Monday Whatevers
April 25, 2022
Hello, Friend!
It’s Monday, so… inspired by on one of my favorite bits of the Bible, let’s start every week off with a little bit of whatever’s good and noble in the world. Here are a few excellent and noteworthy things I’m seeing in the world right now. Some are beautiful, promising, and reassuring. Some are poignant, thought-provoking, and necessary. All of them add to a greater knowing of God’s presence in this world, within our humanity, and out in the great beyond. And, they all prove there’s an abundance of spectacular, breathtaking tangible and intangible cosmic matter between us.
Please feel free to share in the comments whatever is good that you’re seeing in the world as well.
Blessings,
Marcie
MONDAY WHATEVER – APRIL 25
This week, I’m so pleased to share the work of a Maria Popova, the creator of the weekly email digest The Marginalian. Recently, she created a series of videos called The Animated Universe in Verse and they are simply sublime. Just glorious!
I do not have the pleasure of knowing Popova, I am just another one of her many fans. You can follow and support her work @mariapopova. She also has a book that we treasure in our home as part of our collection of truly and wonderfully, blissful books: The Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader.
I love supporting this kind of majesty of humanity being in the world. It’s my honor to share it with all of you. If you are able to donate to her work, please do. I believe that in doing so, you are helping to bring more hope into the universe.
MY GOD, IT’S FULL OF STARS (PART 5)
by Tracy K. Smith – read by Tracy K. Smith with music by Gautam Srikishan
When my father worked on the Hubble Telescope, he said They operated like surgeons: scrubbed and sheathed In papery green, the room a clean cold, a bright white. He’d read Larry Niven at home, and drink scotch on the rocks, His eyes exhausted and pink. These were the Reagan years, When we lived with our finger on The Button and struggled To view our enemies as children. My father spent whole seasons Bowing before the oracle-eye, hungry for what it would find. His face lit up whenever anyone asked, and his arms would rise As if he were weightless, perfectly at ease in the never-ending Night of space. On the ground, we tied postcards to balloons For peace. Prince Charles married Lady Di. Rock Hudson died. We learned new words for things. The decade changed. The first few pictures came back blurred, and I felt ashamed For all the cheerful engineers, my father and his tribe. The second time, The optics jibed. We saw to the edge of all there is — So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.
LET THERE ALWAYS BE LIGHT (SEARCHING FOR DARK MATTER)
by Rebecca Elson – read by Patti Smith with music by Zoë Keating
For this we go out dark nights, searching For the dimmest stars, For signs of unseen things: To weigh us down. To stop the universe From rushing on and on Into its own beyond Till it exhausts itself and lies down cold, Its last star going out. Whatever they turn out to be, Let there be swarms of them, Enough for immortality, Always a star where we can warm ourselves. Let there be enough to bring it back From its own edges, To bring us all so close we ignite The bright spark of resurrection.
[UNTITLED ODE TO THE WONDER OF LIFE]
by Richard Feynman – read and performed by Yo-Yo Ma
I stand at the seashore, alone, and start to think. There are the rushing waves… mountains of molecules, each stupidly minding its own business… trillions apart… yet forming white surf in unison. Ages on ages… before any eyes could see… year after year… thunderously pounding the shore as now. For whom, for what?… on a dead planet, with no life to entertain. Never at rest… tortured by energy… wasted prodigiously by the sun… poured into space. A mite makes the sea roar. Deep in the sea, all molecules repeat the patterns of one another till complex new ones are formed. They make others like themselves… and a new dance starts. Growing in size and complexity… living things, masses of atoms, DNA, protein… dancing a pattern ever more intricate. Out of the cradle onto the dry land… here it is standing… atoms with consciousness… matter with curiosity. Stands at the sea… wonders at wondering… I… a universe of atoms… an atom in the universe.
WHATEVER IS LOVELY & GRACIOUS…
SINGULARITY
(after Marie Howe)
by Marissa Davis – read and performed by Toshi Reagon
in the wordless beginning iguana & myrrh magma & reef ghost moth & the cordyceps tickling its nerves & cedar & archipelago & anemone dodo bird & cardinal waiting for its red ocean salt & crude oil now black muck now most naïve fumbling plankton every egg clutched in the copycat soft of me unwomaned unraced unsexed as the ecstatic prokaryote that would rage my uncle’s blood or the bacterium that will widow your eldest daughter’s eldest son my uncle, her son our mammoth sun & her uncountable siblings & dust mite & peat apatosaurus & nile river & maple green & nude & chill-blushed & yeasty keratined bug-gutted i & you spleen & femur seven-year refreshed seven-year shedding & taking & being this dust & my children & your children & their children & the children of the black bears & gladiolus & pink florida grapefruit here not allied but the same perpetual breath held fast to each other as each other’s own skin cold-dormant & rotting & birthing & being born in the olympus of the smallest possible once before once
WHATEVER IS EXCELLENT & WORTHY OF APPLAUSE…
THE MORE LOVING ONE
by W.H. Auden – read by Janna Levin with music by Garth Stevenson
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me. Admirer as I think I am Of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day. Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky And feel its total dark sublime, Though this might take me a little time.
May your week be filled with whatever is true, honest, just, pure, lovely, gracious, excellent, and worthy of praise.
Much Peace,
Marcie, BCWWF