I was trying to describe you to someone...

"I was trying to describe you to someone the other day. You don't look like any other girl I've ever seen before. I couldn't say: 'Well she looks like Jane Fonda except that she's got red hair and her mouth is different and of course she's not a movie star.'

I couldn't say that because you don't look like Jane Fonda at all.

I finally ended up describing you as a movie I saw when I was a child in Tacoma, Washington. I guess I saw it in 1941 or '42: somewhere in there. I think I was seven or eight or six. It was a movie about rural electrification and a perfect 1930s New Deal morality kind of movie to show kids.

The movie was about farmers living in the country without electricity. They had to use lanterns to see by night, for sewing and reading, and they didn't have any appliances...and couldn't listen to the radio.

Then they built a dam with big electric generators and they put poles across the countryside and strung wire over fields and pastures. There was an incredible heroic dimension that came from the simple putting up of poles for the wires to travel along....Then the movie showed Electricity like a young Greek god coming to the farmer to take away forever the dark ways of his life.

Suddenly, religiously, with the throwing of a switch the farmer had electric lights to see by when he milked his cows in the early black winter mornings. The farmers family got to listen to the radio and have a toaster and lots of bright lights to sew dresses and read newspapers by.

It was a really fantastic movie and excited me like listening to 'The Star Spangled Banner' or seeing photographs of President Roosevelt or listening to him on the radio.

I wanted electricity to go everywhere in the world. I wanted all the farmers in the world to be able to listen to President Roosevelt on the radio.

That's how you look to me.

-Richard Brautigan's Revenge of the Lawn

Five years goes by...A Poem from 6/25/2006

I want to find lyrics that will express the inexpressible

take me to new lengths and and make this life livable.

I want to find lyrics that restore my faith in you

and you

and you

make it impossible to not know what to do

I want to find lyrics that feed me soul

that swell up inside my heart and lungs and make it full

I want to find lyrics that will capture this summer

every every bittersweet moment until they leave.

I want to find lyrics that show a change

and the waiting in-between.

I want to find lyrics that help explain

why I love all of you so much

no matter why how or when

I want to find lyrics that help me understand this love

even though no lyrics can do this,

but the sweet angels of music above.

Sodom and Gomorrah Revisited

I first read this story at age seven, in my Children's Bible, even though I wasn't allowed to watch PG-13 movies at the time. Thankfully, I was too young to appreciate how truly messed up this story is.

Sodom and Gomorrah (Abridged):

The story begins innocently enough, with Lot hospitably taking in two strangers, who are actually angels in disguise. Then...

1) Male villagers bang down the doors of Lot's house, hoping to rape his male visitors.

2) Lot "righteously" offers up his two virgin daughters for gang rape instead.

3) God rewards Lot for this act of "hospitality" by saving him along with his wife and daughters

4) God turns Lot's wife into a pillar of salt.

5) Lot's daughters recognize God's commandment to "be fruitful and multiply" and promptly get their dad drunk and rape him so that they can be impregnated.

Events that DO happen in this story:

1) Attempted Rape

2) Attempted Gang Rape

3) Rape

4) Incest

5) Violence

Events that DO NOT happen in this story:

1) Homosexual couples are punished for falling in love and entering into monogamous relationships.

...Churches often argue that the attempted rape on the visiting men (angels) in this story translates to a fact that all forms of homosexuality must be abomination in God's eyes.

That's quite a stretch. I don't know about you, but male homosexuals

have never banged down my door demanding sex from my male friends inside.

Also, I would be interested to hear someone explain to me how a God who condones gang rape, incest, violence, and violations of the human rights of women is also the most "loving" God ever known.

The Last words of Jesus?

The Gospel According to Mark and Matthew

At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”)...with a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. - Mark 15:33-35

The Gospel According to Luke

Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last. -Luke 23:44-46

The Gospel According to John

Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. - John 19:28-30

So either...

1) The Bible is the written word of God whose memory became foggy after Mark and Matthew were written.

2) The Bible is the written word of God who, on pain of eternal torture in hell, feels that it is justified to make all humans believe in the total accuracy of three contradicting versions of a single story.

or maybe...

3) The Bible is written by mortal men who had different opinions of what happened that afternoon.

What seems more likely to you?

The Beauty Myth

"The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us...

During the past decade, women breached the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing specialty..Pornography became the main media category, ahead of legitimate films and records combined, and thirty three thousand American women told researchers that they would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal...More women have more money and power and scope and legal recognition than we have ever had before; but in terms of how we feel about ourselves physically, we may actually be worse off than our unliberated grandmothers." -Naomi Wolf

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion" - Albert Campus

Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.

-Jane Austen

More Like Falling in Love

Give me rules
I will break them
Give me lines
I will cross them
I need more than a truth to believe
I need a truth that lives, moves, and breathes
To sweep me off my feet
It ought to be

More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It's like I'm falling, oh
It's like I'm falling in love

Give me words
I'll misuse them
Obligations
I'll misplace them
'Cause all religion ever made of me
Was just a sinner with a stone tied to my feet
It never set me free
It's gotta be

More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
It's like I'm falling, oh
It's like I'm falling in love

-Jason Gray

"When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings."

-Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)

The Importance of the Falling Man

Some images just get at the truth.

Images that people conjure of 9/11 tend to show the bigger picture. They may be the second plane crashing into the Twin Towers, or the aerial views of buildings wrapped in smoke and fire, or perhaps even the heroic fire fighters raising an American flag out of the ash and rubble. In theory, we are aware that thousands died that day, but it's less overwhelming if we look at the event as a whole instead of considering each personal tragedy.

As Joseph Stalin supposedly said,

"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic."

Recently, I watched the documentary "The Falling Man" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXnA9FjvLSU) and learned of a photo taken by Richard Drew which showed an anonymous man falling from the North Tower at 9:41:15 on that day. It took me over nine years but for the first time, I understood the gravity of this event, and appreciated the true tragedy that struck our home soil that day. A man went to work at 8am, and 100 minutes later, he was forced to decide the manner of his death: fire or falling. Hundreds of people working in the towers that day made the same fateful decision as him, and approximately 200 of them ultimately decided to jump.

Unfortunately, photos like this- ones that communicate the true suffering of the events that day- have been criticized by media and individuals because they are "too disturbing for public display." I have trouble understanding this logic, because what happened that day was disturbing. Ignoring images that hold uncomfortable truths won't erase those events from our history.

"The are photos in history that are flash points, that really get at the truth. They are hard to look at, but there are certain photos that just tell the story. And in this case, it got to the humanity in a way that other photos, even ones that might be more graphic, would not...we had to capture the enormity of this event. There had never been anything like it prior, and the images were absolutely critical. I really think it did cause anybody that looked at the photo to think about that- 'what would I do?' ...and realize the absolute horror of making that choice. And I think maybe that's the personal space that we went to with some people."

-The Falling Man

We were cast-off gowns and cozy fires

A warm place for rainy April nights

We were young lovers and music connoisseurs

A soft place to fall for dreams to write

We were sitting solemn and silent in well-lit lots

A strange loss of appetite I never forgot

We were your straying imagination

An era of love you left behind

We were old friends and a failed relationship

Watching fireflies in early June

We were worldly and awkward and untoward

Poor timing now that you loved me and my love had moved

We were discouragement and disappointment

A difference you feel that makes you drink and discuss

We were cold and empty and disconnected

Jack Daniels and cigarette smoke consuming us like a cloud of dust

We are forever bound in history and heartbreak

A sharp pain that returns whenever fear creeps in

We are the first love that never forgets

The dangers of loving too soon.