"is it undying love for me or just good old-fashioned lust?" - Weevil

I heart Weevil. On a 1-10 scale, at approx. a 7.

"Shall love, in the building, grow so ruinous?" - Luciana

Comedy of Errors, Act III, Scene II.

I went to see Comedy of Errors a bit ago at Volunteer Park, which is a lovely venue for Shakespeare. Luciana's thoughts on love were what I thought was the most substantive part of the play....Here she is talking to the man she thinks is her sister's husband, but is actually that man's twin, and in love with her....


LUCIANA

And may it be that you have quite forgot

A husband’s office? Shall, Antipholus,

Even in the spring of love thy love-springs rot?

Shall love, in building, grow so ruinous?

If you did wed my sister for her wealth,

Then for her wealth’s sake use her with more kindness.

Or if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth—

Muffle your false love with some show of blindness.

Let not my sister read it in your eye;

Be not thy tongue thy own shame’s orator;

Look sweet, be fair, become disloyalty;

Apparel vice like virtue’s harbinger.

Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted.

Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint.

Be secret-false. What need she be acquainted?

What simple thief brags of his own attaint?

'Tis double wrong to truant with your bed

And let her read it in thy looks at board.

Shame hath a bastard fame, well managèd;

Ill deeds is doubled with an evil word.

Alas, poor women, make us but believe,

Being compact of credit, that you love us.

Though others have the arm, show us the sleeve;

We in your motion turn, and you may move us.

Then, gentle brother, get you in again.

Comfort my sister, cheer her, call her wife.

'Tis holy sport to be a little vain

When the sweet breath of flattery conquers strife.


"Muffle your false love with some show of blindness" is a tear-jerker...I wonder how many men have been told such things?

The end, that part where she says essentially that it's okay to lie a little if it's in the hope of harmonious relationship also makes me wonder.....

"Real power is usually unspectacular,

a simple setting aside of fear that allows the free flow of love. But it changes everything."

- Martha Beck

love for our grandmothers

some say faith is for the weak or small-minded / but i search for your faith everywhere / i need it to reassemble myself whole from these shards of chicago ice...

did you want condoms with that? - Irish ad campaign

K8: I found the pink contraception tin. I thought I'd lost it in the move, but it turned up.

Gretzky: What does it say on it again?

K8: "No matter where, no matter when, think contraception."

K8 found that tin, full of condoms, in Ireland a couple years ago, where it appears they were on a national contraception campaign...the website is still up and there's a great public service ads on it...but you do need to be over the age of consent to watch...(17 in Ireland.)

Here's a transcript of one of the radio psa ads, the night bus:

Bus Script

Older bus driver, has seen it all
Teenage couple
  
Sound Effect: Bus revving
Bus Driver: Right folks, seats on top!
Bus Driver: Two, is it?
Teenage Girl: Yeah (giggling)
Teenage Guy: Yeah, thanks.
Sound Effect: Ticket machine
Bus Driver: Good night?
Teenage Guy: It’s not over yet!
Teenage Guy and Girl: Laughing
Bus Driver: I hope you have condoms so!
Teenage Guy: What?
Bus Driver: It’s just, I’ve heard that gonorrhea is an awful curse.
Teenage Guy: Huh?
Bus Driver: Next!

Nobody else is going to do the thinking for you. thinkcontraception.ie.

I think what I find fascinating about the campaign is that it's funny. If you can get people to practice safe sex by being humorous, more power to you.

"Do you choose love or does love choose you?" - k8

We have no satisfactory answer, although this question did come after a discussion on power, women, and adultery in the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus advocated for women and told men not to be idiots. But mostly he talks about not objectifying each other, and seeing each other as whole people...I'm not entirely sure how we got to choosing love from this, but we did.

and now for something completely different: love updates....

So 2009 is the Year of Love. At least, that's my word for this year.... So I thought I'd post a bit on love....starting with Pam Epstein's Advertising for Love blog, which is hilarious and also illuminating...She's writing a dissertation on love and marriage from the end of the 19th century to the 20th...

I think Bertram's ad is my favorite, but I also really like the one about Two for the Price of One...

"We just want to say thank you for making our neighborhood so beautiful." - 2020 cycle guy,

who said this as I was walking up Union and he was smoking a cigarette with a buddy...

The guys at 2020 cycle are awesome - they made the Schwinn I've had since I was 13 usable last spring, and apparently they sometimes tell people they're beautiful.

Sometimes it's nice to be told you're beautiful, especially when you're in jeans and a t-shirt and have taken no particular care with your appearance.

It's been good being home the past couple weeks...I went into Katy's and Wallace is still up on the dog board, and Megan's art, which I absolutely ADORE, is up on the walls again. And Katy's vanilla chai is still hands down the best chai in the city.

the work of women

"The first time I traveled anywhere, I was not yet a writer, but I can now see I was in the process of becoming one." - jamaica kincaid

"sometimes I feel geometric, so my work goes off on tangents" - mayda del valle

i have been looking for time to write.

you'd think with no official full-time job i'd have hours upon hours to do so, but i'm finding since I got home I am distracted......good friends, dogs, part-time work, summer sunshine, family, etc...all clamoring for a piece of my attention and being present. And not that this clamoring is bad: I'm relishing it, very happy to be distracted...But I'm also wondering how in the heck I'm going to discipline myself to actually sit down and write again...I guess this is something women the world over have struggled with forever, so it's nothing new...jenn crusie writes about protecting the work and getting a life, as have a lot of others...

anne lamott talks about writing as the gift God's given her, and mayda del valle talks about this to0...not only does she rock my absolutely favorite style of jeans with a dress*, she's effing awesome. my all-time favorite poem of del valle's is "seduce me" - it's fantastic - but "the gift" is the poem of hers i've been pondering lately:

* Last March, someone told me I couldn't wear jeans with a dress. I cursed her internally, wore it anyway, and looked fantastic. Confidence is everything.

what the government decided to do....ira glass

oh, ira. How we love you and this american life.

listen to this one.

by now I could have had a ph d in philosophy...Vanessa Hidary

"How was the first date?" - Gretzky text

"It was fine until he tried to kiss me. WTF?" - Ringo text

"He missed the no-kissing-on-the-first-date memo?" - Gretzky text

"Apparently....Don't worry, I gave him the memo." -Ringo text

There's been a rash of first dates, second dates, frates (friend + date = confusion about what exactly the meeting is) and other assorted events that make my girlfriends nervous lately....wow, if guys only knew how much time girls spend analyzing and overanalyzing things...

Then someone sent me vanessa hidary's Ph D in Him....

and for those awful alexander days, ps 22 continues

with just dance. I'm seriously in love with all of them.

don't stop believin'

i do not miss institute, but I do miss all the inspirational songs we used to pump ourselves up, including this one, which is so cute it should be outlawed.

thank you evs for passing it on.

happy birthday Julia

On those days when you go to get a new bra and the saleswoman says, "It's okay, honey, women change their size all the time, don't worry about it," but you feel like crying anyway, because, really, who needs more cleavage? I thought my days of high school insecurities were over, but apparently I'm still a woman, and apparently I still have some... And then you come home from that miserable expedition to find the dog has somehow managed to lock himself in the closet and in wanting desperately to get out, chewed all the wood around the door, and everything that was in said closet all over the closet floor -

Here's what you do on days like that:

1) Eat dinner, preferably Mexican, preferably with margaritas, with at least one good friend.
2) Go see a movie that is funny. Laugh.
3) Take a bath. With bubbles.

That will all help. a LOT.

Especially the movie part. Meryl Streep is awesome. And I now want to be Julia Child. Because

1) She was funny.
2) She loved life. Every bit of it.
3) There was only one person she didn't like. I admire that.

I read the book Julie and Julia when it came out in 2006, and I loved it. It made me laugh out loud. So I was skeptical about the movie, especially after reading the reviews...but Ringo talked me into it and it was good.

And it's Julia Child's birthday today, so happy birthday Julia!

wow, i'm glad I don't have to wear a corset

like the lady in this story, which is unreal. women do crazy stuff in the name of beauty.

sometimes I wish I lived in dallas

so that danielle could be my pastor. especially when she writes about reconciliation and hope.

i worked at frankford this summer

wow, I feel like I'm in hamsterdam, kind of...

the seattle police tried an experiment yesterday....

"he's on drugs? Wow, that is uptown..."

Grandpa asked me today if I had reconsidered Wallace's name, as Wallace is pretty high-class. I said no, and then pointed out Wallace's left eye, which was swollen almost shut yesterday after an unfortunate paper wasp incident...We've been giving him benadryl, which has almost restored his eye to normal capacity, and Grandpa still thinks I should change his name.

"What is the objective?" - Hitch

I should have played this clip from Hitch for my corps members:


Hitch: What is the objective?
Albert: Shock and awe.
Hitch:That was schockingly awful.

I lost 10 pounds this summer eating fritos every day for lunch

this is probably not something I should blog about lest I find myself running an ad campaign for fritos, which are awful and I hope never to eat again.

But for real, during institute one loses all track of time, and i'm pretty sure some days I never ate lunch at all, and when you're awake for 20 hours of every 24 hour period, I suppose everything blurs up regardless of one's food intake...I literally ate crap all summer long, and still lost weight.

Wow, the crap food/sleep deprivation diet really works.

I'm not advocating this. Don't do it. Please.

I am so excited about real food I've been dreaming of sugar snap peas and carrots have been dancing in my head, and NJ's got squash growing in the garden that I'm super excited about...

blessing the boats

Today I am flying home to Wallace, and to people I love and care about, and I am looking forward to sleeping for about 18 years this week.

My corps members flew off to their regions on Friday, and I was sad I will not be there with them this year, or be able to have them over for dinner, since they're all the way across the other side of the country...

Goodbyes are not my favorite thing . Mostly I would like everyone I love to be in the same place for always.

So I wasn't sure what I would end with, except that I've had a few conversations lately about how really what a lot of good teaching comes down to is loving our children...And I think the work of teaching is sacred work, and this is what I ended us with - that leading children in learning means you are standing on holy ground.

So I sent every one of them on their way with lucille clifton's blessing, one of my favorite poems:

may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that

This is what I hope for each of them - that they may sail through this summer into a classroom where kids feel welcomed and valued, and learn all they can every day.

k8 says we can do this

at her wedding, and i don't dance, but I'd totally do this. And you've got to wait to see the bride, she's awesome!

"What do I look like, a basketball player? I was in marching band." - Mr. O

"I have a secret to tell you. My pants have no belt loops." -S.D.

This was followed by a demonstration of how the belt S.D. was wearing was not actually attached to his pants, because his pants had no belt loops.

Mr. O: "Are you wearing women's pants? Are they a size 6? Or 8?"

S.D.: "No, they're not women's pants."

Mr. O: "Where'd you get them?"

S.D.: "Ann Taylor Loft."

i've been dreaming of fruits and vegetables

cucumbers, watermelon,peaches, blueberries, carrots....i do not want to eat out until December. and I want a bucketful of greens...and I've been dreaming of the madrona farmer's market. can't wait to go on Friday!