"When I was in my very early 20's I decided that theater was not really what I should be doing - I had seen a photo of Mother Teresa holding a very tiny baby - the two smiling/beaming at each other and it struck me like lightning that this is what I should do - go to India, find her, own only a sari and a bucket and go around picking up and caring for the sick and dying.

"So I was working temp jobs, trying to raise money to go to India and in the midst of this Mother Teresa makes a surprise trip to NYC. I call all the places she had been, call her convent in the Bronx, trying to find out how I can meet her. Someone at my job suggests I call the Indian Consulate, and when I do the man tells me that she will actually be there for a talk in about 45 minutes or so.

"I dash out of the job - saying goodbyes to all - call my friend Max to try to meet me and head up - the building is in the east 60's off Central Park as I recall...I get there and Mother Teresa has not arrived and the guard will not let me in. While I wait, two cars pull up...out of one exits a flock of nuns, and out of the other tiny Mother Teresa between two tall men. They come down the sidewalk towards me - jumping foot to foot - and she nods to the guard to let me in. My friend Max arrives and I grab her hand and we both follow Mother Teresa, the tall men, and flock of nuns up the stairs trailing behind like the duckling Ping in the Chinese folk tale.

"Max and I stand at the back of a large ballroom filled with beautiful Indian people, women in gorgeous saris, feeling out of place. Mother Teresa speaks eloquently about her work - at one point a man says, 'They say that rather than give a man a fish, one should teach him how to fish.' She says 'most of these people are not strong enough and need to be given what they need..but I will make a deal with you, I will give them a fish and when they are strong enough you can teach them how.' Booya.

"She is funny, she is tough and I am hearing angels of purpose singing in my head. At the end of the talk she is about to be taken into a smaller room and I think now or never. I fling myself at her, she takes my hand in both her hands and looks up at me (she is TINY) First I think - wow, she looks like Elizabeth Swados, and then I am caught by her eyes - which are just like burning coals. I tell her I want to come to India and pick up dying people and she asks you feel you need to do this, and I say yes and she looks at me and says no, you can not come.

"The angels stop singing. I have been rejected at first glance by Mother Teresa. She says, 'When you are so filled with love for these people that you cannot stand to be away from them for another second then you can come' and I get it - it's not about me. She asks what I do - I mumble about theater and singing...nonsense. She says, 'There are many famines. In my country there is a great famine of the body, and in your country there is a great famine of the spirit....that is what must be fed.' And she pats my hand and spins around and enters the room...I stand there and Max has to come up and take me away ....and I still carry those words with me today."

Earlier this year,  I and my film programming colleagues at Frameline—the San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival—met to begin the always agonizing process of selecting our favorites from several hundred new films submitted by filmmakers from around the world, to assemble a representative snapshot of our cinematic moment.

There are a few obvious trends  that we could spot immediately: strong narratives from Latin America with gay male or transgender protagonists (In the Grayscale, Mariposa, Carmín Tropical, among many others); fascinating stories emerging from areas like the Balkans, which have rarely produced queer work (Sworn Virgin, Love Island, Xenia); a spate of bracing documentaries about North American athletes, created in the wake of Michael Sam, Jason Collins, and the Sochi Olympics (Game Face, Out to Win, To Russia with Love).

But there’s one development that has taken me a bit longer to identify as it isn’t as clear-cut. Call it the Year of the Bad Queer.

Some of the most memorable North American narrative films of the past year have featured GLBT protagonists—not side characters, but principals—who are deeply, irredeemably flawed. I’m not talking about the traditional flaws of antiheroes—quirks and oddities, suspect motives, disarmingly human failings. I’m talking about polarizing, problematic, occasionally awful people who happen to be gay. Their journey is at the center of the film, so we are asked to care about their fate, but their behavior is offensive, they are morally impoverished, mean, vain, passive-aggressive, violent, immature, or, in more technical language, generally fucked up.

Some examples of the Bad Queer phenomenon would include the following, all of them quite accomplished films with theatrical distribution deals in place or at least a lot of festival accolades and buzz.

  • The title character of Justin Kelly’s I Am Michael—based on the true story of Michael Glatze, played by James Franco—goes from being a committed gay youth activist to a homophobic evangelical preacher intent on hurting the community he once loved.

  • The screenplay of Sebastián Silva’s Nasty Baby is almost sadistically constructed so that its central character—a garden-variety Brooklyn performance artist, played by Silva himself—transforms (spoiler alert) from likable prospective gay dad in the first half to brutally violent criminal in the second.

• In her feature debut, writer-director-star Desirée Akhavan creates in Appropriate Behavior a central character, Shirin, who’s best described as a lesbian, Iranian-American version of Hannah Horvath from Girls—socially awkward, narcissistic, immature for her years, and incapable of taking responsibility for her failings.
 
•  In Joey Kuhn’s debut feature Those People, the film’s most volatile, charismatic gay character is Sebastian Blackworth, a self-absorbed, manipulative, Upper East Side socialite who may have abetted his swindling father’s crimes (think Bernie Madoff).

  •  Lily Tomlin’s title character in Paul Weitz’ Grandma, while admittedly a fierce and admirable advocate for her pregnant granddaughter, is mean, self-pitying, occasionally violent, and a self-described “asshole.”

  •  The irreverent Canadian black comedy Guidance is about a self-loathing, alcoholic former child star who’s in denial about his homosexuality and, in career desperation, lies his way into a job as a high school guidance counselor, offering the children vodka shots and such affirmations as “I want you to be an inspiration to all the other sluts.”

Rather than be appalled by this newly hatched cast of fuck-ups or lament the scarcity of queer heroes, I think we should see this trend as reassuring—precisely because these films refuse to repeat the tropes of two decades of GLBT protagonists. Unlike their predecessors, the dramatis personae in this new generation of indies are not defined primarily by their sexuality, and their struggles are not about their sexual orientation. They’re dealing with a host of dysfunctions— bad parents, economic distress, addiction, grief—but they’ve largely integrated being gay into their otherwise messed-up lives. What’s most striking about these new antiheroes is that their flaws usually get the better of them. Most of these films’ denouements do not come with a side order of redemption (with the possible exception of Elle in Grandma, which, interesting enough, was created by a heterosexual writer-director).

So why this sudden proliferation of queer jerks and nasties? (Okay, there have been a few such characters in the past, like Aileen Wuornos in Monster or Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley, but they were once the exception.) I believe we’re seeing a new generation of writers and directors who are eager to create characters that veer away from the well-worn track of indie queer protagonists to date. Ironic and unsentimental, these filmmakers have moved beyond brave teens coming out to disapproving parents, misunderstood rural folk heading for the big city, or anything smacking of martyrdom for a gay cause. They’ve seen enough episodes of Modern Family to know that America may not need another likable homosexual on the screen on whom the audience can project its sympathy or approval. They’re feeling emboldened, or even entitled, to present what might be considered offensive gay or lesbian characters. Perhaps they wish to be seen as provocateurs as well as auteurs. They certainly show a healthy disregard for accusations of “internalized homophobia” (which have been leveled by some critics of these films). And they seem to trust the audience is ready to embrace stories that aren’t, in the end, an exercise in community pride.

As a result, queer film audiences finally have a narrative pleasure that has long been afforded to straight audiences since the dawn of film noir: a central character who is highly problematic, but fascinating.

There is an instructive parallel to this phenomenon that happened nearly fifty years ago involving another minority, namely American Jews. In the wake of growing social acceptance of Jews and waning anti-Semitism at home, a wave of cinematic “bad-boy Jews” swamped the screen in the late ’60s and early ’70s.” Think of the cad played by Richard Benjamin in Goodbye, Columbus, the matricidal George Segal in Where’s Poppa, or several of Elliott Gould’s rakes, cynics, and reprobates. This loosening and complicating of Jewish characters on-screen reflected a newfound confidence among young Jewish writers and directors, who were willing to risk offending people in order to widen the spectrum of Jewish personae beyond the pleasant pigeonholes of scholar, singer, soldier, milquetoast, or suburban assimilator that predominated in the postwar period.*

Could we be witnessing an analogous “bad queer” moment now, even as we witness the onset of marriage equality and I Am Cait? I suspect we are in for an extended run of “gays gone bad” on the big screen, if only because screenwriters now need something spicier than vanilla queerness to flavor their films. Expect a rash of Patricia Highsmith adaptations (two are already around the corner) and, who knows?, maybe another biopic about J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohn, and Jeffrey Dahmer.

I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing documentarian Marcel Ophuls at the recent Mill Valley Film Festival, and penning an appreciation of his contributions to the field for the festival's program. Part of preparing for the interview and the essay was reviewing a good portion of his body of work...no small feat when it comes to his lengthy career and lengthy films! You can read my essay here or in the PDF below.

The fall arts and culture season is just a couple of weeks old and I already feel hopelessly behind. To save you from that sinking feeling (“What, I missed that [show – screening – concert – lecture – exhibition] already?”), here is my highly edited tip sheet for the coming month, as the Fall season commences along with (for some of you) a new year, 5775. The only common denominator to the items below is that I have some personal or professional connection to these events, so be forewarned, it is a hopelessly self-referential list:

The Cinema Club: Year 17, Season 35
This venerable sneak preview club, which I have been moderating for <gulp> 10 years, returns for a new season of top-notch, discussion-worthy features on select Sunday mornings at the Sundance Kabuki. Actually, you’ve already missed the first one this past Sunday (I told you, it’s hard to keep up)— we showed the phenomenal Swedish psychodrama-cum-ski-movie Force Majeure (pictured), already garnering Oscar buzz—but you can still become a member for the remaining sessions or come a la carte. Subscription info here.

Mill Valley Film Festival (Oct. 2-12)
So many strong films lined up this year at MVFF, it’s hard to choose.  I am especially looking forward to the producing debut of my friend (and former SF Jewish Film Fest director) Janis Plotkin, whose Plastic Man is a documentary about San Francisco bail bondsman-turned-artist Jerry Barrish. Of the films I have already seen, I was impressed with the Dardenne Brothers’ Two Days, One Night, a sensitive drama in which a working-class Belgian factory worker (Marion Cotillard in an understated, glamorless and lovely performance) has one weekend to convince her co-workers to give up their bonus so she won’t get laid off. And then there is the oddly captivating and unsettling dysfunctional marriage drama from Israel called Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem, starring the intense Ronit Elkabetz, co-directing with her brother Shlomi. Here’s my catalog note on that one. Also MVFF is also showing the above-mentioned Force Majeure.

A Taste for Conversation –
Yotam Ottolenghi
Last year’s blazing-star cookbook sensation was Jerusalem, whose message from its Israeli and Palestinian co-authors seemed to be “make food, not war.” Now the London-based Israeli half of that duo—chef and restaurateur Yotam Ottolenghi—is riding high with several new cookbooks and public conversations. I’ll be doing the onstage honors with him (and extracting some cooking advice) at the JCCSF on October 24. Tickets are going fast, but if you miss out you can watch the live stream at jccsf.org/live.

The Stanford Family:
From a Tragic Loss,
a Lasting Institution
What is a Harvard guy doing plugging the founding story of Stanford University? Cool your jets, Crimson. I had the honor to work on the reinstallation of the Stanford Family Galleries at the university’s renowned Cantor Arts Center; the renovated galleries, which opened last month, tell a remarkable story in California and national history and include some fascinating historical artifacts like The Last Spike, which completed the Transcontinental Railroad, and artworks by Eadweard Muybridge and Thomas Hill. So if you’re heading down to Palo Alto, perhaps to check out the new Anderson Collection, stop in across the street at the Cantor and have a look at the galleries. You’ll discover the little-known (at least to me) tale of how both the university and the museum were created in a single gesture to memorialize the death of 15-year-old Leland Stanford, Jr., scion of one of the country's most influential Gilded Age families. My favorite anecdote: when Leland and Jane Stanford founded the university in 1891 in their son’s memory, they insisted it should be co-educational and tuition-free. But they felt the university museum (precursor to the Cantor) should charge an admission fee. Today, attending Stanford costs around $60,000 a year….but the museum is free. Oh, for the noblesse oblige of the Gilded Age!

5775 – Palindrome Year
Since English is read from the left, and Hebrew from the right, perhaps the only hope for making sense of our divided world is in a palindrome. May the coming year 5775 bring each of you much palindromic symmetry, calm, rationality, and order…but may it also provide many unexpected bursts of random pleasure in this irreproducible, irrational universe we inhabit, no matter from which direction you approach.

I have lost my doppelgänger. All my adult life I have been fated, due to oddly similar facial characteristics (from a certain angle, and especially lately with ever receding hairlines), to have been confused with Robin Williams. This happened most often in public settings, when I would detect strangers staring at me, whispering to a friend with a furtive nod in my direction. Because I too am in the film business, and frequently convey, superficially anyway, a somewhat antic temperament, the confusion happened a lot. 

Occasionally I benefited from the resemblance: I was once whisked past a long line of waiting patrons upstairs at Chez Panisse, where the maître d’ greeted me warmly with “How nice to see you again!” and immediately seated my party at a prized table. I tried to convince myself and my impressed friends that he recognized me. But a few minutes later I saw the maître d’ scrutinizing me from afar: annoyed, even ashamed, that he had been taken in by an impostor. Hey, I hadn’t asked for the special attention. From everything I know about Robin Williams, I suspect he wouldn’t have either.

I never got the chance to ask Robin Williams if he too was plagued by this confusion—set upon by strangers who breathlessly wished to be greeting their spritely gay Jewish filmmaker friend, only to be disappointed that it was an international comic superstar. I did have the chance: In 1984, in a private airport lounge at SFO, I saw him lying across several seats, napping. I stared at my doppelgänger, living proof that we were two separate, distinct beings, our differences now magnified because I was looking for them. I didn’t have the heart to disturb him, just so we could gaze into each other’s funhouse-mirror reflection of ourselves. I let him sleep in peace.

I’d long gotten used to our resemblance, and confident enough in my own persona to laugh it off; but now, in these sad last few days, I find myself weirdly self-conscious. In public, I believe that somehow I am conjuring a ghost, and far too soon—one whose gifts, and struggles, were uniquely his, and not for me to impersonate, even unwittingly. I feel the absence of his comic brilliance as much as his adoring public does, with great pain, but also with a specific and peculiar pang: I am suddenly now a phantom limb, a presence at once comforting and disorienting, a reminder of what we had, and what we’ve lost.

While it’s now been 2 ½ years since I left the staff of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, I still feel butterflies of excitement and occasional fits of anxiety as we approach each new festival season, symptomatic of some unconscious Judeo-Cinemato-Circadian rhythm that rules my autonomic nervous system. I suppose I should not discount, as indirect cause of my generally pleasant anticipatory jitters, the fact that good friends and colleagues still organize the festival, and that I just spent the better part of six months working at Frameline, precisely one floor upstairs from my former office. So I feel that I have been continually exposed to the 2014 strain of the SFJFF bug. While I am not fully versed in the upcoming program, there are several films premiering in the 2014 festival that I have been waiting years for; I also had the chance to preview some of this year’s films, write some program notes, and build up some excitement for a few screenings:

The Green Prince
The current ghastly violence in the Middle East will no doubt lend a strange cast to this year’s opening night documentary, about the friendship between a Palestinian counter-spy and his Israeli handler. For that reason alone I want to be there.  I vividly recall having to preside at SFJFF’s Opening Night in 2006, days after the hostilities with Hezbollah in Lebanon had broken out. Watching films as a community can’t solve a crisis, but it sure beats fretting at home, clicking on the latest handheld video reportage on YouTube, and feeling helpless.

Little White Lie
I first met director Lacey Schwartz in Fall 2006, when her idea to tell the story of being both black and Jewish was in a very early stage and her proposed film, then titled “Outside the Box,” was sketchy at best. How wonderful to see that she has pulled off a terrific personal documentary, strong enough to be the festival’s Closing Night. I was thrilled to write the program note.

10%: What Makes a Hero
Another example of a documentary long brewing: for several years, Yoav Shamir—talented and provocative maker of Checkpoint, Defamation and Five Days—has been pondering on the kinds of people who become moral heroes. He shared with me once that, in considering the infamous Milgrom obedience experiments, he was interested not in exploring the psychology of the majority of participants who kept pushing the buttons that (they thought) tortured unseen subjects, but rather in understanding the few participants who resisted. This film—which I haven’t yet seen—is the result.

A Place in Heaven
Scripted with a bold storytelling style and beautifully shot to reflect the mystical-fabular nature of the story, this is a present-day morality tale that is as fascinating a drama as I’ve seen in a long while. My description in the online catalog is a sufficient statement of why I like the film, but, like the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man or Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, it’s the kind of film I want to see again just to chew over.

Regarding Susan Sontag
If you missed it at Frameline, here’s your chance to see Nancy Kates’s thoughtful and deeply engrossing account of the life and (self-)image of America’s most glamorous and prolific public intellectual.

Havana Curveball
If you need a shot of optimism about the future of our sorry world, come meet Mica, the adolescent hero of this Bay Area-bred documentary, as it follows his attempts over several years to bring much-needed baseball equipment to kids in Cuba. Full disclosure: Mica’s parents—the talented local filmmakers Ken Schneider and Marcia Jarmel—are friends of mine, but I’ve been watching their film deepen and grow from where it started, and it has flowered into a beautiful and surprising evocation of tikkun olam. Don't miss this uplifting and touching chronicle, and the chance to meet the whole family at several Bay Area screenings.

Many friends and colleagues have asked me for a list of my “favorite” films in the upcoming 38th Frameline festival (San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival), for which I’ve served as Senior Programmer. That's not really a polite question, people; it's like asking parents to name their favorite child ("You must have one, right? or at least one that you don't like?"). But without prejudice to any of the 214 films from 31 countries that will be screening between June 19-29, I am sharing here some quick suggestions for films and panels I am especially excited about...events that are “don’t miss” ... or special screenings that I am truly looking forward to sharing with the 65,000+ attendees expected. (All tickets available here.)

Lilting
(Despite the above disclaimer, I don’t mind saying this is among my favorite single films in the Festival!)
A Chinese-Cambodian mother in London resists the overtures of friendship offered by her late son’s boyfriend, whom she has never acknowledged. A beautiful, moving and ruefully comic study in relationships, and in picking up the pieces of one’s life after a loss.

I Feel Like Disco
I can’t say enough about this funny, poignant, uplifting film!  The central character, young Florian, is an endearing misfit in school—anyone who’s ever felt like a misfit (and haven’t we all?) will really fall for this pudgy kid who just wants to be himself. What I especially love—and one of the reasons you’ll find it as the Closing Night film—is that the writer and director refuse to take the sappy, easy, sentimental route with their story of father and son: they win our hearts with honest and funny dialogue, and make us smile with some of the goofiest disco-fantasy sequences ever. Here’s a rave review from its recent New York premiere.

Open Up to Me
A supremely well-acted drama from Finland about a woman who falls for an attractive soccer-playing man she knows from her past, when she was still a man. It’s one of several outstanding films this year featuring transgender central characters or subjects (see also the fabulous documentaries Kumu Hina and Lady Valor: The Kristin Beck Story).

The Way He Looks
Think of a John Hughes film transposed to Brazil: a teenage boy and his best gal-pal both fall for the new kid in school. But the fabulous twist here is that the boy is blind. A marvelous, sensitive take on adolescence and what it means to be “seen” for who you are.

Violette
and Violette Leduc: In Pursuit of Love
I had (embarrassingly) never even heard of the ground-breaking post-war French writer Violette Leduc before seeing these films—she was mentored by Simone de Beauvoir and way ahead of her time in her feminism and frank sexuality. Now there is a sumptuous feature film (by the director of Séraphine) starring the terrific Emmanuelle Devos (above), and an artful documentary that both make her a memorable literary pioneer.

Appropriate Behavior
This contemporary dysfunctional romance is a bit like HBO’s “Girls” in that the main character is a hot mess: a twenty-something Persian American confused about everything (including her sexuality), and always her own worst enemy. Features a very sharp script, and a first-time director/star!

For sheer laughs: Helicopter Mom
Stars Nia Vardalos (from My Big Fat Greek Wedding) as an over-the-top meddling mom who enters her teenage son into a college scholarship competition for out gay high school students…long before he has declared his sexual orientation.

Not for laughs: Bad Hair
An outstanding drama about a misunderstood effeminate boy in Caracas. This is no Ma vie en rose in its bleak family dynamics, but nonetheless extremely well realized and performed, especially by the kid actors.

The Case Against 8 
The opening night documentary – an incredible inside look, shot over 5 years, at the attempt to overturn California’s Prop 8. Even though you know the outcome, this is a riveting account, like being a fly on the wall to an historic civil rights battle. All 4 plaintiffs will be on hand!

The Circle 
I am not always a fan of docudrama, but this pitch-perfect retelling of a little-known chapter in postwar gay history is amazing: alternating between wonderful interviews and high-sheen period re-creations ,it tells the story of the groundbreaking Swiss homophile society (and eponymous magazine) called Der Kreis (“The Circle”). I love this film – director Stefan Haupt is coming from Zurich, too!

Compared to What? The Improbable Journey of Barney Frank
Can’t wait to meet the man himself, as he and his husband Jim Ready will be at the Castro to take in this chronicle of the bumpy road to becoming the nation’s most prominent gay politician.

Out in the Night
The powerful story of a group of African American women from Newark who were accused in the tabloids of being a “Gang of Killer Lesbians” after a street altercation with a man in Manhattan. A gripping account of racism, homophobia and justice denied.

Regarding Susan Sontag
Nancy Kates’s thoughtful and deeply engrossing account of the life and (self-)image of America’s most glamorous and prolific public intellectual.

Spotlight: LGBT Films in Today’s Russia
A four-film program of dramas, docs and shorts reflecting this perilous moment in Russian LGBT life. I have a separate blog entry about the Russian films. I especially recommend the crime drama Stand and the documentary Campaign of Hate, followed by a discussion including filmmaker Michael Lucas, international LGBT rights activist Julie Dorf, and the amazing and fearless journalist Masha Gessen. Plus who can pass up a shorts program called Pussy vs. Putin?

Past (Im)perfect: Filming Queer History
A free panel taking a look at the joys, challenges, and new cinematic approaches to telling LGBT history – a subject close to my heart. I’ll moderate a discussion among a great group of award-winning filmmakers.

Plus of course there are the three shorts programs that I curated: Fun in Boys Shorts,  Worldly Affairs, and Shadows & Secrets...and the fun evening with Star Trek superstar George Takei...and...well, I better stop.

Even if I haven't exactly exhausted my "favorites," I do hope at least I've gotten you excited about some of the offerings at this year's Frameline festival. If you have specific questions about these or the other 200-odd film titles, just shoot me a question. I'll try to answer it...as long as I'm not in one of the screenings, chuckling, weeping. swooning...

I met Maya Angelou just one time, in 1998; her presence was formidable, her voice, unforgettable. She was on one of her many visits to San Francisco and had stopped by the television station where I worked, KQED, where in the late 1960s she had produced a series of cultural essays called Blacks, Blues, Black!  I asked her to participate in the documentary I was making about the history of The Fillmore, where she had once lived and worked as a performer. She politely declined, declaring herself too busy.

Little did I know what was occupying her, among many projects: that very year my (future) friend Stephanie Rapp had commissioned her to write a poem on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco. I had never seen this poem until today. It is stunning, powerful, more relevant than ever...unmistakably Angelou. She will be missed.

A Brave and Startling Truth

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

~Maya Angelou