May 1973

I remember returning from Chicago on the train, celebrating Lerryn’s 4th birthday, May 7, 1973. Roger and I had just decided that we would get back together, though the logistics of how and where we would live were not clear. You and I were through, as of the December before, that had become clear when Anne Marie answered your phone, not to mention the fact that you’d been less than thrilled to see me the last time I had popped in unexpectedly,

I think I’d been back from Chicago no more than a week, maybe less, when you called me. Now this part is less clear, but I recall that you had a theatrical event in mind even back then. Is that possible? I know we went to the Magic Theater to see Sam Shepard’s True West, but was it then (May 1973?). That part is hazy. But what’s not hazy is my feeling that I had been over you, you were a nice memory, and then your voice slipped in again over the telephone. We tend to forget that phone call, since the 1980 one was so momentous, but really, what would have happened to us if you hadn’t phoned back in May 1973? If you’d stayed with Anne Marie a little longer and I had settled in with Roger a little sooner and more solidly by then? What is it that made your phone call so exciting to me (that didn’t always happen, you weren’t the ONLY one to call)? You really did play into some fantasy of mine, and what’s interesting now is to see where our fantasy lives and our real lives came together back then. And again after 1980, and especially after 1982 (December), and on through until today.

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Auroral storm in northern Iceland, over the recently constructed monuments of the Arctic Henge. All vectors point north, including the Big Dipper.

“Perhaps then we need not understand how and why psilocybin works, accepting, as Halpern puts it, ‘that when you combine the chemical, the corporeal, and the spiritual, you get a spark. You get magic.’”

Source: N Y Times: How Psychedilic Drugs Can Help Patients Face Death

"Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French."

P. G. Wodehouse, The Luck of the Bodkins (1935), from The Guardian’s ”10 best first lines in fiction”

(Source: Guardian)

Some things I learned for April 23rd

Compared with most of my friends I have had so little real hardship or suffering to overcome, yet I have often felt vulnerable, unworthy, more fragile than I think one might expect, given my circumstances. When I look over my life—and my parents’ lives—I feel the weight of generations of past suffering and loss, of pure survival needs. So even when an individual’s circumstances are quite comfortable (as for my father all his life and for my mother all her adult life), fears about one’s place in the world remain. Last week, traveling through the beautiful but harsh Southwest, I was struck by these thoughts—my ancestor immigrants came over a harsh ocean and faced a wild New England landscape, not the landscape I was seeing, but the trials they had to face were very similar.

On the other side of the coin, at least in my case, there is a strength, an optimism, that difficulties can be overcome—I feel myself very “American” in that underlying faith in the value of effort and self-determination. Looking over my own life, I see quite a bit of courage and determination to try new things, explore different ways of being. The love and encouragement I felt from my parents gave me such a solid foundation for moving forward when I decided I needed to.

Another theme I saw in doing this work was my deep sense that love (almost like Harry’s “love precious humanity”) was more important than anything else in life. Whatever other goals I was pursuing, however “creative” I wanted to be, I always came back to wanting that connection with people—husband, children, family, friends—and with an even deeper love of “the world”—nature, life, all beings. So I often lived my life with little worries and strivings (sometimes with more accomplishments, sometimes with more disappointments), but underneath I came back to this “abiding love.”

"Learning” no longer means sitting passively in a lecture hall or on in front of a television or in a library and waiting to receive the “authoritative” version of what the experts think is up as if it were a Communion wafer. For nearly 20 years we have had the Internet, now grown into a medium of almost infinite paths, where “learning” means that you can Twitter directly to people in Egypt to ask them what they really think about ElBaradei (and get answers), ask an author or critic to address a point you feel he may have missed (ditto), or share your own insights in countless forums where they will be read and admired (and/or savaged.) Knowledge is growing more broadly and immediately participatory and collaborative by the moment."

Maria Bustillos, “Wikipedia and the Death of the Expert”

(Source: The Awl)

What’s the purpose of a relationship?

One of the women in Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom says people think the purpose of being in a relationship is to be happy, but its real purpose is to make us more conscious.

What do you think?

The Garibaldi biscuit

The Garibaldi biscuit consists of currants squashed between two thin, oblong biscuits - a currant sandwich. In this recipe, it has elements in common with the Eccles cake.

Popular with British consumers as a snack for nearly 150 years, the Garibaldi biscuit is conventionally consumed with tea or coffee, into which it may be dunked in informal social settings….

The Garibaldi biscuit was named after Giuseppe Garibaldi, an Italian general and leader of the fight to unify Italy. During the war they had to use limited rations to prepare food; the result was a simple biscuit. Garibaldi made a popular visit to Tynemouth in England in 1854. It was first manufactured by the Bermondsey biscuit company Peek Freans in 1861 following the recruitment of one of the great biscuit makers of Scotland, John Carr.

(Source: Wikipedia)

The Tao that can be told
Is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
Is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

…

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

From Tao Te Ching, first chapter, translated by Stephen Mitchell

Le vent: Marina Kanno and Giacomo Bevilaqua of Staatsballett Berlin perform several jumps captured in slow motion at 1,000 frames per second. (Start the video, then click full-screen and click the gear to show high-definition.)

(Source: openculture.com)