beautiful, funny, sad & true

Yesterday I was still feeling the effects of the cold or whatever that I had on the weekend, and my head still felt all spacy, so I called in sick to work and went back to sleep for a few more hours. When I awoke, the weather was so warm and beautiful that I decided that I needed to get out of the house, no matter what. Saturday had been really rainy and beautiful, so I’d stayed in bed most of the day and started reading “Catcher in the Rye.” I threw the book in my bag, went and ate miso soup and a little bit of sushi at Sushiland, then drove to Mt. Tabor to read for a while.

Maija came and met me up there after her yoga class was over, and we sat and talked and walked and talked and swang (swung? swinged?) and talked and then got hungry, so we went to Thanh Thao. It was too stuffy in there, and we still wanted to enjoy the day outside, so we drove over to Laurelhurst Park and talked while we ate by the duck pond. By this time, the sun was starting to go down, so when a particularly ‘glowy’ tree caught our eyes, we went over and took about a million pictures of it. Most of mine were terrible, but here are a couple of okay ones of the tree, and also one of a good-sized spider we saw when we first entered the park.

When the sun went down, it started to get a little chilly, and after three days cooped up in my apartment, I started to feel a little bit run down after all that walking. So we said good night and headed home.

I got home just in time for a phone call from Joan, who was on her way over to bring back the “Jesus Camp” DVD. We ended up watching the whole thing, with the director’s commentary turned on. What a great movie. Joan comes from a conservative Christian family–in Kansas, no less!–so it hit especially close to home for her.

After it was over, Joan went home, while I folded my laundry and started to settle in for the night, when I got a phone call from my friend Madeleine up in Seattle. We talked about relationships and our generation and commitment (or lack thereof) that we’ve experienced in our own lives and our friends’ lives. It was fantastic, and completely invigorating. It was also 11:45 at night by then, so I started to fade out. As soon as I hung up the phone, I saw that there was a text message from Joan saying, “Still up?” so I called her back and we ended up talking for over an hour.

What a long and amazing day it was. Here’s to many more like that.

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, and compassion.”

The grandson thought about it for a little while, and then asked, “Grandfather? Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

On Friday, a lady I work with came back after being sick for the previous three days. That was just enough time for me to be around her and catch what she had. I cancelled all my plans for this weekend and stayed inside. I was in bed for much of the day, reading “Catcher in the Rye” (for the first time in about fifteen years) and listening to the rain. When I finally got up, I cleaned my apartment and dinked around on the computer for a while. I downloaded the new Radiohead album (you can too!) and watched Jesus Camp.

I found “Jesus Camp” to be both fascinating and chilling. It would be interesting to turn this into a series–in the style of the Up Series, which amazingly enough is also online–and check in with some of these kids throughout their lives. I won’t give you any ‘spoiler’ info here, but there are two kids in particular that I’d like to see focused on; Levi, who is already quite capable of preaching, and Rachael, who will fearlessly walk up to strangers and ask them about their spiritual experiences. Interestingly, I kept feeling like I was watching the early stages of mental illness in her. Very well-done documentary. Ted Haggard also appears in the movie, which was almost, dare I say, prophetic (ha!) on the part of the filmmakers, all things considered.

Last night, thanks to one of my friends on MySpace, I watched The Bridge. (Incidentally, you can watch “The Bridge” here for free.) This is a very starkly beautiful and haunting film, the likes of which I’ve not seen before. I’m not giving anything away by telling you that there are many scenes in which people climb over the rail of the Golden Gate bridge and are shown jumping to their deaths. (I mean, jeez, they show that happen in the very first scene, even before the credits!) Many of the scenes even show the person’s descent and splash through the surface of the water. It didn’t make me depressed, but I would say that it’s not a movie for the faint of heart.

I haven’t taken a turn and gotten really sick, but my throat’s more scratchy than it was yesterday, and I feel a little more spacy and tired than I did. I was supposed to rehearse with Sarah Castro tonight, but I had to reschedule for later in the week. I’ll see how I feel tomorrow when it comes time to get up and go to work.

plus

equals

GOOD TIMES.

Here’s a video of the seagull that followed J and me all the way from the north end of Cannon Beach clear down to Haystack Rock. The white one wasn’t far behind him, either. When the brown one finally gave up on us and flew away, the white one stayed behind to make sure we weren’t holding out a secret food stash for him.

Ah, nature.