This cartoon brought back a lot of (deeply repressed) memories of being a Census 2010 worker. It's so accurate, right down to the forms and binder that don't fit in the bag, the ID tag, etc.... (TY Moosh for the link)

RIP Elizabeth Edwards: "The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that. And, yes, there are certainly times when we aren't able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It's called being human. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful."

Image: source.

"I know, its scary to think you may die alone. Trust me, we all wrangle with this fear. But this type of fear-mongering won’t actually lead you to happier romantic relationships. What leads to happier relationships is being empowered, being honest, intentional and clear about what you want. Feminism is constructed in the mainstream as a boner killer and is very effective in keeping young women disinterested in it, but in the long-run, feminism actually makes your love life better. And incorporating and prioritizing your own needs into your romantic life means sometimes running the risk of being single for a little while and it means having some standards and it means not settling, but the truth is we have too much to lose any other way." - Feministing on the predictable "omg feminism is killing romance" "style" article(s) by the NYTimes.

(Despite appreciating this tidbit, I do have to note that Feministing is sort of driving me crazy with their tendency to have a hetero focus/lens on stories. I know the NYTimes article they are talking about has to do with straight couples but plenty of the things they have to say about feminism and relationships relate to queer relationships as well.) Also check out Amanda Hess' excellent "A brief history of the New York Times' gender essentialist trend piece."

N.Y.C. Misdemeanor Defendants Lack Bail Money: "Thousands of people arrested on low-level crimes in New York City spend days languishing in jail, not because they have been found guilty but because they are too poor to post bail."

Image: source.

I've been reading Patti Smith's (National Book Award winning!) "Just Kids" for a few days and am absolutely loving it. I'm not a huge Patti Smith fan, and I don't know all the artists and people she references, but she is a wonderful storyteller, managing somehow to recall details from decades ago and describe things intricately, while at the same time always moving the story along at a quick pace. It's a book about love, friendship, being an artist, being young, growing older, it's a book about the 60's, the 70's, and on, a book about New York City, a book about inspiration - it's got it all. A wonderful read. (Check out my friend Zac's glowing review of "Just Kids" as well)

Running update: slowly but surely, I'm back. 7 miles on Friday, 8 on Saturday, 8 on Sunday (some walking in there, to be honest). Paying extra attention to warming up my legs with Tiger Balm and massage and warm pants before running out, hot showers afterwards etc. Scheduling acupuncture for this week. Went to bootcamp today and hoping that helps me build the necessary muscle and any minute amount of flexibility. My knees are still not 100% pain free, and I long for a pain-free run, but I'm hoping these are just growing pains in the life of a still new runner. I know I should add yoga into my routine, but it's another cost on top of the Y and bootcamp and running shoes....ugh.

things to do in the belly of the whale

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.

Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

- Dan Albergotti

Image: source.

Love Poem With Toast

Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.

The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something,
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,
the truth from getting out.

With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cancer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,

as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.

- Miller Williams

What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

Call your representatitves and let them know you support the DREAM Act! This site makes it easy - you enter in your phone number, and they call you back and leave a message - when you listen to the message, you are immediately connected with your representatives office. It couldn't be any easier!

"Seventh grade student at Oregon Islamic Academy wins Washington County human rights poster contest"

Image: source.

From NYTimes Lens: In a Common Scene, a 'Queer Subject': Molly Landreth captures the parallel lives led by gay and transgendered Americans. And Sam Dolnick explains how and why she does."

Enjoying Amy Winehouse's "Help Yourself"

Went for a run this morning, fingers crossed the whole time that my knees, which were nearly pain free, would hold up. At my moms suggestions, I rubbed my legs with Tiger Balm before getting dressed and then bundled up. They were definitely aching after about 3 miles, I will admit, but not unbearably so. I went slowly, avoided going downhills, walked a little, and managed to kick out 7 miles. It felt great to be back out there, running in the morning. I'm headed to the pool this evening to try to continue strengthening my legs (and lungs) without the impact...

“Someday you’ll find the right person, Mari, and you’ll learn to have a lot more confidence in yourself. That’s what I think. So don’t settle for anything less. In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It’s important to combine the two in just the right amount.” - After Dark by Haruki Murakami

Irate before 9am

Today on my way to work I heard NPS's report on "Smithsonian Under Fire For Gay Portraiture Exhibit." I was excited about the exhibit, Hide/Seek, when I heard about it a few months ago, and I guess I should've expected the controversy. The censorship, the caving by museum officials, and the homophobia - well, I guess I'm just used to that by now, so that only got my blood to sub-boiling levels. But then Cantor really got on a roll, and I almost swerved off the road I was so angry. This blogger sums it up well:

"As I usually do, I was listening to National Public Radio as I got ready for work this morning. It may surprise you to know that a working class person like myself listens to NPR, but not as much as it surprised me to hear you saying that Congress should withdraw funding from The Smithsonian, because it’s only enjoyed by the elites. The working class, you went on to say, enjoys professional wrestling, but we don’t provide federal funding for the WWE.

This is one of the most ignorant and offensive things I’ve heard on the news in a long time, and that’s saying something.

Here’s a news flash for you: not all working class people enjoy professional wrestling, or NASCAR, or even college sports. A whole lot of working class people enjoy the arts and count on federal funding to provide us access to them."

Wow, censorship, bigotry, homophobia, classism, and a continuation of the cult of ignorance this country has been alternately worshipping and fighting since Bush took office? And all before 9am.

Image: Susan Sontag, by Peter Hujar.

Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way.
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles --
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.

— Gary Snyder

Image: source.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

I just finished reading Murakami's "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running," and enjoyed it. I can't really imagine someone getting anything out of it if they aren't a long distance runner (and/or a novelist/writer), but as a newly obsessed runner, I thought it was good (maybe not great, but good). I especially enjoyed it because of all his running in Boston and Cambridge - I'm a lot more homesick for my New England home of 4 years than I expected! (Murakami on the Charles: "The river I'm talking about is the Charles River. People enjoy being around the river. Some take leisurely walks, walk their dogs, or bicycle or job, while others enjoy rollerblading . . . As if pulled in my a magnet, people gather on the banks of the river.") Here are some of my favorite tidbits from the book:

‎

"Here it is: Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you're running and you start to think, Man this hurts, I can't take it anymore. The hurt part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand any more is up to the runner himself. This pretty much sums up the most important aspect of...running."

"I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void . . . The thoughts that occur to me while I'm running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of different sizes. They come and go, while the sky remains the same sky as always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky. The sky both exists and doesn't exist. It has substance and at the same time doesn't. And we merely accept that vast expense and drink it in."

"I'm struck by how, except when you're young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don't get that sort of system set up by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance."

"I think certain types of processes don't allow for any variation. If you have to be part of that process, all you can do is transform - or perhaps distort - yourself through that persistent repetition, and make that process part of your own personality."

"Most runner run now because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you're going to while away the years, it's far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: thats the essence of running, and a metaphor for life."

I can't wait to get back to running in....48 more hours! My knee is feeling a lot better after 24 hours of complete rest, and I'm going to hit up the pool today and see how that goes.

Happy Birthday, Woody

"There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, 'Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.' The other one says, 'Yeah, I know; and such small portions.' Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly. The... the other important joke, for me, is one that's usually attributed to Groucho Marx; but, I think it appears originally in Freud's 'Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious,' and it goes like this - I'm paraphrasing - um, "I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member." That's the key joke of my adult life, in terms of my relationships with women."

This "culture diary" from the Paris Review is oddly engrossing (to me, at least).

Swoon. Tear. I Hope This Gets To You: A Viral Love Letter.

I don't really care about Art Garfunkel, per se, but I like the idea (god knows I love lists. Actually, everybody knows that.): Every Book That Art Garfunkel Has Ever Read. via Neatorama.

Image: source.

The Museum of Broken Relationships: "If you're suffering from a broken heart, never fear, a museum with memorabilia is here! The Museum of Broken Relationships is a bizarre tourist attraction where visitors come to look at items donated by people with broken hearts. Olinka Vistina and Drazen Grubisic, two Croatian artists who broke up in 2006, decided to open The Museum of Broken Relationships when they realized how hard it was to give up items symbolizing lost love. This way, they could keep the items together, and before they knew it, the two artists started receiving all kinds of things from distraught singles."

Running update: after not even being able to complete 4 miles yesterday morning because my knee was hurting so badly, combined with the indignity of walking straight-legged down the stairs at work all day, I headed to the running store to ask the pros for advice. The consensus was the accurately named "runners knee," pain in the tendon that runs over the top of my knee cap. They said it wasn't uncommon and that I had been upping my milage pretty quickly. They also reassured me that this doesn't mean I can't run (my fear) and that it wasn't the start of chronic knee problems (my other fear). The prescribed course of action: icing, advil, stretching, and three days off from running and bootcamp. Once I'm back up, I'm to keep up with the stretching, work on strengthening my quads, and see how it goes. Friends have also suggested shoe inserts, and I'm going to bring my shoes into the running store and have them checked out. Sigh. A bump in the road but I guess that's to be expected. For the next few days it will be pool only for me. Maybe some biking.

Being the Stream

Meditation is not just a rest or retreat from the turmoil of the stream or the impurity of the world. It is a way of being the stream, so that one can be at home in both the white water and the eddies. Meditation may take one out of the world, but it also puts one totally into it.

- Gary Snyder, from “Just One Breath,” Tricycle, Summer 1995

Image: source.