Recognize
...because you haven’t learned
to see the beauty of a busted fruit, the bright stain it will leave
on your lips, the way it will make people want to kiss you.
Excerpt from:
When My Brother Was an Aztec
by Natalie Diaz
Recognize:
a hip hop admonition to give attribution or due respect (dap) for lyrical or other dominance; literally, to learn again, to know again; on a certain block in Spanish Harlem on one day - most days really - it foreshadows glimpses of the transcendent, found only in a liberal arts education.
An
e
motion recollected in tranquility
.
From:
The Urban Taoist’s Dictionary
An
a cappella
lullaby from the Tuvan people of southern Siberia had just stopped playing during 7th grade advisory. Tears of recognition welled in a young student’s eyes. She told us she had heard a song just like it at her uncle’s funeral in The Free and Sovereign State of Tlaxcala. There in central Mexico, a woman quietly appeared and began to sing, in Aztec, a song to ease the passage of a soul. Our student had heard, in a recording from the central Asian steppes, the universal experience of transition. In Tuva, it was a baby passing from wakefulness to sleep - and in that town of Tlaxcala - an elder passing from life to death. She knew. Our student recognized. For herself and for all of us there in that room together she found what was lost - something quite ancient and so human. And she passed this knowledge on to us. Together we recognized, and we gave due respect.
