"even when you know the way it's gonna go... it's hard, to get around the wind"

hi dear ones, 

i'm confused by february almost being over. it's simultaneously a relief and also brings up its own feelings. special huge thank you to the lovely Ruthie Rosenberg for making this happen.

1) first off, put this song on... much gratitude to Sam and Tricia for introducing me to this awesome movie called Submarine. the entire soundtrack is by Alex Turner. this one is called "It's Hard to Get Around the Wind." it has been a huge comfort to me for the last couple weeks.

2) secondly, "Sweet Darkness" by David Whyte - full of february wisdom.

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

3) another poem, because, well, it's me... this one, my dear Anastasia Aguiar shared with me in 2010. maybe before? i can literally hear her reciting it in Rick Benjamin's class. she once considered sharing it at a memorial for my mom, and since then, i have found myself coming back to it over and over. 

"from within, of self-blessing".... mmmm. 

Saint Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell

The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;   

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;   

as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch   

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow   

began remembering all down her thick length,   

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,   

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine   

down through the great broken heart

to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering   

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

4) Last, for now, the NYC subways experiment!

which will make you smile. file under "random acts of silliness and kindness"

i love you all very much. 

thank you for this and for everything.

thank you for showing up.

love always,

einat

[February 26]

Friends, 

We're so close! Two more days to March. I'm grateful for this project we all do together, because now February ending brings a twinge of sadness as I say goodbye to what we've marked as a special time for connecting and supporting one another. But mostly? I'm jonesin' for spring. 

Here's a beautiful Mary Oliver poem I adore, which resonates as we inch towards the tipping point into springtime energy: 

Wrens (from her collection Owls and Other Fantasies)

here I go 

into the wide gardens of 

wastefields blue glass clear glass 

and other rubbishes blinking from the 

dust from the fox tracks among the

roots and risings of 

buttercups joe pye honey

suckle the queen's 

lace and her

blue sailors

the little wrens

have carried a hundred sticks into

an old rusted pail and now they are

singing in the curtains of leaves they are

fluttering down to the bog they are dipping

their darling heads down to wet

their whistles how happy they are to be

diligent at last

foolish birds

And two other celebratory offerings: 

This song -- mmm delicious. 

Life is But a Dream  -- An hour and a half of Beyonce that left me feeling sparkly and INSPIRED. 

Love and deep breaths until spring springs,

Nomi

One More More Thing!

I promise this is it!  But I found this story to be so touching and inspiring.  It's also very sad.

One More Thing!

NPR did us all a huge fucking favor and made a playlist for those deepest and coldest of February blues.  I have to admit, I was walking home in a pretty solid February funk, and hearing the report on All Things Considered really turned it into, well, the right kind of funk.

Here it is!

Oh Boy.

Well.

Given my last post was more narrative, I thought my second shot could be a bit more puppy-filled, joke-inspired, and sing-songy.  NOPE!  Since I have a late-month post assigned to me, I feel it's worthwhile to reflect a bit on what this particular February has been like for me, especially given how it started.

I'll still try to include puppies.

In thinking about this month, I'm realizing how lucky I am that I'm reflecting on it with equal parts challenge and gratitude.  This February left me embroiled in continued confrontation, feeling totally stuck in an endless loop of miscommunications, willful ignorances, high-octane reactions, and just enough positive reinforcements to keep tempting messes into continuing toward some imagined, deeply-sought resolution.

Here are some things I have been learning this month in really powerful ways.  I share them in first-person because I don't want to generalize, but I think they're relatable.  At least I hope so.

1.  I have to make it safe for people to love me.  Especially when love feels particularly dangerous to them.  If I constantly fight people, they will probably think that loving me isn't such a safe bet, especially if they think love is a total nightmare to begin with.

2.  I'm even better at fighting than I ever realized.  I'm tremendously confrontational, I turn just about any uncertain situation into a battle.  I started learning this (VERY FUCKING OBVIOUS) lesson about myself several years ago.  But I keep learning it anew, and the stakes get higher and higher, and the pain of this edge feels sharper, and the consequences come into clearer focus.  I feel worse and worse about it, get into thorny situations, and then rest on my fighting instinct to get me out of it.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

3.  Being an attorney is likely to be the solid outlet for fighting that I hoped it would.  This month, I competed in the National Appellate Advocacy Competition.  My team wrote a mock appellate brief to the Supreme Court, and then competed in a 3-day regional competition in San Francisco.  During a final practice, I was in the midst of a furious text exchange, and I put down my phone to get up and practice my argument.  My team peppered me with really tough questions, and I got more and more impassioned.  I finished the round with some exceedingly forceful hand gestures, and tersely concluded.  I figured I had pissed everyone off.  My coach said, "That was your best.  By far."  And you know what?  I didn't feel as angry as I did when I had gotten up there.

4.  I'm not better than cliches.  They still teach me things, even though it can be a little embarrassing to admit it.  This month, my uncle passed away suddenly.  We weren't close, as mental illness had prevented him from maintaining deep relationships.  He was a sweet man, and a very talented musician.  But I didn't know him very well.  I wasn't so much saddened by the loss as I was stunned, shocked, shaken.  I couldn't go home to be with my family, which hurt particularly deeply.  I thought about sudden loss, which has defined February for so many of us.  I thought about every relationship in my life, if it ended suddenly, G-d forbid, would end with love.  Except one.  So I told my ex, "None of this anger seems worth it, or at least not today.  Life is too short to define our relationships by the exact opposite of our real feelings for people."  He said, "I know.  We are just so, so angry."  I felt torn between the important lesson of letting shit go because life is too short, and the lived reality of being human in the moment.  The moment is fraught, the moment is challenging; telling myself I should get the fuck over it because I might die tomorrow just doesn't feel very honest.  But sticking with moments that suck doesn't feel very loving.

5.  Which is the next thing I've been learning.  Sometimes, knowing how angry you are and how worthless it is to maintain doesn't really change how angry you are.  Sometimes you just want to keep being angry.  Because something about it feels right, even if nothing about it feels good.  (See #2 above, re: fighting).  If you aren't ready to stop being angry, you should name that.  It feels a little embarrassing.  Usually, our suffering works best when it masquerades as beyond our control.  But it just isn't.  So, I named it.  I said: Being angry is the worst.  I feel awful about it.  And.  I'm not ready to give it up yet.  I choose it, still.  I'm not proud of that choice, and I don't think it's the best one.  But it's the one I'm making for now.  You have to choose the thing you're doing, especially when it totally sucks and you feel like you have no excuses for choosing it because you should be choosing something way more worthy of you.

6.  Yesterday I went to my coach's house for brunch.  We sat outside, drank mimosas, laughed for five hours, and stared out at the entire Bay while soaking up the gorgeous February sunlight and warmth.  California doesn't care that it's February.  Maybe sometimes I shouldn't, either.

7.  This girl really knows how to be something that she is.

8.  These puppies really know how to be something that they are.

9.  These lesbians really know how to wear eyeglasses.

10.  This just really knows how to be awesome.

11.  You're all amazing and I love you so much!

A Tribute to a Wonder-ful Teacher

Dear ones,

Some of the content of my post will acknowledge a bit more of the February-ness of February, but in a whole, loving, celebratory way.  Be aware as you proceed forward.

Today is one of my holy brothers’ 30^th birthdays.  His name is Jonah Adels and while I cannot call him on my phone, I can imagine him, feel him, link in with him as he soars through the cosmos.  Jonah left this life and this body this past year and blessing him on his journey has offered me a very new way to relate to passing.

Jonah lived each moment of his life so fully, so passionately, that so many nuggets of his wisdom, his laughter, his drive, his humor are still deeply accessible to me.  While October gave cause to mark Jonah’s death, his February birthday offers a moment to celebrate Jonah’s life.  And so I wish to share some of Jonah’s Light that we all might Shine that much brighter on this and all days.

1. Play a Silly Game.

In one of the last e-mails Jonah wrote me, he told me about a new game he was creating (we taught together and it was fun to share curriculum)… while you might not be able to play this with a group, walk to your next destination silly style!  Here is how, in Jonah’s words:

The Ministry of Silly Walks (small to medium group game)

Groups circles up. 2 Game leader pick a person each and demonstrate that they should imitate them. Game leaders model a silly walk with a gesture and a sound and parade around the circle. Chosen people imitate. Game leaders choose another person and demonstrates their silly walk. everyone does their silly walk simultaneously until there is cacophony.

2.  Learn about a new funky fruit or plant and take a moment to connect with nature.

Jonah loved the natural world- from introducing me to crazy fruits- check some out here, to leading me on mushroom forages, to planting an entire edible forest garden for the children of the children of the children of our children ala  The Man who Planted Trees (one of my fave books- watch a beautiful rendition of it on YouTube!).

Spend a moment connecting with nature today… the tree you walk by as you enter your home, the house plant in your office are wonderful companions.  Say hello!  Give um a kiss!  

3. Take action.

Jonah knew that civil and global and ecological action and justice are essential- he was an activist through and through, rallying youth and adults around the Keystone XL Pipeline and countless other causes.  

The legislation is up again- let O’bama know where you stand (and please… stand against it!!) – from 350.org: Our last chance for Keystone comments -- Right now we are in the middle of the last official public comment period for Keystone XL -- one of the very last steps before President Obama makes his decision on the pipeline. I just sent my comment -- it's important that we make it clear to President Obama that both the climate and political risks of approving the pipeline are too great. Click Here to submit your comment- it will only take a moment.

The final few are lessons I have actively felt Jonah teaching me the last several weeks

4. Sing your song.

Jonah is the first person who told me I could sing.  He sat with me for hours playing notes on his shruti box and having me match them, taught me and so many others to play and sing original songs of his and precious songs he’d learned.  Here is an incredible recording of him singing a mystical tune he wrote and composed to “Shalom Alecheim”, a prayer many Jews sing as they welcome in Shabbat to welcome the angels- to come in peace, abide in peace, and depart in peace.  Thank you, brother Jonah.

Listen to it- it is STUNNING.

5. Choose Love.

I don’t have much more to say. One of the first songs Jonah taught me to sing and play on my ukulele goes like this…

Open your heart my love,

Open it wide

Open your heart my love,

Open it wide

Take me inside, my love,

Take me inside

Open your heart my love,

Open it wide…

I have been strumming and singing this song most days the past couple of weeks and channeling and admiring Jonah’s bravery, his tenderness and his trust in and surrender to the rhythms of this world and his own heart.

6. Be all of you.

Jonah the musician, Jonah the activist, Jonah the food forest scientist, Jonah the Maggid (ordained Jewish Renewal story teller/tradition keeper), Jonah the lover, Jonah the teacher, Jonah the tearing child, Jonah the mischief maker, Jonah the artist- they were everywhere he was and my, my, my what permission his fullness offered / offers to all with whom he came into contact. 

In love, in gratitude and in celebration,

Lizzie

The Free Market Value of Life

Hello beautiful bambinos,

Good morning from the West Coast, where I write to you from my kitchen, eating a very healthy breakfast of chicken nuggets and sriracha. I have so enjoyed all of your posts this month. (I work at an office with a fairly robust firewall, so I know you all have contributed something really good when I can't actually view it at work. That's double the fun.) I thought long and hard about whether I would post this piece. Sometimes it's difficult for me to know whether the things I write are for myself or for others, but at some point in the last two months I emailed this piece to a friend who is a consummate writer, and she emailed me back (kids these days!) to encourage me to share this with a public slightly larger than just her; the February Blog seems like a pretty natural locale/audience. If, after reading this, you're tempted to pick up the phone or shoot me an email, that's great! I just hope that the conversation that ensues is about your new boyfriend or my pretend dog because, really, I promise, everything related to this story has turned out just fine.

With love,
Caroline

***

The Free Market Value of Life

"I'm worried my mom is going to die," I say. The time is 5:06pm, and my father, brother, and I have been here since noon.

"We are all always worried our moms are going to die," this person says. This response isn’t very compelling in part because this person isn't real. He is in my head, and he is a composite of at least four or five people I have known and loved. I can hear at least two of my ex-boyfriends’ and best friends’ voices in his response. Mostly, this response isn’t very compelling because he knows my mom isn’t just any mom. She’s my mom, and she’s also in the top 2% of moms. She is a mom who sambas in the kitchen, has been known to discuss the female orgasm with my friends, and always sneezes in threes. She is a mom who cites Freud in everyday interactions, can ask for butter in five languages, and laughs so hard sometimes that she cries.

"I know, but I'm actually acutely worried right now, in this precise moment, that my mom is going to die imminently. Hasn't she been in the operating room too long?"

Has she? Hasn't she? How would I know? The surgical team told us at 8am that surgery would begin at 10am and would last four hours, so either they were wrong or I was too focused on the bagel I was eating at the time to pay proper attention. It felt okay to eat a bagel because that’s a right you earn when your mom is specifically taken to a hospital called Mount Sinai around Christmastime. Mostly, though, it felt okay to eat a bagel because we were so confident at the time. At the 8am pre-op, my dad invoked Woody Allen: the two most beautiful words in the English language, we agreed, are “it’s benign.” But I am trained in the Oxford comma, the art of scrambling eggs, the pluperfect, and armchair anthropology, never in neurosurgery. I think incessantly about worst-case scenarios. I am a closet pessimist who wonders whether the holidays are meant for dying on operating tables and drinking to excess instead of for building snowmen and admiring mistletoe.

"Okay, let's say hypothetically that she dies. Then what happens?" This person has a rather annoying tendency to speak logic to me because he knows that I can play along. He knows that logic is easier than emotion when your mom has a brain tumor. This time, I resist it.

"Then I die, too."

"No."

"Then I stop caring about whether or not I die."

"That's not it either."

"Then living gets harder."

"Yes, that part's true. And what happens when living gets harder?"

"I have less incentive to do it."

"Maybe so. But what happens to the free market value of things when they're harder to attain?"

"Are you fucking kidding me with this 'market value' bullshit?"

"I'm not. I'm serious. You're the one who started with 'incentives' anyway. What happens when resources become scarce?"

I refuse to answer. I cross my arms and obsess about the incomprehensibly bleak future without my mom. I glance at the Montenegrin family that sits on the couch kitty-corner to us that is eating something that smells like a meat-stuffed pizza. I pick through The Daily News. My brother and I chat briefly about Twitter’s IPO. I do everything I can to avoid the question the person in my head has posed. I wait to respond for what feels like ten minutes but is actually only six, which I know because I check the clock on my phone. The phone's battery is almost drained, which I knew would happen but I didn't bring my charger with me anyway because the only people I care to have reach me are in the room with me. At least, I thought that that was true, but this person’s voice in my head makes me question whether there aren’t four or five other people I wouldn’t mind having in here with me.

"I'm being serious. This is economics 101." 

"I practically failed Economics 101. And Neuroscience 101, as luck would have it." I expect him to make a corny joke, something along the lines of how leaky my cerebral cortex is, but maybe he knows now isn’t the time for brain humor.

"Caroline, what happens to the value of scarce resources?"

"It increases, I guess." In my head I shrug, although in real life I strip down to the tank top I wear beneath my sweater. I almost declare to my dad and brother that, at age twenty-six, I’m having a menopausal moment in late December, but that’s the kind of joke my mom would make. A lot of the jokes I make are jokes my mom would make.

"Yes! It increases. It becomes more precious. And that's what will happen to your capacity to live once you've seen its fragility. Do you understand?"

I understand that I want to throttle this person. I understand that when the chief surgeon interrupts our reverie -- to tell us that everything was fine, she'll be okay, she's on her way to a full recovery -- the scope of the verbs he uses (simple past, simple future, and simple present) indicates that we categorize things by when they happened and what the outcomes were. This is mostly a clear-cut way to categorize events. Yet there is another way to categorize moments. I can distill moments into the extremes of times I lived so well that I teased death and sunk so low that I neglected life. In the exercise of inventorying and reverse-engineering these moments, there is only one consistent truth: these extremes are defined by their scarcity. Scarcity, the free market dictates, imbues value.

I start to tell the person this thought, but of course there is no one there. There is only the noise of my breathing, the taste of snot running into my mouth, and the quiver of my slowing heartbeat. The time is 5:17pm.

Pretend it's February 21st!

Hi Everyone!

We had an elaborate plan at 900 Saint Paul Street for Ruthie to remind Eve to post. We realized as we drifted off to sleep that our genius plan had failed. We forgot. We're sorry. BUT LUCKILY Ruthie babysat last night for a very insistent two year old who a) can only go to sleep if her favorite lullaby (hamotzi, the song one) is sung repeatedly and b) loves to "watch Elmo on the ipad." This is lucky because this gem was on the episode of Sesame Street we happened to watch:

Inspired, we pulled up the original, which might be just as good:

We considered putting on all the clothing in Ruthie's room and learning the choreography so we could post a third video of US rocking out, but we decided to watch Gossip Girl in Ruthie's bed instead.

We love you!
Eve (and Ruthie)

February 22, 2014 - Tali

Great things to share on this glorious Saturday:

1) It's my big brother's birthday!!! I feel infinitely grateful for his existence and love in my life.

2) This 3-minute NPR StoryCorps piece about a Jewish family from Queens (listen, don't just read). My favorite part might be: "And I said, 'This is so refreshing.' They don't ask about when I'm getting my period, or how much money I make, or did I make a doodie today"

3) NPR's Planet Money's fascinating t-shirt project from December, documenting the life of a simple t-shirt. Here's one of the episodes, which focuses on the crazy afterlife of a t-shirt. The opening bit of that one is a cool reminder of how tiny the world can feel.

4) This meme that makes me giggle.

5) Humans of New York, a visual blog cataloguing NYC folk. Beware: it is easy for hours of your life to fly by once you start reading this site and get sucked in...which I encourage you to let yourself do.

6) This beautiful story from Modern Love about lots of things, including the awesome power of resilience.

Already feeling nostalgic for our beloved February Project. (Really trying to live in the moment, but sometimes it's hard, ya know?!) And still feeling incredibly lucky to be part of this community of life artisans, as Harry so wonderfully called us.

Lots of love!!

February 20th's tidbits

Good Thursday, Dear Ones,

Allie here.

I've been waiting and wanting to share with all of you something my dear friend Lillie Cohn (also a Brownie) shared with me earlier this month. It is something that hummed resonance down to the bottom of my soul. This is a piece I've been wanting for years and didn't know it. 

Even in our enormous and gorgeous human capacity for empathy, we can never fully enter the pain of our friends, lovers, and family. We are alone. We come in that way, and that's the way we go out. But here's the good news: Tanya Davis and Andrea Dorfman have created something magical to help us greet our aloneness as the friend and ally it is. 

We're rounding the February homestretch, sweetpeas. Only 8 days to go. In the meantime, please make space for Naomi Shihab-Nye's words in your hearts: 

Kindness

Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.

Bonus Post from Kid President

I love Kid President. I would vote for him in a heartbeat.

My mom sent me this video today. Here are a few things we should say more often, told to us by the most charming person in the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5yCOSHeYn4&feature=em-share_video_user

Feeling "In-Between..." - Jonah

Good Morning America,

It is strange to be the only person in this group living outside the States. Though, we are quite a diverse web spread across a number of cities, time zones and climates - something about being in an entirely different country where an entirely different language is spoken - elicits a very February emotion for me: "In-Betweenness"

Having started this month in New York and completing it in Jerusalem only adds to the sense of in-betweenness...

I invite you to listen to this old diddy by Jack Johnson, "In Between Dreams" when reading the rest of this post.
One of the funny things about living "in between" is that the old and the new are constantly dancing with one another. For example, I haven't listened to Jack Johnson since my semi-Emo high school days in New York, but now that I'm dating someone who grew up here in Jerusalem whose high school Emo playlist was different than mine, his surfer melodies have re-entered my orbit.

With regard to the dance between the old and the new, check out this video of the oldest recorded flashmob in the world (people between the ages of 65 and 97 dancing in New Zealand to "promote the need for more adaptable and accessible housing.")

Entering february for me this year was particularly strange as a I celebrated my Grandmother's 104th birthday on the last day of January right before entering the month wherein I mourn a dear friend's life was ended too early.
As my grandmother continues her post-centential life singing, Younger than Springtime,  I prepare for my February soundtrack headlined by a song played at Avi's Funeral four years ago מה אברך לו במה יבורך ("What shall we bless him, how shall he blessed?").

And here I find myself, sitting on the roof of my Jerusalem apartment, shirtlessly bathing in the 70 degree sun, having just flown out of freezing city of New York as snow was piling on-to the wings of the airplane...feeling in-between.

So I want to make a non-traditional proposal to this community:
For so many of us, our ties were built around Shabbat - I think I met the majority of you sitting in the beit midrash of Brown's Hillel, for Chavura's Kabbalat Shabbat. And as we approach shabbat, a variety of cities - I want to invite you to help me actualize a four-year old vision. Since Avi's death, I've wanted to put the tune of "Mah Avarech" to Lecha Dodi and sing it with all of you - but it never came to be. Wherever you find yourself this friday evening, whether at services in a communal environment, singing to yourself on the street, or anything in between - I want to invite you to try this tune for Lecha Dodi - and see if we can bring the music of this online community into our own personal shabbat experience.

Much love,

Jonah

harry on tuesday february 18

first a recognition to the power of azalia's beat to stir me in the morning, and so the first thing i do in the morning is to dance. perhaps an intense beginning, but it works.

second a recognition of this amazing community of life artisans  and a moment of recognition that this weeks' torah portion is vayakhel | ויקהל | "he gathered". in the portion some incredible things happen. moses gathers israel and invites them to bring their most precious and beautiful things, and from these things the alter to God is made through the collective artisan skills of the community, directed by the artist in chief, bezalel. and the people bring more than is needed and moses literarily has to tell them to stop because they are overgenerous with their gifts. and they make beautiful things out of acacia wood and gold and twined linen and blue and purple scarlet yarns, and things that bring light, and a place to make offerings, they mix the most incredible smelling oils. so to ruthie for gathering this holy community and to you all from bringing your gifts in abundance.

third, this is maurice. he carved from wood and is of africa, but now he lives in my room with me among the branches of the fiddle-fig ficus and sits always, still, on the top of a window trashed in a heap of windows on the streets of brooklyn, whose 'potential' I saw last February and claimed as my own garbage to tug around with me in a U-Haul to Washington D.C. He has a poem to recommend, and quite a personality of his own:

Called Little America by Jason Schinder.

My friend says she is like an empty drawer 

being pulled out of the earth. 
I am the long neck of the giraffe coming down 

to see what she doesn't have. 

What holds us chained to the same cold river, 
where we are surprised by the circles 

we make in the ice? When we talk about the past

it is like pushing stones back into the earth. 
Sometimes she digs her nails into her leather bag 

to find out where my heart is. The white sleeves

of her shirt are bright with waves when I visit. 
When we lie, we live a little longer—

which is unbelievable. If you love 

someone, the water moves up from the well.

fourth, some image offerings from a date I went on with myself this weekend to the united states botanical garden: blossoms of a grapefruit tree, the radiant spiral of a desert plant, a flower at the end of a cactus limb, the simple white star of jasmine that perfumes a entire room, and the kumquat for its whimsiness. fifth, if you haven't had a chance to laugh today,  and have a good yiddish accent please read aloud to a friend Simon Rich's "Sell Out"  published in the New Yorker last winter about Jewish immigrant to Brooklyn who falls into his pickling vat  and is preserved in the brine for one hundred years, awakening in modern day Williamsburg. and finally, two animal videos: a lot of bunnies. a dancing armadillo.

Monday, February 17

Hey there,

February does it again. Every year, February is time of reflection for me. I don't know it's the dreary weather, or my birthday or just a time that I've come to assume will throw some unforeseen wrinkles in life. But all that is to say, I've had lots of chances to reflect in the last few weeks, and it all makes me even more grateful for this community. So, thank you for being people who love to love, to bring joy into the world, and to cry when it's time. It's rare.

Moving on, here are some things that I've enjoyed lately:

First, I'm looking outside my window and it's not completely dark yet. Little victories.

Second, making fun of Comic Sans never gets old.

Third, you probably saw the "24 Hours of Happy" website months ago. I'm not over it yet. I like to visit the site at different times of day/night and dance like whichever person is on screen at that moment. As you're picturing this, you should know that my bedroom can easily be seen by the many pedestrians who walk on my street.

Sending my love to all of you,
Sophie

A lil somethin somethin on this Monday morning

Dear Ones,

It's not my day, but apparently this year we can post whenever we're moved to. I love it :]

In December, I bought a book of Hafiz poetry in which Daniel Ladinsky offers a translation for each day of the year. Starting with the new year, I tried to build a practice of reading the day's poem each morning. I've missed some days, but it happens, right? I remembered to read today's, and I wanted to share:

THESE CANDLES, OUR BODIES

These candles, our bodies, see how they burn.

How many hours will they last -- days, months, 

years?

Look at the warmth and comfort we can give 

to each other or to anything that comes close.

One of the components of lasting art is a spirit 

flame within the created

that can ignite inspiration and hope, and survive

time's ways.

Also, I wanted to share or remind you of two other things I love. The sunshine pouring in my kitchen window while I create a powerpoint about diarrhea and washing hands and soap (normal Monday morning activity...) made me remember this video:

And maybe also the sunlight or just the peaceful-longing-warmth-feeling made me remember this:

http://cabinporn.com/ 

(Don't worry, this is not actually porn in like, the naked human sense of the word, so you can open it at work or whatever. Though, porn is still in the website title, so...well, I'll leave it up to you. But there's no naked people. Ok.)

With warmth and comfort we can give to each other,

Ruthie

Borrowing words from Mark Nepo today: About Joy

Often, what keeps us from joy is the menacing assumption that life is happening other than where we are. So we are always leaving, running from or running to. All the while, joy rises like summer wind, waiting for us to grow in the open, large as willows it can sing through. Yet failing to grow in the open, we can be worn to it. Though working with what we're given till it wears us through seems to be the grace we resist. Like everyone, I've spent so much of my life fearing pain that I've seldom felt things all the way through. And falling through more than working through, I've learned that if we can stay true to our experience and to each other, and face the spirit that experience and love carry, we will eventually be reduced to joy. Like cliffs worn to their beauty by the pounding of the sea, if we can hold each other up, all that will be left will be wonder and joy.

-Mark Nepo, reduced to joy

Extra again... more songs for your Friday

A few more songs that are soothing my soul these days:

xxxx feeling much love for you all
--Megan

Extra! Extra! Valentine's Day Extra!

Friendloveds,

I wanted to share a new piece I wrote. I want to share it because, as I composed, I had the following in mind: us, how February feels to me/us, and most importantly how to make peace with this month, which reliably serves up such challenge and heartache.

This is a prose sestina. It has a repeating pattern of endwords to the sentences. If you'd like to check out a traditional, "perfect"sestina in verse, read this: Sestina by Elizabeth Bishopl

Wishing you all a Valentine's day brimful of love. And tenderness.

Ok, here's mine:

February Sestina 

Today the world is voided and gelid. The word of today is “escape.” Today desire’s contours feel labyrinthine. It is that interminable month again, February. The month when the heart feels tender. The month when lips and hands crack and the world takes bets on when you’ll abandon it all to become an ascetic.

Perhaps it would not be so bad, the life of an ascetic. But how would it work when the air is so gelid? Can aesthetics be tender? They abstain, they abscond, but don’t try for escape. They know there’s no swerving February. They know there is only one way through and it’s labyrinthine.  

Constantly turning corners on new emotion feels labyrinthine. This barren month demands the same garments each day, as if it were made for ascetics. This is the crucible of February. The bigger, meaner, sister of Cold is waiting outside and her name is Gelid. The heat you’ve stored in your body is always trying escape. You must fight to remain warm in this hard-freezing clime; it’s about staying tender.

What does it mean to stay tender? Perhaps it means exploring the landscape within, a labyrinth. Perhaps the long walk back to oneself is the only escape. Write letters to old friends, stroke the fur of the cat, press skin against skin, and leave mortification of the flesh for the ascetics. Inside can be warm even when outside is gelid. The greatest teacher of loss can be February.

The time to grow comes in February. The moment to molt and emerge tender. Stripped naked you understand better what’s meant by the word gelid. This month’s methods are labyrinthine. The solution lies—where else?— at the heart, though the way there is not strictly ascetic. Once you find it, you won’t wish for escape.

You don’t need an escape. Make friends with February. It too doesn’t want to be an ascetic. Like yours, the heart of February is tender. Finding it takes 28 days of wandering its labyrinth. You can’t comprehend the embrace of the heat nearly so well if it never gets gelid.

We cannot escape the divine call to stay tender. This is the glory of February, month most labyrinthine. Even ascetics know this, when world has turned gelid. 

4382 Circle Road

4382 Circle Road (Rue Cercle)

The number is the address of the home where I spent the first 18 years of my life. $43.82 is the amount it cost me to fill my minivan in New Hampshire on our trip up here, to my Mom's current home, yesterday. It was a perfect pump. See the video.

It was a short moment on our drive up to Montreal. But it touched off a lot of thinking. My Mom and Dad separated in 2002 and divorced some time later. It was only 6 weeks ago that they finally sold off the house they had moved to in 1999.

72 Dufferin Road (Chemin Dufferin) 

It's not the house I grew up in. I've never really 'lived' here. But it is the house that my wife and children have always seen as "Bubby's house." We have come to relax on February break and to take what we want before my Mom starts selling. 

It is the contents and memories that we are here to pick over and lay claim to. I can have the china, she's not planning on have two sets of dishes in her new apartment. The hide-a-bed sofa. A leopard print couch. An oddly striking and peculiarly racial lamp. Pee Wee Herman. 

But what's really on my mind is the question of where my home is. As we drove over the Champlain Bridge into Montreal I looked to my right, as I have hundreds of times, and laid eyes upon a beautiful city.

That experience, the look through green girders and over the St Laurence River into downtown Montreal, used to give me stomach butterflies of relief and excitement. I was coming home. 

So home. 

We left Providence and now live in Sharon. Our house is not a home we want in the long term. It's kinda shitty and I can't wait to move. It's corny but of course your home is where your family is, etc... But it's confusing because everybody has somewhere that they are from. But I feel less and less that I am from one place. Montreal - Efrat - Montreal - Bat Ayin - Jerusalem - Potomac - Providence - Sharon. 

I'm confused. 

Leopard Print Couch one of two

Some kind of stuffed fish over my mom's bed. Yes. Really.

Paint by number. All of them. There's eight more.

PeeWee Herman drawstring doll. Click on the link for video of crazy baby.