Season's Greetings

For Mary, and for You and Me too


long journey. darkness. silence. doors slamming shut.

you most exhausted with your massive weighty belly: no way out.

worn out, disgusted by the barn, unwashed animals,

not even a small bowl of clean water or the tiniest lamp.


each of us has been here, wondered, why me? wondered, why go on?


yet the waters break by themselves.

into the dark manger of our fears, our shame, our divine new life is born.

not without excruciating labor, but when the bright new babe is in our arms

pain and past are washed clean, washed away,

in the starlight of joy,

the brilliance of the eternal present,

the sparkling magic of Christmas.

Creativity

Today I wish simply to share this quote from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet:

In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love come to life again and fill it with majesty and exaltation.

And those who come together in the nights and are entwined in rocking delight (even if they have made a mistake and embrace blindly), perform a solemn task and gather sweetness, depth and strength for the song of some future poet, who will appear in order to say ecstasies that are unsayable.

This to me is the cycle of beauty. Were I to have a religion, this could be its credo. How thrilling to find it expressed so perfectly, over 100 years ago.

Loving Kindness

Dinner with a friend recently spurred the following musing in my mind: what if no matter what do, we embody loving kindness?


Mostly, I’ve thought of the practice of loving kindness as an effort, a mindfulness, a way of regarding and treating people that is different from my normal reactive way. But assuming we are indeed divine creations, can any of our actions not be loving?


I’ve been spared so much by turning away from people who were mean. In a sense, they were guard dogs against danger. Every time I’ve been hurt or angered, I’ve also been spurred to move on to a truer place, impelled to find a job/lover/home/perspective where/with whom I could best become who I want to be, who I believe I was born to be.


I think of the Zen koan, ‘Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.’



What if loving kindness were not so much about altering how we behave or perceive others, and rather accept that there is nothing we can do that does not become fuel for our own or others’ eventual evolution and greater capacity for love and awareness? What if we all are (and all we are is) loving kindness, and our only task is to accept that?


Am I on to something here, or is it just another grease fire in the brain pan?


Does this make sense outside my head? Pray do tell.

This Moment

Like many of you, I’m thrilled and anxious when considering the outcome of tomorrow’s election.


By some grace, though, a joyous, steadying thought keeps coming back: we made it this far. Through the campaign, through the last fifty years, last four hundred years.

The past two elections disappointed me deeply, not only for the resulting administration, but also for the alienation I then felt from the rest of the country.

Now I’m looking around, and I like what I see. While nothing is certain, one thing is clear: an African-American man has a very clear shot at becoming our 44th president, less than fifty years after young men and women of his skin shade had to protest for the right to vote (not to forget the open savage violence when they attempted to register).

Has this been pointed out enough? Can it be?

1963

2008

I like the new signs better, don’t you?

I’m not saying racism is over in this country. I just want to say I’m proud of us. I look across the ocean to France: the Algerian Revolution ended in 1962, and Arabs in France have made few real gains in status. Not to oversimplify, as that is a multi-dimensionally different situation, but look at us.

Just look at us.

I don’t know how I’ll feel on Wednesday; emotions are riding high. But right now, for the first time in a long time, I am proud to be American – not just a New Yorker!

p.s. it’s the economy stupid

To clarify, the previous entry was in no way an attempt to prove that Obama is the better candidate. I know that economic policy choices will make an enormous difference in how the next administration affects our country. I also know that I don’t sufficiently understand our economy, or what it needs, to make a good determination along those lines. I am voting based on what I do know and understand.

That’s the idea: everyone is voting that way.

That’s my common ground with people whose politics appall me. Holding to that perspective keeps me from being so angry or anxious.

That’s what beauty does for me, and that’s what I’m doing here, trying to find the beauty.

Comments welcome, as always.

Love thy Republican as thy Self

I’m dreading voting day. Or rather, the day after. Will there be that cataclysmic disappointment, that same wondering who-the-hell-are-my-fellow-Americans as there was back in ’04?

In anticipation, I’ve done some soul-searching.

In my life today, there are some very wonderful people who I know are going to vote republican. This does not change my affection for them. I’m disturbed by the faceless masses, the ones ‘out there,’ the alleged 36 or 48 or 52 percent of Americans who think McCain/Palin is the way to go.

Just as I may be disturbing them.

I’m voting for Obama because of his interest in civil rights, that is, for example, early childhood education, legal abortion, legislation for gays. I think the world is a better place when women can trust they are covered for the 1% their birth control fails, where children can read and count and where people are encouraged to love.

This may be as crazy as voting for someone because of gun control, or the life of an embryo, or fear of terrorism.

I’m voting for the leader who makes me feel more safe and more free than the other.
Isn’t that what we are all doing?

If I can keep that in heart and mind, maybe this time I will stay whole when we learn which way the country is divided. Neither too glum, nor too gleeful, as the case may be. Rather, ready to build bridges. To somewhere. (wink)

Clouds and diamonds

Joy: Yesterday, I shared with my mother the awe-inspiring sight of overlapping mighty gray and bright white cumulus clouds, against shining blue sky. Yesterday my mother lifted her blue-green-gray eyes and gasped at the sky and put her hand to her mouth, something she hasn't done in months. Then we smiled at each other completely. All our love is in this.

How to explain what it is like to love someone when all context is gone? I love her because of the past, yes of course, but I love her too because of who she is in this moment. Almost more than ever, for disappointment and expecation and roles are gone.

Does she think me her daughter? Her mother? Does it matter? And who is she to me? No longer parent, certainly still family, somehow become native country. She is my native country. More than the country where I was born or the one where she was born.

I weep for missing her active daily presence in my life, but I weep more at the beauty of the grace of learning to love someone so purely, the grace of being loved with the shimmering, penetrating embrace of innocence and complete acceptance.

I wish you all this grace, though it tears life open, though it breaks one’s heart completely, for it is the crack in the earth which reveals all the diamonds.

Shine on, you crazy diamond.

My Body is My Temple

The first time I heard someone say, 'No, I won't eat [that], my body is my temple,' it was the 70s and I was about 10 years old. I was struck by the comment, but had no idea what it meant.

Now, I think I’m starting to get it. A temple is where we worship, where we go to find peace and solace, to seek the experience of God however we define that.

I have often gotten caught up, instead, in worshipping the temple.

But lately I’ve come to understand that when I think, My body is my temple, this is not vanity.

My body is my temple in so much as it needs to be a peaceful place through which I can experience the divine. To be peaceful that way, this body needs 9 hours sleep, meditation, good food, lots of walking etc., and also the company of friends, the joy and sorrow of love, the experience of wilderness and all forms of beauty, perceived and expressed.

Seeing myself this way changes the way I look at others too. When I really get into it, I no longer see young or old, slender or fat, distinctions that are all about status and worldly power, anyway.

When I really experience my body as a temple, I get to see everyone else’s body as a temple too. And then, well, I have a really nice day.

I hope you have a nice day too.

... and a chipmunk in a pear tree

From outside my window, something sweet for you as the holiday weekend draws to a close.

come see the water fall

There is a fairy goddess creature on the East River of Manhattan. She stands so tall, facing north, and you cannot really see her face. But if you approach her from the south, especially at night, you will see her ever-flowing white hair pouring off her shoulders. Or you might think someone had opened a zipper in the night sky and let the heavenly waters pour out.

I am not making this up. Well, maybe the part about the zipper and the fairy, but not the part about the water, and the 100 foot fall from the sky. If you don't believe me click here.

New York City has been graced with the work of Olafur Eliasson and his vision of four waterfalls around the East River and under the Brooklyn Bridge.

I love and cherish the interest of artists from around the world to grace my home town with their wild ideas, and I am so grateful that this city is a place for wild ideas to flourish and be realized.


Most of all, visiting the falls last night, especially as darkness set and rendered the scaffolding invisible, while the light on the falling water made them glow, I experienced a very adult and childlike sense of magic and wonder, one where my intellectual understanding of what I saw in no way interfered with the near mystical awe.


Thank you Olafur, thank you New York City, thank you Public Art Fund.


And you who read this, come and see for yourselves. The falls will be there through mid-October. And try to be good: resist the urge to climb the scaffolding and ride the cool white wave...

on a lighter note

Paul and I went recently to MoMA. They've moved some paintings since I was last there; I missed seeing Klimt's Forest but delighted in the Pollack room where my eyes feasted a long while. (above, detail from "Full Fathom Five")

Is it odd or fitting that it was in this museum of visual art that I discovered how easily the world can be deprived of color?

One hallway, on the third floor I believe, was drenched in yellow light. All other colors vanished. I tried to remember how colors work... Ah yes, blue lets in all the colors except blue which it reflects back. So what if there is no blue in the light? In this case, everything -- faces, clothing, hands -- was in gray scale of yellow to black. No orange, red, pinks, purple, blue, green or white. It was awful.

If I were ever captured and jailed in some distopian future, that would possibly be the worse punishment. I did not know this was possible without prior injury to my eyes or somesuch.

It surely made me hunger for color immediately -- Paul and I raced through the long pool of yellow light to the other side of the corridor where colors returned.

I need all my colors. The deep purples and the soft greens and sunny oranges. They feed my eyes and my soul. Sometimes I envy the birds' and the bees' ability to see even more colors than I do. Not one color less will do, no, not even one less.

Yesterday's Post, last month's news

I don't often read the newspaper, so I found out from some friends on Monday that the Bodies Exhibit has been forced by the NY Attorney General to post the following disclaimer at its NYC exhibit entrance and website:

Disclaimer: This exhibit displays human remains of Chinese citizens or residents which were originally received by the Chinese Bureau of Police. The Chinese Bureau of Police may receive bodies from Chinese prisons. Premier cannot independently verify that the human remains you are viewing are not those of persons who were incarcerated in Chinese prisons.

This exhibit displays full body cadavers as well as human body parts, organs, fetuses and embryos that come from cadavers of Chinese citizens or residents. With respect to the human parts, organs, fetuses and embryos you are viewing, Premier relies solely on the representations of its Chinese partners and cannot independently verify that they do not belong to persons executed while incarcerated in Chinese prisons.

Worse, yes it gets worse: in China, the families of executed prisoners, when they are even notified of the death at all, have a choice: pay for the room and board of the prisoner’s incarceration, including the bullet used for execution, or receive a large sum of money for the body parts.

I am horrified that people can know this and still pay almost $30 to see the exhibit. I am horrified that the exhibitors know this and still collect the money instead of immediately closing the shows, which are all over the world.

That is what yesterday's post is about. Like I said it is not pretty, but perhaps sometimes outrage can be a form a beauty? What do you think?

This one will not be pretty

Six cents for the bullet to the back of the head

Of your man

Whom you have not seen in months

Who was taken from your bed in the middle of the night

For a crime that he may or may not have committed,

A crime that may or may not be a crime.



Six cents on top of the room and board

For which you will have to pay

The room being his tiny prison cell

The food being maggotty rice

A bill for things you never wanted.

A bill that is more than you can afford,

and already the children's bellies growl.



Ah! but they offer you a way out: let us sell his body for parts

Sell his body, he's dead now, what difference does it make.

Better yet, we'll pay for everything, we'll even give you money

Lots of money

and we won't even charge you the six cents.



This could be a great honor! He may go from

being a bad criminal to saving lives!

A kidney for a poor young mother whose children need her.



Who knows, he could become famous, yes famous in America!

Altantic City, Las Vegas, New York City.

World famous: Budapest, Madrid, Vienna

Smart people will move his body into a shape -- so clever!

Looks like he's playing soccer! Patty cakes!

Dancing a happy dance!

Good for science. Good for education.

Many people will pay big money to see him! More than you make in a week!

Many fancy people will line up to see him, without his skin, looking like he's playing soccer.


So clever.


So much better than you paying six cents for the bullet we put in his head.

Don't worry over him so much. Did you really like him so much?

How can you like an enemy of the state? What are your political affiliations?

Where were you last week at 9 p.m.?

Faith on a wing

I found a dragonfly wing this morning. It caught the light just right on my path or I would never have seen it, transparent miracle that it is.

This photo (found online) doesn't show the wing's rainbow irridescence when tilted toward the sun. But it captures exactly the wing's awe-inspiring intricacy.

I am brought to think of a quote from the New Testament Gospels, Matt 6:28-30 28, "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?"

For those of you who don't know me well, I could not be confused with a Christian, but I have faith -- sometimes large, sometimes little -- and I dip my bucket in many wells.

Sometimes I find a well in texts, scripture and otherwise. Sometimes I find one even deeper, in the impossibly fragile construct of a dragonfly wing.

Where do you dip your bucket?

random act...

Age

I have a reverse body image problem -- I think I look much younger and thinner than I actually do. This is okay -- it makes me happy, I walk down the street feeling good and then laugh at how different I look in a passing window than I think I do. I read somewhere that optimists tend to have a weaker grasp on reality than pessimists. But we also have more fun.

Lately, however, I occasionally notice changes in my body that even my most optimistic self cannot deny. The texture of my skin is changing, not just on my face, but on places like my legs, too. My first thought is displeasure. I have internalized the idea that this is bad, that skin should not look or feel like this.

Then I remember -- it's not just that I'm getting older: I get to get older. I have avoided death several times, even when it stared me in the face.

Getting older happens when we're lucky. And who says that my skin should look this way and not that? Surely not the man I live with, who prefers the way women look as they get older. (I didn't chose him for that, I swear, it's just a fringe benefit.)

Go see the movie The Visitor , just a gem, and fall in love with 48-year-old Hiam Abbass. We need more women like her who are not afraid of their own faces. Women who shine at any age.

Let me take you down, cause I'm going to...

...Celery Fields, where everything is quite real.

In this 107-acre nature preserve, a young deer stares me down forty paces away. Watersnakes mate in slithering groups of two or three. Chipmunks and rabbits scurry hither and yon. Tiny bright yellow warblers cavort in the flowering trees and tall reeds among cardinals and red-winged blackbirds. A great blue heron glides along the surface of the central pond, its vast wings never touching the water inches below.

My best spot to meditate happens to be surrounded by lively green poison ivy. Daily I am tempted to bring clandestine clippers and do away with this possible eventual barrier to my sanctuary.

But there is one rule here. No interfering: no killing anything, no feeding anything. Nature, unimpeded, amidst clipped suburban lawns.

Thus, my meditation this morning: what metaphor to me, this poison ivy? Is it poisonous thoughts that plague my mind, of ‘not enough’ , ‘what if’ and ‘what ifn't’. The poisonous leaves do not harm me as long as I don’t touch them. If I don’t fondle the thoughts that inevitably grow where wild things live, where imagination runs wild and free, I can dwell among the ravishing quiet and bird song, where death floats in the water creating a new scuplture of sky, inversing the laws of gravity, as I sit with earth and sky both above and below, as they truly are.

Welcome to the Celery Fields.

p.s. these photos are not mine, as I go there empty-handed. All photos taken at Celery Fields, except Ivy. In order, credits: animals from Phil Lombardi, ivy from Tim McDowell, last Kevin Watson. For more click here.

Web of Care

I try to meditate every morning; I pray and then I listen. There's one prayer I've been doing lately that feels really good. I think I made it up -- I don't remember anyone teaching it to me.

It goes like this: I ask for a blessing for all the people about whom I care, all the people about whom they care, and all the people about whom they care, on and on until everyone in the whole world is included. Then I ask a blessing for all the people who care about me, and all the people who care about them, and on and on until the whole world is included that way.

I imagine for a moment the whole world connected by a web of care. I inhale all the care that comes toward me; I exhale all the care that goes out from me.

Each act of kindness we perform touches a life which touches another. That is another facet of the same idea.

How do you like this? Tell me if this works for you, or if something else does, or if you have your own variation.

Daisy

I promised some time ago to tell you about Daisy, and after several heavy, serious posts I felt I could use some levity, how about you?

Daisy is my first dog. She was ten when we met two years ago. I never really ‘got’ dogs before. What an ambassador she has been.

She is so good as to be unreal. She is happy to go anywhere, do anything, and take a nap in between. Children can walk right up and grab her ears or stick their hands in her mouth, and she simply lies down to be petted. She will hike for two hours or nap all day.

She absolutely exudes complete peace and gentleness. She is never distressed or anxious.

Her only complaint seems to be if Paul should be downstairs in his studio when I’m upstairs writing. If she wakes from her nap, she may bark ‘woo woo! woo woo!’ until one of us comes and lets her out or sits and pets her. Never mind that she is perfectly capable of coming up to me or down to him. She wants us to be everybody all together, all the time.

Just sitting with her calms me, kissing her velvet nose and smelling her sunshine scent. Honestly, she smells like sunshine. Come on over and have a whiff.

The Eyes of Chamber Street

Last week I used the Chambers Street/World Trade Center subway station for the first time since it was closed after the Twin Towers were destroyed.

I was struck by the mosaic eyes like the one above that are spaced out singly among the regular white subway tiles throughout the station.

Here's where my mind went:
Being underground, I felt as if these were the eyes of the dead of 9/11. Then I thought of the people who jumped out of the burning building, especially those who held hands.

I imagined the moment I cannot imagine. The people holding hands might not ever have even spoken before. It could have been the CEO and the office supply manager, or the woman who got the promotion and the man who was passed over, or the vocally pro-choice democrat and the quiet pro-life republican.

But with death behind and death in front, all that mattered was connection, shared humanity, shared frailty which combined to create a moment of strength and innocence that touched the world.

Then I thought, we are all on that ledge, with death behind and death in front. We pretend we are not, we pretend there is time for petty rivalry, indifference, even disdain. But being alive we are each of us standing on that burning ledge, a place that can only be cooled by the welcome of another's hand.

What are we waiting for to open ours?

Upside-down

I have just finished reading Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye. What a searing gift, truly a master work by a master (mistress?) craftswoman.

My skin crawled, and I twisted in my seat as Atwood opened back up for me the secret world of childhood torture that I thought I’d let go but which still sickened and burned.

I had to turn and look and acknowledge that I still carried old lies about myself, lies contrived from the cruelty of a beloved childhood friend, long long ago.

It had been easier for me to believe that there was something so wrong with me that I deserved this girl’s betrayal, rather than wonder at what pushed her to cruelty.

Since reading Atwood, something has gone click, like a square peg sliding into a square hole after years of trying to push it into a round one.

I realized that the pain I’ve felt and the incomprehension at that girl’s actions showed my health. The cruelty showed her brokenness. It seems obvious to say that now, but what got written on my 8-year-old mind lingered yet.

Sometimes we live in a world where it seems that those who don’t feel are winners, and those who suffer are lost. Thank goodness for writers like Margaret Atwood, who shines a heroic light into those scary, slithering places where we’d rather not look, and helps us put things back right-side-up.

Freefall

I named this blog 'beauty' to avoid the temptation to use it as a place to rant, judge, complain. Before starting it, I asked myself, what do I really have to offer the world? What do I have to give that only I can give? As I often find beauty in places most don't think to look for it, I decided that's what I would write about here.

Thus I haven't written in a couple of weeks, because I have been of late much more inclined to rant, judge and complain. I save that for my near and dear, who can't get away...

I grow weary of this, and this morning I turned to my beloved Rumi for inspiration. I landed on the poem 'Joy at Sudden Disappointment' and the reminder not to 'grieve for what doesn't come. /Some things that don't happen/keep disasters from happening.'

I find this immensely reassuring. It frees me to go full forward toward what I want, knowing all the while that I move within an existing web of cause and effect, not creating one from scratch.

It is a reminder that some of the things I wanted turned out not to be so great, and some I dreaded opened paths to beauty and possibilities I'd never imagined could be real.

It is a reminder that I’ve never known what happiness looked like before I got there.

So I leap, hands eyes open, screaming and laughing and waving at you as I freefall toward Goddess-knows-what.

Courage, I think

A good agent is like a parking spot, or a mate. I only need one.

Now that I am looking again, I remember how much it feels like dating – so much getting ready, so many attractive people at the party, but when rejection comes it only takes a second to pop all the balloons.

So I am writing here as meditation of sorts. I’ve written a story about which I care deeply, and I am simply looking for the best way to share it with as many people as possible, because that is what I do when something touches me. I’ve been known to stop strangers on the street to point out the rising moon, or other heavenly phenomenon, because the beauty was too much for me to carry alone.

I need to remember that this process of seeking agency and publication will result in me being somewhere other than I am right now as I begin, somewhere I cannot predict, whatever the result.

I need to remember that I am not alone. Such friends I have, new and old!

I need to remember that I am being bold! Do you hear me, mighty forces that are said then to come to my aid? I am laying it on the line, officially calling this my best.

I need to remember that feeling this naked and full of want has resulted in some of the greatest beauty I’ve known.

I need you to remind me what else I’ve forgotten. Help!

Women on Fire

When we fall in love , we revel in discovery, risk and expansion. Then, when we start to feel vulnerable in our need and newfound sense of safety, often we stop taking chances.

Worse, we make a terrible bargain: 'I'll pretend I won’t change if you promise to give up changing too. I’ll always be the same person you've come to need and love, and you'll do the same for me.'

We've all seen this happen to people we love. Most of us have made this deal ourselves, whether with spouse, parents, children, or whomever we come to count on.

I am writing today to honor certain women -- you know who you are -- who of late have come to me with the cry: 'I am growing and changing and the whole life I’ve built may shatter.'

I am honored by your trust and inspired by your courage.

Intricate webs of family and love and obsolete dynamics hang in the balance. In addressing these, you have chosen to care too for the fire that keeps you going, you as woman unto herself. You came and lit your damp wick in my flame, a flame you have helped me keep burning over the years.

I think of the lamp that is kept ever burning at many an altar, symbol that the deity is present.

Thank you for your fire. Goddess Bless and Goddess keep.

Walt's World

It’s my first time in the land of Disney. Paul has a techie convention here, and I came for the ride. It’s warm and friendly. Also very difficult to leave without a car which is exorbitant to rent. It reminds me a bit of the movie The Truman Show.

The resorts and 'kingdoms' are islands of construction in an ocean of swamp and impenetrable tropical forest, home to wild storks, egrets and the like, even an alligator (!) who patrols a liminal drainage ditch, I mean pond.

Inside, welcome to stone bridges made of painted concrete blocks and housekeeping staff in alleged Mexican aprons (this resort’s theme is the Southwest) made of embroidered Mickey Mouse logos.

It’s lovely here, yet I feel stifled. Why? This is Walt’s creation: a land where his imagination became three-dimensional.

Aren’t we each of us ever living in the world built by our own imaginations?

I want to make mine truly my own, with all the mistakes and pitfalls that entails. Someone else’s idea of safe haven may charm me for a while, but after a while I feel that charm presents a greater danger than any I could face on my own.

In its utter safety, I can take no meaningful risks, without which there is no fear, but also no possibility of brilliance and beauty.

And that possibility is what feeds me. Walt rolled his dice, and he both won and lost, if you know his story. I want to roll mine too.

For Daughters

Living with my mother as she descended into Alzheimer's, I got to know her as a little girl. My tyranical, commanding mother developed a jig in her walk and an easy laugh on her lips. We danced in supermarkets and elevators. We spent an occasional quiet afternoon with crayons and watercolors. Was I going out without combing my hair? She never noticed.

I treasure the gift of those years. I also weep over never having met woman to woman. By the time I was ready, she was already receding.

But I wonder: would I have ever been ready if she had not receded? At the time, I met for lunch with a friend my age whom I had not seen in years. We talked about my mother and her illness and the sadness of it all. But when I said,

'You know, it's also kind of liberating that she no longer has any idea what I do,'

my friend gasped and put her hand up to her mouth, as if we were teens, about to get caught smoking. She understood.

Did my mother in fading let in the sunlight I needed to grow as tall as she? Is there another way for this to happen?

Are there any women out there who have had a face-to-face encounter with their mothers that has resulted in the same kind of liberation? I’d like to think there are. If you’re among them, tell me. If not, tell me how you find your sunlight.

Onward

The following came to me in light sleep between dreams last night, verbatim. May it speak to you as it did to me:

There are times in life when we are shattered not to pieces but to dust. And even as we fear the wind will come and scatter us, we rise from this dust, not as a phoenix from its ashes, again and again a phoenix, but as something completely new from what we were before, with the added knowledge that we can survive the fire.

Lessons on innocence

Betty is my first puppy. We've been living together for ten months now, and I am honestly startled by how much I love her.

The greatest novelty has been living in the presence of happy innocence. I lived with my beloved cat Emma for 13 years (until she died) and while Emma was deep, intuitive and at times comforting, I never saw her as innocent in the way I see Betty. My cousin Dana, who has lived with cats her whole life, says, 'That's right, they seem to be judging us.'

I don’t think about this as cats vs. dogs. It’s the individual animals. Betty makes me laugh out loud when I'm tense, she helps me get over myself when I’m too deep in my own head, and she ever reminds me of the joy of being directly in touch with body and emotion. Anyone who's ever seen a small dog find a great big stick to carry home knows what I'm talking about.

I realize in writing this that her innocence has evoked mine, and made me literally enjoy my self more. I’m encouraged to be as gentle with my own mistakes as I am with hers – redirecting, corrective, but never punitive.

What have you learned from the animals in your life? What has their neighboring or intimate presence brought?

p.s. I also live with an old dog named Daisy. I'll tell you about that 'love child' another time, soon. By the way, they're both Clumber Spaniels.

Two Years Ago Today

Paul and I met two years ago. His form first appeared as a black and white square – an email response to my Craigslist post. I knew, not where we’d go, but that here was a man wonderfully unlike any I'd ever met, online or off.

Only weeks before, I had come to appreciate how essential it was to be completely and painstakingly true to myself, ALL the time.

Is that sad, that it didn’t happen until I was 38? Or is it magnificient that it happened at all?

I came to appreciate also that what I really wanted in a partner was so specific, and so complex, I knew I would likely never find it. That said, it was the truth of what I wanted.

So I put a post up describing Exactly what I wanted. Very specific, but not about height and weight, more about capacity for joy and peace.

I don’t remember expecting anything; I just put that description out there and waited to see what happened.

A whole range of answers came. And then Paul.

The match was so exact, that we’ve joked since then that the post was titled, Dear Paul.

If that were not miracle enough, the beauty part is his continuous encouragement to me to remain completely true to myself in every moment, even when the relationship we’ve come to envision is on the line.

So, Dear Paul: thank you. I love you. Shouted from the rooftops of the internet, as it were.

Me and Sgt. Pepper and Belly Buttons

I danced to a CD of Sgt. Pepper this morning. I grew up dancing and singing to the vinyl album my father bought when the record came out.

In the liner notes, I discovered that the Beatles started recording the album on December 6, 1966. I was conceived four days later (yes, my mother told me; she knew she was pregnant when she woke up the next day). The album was released during my mother’s her third trimester, with me fully capable of hearing.

I love the idea that I was incubated right alongside this momentous, gorgeous music, and that I was fed by its sounds right up to my birth.

I like to imagine my pregnant mama dancing in the living room with my long-limbed papa, delighting in the new, amazing music.

Now where do belly-buttons come in? Well I’ve just discovered Paul Coelho (I know I know, where have I been?) and The Witch of Portobello. All his talk of navels – as the center of our bodies, of our earth, as connection to the Great Mother – was in my mind as I belly (-button) danced to ‘Within You and Without You.’

And so: forty years after my mother’s joy and music poured into me through my navel, my own joy and dance poured out from there.

Shivers up my swirling spine: a grounding, transcendent moment of connection to the deepest realities of beauty, rhythm, and belly buttons.

A moment that spilled out into merry laughter, and now, these words.

The Glory of humility

I’ve been working hard lately, getting things in place to send my book out to agents (more info on that soon). As I contemplate the likely ensuing cycle of anticipation, rejection, interest, disappointment and excitement, I’ve decided to prepare not just my pitch but also my state of mind.

This has led me to consider the practice of humility as a way of staying centered.

Humility brings me to some of my core truths, to wit: my best work comes through when I get out of the way; unwelcome outcomes often become beloved teachers; and I may only ever participate in a situation, never control it.

So then, how to stay humble when my mind swings between delusions of grandeur and fear of dismal failure? What brings me to that centering humility?

I am humbled by the people who love me, because their love reminds me I need not be anyone special; irregular old me is fine, best in fact.

I am humbled by the presence into which I pray.

I am humbled by the syncronicity that brings a friend to whisper in my ear the very words I most needed the very moment I read them, in an email written days before.

I am humbled by the miracle of being alive.

When I enter this space, gratitude follows like bright shadow. When I feel humble, everything feels like a gift.

What brings you a peaceful sense of humility? Does anything? Any suggestions on staying sane at times like these?

Sometimes beauty hurts

Running to make a commuter train connection recently, I was accompanied through the station by Eric Clapton's Tears in Heaven. That extraordinary song goes right through me, undoes me. I’d like to see it come off radio playlists. Clapton himself says he 'can't play it anymore' because he does not want to manipulate audiences unfairly.

Rushing for my train, I had a choice -- keep my word and my appointment and shut down my emotion, or slow down and listen and mourn.

I caught my train. But I don’t like making that choice. I don't want to be sheltered from the sorrow and pain of the world. But the sorrow and pain of the world are not mild entertainment.

I feel a rant coming on now, one about societal de-sensitization, the exploitation of suffering for TV thrills and advertising dollars and the potential resulting loss of outrage and compassion when it counts.

But that’s not why I’m here. This blog is not for ranting – it's for finding beauty.

Deep breath. There’s something my mother used to say, when one of us hurt ourselves playing. ‘It hurts Mama!’ ‘That’s good,’ she’d say, as she put the bandaid on, ‘if you can feel it, that means you’re alive.’

Does that sound slightly depraved? It was confusing enough to get us to stop crying.

That said, her words are true: I’d rather hurt than be dead, in any sense of the word.

Because more than mama told me, I’ve learned that the places where it hurts, are the places alive to joy as well.

So if Clapton riles me in the train station, maybe I'll just Let It Rain all over my afternoon blues. Click there and join me, would you?

Big Deal

Call me Pollyanna, naive, square even, if you must.

Though I still haven't decided who will get my vote in the primaries, I am thrilled that a woman and an African-American man are running for President.

Last year I worked with a group of gifted fifth-graders, all American, all of Chinese descent. They were quite certain that none of them could run for public office when they grew up. Why not? 'You have to be a special kind of person,' one girl told me. When I prodded some, it turned out 'special' meant 'a rich man who went to an expensive school.' I told them that while it really helped to have a lot of money and connections, the fact remained that according to the law, you only need to be born here to run for president. I think they believed me, though they gave each other curious looks.

Whoever wins this year, I like the idea that children in school are getting to see an election that includes more than white men. Has this been said enough? I haven't heard it enough. Most children, even many teenagers, will not pay attention to policy issues and campaign politics, but they will see the faces on the news and in newspapers. Some school teachers will even talk about the election -- imagine that. Obama's and Clinton's presidential candidacy will be a given to these children -- perfectly normal, rather boring even.

Big deal. So what. Anyone can run for president.