homage

i'd like to pay homage for a moment to sigur ros for all of the happy moments they've invoked in my reality:

• Saeglopur
• Glosoli
• Staralfur

for consideration

"if fear is the motivating factor can peace ever be attained?"

"much of our current reality seems based in fear"

"what if we lost everything we ever owned tomorrow?"

i've been contemplating a powerful emotion lately---loneliness
this is what my grandmother felt
sometimes i know she's with me and i'm happy she's not alone anymore

a woman at fred meyer kicked me in the philosophical gut on saturday. i spent nearly a dozen minutes using the u-scan and emerged without a receipt. thinking the paper ran out, i walked by the attendant without a thought. she stopped me for a signature and asked if i wanted my receipt. i must have looked confused and she asked me if i was always this much of a pushover. the comment didn't really pertain to the situation at hand, except i could hear the universe behind her and knew this message was for me. no, i wanted to shout. but instead i gave her a weak smile. what a moment. this is it. if i want happiness--self-actualization--all of these states of reality i yearn for every night, i have to start demanding it of myself. i have to ask the universe to give it to me. i have to stand up for myself. and this starts with being honest, giving myself voice and letting my desires breathe.

what are these labels we walk with?

i've been considering gender lately
and labels
coming and going along these streets we walk
everyone paints themselves heavy with labels
i can hear their breaths thick with words
it's a tempting reality--grayness bleeding into black and white through simple one-liners
a seemingly uncomplicated reality emerges
but the security is fleeting
the minute a label lands on earth, its meaning is whipped up and jumbled into something else entirely
we walk these careful lines, trimming hedges and pulling up weeds, tending our words like gardens
believing the efforts will result in nourishment come fall
perhaps they will
but i'm betting that more than anything else, the experience teaches us that words can never suffice, lines drawn here or there will fly like dust the moment the sun falls behind those far off mountains
shifting the earth below us into a new, unknown position

giving voice

i don't think we truly have a voice until we can fully listen
during these quiet moments
when the wind shutters against tree limbs or oregon rain falls peacefully upon the moss
these are the times reality whispers her soft secrets into our yearning ears
or even amid chaos--inside strobe-lit dance halls and reverberating music studios--listening becomes real
these moments sculpt emotion and memory
giving us our unique
voice

hearing ani

in college my friends loved ani difranco. i could never get into her. i knew i would, one day, when i was ready to hear her message. in those days, i could sense the importance of her words and the significance of their meaning, but was not in a place to internalize her message.
last week i loaded 10 days of music from the past 8 years of my life onto my new ipod. i've been running with it--and getting a real kick out of being one of "those runners." i get why they carry that little electronic device now. it's neat. having someone belting out, "how can we be lovers if we can't be friends," while trekking up yamhill or lincoln. that's when i noticed ani was on--as i passed the new seasons on division and started heading toward home. i crested the hill and i started hearing her. i felt the same chills i saw on the arms of friends so many years ago. it's not just a story she's telling about that one time in her life, appropriately matching or using a word simply for it's rhyme factor. she's using the language of her soul. and she's illuminating her pain, painting her love and breathing life into her story. by 39th i couldn't get her voice out of my head. what a beautiful experience it is when artists delve into the deepest pockets of their souls--seemingly the most lonely place to visit--yet they return with the stories that viscerally remind us we're never alone in this walk. or in my case, run.

"i don't like my edges rounded off" - ani difranco
"love is loose, shifts each time you move" - ani difranco

Awesome quotes from MLK

• Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.

• A riot is the language of the unheard.

• It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

• Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

• History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

• I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

• Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

• Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.

• Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.

• Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.

• Let us be dissatisfied until from every city hall, justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

• The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends towards justice.

• Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

• Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

ha!

I can't believe how much I love this. And, I love that my brother gets it, too. Click here