On the Road

Tomorrow, La Professora, Cello and I will be leaving Melburne for a two week road trip up the coast of Victoria to just below Sydney. I just went to answer the phone and the wonderful smell of Anna's tomato sauce cooking in the outdoor oven enveloped me, her home grown tomatoes, harvested for all the possiblities of another season--she will dry them on on old window screens lifted closer to the sun on her Hill's Hoist, she will crush them in the whirling aluminium gadget that she is so proud of, add fresh basil and oregano and pour pints and pints into cherished glass jars--which she will put into my arms whenever I come for a visit, but for tonight, she is making fresh pasta sauce in the open air and I can wrap myself in the hot end of summer aroma that is Anna making her self at home in Australia.



Naomi, my dear New York friend, said when I told her of our trip--write it all down, jut like Kerouac did and we laughed. The image of the three of us and our 12 year old Honda, Fifi, two aging lesbians, forgive me, La Professora, one aging lesbian and one middle-aged red head, with their skipergee replacing the male celebrations of Jack and his friends--well, we will see, we will see.

I have already voted for Obama. I miss my country now that it is in the throes of new imaginings. I want to say, love to you all--as if this is a letter to old friends--so in between the old and the new I am. Joan

You Make Hope Grow in Our Blood

Dear Mirna,
Your words reached me in the midst of a dark night--and Mirna, it is you, and all like you, who have seen the terrible failure that war is, and yet reach out, who are keeping hope alive in this world. Our words now can fly to each other, over walls, over armies, over nationalistic tirades. We will always remind each other that under the sweeping rhetoric of national leaders, of militarisms, there exists another people--those who want to stand on hill tops and see each other, to pledge face to face, the end of occupations and collective punishments and national agendas of hatred. I am listening always. Joan

Speaking with Kotsu, years speaking to years