Yuletide Blessings

To my friends on Tribe (whom I've missed in my absence!) ~ warm wishes to you on this shortest day and longest night. I'm so appreciative to have met all of the great people here, and I'll look forward to seeing more of you in cyberspace in 2008!

Be safe, jolly, and well.
~Flaneuse

Moving to a new 'hood

This Saturday I'm moving from Dupont Circle, where I've been living for about 15 months, up to Adams-Morgan. It's probably about a mile away as the crow flies, and a 20-minute walk, but it feels a world away. Very different in character from Dupont. Each has its charms. I'm excited, but moving is awful. It's amazing how much stuff one can collect in a year, without meaning to!

I turn my collar to the cold and damp

For the past week or so I've been in a bit of a funk. No large thing is wrong -- life is pretty good actually -- but little things add up: I came in second for a job I'd applied for. The last time I saw my sweetie we fought. Educational debt is bumming me out because it feels like I'll never be able to save enough for retirement and I worry I'll be eating dog food when I'm old, or have to take the pill like Ruth Gordon in Harold and Maude. My period is late (no, I'm not pregnant, just irregular and moodier because of it). I just learned from Lori's blog that Jessa has died. Those students were gunned down at Virginia Tech today. And the sun hasn't shown its face for more than a moment for the past two weeks.

If only the sun would come out everything else would seem manageable...

Cherries Jubilee

After years of wanting to see the famous DC cherry blossoms, I finally got to -- no excuse now that I live here! On Friday after work I went down to the tidal basin. The festival officially began on Saturday, and my thought was to get a "sneak preview" before the teeming hordes arrived. It was a good call; there were lots of people there Friday, but it was a relaxed vibe just before sunset, and not overly crowded. There were lots of lovers--scruffy 'emo' teen couples, middle-aged couples, gay couples, the works.

A lot of people were wearing pink, or pink accents. (The blossoms are not all pink; many are white). Cutest of all were the Japanese babies, in particular one chubby and rosy-cheeked one wearing pink socks. The dominant sound was the clicking of camera shutters. Biggest surprise: Remembering the orange groves of my Arizona youth, I was anticipating delicately perfumed air, but the cherry blossoms have *no scent*! In one area there are old, gnarled trees that have not only branches but lots of tiny sprouts and seedlings coming out of the trunk and roots: even these are producing flowers on stalks less than an inch high.

I don't have photos of my own to share, but there are many good images on the site below, including some nice shots of the area in fall and even in winter:

www.dcphototour.com/Washingt...-06.shtml

Happy spring!

Got the Red Velvet blues

Today's New York Times has an entire article about Red Velvet cake, and how it is rising from its tacky status to become a sought-after comfort food. The accompanying photos made me drool and crave; I wanted to dive into a massive, sweet, pillowy slice. Hadn't I just seen one of these cakes somewhere? After work I went on a mission, battling the slush and cold wind in search of Velvet. I went to Afterwords Cafe, the Marvelous Market, and the Firehook Bakery, all to no avail. Where had I seen the darn thing??

In the end I had to content myself with a vanilla cupcake from Starbucks, which I'll savor after I log off tonight.

Hope you're all having a great V-Day, however you are spending it!

Valentine "polyamory"

Valentine's Day is usually touted as a holiday only for couples with romantic/sexual involvement, and as such it's often reviled by single people who feel left out, and by others who resist the manipulation of commercialized holidays that would have us express our affection according to the calendar (and of course with pricey gifts).

But I was reflecting on this and remembering how in elementary school we'd buy big boxes of cheap valentines with silly rhymes and cartoony images and give them to all of our classmates. I remember sitting at the dining room table with my mom, trying to match the card to the personality, and stuffing & addressing the envelopes. Then I got older and became too cool for such things. But the early memories are fond ones, and this is the kind of holiday I want to have this year: a democratic, populist Valentine's Day! Lots of love and affection for everybody!

Shopping for Valentine cards, I was initially determined to avoid the classic, cloying imagery of red and pink hearts. But as I looked at the alternative designs, I felt they were just working too hard to overturn the paradigm. The attempt to be slick, innovative, or ironic seemed to telegraph a fear of being frivolous and silly and soft and lighthearted. This prompted a change of heart -- so to speak! -- and I decided to embrace the whole thing, kisses and hearts and icky-sweet colors and all. Eye candy, indeed!

Among the Godless

What does it mean to have a spiritual life without religion – specifically without creed or Deity? As I attempt to articulate my emerging theology, this is the question I begin with.

As I’ve explored inwardly, I’ve noticed two aspects of my spirituality: the first is an ethical dimension that concerns itself with “doing the right thing” according to a moral code: not lying, cheating, stealing, killing, wasting, and so forth. Love thy neighbor; turn the other cheek. I recognize religious figures like Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed as super-righteous beings that humankind created as archetypes of our best possible selves, and concepts such as the Divine and the Most High as ideals one may reach for. But Spirit reaches beyond the realm of moral philosophy; I don’t feel Spirit coming out of many philosophic tomes, treatises, or debates.

The second aspect is harder to pin down, but it has to do with acknowledging the Source, and showing some humility and gratitude in the face of something larger than ourselves, which transcends our narrow personal and even societal concerns. It’s also related to the Buddhist notion of the interconnectedness of all things; when we do violence to others we do violence to ourselves, and vice versa. It’s this aspect, combined with an ecological perspective, that has led me to explore paganism. The natural world – earth, air, water, sun, moon, stars, planets – IS the Source, and that thing larger than ourselves. The cosmos dwarfs us; geologic time shows us to be short-lived as a species, let alone as individuals; we came somehow from the primordial ooze and we return to the earth. Whether this is disturbing or comforting is all a matter of one’s perspective.

None of this explains my relation to Meeting for Worship – who or what is being worshipped? – or my desire to take a moment before each meal for a sort of secular grace, acknowledging my good fortune at having delicious, healthful and plentiful food. To whom or what am I grateful? It doesn’t explain my growing conviction that it’s important to know the places where we live and to tune in to the natural world: daybreak and nightfall, solstices and equinoxes, moon phases, native species, frosts, migrations, watersheds. I’m more clearly seeing the flaw in a totally human-centered perspective, reflected in terms like “natural resources” and “land use”.

To market, to market

As a little Francophile raised on Madeline books, I always idealized shopping the way the French purportedly do, carrying little string bags on a series of stops: the charcuterie, the boulangerie, the patisserie, the greengrocer, where each shopkeeper was master of his or her domain and each customer was a regular. This ideal was reinforced in planning school through the clear desirability of the “walkable urban core” offering easy access to amenties and services within a small radius, interspersed in residential areas.

Now I lead some semblance of that life, in a city bearing some resemblance to Paris, étoiles and all. A handful of food markets are within easy walking distance from my apartment. But they’re all American-style grocery stores, each offering an almost ridiculous selection of foodstuffs, from the standard meat-and-potatoes to more exotic (and pricey) imports and specialties.

So, does one-stop shopping eliminate the need for the urban meander? Mais non! Grocery shopping has become an exercise in logistics in which I may choose to weight time, aesthetic pleasure, or cost. Where is soy milk the cheapest? At Giant. Safeway is good for basics, but it doesn’t carry *mini* whole wheat pitas. Whole Foods (aka Whole Paycheck) is overpriced and crowded, but it offers excellent prepared foods when I’m too lazy to cook and don’t want the hassle of a restaurant, plus it offers free samples and sometime I get a yen for one of their oatmeal scones. Trader Joe’s has inexpensive and satisfying veggie tamales and potstickers, and is my only known source for Almondina cookies. The locally-owned Yes! Natural Market carries things I can’t find elsewhere, like coconut water and my favorite face cream (CamoCare). And Dupont Circle even has its own farmer’s market on Sundays – where a dozen eggs cost $3.20! Sacre bleu!

I take a lot of pleasure in making these rounds. Carrying my canvas shopping bag through the city (sometimes with the emblematic baguette sticking out), I feel part urban sophisticate, part granola-head, and totally in my element.

'Tis a gift to be...silent

For seven months now I’ve been attending Meeting for Worship with the Quakers, not missing it unless I’m out of town (and then I look for local Friends). The silence there feels like a calm pool in which I immerse myself. On the best days, I sink deeper and deeper till I’m still as a smooth stone at the bottom. I ascend refreshed, balanced. Each week I look forward to this.

Sometimes I employ techniques I learned from Buddhist texts: following or “riding” the breath; deep listening to all sounds in the surrounding environment; or noticing sensations in the body. Sometimes I wish good things for the people I love, or think of all the things for which I’m grateful. Sometimes I simply give my mind permission to roam to whatever feeds my soul.

Why is silence so undervalued in our society? There is always the TV or radio on somewhere, and Muzak in restaurants and offices. People always have to be SAYING something, putting their agenda out there, arguing, proselytizing, opining. Being human, I have this tendency to verbalize and intellectualize too, which is why turning it off, making a different choice, is so revolutionary. The silence is not an absence – it’s full and rich! With all the talking in the world, why didn’t anyone tell me THAT?

Sometimes Right Speech is choosing not to speak at all – what a previous generation called “holding your tongue.” There is a quote I saw from some eastern guru called Sai Baba that expresses this perfectly, and I reflect on it regularly:

"Before you speak, ask yourself:
Is it kind?
Is it necessary?
Is it true?
Does it improve on the silence?"