The Oscars

That's three hours of my life I'll never get back.

WELL

This play by Lisa Kron didn't work for me. It had some good moments, nice laughs, but it was ultimately amateurish and manipulative. The big insight is not worth the effort. Or as one character asks. "Did you all pay to be here?"

CONFESSION

I saw very few of the Oscar nominated films.

{yawn}

Spring Is the Pink Season

Spring Is the Pink Season
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Late winter filled with flowers: plum, cherry, pear and magnolia. Lush and fleeting.

Kitty Friday

Isabella
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Isabella preparing to jump from the fence.

Flower

Flower
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Eucalyptus

Eucalyptus
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Cold

Cold inside.
Cold outside.
Head cold.

HOPE

Where there is darkness...

Avast ye hardies!

My pirate name is:
Dirty Roger Rackham

Capital Punishment

killing someone who killed someone to show that killing someone is wrong...

Cat On a Cool Wood Fence

Cat On a Cool Wood Fence
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Friday cat photo. 'nuf said.

More Magnolias

More Magnolias
Originally uploaded by vajra.

I will probably be unable to post for the next four days.

PLURALITY

OF BEING NUMEROUS

1

There are things
We live among 'and to see them
Is to know ourselves'.

Occurrence, a part
Of an infinite series,

The sad marvels;

Of this was told
A tale of our wickedness.
It is not our wickedness.

'You remember that old town we went to, and we sat in the
ruined window, and we tried to imagine that we belonged to
those times--It is dead and it is not dead, and you cannot
imagine either its life or its death; the earth speaks and the
salamander speaks, the Spring comes and only obscures it--'

__George Oppen

CONSCIOUSNESS

As fire lights the wood it consumes, so the soul illuminates the body with consciousness.
__Srimad Bhagavatam

Spring in February

Deciduous Magnolia 2
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Insomnia

Can't sleep.
No sign of fatigue.
Again;.

Good day sunshine

The Journey

About a Boy
Originally uploaded by vajra.

All I have is this moment.

The day after yesterday.

Be here now.

Scott's Message

"A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.
Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge."
--Pale Blue Dot

VALUES

There's so much talk about values but it seems as a society we value only the most base exchange. One hundred thousand murdered in Rwanda and we did nothing. We did nothing because it was Africa, the victims were black, we has just lost a handful of soldiers in Somalia, and Rwanda has no oil. "Acts of genocide" are apparently not the same thing as genocide. We did nothing. Nothing. And we continue to do nothing in the Sudan and other places where cruelty and oppression prosper. All those victims can possibly wish for is that oil fields will be discovered. The U.S. will then be "shocked. Shocked!" that atrocities have been committed and will then, perhaps, intervene.

I saw Hotel Rwanda today. It's a brilliant film. The actors don't act: they inhabit their characters so that the movies seems like a documentary rather than a commercial film. In an eraa with any number of amazing Black actors, Don Cheadle has turned in an extraordinary performance. The other actors are equally good. This movie is not to be missed.

Every Time the Rethugs Make You Want To Scream

or they play Gov. Dean's scream, fight back and give a buck:

We've Got Howard's Back

by The People
Let's give Howard Dean the ammunition he needs to successfully reform our party.

Democratic National Committee

  Contribution amount:
  $
 
 
 
 

ENVIRONMENT

The attack on the environment has begun. The Rethuglicans want drilling in the Arctic and to rewrite the Endangered Species Act, the latter by changing the meaning of "endangered" so that if a variety is threatened or on the verge of extinction it will not be listed unless the entire species is threatened.



Egrets
 
Where the path closed
down and over,
through the scumbled leaves,
fallen branches,
through the knotted catbrier,
I kept going. Finally
I could not
save my arms
from thorns; soon
the mosquitoes
smelled me, hot
and wounded, and came
wheeling and whining.
And that's how I came
to the edge of the pond:
black and empty
except for a spindle
of bleached reeds
at the far shore
which, as I looked,
wrinkled suddenly
into three egrets - - -
a shower
of white fire!
Even half-asleep they had
such faith in the world
that had made them - - -
tilting through the water,
unruffled, sure,
by the laws
of their faith not logic,
they opened their wings
softly and stepped
over every dark thing.

Mary Oliver

Fluffy

We call this kitty "Fluffy" but his real name is OZ.

Fluffy
Originally uploaded by vajra.

It's Cat Friday.


'nuf said.

Springe Is Icumen In

White, and Pink, O
Originally uploaded by vajra.

*****
FULFILLMENT

Eternal existence has no meaning if it is not conssious, and consciousness has no meaning if it does not give any fulfillment. Real enjoyment, divine enjoyment, comes from service--not from exploitation.
__Swami B.R. Sridhar

Ash Wednesday

This late winter ritual, "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return," is a sacrament for sinners. So many arrive at the altar for this rite who do not appear for any other church event. Why?

SAINTS

I recall the performance piece that my writing group did at the Marsh about saints. It was probably one of the best pieces I've ever participated in. I should look at it again.

Deciduous Magnolia 5

Deciduous Magnolia 5
Originally uploaded by vajra.

I could become obsessed with the beauty of these magnolias. Each one inviting me to observe and record its extraordinary beauty.

Sky

Sky
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Infinite

the night sky when I was a child

the ocean on a cloudy day

the number of books I've yet to read

Sky w/branches

Sky w/branches
Originally uploaded by vajra.

"Every blade of grass has an Angel bending over it saying. 'Grow, Grow!"
__Jewish Proverb

FAITH

“If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you” (Lk 15:6).


******

“Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief” (Mark 9:24).


******

"Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe."
__Augustine of Hippo


******

The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation."
__Simone Weil

EXISTENCE

Q. Why did God make you?

A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world,
and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven.
__The Baltimore Catechism

Knowledge

It is a defect to want to know everything about divinity. Knowledge may be a qualification here in this world but in relation to the transcendental truth of the highest order, the tendency to want to know everything is a disqualification.
__Swami B.R. Sridhar

*****

Ownership

Now Duhbya proposes an ownership society . Of course the man pushing a shopping cart filled with his possessions OWNS his stuff just like Bill Gates owns his stuff.

The Little Big Guy

The Little Big Guy
Originally uploaded by vajra.

He looks longingly at the ribbon, knowing that the cat on the other side of the glass is no match for him.

Obstacles

Difficulties with iChat this evening: no video and excruciatinly loud music even after the music was turned off. Some kind of wireless overlap, I think. Interesting that communications were blocked...

READING

"I only read what I am hungry for at the moment when I have an appetite for it, aand then I do not read, I eat."
__Simone Wiel, Waiting for God, 1950

Ego

"Nowhere are we closer to the sublime secret of all origination than in the recognition of our own selves, whom we always think we know already. Yet we know the immensities of space better than we know our own depths, where -even though we do not understand it-we can listen directly to the throb of creation itself."
__C.G. Jung

LOVE

"Although is is impossible, the infinite is defeated by the finite. What is that unthinkable position? It can only be attained through love."

__Swami B.R. Sridhar

Resuming

I didn't post an entry yesterday because I was too exhausted. A recurrence of my insomnia resulted in more than 24 hours without sleep. I simply collapsed about 7:30 p.m. despite having my computer beside me.


Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.
__William Shakespeare