Quoth Morpheus...

"Neo, soon you're going to realize just as I did, there is a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path."

Odo Nnyew Fie Kwan Frame*

The body of Matt Maupin, the American soldier captured by Iraqi insurgents on April 9, 2004, has been found and identified by DNA.

Staff Sergeant Maupin is finally coming home.

*Love never loses its way home ... the West African proverb used by his family and in Iraq among the troops to describe the search for Staff Sergeant Maupin.

I'm a Classicist *preen*

Two brief thoughts on perfume that i just posted on Twitter (since I have zero followers on that "killer app" and I know I have at least two readers here. Oh, one. Because Doug doesn't care about perfume).

I'm either in a rut or have become a classicist. What I love now is what I've loved for three years.

Tell me what's better than Ormonde Jayne? Than the early Serge Lutens? Than the F. Malle greats: Une Rose and Musc Ravageur? Than select Guerlains and Carons?

Somehow I've lost the lust to follow every new niche brand. What's wrong with me?

Or what's right?

Persephone, Bernini

Earth Hour: 3/29/08 8 p.m.

What changed in the United States with Hurricane Katrina was a feeling that we have entered a period of consequences. Al Gore

Join the rolling blackout of the Earth tonight at 8 pm your time ... to demonstrate we can conserve energy and lower carbon emission.

One hour in the dark tonight to demonstrate we've seen the light.

Idiomatic Logic Going On In My Head

My analyst told me
That I was right out of my head
The way he described it
He said I'd be better dead than live
I didn't listen to his jive
I knew all along
That he was all wrong
And I knew that he thought
I was crazy but I'm not.
Oh no.
So why should I feel sorry
If they just couldn't understand
The idiomatic logic
That went on in my head?

Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, covered by Joni Mitchell, Twisted

Tea and Oranges that Come All the Way from China

Once there was a sullen teenager who sat in her dorm room, smoking cigarettes in the flickering candlelight and pretty much believing Cohen had written this song about her. Never mind that her college was landlocked in the midwest and there was no river -- or boat -- in miles.

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river

You can hear the boats go by

You can spend the night beside her

And you know that she's half crazy

But that's why you want to be there

And she feeds you tea and oranges

That come all the way from China

And just when you mean to tell her

That you have no love to give her

Then she gets you on her wavelength

And she lets the river answer

That you've always been her lover

And you want to travel with her

And you want to travel blind

And you know that she will trust you

For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.

And Jesus was a sailor

When he walked upon the water

And he spent a long time watching

From his lonely wooden tower

And when he knew for certain

Only drowning men could see him

He said "All men will be sailors then

Until the sea shall free them"

But he himself was broken

Long before the sky would open

Forsaken, almost human

He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

And you want to travel with him

And you want to travel blind

And you think maybe you'll trust him

For he's touched your perfect body with his mind.

Now Suzanne takes your hand

And she leads you to the river

She is wearing rags and feathers

From Salvation Army counters

And the sun pours down like honey

On our Lady of the Harbour

And she shows you where to look

Among the garbage and the flowers

There are heroes in the seaweed

There are children in the mourning

They are leaning out for love

And they will lean that way forever

While Suzanne holds the mirror

And you want to travel with her

And you want to travel blind

And you know that you can trust her

For she's touched your perfect body with her mind.

painting Scott William Simmons 2003

Easter 2008

On a rainy Seattle Easter, memories of church:
The Methodist church temporarily located in a post-war tract house in Dayton, Ohio ... a Methodist church with a green-walled basement in Sweetser, Indiana ... the gray stone Bethlehem United Church of Christ in Ann Arbor, Michigan ... the towering sanctuary of St. Mark's Cathedral, an Anglican church in Seattle ... then a long period when my place of worship was Temple Beth Am in Seattle, with its Torah scrolls in their golden Ark ... and now, my thoughts more often return to the Christian churches of my childhood.

This, from the Methodists, has always been my favorite Easter hymn:

Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!

Earth and heaven in chorus say, Alleluia!

Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!

Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply, Alleluia!

Love's redeeming work is done, Alleluia!

Fought the fight, the battle won, Alleluia!

Death in vain forbids him rise, Alleluia!

Christ has opened paradise, Alleluia!

Lives again our glorious King, Alleluia!

Where, O death, is now thy sting? Alleluia!

Once he died our souls to save, Alleluia!

Where's thy victory, boasting grave? Alleluia!

King of glory, soul of bliss, Alleluia!

Everlasting life is this, Alleluia!

Thee to know, thy power to prove, Alleluia!

Thus to sing, and thus to love, Alleluia!

For those who celebrate, I wish a Joyous Easter.

It's Spring!

since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world


my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

e.e. cummings

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

May your glass be ever full.

May the roof over your head be always strong.

And may you be in Heaven

Half an hour before the devil knows you're dead.

Palm Sunday

The palms blessed on Palm Sunday were used in the procession of the day, then taken home by the faithful and used as a sacra-mental. They were preserved in prominent places in the house, in the barns, and in the fields, and thrown into the fire during storms. (excerpted from New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia)
Giotto Christ Entering Jerusalem 1304 fresco

Why Are We Numb? Why We Are Numb.

It's never easy for me to write something thoughtful. Glib I can do. Humorous I can do sometimes. But this is serious.

For approximately 8 years, we as a nation have sunk lower and lower.

I have written often of my concern, dislike, repulsion of policies that have led us to invade without provocation (yes, I've heard the opposing thoughts on that) and occupy another nation, repudiate the Geneva War Conventions, implement torture while claiming we have done no such thing, imprison individuals without pretense of habeas corpus, and sustain horrific injuries and death to so many of the young who volunteered to protect our so-called national interest in a hideous war.

While they have been on the front, we haven't provided them with enough, or quality equipment. We haven't questioned the stoploss repetitive deployments that mean they go back and back and back. And then when they finally get home, we have been stingy in caring for their broken bodies and providing for their needy families.

We have chosen not to ask how we could afford this war. How it was really being paid for.

The answer -- and many financial fouls -- are coming home to roost.

Certainly the greed of the subprime mortgage debacle has much to do with banks on the edge of failure -- to the extent that this time is being compared with the precipice of 1929 depression.

But think about it. That's not the only reason our economy is in big trouble. That China owns a big chunk of our deficit, and therefore our future. That's not the only reason the dollar has tanked and, per MSNBC, "even" South Americans prefer euros to the once gold-standard American dollar.

Think about how much that war in Iraq has cost us. And think how it may actually end up costing us our way of life, our standard of living, no matter what a hopeful young Democratic candidate may tell us.

And yet we remain silent. We continue to not ask those hard questions. We continue to sleepwalk through -- what? The fifth year of this war? The sixth?

Why are we numb? Guilt and determined ignorance, I think. This is why we are numb.

Looks Weird. Can't Wait.

St. Patrick's Day is almost here. I think that's Guinness in the background.

I love being Irish.

Excerpt from Newsweek ...

"'[reference to Saturday Night Live skit] Fey: Maybe what bothers me the most is that people say that Hillary is a bitch. Let me say something about that: yeah, she is. So am I, and so is this one. [Points to Amy Poehler]
Poehler: Yeah, deal with it.
Fey: You know what, bitches get stuff done. That's why Catholic schools use nuns as teachers and not priests. Those nuns are mean old clams and they sleep on cots and they're allowed to hit you. And at the end of the school year you hated those bitches but you knew the capital of Vermont. So, I'm saying it's not too late, Texas and Ohio, bitch is the new black!'

The task now for Hillary Clinton and her unreliable campaign organization is clear: stay on the sidelines while the women of America fight the battle...Unless the press actually wants Clinton to win the White House, it had better stow the sarcastic Hillary one-liners and kill the caustic sound bites. Because nothing makes an American woman as crazy-mad as watching another American woman get pushed around."

Rick Astley Would Never ...

Rabbit, Rabbit!

March!