Lifelines for MCI | lifelinesformci.com
Call for Responses: What is it you want your legacy to be? How do you want to be remembered? What will be your contribution to humanity? Take your time and answer honestly, then send in your responses; we'll share them all anonymously on the website and in an upcoming edition of Lifelines for MCI.
“Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat." - Audre Lorde
"My wish for you is that you continue to be who you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness." - Maya Angelou
"There is some good in the world and it is worth fighting for." - J.R.R. Tolkien
Songs for Inspiration
“Wide River to Cross” by Levon Helm
“Shake It Off” by Taylor Swift
“Kind and Generous” by Natalie Merchant
“Santa Claus And His Old Lady” by Cheech & Chong when I need to laugh
“Long Black Veil” by Dave Matthews Band when I need to cry
Southern Harmony and Musical Companion (entire album) by The Black Crowes when I need to feel all the feels
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, BB 114: II. Allegro, Bartok, B.
“Keep Ya Head Up” – 2Pac
“Beautiful Day” or “No Bad News” – Patty Griffin
“Son’s Gonna Rise” – Citizen Cope
Bother, Stone Sour or Karma and Effect (entire album) by Seether when I need to be angry
“Everything is Everything” – Lauryn Hill
Word Scrambles – County Fair
ISEDR ODFO MIALNAS TOHOBS UCSMI KITCTE
NCRO SGDO (two words) RSIFRE EHLEW (two words) DESI HSOSW (two words)
Poem for Today
Blood History – Reginald Dwayne Betts
The things that abandon you get remembered different.
As precise as the English language can be, with words
like penultimate and perseverate, there is not a combination
of sounds that describe only that leaving. Once,
drinking & smoking with buddies, a friend asked if
I’d longed for a father. Had he said wanted, I would have
dismissed him in the way that youngins dismiss it all:
a shrug, sarcasm, a jab to the stomach, laughter.
But he said longing. & in a different place, I might
have wept. Said, once, my father lived with us & then he
didn’t & it fucked me up so much I never thought about
his leaving until I held my own son in my arms & only
now speak on it. A man who drank Boone’s Farm & Mad
Dog like water once told me & some friends that there is no
word for father where he comes from, not like we know it.
There, the word father is the same as the word for listen.
The blunts we passed around let us forget our
tongues. Not that much though. But what if the old
head knew something? & if you have no father, you can’t
hear straight. Years later, another friend wondered why
I named my son after my father. You know, that’s a thing
turn your life to a prayer that no dead man gonna answer.
Word Scramble answers: rides, food, animals, booth, music, ticket, corn dogs, ferris wheel, side shows