Because it is always timely, but especially so considering the porked-up bailout, and all the election year rhetoric. It is important that we remember.

Happy Earth Day!



















As per usual all the rags have excellent Earth Day publications out about green living and such, with tips on how easy it is to green your life. A very good thing. But I also sometimes fear that the push to "go green" is becoming so ubiquitous -- with so few easily discernable rewards on the consumer's part -- that a lot of folks are liable to exhibit a certain degree of "green-fatigue." I know I certainly feel that way sometimes.

So, on that note, The Omnivore's Dilemma author Michael Pollan asks us, Why Bother?

Okay, here's something decidedly not complaint-ridden and more lovely to behold -- my Valentine's Day gift from Trevor of earrings from Favor in Oakland.















I reciprocated with tickets to see Red Sparowes at Bottom of the Hill in March. BTW, we are so the same person -- we placed our gifts to each other on the other's pillow. Silly monkeys.

Also went to Santa Cruz Friday to get massaged and just sit in the sun with an iced coffee and read for a bit. Am currently reading No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy -- the author of one of my top books ever read fame. It's a pageturner, and quite intense; in fact, I almost don't want to watch the film for how intense the book is, save for the bits on Gootube that I have seen with the excellent, Oscar-nominated Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh. Besides being a real gore phobic, I'm so haunted by films lately -- took me forever to get over Atonement.

Anyway, the novel really makes you ponder your own mortality, and how you live, define, and value your life. Interestingly enough, I had a conversation with a friend last night about a class her friend is taking where students are told they have 6 months to live and they are supposed to live just how they would if this were true. So, her friend quit her job and left to backpack through Mexico. The combination of this book and pondering this class has been hitting home for me how quickly life can end and how important it is to have satisfaction in one's life no matter how long one is alive.

Trevor and I were talking about this today. How if we were told we were to die in 6 months both of us would up and quit our jobs and school and everything we've been investing in for our now and our futures and set out to be vagabonds around Europe, making our way any way that we could. But you know, the thing is, we could do that tomorrow if we wanted. And we could do that the day after we sign a mortgage or buy a new car or get a badass promotion. We know this. So the real lesson to learn is that you must keep your dreams alive and vital in one hand while always seeing to it that your life can continue happily in the other. Life can end in a second, but finding the balance between balls-out and everyday life is where you find satisfaction and happiness.

And today I was so happy on a long evening walk, hand in hand with my sweetie-pie, bellies full of Gordo burritos and cumin candied pecan ice cream, talking about just these things.

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

William Butler Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium"

Just reading in the San Francisco Chronicle Travel section about the demise of the postcard.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, or simply enamored of a romanticism of the early twentieth century -- which includes the dawn of world travel within the reach of the masses -- but I love postcards, and the handwritten letter. As I sit in front of a computer and diligently blog about my life and what interests me, I am still of the belief that information and correspondence has in some ways become useless because of its easy proximity; thus, we often do not value or really ingest anything that is conveyed. Hand-letter-writing and receiving is so tangible and grounding, and I believe it tames that go-go-go, scan and discard mentality so prevalent with email and MySpace and such.

So, besides my egalitarian leanings and love of jeans and Vans (oi, and my wicked wicked iPhone), I think I sometimes do belong in my romantic version of 1940s Paris or London (a Blitz-free London, of course). Ha, but even then I'd probably be pining away for the times before the proliferation of the telephone yet declaring I am also anti-corset but pro-penicillin, as well as wanting to opt out from the Black Death or dying from cholera. Even though hardship is part of the romanticization, long live my hyper-romanticized Victorian era or Wild Wild West!

Things change, for better and for worse, and in the end you've just got to be mindful.

But I digress: I love collecting postcards from friends and their travels; in fact, that's the only thing I ask for when someone offers to pick up a souvenir up for me. It's true what the article states, though: they take time, people are lazy, and the new technology allows us instant gratification. I guess that's why I love them so much though -- it really demonstrates someone was thinking about you wherever they were.

Some of my favorites -- definitely for the locations, but most for the stories contained on the flipsides:
























The studio portrait was mailed to me as a postcard from my best friend while she was traveling through India. She wrote a whole story on the back about finding it and haggling for it. Apparently once the shopkeeper got wind of the fact that she was actually into buying one of the myriad 70s discarded portraits he had in a dusty box, he began to regale her with stories about how popular they were with hotels as decorations, and thus were far far more valuable than she had previously thought. :)

My amazing friend Aaron, the man behind the previously blogged Tactical Ice Cream Unit, is exhibiting at Psychobotany in Los Angeles through June 17. In this project, Aaron and the Center for Tactical Magic explore the nature of consciousness and the consciousness of nature through interaction between the human mind and living plants.

While the theories of the effect of human communication on plants isn't new, I'm positive Aaron has something dazzling, engaging, and provocative up his sleeve, especially for the lecture! And while the implications for direction on this subject are multifaceted (environmental, military-political, social, etc.), for me the social aspect won out. I think it is extremely important to be reminded of just how effective our own energy can be on other living beings when thinking about cultivating and continuing contentment, health, and compassion. This is something I really wish to remember in my communications with, and my thoughts about, people around me.

From the Center for Tactical Magic website:

Within less than a day, the "negative" plant was already looking significantly wilted. By the end of the exhibition, it was nearly dead, and perished shortly thereafter. Few changes in overall growth were detected between the "control" and the "positive" plant. Both continue to live; however, only the "positive" plant has borne fruit.

Y'all know I am a huge proponent of one gaining strength and resilience from adversity. But in this type of experiment I can't help but think about continued, relentless human toxicity and how that intersects with compassion.

When your fear touches someone's pain it becomes pity; when your love touches someone's pain it becomes compassion -- Stephen Levine

Plants demonstrate quite well the effect of toxicity leveled at them, but they are only one-way, because they cannot talk back. How many of us know someone whose constant negativity and pain results in a vicious poison circle from which they cannot exit -- devastating not only those around them. but themselves? What to do with that kind of misery? It is a constant struggle when in this type of relationship with someone, to overcome impulses to "fix," maintain one's own sense of worth and happiness without getting angry at the person, and not enter that toxic arena. I'm frankly no good at this at all, and I know very often I've gone the easier route and just removed myself from the situation. Sometimes you have to.

Funny, this, because I've also been reading recently about mindfulness meditation which may help one shed negativity in interactions, maybe put some positive energy out there for grabs if it's wanted, and move toward becoming stronger and more resilient in the face of adversity. Hee, maybe you can mix the bootstraps with Buddhism.

I guess the ultimate result for me at least would be to stay connected but still move freely in and around in a neutral or positive manner, and then move out -- because a living thing must also have its own will and space to live and grow too. Easier said than done, huh? No wonder therapists and yogis can charge so much for their services!

Anyway, lately when I see Aaron I have been feeling a real sense of light and love coming from him, even more so than usual. Just being around him perks me up. There's definitely something to this.