THIS WILL NEVER FADE.
in that moment when everything is clear and something is understood we think we ll be changed. we hope that we ve been reborn but then come to know better as we fall harder into our old habits, our old perspectives. this moment haunts the artist and eludes the masses. lifetimes dedicated to capturing, freezing the frame.

let this take flight.
i used to think that my thoughts weren t worth the paper on which they d be printed. I m still not sure, just a little more desperate. maybe all i learned from college was a deep despair wiped away by this stubborn hope that we can have some hand in our legacy.

a cosmic swap of magnitude how your car lease appears larger than a supernova
the universe exhales into the shade of a single cell/ our worlds eclipsed by subatomic realities/ seed fertilized sprouted, grown/ you re bigger than i ll ever be./ in the moment between the silence and the noise, the darkness and the light/ i caught my breath long enough to see/ micro and macro are mirror images of each-other./ my everything is taking shelter under a single grain of sand/ while your memory transcends 10,000 earthquakes. the vine is still climbing with more adhesion/ than fire to paper/ you thought you could catch the sunsets/ and i believed you./ i still do./ in the moment between the silence and the noise,/ the darkness and the light/ i caught my breath long enough to see that micro and macro turned out to be the same.

your hands are infinitely stronger than they would have you believe. you tell me what matters. what used to be a mirror rained down on to a cold floor. between sobs she whispered, none of this will make my heart any more beautiful.

closer to science
compelled from rest into new sun. stripped of nobility and heroism, fleshy, mobile masses robots driven by forces unnamed. word birth to demystify the magic. all of our stories. mutual womb-decaying, half-frozen, chlorophyl-drained, musty soil ground-brittle bone, aged worn teeth, fragmented hair, stripped of skin still somehow soft until it powders in your still-warm fingers, grasping for something real beyond sterile and concrete tunnels.

we re going to fall and lose our breathe.
we re going to fall and lose our breath. we re going to bloody our hands, bruise the miniature expanses of our limbs on our way out. abrade this flesh, leave a trail of my own red warmth. this place can keep our skins.

i d never trade your comfort and misleading contentedness for these sleepless nights. excuses like yours are exactly what keeps the good fight weak. excuses like yours make you a cog in that machine. excuses like yours tear at our collective hope. it s never too late to take arms again.

misled by aerial views
in the city where i was born there is a peculiar order, complete with miles of polished images and syrupy rhetoric. it s probably like this in your town, too. i ve found it in every city i ve visited in the united states. it s hard to see how bloated and botched our world is by these straight streets, trimmed with trees, sparkling with twinkle lights. deceived by the preciousness of it all. still, here we are, floundering, trying to make sense of this peculiar combination of time and space file us under B4, an unlucky spot on a cosmic bingo board. we gaze at mirrors, not windows, stifled by recycled air and unreal colors. this world puts us into beautiful bubbles of isolation and confusion- and all is well until we realize that they re not fluid, real, or beautiful at all. we re compartmentalized into tight, rigid coffins made of our own fingernails, grit, sweat, and futures. we re stuck, writhing, aching, and achingly beautiful. these misshapen bodies, quashed dreams, and massacred heart carry on every day with blue prints of nothing but mistakes. we re engorged in a strange real world where absolutely nothing is real but our suffering and quieted urge to throw it all away, burn those streets, and start again.

NOTHING IS SACRED.
10 billion a year
192 million a week
21 million a day
1,140,000 an hour
19,025 a minute
317 a second
What have we done?

swimming solo
this one eludes even the most simplistic and darwinian definitions of life s purpose. the fact that this is so appealing to me is troublesome, to say the least. the promise? the appeal of this womanly defiance? what is so
beautiful about shaking the mutual dependence between men and women? my guess is the reality and seriousness of that dependence has created enough friction to cause an internal rebellion. this is a little flame burning in the heart of every woman that mysteriously idealizes the idea of running away with your girls, making a new life, and drowning in a sea of estrogen . maybe the spark only comes out when we are particularly disgusted with our male partners or when we are markedly inspired by our sisters nonetheless i would argue that it is there, quietly burning in the heart of every woman. there is something driving us away. men aren t inherently oppressive. they are equally important to our tribes. families, and relationships, so should be regarded as such. still, my heart leaps at the thought of that shark, creating with a fierce and bloody independence. a big who needs you? to everyone she was supposed to need. i hope i can shake this fixation and quiet the spark that keeps me enamored with the idea of running away, someday. until then, i ll need to grapple with the idea that is okay to

learn and that sometimes my estrogen needs a little balance, even if i don t understand what forces drive me away and why total independence taunts me the way that it does.
-kh

footing fails with years. i despise the inverse relationship between years and idealism. your years taught you to forget the suffering and evil that used to inspire us all. we re young, we re idealistic, we re full of passion and we re right.

the passionate life drafting the resolution
driven from an utterly unfulfilling relationship and struck with the emptiness of disappointment from too much logic and too little passion, it was born my constant quest for a passionate life. i ve been busy drawing diagrams, drafting blue prints, coordinating maps, and scheming into these indiana nights. admittedly a work in progress.

basic principles
i. these seconds are finite and matter.
ii. will make mistakes and break our hearts willfully or not. take a chance on the good life.
iii. our culture would prefer us to be void of intensity and fire. we know better.
iv. only capitalist robots can t listen to their hearts. don t be that robot.
V. fighting the good fight and resistance are central to reclaiming our passionate lives. there are no rigid guidelines necessary for living a passionate life. staying true to your heart, a dedication to positive change, and an awareness of the limited availability of minutes like these are the starting points, however.
vi. this life is absolutely for the taking. excuses, money, fears, apathy and hesitation are the enemies of passionate living.
vii. sleep is for the weak. this time is too precious to spend it all with your eyes closed.
viii. tell her you love her.

hectares will always be greek to me,
my eyes caught on a photograph of us years ago, laughing together in the middle of the night, all dressed up with nowhere to go. I m convinced that we re not built for this distance. nomadic tribes cross paths, moving on in opposite directions. how come i am so confident we would have been in the same tribe, girl? pack of wolves. alpha beta. good riddance to the rest. death is another story, entirely. i know your heart still beats. its complicated rhythms that took me years to understand are altogether silent over all of these miles, fields, gnarled monuments of humanity. I m left here opening wings of my own adding distance that can only fairly be called unnatural. battered, warn psyche telling me that you re as good as dead. all i have, all we have pushed, spun out an an invisible clothesline, spider-web. pressing all hope into the safe passage of gentle sparkles of reflected light from me to you and back again.

west maple
tight-roping between comfortable ethics in deep colors, meaningful hues and sitting at the same table i ve known for 22 years. those white stools thick and waxy covering decades. eight years old balancing on the back. tepid cricket with a grinding creek, stay still, summer chirp, your sister is still sleeping. your heart beat in recipes, hot ovens and spilled sugar. i am haunted by red corn syrup rocks broken by candy hammers under my feet. when i looked at you i forgot the recipes, deep-fried southern cuisine, a rich carcass casserole, and tucked them away with words like colored and woman doctor. we don t carry so much. on such small feet when i dream of you.

fourteen hours
move past the formalities while i turn the sand timer heavy side up. it s not that I m watching each grain fall. it s just that as each grain passes, it weighs a little heavier in my heart a deeper connection and one second closer to our last. that s why i don t want to sleep. it s not that there is too much to see in this second story bedroom. i just can t help but think about you, afraid your eyes will leave you in the dark. i want to see all i can so i can tell you all about it. i want to. i want to remember color, texture, size, proximity and bear witness to what you don t. if i could give you new eyes i would but for tonight i ll settle for staying up through the morning, blinking and seeing you everywhere i look.

end of summer.
The night my friend told me the profile of a rape victim, i cut of my hair and vowed to not get a call phone. i watched friend #1 and Friend #2 to their cars and was too afraid to let my dog out. i listened for noises and visually scoured the street, for movement from my bedroom window. i worried about #1 and #2 as they drove home, holding back my maternal urge to call. that night #2 s friend got hit over the head on hot way into her home. he tried to take her. her barking dogs scared him away. they eventually caught him. turns out he was the same man who raped #1 s grandmother after breaking into her house that june. this is my neighborhood in so many ways.

As my hair fell, as i imagined one nightmare after another, to lurked blocks away, prepared to bloody an innocent woman. is this a gender issue? is this psychological issue? both?

I know what i can see. my guilty pleasure over a midnight bike-ride, alone. my fear of traveling solo. the dark beyond the stifling electric inside warmth. the shards of glass that he shattered as he called me hitch demanding my purse. the haunting memories of places my body has been forced.

I am seeking a balance of letting myself live and keeping up these defenses. the tension between these two existence s is beyond troublesome. to know a woman doesn t let herself be a victim, right? i didn t choose this. the language of prevention feels like a knife in my hands but what happens when my hands are too full to carry that knife? every victim knows this feeling. i should be thinking about sidewalks and mittens, not footsteps and head turns. no answers for the spirited sisters scolded for exploring after dark. foolish late night empowerment. teaming up against the perpetrators. there is a sick beauty in this call for sisterhood. this is everyone s problem

dead of winter.
Of course there is a part two.
Last night #1 got rear ended at an intersection. he tried to get her out her car, then followed her home. a few weeks before her sister was cornered in a dark parking lot. they both got away. that is two more women, afraid. two more victims.

The transformation from innocent to victim still troubles me. i ve known nothing but being responsible for not being a victim. nothing but escape routes and planning for the worst. the man at the park as a child. the man in the white cadillac in jr. high. the man who broke into my car while i sat there helpless, and all of the men who have colored the lives of my closest friends. these realities haunt me and keep me out of stride with living life instead of fearing it. back to the language of prevention why do we have to carry this weight? anticipating the worst, knowing that prevention is accepting the responsibility for actions entirely out of our control. we know that there is nothing inherently wrong with walking alone at night or traveling solo. alas, corruption has marked our lives, tinting independence and hopefulness with guilt and responsibility. the lesser of the two evils? find someone to walk you in, guard up. here i sit, fists clenched, vowing not to let them get the best of me, all the while turning over these memories and fears over in my head. knowledge is power and its making me weak.

raw foods and revolution
It has been said that of the 4 million years our bodies have been evolving 3,950,000 of those years were spent eating only raw food. we re the only animal on earth who cooks our food before we eat it and the only species with such prevalence of disease.

When we cook a food above 118 degrees f, were killing its enzymes (the elements that help digest and assimilate our nutrients), denaturing proteins, removing 30-50% of vitamins and minerals, and decreasing the potency of that food s fiber.

I recognize that we are more than machines and that our diets are more than a mere quest for nutrients and fuel. nonetheless, I m concerned about the logic and ethics behind my choices, primarily the amounts of energy my food uses to get to my table. the facts are clear. - fruit yields more calories per acre than vegetables, grains, and most definitely mean. - Consuming living foods implies little or no processing, thereby saving water, electricity, transportation and nutrients.

We eat to sustain ourselves. somehow, we still eat food that s of substandard nutritional quality, wasteful, and actually contributes to the detriment of our health.

Only cooked food, as opposed to raw, activates the white blood cells, leukocytes- a reaction reserved to fight against infection or poison threatening the body. hmmm.

Personally, i need less sleep, i feel healthier, i feel more in touch with my surroundings and passions, i have more energy, and i have more confidence in the integrity of my choices when i eat raw.

Fresh fruits and vegetables are nothing short of beautiful. these perfect foods are vibrant, life-giving and brilliant. they are, logically, the ultimate choice for the good of our bodies and of our planet.

We support industrial processing of our otherwise vital food when we eat cooked, processed cuisine and thus end up paying more for less nutrients and more pollution. nowhere in my vision of utopia are debased, cheapened foods.

Real revolution starts within. i could write novels on the subject and would be happy to share what i know and am discovering with anyone interested. strive for a pure heart and a pure body.

*for ease of reading citations have been omitted. further reading on the subject is readily available with citations included. recommended authors dr. doug graham, frederic patenaude, victoria boutenko gabriel cousens, edward howell, and more recent works by david wolfe.

thank you for listening. hope my words meant something to you. we have so much power, so much potential. let s take back this place and take back our lives.

kristina. embraceresistance@hotmail.com
aol summerunfolds

hold tight to hope