Leftovers

Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

26 Jun 2006, 21:46 p.m.

Leftovers

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2006 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Some leftover chunks of text:

I get irrational if I'm trying to go to sleep alone. I need a light on, and music, and no windows open, even if it's dadblamed hot. Otherwise ninjas with grappling hooks will steal the KitchenAid, right?

Ritual self-deprecation is like knocking on wood. Self-confidence, like praising your own child, is taboo.

If you swallow a watermelon seed, a melon will grow in your tummy. Quit your individual computer programs before hitting Start to shut down Windows and your PC. If you're a good little child all year, a magical man on a big sled will sneak into your house as you sleep helplessly, to give you gifts.

A darker-than-intended sonnet that's been sloshing around my head for weeks if not months, finally put down on paper in front of Lincoln's statue in Union Square:

Like ivy on a plaited trellis wall,
We climb up cities -- but we build them too.
If ivy could create more height to crawl,
We'd drown in it -- the poison of kudzu.
Like limbs, each building serves as human's tool,
Each skeleton bound to a certain cause.
Offices, flats, the classrooms of a school.
Architectures force behavior more than laws.
	The scaffolding you ride past in your car
	Grows up, makes cities, makes you who you are.

I visited Hiroshima.  The bank
Stayed standing, there, even after the blast.
The workers died, the neighborhood went blank.
All flesh was grass; that skeleton held fast.
An electronic pulse, a neutron bomb --
What fossils will the humans leave behind?
A signature, a bone, a bust, and calm?
We used up Earth and left an orange rind.
	Will ivy grow on that bank's granite wall?
	Our blood and treasure, slaves in cancer's thrall.

Stories and Wages

Sumana Dismisses Dilettantes, Including Herself, in MC Masala