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