a word to the wise

Don't go to a wedding alone.

Let me rephrase that. If you're a girl, don't go to a wedding out-of-town alone.

Let me rephrase that again: If you're a cute, single girl (who is open to new opportunities.. nudge nudge wink wink), don't go to a gay wedding out-of-town (without consulting a map and discovering that Baltimore is FILLED with one-way streets) alone, (especially not one that requires you to drive on the NJ Turnpike over Memorial Day weekend,) (and for which said driving will cause you to incur an additional, unannounced $25 parking charge at your expensive hotel) (at which your room, incidentally has TWO double beds), even if it is for one of your absolutely favorite people from college, (but who you really haven't seen much in the last five years, and hence don't know more than six people at the wedding).

Hmmm, I make it sound like I didn't have a good time, but I did. It totally wasn't the Wedding From Hell (which I've been to), and I was really glad that I was there, and I could be a part of such a big occasion in their lives.

However, it was a lot of work to make it happen. And it was the first time I had to do something like this on my own. (which was fine, really, except for all the driving. my butt fell asleep sixteen different times!)

Oh, and I got to sleep on a Sleep Number Bed. (which, truthfully, was a bit of a letdown. It's basically a bed with some sort of air pump that will add or remove firmness from your mattress. I liked it pretty much any way it went, so I guess I'm not really their target market.)

greenwood cemetery (it's not square)

So I bet you didn't know that Greenwood Cemetery isn't square. It's not. It's totally not. It's not even a quadrilateral. That thing's got more sides than... well, something with a lot of sides.

I got up this morning to go for a run, and I thought to myself, "Gee, what a great idea! Since I'm half asleep anyway, why don't I run around the cemetery? It's not that big, and once I get more than halfway through it, I'll have to keep going so I can get home."

Genius.

This is what Greenwood Cemetery actually looks like (thanks google):

I count 11 sides. And after the first three, I kept thinking, "well, once I turn this corner, I'll have to be back on Seventh Avenue, on my way home." No. Not quite the case.

So it turns out that there are some really cool things in Greenwood Cemetery (this you did know, I'm sure), but you can't really see them all, when you're so focused on each corner being your last. (Did I mention that I'm not really much of a runner, anyway?)

Greenwood was built in 1838 and people liked it so much that, until Prospect Park was built in 1866, it served Brooklyn as the biggest public green, where people would go and eat picnics and (perhaps) run around. It covers 478 acres and contains 550,000 interments and monuments, including those of:

Jean Michel Basquiat, graffiti artist, Andy Warhol protege
Henry Ward Beecher, abolitionist, religious leader, subject of scandal
Leonard Bernstein, music giant: composer, conductor, and teacher
Henry Chadwick, "Father of Baseball"
Kate Claxton, actress on stage during the Brooklyn Theater fire
Joey Gallo, mobster nicknamed "Crazy Joe"
Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune
William Surrey Hart, cowboy actor
Laura Keene, actress on stage at Ford's Theatre when President Lincoln was shot
Frank Morgan, actor, best known for his role as the Wizard in "The Wizard of Oz"
Louis Comfort Tiffany, jeweler
"Boss" Tweed, political boss of New York City

It's really very beautiful, with some scenic vistas and a pond. (a freaking pond! I never would have run around it if I had known there was space FOR A POND!)
There's also a monument of Minerva saluting the Statue of Liberty, commemorated in 1920 to mark the Battle of Brooklyn, the first battle of the American Revolution on August 27, 1776 (who knew?) Apparently they need our help to save her. go here and help.

This is what she looks like to the Statue of Liberty (who probably makes fun of her for being so short):
Visit the official Greenwood Cemetery site for more interesting facts and information (which is where I got most of my stuff here).

Also check out the satellite map and look at the bottom of the map -- there's this cool train yard and bus parking lot, which I also never knew was there. So much to learn.

I'm totally going to take a guided tour of the cemetery, just not today. I can't really walk today.

why i flew home from Des Moines (via O'Hare, of course)

So after several Sangrias on Sunday with the Surgeons, my sister, my mother and I stuffed our shit into the silver Subaru and sailed across the sprawling flatlands of Illinois and into the rolly, rolly hills of Iowa. (didn't know Iowa was hilly, did you?)

We even crossed the Mississippi, which disappointed my mother by being so small and muddy. ("THAT was the Mississippi? It wasn't even that big! And where were all the men singing 'Old Man River'? And where was the choir to herald us?")

I have to admit, it was kind of lame. (So lame I had to get my thumb in the picture)I slept for most of the trip (it did start at 5:45 a.m., thank you very much) but this is pretty much all I missed (until we got to Iowa):
Attractive, sure, but Very Boring.


We finally got to Des Moines to meet my cousin Brian (and drop off the silver Subaru) around 11:30 and went to my aunt and uncle's house in Ames. Where we caught up with Jen & Mike.

(this is a borrowed picture from their family website... I didn't get a good one of the two of them)Adorable, no?


I spent the first three hours running around the backyard chasing Ella (on the left, Piper on the right) in hopes that she would tucker out. No such luck. Brian (or, as we call him, "Unkie Bri Bri") and I got tired ourselves and had to lay around in the grass. Which it turned out I was allergic to. Fun!

The kids were ridiculously cute, though, and very well behaved. But you can see from this picture of their dad, Mike, that they require a certain level of energy.

Hanging with this side of the family is always fun, the food was great (yum, spicy corn casserole!), and silliness abounded. Like my mom riding Uncle Joe's bike:
(don't know if you can see it in the background, but look at the dashboard of Brian's car -- it's covered in little red devil ducks.)


Then there's more of the adorable red-headed family:

(cousins Jen, Ella and Mike)


and an attempt to get the whole family... which didn't work so well. (someone has a better copy of this)
Instead of submitting myself to a houseful of early risers and children under 5, I stayed over at Unkie Bri Bri's house (on the comfiest couch ever!), which was a little like something out of a science fiction movie. I felt like if I rolled over in the night, I might accidentally launch a rocket, or perhaps alter some nuclear forcefield keeping everything in place. (not true, but he does have a lot of techie stuff.)
Do you know ANYONE with 5 pounds of silly putty on their kitchen counter? I do. And that's pretty much why I went to Iowa. (The family, not the Silly Putty, silly)

why i went to O'Hare in the first place

My dad has one sister, Janet. So on my father's side of the family, there are four immediate cousins, and a (friendly) handful of second cousins and once removed cousins and cousin-cousins, some of whom I'm pretty sure I haven't met (and if I have, I may have forgotten them -- no offense, guys).

Anyway, in my generation there are essentially six of us -- me, Polly (my sister), Bates, Gretchen, Darcia and Marty. (confused yet? here, let's put some faces to the names)

You know me.

This is Polly:

This is Bates & Gretchen (sisters -- first cousins once removed, I think):
This is Darcia (cousin):
and this is Marty (who looks so much like my dad it's scary):
And this is why we were there:
Because these two cuties are getting married, and Polly, Darcia and I were throwing a shower for them! (or as my friend Christina said, I was showering all weekend)

As it turns out, I'll be performing Lear during their wedding, so I won't be going (boo) so I'm really glad I caught the shower.

Here are some other pics from the weekend -- try and guess who's related and who isn't, and how!

(we'll start out easy...)

And then, my aunt Janet (on the left) and my "aunt" Marilyn, her cousin (mom to Bates & Gretchen).

My mom, having a little rest after the Sangria-filled party. (Yeah, we started drinking around 11 a.m.)
This is the view from Janet's back porch (not bad, if I do say so myself)
This is Kitty. (that's his name) He likes to sleep in the cupboard. Which is really funny because he can open the door himself and climb on in there whenever he wants!
and my favorite (and perhaps the most telling about my own personality):

six things i learned at O'Hare -- one for every hour i was there!

So, I went to Chicago and Iowa this weekend, and had the great luck of flying through O'Hare. Twice. And on the first half, I got screwed only because my sister was driving an hour to pick up my mother and me (who were on different flights, on different airlines) and my mother's 7:30 flight was delayed three hours, while my 8:00 flight was on time. In an effort to spare my sister from driving there twice, I told her to split the difference, I could sit in O'Hare for a few hours.

Silly me.

And on the way home, when I checked in at 2:30 at Des Moines, the automated ticket machine said "oh, by the way, Air Traffic Control said the second leg of your flight might be delayed. And we're just letting you know ahead of time, just in case." (i.e. "buy another book, you're not getting home on time")

So here are a few things I learned over the course of five and a half hours in O'Hare.

1. There's a dinosaur in the B (or C) terminal. (It's a little hard to pick out, so I circled it in pink)
The dinosaurs became extinct, not because of some great environmental disaster, but because the only food available to them was served in Terminal B (or C) after ten p.m. Sad but true, they died of starvation.

2. Not bringing your cellphone charger on your trip makes you really, REALLY aware of the quality of the cellphone conversation you're having. "Is this really how I want to spend my battery this weekend? Could I be talking to someone better? Will I need this so I can find my sister later....?" The short answer is no. ANY conversation will pass the time nicely, but I happen to have had some good ones, so I guess I'm just lucky. Sort of.

3. O'Hare toilets are retarded. They're all automatic, with sensor flushes and Sani-seats (those rotating plastic seat covers). I walked into the stall and the seat changed, and the toilet flushed. I jostled my bags into position by the door, and the seat changed, and the toilet flushed. I did my business and got up to leave, and the seat changed again. I opened the door, and left the stall, and the seat changed again. But the toilet never flushed. I went through something like sixteen sani-seats, and still ended up touching the toilet to flush it.

(for those who can't fathom the joy of the sani-seat, go here -- I tried to load the video myself, but it didn't work)

4. Getting stuck in the airport is bad. Getting stuck on the plane is worse, for a number of reasons:

• i) they don't like to circulate the air. (I mean, why waste free air?)


• ii) if the plane pushes back from the gate when it was told to, that flight is considered an on-time departure, despite parking for 35 minutes at the end of the runway.


• iii) you feel kind of like you're being punished. (I originally said "grounded" but you are actually being grounded, and I didn't want to be too punny. Because after 5 hours in O'Hare, THAT'S NOT FUNNY)


• iv) when the woman behind you is blowing her nose about nineteen times into the same tissue, it gets really REALLY old. After a while I started feeling the booger germs pile up on the back of my elbow -- especially since they weren't being ciruculated by the free air.

5. The tunnel from Terminal B to Terminal C (and back to Terminal B and back to Terminal C and back to Terminal B and back to Terminal C, ad infinitum) is rather cool, but would be considerably cooler if a) I had been stoned and b) I had chosen to be there.

6. McDonald's food starts to smell like poop after about forty five minutes. Everyone at my gate was taking turns eating it, and, for the first fifteen minutes, my mouth watered. (oh, by the way, this is on the way back, not on the way there, when I was STARVING, and all bets would have been off) The next fifteen minutes, my tummy rumbled. The next fifteen, I got kind of sick of it, and walked away. (probably to use a retarded toilet) After that, it just smelled gross. And not just too-greasy-too-oily gross, but yech-rotten-nasty-putrid-ass-funk-of-death gross.

trust

I'm a very trusting person.

Of everyone else, that is. Not of myself.

I can meet someone and instantaneously trust them. And I do. All the time. And for the most part, I've been lucky, meeting good, decent people who are worthy of my trust. But it seems like it's getting to a point where I trust other people more than I trust myself.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, as people have come and gone in my life. People who I have trusted as if, in some way, they have the answers that I don't. And if I trust these people, or follow their advice, or live my life in a way that they would approve of, then they're in charge, and I'm no longer responsible for whatever shortcomings I have in life. As if they know the route better, and I can relax and just enjoy the ride.

But what's funny is when I do that, I end up somewhere other than where I wanted to be.

This kind of trust, this belief that other people know what's right for me, what my inner truth is, is in fact, a huge betrayal of myself. It's almost as if I'm saying, "Hey Kate, your plans and your wants must suck, because look at all these other people, who know how you should be living your life differently --they clearly have the inside scoop!

One of the monologues I use is from The Road to Mecca, by Athol Fugard and it closes with this: "You know what the really big word is, Helen? I had it all wrong. I suppose like most people I used to think it was Love. Thats a big word all right, and quite an event when it comes along. But there's an even bigger word. Trust. And more dangerous. Because that's when you drop your defenses, lay yourself wide open, and if you've made a mistake, you're in big, big trouble. And it hurts like hell." It speaks to me mostly because I've been there before, trusting someone to take care of me, to be responsible for me, and in the end, letting me down simply because that's not their job.

I am so not a religious person, but the Rev. Kim K. Crawford Harvie has written an AMAZING sermon on trust, and I would recommend reading it. You can find the full text here.

She says, "The more highly developed our trust yourself voice, the better prepared we are to trust the world, or to trust it again. The strength of our capacity to trust ourselves is the reserve on which we draw when the world betrays us. And the capacity to trust ourselves is the bedrock of our trustworthiness to others."

So, it seems that the objective, then, would be to build a trust in myself, and to listen more to myself and what I'm saying I want. Which sounds great, and is an idea I can really get behind. But it gets tricky when I know I'm listening to a part of myself that is my least trustworthy -- my sexuality.

When I was younger, I never did drugs, I never drank, I was really (REALLY) straight-laced and good. But the one area where I let myself misbehave was with guys. It seemed (at the time) the lesser of the many evils I faced, and, while I wouldn't change how I was then, it's almost as if my sexuality missed the boat when the rest of me grew up. When I want someone (or something), I want him NOW!, regardless of what the other, more responsible voices say. Regardless of my really strong desire for romance and courtship. I have done some fairly reprehensible things in the name of Attraction (which I won't list here, thank you very much) and I often lead myself into temptation (but do NOT deliver myself from evil) in pursuit of someone sexy or a situation that turns me on. And then my heart gets involved (intentionally or not) and I find myself in a place where I don't trust myself to drive, and whoever I'm with leads me somewhere other than where I wanted to be.

This has manifested itself in several, no, scratch that, most of my past relationships, where I got physically involved with a man, and then ended up in waaaaaay over my head before I was ready, or before I was willing to see the full picture. I can't do this anymore. I don't want to.

So.

Is the answer then to only listen to parts of myself? To listen to those voices that I respect? Or to hear my sexuality, but not let it drive? I want to live a life I'm proud of, and make decisions for myself that not only do those close to me respect, but that, more importantly, I can trust.

"In our inner world, we can cultivate a sanctuary of courage and strength. It is from within that sanctuary that we cast our lot with the world, whatever hand the world deals us. The trick here, though -- and it's a good one --is not to harden our hearts, not to make of our sanctuary an armored vehicle, or a prison."
And I think I can get on board with that -- finding a way to curb, but not destroy the voice coming from my sexuality. Before, when I thought about handling that side of myself, I thought it meant cutting it off completely. Keeping myself from even acknowledging I had desires, and certainly not acting on them. But the more I think about it, the more it just means I have to be careful, to be selective, and not to think about a lack of sex as a deprivation or a way of being "good," but more as a choice to be strong, to opt for the clearest future I can make for myself.

I won't be my best self until I make the choice(s) to become her.

Rev. Crawford Harvie also refers to Rumi (which is actually how I found her in the first place), and the poem below really speaks to me right now, to not selling myself short, and to finding out how to trust the woman I want to become.

There is a life-force within your soul.
Seek that life.
There is a gem in the mountain of your body.
Seek that mine.
O traveler, if you are in search of That
Dont look outside.
Look inside yourself

the door saga, part iii

The new door works wonderfully!

I mean, sure I still hear it every so often, but I have supersonic hearing and can hear my mom's cats jump off the sofa DOWNSTAIRS when I stay at my parents' house, so it's to be expected.

And in honor of the new door, I baked some doorcakes (which are similar to doornaments, in that I made up this word, too. and they both have door in them.)

YAY! DOORCAKES!

pathology guy

Good News!

I just got cast as Regan in Boomerang's production of King Lear! I'm ready to wreak some havoc, kill some servants, drink some poison and possibly, if I can con a certain prop master into sharing a secret, bloody (non-peanut-butter-based) recipe, steal an idea given to me by a certain fight choreographer which ends up looking a little bit like this (sort of).

[for those of you who are not me and don't get my references, (even after following the links, bless your hearts) my friend Dan said that he saw a production of Lear that, when Regan takes out Gloucester's eyes, Gloucester didn't get all bloody, but Regan's hands did. Which I thought was pretty sweet and gross. And since a lot of stage blood is made out of peanut butter, and I eat peanut butter like I don't have a costume to fit into, I'd need a recipe that Sean was touting, that's made out of chocolate. Although maybe I could mix the two and just spend Act Five licking my bloody, eyebally fingers! Yum!]

ANYWAY, the best part of all of this is that, in doing some research on the play, I came across this page about Lear. Which I didn't read -- truthfully, I was just looking for pictures to start out. But I scrolled all the way down to the bottom in my pictorial quest. And I met Pathology Guy.

And I followed him to his home page. Where he's got a lot to say. And since I have so little today, you should find out why he supports amateur boxing and what his photos for In the Hall of the Mountain King look like. Then translate it all into Russian. Then, translate all of this into Russian. And then call it a day. Because it's only 1:22, and I already have.

Addendum: my eyes are so allergic to something right now, I'm tempted to start practicing my eyeball-removal procedures on myself. Anybody else have this recently, and any thoughts on what I'm allergic to? (other than work of course)

so bored today zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I'm so bored today I can barely see straight. So I've engaged in several silly quizzes and now so can you!

First off:
You're an Passionate Kisser
(I'm AN passionate kisser?)
For you, kissing is about all about following your urges (as opposed to...?)If someone's hot, you'll go in for the kiss - end of story
(um...)You can keep any relationship hot with your steamy kisses
(well, sure, but so could a puppy)A total spark plug - your kisses are bound to get you in trouble
(wheee! trouble!)
try it yourself, hotlips(es)

You Have A Type A- Personality
A MINUS!? A MINUS?!?! WHAT DO YOU MEAN A MINUS??? (heh, just kidding)You are one of the most balanced people around (ohmmmm)Motivated and focused, you are good at getting what you want (like kisses, apparently)You rule at success, but success doesn't rule you. (touche, success!)When it's playtime, you really know how to kick back (and sometimes, when it's worktime, I really know how to kick back, too)Whether it's hanging out with friends or doing something you love, you live life to the fullest - encorporating the best of both worlds (this world and the next. thanks, Jesus!)
get better than an A minus... I dare you!

Your Inner Child Is Happy
(funny, I thought my inner child was hungry...)
You see life as simple, and simple is a very good thing. (unless you're talking about complex things. then it's just bad.)You're cheerful and upbeat, taking everything as it comes. (um, have you seen me in the morning?)And you decide not to worry, even when things look bad. (are these really MY answers?)You figure there's just so many great things to look forward to. (that's probably true, but none of them are here at work!!)and your inner kid is what? hungry?

And the ALL IMPORTANT:
Your Toes Should Be Red
(my toes should be that lucky)
You pretend to be an old fashioned girly girl, but you're secretly a naughty girl deep down.(see above, apparently)Your ideal guy: Tall, strong, and handsome - with a devilish twinkle in his eye.(sure, why not?)Stay away from: Nice, safe men. They won't really give you what you want!(well, I didn't know I was getting bossed around here!!)
because you REALLY want to know what color to paint your toes, don't you???

Go ahead, run rampant. Find out your gemstone. See what color your lucky underwear should be. Me? I'm off to an audition!

the door saga, part ii

OH MY GOD! I am so excited, I can't even stand it!

THE NEIGHBORS HAVE A NEW DOOR!

I came home last night, and to give you some perspective, this is what my door looks like:
Attractive shade of ew-I-ate-too-many-mints-and-barfed-green. Clean trim, lovely door ornament (a gift from a friend of mine almost fifteen years ago, and I've hung it in every house I've had since then). No door knob (but that's another story). You get the point.
When I got home, this is what I saw:

Note the brown edges where trim has been removed. Note the lack of clangy-ass doornament (I just made that word up). I'm seeing progress being made here!
Then, this morning when I left for work, I saw this:

(Of course, when I saw it, there were two large-ish men flanking it -- one was my landlord and one was a guy in coveralls who reminded me of my father. But only because of the coveralls, because otherwise he looked NOTHING like my dad. I really wanted to take a picture of them for you to enjoy, but thought they might find it weird. Which it certainly would have been.)

I knew then that good things were afoot on the third floor at 329.

And when I came home tonight, what did I see???

OH MY GOD, A WHOLE NEW DOOR!

(Notice the lack of doorknob there, as well. I'm not entirely sure how they're supposed to get in and out of their new door, but as long as they do it quietly, I don't fucking care!!!)

And, to cap things off nicely, this was the view from my window:
It almost feels like a funeral scene, doesn't it? I think I might be broken up if that were my door out there, but since it's not, I'M HAVING A CELEBRATORY PARTY!

Farewell, sweet, sweet bangy door. I shed no tears for thee!

A-CHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

It was an allergic kind of weekend. Two main factors joined forces in the assault against my respiratory system.

#1: all the crawling around I did this weekend with the legion of dustbunnies in my parents basement. There was more cat fur and dust (and far less schwag) than I thought there could be in one family's basement. (as a sidebar, the only good stuff I got was stuff that was mine to begin with -- picture frames, bedsheets and a $10 roll of quarters from the Box Of Stuff That Used To Be In Kates Car, That Is, When She Had A Car.)

#2: the bizarro pollen shitstorm that kicked up Saturday afternoon. My sister and I were outside playing cards when the wind picked up. And my parents live on a park (see the picture below for a sense of the greenery and fyi, the gentleman in the picture has only been edited out because last time I used this picture, he got upset that I was using it. Granted, that was because I had cropped him out and used the pic on a dating site, but that's a whole nother story)

So it's green green green there. And then the wind picks ups (blowing our card game to hell) and when we turn around to pick up the cards, this ENORMOUS, TERRIFYING green cloud is blowing off the trees. Not like leaves blowing or seedlings flying off the trees. It was sheer pollen. Not terribly unsimilar to this (just greener, and in the backyard):

Pollen (or as my brother-in-law was calling it "tree sperm") was flying EVERYWHERE! It was so heavy on the table that we could write our names in it! It was in our hair, our ears, our eyes. Imagine a whole sky full of this:
You know how kids worry about eating apple seeds because they don't want trees to grow in their tummies? Similar fear, only in my lungs.

But, surprisingly enough, neither my mom's two cats, the basement nor the Plague of Pollen was enough to get me even a little stuffed up. Only when I returned to the city did my nose start to run, and my eyes to water and the sneezing to take over.

I shudder to think of what kind of apocalyptic shit I'm allergic to here.

one step closer to famous!

OH MY GOD! I JUST SHOOK HANDS WITH MARIO BATALI AND NOW HE KNOWS MY NAME!

Look closely, and maybe you can see traces of his fame clinging to me.

This is my hand before we shook (note the retarded pinky):

And this is it after. I can sort of see a difference:

Truthfully, I don't really care about having met Mario (other than the fact that he was a pleasant and nice guy). I just wonder if this means he'll use my name when I answer the phone. Now THAT would be something to blog about.

love poetry

Pale sunlight, pale the wall.
Love moves away.
The light changes
I need more grace than I thought.

Not exactly what youd expect from a guy born in 1207, right?

Rumi [the poet] was born on the Eastern shores of the Persian Empire in 1207 (in the city of Balkh in what is now Afghanistan), and finally settled in the town of Konya, in what is now Turkey. His life story reads like a fairy tale. A charming noble man, a genius theologian, a brilliant sober scholar, meets a wandering and wild "holy man" by the name of Shams, and almost overnight is transformed. It seems that the universe brought these two opposing characters together to remind us for eternity that it is never what you expect when it comes to personal transformation.
(text borrowed from here: http://www.rumi.net/rumi_by_shiva.htm -- I can't seem to make the links work today)

I've been thinking a lot about Rumi lately, because Im feeling a little artistically uninspired by my life, and I find his poetry passionate, rousing and really chicken-soup-for-the-spirity, but not in a God-Says-You-Must-Do-This-Kind-Of-Way. Rumi just reminds me to keep at it, because its what I'm meant to do. It's almost like he wants to tell me that god wants me to do this, but he knows he can't use the big old G word with me or I'll tune out. I consider myself very spiritual (but not at all religious) and so I see the love in Rumis poetry as the love his has for his soul, for his god, or for Shams (his holy-man-soulmate), who embodies both physical and spiritual love.

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.

To me, his love is Love (with a capital L), applying to almost any kind of love -- romantic love, physical love, spiritual love, self-love, family love, he gets it all. And it helps me get through the tough stuff (which, these days, seems to abound, but blah blah blah) and reminds me there are simple, organic loves out there, and if I cant find the out-of-reach ones, I should seek the simple ones that make my heart happy.

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.

Now, my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let's buy it.

* * *

The way of love is not
a subtle argument.

The door there
is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles
of their freedom.
How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling,
they're given wings.


The simplicity of the imagery in his poetry just speaks to me, but I'm tickled by the complexity of trying to apply it to my own life. I mean, it's not like I'm in the 13th century, I'm not going to read by the fire, or arc my mallet at work (although sometimes I'm sorely tempted), but I see the metaphor, and can appreciate what he's saying.

ANYWAY, I'm no scholar (well, at least not about this) but it all just makes me really happy, and really connected to something bigger than me, so I just thought I'd share it. (also, it's a really good place to look if you want to use a poem in a valentine or love letter.)

So here's for you to enjoy (and cut and paste and send to your lovers)

If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting
will look, lift your face
and say,
Like this.

When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the nightsky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,
Like this?

If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is,
or what "God's fragrance" means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.
Like this.

When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.
Like this?

If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
don't try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.
Like this. Like this.

When someone asks what it means
to "die for love," point
here.

If someone asks how tall I am, frown
and measure with your fingers the space
between the creases on your forehead.
This tall.

The soul sometimes leaves the body, then returns.
When someone doesn't believe that,
walk back into my house.
Like this.

When lovers moan,
they're telling our story.
Like this.

I am a sky, where spirits live.
Stare into this deepening blue,
while the breeze says a secret.
Like this.

When someone asks what there is to do,
light the candle in his hand.
Like this.

How did Joseph's scent come to Jacob?
Huuuuu.

How did Jacob's sight return?
Huuuu.

A little wind cleans the eyes.
Like this.

When Shams come back from Tabriz,
he'll put just his head around the edge
of the door to surprise us.
Like this.

* * *

There is a way between voice and presence
where information flows.

In disciplined silence it opens.
With wandering talk it closes.

* * *

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, languages, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.


p.s. I'm not really reading this book right now, but it's a good place to start if you want more non-internet Rumi info.

my body (no, no naked pictures)

So I've had a love-hate relationship with my body over the last 29 years. Well, over the last 19. I don't think I really paid it much attention before 10 (when I started playing "Nude Models" with Amy Gabriel in the backyard). (yes, the back yard.) (well, at least it wasn't the font yard!)

Anyway, it's been mostly hate -- butt's too big, thigh's too jiggly, tummy's too flabby, blah blah blah. Whatever a woman's complained about, I have too. (except my feet. They're cute and little and I've always loved them, even though normal shoes never fit) But over the last few years, I've gotten myself into pretty good shape, and am actually really happy with where things are.

And wouldn't that just be when my body starts to fall apart?!

I'm too young and cute for the shit that's happening to me to be happening! First my shoulder falls apart (see "dorky new headset") and then my knee starts to get all weird, and apparently I have a Baker's cyst which makes my knee misbehave (i.e. HURT!) and make me super-gimpy. (you can see the definition here -- contrary to popular belief, it doesn't come from baking too much, but rather from a British surgeon, William Baker. Of course, the name just makes me think it's a cyst full of Tammy Faye's mascara-laden tears).

Then, to add insult to injury this weekend, I tried swimming again after a six month hiatus (for shoulder recovery) and my shoulder comes out fine, but I get a nasty calf cramp that actually makes me LIMP in the pool! Didn't think it could happen? Trust me, it ain't pretty. Especially not with grandpa in the next lane trying to outpace the hot young whippersnapper next to him (and swimming uncomfortably close to me, I may add...)

So now swimming, step aerobics, running, jumping rope, kickboxing, just about everything I do (even WALKING for crying out loud) has to be done with care.

What am I, 80?