Hi hi hi! YES, feels so good to have the time and space to sit down and write a real blog post! [with a well-crafted cappuccino by my side, I might add]...
It's sunny, it's warm, and oh yeah, it's Easter. Now, I'm a very spiritual person...but religious? Meh, not so much. So this morning when I woke up and, sans Easter basket (my 2nd Easter w/o basket...sad, but at age 24, not too shabby. I surely milked it), recalled what holiday it was, I rested my head back on my pillow and reflected a bit. Easter is, of course, the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. Now, that's wonderful and all for the church-goers out there, but for me the story does not deeply resonate. In fact, it just flat out doesn't resonate. Period. But I wanted to honor this day in a way that meant something real to me. I decided to take the idea of resurrection and apply it to...well...my Self (note the capital "s").
It's easy anywhere at any age to lose grasp of the Self. And I could be wrong here, but I think that especially as a person in their young 20's in NYC, it is especially easy to lose sight of what's important to and for the Self. I often find myself intimidated by others' success or ideas, as opposed to inspired. Or I find myself focusing on the areas of my life that leave much to be desired [in my mind], rather than embracing, revering, and appreciating the areas in which I've grown. I can, at any moment, be pushed down and allow my grounded foundation to be shaken up by negative energy or...eek...negative thoughts. As we all know, thoughts/feelings such as those create an icky paralysis in mind, body, and spirit; and no one wants that. So I claim today the day of Self resurrection.
Easter will be a day [hopefully among many others] for me to step back and look at my Self objectively and see how I'm doing. I will note the spots that are shifty, swirling with negative energy, or missing, and work from there to fill those gaps or tumultuous regions with light, love, and healing energy. I will then embrace myself as a whole and thank my Self and the Universe for everything I have and everything I am capable of. I think it's important to do this often, but this day just made me realize it on a stronger level.
In short, love thy Self! And, one of my favorite phrases: To thy own self be true.
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I read this every Easter and it continues to make me giggle:
Jesus Shaves
by David Sedaris
"And what does one do on the fourteenth of July? Does one celebrate Bastille Day?"
It was my second month of French class, and the teacher was leading us in an exercise
designed to promote the use of one, our latest personal pronoun.
"Might one sing on Bastille Day?" she asked. "Might one dance in the street? Somebody give
me an answer."
Printed in our textbooks was a list of major holidays alongside a scattered arrangement of
photos depicting French people in the act of celebration. The object was to match the holiday
with the corresponding picture. It was simple enough but seemed an exercise better suited to
the use of the word they. I didn't know about the rest of the class, but when Bastille Day
eventually rolled around, I planned to stay home and clean my oven.
Normally, when working from the book, it was my habit to tune out my fellow students and
scout ahead, concentrating on the question I'd calculated might fall to me, but this afternoon,
we were veering from the usual format. Questions were answered on a volunteer basis, and I
was able to sit back, confident that the same few students would do the talking. Today's
discussion was dominated by an Italian nanny, two chatty Poles, and a pouty, plump
Moroccan woman who had grown up speaking French and had enrolled in the class to
improve her spelling. She'd covered these lessons back in the third grade and took every
opportunity to demonstrate her superiority. A question would be asked and she'd give the
answer, behaving as though this were a game show and, if quick enough, she might go home
with a tropical vacation or a side-by-side refrigerator-freezer. By the end of her first day, she'd
raised her hand so many times, her shoulder had given out. Now she just leaned back in her
seat and shouted the answers, her bronzed arms folded across her chest like some great
grammar genie.
We finished discussing Bastille Day, and the teacher moved on to Easter, which was
represented in our textbook by a black-and-white photograph of a chocolate bell lying upon a
bed of palm fronds.
"And what does one do on Easter? Would anyone like to tell us?"
The Italian nanny was attempting to answer the question when the Moroccan student
interrupted, shouting, "Excuse me, but what's an Easter?"
Despite her having grown up in a Muslim country, it seemed she might have heard it
mentioned once or twice, but no. "I mean it," she said. "I have no idea what you people are
talking about."
The teacher then called upon the rest of us to explain.
The Poles led the charge to the best of their ability. "It is," said one, "a party for the little boy of
God who call his self Jesus and . . . oh, shit."
She faltered, and her fellow countryman came to her aid.
"He call his self Jesus, and then he be die one day on two . . . morsels of . . . lumber."
The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an
aneurysm.
"He die one day, and then he go above of my head to live with your father."
"He weared the long hair, and after he died, the first day he come back here for to say hello to
the peoples."
"He nice, the Jesus."
"He make the good things, and on the Easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead
today."
Part of the problem had to do with grammar. Simple nouns such as cross and resurrection
were beyond our grasp, let alone such complicated reflexive phrases as "To give of yourself
your only begotten son." Faced with the challenge of explaining the cornerstone of
Christianity, we did what any self-respecting group of people might do. We talked about food
instead.
"Easter is a party for to eat of the lamb," the Italian nanny explained. "One, too, may eat of the
chocolate."
"And who brings the chocolate?" the teacher asked.
I knew the word, and so I raised my hand, saying, "The Rabbit of Easter. He bring of the
chocolate."
My classmates reacted as though I'd attributed the delivery to the Antichrist. They were
mortified.
"A rabbit?" The teacher, assuming I'd used the wrong word, positioned her index fingers on
top of her head, wiggling them as though they were ears. "You mean one of these? A rabbit
rabbit?"
"Well, sure," I said. "He come in the night when one sleep on a bed. With a hand he have the
basket and foods."
The teacher sadly shook her head, as if this explained everything that was wrong with my
country. "No, no," she said. "Here in France the chocolate is brought by the big bell that flies
in from Rome."
I called for a time-out. "But how do the bell know where you live?"
"Well," she said, "how does a rabbit?"
It was a decent point, but at least a rabbit has eyes. That's a start. Rabbits move from place to
place, while most bells can only go back and forth--and they can't even do that on their own
power. On top of that, the Easter Bunny has character; he's someone you'd like to meet and
shake hands with. A bell has all the personality of a cast-iron skillet. It's like saying that come
Christmas, a magic dustpan flies in from the North Pole, led by eight flying cinder blocks. Who
wants to stay up all night so they can see a bell? And why fly one in from Rome when they've
got more bells than they know what to do with right here in Paris? That's the most implausible
aspect of the whole story, as there's no way the bells of France would allow a foreign worker
to fly in and take their jobs. That Roman bell would be lucky to get work cleaning up after a
French bell's dog -and even then he'd need papers. It just didn't add up.
Nothing we said was of any help to the Moroccan student. A dead man with long hair
supposedly living with her father, a leg of lamb served with palm fronds and chocolate.
Confused and disgusted, she shrugged her massive shoulders and turned her attention back
to the comic book she kept hidden beneath her binder. I wondered then if, without the
language barrier, my classmates and I could have done a better job making sense of
Christianity, an idea that sounds pretty far-fetched to begin with.
In communicating any religious belief, the operative word is faith, a concept illustrated by our
very presence in that classroom. Why bother struggling with the grammar lessons of a six-
year-old if each of us didn't believe that, against all reason, we might eventually improve? If I
could hope to one day carry on a fluent conversation, it was a relatively short leap to believing
that a rabbit might visit my home in the middle of the night, leaving behind a handful of
chocolate kisses and a carton of menthol cigarettes. So why stop there? If I could believe in
myself, why not give other improbabilities the benefit of the doubt? I accepted the idea that an
omniscient God had cast me in his own image and that he watched over me and guided me
from one place to the next. The virgin birth, the resurrection, and the countless miracles -my
heart expanded to encompass all the wonders and possibilities of the universe.
A bell, though, that's fucked up.
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Also, check out all of these sketchy bunnies, AH!
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Ok, now moving onto non-Eastery stuffs.
Nora and Christoph of Learningfrom.de created a range of fascinating objects all made with things found on the streets of Mainz, Germany.
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Thank you to the wonderful Ms. Bancks for introducing me to this awesome website!
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The Selby is in Your Place is a new book by, you guessed it, NY-based photographer and illustrator Todd Selby...and I just missed my chance to win a free copy. Waaahhhhhh
Probs worth shelling out $23, though...
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I want to give a shout out and a big congrats to a dear family friend, Betsy Rich, for starting up her new photography website! She's incredibly talented and she rocks because she left her comfort zone to go a pursue something she's passionate about. A rockin' lady, to be sure.
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If you're like me, you've definitely spent minutes of your life checking out these weird little codes on your milk bottles and wondered what exactly they mean. 49-70? 12:12? [the time it was bottled?]...F1 DNO? What?!
Well ponder no more, my friends....go to Where Is My Milk From to de-code these suckers. Everyone should know where the sustenance hails. Get smart on your dairy, yo.
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“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening, that is translated through you into action – and because there is only one of you, in all time, this expression is unique.
If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium … and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly to keep the channel open.
You do not have to believe in yourself or your work. You do have to keep open and aware, directly to the urges that motivate you.
Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction, ever, at any time. There is only a queer, divine, dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching, and makes us more alive than others."
- Letter from Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille
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Hm, Google searches can reveal a lot about the sexes...
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As a side note, I am currently munching on these and am deeply, deeply satisfied...and should probably stop...but...so...good...
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If I had an iPhone, I'd get one of these. Come ON Verizon! Get with the program.
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In Praise of Nothingness. I like it; I can jump on that boat. [or do you jump on a band wagon? Whatever, I can jump on that mobile structure of sorts...]
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Ok, off to enjoy more of this beautiful, beautiful weather!
Happy Easter, everyone and happy self-appreciation/Self-resurrection day, too!
<3
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