On Republican Veepstakes

"I wonder if McCain was trying to compete with Obama who has all these young ladies with crushes on him. He knew he had to get a hot VP ticket -- someone people would have crushes on."

- a friend reflects on McCain's pick of Sarah Palin, Governer of Alaska, for VP

thoughts on choosing

I read today on the BBC News web site that as Kenyans vote on a new draft of their constitution, citizens must choose between the banana (the symbol for "yes") and the orange (which signifies "no"). What a wonderfully simple image of something we must do every day of our lives: make a choice between two exclusives. The banana represents one future for a country, the orange, another.

I am sprawled on my bed before yoga. I am thinking about choices.

Will you take a banana, or an orange, madame?
Neither. I require chocolate-covered strawberries. See it done.

I am actually really eating chocolate-covered strawberries, because my roommate made some. I am savoring their juciness, and thinking that hard as I try, I cannot seem to mold these thoughts about choosing into something sleek and presentable. The thoughts are jagged, and slap against one another. Wave upon wave.

Thought #1: Choosing, I am coming to find, is inherently risky business. I hate it.

Thought #2: However, I am also learning that making decisions is as necessary part of sailing on this gorgeous and terrible sea of faith. In choosing, we learn to respond to what comes our way: riptides, teasing winds, Siren songs etc. In choosing how we respond to obstacles and opportunities, we are most painfully aware of our human frailty. Because even in putting the best we have into choices, we sometimes get slammed, thrown overboard, and come up sputtering salt. At least, I do.

Thought #3: But in choosing -- charting a course -- we find our adventure, find what we are made of, and find our God. Thank you, God, for the chance to use our muscles and minds and hearts, for the chance to stumble out upon stubby, inexperienced land-legs.

Thought #4: While it can feel like I'm risking less by not choosing, I'm often risking a lot more by my inaction. Choice is unavoidable, and failing to choose can be foolish. Dangerous. It's good to be thoughtful and take time in decisions, but life offers such things as "windows of opportunity," and as we mull and muse, the favorable breeze dispels, and is gone.

Thought #5: "Goodbyes" are the hardest choice for me. Well, oftentimes, goodbye is not a choice. But it is in putting limits on friendships that I most acutely feel the weight of the Fall, and that I most often rage against the Way of Things. No, I will not be quiet. No, I will not be silent. The loss of you tears my heart. The thespian in me would like to rend my garments, wander the desert and refuse speech. But there is no desert around here, and the American mourning rituals, or lack thereof, are not big enough for loss. So I just write and go to Starbucks.

Thought #6: It would be nice, wouldn't it, if all our choices boiled down to To Sin or Not to Sin. Most of the ones I wrestle with do not. They are ... should I be in this play? Should I date this person? Should I go to this grad school, God? Should I wear these pink pants with this purple shirt (answer: no, Laura. No! Neutrals are your friends!). Should I eat a banana or an orange?

Thought #7: I possess the unfortuante tendency of evaluating the success of my decision-making processes by result. When things work out my way, I congratulate myself on decisions well-made, even if I was not careful in my choice. Conversely, when I take a risk, and fall on my face, I chastise myself for not selecting the other option, even if I've grown stronger or more honest by making the difficult choice. Perhaps the challenge was, in and of itself, the reward, rather than the prize I sought. When my choices do not yield the results I want, I regard them as bad choices, even if I have made the decision prudently, and with my heart in the right place. The lens of hindsight tints my memory, rosy or gray, with the result that I misremember my story. And, looking back on my failures, I chastize myself for the inability to do the impossible: see the future.

I regard choices not as opportunities to grow, but opportunities to get what I want. And when I don't get what I want, I regard my choosing-ability, and hence, myself, as somehow deficient.

Thought # 9: But this is horrifying, isn't it? Very bleak. Very Ayn-Randy (ecch). Very Pharasaical. ""Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" I see myself as only as good as how much I get what I want.

Thought #10: Perhaps a way to love others radically is to strive to keep our minds large, as the universe is large, in order to see one another's stories, in all their complexity. We are not the sum of our choices. We do not always get what we deserve, or deserve what we get.

Sometimes, we fail so God can sanctify us. Sometimes, trouble does come as a result of bad choices (the Universe contains within it certain laws: don't touch the stove, or you'll get burned. The Bible, while very complicated, contains distillable truth, too -- and we are foolish not to heed it). Sometimes, we fail because who knows why.

God can, and has, taken my sin and fashioned it into something beautiful. And conversely, sometimes when I am living righteously, I am repeatedly thrown against the rocks.

Thought #11: I am tired of my mutinous spirit: putting a pistol to Destiny's head and demanding particular treasures. Perhaps I should try to collaborate more with the Captain.

Okay, I'm done waxing philosophical now (and eating chocolate covered strawberries). Time for yoga with the roommates. A few weeks ago, the yoga teacher went on and on - with a face as inexpressive as a pan of milk - about how Faith is your Lifeguard in the Pool of Life. Now, I wonder if my thoughts and metaphors about, you know, sailing on the sea of life and choosing how you respond to stimuli are as inane and vacuous as that?

When if Someone Pees in the Pool of Life, huh? I wanted to demand. What then? But I chose to stay in child's pose, and, sheltered in the dark cool cave of my own shoulders, to darken an imaginary glass with my hot ujayi breath.

perfume dispensers give me the willies

They just installed an automatic perfume dispenser in the women's bathroom here at my job. I appreciate the dispenser. I really do. Every so often, this dispenser emits a cloud of ambiguous sweet scent... overripe watermelon on a forest floor, maybe, and while I do not care for the scent myself, I appreciate the intention behind it.

I do not, however, appreciate the terrifying sounds this gadget makes.


I was in a stall when I first heard the click. To my ears, this sounded a good deal like someone cocking a gun. Where I work, hearing such a sound is not entirely outside the realm of possibility. So, with racing heart and sagging tights, I leapt on to the toilet seat, and stood there until I was quite sure the danger had passed.

Today, scrubbing my hands at the sink, I told a co-worker about my first encounter with the perfume dispenser. "You should have heard the perfume dispenser at my old job," she replied.

"What did it sound like?"

"A large man sighing."

Horrifying. Perfume-dispenser-makers of America, I ask you: What are you thinking? What on earth?

drudging away at magic

It was necessary for me to gain power in some realm into which my parents -- my mother particularly -- could not follow me. Of course, I did not think about the matter logically; sometimes, I yearned for my mother's love and hated myself for having grieved her, but quite as often I recognized that her love had a high price on it and that her idea of a good son was a pretty small potato. So I druged away secretly at the magic.

Davies, Robertson. Fifth Business. 34.

my radiant, ineffable 13-year olds

"i personally wouldnt have gone 3 days without real food for a giant fish. but i still admire that he tried"

one of my dearies on Old Man and the Sea

everyone's asleep but me

After a fun but crazy game night slash "Welcome, special guest K." party, our dining room table is strewn with napkins, crumbs and junk. Tomorrow morning, I will have to reckon with the mess. Now, all is (finally) quiet in our little house.

I can hear K. breathing and tossing at the foot of my bed. I love her. How absolutely lovely, to have friends with whom one can rest, even after a long separation. I have maybe four of these friends. When you're with them, you don't have to talk; you can just enjoy one another's company. There is no pressure to "catch up" or have a deep conversation. Without straining or striving for understanding, both people experience it. Silence is deep and rich, not squirmy - or awkward.

Heaven knows, I love words. How ironic, then, that the friends I value most are the ones with whom I talk least, the friends with whom I can sit for hours, saying little or nothing.

Michael Phelps: what he eats

From the NY Post. After reading this, I thought, "Heck. I work out. You know what? I'm going to Wendy's." And promptly did. Michael, you inspire me. Read here

Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase "Breakfast of Champions" by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread - capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy
drinks.

For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs - what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen - with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza. He washes all that down with another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

Phelps remains on course to at least equal Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals won at the 1972 Munich Games.

the "complexity of mankind": wise and gracious words for J. Edwards

I haven't read much of this blog, but this thoughtful post makes me eager to read more:

I also find it difficult to understand why many conservative bloggers can't entertain the possibility that Edwards feels genuine remorse over his conduct. To be sure, Edwards is a phony, and I've made that case in virtually everything I've ever written about him. Had this affair not been revealed, I'd have always remembered Edwards as the man whose phoniness, according to Bob Shrum, offended John Kerry.

But to have lived in the world, and to have understood the complexity of mankind, is to recognize that phoniness is not the same thing as an inability to have genuine feelings. To pretend frequently that one has extraordinary sensibilities is not evidence that one lacks ordinary sensibilities. A person with anything remotely resembling ordinary sensibilities would feel genuine remorse, and indeed shame, over the conduct involved here. Though we can't know whether Edwards possesses such feeling, those who assume he doesn't may be telling us more about themselves than about Edwards.

Piling on public figures after they are brought low by their human frailties is unseemly whatever the political affilation of the offender and whatever the ideological affiliaton of the critic.

Paul Mirengoff

Thanks, D.S. for the link.

failed but honorable gestures

"A certain sartorial intersection of glamour and trash, a louche but lovely address at which reside faux leopard anything, cloches, art deco jewlery, silk scarves worn as head wraps, tiny black dresses worn with a black leather jacket. Lynda looked wonderful, and she loved looking unlike anyone else; she wanted her unlikeness to be seen and appreciated. Her style, as her body fell apart over time, became more and more the sort she admired, a panache which triumphed over difficutly without exactly concealing it; she adored Frida Kahlo, Marianne Faithfull, Lotte Lenya, women made more beautiful by a certain broken quality about them, by the acknowledgment of that quality ... the artifice of making oneself be whomever one liked always revealed the reality beneath, and therein lay both its failure and a good part of its charm. She was a lover of appearances, of performance, of bravura, of failed but honorable gestures toward beauty.

Because the world was ruined, wasn't it, and how could its children not be ruined as well?" (96)

Doty, Mark. Heaven's Coast. New York: HarperCollins, 1987.

opportunities and muscular love

When I am burdened, it helps when people come to me with their own troubles. I am so thankful for the chance to listen to another's life for awhile, instead of just thinking about my own.

What a relief it is to extend love to another person by listening to them. Rain "dropping as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath." Sweet, sweet mercy.

In the last few days, a few people have shared their burdens with me. Each of them has been distraught, unable to work/study, and has apologized profusely for making things a Big Deal. Also, each has ended her heart-rant with, "Whatever." And then apologized more for taking up my time, for dumping her problems, etc. etc.

"No," I say. "Thank you for trusting me."

When we run to God with our burdens, all babbling and weeping, I am sure he weeps with us, too. Yet I wonder if he also smiles a bit - because now, finally, he can show us how much he loves us. Now, he can squeeze us in his muscular love. Now, he can unleash rivers of his mercy to wash away our sins and sorrows.

In the midst of our weaknesses, God shows us who he is. His name is Love. And he also shows us how we are Loved -- powerfully, tenderly, eternally.

space between: modesty, writing and intimacy

Today, I went to lunch with two coworkers, A. and K. Both are beautiful women: one has long, blonde hair. The other has short black curls. We sat on a blanket in the grass, ate our yogurts and sandwiches and talked about our weekends. I mentioned I'd been to a hip hop dance class with two friends, and that my favorite part was watching a lady in a Moslem headscarf break it down. Or, "rock the boat," as my friend Mel said. This particular woman closed her eyes and grinned as she danced. She relished every step … like she had been waiting her whole life to move. Instead of dancing myself, I found myself watching her, so buoyant, yet so burdened in her long-sleeves, long pants and headscarf.

This in turn led to a discussion of Islam and burquas. A. actually studied religion and politics at the University of London. For her graduate thesis project, she had to interview Muslim women. Some of them, she said … not all by any means … actually liked wearing burquas. I began to (hotly) protest, but A. coolly explained. She meant that these women felt they were more free to be themselves with their bodies hidden. When the complications of having a woman's body were removed, they felt they were actually listened to instead of gawked at. And they felt valued and protected … intact … in those caves of cloth.

I don't know what I think about this, I said, splaying my arms wide in the grass. Actually, I do know. Burquas are awful; they put the burden of lust on women. Who would want to walk around swathed in heavy black cloth? I, personally, am glad to be able to walk around in shorts and a t-shirt. Aren't you? I asked A. and K.

Now, reflecting on this conversation later, I think I actually understand that distance - cloth, miles, or time - can be both freeing and intimate. I have experienced this through letter writing. Through receiving carefully-wrought letters, I've gotten to know both men and women really well ... differently than I would have face to face.

Similarly, you can draw closer to the truth of an experience after you've gained distance. Time away from the heat of the moment can help focus our minds. The advantage of hindsight helps us trace the shape of our lives. To understand.

So maybe, oddly enough, I am more with you when you are not with me.

And perhaps, paradoxically, distance helps us to better see each other, and allows us to love or desire the best parts of one another ... not just the obvious ones.

after the opera: thoughts

When you hear love soaring in the effortless form of Italian aria, you begin to believe that your own love can take on that depth, breadth and richness. Art makes life bigger, reinforces our sense of our own uniqueness while connecting us to other lovers and strivers and strugglers and people longing on this Earth.

"year of the locust"

Here is the beginning of an old essay about crying, believe it or not. Doesn't have much to do with crying, does it?

Princeton is perfect in summer. Rows of trees stand tall, branches sheltering pedestrians from the hot Jersey sun. Hedges are clipped, fences neatly divide neighbor from neighbor, and the Doric columns on the porches give the whole place an imperial feel. Every homeowner ruler of his own little kingdom. Every child knows which Ivy League she wants to go to. Every bike is shiny and new. Our neighbors in the pink Victorian once tried to install a window air-conditioning, and within a day, the Historical Society called to inform them that they would need to take it down.

Several forces invade the tranquility of this neighborhood. First, the ghosts. In one house owned by Princeton Seminary, the ghost of an ex-faculty wife rocks back and forth in her chair, weeping and muttering, wild in her grief. Another ghost hides out in the oldest house in Princeton, built in the seventeenth century. This ghost re-arranges the socks. The owner called in a priest to perform an exorcism, but it didn’t work. The ghost continues to have his way with her laundry.

Potholes are another force to be reckoned with. The roots of the trees run deep and break up the pavement. So all the Benzs and Audis pop hubcaps right and left as they drive. Some days, my sisters and I would find three or four in our yard in a single day. Property taxes are high, so the city can afford to re-pave the road often, but it doesn’t do much good. The roots are too unruly, and too deep down to tame.

Perhaps the two most disruptive influences are plagues of creatures. The first, cicadas, who every seventeen years, invade the town in great hordes. Individually, they are beautiful, with their amber carapaces and beady black eyes. Overall, their presence is fairly intense, actually alarming, like an Alfred Hitchcock movie. It is impossible to avoid stepping on them, and together, they hum loudly, a kind of eerie drone, a soundtrack to normal tasks like washing dishes. One never quite get used to it. Bob Dylan happened to be receiving an honorary doctorate from Princeton in a cicada year, and he was so shocked by their omminpresence, that he wrote a song about them. It’s called “Day of the Locust.”

And the locusts sang, well, it give me a chill,

Yeah, the locusts sang such a sweet melody.

And the locusts sang with a high whinin' trill,

Yeah, the locusts sang and they was singing for me . . .

The year of the locusts, my brother, who likes to buy crap off the Internet, made good use of his special-edition Lord of the Rings sword. He slayed his thousands upon thousands up in a tree. I like thinking about him up there, thrashing. “Yeah! Got one!” The boyish grin on his dirty, cherubic face, the bright sun catching his golden curls, and the insect blood and guts spurted everywhere.

The last, and the most disturbing plague, is the influx of deer. Deer are everywhere in Princeton. They chew flowers, they mar the lawns with their mangy rumps. They are skinny, ugly things, desperate for food. They are so weary and faint from hunger that they will walk out in front of cars without a second thought. In the second before you end their skinny lives, they look reproachfully at you with their large fawn eyes through the windshield, as if to say, “Why?”

In January of 2002, a State Superior Court judge blocked Princeton Township's deer-killing program, which included using high-powered rifles with silencers or catching deer with nets and firing bolts into their heads. Officials had hoped to use some 400 deer for food. Animal rights advocates asked for a restraining order on the grounds that these measures were dangerous and cruel.

Ghosts. Tree roots. Cicadas. Deer and their mournful brown eyes. In small ways, these disruptive visitors, thes inconviences reminded us that for all our money and authority, we were not all-powerful. That we could not control our lives. That chaos lurked underneath the semblance of order.