Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hands and Trumpets from the Islands of their Eviction - both by Martin Espada. Espada's poetry has a palpable passion in it. I found it interesting in that he uses very little figurative language, which I'm not used to, even though my favorite poet (Jack Gilbert) uses even less. In any case, one could learn some Spanish from Rebellion as it has Spanish translations on each facing page, and Latin American history from both.

And the other random thing I was thinking about was the idea that say someone recognizes something about themselves that they hadn't realized before - say, that they are arrogant, or that they react a certain way in certain situations. But it seems that that aspect of themselves might react like a particle that has just been observed, and thus been hit by a photon - it changes a little. So it seems like it comes back to "the moment in which you think you know a thing is the moment in which you must look deeper," and the infinite loop that entails. The tangent to this idea runs off an example of some really screwed up people that I've met at UMC. They know that they're messed up, and it'll probably be the first thing they'll tell you. But in that sense to me it seems like they're not really "observing" it anymore; it has just become an excuse for them to act the way they are comfortable acting, because someone else told them that about themselves and they went with it. But that use of it also conveniently blocks them from getting to know themselves more, and maybe changing to be healthier, but gods forbid that we wouldn't want them to be uncomfortable. Which isn't to say that there aren't the people who have some issues and are genuinely trying to work through them; it's just that they seem quieter about it.

-Now that's just funny