One Day, Perhaps

On days when I'm feeling brave, I tell myself that I'll move to Nashville, Tennessee and have a peacock farm. I'll write books, smoke cigars, and admire the flamboyant prancing of the peafowl- the rare albinos like snowflakes, and the standard peacocks colored like toxic puddles of fuel and water, or bubbles floating in a summer breeze.

One of my favorites

The Canonization

FOR God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
Or chide my palsy, or my gout,
My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout,
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve,
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his Honour, or his Grace,
Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face
Contemplate; what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.

Alas, alas, who's injured by my love?
What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd?
Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.

Call's what you will, we are made such by love;
Call her one, me another fly,
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find th' eagle and the dove.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us; we two being one, are it;
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.

We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tomb or hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for love;

And thus invoke us; "You, whom reverend love
Made one another's hermitage;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes;
(So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize,)
Countries, Towns, Courts: Beg from above
A pattern of your love."

- John Donne

Somethin' like a Terminator

She is so thoroughly cool. And the typewriter at the end is gorgeous.

Strangers are Strange

The lease for my wonderful Brookline apartment is over come June. This means a myriad of strangers have walked through my apartment and seen my dirty laundry (literally), typewriter, bookshelves, and the contents of my closets. Some have undoubtedly noticed the dust under the couch, the dishes piled in the sink, or the way my bedspread isn't perfectly smooth.

Out of curiosity, I would love to ask prospective renters to write a paragraph about the kind of person they think I am based on the contents of my apartment. Snap-judgements are rarely indicative of anything more than the viewer's own biases and values and I bet I could learn a lot about the people viewing my apartment just by reading their interpretation of me and my home. If only I could- I'd find reading the responses hugely entertaining!

Sunny

In the past couple days, I've made it a point to feel bright and sunshiney despite the depressing New England grey that's engulfed Boston. In combating the oppressive rain and cold, I've:

• painted my nails a ridiculous shade of bright pink. Think Rollerblading Barbie circa 1995.
• wore limey-green tights
• bought a bouquet of daisies for David, who needed a little something to cheer up his window sill
• purchased rain shoes

The last initiative was completely spontaneous and was actually done out of necessity. For as I walked out of my apartment yesterday afternoon, I quickly realized that wearing my suede boots had been a horrendous decision and after a few short blocks, my feet were soggy and cold. With the promise of an afternoon at work still ahead, I made a quick decision to duck into Lord and Taylor (a store I very rarely visit and whose font I find incredibly distressing) and went right up to the shoe department where a profoundly awkward salesman watched as I picked a pair of rain shoes off the display, slipped them on and said that I'd like to buy them and wear them out of the store.

I'd actually been meaning to buy these shoes for a long time but had been putting it off, hoping the weather wouldn't necessitate that I actually go out of my way to get them. But the rain stops for no one, and now that I have my new shoes I am very happy (that's not to say I wasn't happy before).

I once told a professor that a new pair of shoes can drastically alter the way in which one thinks about life- for when one has something attractive and solid on which to stand, one is more apt to feel and behave like a more confident, alluring and secure individual. In my rainshoes I feel adorable. And now I don't care if it rains for the rest of spring, so long as I have them on my feet.

Parched

For a hot sec. yesterday, I went to Rockport, MA for a healthy dose of ocean air. It's a picturesque town, to be sure, and like most tourist towns it has an array of candy/fudge/cupcake shops, sweatshirt stores, and art galleries that are situated on seagull-infested stoney bluffs that overlook the sea, which is all very good. But nice as it is, there is no way I'd be able to stay in Rockport for any space of time longer than 48 hours, or want to stay there for any more than five. Why? Because it's a dry town.

If ever there was a setting for a sticky, cozy bar with an ocean view and good beer, it would be Rockport. The fact that it's lacking in such amenities seems like an incredible tragedy.

Brent told me that Rockport is dry because, once upon a time the fishermens' wives got upset with their husbands always being drunk, so they took blunt objects and broke every bottle, cask and barrel of alcohol in the town. As we all know, women can be very scary when they want to be (though usually they are soft and kind and smell exclusively of roses). In this particular instance, the men of the town were too afraid to reintroduce alcohol to the locale and now it's banned by law (though I'm sure you can bring it in from, uh, wet towns and enjoy libations inside one's own dwelling). I don't know how true this story is- but it sounds about right.

Until this law changes, I will not go back to Rockport. Unless, of course, I really want some fudge and shellfish jewelry.

Hitched

Last night, I went to a debate between Christopher ("Not Chris") Hitchens and Rabbi David Wolpe. It was put on by the New Center for Arts & Culture and was mediated by On Point's Tom Ashbrook who is taller and more attractive than I thought he'd be (it's always so fun to see radio personalities in person. And the picture doesn't do him justice...) The topic, of course, was religion.

Being neither an atheist nor a Jew, but rather one who subscribs to the Christian faith, it was hugely interesting to hear the arguments (granted desciphering Hitchens' mumbling at times was difficult) of the two men and then think how their ideas interact with my own life philosophy, religion, and beliefs.

Here are some notes from the evening:

• The audience for this event was the strangest I've ever encountered. Weirder than an amusement park line, stranger than a comic book convention, more bizarre than an Emerson College orientation weekend. There were a lot of old Jewish people, a lot of old Jewish atheists, a lot of young angry atheists, and a lot of Christopher Hitchens infatuates- including one woman who brought a bottle of Jonny Walker Black Label to give to Hitchens as a token of goodwill and affection, or something. Also, there was a staggering number of severely unattractive people (not that it matters).
• There was an awful lot of disapproving tutting/head shaking/inappropriate clapping going on. If you show up to an event hosted by a Jewish organization that is about open ideas and acceptence, please try to be accepting. You came to hear ideas, philosophy and, essentially, two men disagreeing. I don't need to know every time you disagree, as well.
• What many people struggle with when accepting a religion is the antiquity of the teaching. It's easy to think that religious texts lack a forward progression, rendering them obsolete on certain issues that our society has since moved past (such as putting homosexuals to death- Leviticus 20:13). From what I gathered from Rabbi Wolpe, Judaism is more of a community than religion in many ways- as one Jewish audience member said, "I love my religion but I do not accept the idea of a God"- and it is in community with one another that the religion takes on modern day challenges and becomes currently viable. This is true of many religions. They need to be applicable to today, not just to the past. I'm not saying that, like the audience member in question, modernity necessitates the loss of faith in God, just that such ideas need to be discussed while the religious community stays intact. It's also important to contextualize what is written, and to understand it from different angles, including a modern one, so as to sustain the cultivation of new ideas.
• Before the event started, my roommate and I stood in line near the front doors and tried to bundle up our dripping umbrellas and get warm. Lo and behold, standing just outside in the shelter of the marquee stood Christopher Hitchens, smoking a cigarette and drinking what appeared to be water from a wine glass. Brent thought this behavior was pompous, and while it was perhaps a little ass-like, it also seemed quintessentially Hitchens- frumpy suit and all!
• The only moment of agreement came in the form of the golden rule, which is commanded by God but is also widely endorsed by [rational] mankind: love your neighbor. If everyone really does this- regardless of ideaology- I think we'll have a pretty level middle ground.