On Love

I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart. - Alice Walker

On Acceptance

Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer.

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

Meet Danny Wilson

Obsessively listening to "Meet Danny Wilson" lately.

Most people know Danny Wilson from their one-hit-wonder big hit, "Mary's Prayer," but I actually bought their album and listened to it endlessly for a good part of 1987 and 1988 (does anyone still do that? Buy an album and listen to the entire thing again and again until every note is engraved on her soul? Or has the single-song downloadabilty of iTunes made that a relic of a different era?).

"Steam Trains to the Milky Way" is one of my favorite cuts on the record, and has one of the most beautiful slice of life lyrics I've ever heard:

I bought some gardenias at the market place
And I saw some old men playing checkers
And love on a young girl's face
Sing "When You're Smiling" for the boy's return
Inside the fire is on and every friend I own is singing my favorite song

Isn't that a pretty little meander?

But my favorite song on that record (yes, I still call them records) is "You Remain an Angel." I haven't been able to find it on youtube, though admittedly I haven't looked very hard. I've actually spent more time deciphering the first line, which as it's sung is an unintelligible mess, so stumbling on the lyric on MySpace (soooo 2003) feels like winning the lottery. Okay, maybe not in a "Woohoo-I can retire-hello boss I quit" way, more like an "I won twenty bucks in scratch-off" way. But still. You take the little victories with the big.

I know it's pretty lame of me to write about a song without posting a video or audio to go with it, but too bad.  My blog, my rules, subject to change arbitrarily depending on my mood, which today is: Watchful. Not wary, exactly, just with a heightened sense of paying attention. Like a deer that suddenly lifts its head at the snap of a distant twig or a tickle of scent, ears quivering. Frozen in place and just...listening.

Here's the song lyric, which I pinched from the Danny Wilson blog on myspace:

You belong in heaven
With all the other angels
Do you believe in angels?
I'll tell you angels believe in you

Good morning misguided I misunderstood
I'm on my knees before you
You show me a ditch were a palace stood and
I will still adore you

I know you belong in another brilliant world
Where the skies are bluer than blue
I know this song is never gonna change the world

You remain an angel in my eyes
So rest your weary wings
And hang your heavy halo high
When I'm gone I hope you realize
Above all other things you are
An angel in my eyes

I once heard you sing and
I could not believe
You sang like a hero
Now who is this poison that makes you behave
Like Robert De Niro
I know you belong in heaven
You can stop pretending the habit is bigger than you
I know this song can maybe have a happy ending

When I'm gone I hope you realize bove all other things
You are an angel in my eyes

One day soon I'll paint my name
On the walls of the city of love and fame
I'll stake my claim on the northernmost tip of citizenship
I will wish you well
Here's some summer music
For an angel

Well anyway thank you for pushing a smile my way
You sang like a hero
You sang the same song on a different day
Like Robert De Niro
And I know I was wrong to think that we could be together for sixty or seventy years
But at least I believed we could make it up 'til here

You remain an angel in my eyes
No rest for weary wings
So hang your heavy halo high

When I'm gone I hope you realize
Above all other things you are
And the things you do
Friends may come and go
But you
Will remain an angel in my eyes

Shoulding All Over Ourselves

I promise a better update, and soon, but the last week has been a challenge of paying attention, listening to what goes on with my heart, and challenging the "shoulds" that I've been trained to believe: 

I should be reacting to my mother's death a certain way, I should be feeling certain things and should be demonstrating those feelings in a socially-expected and socially-acceptable manner (weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes), and my family should be doing certain things with regard to my mother's death.

Now I should go back to work.  And that's not a conditioned "should" -- I actually have to earn a living here.

"It's Different For Girls" - Joe Jackson

Just because this one is fun.  And true. Well, at least for me.



What the hell is wrong with you tonight?
I can't seem to say or do the right thing
Wanted to be sure you're feeling right
Wanted to be sure we want the same thing

She said, I can't believe it
You can't, possibly mean it
Don't we, all want the same thing
Don't we
Well, who said anything about love?

No, not love she said
Don't you know that it's different for girls?
(Don't give me love)
No, not love she said
Don't you know that it's different for girls?
You're all the same

Mama always told me save yourself
Take a little time and find the right girl
Then again don't end up on the shelf
Logical advice gets you in a whirl

I know, a lot of things that you don't
You wanna hear some?
She said, just give me something
Anything
Well give me all you got but not love

No, not love she said
Don't you know that it's different for girls?
(Don't give me love)
No, not love she said
Don't you know that it's different for girls?
You're all the same
You're all the same
You're all the same
You're all the same
You're all the same
You're all the same
You're all the same
You're all the same

Who said anything about love?

No, not love she said
Don't you know that it's different for girls?
(Don't give me love)
No, not love she said
Don't you know that it's different for girls?
(Don't give me love)
No, no, no, no, not love she said
Don't you know that it's different for girls?
(Don't give me love)
No, no, no, no, no, not love she said
Don't you know that it's different for girls?
You're all the same
You're all the same
You're all the same
You're all the same

Natalia Zukerman

Natalia Zukerman

Because she's an incredible finger-pickin' guitar player.

Because of that coffee-with-a-little-bit-of-cream voice.

Because you listen to her music and can't pinpoint just exactly kinda what precisely is her genre.

Because she's musical royalty.

Just because.

Oh, just listen because.

Shenpa

A very long and fascinating talk about getting "hooked," by Pema Chodron.  Along the same lines as "attachment."

On Having Buttons

"When Our Buttons Are Pushed"

Each of us has "buttons" -- areas where we are sensitive.  When our buttons are pushed, we fly off the handle, blaming the other person for upsetting us. But our being upset is a dependently arising process.  We contribute the buttons, and the other person does the pushing.  If we didn't have the buttons, others couldn't push them.

Our buttons are our responsibility.  As long as we have them, someone will push them, especially since they are big, red, and flashing.  Our buttons are so sensitive, that even if a person walks by, the breeze from his passage will trigger our button's detector and our alarm will ring, "That person is offending (harming, criticizing, deceiving, manipulating, cheating, etc.) me!"  Although many times people have no intention of harming us, our buttons get pushed just because they are so sensitive.

We need to do internal research, asking ourselves what our buttons are and why we are so sensitive in those particular areas.  Our sensitivity generally has to do with attachment.  If we are able to identify and then reduce our attachments, our buttons shrink.  Then even if someone wants to push them, doing so is harder.  Realized spiritual beings have no buttons left to push, so no matter how others treat them, they do not become upset.

We may think that if someone deliberately insults us, it's correct to be angry. However, such thinking is illogical.  We would be giving our power to the other person, in which case his intention -- which we cannot control -- would be governing our happiness and suffering.  Whether or not another person wishes us ill does not matter.  We still have a choice whether to be offended.  The less we are attached, for example, to praise and reputation, the less miffed we will become, because our mind will not interpret situations as personal assaults.

Thubten Chodron
"Working With Anger"
2001

On Art and Suffering

Since moving to New York, she had been gradually abandoning her old ideas about the nobility of suffering. The more suffering she witnessed -- and the New York art world was wormy with it -- the less she subscribed to it. Some pain came with the territory, of course, but most suffering artists were narcissists, she was starting to believe. Narcissistic artists seemed attached to agony, to the writhe and the whine, to the yowl, the howl, and the botched suicide; their fits of despair (preferably in public) carefully timed to impress the seriousness of their aesthetic upon critics and collectors. In the past, she'd embraced the suffering artist image, she supposed, but in her heart she had always considered artisthood more of a privilege than a curse, and those to whom the creative life brought only misery, she now invited to go into food service. The world could always use another waitress, another fry cook.

Tom Robbins
"Skinny Legs and All"
1990

Random Definition: Beguile

be·guile
tr.v. be·guiled, be·guil·ing, be·guiles

1. To deceive by guile; delude.

2. To take away from by or as if by guile; cheat: a disease that has beguiled me of strength.

3. To distract the attention of; divert: "to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming" (Abraham Lincoln).

4. To pass (time) pleasantly.

5. To amuse or charm; delight.

I find it interesting sometimes that the most commonly assumed definition of a word is frequently lowest in the hierarchy of definitions.

Take this word, "beguile.". You tend to think of it as something good, right? And generally feminine. Her beguiling smile, etc.

We think that describing someone as "beguiling" is a compliment. But you'd have to consider the source, and possibly even facial expressions, I guess. For if someone super wordnerdy described, say, Angelina Jolie as beguiling, but with a sardonic twist to his mouth, the presumed definition would be, "conniving husband stealer." But if the same person said it with a smile and a twinkle in his eye, it would mean that Angie is the most captivating example of human flesh ever.

Just a random thought about a silly little word.