proud.

last night i went to target.  target is wonderful.  a haven.  i can take any problem to target and find some distraction.  so when i found myself sitting around, feeling a bit glum (isn't that a lovely word?), i decided to get out of the house and go pick up a few required items for my new apartment (i moved--yay!).  and you know what?  i'm proud of myself for going to target.  that's right.  proud of myself.  for going to target.

i know, i know.  target isn't much better (if at all) than those other big-box stores.  consumerism is bad.  retail therapy is bad.  yada yada.  but i'm still proud of myself.  because i could continue sitting on my rear end, wishing somehow my computer would connect me to a real live person (which i'd already been doing for well over an hour); or i could get off my rear end and engage.  with something.  anything.  even if it was just going to target to buy a trashcan with a lid on it so my new kitchen doesn't stink.

you know what else i'm proud of?  when i was at target, i resisted spending $65 on the only wireless router that looked reliable just because i want wireless at my new place RIGHT NOW, not in a few days.  instead, i put it back on the shelf and, when i got home, did a bit of research about wireless routers and where to get the best prices (any suggestions? i'm still figuring this one out).  and i'm proud of myself for buying a compact fluorescent lightbulb because it's good for the environment.  even if i dislike CFL's because the light they generate feels cold to me.  and i'm proud of myself that the biggest indulgence of this trip to target was a compact surge protector with a built in USB charger so i can charge my phone while having my computer, lamp, and printer plugged in all at once.

this is what i hold on to right now.  small things.  i've done a lot of small things in the last couple of months of which i'm proud.  sometimes it's as simple as calling someone--just connecting to another person.  sometimes it's working--having actual ideas about actual literature.  sometimes it's eating.  i'm proud of myself for eating.  how's that for a window into how bad things have been?

things have been bad enough that i have, in many ways, not been myself.  i don't know what i would have done had i not had such incredible people loving me, helping see me through.  but i haven't made it only because of the people who have helped me.  as a friend pointed out , i am also one of my sources of support.  i'm proud of myself for more than just little things.  i'm proud of myself for big things, too.  because in the last two months i've done more to change my life than i have in the last two years.  i'm not happy about how things are right now.  i'm not happy that my relationship with j(wh) is over.  or with the outcome of the prop. 8 ballot measure.  i'm not happy in my relationship with my church.  there are a lot of things that could be much, much better.  but i can say this much--i'm happy with myself.  i'm happy that, with my family and friends' love, i have made significant changes in my life that have brought me greater peace now and which, i have no doubt, will bring happiness in the future.

scheduled.

if you've followed my blog for any long amount of time (and i doubt many have), you may have noticed that i disappear sometimes.  every single one of those disappearances has had to do with depressive episodes.  or, as i now think of them, mixed episodes.  mixed because my depression manifests itself through some manic tendencies--not needing sleep; not needing food; aggressiveness; irritability; etc.  my recent disappearance has been no different.  it has several causes, this episode.  the most clearly defined is j(wh) breaking up with me.  which has been horrendous.  i won't put that specific word in his mouth, but i know it's been very hard on him, too.  it's not a pretty thing, ending a relationship.  of course, that's not the only cause of this particular episode.  there's been the recent election, with accompanying emotional extremes--elation over obama's victory and discouragement over prop. 8's success.  and all of the ways my relationship with the church and friends and family are caught up in that.

i've refused to write because i knew i would be tempted to write about all of that.  breaking up.  the church and prop. 8.  being sad.  my family and prop. 8.  being angry.  ad nauseum ad infinitum.  and i didn't really want to do that to anyone who reads what i write.  plus i wasn't sure what, if any, of that i want out in the ether.  so i've avoided blogging.

so why am i here tonight?  apparently talking about the very things i said i didn't want to talk about?  i'm here because i decided to add blogging back into the schedule of activities that has helped keep me a little sane the last couple of months.  and it has been a schedule.

there are the scheduled interactions with other people:

• lunch with the thai tuesday crew almost every tuesday
  
• lunch with grad student friends every wednesday
• dinner with george almost every wednesday
• talking to JP every week
• attending quaker meeting once a month
  

and the scheduled minutiae  

• waking up early to plan a lesson before class every MWF
• organizing my medicine every monday into a little pill case so i can take it every day
• planning my week every sunday
• weekly appointments to take better care of my health
• walking to and from campus MWF (and occasionally in between)
• crying (which has happened with unfortunate frequency; so much so that it sometimes feels scheduled)
  

and there's the things that should join the schedule:

• tea with J.  because we've done it twice in the last couple of weeks and it's such a pleasure.
• dancing.  which i haven't been able to do because of the side effects of new medications. but i'm getting a handle on those, so i should be able to dance again.
• bike riding.  because i know it would be good for me, body and soul.
• going to the grad student knitting group.  because i have projects to work on.  and talk is good.  and new friends are always a good thing.
• baking my own bread.  mmmyummy.  i'll even have my own sour dough start soon.
• blogging.  because i miss writing about my world.

so look for more posts soon.  tomorrow a post about the things i've done in the last couple of months of which i'm proud.  because there's enough of which i'm not proud that i want to remind myself that i haven't been a complete loss.

and finally, if you've been involved in any of the above, god bless you--you have no idea how much it's meant to me.

comfort.

this morning, i almost cried in front of my students.  it's been a bit of a rough weekend.  george helped see me through it with kindness and love and food and shopping and even some laughter.  and i was feeling okay this morning until i had to talk to someone about it again right before getting to class.  so i showed up in class a little emotional.  and had to apologize to my students for distributing some information late.  and before i knew it i was tearing up again.  i hate such things.  it's only happened once before--last spring when i was so sick that i got lightheaded and felt like i was close to passing out while i was teaching.  i don't mind showing a weakness i can laugh about--like throwing up on the first day of class.  but the other ones--the ones that scare me a bit--those are harder.

after class was over, one of my students asked if she could talk to me apart from the other after-class hangers-on, so i asked her to wait a moment while i answered the others' questions.  once they'd all left, she surprised me.  instead of asking about our current paper or the homework, she said, "you seem like such a beautiful person.  and i can tell you're not feeling up to your best.  i'm sorry things are hard right now."  and she gave me a hug.  if i were feeling particularly cynical, i suppose i could attribute this to brown-nosing.  but her eyes glossed over with tears while she was speaking and i have no doubt it was sincere.  this evening i checked my email only to find a message from another student expressing sympthy.  and i find myself feeling comforted by these simple gestures of kindness and support.

open.

nearly ten years ago i graduated from BYU and moved to virginia to get a masters degree at UVA. i remember sitting in the welcome meeting for new graduate students and feeling a bit of culture shock. the most memorable catalyst for that culture shock was the DGS (director of graduate studies), a very hip man who taught african american studies and late 20th century pop culture--a man with long hair (a definite no-no at the Y) and colorful language (another no-no). i think he had a goatee, too. i wonder if he had a beard card signed by his medical provider...

that first semester at UVA was full of all kinds of new experiences. my first party, by which is meant a lot of people getting together to drink and talk with loud music playing in the background. my first wine & cheese gathering. my first outing to a bar for drinks. my first attempts at explaining mormon peculiarities to drunk people. my first whiff of pot. my first taste of thai food, vegetarian food, and cooked spinach. my first cocktail party (at which i was dubbed the 'mormon alice cooper' for reasons that remain entirely unclear to me).

i embraced every new experience that presented itself so long as it didn't require that i do something that contradicted my own standards. i made a very conscious choice that i would welcome any advance of friendship. for the first time in my life i lived far away from family (only two hours from my oldest brother, but without a car that was a fairly insurmountable distance). i was starting a new educational venture. and i knew that if i didn't build a supportive network for myself in charlottesville i would be miserable.

i didn't end up miserable. i ended up so happy that i wanted to never leave. i made wonderful friends at church. and i made wonderful friends at school. some of my friends from virginia remain among my dearest friends. i wouldn't trade the experiences we shared for anything.

once in a while, when i've described my experiences in charlottesville to other mormons, they've been surprised that i would go out to a bar on a friday night as a regular social activity. or that i would go to what was essentially a slightly grown up version of a kegger. that i wouldn't immediately leave a party when i smelled marijuana. that i laughed about the cross-dressing that i witnessed at a "shock your mom" party (one of the funniest nights ever) rather than being horrified. that when my boyfriend in virginia said 'f*** you' to me, i usually laughed at him because it was never said in anger but rather as part of a teasing that helped make our relationship happy.

i don't want to simply condemn people who would have refused to participate in such activities. i know that different people have different tolerance levels for different things. i respect that. but i think that a lot of people also create their own offense by focusing on something they consider unacceptable rather than looking past it. in my mind, it's far better to hear someone swear without it ruining my day or foreclosing the possibility of knowing that person, and the happiness that friendship with them might bring, than to try to shut myself off from all sources of behavior i deem inappropriate for myself.

what it boils down to for me is this: i want to know and love my world. all of it, not just that part that fits my preconceived notion of good. and focusing on the things i do not like so much that i fail to see wonderful new things or old things in new ways--well, that strikes me as the best way to refuse to know and love my world. and it seems to me that when we're so tuned in to potential sources of offense, we actually grant them much more control of our minds and spirits than they would have if instead we let them roll off our backs and instead we looked for the beautiful.

healing.

some good cheer for jana:

because her pictures of flowers always give me
a surge of simple pleasure, no matter how i feel.

i hope mine will give a little of the same back to her.

namaste.

give.

one last call: if you haven't had a chance to donate to the 24-hour cancer dance-a-thon and you'd like to, make a quick trip to my profile and give whatever you can afford--$5, $10--any little bit will help. as of tonight, the dance-a-thon is less than $20K from meeting it's stated $150K fundraising goal. help us meet that goal!

titled.

sometimes i read in barnes & noble. if luck is with me, i find a big cushy armchair and settle in for a few hours of reading. my view from those chairs looks like this:i like looking up and perusing book titles on occasion. it's interesting to see what people write about. how they represent that work to readers. how the title and the cover art work together.

lately i seem to find my cushy chairs in the current affairs section. and i've been struck by some of the titles. a few examples:

• by ann coulter how to talk to a liberal (if you must): the world according to ann coulter and if democrats had any brains, they'd be republicans. on the covers of which coulter does her best to look sexy.
• another conservative commentary: conservative comebacks to liberal lies. touted as a 'national best seller.'
• a liberal approach of the same stripe: the GOP-hater's handbook: 378 reasons never to vote for the party of reagan, nixon & bush again. with a picture of an elephant's backside with a target on it.
  

these are all relatively amusing when seen for what they are--trash. they're less amusing when you realize that people might actually believe what's written in them.

the one that caught my eye the most--and the reason i'm writing this--is i don't believe in atheists, by chris hedges. take a look at the cover:

this book, like the others, aims to shut down conversation rather than open up opportunities to learn and understand. the title reminds me of a scene in kushner's angels in america. harper--the agoraphobic, valium-popping wife of kushner's gay mormon--encounters prior--the AIDS patient who sees visions of angels--in a hallucination or a dream or some alternate reality. she tells him that in her church, they don't believe in homosexuals. now, i've been raised mormon and i don't think i'd ever come up with that statement on my own--mormons don't believe in homosexuals. but i understand how someone could make that statement. and it bothers me. because to dismiss someone else by saying you don't believe in one of the groups they belong to--you don't believe in their professed identity (whether sexual or spiritual or whatever version of identity)--well, it's a neat way to avoid any real engagement. and it's an assertion that you understand the other person's reality and experience better than they do.

i was also struck by hedges' title because of its graphic design. the white words 'i' and 'in' easily disappear against the gold background, especially when the book sits on a shelf under bright lights. and when they disappear, an imperative remains: 'don't believe atheists.' with the picture of god's enormous hand pressing down against puny man. opinion becomes dictate--and one with divine sanction.

the imperative and the image made me think of how easily religious believers attempt to dismiss atheists as immoral, anchorless, lost human beings who may deserve our pity, but who certainly don't deserve our respect. of course, this response isn't reserved for atheists. i know believers who respond similarly to those of other faith traditions--especially traditions that do not resemble their own. i've also encountered a few atheists who react this way towards believers.

i don't like the reaction no matter where i encounter it. it's too self-assured. too convinced that i am right and they are wrong, end of story. i don't like it because when argumentative amelia emerges, she's willful and adamant and articulate and passionate but she's usually not listening. i don't like that when i'm convinced i'm right and 'they' (whoever they are) are wrong, i stop making the effort to understand. to think in new ways. to recognize the realities of someone else's life.

i'm not always good at keeping argumentative amelia on a leash. but i've been trying. if she's reared her ugly head in your direction, do accept my apologies. and know that i'm more interested in understanding than in being right. so give me another chance. because i don't want people to walk away from me feeling like the title across my forehead reads 'i don't believe in X' or 'don't believe x.'

dance-a-thon.

so i've been swing dancing for three months now. and i'm still loving it. so much that i'm at atomic three or four times a week either taking classes or social dancing. i've learned so much that it often becomes a jumble in my head. and now i'm learning to lead, too. why not throw another challenge in the mix?

but i'm not writing just to update you on my swing dancing progress. i'm writing to invite you to support a fundraising event atomic ballroom is sponsoring--the 24 Hour Cancer Dance-a-thon. in its first year, this event raised about $50,000 for City of Hope, one of america's best hospitals for cancer. last year (the dance-a-thon's second year), it raised $100,000. this year they hope to raise $150,000. all profit goes directly to the hospital. and the venue and all of the entertainers, instructors, and organizers are offering their services free, so the vast majority of the money raised will be profit.

i'll be dancing in the dance-a-thon. i'm asking you to make a donation if you're interested. any little bit will help--$5, $10--whatever you can spare. to make a donation, visit my page at the dance-a-thon and scroll to the bottom of the page until you see the yellow "donate" button. designate an amount for your donation (you don't have to donate $100), write a dedication if you'd like to, and click the "donate" button. you'll be prompted to provide your credit card info, etc.

if you'd like additional info, leave a comment with your email address and i'll send you more info. and if you're in the area (southern california) and would like to come dance, do!

thanks for your help in supporting a great cause!

vote.

4:00 on super tuesday and i've just come home from voting. our polling place is at the fire station only three or four blocks from my house. i always love going there to vote. they roll up one of the big doors on the front of the station house and voters line up out onto the drive way, chatting casually as they wait their turn to step up to one of the nifty electronic voting machines, scroll their way through the ballot, and, having confirmed their vote on the paper trail, push the bright red "cast vote" button. this time there was no line. i simply signed in and walked straight into a booth to vote. and since i'd done my ballot research beforehand, it was a simple matter of choosing barack obama (non-partisan voters can vote in the democratic primary in california), checking off yes or no for each proposition, and confirming my vote.

i love the feeling i get when i vote. there's a sense of connectedness at the polling place, of strangers participating in something larger than themselves. and this election has been particularly exciting (even if i've also been particularly irritated at how early the campaigning started--i'm all for severely limiting both time and funds a candidate can spend on campaigning). part of me wants to stay tapped into the news all evening so i can follow the results, hoping that obama pulls enough delegates to keep the race competitive. another part of me is too nervous about it to follow and so doesn't want to check until the results are all in and there's a clear-cut result. i honestly can't remember ever feeling this way about a primary election and only once feeling this way about a general election (2004--curses on george w. bush!).

oddly, although i've been following the campaign rather avidly and have supported obama from the get-go, i've resisted becoming involved. my friend george is a bit disgusted with my refusal to volunteer. and i've been a little at a loss as to how to explain my resistance. i spent an evening talking it through with her, but mostly i was making excuses, never quite able to explain more clearly than that it would make me feel yucky to try to campaign on someone's behalf, no matter how much i supported him/her. that's not to say i won't talk about the candidates and the issues--i've done plenty of that. but i didn't feel okay about volunteering.

after receiving three emails from friends imploring me to vote in the last 24 hours, i understand my own reluctance better. one of those emails was a simple plea to vote. no partisan element to it. no endorsement of one candidate over another. just a request that i vote. that didn't bother me at all. i think everyone should vote. but the other two offered unsolicited advice about their candidate, mitt romney--about his strength of character; about how he has what it takes to save us from the desperate straits in which we find our nation; about doing everything in our power to get him elected. one of these authors managed to write without presuming that all of her email's recipients would agree that romney is the best candidate. the other one simply assumed that everyone receiving the message would agree that romney (i refuse to refer to him as "mitt") is the man for the job, and this in spite of the fact that this particular friend knows that i'm liberal and disagree with the kind of conservative politics romney stands for. in spite of this difference in tone, i was pretty disgusted by both emails.

i admit that part of that disgust has to do with my opinion of romney. i think the best single word to describe his character is "smarmy," rather than "good" or "trustworthy." and (much more importantly) i not only disagree with most of his approach to policy and governing, i find some of his opinions frightening in the extent to which they disregard what i consider vitally important and basic principles and rights. but my distaste for romney, his persona, and his positions, isn't the only source of my distaste for these emails. i simply don't like receiving this kind of unsought petition for my vote--one which is, moreover, premised on fairly empty platitudes about character and inflammatory rhetoric about us needing salvation and romney providing it. it's precisely this manipulative over-reliance on the rhetoric of ethos or the rhetoric of pathos (which far too often excludes the rhetoric of logos, which should be the most important) that bothers me about campaigning in general. i certainly don't want to receive it on a personal level. and i don't ever want to be a purveyor of such campaigning, no matter how much i believe in the candidate or how successful the tactics may seem.

instead, i'll join in my other friend's plea: if you haven't yet and you still have the opportunity, go vote. if you've missed your chance today, don't miss it when the general election rolls around in november. i don't care who you vote for or what you think of the various candidates running; i just care that you exercise the right so many in this world don't have.

honor.

i live a very secure life. i have my moments of personal insecurity--as many as most, a few less than some, a few more than others. i've experienced enough cognitive dissonance to spin me into depression that has kept me from fully functioning. but i live a very secure life. i know there are evil people in my world--not the world, my world. i'm sure there are people in my community who have committed unspeakable acts. i may have even encountered them. but i do not fear that evil. that's not to say that i don't take reasonable precautions or that i live in a self-generated bubble in which i think i could never be the victim of an unspeakable act. it's simply to say that such unspeakable acts are not a daily reality i must confront.

on tuesday, as i listened to my usual dose of NPR while getting ready for the day, i heard a story about healing women and children who have been raped as an act of war, followed by a story about an american doctor affiliated with harvard who has tried to help her congolese colleagues. when the story started, my tendency to socially conscious outrage was immediately piqued. as was my academic interest in feminism and women's issues. but i couldn't maintain the distance necessary to have those reactions. these stories recounted such unadulterated evil that there was no way i could simply listen in outrage and interest. instead i stopped what i was doing, sat down and cried as i listened to stories about women and girls--little girls of 10 or 11--who had been brutally violated as an act of war. and about people who give everything to help them.

those 15 minutes of radio time forced me to realize how very secure my life is. and how very helpless i feel about making any difference. i don't know yet what i can do--which organizations i can support, what work i could do remotely, how i can speak up about the cause to my own government. i plan to find out and, when i do, i'll share what i learn. but in the mean time, i'm asking you to take 15 minutes and listen. it will be hard. these are devastating stories. but please--honor these women and girls, and the people trying to help them, enough to know their stories.

dance!
in october, i went out with j(wh)--dinner, hot cocoa at my favorite local cafe, and lots of conversation. by the end of the night, i knew i'd like to go out with him again so his day-after follow-up email (which has become dating protocol in our e-world, i think) inviting me out again was a good thing. except it was an invitation to go swing dancing.

now, i haven't danced at all in probably 5 years. maybe more. and swing? i'd dabbled in it 15 years ago or so, but my version of swing was complete slop. and j(wh)--he actually knows how to dance. so the idea of going dancing with him was intimidating at best and scary at worst. i turned my 'no' into a joke and suggested alternatives.

so we've done some of the alternatives, but the dancing invite stayed open. until i finally decided to bite the bullet and put myself squarely outside my comfort zone. so last friday night i went dancing. an hour-and-a-half of basic swing classes first. then 4 hours of social dancing. and the only knowledge i had going in was a couple of 5-minute parking lot tutorials with j(wh) a couple of weeks ago.

the classes helped. a lot. it also helped that j(wh) knows what he's doing and danced with me periodically. it's amazing what i could learn when dancing with someone who knows the dance and is a good lead (as opposed to the guys with spaghetti arms--impossible to follow). it also helped that everyone was incredibly nice and put up with my beginner's ineptitude. everyone including one of my current students who showed up. i have to say, it's a bit odd to dance with a current student...

honestly i didn't know what to expect. i decided i'd go and try something new. and i decided i would just relax and enjoy myself. so i expected to have fun. but i didn't know what to expect beyond a fun evening.

what i found was exuberance. part of that comes from the music, which bursts with vibrant energy. part of it comes from the style of dance, which responds to the music's energy. but i think most of it came from the people. i danced a lot of the night (which surprised me, quite honestly; i've never been to a dance where i was asked to dance so much). but i sat out quite a few songs, too. which i enjoyed. because it let me watch people dancing. and it was so very evident how much they loved what they were doing. it looked and felt like a simple celebration of being alive. and i loved being part of it. i think i'm officially hooked...


{edited to eliminate inadvertent rudeness...}

fire.
tonight as i drove home the sun blazed redgold in the west, infusing the sky with warmth and light. it was stunning. but that beauty was born of the disastrous fires blazing to the east. which were in turn caused by my beautiful santa ana winds. this symbiosis between beauty and destruction haunts me. i look at my world and it is so beautiful. but it is so devastating. not just the physical world, but humanity, too. i believe community is unavoidable--that human beings are naturally social creatures who form bonds of beautiful intimacy and love. but i also believe that the very actions and words that forge those bonds isolate us. we use the gestures and actions of friendship to turn inward, to hunker down, and avoid the pain that interaction demands.

i do not know how to navigate that paradox. and today it has me feeling tired, eyes heavy with tears i do not want to shed, wishing i could take refuge in misanthropy. but i can't. because despite the destruction, the beauty is there--glaringly unavoidable. like the sun in the west, reflecting the fire in the east.

needs.
two years ago, my sister and her husband began what would become a very long process to adopt children from haiti. a couple of weeks ago, they finally got word that K's passport had been signed (she's the first of the three children they're adopting). which means they could be traveling as soon as two weeks from now. we're all superexcited to have K home and part of our family. and yesterday (i think it was just yesterday), they received word that M and R's paperwork had been signed out of IBESR (haitian social services office that has to approve adoptions). maybe they'll be traveling back to haiti again in the next six months (or, dare i say it, even sooner?).

anticipating traveling to haiti soon to pick up K, tasha contacted the orphanage where K lives and to find out what they need. they've asked for very simple things: sheets, shoes, and clothes. tasha added watches to that list (one of the caretakers asked for tasha's watch last time she was there). if you'd like to help provide shoes, clothes, sheets, or watches for orphans and their caretakers in haiti, you can send donations to tasha through her company at:

QuicKutz, Inc.
1365 West 1250 South
Suite 100
Orem, UT 84058

mark your package or envelope "Haiti Donation".

you can send either the items on the list or cash (please look at the more detailed list on tasha's blog). any cash donated will either purchase items to be taken to the orphanage or pay baggage fees to fly the items down. please send donations by August 7.

any help you can give will make a difference for these beautiful children. thanks.

spirited.
i find myself in the odd position of feeling what definitely qualifies as school spirit. now, i don't dislike uc irvine. in spite of some departmental shuffling (to put it nicely) in the past few years, it's been a good place to do graduate work. but i've never really found myself tracking any of its sporting events. in fact, with its refusal to have a football team, the university has a bit of an anti-school-spirit, at least in traditional sports-related ways, feel to it.

but yesterday i went to ray's to get an early lunch. and the customer behind me in line asked them to tune the television to espn 2. i was a bit surprised to find that uci's baseball team was just starting a game. college world series. against cal state fullerton. a southern california showdown. and it was win or go home. i watched the first two innings in roy's and then forced myself away. silverian exam and all. but i tracked down espn's college sports scoreboard and checked the score every so often through the afternoon. after tying up the game at 4-4 in the 7th, they played another six innings. that's right six more. for a total of 13. before winning 5-4 in the bottom of the 13th, setting a record for the longest game in cws history.

so this afternoon i tuned into espn's scoreboard from the uci library again to monitor progress as they played arizona state (who beat uci 5-4 in their opening game last saturday night). when arizona was up 7-4 in the 8th, which is when i left the library, i pretty much decided the anteaters were probably on their way home. much to my surprise, when i checked in from home a bit later, it was bottom of the 10th (another extra-innings game) and they were tied up at 7. with the anteaters at bat. with loaded bases and only one out, the anteaters delivered. 8-7 final. they set another cws record in the process--first team to win extra-innings games on consecutive days in the series. and now they face the defending national champions--the oregon beavers (sure makes for an interesting animal kingdom face-off)--two days running. that is two days running if they win tomorrow night (here's to seeing them win without going into extra innings...).

and i find myself feeling more school spirit than i have in more than a decade. ZOT!!

communion.
tonight, while at the greek theater for the arcade fire concert (second time in about a month), i was looking around at the trees and the people and the sky and i was struck by the magic of people coming together for no reason other than to celebrate life through music. outdoor concerts do that to me. one time some friends and i went to a concert in central park. and as we walked away from the park afterwards, i felt awed by the community i had just experienced. thousands of people brought together by the beauty of a summer night and the brilliance of human creativity. and tonight, for a moment, i experienced that awe again.

the concert tonight wasn't quite what last month's concert in san diego was. according to seymour, you only get a spectacular show when you have a great band, a special venue, a fantastic audience, and a little something extra. and we definitely had that in san diego. tonight's crowd was a bit lackluster. and the sound wasn't loud enough (in large part due to the outdoor venue, i'm sure). but i still felt that magic of people celebrating life through music. and when regine sang 'in the backseat,' it took me back to that gorgeous night in england when i sat in the backseat of a taxi from the middle of nowhere to beverley. my friend becca sat in the front seat and was obliged to talk to the driver; i sat in the back seat and lost myself in the peace of the english countryside and the beauty of a starry night.

help.
a note from my sister about her cookbook project. she posted it in the comments on my last entry about it, but i wanted it to be more visible. it illustrates how very much the children of haiti need help.


Amy-
Thanks for your help! We are commited to ordering 2000 books regardless of the number of orders we have come April 6th.....so keep pushing if you will.

The cost for 2000 vs. 1000 books is almost half - so we are going to stretch a bit in effort to raise more money for the children of Haiti.

Holt has a waiting list of children. Until they can expand they remain on the waiting list. The money we earn from the sale of this cookbook will help the Holt Fontana Village build the required homes so they can help more children.

I struggle with the memory of a little boy who probably had AIDS that couldn't keep any food down. We went into a remote area of Haiti to see some of the wells that Peter Fontana was so proud of and responsible for building. On the way back we stopped in the small clinic in Montrois. The Doctor had very little to work with. And the poor little boy he was trying to help was very sick and unable to keep any food down. The skinniest dog I have ever seen came along and cleaned up what the boy couldn't keep down.

It is those memories of our trip to Haiti that I remember when I'm feeling tired of pushing people to buy a cookbook. We have so much! We can always do more. The cookbook is a start.

I love you!
tash



i spend a lot of time listening to the news on the radio. and i regularly find myself in tears because there are so very many people--beautiful children of god--who suffer in this world. who could be helped if only i could give them a little bit of my excess. this is one way of doing that.

donate.
my sister natasha and her husband mark are currently in the process of adopting three children from haiti. K, M, and R are beautiful children who have been in institutional care for most of their young lives. K currently lives in the Holt Fontana Village, where four or five children live in small cottages with caregivers rather than in a large institutional style orphanage. currently holt fontana provides for between 20 and 25 children, but they are planning on building additional cottages so they can care for more children.

after visiting haiti last year, tash and mark wanted to do something for the children at holt fontana--give them some kind of memory book so they would have pictures of their friends, the people who loved and cared for them, and where they are from when they move to the u.s. to live with their adoptive families. when they heard that holt fontana was planning on building new cottages and needed to raise the funds, tash and mark turned their memory book into a cookbook that could be sold to help raise money.

the kids from haiti cookbook is a pretty cookbook, full of pictures of these beautiful children. it's also full of great recipes collected from the children's adoptive families, people who work for holt fontana, and people involved in the scrapbooking industry. my sister's company (thus the scrapbook connection), QuicKutz, has donated all of the labor to assemble the cookbook. 100% of the profits from the sale of the book will be given to holt fontana for construction of additional cottages and to support children at risk (only cost of printing and shipping will be deducted from the sale price). the book costs $20. i've used it already and it has some great recipes in it. it would make a wonderful gift. and most of all the money its sale raises will go to a wonderful cause.

if you can help by buying a cookbook, please do. you can find information about the cookbook and how to order it on QuicKutz Kids from Haiti Cookbook website. click here for an order form. click here for basic information about life in haiti and the conditions children there face.

you can place an order by filling out and submitting the order form. or you can call QuicKutz at 1.801.376.5666. you can pay by either check or credit card. orders must be submitted by april 6.

if you know me and will see me in the next week, you can order through me. if you're having trouble with the links i provided and would like me to email you information directly, drop me an email at whilikers at hotmail dot com.

our world is so full of darkness. these children have had their taste of that darkness. but somehow they hold onto the hope and light that i believe we are each born with. please do whatever you can to help them. please share the link to this entry with whoever you think would be interested. thank you.

one.
in two parts.

and you're single because...
that's a statement, not just a question. and i hate it when people tell me why i'm single--almost as much as i hate it when they ask me why i'm single. i hate it every bit as much when i have to listen to someone tell men why they are single.

last sunday, a very well-intentioned member of my ward stood to share his testimony. and as part of that testimony he recounted his own experience as a single man. looking back, he apparently believes he remained single as long as he did because he loved his fast car. and after explaining that, he advised all the single men in our ward (which is a stake magnet ward for mid-singles [ages 31-45]) to stop spending all of their time and energy on acquiring and enjoying toys and to just get to it and get married. i hate hearing this. no matter who says it and no matter what position he (it's almost always a he; a he in a priesthood position usually, though not always) may hold. i think it is a gross misrepresentation of why mormon men remain single. i find it callous and uncompassionate. i think it rests on sexist assumptions about both men and women: that men do not have a deep need for emotional support and love, unlike women who live for such things and who are not driven by physical appetites; that they are motivated by physical drives and pleasure, not the higher emotions women feel; that they, not women, are responsible for getting themselves and the women of the church married; that they are lazy freeloaders who will take whatever you give them (whether we're talking food or sex) and never make a commitment unless forced to by depriving them of that for which they have an uncontrollable need. i could go on.

i will not assert that there are no men who are simply too comfortable in their single lives to make relationship commitments or who are more concerned with acquiring things than with building love and family. i'm sure they exist. but i emphatically reject the notion that this group of the male population is anything like a majority. i know quite a few men who either were or still are "older" (in mormon parlance, though that is not always very old in non-mormon terms) and single. and their still being single has nothing to do with their obsession with acquiring and enjoying toys, an innate tendency to freeload, or an unwillingness to commit. generally it has much more to do with the fact that they simply have not yet found a woman they can marry. and i should say that i reject every bit as firmly the argument that if someone would just try, they'd find someone to marry. i suppose that is true if the only objective is to participate in the sealing ordinance. it is not true if by "marry" you mean build a deeply intimate, loving, beautiful relationship with someone who is/can become your soul mate.

{i should thank my bishopric for immediately countering this man's problematic, albeit well-intentioned, comments about single men.}

but touching is like watered down sex...
last wednesday as i was stewing over how to build a bridge between two sections of my paper, i took a quick break from thinking wilkie collins and the moonstone and community, and instead read a couple of blogs. deborah, over at exponent II, sent me on to a beautiful and poignant conversation happening at segullah about being single and not being touched. i read the entry with its subsequent questions and the first two comments before i realized that if i kept going i would start crying and not be able to refocus on my paper. and i had to focus on my paper that day. which i did. i finished it and submitted it and it made me happy to do so. but that post has been hovering in my mind ever since.

not being touched is one of the things i hate the most about being single. this is obviously in some ways about sex. some people have the ridiculous and, in my opinion, incorrect idea that women have little if any need for sex. or if they do, it's just not comparable to a man's. well, i'm not a man so i can't say whether my needs are comparable to men's. but i can say that it's just not true to assert that women have no need for sex. i understand the law of chastity. and i think celibacy outside marriage is a good thing. but i don't think the absence of all sexual touch is a good thing.

but it would be a mistake to believe the longing for touch is entirely sexual. it's not. as the post at segullah and the responses to it illustrate so profoundly, it's also about being human. human beings are social creatures. and they are, in my experience, creatures that express their care and concern for each other physically. at this point in my life, the only person who touches me with any regularity is my mother. but i sometimes go days without seeing my mother in the evening, which is when she usually hugs and kisses me as she says goodnight.

i'm not sure why it is that i have so little touch in my life right now. i'm used to having physical contact with my friends and family. when my brother jared and i were in high school, we'd often lay on his bed and listen to music and talk. and we had this almost ritualized bedtime routine that always included a hug and saying 'i love you.' while i was at byu, i lived with my best friends. a few times a week, late at night randi would climb onto my upper bunk and we'd start talking and laughing. and after not too many minutes had gone by, marguerite would come in (it became something of a joke for her to kick the door open) and join us. three of us curled up on my little twin bed talking and laughing and simply being together. i miss that closeness. i've almost always had friends--both male and female--that i hugged goodbye after spending time together. i have little of any of that now.

i have to take the blame for some of it. i have isolated myself emotionally for much of the last three years. it's been a hard time. and i'm sure that my self-imposed isolation has led to the absence of physical contact between me and my friends here (who are wonderful). but i think part of this has to do with this idea that touch is about sex--especially touch between members of the opposite sex. and i hate that--the categorical assumption that all male-female contact (and for some people, all male-female relationships) is by definition sexual. being alone together, touching each other is not the catalyst to some sexual conflagration. it's just two people being people. i'm not trying to argue that there is no possibility of sexual interest or reactions--reactions that are sometimes not meant to be acted upon; i'm simply arguing that it's not exclusively sexual. it's also human. and very, very necessary.


{i want to say, for the record, that at this moment i am very happy. and i feel more peace with where i am in all aspects of my life than i have for a long time. this has not always been--and probably will not always be--the case. but i'm glad for the peace i have right now.}

barriers.
today i bought myself lunch. two pieces of pepperoni pizza and a drink from ray's for five bucks. i love ray's pizza. and i didn't feel much like making myself lunch. so i bought it and ate it while sitting in my car listing to PRI's news show "the world."

and while eating my $5 lunch, i heard this story about liberia's market women. in a nation with an 85% unemployment rate, these women are one small economic bright spot. working 12 hours a day, six days a week, they earn enough to support their families. and they're petitioning their relatively new president ellen johnson-sirleaf for help in improving the condition of their markets. so they don't have to work next to mounds of garbage. so they have bathrooms. so they don't have to work in waist-deep water during the rainy season. on a really good day they earn as much as 1,500 liberian dollars--the equivalent of 30 u.s. dollars (more than a school teacher earns in a month). one of the women they interviewed, who is saving money so she can put herself through college, got her start with just $5. when i heard that, i couldn't help feeling a twinge of guilt that my $5 could have helped a woman in liberia start on the road to self-sufficiency, rather than being used to facilitate my laziness.

tonight on my way home from fhe, i was listening to talk of the nation (more NPR?! what a surprise!). tonight they rebroadcast one of today's earlier shows--neal conan interviewing author ayaan hirsi ali, a somali-born former member of the dutch parliament. she's just published infidel, an autobiography of her childhood and youth in somalia, saudi arabia, ethiopia and kenya and her flight to the netherlands for political asylum. a victim of genital mutilation herself, she was asked by a listener why she (and others like her who oppose the practice of female "circumcision" or genital mutilation) do not make more of a concrete effort to change the practice. her response was that with 140 million women mutilated in this manner--one little girl every ten seconds--it would be "delusional" for an individual to believe that she could change this practice.

i sympathize with that sentiment. i often find myself feeling distressed by the prevalence of sorrow and trouble in this world and feeling frustrated that there seems to be nothing that i can do to change it. and to hear this woman--a woman who explains living with death threats as akin to living with a terminal chronic disease that could take your life tomorrow or next year or in ten minutes; a woman who has been named by time magazine one of the 100 most influential people in the world--to hear her proclaim delusional the idea that an individual can make a change in the face of such odds confirms the way i feel. but it bothers me. immensely. because i believe very deeply that if each of us would take our gifts and use them fully, if we would put to work even some of our surplus in order to make our own worlds a more beautiful place, then we could truly change our world. i think of muhammad yunus and the micro loans his bank extends which have changed the lives of millions of people who were able to get loans through the grameen bank when they couldn't get financing anywhere else. and i disagree. it is not delusional to think that one person can change the world. perhaps they cannot completely solve a given problem, but no problem is solved in isolation; they are only solved in process and in context.

if i made myself a tuna sandwich and gave my $5 to a woman in liberia, her life would change and with it the lives of her children and their children. the real problem is not whether individuals can change their world; the real problem is how do i get my $5 to that woman in liberia who could set up a market business with it? our problem is not ability to change, but rather isolation. boxed up in my world of fast food and materialism and luxury, i can't help someone in need. it is only when we find ways to break the barriers of our confined and anesthetized worlds that we can make a difference--if only for one or two or five people. so how do we break those barriers?

light.
a scripture chain for you. tracing it last night made me feel better; hope it makes you feel better, too.

• alma 5:7 speaking of a people in captivity to the lamanites: god 'awakened them out of a deep sleep, and they awoke unto god. behold they were in the midst of darkness; nevertheless their souls were illuminated by the light of the everlasting word.' such a beautiful idea, that our souls can be 'illuminated' even in the 'midst of darkness.'
  
• d&c 50:24-25 in which we learn that light, when it is received and when we continue in god, creates more light--that it 'groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day. . . . and i say it that you may know the truth, that you may chase darkness from among you.' i love that--that if we know the truth that light increases as we receive it, then we will be able to chase darkness away.
  
• d&c 93:36, 39 in which we understand that 'the glory of god is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth' and that, by implication, if 'the wicked one' takes away light and truth through disobedience, then obedience brings light and truth. and i read obedience not as simply doing what we're told; since this is presented in the context of knowledge and truth, rather than simply performance, i think that obedience refers to living in keeping with god's will because we understand it--because it is a part of us.
  
• 1 john 2:4-5 in which we learn that truth is not in any man who claims to know christ but who does not keep his commandents; that god's love is perfected in she who keeps the commandments. and in verses 8 through 10, we learn that we abide in light when we love our brothers and sisters.
• light then is a result of obedience. and in my reading of these verses, obedience takes the shape of love (which is, after all, the heart of the two great commandments--to love god and to love our neighbors as ourselves). so as we love others, we are filled with light--even in the midst of darkness.
• d&c 115:5-6 in which we are told to 'arise and shine forth' not only that our light (our love, not our selves) may be a 'standard for the nations,' but also that our 'gathering together' and our stakes (in other words our communities) will be a source of defense and refuge from the darkness of the storm.
  

i love these ideas. that as we do the will of god, we will be filled with light. and as we let that light shine forth--as we live the truths we know, as we love, actively making our world better--we will build communities which will have the power to 'chase darkness from among [us].' that our souls will be enlightened by the word, the word which is christ, christ who is love incarnate--that our souls will be illuminated even in darkness.