beautiful day

“A balancing of life’s books showed me in debt to God and man. it had not yet begun to dawn upon me that to be recreant to either was to be in arrears with both, and that spiritual insolvency is assured when freedom of the mind is assumed to mean liberty to follow every will-o-the-wisp of human philosophy.” Howard Colby Ives, Portals to Freedom, p21

“Or who can understand the reason why a chance perusal of a book, the presence of a friend or the meeting with a stranger often alters a determined course of action, profoundly affects our attitude toward life, and, not seldom, so nearly reaches the roots of being and the springs of action that never after is life quite the same?” Howard Colby Ives, Portals to Freedom, p13

“How can darkness assert itself in the Presence of Light? Can a fly attack an eagle? Or the shadow defy the sun?” Abdu’l-Baha as quoted in Portals to Freedom, p96

 

arrested development… the final countdown

according to imdb, this movie is due to come out sometime in 2009. however, it is still in production, so that could all change.

**spoiler alert**

the thing i’m really looking forward to is that this movie will be a huge departure from arrested development the tv show. and the musical group.

i think it will, rather, prove to be one of the highest grossing summer action blockbuster-ing films of all time.

but you don’t have to take my word for it.

love,

lavar

 

hmm… i don’t know if i’ve ever seen this before.

there are little green shoots popping up all over my doormat.

i’ve been wanting to get more plants for my place, but this wasn’t what i’d been envisioning.

 

overheard

at house of cha…

conversation between 3.5 year old boy and owner

“What do you want? Chocolate, cheesecake, or baklava?”
“Nothing!”
“Nothing? How about boba?”
“Yes! Just boba!”
“Just the facts, huh?”
“Just boba. Mommy? Can I get the facts?”

 

conscious of our unborn unity, i am conscious of my failings

This is not a poem to be repeated in night alleyways
This is not a poem that will raise dead from sepulchers
Send them rocketing into dried leaf flight
This is not a ringtone to awaken you from timidity
Or a call to raise your hands in prayer
This is not a proverb to remember in weaker moments
One that will assure you
And shift you
Back onto the right track
This is not the one that will have you out of your chair
Bomb dive, bum rush the stage
Send your fingers stinging
Mend your body elemental for flight
This is not the racket that will make stray dogs nervous
Scratch and howl for no one thing
This is not a sad song to break mom’s heart
Or make daddy do his slow sweep through the living room and sit.

This poem will not go down softly
Like warm ice tea
Cool hot tea
Neither will it stick to the side of your back tooth and have you
Burping lines from memory
This here, right here, will not stain white tablecloths or tshirts
Will not need to be bleached later in a sink
Or on a countertop sticky with liquid detergent made for brightly colored clothes

These lines do not need to be creased down the front of your slacks
Or sucked up off makeshift coffee tables
This is not the line you will stand in for one hour. two hours.
To get on the other side of all this static.
This poem will not bounce you up and down on its knee like you are a giggling baby.
Will not cut your toenails for you
This is not an adage tattooed to forearms
Will not peel off like a wet bandaid when you’ve healed

This poem will not make idle threats
Or legitimate threats
Or threaten your identity

This is more like patience on a cloudy day
More like a whim that lures snails out of shells
Or curls like a cat safe at home
This something will be vaguely forgotten by the time it is even over
But is still right now
The common threading us together
Making you and me, we
(if we forget each other’s names)
Because we are all one moment,
Cohesively

We are one prayer
But one thousand pleas
One mother, yet we all must bleed
One thousand reminders
And one remedy
We are one song in ten thousand melodies

We are the linked up sections on a jackfruit’s belly
The feathers that, if they fit, will let the bird take flight
We are the destroyers and redeemers
The compulsive over-cleaners
We are the spokes in a bike wheel that will not bend
Will not bend
Will not bend
Until God says.
We are one sigh of relief
One gentle smile that says,
My love, didn’t I tell you we would be?
We are one forgotten song God let us sing
Remember, remember
We are trying to notes to see
We are relearning and reviving
We are struggling, we are striving
We are the pearl-like drops that spell love
And the crystals yet untouched and unseen

And it is time
It is time
It is timely.

(Tonight was jazz poetry jams at Blue Room on 18th and Vine. It is so lovely to know there are these people out there breathing and living poetry. Tonight I ran into my friend Tegan who was coincidentally in town and at the Blue Room. I had told myself on the drive to KC, “If I’m supposed to get onstage tonight, I’ll recognize a sign. If not, then it wasn’t meant to be this time.” So when I saw Tegan and she asked if I was performing, I was like, “Yeah… I think so…” So I chose to do this one.)

 

america’s most challenging issue.

art can be used to express the heights and depths of human possibility.

i am, hereby, citing:

Sunni Patterson’s “We Ain’t Come Here on No Cruise Ship” from her Porch Prophecies album

Zora Howard’s performance at 2006 Urban Word NYC Annual Teen Poetry Slam

Julian Curry’s wow performance on Def Poetry

The amazing-like-no-words-can-describe Saul Williams’ “Coded Language”

Daniel Beaty. Woah. This is a powerhouse of a piece.

“Peculiar Evolution” by Dahlak Brathwaite.

 

eagle shark

this movie is good for two reasons:

kiwi mullet

AND

a really great impersonation of Ah-nold

 

books to read

(spotted on erin’s blog first, but she saw it on sarah’s prior to that… so the trend continues…)

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. Well let’s see.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Italicize and bold the books you LOVE.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austin
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible - God
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. 1984- George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

 

Bugs

As I write this, I have several bugs buzzing around my lamp. When I let Malibu out, a lot of bugs generally get inside. Now, I consider myself to be someone who is pretty tolerable of bugs. I mean, I don’t want them taking over my house, but I’ll usually just move them outside, not kill them or anything. Because we can respect each other, me and the bugs.

However… In honor of Melissa Haenchen, who refuses to have a large online presence, so I cannot link to her, I am compiling a list of bugs that I cannot easily tolerate…

1. Cicadas. This is because they are never quite dead. You’ll see a cicada on the sidewalk that’s been lying on its back for a day and a half and you walk past it to get to the mailbox and it makes that horrible desperate buzzing sound and attempts flight, colliding with your leg. And… it’s just so unsettling for such a large bug to die such a dishonorable death.

2. Cockroaches. Now this should go without saying, right? Oh, who can stand cockroaches, no one, right? But I had not had the opportunity of encountering many roaches in my formative years (although i remember Andrew pointing a “roach” out to me at “the old house” and proceeding to inform me that it is the dirtiest bug in the world and even if you kill it, you’ll only release the thousands of babies that are hanging on to their mother’s body). Despite this cockroach lore, maybe 5 years ago cockroaches would still not have been on the list. But it is now. After Panchgani and the roaches that got into my cupboard… No. They’re on the list.

3. Ticks. Melissa’s buddy Josh got a baby tick on him after a walk at Clinton Lake and that kind of made us run fingers along our scalps and sort of shiver. Plus, they can carry disease which is like a double reason to be on the list. Hello. Sheesh.

4. Silverfish. What are they supposed to do? Eat fabric? I don’t know… But as much as I tell myself they aren’t creepy, everytime I see one, I freak out and can’t sit still if I don’t kill it. This might have been inherited from my mother. It’s hard to know for sure.

Honorable mention:

Grasshoppers. Now a lone grasshopper in broad daylight that knows about personal space boundaries isn’t too bad. Grasshoppers get honorable mention, however because they have one of the scariest faces of any bug. As you can see, they appear to have no neck. If these bugs were human size, any doubters would see the truth about their scary faces. Grasshoppers also are very large and so when they and their scary heads collide with you, you might be afraid they will turn into human size and devour you. Don’t worry. This has never been documented as happening before. Your chances of survival are good. Grasshoppers are also included as honorable mention because swarms of locusts (locusts is Bible for grasshoppers) have been given biblical reference and the catastrophe they can wreak is insane.

Thank you.

 

like an ee cummings poem

I like living here in Lawrence. But… Sometimes I really miss being around lots of people who I feel intensely connected with… That kind of closeness that distance and time cannot diminish… but dang- it’s refreshing when you’re finally all together again. And not a closed closeness either, but a friendship that welcomes everyone to their own capacity. I feel like many people out-here-in-the-world love cautiously. Or casually. Altering between the notion that love cannot exist between friends, but must always manifest itself sexually and the fear that love can be extinguished at any time.

If I were Rumi, maybe I would say something mystical about seeking the true lovers. If I were Kerouac, maybe now would be a good time to pull out those lines about the mad ones who burn burn burn like fabulous yellow roman candles… Maybe if I could grow up a little, I could write my own story about how I found the lovers and the mad ones who had been under my nose the whole time.