Tuesday, September 02, 2014
fight the power, fight capitalism
This article about the brilliant Naomi Klein's latest book is well worth a read.
this_changes_everything_naomi_klein_lessons
this_changes_everything_naomi_klein_lessons
Monday, September 01, 2014
I am a delicate, hot house flower
Seriously, I really am. I am sweet, kind, empathic, compassionate and loving. Trust that I am these things and that is who you see. Project fear and distrust onto me and that will be what you see but the negative arises from within you.
I am a delicate, sweet, beautiful, hot house flower. I am loving, lovable and adorable. And brilliant.
I am a delicate, sweet, beautiful, hot house flower. I am loving, lovable and adorable. And brilliant.
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Nymphomaniac Vol. 1 by Lars von Trier: on Netflix
Nympho V. One by Lars Von Trier mostly bored me but for folks following his career, it's on Netflix. It seems a little surprising to me that it is showing on Netflix. It is so misogynistic and so debasing. Then again, I understand porn is a big deal on the web. I've never seen any porn and certainly never googled it. Nympho is not quite porn. It's art, right?!! Sure it is.
I particularly dislike the actress who plays the lead in Nympho and in several other von Trier films. I don't think she can act. Whatever she does, let's call it acting, she bores me. I don't care about her characters, what they feel. I do wince at some of the degradations (fictional) the characters endure but that is not the same thing as considering the acting of a woman being degrades decent acting.
What's her name? Charlotte Gainsborough maybe? She always seems to speak with no affect whatsoever. Shes all monotone, no facial expressions.
B-O-R-I-N-G.
But if you are interested in Von Trier's work and I was interested enough to see it in a movie theater as soon as I could, it's now on Netflix. Check it out.
Different tastes for different humans.
I particularly dislike the actress who plays the lead in Nympho and in several other von Trier films. I don't think she can act. Whatever she does, let's call it acting, she bores me. I don't care about her characters, what they feel. I do wince at some of the degradations (fictional) the characters endure but that is not the same thing as considering the acting of a woman being degrades decent acting.
What's her name? Charlotte Gainsborough maybe? She always seems to speak with no affect whatsoever. Shes all monotone, no facial expressions.
B-O-R-I-N-G.
But if you are interested in Von Trier's work and I was interested enough to see it in a movie theater as soon as I could, it's now on Netflix. Check it out.
Different tastes for different humans.
very short story related to Italy
A former acquaintance's ancestors are from Italy. I think some of his grandparents were born in Italy. Maybe his parents. I never got to know him well enough to learn if his parents were born in Italy.
When I first knew him, he often talked with great pride about his Italian past. He especially loved his grandmother, although as I write that I realize I don't know which grandmother, maternal or paternal. They are both gone.
One of his grandparents, and perhaps one of his parents, used to live in and own an old house in Lucca, Italy. He has visited the home, which his relatives sold when they emigrated, I guess. I know his family no longer owns it.
He told me a charming story about this house. The top step to get to the front door was so worn that it had a permanent dip. That's an old stone step! It was enough of a hollow spot on the stairs that his grandmother, or great grandmother, or some relative, would pour milk in the stair hollow spot for the cat.
I love that image, stairs old and worn down then using the wear practically to make milk available to a cat or two.
I want to own a house with a stair like that.
Such a house seems, at least to me, like it would be a lovely setting for love, maybe magic and princes and princesses going to balls in horse-drawn carriages in exquisitely beautiful clothes. Starry nights. Warm breezes. Water views. Of a Stega, a witch, casting love potions and spells. I could most def visualize Cinderella pouring milk in the top step, milk for the cat. I have no image in my mind of the house, which was likely not a castle if an ordinary family lived in it. I have an image of stairs, stone, flowers, and beautiful views. In the movies, Cindrella always leaves from the ground level. In my imagination, make her Italian and have her descend an old stone staircase under the stars.
I have no idea if Lucca has water views, never having been. My mom spent a couple summers in Lucca. Mom went to paint all summer. She did some beautiful paintings. One was a self portrait she called cappuchino. She is in a blue robe, her ubiquitous ciggie in her hand. You see the smoke drifting up from her hand, steam rising from the cappuchino. And her face looks just like her. My mom was beautiful, even as she aged. As a young woman, she was smoking hot beautiful. As is my sister, daughter and niece. How come I got the ordinary looks?!!
I guess I have a smoking hot beautiful heart. I do, you know.
When I first knew him, he often talked with great pride about his Italian past. He especially loved his grandmother, although as I write that I realize I don't know which grandmother, maternal or paternal. They are both gone.
One of his grandparents, and perhaps one of his parents, used to live in and own an old house in Lucca, Italy. He has visited the home, which his relatives sold when they emigrated, I guess. I know his family no longer owns it.
He told me a charming story about this house. The top step to get to the front door was so worn that it had a permanent dip. That's an old stone step! It was enough of a hollow spot on the stairs that his grandmother, or great grandmother, or some relative, would pour milk in the stair hollow spot for the cat.
I love that image, stairs old and worn down then using the wear practically to make milk available to a cat or two.
I want to own a house with a stair like that.
Such a house seems, at least to me, like it would be a lovely setting for love, maybe magic and princes and princesses going to balls in horse-drawn carriages in exquisitely beautiful clothes. Starry nights. Warm breezes. Water views. Of a Stega, a witch, casting love potions and spells. I could most def visualize Cinderella pouring milk in the top step, milk for the cat. I have no image in my mind of the house, which was likely not a castle if an ordinary family lived in it. I have an image of stairs, stone, flowers, and beautiful views. In the movies, Cindrella always leaves from the ground level. In my imagination, make her Italian and have her descend an old stone staircase under the stars.
I have no idea if Lucca has water views, never having been. My mom spent a couple summers in Lucca. Mom went to paint all summer. She did some beautiful paintings. One was a self portrait she called cappuchino. She is in a blue robe, her ubiquitous ciggie in her hand. You see the smoke drifting up from her hand, steam rising from the cappuchino. And her face looks just like her. My mom was beautiful, even as she aged. As a young woman, she was smoking hot beautiful. As is my sister, daughter and niece. How come I got the ordinary looks?!!
I guess I have a smoking hot beautiful heart. I do, you know.
Saturday, August 30, 2014
the bell of being© training
I am preparing to launch a new training business. This will be training in personal, inner development, intensive experiential training. The goal will be to develop our capacity to become more aware of our interconnectedness to all beings, nature and the cosmos and to develop our capacity to listen together: to listen within the bell of collective being.
Whispers, echoes, feelings, knowing . . . when aligned with collective energy, within the bell of collective being, one hears a whole new way of being.
Whispers, echoes, feelings, knowing . . . when aligned with collective energy, within the bell of collective being, one hears a whole new way of being.
Friday, August 29, 2014
anxiety can kill love. . . more from Anais Nin. . . .
"Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It creates the failures. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangel you with his panic.
Anais Nin, from one of her many, lifelong diaries, February 1947
my hair is being pulled by the stars. . . .Anais Nin
When I discovered Anais Nin in college, I special ordered all her books from Conkey's, the bookstore that supplied all books for our classes but also was a regular book store.
Gosh, in those days, paperbacks cost thirty five cents. And I guess it is true that college kids, at least in those days (early seventies) had spending money. I thought nothing of ordering books that were not for courses, just for recreational reading.
I inhaled all of Nin's work and all the work of many authors. I would discover an author and just buy everything available that was written by them. Nowadays, I get restless reading a bunch of books by the same writer all at once. I like to change up writers, one book to the next. Young and obsessed with literature, I loved reading a writer's entire oeuvre.
Of course, in those days, I could do all my college homework and still inhale entire novels in a day.
A guy I dated often criticized my speed reading. He said I could not possibly have understood The Brothers Karamazov because I had read it too fast. We were in the same course and I read that one for a class. Yet when I questioned him about that novel, he did not know nearly as much about it as me. If I read something, I usually remember it forever.
I have all that legal reading I did to become a lawyer seared in my brain, still accessible. It amazes me how much I remember.
Anais Nin. I should get some of her books out of the library and revisit her. She often wrote very sensually and sometimes actually wrote erotica. Some patron paid her by the word for pornographic erotica, she needed the money. Even when paid by the word, Nin wrote gorgeous works.
Thursday, August 28, 2014
tweakers ally in the SF Chron building
Yesterday I went to a wine reception at the San Francisco Impact Hub. I have wanted to join a HUB for some time but felt I could not spend the money. Now that I am launching a new business, I need to be interacting with other social artists and small business entrepreneurs. I need to be in a collaborative environment.
There is a Hub in the office building next to the building I live in. I can see the Berkeley HUB from my apartment, across the courtyard. The Berkeley HUB will be my home HUB but membership in the Berkeley HUB buys me access to the SF HUB. So I wanted to check out the SF HUB.
Yesterday an organization that just took some office space in the SF HUB held a wine reception, open to anyone. I thought it was a good chance to check out SF HUB.
To enter the SF HUB without membership, one has to be screened by the Chronicle security guard and given a visitor badge.
When I arrived at the security desk, an understandably excited young man was describing an experience he had just had. In some place in the Chron building, or maybe just outside it -- I don't know the building well enough to know there 'tweakers' alley' might be, whether it is literally in the alley. The understandable tense young man kept repeating his story, the guard kept asking him the same questions.
And the guard kept me and another woman waiting a really long time. Clearly the guard could not resolve the young man's problem. Actually the young man had solved his own problem. Some high, likely-drug-addicted young man had asked to borrow his cell. The guy at the security desk, the crime victim, said "I am too naive, I guess, I just handed him my phone. I will never give a strange my phone to use, no matter excuse they give for asking to use my phone, I'll dial for them."
The 'high' phone thief just kept the phone, with the victim amiably walking along, initially believing the thief would use his phone and return it. When it became obvious the thief was not going to return his phone, the young Chronicle intern explained to the thief how important his phone was to him and how he really needed to get his phone back. The thief said "I'll give you the phone if you give me $100". The kid said "I am an unpaid intern, I don't have $100." The thief suggested they go to a bank machine and extract $100. The kid said "how about $20? I think I have $20 in my bank account."
Once the intern had gone to the bank machine with his cell phone thief, the thief took the money but continued to resist giving up the phone. The unpaid intern kept begging for his phone, explaining his need to keep it, his inability to finance a replacement and swearing that tapping him for $20 was a bite for the unpaid intern to absorb. The thief was obviously high but he must have been, somewhere within, aware he was behaving badly. He was coy with his victim, taking his twenty and initially refusing to yield the phone. Finally he gave the guy back his phone and even said "I won't keep your twenty" but he did.
I listened to the understandably adrenaline filled young man tell this story three or four times, with the security guard clearly incapable of doing anything constructive, like pick up the phone and call the police or take down the victim's contact info so if the Chron security staff wanted to talk to him about the incident, like maybe if they saw the incident on security tapes and could ID the thief.
Finally I said "i will take a few secons to check us in, could you check us in and then keep listening to this crime victim?"
This irritated the security guard so he pointedly took care of the other woman, who had arrived longer after me, before me. While he tended to her, I advised the kid not to file a police report, which he had already said he didn't want to do. Oh, I think it optimal to pursue such street crime but I know that security cameras are deceptive. They do not provide much security. Unless someone happens to see the video recorded and happens to be able to identify the thief, the odds of catching that petty thief are extremely remote, while the time consumed by the victim wasting time could be enormous.
After I shared my thoughts, the security guard let me in. I don't know what happened with that unpaid intern's report. That security guard seemed totally clueless as to what to do about it.
I have read many complaints of the aggressive rudeness of the Chronicle's security guards. Apparently the guards are rude to folks who come to the security desk and provide ID but they are not, evidently, trained to deal with actual security breaches like cell phone theft by an alleged tweaker.
Tweakers Ally in the SF Chronicle building or ally. Who would have thunk it?
Note, there is no security presence in the huge ally, where newspaper delivery trucks of old must have picked up paper newspaper for distribution around the bay. Sometimes it is now filled with food trucks. One truck that sometimes shows up there sells awesome fallafel. Expensively priced but it is downtown SF. And not even organic. I pay seventy five cents apiece for organic fallafel in Berkeley. Non-organic fallafel can be boght for 40 cents apiece in Berkeley. And nonorganic fallafel in Tweakers Ally is ninety five cents. Still, every time I pass that big covered 'ally', delivery area, for the SF Chron building, I check to see if the fallafel truck is there. Fallafel is gluten free and tahini is dairy free: good I can eat, healthy, delicious. Add a green salad and I have a perfect antiinflammatory, nutritious and weight-loss condusive meal: yum.
There is a Hub in the office building next to the building I live in. I can see the Berkeley HUB from my apartment, across the courtyard. The Berkeley HUB will be my home HUB but membership in the Berkeley HUB buys me access to the SF HUB. So I wanted to check out the SF HUB.
Yesterday an organization that just took some office space in the SF HUB held a wine reception, open to anyone. I thought it was a good chance to check out SF HUB.
To enter the SF HUB without membership, one has to be screened by the Chronicle security guard and given a visitor badge.
When I arrived at the security desk, an understandably excited young man was describing an experience he had just had. In some place in the Chron building, or maybe just outside it -- I don't know the building well enough to know there 'tweakers' alley' might be, whether it is literally in the alley. The understandable tense young man kept repeating his story, the guard kept asking him the same questions.
And the guard kept me and another woman waiting a really long time. Clearly the guard could not resolve the young man's problem. Actually the young man had solved his own problem. Some high, likely-drug-addicted young man had asked to borrow his cell. The guy at the security desk, the crime victim, said "I am too naive, I guess, I just handed him my phone. I will never give a strange my phone to use, no matter excuse they give for asking to use my phone, I'll dial for them."
The 'high' phone thief just kept the phone, with the victim amiably walking along, initially believing the thief would use his phone and return it. When it became obvious the thief was not going to return his phone, the young Chronicle intern explained to the thief how important his phone was to him and how he really needed to get his phone back. The thief said "I'll give you the phone if you give me $100". The kid said "I am an unpaid intern, I don't have $100." The thief suggested they go to a bank machine and extract $100. The kid said "how about $20? I think I have $20 in my bank account."
Once the intern had gone to the bank machine with his cell phone thief, the thief took the money but continued to resist giving up the phone. The unpaid intern kept begging for his phone, explaining his need to keep it, his inability to finance a replacement and swearing that tapping him for $20 was a bite for the unpaid intern to absorb. The thief was obviously high but he must have been, somewhere within, aware he was behaving badly. He was coy with his victim, taking his twenty and initially refusing to yield the phone. Finally he gave the guy back his phone and even said "I won't keep your twenty" but he did.
I listened to the understandably adrenaline filled young man tell this story three or four times, with the security guard clearly incapable of doing anything constructive, like pick up the phone and call the police or take down the victim's contact info so if the Chron security staff wanted to talk to him about the incident, like maybe if they saw the incident on security tapes and could ID the thief.
Finally I said "i will take a few secons to check us in, could you check us in and then keep listening to this crime victim?"
This irritated the security guard so he pointedly took care of the other woman, who had arrived longer after me, before me. While he tended to her, I advised the kid not to file a police report, which he had already said he didn't want to do. Oh, I think it optimal to pursue such street crime but I know that security cameras are deceptive. They do not provide much security. Unless someone happens to see the video recorded and happens to be able to identify the thief, the odds of catching that petty thief are extremely remote, while the time consumed by the victim wasting time could be enormous.
After I shared my thoughts, the security guard let me in. I don't know what happened with that unpaid intern's report. That security guard seemed totally clueless as to what to do about it.
I have read many complaints of the aggressive rudeness of the Chronicle's security guards. Apparently the guards are rude to folks who come to the security desk and provide ID but they are not, evidently, trained to deal with actual security breaches like cell phone theft by an alleged tweaker.
Tweakers Ally in the SF Chronicle building or ally. Who would have thunk it?
Note, there is no security presence in the huge ally, where newspaper delivery trucks of old must have picked up paper newspaper for distribution around the bay. Sometimes it is now filled with food trucks. One truck that sometimes shows up there sells awesome fallafel. Expensively priced but it is downtown SF. And not even organic. I pay seventy five cents apiece for organic fallafel in Berkeley. Non-organic fallafel can be boght for 40 cents apiece in Berkeley. And nonorganic fallafel in Tweakers Ally is ninety five cents. Still, every time I pass that big covered 'ally', delivery area, for the SF Chron building, I check to see if the fallafel truck is there. Fallafel is gluten free and tahini is dairy free: good I can eat, healthy, delicious. Add a green salad and I have a perfect antiinflammatory, nutritious and weight-loss condusive meal: yum.
developing one's will capacity
It is important for humans to develop their inner will capacity. We've all heard admonitions to exercise willpower when faced with certain challenges, such as weight loss or an exercise goal. Will capacity applies to everything.
Meditation and committing to a regular practice is one way to develop one's will capacity.
Exercise is almost entire an exercise in strengthening one's will. It not only takes a willful choice to get out and run seven or eight miles daily, or swim a mile daily or workout on an elliptical for however much time one wishes, you exercise with your limbs.
It is in our limbs that we exercise all our will. Our legs take us into the future, be that future the other side of the pool or a lap around a running track. Our arms make and create, again our limbs exercising our will.
Any regular practice, done with committed discipline will develop our will capacity. And we all need to have strong wills to create the life we are destined to have, to be happy, to be loved, if to be loved is what we desire. All humans, I believe, wish to be loved. So get out there and grow your will force.
I meditate daily and have since 2002 when I sat my first ten-day Vipassana course. I exercise daily and have most of my adult life, with a few gaps when I didn't exercise. After my daughter cut me out of her life, I didn't really do anything for a few years. Slowly, excrutiatingly, I healed. As soon as I began to recover, zip, I was back in the pool. I have swum laps most days since I was in college. A lifelong habit.
In recent weeks, I have been walking several miles a day, pushing myself to get up to ten miles a day. I'm almost there. Walking is much harder for me than swimming. Swimming is pain-free. Walking brings out all my arthritic creaks and joint pain. I will, I suspect, eventually resume swimming daily as my primary exercise practice. Walking six to ten miles daily, however, has rapidly accelerated my weight loss. I have an iron will when it comes to losing weight, to getting down to my high school weight.
As I told a group of new lawyer friends a week or so ago, one of my weight loss goals is to buy a pair of jeans that would have fit me in high school.
It takes a strong will to push myself to walk as much as I have been. Every step hurts me. I am not exaggerating. Occasionally, I am in so much pain my eyes sting with tears and I consider catching a bus home. I push on.
In such moments, when I am experience much pain and I push on with my walking goal for the day, I usually tell myself "you are growing your will force, you don't know where this power will take you but you know you need to grow your will to get where you are supposed to go."
This might sound like nothing to some. Developing one's will capacity is serious business, a central focus in Anthroposophical meditative life.
I am grateful to have the depth of knowledge of Steiner's work that I have. Recently I hear myself sharing Steiner's ideas more and more. I am sometimes surprised by how much of his thinking I retain. I forget that one of my will capacities is an unusually detailed memory.
I don't think I could walk at all if I had continued to eat dairy. I have tested what I can eat without inflaming my knees. And I slip and eat a little dairy here and there. I see immediate results in my knees. When I eat dairy, my knees scream when I walk. Then I get clean, avoid all dairy and in just a couple days, my knees don't hurt as I walk. My hips, they always hurt.
I used to have a friend who refused to come to my apartment, would only see me in coffeeshops. And when we met in those coffeeshops, he usually rejected my stated preference to score the easy chairs. I must have told him a couple dozen times that sitting in hard wooden chairs hurts but he must have forgotten. In a weakning of my will force, I would accommodate his preference for wooden chairs and do my best to hide my pain. I should have exercised my will and taken care of myself, insisting on only visiting with this 'friend' when I could sit in soft chairs.
I have some shame around this pain, as if it is my fault my hips hurt most of the time. Maybe it is. I should not have gotten fat, although I am not fat now. I am not longer eligible for weight loss surgery for I have lost so much weight!
Rambling. Tired. Losing focus as I ramble, eh?
Meditation and committing to a regular practice is one way to develop one's will capacity.
Exercise is almost entire an exercise in strengthening one's will. It not only takes a willful choice to get out and run seven or eight miles daily, or swim a mile daily or workout on an elliptical for however much time one wishes, you exercise with your limbs.
It is in our limbs that we exercise all our will. Our legs take us into the future, be that future the other side of the pool or a lap around a running track. Our arms make and create, again our limbs exercising our will.
Any regular practice, done with committed discipline will develop our will capacity. And we all need to have strong wills to create the life we are destined to have, to be happy, to be loved, if to be loved is what we desire. All humans, I believe, wish to be loved. So get out there and grow your will force.
I meditate daily and have since 2002 when I sat my first ten-day Vipassana course. I exercise daily and have most of my adult life, with a few gaps when I didn't exercise. After my daughter cut me out of her life, I didn't really do anything for a few years. Slowly, excrutiatingly, I healed. As soon as I began to recover, zip, I was back in the pool. I have swum laps most days since I was in college. A lifelong habit.
In recent weeks, I have been walking several miles a day, pushing myself to get up to ten miles a day. I'm almost there. Walking is much harder for me than swimming. Swimming is pain-free. Walking brings out all my arthritic creaks and joint pain. I will, I suspect, eventually resume swimming daily as my primary exercise practice. Walking six to ten miles daily, however, has rapidly accelerated my weight loss. I have an iron will when it comes to losing weight, to getting down to my high school weight.
As I told a group of new lawyer friends a week or so ago, one of my weight loss goals is to buy a pair of jeans that would have fit me in high school.
It takes a strong will to push myself to walk as much as I have been. Every step hurts me. I am not exaggerating. Occasionally, I am in so much pain my eyes sting with tears and I consider catching a bus home. I push on.
In such moments, when I am experience much pain and I push on with my walking goal for the day, I usually tell myself "you are growing your will force, you don't know where this power will take you but you know you need to grow your will to get where you are supposed to go."
This might sound like nothing to some. Developing one's will capacity is serious business, a central focus in Anthroposophical meditative life.
I am grateful to have the depth of knowledge of Steiner's work that I have. Recently I hear myself sharing Steiner's ideas more and more. I am sometimes surprised by how much of his thinking I retain. I forget that one of my will capacities is an unusually detailed memory.
I don't think I could walk at all if I had continued to eat dairy. I have tested what I can eat without inflaming my knees. And I slip and eat a little dairy here and there. I see immediate results in my knees. When I eat dairy, my knees scream when I walk. Then I get clean, avoid all dairy and in just a couple days, my knees don't hurt as I walk. My hips, they always hurt.
I used to have a friend who refused to come to my apartment, would only see me in coffeeshops. And when we met in those coffeeshops, he usually rejected my stated preference to score the easy chairs. I must have told him a couple dozen times that sitting in hard wooden chairs hurts but he must have forgotten. In a weakning of my will force, I would accommodate his preference for wooden chairs and do my best to hide my pain. I should have exercised my will and taken care of myself, insisting on only visiting with this 'friend' when I could sit in soft chairs.
I have some shame around this pain, as if it is my fault my hips hurt most of the time. Maybe it is. I should not have gotten fat, although I am not fat now. I am not longer eligible for weight loss surgery for I have lost so much weight!
Rambling. Tired. Losing focus as I ramble, eh?
Wednesday, August 27, 2014
I've lost people, then found them again
I've lost people and found them again. The second time around, things just made more sense. Honestly, timing has a lot to do with everything. Sometimes you just aren't ready for each other yet.
I am building my will and trust muscle (same thing). I need to practice radical trust.
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
anger, deep compassion for another: David Whyte
ANGER
at its heart, is the deepest form of compassion, for another, for the world, for the self, for a life, for the body, for a family and for all our ideals, all vulnerable and all, possibly about to be hurt. Stripped of physical imprisonment and violent reaction, anger is the purest form of care, the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for. What we usually call anger is only what is left of its essence when it reaches the lost surface of our mind or our body’s incapacity to hold it, or the limits of our understanding. What we name as anger is actually only the incoherent physical incapacity to sustain this deep form of care in our outer daily life; the unwillingness to be large enough and generous enough to hold what we love helplessly in our bodies or our mind with the clarity and breadth of our whole being.
What we have named as anger on the surface is the violent outer response to our own inner powerlessness, a powerlessness connected to such a profound sense of rawness and care that it can find no proper outer body or identity or voice, or way of life to hold it. What we call anger is often simply the unwillingness to live the full measure of our fears or of our not knowing, in the face of our love for a wife, in the depth of our caring for a son, in our wanting the best, in the face of simply being alive and loving those with whom we live.
Our anger breaks to the surface most often through our feeling there is something profoundly wrong with this powerlessness and vulnerability; anger too often finds its voice strangely, through our incoherence and through our inability to speak, but anger in its pure state is the measure of the way we are implicated in the world and made vulnerable through love in all its specifics: a daughter, a house, a family, an enterprise, a land or a colleague. Anger turns to violence and violent speech when the mind refuses to countenance the vulnerability of the body in its love for all these outer things - we are often abused or have been abused by those who love us but have no vehicle to carry its understanding, who have no outer emblems of their inner care or even their own wanting to be wanted. Lacking any outer vehicle for the expression of this inner rawness they are simply overwhelmed by the elemental nature of love’s vulnerability. In their helplessness they turn their violence on the very people who are the outer representation of this inner lack of control.
But anger truly felt at its center is the essential living flame of being fully alive and fully here, it is a quality to be followed to its source, to be prized, to be tended, and an invitation to finding a way to bring that source fully into the world through making the mind clearer and more generous, the heart more compassionate and the body larger and strong enough to hold it. What we call anger on the surface only serves to define its true underlying quality by being a complete and absolute mirror-opposite of its true internal essence.
©2014 David Whyte
Excerpted from ‘ANGER’ From the upcoming book of essays CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning in Everyday Words
Photo © David Whyte
Persian Ceramic
Detail : From Yusef and Zuleika
Asmolean Museum, Oxford. July 2014
the fault is in the blamer: Rumi
"the fault is in the blamer. Spirit sees nothing to criticize." - Rumi
feeling Irish, or Gaelic, today? I am .
I have felt a deep bond with the land, air and water. I have felt the Earth rocking in its orbit, whorling through space. I have felt the air as it moves through trees, shrubs, meadows and gardens. I have hear many creatures making their many subtle and unsubtle sounds. I have felt the Earth sing, tis true, but it sings in alignment with my being. I feel my bond to the all of everything in such moments.
overheard on bus: made me laugh
A young African American woman sat next to me on the Transbay bus from SF to Berkeley. Note: I have increasingly taken the bus over the Bay Bridge instead of the subway under the bay. Not having a car, if I always take BART, I get few views of the spectacular setting in which I live. On the bridge, I behold so much beauty.
This young woman talked on her cell the whole way. I did not listen to her. I was reading a book. I just overheard one snippet. She said "I am now so Berkeley!" and she laughed. Then she said, "Gosh, I'm even gluten free."
I have been going to many parties, occasions to socialize with new acquaintances. Eating at a restaurant one day last week, I reviewed the menu and noted that the only thing I could eat was the side of spinach and even then I had to ask them to not give me the dairy sauce."Not even on the side?" the waiter asked. Nope, not even on the side.
I turned to the people I was dining with and tried to be a little self-effacing or something. I said "I must sound like I am too fussy." But this guy sitting across from me, another lawyer, said "You are speaking my language. My life has a million diet restrictions. No gluten for her, no dairy, no sugar and she can't do nuts so no almond milk." Then he and I said together "Coconut milk."
In the past week, no exaggeration, I have been a part of, or overheard, endless conversations about people making the most careful eating choices they can.
Why does anyone eat crap like Doritos, cheap pizza -- especially frozen, Triscuits?
Sometimes I see someone, often a young male adult who seems hungry, stuffing his face as fast as he can with some crappy food-like substance like Doritos and I want to say "You need real food. I can see you are hungry. The stuff you are eating will not really feed you. Eat some real food." I don't say such things, not even to people I know a bit. It's not for me to tell another how to eat.
I do love finding myself at gatherings where the food is vegan or vegetarian. I love gluten-free parties.
Hearing that young black woman say "I am so Berkeley I am gluten free" gave me a happy lift.
This young woman talked on her cell the whole way. I did not listen to her. I was reading a book. I just overheard one snippet. She said "I am now so Berkeley!" and she laughed. Then she said, "Gosh, I'm even gluten free."
I have been going to many parties, occasions to socialize with new acquaintances. Eating at a restaurant one day last week, I reviewed the menu and noted that the only thing I could eat was the side of spinach and even then I had to ask them to not give me the dairy sauce."Not even on the side?" the waiter asked. Nope, not even on the side.
I turned to the people I was dining with and tried to be a little self-effacing or something. I said "I must sound like I am too fussy." But this guy sitting across from me, another lawyer, said "You are speaking my language. My life has a million diet restrictions. No gluten for her, no dairy, no sugar and she can't do nuts so no almond milk." Then he and I said together "Coconut milk."
In the past week, no exaggeration, I have been a part of, or overheard, endless conversations about people making the most careful eating choices they can.
Why does anyone eat crap like Doritos, cheap pizza -- especially frozen, Triscuits?
Sometimes I see someone, often a young male adult who seems hungry, stuffing his face as fast as he can with some crappy food-like substance like Doritos and I want to say "You need real food. I can see you are hungry. The stuff you are eating will not really feed you. Eat some real food." I don't say such things, not even to people I know a bit. It's not for me to tell another how to eat.
I do love finding myself at gatherings where the food is vegan or vegetarian. I love gluten-free parties.
Hearing that young black woman say "I am so Berkeley I am gluten free" gave me a happy lift.
