Other Hats

In my off time I coach a YMCA kids swimteam. My son is a swimmer on the team and I swam for the team 18 years ago (!!).

The neat thing about coaching is that when I walk on the pool deck I get to play a new role; I am 'coach' and the kids look up to me. It is a really rewarding time and it is amazing to help the kids improve and excel. It feels glorious to have such responsibility and to be looked up to by kids. I become my 'best' self when I am there and all of my worries melt away when I have to live in the moment, think on my toes, and have fun. Sometimes I think the kids teach me more than I teach them. Classic line but its true. They all have such wonderful perspectives and I enjoy being a mentor for them.

So if you need a new hat to wear, I suggest working with kids. They put everything in perspective and they are so wise. Plus, you get to share a skill with them and help them grow.

Coolness all around!

Here is a picture of me from my glory days of swimming. This picture was taken in Israel at the Jewish World Championships in 1997. Not to brag, but I have 3 gold medals stored in a box in a cabinet in my room. I'll have to write about the glories of swimming soon. Being in the water is really my other home.

PJ Harvey and Jeanette Winterson

I just realized the striking resemblence between PJ Harvey's song 'Water' and Sappho (yes that Sappho, but living here with us in the present) in 'Art and Lies' by Jeanette Winterson. (This is by the way one of my top 5 favorite books of all time and we can get into it fully, hopefully soon.)

AND Icarus is also a subject in both, hmm.

Here is an excerpt from the book I found online although it is not the perfect part from the book I am thinking of. I will have to look this up tonight and update with the right quotes, but here is a sense of Jeanette's writing.


"There was no colour in the sky when she walked along the beach.

The white shells sea-glazed shone. She put one to her ear and heard the strange moaning of the sea. She looked out to where the light skimmed the water. The light that balanced on the narrow crests of the waves. The light that tumbled in the water's concaves.

The light whipped up the dull foam and threw it in petals over her feet, her feet glassed in by the shallow water.

The water, dashing the past at her feet, the water dragging her future behind, the hiss and pull of the waves.

Driftwood on the sands. She picked up a wedge, too light for its size, its substance beaten away. It was only the past, a hollow thing in her hand, only the past, but a shape and a smell that she recognised. The comfortable old form its uses dead.

Clouds in the sky. She wanted a view but the clouds were pretty. Vague, pink, well known. Weren't driftwood and clouds enough? Memories, and what she still had, enough? Why risk what was certain for what was hid? The future could be just as yesterday, she could tame the future by ignoring it, by letting it become the past.

She began to run. She ran out of the day that coiled round her with temperate good sense. She ran to where the sun was just beginning the sky. A thin rung of sun within reach. She leapt and grabbed the ladder bar with both hands and swung herself up into the warm yellow light.

The train was crowded. Is that Sappho, both hands hanging off a neon bar" - Winterson, J.

Water - PJ Harvey

Rusted Wheel

Rusted Wheel by Silversun Pickups. This is for a very dear friend who has a better plan.
Lyrics here.

Rusted Wheel - Silversun Pickups

Prisms and Adele

I have kept prisms and four leaf clovers in my mind all morning so I could tell you about how wonderful they are.

Prisms found when you are not looking for them are magical little gifts of awareness. Four leaf clovers also found when not looking are magical little reminders of beauty.

I saw a prism in this morning's sun, reflected off a dry brown stalk in the muddy garden. It was really beautiful and I wanted to tell you about it. Enjoy things that find you. They are best when you least expect them. Enjoy.

A good morning Monday song for you by Adele. Enjoy and stop seeking, it will find you.

12 - Hometown Glory - Adele

Greensleeves

Enjoy. I found myself humming this today and had to hear it...a beautiful song with so many levels. Ps. I highly recommend Imeem as a source of music.

Wii Fit - it really IS cool!

Ok, I know how popular this thing is and how amazing it is and its hard to find. I would have never bought it for myself. Ever.

But my sister bought it for me (and the fam) for Christmas and I have used it twice now an I must say that it really IS cool.

I worked out 32 minutes (beginner me) today which is more than I would have done today if I did not have the Wii Fit. And its fun!! There are strength training programs, aerobics, yoga, all sorts of stuff, and hoola hooping.

Overall, I totally recommend it. Especially for folks who cannot get out of the house to hit the gym much. And it has a nifty tracking calendar for all your workouts and weigh-ins. Nice!

That's all, just a shameless plug for the Wii Fit. :)

Sunday Mornings

Sunday mornings always feel so much more lovely than any other. I'm listening to fresh squeezed jazz and thinking of making that pot of coffee. Sunday mornings always seem to give me hope. Its the close of one week and the soft opening of a new one.
Here is something beautiful to look at. Isis, Egyptian goddess of life and rebirth.

Sunday Morning - Ani DiFranco

Gandhi

“	Christ gave us the goals and Mahatma Gandhi the tactics.	”
	— Martin Luther King Jr, 1955

Often I find myself Googling 'Gandhi Quotes'...there are so many I love that I return to again and again. I read a book about him in highschool and remember some parts clearly, but in the end, its the quotes I come back to. These are some of the best snippets of truth I've ever come across. My favorites are bolded. Enjoy!

• A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.
  
  
• As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world -- that is the myth of the atomic age -- as in being able to remake ourselves.
  
  
• Be the change you want to see in the world.
  
  
• First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
  
  
• God is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist.
  
  
• Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.
  
  
• If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior.
  
  
• Nobody can hurt me without my permission.
  
  
• There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.

• Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
  
  
• Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.
  
  
• A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.
  
  
• A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.
  
  
• A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.
  
  
• Adaptability is not imitation. It means power of resistance and assimilation.
  
  
• Anger and intolerance are the twin enemies of correct understanding.
  
  
• You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.
  
  
• Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

• Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
  
  
• The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
  
  
• An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
  
  
• Hate the sin, love the sinner.
  
  
• I want freedom for the full expression of my personality.
  
  
• Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.
  
  
• Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
  
  
• Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
  
  
• Permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth and violence.

..and after typing them (copy/pasting) them all here I realize the ones that I've bolded have served me more during my time as a mother than any other time in my life. I am constantly working to put 'heart' first and 'mind' second when it comes to being a parent. Although there is a time and place for both. I think I have just neglected the 'heart' perspective for so very long that once faced with a child all your own, I had to learn to let go and just love with my heart and let my mind rest.

Food

photo courtesy of 'So Lost and Found'

Written while bitter and pissy...tread with caution...

After stuffing myself sick on holiday cookies and loot and after going out to dinner, I sit here in bed eating a 7 serving bag of chocolate covered pretzels. And I do not want to talk to certain people who annoy me and I have taken my full daily prescription of adivan and life still sucks.

This condition, life or whatever whoops me every time. I am better off staring into the sun than running around hopeless like a fool.

This quote has been bothering me lately, it's by Shakespeare...'what is past is prologue'. Its from The Tempest and carved on the national archives building.


I am not sure if this fills me with hope for the future or despair for my past.

Then I start to wonder, how 'past' are we talking here, a day, a lifetime, a century, all of humankind?

Then this leads me to the question: Do we then have control over our present and our future if what we have done in our past has well, sucked.

And yes, hindsight is 20/20 but so what.

So we see the clarity of our failings; how can we avoid repeating them, reliving them, exacerbating them?

Please stop the fighting

This breaks my heart in so many places.

Israel/Gaza: i implore you an every other location of power, to put down the weapons and embrace your people and all people. children may you find peace.

wherever wars are waged, wherever people die, wherever there is suffering, i wish it would all end. i pray for you and i hope everyone in every language of faith prays also.

Tori Amos

"Give me life, give me pain, give me myself again"

-From the title track of Little Earthquakes...

Just heard it play, and had to write it down before I forgot to mention how wonderful this album and song are

Ani Difranco

This has always been my favorite picture of her...such a strong woman, and she came into my life at just the right time. She actually carried me through some pretty heavy things and she is still with me. I could call her my most influential musician.

Music has always been there to pull me through some tough things, that and spoken word that carries me into the the blue white stratosphere of grace.

The Shawshank Redemption

Such a wonderful movie. If you haven't seen it, I recommend you do.
Here is my favorite excerpt from the script...

ANDY
Not me. I didn't shoot my wife and
I didn't shoot her lover, and
whatever mistakes I made I've paid
for and then some. That hotel and
that boat...I don't think it's too
much to want. To look at the stars
just after sunset. Touch the sand.
Wade in the water. Feel free.

RED
Goddamn it, Andy, stop! Don't do
that to yourself! Talking shitty
pipedreams! Mexico's down there,
and you're in here, and that's the
way it is!

ANDY
You're right. It's down there, and
I'm in here. I guess it comes down
to a simple choice, really. Get
busy living or get busy dying.

Cardinals

I have somehow always found cardinals to be such a lucky symbol for me, an omen and peacefulness. We have feeders in the backyard and when I see the cardinal pairs my body lightens and muscles relax. I love them and they watch over me.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

So I have never really read this book. I know the fate of Sylvia (and Anne Sexton..) and these women taunt/tease me with their creativity borne of the blood of mental insanity/mental illness. I am reminded of 'The Yellow Wallpaper' and 'The Awakening' and all of the women (Virgina) who have passed on to death through a power darker than could keep them writing. How they even lived such agony and yet gave us the broken teeth and skin of their bodies in exchange for crazy death/unbalanced exsistence plagues me. I actually have most of Anne, Virgina and Sylvia's books around me. I think they remind me of where I do not want to go. I myself am a women who would sail in the same boat as these women, in terms of the former darkness of existence. I think our similarities end in where circumstances keep me here and those that made them go. I keep them around me as a warning to myself, and in a twisted way, as a comfort. They watch over me and wag their fingers at me if I ever get to close to any edge.

Go Ask Alice

My senior year I skipped lunch (anxiety?) and would hide out in the huge ancient window seats of our library. I'd read the dirtiest and grittiest things I could find. I'd look for things that were shocking to peruse: art books, novels, poetry collections, histories of war and massacre, things of substance.

I found this book in our highschool library. It captured me with its plain black cover and anonymous author. I was hooked from the first chapter into the woven world of a young girl's fall from grace, her desecent into madness, drugs, sex. It was the act of seeking herself that she actually brought her the greatest losses. She supposedly dies in the end. I saw that the book was trying to serve as a warning for kids. On the outside, I nodded in disbelief at what happened to her, but inside I loved the romance of her fall and I wanted what she had: adventure in a world without rules or care. If death or demise brought me this close to what I thought 'really living' was, I wanted in.

I was probably late for class that day. I loved how when sitting in those window seats, I could extend my legs straight up against the frame of the wooden window frame and look out the 20th century thick glass windows that would distort the kids playing frisbee in the quad below.

and today I learned it was/may be a fabrication...

a cold morning, a heated blanket and a plate full of addiction

This is what I sound like when chemically and physiologically, I am out of sync... In a state of grace I see the depths of my disconnection. It is a fearful place to be, and having come out of it, I want to remember there is always a way out. I wrote this disconnection this morning...

"i wake and sleep to the tune of a substance that knows the call of my name and the calculus of my cells. i live dire. i read pain and i live lifeless doped up on hope and numb, i walk.

a spiral of misshapen moments, a demon of desire that knows not the mystery and beauty of the real world. i live in a fix, finding a fix, recovering and doing it again. a walking death wish. my foe and friend: i demise and despise...Anne Sexton, tell me... you were there."