#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Morning Brook

Here is a real April glorious morning. Flawless sky. Stop at the river and the sunbeam is powering down from the heavens, reflecting off the calm surface of the Charles and beaming right back up like a call and response. The brook is bright blue, reflecting sky. Trees are in bud, especially the maples. Wetlands are quiet, at least on the surface. No mallards this morning. I have the Special One on my back; he has fallen asleep. I listen, or start listening, to a compelling long non-fiction piece featured yesterday on the New York Times podcast, Sunday Read: The Daily: ‘The Battle for the Mural — and the Future of Belarus.’ It’s almost two hours long, so it takes me all day to snatch the moments to finish it, while driving to a doctor’s appointment. It’s a gripping narrative about resistance to Aleksandr Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, and relates the modern history of government, stolen elections, and relationship with Russia. It’s tense and incredibly moving. I feel as if I now understand the significance of Belarus’ relationship to Russia and how it’s being used by Russia in the efforts against Ukraine.

For more than two decades, Belarus existed in an equilibrium of quiet authoritarianism. If the government’s repressions didn’t directly touch them, most Belarusians tolerated them. But over the course of 2020, the country’s history and identity, which never much interested a majority of people who lived there, became something they would sacrifice their lives for. Sarah A. Topol explores the battle over a political mural in a public park in Minsk and considers the future of Belarus. As a remarkable campaign of defiance against an increasingly totalitarian regime, the mural is an emblem of strength and a call for change — but to what end?

~ This story was written by Sarah A. Topol and recorded by Audm.

http://www.journalofexpressivewriting.com/open-mic

I had a long phone listen to a client while in the sunny garden. I had time at my desk to respond to email and write a blog for the Journal of Expressive Writing about U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo’s feature in the open mic I host Wed. And, finally, a response from the journal who requested some work on the ending of my poem, which I submitted a couple of weeks ago. They have accepted it, and I am very pleased it has found a home in this particular journal. I’m very moved and inspired by the words of Jed Myers, an editor of this journal, who writes:

Poetry has prevailed with me, I believe, as it is a form of song, rendered in speech, offering the prospect of deep understandings of complex personal experience. It can be a bridge between psyches, between souls, across any distances whatever in time or geography. I am terminally enthralled with this notion.

Terminally enthralled, indeed.

Sunbeam & Reflection