Ming Dynasty

on a bright and sunny Sunday

we forked fried taro masterpieces

and lemon curd in wonton skins 

hailing from the Ming Dynasty

falling off the budget toasting 

the end of all soul sucking 

aspects of life

#katyamills

runaways

we drank hot chocolate from silver-rimmed china
around a polished wooden table

i found your big toe beneath it
punching through the canvas
while eating macaroons

why are you running away?
she asked us

i stood up tall
on my toes

you would too
if your home
was like ours

tightrope.hk.leadership.manuscript

My thoughts turn to Hong Kong where democracy leaders who have fought for the ‘one country, two systems’ were recently arrested and detained. Timing is suspicious as they know the global pandemic is likely to edge out anything else (no matter how relevant) for headlines. An age old political tactic for sure. My thoughts turn also to less fortunate countries in these troubling times. Covid19 has had a terrible impact on the USA, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, UK, China. All countries with historically thriving economies, mostly well connected and funded, top notch with research and development, technological advances, and responsiveness to crisis. One can only imagine the devastation when it marches through impoverished areas. How will Africa and India and South America be impacted? I worry for the global economy and a second Great Depression. People gathering at State Capitols across the nation, protesting stay at home orders, their jobs and livelihoods at stake. And it is true that for every family every single job is not non-essential. People want desperately to get back to work. We are all walking on a tightrope it seems and for various reasons. The world needs true leadership. Who will step up? So far we’ve seen a few. Dr. Fauci. Angela Merkel. Gavin Newsom. Andrew Cuomo. Anxiety about the contagion and keeping it subdued competes with fear of the economic impact that comes from not working. I feel increasingly fortunate to have my job and my writing habit and my friends and family. Work keeps me sane. GREAT news! my manuscript is complete and ready to be published. I’m grateful for freedom of speech.   #katyamills

pandemic 2020 day 3

March 20. I have scared myself thinking i may have symptoms of covid-19. i have a history of asthma and bronchitis and have compensated for shortness of breath by long-distance running. the past couple of mornings i have felt short of breath slightly, and i have been sleeping extra hours. hopefully i'm fine. i ordered more inhalers just in case, on advice of my brother. i still cannot find a thermometer in local stores to check my temperature. the part of me that gets scared amps up and then i come to place of acceptance to calm down. so i may get the virus like anyone else, and then i just need to get through it. i have faith that i can. i have an autoimmune condition but i have kept myself in very good health and i am only 47 years old. my plan is to continue running the river and doing yoga at home to stay in good cardiovascular health. as of midnight last night the city and region of Sacramento put into force a shelter-in-place law, which can be enforced. this follows the Bay Area and SF which did so monday. a colleague told me her friend who lives in SF actually got a ticket for venturing outdoors for something other than 'essential services'. so this is martial law. Governor Gavin Newsom indicated in a letter to the President that he fears in 8 weeks time, half of the 45 million citizens of California will be infected with covid-19. This to me was an astounding statement! We have been told that the virus has stopped spreading in its epicenter, in Wuhan, China, no new cases are being reported. And they topped out at 80,000 infected. So i figured if they can stop it, why can't we? I am curious to learn more. I cannot let myself be terrified. Only curious to learn and understand and take any precautions to safeguard myself and anyone i come in contact with. The distance between two people has been set somewhere between 6-10 feet. Essential services include mostly anything you gotta do to meet your basic needs. Healthcare appointments, exercise, walking pets, grocery shopping, post office, etc. No social gatherings for leisure activities. The mayor of New York City Bill De Blasio just had a press conference and railed on President Trump for not having yet mobilized the government and 'the finest military in the world' to battle. Hospitals are going to run out of the necessary equipment in two weeks. This is the first domestic leader to really come out with a strong statement against the current administration. NYC has clearly become the new epicenter of covid-19 domestically, and it has millions of people crowded into several square miles. So the potential cost of life is extremely high.

+ a flash +

they are falling in love

they are working

they are raising the children

from south carolina

to china

the sun looks the same

the moon looks the same

from hong kong to warsaw

they worship the same gods

under different names

drink the same wine

the stars appear

no different

only the moment makes

history

the diverse feelings arise and fall

beneath the diverse flags

we come and go like

the wind

coffee vs tea

i got turned on to some oolong tea by my coworker. he shared how his family used to harvest it back in China, they packed it in bamboo pipes after boiling it and mashing it to death. for life. the pipes were stored up in the roof and the tea would last indefinitely. the story was so powerful i have forsaken coffee for several days now. this is almost unheard of.

guided mindfulness

a group exercise

by Katya Mills

Let’s try and get centered for a minute. Okay? (get permission from group). I am going to ring these Tibetan bells to start and to finish. I want you to relax. You can close your eyes or keep them open. You can relax your eyes and soften your focus. Let yourself get comfortable in your chair…

Ring bells

Now notice your breath. You can breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. You can imagine yourself inhaling sweet goodness and exhaling all the negative energy you may have picked up along your way here. Just breathe in that yummy oxygen… let all the bad stuff go. You do not have to breathe deeply but you can if you want. The point is to notice your breath and not change it.

Feel how the chair supports your weight.

Notice the fabric surrounding your toes.

Notice the floor beneath your feet.

Notice any thoughts coming into your head, just notice them.

See if you can watch them and let them go on their way, like mist carried off on a breeze.

Come back to your breath…

Notice your sensations

What do you feel against your hands

Your arms, your back, your legs

Feel the chair supporting you

Notice any feelings you are having at all, try and just notice them

Let them pass by like clouds across the sky

Come back to your breath…

Inhale the good energy…

Ring bells 

broken toys of cyberspace

one died of a bullet through a heavy bound text shot by a girl and a go pro camera. another talking trash on a binge drunk rampage got murdered by the character he assassinated. one took an elevator up a high rise in China then climbed free and slipped to his death. a million followers more cannot help you when you're gone. we will remember these years for all our sad broken toys in cyberspace. someday may they be retrofitted with new capes and powers and costumes. and endless lives in the deadly video game where they reside.

stay

K. June 2017

our gods were different and we broke into hard candy and cell phones chirping to be hacked. China and Germany were already in there, coded in sugar of maples from Canada. the world turned pink and tasted of Pepto Bismol, when all the acid washed away, I asked you and you did, Stay

ten. indivisible

i breakdown, too. useless, not unlike a chevy silverado, nothin in the tank. if there's no coffee in me by 6am, make a lawn ornament outta me. so i start early, crackin those beans through the grind, by hand sometimes, yawnin bedhead and all, spring winter summer and fall, gotta keep myself runnin and runnin along, so i can be luscious good and vitamin k for you, my love, roarin my middle age burnin fuel with that special manner makes all the millenials turn their heads, double take, slap their faces to wonder where the hell i came from? yes, i am my own sensation, out in the wild west of this great nation, one being, guarded, sentient, indivisible, under god, and irreverent to the core. last week against all odds ran my first ever ultra, just ran and ran eight hours long like a lunatic, up and down quarry road through the american river canyon, drawing poison oak for the second time in three months, so sore for three days i could hardly walk and find me thrilled through the pain... just now i saw the county job i applied for has hit processing stage, so juicy like a quarter orange shall i climb out of my navel and squeeze on to the commodity, precious life, dear god, and hopefully get around my self center and finalize my time, this life, on the carrying about in service to those less fortunate, county state country corner, with a beating heart and a backpack and a rushing spirit glancing off the darkness like light does. that's all i want, anyway.

weathervane

All the Hollywood icons
all the Bollywood icons
inspire us. they sweep our floors
in black and white

All the grandeur of southern plantations
made to capture the sun
arabesque

We live on through these times we made
the oceanic minutia
we consecrate
       describe
        classify in our tomes


Our differences we set aside to study
before bed. chamomile tea with lemon peel.
we fall asleep on them

We all do the same                 in the sun in the
day in and                                      shade
out           after
                      the same nonsense
iced tea
lemonade
sugar cane crystals sparkle

Our children ask for help
without having
to ask         they ask us
                         help

we live we die
we live again
cuz

Life cannot end
when you die
         you cannot really
            you do not truly
                        die

unless you're just
another asshole
weathervane

pointing
the wrong
direction

china. usa. bodhi

If china and the usa can meet for tea
 in the south china sea
what a dream this
    would be

then will i know my chinese brother
who wears the knitted hat
like me

given us by our nephews
to keep warm
in the mountains

in the valleys
in the winter

a dream is only worth
making real. like the two silver hearts
i wear around my neck
on a silver chain

as my sister. in china
given us by our young nieces
replacing our hearts
from their scattered
pieces across the world

jasmine tea
in the south china sea
you and me

i give you my cup
you give me yours
and fire up our ceramics
 against any twitter
polemics

arms locked at the elbows
we drink slowly

drink up. you and me
from the sunset west
looking east where she
shall rise again

red. blue and white
in the south china
sea

lighting the single candle
given us by an elder. in faith

by the bodhi
tree

m x memory -ix

The true pioneers of mindful presence were now emblazoned in lifesize advertisements so real you thought they were meditating on you. Commuters dropped coin at their feet, which was quickly swept up by the children of atheists. Advertising for anything other than recreational weed had fallen out of fashion in 2023. Along with work. Working a steady forty, monday through friday, was now punishable by dominatrix for up to one month of nonconsensual slavery. Attaching ones org to a mission was also considered a violation of collective liberties, as the future was to be revered for all and not limited possibility. Proselytizing the sentients into a limited potential future based on some dreamers special mission was considered a flagrant and intentional crime, and prosecuted under the diversion clause. You could not go herding people into some other container, when they had already been successfully contained by strategic water cannon placement and acupressure machines. All individuality had to be compressed and pasteurized, homogenized, so to be useful to the state's personality packet program. The American dollar was of no value to China anymore. Their ports only accepted freight containing the balanced personalities of America. Global trade was mostly information these days. China in 2023 was the forefront global exporter of eastern solution to the world paradigm in similar packets which could be easily decompressed with a modern day can opener any toddler could figure out. A great demand for the nutrients in a non-violent and benevolent product, the wisdoms inherent in confucianism, buddhism, taoism, communism, sufism, among other subscribed philosophies which had evolved the eastern world into its current selfless, rugged, dialectic nature. Sentients efforted and fought over it as usual, but reverence was placed so much differently and more carefully in the world 2023, the landscapes of the last century's ruling global authority had become relics and often been archived, as interest fell mostly on the new world order, which struck most sentients as highly advantageous and useful to the species and collective inclination toward healthy unbiased purpose wherever possible... all the way to the ends of the earth, which were not ends after all, as awareness now informed us of non-finite individuation. this was accepted as practical science, contemporary thought-feeling-knowing. Yet still they go unnoticed, the silent ones. Love was underwater, perhaps devalued or defaced, below the heavy freight of packaged information and pasteurized personalities. This is as it is.