"It's a super-duper-duper long shot, but I got nothing else to do, so why not?"

--sidewalk voice, a man talking on his phone

February Eve

Walking past a space that was designed to be a store but which is now empty often feels like walking past a horizontal grey hole.

On Market near Kearny is an unrented store that's not like that, that is not empty, not grey but filled with red, yellow and green lit from within, bangled with little decorative lights like gems. A Chinese New Year's parade dragon snakes around the store space and fills it, the dragon's big red and pink mouth open right at the window as if roaring through the window at inertia and usualness, ready for new, ready for anything, and regardless of what the anything is, the dragon will be in charge.

It's like part of what Valentine's Day wants to be--instead of emptiness, colors, fullness, strong beauty, and movement even when still.

Wanting a search function designed especially for me where I type "actual news" and am directed to wisps of clouds and wisps of ideas from all over.

--"No, I can't remember the first time I was sick. I can't remember the last time I was sick. I've never been sick. Eat onions, eat garlic."

--Sidewalk voice

What is the uneven gift that is human intelligence for on this planet at this momen?

Maybe it's for doing nothing. Maybe it's for doing what seems like nothing in the current flawed set-up, but a particular nothing that is a path to a whole better way.

Or a path for a whole better way to find us. If we stop replicating the screwy-ness of now. Maybe anything we can think of doing inside now is bound to help what bad about now bound on, and if we do what feels like nothing, something better, which almost exists, can come on in.

"The lawyer speaks Spanish." "La abogada habla espanol." "El abogado habla espanol."

I'm looking through Momenta, the Bay Area Spanish language Yellow Pages, and I'm thinking about a quote I read from a judge.

The judge said that it's obviously bad that minorities are not lawyers in the U.S. anything like proportionally to their prescence in the population at large. The judeg said the worst thing about that is that it condemns us to a future of not enough minority judges.

For the appearance and reality of fairness, there must be minority judges at least to the extent that there are minority people in general.

Right now, we're not even close, on lawyers or judges.

The Abogado=Attorney section of Momento has many ads for lawyers, dealing with immigration, DUI, family law (divorce), bankruptcy and on and on. A few of the ads say, "The lawyer speaks Spanish" "El abogado habla espanol."

Most don't say that. Some of the one's that don't say that say, in Spanish, things like "Ask for Rosa, Sandra and Nancy, Legal Assistants." and "Viviana and Yessenia, Legal Assistance in Spanish."

At many of these law offices serving Spanish-speaking people, the person who is actually speaking to the client and listening to the client directly is a woman who isn't a lawyer.

So--how about a big push to get some of those women to law school?

Probably that means first getting them to college, and democracy is worth that, and they are worth that.

Have a really interesting meeting, with music and food, for some of these women, and propose to them that they could be lawyers.

Having already set up much support. The new program gets them scholoarships, if possible for collge, pays outright for law school. Sets up ways for them to support each other in college and law school and be supported by and talk to people who have made similar leaps.

These women have experience in detail many legal cases. They know in detail what one kind of law is like. The new program could show them other kinds of law.

Not everyone who starts college finishes college. Not everyone who starts law school finishes law school. The first lawyer out of a program like this could be very expensive for the program, and worth it. The program would have learned to do what it needs to do much better.

Lawyers from this program could go to firms or start firms that do family law, bankruptcy law, immigration law, all that, and the lawyers could speak directly to clients.

They could become big firm lawyers, legal theorists, law school professors, judges.

They could become people who people know and say, "Yes, someone like me can do that."

To stay smart and accurate in changing times, democracy needs to recruit.

If we don't have enough minority lawyers, and we don't, people who have lots of legal experience and are minorities should be recruited.

--"No, if I make it, we both make it. You've got to look at it that way."

--sidewalk voices, one man talking to another

Slow down, and meet.

Sometimes, in a city, you've go to roll with it--not proofread every encounter and compare it with perfection. Because the question is, "Whose perfection?" A city is a place of many consciousnesses.

It is sweet. I like it. I think it came to me at this moment because I'm thinking of you.

Might might move better if it remembered with every move that it doesn't know that much. Get those mights together in the mind. Power, maybe. Power can only act on things known at the level of maybe because that's all we've got.

Power holders can use power to surround themselves with folks saying, "You're so smart." The power holders then get dumber and dumber. Might that might do some good never forgets the maybe.

The world tenderly holding me through you.

A dream pleasant and thick makes me feel like forth is a place I can go.

The English word for "understand" includes the English word for "under."

Good reminder. The temptation is to think if I understand something I'm over it, above, can run it. But any part of reality, I'm under, I need to look up to and honor and get that reality is bigger than I am. I'm under it.

It depends on the night.

It depends on the night.

Pause, and re-understand.

Let go of the castle of hassle.

A grey sky bumpy with lighter bits that are almost white.

Later, one of the lighter bits becomes almost yellow and the sun becomes specifically present in the sky.

The way the world is woven. You see the spaces; I see the thread.

We are wrapped together by back and forth and up and down we weren't around for, that helps us save and share warmth.

We're covered.

Be careful about being thorough. The future comes from leftovers, which come from not using everything up in the current project.

Archeologists now often deliberately leave part of the site undug, so it can be dug in the future with the wisdom of the future.

When nothing is happening interestingly, we may be visiting Paradise.

Sometimes big change might do better oozing. Not make a big move to start, but just a bit of the change becoming part of reality.

Less "oh,wow," less credit for who might get credit, and less resistance.

Grass starts slow and spreads. Big change that matters shouldn't be about proving anything with drama, but about happening the most useful way possible.

Lighten up. Light in. Up.

Compared to canned pineapple, fresh pineapple is more aggressive. The inner dragon is still alive.

She doesn't have to be wild and crazy. She's genuinely different.

What I'm looking for might have a shape opposite the shape I expect and a color at the other end of the rainbow.

Melt at night.

Shiny grey rainy day.

Why don't I be completely impatient?

Oh, that's a good idea. That will make everything better.

copyright 2011 Anne Herbert All Rights reserved