I Feel More And More Every Day,

as my imagination strengthens, that I do not live in this world alone but in a thousand worlds. (John Keats)

I have had the great pleasure of making art as a collaboration with a lovely young woman who lives not far from me. She is an amazing and beautiful person, an aerial silks artist and circus performer, among other things.

Together we have performed locally, she on the silks and me watching her and playing accordion extemporaneously, trying to match her gestures with music.

This makes me so happy. I live for these kind of experiences.

Thank you Chelsea.

Work?

Work?

I don't have to work.

I don't have to do nothing

but eat, drink, stay black, and die.

This little old furnished room's

so small I can't whip a cat

with out getting fur in my mouth

and my landlady's so old

her features is all run together

and God knows she sure can overcharge--

Which is why I reckon I does

have to work after all.

LANGSTON HUGHES

Was God In Tahrir Square?

Was She chanting for Bread? Was He shouting “Liberty”? Was It demanding Social Justice?

The majority might pretend to own moral values, but if it closes its eyes to hunger, dictatorship, and injustice, those values are not mine. The yes-men of the state might try to stand between us and God, but my God does not rub shoulders with dictators and their enablers. I worship the God of Bread, Liberty, and Social Justice.

Mona Eltahawy

From the Foreward in Occupy Spirituality by Matthew Fox and Adam Bucko

Beauty. The Invisible Embrace.

Yet beauty's visitation affects us and invites us into its rhythm, it calls us to feel think and act beautifully in the world: to create and live a life that awakens the Beautiful. A life without delight is only half a life. Lest this be construed as a plea for decadence or a self-indulgence that is blind to the horrors of the world, we should remember that beauty does not restrict its visitations only to those whom fortune or circumstances favour. Indeed, it is often the whispers and glimpses of beauty which enable people to endure on desperate frontiers.

This book by John O'Donohue, with the above title, has become my bible. This man has said everything in this one book that I couldn't express in a lifetime.

In Greek the word for 'the beautiful' is to kalon. It is related to the word kalein which includes the notion of 'call'. When we experience beauty, we feel called. The Beautiful stirs passion and urgency in us and calls us forth from aloneness into the warmth and wonder of an eternal embrace. It unites us again with the neglected and forgotten grandeur of life. The call of beauty is not a cold call into the dark or the unknown; in some instinctive way we know that beauty is no stranger. We respond with joy to the call of beauty because in an instant it can awaken under the layers of the heart a forgotten brightness. Plato said: 'Beauty was ours in all its brightness ... Whole were we who celebrated that festival' (Phaedrus).

Yes, It's Adulterated

For the last 5 years or so, I've been mixing coconut oil and butter in my coffee. And, I love it.

I use the highest quality ingredients I can afford. Grass fed cows from Ireland make the butter. Organic virgin coconut oil from trees in the Philippines. Arabica beans from Mataquescuintla, Guatemala.1 This is an effort I usually don't undertake with my other food choices, but the results have been great for me. I've lost weight, gained energy and feel sated until noon, which means I rarely eat breakfast. Go here if you want to know all about it.

I toss the 3 ingredients in a blender and get smooth, creamy latte-like coffee without milk or sugar. TRY IT.

1.Some trivia. Mataquescuintla played a significant role during the first half of the nineteenth century, when it was the center of operations of conservative general Rafael Carrera, who led a Catholic peasant revolution against the liberal government of Mariano Gálvez in 1838, and then ruled Guatemala from 1840 until his death in 1865.

Innocent Villagers

We, too, cry falling to the edge of
the earth. But we don't store our voices
in old jars. Nor hang mountain goats
on the wall. Nor claim the kingdom of dust
Nor do our dreams look out over the grapes of others
Nor do they break the rule.

Mahmoud Darwish

It Was A Good Cup-O-Joe

Cafe: Alleycat (closed)
Grub: Dark coffee of the day, black, served with sticky bun