We’re giving away husbands on a game show.

“I know many people are concerned about the destruction of the sanctity of marriage, as well, and they view this as a threat. But let me ask you something, ladies and gentlemen, what are we really protecting when you look at the divorce rate in our society? Turn on the television. We have a wedding channel on cable TV devoted to the behavior of people on their way to the altar. They spend billions of dollars, behave in the most appalling way, all in an effort to be princess for a day. You don’t have cable television? Put on network TV. We’re giving away husbands on a game show. You can watch “The Bachelor,” where 30 desperate women will compete to marry a 40-year-old man who has never been able to maintain a decent relationship in his life. We have “The Bacholorette,” in reverse. And my favorite show, which thank God only ran one season because it was truly distasteful, was “The Littlest Groom,” where 30 desperate women competed to marry a dwarf. That’s what we’ve done to marriage in America, where young women are socialized from the time they’re five years old to think of being nothing but a bride. They plan every day what they’ll wear, how they’ll look, the invitations, the whole bit. They don’t spend five minutes thinking about what it means to be a wife. People stand up there before God and man — even in Senator Diaz’s church — they swear to love, honor, and obey; they don’t mean a word of it. So if there’s anything wrong, any threat to the sanctity of marriage in America, it comes from those of us who have the privilege and the right, and we have abused it for decades.”

NY Senator Diane Savino

A post. a window.

I wanted to post two pages from my journal. one of the pages, because it was part of my shaken response to the death of my grandmother last summer and is honest. someone may find themself less alone in reading it. that is worth the exposure. and one, because it is what I want to be known if I died soon.

Reminds me of my friend Eric.

Who has not forgotten the sunset.

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone—
and how it slides again out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance—
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love—
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you as you stand there,
empty-handed—
or have you too
turned from this world— or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

~ Mary Oliver

What does my life say?

From NPR:

To reclaim their “honor,” families in Syria have been known to kill raped female members. Even if families allow such women to live, they are not eligible to marry.

“We sat and discussed that we want to change this. We don’t want to change just the regime in Syria, but also this kind of stuff. So we will marry them in front of everyone,” said Ibrahim Kayyis, a 32-year-old baker from Jisr al-Shugour.

To do what is right at the expense of what is easy or socially acceptable is to the Glory of God.

They gave it a name.

how many floating clouds of feeling

are given words

by different cultures with different tongues

that value different things?

I've been looking for this word.

You start.

"The chief Raoni cries when he learns that brazilian president Dilma released the beginning of construction of the hydroelectric plant of Belo Monte, even after tens of thousands of letters and emails addressed to her and which were ignored as the more than 600 000 signatures. That is, the death sentence of the peoples of Great Bend of the Xingu river is enacted. Belo Monte will inundate at least 400,000 hectares of forest, an area bigger than the Panama Canal, thus expelling 40,000 indigenous and local populations and destroying habitat valuable for many species - all to produce electricity at a high social, economic and environmental cost, which could easily be generated with greater investments in energy efficiency."

I am torn. By my life, the power to be one man, and the current of influence I may be a part of... for change, for fire, for busting down walls and ripping out the pillars of hungry made-up gods. I want to destroy factories, I want to sew something, I want to tell one person, look them in the eye, and say 'stop consuming so much. you are cancer.' And see the look on their face that says, 'you start.'

I believe in such cartography.

“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.”

—Michael Ondaatje | The English Patient

Being alone is first in being in love

““The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person - without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.””

- Osho, Being In Love

Consciousness is

Thinking

Thinking is hard. I've heard is said that

genius is nothing more than continued attention,

I think that may be true.

I am possessed by desire to know and be known and feel and be felt

and if I am not seeking, I am sinking.

I am like a shark in that way.

But I know great men and women that are not like sharks at all,

to the naked eye, they seem much more like lonely bears

that forage and eat berries (somehow supporting their mass) and sleep

and are formidable in their own way.

But maybe we are all sharks, or maybe I am a bear,

I get excited when I think I may have it all wrong, because that is fresh and I am a learner.

Here is something I think I know: We want what we are not, because at the root, we want to control all of creation, and control comes from ownership and understanding.

I believe that is why we are attracted to opposites: to grasp them, understand them, own them and control them.

We do not fear what we understand.

I am a student of movements of the heart

I am a student of movements of the heart

when the clouds like milk in water billow and spill

down the low places of the mountains

and the late sun light is too smooth to believe,

I am a student of movements of the heart.

when I am bestowed a life of co-toil in worthy soil

with kin closer than blood by choice and not by choice,

and wake every day springing from my floor

ready to do what I was built to do,

as a pelican must feel when it sees its wings work on the lift of wind by the crest of waves at the shore, I am a student,

when a best friend is committed to raise too much money

for too high a mountain and kids too burdened with chains they did not fasten,

and a best friend shares a cigarette with me to confess his sins and

make me feel less alone,

I am a student of movements of the heart,

for they are neither joy nor sorrow,

but one part longing, one part hunger, another thirst,

and a space in my chest and fingers and knees,

that makes me wish to be barefoot,

to burst into mist and mingle there

where I have no body but all of it at once.

Critics as creators

There are critics,

and there are creators,

and so often, I am a critic of critics and a fan of creators,

but there are critics who are creators, because they see the world around them, assimilate it, and hold it up as something that can be grasped. I like them.

“Many films diminish us. They cheapen us, masturbate our senses, hammer us with shabby thrills, diminish the value of life. Some few films evoke the wonderment of life’s experience, and those I consider a form of prayer. Not prayer “to” anyone or anything, but prayer “about” everyone and everything. I believe prayer that makes requests is pointless. What will be, will be. But I value the kind of prayer when you stand at the edge of the sea, or beneath a tree, or smell a flower, or love someone, or do a good thing. Those prayers validate existence and snatch it away from meaningless routine.”

- Roger Ebert