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.