Living Designs

When I was 18 yo, pretty darn poor, a new employee at a lawyers' office as a typist/etc, in Richmond, CA, but had moved to CA  all the way from Maine, as a desperately "needing to get away from family" young lady, I did some shoplifting...and got caught. And then I went to a therapist, and devised a plan to deal with my loneliness and sense of isolation. The plan was that every time I felt like shoplifting, I went to the counter and said, "I feel like shoplifting. I'm feeling very lonely." I also agreed to call 911 (back then it was also a hot-line of sorts), to say the same thing. That actually helped, and the folks I talked to were pretty darn accepting and comforting. It's possible!

What I do not understand is why "caravans" of people from south American countries would choose to move north, a good over a thousand, rather than take up arms and fight against the shits who are controlling their country? Do they really think they'll have something better in the US of A? What I least and most severely don't understand is why one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world wouldn't again consider colonization, as awful as that is, to go in, give these folks a better life? Stop the drug trade, which is destroying our country? These are awful but important questions. If the folks in these South American countries feel they have no other options, but to leave their countries, because they are taken over by the "drug lords", and the countrys' governments are corrupt and incapable of developing economies other than based on drugs, then it seems that the folks are incapable of imaginging a life of just ordinary poverty.

Not sure: new poem:  My Mother When a tree falls in your memory, were you there? The shape of my mother is waiting Just calmly emptying out of my waiting, and speaking to herself as the trees are quietly falling. I do not remember my mother, but I have many broken objects from her. Mostly I remember a beautiful glass decanter, of red and clear. As clear as the the red of blood. e.m. burke 12/19/2018