So Much for Peace

At night it's worse.  The knowledge that tomorrow contains no objectives.  In the morning, I know I will be happy and exuberant and eager, but it flags after hours pass.  I've come to realize that I am intimidated by the city - at least tonight.  Caspian and I took a walk around the warren of streets nearby.

There is a park to the east, culminating in a lawn, a series of crenelations and modern sculptures, and a wall over which I couldn't see, until we went exploring.  We came to the wall, which had only sky behind it as far as I could see (as opposed to buildings), and beyond...  A sea of buildings in the twilight.  Off in the distance, a few skyscrapers glinting and there a monster crouches, the skeleton of a dinosaur - the bridge over the St. Lawrence.

There were bushes and a steep hillside and then the motorway just below the wall.  I looked at the graffiti, sniffed the air laden with human stinks and listened to the giggles of students nearby and wished so hard to be back in the hidden, rhododendron-shaded gullies where the Smoky Mountains keep their secrets.  Where birdsong is too high and far away to hear.  Where sparkles of light illuminate tiny fishes in the pools and rivulets for brief seconds and the moss is so green it looks Photoshopped.

Caspian is so content here; he's content everywhere.  He loves it and sees only its practicalities and fun attributes.  Will I ever be able to ignore the smell of city alleyways where the dumpsters lurk?  Will I walk past without seeing the bums and their lined faces or become resigned to the fact that the person walking just ahead of me on this crowded sidewalk is smoking a joint, or worse?  Will I fail to notice a drunk vomiting copiously in the street?

A city is such a strange mix of flagrant and threadbare, austere and over-the-top, rich and poor.  It's all jumbled together in a big mess, and we all walk beside each other, whoever we are, bound for different places and our paths just happen to intersect.  Curious eyes meet mine, or lecherous ones, or completely apathetic ones.  Young women appraise my fitness level, breast size and fashion finesse, sizing me up in an arbitrary glance.  Old women glare at my tattoos.  Businesswomen don't even look at me.  One has to bear the weight of so many eyes and yet so few, of so much perceived attention and yet so little, as we are just ants passing on little ant paths.

I can never be sure that my feet touch the earth.

Amusements and Hot Weather

Today I amused myself by making a banana "pudding."  I took a square pan and lined it with tea biscuits and poured my banana-filled cooked pudding over them - but they all floated to the top of the pudding and I had to weigh them down with banana pieces!  It's more like a banana-biscuit pudding stew.

I will do it differently next time - with a thin layer of pudding poured on the bottom first, and then the biscuits, and then the pudding/bananas.

Wheat bread is baking right now, and I plan on making poached chicken breasts in a mushroomy, creamy, pea-infested (er...) sauce over Japanese short-grain rice for dinner.  Not only that, but I put faceplates on light dimmers, swept the entire apartment (where does this fine, sandy dust come from, anyways?), and I sent my resume out to a corporate English-teaching company.  Of course I did the dishes as well, reorganized the closets to accommodate our suitcases, did some filing, read several chapters, and I plan to look over my old Japanese textbooks, which I have handy.

It is 90 degrees here in Montreal, but only 72 - 75 degrees in our apartment.  Nice!  No AC needed.

Carpe Diem

I've written some recently about how things are, but little about how I feel.

I feel joyful to wake up in the morning.  I used to sleep in whenever I got the chance, just because waking up at 5:30 AM was my modus operandi, but here, the breezy day stretches out in front of me, the hours are long and the things I need to do are interspersed with periods of simply enjoying existence.  I can walk through our little vapor barrier foyer and out the front door to behold a metropolitan, bustling world of fashion and French and little old ladies in Audrey Hepburn sunglasses walking arm-in-arm, and return to our quiet little subterranean retreat.  Obligations I used to have (that I did often enjoy, but dreaded too, since they are scheduled and obligatory and occur at the same time at the same place) have been irreversibly escaped.  Tenuous personal ties and acquaintances have been soundly abandoned, for good or ill, and new relationships have been forged.

I don't worry about skipping or not skipping dance practice.  I don't worry about not having enough time to do the housework, or about needing a nap after work to function beyond 7:00 PM.  I have no propensity to snap at Caspian, to question the purpose of my work - because my work, at the moment, is here.  It's to learn to speak French, to read all of those books I've bought but never had time to read, to find a job that fulfills me and fills my days with challenging, fun tasks.  It's to make our new and lovely little downtown place home, to be an engaging and loving companion and to forge a new path to a unique but satisfying career.

One thing I find really refreshing is the fact that all of the people living on our little street of 150-year-old stone houses know each other and greet each other and get all up in each others' business.  It's grand and so different from the American experience.

One thing I find really daunting is the public transportation system.  There's this really neat fabric store that I'm itching to visit, but it requires complicated maneuvers in the form of walking through meshlike streets, taking the metro to the right stop (and all of the stop announcements are in French), walking again through the streets, and then doing it all over again backwards to get home.

Who knows, this peace may be short-lived, or not.  I'm a complicated, moody individual and by next week, I might be crazy with boredom and frantically scanning job postings.  For now, I'm content, and I am so grateful to Caspian, who is supporting me for now.  I feel quite guilty for being unemployed.  Deeply ashamed even, which I try to ignore since it's unproductive and pointless and has no basis in reality.  I just got here!  We just moved in a few days ago!  Why on earth should I soul search about being purposeless when the point right now is to orient myself to living in a new country?

Yet, Caspian is employed.  Why does this make me feel inferior and underutilized?  Ah, socialization.

Apartment and Heat

I walked outside this afternoon after lunch, some pleasure reading and a nap (oh, the woes of unemployment) with the intent of visiting la bibliotheque, which is a few blocks to the southwest.  And discovered that it is 90 degrees outside.  This is Canada!  I want my chilly weather!  Grump!

New Apartment

This apartment is a beautiful place to take a nap.  The windows of the bedroom face west and the light filters through the waving maple leaves and impatiens blossoms to project colored shadows onto the shades.  Our new curtains our beautiful and the soft, white bed is so inviting.

It is a long, narrow apartment, but still large.  The floors are hardwood (bedroom) and ceramic (everywhere else), and its windows look out upon the front yard (yes, yard!  with flowers!  and grass!) and internal courtyard at ground level.  It's in an affluent part of town, and has its very own private front and back entrances, which means we have our own street number.  It will be easy to heat in the winter, and stays cool in the summer without AC.

After much chaos, we are almost moved in - the owner, who lives in a floor above us in this house (it's a stone 3-story house built in the late 1800s), was storing some things in our apartment and is removing all of them this afternoon.  He's been working on it for the past few days.

The kitties are acclimated to our new place and romp all night.  Caspian now has Starcraft II and a fast wireless connection, and he's been playing for hours.  Pictures to come!

The Traveling Story

Troubles began when I hit Homeland Security just a minute after hugging my mom goodbye and watching forlorn little Jesper being wheeled away on a cart to be loaded into the unpressurized belly of a jet.

HS wanted me to take Kiska out of her carrier so they could x-ray the carrier.  I tried, but she kicked a huge gash into my hand which sprayed blood in all directions.  One agent ran to get me a towel with alcohol on it, while the others debated about what to do.  I told them that, at their risk, they could remove her or have me do so, but if she struggled and escaped, we'd never see her again because she would be off like lightning.  After about half an hour, they decided to just feel around in her carrier with her remaining inside, because I don't think she would come out without inflicting serious injury in the process.  Whew!

I sat next to the former big wig president of a corporation in the waiting area.  Not a peep from Kiska, who was trembling from her ordeal.  I spread a fleece blanket over her carrier, and she went to sleep.  The flight was about an hour delayed getting out, but when I arrived in New York City, my new gate was two gates up from my arrival gate, which was great because I had minutes to spare.  Most of the people who booked the Montreal flight out missed it because of weather delays, and there were about 5 people on this flight!  I could stretch out and enjoy the beautiful flight over rural New York, Vermont and southern Quebec.  We approached the city from the south, then made a hairpin turn west and then east.  I watched, bedazzled, as the setting sun lit the water of the St. Lawrence seaway.  I could see the striated riverbed, it was so clear.

We touched down early, and I bustled out with Kiska in my arms - only to be stopped short for quite awhile at customs.  I had everything in order, and it took about 1 hour for me to clear customs and then immigration.  I went down to baggage pick-up to find my suitcase sitting alone and unclaimed next to a squeaky little Jesper, who was fine!  Everybody else had already picked up their suitcases, since they only had to clear customs and not immigration.  The airline company reps were cooing at the kitties.  I was relieved.  I wheeled the cats to get them cleared to enter Canada (I had to provide proof of vaccinations and health) and thanked the agent when she said, "bon chance!"  I wondered why I'd need luck?

Tired, hungry (I had eaten no lunch and no dinner) and with a massive sinus headache blooming below my right eye, I met Caspian with a long hug and a kiss.  We took a cab to his temporary apartment in deepening dusk and I watched the lights of a strange city fly by - a strange city that was now my home and the only place I could afford to live for quite some time.  We snuck in and dropped the exhausted kitties off (no cats allowed), and then wandered out in search of food.  We found it at a little sushi joint nearby, and walked amidst the throngs of howling university freshman back to the apartment at 10 PM, where we promptly crashed.

Caspian was up all night playing with the cats, and I was up intermittently all night because of the sinus headache, which was getting worse and worse.  We'd thought the cats would stay in their carriers, terrified, but they were both out and very affectionate and gregarious.  I woke up this morning after strange dreams with the headache diminished but not gone, made delightful butterscotch coffee (I'm not usually one to enjoy flavored coffee), ate muesli, showered and headed off to Old Montreal and customs, to claim all of our belongings.  It took us about a half-hour or maybe a little more to get there, dodging dodgy old men, polite French-speaking street bums, insane students and cute couples.  I think I would have enjoyed it thoroughly if it weren't for the headache, which was excruciating.  We were made to wait in the grand customs building, empty and echoing, for another half hour before being called up.  We gave the agent our moving inventory and all of our papers and were cleared without any trouble.

We continued our stroll, past huge, plodding Belgians towing carriages filled with tourists, to Rue Ste Catherine Oeste.  I was not a happy camper and wanted to go home and sleep.  Caspian insisted we get lunch, and we ended up in a basement bar, where I ordered from a surprisingly cultured menu.  My choice:  mussels steamed in white wine sauce.  They were delightful.

Afterward, I was feeling up to a jaunt to our new, permanent apartment, into which we are due to move tomorrow at 9 AM.  It is on a charming little street downtown, away from the crazy pedestrian traffic of Rue Ste Catherine, and surrounded by cute trees and pots overflowing with petunias and impatiens.  My heart was pounding as I approached; I was excruciatingly aware that this place would be my home for at least a year.  I was terrified of hating it and hoping so much to love it.

It was perfect.  I'm not a city girl, but it is as perfect as it can be.

We took the metro home, which is a similar system to those in the Japanese cities I've visited, only a lot less complicated.  We both fell into bed, exhausted, and woke 2 hours later to an overcast sunset.  My headache was much diminished and I felt up to a metro trip to Caspian's office, which we took together.  What a cool office!  It has an amazing view, looking east over the St. Lawrence river and the bridge that connects the island to the mainland.  I was so happy to escape the headache that I was pretty obnoxious.

Now here we are, sitting in the temporary apartment for our last evening, listening to students shout in the streets below, and petting the cats as they walk by.  I'm tired, but we still need to pack up all of our things yet tonight.

Leaving it Behind

It's been quite the week.  Really?  A week since I last posted?  Unreal!

I'm sitting awake in the dark of my dad's office, at my parents' house, at 4:04 in the morning.  Can't sleep.  I hear Jesper crying in the bedroom I'm borrowing - he's upset that I'm not in there in bed, snuggling with him.  I'm his only constant in a world of chaos, poor little kitty.

In the last week, more adventures were had, cats were picked up from Natty & Pepper's place (Lovely and I stayed overnight after our loooong drive), much insane packing was done, last piano lessons were had, goodbyes were said, health certificates were acquired from veterinarians, movers arrived, packed and left in a flurry of crazy activity.  Caspian chose our apartment at the very last moment (Saturday night, before the morning the movers came).  It's a ground floor 1 bedroom apartment in a stone house built in 1870!  Expensive, but with ceramic and hardwood floors, a laundry room and an excellent location.

So, all of our possessions are on their way to Montreal, and I am responsible only for myself, my suitcase, and my cats.  That's all.  I leave on Tuesday.

Flash.

It's midnight. Pale sand eddies under streaming streetlight beams across the road in graceful wavelets before my dim bike tire. Stars wheel overhead, the only constant in a night black scene of lashing dune grass and my hair whipping across my eyes as I fly down the beach and through the deepest shadows under the oaks! Down, down, down the hill, whooping with my cousins as they do the same!

Flash.

The water fractures under the weight of the blazingly white midday sun, a dynamic, deep blue opal. It breaks and foams and rises and falls and crashes endlessly as the hills listen and have listened and will listen for longer than I can comprehend. I'm only here on this beach for a blink that I will remember for decades and those trees are still listening to those crashing waves in all of their moods. I am asleep in my bed and those leaves are listening.

All of my sounds are like the cries of seagulls on the air, meaningless after just a few seconds and just as lost after the wind strips them away.

Flash.

My coffee in hand, I stand in the grass and stare at a particular drop of water that catches the light in such a way that it's as brilliant as a star.  It rests just above my big toenail, painted in blood red and I admire the red against the green beside the starry droplet.  Steam from my coffee whips into my face and I breathe.

Horsies!

My sister and cousin went riding on my family's horses.  There's a bay Percheron named Sterling, a paint Tennessee Walking horse named Chief and a quarter horse named Zeus.  I didn't go because I was dressed too nicely and had already gone jogging and taken a shower.

Lovely came back dirty and happy and with lots of great pictures, which I may post later.  She told me that Chief was a brat who doesn't know how to listen, Zeus is a brat who makes you second-guess your instructions to him, and Sterling...  WAS LIKE RIDING A COUCH.  He's enormous!

Bahahahaha!

Every Little Thing He Does is Magic

So I'm pining for Caspian today.  It's been two weeks since he left.  Totally lame!  And distracting!  Little stupid things remind me that we are apart, as cheesy as it sounds.  My gramma said the simple words "oh, this" at a particular pitch, which reminded me of a duet from The Mikado, and of course I had to look up the news spot covering last spring's show on YouTube and watch him rehearse.  Twice, my heart all a-flutter.  Such clandestine research sounds like the domain of a hopelessly-in-unrequited-love, starry-eyed young high school student obsessing over an out-of-reach crush.  I guess our love has been unrequited for about two weeks.  Heh.

Not like I haven't kept busy here in my homeland - I've run probably about 25 miles, walked probably 5 and biked maybe 20.  I've eaten close to a lb. of candy, studied French diligently, read books, explored the deserted town all through the night by bike while the cicadas scolded us, ventured through the cemetery, ridden through Duncan's Woods at 1 AM in total darkness.  I've stayed up until the wee hours playing a Sega Dreamcast turned original Nintendo - Kirby's Adventure, of course.  Lovely, G and I have visited our favorite haunts, like the jewelry store, the ice cream stand, the waterfront, the pier at sunset, the candy and liquor store (twice), the coffee house (three times), R's store downtown.  I spent "a bit" of money on a clothing-related shopping spree for myself and for Lovely's birthday.  We visited the kitties in the pet store.  We watched the meteors streak over the distant, watery horizon, standing on the beach at midnight with our heads craning upwards and the waves lapping at our feet.

What the heck are we going to do for the rest of the week?!

855 Miles Away

After 16 hours of driving, Lovely and I made it to my father's coastal hometown.  It's been two years since last I was here, and it remains remarkably unchanged in the 28 years since I've known it.  My gramma hasn't changed much either, only now she's alone.  Grampa died from bone cancer several years ago.

I started my day with a 4-mile jog through the neighborhoods and woods, and that vista that greets me after that one tree tunnel that runs along the cemetery - the water, from the top of the dune, stretches as far as the eye can see, gray and blue under a gray and blue sky, and the wind stirs droplets from the beeches.  They make strange shapes as they fall on the sand, which is only wet on its top layer and dry beneath as my jogging shoes scuff along it.

Caspian has a job interview tomorrow morning, and I contacted the moving company that we chose - we had a few others quote us much more reasonable estimates than that first one.

The Books?

Should a moving company quote $5000 for two newlyweds in an apt. moving to Montreal?  Hell, we have two folding chairs and a tiny round breakfast table to eat at!

Could it be the books?  The boxes and piles and loads of books?

Exit Stage Left, Groaning

I was out and about this afternoon after a morning of packing and another grueling 1-hour workout - my fourth in as many days.  After deciding that FedEx/Kinkos was way overblown in terms of print pricing, I went in search of bins in which to organize our stuff for ease of life our new home.

There was a Prius in front of me that had a bumper sticker emblazoned with the words Stage Left and an arrow pointing right, and Stage Right with an arrow pointing left.

A wave of missing Caspian broke over me and I groaned inadvertently until I was like, who is making that lame noise? and realized it was me.

Who am I?

Today was a sad and happy day.  Happy in that I feel that I made the right decision in leaving this workplace behind and moving to a new country, but sad in that I am leaving behind several people I care deeply for, and one who told me in parting that if I needed him, he would do anything to help me.

I turned in my badge, my equipment, my exit questionnaire.  I looked out of the elevator for the last time.  I did spend some pleasant time at a Cuban restaurant with my closest work friends, and we hugged goodbye under the hot August sunshine.

When I got home, I flopped down onto my unmade bed, a snowy, queen-sized mound of down comforter, pillows and sheets.  I felt diminished.  I was unemployed.  I jealously held the idea of my completed degrees close to my heart, comforting myself that I would always have them.  I curled up and wondered who I am now.

I am not unhappy with my job anymore.  I am not "settling" for a career, or living with the consequences of an uninformed choice in job responsibility.

I am free now.  Significantly less well-off (for now), but free to do what I please, be discerning, accomplish tasks that interest me, choose a new direction in my career that I have passion for.

That very first task was a nap.  A long, sun-streaked snooze, probably three hours long, and then I got to work!  I worked out for an hour.  I read several chapters of The Sins of Scripture.  I got a good start on rereading the Harry Potter series from beginning to end, which is one of many goals over the next two weeks. I boxed up ceramics and organized lots of other items.  I boxed coats, organized winter gear, played with the cats until they were panting, started the moving inventory required by the moving company and Quebec customs, and talked at length with Natty.

Tomorrow:  French.  I plan to save and print out FSI's online French language coursework at FedEx and complete as much of it as I can in my spare time.

Whether it makes you happier or not...

I know I have several musicians and perhaps a pianist or two reading, so I'm going to mention this technique my piano teacher, Kokopelli, is having me perfect.  She calls it the Leschetizky-Essipov Technique, but I'm not sure if it truly bears this name.  All I know is that her piano teaches in college and graduate school was Ozan Marsh, and when he accepted her as a student, she learned it from him.  She woke up at 3:30am to practice this technique for a few hours, with Hanon exercises as its initial structure, before she had to leave for work to pay for college.  She was not allowed to do anything else - no repertoire or other exercises - until she had mastered this technique, which took her about three months of nonstop practicing and caused many, many bleeding blisters.

Needless to say, when she told me this, I imagined all sorts of contortions and torturous stretches and banging exercises, but in practice, this technique is gentle and very natural.  See, when I play music that doesn't fit well in my hands, I get very tense and cramped up, even after just a half-hour of practice.  It's because my wrists are not naturally relaxed, and I am unable to use the weight of my entire upper body to apply myself to the keys.  Some pianists hammer at the keys with their elbows as the pivot points, completely ignoring the amazing expressive ability that the neck, back and shoulders can bring to the "attack."

The L-E technique is like yoga.  Breathing aligns with phrasing.  The seat of the piano is low enough that the elbow is in line with the keys.  Wrists are relaxed, and drop fluidly and subtly according to the whims of phrasing.  I am playing through Hanon for the gazillionth time, only I go VERY slowly, raising and suddenly dropping my wrist, every other note, every fourth note, and once every measure (which consists of eight notes, of course).  It's not pretty at its slowest.  I bang around on the keys, trying to drop my wrist, relaxing it utterly, and then raising it in stages as I continue through the measure, only to relax and drop it again, over and over, in pulses.  Right now, accuracy is unimportant; all that matters is the complete and total relaxation of the wrist.  I have been told that I have beautiful, intuitive and subtle phrasing, and I think this can only make it better.

The key, which I think is similar to that of operatic perfection in voice, is to completely eliminate all extraneous movements and muscle contractions.  Everything, every movement, has a purpose.  Every position, every breath is made and taken to accomplish the execution of the music.

A beautiful and puzzling (to me) quote by Leschetizky:

"Be ideal, think ideally. We can all afford to cultivate that quality ... Whether it makes you happier or not, it is worth the trouble to try to live ideally. If you think yourself a poor specimen, you will probably always remain one, or most likely become one, but if you think of yourself as having the possibilities of greatness in you, there is a chance for you."

Keep Glowing

I was told by my superiors today that I will be greatly missed.  One told me that the office would feel empty without my hall-running, dance-pacing and endlessly diverse esoteric conversation.  Another told me that I had more talent than any up-and-coming young careerperson they knew of, and that they thought I had a very rare and vital skillset.  This same person also told me that the office would contain a lot less laughter without me in it.

They were very, very nice things to say.  I feel like less of a worker ant, and more like an uncommon August firefly, small, but still admired by those that had the opportunity to see it.  It feels like such a waste, finally learning how to glow in such a way that others notice, and then leave.  I hope I keep glowing.

I was given a card and a pink cake with a yellow flower on it, and all of my division-mates sat with me in the conference room to eat lunch, joke around and generally goof off for an hour.  Despite my lack of passion for this particular career (or possibly my distaste for the workplace culture poisoned my conception of the work), I was passionate about many of the people here.

Take a Stand

Last night, I was on the elliptical for 60 minutes.  I turned my TV to Shark Week (because I happen to love sharks, but I love seals more and always cheer for them when they escape), and a CNN anchor was blathering on about Prop 8 on another screen.

I idly thought to myself, "It might be a good thing for me to publicly support gay marriage.  What can I do?"  Bumperstickers immediately popped into my mind.  There are probably tons out there, and I've seen pretty discrete ones.  I was all for it until...

What if somebody rear-ends my car?  What if one of my friends refuses to ride with me because they object to gay marriage?  What if somebody thinks I'm gay and tries to hurt me?  Would the gay community object to me supporting their cause, as a straight individual?  And then I was ashamed.  I was afraid of the persecution associated with taking a stand, as a heterosexual woman supporting gay marriage.  Coward!

What if I were gay.  It's just another position on the 3-dimensional continuum of natural human sexuality, but much of the world seems to make such a big deal out of it.  I'd have to face discrimination every day.

I can at least take a stand.

On the Side of Love

Here's some food for thought regarding parenthood, careers and cultural and policy-related changes needed to overcome rigid gender roles.  Another reason why I'd ideally like to live in Sweden before considering motherhood.  Like, for real.  The United States is so primitive compared to other western nations.

So, I just browsed through the final ruling on Proposition 8 (which, in sum, states that marriage is only recognized by the State of California if it is between a man and a woman), and I am amused and joyful.  The words of the proponents of Prop 8 are full of hate, ignorance, bigotry... and are just plain ludicrous.  Really, citing "the internet" as the most focused source of verifiable information?  To attempt that to support an argument in a high school class would be laughable.

The proposition's opponents speak only of love and the desire for acceptance and the dignity that is due to all benevolent, loving people.

Not Much, but Something

Bread baked overnight.  I woke up at 2am to the warm, ancient smell of it, and had to get up and have a small piece with butter.  It is delightful this morning with strawberry jam.  Ah, the conveniences of the 21st century.  Our Cuisinart bread machine was one of our best investments.

I sit at the dining room table with my feet propped up, coffee by my hand and two cats lounging close by, waiting for the moving company rep to come, do her walkthrough, and cite us a quote.  I have NO idea how much this should cost.

Faith and Philosophy

A thought-provoking opinion piece on faith, philosophy and religion.  Despite his unsupported shot at atheist Richard Dawkins, the author satisfactorily summed up the impersonal fundamentals of why I rejected Christianity and all other forms of organized religion and became such a fervent agnostic. I find religious orthodoxy barbaric.

In these popular debates about God’s existence, the winners are neither theists nor atheists, but agnostics — the neglected step-children of religious controversy, who rightly point out that neither side in the debate has made its case. This is the position supported by the consensus of expert philosophical opinion.

Through experiences of, for example, natural beauty, moral obligation, or loving and being loved, we may develop an abiding sense of the reality of an extraordinarily good and powerful being who cares about us. Who is to say that such experiences do not give reason for belief in God as much as parallel (though different) experiences give reason for belief in reliable knowledge of the past and future and of other human minds? There is still room for philosophical disputes about this line of thought, but it remains the most plausible starting point of a philosophical case for religious belief.

But this defense of faith faces a steep hurdle. Although it may support generic religious claims about a good and powerful being who cares for us, it is very hard to see it sustaining the specific and robust claims of Judaism, Christianity and Islam about how God is concretely and continually involved in our existence. God is said to be not just good and powerful but morally perfect and omnipotent, a sure ultimate safeguard against any evil that might threaten us. He not only cares about us but has set up precise moral norms and liturgical practices that we must follow to ensure our eternal salvation. Without such specificity, religion lacks the exhilarating and terrifying possibilities that have made it such a powerful force in human history.

What sort of religious experience could support the claim that Jesus Christ was God incarnate and not just a great moral teacher? Or that the Bible rather than the Koran is the revelation of God’s own words? Believers may have strong feelings of certainty, but each religion rejects the certainty of all the others, which leaves us asking why they privilege their own faith.

That last paragraph is profound. I cannot fathom how anybody from any faith can see a person of another faith, equally faithful, and believe with absolute certainty that they are doomed to burn in hell.

She's a Dream

Me, Natty, taken last night after dinner.

Here I am, I'm home.  The kitties weren't particularly overjoyed to see me, but they had eaten both gigantic bowls of food, which is kind of amazing to me.  I just hefted Jesper and he feels like he weighs several lbs. heavier, but that may just be an illusion after handling Natty and Pepper's itty bitty kitten, Minerva, all weekend.

I am lying on the floor, video chatting with my husband.  I miss him and his absurdly short hair and his Calvin Klein glasses and his UNC-blue polo shirt.  I miss weird things like the way he holds a spoon and the way his perfect teeth fit together.

Finally caught this strange distorted message at the beginning of the Backstreet Boys' song She's A Dream.  Brian says, and you can barely understand it (I've been puzzling over it for months), "So tired of this face."  It was kind of a funny transcendental moment for me.  What if everybody knew your face?  What if anonymity was a novelty?  Yeah, there are times when I want attention.  If I am among other people, I generally enjoy being watched, looked at or spoken of, even if it's because I'm muddy or wet or acting silly, much less dressed to the nines or completely out of place.

Only very rarely do I actively not want attention.  Beyond not caring whether I get it or not.  I guess it's indicative of my non-fame.

Mist in the rainy forest.

Pepper and I on the Dragon's Tooth.