My Son, Under the Waterfall
by Alan Michael Parker

The weight of what falls surprises, the solidity of
the slapping water, its constant and different pressures,

the way when you're thirteen everything seems
not to have happened, life itself, and yet be

dumped upon you, and you can spread wide
your arms, wide as the rest of July, and still

be filled with feeling while holding nothing,
like a movie screen, or the voice of the girl

who called on a Friday to ask about the homework.
Moss slimes the rocks, cattails rim the pools,

and the water rushing to arrive through the cut
feels like sunlight on your skin if only sunlight

would have mass and volume and pound
your head and shoulders, and with your mouth open

breathing is like laughing and laughing
is like breathing, and the surprise persists,

the sense of being between elements and standing up
in your swim trunks and sandals as though

on land and swimming at once,
and your resolve also matters, to keep hold

of these feelings, of each single feeling
no matter the future, to stay true to what you feel

and not to give the next kid a turn, the long line of
campers beginning to chant your name, and you

pretend not to hear, deafened by the lovely
crushing of the water on your head.


Alan Michael Parker, “My Son, Under the Waterfall” from Elephants & Butterflies. Copyright © 2008 by Alan Michael Parker. Used by permission of The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of BOA Editions, Ltd. www.boaeditions.org. (buy now)

It's the birthday of the Mexican poet and essayist Octavio Paz (books by this author), born in Mexico City (1914). He wrote a book of essays on Mexican culture, The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950), which became standard reading for students of Latin American history and literature. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1990.

It's the birthday of activist and labor organizer César Chávez, born on a farm near Yuma, Arizona (1927). When Chávez was ten years old he started laboring as a migrant farm worker. He and his family picked grapes and harvested vegetables. He co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers (UFW). He was passionate about working to alleviate the miserable conditions of farm workers, including low wages, backbreaking work, little or no recourse after injury, and infrequent breaks.

It's the birthday of one of the greatest intellectuals of all time, a man known as "the Father of Modern Philosophy," René Descartes (books by this author), born in 1596 in La Haye en Touraine, France, which is now named for him, Descartes, France. He's the author of a text that is still required reading for philosophy students around the world, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641).

He's the man who, in 1637, said, "Cogito ergo sum" — "I think therefore I am." Of course, since he was a Frenchman, he first wrote it as "Je pense donc je suis.

The statement is the sum of an argument in his work Discourse on the Method (1637), written nearly 400 years ago. He realized that some of his ideas about science, like those of his colleague Galileo, were controversial. So he decided to write a book to prove that skepticism about the laws of nature was a necessary step in understanding nature. In it he described his own experience of methodological skepticism, where he rejected any idea that could be doubted, and then required proof for the idea in order for it to be accepted as knowledge. He doubted everything, even his own existence. But he came to realize that the one thing he could not doubt was the existence of his own thoughts. If he was doubting, he was thinking; if he was thinking, then he existed. Hence his famous conclusion: "I think, therefore I am."

Descartes had been a sickly child, went to Jesuit schools, spent most of his life staying in bed till noon, got a law degree, then settled in the Netherlands, and in his 20 years there, he did most of the writing for which he is famous. When he was in his 50s, Queen Christina of Sweden — age 23 — invited him to Stockholm to be her tutor. It was a job that required him to rise at 5 a.m. every day. He was sleep-deprived, caught a fever, and eventually came down with pneumonia, which killed him.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.^®

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