Rock & Roll Farm

Thursday! Jun 12 2003 // 12:18 pm //

‘The past is like the tail of a kite…’

I absolutely loved Geeta Sharma Jensen’s A Good Country over at The Atlantic.

“…The fields steamed in the morning, and mist drifted like billowing smoke in the hollows. The earth smelled like Amarapura after a rain. Remembering the chill of Ruthie’s shed, I put on silk long johns before slipping into my husband’s overalls and a long-sleeved blouse with a high collar. I added the navy wool cardigan I’d knitted for Shwe our first winter in America. I knotted my hair, wrapped a long chiffon scarf around my head, and carried three bowls of rice into the prayer room. Sitting on the mat below the papier-mâché Buddha that Shwe had fashioned, I lit candles and made my offerings—one bowl of boiled rice for our ancestral spirits, one for our living elders in Amarapura, and one for us Burmese refugees in America. The Buddha’s face was misshapen, his smile not quite right, but how he glittered in the gold paint Shwe had found at Harry’s Hardware. I asked the Exalted One to forgive the gassing of minks, whispering that it was the livelihood of my friends the Swensons, and so it was within the teaching; it needed to be done. Then I watered the chrysanthemums at the Buddha’s feet and left without waking Shwe…”