(dc) google doesn't know everything yet

(dc) moods

sometimes i'm just really in the mood for mind blowing sex. at these times i change the subject in my internal conversations with myself as best i can. or i take a nap. chastity is a state of mind. but moods are tricky.

(dc) ode to a bullet train

she was a hard working train
in the early years
the little engine that could

she will shine in the museum
decades of service
with the other cool old trains

the first decade of service
oh how fast she was
learning her awesome powers

and in the second decade
the word got around
people crowded on for thrills

she was a magical train
people met themselves
learned what they really wanted

and then she would take them there
drop them off, goodbye
enormously efficient

the third decade of service
perfecting the art
connecting the good people

direct nonstop service to
all the places of
desire in peoples' hearts

not so secretly she thought
maybe there would be
another engine like her

to double up at the front
like the old trains did
only not like the old trains

because this train was magic
or so she had thought
the silly old bullet train

the museum will honor her
with a shiny plaque
she will be happy in there

and there are lots of stories
for the grandnieces
and grandnephews and their kids

a new train's coming on line
a much smoother ride
to better serve the people

(*dc) two friends

two friends

A certain person came to the Friend's door
and knocked.
"Who's there?"
"it's me."

The Friend answered, "Go away. There's no place
for raw meat at this table."

The individual went wandering for a year.
Nothing but the fire of separation
can change hypocrisy and ego. The person returned
completely cooked,
walked up and down in front of the Friend's house,
gently knocked.
"Who is it?"

"You."

"Please come in, my self,
there's no place in this house for two.
The doubled end of the thread is not what goes through
the eye of the needle.
It's a single-pointed, fined-down, thread end,
not a big ego-beast with baggage."

But howcan a camel be thinned to a thread?
With the shears of practices, with doing things.

And with help from the one who brings
impossibilitites to pass, who quiets willfulness,
who gives sight to one blind from birth.

Every day that one does something.
Take that as your text.

Every day God sends forth three powerful energies:
One, from the sperm of the father into the mother,
so growth may begin.
Two, a birth from the womb of the ground,
so male and female may spring into existence.
Three, there's a surge up from the surface
into what is beyond dying, that the real beauty
of creating can be recognized.

There's no way to ever say this.

Let's return to the two friends whose thread
became single,
who spell with their two letters
the original word,
B E.

B and E tighten around sugjects and objects
that one knot may hold them. Two scissor blades
make one cut.
And watch two men washing clothes.
One makes dry clothes wet. The other makes
wet clothes dry. They seem to be thwarting each other,
but their work is a perfect harmony.

Every holy person seems to have a different doctrine
and practice, but there's really only one work.

Someone listening to a millstone falls asleep.
No matter. The stone keeps turning.

Water from the mountain
far above the mill keeps flowing down.l
The sleepers will get their bread.

Underground it moves, without sound, and without
repetition. Show us where that source of speech is
that has no alphabet. That spaciousness.

Where we are now is a narrow fantasy
that comes from there, and the actual, outside world
is even narrower. Narrowness is pain,
and the cause of narrowness is manyness.

Creation was spoken with one sound, BE.
The two letters, B and E,
to record it
came after.
The meaning of the sound
and its resonance
are one.

There's no way to ever say this,
in so many words! And no place
to stop saying it.

Meanwhile, a lion and a wolf were fighting . . . .


-Rumi

(*dc) that one word

i've recently started spending time with nia and jasmine (7 and 9), daughters of a friend of mine in capitol heights. i've started taking them to children's classes at the baha'i center on sundays, after which we usually do something fun together. yesterday we invited a third girl, who is 8, to join us for pizza. the three of them sat in my back seat and gleefully went through all the songs they knew together, singing them at the top of their lungs and sometimes making up new words. i was shocked at the things they sang. they're all mixed kids and apparently exposed to some serious hip hop - they said from BET - at home. i learned a lot by listening to them. one of their favorites seemed to be "you're goin' down"...sometimes i asked them if they knew what the things they were singing about meant. they knew which songs were by whom (50 cent, kanye west, usher, destiny's child, etc.), but usually didn't know the meanings. i tried to explain a couple things. they seemed broken-hearted, like they couldn't really sing with quite as much glee when it's about wanting to beat someone up or kill them or defeat them in some sort of challenge. and despite how hard i tried to cover it up i think they could hear in my loving voice the sadness at these 7-9 year olds singing/rapping such inappropriate things.

after i dropped off jasmine and nia, that left the 8-yr-old in the car with me for the half hour drive home. sometime into a sweet and interesting conversation, she seemed to get up the nerve to ask me,

"umm...miss kelly...do you have to have 's' to make a baby?"

i was a little thrown on this one, but i decided to go for the full disclosure and comfortable honesty route.

"do you mean do you have to have sex to have a baby?"

"yeah."

"well, usually, yes."

she seemed a bit dissatisfied with my answer. i thought more deeply about it and decided to give her more information.

i told her that usually you have to have sex, but that there are other ways that people can have babies. i told her they can adopt and that there are also ways of making a baby inside a woman artificially. she wanted to know more about this, so i told her about how they can take an egg out of a woman with a needle and then put it together with a man's sperm so that it gets fertilized. then they can put it back into a woman so that it could grow inside the woman.

she said "yeah yeah that's what my sister was telling me!!! but she wouldn't tell me that word. could you say those words again?? what did you say??"

she was very animated. i didn't know which word she was interested in. i went through it all again, slowly, and when i got to "sperm" she said, "YEAH!! THAT WORD!! SPERM! THAT'S WHAT MY SISTER WOUDLN'T TELL ME!"

her sister is 10.

i explained to her in as simple terms as i could what sperm was. i told her that women had eggs and men had sperm and that an egg by itself will die and sperm by itself will die, but if you put them together sometimes they can make a new life that turns into a baby.

i tried to remember back to when i was 10 and 8 and i'm pretty sure i didn't know about sperm and eggs, or any of the mechanics of how they make babies, either naturally or artificially. i hoped i hadn't just overstepped my boundaries as a family friend and divulged too much info.

i didn't tell her about penises and vaginas or sex.

but my approach is that information is power, even for an 8 year old. for crying out loud, they're singing about graphic sex and violence, they might as well know a tiny bit about what they're talking about.

jasmine said she got an A on her descriptive writing assignment, in which she wrote about the day we spent at NASA last month. i asked her if i could read it and she said it was still up in the display case at her school. this was so sweet i almost cried.

(dc) the flower that grows inside of me

Cómo decir que me partes en mil
las esquinitas de mis huesos,
que han caído los esquemas de mi vida
ahora que todo era perfecto.
Y algo más que eso,
me sorbiste el seso y me desciende el peso
de este cuerpecito mío
que se ha convertío en río.
de este cuerpecito mío
que se ha convertío en río.

Me cuesta abrir los ojos
y lo hago poco a poco,
no sea que aún te encuentres cerca.
Me guardo tu recuerdo
como el mejor secreto,
que dulce fue tenerte dentro.

Hay un trozo de luz
en esta oscuridad
para prestarme calma.
El tiempo todo calma,
la tempestad y la calma,
el tiempo todo calma,
la tempestad y la calma.

Siempre me quedará
la voz suave del mar,
volver a respirar la lluvia que caerá
sobre este cuerpo y mojará
la flor que crece en mi,
y volver a reír
y cada día un instante volveré a pensar en ti.
Y en la voz suave del mar,
en volver a respirar la lluvia que caerá
sobre este cuerpo y mojará
la flor que crece en mi,
y volveré a reír
y cada día un instante volveré a pensar en ti.

Cómo decir que me parte en mil
las esquinitas de mis huesos,
que han caído los esquemas de mi vida
ahora que todo era perfecto.
Y algo más que eso,
me sorbiste el seso y me desciende el peso
de este cuerpecito mío
que se ha convertío en río.

Siempre me quedará
la voz suave del mar,
volver a respirar la lluvia que caerá
sobre este cuerpo y mojará
la flor que crece en mi,
y volver a reír
y cada día un instante volveré a pensar en ti.
En la voz suave del mar,
en volver a respirar la lluvia que caerá
sobre este cuerpo y mojará
la flor que crece en mi,
y volver a reír
y cada día un instante volver a pensar en ti.

-Bebe, Siempre me Quedará

(dc) who makes up these things?

happy international on-line romance week.

(dc) new leaf - no more messaging

to all my friends and family that might read this - i've decided to get off instant messaging during work hours. for those of you on the west coast (most of you), perhaps you'll see me around in the late afternoon. i also might pop on from time to time to handle specific tasks. otherwise, i'm going to put my nose to the grindstone here and focus on productivity.

(dc) no turtles

there will be no turtles.

today marks the end of something. they say when one door closes, another opens.

(dc) they say it's lonely at the top

rahan alerted me to this: google "myspace baha'i". is this due to my friends at google?

(la -> dc) real life great men

buzz aldrin


burt rutan


hugh downs

babak

and babak and todd (although i was tied down and forced to crop this image, forbidden from posting babak's part of this photo, so you only see a bit of his glasses here.)


the serious coffee guy

(LA) marriage

yesterday my mother speculated that perhaps i'm not "destined to be married in this life...again." i wonder if she's right.

(victoria -> vancouver -> sf -> LA) too soon

too sweet

(LA -> SF -> Vancouver) missed connections

the universe is confusing me.