"Now is the winter of our discount tents."

If you own an outdoor goods store, and you have a Shakespeare allusion in your advertising campaign, I might fall in love with you.

Have you got the nerve to give it up at the beginning? And does it hurt you?

Don't you hate it when it's late Thanksgiving evening, and, even though you KNOW that there's a whole refrigerator of delicious leftovers right there, all you can think about is how you really would love a bean burrito right now?

And also, isn't it funny how microwaves always have all kinds of fancy settings to defrost and refrost and nuke a small country, but no one really uses anything but the regular old "set time" features? Just imagine the sort of left-over rehabilitating power is untapped in this country! It's unreal, man. Totally unreal.

I've probably been hanging around to many English majors lately, because I was thinking about the power of language today, and it's always English majors who put those sort of thoughts into my head. You can't see it right now, but I'm shaking my fist at you and also giving you the skinny eyes.

I was thinking about how we--we, English-speakers--should pay less attention to the necessary prepositions which influence the way in which we must feel emotion. We are afraid of. We are surprised and disgusted by. We are sad about. We are also happy about, and we can be mad about, but more often we are mad at, however, it is not appropriate to be happy or sad at, which doesn't seem fair.
If you try to cleverly evade these linguistic restrictions, by just inserting that clever little period in early. For instance, "I'm sad." But, you can pretty much bet that unless you're just talking to yourself, the response that statement will be, "What are you sad about?"

Well, you should probably know that I'm happy at my sister right now. And at my cat. Also, I'm sad at my country all the time. And I'm afraid by the world and how big it is. And I'm mad. I am anxious at my classes this week, because I have sssssooo much stuff to turn in. Oh dear.

Capax Universi

Capax universi, capable of the universe are your arms
When they move with love.

And I know it is true that your feet are never
More alive than when they are in
Defense of a good
Cause.

I want to fund your efforts: Stay near beauty, for she will always
Strengthen you.

She will bring your mouth close to Hers and
Breathe – inspire you the way
Light does the
Fields.

The earth inhales God, why
Should we not do
The same?

This sacred glame we tend inside needs
The chants of every tongue,
The communion with all.

As capable as God
Are we.

- St. Thomas Aquinas, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky

And so it is, just as you said it should be. We'll both forget the breeze--most of the time.

Joseph Campbell says, "Becoming is always fractional. And being is total."

Isn't that just a painful word? "Fractional." I can feel that word. It's a word that tightens my chest and makes me exhale just slightly to much or inhale not enough. "Becoming is fractional." It's supposed to be a great thing, to be "becoming." It's desirable, it's sought after, the word itself is a compliment, "becoming." It the difference between caterpillar and butterfly, ugly duckling and graceful swan. "Becoming" is a thing of metaphors, it's an expression of all that we advocate, it's what we must strive to do, lest "become" become that passive form of itself which is never to be desired.

It's exhausting, always becoming. There just seem to be so few moments of "being" in my life lately, and I'm trying to teach myself to have and to hold onto those short periods of rest throughout the day. To just "be" is a good thing. It's a holy thing, I think.

I've learned though, that there's a difference in letting myself rest and letting myself vegetate, just like there's a difference in making myself work and wearing myself out. I'm so afraid of that lethargy. I am so afraid of getting caught up in a world of nothing when there is a whole world of something to be had.

Nothing could be further from the truth, my love.

And nothing is more powerful that beauty in a wicked world.

So I sit down to write, thinking, "Wow, I feel really lonely lately, and really isolated and sad, and I feel like I'm being a slacker in so many ways, and like today has just been not a good day at all, and I'm just going to write about how sad I am, and how I miss my family and blah blah blah...."

But then when I started to think about it, I mean, today hasn't actuually been a bad day at all, and I'm not sure why I thought that it had been. My room is a mess, and that's no good, but I got some research done to start putting together a newsletter for the Tuscaloosa Children's Center. I had 2 meetings to talk about Invisible Children projects and those are about to get started. I got certified in CPR. I had a really really great coffee talk with a new friend--a new friend whom I think I'm going to love very dearly. I painted some Change for Change jars and collected some new ones. I washed my rugs because something was spilled on them.

I need to do this more often. Today was a good thing. I connected with some great people. Wow, blogs are great.

I love how you can be so wildly serious, loudly soft, thoughtfully garish, lyrically logical, and chaotically organized.

from freewillastrology.com...


"Your face is true and your hair is perfect and I love you. You make boats in my dreams and you speak without words and I love you. Your fears unnerve me and your questions amuse me and I love you. I love you not only for who you are, but for the interesting person I become when I'm with you. I say I love you and love you and love you until the words become the constant song of your voice in my head and the original ache of memory in my soul. I love you more than life and death, more than everything that's in between the light and the dark. Do you believe me? Try harder. Do you believe me now? I'm always with you, which is why I know you will never abandon yourself."

"Slapstick thinker with refined sensibilities seeks a saint-like sinner with insanely cool style for a long-distance joyride towards the outskirts of Nirvana. Established meditation practice and a good bedside manner are desirable. Would it be too much to ask that you might also have a high level of emotional intelligence without boring me to death with your maturity? Is it possible that you'll be an entertaining talker who also knows how to listen with your wild heart turned up all the way? Let's keep reinventing ourselves forever."

"Be my ruckus, my perfect non-sequitur. Be my circuit-breaker, my lengthening shadows at dusk, my nest of pine needles, my second-story window. Be my if-you-stare-long-enough-you'll-see. Be my subatomic particle. Be my backbeat, my key of C minor, my surly apostle, my scandalous reparté, my maximum payload. Be my simmering, seething, flickering, radiating, shimmering, and undulating."

"Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love."
-Tolstoy

"Love is like a well in the wilderness where time watches over the wandering lightning." - Pablo Neruda

Tell Her Something in My Mind Freezes Up From Time to Time

I was watching this biography behind the music thing on Faith Hill once, and I don't remember much of it, but I do remember the interview with her husband, Tim McGraw. "I just don't see how anyone could be in the same room as her and not fall in love with her," he said. Oh wow. What a wonderful and terrible thing to feel about anything in the world.

It's crazy to me that the quirk that I find endearing in someone might be the very reason that someone else finds him annoying. It's even crazier that the abnormalities that I love in one person I might disdain in another. And craziest of all is that the little things about you that I love
today could very well be the things that I find repulsive in a month.

I don't want to hate you. I don't even want to dislike you. But the thing about mountains is that once you get to the top, there's no where to go but down.I hate the bitterness that comes into my voice when I say anything in reference to you. I hate that I cringe when you come near me, and that I always always assume the worst about you. But you did prove it to be true, didn't you? Again and again and a-fucking-gain, dear God, I cannot believe that I put myself through that. Don't bother pretending with me, OK? I was there for the dress rehearsal, I'm quite fine with missing the actual show.

And All the Colors Mix Together to Grey, and It Breaks Her Heart

No this is how it works, there are some people that I like some times and don't like other times and that just means that when I don't I have to remember the times that I did.

The way we compromise everything that we might or might not be isn't really a compromise at all, because you can't compromise fiction that never had any basis in fact. It blows my mind how we could all so easily imagine that we become that which we pretended to hate under the facade that we have now learned to love; we are ridiculously moldible and you more so than him. I don't know if we'll ever learn to live with who we actually are instead of consoling ourselves with who we can so brilliantly pretend to be. There's some tangible pride for something that the actually honorable will never attempt.

It will be awful that those pedestals on which we pose are much easier to stand on than we make them out to be.

Nice to Meet You Anyway

1. I put my player on shuffle
2. I hit next for each question
3. I cheated a little on some of them, but only a little, I promise.

What does next year have in store for me?
"I Don't Want to Be" by Gavin Degraw

Your favourite saying?
"If It's the Beaches" by the Avett Brothers

What do I think when I get up in the morning?
"Hakuna Matata" from the Lion King

What song will I dance to at my wedding?
"Falling for the First Time" by Barenaked Ladies

What do you want as a career?
"American Pie" by Don McLean

Favorite place ?
"Upward over the Moutain" by Iron and Wine

What do you think of your parents?
"We Looked like Giants" by Deathcab for Cutie

What's your Pornstar name?
"Flake" by Jack Johnson

Where would you go on a first date?
"They Are Night Zombies! They Are Neighbors!" by Sufjan Stevens

Describe yourself:
"Pretty Girl from Cedar Lane" by the Avett Brothers

The song that best describes your school principal?
"Helicopter" by M Ward

What is your state of mind like at the moment?
"Cigarette" by Ben Folds

How will you die?
"I Killed Sally's Lover" by the Avett Brother

The song you'll put as the subject?
"Nice to Meet You Anyway" by Gavin Degraw

Come on, come on. That's got to be the way

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qweNX67bZc4