You've got to invite Native Americans to the table, and Asians, and Chicanos. You cannot keep us in the back room anymore and give us notations on paper saying this is what you deserve. You have to invite us to the table because America is ours, too.

One thing America truly does stand for is a million different ways of living. But while we enjoy the lives we have, we're so privileged. We live in a world that's so far from what the Palestinian children are going through, it's unbelievable. Yet if we dare to get close to that atrocity and name it, it would shock us so badly we couldn't live in our privileged comfort zone.

I culled poetry from odors, sounds, faces, and ordinary events occurring around me. Breezes bulged me as if I were cloth; sounds nicked their marks on my nerves; objects made impressions on my sight as if in clay. There, in the soft language, life centered and ground itself in me and I was flowing with the grain of the universe. Language placed my life experiences in a new context, freeing me for the moment to become with air as air, with clouds as clouds, from which new associations arose to engage me in present life in a more purposeful way.

I can't stand the comfort zone. So many people I know, their parents give them their homes, and they get married and have children, or whatever. That's it. They don't ever go beyond that. That's not what life is.

People say what distinguishes us from the animals is that we think. Well, then why the hell don't we extend some compassion to those under tremendous duress? There's this whole idea that you work really hard so you can deaden your soul to the universe and enjoy yourself only in ways the Sierra Club will let you. But what about enjoying yourself by getting into the whole melee of poverty and racism and violence and murder and drug addiction? Get in there, roll up your sleeves, and do something! Nobody does it.

How much truth can we bear? Our tolerance for carrying the truth is not very high. I mean, the slightest discomfort about truth and we run to our refuge of our jobs and our schools and our friends who keep supporting our blindness.

The whole thing is this: If you don't use just basic grammar, if you don't get the language down, you're not going to have access to a tool that people use as a weapon against you. The only reason I was never taught to read and write was because it was easier for them to lead me. But the second I learned to read and write, I began to lead myself.