Sunday, July 30, 2006
Hankapi
Engagement! Weddings! Marriage!
Caitie and I are engaged! WooHoo!!!! Exactly five years after our first kiss I asked Cait to marry me last night along the banks of the Raritan River, and she said, "of course". We are, as you all know, ridiculously in love, and are wildly excited about the next year or so.
First things first: we will be having two engagement parties. One at the Brooklyn place in mid-late September for the friends. Thinking it'll be potluck with a karaoke theme, as it was such a hit last time around. Second party will be at the Steeve's house in early October for the family, but the really close friends will be invited as well - that's you boys.
We're in the process of brainstorming where and when for the wedding, but we'd like to work something out for a really big reception, and then have those who want to stay over at an inn or hotel or something for the night to continue the party into the morning and have breakfast the next day before breaking, similar to Becky and Nathans.
Love you guys.
|
Caitie and I are engaged! WooHoo!!!! Exactly five years after our first kiss I asked Cait to marry me last night along the banks of the Raritan River, and she said, "of course". We are, as you all know, ridiculously in love, and are wildly excited about the next year or so.
First things first: we will be having two engagement parties. One at the Brooklyn place in mid-late September for the friends. Thinking it'll be potluck with a karaoke theme, as it was such a hit last time around. Second party will be at the Steeve's house in early October for the family, but the really close friends will be invited as well - that's you boys.
We're in the process of brainstorming where and when for the wedding, but we'd like to work something out for a really big reception, and then have those who want to stay over at an inn or hotel or something for the night to continue the party into the morning and have breakfast the next day before breaking, similar to Becky and Nathans.
Love you guys.
Friday, July 21, 2006
Sufis Rule!
Laughing at the Word Two - Hafiz
Only
That Illumined
One
Who keeps
Seducing the formless into form
Had the charm to win my
Heart.
Only a Perfect One
Who is always
Laughing at the word
Two
Can make you know
Of
Love.
Hafiz was another Sufi poet of Islam in the 14th century, but had preached a very liberal view of religion, one very out of step with popularized religion today. He lived in Persia, but knew of and venerated Rumi who had lived during the 13th century in modern day Afghanistan. I always enjoyed Hafiz's poetry a little more than Rumi's because he entered into whole-being rhapsodies of his love of people and the divine. He always expressed the relationship between himself and the divine as this gentle, intimate, very sensual experience. His phrase, "That illumined one who keeps seducing the formless into form" blows me away with its subtle, almost tangible, sexuality. And, of course, another reference to the reality of interconnectedness.
|
Only
That Illumined
One
Who keeps
Seducing the formless into form
Had the charm to win my
Heart.
Only a Perfect One
Who is always
Laughing at the word
Two
Can make you know
Of
Love.
Hafiz was another Sufi poet of Islam in the 14th century, but had preached a very liberal view of religion, one very out of step with popularized religion today. He lived in Persia, but knew of and venerated Rumi who had lived during the 13th century in modern day Afghanistan. I always enjoyed Hafiz's poetry a little more than Rumi's because he entered into whole-being rhapsodies of his love of people and the divine. He always expressed the relationship between himself and the divine as this gentle, intimate, very sensual experience. His phrase, "That illumined one who keeps seducing the formless into form" blows me away with its subtle, almost tangible, sexuality. And, of course, another reference to the reality of interconnectedness.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Poems?
So, where are all of Johnny's fabled poem-a-day poems? Fallen by the wayside after two days?!
Well, then, here's one of my favs:
Out Beyond Ideas - Rumi
Out beyond ideas of
wrong-doing and right-doing,
there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'
doesn't make any sense.
Mitakuye Oyasin leaves room for individuality wheras philosophies from the east tend to stress the underlying oneness of all things. That field where we are truly we and not you and I.
|
Well, then, here's one of my favs:
Out Beyond Ideas - Rumi
Out beyond ideas of
wrong-doing and right-doing,
there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'
doesn't make any sense.
Mitakuye Oyasin leaves room for individuality wheras philosophies from the east tend to stress the underlying oneness of all things. That field where we are truly we and not you and I.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Blackbirds...
I'm Such a Good Boy that I'm Posting Today's PoemAday before I Go To Sleep, because the Likelihood of Doing It tomorrow in the Morning Before I Go To Work is Much Less Likely. Mark My Words (REad My Lips, NO NEw...) , A PoemAday for a Million Days.
DESIRE - by Joy Harjo
Say I chew desire and water is an explosion
of sugar wings in my mouth.
Say it tastes of you.
Say I could drown because you left
for the time it takes a blackbird to understand
a pine tree.
Say we enter the pine woods at dawn.
We never slept and the only opium we smoked
was what became our mingled breath.
Say the stars have never learned
to say good-bye. (One is a jewel
of blue magic in your perfect ear.)
Say all of this is true and more
than there are blackbirds
in a heaven of blackbirds.
Harjo is a poet of pure emotion, not of ideas. Therefore, her images, metaphors and poems are not subject to rules of gravity or logic or causation. They are not trying to express any of those things. They are moving in a wheel around a feeling, or, maybe many feelings wrapped up in a larger feeling. The trick is to turn the wheel over and over until, just like those tops with the spiral painted on them would draw our eye in a swirl to the middle, you sink into the center. I'm not saying don't think about her poems. I'm saying read them over and over and you will find your interpretations as to their meanings may change but a feeling refines. It's really frustrating, actually, for someone like me who is a gemini, an air sign, someone used to conceptualization not meditation. Which is maybe why I enjoy her work so much. It makes me work at something that is about not working but watching, waiting.
|
DESIRE - by Joy Harjo
Say I chew desire and water is an explosion
of sugar wings in my mouth.
Say it tastes of you.
Say I could drown because you left
for the time it takes a blackbird to understand
a pine tree.
Say we enter the pine woods at dawn.
We never slept and the only opium we smoked
was what became our mingled breath.
Say the stars have never learned
to say good-bye. (One is a jewel
of blue magic in your perfect ear.)
Say all of this is true and more
than there are blackbirds
in a heaven of blackbirds.
Harjo is a poet of pure emotion, not of ideas. Therefore, her images, metaphors and poems are not subject to rules of gravity or logic or causation. They are not trying to express any of those things. They are moving in a wheel around a feeling, or, maybe many feelings wrapped up in a larger feeling. The trick is to turn the wheel over and over until, just like those tops with the spiral painted on them would draw our eye in a swirl to the middle, you sink into the center. I'm not saying don't think about her poems. I'm saying read them over and over and you will find your interpretations as to their meanings may change but a feeling refines. It's really frustrating, actually, for someone like me who is a gemini, an air sign, someone used to conceptualization not meditation. Which is maybe why I enjoy her work so much. It makes me work at something that is about not working but watching, waiting.
Friday, July 07, 2006
A Poem a Day for a Million Days
Okay. I say I'm going to do a lot of things that somehow, suprisinigly, never seem to get done. So, I'm a little wary to put this out there for fear of embarassing myself by dropping the ball on it. But I'll go ahead anyway. As a bit of a self-induldgent exercise for my own benefit, I am going to post a short poem a day on our blog. Hold up, don't panic- not my poems- good poems by good poets in good taste. I'll follow with a little paragraph of what I like or don't about the poem, the mood it creates, the meaning it musters, or some useless biographical tidbit about the author. This will hopefully add to the culutral dimension of OFTH, though if nothing else, will force me to post here daily and keep my head full of good, short poems.
Alright, here we go. Into the mystic.
Southern Sunrise - by Sylvia Plath
Color of lemon, mango, peach,
These storybook villas
Still dream behind
Shutters, their balconies
Fine as hand-
Made lace, or a leaf-and-flower pen-sketch.
Tilting with the winds,
On arrowy stems,
Pineapple-barked,
A green crescent of palms
Sends up its forked
Firework of fronds.
A quartz-clear dawn
Inch by bright inch
Gilds all our Avenue,
And out of the blue drench
of Angels' Bay
Rises the round red watermelon sun.
If poetry is prose condensed into the perfect words, in the perfect order, then methinks Ms. Plath was in the right line of work. In this poem as in much of her work, I feel she writes along a razor's edge between the 19th and the 20th centuries. Her images are certainly modern, insofar as they largely exist for their own sake, not solely as allegory for some methaphysical story, and have a sense of the surreal and absurd on top of the sentimental. And her subject matter is more immediate and less grand-standing than those poets of the earlier century. But her meter is so tight, her vocabulary so phonically-conscious and specific, that her poems always allude to something eternal, classic. And I just love the way it ends so playfully: Rises the round red watermelon sun. Makes me want to wake up in Tara to the sound of Scarlett/Sylvia/Johannsen/Plath's voice saying Oh, Rhett, it's getting late, we have so much to do today and I reply Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn, the sun is shining and the weather is sweet, yea, makes you want to move your dancing feet, yea as dreadlocks sprout from my pomaded slick and reggae music rises from the slave quarters as giant spliff-like clouds slowly drift into the giant cherry incinerator of the sun and the whole languid day gets stoned out of its gourd.
|
Alright, here we go. Into the mystic.
Southern Sunrise - by Sylvia Plath
Color of lemon, mango, peach,
These storybook villas
Still dream behind
Shutters, their balconies
Fine as hand-
Made lace, or a leaf-and-flower pen-sketch.
Tilting with the winds,
On arrowy stems,
Pineapple-barked,
A green crescent of palms
Sends up its forked
Firework of fronds.
A quartz-clear dawn
Inch by bright inch
Gilds all our Avenue,
And out of the blue drench
of Angels' Bay
Rises the round red watermelon sun.
If poetry is prose condensed into the perfect words, in the perfect order, then methinks Ms. Plath was in the right line of work. In this poem as in much of her work, I feel she writes along a razor's edge between the 19th and the 20th centuries. Her images are certainly modern, insofar as they largely exist for their own sake, not solely as allegory for some methaphysical story, and have a sense of the surreal and absurd on top of the sentimental. And her subject matter is more immediate and less grand-standing than those poets of the earlier century. But her meter is so tight, her vocabulary so phonically-conscious and specific, that her poems always allude to something eternal, classic. And I just love the way it ends so playfully: Rises the round red watermelon sun. Makes me want to wake up in Tara to the sound of Scarlett/Sylvia/Johannsen/Plath's voice saying Oh, Rhett, it's getting late, we have so much to do today and I reply Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn, the sun is shining and the weather is sweet, yea, makes you want to move your dancing feet, yea as dreadlocks sprout from my pomaded slick and reggae music rises from the slave quarters as giant spliff-like clouds slowly drift into the giant cherry incinerator of the sun and the whole languid day gets stoned out of its gourd.
A Million Dollars a Day for a Million Days
If certain estimates and projections are correct, the full cost of the Iraq war by 2015 could exceed 1.27 trillion. This includes long-term considerations such as Veterans Benefits paid over their lifetimes and other expenditures not being included in the 'official' war tally.
As writer Matthew Yglesias notes in his article in The American Prospect, a trillion dollars is a million dollars a day for a million days. INSANITY. I urge you to check his article out. He outlines in quick detail 11 ways we could've spent that money more wisely and the result is a dizzying sense of hope and disappointment, of potential and failure...
O, let America be American again-
The land that never was yet-
and yet must be-
Langston Hughes
|
As writer Matthew Yglesias notes in his article in The American Prospect, a trillion dollars is a million dollars a day for a million days. INSANITY. I urge you to check his article out. He outlines in quick detail 11 ways we could've spent that money more wisely and the result is a dizzying sense of hope and disappointment, of potential and failure...
O, let America be American again-
The land that never was yet-
and yet must be-
Langston Hughes
Thursday, July 06, 2006
WIFI Comes To The 'Hood
Apparently, there should be two WI-FI hotspots up and running in Prospect Park by the end of August. I'm not sure if I will actually wander into the park with my lil' Dell all that often. Usually, when in the park, I'm in the mood for running, disc throwing, beer drinking, dancing, stretching, or babe-watching. None of which really require wireless web access. Nonetheless, I'm very excited that the park will be so hip and hi-tech and the option will be there should I choose to read my email at the boathouse, scan ezines along the long meadow, or search for nude pictures of minors near the playgrounds... Just kidding, guys! God, relax. Just a joke- a horrible, evil joke.
|
Distractions
I have this thing I've been doing all my life when I need to get something done. I find a hundred ways to do it differently, just to spice things up. I do yoga, practice standing on my head. I read histories of arcane individuals like Crowley and Rasputin. I go through my music collection, twice. I write blog posts.
We all have our own personal procrastination techniques, some more damaging than others, but these are really emblematic of the daily activity of distracting ourselves from what really matters. Family, friendships, love. Why are we so afraid of that which we love the most? We are worthy.
We all have our own personal procrastination techniques, some more damaging than others, but these are really emblematic of the daily activity of distracting ourselves from what really matters. Family, friendships, love. Why are we so afraid of that which we love the most? We are worthy.
