Read on the train ride home yesterday... 4.10 at dumbmonkey in which a zen moment occurs followed by heightened awareness.

there was this family of six, two young boys, one 3 (possibly 4), the other, oh, 6?; mother and father, who carried babe in arms, wee infant, sleeping the entire time yourstruly spent observing indirectly, and la Abuelita, yes, they were from somewhere south of the border, you know how sometimes it takes one to know one? What caught my attention initially was the beautiful serenity in the man's face, and the way he held his child, with both arms, his fingers intertwined, there would be no taking his child from him without his consent. His face an impassive mask, defined and chisled cheekbones, a full mustache, and the slightest of skinfolds at his eyes, giving his countenance a somewhat, ummm, asian cast. We all boarded at the Powell St. station, and they continued on after we exited, likely they were riding to the end of the line, so to speak, at the Richmond terminus.

dumbmonkey shares this awareness with the reader along with the discovery of...

Richard Rodriguez's America, Greater Than All the Parts

"History begins for us,'' wrote William Carlos Williams, ''with murder and enslavement, not with discovery. No, we are not Indians but we are men of their world.'' Since 1982, in three books that can only loosely be called memoirs, Richard Rodriguez has considered the implications of Williams's aphorism with a meditative patience that offers a compassionate vision of our society and its complicated past. With his new book, ''Brown: The Last Discovery of America,'' Rodriguez completes his trilogy, published in 10-year installments, that attempts to redescribe the American predicament through his own carefully examined experience. He writes: ''Some readers . . . take 'race' for a tragic noun, a synonym for conflict and isolation. Race is not such a terrible word for me. Maybe because I am skeptical by nature. Maybe because my nature is already mixed.''
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