This morning we danced around kitchen, sang made up songs, and drank coffee together over a close—if slightly overly-serious—conversation. At church, a man stood in front of the pulpit speaking of the equilibrium between desire and acceptance, between the striving, and the stillness of gratitude. I kept thinking about the abstraction of language, of the context of the conversations. Over brunch we all talked about being being in the world versus talking about being in the world.

Afterwards, as I was outside digging in the ground, my mind kept drifting to that dichotomy, to why my mind thinks it's a dichotomy—being in the world and thinking about being in the world. Action or thought. We live in a culture, don't we, that creates that conceptual rift. A philosopher is one whose head is in the clouds and can't see his feet on the ground. In a film about Derrida I watched recently, he refers to the joke of the philosopher who falls in the well while looking at the stars. It's a nearly unchallenged assumption. The thinkers can't be concrete, the doers can't really stop and think.

Why do we split these ways of being so divisively? Or is it just me? When immersed in thinking, doing seems a threat. The inverse is also true; immersed in doing, thinking too deeply seems to threaten the action.

But I think we can have both. I think we can be in the world and think deeply about how we choose to do so. So I try—at least for today. Today I spent my afternoon digging in the dirt, a piece of my early evening philosophizing about it, and next we will go join hands in solidarity, to literally, physically, stand on the side of love. Because, for me, the doing of it matters. I can send my heart out any day of the week, and I do, but sometimes, sometimes I've got to use my body.

Mid-May Reflections on Love

It's a sunny spring day, the perfect middle of May day—the kind you imagine when you think of the promise of summer just around the corner—a little breezy, bright and blue, just shy of 70 degrees. And I'm spending my afternoon writing—well, clearly I'm writing, but I'm taking a break from Capital W Writing to write this here.

Intermingled with my day of sunshine and Writing about Art, is a little bit of sweet nostalgia. A year ago tomorrow, I met a pretty terrific guy. Am I really blogging about my boyfriend? Why yes, yes I am. Because, truth be told, he's become a pretty important part of my life.

My mind is not all art and politics. Turns out, I've got a whole lot of space in there for love. As a matter of fact, most of my thoughts about art and politics revolve around love, around relationality, culture, community, the ways we share this space with each other...

But I digress.

I will spare you all the details of how and why I love him. Suffice to say, I do, and I'm grateful for all he's brought to my life—a great amount of joy and a great amount of growth; I'm grateful for his gentle and patient ways, for his wisdom, his thoughtfulness, his amazing heart, and, I'll admit it, for his ridiculous handsomeness.

An Ode to Me?

I'm home sick today—not to be mistaken for homesick, which is a different beast altogether, no, I am home sick, in bed, runny nose, sore throat, feverish, et. al.—which, for me, means trawling the internet... and, via a long circuitous track of poking around, I happened upon the blog of an old boyfriend's new girlfriend. Now, that's hardly fair, as we were only together for one hot minute years ago, and they've been together since... as in, exactly since. But either way, it's been a long time and I only felt fond feelings upon seeing her face. We were friends once upon a time, after all. But then I read her blog and felt a little jump and a ping upon finding myself featured in it. She was polite enough to have changed my name, but it was strange to hear her story of one of my first dates with this man.

She even included a photo of her "general memory of what [I] was like, though perhaps a little less pink & blue and more maroon & navy blue. With pearls. And an apron":


First: Uh, no... just, no.

Second: I'm not sure if I should be flattered or offended, or maybe just plain weirded out.

Let me assure you that I do not (nor have I ever) resemble(d) either of the ladies pictured above. I did, briefly, have a pair of white kitten heels I was rather fond of, but that's about as far as one could go.

It is strange on all sorts of levels to be featured—as the antagonist, nonetheless—in someone else's love story. I was the force that needed to be overcome, the obstacle laid out at the beginning of the story, just so the reader knows what they're in for.

That's right reader. I'm what you're in for.

It turned out, though, that it was almost fun, if wholly disconcerting, to read another angle of a story of my life, be reminded that the stories of my life are the stories of others' lives too. As a matter of fact, maybe it felt good precisely because of that disconcertion. Sometimes it's good to feel humbled. Sometimes it's nice to be reminded that you're somebody's 'other', the supporting role—sometimes even the character the audience isn't supposed to like—in somebody else's play.

And, you know, I'm pretty happy it turned out the way it did. They sound happy. I know I'm happy, and I'm feeling generally pleased and pretty damn lucky in regard to matters of the heart these days.

So hey, thanks for the shout out, lady. I wish you only the best.