"Overstanding"

Rastafari is a language of sorts, and I recently learned about the wonderful Rasta term "overstanding." Overstanding is a play on words that implies the elevation of knowledge, where the overstander (my term?) sees knowledge as a tool for personal improvement instead of feeling oppressed by it (as in "under"standing). It's like seeing the weather as an adventure instead of a scourge.

"All we do our whole lives is go from one little piece of Holy Ground to the next.” - J.D. Salinger

On January 28th, 2010, my old blog nicoleqatsi got 340 views. Three hundred of those were searches for passages from "Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters." January 28th, 2010 was the day J.D. Salinger's death was announced. Remember what a lovely writer he was by reading my list of his quotes here.

R.I.P., J.D. You will be missed; I will be shining my shoes for the fat lady.

The Gestalt of You (and Me)

Watching old copies of The French Chef (Julie Child was 6' 2'' with frizzy hair) and reading Amy Tan's novel Saving Fish from Drowning has me ruminating on personal style and the empowerment it can bring through self-expression and authenticity. Julia was a very happy lady despite her size 12 feet!

"Yet I was not dissatisfied with my looks -- well when I was younger, yes, multiply so. But by the time I became a young woman, I knew it was better the be unforgettable than bland. I learned to transform my faults into effect. I darkened my already thick eyebrows, put big-stoned jewelery on my knobby fingers. I dyed my muddy hair in long streaks of bright gold, red, and lacquer black and wove them into a passive plait that striped the entire length of my back. I adorned myself with layers of unlikely colors, clashing tones married by texture or design or flow. I wore large pendants and medallions, clown-green gaspeite where people expected cool imperial jade..."
- Amy Tan, Saving Fish from Drowning

To Read: MLK's letter from a Birmingham Jail

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

"I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."

A day in the life of Ben Franklin

(from ben franklin's autobiography: the new yorker)

Because his heart is still free.

(image: me)

Added by author on 11/22/2011 - I no longer believe that caged birds can have free hearts.

"There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes."

- an old Norwegian saying, told to me by my dad

Julia Child: On Traveling

I'm devouring Julia Child's My Life in France. It's a recipe for life! In it, she describes people's different approaches to traveling, and I whole-heartedly agree with her style.

On traveling through France and Italy with her parents: "I grew restless on those days of driving and driving and eating and driving and eating at the biggest-best restaurants and sleeping at the biggest-best hotels. To hell with it! It seemed like we'd never really been anywhere or done anything...In fact, I didn't like traveling first class at all. Yes, it was nice to have a bathroom in the hotel and fine service at breakfast, and I'd probably never visit those grand hotels again, but none of it seemed foreign enough to me. It was all so pleasantly bland that it felt as if I were back on the SS America. I don't like it when everyone speaks perfect English; I'd much rather struggle with my phrase book."

On traveling through France without her husband, Paul: "Paul and I liked to travel at the same slow pace. He always knew so much about things, discovered hidden wonders, noticed ancient walls or indigenous smells, and I missed his warm presence."

i woke up at 2:59 this morning, reprieved because i fought dream-catchers & won

my lyre has fallen & broken,
but i have my little tom-toms.
Look, do you see those crows
perched on the guardhouse?
I don't wish to speak of omens
but sometimes it's hard to guess.
Life has been good the past few years.
I know all seven songs of the sparrow
& I feel lucky to be alive. I woke up at 2:59
this morning, reprieved because I fought
dream-catchers & won. I'll place a stone
in my mouth & go down there again,
& if I meet myself mounting the stairs
it won't be the same man descending...

-yosef komunyakaa

Good Oak

"There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a cabin. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace. To avoid the first danger, one should plant a garden. To avoid the second, one should lay a split of good oak on the andirons, and let it warm one's shins while a February blizzard tosses the trees outside. If one has cut, split, hauled, and piled one's own good oak, and let one's mind work the while, one will remember much about where the heat comes from, and with a wealth of detail denied to those who spend the week in town astride a radiator."

-Aldo Loepold, naturalist and author of A Sand County Almanac

Laying fallow on Sunday mornings.

Keep a poem in your pocket.

The New Yorker reports that April 29th was A Poem in Your Pocket Day in New York City. Here's what I chose to put in my pocket:

"In the woods is perpetual youth."

The Rose Garden

one day in summer
when everything
has already been more than enough
the wild beds start
exploding open along the berm
of the sea; day after day
you sit near them; day after day
the honey keeps on coming
in the red cups and the bees
like amber drops roll
in the petals; there is no end
believe me! to the inventions of summer,
to the happiness your body
is willing to bear.

-mary oliver, the roses

tidepooling

low tide at deception pass, spotted a purple sea star: "five broad rays are stiff and bumpy, patterned with lines of very short white spines...common on rocky beaches under overhanging rocks...feeds by humping over prey and forcing shells apart then inserts its extrudable belly to dissolve and devour the inner parts" (yate's marine wildlife).

"How Not to Read Imaginative Literature"

I fear this might be a contradiction.





From How to Read a Book by Adler and Van Doren

"The Importance of Suspending Judgment"

I really like this one.







From How to Read a Book by Adler and Van Doren

Hah!

"a mongrel working his legs to a gallop/ hustles the gull flock to flap off the sand-spit" -sylvia plath

just back from camping in the hoh rainforest and a walk along the dungeness sand-spit on the way home.

"The Great Eskimo Hoax"

a common misunderstanding is that eskimos have at least 100 words for snow. well that part's true, but so do we. it's just that their words are compound words, which is equivalent to phrases in english~

single words (include conjugates): to snow, snow, snows, snowed, snowing, snowflake, snowflakes, slush, avalanche, avalanches, blizzard, blizzards, blizzarding, to flurry, flurry, flurries, flurried, flurrying, frost, to hail, hail, hails, hailing, hailed, powder, snowstorm, snowstorms

and now for a few english phrases that are only one word in yupik (eskimo-ese): fresh snow, snow bank, snow banks, deep snow, soft snow, fallen snow, snow drift, snow drifts (and now mix and match): freshly fallen snow, snow on the ground, freshly fallen snow on the ground, deep snow on the ground, fresh deep snow, fresh deep snow on the ground (and on)

a bouquet of books

a fresh stack of books from the public library

aren't they beautiful, and they haven't even blossomed yet