Feminine Fluidity

I am the water in my father's tea.
Warming his heart with a drink of me.

I am the water dripping off olive leaves,
In my mother's garden, silver signs of peace.

I am a cool towel on my baby brother's brow
Wiping away worry, the only way I know how.

I'm light like warm air, my head up in the clouds.
But I am also rain water soaking into the ground.

Tickling tree roots, sleeping through the dawn.
Waking up slowly like dewdrops on the lawn.

I float down a river and rush into the emerald sea.
I dance to my own song, suspended in the breeze.

When I'm sad it hurts, I cry, quiet 'til I freeze.

I crack with pain and anger until I fall into your glass.

Your sweet embrace. My loving cup, I'll drink you to the last.

What do you do in times of desperation?

When I'm feeling overwhelmed,
like life has spun so fast that my body clenches and every vein, muscle and tendon can't relax,
I keep breathing.
I hug a friend.
I pour a glass of wine
and remind myself I can only change what is mine.
I remember happier times of more control.
Inhale,
exhale
relax, I say,
you're doing fine.




This Saturday, September 19th, you are invited to experience a night of
campfires, hobo-tech, 5¢ cabarets, big-band jazz, cheap whiskey, accordion
orchestras, tent-cities, desperate moments, fire-eating, kisses from
strangers, aerial acts, glimpses of nudity, bathtub gin, a breathtaking
sunrise and a dozen dj's in an all night celebration of the grit, beauty
and desperation of an all-too-familiar past.


Welcome to:
Nineteen Thirty Three


9pm through 9am
Saturday, September 19th
Starting at: 260 Meserole St., Bushwick Brooklyn

Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel laureate and an Israeli psychologist, wrote about what got him into the fascinating field of psychology. When German Nazis occupied France in 1940s, Kahneman and his family lived in Paris. During the wartime, Jews were required to wear the Star of David and had to obey a 6p.m. curfew. “I had gone to play with a Christian friend and had stayed too late. I turned my brown sweater inside out to walk the few blocks home. As I was walking down an empty street, I saw a German soldier approaching. He was wearing the black uniform that I had been told to fear more than others – the one worn by specially recruited SS soldiers. As I came closer to him, trying to walk fast, I noticed that he was looking at me intently. Then he beckoned me over, picked me up, and hugged me. I was terrified that he would notice the star inside my sweater. He was speaking to me with great emotion, in German. When he put me down, he opened his wallet, showed me a picture of a boy, and gave me some money. I went home more certain than ever that my mother was right: people were endlessly complicated and interesting.” (Kahneman, D. 2003. Maps of bounded rationality: A perspective on intuitive judgment and choice)

Paulo Coelho On What It Means To Be A Writer

This is what I learned about what being a writer meant in the early 1960s:

A writer always wears glasses and never combs his hair. Half the time he feels angry about everything and the other half depressed. He says very 'deep' things. He always has amazing ideas for the plot of his next novel, and hates the one he has just published. A writer has a duty and an obligation never to be understood by his own generation.. A writer understands about things with alarming names, like semiotics, epistemology, neoconcretism. When trying to seduce a woman, a writer says: 'I'm a writer', and scribbles a poem on a napkin. It always works. When invited to say what he is reading at the moment, a writer always mentions a book no one has ever heard of.

-Paulo Coelho

Ashley Casselman
4:34
good
me too
he is the embodiment of everything i was looking for
he's not perfect, but he meets the hell out of the criteria

Adolf Hipster

Lies About Lying

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind –
— Emily Dickinson (#1129)

NYTimes article: http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/seven-lies-about-lying-part-1/

Songs of Love

The Songs of Love Foundation is a non-profit organization that creates free personalized songs for ailing children. Professional songwriters from all over the country (and the world) write, perform and produce more than 250 original songs every month. Our songwriters perform songs in any style ranging from hip-hop to heavy metal, pop to classical, with lyrics based on the interests of each child and the loving people in that child’s life. Children of all ages (up to and including 21) who are currently battling a serious illness are eligible to receive a song, free of charge.

Every child is unique and so is every "song of love" composition. In 13 years, the Songs of Love Foundation has written songs for more than 19,000 children in hospitals throughout the country and the world. The songs alleviate pain and trauma during painful and scary hospital treatments. Song recipients play their "songs of love" in all kinds of situations and settings such as car trips to the hospital, show and tell at school, for family and friends, and even for the doctors and nurses.

There are many ways to help this unique and innovative children’s charity. Through its vehicle donation program, CARS (Children Are Receiving Cars), folks across the country can donate their car, boat, or other vehicle in order to help further the organization’s mission of music. Donated vehicles are fully tax-deductible as allowed by law.

For more information on donating your car, boat or other automobile, you can visit www.songsoflove.org/cardonation or call toll-free, 1-888-909-SONG (7664).

Each child’s “song of love” costs the charity approximately $250 to create, though the Songs of Love Foundation also accepts cash donations in any amount. The $250 covers the cost to produce the song, as well as all administrative and office tasks involved in delivering each song to the child it was written for.

To make a cash donation, you can visit www.songsoflove.org/donation or call toll-free, 1-800-960-SONG (7664).

To request a song, you can visit http://www.songsoflove.org/profilesheet.html or call 1-800-960-SONG (7664) to request a profile sheet in the mail.

My AI Report on the Forbes HP

Rejection

Rejection is a warm feeling in your ears, a tight feeling in your throat and a wet feeling in your eyes.

Troilus & Cressida

Upon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit, to defend my wiles; upon my secrecy to defend my honesty; my mask, to defend my beauty.

Shakespeare, Troilus & Cressida

Etymology Lesson

callipygian: a person well endowed with a shapely or attractive rear end

from:

kallos (grk): beauty
+
pyge (grk): buttocks

What Is Something You Would Change About Me?

If you love someone unconditionally then its nearly impossible to answer this question.

If you love someone, but are unsure of how conditional his love is for you, this question must not be asked aloud.

If you don't love someone, then this question takes too long to answer.

An E-mail from Debbie to me and Mozart's breeder

On 6/11/09 4:34 PM, "Debbie Myers" wrote:

We buried Mozart today. In March of 2001, we came to Addison to pick him up. He has been loved to pieces and experienced all the joys that this life has to offer; family, doggy friends, travel and even a year living at James Madison University where he was the the unofficial campus mascot. Today, he was remembered by many and through Facebook, many have shared in the sorrow of his loss. His passing has been difficult for me because I have spent many years caring for him since he struggled with allergies, brittle bones and finally lymphoma. I have been angry at vets and the steroids they used to treat him because he would jump over a rock when chasing a deer and would hobble home. The pain of his loss is more than I felt when my Dad died, he is irreplaceable and I'm not sure just how life can exist without him. He raised my kids with me through their teenage years and rolled with the punches. Electric fences couldn't stop him and I found myself daily chasing him while he chased a deer through the woods to the Potomac River when we lived in Maryland and finally down Scudder Lane here on Cape Cod, only to wind up seeing the sun rise on the beaches of Barnstable Harbor. A vet came today and we layed on a blanket while he quietly passed. He is buried in my backyard and tonight I will plant white lilies which are called "Gentle Shepherd" because I know now that he will be there to shepherd all who he loved in heavan. I will also plant a Camelia bush there to remind me of all his joys in the South while he partied through many evenings at James Madison. I am in so much pain right now. I prayed to anyone as he passed and that included any angels, dogs that I have loved and God himself that they would embrace him as I had to let go. Thank you for the chance I have had to learn compassion for others, for what it feels like to take care of someone who is sick for a long period of time and for the caregiver who are left without purpose when their loved one passes. I have learned that no one can give me answers to why my 'why's' sound like whines. I have learned that the day I turned into your driveway and saw all the furballs starring at me through your Bay window was a choice I alone made and somehow when I looked at their faces in the dark on that cold March night, I knew what was in store for me. I knew I would love like I never loved before. I knew I would learn about unconditional love." No experience and that includes all my moments in church, my long years of teaching, my human family that I love without measure could ever bring me to my knees like today when I begged for someone, anyone to embrace my little friend as he passed through the shadows of this life and surround him with the magnitude of love that I no longer could express here and now. Life is so short and I hope that soon I will be a good enough person to warrant passing on to the place where I know he is; in Divine Love's embrace, nestled under his wing and in the meantime, I pray for moments when I will feel his cool lick on my cheek and his protective impulse while I continue to walk the paths that we ventured together.

Ode to Muzzy

Ode to Mozart

Beneath these flowers and greens lies Mozart,
Our magnificent Newfoundland friend.
A life full of love but a life too short,
But like each Cape summer, all beauty does end.

You roared like a lion but cuddled like a lamb.
You jumped for joy rides, and danced on two legs,
Waltzing across the room, your paw in my hand.
A cherished prince, for love you never begged.

Like a stallion, you'd make all the girls run.
You'd let it all hang out and lay in the grass.
They'd stroke your silky fur in the shining sun.
King of the palace, with a sage's class.

Your salty kisses, drool copters and goo,
Muzzy, we miss, and will forever love you.

Color Spectrum

Act 5 A Mid Summer Night's Dream

SCENE I. Athens. The palace of THESEUS.

Enter THESEUS, HIPPOLYTA, PHILOSTRATE, Lords and Attendants

HIPPOLYTA

'Tis strange my Theseus, that these
lovers speak of.

THESEUS

More strange than true: I never may believe
These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

HIPPOLYTA

But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images
And grows to something of great constancy;
But, howsoever, strange and admirable.

Venetia Phair RIP

Venetia Phair, nee Burney, who as an 11-year-old girl in
1930 named the newly discovered planet Pluto, died at age
90. "In the year 4,000 A.D., when Pluto is hollowed out and
millions of people are living inside," said an amateur
astronomer, "the name of Venetia Burney may be the only
thing that Great Britain is remembered for."

I love my mom.

That article was wonderful, I am beaming with joy because you can't imagine how powerful these ideas are and how much good you are doing for everyone who tries to embrace these ideas. Really well written and so timely because that Serchuk article describing the economies evidence of "green shoots" emerging is huge this week and little do these people realize how much more gratifying simple plant growing can be vs. growing our wallets. Think about our worth… on one side, we think about our jobs, size of our wallets and education. But on the other side, our worth is what we give back to our friends and families, hopefully strangers in need and our environment. You are a huge part of this reorientation. I am so proud of you.


http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/05/state-of-the-city-opinions-new-york-urban-gardening.html

"I got this idea of doing a really serious big work-it would be precisely like a novel, with a single difference: Every word of it would be true from beginning to end."


-Capote

New Orleans Quotations and a mini-lesson in traditions + acoustioptics

Life looks like how you paint it and is whatever inspires you.

DDBB sounds like what a French military style funeral would sound like after 4 po-boys and a case of bourbon. A rich, creamy donut that makes you want to get down and dance to the funk.

I felt exposed; adversely affected; by the shoulders that surrounded me.

I’m not so rested, but I’m battle tested.

A Ripped Love Letter Found on the Street

you write to me
w’s everything?
Sherman. I hope your
s through. Its been two
high fever and diaheria
loving in here without you
Please come & make my day. How’s your job? I hope you don’t think of me as a selfish person for all this. I know and you know I am now selfish. I am doing this because I am in big trouble and you are the only one who can help me out. I love you & I need you more than anyone or anything right now. I promise you if you come everything would be perfect and wonderful. I want to stay in Bangladesh forever and live my life here with you. You and I have enough wealth to survive. So, why not? Please, Sherman, come and see how beautiful things will be.
Sherman, I am begging you and will beg more if you want me to. I don’t know if my writing means anything to you or not. But believe me if you tell me to kill myself in order for you to come I will. I will at least get to see you before death.
We don’t need to buy anything for our wedding from U.S. except for the jewelry and some makeup product and all other stuff will be from here. I been to few weddings in here & realized how less $we need for a wedding but can be a perfect wedding with less money compare to U.S. I don’t know how can I explain more to you. I hope my feelings & my words means as much it means to me and as much as it makes

Me happy. Wow
You want to see
Every might I pra
To have a great life.
So, stay well & happi
Me. Just be happy
If you want make me happy in this life maybe you can make me happy after life.
Love always & forever
Your unlucky &cheap girl
N.Y

P.S. If possible try to send me some money about $300 to $400 dollars at this account #
This account is located in Mithapur the same address as I wrote. My address with send the money as my father does from a travel agency or something. You know that people who does exporting & importing or money business. I still didn’t get any letter from you but I still write to you & I will. I hope you will do the same instead of waiting for me to write or receive my letter.

The name of the Bank is

registering a sense of time through light and shadow.

A Mother's Energy

"You are, after all, genetically, half your mother and half your father. (Actually, you are slightly more your mother, since the genes in your mitochondria, the energy power centers of your cells, are inherited exclusively from your mother.)"
-Ray Kurzweil in his book, "Transcend"

We've Spun Our Story

I want to write a song for you
But you’re the only one
who likes to hear me sing.
And my fingers strum all wrong.
You're the great songwriter
So how about a poem?

We've spun our story
Around so many seasons
Finding clear blue pools
In evergreen forests
Snowed-in in the sunshine
We've spun our story

We're not a patchwork quilt
Or a crocheted craft
There are holes in our art
Cause sometimes I spin
Too fast and there's a large tear
Where you dropped the thread

We've spun our story
We've cried, loved, and bled.
No, I don't see an end
Our story's still spinning.
Sew slow and stitch tight.
Only time will tell my friend.

Les Claypool 3/28/09

"Isn't it awfully nice
To live in a world
Where everything's exactly how it seems?

We live in a world
Where all you have to do
Is sit around and dream

About the things that make ya happy
The things that make ya smile
Lay back, relax
Apathy's back in style"

32409

How do fonts inspire us to write differently?

32409

You can look at a problem both ways;
but the crossing sign won't flash forever.

32409

Time.
We spend it all so differently.
But its how we spend it that matters.
The ultimate capitalist gain,
and the holy bohemian pleasure.

An E-mail from Dean Kamen

My five favorite transportation technologies…in order of speed and range:

1.) iBot
2.) Segway
3.) Tesla
4.) Enstrom Helicopter
5.) Hawker Premier

Dean

A+C

The mind is its own place,
and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell,
a hell of heaven.
William Blake

Albino Dolphin

A pink bottlenose dolphin was spotted swimming in Lake Calcasieu in Louisiana. It is believed to be the only of its kind.

PHISH RETURNS! PHISH RETURNS! PHISH RETURNS!

Wading in the Velvet Sea


Each musical note hangs in the air-

Technicolor reds, greens, and blues in neon flair.

The notes become tunes that soak into my head,

Then seep down until my feet hang like lead.

We all sway like seaweed, from left to right,

as the sets of waves engulf the night.

I feel a surge of passion and look around,

to see mile long glow chains snake through the crowd.

I am alone in a sea of 70,000 drifting phans

Who like me, are wasting their time for the love of the band.

A building passion, the glow lights are thrown.

Everybody's dancing at a place I once called home.

Boy, 13, allegedly killed his brother to take over their drug ring

If drug users only knew what the poor are subjected to, they would never touch the stuff. I hope I live to see the day when no more suffering occurs because of evil rotten drug lords. That would mean everyone stops taking drugs or it becomes legal to grow your own and then it would be free.
Love Deb

Jordan Mendes was found shot, stabbed 27 times and dumped into a pit, police say. The boys inherited the Cape Cod, Mass., business from their father, who is in prison.

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

— John Gillespie Magee, J

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker Head Goes on the Auction Block

It is expected to sell for $2,000-$3,000. Featured at the end of "Moonwalker," the head lights up in addition to moving. The auction will take place April 29 from Shaan Kokin/Julien's Auctions.

Aimless Love

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren

and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door –
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor –
just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

Billy Collins

Etymology Lesson

Ecstasy: to stand naked before from the Greek word ekstasis, meaning: standing outside oneself

Passion: strong and barely controllable emotion from the Latin word pati, meaning: to suffer

Painting as reproduced in: Henry Geldzahler and Robert Rosenblum, Andy Warhol: Portraits, Munich 1993, p. 91.

Dieter Mersch

Movements of Avant-garde Art:

›Aisthesis‹, ›Ekstasis‹, and ›Askesis‹.

›Aisthesis‹, ›Ekstasis‹, and ›Askesis‹.

›Aisthesis‹, ›Ekstasis‹, and ›Askesis‹.

»withdrawal of art from art« (Joseph Beuys)

»It must turn against that which constitutes its own concept,« says Theodor W. Adorno in his Ästhetische Theorie, »and in so doing it will become uncertain right down to the very fibers of its being. It is not, however, to be dismissed as an abstract negation. By attacking that which the entire tradition considered to be guaranteed, the bedrock on which it stood, it transforms itself qualitatively; it turns into another.«

LOVE PUT ME IN A STRAIGHT JACKET (2005)

I string love along with

Clever eyes and moist lips.

He reaches out to hold me as

I dodge his grasp with swinging hips.

Feather caresses and sexy glimpses

He stares and inside, I smile.

Our eyes meet, love thinks he knows.

So I let his feeling fester for a while.

The attachment grows, sick and twisted.

As one side is stronger, it starts to bend.

I feel his embrace hold longer and I know

That this is the beginning of the end.

My smile slopes with weight

As my lungs close up with panic.

He keeps coming back for more.

Love put me in a straight jacket.

Lost in the maze of a circular design,

Of finding salvation and then I run,

Love’s orbit in my life spins me away.

Death to Love by my atavistic gun.

11.06.05

What is this sensation?
Temptation?
There’s nothing that compares…
I feel it in me, the heat.
When you smile, does that make it worthwhile?
God you were the best I ever had.

Best of Rob Sheffield Quotes

“Jagger didn’t slow for a second, prancing around the stage and swiveling panther hips as if Lucifer was his Pilates instructor.”

Don't Smile When I Ping You

Hide your smile
When I ping you
Cause he'll know
You never smile
For him like that

Hide your smile
The one that twirls your curls
around your little finger
with the fancy diamond on

Hide your smile
The one that shrieks
When I touch you
Cause he'll never touch you
Like that

Hide your smile
At the dinner table
Order the lobster
Just save some
Room for later

Hide your smile
When I ping you
Cause he'll know
You never smile
For him like that

For The Southern Hoes

left the moonshine down south
and drank all the natty
now I'm a big city girl
may I call you sugar daddy?

see I've got nice manners
big hats, high heels but
none of that matters
If I can't be your candy

I loved a boy once
With pretty blue eyes
Sandy white hair
And a mouth full of lies

He rode a big truck
With a brain full of hay
Whispering sweet nothings
Like let's marry someday

So I felt in his pocket
Reaching for the jewels
But you can't buy my love
With pennies and bubblegum

Left the moonshine down south
and I drank all the natty
now I'm a big city girl
may I call you sugar daddy?

I found a studio palace
And bought a cashmere bed
Satin sheets with diamonds
Just can't pay the rent

Who cares if I'm 17
And your 45
I saw your Ferrari
I'm old enough to drive

Left the moonshine down south
and I drank all the natty
now I'm a big city girl
may I call you sugar daddy?

“Rules for a Congressman in Washington”

During the third session of the 76th Congress, on March 18 1940, Rep. Luther Patrick of Alabama outlined before his fellow members of the House of Representatives 10 simple “Rules for a Congressman in Washington” to succeed.

1. Entertain with a smile constituents, their wives, their sons, sons’ wives, etc. Go with them to the White House; show good reason why you are unable to personally have them meet the President; take daughters to meet midshipmen at Annapolis.
2. Explain what bill is up for debate; point for discussion; how it will be passed; how you will vote and why.
3. Attend to the balcony and point out leading members of Congress.
4. Respond to worthy causes; make after-dinner speeches, before-dinner speeches; learn to eat anything, anywhere, any night—work all day, dictate all night, and be fresh as a rain-washed daisy for next day’s duties.
5. Be a cultured gentleman, a teller of ribald stories, a profound philosopher, preserve a store of “Confucius say” gags; be a ladies’ man, a man’s man, a he-man, a diplomat, a Democrat with a Republican slant, a Republican with a Democrat viewpoint, and admirer of the Roosevelt way, a hater of the New Deal, a new dealer, an old dealer, and a quick dealer.
6. Learn how to attend six to eight major functions, rushing home and back during each term on one round-trip travel pay.
7. Have the dope on hot spots in town.
8. Learn to be an expert guide. Keep car in tip-top shape.
9. Know names and dates related to all points of interest, and be able to explain and supply information regarding public buildings and statuary about Washington.
10. Be an authority on history, travel, psychology, philosophy, education, economics, civics, finance, export trade, Government printing, international relations, neckties, and fishing tackle.