More books

I went to Border's Friday night, just to browse, of course, but I bought a book, 365 Tao : Daily Meditations and a magazine, Yoga Journal (website). I have wanted the book since Angel gave it such high praise "** Did I mention, this is the first and last book I read everyday? **" The articles that caught my eye in the August issue of Yoga Journal were "7 steps for turning bad habits into good ones" and "Be happy from the inside out".

Quote from Yoga Journal:

You cannot do yoga. Yoga is your natural state. What you can do are yoga exercises, which may reveal to you where you are resisting your natural state. What is this natural state? Eternal, everlasting happiness: bliss." -Sharon Gannon, Jivamukti Yoga Cofounder

A good thing to keep in mind.

Am I famous yet?

~Z~ from theatter left me a nice comment and then wrote a blog entry about lil ol' me. A day or so ago Angel mentioned me too. This attention might be making my head a bit big but I started to wonder how many blog sidebars I am on.

Here's the list as far as I can tell (is there some easy way to tell?)

• A Mindful Life
• Kat's Paws
• John's Dharma Path
• Luminous Heart
• queen of cups
• the not-so-daily news

I guess it's not really fame but I never really expected anyone to read this blog. I am amazed at the thoughtful, kind, and interesting people I have 'met' through blogging. So thanks to all of you who have read my words, commented, listed me on your blog, and made me feel welcome in this exciting, addictive, new world.

Friday morning sensations

Morning light filtered by white curtain
Silky soft cat fur and low purring
Foot slaps through hall to the kitchen
Click of electric tea kettle
Hum of smooth cool laptop on bare legs
Bright bitter taste of hot green tea with lemon
Hot water on stiff lower back
Wonderful scent of grape seed shower gel
Buzzzzzz of electric toothbrush and minty taste
Comforting support of New Balance cross trainers
Smooth slide and thud of sliding door closing
Bright sun in eyes
Ready for another day

Inspired by Saturday Morning Me by Easy Bake Coven
which I first saw in rune's blog, queen of cups

Progressing in politics

Ah politics. When I started this blog, I decided that I didn't want to discuss politics or current events. Why? Well, I don't like controversy, I don't like heated arguments, I tend to avoid confrontation. But I have been rethinking my choice lately. So much is going on in the world and in this country. So much that I don't agree with, that I don't like. It seems like a time that everyone should speak their voice, do what they can, or be prepared to accept responsibility for the atrocities done in their name by their leaders. Maybe I am late in coming to this conclusion, but here I am. And this is a difficult choice for me personally. I have a deep seated fear of bringing attention to myself, of speaking out for things I believe in, of ridicule, of rejection. I have hidden behind provable facts in my profession so I don't have to have an opinion, just state facts, results of experiments. At the end of Fahrenheit 9/11 I clapped with the others in the audience, but then thought and looked around to see if I was in the majority. When leaving the theater, I started to worry. What if there were reporters? What if someone wanted my opinion? I was relieved to see no one. I could pretend I had just seen something mindless and uncontroversial like Spiderman 2. I know what I believe in but I don't feel like defending it to anyone. I am a member of the Green party. I vote for the most liberal candidates available. I support/supported Kucinich's campaign. I send emails and faxes to support the environment and progressive politics. I get lot's of alerts and emails. But these things are rather anonymous. I can hide behind my computer screen and my credit card. I know that a blog is rather anonymous too but it is a start.

Today I just supported MoveOn's campaign to Fire Marriage Amendment Supporters Elect A New Generation of Progressive Leaders to the U.S. House

Progressive/Liberal sites/alerts that I subscribe to:

Center for a New American Dream
People for the American Way
Care2

Some Anti-Bush sites:

ReDefeat Bush
Run Against Bush
Stop Bush in 2004

Kerry/Edwards in 2004

Derek Walcott

Here is the poem by Derek Walcott that Angel mentioned and quoted from in her comment to Running with Wild Women.

Love After Love

The time will come
When, with elation
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror
And each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott won a Nobel Prize in 1992.
Derek Walcott's Wikipedia entry.

Perspective

After searching for the last few weeks in our archive disks I finally found a number of poems I wrote when I was in high school and college.

Perspective

The book has been classified, catalogued, and shelved
The life of a hero written in prose
The story of the nation he rose

I saw the book and I liked the color
So, I read it while sitting on the beach
The life of a madman struggling to win
The hand of a maiden devoid of sin

Running with Wild Women

Zenchick's interesting encounter led me to Angel's blog where her July 8th entry talked about the book, Women Who Run with the Wolves:

I know that where I'm headed is full of warrior women. They are creative, forward-thinking, solutions oriented women. They are women who are living succulently, living juicy. They are artists and writers and painters and teachers and best yet, they are believers beyond the dogmatic restrictions that attempts to keep us all in chains. They are women with photos to show of all the places they have fearlessly travelled. They are warrior women, Women Who Run With The Wolves (and if you don't own that book by sister Clarissa Pinkola Estes, phD, do get it). And I know this: we are all getting ready for each other. We are in our separate spaces, feeling this urge in our bones, trying to find our way back to the pack. But we will get there, this I know.

I am reading Women Who Run with the Wolves right now. C. recomended it to me. She is reading it because her sister recomended it to her. After reading it, her sister changed, she was almost reborn. She found love and passion for the first time in her life. Coincidently, I am reading the copy that my sister gave me. Parts are highlighted so I can see the passages that were especially meaningful to her. I am so blessed to know so many vibrant, creative, juicy women through my real life and my online life.

Each woman has potential access to Rio Abajo Rio, this river beneath the river. She arrives there through deep meditation, dance, writing, painting, prayermaking, singing, drumming, active imagination, or any activity which requires an intense altered consciousness.
Excerpted from Women Who Run with the Wolves

Maybe we can add blogging to that list.

I leave you with one of my paintings created as I read Painting from the Source: Awakening the Artist's Soul in Everyone. It was one of the times I connected with my wilder feminine side.

Films are prodding me

I have watched three films in the last 24 hours. They were selected without apparent forethought, at the dictates of chance, and yet each one spoke to me deeply about appreciating life, exhorting me to live life to its fullest. Actually most films seem to be telling me that in some way or other. Maybe that's what good cinema does? The films I saw are:

City of Angels

I had seen this film before but I wanted to show it to my friend C. because I thought she would like it and we had recently seen Wings of Desire together. This modern remake is about savoring life but it does not show as deeply or effectively as Wings of Desire did, in my opinon. What was remarkable about seeing this was seeing it with C. She is such a positive person and she loved it so much. She appreciated that I showed it to her. It was so refreshing. I seem to be hanging out with so many jaded intellectuals that critique the life out of everything. This is not to say that C. isn't intelligent but she isn't only intelligent. She thinks with her heart and her mind and it really is beautiful to listen to her speak about things.

After C. left I wasn't tired so we watched another film.

About Schmidt

Nicholson is superb. He plays a retired actuary who is only now faced with discovering himself, not in comparison to others or from expectations or others, but his true self. Well what to do about that? He reaches out and makes feeble connections with others, often leading to misunderstandings. But slowly he begins to sort through things and the last scene in the film brings me to tears, here, now as I remember it. There don't seem to be any easy answers. We each have to get in our own RV and make our own mistakes.

Finally this afternoon we went to the Cinema Arts Centre to see Facing Windows.

Wow! What a great film. I feel like stopping people on the street and telling them to rush right over and see it. I already called C. and left a message. I felt stupid leaving such a message but sometimes things wear off, you know, and I wanted to tell her now, before ordinary life rushes in and dilutes it: See this film -- you must see this film. I don't want to write the plot here, you can read that on IMDb, I want to write that it was great and you should go see it, if you can. It's too fresh in me to describe. I looked at the clear, blue sky driving back from the theater and ... it was so incredibly beautiful and I wondered why aren't I just happy with that? Why isn't that enough for me? Why do other things creep into my mind and ruin it? I don't know.