Kloncke

Women and the genius things they make and do. Here are just a few.

I am not a Christian, so to my ears this recorded sermon by my friend Nichola sounded more like an arahant (enlightened one) elucidating the teachings of the Buddha. On this very night your life will be taken — by endless, cavernous craving. Tanha. I knew Nichola was brilliant, a student of Jesus, James Baldwin, and other pretty okay characters, but damn, I don’t think I had ever heard her preach before. At the time I was at a friend’s place in San Francisco, and once I started listening I was so captivated that I stayed huddled on the living room couch, rudely ignored my friend-hosts  while they tested the day’s crock-pot soup in the kitchen. (That craving, that need, even for wisdom — like she says at the pulpit, it’ll make you ignore your loved ones if you’re not careful.)

I am not a poet, nor a scholar, really, but I know what I like.  What makes me pause from internet “snacking” (a term I learned from web marketing experts studying cyber-habit-patterns) to recollect my breath.  My friend Kim, on the other hand, is a scholar and poet and artist, and thank goodness.  That piece will stay with me — and don’t miss the video she links to, minutes 3:45 to 7:54.

I am trying to become a revolutionary, but it’s less simple than it sounds, though thankfully also less cult-y (so far).  In this arena, mother and self-identified manta-militant Berta will remain unlinked, as she is best experienced off the Internet, but she has been no less crucial to my week and my spirit.  Berta torpedoes through this fearsome world with a cheerful pragmatism, a humble, no-bullshit incandescence.  She makes being a revolutionary seem like the only sensible thing one could do with one’s life — and vows, smiling, to keep at it til the day she dies.  I believe her.

And then there’s Lianne, who I mentioned earlier, and cannot stop listening to.