sorry

don't be too mad guys - i promise to blog all about it when i get back. also pictures.

Vacay-

Dear friends and bazillions of readers who love and adore me and my blog -
I will be absent for a week or so (oh-shame!) because I am refraining from the sensible, ecologically conscience and cheap stay-cation, and actually leaving town for a week (dear lord). I will be in the outer banks, with sand and water and a super cool set of people and darling boyfriend and my super best pal sophie. and water. and sand. and sun. and no work.

so don't be lookin for no new posts here guys. i don't care THAT much.

Life Experiments

I have been consistently fascinated by the concept of “life experiments” – I recall my friend Giles whose life seemed to be one giant Life Experiment in minimalism and attempted culture-reversal, as he was constantly tinkering with his diet, using certain soaps and wearing only the few clothes he found for free. And Gusky, whose experiments I know only marginally but are legendary (I encourage commenting with memories of these experiments). Perhaps I better understand these experiments as similar to the “phases” we had as children and teenagers – trying something out like a new pair of jeans to see if it fits – but with a more focused bend to it.

These experiments are designed to discover something about the world, instead of oneself, perhaps a more mature version of our younger fit sessions. Specifically the recent ones that have inspired much thought in me relate to the environment and our regular impact, relating to trash, food, and consumerism.

I read about a couple who decided to focus on food by eating only local, organic, sustainable foods, but with a twist – they allotted themselves only the $200-some dollar food-stamp allowance for the entire month. Included in this experiment was the price of gas to go pick up the food, the price of gas to bring the food to them, and the way it was designed. Farmers Market foods topped their preference list, and they worked their way from there, walking to the grocery store when needed. They started with a clean kitchen, purchased spices and staples, and made most of their food. Sunday was cooking day, baking their bread and soaking beans for protein as meat was too expensive, and creating dishes that could be frozen and heated up for lunch and dinner. Ultimately they learned a lot from the process, deciding to stick to most of the principles they learned but adding some $’s for more fruit and veggies and occasionally a chicken breast. I am still trying to find the link to the article again.

Here is one man’s attempt to be entirely sustainable: http://365daysoftrash.blogspot.com/
by creating NO TRASH for a year. This echoes a blog post I cannot find anymore where a woman carried around all of the trash she made for a month in a bag on her side – forcing her to use re-usable containers as much as possible. This site http://notrashweek.com/ shows a movement towards spreading this concept beyond individual attempts at greener living.

I came across No Impact Man (http://noimpactman.typepad.com/) a year or so ago and he has been a true inspiration for this line of thought. Here he talks about green parenting http://www.mnn.com/family/education-activities/blogs/no-impact-man-on-green-parenting, something I will devote much time to in my future but not so much right now.

And finally, an article about The Compact, a concept I am 100% behind and long to join someday when I have my life more in order: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-03-22-simple-life_x.htm, although if I take a look at my own spending habits I doubt I am far from being a member anyway.

Does anyone know of any other life experiments worth noting – green or not? One question having to do with publicity – is it more of an intent if your pact or experiment is known to others, or if you keep it to yourself as your own search for truth? I have a bible verse about hypocrites ringing in my ears, although if part of the purpose of the experiment is to inspire than mustn’t it be public necessarily?
QED.

Some self TLC...

Last night I decided that after this week of treating myself horribly I was going to be kind. I had one of my perpetual arguments over whether to go to yoga when I am tired and don’t really want to go (but this is when you SHOULD go, Annelies – but I am too tired and unhappy to go! Etc) SO I decided not to, which is usually what happens, and I cooked a fantastic meal of sauteed squash and onions in sesame oil with sesame and fennel seeds – with a new trick of adding the garlic at the end – and some Indian paneer, and tea and seven grain bread with yogurt and peaches for dessert, and watched Talk to Her in the dark on my laptop on my living room floor, and then sat outside and wrote. This is what I wrote:

It is death that turns the heated days of July into night, into soft cool hours lit by a street lamp as home waits or doesn’t wait for your arrival. Death brings the breeze and the sleep we indulge in, with its final wish death leaves us alone, unburied in our beds, unaware that its true horror comes when we wake, knowing that the sun only whispers the impending eternal visit of doom.

I have sat on these steps for years now, in between my doorstep potted herbs, the door light offering only the shadow of my hand on the page while the street light pouts, watching the dance of the leaves on the sidewalk. It is no longer hot, in dying day released us from her burden but the breeze brings little comfort when it is greeted by me alone.

A man once loved me – he is not yet dead he is dying. He has held me many times, and as his arms grow weaker and mine longer I have held him. I am always his dancer, as a girl in a tutu and now as a woman in the games I play with love and dreams.

I live on a busy corner – there is a fire station across the street and a hospital down it. Buses drive by announcing the address as it stops, and cars keep their radios loud when they rest at the stop light. Their horns are starting to anger me – the repetition of the insistence of rushing, the communal impatience, the monotonous misunderstanding that comes from being utterly self absorbed.

Thoughts on water inspired by this weekend:
Water is its own mother, it needs no nurture, no hope, no reassurance. Water is the daughter of the moon, following it with devotion unique and awful. Because of this water refuses engagement, not needing love, it in turn, cannot give it back, yet it demands y our attention. Therefore, water is a terrible lover, a sociopath we cannot break away from for an addiction to its charisma. Water controls us completely by its shameless distance.

And boats are the enablers of this abuse, providing a way for waters’ talents to get into our skin, revealing every fine nuance in its loveliness and strength in its passion the creativity, the vitality, and occasionally the violence. We are stuck going back, again and again only to realize we will never be able to engage water with our love, it is futile and we can do nothing but continue to give ourselves entirely with every rock of the keel, every small breath of the sails.

Law

My new job is being a legal assistant. Everyone (being my friends in law school) told me it would be really really boring and thought I was crazy for wanting it. I knew it would be really really boring but also knew I needed it on my resume if I wanted to go to law school, since Starbucks and art-directing are not really great recommendations for my logic skills. The job is boring. I do a lot of data entry, a lot of filing, a lot of doing nothing. And it is formal, I have to answer the phone and say “Your Highness” and “Please hold” and wear real clothes and my boss does not really like to joke around a lot. I have gone three weeks without mentioning what I did over the weekend. Nobody here knows my grandmother died. This is weird to me.

On the other hand, who ever though corporate law could have interesting side effects? Granted, I do not want to practice corporate law, but knowing that there are these actual things that are created because I fill out a form and someone else says they saw me do it, and because forms are consistently filled out with slightly different wording, is pretty fascinating to me. I am not at all surprised that I find something so boring uniquely interesting – this has always been the case in my life. The purpose behind these gazillion companies that these people own is quite intriguing. Now, my dream for becoming a lawyer is several-fold a) I want to go to law school. I want to be challenged the utmost I can as an intellectual, I want to contemplate strange ethics of white people in a way that St. John’s didn’t let me because it entirely denied intuition whereas there is an entire field of law that has to do with it, b) I really truly more than law want to do environmental things and law is the best way to do it, since it is the only way I can see myself making an impact and c) I have this lovely dream that I could be a Riverkeeper in South America, someplace beautiful and slightly romantic and simple where I can be surrounded by edible plants and walk down to a watershed that I spend my days working to protect, where there are people who couldn’t care less about corporate mergers and Ponzi schemes, and where the culture is based off of storytelling and magic. And somehow law school will help me do this, I guess. Anyone see how this happens in my mind? Or am I completely dreaming?

Here is a post from one of my new favorite bloggers about being a lawyer:
http://heliotrollop.blogspot.com/2009/06/objectionable.html#comments. She brings up the issue I am terrified of, and which made my relationship with an ex-regional manager at a shifty one (She had left law to work for this retail company) and basically all these people are unhappy with being a lawyer. I am terrified of being unhappy. I refuse to let it happen to me. And I am convinced that if I do make the plunge to try to pass the bar, I will be satisfied because my goal is to utilize law for another purpose, instead of being convinced that law in its own is the end – perhaps as if others’ unhappiness arises from their previous conviction that as lawyers they could be happy, and were disappointed with pushing paper around, whereas I believe as an environmentalist I will be happy, using law.

Rory, you can identify with this constant convincing in your head as to your future, and this is just one of the conversations I have recurring about it. I hope you all don’t mind listening to me trying to figure out my life, and tell me – does any of this make sense?

I apologize in advance for the rambling...

Today, I ate.A lot. And bad stuff. I haven't eaten this bad for so long since Reality (I know, that bad...). Oatmeal (not so bad), microwaved pasta from CVS, candy,rice I made last night, I even bought a hot dog from the stand outside, which is ridiculous because my roommate and I still have literally hundreds of hot dogs leftover from the 4th of July party that we will never ever eat.

Today, I spent all my time at work reading new blogs (see all the new ones I'm following?!) instead of typing in data into Outlook with a brief intermission to for an orientation about my notary status.

This past week, I have not run, nor yoga-ed, not even cooked. I feel like I did in high school, with everyone around me wearing better clothes that actually fit them and having enough hours in the day where they can stay fit and feel good and be happy all the freaking time. And I'm only a little bit upset about this. Mostly I am tired (also kind of like high school) and sad (even more like high school). My hips hurt because I haven't sweated in so long. I can't afford food because Friday is pay day. And now I sound like a whiny child which is not supposed to be what a blogger sounds like.

So, instead I am sharing this video because Neko Case is beautiful and makes me very happy and her cover is amazing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBqOrZjEl5I

July 21 8:42 am

I will at once be both your child and your lover, the girl not afraid to soothe your lonely aches, the woman still willing to let you love her in her own absence of father and need for friend.

Even now in your dying you capture youth and movement as from the dancers you sculpted or the words you found lying on the pages you paint, lifeless but full of love, elaborate and marble strong.

Not all corners are cut to be sharp, you teach me, somewhere men cry for the sake of tears and the shiny pools they leave in my hands when you pull away.

I am at once both mother and the sister you lost, the artist that makes you from stone, the poet who writes down the lines of your fading heart. Life is not the performer you made, instead it is resting on your shoulder, tired and thin, waiting to close its eyes.

My Inspiration

Here is the article that has inspired my recent attempts at home-making stock products:

http://www.slate.com/id/2216611/pagenum/all/

I also found some good recipe's in the DIY section of here: http://www.thekitchn.com/

Tonight I will try the purple microwave potato chips from jugalbandi and attempt to make an herbed pesto to go with it. Also some tomato bread since I have tomato sauce left from my pizza last week.

Pictures and a post about sailing to follow.

I have many wonderful links to sites that handle both travel and vegan food which I am weeding through and will share my favorites, and I will make some posts about my reflections on veganism for rory. FYI.

Baudelaire

To connect my last post with this weekend's sail trip:


Invitation to the Voyage
by Charles Baudelaire
Translated by Keith Waldrop

Child, Sister, think how sweet to go out there and live together! To love at leisure, love and die in that land that resembles you! For me, damp suns in disturbed skies share mysterious charms with your treacherous eyes as they shine through tears.

There, there’s only order, beauty: abundant, calm, voluptuous.

Gleaming furniture, polished by years passing, would ornament our bedroom; rarest flowers, their odors vaguely mixed with amber; rich ceilings; deep mirrors; an Oriental splendor—everything there would address our souls, privately, in their sweet native tongue.

There, there’s only order, beauty: abundant, calm, voluptuous.

See on these canals those sleeping boats whose mood is vagabond; it’s to satisfy your least desire that they come from the world’s end. —Setting suns reclothe fields, the canals, the whole town, in hyacinth and gold; the world falling asleep in a warm light.

There, there’s only order, beauty: abundant, calm, voluptuous.

Beauty

7/17/09 (after watching the movie Domino)

Beauty is supposed to be a passive existence, an experience to reflect upon, a state that suffices as a primary being and purpose within objects. This is why the existences of characters like Domino are so fascinating, because they are active to the point of rage, and it is hard for us to process beauty as so active.

I argue however that beauty is innately active – and it must be some other quality that fascinates. Beauty inspires, it marks us with emotion, it moves us to speak or decide. Beauty is the cause of war and writing and families, discontented with a simple state of being, it moves generations in a show of power over motivation.

Perhaps it is the rage of such a character – a model-turned-bounty hunter – that captivates. Where does beauty get away with being angry or vengeful upon the world, when there are whole age groups of people willing to harm themselves for just one fleeting moment of experiencing it themselves? Along with beauty comes expectation – people’s belief that beauty is a common stock and is wasted on those who refuse to share it, a complicit understanding that beauty is a primary quality and is therefore enough to validate you. But then where does the mind fit in, or creativity? How can one truly feel accepted based no a quality they have no control over and absolutely no responsibility for?


This conversation is one I have often in my head – another side to it involves the very adamant feeling that beauty must be shared, although I often relish disdain for those men at bars they may throw that statement at me like a twirling football and expect me to catch and run with it. And are humans objectively beautiful, or is it their utter imperfection an inherent aspect that makes beauty something more alive than a statue’s pleasant lines? More to follow, I am sure….

Rilke

I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.

Life passing

There are often times I stop and realize just how different my life is - from itself a year ago, from what I imagined, from what it would have been if I had made different choices. Today it sinks deeper - my clinging to change, a strange divorce from my younger self who craved settlement and constancy like a starving African child who has never tasted a complex carbohydrate craves the sense of fullness we take for granted. I always fought the effects of growth and movement until the recent years when I fel I have emerged from this cloud and become increasingly more frustrated with similarity.

My star chart reads that I am particularly marked by the habit of transformation - not pheonix-type, rising out of despair, but the type characterized by my beloved nautilus, that changes his home when he grows too big. I will forever change who I am when the last me gets too easy to be.

Today my life is drastically different - yes, from a year ago, but more acutely from two weeks ago. I find even this much change necessary and thrilling. This line of thought calls to mind a fear I had as a teenager that I would reach my goals, that I would be excellent. A strange fear perhaps? I have for a long time understood it as a fear of perfection left over from a troubled childhood, but I now understand it well as a fear that there will be no more room to grow, nothing to change into, only the possibility of a stagnating life.

And how, why, do I ponder this today? My grandmother, my father's mother and my last remaining grandparent, died last night in a coma. Sad, terribly, but a long time coming. She herself never stopped changing, always had new projects, new friends, new jobs, new great grandchildren that kept her going for ninety years. It was only in the past two years that she stopped moving and accepted she could not accomplish anything new. I feel that was her real death.

Grief manifests itself in as many different ways as there are people. Some search outside themselves to find comfort, acceptance of a world that has fundamentally changed for them by the loss of a person or a possibility. They need to replace that absence. Others seek companionship, hoping a strengthened relationship or time spent with others will fill the hole where their love used to be. Grief can destroy relationships, projects, jobs, a person. Grief can be inspiration to those stuck inside themselves in a world too isolated. It can be a quiet acceptance or an outraged roar. Grief is a private war against perhaps the most public and universally experienced emotions of sorrow.

My grief is blank, it is the lack of emotion, it is the lack of acknowledging the beauty in the morning, the attraction to my boyfriend, the variety in the public commuters beside me. I see only dull colors, only the pain in the forward steps that I have spent most my life coping with, I lack the energy to smile or the will to try, My grief is the prospect of tears. Never more than this.

I took the metro home today, as I do every day, and noticed how we learn to move with the car careening under our feet. We stand up to make way for our seat-mate so they may stand themselves, we shift our weight to hold on and remain upright, we stand sideways so more of us can fit in. We make sacrifices for this convenience, we relinquish the security of solid ground for a piece of carpeted earthquake, sometimes risking greater safety, so we may reap the benefits of public transportation. In a world of private sound controlled air conditioned automobiles we step into a dirty, hot, loud and smelly system. And this is how it should be. In order to exercise the full benefits of love and stories of love past and great adventure and small hugs, we have to step onto the car and know that we will probably lose our balance when the train stops and we may bump into a few people while doing so.

My grief is a forgotten subway ride, a half hour lost to the futility of movement-without-consideration to the wonder of efficiency or participants. I will mostly keep my balance, and certainly inconvenience nobody for I myself will be forgotten too. The plain low-faced girl that sits with her pad and pen, and never looks up, who has memorized the risks of tuning out to the station calls, who has decided that today this ride does not exist.

----
time may sit as a spider
on our should, who whispers
words of how things are in our ear,
proposing we turn away from
the fly on the other wide
who only buzzes about how
the world is not.

To Oma, Passed Away

7/15/09

9:35 AM

Perhaps it is the length of time that

teaches us to take deep breaths –

An attempt to suck in forever and

hold our world in pause until, reviled

we retreat from the suffocation

of an endless day and exhale.

In wrinkled shirts and leather belts we hurry,

diving into the sticky smell of decades of

commuters, oiled electric tracks, the rush

home and after running there and down

we stand, to sit, to run again, to exhale out our day.

And you, Oma, grandmother of a different time,

have lived your final days in this deep

hurry outward, running home by standing

still, a rush through waiting and a deep pause

of eternity in the moments you open

your tired eyes. You are home,

forever, in your final exhale.

Holes

This weekend was frustrating, as I felt I spent too little time being productive and too much money on nothing at all. Today sort of made up for it. While I did not make it to yoga, I did go for a run with my friends in Rock Creek Park which is rewarding for its inspiration and thorough nurishing of the soul. Also, I made a lot of food. 

I made Bagels, the idea of which came from my search for how to make most of your food, and a need to use my quickly growing herbs. This was a very successful venture and I recommend it to everyone. The recipe: 

2 teaspoons, instant yeast 

3 teaspoons, dark brown sugar
1 ½ cups, room temperature water
1 Tablespoon, salt
4 cups, bread flour 
2 teaspoons, baking soda

1. Mix the yeast in a large bowl with the brown sugar and the warm water. Stir in the salt and flour, ensuring all the flour is well hydrated. Knead the dough 5-7 minutes, until it is smooth. Cover the bowl and set aside for 2 hours.
2. Lightly dust a cutting board with flour. Turn out the dough onto a floured board. With a dough knife, cut a 4oz portion and mold into a ball. Here I kneaded my herbs into the dough so they were green-speckled balls.  Allow the dough balls to rest 5 minutes. Pierce the ball with your finger and rotate the dough around until the hole is of desired size. Set the bagel on a cornmeal-flour dusted sheet tray and repeat.
4. Preheat the oven to 450 F. Dust another baking sheet with flour.
5. Fill a large, wide pot two-thirds full of water, and bring to a boil with the baking soda. Drop the bagels in batches into the water; they must not touch. Boil on one side for 2 minutes. Turn the bagels and boil on the second side for 1½ minutes. They should firm and puff up. Carefully remove from the water and drain for 1 minute on a rack. 
6. Place the bagels on the prepared baking sheet. Immediately place the sheet in the oven and bake for 15 minutes. Rotate the sheet tray 90  and cook for another 5 minutes, or until the bagels are tan to medium brown. 

These are very yummy. 

For dinner I made a pizza. All of this dough was rising while I was running, which was very convenient. The pizza was a small one, made with a sliced tomato, mozzarella cheese slices, garlic sauteed summer squash, basil leaves, and a dusting of herbed goat cheese. 

It is wonderful to me that filling my time with the activity of filling my belly can be so satisfying and in turn fill the holes in my life that fester in frustration from the activities of normal life. 

Pictures of Food

Here are some pictures of food I made: 

On the left is my favorite omelet:

two eggs, cheese slices, tomatoes from my tomato plant, rosemary and red pepper flakes.

On the right is another favorite: strained yogurt for thickness, molasses for omegas, mint from my mint plant, and cardamom from inside the cardamom seeds. Very flavorful.

Forty years of sailing

The image evokes illegality; some scheme about to be discovered, a clever man's plans going under and cleared up just in time. Hunched over a shredder I am feeding piles and piles of bank receipts and informaiton into the tired metal teeth; tax info from twelve years ago, customer addresses, all go in only to be poured into a twenty-cent trash bag and hand delivered to the dumpster. I estimate about fifty of these bags have been so well cared for these past few months. Twenty years of information at least have fed the small beast I attend.

In a way the image of a crook making a break for it is oddly appropriate - the sailmaker himself gives off an aura of thievery. He is not a sleezy man, or one who would ever take anything without a long discourse on permission beforehand. In fact he is a man whose charisma is somewhat larger than his six-foot frame, who has the ability to become your best friend in a manner of minutes by discovering the one detail you are most proud of. No, the thieving he does is in his trade - he believes he is getting away with robbing a bank by making a living as he does. He also believes the customer is getting away with a prize ruby for practically nothing by buying one of his sails. This man is a craftsman, a character, a sailor who believes in the wind enough to buy his groceries from it.

While standing in front of me, systematically throwing away folder by folder a pile of tax returns from 1977 (which I was sacrificing to a small metal monster a few minutes ago) he stops and looks at a file before throwing it on a pile on the desk. "Um Sun, what a man," he says, shaking his head, "he was a major general in the Cambodian Army, gentlest man who ever walked in here. He went on to work in a grocery store after being an engineer for thirty years, used to come in and tell me stories about the battles he fought. 'Those men are gruesome', he would say, 'in the jungle, men eat babies.' "

This man knows your uncle. I will bet you money. And you have an elementary school teacher who once bought sails from him back in 80-something and he was a nice guy with an Olsson 30, or a Columbia or a Beneteau, and he was glad to help him. No joke this man remembers every customer. And will keep every scrap of paper surrounding the job he did, put it in a pile, and forget the paper but not the man.

June 26

I sit at this frayed desk and pray to the unseen god-of-my calender to grant me patience and ease. Every monring I preside over my schedule and my to-do list like a warring emperror, determined to conquor each line, to appropriately integrate and schedule every minute. I am winning the great battle over free time and dangling errands.

When asked how I want to be remembered when I die at a high school retreat - strike that, the question was what was our greatest fear - anyway, my answer was that my greatest fear is that I will die without being interesting. What I meant was that I would be an old woman forgotten. Now I believe my answer would relate to love and joy - that I will live my life unable to sufficiently communicate my love for my family and friends to the point where they have lived without knowing the great scope of my love, and that my joy will not be seen.

Having done research into joy, I am more and more convinced that it is one of the reasons we are alive, that it is an energy force that we are ultimately moving towards when we try to improve the world. Knowing this, having figured out exactly what I must do to be joyful, what owuld I be worth as a human if I could not achieve it? These worries are groundless for now, as I know I love with all my heart and I live in ajoy that effects every moment. I only hope to depeen, strengthen, and to expand these experiences so I am truly living my potential and ensuring other's joys as well.

June 17

These smells are all at once but it takes moments of memories to separate them out - the smells of waking up, morning on magnolia trees two streets over, of sheets sweated in during the summer night, of a breakfast not made and a day still becoming.

Last night, as I was driving home I was stopped at a light. I looked over across the street and on the sidewalk in front of brick rowhouses was a young girl, barefoot, wearing a pale pink tutut. The dress contrasted against her dark skin, the red fading behind her as she kicked and twirled and danced up and down the stairs. The light turned green before I was finished watching her, but the years captured in her dancing were more than I will ever live.

May 29 2009

If one can transform oneself through conscious intentions, than the attention paid to your diet takes on a whole new meaning. One can certainly argue that by doing so you divert this attention away from more worthwhile pursuits, but can you risk the concept that perhaps by transforming yourself by food you may have ever more energy to spend on things such as that foundation you have been meaning to set up to benefit starving urban children? What responsibility do we have to our community to take care of ourselves? A great one, I would say.

Consistently in the habits of successful people attention to one's body emerges - those who provide the most for the world inherently provide for themselves as well. Where do we get away with consuming such excess just because the advertisement has convinced us to, or because there is no cheaper alternative available? The health food movement can perhaps be seen as a cultural sway of a fundamental aspect of yoga - yet another set of thoughts moving us now - of balance through opposition. We are opposing the norm, the gravity of cheap and easy - and through this we are searching for - and finding - a balance.

It is not but for the weary days of worry that we move forward at all - hours of red-eyed sits, alone in crowded coffeeshops while the sun shines outside that we pick up the phone and answer Yes to whomever asks for time - When we are nothing to the world all possibility is a gift, when we are still ourselves in ownership of our lives only our responses can confirm our responsibility. We have no right to sit in passivity to a world burgeoning with undone deeds and unwritten worlds, and we owe our immigrant parents one last twenty year try at success and if not wild affirmations than at least a "Good morning, hello" to the world.

When the pressure of life starts interrupting my digestions all I can do is sit somewhere with strong coffee and write sentimental words about tomorrow - and hope that it doe snot scare away my boyfriend. Notebooks of to-do lists surmonize my mornings, and the prose beyond it takes care of my afternoons, in thought about life which is love of breath and people, which is what exists when you ignore the lists in themselves.

May 26, 2:38 pm

We are a generation coming into our adulthood in a time of great struggle - the wars offer a moral conundrum, the economy a financial one. In the face of these we are left with few choices - fail or to rise to the occasion and develop the only area we are left to strengthen - ourselves; the cultural and spiritual sides we develop now will carry us through our poverty, the utter confidence massacre that is the job market, our guilt at being unable to use our expensive college degrees, our confusion at what od o when you can't pay rent (answer; buy beer).

We will be scarred by this time - we will always try harder than we need to for fear that if we just try hard we will never make it. We will push our careers to our limits and beyond for fear that we will lose it if we don't. Our earth is dying in front of us, our friends are fighting for the unknown, and we are painting, writing poetry, and forming the seeds that will grow to save the culture we grew up in.

May 20

Outside my window a carpenter bee joyfully cannot decide the directino to fly in, as long asi t is in this one plane of x + y. Beyond, in the yacht yard, great machines move boats like whales or sick elephants, assuring them the water is returning soon and they will be in pain no longer. And the creek itself beyond that is patient as small crafts deliberately move zenith-ward. Here in this space all movement collides, a harbor not just for the racing vessels but for the mechanisms of physics and magic of regular gravity. The yacht yard is a harbor for dreams - a safe lot to do only what you want to do - come in for the day to buy bread n your way back to sea, run around caretaking the details of a wood craft, fine stitch a sail, master plan a race. From here you can leave at any time, from here we are all still vikings, greek argonauts searching for our own fleece to keep us satisfied in the sea's refusal to settle. It is the constant change that soothes, the flux of chemistry that the shore brings.