n-judah love song

for steve and cindy

cross posted at their blog. what I wish I'd said at Steve's funeral.

---

      

hello, my lovelies:

A personal note, but one from the heart.

I am -so- happy to be in San Francisco (and lucky to get to be here through my work folks, who loved Steve and Cindy both) and get the chance to see Cindy. I am so proud of her for everything she’s gone through and still has her positivity

She and Steve have - yep, have - a love that is just so powerful that it knocks me sideways, even through all of this. For every tough time, for every crappy hour, there’s a wonderful memory - however small, however silly, however lovely, of the two of them getting to do something wonderful, interesting, amazing - but always together. Every memory for me here in this place we all lived, where we were down-the-street neighbors or far away, each corner and nook and cranny and moment I spent here has at its heart: the two of them. I feel so deeply honored to be a part of their lives, and of Cindy’s recovery process. She is hurting in every way that you can imagine and then some, but she is just so damn brave. How many of us would just give up? Not our girl. Not Steve’s girl.

Every one of you feels this loss in a different way, but she knows your thoughts are with her, and your support, and it means the world to everyone. I know Steve is here, watching over her, making sure we don’t take it all too seriously, making a joke, shaking his head (with that smile) at all of us.

Suffering and death are a part of the human contract - but so are hope, love and life. And all my love to all of you reading this.

         

and now you're back from outer space

I wonder if this blog is still out there somewhere...say hello if you are.

things I've learned in San Francisco

Bring a hoodie. It's colder than you think.
Taxi drivers and Chinese food joints miss Web 1.0.
You will be sorry if you finish the whole burrito.
The ocean? Bring a wetsuit. And there ain't no boardwalk.
Real, fresh wasabi makes all the difference.
Everything you want to go to after 9pm is closed. (™- Anil)
You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a DJ.
It was better last year.
You need a car 18% of the time.
Muni: worse than NYC transit, better than DC's.
You can, indeed, make a family out of some of the greatest friends in the world.

I'm out - see yall in Boston!

les petites

Everyone, everywhere, everyplace I know is having babies. And not just celebrities. I present to you, born only a day apart - OMG Harper and PeanutElla. Go ahead. Feel free to die of the cuteness.

Actually, I think this is my favorite of Harper. Wait, no, this one.

Also, I really wish Gargle was arriving before I left. I will have to come back for visits soon!

 

it's a dog's life

Hello, internet. I've been trying to think of how to say and deal with this, so I'll just come out with it.

I am moving to Boston. Stella is not. Instead, Stella will be living with two of our favorite people, Jay and Jen.

Boston is not much of a dog-friendly town. San Francisco, you can bring your dog into the bar, the record store, the bookstore, hell, there's dog bowls out everywhere you go. Boston basically has a big sign on it that says NO DOGS ALLOWED. Stella has wicked arthritis from her surgery. Boston is cold, in case you haven't been following along. I talked with her vet, and he  spoke plain crazy truth: "you want to take a large, arthritic, barky animal to a city like that?"

Right. She would be miserable. I would be miserable. And yet...

I've spent nearly every day of two years with Stella since I rescued her from Animal Control. I know what face she makes when she's SO HAPPY to be walking, how she carries herself when she's about to explode off to chase another dog. She's my girl, even when she gives me that look of "lady, don't you even try to pet me right now" and saunters off to see what else more interesting could be going on.

There were also times that her behavior has been so bad that I have wanted to give her to the nearest homeless person and run away. When she had her surgery and would simply pee on my bed or wherever she was laying, when she chewed up everything in my room, when she required lifting up and down stairs for three weeks and couldn't run and play for months...well, I tell you, I nigh about cracked.  I felt sorry for myself for having to take care of an injured dog, and then felt even worse that she was the sick one, and what was I doing with this self-pity-party. If it hadn't been for all yall, I don't know what I would have done.

If I look too closely at my motives for not taking Stella with me, I see some demons mirrored back plain as day. I see selfishness for not being able to continue a responsibility to this animal who I promised to take care of for the rest of her life. I see incredible guilt for placing my happiness above her happiness. I see irresponsiblity. I see it all, and I know it's not productive to get down on myself this way, but I do. And yet it doesn't stop me from making the choice that I think is best for both of us.

I see all that and more: she is my best friend, and while my human best friends understand my motives, she doesn't, and she will forget for the most part, like dogs do. I mean, cmon, she forgets that I've left the house for five minutes and greets me like it's been five years. I know her new people are delighted and wonderful and ready to have a dog. I know when I see her napping under Jay's desk that she is happy and will continue to be so. I know I can hang out with her again. We'll all still be at Six Apart. I know all these things.

And still, my heart is still breaking into a zillion pieces, thinking that soon she won't be on the other side of the door, waiting and wagging. My little girl.

mothers/daughters

from 45 Mercy Street, by Anne Sexton:

"I open my pocketbook,
as women do,
and fish swim back and forth
between the dollars and the lipstick.
I pick them out,
one by one
and throw them at the street signs,
and shoot my pocketbook
into the Charles River.
Next I pull the dream off
and slam into the cement wall
of the clumsy calendar
I live in,
my life,
and its hauled up
notebooks."

from Searching for Mercy Street, by her daughter Linda Gray Sexton:

"Without knowing it, Mother passes out to me her powers of observation. She shows me how to watch, how to see, how to record what transpires in the world around me. This is how I inherit her greatest gift..."

These two women, mother and daughter, wonderful writers both, express in a few elegant phrases what I wish I was concise enough to say. Anne being among the first of many "confessional" writers, to whom many a blogger owes a debt of gratitude that borders on plagiarism. Linda explores instead what it's like to grow up with a mother whose brilliance is often blinding.

I've always referred to my own mother jokingly as "superlady", a woman who not only has worked nearly her whole life at things she excels at, but is getting a PhD in her field, holding a full-time job, and is also a wife and mother of nearly 30 years. A woman who can, in a blink, be both sarcastically sharp and self-deprecatingly funny. She's toughed through some life dramas I wouldn't wish on anyone. She's my opposite in so many ways, and yet, as daughters will, I always strive to be like her, albeit in my own way. She taught me to guard my independence with a fierceness, while cherishing my family and friends. To joke into submission whatever problems come about. That "life ain't fair, kid. Get used to it".

When I found out a few weeks ago that she had a tumor removed, and would have to go through preventative chemo, whole worlds shifted, quick as an earthquake.

I don't want to sound melodramatic, after all, that's one of the worst mistakes one can commit in her book. "Oh, it's not that bad," I can hear her saying, "after all, they've gotten it all, and here I am, losing weight!" (Losing weight having often been a point of pride in our family.)

Mom has never been one I worried about. After all, she's a runner, a skinless chicken-eater, violently allergic to drugs as mild as pot and sudafed, never smoked, can't look at a screwdriver without going cross-eyed.

She's about to face, today, what I wish no one had to. Chemo calls back a time when doctors were barbers. The fact that we can't come up with something better than an atom bomb to the body just makes me angry.

I cut my hair the other week partly in solidarity. I mean, I didn't shave my head or anything, after all, I love her, but I'm still vain as hell. She'd do the exactly the same for me. Alike and different.

She's a tough woman, this mama of mine. She's spare with outward emotional shows, while my father and I carry our hearts on our sleeves and prefer to pour out our emotions on you, our unsuspecting victims. My mom prefers to be the watcher, removed, to find that emotional release in reading books or listening to music. So, when she tells you something true, it's special, because you know she means what she says. One book of poetry I've had for years has her scrawl inside: "For my daughter, who has always spoken in poetry and prose."  The fact of her writing it for me, and the honest emotion, lets me know what a strong, lovely mother she is.  She loves the fact that her child is an oddity to her, and loves me in spite, or maybe even because of it. Instructive in these small movements, she shows that's what real love is: you accept who those you love the most really are. Despite if you really understand them.

Poetry and prose aside, Lady, as you would say, "Katy bar the door!" against all these things, and go kick some cancer ass.

I love you -
Kid

what is Real?

I saw this posted here the other day, and a touching email I got this morning put me in mind of it again.

"You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand."
- from the Velveteen Rabbit

There's more wisdom in children's books than we sometimes give them credit for.

speaking from the heart

I've been trying to write about this for days, and I keep getting hung up on the words. Little details are easy, the Big Events are much harder. But someone stopped me at work today and was all "but... it's not on your blog!" Like it couldn't be true if the internet didn't know about it.

So, um....er...hey internet, I'm engaged!

No, I am not knocked up. Thank you very much, though, for the vote of confidence.

No, we don't know when the Big Day is. Next person who asks gets a size 8 Puma sneaker to the face.

No, we are not going to Vegas. The more bride-y things I read, though, the more that sounds like a swell idea.

No, we don't know who is moving where when. Magic 8-ball say: ask again later.

Here's what I do know:

I've had my share of relationships - wonderful, terrible, and everything in between.  I've been perfectly content being single, having fun, running around with my friends, breaking hearts and breaking my own. I wasn't looking for someone to fill up a void in my life, in fact, I pushed a lot of people away from filling anything close to that role. I always figured I'd get married someday, but darned if I knew when, or to who. 

And then Alex came back into my life. The proverbial one who got away. For reasons that weren't anyone's fault really, (including that bitch of all of them, Timing) things had seemed to not work out. I promised myself I'd just find someone new. And for years, we both did.

Yall, then he drove across the country with a ring. And I turned him down, saying he was out of his mind, that it would never work, that he lived in Boston and I lived in SF, and we'd changed, and a host of other very sensible reasons why it wouldn't work. But something kept on whispering to me that I had known he was the one for me since the day I met him, and wouldn't it be grand, and would I regret not taking this chance? I kept asking everyone else (and asking and asking...thank yall a million times over for your patience) what I should do. I know now that I can't follow my head to find out what makes me happy, I have to follow my heart. And if my heart worked like a brain, I wouldn't need both.

Someone said "you're just blinded by the ring." In truth, what got to me was a mix CD he made for me. The first time I listened to it, I sat right down on my floor and bawled. It was a love letter, no mistake. It just took me a while to understand what that letter really said.

I made a plan to go see him in Boston to test the waters. And the rest, as they say, is history. I'm sure there will be a version of the actual engagement story for your reading pleasure later, but there was a Vegas theme, which I find funny as hell upon reflection. DJs! Elvis! Go-go dancers! Giant slot machine! Champagne! I hardly remember it except for jumping up and down a lot.

After six years of love, loss, and other Dramatic Events, most of all, we kept a rock-solid friendship. He's still the one who takes my breath from me the moment I see him. Who makes me laugh - both at myself and everything else. Who refuses to let me get complacent, and instead challenges me and makes me think. Who has the sweetest soul. Who I love more and more, every day.

Is it nuts? You bet your ass it is. We'll never be boring. Stay tuned.

operation eden

Operation Eden is a blog by Clayton James Cubitt, who is one of the best young photographers in America - at least according to Surface Magazine and your personal taste. You may have seen his work with Nerve.com, suicide girls, Metropop Magazine and various Brooklynite fashion shoots.

He's a New Orleans native, a kid raised by a pot runner and a go-go dancer, with a keen eye for detail and a fierce love of his home. Click here, scroll to the bottom, and take a trip through the faces of hurricane survivors.

Update: you can also buy prints of his photos to help support his family - I bought one of the still lifes.

disaster benefit

Whatcha doing Thursday? Well, everyone else will be out for an evening of music and cocktails celebrating the spirit of one of the best cities in the world.  All proceeds will go to disaster relief - raffle money, tips, et cetera. A few online charties that I know are doing matching donations, so we'll find the one with the most generous and legit cause and send them one big old check.Click the image on the left for full details.   

And a mighty big thanks to Six Apart, Mule Design, SFist, SF Station, Music Player magazines, OM Records, Loveslap Recordings, Southern Relief, Adam, Todd, Jon, Jen and everyone else who is pulling together to help make this happen.

Want to help out? Just leave a comment and we'll tell you how you can.

the underdog

I'm with this piece in the LA Times and the post on Rangelife: let's all root for the New Orleans Saints this season.

Best of DC?

So a friend of mine’s sister is moving to my old hometown for grad school. I love DC, but while I know some things never go out of style – like the Black Cat and Ben’s Chili Bowl, I’m wondering if any of my Chocolate City readers have some advice to give. And I know yall love to dole that advice out like candy on Halloween, so let’s make a list!

Bets place to shop for cute things on the cheap:
Filene’s, of course. 

Best hairdresser:
the inimitable Little John, Studio 2000 in Dupont

Best everything bagel:
Georgetown Bagelry on M street

Best ice cream:
Max's on Wisconsin in Glover Park

Best museum:
it's a tie for me between the Corcoran, the Hirshorn and the Air and Space...

add your DC superlatives in the comments, please - she leaves this weekend, so time's a-wastin!

books books books

I just got a gift certificate to Amazon thanks to my sidebar Amazon links. (I <3 TypePad!) Mostly, I'm a commuting-reader. Which made reading Lolita a little bit odd - I felt like people were always looking at me a bit askance.

I miss delving into a good book and arguing its merits with Trav on the way home from our old office on CalTrain. Since he's not here anymore, I've run out of angry young man fiction to borrow from him. And I've already ransacked most of my friends' bookshelves as well.

Do yall any suggestions for something interesting to pick up? Powell's has a great list...

summertime

Sometimes, when I'm wearing a furry coat and jeans outside on a July night to insulate myself against wind and fog, I miss the sticky summer evenings of my first 23 years. Nights with the heat sticking my shirt to my back, thunderstorms every afternoon bringing a smell of wet asphalt.  Going to the movies just to be out of the swampy DC heat.

Sars write about what it meant to work in those summers.

"So simple.  Things needed doing, and we did them; when nothing needed doing, we lay down."

My last summer in DC, I spent working at the bar. Most nights it was busy enough to raise the temperature to approximately Core, Earth. We'd run the air conditioners sporadically so as not to tax the old electrical system, taking turns standing in front of one of the roaring old wall units, lifting up our hair and letting the cold blow across our foreheads, down our backs. But then once a week in the dead heat of August, some yahoo would come along and crank the AC up, and before you knew it, we were out of power, four old buildings on one circuit. The drunken "AWWWWW!" would go up, and everyone would filter outside, moving someplace where the lights were on.

We employees would sit out on the front porch, waiting to see if the power company would bother with fixing us before closing time so we could start making money again. P would play the guitar, and we'd start telling stories with the employees of the coffeeshop next door and the diner down the way. We'd drink the last cold bottle beers left in the fridge, fling melting ice cubes at each other, watching the parade of Saturday night on 18th street go by.

Anyone from back east want to do a weeklong exchange program? I'll wear your tank tops, you can wear my coat.

lifecycle

Today is payday. Go give my darling Jamison a donation for LifeCycle, where they ride like a million miles in 7 days to raise money for AIDS awareness.

balancing act

I've been having a running conversation with a friend lately lately about our respective jobs, and how lucky we are to have them. But having these jobs, in and of itself, takes up so much time and mental capacity that sometimes a gal really doesn’t have a chance to get to spend time with tasks you love, like actually writing for the simple pleasure of it, or playing accordion, or applying decoupage to a trash can, whatever your bag is.  Living in a big city also means you have less time to do the things you love, what with commuting and making ends meet and fun friends to go out with at night and a zillion other distractions.

It's even more of a dichotomy when faced with being lucky enough to work in a field you love, and having your obviously limited supply of energy being laser-focused on the task at hand.  If I spend all my time working, I can’t blog.  If I spend time blogging, I don’t have time to write longer pieces or edit them. And sometimes I fall prey to the "I work at Burger King" effect - since I work with something all day, the last thing I want is another quarter pounder staring me in the face. And eventually I have to get away from the computer, too.

I'm curious, where's the balance between your work life and your life's work - and how do you know when to balance?

in which Lauren continues to rock

Well well well, Miss Benzo, first you get up and walk! And then Steven Speilberg offers you an internship on his new movie, in front of jillions of people. (Click here to watch the video of her receiving said internship, courtesy of Access Hollywood.) WTF, girl, you going to fly to the moon under your own power next? 

Now, everyone bug her to get writing again so she can share her experiences with all of us.

a sad day

Nikki was murdered senselessly Friday night in the LES by a couple of kids. My heart goes out to her fiance, her family, and everyone who knew her.  This touches so many people I love and care about that I'm at a loss for words.

One of the “I’m not just your dad, I’m a cop” things my dad always told me is to just let someone have whatever they want if they are trying to rob you. It’s better than having them take your life.
But c’mon, she said something I would totally have said to the young punks who accosted her: “what are you going to do, shoot me?” It’s that sassy east coast attitude that we take, not expecting someone to actually do it.

As the ever-lovely Piper (who knew Nikki well) reminded me in an email, remind everyone you know that you cherish them and hug em extra tight.

UTA: The police have a suspect.

 

buy organic

My friend Heather and I used to spend many a night hanging out, talking about life, camping in her backyard, and biking around our little corner of the Pacific Northwest. She finished her degree and is living the life of sustainable agriculture by leasing a little patch of land and starting a farm called Snowden Organics. If you live in the Northwest near the Gorge, you should buy a share in the farm and then she brings you good things to eat and pretty flowers. 

choose your own epiphany

from ask MetaFilter. My favorite is "you need obstables to grow." I don't think everyone follows that, but I sure as hell do, like a girl-bonsai.

Can a few words sum up some of your long-fought lessons?

changing on its axis

I know I've recommended this book to some of you before, but it's favorite of mine, so I'll mention it again.

In Annie Dillard's book For The Time Being, she attempts to make sense of nature and its relation to those of us who live under its grace, in "a cosmos where grace is tangled in a rapture with violence."

She writes that it is hard to imagine so many people drowning in the tidal wave that killed 138,000 in Bangladesh in 1991, and her young daughter answers, "No, it isn't. Lots and lots of dots, in blue water."

What this book lacks in narrative structure, it more than makes up for in consolation: none of the world, natural or unnamtural, makes any sense, not the bird-headed dwarves nor a tsunami, or the order of sand and stars. We're at the mercy of our own short perspective, and nature's stubborn existence, despite what we've heaped out.

Solve for "X"

Sam Harrison has a list of things you can do to help you be creative:

Some if it gets a little....Mickey Mouse Club for me at times, but still food for thought, nonetheless.

Here is my favorite: Build on mistakes. Know the difference between good mistakes (strong effort, bad result) and bad mistakes (sloppy effort, bad result).

Some of the most inspired people I know have been writing beautiful posts lately about the successes they've achieved and the possibilities they've dreamed. None of these would have happened if these people had been afraid to make a choice, afraid to make a mistake.

I have always lived my life at full-tilt boogie, which isn't something I thought to be proud of until my mom said: "You know, you never give up. You see a stop sign and you just try every way around it, over it, under it, until you get past it." I truly saw myself from the outside at that moment, not as someone screwing up, but someone screwing up on their way to a goal.

I make mistakes at that same speed - full on, helmet strapped to my head with duct tape. I would almost always rather take a risk and see what happens. I like the ensuing fireworks.

What I'm saying is I've made plenty of mistakes - but now I realize that I own those. I made them, fashioned from my own fingers and made animate. I rationed and reasoned and thought my way through to some terrible choices. But those are my mistakes, my fireworks.

There's a subtle difference between being assured in your rightness and plowing ahead, damn the torpedos; and in taking that step over into the unknown, willing to accept the consequences.

I love this aspect of life.

the northern lights have seen strange sights

pretty lights in the sky for the next 48 hours...

Hi, family!

My family is reading my blog. AIIIIIIIIIIII!

I’ve questioned myself as to whether to go back through all the posts and sanitize them for parental consumption, but I won’t. Mostly because I am busy at work and lazy at home.  I also welcome the whole world to see what I write about on a daily basis, why shouldn’t my family see? So, I apologize in advance if you find out something you didn’t want to know, but hey, as the man says, that’s cards.

The questions of a generation – what would your mother say if she could really see what your life is like? The mind boggles.

I love my family, even though they’re far away geographically. I feel like email and blogging can really keep families in touch across the miles more easily than we could in the past. Throw Jet Blue into the mix, and it takes about as long to get to DC from SF as it used to take to get from Blacksburg to Alexandria. Plus, Direct TV!  It’s an amazing world.

I could write pages upon pages about how much my family means to me but that would be kinda boring. I’ll tell one story instead to serve as allegory:

My parents bought me the first bike (well, the first I really used) for my 21st birthday. I was still living in DC at the time, which meant it was usually either too hot or too cold to bike for long. However, I did manage to get around fairly frequently. The seat dropped out  in the middle of Florida Avenue once, it wasn’t a pretty scene.  I wasn't really into it, but I kept trying.

I paid to have the bike broken down and shipped from DC to Portland. Bree, my housemate in Puddletown, had just received a tool kit for Christmas and was dying to try it out. We managed to put the bike together in our living room with  a fair degree of success. It was learning the ins and outs of the bike that made me appreciate it – Zen and the Art of Bike Maintenance. I could put the damn thing together myself. I fixed the chain at 2am in the parking lot of the video store, in the spring rain. 

When I moved to SF, I couldn’t take the bike with me. Cousin Courtney and I were packing up the pickup, and it just wouldn’t fit. Instead, I left it with my old roommates, hoping to go pick it up at a later date. Time passed, and Yen bought me another bike, not nearly as fancy, but it was lighter on the hills and stairwells of SF. And it had a bell.

My old roommates contacted me. It appeared that my friend Liv needed a bike desperately to get around Portland. She had just moved from Olympia, her car was dying, she was working at my old job at VQ. I told them to give her the bike. I would have loved to go back and get it myself, but c'mon. I love Liv, I loved my bike, but it's just material bullshit anyway.

What does all this have to do with my family?

My dad taught me that things don’t always work out for the best, but they always work out. My mom taught me that it’s better to give than to receive. My aunt taught me that sometimes the best times are really moments just between girls. My cousin taught me that family will always come to your aid, even to haul a pile of junk in a Danger Ranger from one end of the west coast to another.  My uncle taught me that fixing your own tire – literally and figuratively – is an indispensable part of being your own person.

Thanks, family, for raising me right.

lauren = she who rocks like Led Zepplin 1974

I take back what I said about being grateful for your health. We should all be grateful for senses of humor. And that there interwebbing. I have to give mad props today to Lauren, who has copyrighted the tshirt "I'm a crippled kid, hit me on the legs with sticks." She is wicked funny and I think she should have a state capitol named after her and a marching band to come to her house and play Led covers. She rules it, yall.

bright wings

I noticed Martin posted here today, and that reminded me I haven't linked to his father's blog yet. I feel in some way connected to this wonderful family via my job, as we got them set up with a custom license for MT to power their sites. However, reading about the way they power their lives has been amazing, and at the risk of sounding too much like my mama's child, blessed.

Donel is a pastor from Bellingham, Washington.  His sermons are facinating, firmly rooted in love for fellow humans and a profound respect for the power of the church to unite, rather than divide. My mom says he would have gotten along well with Jonsey, the priest who first drew her into her church.  They still make Christian leaders who don't make you want to do something crazy.

Donel's journey through surgery for renal cancer has been blogged for you to read, courtesy of himself, his loved ones, and I like to think, a little bit of help from all of us at Six Apart.  Read the whole thing, it's a great way to understand how someone can handle the real problems of life with grace, and reminds one to have the humilty to thank God each day for a life full of love and good health.

attack of the sand baby

Logan's feet would be nearly edible were they not covered in sand. and awesomely huge. I suspect that Scott intentionally exposed his child to super-secret Oregonian radiation, and those feet might actually be flippers. Why else is he throwing Logan into the ocean?

tragedy on two wheels.

Even though I didn’t know Sean well, I was shocked to hear he had died this weekend in a motorcycle vs. blood alcohol level accident. . Details are still coming in (as I can’t seem to find a news story about it anywhere), but I know that everyone loved him, from Zeitgeist to the SF punk scene to the motorcycle circuit. He had great taste in Peruvian art and a cute little Chihuahua named Iggy.

I’ve experienced death far away as well as right up close, but the degree of remove and knowledge in this case has me a bit stumped as to how to react. I feel a mix of wanting to comfort German Jenny, and anger that this was so avoidable. Instead, until I can make some sense of this, go read Yen’s post about motorcycle death rates, and while you’re at it, check out Bay Area Motorcycle Training.

Oh, and share the road, kids.

updated:

this is a saucy, cussword filled post from Sean trying to sell the bike he was killed on, and a sweet goodbye from one of his friends.

Thich Nhat Hanh

I had a great conversation with my friend Adam the other night, who had just returned from studying at a Buddhist monastery in Thailand for several months. We chatted about a lot of things - from Merle Haggard to meditation in various Buddhist traditions. This is a favorite poem of mine we discussed, written by Thich Nhat Hanh. I mailed this to several of my friends on September 12, 2001.

EXISTENCE

It is night.
Rain pelts the roof.
The soul awakens
to a flooded Earth--
a sea of storm
roaring,
then passing.

In that short moment,
shifting lines and shapes,
fleeting,
barely seen.

Before the passing moment tilts
and falls to melancholy,
laughter sounds
in quiet raindrops.

[This poem was written in Saigon in 1965. It was raining hard. There was so much death and killing, so much destruction. And yet in one moment, I could hear the laughter in a raindrop.]