Call people rich when they are able to meet the requirements of their imaginations...

"The real offense, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her own at all. Her mind was to be his--attached to his own like a small garden-plot to a deer-park." - Henry James

But what of this worthy proponent?:



What are we unshackled? Where would we go if given the gift of uncensored fearlessness?

I would canyon. I don't know why base jumping or being propelled, or defying the natural order of gravity is so alluring. Maybe it's a nod to the many stations I've arrived at safely. Guarded arrivals make no news. Who googles traffic-less bus routes? I want to be the woman you photograph doing all the things you would if only you could. I want to be fearless and fun and free. Which begs the question; do our adventures remodel us? Can I morph into a less rigid, better-made woman if I simply jump from one base to the next? And if so, why must danger be our only recourse?

No one ever lies about being lonely

moments I once knew

Michele Getting Married, and Other Tales

was introduced to The Love Project, by random post after became obsessed and post-anxious with an NPR challenge that asked listener's to cite words that would withstand the test of time.

I wrote of love. Most notably, Robert Penn Warren's ostensible preoccupation with a women's laugh as written in All The Kings Men.

That got me to thinking; where are we going? where have we been?

I don't want to lose sight of the romantic. The happy adages of old.

I think this video perfectly addresses both sides of the coin.



Everything really is so beautiful.

Women seem wicked when you're alone

"Don't you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go someplace where you don't know a soul? Sometimes I feel like doing that. I really really want to do it sometimes. So, like, say you whisked me away somewhere far far away. I'd make a pile of babies for you as tough as little bulls. And we'd all live happily ever after, rolling on the floor."

NPR challenged me to quote written words that will transcend the test of time. It was the anniversary of the publication of the Bard's sonnets. They may have been printed against his will. All those lovely words that no writer will ever trump being force published. How could he not have known the onslaught effect of his creation? How can anything so lovely go against will?

California is a binary mess. The people cry foul. The people cry fair. The former assert that their rights and liberties have been pulled out from beneath them. When finally they had set the table in storms Proposition 8 - a hefty drunk of an abusive father who pounds his fists in some Right Wing Papa's Waltz. So we can keep our marriages? What of our friends and neighbors? What's to come of a community so ruthlessly divided?

And queue our second camp, the latter. They assert, with straight posture and forefarthered wisdom that we haven't any right to disrupt the will of the people.

The Will. Of the People.

See here's where things get hazy for me. What have these people willed my one-day offspring? Hatred and intolerance? Yes it's true. The people of California decided, as an entity to outlaw Gay Marriage. But it's also true that not all people voted in favor of Proposition 8. Since when has the word of the majority been a testament to truth? Can we recall the Catholic Crusades? One religion is obviously not all religions. Bloody Mary would get no further than North Korea, when once her words dictated the will of the people. More Hutus than Tutsi's lobbed machettes in the Rwandan Genocide. That was the will of the Hutu. The Holocaust, the Japanese Internment Camps, The Red Scare, EVERY WAR WE HAVE EVER HAD.

In effort to amass a crowd there has to be some will.
But there will always be some dissent.

So we may have will. And we may be mighty in number, but who is to say what is right and wrong?

If there was a Prop to overturn Suffrage or Abolition movements would we say it's just because Right Wing eccentrics have powers of persuasion?

When do we remove ourselves from the principles of voting booths and ballot numbers and ask the simple question: does this REALLY seem fair to you?

People are people are people.
For the Mormon's who glided on the Prop 8 parade float let me ask you this: Don't you think your God, (he/she/it) would be reduced to tears, totally crippled in happiness, to see his/her/it's creation full of so much beautiful love? Be it man and woman, woman and woman, man and man and every gendered identity in between? Isn't that the grand design? Aren't we here to do well and love? Love and honor? So what is love with hate and biggotry and restriction?

I don't subscribe to your God, proponents of Proposition 8. Instead, I subscribe to our forefather's notion of a just and verdant life. We have taken strides to balance and grow. I think it time that you reassess the meaning of will, as either a forthcoming offering or a conviction and recognize that the two relay a stronger message than a book or vote.

And that's on you.

My Korean Care Package

Compliments Keith:

The sky was as blue as the ribbon on a prize winning lamb...

things I like that I'd sooner share with you:

They will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem...

Oh those sister's of mercy. They are my favorite Valentine sentiment.

Today is the birthday of Toni Morrison. A little information on Toni Morrison, if you weren't otherwise informed:
born in Lorain, Ohio (1931). She started writing when she was in her thirties, unhappily married, working as an editor, and raising two children. She said, "It was as though I had nothing left but my imagination. I wrote like someone with a dirty habit. Secretly. Compulsively. Slyly." She went on to write nine novels, including The Bluest Eye (1969), Song of Solomon (1977), Beloved (1987), and in 2008, A Mercy. In 1993, she won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

We're (the collective unit of Kim & Jason) celebrating the birthday of my dear friend Helen vilner this coming weekend. As Helen's birthday is on Sunday, and Helen is spoken for on Sunday, I suggested we reign in festivities on a Friday instead at some nicer than not restaurant in the city center. Helen, lovely Russian princess that she is, refuses a gathering in honor of her birthday as it's a superstition and bad luck in Russia to celebrate one's birthday before one's birthday. So we compromised on referring to it as "Give Helen a Gift Day", but my curiosity was peeked. What other quirky superstitions does Helen uphold? Below, please find a few:

* When giving an animal as a gift (a cat, dog, bird, etc), the receiver should give the giver a symbolic sum of money, for example one Russian ruble.

* A purse (or any other money holder) as a gift requires a little money inside. Given empty it causes bad financial luck.

* A funeral procession brings good luck. But one should never cross its path or it is bad luck.

* A woman with empty water buckets coming towards you is considered a bad omen.

* A group of two or more people should not walk on either side of a tree. They should all keep to one side or the other.

* Bread should only be cut with a knife, not with your hands. Otherwise, it is said, that your life will be broken. The opposite is held true by some people.

* Two or more people should never use one towel at the same time to dry their hands or bodies, or it is said to bring conflict.



On the campaign trail I encountered even more. For a spell, I was the default driver. Odd, as I hate to drive and defer to someone, anyone else whenever possible. However, after being dispatched on a few multi-mile errands in my first few weeks of employment I found that I could milk the system. Milk for days. The reimbursement rate for my troubles was worth much more than the jacked economy's acquiesced discounted gas and oil. Celebrate! So I oft drove, and in so doing, my pal, the lovely Katie Kelly, could be found performing dedicated rituals that warranted question and stare. We would be driving, and as if without prompt she would diligently and hurridly kiss her palm, touch the car ceiling and lower her hand. Or she would pound two fists on a dashboard. I asked after a few, at first; most noteably what to do when I encountered a driver with one headlight. There even seemed some superstitious ritual to be performed when approaching a driver without lights, in the dark night. To that I prefer to flash my brights. I think I have a heavy hand over superstition in that regard.

Hearing tale of presumed beliefs, having, myself, lived with ghosts, I aim to further research. I'm in possession of a book of folklore or regionally specific rural and urban myths, "The Vanishing Hitchhiker". Let's get me to certain crazy, paranoid, suspicious and convinced in a matter of 200 pages. The countdown starts........ now.