2008

Let your love flow outward through the universe, to its height, its depth, its broad extent, a limitless love, without hatred or enmity. Then, as you stand or walk, sit or lie down, as long as you are awake, strive for this with a one-pointed mind: your life will bring heaven to earth. Sutta Nipata

Monet Sunrise 1872

The Best of 2007

Worth your attention in 2008!

1) Lush Rehab Shampoo

2) Lush Jasmine & Henna Fluff Ease

3) Tom Ford Private Blend Noir de Noir

4) Green Cream

5) Skin MD Natural™ Shielding Lotion

6) EcoDent Ultimate Daily Oral Rinse

7) Stila Kajal

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The Makeup Girl

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My Life,My Words,My Mind

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Product Girl

Shop Diary

Slap of the Day

Steeping Beauty

The Beauty Alchemist

The Daily Obsession

The Life Of A Ladybug

The Non-Blonde

Urbane Girl

Victoria's Own

We Love Beauty

The World Is Tired Right Now

The world is tired right now.

Before I left the office yesterday, I looked down from the 8th floor and saw the Christmas carousel, now still.

Promenade trees, still wrapped in red and white lights, could be seen through the gray mist, but no children shrieked and laughed, no families celebrated.

The time for celebration of light and life in the midst of dark is over.

Now we wait.

It's that time when the old year is preparing to die ... and the new year not quite born.

We spend some time counting our sins, sins that we -- singularly and as a community -- committed this past year. War, cruelty, greed -- the world is too much with us.

And now we wait.

For a new beginning, a tabula rasa, an opportunity to do something different, something right.

Now we wait.

film still from the 2006 Russian Stalker

Benazir Bhutto

June 21, 1953 – December 27, 2007

Christmas Cakewalk

A favorite Christmas gift: the D&L Company's Modern Alchemy Cakewalk candle, with its perfect winter-warmth scents of vanilla, chicory, cotton leaves. (Many thanks to NowSmellThis columnist Kevin for his review.)

My Favorite Part

We are coming upon the holidays.

When those who are fortunate feel family and friends contracting around them to that tight core of silence, light, calm and peace.

I am very fortunate.

Happy Holidays to all.

and I just received what I know will be one of my favorite gifts this year, a CD of The Meditations of Diogenes the Cynic, featuring the Nearly Ready for PrimeTime Waking Ambrose Players. Doug, thank you for pulling us together with your inimitable mix of philosophy, humor and curmudgeonism ... now, entering its third year. Merry Christmas, D!

Half In Jest, Fully In Earnest

Santa, please add these to my list. All of them.

Scotches offered at the Scotch Malt Whiskey Society, Edinburgh

Santa? A Word.

Steve Madden suede boots. Tianna. In black suede and gray suede.

Autocide

Luke 17:33 "Whoever seeks to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.*

Autocide. Not the killing of your Volkswagen.

The purposeful changing of self to the extreme extent that you are, for all intents, not the person you were before.

Can therapy -- or analysis -- achieve that? Do you think it is possible for a human to undertake such a deep understanding and reworking of the self?

This must sound insane to those who doubt the validity of psychiatry, specifically talk therapy or analysis.

Do we have the ability to, of our own volition, remake the self?

I don't think so. Not of volition.

But I believe the trauma of change, whether externally- or internally-provoked, can be the abrasion that sands a soul smooth. And that reaction to, and impact of, daily life then causes a new entity, like callus, to form over that naked surface of being.

As I write this, it sounds crazy and glib. But this process is death-dealing, on more than one level.

To lose your self is a grieving, painful, painful process. And the rebuilding is a hesitant, chancy endeavor that means living in fear a great deal of the time. Fear of more loss, fear of not regaining any semblance of what was lost.

But, if a human comes to this point in life, for whatever reason, autocide was not a choice. It was an imperative.

And you very much want to live ... with the consequences.

photo © c-lab 2007
* a quote abused completely out of context

It's A Mystery

I just finished doing my absolutely least favorite part of Thanks- giving ... cleaning the carcass and clarifying the broth for the Annual Turkey Soup.

If men really knew where turkey soup and children came from, they wouldn't want either of them.

Rabbit, Rabbit

Monty Python Killer Rabbit slippers available at thinkgeek.com