if you are focused on all that you want, how can you enjoy all that you have? lao tzu

remember this book?

i can read

I yesterday only began to love, to understand. 5/24/09

Second morning in Breckenridge.

I lay in bed and stare at the ceiling. I listen to Dad concoct his tea in the kitchen. Red rose with half a teaspoon of milk. I can direct him from counter to counter. Before he sneezes I whisper "bless you."

Two sisters still sleep: Jackie sprawled like a star fish, blond hair splayed. Cassie buried beneath covers, snoring and dreaming of red eyed seagulls.

I am awake, always awake, I rise early.

Where is my mother? Ahh, the missing figure, "touche" she would mutter, disapproving. She could be running in place or painting a landscape or crouched beneath a closet shelf sipping chardonnay.

My family. My makeup, my insides.

If I were a fourth sister and describing myself I would write:

And the oldest is awake, always awake, writing in her room. I can hear her soft sighing through the wall. The occasional thump of pen against paper. She will appear in a minute and say "good morning, lovely girl, good morning - I just woke up." But I know she has been up for hours.

And then I kiss my youngest sister's cheeks and say, "you don't exist, which is just as well."

To think I almost missed it all!

Title quote from Franz Wright's Admission.

rummaging, I found this from Anna Quindlen.

The following is from Pulitzer Prize winning author Anna Quindlen's commencement address to Villanova University, Friday 23 June 2000:

...

I have no specialized field of interest or expertise, which puts me at a disadvantage, talking to you today. I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. The second is only part of the first.

Don't ever forget what a friend once wrote Senator Paul Tsongas when the senator decided not to run for reelection because he'd been diagnosed with cancer: "No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time in the office." Don't ever forget the words my father sent me on a postcard last year: "If you win the rat race, you're still a rat." Or what John Lennon wrote before he was gunned down in the driveway of the Dakota: "Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans."

You walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life. Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your minds, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account, but your soul.

People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've gotten back the test results and they're not so good.

Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the center of the universe. I show up. I listen, I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cutout. But call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.

I would be rotten, or at best mediocre at my job, if those other things were not true. You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are.

So here is what I wanted to tell you today:

Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house. Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast? Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a red-tailed hawk circles over the water gap or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a cheerio with her thumb and first finger.

Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Each time you look at your diploma, remember that you are still a student, still learning how to best treasure your connection to others. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Kiss your Mom. Hug your Dad. Get a life in which you are generous.

Look around at the azaleas in the suburban neighborhood where you grew up; look at a full moon hanging silver in a black, black sky on a cold night.

And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Once in a while take money you would have spent on beers and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister.

All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good, too, then doing well will never be enough. It is so easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of the azaleas, the sheen of the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the color of our kid's eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of live. I learned to live many years ago.

Something really, really bad happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my druthers, it would never have been changed at all. And what I learned from it is what, today, seems to be the hardest lesson of all. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and to try to give some of it back because I believed in it completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned. By telling them this:

Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a baby's ear. Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness because if you do you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived.

Well, you can learn all those things, out there, if you get a life, a full life, a professional life, yes, but another life, too, a life of love and laughs and a connection to other human beings. Just keep your eyes and ears open. Here you could learn in the classroom. There the classroom is everywhere. The exam comes at the very end. No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time at the office. I found one of my best teachers on the boardwalk at Coney Island maybe 15 years ago. It was December, and I was doing a story about how the homeless survive in the winter months.

He and I sat on the edge of the wooden supports, dangling our feet over the side, and he told me about his schedule; panhandling the boulevard when the summer crowds were gone, sleeping in a church when the temperature went below freezing, hiding from the police amidst the Tilt a Whirl and the Cyclone and some of the other seasonal rides. But he told me that most of the time he stayed on the boardwalk, facing the water, just the way we were sitting now even when it got cold and he had to wear his newspapers after he read them.

And I asked him why. Why didn't he go to one of the shelters? Why didn't he check himself into the hospital for detox? And he just stared out at the ocean and said, "Look at the view, young lady. Look at the view."

And every day, in some little way, I try to do what he said. I try to look at the view. And that's the last thing I have to tell you today, words of wisdom from a man with not a dime in his pocket, no place to go, nowhere to be. Look at the view. You'll never be disappointed.
________________________________________

sunday musings. thich nhat hanh. tea.

corona del mar, ca.

Lydia asked me to write some about dharma study. So...

Thich Nhat Hanh is one of my favorite Buddhist writers. His work always carries a tone of boyish excitement and pure joy.

From Peace Is Every Step

We can smile, breathe, walk, and eat our meals in a way that allows us to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available. We are very good at preparing to live, but not good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma, and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive. Every breath we take, every step we make, can be filled with peace, joy, and serenity. (chapter: Twenty-Four Brand-New Hours).

You can breathe anywhere, just sitting on your chair at the office or sitting in your automobile. Even if you are at a shopping center filled with people or waiting in line at a bank, if you begin to feel depleted and need to return to yourself, you can practice concious breathing and smiling just standing there.

Each thought, each action in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred. In this light, no boundary exists between the sacred and the profane. I must confess it takes me a bit longer to do the dishes, but I live fully in every moment, and I am happy. Washing the dishes is at the same time a means and an end--that is, not only do we do the dishes in order to have clean dishes, we also do the dishes just to do the dishes, to live fully in each moment while washing them.

my service.

I just received an email from a friend of mine in India. Although it has taken me a bit of time to transcribe, I wanted to post this Amy Hempel story for him - I hope he, and you, will enjoy it.

The Man In Bogota.

Amy Hempel.

The police and emergency service people fail to make a dent. The voice of the pleading spouse does not have the hoped-for effect. The woman remains on the ledge--though not, she threatens, for long.

I imagine that I am the one who must talk the woman down. I see it, and it happens like this.

I tell the woman about a man in Bogota. He was a wealthy man, an industrialist who was kidnapped and held for ransom. It was not a TV drama; his wife could not call the bank and, in twenty-four hours, have one million dollars. It took months. The man had a heart condition, and the kidnappers had to keep this man alive.

Listen to this, I tell the woman on the ledge. His captors made him quit smoking. They changed his diet and made him exercise every day. They held him that way for three months.

When the ransom was paid and the man was released, his doctor looked him over. He found the man to be in excellent health. I tell the woman what the doctor said then-- that the kidnap was the best thing to happen to that man.

**

Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogota. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good.

Mindful Living.

space is the symbol of liberty... if you don't have space around you, you can not move.

and therefore in order to be happy, you should allow yourself some space -

inside and outside.

the refreshing moon of the buddha is traveling in the sky of utmost emptiness...

practice bringing space into you and around you.

if you want your loved one to be happy, leave him some space,

inside and around him.

if you have too many concerns, too many worries -

how can you have space?

I am reading Thich Nhat Hanh's The Art of Mindful Living. This part about leaving the people you love space feels very true to me.

::::: from an incredible, canadian (ahem) designer.

Bruce Mau Design Inc.
An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.


.... go to website for the rest!

still thinking about canada.

ontario's corn fields and cows

from one of Lydia's comments,
Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke.

Whoever looks seriously will find that neither for death, which is difficult, nor for difficult love has any clarification, any solution, any hint of a path been perceived; and for both these tasks, which we carry wrapped up and hand on without opening, there is not general, agreed-upon rule that can be discovered.

But in the same measure in which we begin to test life as individuals, these great Things will come to meet us, the individuals, with greater intimacy.

The claims that the difficult work of love makes upon our development are greater than life, and we, as beginners, are not equal to them.

But if we nevertheless endure and take this love upon us as burden and apprenticeship, instead of losing ourselves in the whole easy and frivolous game behind which people have hidden from the most solemn solemnity of their being, - then a small advance and a lightening will perhaps be perceptible to those who come long after us. That would be much.

all the king's men.

I just finished All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren. Good book, although difficult to get through, especially at the beginning – I know Warren is known for his novel approach to Southern speak, but in the beginning… I was going slower’n a bread wagon with biscuit wheels. The story picks up towards the end… overall, the book is an insightful and well informed foray into the world of American politics… all about graft and corruption and hope and promise. As Lydia pointed out, a very fitting read for the times. One of my favorite points: That we will never be OK with the future until we are OK with the past. And vice versa. Inextricably linked to this insight is another Warren makes regarding parents and children. He writes,

When you get born your father and mother lost something out of themselves, and they are going to bust a ham trying to get it back, and you are it. They know they can't get it all back but they will get as big a chunk out of you as they can.

Jack Burden, the main character, describes his mother:

For years I had condemned her as a woman without heart, who loved merely power over men and the momentary satisfaction to vanity or flesh which they could give her, who lived in a strange loveless oscillation between calculation and instinct…

After he sees she isn't this way, and he sees the truth about her:

I had given my mother a present, which was a lie. But in return she had given me a present, too, which was a truth. She gave me a new picture of herself, and that meant, in the end, a new picture of the world. Or rather, that new picture of herself filled in the blank space which was perhaps the center of the new picture of the world…

And that meant that my mother gave me back the past. I could now accept the past which I had before felt was tainted and horrible. I could accept the past now because I could accept her and be at peace with her and myself (433).

a bit more poetry:

my pops used to say this when we whined about curfew...
is it sad that I now wholeheartedly agree?!

:::

Regarding the age old question, “Why me?” Stephen King says,

You make an agreement. You say to yourself ‘ok, there’s a God- why? Because I choose to believe there is a God. Believing makes my life better than not believing. Why did this happen to me? It happened to me for some good purpose. What is that good purpose? I don’t know, but I choose to believe it’s good, because to believe it’s bad would… bum out my whole day!

from: Terry Gross interviewing Stephen King on "Fresh Air" shortly after King's nearly fatal car accident.

Augusten Burroughs, "Dry"

Sobriety:

All of a sudden, I feel like an emotional paraplegic. I feel that all of my gains and insights are based on control and denial. I'm worried that I'm so profoundly sick as to appear healthy and together.

Like cubic zirconium, I only look real. I'm an impostor. The fact is, I am not like other people.

Do you have friends like this? I do. I love it/hate it because it 's awesome/sucks. You get me?

The reason I know what we are to each other is because we fight freely and almost constantly, about even the smallest thing. In fact, once we didn't speak for an entire week because he didn't like the way I loaded his dishwasher...I can't decide if we're exact opposites, or somehow exactly the same except for minor cosmetic differences. I do know that all of his friends hate me and all of my friends hate him. We drive each other crazy in ways that nobody else can even touch. We never bore each other. And we both realize what a rare thing this is.

for jackie.

Firstly, love is a peculiar thing. There is an almost ludicrous asymmetry between two people. The person at the top of your best friend list may rank you only at the middle of his or her list. However, if you truly, truly loved someone, then you'd be able to realise that it's OK if they don't love you back. True love gives and expects nothing in return; a true unrequited love. So, I've moved on from my perfect potential companion. He gave me the strength to realise that I can move on. He gave me the courage to try something different. He gave me the wisdom and sense for me to also respect myself. So, if you truly loved them, it doesn't matter if they feel the same way, your love conquers all.

If you belive in destiny then you have know that things happen when they are meant to be. People part for reasons beyond human comprehension but the reality remains if you are meant to love each other and be with each other, it will happen. That's the power of destiny. Love always wins. Love is important and only it counts.

I am going through this right now. For those of you whose situation is similar, this is what I suggest: Deal with reality. Stop hoping, dreaming, etc. Pray and tell God that you forgive them for not being able to love you. Ask God to take this from you - and He will. Then continue to deal with reality. Don't tell yourself, maybe someday... they'll change... True love accepts the person for who they are, even when they are evil and they don't love you. It means accepting reality. When you love and accept reality at the same time, you are forced to move on. When you deal with reality and move on without love, you take bitterness with you. When you love without dealing with reality, you hurt yourself. Love the other person, Accept the reality and pray to God for the wisdom and strength you'll need to do that continuously until it ceases to become a problem.

Isabel Allende: last page of quotes.

…..various sources:

Write what should not be forgotten.

For women the best aphrodisiacs are words.

Here, write it, or it will be erased by the wind.

You can tell the deepest truth with the lies of fiction.

I see a more feminine world, a world where feminine values will be validated, the same as masculine values are. A more integrated world. I see that in the future, things that we have lost in the past will be recovered. There's a search for those things, a search for spirituality, for nature, for the goddess religions, for family and human bonding. All that has been lost in this industrial era. People are in desperate need of those things. I don't think the world will destroy itself in a nuclear cataclysm. On the contrary, we have the capacity to save ourselves and save the planet, and we will use it.

You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend or not.

I've been so thoroughly incorporated into the California culture that I practice meditation and go to a therapist, even though I always set a trap: during my meditation I invent stories to keep from being bored, and in therapy I invent stories to keep from boring the psychologist.

Allende's The House of Spirits

How to react to an angry, explosive man:

He shouted like a madman, pacing up and down the living room and slamming his fist against the furniture, arguing that if Clara intended to follow in her mother’s footsteps she was going to come face to face with a real man, who would pull her pants down and giver her a good spanking so she’d get it out of her damned head to go around haranguing people, and that he categorically forbade her to go to prayer meetings or any other kind and that he wasn’t some ninny whose wife could go around making a fool of him. Clara let him scream his head off and bang on the furniture until he was exhausted. Then, inattentive as ever, she asked him if he knew how to wiggle his ears (106).

Ferula, the spinster sister of Esteban Trueba:

She was a regal matron, but with a bitter smile on her face that revealed her inner tragedy (109).

Nana, the Trueba’s live in nanny:

She had been born to cradle other people’s children, wear their hand-me-down clothing, eat their leftovers, live on borrowed happiness and grief, grow old beneath other people’s roofs, die one day in her miserable little room in the far courtyard in a bed that did not belong to her, and be buried in a common grave in the public cemetery (124).

On charity and giving to the poor:

“This is to assuage our conscience, darling,” she would explain to Blanca. “But it doesn’t help the poor. They don’t need charity; they need justice” (136).

Allende's The House of Spirits.

On falling in love with a childhood friend - wedged between the innocence of youth and the trappings of adulthood....

They spent that summer oscillating between childhood, which still held them in its clasp, and their awakening as man and woman. There were times when they ran like little children, stirring up the chickens and exciting the cows, drinking up their fill of fresh milk and winding up with foam mustaches, stealing fresh baked bread right from the oven and clamoring up trees to build secret houses.

At other times they hid in the forest's thickets, most secret recesses, making beds of leaves and pretending they were married, caressing each other until they fell asleep exhausted. They were still innocent enough to remove all their clothes without a trace of curiosity and swim naked in the river, as they always had, diving into the cold water and letting the current pull them down against the shiny stones.

But there were certain things they could no longer share. They learned to feel shame in each other’s presence. They no longer competed to see who could make the biggest puddle when they urinated, and Blanca did not tell him of the dark matter that stained her underwear once a month. Without anyone telling them, they realized that they could not act so freely in front of others. When Blanca dressed up as a young lady and sat on the terrace sipping lemonade with her family each afternoon, Pedro Tercero would watch her from afar, without coming closer.

They began to hide when they wanted to play. They stopped walking hand in hand with in the sight of adults, and they ignored each so as not to attract attention.

Nana gave a sign of relief, but Clara started watching them more carefully (147).

“Most people don't have any idea about all the complicated life going on inside a hive. Bees have a secret life we don't know anything about.”

Spring First Flower.

The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd.

August said, "Listen to me now, Lily. I'm going to tell you something I want you always to remember, all right?"

Her face had grown serious. Intent. Her eyes did not blink.

"All right," I said, and I felt something electric slide down my spine.

"Our Lady is not some magical being out there somewhere, like a fairy godmother. She's not the statue in the parlor. She's something inside of you. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"Our Lady is inside me," I repeated, not sure I did.

"You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside."

Just finished this book... engaging story, but predictable, too typical - I felt as though I had read it before... have any of you read it? What did you think?

writing, writing, writing.

I just ordered these from a photographer named Maditi... we have been conversing through email - she is such a sweet, lovely woman! Find her work here & and find her blog here!

what does writing mean to all of you?

my writing is:
joy,
prayer,
confession,
and grocery list.

seeing,
hearing,
knowing,
and complaint to AT&T.

here,
now,
there,
and en route to your computer screen.

I used to write because I thought I could do nothing else. Now I write because I can do nothing else - passion won't permit me the wiggle room.

Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.
- Carol Burnett

creating as responsibility... this must be a constant reminder.

happy, happy monday!

Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, on Work & Integrity.

Howard Roark's advice...

to Peter Keating-

Never ask people about your work (33).

It's I who have destroyed you, by helping you (611).

general:

Show me your achievement- and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.

I am a man who does not exist for others.

I have come here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life.... It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.

Pain only goes down to a certain point.

To say 'I love you' one must know first how to say the 'I.'

Dominique comments on Roark's work:

There is not a person in New York City who should be allowed to live in this building (287).

Ellsworth Toohey:

A leash is only a rope with a noose on both ends.

I don't want to be on a leash, I want to be free. And I want to own myself, and do what I love, I want to be my own boss and a free agent... it is not in my Pisces nature to be hemmed in by anything - be it a boyfriend, employment, location -

so?

so I am reintroducing myself to myself, and every day things become more clear.

<3>