Faith Fishbowl

In September of 2001 I was working at Saint Mary's College, a small residential college. Zirpu called me on the morning of the 11th to tell me to turn on the TV; I watched images on the only station I could receive at the house and listened to NPR simultaneously. I continued to listen to the radio during my bucolic drive through county parks to get to work. I specifically remember Bob Edwards saying there had been a plane crash in Pennsylvania that, it was believed, had nothing to do with the World Trade Center planes.


Of course, once at the university, there was not a lot of work going on, for anyone. People hung out in each other's offices, talking, listening to online news broadcasts, trying to check CNN's website, which was crashing all day, for news updates. Everyone made and received "How are you? I'm just checking in" calls. Very few calls came in regarding financial aid, and I couldn't really concentrate on processing loans that day. I spent a lot of time looking out the window and listening to NPR online.


The college, which is Catholic and at that time had a lot of practicing Catholics in the student body, scrambled to put something together for the students to take comfort in. Directors of departments had been instructed to allow staff to attend, if any staff member wished to do so. Mass was held in the chapel, followed by a less-formal gathering in the courtyard in front. I attended part of this second event, which included the recitation of the Kaddish and of the Hail Mary.


After awhile I went back to my office to continue looking out the window. The field across from my office was green even in September - the college's intramural rugby teams played there - and the sky was blue, without any clouds. I felt like the faith of the youth in the courtyard had created a dome over the college, which is in a natural bowl, and that their god was looking over us all - even those of us who didn't believe.

Dayenu!

Definition: It is enough for us. . .


It is Passover, the springtime feast of thanks at which the story of God bringing the Jews out of slavery in Egypt is told. Because telling myself stories is how I make sense of the world, how, I think, a lot of people - and peoples - make sense of the world, this ritual connects me to others regardless of my personal beliefs, because I allow it to do so.


I did not organize attending a Seder this year. I was a little sad about this, though to be honest, this last week was so busy that I was very happy to not have to go anywhere this weekend (other than work, which was bad enough). This afternoon, I turned on the radio just as the intermission for A Prairie Home Companion was ending, and after reading the audience's greetings, Garrison Keillor had his musical guests go into a couple of Passover songs. The first one was a devotional song listing God's attributes alphabetically (much shorter than I expected, though the Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters). The second one was Dayenu, a clap-along rendition led by the twelve-piece swing band Kustbandet. Hearing that song made me so happy that it is enough Passover for me this year.

Another Weird Thing About Me

I like to go to Midnight Mass, a Catholic (and Anglican) service held at midnight on Christmas Eve. I'm not Catholic, and wasn't even raised Catholic, and have rather negative feelings about a lot of Catholic dogma (not Catholic individuals), but I like Midnight Mass.


I don't go very often, and I haven't been in at least five years. Two years ago MM (my only friend who isn't too annoyed at the Catholic church to attend) and I were supposed to go, but when I got to his and TL's house, he wasn't feeling well so we ate Flemish spice cookies and talked until 2am. Last year MM, the kids, and I went to the 5pm Children's Mass at Batman's school, but it didn't resonate with me as the whole Mass was directed to an under-10 audience. This year both Batman and Lizard are involved in the Christmas pageant part of the Mass, and MM says one Christmas Mass is enough.


I have attended some good Midnight Masses and some really bad ones. No and I and a friend went to Midnight Mass years ago at their high school in which a major part of the homily was about how when the SFPD placed an undercover cop on campus to ferret out drugs, they didn't find any. Denver D and I went to a Midnight Mass with his parents in Denver during which the priest talked about two parishioners who had died suddenly just before Christmas. I'm certainly not Catholic, but these homilies seemed really out of place for Christmas.


The best Midnight Mass I attended was at a church in NW Portland which had been recommended to me because the music there was so beautiful. The music was traditional and the Mass was in Latin, which was confusing and made me feel rather distant from the experience. However, the homily, which was in English and Spanish, really inspired me. It was at the beginning of my career in social work, while I was still volunteering at Harry's Mother. The priest's message was "Go out and do good."


My favorite part of the Mass - and this was true when I was at Catholic school - is the few minutes when everyone greets everyone else with a handshake (or, at CSH in the late '70's and early '80's, a two-fingered peace sign). I don't know if they call it this everywhere, but at my old school it was called something like The Peace Greeting. It is a moment in the service when everyone recognizes the individuality of each person and breaks through the barrier to smile and touch.


Namaste. The divine in me greets the divine in you.

Christmas Cards

I've received the first two Christmas cards of the season. The first was from one of the volunteers, with a nice message about getting everything you wish for. The other is from Zirpu's stepbrother and his family with a message about how Jesus came "for you and me" and, strangely, a school picture of the older child but not one of the younger one.


I must admit that I don't like receiving Christmas cards. I like receiving kids' photos for the brag board, especially since the kids change so much and it's fun to compare last year's photo with this year's. So those of you who send me Christmas cards, please don't stop doing so because I really do appreciate them! Even the ones with newsletters in them!


But I don't send Christmas cards myself. This might be because I'm lazy and might be because I'm rather ambivalent about Christmas. Also I figure that I've been in contact with everyone during the year to whom I might send a Christmas card (if I were a Christmas card sender) and I hope they know that I wish them joy and prosperity and love all the time. Still, when someone distant sends a Christmas card, I feel guilty: I should send them one too! But if I do it this year I'm committed and I don't want to set a precedent.


I've actually been wondering if I should give Christmas cards to my volunteers. A lot of them are older, and therefore old school, and it would be a simple way to thank them for their work this past year. I don't want to seem as if I were raised in a barn. I do, when asked, come across as not-Christian (though gently), which should get me off the hook. I don't have any kids or animals to get photo cards made (which Shmeen tells me are difficult to find without a Christmas theme) to send out, though that sounds like the easiest option.



Of course I have to make a decision soon, which means that I might get away without making any decision because eventually it will be too late.

Overheard

I had a Berkeley moment today. I participated in it, too.


I was at the Whole Foods on Telegraph buying whole red winter wheat berries, dried fruit, and soy powder. I walked up in line to hear a woman say to another: "Isn't it great that we've lived long enough to see these changes manifest?"


The first woman went back to the line where her groceries were (since I walked up late, I don't know why she was in one lane when her stuff was in another). I put my basket down and dashed over to her lane to say, "That's the most right-on thing I've heard all day. Thanks for that."

I'm A Winner!

The Year of Big, Fun, Scary Things has ended and I have received a certificate for completing it!


Of course, big, fun, scary things never end. That's life - finish one, and another appears in its place. Sometimes it's a big thing - or a fun thing - or a scary thing - and sometime s a combination of two, and sometimes all three. Shanelah would call the third combination an AFOG: Another F----g Opportunity for Growth.


Here's to growing! You don't have to embrace change, but you can brace for it.

The Year of Big Fun Scary Things

I received an email from the National Novel Writing Month guy, Chris Baty, following up on his invitation to all of us who had once signed into NaNoWriMo for "Trying Big, Fun, Scary Things Together." The Year of BFS Things is coming to a close with the start of the 2007 NaNoWriMo, so he's checking in.


When I received the invitation in January I took it as a sign to not go back to financial aid right away and to take the year off and do other things. TL pointed out to me at the time that even though many of my friends had been supporting me to go for joy, it was an email from a stranger that convinced me to do it. Well, I'm superstitious that way, I guess.


I'm fascinated by what people are reporting were their goals and on their completion or status of those goals. I think I got what I wanted out of participating, and that makes me happy. When I read Saipan Writer's blog I feel like I'm helping her meet her goal, too, which was to write a blog.

In response to Chris Baty's email I posted this response to the forum:

My goal was titled "Saying no to paid work."

Indeed, I did and I volunteered several places, including a small food pantry. When the program coordinator gave her notice at the beginning of May, the director asked me if I would be interested in taking over the position on an interim basis for several months while the food bank would be going through some major transitions. I said yes, and when the interim period ended, I was offered the position "for real." I said yes again.

Working at the food bank is hard physical work but oh so fulfilling, usually fun, and interesting. And if I hadn't started the Big Fun Scary thing of not working for pay I wouldn't have wound up with this great job that I love.


PS Unrelated to this, I resolved I would write every day in 2007 and on day 266 [yesterday] I think I'm having about a 95% - plus success rate so far.

The Universe works in strange ways.

Parting Out

When I'm dead, I won't need my body anymore. While I have greater appreciation for this machine now than I did before the car accident, I don't consider my body to be the total, or even the main part, of who I am. I plan to use my body for a long time, to use it up and wear it out. If any of it is still usable when I'm done with it, I want whatever organs to be used by someone else. As many as fifty people can be helped by one person's organ donation.


Today I caught the end of Heart and Soul on BBC World Service which was also about organ transplants. It's apparently a religious program (oh, I resist spelling it "programme") but I came in so late I missed any religious overtones. One of the speakers was the mother of a 19 year old British Jew who was killed by a suicide bomber on a bus. His heart went to a 7 year old Palestinian, and the mother says, "I was overwhelmed by the feeling of gratitude I got from [the recipient's family]... I realized my loss was her gain. Their miracle was my tragedy, and their greatest happiness was my greatest sadness. And there's nothing you can do about that... And when I saw that little girl, I just felt good that something good was able to come out of such a terrible waste, such a terrible tragedy."


It's known that the best way to make sure that your organs get donated is to tell everyone you know that you want your organs given away when you're done with them. I know Zirpu knows this, and I have a Do Not Resuscitate order with my will, should that ever come up. I know that my friends will remember me, and while I don't need this, anyone using my body parts will remember me too. I'll live on, in more ways than one.


Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go avert the evil eye.

A Child's Eye

We spent Saturday with Shmeen, Shman, and the girls (well, mostly Sa, as Ya napped through most of our visit).


I took a picture of Shmeen and Sa with my phone/camera. Sa was very interested in the camera, so I showed her how it worked. Then I gave it to her and let her take pictures. She took some unusual ones of walls and corners, and a heat register, and then she went out in the living room tot ake one of Shman.


Shmeen suggested that Sa not take a photo of Daddy and I suddenly remembered that it was Shabbat (read the section headed "Shamor: To Observe) and Sa shouldn't have been playing with anything electronic in the first place. I heard Shman tell her that he wouldn't want Sa to break the camera so she shouldn't take pictures, but by then she'd taken half a dozen so that didn't wash.


Shman avoided having his picture taken, but Sa's dolly did not.


I wonder what Sa was seeing when she was taking photos. The wall photos aren't interesting to look at (and she may have been taking those to learn how the camera works) but for some reason this picture interests me. Maybe it's the expression on the doll's face, the frightened eyes and happy mouth. Maybe it's just that a four year old took this picture and I'll never know.

What Goes Around, Comes Around

A Story In Several Parts.

About ten years ago, I was driving east on highway 26 through Portland at about 830 on a weeknight, when my car broke down. That is to say, the engine stopped running, though due to inertia I had enough power to get the car over three lanes and onto the shoulder. This had happened before (for a different reason) so I knew what to do, and I was lucky because there was no traffic to navigate thorough in the car's powerless state.


I got the car onto the shoulder a few hundred feet or so from an entrance onto the highway. This was in the days before cell phones, so I walked up the exit to call AAA, an organization with which I have had a long and useful relationship, for a tow. The entrance came out in a residential neighborhood bereft of pay phones, so I walked a bit, looking for a house with the lights on. I found one in which not only the lights were on but I could see people sitting around a table in the front parlor, so I rang the bell.


I explained my situation and asked if I could use the phone to call a tow truck, and the person who answered the door not only agreed but insisted that I wait at her house for the tow truck to come, rather than on the highway shoulder. I sat on the stairs in the hallway and made my call to AAA, and then waited for the yellow truck to arrive to take me back to the car and ultimately to the auto shop.


I didn't speak to any of the people in the house, except to say thank you and goodbye. They were playing a dice game like Yahtzee or Boggle. At the time I felt strongly that they were so kind to me because the kindnesses I was doing in my life were coming back around to me. I hadn't had to walk far to find a household that would allow me to use their phone, and I had been asked to wait inside, where it was warm and safe, until the tow truck came. I was very aware that I had received kindness from strangers, and felt enfolded in the arms of the universe.

True Christian

Unfortunately due to my early exposure to a Catholic school, and to my later exposure to Christians who wanted to take over the government and destroy the state constitution (not to mention the federal one), I have a poor attitude about Christians. I've known a lot of people who went to church but didn't live what I think of Christian values (and not just Christian). One exception to that was Denver D's father, who in his mid-70s was running a meal program "for old people," was working for Meals on Wheels, and baking many dozens of cookies for prisoners in Canyon City.


Thus, Denver D's dad became my gold standard for a good Christian, a standard to which I don't hold non-Christians.


I met a good Christian today. He works for the postal service, and is about my age. He noticed on his drive to work a homeless encampment under a highway, consistently numbering about a dozen people. As the season was turning from summer to fall, he started a blanket collection among his coworkers for the homeless. He was in the process of trying to figure out which agency would want the blankets and then one night he couldn't sleep. He got up and took the blankets to the encampment.


Now, it's moments like these that I think ignorance is bliss because if his man had had much interaction with the homeless he might have been reluctant to go their campsite in the middle of the night. Of course he was warmly received, and for the last nine months he and a dozen or so USPS friends have been delivering food to the encampment twice a week. Out of their own pockets, they have been purchasing little- or no-prep-required food and delivering it to the folks at the camp. He said they deliver the food, talk with the campers, pray with them, and that they've become friendly with the people at the camp.


From some of the of things he said I gathered that he is serving these folks because his faith tells him to do so, the way Denver D's father's faith told him to serve the elderly, the shut-ins, and the prisoners.


It's possible that this man I met today "hates the sin" and wants a government that is run on some kind of fundamentalist Christian agenda. But I don't know that about him. I know that he is feeding the hungry and warming the chilled. It happens that his faith gives him the reason. I don't think that's a bad thing.


"I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me."


Those are pretty good words to live by, regardless of their source, I think.

Raven

I have finally finished Tim Reiterman's book about Jim Jones and Peoples Temple. At 580 pages, it's exhaustive, but very difficult to put down. I limited my time reading it though, because the material is so heavy. All through the book, I knew what was going to happen at the end, which made it hard to read.


Reiterman does a good job of explaining that Jim Jones held sway over his flock, and how. Did you know that they did not consider themselves Christians? They worshipped socialism and Jim Jones (though no one was supposed to admit to the latter).


I'm not a religious person and I am naturally rather skeptical. While I understand Reiterman's explanations about why people followed Jones into the jungle, let alone over the edge of the abyss, I still don't really "get" it. I don't understand why people send money to The 700 Club and similar shows, so I don't understand why someone would have sold their property and moved into Temple housing, which is described as almost always crowded and often substandard in other ways.


A friend said that she wondered if she would have gotten sucked in had she been in her late twenties when Peoples Temple existed. She said that she had been seeking, confused, disillusioned with traditional religion, and wanting to "belong" at that time. And since I too was seeking, and cut loose from a lot of the things I thought I'd known when I was in my mid-20s, I can understand that a little bit. But I still don't really understand why all those older people, middle-aged and elderly, joined up and tolerated that life. I guess I think that they would have been wiser somehow, even though Jones tricked educated, politically-savvy people such as Willie Brown, Angela Davis, and George Moscone (not to mention Rosalynn Carter and Harvey Milk).


We know why people didn't leave, but we'll never know why all those people followed Jones to Jonestown. I imagine that each person's reasons were different, and they took those reasons to their graves.

Virginia Tech

After taking Zirpu to BART this morning I turned on KQED radio like always for the NPR feed. Renee Montaigne was reporting on the candlelight vigil held at Virginia Tech last night. Toward the end of the story, Montaigne reports that a few people on one end of the crowd started singing "Amazing Grace" while people on the other started shouting Virginia Tech cheers.


I am really moved by the sound of the cheers drowning out the song. It's the sound of power taking over the sound of sadness.

I realized that I have struck the phrase "drink the Kool-Aid" from my speech.

"No one joins a cult. No one joins something they think is going to hurt them. You join a religious organization, you join a political movement, and you join with people that you really like."

- Deborah Layton Blakeley, who escaped Jonestown in June 1978



I watched "Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple" the other day and it's really given me the heebie-jeebies, almost making me physically sick at times. I remember standing outside Saint Mary's Cathedral during George Moscone's funeral, but I remember nothing about Jonestown, which happened the same year. I think this is because at ten years old I didn't read newspapers or watch the news - and anyway I'm fairly certain that had I been a kid who watched the news my mother would have kept me from seeing the pictures from Jonestown.


Things I Didn't Know:

I didn't know that the Jonestowners knew what was in the Kool-Aid; I have always thought that most of them were tricked into drinking it. I didn't know that one person had questioned the plan for "revolutionary suicide." I didn't know that as many as eighty of the thousand people in Jonestown survived, most of them because they were not there that day. I thought only a few had lived through it by hiding under bunks or in the fields, like Jews in Nazi-occupied countries. I didn't know that elderly people went to Guyana because I didn't know that Peoples Temple had a lot of middle-aged and elderly members. I thought it was full of a bunch of young people from SF or new to SF, a city famous for seekers, who were sucked into Jones' church because they were looking for answers to their own questions and to social problems and he seemed to have answers for both.


I'm sure everyone made what seemed like (to them) rational decisions all along. It sounds like, though, that people's ability to think for themselves was usurped, through lack of sleep and through total involvement in Peoples Temple and Jim Jones' charisma. How do you know when you've allowed someone else to do all your thinking for you? If you can't think for yourself, how do you question it, especially if you are totally isolated by fear while surrounded by others who are equally isolated? How do you know when the leader is going crazy, when there's no one there to tell you so?


Every time the subject of Jonestown comes up my mother says that the butcher at Petrini's from whom she used to buy meat lost his daughter in Jonestown. When I was talking to her the other day about this documentary I'd just seen and about the Moscone/Milk murders, she said in a very sad voice still full of helplessness, "Jonestown was the last of the murders. That was a terrible, terrible time. A terrible time."

More thoughts on the Seder

Last night's Seder plate, clockwise from left: Lamb shank; parsley; matzo; roasted egg; charoset; horseradish; an orange in the center. Manishewitz Concord Grape Wine and Kedem Grape Juice are the traditional beverages, though most people prefer a wine that isn't as sweet as Manishewitz.


Having had some time to mull over what I was feeling last night, I'm following up.


Firstly, that warm feeling was the feeling that I was sitting with Shmeen and her family even though we are a couple hundred miles apart from each other. That's community!


I've thought more about why the phrase "This is what G-d did for me when He brought me out of Egypt" (which is how I learned it, a slightly different version than the one we used last night) strikes such a chord with me. It's because it says that there is nothing between me and the Divine; that the Divine is directly interested and paying attention to my life. I call this the Universe, but the idea is the same: Wasn't it Gandhi, a Jain, who said that God is known by many names?

Passover Seder

I attended a Seder this evening for the first time in several years, and a Seder on the first night of Passover for the first time in many years.


I literally got a warm feeling thinking that as I was at the home of friends in Oakland, Shmeen and her family were doing the exact same thing we were doing: Telling the story of the Exodus. And it wasn't just us, my group and Shmeen's, but Jews all over the west coast were sitting down to the Seder. It seems that each Seder is a little different, depending on not just the kind of religious observance each group keeps, but also on the family traditions and rituals, new and old, that have become part of the Seder. Additionally, people add and subtract from their family Haggadah as they incorporate their own beliefs, practices, and parts of other Haggadot.


In the past the part of the script that has meant the most for me is in response to the wicked child or the wicked person, who asks, "What is this [celebration, story, observance] to you? [Why do you tell this story of being led out of Egypt?]" The answer is, "It is because of what G-d did for me when I went forth from Egypt." I'm not a religious person and I don't even believe in that God, but for some reason, it has always felt like the line between me and my ancestors is direct and tangible.


This evening, however, the piece that struck me was when I read (we passed the leadership around the table):

"...For it has not been just one person alone who has stood against us to destroy us;
but in every generation, groups and movements have arisen who have sought to destroy us.
In each generation, we have come together with the help of the Holy One and sustained each other and were delivered from their hands."


Perhaps because this is the first Seder I've attended that was specifically designed for a queer group, which we were, with our personal awareness of and experiences with oppression and freedom. Perhaps it was because I've read a couple of books about the Nazi era recently, about those who were not saved ("The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million") and those who were ("Schindler's List").


I will be writing more about this tomorrow when I have had some time to think all of this through.

Following up on forgetting

I received my inheritance from my grandmother with a formal note from my aunt on Thursday. It brought up a bunch of crap about how I'm angry that my aunt is angry at me and has not accepted my apologies (as I've already discussed). I'm also sad that there is someone out there who doesn't like me when I have done EVERYTHING I can think of, everything I've been trained to do, to close the loop and make it better. Part of it is also that my aunt stands between me and No and anything of my father's that my grandmother had (photos, letters, etc.) and that by all rights No and I should receive. I was talking to my mom about "the thing with my aunt" and really, her advice was to just let it go, because why would I want to fix a relationship with someone as "toxic" (her word) to me as this aunt?

Mom is right. I think I've felt upset because I've felt an obligation to this aunt because she is Dad's sister. But I'm her dead brother's daughter and who knows what she's feeling. My mother is a saint to have maintained a connection with my dad's family for the sake of No and myself, because the relationship with them was difficult for her.

Mom said that she would talk to my aunt about anything Noah and I "should" have. I think my aunt might think she should have them because he was her brother, but Mom says my aunt's mellowed as she's gotten older. Nothing in my experience as an adult leads me to think she is generous at all. But we'll see - and at least I don't have to feel responsible for that conversation.

As nice as it is that she sent our inheritances, I am more interested in photos and stuff. When I was there in '96 our grandmother gave me the yarmulke and tallit that Dad wore for his bar mitzvah, as well as a few pictures, one of which is below:


I immediately gave the yarmulke and tallis to No, even though I knew he wouldn't use them. Maybe he and KT will have a child who will choose to bar or bat mitvah and will wear them.


So I am letting go of the aunt thing. Watch me...

... And also with you...

I went to Catholic school for fourth through eighth grade. I didn't think it was very Catholic, but it was the '70s and early '80s, when the Church was more responsive to the needs and sensibilities of its members. Or maybe it really wasn't a very Catholic school - certainly my experience with the administration led me to feel that way. I wasn't Catholic, but my mom had been and she attended Catholic schools when she was growing up, so she sent me to one when I graduated from the neighborhood elementary school.


The only religious event in five years that made any real impression on me was an Ash Wednesday Mass. Though I remember the Masses we sat through annually, I remember an Ash Wednesday Mass only in my fifth-grade year. We had been told to write a wish on a small piece of paper; these were collected by Father Mike and burned in a coffee can. It was my impression that the smoke was taking our wishes to God. I even sort of remember Father Mike telling me this while he dropped matches into the can, though now I can't imagine that I was with him while he was doing it. During the Mass, he used the ashes for smudging the foreheads of the faithful (which was almost everyone) during the service.


Years later I started hanging out with Pagans and learned that some of them did much the same thing, burning the papers or threads used in spells, carrying wishes and prayers up to the sky.


The most religious experience I ever had was one night when I was in college. A group of us were listening to the Beatles. It was dark, there were lit candles, we were passing a bottle of wine around, and the small room was filled with incense and the sound of "Hey Jude." We all felt joined together in peace.

Getting What You Ask For

Or, "How Zirpu and I Met." This is the story of how the Universe answers prayers even when you don't believe.


It was the Saturday of the Summer Solstice in 2001. That day had been declared a "voluntary blackout day" and I unplugged everything in my house (except the gas stove, because that made me nervous). I mostly sat outside and read a book. It was a beautiful day.


Shmeen had advised that while it's important to have a list of requirements for a lover, the list should be short, no more than five items. Otherwise, she said, the list is too specific and no one could ever meet it. I had my list: Smart, silly, sex-positive, willing to deal with emotions, and... now I always forget the fifth one. Probably something basic like "mature" or "friendly to my family." So even though I thought it was superstitious to do so, I set up a request - what some of my friends would call an altar - on the dining table. I wrote my list on a piece of paper, and next to it put a collage I'd made a few years before of my relationship to the Universe; pictures of two people I had really loved; a photo of Dad and one of Phil (for intercessionary powers); some jewelry that has strong sentimental value; a flower; and some candles. My deal with the Universe was that I would help it help me find someone.


At the beginning of July I started looking at the personals on Craigslist. I was looking at Men Seeking Women because the Women Seeking Women posts seemed to either be flame wars or very young women. I had dared myself to meet ten men, which worked because I didn't really want to be doing this at all. Ten meant I had an escape clause.


Zirpu was Bachelor #8. I had actually met about four people in real life by the time I met him. His ad said "Boring Southern Gentleman, 33, in Berkeley" and I thought, "I"ll give this a try, he's close to me in age and geography" because the previous two guys I'd dated hadn't been, one in San Jose, the other 22 years my senior. We exchanged a few emails - he sent a picture I couldn't really see because I only had 16 colors on my old machine (not to mention a 28.8 modem) - and then two phone calls to set up a meet. I'd learned from previous experience that you have to set up the meet quickly, before everyone loses interest in emailing.


We met at the Beanery in Berkeley, close to where we both lived, on July 29. I was 20 minutes late because I couldn't recognize him and because I didn't know the coffeehouse had a back room, and I still want that twenty minutes back. He was playing with Legos which he'd purchased at the toy store next door, to give his hands something to do and hide his nervousness. We talked and played with the Legos for three hours, up until the last possible moment before I had to get back home to meet the book club that was coming over.


When we walked out, he was a little ahead of me and skipped a few steps. So did my heart. As miraculous as it was that we met, the real miracle is that had we met any earlier than we did, neither of us would have been ready for the lightning bolt.


One and a half year later YaYaWOT and Boy made our wedding cake top out of Legos in honor of our first date.

Desired Things

I've been thinking a lot about "Desiderata." I know that was a long post yesterday and to tag this poem onto the end was perhaps unfair. I've been familiar with it for a long time; Mrs. P posted it on our closet door when we shared a room in college. As a result, as soon as Psycopat started reciting, I knew what it was. Now I find myself coming back to it, seeking.

"Speak your truth quietly and clearly;"

I am still learning to do this, and have to remind myself in the scary moments that nothing bad has ever come of me asking for what I need, or saying what I believe. YaYa Words of Thunder and Desi keep me honest on this.

"...and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story."

I'm taking this as a reminder to be patient. It's not just listening but waiting, helping but not interrupting. That "finishing someone else's sentence" thing? Really, it's not okay and I need to stop doing it.

"Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself."

Uhhh, if I don't hold myself to high standards, who will? And if I don't flagellate myself for not meeting them, who will? The executive director at Harry's Mother said to me once, "You're 'shoulding' all over yourself." Of course then I can get all over my case for not lightening up enough. I can't win, some days.

"You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should."

I don't need to say anything else about this, I think. Max Ehrmann expressed how I think the universe works, forty years before I was born. But just to keep me humble, it turns out there is "Deteriorata" (which I found on Wikipedia while searching the original):

You are a fluke of the universe.
You have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not,
The universe is laughing behind your back.

I'm taking the attitude that the universe is laughing with me, rather than at me. Even when some days are "If I weren't laughing I'd be crying" days.