comma,
As I went down in the river to pray
Studying about that good old way
And who shall wear the robe and crown
Good Lord, show me the way !
O brothers let’s go down,
Let’s go down, come on down,
Come on brothers let’s go down,
Down in the river to pray.
As I went down in the river to pray
Studying about that good old way
And who shall wear the starry crown
Good Lord, show me the way !
Michal Angela Wilson
Heart of mine! What strange surprises
Mount aloft on such a stair!
Some great vision upward rises,
Curving, bending, floating fair.
This is Michal Angela Wilson. Dear friend, genuine soul. Portland, Oregon, December 2009.
Live: NikeGolf.com
Tonight we launched NikeGolf.com, a full site redesign for US, Canada, and Europe. I’m proud of our team and the countless hours that were put in. There were some incredible obstacles we overcame and this is the largest project I’ve ever been a part of, spanning at least two years of planning and five months of all-out design and development phase, which could easily have lasted a year by itself. I led the Flash Development team on this project and I’m very happy with how it has turned out and I’m glad I’ll now have a chance to catch up on sleep, friendships, and books. See the site here: http://www.nikegolf.com (officially live at midnight PST, March 1, 2010)
Please-Tame Me!
The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.
“Please–tame me!” he said.
“I want to, very much,” the prince replied. “But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.”
“One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox. “Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends anymore. If you want a friend, tame me…”
“What must I do, to tame you?” asked the little prince.
“You must be very patient,” replied the fox. “First you will sit down at a little distance from me–like that–in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day…”- The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Words have been my source of exhaustion more than I’d like to admit, words read in the leaves of a book, spoken by me or you, by he or she. There is a key to closeness that you cannot hold in your pocket but comes only with your eyes or the proximity of your being. Is the missing word your or my?
It is the exhaustion that destroys me most. The places a soul goes to discover what other surroundings cannot bring have become so crowded, so loud. Such a place can be only lonely, and with such awareness, I sit a little further every day…
Me– the dog who bites his own stitches, the soldier preferring the medal to the trench, if only I were honest. Don’t be mistaken, don’t even be taken. I’m not clear, I’m not tame, I’m only wanting. Were you sitting a little closer you would know that.
But if I were asked what I really want, which pathology or awareness to return to sender, which experience to undo, which control to regain, it would be none of these. It would only be to finally be worth it– worth the silence, worth the words, worth a look from the center of your eye. Only in silence can contradiction make sense.
And so far this just isn’t making sense. I must have mistaken our roles, because I’m either directionally challenged, or the closer I sit every day brings me closer to far away. So maybe it should be you taming me.
The Mirage
Within two weeks even the idea of a city never entered his mind. It was as if he had walked under the millimetre of haze just above the inked fibres of a map, that pure zone between land and chart between distances and legend between nature and storyteller. Sanford called it geomorphology. The place they had chosen to come to, to be their best selves, to be unconscious of ancestry. Here, apart from the the sun compass and the odometer mileage and the book, he was alone, his own invention. He knew during these times how the mirage worked, the fata morgana, for he was within it.
- The English Patient, pg246
The Desert
The desert could not be claimed or owned–it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names long before Canterbury existed, long before battles and treaties quilted Europe and the East. Its caravans, those strange rambling feasts and cultures, left nothing behind, not an ember. All of us, even those with European homes and children in the distance, wished to remove the clothing of our countries. It was a place of faith. We disappeared into landscape. Fire and sand. We left the harbours of oasis. The places water came to and touched… Ain, Bir, Wadi, Foggara, Khottara, Shaduf. I didn’t want my name against such beautiful names. Erase the family name! Erase nations! I was taught such things by the desert.
- The English Patient, p138
Andrew Stonestreet
Its fall again. I seem to have been seeing this guy every September for the last few years, and we always come away with some great photos. Last year we met up in Felton, CA, this year Andrew spent a few weeks with us here in Portland.
comma,
Certainly we talk to ourselves; there is no thinking being who has not experienced that. One could even say that the world is never a more magnificent mystery than when, within a man, it travels from his thoughts to his conscience and returns… we exclaim within ourselves, without breaking the external silence.
-Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
Expectations
How can I expect to know God, how can I expect him to do anything for me/with me/through me if I’m not first doing what I can for myself? I’m not talking about success. I’m not talking about love. I’m not even talking about the feeling of peace. I’m talking about my part in the connection. I’m talking about character. I’m talking about work ethic, focus, and persistence to something beyond the bullshit insistence and triumphantism of happiness.
I can expect the dark and the bright times. I can expect and enjoy the repeated shock of cold water jumping into a stream. But without effort on my own part, without the willingness to step/dive/fall in, I can expect nothing in contrast from what I have now.
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