i watched rabbit-proof fence the other day. christ, it was a little too close to home. when it came out in 2002, the tag line was: if you were kidnapped by the government, would you walk the 1500 miles back home? and i kept thinking about all of the stories of the carlisle indian school i read, of the hundreds of attempts the kids tried to escape home, most getting caught halfway home and being returned, most never making it, and some making it. children.

it was uplifting to know it was based on a true story, then heartbreaking when you find out the oldest had a child who was taken to the same school and never seen again.

children.

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Fixing my kite

I've been fixing my kite on the kitchen table. The preparation, drying, and clamping involved in using the crazy glue has kept me from being able to do it all at once. I'm lucky my roommates haven't complained about it interfering with breakfast. This one is an improvement from the one I left half-finished on the table in the bar. With that one, I walked out of the door and never looked back. There's one I see all over Chinatown -- it's like the country just stamped the same patter on an ocean of silk despite being underpaced by the intricate cutting, steaming, and bending of the skeletal bamboo frame. They all have the same six shades of a spectrum placed in the same stenciled patterns, only occasionally reversed and disguised as noncomformity. The one before that I accidentally lit a cigarette a little too close and the spontaneous combustion revealed its beautiful wings were actually plastic and not silk and it was alight and gone before I could say anything. It's only been recently that I could talk about the one whose chord snapped when I reeled out all of the string. It was a bright, silver day on Ocean Beach, and though the sun was hot and the sand burned the soles of my feet, the breeze off of the Pacific petered everything out. The waves kept pace with my breathing patterns and slowed down my heartbeat despite the exhileration of seeing it up there circling the birds. And I forgot that the clear Pacific still contains pockets of gusts and a tiny little pop! had it gone. It was so high I couldn't even distinguish the colors and it looked like a little purple dot as its end unravelled and pulled individual veins off of the muscle buried deep in my ribcage -- one by one, peeled off, not to be set aloft with the purple dot that kept getting further and further away, but fell like blood-laden threads to the ground.