Don’t forget, last year I put a video reading of this poem up on YouTube, if you want to see me get a little fired up. I will continue posting this poem every election day until I feel like the American people have made a real shift.
Crumbs is from my collection The Little Book of Insurrection or the Poetry of My Discontent, which is available on both Amazon and Smashwords.
I meant to post this yesterday! Hope you enjoy.
Mary’s Lamb
By Kat Miacri, copyright 2018
This poem is inspired from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.
Today is the last day of preordering The Kindness Book here. I will be taking the page down at midnight Eastern tonight. As a reminder, this is currently the only opportunity to get a copy of the book in the United States, so be sure to grab one if you are interested!
It seems one of those odd synchronicities to be running the preorder for The Kindness Book during all the ugliness of the Kavanaugh hearings, but I think it’s really important. There is a lack of civil discourse and a quickness to “other” people, and overall there seems to br increasing polarization lately – those who view other people as individuals with rights and those who view other people as pawns to use in their efforts to gain personal power. Kindness that stems from compassion and true caring can go a long way toward helping to improve society.
Kindness is viewed by some people as a weakness, but there is a distinction between being kind and being nice. Niceness is more related to manners and is frequently motivated by wanting people to like you and not wanting to make waves, thus a very passive state. Kindness comes from empathy and often requires action, even if it is just active listening to others. And so kindness requires a steel core of convictions underneath the softness. Kindness sometimes mean saying “no”.
And here is where kindness can really help in society. People who care can look at those who view people as pawns and love them for the individuals they are and the load they carry but out of that love say “no”. It is a lot like parenting. Say “you are mucking up this sandbox we are all trying to play in, and I love you but you may not knock down the other sandcastles and you can’t force other people to build you the biggest sandcastle. That is not okay, it never was okay, and it never will be okay. And until you can respect that, you have to go sit on the side.” Imagine doing that to those currently in power, just making them sit on the sides until they at least play nicely, if not kindly. The trick then is that you then have to live by example and play by the rules yourself.
Anyway, The Kindness Book preorder is up just through Monday so make sure you snag your copy while you can!
I was going to do a post on kindness this week in honor of the preorder for The Kindness Book, but I find myself moved to reblog this poem from last year instead.
I am so disgusted by the current state of affairs and the so-called elite believing they are a class unto themselves and that people in the general population applaud and want to emulate them. We can do better. We can BE better.
I wrote the following and it was super cathartic to do, but I think I would describe it more as a “piece” rather than a “poem” due to the discordant rhythm and the dialogue involved, but that suits the mood. Hopefully this means my streak has been broken. We’ll have to see.
Lady Liberty and Uncle Sam
Lady Liberty weeps
In the corner on the floor,
Torch extinguished.
Uncle Sam says
“Smile! Don’t you know
You are so much
Prettier
When you smile?
I can’t abide
Your ugliness.”
“Oh Sammy,” Liberty wails,
“Your games have gone
Too far,
And I feel such pain
That smiling is an
Impossibility.”
“You’re too temperamental,”
Uncle Sam replies.
“You let your
Emotions
Get the best of you.
Swallow it down, like me,
Until you are
Numb inside.”
Standing, Liberty shouts.
“No, I won’t allow myself
To become internally
Dead.
Nor will I hide
From…
View original post 139 more words
The preorder page for The Kindness Book is up and running here! As a reminder, this is the short story collection for children which I am included in, and this is the only opportunity to buy the collection in the United States, though I may include my story in my own collection if I ever manage to write enough that I am proud of to include in a collection of my own.
My story is called A Spring Search and was inspired by my illustration A Hope For Spring which I’ve shared below. It was a serendipitous happening where I posted on Instagram about wanting to write more and thought using my old illustrations as inspirations for short stories would be good, and I was invited to write something and submit it for the collection.
I will do a blogpost next week with my thoughts regarding kindness.
Also, in an effort to spread the kindness outward, I will be donating half of all profits of this preorder to charity to help feed needy children in my local city. Specifics are on the preorder page.
I recently finished a biography of Madame Roland, a woman who played a key part in the 18th century French Revolution. I was familiar with late 18th century French politics but it was never an area that I studied deeply before, mostly looking at the time from the Royals and from the Americans’ point of view, as well as the Jacobin side. Madame Roland was a part of the Girondists, a more moderate faction of the revolutionaries than the Jacobins. Her life is fascinating, and I’m planning on reading her memoirs that she penned while in prison in the future.
Reading about Madame Roland and the revolution reminded me of the horrors of the mob, and also how the mob can be roused and utilized by individuals or small groups of people against others. And it also got me thinking again about liberty and the rights of individuals and morals and principles both in general and personally.
The brutality of a portion of the poorest people whipped into a frenzy in France was horrifying. The streets literally did run red in blood. So me being me, I immediately tried to put myself into that situation. Do you ever do this? Ask yourself – what would it take for me to be so angry, to dehumanize or blame someone so much, that I would relish in witnessing their public murder and be gleeful at the blood? Or what would it take to be swept up in the tide of a mob and how far would you let that tide take you, if there were rioting? We mostly want to think of ourselves as too civilized, too intelligent, too above the common herd to fall sway, but what if we were chronically on the brink of starvation and freezing to death?
And the flip side – have you ever asked yourself if you have a cause or a principle that you would be willing to die for? Or to try to manipulate people to achieve the goals of that cause? The Girondists really believed in the Grecian ideals of liberty and freedom for France, but the general population at that point mistook licentiousness for liberty, something many still do today. And that’s a point I think everyone really needs to reflect on. I do firmly believe in liberty and self-governance, but I also know that not everyone is ready for self-governance, so the best thing we can be doing is to help others become more aware of their power and responsibility over themselves as individuals because without that, society is pretty much doomed to keep repeating the mistakes of the past.
While I’ve been having all this swirling in the background of my mind that past week, a quote of Alfred Adler’s came up on a podcast I was listening to – “It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than it is to live up to them”. And that just kind of turned everything around and made me consider things even more. It is an interesting and instructive exercise to reach into the dustiest, darkest corners of your inner self, even when it is uncomfortable.
Anyway, I hope we never have to repeat something like the French Revolution, and that the revolution, when it does come, can be a more enlightened and less messy one.
The end of August and beginning of September is the time of year that I get super productive and active. My motivation goes into full throttle, I accomplish a lot through the autumn months, and then it begins to wane in December as we approach the shortest day of the year.
I wonder if it’s biological – if my DNA remembers ancestors of mine gathering the harvest and preparing for winter. Or maybe it’s because my birthday is at the end of August, and this is “my” time. Or perhaps it’s merely Pavlovian with my years and years of starting school at this time, with all the preparation that went with it. Whatever the reason, and it may very well be all three honestly, I love this time. I love starting new projects and recommitting myself to whatever ongoing projects I’m working on, I love the bustle and activity, I love the feelings I get running through my veins as the quality of the sunlight shifts and autumn starts to show itself.
Do you have a certain time of year that feels like yours?
I’ve finally updated my gallery page with the 3 paintings I finished for the art show last month, and I put two of them up on my Fine Art America page too.
This abstract is entitled Breaking Through, and I painted it with the thought of people finally breaking free of their programming.
The last two are watercolors that started out as experiments with my son from about a year ago, using salt crystals on the page to create interesting texture. After letting the textured pages sit for a long time, I built on top of them in ways that seemed interesting to me, without any set plan in mind. The first was more successful than the second and may have become a personal favorite. I titled it Outer Space 1 because I assume I’ll be painting more on the theme at a later date. I loved playing with my new set of metallic watercolors that I got over the holidays on this one.
The second is a generic landscape that seems a little garish to me, but it is an interesting effort so I am sharing it. Because I wasn’t as satisfied with this one, it is not getting a name nor did I upload it for merchandising purposes, but I do have the original available if anybody is interested.
I have been meaning to share these for over a month now, but work and life has been insane. Still working on coming up with some solutions to give me more time to create, but I am taking things as they come. It felt so good to work on these.
