Happiness and gratitudes

• Parmesan. The not-powdered kind.

• Clarity.

• That these days when I take naps, I fall asleep to a blue sky-view.

• Cooking lentils on Friday evenings from my mom's recipe.

• Touching my back foot to my head in pigeon pose for the first time.

• Yoga classes with different kinds of bodies in them.

• Taizé chants that get stuck in my head. Lately this one.

• Ideas which are like food.

• Memories I have of this room in late summer, fall, and winter. I will miss it when I leave.

• Multicolored nails on my left hand, courtesy of testing privileges at Walgreens.

• Shared Google Docs, for making late-night group work from our respective bedrooms possible and more bearable.

• Birdsong in the morning, and being awake to hear it.

• Princess Jellyfish.

• Realizing that I do not have to answer every question asked by other people, if I don't yet have the trust or energy to do so. (Direct questions almost compel me; I don't know why and I don't enjoy saying things I don't want to say. And I'm terrible at lying.)

• The Secret Garden for bedtime reading, as spring is pushing back winter in my world and in Mary Lennox's.

• Asking for advice from just the right friends, and having those friends.

• De Clarke's writings. [example]

I was underway

Week in photos (90-96)

90/365. My hand likes this (railing).


91/365. Tribe.


92/365. First snowdrops.


93/365. Muriel Rukeyser sunset.


94/365. I was just writing about a dream, so I don't mind that my journal page is legible.


95/365. Magdalenas/neighbor-friend.


96/365. Kumquat windowsill.

Lakeshore, late winter

Untitled

"There is no human love that is not broken somewhere."
- Henri Nouwen

I am full (God empty me)
of the desire to be needed
because what is needed
cannot be replaced so easily,
will not be discarded so easily—
because yes, sometimes
I am full of fears like that

But the truth is
that it is      not necessary
(to be needed) here,
and perhaps the fact
of me being here
says I am
necessary—
in a way that has nothing to do with the mean little
being-needed which my heart cultivates so reflexively
or the being-wanted which it wants, for that matter—

or anyway,
as necessary as
I need      to be

Week in photos (83-89)

83/365. This is my Lenten discipline.


84/365.


85/365. I love Daylight Saving Time.


86/365. Lunch.


87/365. Nook.


88/365. Window open/why I do not need a clock.


89/365. Gutter.

"this is the birth/day of life and love and wings"

Spring is being born and everything is being born. This is how I am feeling lately, from the moment I wake with the sky blowing on my face through the open window—so exultant. I ate lunch in the full sunshine thinking this is the sun's birthday and so I must share this with you, a favorite since freshman year.

i thank You God for most this amazing

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

- e.e. cummings

Berkeley

I went to a Cal track meet with my parents over spring break. It was a lot more fun to watch than I thought it would be—I don't like watching most sports, but most sports are games. It wasn't like dance, but it was sort of like watching dancers—people intense in their embodiment. I love that. I love watching how people are in their bodies, but especially those kinds of very-inhabiting people.

Later we went to a used bookstore that had a buy-3-get-1-free deal. I met a former sociology student in the social sciences cranny; he was talking to his friends about how black history texts always cover only the last four hundred years of black history...and I got excited about a German edition of one of the volumes of Paul Tillich's Systematic Theology, because it was quite easy for me to read. But then I realized it had been written originally in English, so what was the point of that.


Stadium.


Dad.


Camellias. (My favorite.)


Mural in downtown Berkeley.


And at the actual People's Park a block away.


Movements have been born here. It's mostly sleeping now, with homeless people sleeping in it.

Eye candy and brain food

Melissa on being seen. "I’ve been sharing stuff I thought was unshareable and prioritising authenticity, even though it’s made me feel quite afraid. I’m not a hundred percent there yet but the barrier’s starting to crack..."

Mentioned once before in passing: free guided meditation audio tracks.

"The Dog Theory of Fatness" (kind of sounds offensive; is not).

Sonnets about zombies.

Photo usage guidelines for bloggers. Most comprehensive treatment of the subject I've read; written by a blogger with input from a photographer and a photography agent.

The Eowyn Challenge: nerdiest fitness site ever, ahh.

"4chan's Chaos Theory." This is about Anonymous, etc.

The Riot Grrrl Manifesto. I printed this big and put it on my wall. Even though I'm a Christian. Ha.

And: riot grrrls + Maoist ballet dancers = this Bikini Kill music video. Dig.

"High heels yay, headscarf nay? Double standards in fashion symbolism."

Seo Min-Jeong's art installations.

Photography by female prisoners in Romania, via English Holly.

A dressing room experiment: "Finding Clothes That Fit." I think I'm going to do this.

Two small questions (I do believe in want)

What do you want less of in your life?

What do you want more of in your life?

I'll put my answers in the comments too...but you first.

Ice in the morning

I'm sorry that these pictures don't convey the way the ice caught the light.

Week in photos (77-82)

77/365. Really, really happy.


78/365. Waterfront.


79/365. A host/ess gift.


80/365. In a few weeks, it will be glorious like this in Illinois.


81/365. Lunch by the sea.


82/365. Beautiful people in the afternoon.

Last time I was here

It was for a wedding, in January. We spent the first night at my aunt and uncle's house, where my big sister got married summer before last.






As chance would have it, the bride (my brother-in-law's sister), was paired with her groom when she walked at my sister's wedding as a bridesmaid and he as a groomsman—back before they really knew each other. So to return, just before attending their own wedding, to the place where that other young couple had been married—quiet now in the evening light, nary a folding chair to be seen—flavored my memories some extra. The sweetness of chance in the stories we tell.

From the wedding the next day, which took place high up in the San Diego hills:

Happiness and gratitudes: Niece-Baby edition

• I took her to see her reflection and she smiled delightedly at herself, every time.

• These little sighs and mildly dissatisfied/musing noises she makes to herself.

• Her feet flexed when you pick her up.

• She laughed wildly for about three seconds when her papa smacked some kisses against the side of her face. Who knows why a baby laughs? I mean, what is it like in her brain?

• She's in the 75th percentile for weight, 85th for height, and 90th for head size. Also basically bald.

• Shocked-looking staring-big eyes ALL the time. And blue. So blue.

• Fascinated by hands. She holds mine for minutes, feeling it out with her own cool, tiny-nailed, half-scrunched hands. Like she'd tell my fortune, or like how blind people in movies read faces with their hands.

• She will stop crying if you let her look at one of her parents' iPhones.

• Her cheeks are like mochi. Irresistably squinchable.

• The clothes bar in her closet lined with tiny little jackets.

It's International Women's Day, and?

And this is what a feminist looks like.
[Welcome to Feminist Coming Out Day.]

Week in photos (70-76)

70/365. Ice.


71/365. Mornings.


72/365. Mastodon.


73/365. We don't have an electric kettle anymore.


74/365. Train platform with suitcase and salt.


75/365. Another train platform some thousands of miles away.


76/365. Making.