I have other thoughts to post, perhaps later. But just look at this for 40 seconds:
Molly rightly says, “I have never seen a more bad-ass pink cardigan.” Gods, I’d love to see this woman as our first lady.
Penultimate drum-and-dance of the year in South Amherst yesterday. I brought my drum, even though I don’t have a bag for it yet and it was raining a little – but Molly and I threw garbage bags over the drums, and I’m very happy we did. By the end of the evening my hands were somehow hurting and a little numb at the same time, and I could still feel the just-played drumbeat in my ribcage.
I did better than had seemed possible, given how out of practice I’ve been with things that require sustaining a regular rhythm with my hands (drumming, juggling, playing the guitar which I haven’t done in any sort of sustained way since my first year in grad school). Concentrating on picking out, playing and sustaining relatively simple rhythms for several minutes at a time was great practice.
Molly and Natalie and I stayed over at our friends’ place in Hadley (Inspirit Common), and had breakfast at Cafe Esselon there. Natalie kept feeding us pretend food. The more ridiculously we reacted, the more giggles scattered, sparkling, across the table.
Thing I learned today: Equality Now was founded in large part thanks to (by a student of) Joss Whedon’s mother. No wonder he’s such a brilliant feminist. I just ran across this video of Joss’s acceptance speech when EN gave him an award in 2006.
I love this eloquent, witty, heartbreakingly stunningly kind and passionate man.
…when you’re feeling restless? How do you release that energy? What do you usually do? What would you prefer to do? How often do those coincide?
(Obligatory periodic note to LJ feed readers: I don’t see comments made on the feed. Please to be clicking on the URL up top.)
It’s snowing white all over and so, so quiet outside.
This past Saturday was Frostbyte’s memorial auction. I arranged food for what probably ended up being a couple hundred people over the course of about 24 hours. Didn’t really cook, except in a minimalist sense. Still, it was lovely – several times that day people asked me the requisite how-are-you and I would answer, “in my element.” Providing good food for people, even if I just shop and chop veggies and open cheese and get others to help me, fills my soul like nothing else does. Especially when people I don’t know take note of the food and are pleased with it. Especially-especially when I get to participate in a group effort such as this was, two years in the making (by others: I only came to it within the last month). Labor of true love, it was, despite the complexity and frustrations of the organizing process. The next day, as we were finishing cleaning up, one of my co-organizers smiled at me and said, “You’re a new old friend.” Burners’ spirit of instant community is priceless.
(I don’t actually know whether the person who made the above remark has gone to Burning Man. But he’s old-school TEP, and I gather that’s pretty close in all the relevant ways.)
Saturday evening I sat on a couch in front of Tensor, weaving slow conversation with the human beside me into its constantly changing color-light play. A swing hung between us and Tensor. Its shadow in the bright lights, sometimes swinging empty, most of the time complete with people’s silhouettes, was the narrative of remembrance unfolding. If the mark I leave on my community when I’m gone even approaches Kevin McCormick’s – he died at just 29 – I’ll have done well.
Yesterday I spent a few hours with a sweet, social two-year-old and remembered how exhausting and satisfying it is to live only for the present moment, all the time. I remembered the realization I’ve been coming back to over the last couple of months: the kind of family I want, the village that it takes to raise children and be the change I/we wish to see in the world, is already there. Here. All I need to do is participate in it.
Last night another new old friend, the luminous human with the Tensor-side conversation, brought me a present, a square of squares of color-cycling light. It is making slow progress in its simple programming as white snow layers itself onto the skylight, sounding like grains of sand falling. White cat at my feet, I watch the color cube and feel his still calm.
At a weekly teachings/meditation group this morning, conversation turned to… Dubya. If love and compassion for all beings is a goal, how do you reconcile that with strong negative feelings you have towards someone, whether a world leader or anyone else affecting your life in significant and negative ways?
Someone said that it helps her to think of humans like this as people who are seeking peace and love and contentment in their own ways, which she may or may not understand. We may disagree with how they’re going about attaining that contentment – even strongly enough to attempt counteracting the effects of their actions sometimes, when the price they are willing to pay is too high. But the fact of this quest is in itself worthy of compassion.
Then there’s something else. Negative feelings directed toward another human being happen sometimes. Like thoughts happen while you’re meditating. With the latter, it’s useless to deny their existence: you acknowledge them, detach your self from them, watch them pass like clouds. Over and over, gently, until (presumably; I haven’t gotten to that point yet) they stop coming. Maybe the negativity is like those thoughts; we can acknowledge it, but channel whatever feelings arise into love and compassion, and act from there. The resulting action may be the same; but where it comes from will inform its true content and impact, and maybe even how it is perceived by others.
Just idle thoughts; as my mom would say, I have an A in theory. Practice is harder. But in the meantime, I give you “Imagine This.” Do watch the video; it’s strangely inspiring and thoughtful, not at all a mockery, as I had expected it to be.
If you haven’t inspired me yet and feel like doing so, please comment there. And if you have, thank you. What people have written so far has brought home the astonishing reserves of kindness manifest in those I know.
…is a treasured rarity. After a three-hour (or so) conversation over food and drinks and even dessert, I came home with a light shining somewhere near my solar plexus. Excuse me while I go savor the feeling of a good-people day. (Or is it a good people-day?)
OK, so I hadn’t seen much of Oscar Niemeyer‘s stuff until today, but just check out his work in Brasília, Brazil’s capital city!
The man turns 100 today, and is still working – in BBC’s words, “sculpting curves from [steel-reinforced] concrete.” Damn.
ETA: BBC has a 30-minute radio piece on him here. The first minute or so is about something else, but don’t despair.
Friday afternoon I left town just a bit too late, too close to Friday traffic going out of the city along the Pike. That and the slush coming down from the sky made the trip to Inspirit Common in Hadley a two-and-a-half-hour one; good thing that just before leaving I had downloaded some talks by Ajahn Brahm (thanks for the suggestion, Rob, what I’ve heard so far is good).
Together with Emily and Bucky (the friends who own and run the above-linked mind-body-spirit center) and their six-month-old son Kadin, I went to a drum-and-dance event. And for the first time ever I played a djembe in a drum circle, for half an hour or so. It’s a rush! I came in with this tightness in the middle of my chest, which almost worked itself out in the course of trancy dancing to the drums, but it was still there afterwards. Sat down to make rhythms, next thing I know there’s a lightness where the bad used to be. Later on in the evening Bucky said, “It opens up the heart, doesn’t it?” That’s exactly what drumming did for me. I will buy a djembe before I buy an iPhone, and that’s saying a lot.
Driving home late at night, I took the long way along Route 9. On and on and on through endless trees and industrial towns and mist. The road looked like it belonged in Neil Gaiman’s stories.
Newsbit: Evel Knievel is dead. Not from a stunt, either. I’ve never been hugely into him, but the guy had some guts, and was entertaining. May he rest, etc.
And a video, in which a science teacher proposes a pretty decent way to think about the global warming debate (and where you personally might stand regarding the issue) by approaching it as a risk-management problem. At the end of the video there’s reference to an “expansion pack” – a video cataloguing sources for finding out more about the issues involved. I haven’t watched that one yet, but the one below is worth even the ten long minutes it runs. Especially since the decision-making process this guy describes is applicable to many other areas of life.
