is it wrong of me...

... to want her at my wedding?

reset

it's not a particularly well kept secret that November was a terribly trying month here at the café. my new job upped my stress-levels a touch; Peter joining his parents in opening a new noodle shop has eaten into our precious free time; old man Winter's SAD-influence on my internal processes were left unchecked and, the proverbial straw: an intensely personal trial very nearly pushed me off the roof of a building.

it all boiled to a climax about two weeks ago. after trying to cope with my illusions unceremoniously shattering around me, i reached bursting point. the cacophony in my head and heart had me bouncing off the walls... and i snapped. Peter rushed home just in time to stop me from going overboard. both our wounds were opened again and we've since started the process of healing.

my physiology finally got a chance to catch up this week: in that faint-and-shake kind of way i've managed to avoid for so long. this morning's epileptic fit in the shower, however, was by far the best thing that could've happened to me. you see, this time there was a measure of lucidity to it. what i mean by that is, this time i can remember seeing something. almost like a flickering stream of a thousand polaroids flying past me. i remember seeing my sister, pink flowers, and Peter. i remember a sense of peace. i also remember hearing Peter's voice fading in from somewhere. he was calling my name - and when i started to come around, his face materialized in a flickering,white haze - which later became the bathroom ceiling.

he got me to our bed where i lay still confused and panting, trying to pull myself towards myself. i knew that Fear was going to grip me any second and was trying to prepare myself for the onslaught. what followed, though, was quite different than usual. in the past, i would be flooded with feelings of terrible fear, horror, loneliness and regrets of all shapes and sizes... but today only one Visitor had come to present itself to me. only one, ice-cold and crystal clear fear: not the fear of not waking up, but the fear of dying and leaving Peter without him knowing how much i love him.

it was at once a crippling curse and a liberating blessing. i managed to see the blessing and chose to take that as my cue. i got up, got dressed and went to lie next to him on the couch. my "reset button" was pushed and i found myself in a place where Love again took centre stage. i've been asking for help to let go of the past - and i'm choosing to see today's events as just that.

maktub.

intermission: on religion

i just wish the Bible-thumping, fear-mongering, hate-and-damnation types would stop shouting: "Do you know Jesus!" and start asking: "Can you see Jesus in me?"

reprise: "Who knows where the time goes" - Nina Simone

somehow, this version of "who knows where the time goes" feels like a perfect transition from our theosophical musings (in the blogosphere and the twitterverse) to something more... tactile isn't the right word...

moving from my last post, to my next post - Nina just makes sense.

Esquire.com: What If Jesus Meant All That Stuff?

This radical Christian's ministry for the poor, The Simple Way, has gotten him in some trouble with his fellow Evangelicals. We asked him to address those who don't believe.

By Shane Claiborne

To all my nonbelieving, sort-of-believing, and used-to-be-believing friends: I feel like I should begin with a confession. I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians. Christians who have had so much to say with our mouths and so little to show with our lives. I am sorry that so often we have forgotten the Christ of our Christianity.

Forgive us. Forgive us for the embarrassing things we have done in the name of God.

The other night I headed into downtown Philly for a stroll with some friends from out of town. We walked down to Penn's Landing along the river, where there are street performers, artists, musicians. We passed a great magician who did some pretty sweet tricks like pour change out of his iPhone, and then there was a preacher. He wasn't quite as captivating as the magician. He stood on a box, yelling into a microphone, and beside him was a coffin with a fake dead body inside. He talked about how we are all going to die and go to hell if we don't know Jesus.

Some folks snickered. Some told him to shut the hell up. A couple of teenagers tried to steal the dead body in the coffin. All I could do was think to myself, I want to jump up on a box beside him and yell at the top of my lungs, "God is not a monster." Maybe next time I will.

The more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through force but through fascination. But over the past few decades our Christianity, at least here in the United States, has become less and less fascinating. We have given the atheists less and less to disbelieve. And the sort of Christianity many of us have seen on TV and heard on the radio looks less and less like Jesus.

At one point Gandhi was asked if he was a Christian, and he said, essentially, "I sure love Jesus, but the Christians seem so unlike their Christ." A recent study showed that the top three perceptions of Christians in the U. S. among young non-Christians are that Christians are 1) antigay, 2) judgmental, and 3) hypocritical. So what we have here is a bit of an image crisis, and much of that reputation is well deserved. That's the ugly stuff. And that's why I begin by saying that I'm sorry.

Now for the good news.

I want to invite you to consider that maybe the televangelists and street preachers are wrong — and that God really is love. Maybe the fruits of the Spirit really are beautiful things like peace, patience, kindness, joy, love, goodness, and not the ugly things that have come to characterize religion, or politics, for that matter. (If there is anything I have learned from liberals and conservatives, it's that you can have great answers and still be mean... and that just as important as being right is being nice.)

The Bible that I read says that God did not send Jesus to condemn the world but to save it... it was because "God so loved the world." That is the God I know, and I long for others to know. I did not choose to devote my life to Jesus because I was scared to death of hell or because I wanted crowns in heaven... but because he is good. For those of you who are on a sincere spiritual journey, I hope that you do not reject Christ because of Christians. We have always been a messed-up bunch, and somehow God has survived the embarrassing things we do in His name. At the core of our "Gospel" is the message that Jesus came "not [for] the healthy... but the sick." And if you choose Jesus, may it not be simply because of a fear of hell or hope for mansions in heaven.

Don't get me wrong, I still believe in the afterlife, but too often all the church has done is promise the world that there is life after death and use it as a ticket to ignore the hells around us. I am convinced that the Christian Gospel has as much to do with this life as the next, and that the message of that Gospel is not just about going up when we die but about bringing God's Kingdom down. It was Jesus who taught us to pray that God's will be done "on earth as it is in heaven." On earth.

One of Jesus' most scandalous stories is the story of the Good Samaritan. As sentimental as we may have made it, the original story was about a man who gets beat up and left on the side of the road. A priest passes by. A Levite, the quintessential religious guy, also passes by on the other side (perhaps late for a meeting at church). And then comes the Samaritan... you can almost imagine a snicker in the Jewish crowd. Jews did not talk to Samaritans, or even walk through Samaria. But the Samaritan stops and takes care of the guy in the ditch and is lifted up as the hero of the story. I'm sure some of the listeners were ticked. According to the religious elite, Samaritans did not keep the right rules, and they did not have sound doctrine... but Jesus shows that true faith has to work itself out in a way that is Good News to the most bruised and broken person lying in the ditch.

It is so simple, but the pious forget this lesson constantly. God may indeed be evident in a priest, but God is just as likely to be at work through a Samaritan or a prostitute. In fact the Scripture is brimful of God using folks like a lying prostitute named Rahab, an adulterous king named David... at one point God even speaks to a guy named Balaam through his donkey. Some say God spoke to Balaam through his ass and has been speaking through asses ever since. So if God should choose to use us, then we should be grateful but not think too highly of ourselves. And if upon meeting someone we think God could never use, we should think again.

After all, Jesus says to the religious elite who looked down on everybody else: "The tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom ahead of you." And we wonder what got him killed?

I have a friend in the UK who talks about "dirty theology" — that we have a God who is always using dirt to bring life and healing and redemption, a God who shows up in the most unlikely and scandalous ways. After all, the whole story begins with God reaching down from heaven, picking up some dirt, and breathing life into it. At one point, Jesus takes some mud, spits in it, and wipes it on a blind man's eyes to heal him. (The priests and producers of anointing oil were not happy that day.)

In fact, the entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just want to stay "out there" but who moves into the neighborhood, a neighborhood where folks said, "Nothing good could come." It is this Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and drunkard and rabble-rouser for hanging out with all of society's rejects, and who died on the imperial cross of Rome reserved for bandits and failed messiahs. This is why the triumph over the cross was a triumph over everything ugly we do to ourselves and to others. It is the final promise that love wins.

It is this Jesus who was born in a stank manger in the middle of a genocide. That is the God that we are just as likely to find in the streets as in the sanctuary, who can redeem revolutionaries and tax collectors, the oppressed and the oppressors... a God who is saving some of us from the ghettos of poverty, and some of us from the ghettos of wealth.

In closing, to those who have closed the door on religion — I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend if I thought he was going to hell. I said, "I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you." If those of us who believe in God do not believe God's grace is big enough to save the whole world... well, we should at least pray that it is.

Your brother,
Shane

Reprise: Million Dollar Bill - Asbury Park

oh how i long to be part of such fun, fabulous frivolity again *lol*

now those of you who can:
grab your friends,
go out and
have a blast!

(that's an order.)

list: elisabeth kübler-ross' 5 stages of grief

sometimes it helps to remember that:
other's have gone through roughly the same thing as you,
some have studied the process of "getting over it", and
this too shall pass.

sometimes change can be a very painful experience - especially when prompted by some form of grief or trauma. (and i'm using these words in their broadest sense.) i've often found a kind of peace - solace even - in the Kübler-Ross model, as introduced by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book "On Death and Dying". although the model was originally developed for people with terminal illnesses - it manages to translate into everyday life quite well.

i found myself thinking about this model often over the last week or so. in sharing it with you, i hope that somewhere, someone else might find it a little easier "to deal".

keep in mind that the stages are not linear: they don't necessarily follow a set pattern. some stages might even repeat themselves at random. what is important, is to know that they exist and that we have to go through at least some of them to reach the stage of acceptance.

1. Denial — "I feel fine."; "This can't be happening, not to me."
   Denial is usually only a temporary defense for the individual.
2. Anger — "Why me? It's not fair!"; "How can this happen to me?"; "Who is to blame?"
   Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy.
3. Bargaining — "Just let me live to see my children graduate."; "I'll do anything for a few more years."; "I will give my life savings if..."
   The third stage involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone or delay [change]. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made with a higher power in exchange for a reformed lifestyle.
4. Depression — "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"; "I'm going to die . . . What's the point?"; "I miss my loved one, why go on?"
   During the fourth stage, the person begins to understand the certainty of [change]. Because of this, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and spend much of the time crying and grieving. This process allows the person to disconnect from things of love and affection. It is not recommended to attempt to cheer up an individual who is in this stage. It is an important time for grieving that must be processed.
5. Acceptance — "It's going to be okay."; "I can't fight it, I may as well prepare for it."
   This final stage comes with peace and understanding of the [change] that is approaching. Generally, the person in the fifth stage will want to be left alone.

i went through quite a few cycles of bargaining and depression this time around - thankfully "anger" only reared it's menacing head twice. (nobody was physically hurt in either instance.)

acceptance, for me, was both a process and a choice this time.

a choice, much like finding joy, that i have to stick to.

but now, i'm afraid i have to get ready for work.

hope you are all well!

may your day be bright, comfy and pleasantly familiar ;0)

memo to self: be kind

be kinder than necessary - everyone you meet is fighting
some kind of battle.

live simply,
love generously,
care deeply,
speak kindly...

and leave the rest to God.

still here

although i am by far not ready to talk about it, i realize that total radio silence from me would be irresponsible.

thought for the day: Be merciful to those who fail you.

find a way

i am in a very dark and hurting place right now. still, i have to believe that there is a way through it. the following words might serve you as well:

Most of the time our happiness is reactive behavior. We let things or people be the cause of our happiness. True happiness has no reason. It's a choice.

Today, find one reason for joy. And focus on that for the day.

don't be afraid of the dark

don't ask why - just know that i'm having a really bad day - and enjoy this little pick-me-upper Francois sent me.

a post! a post... nah, more music

i was honestly going to post something deep and meaningful tonight. and to get me in the mood - i read some of your awesome mails, tweets and blogs for fodder and inspiration.

some of you struck quite a few chords tonight... a closeted man's dream of love, a potent farewell, and a billet doux from long, long ago.

i'm choked up, to be honest.
so here's a clip of the song that's echoing inside.

love one another. fiercely, openly and enthusiastically.

music week continues: Lady Gaga - Bad Romance

too much?
i'm sure i don't know what you mea...

oh.

Auriol Hayes " Take It Slow "

a little bit of Cape Town in the morning...
*sigh*

the songs in my head: Wonder Girls: "Nobody"

i'm loving this so much right now! korean girls rock!

got the song as a gift from Peter (aw schweet) and totally fell in love with it's sing-along chorus. the video's a bit on the long side - but it tells a nifty story ;0)

love from formosa,
w

the songs in my head: solid gold

woke up with this number from the golden filter looping in my thoughts.
the video's not really quite there, methinks.

review: i saw SAW 6

yup - i went and saw it. the latest installment of SAW, that is. (in case you thought i was loosing my mind. then again, that might be proof enough...)

it was horrible. better than 5, but horrible.

the acting sucked - none more so than that of Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor). the man has the depth and range of a gnat.

the gore was pretty much the same as anything before. nothing is left of the (for lack of another word) genius of the original move. even the "traps/games" feel rehashed and regurgitated - in some cases to the extent where boredom sets in.

and the twist that everyone talked about? utterly predictable.

the only thing that really got to me - and boy did it ever get to me - was the opening sequence. now THERE's some horror right there! not so much for the visuals, as for the audio.

THE SCREAMING!!!

whomever cast the first two "players" should be congratulated,
and closely monitored!
THAT scene worked: my stomach turned, i broke out in a cold sweat, i felt nauseous and...
i passed out...
on my way to the bathroom...
two-thirds into the scene.

yup. my biological operating system crashed.
sensory overload.

on reboot i was still sweating, but no longer nauseous.
i returned to my seat for what turned out to be a boring film.

so here's my advice:

if you want to see it for a gut-wrench - be on time, leave after 10 minutes. it'll be the best movie-experience you've had in a while!

if you're a bit more sensitive but want to watch it for the story - be 10 minutes late. skip the hot dog.

repost: from Happy Days: the pursuit of what matters in troubled times

Happy Ending

By TODD MAY

In the spring of 2004 I took a flight from my home near Greenville, S.C., to New York to visit my dying step-grandmother. We had been close, and it would be one of the last times I would get to see her. As the flight was about to land, it abruptly ascended and headed toward the Empire State Building. The passengers on the plane became quiet; the aura of 9/11 was hanging in the air.

We flew over the Empire State Building (but too close to the antenna for my comfort) and circled back to La Guardia. As it turned out, a small commuter plane had decided to land without taking account of our aircraft, so the pilot had had to make a quick move. But in those moments when it seemed I was aboard another human missile, I revisited my life. I realized, almost to my surprise, that I would not have traded it in for another life. There had been disappointments, to be sure, but my life appeared to me to have been a meaningful one, a life I did not regret. This is not to say that I was not nearly paralyzed with fear. I was. At the same time, strangely, my life appeared to me as worth having lived.

There are two lessons here. The first, and most obvious one, is that death is terrifying. Here in the United States, we have the technology to defer death, so we often pretend it will never really happen to us. There is always another procedure, always a cure in sight if not in hand. But in our sober moments we recognize that we will indeed die, and that we have precious little control over when it will happen.

The harm of death goes to the heart of who we are as human beings. We are, in essence, forward-looking creatures. We create our lives prospectively. We build relationships, careers, and projects that are not solely of the moment but that have a future in our vision of them. One of the reasons Eastern philosophies have developed techniques to train us to be in the moment is that that is not our natural state. We are pulled toward the future, and see the meaning of what we do now in its light.

Death extinguishes that light. And because we know that we will die, and yet we don’t know when, the darkness that is ultimately ahead of each of us is with us at every moment. There is, we might say, a tunnel at the end of this light. And since we are creatures of the future, the darkness of death offends us in our very being. We may come to terms with it when we grow old, but unless our lives have become a burden to us coming to terms is the best we can hope for.

The second, less obvious lesson of this moment of facing death is that in order for our lives to have a shape, in order that they not become formless, we need to die. This will strike some as counterintuitive, even a little ridiculous. But in order to recognize its truth, we should reflect a bit on what immortality might mean.

Immortality lasts a long time. It is not for nothing that in his story “The Immortal” Jorge Luis Borges pictures the immortal characters as unconcerned with their lives or their surroundings. Once you’ve followed your passion — playing the saxophone, loving men or women, traveling, writing poetry — for, say, 10,000 years, it will likely begin to lose its grip. There may be more to say or to do than anyone can ever accomplish. But each of us develops particular interests, engages in particular pursuits. When we have been at them long enough, we are likely to find ourselves just filling time. In the case of immortality, an inexhaustible period of time.

And when there is always time for everything, there is no urgency for anything. It may well be that life is not long enough. But it is equally true that a life without limits would lose the beauty of its moments. It would become boring, but more deeply it would become shapeless. Just one damn thing after another.

This is the paradox death imposes upon us: it grants us the possibility of a meaningful life even as it takes it away. It gives us the promise of each moment, even as it threatens to steal that moment, or at least reminds us that some time our moments will be gone. It allows each moment to insist upon itself, because there are only a limited number of them. And none of us knows how many.

I prefer to think that the paradox of death is the source not of despair but instead of the limited hope that is allotted to us as human beings. We cannot live forever, to be sure, but neither would we want to. We ought not to mind the fact that we will die, although we really would rather that it not be today. Probably not tomorrow either. But it is precisely because we cannot control when we will die, and know only that we will, that we can look upon our lives with the seriousness they merit. Death takes away from us no more than it has conferred: lives whose significance lies in the fact they are not always with us.

Our happiness lies in being able to inhabit that fact.

list: posters i long to own

our lease will be up come february, which has me daydreaming about finding the perfect space again :0)
wooden floors...
high ceilings...
kitchen with an oven...
rooftop patio...
lots and lots of cupboards for Peter's clothes *lol*

this lead me to thinking about decoration.
does wanting these posters make me weird?

so that was halloween

looking back, this year's halloween most definitely deserves another post. it was, after all, the first time that i "did" halloween the way Americans do.

you see, halloween was not very popular in SA when i was growing up. quite the contrary, in fact. not that ghosts and witches weren't fun - we did have haunted carnival rides and even played "haunted house" at school events. just never on the 31st of october. i suppose some grown-ups in the bigger cities might have had a party, but i don't recall caring much about that as a youngster.

in fact, i only started enjoying halloween in my university years - and i had quite a few of those ;0)

remember, i only 'discovered' booze on my 19th birthday. (of course i knew about wine and liquor before - i just didn't like it.) but on my 19th birthday i discovered i DID like the bubbly! quite a bit. so much so that, much like any other student, most of my free time was spent finding a reason to party. life was all about having fun and getting drunk. add to that the opportunity to dress up and be as weird as you care to be... you get the idea.

any party was an excuse to drink copious amounts of whatever had some kick in it. strangely enough, most people were more fun in costume (out of character) - or, in my case, in drag! back then, we had more fancy dress parties than anything else!

when i switched from studying Town- and regional Planning to a degree in Interior Design - one of my closest friends had the fortune of celebrating her birthday on November 1st. Halloween party PLUS birthday after midnight... instant success!

so yeah, that's pretty much what halloween was all about for me and my friends: getting.wasted.

carving pumpkins was something americans did - who knew why or what for? messy for sure.
trick-or-treating? sounds like playing "tok-tokkie", without running away before someone opened the door - and what's the fun in that?

tok-tok·kie [ tòk tókee ] (plural tok-tok·kies) noun  South Africa Definition: 1. insects African beetle: an African beetle that makes a characteristic sound by tapping its abdomen on the ground to attract a mate. Family Tenebrionidae. 2. leisure children's game involving knocking on doors: a children's game or trick of knocking on somebody's door and then running away before it can be answered.

 ---------------------------------------------------------

fast forward to last week.
i'm working in an American school, with real Americans, in a culture that practically worships everything about the United States.

my kids want to carve pumpkins. the school actually set aside class time for this. these carved pumpkins go on display for the school's only "event": the Halloween party.

being the only outside event that our school has - it is THE moment to dazzle and beguile. suddenly, our costumes are seriously important. the show is for awing kids and parents alike - which is great PR for the school, which means new students, which means business.
then there's also the after-party...
yes, there's an after-party in town, where throngs of foreigners get together for the "best outfit" competition. not only are the prizes pretty cool - but there's a bit of prestige to it. and apparently our school always wins one of the three categories. (no pressure)

so... carving the pumpkin was nerve wrecking. although i'd read up on carving templates and techniques beforehand, i was seriously feeling the pressure when i walked through the front door that morning. my concerns about carving a decent pumpkin, however, were overshadowed by the fear of slipping and hurting a student. kids, as you well know, loose all sense of caution when curiosity takes over. i ended up barking "too close!" more often than plunging the knife into the (resistant) pumpkin. i was sweating bullets. (or balls, as my colleagues put it.)

thankfully the pumpkin emerged looking pretty decent, without any blood being spilt.

next up was the party itself - and i had no idea how i was going to pull off a "genuine" halloween costume (or perform a quick ditty on stage). all i had to do at my previous school was scare the living daylights out of everybody!

i ended up sticking to what i knew best - and went as a zombie. my theatrical flair ended up being a bit TOO scary - and i had to loose the bloodied mouth and throat. the white contact lenses, however, couldn't be made less scary. unless i took them out. which i didn't, seeing as how i'd painted my whole body. (there was no way i was going to stick a painted finger in my eye!)

during the night's activities, i managed to perspire myself into lighter and lighter shades of blue as i went along. so much so, that i had to turn to the art-supplies of my manager for some additional blue poster paint.

for the stage-show i merely hopped around the way chinese zombies are supposed to - which drew a great response from both the crowd and management.

then we headed for the after-party. i squeezed out too much paint for my last application, but decided to bite the bullet and use it all. worked like a charm! i visibly scared the sh!t out of people on the way to the bar - and at the bar itself. success!! i didn't enter the competition in the end - but my boss won best dressed male.
he went as marilyn monroe.

(mahat maghandi came second. obviously spelling ability was not a prerequisite.)

not so long in the tooth...

from inspiration:


came implementation:

which then went into translation:

not in kindergarten anymore...