to a spring that is weaning me off winter

to the quarter-sized flakes out my window when i woke up

to puddles and melt

to wet feet, consequently

to gray gray skies

to the low sulking clouds on the mountains to the east

and yet, to yellow blossoms and the faintest green on branches, so barely there i might be imagining it

today is a "contemplate failure" day, supporting evidence attached.

you know what never fails?

spring. but sometimes it looks like it's failing.

so i'm expanding my view. i'm not failing. i'm in transition.

me and bro bro

he is my best bud. and if the only reason i ever came back to school was so that bro bro and i could live a block away, it'd be worth it.

prepare yourself: this is eventually a post about politics

"we read to know we're not alone."

i watched shadowlands tonight all the way through for the first time (skinny, are you proud? thanks for loaning it.) i need more time to process before i'm really ready to talk about it, but i sure did like joy, c.s. lewis's wife. he calls her the truest person he's ever known, and i think that's one of the best compliments i could hope for.

to me, truth is beauty. i want to be authentically beautiful on the inside. i want to be a beauty collector. here's a start:



to politics. i feel very conflicted lately, and every time i read the news, i come away depressed. anyone else? (let me be clear: this sensation is caused primarily by people, not policies.) before i go any further, you should know that i bounce between being a cynic and an idealist but spend most of my time as an idealist. so call it naive, but i think things can be different. i think we can listen to each other. i think we can LISTEN to each other, not just give the appearance of listening. i think we can talk about each other with respect.

i'm not just talking about political celebrities--i'm talking about you and me and the way we can't understand the meanness that comes at us when we support something we believe in even though we dish the same petty divisiveness when we don't get our way. is there another choice? i'm speaking vaguely because even though this is a post eventually about politics, i don't actually want it to ever be about politics. i want it to be about people. (though what is the point in separating politics from people?)

i understand that people have strong feelings (understatement: people feel like their lives are at stake, and in some cases, that's probably true) about what happens in the senate and the house--i do too. can we be worthwhile participants in the political process and still be kind to those who see differently? can we have intelligently reasoned, vigorous debates without attacking one another? if you tell me no, i just might believe you. that's the state i'm in. i'd appreciate any thoughts.

"it is a way of saying, i want you, too, to have this experience, so that we are more alike, so that we are closer, bound together, sharing a point of view--so that we are 'coming from the same place.'"

--lyn hejinian, my life

i will continue to have faith in the power of sincere dialogue.

PS (if you haven't had enough):
the irking thing about this whole post is that i'm not sure dialogue deserves the praise i give it. i wonder if dialogue is a western ideal (i read this somewhere, can't remember where) and not really as "good" as i think but simply what i'm used to. i wonder also if there isn't a point where differences are so fundamental that talking won't help at all. (ie samuel huntington's "the clash of civilizations" and stanley fish's "boutique multiculturalism.) on the other hand, i wonder if the flaw of the dialogue paradigm is assuming that the result of dialogue should be shared beliefs instead of greater civility.

a friend read the above hejinian quote and expressed shock at my support of homogeneity. this is my ultimate question:
can we understand each other if we have fundamentally different values, desires, lives, experiences, etc.; or does understanding necessarily result in sameness?

just because love is complicated doesn't mean i shouldn't try (take 2)

i believe love can change the world.

i'd like to say that one hundred trillion times and to everyone i meet or ever have met. i like the way it sounds in my heart. this belief is my core. i'm sorry that it hasn't fully penetrated my exterior yet, but the transformation started on the inside and it's moving slowly. it will happen though: someday my actions will reflect my beliefs. someday i will do what i know.

most of the time when something is wrong, i think it means there's not enough love. our brains are sneaky machines that hide the people we don't want to love from our view when we are taking soul inventory. this way, we can feel pretty good about ourselves and our interactions with the people around us, even while harboring bad feelings for a person or group.

we interpret disagreeing with someone's position/beliefs/behavior as a reason to not love them, and we excuse ourselves for acting unkindly. we convince ourselves that our feelings in those cases are justified.

no. disagreeing is not a reason. the people who are hardest for us to love are the people we must love most. (i believe this but i'm still puzzling over why.)

i've been thinking about an oped by david brooks published here in the nytimes. (p.s. david brooks is my favorite. thanks jack.) brooks talks about the built-in "spirit of sympathy" humans have that helps us bond with each other through caring. read what he says (it's good):

"As a result of this sympathy and these sentiments, people are usually pretty decent to one another when they relate person to person. The odd thing is that when people relate group to group, none of this applies. When a group or a nation thinks about another group or nation, there doesn’t seem to be much natural sympathy, natural mimicry or a natural desire for attachment. It’s as if an entirely different part of the brain has been activated, utilizing a different mode of thinking.

Group-to-group relations are more often marked by calculation, rivalry and coldness. Members of one group sometimes see members of another group as less than human: Nazi and Jew, Hutu and Tutsi, Sunni and Shiite.

Political leaders have an incentive to get their followers to use the group mode of cognition, not the person-to-person. People who are thinking in the group mode are loyal, disciplined and vicious against foes. People in the person-to-person mode are soft, unpredictable and hard to organize."

even when we disagree--especially when we disagree, as groups or individuals--i believe in loving each other. people across the news are lamenting the state of washington and our broken political mechanism. what a little love would do to grease or clog the cogs (depending on how you see it). the best part about love is you can't fake it. maybe you can fake the actions, but then it's not love. it's fake love. love is a powerful word, a semantic heavyweight. it contains its own conditions without which love wouldn't be love, with sincerity and selflessness at the top of the list.

love is power because it helps us let go of the self, and love is pain because it helps us take on the other. in other words: you can't hurt me (because i'm already willing to give everything i have for those i love), but you can hurt my brothers and sisters.

and so God weeps.

i hope you don't think i'm suggesting that love makes things easier, simpler, clearer. i'm not. if anything, love muddies things up and tangles the web that holds us all in precarious connection.

on blogging and writing

check out this interesting article over at brevity.

i think the ideas are worth thinking about, especially since they redeem blogging from navel-gaving by transforming it to a lower-stakes format where a writer can develop her persona, as expressed here:

"Blogging offers a veiled reality that can be a serious advantage to the writer who is not quite sure of himself or who is in need of some narrative soul-searching. Online, we can shape our eccentricities, smooth and polish our rough-edged fears, have good fun with our own insecurities, be caustic or witty in moments when our real selves might brood, get flustered or hold back."

but i disagree that it is so easily done. three or four posts and your voice strikes the right balance? i'm also not sure the author fully addresses the problems associated with creating a pseudo-self to bear the weight of our "real" selves, or creating a mask that lets us be vulnerable enough without being "real" vulnerable. (if i've learned anything besides handout creation in graduate school, it's that the money question is "what are the implications this text ignores?" money. but only pseudo-money, since i'm in the humanities.)

i'd like a little more explanation here: "If taken seriously as an effort to hone artistic skill, one’s online persona will emerge as a narrative strength that will readily transfer to more traditional, more literary, hard-copy forums," specifically on the "readily transfer" part.

"sometimes i'm stopped cold by dragonflies"

i've been floating all day on the scent of gardenia. i wish it could waft through my pores and sail down to my fingers right into the keys and out your speakers so you could be transported, like me, straight to heaven.

all my life, my senses have been spoiled by more loveliness than they could handle. i'm amazed by the many ways my body experiences this world. i love the richness and depth that my body makes possible.

because i'm thinking about smell today, here are a few others i love:
cilantro
basil
rain
petrichor (smell of rocks after rain)
mom's angel perfume
grass
the air blowing out of laundry vents
sauteed garlic
my house after vacation
the box of christmas decorations
horses
pines
the cedar closet
the melange of blossoms when you drive through springtime with the windows down
sunscreen
ginger root
campfire
new books, old books, brown books, blue books

what am i forgetting?

departures, thestrals, and mrs. who's glasses

i don't know how to be anybody but myself. this gets said a lot, but i don't really think about it enough. even when i try my hardest to "put myself in their shoes," it's still myself i'm putting in their shoes. and i am my family, my home, my friends, the experiences i've had, my beliefs and values: i am a distinct pair of eyes looking at the world.

i went to see a great movie at the IC this weekend. (i'm sorry that i always seem to want to review flicks on my blogo since i'm not a critical viewer really.) the movie is called "departures" and it's lovely. (i can't figure out/don't want to take the time to figure out how to make the whole video show, so watch the trailer here.)



i have opinions about western burial/funeral practices. i generally find funeral homes tacky and funeral directors insincere. so i was incredibly touched by this alternative, and the film's recognition of our attachment to bodies despite whatever beliefs we have regarding what is to come. we need easing into absence. lives reconfigure slowly.