Something to be excited about!

A new kind of yogurt made with plums and lavender!
How can you top that?
(Besides revamping one's whole life.)

End of the month sounds

It is like someone is scraping a big snow shovel across the sky.
My heart is whining because I'm not someplace else (like on a farm, maybe). I evaluated my pantry: pasta, dried fruit, hot cereal mix, legumes, canned vegetables. I evaluated my freezer: soup, frozen veggies, frozen fruit, frozen rice/vegetable dish. And arrgh...frozen flies (not on my food shelf though). I guess the roommate does not care about them. I think I will just clean it myself. I evaluated my portion of the fridge: eggs, yogurt, flaxseed, fruit, kale, tahini, tortillas, and various condiments.
I evaluated the counter: one aging banana.
Question to the self: "where are you going?"

Serenity can be found in strange places

Today I made sandwiches to pass out to the hungry with a group at a church that does this twice a year. Other groups do it once a a year. (This was mentioned several times.) We also picked up containers of soup from a shelter to distribute. It smelled a lot like chili, prompting me to buy a small cup from Wendy's on the way home. At the first place we stopped, we could not give out seconds, for fear of running out and not being able to serve everyone, but at the second place we were able to (only 4 people got an extra soup though.) When one woman came back asking for a bag (meaning a plastic bag, which we didn't have) a man thought she was asking for another bag of sandwiches and offered to give his "seconds" to her. I told him she only wanted a plastic bag. "I'm looking for one of those, too!" he said. As we waited for more people to show up before passing out seconds, a woman in large SUV turned down the street going by the line. "ONE WAY STREET!" they screamed at the vehicle, which ignored them but turned safely at the traffic light.
When I typed this, I tried to think of some other way to begin the title, like "Snippets of..." but I didn't feel like using that, and somehow I began to think of the phrase "a slip of a girl," which did not seem to be indicated anywhere on this synonyms site, but someone made a song out of it and it was also referenced in an article. Before we delivered the food, the driver and another sandwich maker spoke of seeing eagles. He said that he thought bald eagles were originally called piebald. He also mentioned a piebald deer who comes into his yard. While we were waiting in his car (which was my old Taurus but bigger) at the hot food pickup, he kind of talked my ear off about deer hunting regulations and told me about Hunting for the Hungry. Later, I mentioned that my grandfather used to hunt deer. "Is there a way you could get some to him?" he asked.
I have friends who do not hunt but have learned those kinds of outdoor skills, and made use of them when a deer broke its leg on their parents' property and had to be shot. One said she sat by the deer after she died and meditated for a while and for her it was a spiritual experience. In the middle of February they threw an outdoor party in a very big tent which had a hole in the roof for a stove pipe, and served various dishes, including deer ribs which were wrapped in foil and cooked inside the woodstove.

Some readings

Book
Article
Event
For a topic that seemed quite depressing, the reading gave me a feeling of serenity. I think sometimes it can be useful to attend these events, as it can be useful to smudge rooms.

Gardening staves off gloom

It is something I went away from for a while. I went back to it today after experiencing perhaps reasonable (or perhaps unreasonable) stress because of some impending car repair costs. The plot was built over a sidewalk and the remnants of a community that used to commute to a torpedo factory. (When my friend said that to the students this summer, one of them looked at me and laughed. "Did you hear that? Only she would say something like that. A 'shanty town!' Like something out of a John Steinbeck novel!") Sometimes a line spoken by Leonard Bast from Howard's End comes to mind: "That's for rich people to make them feel good after their dinner." But it is oh, so defeated-sounding! And, if only the definition of "rich" were more expanded in some people's minds? Anyway. Some nice extras to going back included: being told that I have to come again next week to sample a pumpkin pie, feeling the wind blow and liking it, admiring sunlit rainbow chard ("it looks so happy! If a plant can look happy" the same student said), watching people run around the plot and feeling the impulse to increase athletic activity in my life, and receiving some free extra basil and tomatos. The garden will be put to bed and winterized soon!

Nature...

I was reflecting that no single person has ever been able to transform me the way a few quiet moments alone in nature could. Then I decided to look up Oh Give Me A Home Where The Buffalo Roam... However, one time I did have a very lucid experience on the dance floor at China Harbor in Seattle. It was not necessarily because of my dance partner (although he was a good dancer), it was the energy of the crowd. Suddenly, in the middle of a song, everywhere I looked, all the guys (Latin American immigrants) that had taught me and the other girls I knew how to salsa were beaming in such a pure and happy way that shocked and surprised me. Ecstatic, collective, & friendly. A state of high energy. Like time had stopped. Maybe whirling dervishes experience things like that.

Quirky messages

Today I got one from my sister: Hey Al, I just saw a commercial for Peru on the fine living network. It was very elegant but parts were sort of funny where they showed people partying around machu pichu with catered foods that look like cupcakes and things, and people dancing with scissors. Isn't dancing with scissors illegal? Hehe. But here's the website they showed: http://www.peru.info/ Peru, not just for college students in anthropology and latin studies anymore (or meteorologist students studying el nino). So I clicked on that link. And whats the first thing I see? Not just the famous ancient city, but--Madre De Dios and Tambopata and Puerto Maldonado. Where I was! (Not the other, seemingly better known rainforest which is by Iquitos.) I just remembered that when I was college, she made a card for me with a girl writing on the blackboard "I will stop talking about Peru in class."

Hallo, K. A.!

I feel like I am rediscovering an artist...I'm thinking about sending some links about Keren Ann to some people, like maybe to friends who went with me on a trip where we visited Melville's house, and Salem, and we stayed at a bed and breakfast across the street from Emily Dickinson's house, and one of them drew a pentacle in the sand on the beach at Walden Pond. Brrr, it was co-o-o-old. I was thinking about the Nolita CD, because I a little bit missed my sojourn in upstate NY, especially the last part of it in a particularly hot upstairs apartment (oh NY, you are so extreme in temperatures) where I listened to songs such as Chelsea Burns, Greatest You Can Find, One Day Without, Nolita and For You And I.
Burn the Witch is intriguing.
I just watched a song called "Not Going Anywhere." Video. Performance.
I watched Where No Endings End after this Ailleurs video (which especially charmed me at the beginning of it.) Okay, linky, linky, linky, that's enough...I was really in the mood to drink tea at the beginning of this post, but now I just want to drink a very tall glass of water and go to sleep.

Fun pieces of info, if it works!

The Monster at the End of this Book. Read it as a kid!
Martina the Beautiful Cockroach. Read it as an adult!
From going to a fair this weekend:
Interfaith Conference
Journal of Heart Centered Therapies
Stepping Stones
Hygieia, Hygeia
ShadowGrove
Open Hearth
Faerie Festival

Yay, me and technology!

Spilled soymilk on laptop - really not good. It barely seems to allow me to type things without doing this weird highlighting erasing thing half the time. Except now I think it is working okay if I use the external mouse. Someday...everything will be...splendid.

Nice song or maybe supplication

Well, that actually worked really well! Saved.

Something to play while on a quest

I have lost my keys. I think there is nothing more frustrating than looking and looking and looking and not being able to find those keys. I think that My Sweet Lord is probably the kind of song I need to hear quietly running through my head as I'm looking for them. Keys, please find me.