registering dissent

The death toll in Gaza nears 400 as I sit here, with hundreds more critically injured and something like 1,000 wounded. This is the most devastating violence that the Palestinians have seen in 40 years.

Even as I write those words, I hear my father's voice. He is there, as he always is, with his anger rising and his conclusion incontrovertible. Of course Israel has the right to bomb, strafe, kill! The Arab nations would rather see all Jews pushed out of the Middle East and Israel wiped out of existence! This tiny nation is surrounded by hostile forces! Of course it is within the bounds of normalcy for Israel to defend itself! That's what he's saying.

He's also saying, near-shouting by now, why does the international community always point its finger at Israel, when so much violence and destruction has been directed at Israel by the Arabs, since the moment of its founding? Someday the world will wake up, he says, and see how wronged the Israelis have been, and how righteously they acted.

And he shakes his head in seething disbelief at the Jewish anti-occupationists and anti-Zionists in Israel and America. Self-hating Jews -- how can they turn against their own State, their own family? How can they align themselves with neo-Nazis, racists, people who equate Israel with Jews and want to eradicate both from this earth?

My father's voice scorns the depictions of olive groves being uprooted to make way for settlements; he decries the liberal media's portrayal of the Palestinian situation as poetic, poignant, when, in his mind, Palestinians as a people must be contained to ensure the survival of the Jews. Palestinian bloodlust justifies bloodletting of Palestinians by Israelis.

This is his voice. It is strong in my mind. I have long wrestled with it.

I remember being in high school and feeling that it was very important to have a position on this issue, just like it was important to have a position about abortion, the rainforest, and the existence of God. So I took my father's position. I was Bat Mitzvah in Israel, after all, and I had family there. And how could the Jews, the intellectual Jews, the successful Jews, the contributing Jews do anything wrong!

In college I studied abroad in Israel, moving along a corridor from Beer Sheva to Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to Sinai, marvelling at the young soldiers who polished their rifles sitting next to me on the bus. My world there was mostly filled with white people, but I did meet and talk with some Israeli Arabs in a seaside town called Akko. At a music festival there, on the roof of an ancient fort, I heard Palestinian music and stood in a crowd of young men and women who called out 'aiwa' as the Greeks might call 'opah.' Mostly, though, I stayed within the contours of the myth of Israel as I had always understood it.

Some of my close friends are deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement. One friend is a human rights attorney in Israel who works for justice on behalf of displaced Palestinians, another is a Reconstructionist Rabbi who has developed an anti-occupation education curriculum for religious schools, another writes missives for Moveon.org.

Over the years, and because of these friends, I have read, thought about, questioned deeply, struggled with Israel's aggressive actions, its systemic dehumanization of a populace, its violation of the basic human rights to food, water, medical care, livelihood for thousands of people living in what amounts to many-hundred-square-mile ghettos that are appended to Israel proper. I have turned over and over in my mind the shattering contradictions, the impossibility of reconciling the dream of Israel with the nightmare of Palestine, the truth that Arab nations support the destruction of Israel and the truth that Israel supports the destruction of Palestine.

As deeply as this situation has pained me as I have learned more and more about it, as many movies as I have watched and articles I have read and analyses I have considered, I have never been able to betray my father by taking a non-Zionist stance. Instead, I have done the discursive equivalent of throwing up my hands: it's not a black and white situation, I can't take sides, it's just a tragic situation and me speaking out about it one way or the other won't do anything.

Whenever we discuss it, my father and I, I choose my words with the utmost care. My main concern in those moments is keeping a smile on his face, that slight satisfied upturn of the corners of his mouth when I align with his views. At home last week, my mother asked me what I think about the situation in Israel. I couldn't answer her. I was unable to speak, unable to formulate a reply that would satisfy the censors who stand watch at the gate of my own mind.

And now, faced with the unassailable truth of the situation in Gaza, I find myself still rendered silent. There is a part of me that is pleased, even, in the face of this massacre, that I am keeping the small smile on the face of my father and so many others whom I love, whose own love for Israel blinds them entirely. I find myself inside a room and leaning against a locked door, a door that I have slammed on the wailing masses outside, relieved to be safe inside the room. The show must go on. The Jews must go on, at all costs. Otherwise, what would be left of us? Were these walls to crumble, this door to come off its hinges and fall to the floor, what -- who -- would save us from annihilation? NO ONE! my father shouts. No one would save us, so we have to save ourselves. Be silent, then, and turn your face away from the horror that ensues.

But I cannot. I cannot turn my face away. I have to look, to recognize. Selfishly, for the sake of my own humanity, my own realness, I have to enter the naked truth of this sweeping destruction. I have to acknowledge what torments the Jews are inflicting on the Palestinians, and what torments the Arab establishment inflicts in return. I have to bear witness to the ways that these cousins wound themselves, over and over again, mortally.

And I have to register my own dissent to this violence; I have to speak, to say that this is not in my name, this is not the door that I want the people of my faith to pass through on our search for sanctuary in a deadly world. I cannot stand by and swallow this great misery as if it were simply a bitter medicine to precipitate healing. No. There is no healing, no peace that can come from this. I refuse to accept that this is for the good.

I say no to the massacre of Gaza.

My words here travel out into the nothingness, reaching a handful of people, bringing no salve to the bleeding wounds of the people of Gaza. Were this to reach my father, it would simply anger him. No change can be wrought from the saying of these words. I say them, nonetheless, because I must.

"I have come into this world to see this: the sword drop from men's hands even at the height of their arc of anger because we have finally realized there is just one flesh to wound" ~ Hafiz

revisiting

I've been at home with my parents for the last week, in L.A. It has been, essentially, a film festival -- I think we've watched 5 or 6 (or maybe 7) videos, plus a few on cable late at night by myself (including "But I'm a Cheerleader," and boy oh boy did Clea Duvall's andro to Natasha Lyonne's femme give me a scandalous little shiver there in my parent's den). I've been sleeping hours upon hours every night, reading the paper all morning. My mom bought me a pink shirt today after we went for Japanese food. I made some fantastic latkes the other night -- Susie Bright has a recipe blog, did you know that? It's called "Suzie the Homebreaker" and I highly recommend her latke recipe.

Another thing I've been doing is sorting through all my old journals and letters. They're all still here, in the drawers of my childhood desk. I seem to have saved absolutely everything -- every note ever passed my way in pre-calculus, every errant scribbling of mine from my teens and early twenties. Paging through it all, I'm struck mainly by the state of deathly insecurity in which I have spent so many years of my life. My college scrawlings oscillate between a fear so pervasive I was almost paralyzed, and hope for a stronger self to emerge.

It is amazing to read, and so sad, too -- I grieve all of that lost time. What was I so afraid of? Why was I so full of condemnation for myself, for my every move? What's excellent, I guess, is being able to see it all in retrospect, and to see how far I've travelled since those years. But the feelings then were mostly along the scalp-tingling fear spectrum -- fearing the worst in terms of my personality, my loveability, my capacity to succeed in the world. I remember, both from reading my diary entries and from all the associated images that have come rushing back, how I would end up so many days and nights cowering away from the specter of my own terribleness. No high could erase that creeping dread.

I wish I could go back and talk to my trapped, tormented 21-year-old self. I wish I could tell her to loosen her grip a little bit; that she really is smart and talented enough to be at that big school with all those math-smart people; that it's okay to feel attracted to other girls. I wish I could somehow transmit to her that she is a precious light, a vital player in the community of life, beloved on this earth. She didn't know any of that then, but life was calling to her, however faintly it echoed in the darkness, and I wish I could have held her shoulders and whispered in her ear to listen, listen.

As I said, though, it has me marvelling at the journey. We are space travellers but we are also always reaching deeper in, brushing back the dust and debris from the essential qualities that glow through time. It is beautiful, to have a record of all my yearnings, because through it there runs a line, a thread, a vein of gold. I saw it back then, as bleak as I felt, and I wrote about it. And now I am running alongside it, faster and faster, flying along on the dream that this thin strand will take me to my place, take me home.

leap

You know that old adage about "when you take a leap of faith, either the ground will rise to meet your feet or you'll sprout wings?" Well, I think it's the wings that sprouted, because I feel like I'm flying.

This past week I had another intense fear-contraction. I decided to change my mind again and talk to my boss about staying on. I got all cold and clammy last weekend, thinking 'what the fuck am I doing, quitting my cushy job during Great Depression 2.0!' So I had a panicky few days of urgently trying to claw my way back up the birth canal. I want to stay in here where it's safe!

Fortunately for me, that wasn't how it turned out.

I just had a really wonderful conversation with my boss in which he enthusiastically agreed to keep me on board, in a paid part-time contract attorney position, to work solely on the apple moth case, whenever it's necessary. (He also told me he thinks of me as a daughter and wants me to follow my calling. Yes, he did!) And my amazing women's environmental network just two days ago got a really big grant, much of which can be used to fund my work.

So, um, okay! HERE GOES NOTHIN'!!!

over the edge

I'm leaving my job two weeks from Friday.

The fear claws at my solar plexus. What have I done?

I remember about a week after I had started this job, as an associate at a small public interest private law firm in downtown Oakland, that I had already started counting down the days until I was finished. At the moment, I was reading prior briefing in a California Environmental Quality Act suit, having to do with UC Berkeley's expansion plans; I was preparing to write the reply brief to the court of appeal. By all accounts, it was an important issue -- the classic town-and-gown dispute, the fate of downtown Berkeley's land use plans -- but to me it was the drudgery of the law. I thought, "I'll give it a year here."

In mid-winter and spring, my work was so dull it was physically painful. I spent about two months writing a terrible brief for a client who objected to the expansion of his neighbor, a fast food restaurant, because he was going to lose a few parking spaces. I remember being at my women's circle and asking to be held, needing the touch, the soothing. I crawled into the center of the circle, heaving a great sigh. I sobbed and sobbed. Meanwhile I was working feverishly to develop the Southwest project that just took place successfully in September. My health suffered; my hair started falling out in clumps. Through spring and summer I started cancelling my social plans, going into survival mode. I skipped all the festivals.

And then the apple moth came along. I'd heard about this issue in December or January, and brought it to the attention of my boss; it turned out that one of our clients was also interested in suing, so I was given free reign to do the research and write the complaint. It turns out that EPA actually made a pretty grievous error in purporting to exempt from normal registration processes the pesticide used for the aerial spray; I caught the error, and wrote a great complaint. After months and months, we finally filed it last Tuesday. To me, it felt like "mission accomplished!"

In June, I wrote an e-mail to a community list of which I'm a member, sharing my dilemma with them about whether or not to quit. I wrote: "there's a natural break in September, when I'll be doing some work in the Southwest for about three weeks, so it would be a full year here. When I feel into this possibility, I feel excited, scared, relieved, anxious, and doubtful. I'm not sure whether it's the right time for me to do this, I'm not sure whether I'd be making a huge mistake (i.e. my job isn't great, but it's not *that* bad, I'm getting paid, I can hang in there, I shouldn't abandon the moths, etc.) I'm secretly hoping that someone or something will tell me what I 'should' do; the deeper truth is that in my life I haven't cultivated a great deal of trust in myself to guide my life, since I've been doing (or attempting to do) what I 'should' do for such a long time."

Eventually, the quickening of the life-energy inside me moved me to decide to quit. I agonized and agonized down to the very last minute, but I finally gave notice in August, saying that I'd be working until the end of December. Pretty much immediately I went into a major fear contraction. What have I done? How could I leave my job, which isn't that bad, in the middle of a recession? What am I going to do instead?

That's the question my parents have always asked me. What would you be doing instead? I wasn't exactly forced to go to law school, but one could say that I found my father's strenuous recommendation that I go to be unopposable. And it was miserable, in a lot of ways, but I wouldn't trade it now for anything for the healing and strength and community and experience that it brought. In the midst of so much tearful suffering they said "what would you be doing instead?" And I could never answer that question with any kind of comforting specificity. There has never been anything more than a sense of the truth inside of me.

What would I be doing instead? It comes down to this: I'd be letting the life inside of me live. I'd let the truth about my life force, which is that it is not about conflict and adversariality, but instead about healing and collaboration and creativity, to emerge and be my guide. I've never done that before. I've been squelching and squashing and boxing it for a really long time; putting it aside in favor of what is the "right" thing to do. I don't know exactly what it looks like, but it is some combination of writing, advocacy, community weaving. All, ultimately, in service of the healing of the earth, our Mother Earth.

So I agonized and agonized some more. At my therapist's office I did a sand tray, and basically built an intuitive altar to the two choices I was facing. In one corner, a figurine of the goddess, in the other corner, a figurine of a postman. In the goddess' quadrant there was a red glass heart at the center of a circle of amber and green stones; there was a sand dollar, an angel, a spiraling shell. In the postman's quadrant there was a little girl riding a speedboat surrounded by paper money and fake pennies. Next to her stood a figurine of a woman doctor, an upstanding and powerful citizen. Between the two quadrants was a tree -- the driving force behind both energies -- and a roaring lion's head.

She took a polaroid of the array for me, and I called it "Confluence." I gazed into it like a crystal ball for several days, knowing that the movement of my heart and soul was towards the feminine quadrant, but feeling so much fear about stepping away from the masculine quadrant. Am I just a spoiled, lazy brat? Am I ridiculously naive for making this sort of decision? Who am I kidding?

I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but finally, several weeks ago, the fog lifted and I found peace with the decision to walk towards the feminine and to leave my job. To leave the security, the prestige, and even the excitement of working on the apple moth case. To leave this thing that's not half-bad, that's really okay, that pays a good sum of money, that gets me by. To take a leap off the edge into the absolute unknown, hoping desperately that my wings will sprout or that the ground will rise to meet my steps.

I remember that I have done this before, and it has always led to something greater: when I was supposed to be in my third year of law school I took the fall semester off. It gave me time to rest and heal, and it allowed me to have a third summer. I got an internship at NRDC that summer, which was the best law job I've probably ever had. And last summer I was offered a prestigious job clerking for the Supreme Court of Colorado, a year-long position which would have started this fall. I agonized over that one, too, but finally realized that my heart was not at all in it. And then this current job came along, which has been nothing if not a learning experience.

And I pay attention to the fact that in the few months since I've made the decision to quit, my health has been rapidly improving. I've lost about 15 pounds; my whole relationship to food has changed. A weight has, literally, lifted.

And still the fear plagues me. What have I done? Time will tell. My fervent prayer is that I will be shown what is needed of me, how I am to give my life over to the Earth's healing. My fervent prayer is that even if this quitting, this leaping is a terrible and foolhardy mistake, that I will learn from it. That life will not mete out punishment instead of blessings because I have leapt so blindly. That if this is a mistake, it will give me the wisdom that I'll need in order to leap again and soar. And my fervent prayer is that it is not a mistake, that this is not a figment of my priveleged imagination; that there really is something to this powerful, pulsing, unformed call that is so indescribable, so subtle, and so wholly irresistable.

I am in a great and painful birth canal, and when I emerge nothing will be the same. This is what I have done; I have said 'yes' to being born.

May it be so,
may it be so,
may it be so.

down to earth

I've spent a lot of time with my head in the clouds.

That's not to say that there aren't a lot of good ideas floating around up there. For example, I believe in bioregionalism as a political organizing principle. This is the notion that a polity should be organized around an ecosystem, taking into account that ecosystem's natural boundaries, its resource input needs and outflow capacity, and its ability to sustain human life over time. Bioregionalism is about binding human life to the land, acknowledging not only that we need to be in relationship with the earth in order to survive, but that the relationship between the earth and people in the arid west will be completely different, and will demand completely different governance, than the relationship between earth and people in the swampy south.

It's a beautiful idea, isn't it? Makes so much sense, doesn't it?

My dad and I have had different versions of the same argument for most of my young adult and adult life, about social issues like violence, racism, poverty, environmental destruction. The particulars are different, but our positions are basically fixed: he's talking about the free market, self-reliance and the law of the jungle, I'm talking about essential human proclivity towards sharing and caring. Usually these arguments end up with him fake-conceding; "I wish it could be true, Cait." The newspaper we pore over for long mornings, when I'm home to visit, invariably reflects that it's not.

But even as I trudged through law school, getting indoctrinated into the behind-the-curtain workings of this chaotic enterprise called civil society in America, I still rejected the idea that this is it, that this is the best we can do: this backward-scrambling system that seems to generate imbalance after imbalance, injustice after injustice. There's more to it, I knew, and so even though I was playing along, I wasn't really in the game. I was holding out for the rapture, you could say, the New Age rapture when everybody would finally heal the wounds in their hearts, love each other, and magically transform this whole mess. Back to the farm, or the ashram, or something.

That is, until recently. I've experienced kind of a triple-whammy catalyst for new thought in the last several months. A perfect storm, if you will, of awakening.

(1) Tearing down the wall. Remember when I told you, a few months ago, that it was time to step back and do some heart-healing? Well, I'm doing it. It's really happening, in an almost visible way. And it's pretty deep, and entirely new.

(2) Barack Obama's election. About 45 minutes after CNN called it, I was standing with thousands of people in Oakland's Convention Center, surrounded by some very dear friends. Our collective attention was aimed towards the huge TV screen, and Barbara Lee was trying to talk to us but kept getting interrupted because the anchor kept saying that Obama was about to give his acceptance speech. I don't remember when it finally happened, but it did, which is that I finally let myself cry.

And I sobbed, under the same blue-neon lights that illuminated the room when I took the bar exam there last February. I cried because I finally felt it: yes, we can. The witch is dead! After eight years of feeling like all of our efforts for peace and justice were going absolutely nowhere, while a power-addled moron made one destructive decision after another, all of a sudden I felt this lightness where there used to be a weight.

I hadn't even realized there was a presidential-sized weight sitting on my chest. But there was, and suddenly I recognized it because of its absence. Suddenly, the energy that all the peacemakers put out into the world wasn't going to be pulverized and blown back in our faces like so many shards of broken glass. Suddenly, there's an open channel that starts on the ground and goes all the way up to the top, and then flows on down again. Really? Really?

We whirled and hollered in the streets for a long time that night.

(3) Gay marriage. How do I even talk about this one? It was a suckerpunch, a body blow. It knocked the wind out of the community, and a lot of us started spitting ignorance and hatred as soon as we got our breath back. But the leadership is pulling itself back together, the people are calming each other down and speaking truth to power, and the fight goes on. The Cal Supremes are set to hear oral argument in March on the question of whether this proposition is a constitutional revision, meaning that it effects such sweeping change to the structure of government that it should only be ratified by the legislature, or a constitutional amendment, which means that it is among the class of decisions that may be constitutionally made by the voters.

As a privileged, able-bodied, urban California white woman, albeit of the Jewish faith, I have until now been wholly unfamiliar with the set of sensations which may be termed 'minority stress,' a set of sensations which too many people in our society have experienced and continue to experience each and every day. Just this week, a group of six Long Island teen boys were charged with the hate-motivated murder of an Ecuadorean man, in an episode of "beaner hopping." And today is Transgender Remembrance Day -- that's "remembrance," not "awareness" -- when we recall the lives that have been lost (43, in the past two years) of differently-gendered individuals who were raped, maimed, and killed for deviating from the norm. Ethnic violence in the Congo rages on, and the death toll climbs upward of 5 million. Not to mention garden-variety racism and sexism which pervade our cultural relations and which can turn deadly on a moment's notice. So many of us walk around scared, and scarred.

Me? I have always mourned this, in my head-in-the-clouds way. But in mourning I've tended to throw up my hands, resigning myself to sit and wait for the big, sonorous Crystal Vision that will unite us all.

As a queer woman, though, all of a sudden it has arrived in my body. Fear, rejection, self-rejection. How can this be? Don't they see that we are human, and that we just want to love? No, they don't see. The Goddess has not yet removed the veil from before their eyes; Barack Obama's ascendancy has not yet induced Buddha-like serenity in the hearts of the many. We're all still mucking around here together; the name of God is still used to justify hatred and separation; the book that says "Adam-and-Eve-not-Adam-and-Steve" still propels bullets out of guns and into bodies, bodies which love other bodies that feel just like home. Stares, taunts, silences. Denial of rights, denial of fellowship, denial of life in a split second.

All of that is in me now.

I used to think that as I moved through my own pain, my own wounding, I would find myself less and less engaged with this messy experiment called America. That I would become more involved in the esoteric, the personal, the ethereal. Not so, as it turns out. The more I wake up to the vibrant, quickening life-force inside of me, the more I realize that we really are all the same. We all want the same things, aspire towards the same goals -- safety, freedom, peace -- even if our means are wholly divergent.

The skinheads who threw a rock through the window of a ten-year-old boy in Billings, MT in 1993, because of the menorah on his windowsill, were trying to live out a vision of safety that was borne from ignorance, and fueled by hatred and violence. But 10,000 citizens in Billings called forth a higher vision, illuminating their own windows with paper menorahs printed by the local newspaper. 10,000 households followed a truer star, held a stronger common dream, one of love and mutuality. And that higher vision prevailed. Billings, which suffered for so long from KKK violence, has not experienced a single major hate crime since then.

Similarly, suddenly, my feet are here on the ground. My life is here, my fate bound up with the fates of the humans who surround me every day, the humans I will never meet, the creatures of the land and the sea. Truth is not esoteric, and it resides on a mountaintop only to the same extent it resides in a city storm drain. As long as we're all here together, the truth is that we've got to show up for it. We've -- I've -- got to live every day with full commitment to the possibility that some day, with enough sheer will and enough eyes-open faith, we can all be who we are, love who we love, and sleep soundly through the quiet night.

I'm in.

on hate and love

Can you hear that? Across the state, from south to north, they are cheering. Joyous tears stream down their faces, just like my own tears of "yes, we can" flowed on election night as I danced in the streets of downtown Oakland. They are the church-goers, the families of young men fighting in Iraq, the white people and the people of color, the concerned citizens of this state heaving sighs of relief because marriage has been codified as the province of the heterosexual.

They assure us that this amendment won't deprive anyone of any rights, but will simply affirm a longstanding definition. They say this is about love, not hate. But we know and feel otherwise. This constitutional amendment is a sharp blow to our hearts, our guts. It confirms our suspicions: all across our state and our nation, there are those who reject and fear homosexual relationships, who triumph in having defended the institution of marriage against incursion by an advancing army of sexual deviants.

And as the doors of this institution are slammed in our faces, as we hear the locks turning and the chains rattling, there is a profound sadness that arises -- a gaping and terrible vacuum where there was once energy, movement. Gays exist, they admit, but gayness must not be talked about, taught in our schools, seen in our churches, acknowledged as a protectable category by our government, or granted the same benefits and privileges as is heterosexuality with regard to state-issued marriage licenses. God says gayness is a sin, they say, and even if we can't really stop you from having all of that weird sex and perverse love, we can sure as hell make sure you're not receiving the same treatment as are we, the child-bearers, the keepers of what is sacred in our society.

This is a deeply painful message to receive. I grieve the receiving of this message as it enters my very body, this body of mine which aspires only to love and be loved. I don't feel any acceptance in their exclusion, as they claim; I feel only their fear, only their attempt at disciplining me out of my messy, dangerous desires. I feel only a sweeping of my heart under a heavy rug, so that it doesn't disturb a pretty picture.

What I want to say, though, as I move through my grief, is that it's this pretty picture with which we must contend. Any observer of nature knows that the world is a teeming, chaotic place, but a place which always manages to self-regulate in surprisingly elegant ways. And yet people, perhaps out of our fear, perhaps out of our quirky wisdom, continually attempt to impose order and organization on this wild web of interdependence. To erase the curves and draw thick lines instead. To dam the river and straighten out its banks. God wrote a book, it is said, which ought to be the instruction manual for the entire world. One book, one way, one paternalistic social structure for everyone, no matter how many people it sickens and kills from smallpox or heartbreak.

This is what we're up against. The book says that gay sex is transgressive, and that transgressors burn in hell. As such, I think we were fatally misguided in our attempt to conduct this ballot initiative fight solely according to reason and a civil rights framework. In the contest between secularly-granted rights and God's word, the believers won't be swayed by suggestions of discrimination under the law. This is about God's plan for the way all humans must live -- and rights either flow from God's word, they say, or aren't real.

And we're up against this with a massive handicap: internalized homophobia. After generations of shielding yourself against the violent screams of "you're not supposed to exist," can you muster the will to fight against God and his book? Can you even fight against such a deeply-held belief about love and its barbed-wire parameters, especially if your collective strength has been continuously, insidiously sapped? Can you rally your spirits to say, "here I am, and my existence is just as real and beautiful as yours," when you've been so "other"-ed, so alienated, so villainized?

It's a challenging task, and it's exactly the task we must undertake. In order for us to stand upon solid ground, to align ourselves with the inviolability of our constitutional right to equal treatment, we have to somehow meet this God-driven negation of our existence with a God-inspired knowing that we are here, that we do exist, and that homosexuality is neither a sin nor a lifestyle choice. There must be a shared moral vision of equality among us -- in addition to a shared legal vision -- in order for us to achieve that equality. We must have more to rely upon than our tender hearts and our political acuity and our spandex short-shorts that we wear once a year at the Pride parade. We must wholly love and believe in ourselves as individuals and as a group before we can convince other people to love and believe in us, especially people who are so angrily invested in God's decree against us. Whether we believe in God or not, we must be aware that there is love for us -- even us -- that is infinite and unconditional.

So please, begin within. Love yourself. Respect yourself. Hold fast to your inherent human dignity and equality, even as you feel the reverberations of this dizzying electoral slap in the face. Feel your innate belonging, and from that place, step forward to speak your truth.

Roses

This one rose,
dressed in a pink so pale it verges on gray, juts out
at an alarming angle from the vase
on my dining room table.
The remaining flowers stand proudly,
blooming their hues and fragrances
like women outside of a nightclub,
shifting their feet and laughing
moved towards the thumping, smoky recesses
by the momentum of their hope.
I tug the odd-angled one out, slowly,
careful not to budge the arrangement.
I see that its stem has been bent in two places.
Two dark elbows through which
water cannot travel.
I twist at the fibrous stalk,
no longer a conduit,
at one of the broken places. As I do,
two sets of leaves fall to the table, starved.
I am ministering to the life that remains.
Into a small glass jar filled with water
I put this rose,
with its three remaining inches of stem.
Where is the place in my house
that can host this delicate refugee?
I think of the way
my mother does this,
places flowers in small jars on the kitchen windowsill.
Somewhere in this forgettable sequence of events
I realize, in my body, the gravity of what it is to love.
To love
is to agree to tend,
to seek to restore,
to invite what is finished
into its rightful ending.
To love is to become a sentinel,
a quiet, awake guard
at the beloved’s heart-gate.
When it comes time to enter,
when the beloved lifts the veil
and permits passage,
the witness herself
must enter as an offering.
She must act
as dry wood acts upon meeting flame.
Grateful for the chance
to be consumed
and then to rise as glowing sparks against the vast sky
and finally to disappear.

let's never go this long again

Really, I don't know how the time slipped away!

Actually, yes I do.

"Tell us your top five highlights from the past, oh, four weeks or so," you say? Why, certainly! (Very kind of you to add, "because we know you don't have time to give a full report before your salsa dancing DATE tonight!" You are so considerate, dear reader.)

(1) I fully rocked the project I've been working on for the past year and a half -- more accurately, it fully rocked me. More details? See here.

(2) Rosh Hashanah dawn ceremony on top of a hill in Petroglyph National Monument outside of Albuquerque. Prayer in community on the land! I love it.

(3) I officiated my dear friend and colleague's wedding in Albuquerque; it was a blend of Buddhist, Hindu, and Apache prayers, and the bride and groom held candles to illuminate their faces in the late dusk. Part of their ceremony was sending the rings around to have them be "warmed" by each guest, so now their rings contain the blessings of everyone in their community. Beautiful!

(4) The absolute attention-getting hijinks of reiki; reiki basically tap danced for me in a top hat like that alien in Spaceballs. No less than FOUR significant events having to do with reiki took place in the course of about four days. Okay, universe! I get it. Heat. In the hands. Use it. Yes.

(5) At the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, the largest hot air balloon event in the world, watching the 6:30 a.m. dawn patrol -- in advance of the 700-balloon mass ascension that took place once the sun was fully out, twelve hot air balloons lifted off in the still-dark early morning, and once up, worked their engines so that the fire that's used to keep the hot air hot, lit up the inside of the balloon. Twelve twinkling balloons in the dark sky? A grand display of what humans can do when we're focused on making beauty and peace? Yeah, I was crying.

elegy for the felled

They've started cutting down the oak trees in Memorial Grove. Just within the last hour.

It's like being punched in the gut, to witness or even imagine a tree being toppled by a chainsaw.

There's an ache to it. Yet somehow the ache is spread thin, as if any decent, silent moment the heart might seek in order to grieve the loss of such a formidable elder is drowned out by progress' tinny victory march. It's a uniquely modern ailment. Another great tree falls, another great creature is lost -- and we just sigh, shake it off as best we can and smile bravely into another day. But the loss doesn't escape us, no matter how removed we might feel; something inside us still flinches, still stumbles under the weight of every plummeting 600-year-old trunk, every newly-erected power plant belching soot, every wanton gesture of crazed consumption.

My law firm represents one of the plaintiffs in this case. We raced to assemble a Supreme Court appeal and file it on time. Attorneys were running down the hallways and the secretary was fielding press call after press call (as well as calls from one of the tree sitters, Air, whose voice was low and urgent. "They're cutting!" We know. "Did you file yet?" We will, by 4:00 p.m.). We enlisted two of the neighborhood copy shops to prepare the final versions of the documents. Four of us fanned out into the City to file at the various courts and serve the documents on opposing counsel.

At 3:45 or so I found myself in a big law firm's climate-controlled waiting room on the 20th floor of Two Embarcadero, a gleaming chrome and glass high rise in the heart of downtown San Francisco. I waited for the receptionist to return, gazing out the floor-to-ceiling windows framing the panorama of the Bay, flanked by two bushy potted palm trees. The industriousness in the building was palpable. I felt like such an unkempt hippie, somehow out of place, and still so thankful that my contact with the world unfolds at ground level.

The lawyers here toiled for months on this case, introducing very promising novel legal theories and waging a remarkably refined fight on behalf of the oak trees. And the tree sitters climbed up into those branches nearly two years ago. All of that work sure bought a lot of time. But despite our best efforts, here comes the machinery, once again clearing the way for taller, bigger, stronger, more.

My mom always implores me not to let things like this affect me. "It's not your pain!" she says. But it is. We're all inextricably interwoven into this community of life -- what impacts one, whether one is a mighty oak tree or a little brown moth, impacts us all.

Nonetheless, the sadness does not serve. All that can be done is to continue.

"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime, therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone, therefore we must be saved by love." -- Reinhold Neibuhr

softening

That was Zelig's assessment last night, while we sat and talked on his couch, before I walked out into the warm, dark evening to witness the honey-colored new moon hovering over West Oakland. "You look great," he said. "Clear." And, "softer."

(This was after five of us sat, cringing, gasping and laughing, through Sarah Palin's speech and the attendant camera-pans over the legions of rapturous, button-wearing idiots. Now, I never had very many bad things to say about Hillary; to the extent that I believe that federal government is worth the powder to blow it straight to hell, I thought Hillary was a viable and interesting candidate for the presidency. I loathed the easy and off-handed dismissals of her as a "bitch." Hillary is a tough, smart lady, with a great deal of experience and some wise ideas. In her case, behavior which, in a male colleague, might have been called "strong" or "no-nonsense," was derided as "bitchy" when coming from her. I despise that.

. . . Sarah Palin, the Killa from Wasilla? Bitch.)

Anyway, my dear friend's take on the state of my being feels, at once, totally out of left field, and wholly accurate.

Left field: because I'm up against one or two of my most persistent demons at the moment, with not a lot of breathing room, it feels like. I see the old, tired techniques I'm using to handle it, and at some moments it feels like nothin's gone nowhere.

But more than that: wholly accurate. Mainly because I'm practicing something I've never practiced before in any kind of sustained way, which is compassion for myself. Oh, compassion. I can dish it out with all the juicy mama-energy in the world. I can usually receive it from the folks I love. But self-directed compassion? Who knew it would turn out to require such a massive expenditure of energy! Nonetheless, it is a project I have undertaken, and it requires much focus, clarity and dedication. It's an effort to silence judgmental, angry, cruel voices, and in their stead, to speak to myself in tones of kindness, patience, and forgiveness.

What I find most compelling is the voice of faith: that the truths I remember about my being, which arise most clearly when I am out on the land and in deep, heartfelt connection and in moments of creation -- those truths abide, and can be like a lighthouse for me when I am feeling lost and cut adrift. Staying connected to those truths requires a leap of faith, I am finding, and it is a leap I am convincing myself to take, more and more.

It's pretty nice!

I attribute much of these shifts to the time I've spent in communion with the earth this summer. I just got back from a yoga backpacking trip in Yosemite, which was phenomenal. (Earth said to me, "you are my beloved, and I miss you when you're gone from me.") And my experiences in Mt. Shasta, and the Trinity Alps, and Mojave, and Western Shoshone land, and even the Santa Cruz mountains have all yielded new peace and awareness. Sometimes, in these happy moments of realization, I feel energy moving in my body like glaciers calving and breaking apart.

I'm about to go out of town for three weeks, to facilitate this journey in the Southwest with an amazing group of women attorneys who will connect with Native American women environmental justice leaders. Then I get to celebrate Rosh Hashanah in Albuquerque (complete with a dawn ceremony in Petroglyph National Monument), hang out with my most beloved Reiki teacher who lives in Santa Fe, and then officiate the marriage of my dear friend and colleague. A lot of powerful experiences, and I think I'm able to show up for all this -- my life -- in a way that is entirely new. The bonds of fear seem to be, well, loosening, and boy-oh-boy does that free up some space! I tell you what.

So here I am on my path, one foot in front of the other, not sure what to make of it all, but committing to practicing non-judgment every step of the way. You may not hear from me for a while, but when you do, I promise I'll have some fine stories to share.

seven things of which I cannot get enough

*Ahem.*

1. Sunflower nut butter and jam sandwiches on Ezekiel's sprouted bread.


2. Kombucha. Seriously, I am like a junkie. I expect to find myself pawning jewelry soon in order to finance my $3.50-to-$4.00-a-bottle habit. Meanwhile, there is a kombucha mother (the mushroom-y material you can use to make your own brew) just languishing in the back of my fridge. It's preposterous, really.



3. 31 and Falling, by Chris Pureka. (Listen all the way through. You'll thank me!) The rest of her material is pretty awesome, too.

4. Craigslist. In the past week I've made friends with a Uruguayan aspiring public interest lawyer (the dating moratorium is still in effect, I'm just trolling for new friends), lined up a cool writing gig for when I go part-time at my job in October, and found the apartment of my dreams.

5. Red-leaf lettuce lettuce tossed with feta, fresh fennel, grapes, and balsamic vinaigrette.

6. Exuberantly singing songs with my pals.

7. Downtown Oakland. Pretty much the coolest place ever! Basically, and this is a proven fact, it has the highest concentration of hidden culture-y and restaurant-y gems per square block of any city in America. Maybe the world. I don't know. I just know that if loving downtown Oakland is wrong, I don't want to be right.

So TELL me, my pretties, what is one thing YOU find yourself unable to live without during these waning days of summer?

some shimmering precipice

Everything still looks the same. There are soft shadows stretching across the floor and flickering on the wall. My stomach is empty and I need to eat, but not as much as I need to write. No matter that everything looks the same; it is different now.

Over the weekend I went up to Mt. Shasta, to a beautiful place called Headwaters Outdoors School. I was invited there by the president of a personal development group here in San Francisco, a group of folks I've recently been admiring from the periphery. I started meeting many of them in May after that course I mentioned, Arete; a few of the people involved in ASF took the course with me, and I got to know them pretty well during those three days.

After I had my Arete experience, I wrote a letter to the online listserv for course graduates to share a bit about my life and ask for advice. I shared with them that I was frustrated with my job, but scared to quit; as much as I felt the deeper pull of unformed passions, I also felt the fear of leaving the safety and prestige that this job afforded me. For the most part, I wasn't feeling inspired, but I was feeling safe. Even as I felt the edges of stress bearing in on me in a multitude of ways, I was surviving, supporting myself, going along.

So I asked for advice, and I got a few extraordinary e-mails in return. One of those began with what is perhaps the finest first line of any e-mail I could hope to receive: "I've been liking you!" That was from the president of the group I mentioned earlier. In his e-mail, then over lunch, he told me about his vision for growing the work of his organization, which now includes a focus on dating and relationship dynamics, to include a focus on the ways in which healthy human-human relationships lead to sustainable human-earth relationships.

We had a great lunch. He invited me to be on the board of the organization, and to join them for their staff retreat up on the land at Shasta. Say no more, right? I'm in.

It was a phenomenal weekend. We spent time with Tim, the director of the school, and a wise old bear of a man. He guided us to climb a huge Doug Fir, blindfolded, and then to find our way into connection with the tree. He spoke to us about earth medicine, about how to ask a rock a question and then receive the answer.

And he led us in two sweat lodges. I've probably done about 5 or 6 sweats in my life, but none so intense as I experienced this weekend, and certainly never twice in a day. We completed a four-round sweat on Saturday morning, and the same on Saturday evening. The rounds lasted 10 or 15 minutes; the door was opened between the first and the second, and then between the third and the fourth. Between the second and third rounds, we all got out.

I hadn't before had such a focused experience of, literally, cooking in my discomfort. Tim runs a hot sweat lodge. We chanted with him as he beat his frame drum and poured water on the glowing, glittering stones, huge mother stones which had been culled from the mountain and heated in the searing fire. We breathed deeply, made low animal noises as wave after wave of heat met us. Welcome steam, we called. Welcome heat. Welcome, fluttering panic. Now, now, now. Only now, in the sweat lodge.

By the fourth round of the morning sweat we were all lying down, seeking some relief from the intense heat against our skin. I survived by knowing that death wasn't going to come, even though it felt that way during some moments, and meeting the moment over and over again. Rubbing mud on my face. Breathing deep and crying out. Holding a rutilated crystal against my heart, feeling my heart-space expanding outwards. There was no escape, so I stopped seeking it.

Exiting the sweat with a bow, sinking into the cold creek water, Shasta's sweet snowmelt, I didn't know anything beyond the animal shudders and coos coming from within me. The crystal, in my lap under the water, caught the light and cast rainbows on my skin. Sunlight glanced off the water. My heart broke, and I began to cry. I could hear the creek rushing and as some heart-chasm in me began to widen to meet life, the rushing became a little louder and a little faster. I felt the widening and the resistance. The tears were quiet and stilted, and I felt myself to be so held there, by the others around me and by life's gentle invitation.

This -- here -- now -- yes.

It was a quickening within and without. It ended soon. I emerged from the creek and stood shivering by the fire, opened.

The sweat in the evening was easy and sweet, compared to the morning sweat. I found myself welcoming the heat, revelling in the opportunity to be washed through. During the last round, when the pain on my skin was like bandages being ripped off, I remembered that it wasn't too long ago that women were burned alive for being powerful, for knowing secrets, for loving each other. In remembering it I could open to the heat, somehow connecting to the power of that lineage. And I felt the blessings of being alive in this time when Tim shouted, "Open up!" and we all crawled out, safe and intact.

There were so many sweetnesses this weekend.

And I knew that today was going to be the day that I would tell my boss that I was leaving. I had planned for a long time to give him one month's notice until I'd end my full-time employment with him. Feeling that, out on the land, I knew it was right, and yet I was terrified. And today I was terrified. What if this is a terrible, foolhardy decision? What if there's nothing on the other side? What if none of these feelings are real? What if I'm just taking advantage of my privilege? What if I'm just a lazy, compulsive, useless person?

These questions flooded me today. But then my friends sent messages of support, reminding me of what I know inside my being. And so finally, at 4:54 p.m. I walked into my boss's office and told him in a gentle voice that it's time for me to follow the increasingly-insistent inner compass, which has been guiding me towards indigenous environmental justice work, toxics and women's health, healing arts. In so many words I told him that I need to see about it, to say 'yes' in whatever way I can to all the medicine that has called to me so mightily.

He understood, and agreed. With sadness he told me that he honored my choice and my passion, and that he knew on some level that it was coming. We agreed that I will stay on through the end of 2008, after I return from the Southwest, on a part-time basis. We agreed to stay in contact, to explore whatever points of collaboration might arise, which may be few but will undoubtedly be fruitful.

On the phone afterwards, my father asked me what my Plan is. I told him a few things I've been thinking. I could feel his concern: "you have to get back into the swing of things at some point, you know." Oh Dad, you'll never know what things are swinging for me, will you? And still, little by little, I feel myself letting go of the constant quest to appease him. It is an unfolding dance.

And here I sit, alone in my sweet apartment, broken open, heartbeat like bird's wings. What will become of me? What will the world ask of me? How will I give, how will I learn, whom will I meet? I can only take one step after another, and go forward to discover the answer. There is no longer any way to be told what I should do.

A quickening. An affirmation. An agreement, a surrender, a commitment. No choice but to say yes.

R.W. Emerson says:

"Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Accept the place the divine Providence has found for you; the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men [and women] have always done so and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that Eternal was stirring at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being."

Only yes.

the mysteries of love

Seriously, though.

It is one hell of a mystery!

Rumi says: "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you built against it." That's so true for me. In my particular worldview, which defies categorization but is perhaps something along the lines of technopagantribaljewishurbangypsyearthmama, maybe, um . . . oh yes! In my worldview, love is the very fabric of the universe. Love is the animating force for the first exhale of God, a breath that imbued life into all of creation in a millionth of an instant. Love is what we are. It is not something we do, or something outside of us, it is something we are unfolding as, continually.

Love is the aliveness in every cell of our being. It is what motivates our lives, what drives us to create and expand and explore. "Work is love made manifest," said Kahlil Gibran.

And of course, love is what impels us to seek our Other. I suspect, although I certainly don't know, that 'true love' is what happens when two people come together and their hearts come open into the realization and reality of who and what they truly are -- which is Love. Together, two people in love and in partnership -- two people who are truly compatible, who may even have been destined for one another -- can reflect to one another the divinity that is enfolded into every aspect of their humanity.

So, okay, this is all perfectly cool by me. The universal love stuff? No problem whatsoever. It makes sense, I get it, I seriously dig it, I feel psyched to be able to access the amazing experience of being connected to all hearts and to earth's heart, all that good stuff.

But interpersonal love? Another story entirely, friends. Una otra historia. In this arena, I am certifiably an imbecile. If you are the betting type, I'd say a good 85% of the time the odds are in your favor that intimate partnership is not what's happening for your homegirl here. That other wildcard 15%? You'll find me either leaving a trail of broken hearts in my hapless wake, or pining hopelessly after love-misers who deign to toss me a crumb now and then. Precisely 0% of the time am I happily and healthfully dating one person who is kind, sexy, down to earth, passionate, and smart, not to mention who lives within a 15-mile radius of me.

You know what, though? I am giving up something major. I am sacrificing upon the altar of truth, any notion that I've been coyly hanging on to for all these years that "there's something wrong with me." That people just don't *like* me or don't *notice* me because I'm physically unacceptable or emotionally inferior or in any way non-viable as a warm-bodied human being. Because that attitude is B.S., my friends and neighbors. It is just a cute little way for me to not take responsibility for the walls I myself am putting up.

Yeah, I got a wall in front of my heart. I know it, I feel it. Who doesn't, at least now and then? What I'm realizing is that I have to take a look at this wall. Sit with it for a bit. Leave the dynamite and the sledgehammer and the spraypaint at home, and just go on over and lean against this wall for a while. What's it made of? What are its contours, its textures? How long has it been there and who were its stonemasons?

Good old inquiry, y'all. Not denying it, not railing against it, not condemning it. Taking a real, curious, compassionate look at the thing, and maybe even coming to understand it.

Because until I do that, it's just plain irresponsible of me to act like I'm ready to engage in intimate relationship with anyone. Because as beautiful as my words may come across to a potential lover about how open and ready I am, and as well-oiled as my steely intellectual machinations may be when the going gets tough, my heart is still yearning to be free but this heart-wall is still standing strong. And what all that means is that the love energy leaks out in all kinds of unconscious ways, which just can't attract anything good and wholesome.

*Sigh.* They're the bitterest medicine, these ill-fated love affairs. But medicine is medicine, and after this most recent bout of watching another weird stilted heartbreak play out in front of me, I am realizing that it's high time that I have a little meeting with myself. A meeting that may last several months. A meeting in which I am sequestered with myself and only myself, and all these tempting tantalizing people who keep popping up will just. have. to. wait. A meeting in which I ask myself some probing questions, to which I shall reply honestly and to the best of my ability. A meeting which may involve power-point presentations and/ or shamanic journeys, as the situation calls.

My hope is that once the meeting is adjourned, I can re-emerge from that stuffy boardroom (just kidding - we're going on retreat!) into the wild and wonderful world of turning-towards-love, but this time with confidence and with integrity, knowing full well who I am, where I am at, what I am offering, and most importantly, what *I* want. I look forward to a time of standing with two feet fully planted into the earth, spine in balance, awareness centered in my belly and my heart, so my outstretched arms can embrace Love without me toppling forwards or collapsing backwards.

All of this, so that one day it shall come to pass in my life that, finally, there are no words for the gift that arrives: "Although I may try to write about Love I am rendered helpless; my pen breaks and the paper slips away at the ineffable place where Love, Loving and Loved are one." ~Rumi.

How July is (so far)

Believe me, dear readers, I did not mean to leave you here alone for all these many weeks!

It's just that I went backpacking deep into the Trinity Alps, where we could see the reflections of the planets in the glossy black surface of Caribou lake, and the exhilarating explosion of cold water in the morning followed by my back on the warm rocks brought me close to earth again...




and then I fell into a torrid two-week romance, which, as you might imagine, ended torridly...


and then I drove through grey-brown distant-mountained deserts to the glittering green hills of Ruby Valley, NV for the Indigenous Environmental Network conference, and the original people of our lands spoke about the many devastations that add up to the great disaster we are visiting upon ourselves, we who are so cut adrift from the anchor of reverence...


and in between, there were of course dazzling blown-glass exhibits and inspired lunch meetings and dinner delivery to new parents and women's circles. And all the mundane and awesome moments that make a life.



These weeks of summer are so full, and bring so much, and fly so quick.

I haven't forgotten, I've just been testing you to see if you're paying attention

Dear reader, by now you may be a bit perplexed. "Um," you are saying. "What about the food?"

At the beginning of this blog I had my chest all puffed out about my new identity as a food blogger, yes indeed. And trust me when I tell you that the puffery was sincere. I had every intention of developing this space as a cohesive tribute to my experimentations and epiphanies in all things epicurean, from procuring my food (oh, those sweet bicycle-rides down to the farmer's market) to cheery ventures in front of the stove, to revelations in flavor.

So, yeah, best laid plans, and all that. It turns out that I still love to blather on at length about Deep Life Topics like right livelihood and pesticides and health care and such things. And oh, how I *love* to write about my many feeeeeeelings. They are dark and angst-ridden; they must be recorded!

(I ask myself, just like Angela asked Jordan Catalano in the boiler room, "why are you like this?" ["Like what?" "Like, how you are." Ladies? Can I get an amen.] Not sure. Would love to know. Parents would also love to know. But that's another story. I digress.)

Anyway, so, this blog has undergone a kind of de facto expansion in its range, which is pretty fun for me, and I hope you are having a good time too. Dear reader, I just want you to be happy! And I haven't forgotten about food, you know. I've been buying it and cooking it and eating it pretty consistently since I started this blog, and expect to continue within those general parameters for quite some time.

As does all things, food goes in waves. Sometimes I enjoy periods of all home-cooked and home-prepared meals using the finest, local organic ingredients; sometimes I am buying breakfast from the Bagel Street Cafe and lunch from the Golden Lotus and dinner from Mitama Sushi. Not all the time, I promise (mom), but sometimes. I recently purchased a breakfast crepe from a place called Metro Cafe, where all of the crepes are named after cities. I.e. the Mill Valley has eggs, tomatoes, and cheese, while the Barcelona has turkey and pesto. I swear to you that there is an item on the menu called the Las Vegas: "any crepe and a spanking." $25. Would I lie about such a thing? No.

This weekend I ate some Indian food which just didn't agree with me, and I was depressed for about 36 hours. The connection between food and mood is amazing. So now my fridge is stockpiled with leafy greens and radishes and other cleansing vegetables. Oh, the body knows, the body knows.

Really, though, the reason I'm writing all of this is because I wanted to share two bona fide food blog items with you.

Thing One:

I think that the executive chef at this restaurant just moved into the studio apartment downstairs from me. I enjoyed a fine dish of tender duck meat and savory potatoes there in January with my beloved Cuz, and it was perhaps one of the most flavorful meals I have ever experienced. And now the dude is my downstairs neighbor?

AWESOME.

Thing Two:

Could there be a more compelling package for a loaf of pumpernickel bread?



I think not, dear readers. I think not.

a world of we

I just finished watching "Sicko," Michael Moore's documentary about the health care system in America. Have you seen this movie? It came out a while ago, but I didn't see it because I so rarely make it to the movie theatre, even though every friend who'd seen it implored the rest of us to go. (But I really would like to see "Mongol" on the big screen -- anybody want to see that one with me?) Zelig even brought it up when we were in the high desert back country on our vision quest last summer.

So, I recently acquired a TV/ DVD player (which I keep tucked behind the couch most of the time, thankyouverymuch) and have signed up for Netflix. I ordered Sicko out of a sense of obligation, really, like it was part of my civic duty to check out this film about health care. How bad could it be, really? The health care situation can't be as bad as, say, the 9/11 situation, or the gun situation (which, incidentally, got a lot worse today, thanks to the Supremes), both of which Moore exposed so masterfully.

I am engaged to an extent with western medicine because of a condition I have, that requires doctor visits and pharmaceuticals and such. I've always had health coverage, and I've always been able to afford the prescriptions. Yes, it's a bummer to shell out a $40 co-pay and $50 at the pharmacist, but in the context of my privileged lifestyle, it isn't a major concern of mine. There has always been a cushion between me and any kind of real, pit-in-the-stomach fear about medical care, so I get to spend my time and resources on things like stopping aerial pesticide spray and transformational workshops. Other than my personal health situation, concerns about healthcare -- mine, or the overall state of the system -- don't really penetrate my reality.

Um, I mean, until I finished watching "Sicko". If you haven't seen it, it's an intense and unflinching expose of our deeply broken health-care system. People suffer debilitating illness for years on end because they can't afford to pay the exorbitant costs for simple treatment that could help them; toddlers die because they are turned away from emergency rooms which don't accept the type of coverage that their parents possess; families go bankrupt because of unexpected health conditions; members of Al Qaeda imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay receive free, highly-advanced medical care while one American man had to choose between having the joint on his fourth finger re-attached for $12,000, or the one on his third finger for $60,000 after an accident with a saw.

The worst part, though, the most embarrassing part of this whole movie was the fact that Moore, as he does, told the story of other nations in order to contextualize the American story. And, as usual, those comparisons end up illustrating just how profoundly alienated, mistrustful, and selfishly-motivated we are here in the U.S. He went to France, Canada, England, and Cuba, all of which have extremely low-cost or free prescription medicines, entirely free medical coverage, and even house-call doctors. All paid for by the government. Moore repeatedly asked people in all of these places: how much did you pay for procedure X or surgery Y or doctor's visit Z? And the answer was always: nothing. With a chuckle! None of the people he spoke to could fathom the possibility of paying out-of-pocket, much less paying the astronomical costs that we pay, for any goods or services related to healthcare.

At the end of the film, Moore took a group of individuals who were ill from exposure to 9/11 chemicals to Cuba, where they not only received medical attention of the highest caliber (just like everyone else in Cuba) for free (just like the Cubans), and where they could purchase medications that cost $120 in the U.S. for $0.05, but where they received friendly and even loving attention from the providers, the pharmacists, and receptionists.

Mind-boggling.

Now, yes, I'm sure that this is an idealized look at things to some extent. If Moore had gone, for example, to the Parisian ghettos where all the Algerian immigrants live, I'm sure that it wouldn't have been as tidy of a picture. But the gist of it is that we in America just do not take care of our own the way that most other places in the world do.

As I was watching this movie I started inquiring into my own stereotypes about caring for others, because they started to enter my thoughts as the movie went on. Things like, poor people and privileged people naturally receive different standards of treatment; that's just the way it is. There are too many people and not enough resources to adequately care for everyone. I started to notice in my head a context of: everyone is basically on their own when it comes to health and well-being. People don't take care of each other, really, and that's just how it is.

And I thought about all the friends I've known over the years who work as social workers, or who run struggling non-profits that do things like provide childcare for low-income women. These friends were all striving to do the basic work of caring for fellow citizens. This is poorly-compensated work, mostly done by women. Government funding for social services is sparse, and lately what has been coming down the pike is being funneled towards religious institutions. (Remember that whole debacle?)

All of this just makes me realize, viscerally, that our ethic in this American society is really "every person for him or her self." Especially people of color, immigrants, poor people, people who are sick or weak or disfigured or otherwise not living out the dream of being wealthy and sexy. Even here, in our bubble of beauty and consciousness which I wouldn't trade for anything -- even here, notice how many people spend years of therapy and go through boxes of tissues in workshops because they (we) don't know how to ask for help? Like asking our friends and community for physical or emotional assistance would be placing this inordinate burden, this inconvenience, on their lives, because everyone's supposed to be just cruising along in their little self-contained unit of I've-already-figured-it-all-out. And yet, for me at least, I can't think of anything that makes me happier than helping people with their life cycle events: birthdays, weddings, births, career transitions.

You know what I mean? What greater joy is there, really, as a human, than building a marriage altar or bringing dinner to new parents or reflecting a friend's beauty and brilliance to them on their birthday?

It is remarkable and tragic how isolated we are from one another and from the earth. And our government encourages that, the print media encourages that, schools encourage that, the workplace encourages that, the legal system certainly encourages that, even our family structures encourage that. Why? I don't know. Because there's profit to be gained from fear-based consumption habits, from ignorance, from hopelessness.

We live in a world of "me," Moore said, and we suffer immensely from it, and the earth suffers. The most frustrating part is that there are nations all around us, right next door to us in fact, who live in a world of "we," and not because they're better humans than us or somehow different, but just because they made a choice to live that way. Somehow the collective wisdom in those other places hewed to the natural human impulse towards community and communal well-being as the highest value. We missed that memo, I guess, or maybe we're still just being swept along mindlessly by the sheer momentum of corporate dominance and its corresponding cultural malaise.

There are so many of us who want a different life. And we haven't yet figured out a way to achieve critical mass towards the radical changes we want to see implemented. What good is the federal government if it's not overseeing a national system of care-taking? But for all our prayer and meditation and cleansing, for all the hard and breathtakingly beautiful work we do here to support personal and planetary transformation, we can't overthrow the government. I mean, have you *met* the federal government? I read an article in SF Chron today about how the Bush administration actually told EPA that if EPA sent the White House documents revealing the truth about climate change, the White House WOULD NOT OPEN THE E-MAIL. Dubya is literally up in there with his fingers stuck in his ears going "la la la, I can't hear you!"

What gives me any hope at all is that all those people in Tuscaloosa and Des Moines and wherever the hell they are, just *waiting* for the hand of God to smite San Francisco and all these unholy homos getting MARRIED, those people actually do go to church, and do bring meatloaf to their ailing neighbors, and do just want to do right by the Lord and their families and stuff. And for them, maybe right now that means driving an SUV to Costco, an SUV that has a yellow ribbon sticker on the back because their 19 year old sons are over there in Sadr City, and hating gays and hating abortion and hating treesitters. But maybe at some point, if gas prices keep ballooning and the rivers keep rising and the sons keep dying, maybe those people too might notice that Something Is Wrong and we need to Come Together if we want to have any chance at all of living out our natural days on this precious planet.

I hope that when that time arrives, we're all ready to meet them with gentleness and kind language, just like the Cuban firefighters received the 9/11 volunteer EMTs, with a salute.

En Las Noticias

I used to write a different blog.

Yes! It's true. It's not my first time. Do you still love me? *sniff*

The old blog was anonymous, and mostly private, in the sense that I didn't share it with my friends here in the way that I share this one. It was much more of a "Dear Diary" sort of place than this is, and through my experience of writing it I discovered the distinct, 21st century cathartic satisfaction of pouring one's heart out to a circle of (mostly) far-flung strangers.

At some point, though, that sense of satisfaction wore thin and I realized that all the covert disclosure, all the connecting-under-the-cover-of-darkness made me feel, well, shrouded, like I was telling all these truths but the telling was somehow inappropriate or unwelcome in polite company.

So at some point I just said fuck it. I love to write more than most other activities, I have this bizarre compulsion to share the truths and the discoveries and the meanings that occur to me every day as I stroll through my funny little life, and I have an incredible community of people who I love and who also love me more than I've ever been loved before by people who were not my parents.

I declared (to all 5 people who were reading my old blog): I'm gonna write, and I'm gonna tell people about it!

And so here we are.

Perhaps by now you are a bit titillated, sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for me to tell you some intimate, heart-wrenching, vividly-detailed story about my life. Oh, dear reader, I can spin those yarns anytime. For whatever reason, I just *love* doing that. Maybe someday I'll write a whole book. And normally, just for you, because I want you to be happy, I would oblige.

But not today.

No, today I am interested in resurrecting a feature of the old blog that I particularly enjoyed. It wasn't a regular occurrence, but the need for it would arise every so often, when enough juicy tidbits had accumulated from my obsessive cruising of online news sources. (Hi, my name is Caitlin, and I'm cracked out on current events.) And so every so often, my five fabulous readers would be regaled with all the obscure, off-color, momentous-to-somebody-somewhere stuff that caught my attention.

Lately, a lot of stuff has caught my attention, folks. And so, without further ado, I give you:

IN THE NEWS, 2.o!

*Ahem*

First, we have a story that is near and dear to my heart: suddenly, without much advance warning, the state announced yesterday their plan to halt all spraying of urban areas, at any time, for the light brown apple moth!

This is simultaneously a hugely fabulous piece of news, and also just another sneaky tactic by the government to dispel activist energies. While it is *totally awesome* that we don't have to fight against the risk of having BHT and TMAC land on our homes and bodies and babies this autumn, the state and federal governments still plan on doing aerial spray of forested areas (meaning all that nasty stuff lands on rivers, lakes, animals, trees, insects -- even after we saw that last fall, hundreds of birds and pets up and died after the sprayings in Monterey and Santa Cruz), and are still planning to do ground treatments using incredibly toxic chemicals like permethrin. All because of a little moth that's not even a threat to agriculture!

And even though this is a victory, we're still living in the context of a regulatory system in which the profits of big ag and big chem are valued above human and ecological health. In my months of research on this issue (I have taken to calling myself "moth lawyer") I have looked into the very heart of the pesticide behemoth, and let me tell you, dear readers, it is a dark, dark heart. Our federal pesticide governance regime is probably one of the most corrupt, secretive, and undemocratic systems of rules in the entire federal government. It boggles my mind, the extent to which decision-makers value profit above health, and even above life itself, as so much of this stuff is endocrine-disruptive and causes infertility.

So our work is very much still cut out for us. But for now, yes indeed, there is cause for celebration! I wonder if I should leave the "Stop the Spray" bumper sticker on my car, though.

Next on our news docket: gay marriage! Yep, gay and lesbian couples all over California (excepting Kern County) have been able to tie the knot since Tuesday morning. I have been jubilant about this major progressive step towards equality and justice for all in our great state, but what's been the most enjoyable to see are the pictures.

There are so many wonderful shots in all the newspapers of people who are so clearly in love with each other, so pleased to finally have validation of that love from the community (and all the attendant healthcare and legal benefits), and just so cute! I tell ya, nothing brings a tear to my eye like seeing images of people who are totally head over heels for each other, and who can finally choose to affirm their love with a legal bond, just like everyone else.

The funniest part has been reading all the arguments against gay marriage, which mostly boil down to: it's not traditional, it's not historical, it's not in the bible. Oh GAWD. That's all you got? Blah blah blah, insert usual litany of responses to such allegations (i.e. if we were still acting all biblical we'd be keeping slaves, stoning people to death, et cetera). It's such a curious phenomenon, this way in which some people need to harass other people about "morality" and lifestyle choices. What's the big fear? Let me assure you all, The Gay is not actually contagious.

Anyway, yeah, lots of joy about that one.

And finally, I could certainly insert here a nod to the various crises of the day: skyrocketing oil prices, water shortages, worldwide hunger as food prices spike, escalating brutality and misery in the war without end, devastating floods in the midwest, China's attempt to rebuild from the earthquake, and all of the various, quiet atrocities that may never even get picked up by the AP.

But you can scan NYT or LAT or SFChron and find out about all that stuff for yourself.

So instead, I will leave you with this exemplary piece of journalism, a veritable model of the kind of intrepid reporting that makes the world a better, or at least more interesting, place.

And that's that. Stay tuned!

little big word

SO.

What a word, huh? Two rounded-edged letters, nestled next to one another so naturally and unassumingly, just as you might find a couple of skinny garter snakes lounging in the sunshine or a piece of seaweed coiled around a sand dollar at the beach.

So. I like that word. It often comes in very handy.

"So," just like that, at the beginning of a sentence, can alert a listener or a reader that a juicy bit of honesty is imminent. "So, to tell you the truth," or "So, what really happened is..." It's a highly efficient attention-grabber: somebody's about to cut the bullshit! (Usually me. I am honest to a fault when I write, much to the bemusement, I am certain, of more than a few recipients of letters from me.

...So.)

"So" can also signal -- or better yet, invite -- a conclusion, a bringing-back-around of the truth after a long, circuitous journey through a story. "So what I realized was," or "So, what are you trying to tell me?" In such an instance, "so" is a potent catalyst for culmination and closure.

And of course, "so" is one of the simplest yet most opulent adverbs of our lexicon.

"It's so hot out!"

"This sunset is so beautiful!"

"I love you SO much!"

"So," in such instances, can become "soooooo" or "*so*" or any number of emphatic variations on its emphasis-expressive theme. Sometimes there aren't enough o's or enough stars or big-enough capital letters to tell someone how very SO something is. I love it when that happens, when language fails us and renders us mute, positively unable to cram the grandness of the moment into these two curvy little letters.

In any event.

I wanted to tell you that I have been learning and growing so much lately. My heart has been opening so wide. I have been so showered with blessings. I feel so inspired. I am so ready for and receptive to the shifts that I am experiencing.

And

I

have been

eating

SO

well!

That's all, really.

And so to sleep.

P.S. Goat cheese on a ripe apricot? SO GOOD!

slow prayer

Sometimes, in my head, I write the story of this time in my life from a few years in the future.

From my cozy vantage point in the future, I'll look back with compassion at the over-scheduled, under-rested pace of my life. I'll remember with some melancholy the way that my exhaustion was so clearly mirrored in my health challenges -- the clumps of hair in my comb, the broken-out skin, the discomfort of excess flesh, the quickened-by-pharmaceuticals rhythm of my heart. I'll recall how I trudged forward, pushing myself to achieve and produce, and how my relationships -- to my friends, to the earth, to God, to myself -- grew thin and brittle. I'll marvel at the misguided ways in which I attempted to nourish myself.

Mostly, I know that I'll be smiling, because I'll be able to see from that place how powerfully the Universe was holding out its astounding and infinite bounty for me, just waiting for me to receive it. I'll smile, because I'll remember the way that the din of my life drowned out Spirit's voice as it implored me: "no matter what you do or what happens to you, you are my beloved!"

From here, though, in this moment, it's hard to imagine the shift. From here, I grieve for my health, for the feeling of endlessness that is so inherent in these challenges. And it is with much trepidation that I consider releasing these burdens of time and pace, for though they cause me to suffer, they are also my safety. I am safe inside the world of overwork, even though I am also withering there.

And yet, improbably, this is also a time of utter transformation, of quantum leap, of breakthrough. Simple, visceral realizations effect tectonic shifts within the landscape of my life.

And the messages from the other side are so powerful, so clear. This morning at Ecstatic Dance I sat in front of Rivka's beautiful altar, kneeled and bowed before the graceful deep-hued creation of water and light that she'd assembled. At the base of the altar was a set of Osho's Zen Tarot. I sat for a long time holding the deck, asking for guidance for the road ahead, and feeling deep in my body that from this moment forward, I was opening to the shift. The words formed clear and resonant in my mind: "I'm ready to go with the flow." I felt the heat pouring from my hands into the deck, knowing that whatever card I pulled would contain such perfect guidance

And then I pulled this card.



Laughing out loud, I read the meaning of this card in the deck's book:

The figure in this card is completely relaxed and at ease in the water, letting it take him where it will. He has mastered the art of being passive and receptive without being dull or sleepy. He is just available to the currents of life, with never a thought of saying "I don't like that," or "I prefer to go the other way." Every moment in life we have a choice whether to enter life's waters and float, or to try to swim upstream. When this card appears in a reading it is an indication that you are able to float now, trusting that life will support you in your relaxation and take you exactly where it wants you to go. Allow this feeling of trust and relaxation to grow more and more; everything is happening exactly as it should.

Everything is happening exactly as it should.

Trust.

Surrender.

I know that trust and surrender form the golden key, which unlocks the door to a future of health, of energy, of vibrance and radiance. Trust and surrender, instead of push, control, stay separate.

I live inside a remarkable, beautiful life. But in many ways it is a life that I have carefully fabricated so that I can be good, and so that I can be loved. And now those seams, so expertly crafted out of my quiet desperation, are beginning to unravel, as a deeper truth strains to free itself. The current becomes irresistible; though the banks of the river have been carved and shaped, the wild water will always find and follow its true course.

Osho says: "What is the movement of water? or of a river? The movement has a few beautiful things about it. One, it always moves towards depth, it always searches for the lowest ground. It is non-ambitious; it never hankers to be the first, it wants to be the last."

The very mention of "non-ambitious" is truly frightening to me. And yet I know that it is this towards which I must now turn. As I am beginning to sense it, non-ambition is not a release of passion or creativity. No, just the opposite -- ambition, as I have known it, is powered at its core by the question and the doubt of self-worth. Performing to make myself good.

I am certain that this kind of ambition blocks the upwelling of my deepest gifts. When I am always running after approval and, ultimately, love, I do not stand at the center of myself, and so I cannot offer the world the realest bounty of my heart. When I am running like this, I cannot construct my life around the central axis of spiritual practice, cannot take time to lovingly prepare and enthusiastically enjoy delicious, nourishing foods, cannot feel enough energy to be in the flow of giving and receiving with the people I love, cannot devote myself to breathing with my experience. And I run so fast that my body becomes injured, debilitated.

For what?

This is my life. Why would I make choices that are anything less than life-affirming, life-supporting, life-giving?

The shift is coming. Life has extended its hand to me, and there is only one simple word I must utter -- "yes" -- before the music begins and I step forward to join the swirling, sweating, exalted dance.

entrevista

So, Nicole over at Go Nicole Yourself! has been rocking an interview series for a while now, wherein friends and blog buddies of hers ask her interview questions, which she answers candidly and beautifully. She recently turned the tables and interviewed her friends.

So in lieu of a post about what is happening in my life right now (a lot is happening), I present to you my replies to her questions. May you be entertained.

What are your three most disgusting habits?

I am a paragon of ladylike virtue and have no disgusting habits.

What quality of mine do you wish you had? What quality of yours do you wish I had?

I wish I knew you well enough to answer this question. If I could bestow one of my qualities onto you, or onto anyone really, I think it would have to be the dimple. It is such a good conversation starter! Everyone's life would be more interesting with a dimple in their cheek.

Whose heart did you break the worst? What happened?

This is cheesy, but as far as I know the worst broken heart resulted from a summer camp romance. Matt and I had been flirting all summer out on Catalina Island at our little camp. On the night of the camp dance, one of the last nights, we sat together on the blue plastic picnic table and held hands. And on the boat ride back to the mainland, he fell for me. He said all the right 14-year-old-boy sweet nothings, and I swooned. But he went back to Phoenix, and I went back to LA, and I thought that was that. Matt, however, did not.

He commenced to sending me Hemingway-esque one page stories about love and loneliness; usually the envelopes were taped shut with duct tape. We would have these long, tearful late night conversations, him trying to convince me to love him, me feeling no such stirrings in my heart but not knowing how to extricate myself from the drama. (OK, sure, maybe I enjoyed all the attention, just a little bit.) The last straw was when he pledged to come to the same beach in Mexico that my family was going to over winter break, to give me diamond earrings. I called it off (whatever "it" was) pretty firmly at that point, although I was still nervous that I'd find him skulking around every corner on my vacation that year.

Anyway, I don't think I really broke his heart, truly -- I think he invented me in his mind, and fell in love with the girl he'd invented. Either way, somebody broke his heart.

Of course we found each other about ten years later on Friendster, and I think we're cool now.

What were the circumstances of your first real kiss?

I was maybe 15 or 16, and my boyfriend E was visiting me from Irvine, where he lived. (The first in a fruitless series of long distance relationships.) He was a surfer, his eyes were perpetually bloodshot, and he made fun of me because I used big words. But he was cute. And, I kinda stole him from my arch-nemesis at the time. (Well, not really stole him. But she was obviously crushing on him, and he liked me. And I felt just fine about that.)

So there we were on my bed, rolling around, doing God knows what. I knew it was about to happen. I was so excited, so nervous, so ... very unprepared for the slimy appendage that began probing my tonsils. I think I actually pulled back in shock and disbelief. We kept going for a while, but I couldn't wait for it to be over.

And that was the last time we hung out.

Do you feel strongly about the election this year? How has that changed from years prior and why are you voting for the candidate you support?

I voted for Obama in the primaries. I also, however, am deeply annoyed at what seems to be the fundamental basis for most people's aversion to Hillary: "she's a bitch," or other variations on that theme. Hillary is a strong, empowered, smart, tough woman. I don't know about you all, but those are the qualities I want in my president (to the extent that I believe that a national president is even a viable or useful office, which to tell you the truth, isn't that much).

I thought Obama's speech on race was one of the finest orations ever delivered in modern political discourse, and I admire him very much. However, the Jewish shtetl instinct in me is recoiling at the Jeremiah Wright/ Louis Farrakahn situation. I know Obama is distancing himself from that relationship, but still, lately I have been feeling uneasy about it. Moreover, I haven't heard any of the candidates say anything that actually moves me regarding environmental policy. 'Cause if we're all burnt to a crisp in 20 years, none of the other stuff matters much.

So, yes, I feel strongly about the election, in all kinds of ways. Obvs I'm not voting for McCain, but who knows; I might write in Bill Richardson, who was my candidate of choice to begin with.

Is there a moment in your life you'd like to take back or do over? What about it would you change?

Not one moment, really, but there are so many things I've said "no" to because of fear of failure. I'd like to go back to every single one of those moments -- whether it was a game of volleyball on the beach, or the time my college rabbi asked me to read from the Torah during Rosh Hashanah services, or any number of beautiful people who've wanted to get close to me -- and really assess the situation from a place of strength and courage. If I said no, I'd want the no to be coming from a place of confidence and belief that it was truly the right, healthy choice to say no. From that standpoint, I hope I would have said "yes" to a lot more moments.

Is there anyone in your past you wish you could say something to? Who would it be and why?

One time when I lived in New York, I got on the subway into a pretty empty traincar. I think it was in Brooklyn. I was wearing a long purple skirt and a black hoodie. You know how right when you walk into the train, there are two sets of seats that face the center of the train, while the rest of the seats are in rows? Ok, well, I sat down at the first seat in rows and put my feet up on the empty seat that was facing center. Can you picture it? I was kind of tucked into a corner.

There was a dude sitting in the center-facing seat across the way. He might have been the only other person in the car, or there might have been some other people at the far end. I don't remember. Anyway, this guy was wearing a black baseball cap and grey sweatpants. I didn't really pay too much attention to him, 'cause I was looking out the window (the train runs above-ground in Brooklyn sometimes). But soon enough I caught his reflection in the window, and I saw that he had his hand down his pants, and he was looking at me and masturbating.

I was horrified, so I got up and walked to the next car. I kind of looked at him disapprovingly, but I think I was too shocked to say anything. Actually, the feeling I felt was something like shame. As if it was my fault that this guy was basically violating my space. Classic victim mentality, right?

Well, I wish that I would have walked up to this guy, let myself feel some righteous rage, and said "FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE."

Why I would have said that? I would have said it to reclaim my space, to let this kid know that he can't disrespect women this way. But mostly, I would have said it so that I could hear my own voice, protecting me, knowing that what he was doing wasn't right and saying something about it.

I like to think that I'd have the strength to do that now.

What blogs do you read regularly and why?

I actually have about 30 blogs on Google Reader that I get excited to read. Nicole's, of course! And I've also become a regular reader of the other ladies on your list like Lori (way to get published!), Abby, Greenie, Amy, and Samantha. I can't get enough HippieChyck. I love to read about my oldest friend the Girly Auditor, when she posts. Simon Metz makes me laugh out loud. And of course, I wait for news from my dear high school homegirl who brought me into this bloggy universe, my darling Meeks.

I also read a lot of food blogs and a lot of enviro blogs.

Probably my favorite blog of all, though, is Gluten Free Girl. I wrote about that blog in my first post of this blog:

Shauna Ahern's Gluten-Free Girl is a paean to the overflowing deliciousness of existence. She discovered that she has celiac disease in 2005, and since that discovery her life has undergone an utter transformation -- as soon as she removed gluten from her diet, she gained a level of health and vitality previously unbeknownst to her. Since that pivotal moment, she has gone on to write a book (which I am about to read), connect with the love of her life, and continue to help and inspire thousands of people to find their own equilibrium through food.

I love reading Shauna, because Shauna loves. She adores the taste of food, and describes her culinary adventures with mouth-watering specificity. With her words, she brings each bite to life, conjuring up so vividly the mosaic of sensate delights which makes up her days. She also adores her husband Danny, "The Chef" -- the openness of their hearts, the freedom with which they utterly relish one another, the clarity of their twin souls together, is breathtaking. She adores her community, her craft, her world, her life, and that love is woven through every essay she composes and is evident in every photograph she takes. Shauna, to put it in a nutshell, says YES, and her blog has inspired me greatly.

What television shows do you watch that you won't admit to your friends?

I'm one of those obnoxious hippie-types without a television. Favorite television show of all time would have to be My So-Called Life.

What celebs are on your "list"?

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie come to mind.

Have you ever internet stalked? Who were you looking for and how did you do it?

Now that every single person I have ever known in my entire life is my friend on Facebook, internet stalking has really lost its magic.

If you're a blogger, what do you think is the best post you've ever written?

I just wrote one that, in a roundabout way, is on toxics in cosmetics, and I'm pretty proud of that one. The connections between reproductive health and environmental justice are starting to become more and more compelling to me, so my words on that topic are very passionate.

Fin!