Poem - WATER

Water so continual, wet and cold, warm and soft,

Relentlessly moving over the earth.

Water runs on top of a rock, eventually through the rock,

Wearing it down and down and down...

Is it foolish to believe you can escape the death of your dreams?

Are we all just grabbing at straws?

I fear one day I'll meet the child I once was, that she will look in my eyes,

and grieve over the absence of vision, the calloused hopes.

What will I say to her? Will there be any attainment to reassure her of? Or will my only words be, "If I had known, I would have..." done things differently?

Is it possible? Can revelation come to me now before this river becomes a canyon,

before the years wear away at me like water on stone?

Water, so continual, so unceasing, like the passing of the hours, the minutes, the seconds on a clock, challenging my static disposition.

How do I pick up these stones, so heavy and black, carrying the weight of my unfinished life? How do I become the water?

`

Oh little girl, innocent child...I don't know what to tell you.

`

Halloween...scary?

So, any of you who know me well are probably aware of the fact that I'm very particular about what I celebrate and why I celebrate it! I'm not one for jumping on cultural bandwagons when it comes to holidays of any kind. I don't often get a chance to explain my thought process around this, and a lot of my friends have been asking me about it lately, so I thought I'd use my blog as a jumping off point, and start with Halloween.

I just wrote an e-mail about this so I'm going to just copy and paste it here to save myself re-writing the same thing.

Before I paste this in and just for a bit of background, I wrote this section of the email as a followup explanation to why I had requested no costumes that celebrate, endorse or exploit death and evil at our Halloween supper club...the rest is self explanatory.

So, just briefly, let me first say that I believe death is a natural part of life and not something to be afraid of. I also believe that the realization of the finite nature of our physical lives is necessary and humbling, even healthy, and that the recognition of evil and the existence of true darkness keeps us fighting and moves us out of apathy. Understanding both actually helps us value our lives more in many ways.

Now, what I don't like is the way our cultural Halloween presents death with fear mongering and evil with a mask, and seems to give the impression that "evil comes out to play" on a particular night and that it is easily recognizable. Truthfully, "evil" or whatever word you want to use for it (for you Universalists out there) is out to play already everywhere in the world, and it sure doesn't look the way people think it does on Halloween. Sure, ghosts, demons, witches, zombies and vampires look really scary and their main business is death, but that's just sensational and misleading. I don't know about you, but I've never personally had a run-in with a vampire that was unpleasant, and I haven't met any zombies in my lifetime, mean ones anyway. Maybe I just need to get out more.

I guess I have come to believe that true evil is not found in a scary mask or even in the thing it represents. No. True evil is plainly seen in the face of a starving child who no one is feeding, in the lives of people being oppressed and used with no one intervening for them, in relationships that are dying because of a lack of understanding and forgiveness, in the bruised and infected track marks of the men and women in our city living to inject themselves with chemicals and dying for the same reason...you get my point.

I want to continue to call evil what evil really is - the absence of the presence of God, the absence of love, the absence of life. So on Halloween, JUST LIKE ANY OTHER NIGHT, I think that we should CELEBRATE LIFE, celebrate each other, celebrate friendship, eat yummy food, and enjoy every good thing that we have!!! That's one of the best way to combat "evil" in my mind, just don't let it get the best of you!

That sums up my thoughts on Halloween.

Ovr'n'out......

Book recommendation - Eat Pray Love

Okay, I rarely do this, but I can't afford not to recommend this book!

Eat Pray Love

one woman's search for everything through Italy, India and Indonesia

by Elizabeth Gilbert

To all of my fantastic, soul-searching, life-loving, sensory-aware, passion-driven, beauty-struck female friends (which is all of you!) - YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK!!

I have just started to RE-READ it because it is so beautiful.

This is a true story of a woman who travels through Italy, India and Indonesia in seach of some answers to her soul's deepest questions...and she actually gets some good ones!

Through this book, we enter this journey with her, and she makes it so much fun with her inviting writing style and sharp wit/humour. Its one of those stories that can actually make you laugh and cry throughout, maybe even on a page by page basis!!

So, if you are looking for a good read this weekend or over the Thanksgiving Holidays, this is the one, I guarantee it!

Give it a shot and tell me how it goes.

Amb

fragmented

i feel so frag men ted sometimes

as if my life is an ornamental glass lamp

that has been shattered to pieces

and i have to find them all somehow

in every place they have landed

all around the world

as randomly

it would seem

as dandelion seeds...

and i will keep them hidden within myself safely

then piece by hopeful piece

start to glue them back together

hoping that when i'm finished

the light will still turn on

and I will finally be

`

complete

`

`

Enraged!

Feeling enraged is very very strange...it takes me from rational to muppet-esque in no time flat.

I pride myself on being quite judicious in most situations, but there are cetainly times when I am so angry and fed up that biting down hard on my lips is all I can do to prevent myself from scribbling all over my walls, throwing china across the room and knocking over tables and chairs....its a very very strange sensation, like I said!

Anyway...just sharing.