positive pleasure and positive pain

"Tess had never before known a time in which the thread of her life was so distinctly twisted of two strands, positive pleasure and positive pain."

I'm part of a book club called Read With Me and the current selection is Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. So far, I'm in love with Thomas Hardy's ability to write beautiful descriptions but I am getting a little impatient with some of the characters and the dialogue. I still have a long way to go... I'm on chapter 31 and there are 59!

something inevitable

"It's like a bear stumbling into a beehive or a honey cache: I'm stumbling right into it and getting stuck, and it's delicious and it's horrible and I'm in it and it's not very graceful and it's very awkward and it's very painful and yet there's something inevitable about it."
- Leonard Cohen

sehnsucht

"Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year after year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it—tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest—if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself—you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for." We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all." - C.S. LEWIS

work

"The best cure for melancholy is industry - and though the winds blew for days, never ending, and the gulls never ceased their cries, we drew strength from the rhythm of our labors." - The Weight of Water

can't stop thinking about: broken bells

I have a bit of a thing for James Mercer's voice. From what I understand, quite a few other people feel the same way. I guess that makes me part of the mainstream – is that so bad?

I've been obsessing over three songs on the Broken Bells album – I've been playing them over and over in my car. Over and over and over. My obsession might also have to do with the lyrics that I can't get out of my head:

It's too late to change your mind, you let loss be your guide – High Road

Common fears start to multiply, we realize we're paralyzed. Where did it go, all that precious time, did we even try to stem the tide? Why should we waste it on buying into the same old lies? The longer we wait around the faster the years go by – Vaporize

I was lost then and I'm lost now and I doubt I'll ever know which way to go – Vaporize

Remember what they say, there's no shortcut to a dream, it's all blood and sweat and life is what you manage in between – October

(image: brokenbells.com)

oxalis oxalis oxalis

I have this ongoing problem of calling certain plants by incorrect names – I'll chalk it up to a bad memory but, really, you have to admit that there are a lot of plant names out there... how are we supposed to keep them all straight?

Anyway, in my e-mail inbox today was a photo that solved a mystery for me (a photo featuring two of my fave things: a Jonathan Adler product and a COOL plant). For years, I've been incorrectly calling the plant cyclamen when it is actually oxalis. How did I mix that up?

I associate this plant with the beginning of my relationship with J. He had one of these plants when I first met him... so that's why I love oxalis. { photo: jonathanadler.com }

lonely little garlic clove

We thoroughly enjoyed our turkey-day feast last week... so much so that we made a second batch of garlic mashed potatoes and cornbread stuffing on Saturday. I refuse to feel guilty about being so gluttonous. It was lovely!

We used a lot of garlic over the past five days (and I'm sure my co-workers appreciate my spicy aroma. hmmm, sorry!). I had to giggle a little when one of the garlic cloves turned out to be itty-bitty; perfect for a lilliputian.

Anyway, this tiny clove reminded me of a cute Thai saying but I can never remember the exact phrasing. The saying is about being alone without your family: when you are by yourself, you're a lonely little garlic clove that has been separated from the head of garlic. I know I don't have it quite right, but I've already pestered Phil too much about silly Thai translations, so I won't bug him again about this phrase (maybe later).

life-coach in a cup

I have a tea addiction and my favorite varieties are crafted by Yogi Tea. Every single tea bag has a little snippet of wisdom printed on the tag and the one that made an impression on me today was: Love what is ahead by loving what has come before.

My interpretation of this can be summed up by that lovely old concept of 'No Regrets'. Or maybe, more accurately, my tea tag is telling me I should have reverence for my past. I have to be honest, though, I've never been able to decide if subscribing to the 'No Regrets' philosophy is strong and noble OR a complete and total cop-out.

I definitely regret some of my past choices. Right now I'm grappling with a few that greatly affected my career path (path? more like career ditch). I wish I had done a few things differently, which is to be expected.

I don't want to miss the point that my yogi (in tea-tag form) is trying to make; I may not like what has happened in my past but I will have to make peace with it in order to make room for the possibilities of the future. And that, my friends, is a challenging task.

P.S. ...in the most creepy coincidence, as I was typing this blog post, a character in a movie on t.v. said, "It's not about what happened in the past, or what you think might happen in the future. It's about the ride... there is no point in going through all this crap, if you're not going to enjoy the ride."

modern american poetry

As I sit here and watch Iron & Wine on Austin City Limits, I'm reminded of how much I adore Samuel Beam's music. I haven't listened to Iron & Wine in a while, which is a shame. Samuel Beam is a true poet...

"Mother remember the night that the dog had her pups in the pantry? Blood on the floor and the fleas on their paws and you cried 'til the morning..." ~ Upward Over The Mountain, Iron & Wine

mocha

See? Television CAN be educational. I had no idea (until today) that 'Mocha' is the name of a port in Yemen where coffee was traded for over two centuries – that's what I learned while watching T.V. today.

While 'mocha' is also the name of a type of coffee bean grown in Indonesia, I found it interesting that the word 'mocha' probably originates from that port city in Yemen. Yes, I'm a self-declared word-nerd so this sort of stuff intrigues me.

verbivore

Words. I love words. In fact, I think I might be a word snob. I refuse to use abbreviations in my text messages, forum posts and blog posts. I still use proper punctuation, spell words out completely and always check my spelling. And, since I have never in my life actually spoken the phrase "laugh out loud" I find that I have no need to use that ever-so-popular abbreviation in my writing. Never. A little pedantic, I know, but someone has to preserve 'real language' before we all forget how to spell; before we humans start to communicate purely with abbreviations.

I don't know why I love words so much. I just do. I'm a verbivore. When I was in college, our college radio station broadcast word etymology snippets in a program called Chrysti the Wordsmith and I thought the program was brilliant. Word origins are totally fascinating. In fact, as soon as Chrysti published a book, I ran out and bought it (Verbivore's Feast: A Banquet of Word & Phrase Origins From Chrysti the Wordsmith).

Anyway, what's not to love about language and words and letters? This week, my favorite word is invective, a noun that means "highly critical or insulting language."