Carol McMillan
Anthropologist, Author
Scriptless: A Memoir
Lessons from the last time the world fell apart. Does the daily news leave you speechless? Does the world seem to be changing at an exponential pace? In Scriptless, we find wisdom from a brave soul who broke the mold she was meant to inhabit and found her own unique place upon the vast and ever-changing globe. McMillan deftly steers us through her coming of age in San Francisco during the unrest and upheaval of the late sixties. We follow the journey of a sheltered suburban white girl who ventures out to try marijuana and dance to Janis Joplin during the Summer of Love in the Bay Area. Now set on a course of adventure, Carol goes on an entomology expedition across Africa and has a spiritual epiphany about the Oneness of the Universe. As her childhood foundations are rocked, Carol is shocked to realize the depths of injustice in the world, as she becomes disillusioned by actions of her own government, and the extent of racism—even in her own liberal family.
Publications
Poetry, memoir, & journal articles
“All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really one.”
~Black Elk
Media
Carol’s Interview on KNKR
Poetry
Interview with the Hawaii Writer’s Guild
I was interviewed by the Hawaii Writer’s Guild in preparation for the release of my new memoir, Scriptless.
April Fools
We stepped as fools
Free falling
over the cliff.
Trusting
Knowing, in the
Center of all understanding,
Forever,
Past death,
Our love.
Chauvin’s Trial
They decide what degree,
First, second, or third,
Is murder
By Arrogance.
A Sunrise, November 7, 2020
Have you noticed
There have been fiery red
Sunsets this month?
On November 7, 2020
A pink sunrise.
A thin band of red
Spread across the clouds,
But when the sun rose
The entire sky
Turned blue.
Relief
My puny ‘Ahhh’
Just doesn’t compare with
The quiet moaning sound
My neighbor’s dog makes
When scratching his belly
With his left hind foot.
Getting By
I shop mostly at the
Kamuela farmers’ markets now:
Eggs, bananas, macadamia nuts,
Vanilla, lilikoi jelly. . .
Add a few tablespoons of flour:
Banana nut pancakes!
Drizzle with Amaretto.
Gathering a Poem
Newly cut grass and citrus blossoms
Color the trade wind’s breath.
Mynas, cardinals, and two
Saffron finches
Chatter into the breeze.
Somewhere,
Inside that zephyr,
A poem floats
Like a gossamer veil.
I hook it gently with my
Bard’s pole,
Cautious, lest the verses turn and choose
To flee.
With reverence I have spilled its words
Across this page,
Never knowing how long they might be
Willing to remain.
A Hay(na)ku
Finches
Greet me
Always in pairs
The Essence
Today
Existence
Shrinks and swells,
Looming or squeaking by,
Depending on the mood.
Existence
Fills each cycle
As the sun and moon
Chase each other around the planet.
The illusions of reasons for being
Have been felled by a virus.
The screens through which
We have viewed our lives
Are wiped clean,
Undifferentiated by those
Illusory deadlines
We’ve held dear.
There remains only
Essential existence
For our contemplation.