April Haiku

Rosa Alba
Originally uploaded by vajra.

this white bed shimmers.
unfolding lover grunts.
a dream before twilight

Cat Friday

Danny Boy
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Why did you wake me from my nap?

A beauty whose image fills the mirror of the heart

Pink Rose
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Your Face

I swear, since seeing Your face,
the whole world is fraud and fantasy.
The garden is bewildered as to what is leaf
or blossom. The distracted birds
can't distinguish the birdseed from the snare.

A house of love with no limits,
a presence more beatuiful than venus or the moon,
a beauty whose image fills the morror of the heart.

____The Divani Shasmsi Tabriz, XV

Silent Gulls

Silent Gulls
Originally uploaded by vajra.

After years of not liking seagulls very much, I've come to the conclusion that they are beautiful. They have a clean, modern line which suits my current passions.

Darling Frenchie

Darling Frenchi
Originally uploaded by vajra.

This is the puppy I want. Or one very like it.

Agave

Agave
Originally uploaded by vajra.

I would love to go back to Oaxaca. This picture wasn't taken there but it reminds me of that wonderful week nonetheless.

RENT

Watched a rehearsal of the "feature film based on the musical" this afternoon in my favorite cemetary. More trucks than bodies. I'll try to check them out again tomorrow.

Why

Lily
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Why is there always
music in this house?
Ask the owner.

Come in.
The Beloved is here.
We are all drunk.
No one notices
who enters or leaves.
Don't sit outside
the door in the dark,
wondering.

__The Divani Shamsi Tabriz

Duncan's Mills

Duncan's Mills
Originally uploaded by vajra.

EARTH DAY: LEST WE FORGET

Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch.
___CHIEF SEATTLE

Cat Friday

Me and My Shadow
Originally uploaded by vajra.

I can't believe I'm stuck with the world's cutest kitten. Sheesh,

Ev'rybody's talking about
Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism
This-ism, that-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m.

All we are saying is give peace a chance
All we are saying is give peace a chance

C'mon
Ev'rybody's talking about Ministers,
Sinisters, Banisters and canisters
Bishops and Fishops and Rabbis and Pop eyes,
And bye bye, bye byes.

All we are saying is give peace a chance

___Lennon & McCartney

Too Cute!

Abby & Max ©WSCULLIN
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Ratz

Ratz
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Separated at birth?

The Emperor
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Separated at birth?

O Lovers

Orange Rose II
Originally uploaded by vajra.

O lovers, lovers, it is time
to set out from the world.
I hear a drum in my soul's ear
coming from the depths of the stars.

__The Divan Shamsi Tabriz

Floating

Floating
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Don't Go Away

Pink Rose
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Don't go away, come near.
Don't be faithless, be faithful.
Find the antidote in the venom.
Come to the root of the root of yourself.

__Kulliyat-E Sahms

Cat Friday

On the Prowl
Originally uploaded by vajra.

What if the hokey-pokey is what it's all about?

Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader, is preparing a speed for a so-called Christian group, equating opposition to Bush and his appointees as being anti-faith.


The Rethuglicans have taken sleaze to an unbelievable level.

LiberalOasis

This is an attack on the conservative movement. It is not just about Tom DeLay.
-- Rep. Eric Cantor, House chief deputy whip, 4/6/05 (via The Stakeholder)


The Republican Party has not only decided to stand by Tom DeLay.


It has explicitly embraced DeLay’s view that the attacks on him are the equivalent to attacks on conservatism itself.


It has explicitly rejected the Wall Street Journal-David Brooks-Lindsey Graham view that, for the sake of the movement, conservatism must be kept far, far away from the whiff of ethical transgressions.


It has implicitly sent the message that the DeLay way is the conservative way.


Not only that creating a seamless relationship between Congress and corporations -- foreign or domestic, through legal or illegal means – is ideologically in sync with conservatism.


But that pragmatically, the conservative movement does not have the popular support to survive without the kind of well-financed corporate network that DeLay has built.


In classic projection mode, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt said Dems were attacking DeLay because they have “no competing policy ideas.”


But of course, DeLay is not cherished because he’s the GOP’s idea man.


He’s cherished because he’s the GOP’s bag man.


And if the GOP’s ideas were as politically potent as they like to claim, then they wouldn’t so badly need a bag man, and wouldn’t so badly need to protect him at all costs.


Apparently, selling our government to the highest bidder is the greatest idea conservatives got.


But the GOP has done the country a great service by making their deepest principles crystal clear.


And they are helping the nation make an informed choice about the kind of Congress they want in 2006.


April 6, 2005 PERMALINK
Fat Cats vs. Fringe Fundamentalists
And the Nuclear Option Loses
(posted April 6 1:15 AM ET)


The Dems won on “Clear Skies.” They’re winning on Social Security.


And it looks like they’ve won on the “nuclear option.”


Last night on Fox News, Bill Kristol said that while there was once talk that the GOP would end filibusters of judges this month, instead, “the Republicans have backed down for now” as “the Democrats called Frist’s bluff.”


Kristol’s Fox colleague Charles Krauthammer concurred, lamenting that “the Republicans might have missed a moment” by not doing the option “after the inauguration when they were at their peak strength.”


Now, he noted, “the Republicans are weakened … and if they don’t act, they’re going to get stymied on judges.”


Krauthammer didn’t say why they are weakened, but this piece in The Hill sheds light.


Basically, it’s the coalition between corporate conservatives and the social conservatives that is continuing to weaken.


Last month, LiberalOasis discussed how the social cons were complaining that the corporate cons were getting their goodies, and the social cons were getting squat (leading to intense pressure to prolong Terri Schiavo’s vegetative state).


Well, according to The Hill, the corporate cons are impatient for more.


So even though the social cons want the nuclear option; and even though the corporate cons want anti-regulation, anti-civil rights judges quite badly; the corporate cons want more corporate-friendly legislation too.


And the nuclear option, by definition, would indefinitely stall the GOP’s pro-corporate agenda.


In turn, the corporate cons (the cons with the money) appear to be getting their way again, while the social cons (the people power) will feel like they’ve gotten the short end again.


As these two key GOP factions continue to publicly squabble, unintentionally raising the coalition’s profile, the long-term challenge for Dems is to show how the GOP only seems to care about stroking fat cats and fringe fundamentalists.


In the meantime, Dems can pat themselves on the back for stifling the nuclear option.


There’s no guarantee the nuclear option won’t return, but in the short-term, Dems likely have prevented Bush from easily ramming an extremist Supreme Court nominee through the Senate this summer.


LiberalOasis

Chchchchanges

More Magnolias

More Magnolias
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Oxalis

Oxalis
Originally uploaded by vajra.

I Have Given Up

I have given up on oxalis. Oh, I pull a handful now and then just to keep my hand in and just to show it who is boss. (Hint: it's not me.) But it's such a beautiful weed and the other day at a nursery I saw pots of "oxalis" for sale. It wasn't exactly the same: the leaves were slightly bronzed and smaller. But it was oxalis alright. Anyway, I love the bright yellow flowers and the fact that it dies back gently and is easy to pull up whenever I get the urge. Though I know that each root has dozens of little bulbs which are impossible to get rid of unless you are prepared to sift every square inch of soil, which I am not. I'm just happy when I see the joyful yellow blossoms. And I know that God doesn't think of them as weeds. Pretty much.


Consider the lilies of the field. They toil not neither do they spin. Yet I tell you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these.

Pink Camellia

Pink Camellia
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Amazing perfection.
Today.
A glorious rain-washed sky.
Flowers.
Clean streets.
Spring.

Cat Friday

Yin and Yang
Originally uploaded by vajra.

OK. So she's cute. Like I care.

Dare I eat a peach?

Peaches
Originally uploaded by vajra.

or perhaps a plum?

Poetry

I, too, dislike it.
Reading, it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers
in it, after all, a place for the genuine.

__Marianne Moore

from The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
 Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
 Memory and desire, stirring
 Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
 A little life with dried tubers.
 

Yellow Rose

Yellow Rose
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Karol Wojtyla

As I ponder the death of this pope, it occurs to me that I remained Catholic during his pontificate despite rather than because of him. I will never forget the tears I shed when I read that he would never allow the ordination of women because they didn't look like Jesus. Nor will I forget that he advised the suffering campesinos of Latin America to bear with their oppressors, presumably because their oppressors were Catholic, while telling the workers of Poland to stand against their government. He destroyed the vibrant Christ-based Liberation Theology and left the fields of Latin American open to the emotional banality of Evangelical Protestantism. His theology never warmed my heart or captured my intellect.

I wait, with a degree of trepidation, for the Conclave, which he fashioned with his appointments.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

 
S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo
Non tornò vivo alcun, s'i' odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the windowpanes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

. . . . .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

. . . . .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in
upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

. . . . .

No!I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

T. S. Eliot

Rest In Peace

John Paul II died today. A great man whatever one's POV.

Cat Friday

Molly (copyright Alison Lara)
Originally uploaded by vajra.

Molly lives with Alison and her buddy, which she grooms, cuddles and sleeps with.