Tag Archives: flying
i have a high “negative capability”
i have a high “negative capability.”
“Negative capability describes the capacity of human beings to transcend and revise their contexts. The term has been used by poets and philosophers to describe the ability of the individual to perceive, think, and operate beyond any presupposition of a predetermined capacity of the human being. It further captures the rejection of the constraints of any context, and the ability to experience phenomena free from epistemological bounds, as well as to assert one’s own will and individuality upon their activity. The term was first used by the Romantic poet John Keats to critique those who sought to categorize all experience and phenomena and turn them into a theory of knowledge. It has recently been appropriated by philosopher and social theorist Roberto Mangabeira Unger to comment on human nature and to explain how human beings innovate and resist within confining social contexts. The concept has also inspired psychoanalytic practices and twentieth-century art and literary criticism.”
uh, i know that’s a mouthful. but it’s really accurate if you can bear to wade through all those long, long words!!!
for me, it was just a survival skill, really. how else does a fast racehorse survive being used only as a mule? what some people cannot see is that those in their lives were sent to help them heal. sometimes, there are angels in our presence, and we can’t see it. the minute we do, we know exactly what to do. this is what love looks like.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
New International Version (NIV)
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Filed under notes
while jenny laughs, a poem
While Jenny Laughs
(originally published in Earth’s Daughters)
While Jenny laughs,
two large brown hawks
ride the currents,
swirling over our heads
like the occasional
dreams we’ve had
of flying — she and I
agree on this. She
raises her blouse
to nurse her son.
His wispy curls are moving
lazily in the air, too,
his tender scalp
the color of a ripe peach,
and as he nurses she
kisses his hand.
Since I cut my hair
short, she says,
people keep mistaking me
for a man. Her smooth
face is perfectly
symmetrical, her cheekbones
high pirouettes of pale
skin, lightly flushed and
freckled by the quick
heat of early summer.
I would never, ever,
mistake you for a man,
I say, and as her milk
flows into the baby’s
mouth she laughs again,
her high voice turning
into notes of clear amber
bells. Look at the hawks
one more time, I tell her,
and so, to please me, she does.
Filed under poetry
Kimberly Townsend Palmer 