today, the kitty curled up on my lap and looked into my eyes.
she was playful and affectionate and purred that she loved me.
i hope i never need to get a kitty because
i would rather get those things from people.
(playfulness and affection and love, that is.)

has it been a month already?
i suppose it has, in more ways than one. february has not been good to me. i think march will be better. my favorite person was born in march. that's something, right?
i like new months. it's amazing how there are so many new beginnings in life. i'm ready to start looking forward in joy and anticipation.

"All of the great ones—the saints, the bodhisattvas, and all of those who are filled by the spiritual light—have been on this journey. They went into the wilderness, stepping, like fools, off of the safe paths, into the waiting hands of their gods and goddesses. This is the journey of life, a pilgrimage that begins in ignorant trust, passes through all of the doubts, fears, ups and downs, probably all of the delusions, and certainly all of the confusions. Through it, we learn slowly, painfully, a new kind of trust, a trust in the process, detached from the goal."

- From The Faeries' Oracle by Brian Froud and Jessica Macbeth

how does one move from a dream world to the real world? i've been living in my mind so long, i can hardly remember what it is to be present. someone, help me awaken! i want to see, touch, hear, smell, taste life again. i want to be grateful for how blessed i am here and now instead of always dreaming about the future. but i don't know how anymore. how can i have forgotten what it is to be alive?

while looking out the plane window, i wondered what all those flickering lights were in all the houses. thousands of them across the city. and then i realized they were televisions. and then i was sad.

on another note, things i like:
the scent of peeling cucumbers
getting my hands dirty in the garden
roommates who love me
my family
(for a start)

also, i was thinking, my sisters are the only people i feel i come even close to loving somewhat selflessly and unconditionally. but it doesn't hurt that they're so amazing. they keep surprising me with how awesome they are. (but then, how can i know if i really love them unconditionally, since they're so great?)

a poem i like:

And you inherit the green
of vanished gardens
and the motionless blue of fallen skies,
dew of a thousand dawns, countless summers
the suns sang, and springtimes to break your heart
like a young woman's letters.

You inherit the autumns, folded like festive clothing
in the memories of poets; and all the winters,
like abandoned fields, bequeath you their quietness.
You inherit Venice, Kazan, and Rome;

Florence will be yours, and Pisa's cathedral,
Moscow with bells like memories,
and the Troiska convent, and that monastery
whose maze of tunnels lies swallowed under Kiev's gardens.

Sound will be yours, of string and brass and reed,
and sometimes the songs will weem
to come from inside you.

For your sake poets sequester themselves,
gather images to churn the mind,
journey forth, ripening with metaphor,
and all their lives they are so alone...
And painters pain their pictures only
that the world, so transient as you made it,
can be given back to you,
to last forever.

All becomes eternal. See: In the Mona Lisa
some woman has long since ripened like wine,
and the enduring feminine is held there
through all the ages.

Those who create are like you.
They long for the eternal.
They say, Stone, be forever!
And that means: be yours.

And lovers also gather your inheritance.
They are the poets of one brief hour.
They kiss an expressionless mouth into a smile
as if creating it anew, more beautiful.

Awakening desire, they make a place
where pain can enter;
that's how growing happens.
They bring suffering along with their laughter,
and longings that had slept and now awaken
to weep in a stranger's arms.

They let the riddles pile up and then they die
the way animals die, without making sense of it.
But maybe in those who come after,
their green life will ripen;
it's then that you will inherit the love
to which they gave themselves so blindly, as in a sleep.

Thus the overflow from things
pours into you.
Just as a fountain's higher basins
spill down like strands of loosened hair
into the lowest vessel,
so streams the fullness into you,
when things and thoughts cannot contain it.
-Rilke, from Love Poems to God

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. -Thoreau

my days lately have been less than deliberate, not really savoring each moment or tasting my life... more of it has been in the world of my mind, a dream, really, whether in debating theoretical concepts or dreaming of what my future my hold (and which future of the many i envision i will take ahold of). i haven't been enjoying the way the sun comes in through the window, or the sounds on the wet street, or just being. in this, i see how silence and solitude allows one to experience life more fully... yet it is so hard. it is not that i want to live for the moment, but in the moment. when will i wake up? when will i learn to
love with an open heart
live with arms wide open
stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back
expect hope trust
love what is plentiful as much as what is scarce
be still and know

February 5, 10am: 80F.
California, you are a strange animal.

not someday, but now.

saying goodbye is hard,
but not getting to say goodbye is harder.

"The observance of the tithe might easily produce a tight-lipped self-righteousness such as Jesus attributed to the praying Pharisee in his parable. But to think of the tithe as an act of self-denial was to miss the whole point of it. It was intended to be a most almighty beano, a party to celebrate the Lord's generosity.

Year by year you shall set aside a tithe of all the produce of your seed, of everything that grows on the land. You shall eat it in the presence of the Lord your God... When the journey (to Jerusalem) is too great for you to be able to carry your tithe, then you may exchange it for silver. You shall tie up the silver and take it with you to the place which the Lord your God will choose. There you shall spend it as you will, on cattle or sheep, wine or strong drink, or whatever you desire; you shall consume it there with rejoicing, both you and your family in the presence of the Lord your God. You must not neglect the Levites who live in your settlements (Deuteronomy 14:22-27).

A spending-spree, whisky and all, to make our commercial Christmas look like a Lenten fast! That was their way of saying thank you to God. Such sponateous, lavish celebration is the absolute opposite of the greedy spirit of grasping, hoarding, exploiting and turning everything back into greater profits. And this generosity to oneself goes hand in hand with generosity to those who are less fortunate or less secure.

At the end of every third year you shall bring out all the tithe of your produce for that year, and leave it in your settlements so that the Levites, who have no holding or patrimony among you, and the aliens, orphans, and widows in your settlements, may come and eat their fill. If you do this, the Lord your God will bless you in everything to which you set your hand (Deuteronomy 14:28-29)."

from enough is enough, by john v taylor

I like that. A joyful, generous faith.