rilke!

You see, I want a lot.
Maybe I want it all:
the darkness of each endless fall,
the shimmering light of each ascent.

So many are alive who don't seem to care.
Casual, easy, they move in the world
as though untouched.

But you take pleasure in the faces
of those who know they thirst.
You cherish those
who grip you for survival.

You are not dead yet, it's not too late
to open your depths by plunging into them
and drink in the life
that reveals itself quietly there.


It’s Not Too Late, Rainer Maria Rilke
Image here.

desire

More on the Rebelution, from someone more thoughtful than me: here and here.

Image: here.

home, home in the snow

"Wherever you go, there you are."
-attrib. to Grandmaster Cliche

There's something profound to be said about identity observing the self, but I'm going for a walk instead.

on the blessing of community

"There is no use trying," said Alice. "One can't believe impossible things."

"I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

-Alice in Wonderland


Yoga by the mailboxes with Adriana and Tonda, followed by jumping on the couches and throwing pillows, makes me feel like I can believe the impossible. Even if Etienne does laugh at us.

quote of the day

From Twisty:

Their remarks represent what I have scientifically determined to be the most prevalent misconception about American feminists (aside from our famed dedication to the Three Hs: Hairiness, Humorlessness, and Hate): that we desire “equality” with men. This notion of inadequate women clamoring for parity is undoubtedly a comforting one, since it postulates “men” as the ideal that is desperately sought by legions of shrill bitches who, ultimately, are doomed never to prevail owing to “innate differences.”

That equality with men is the last thing on the radical feminist’s To Do list will not blow any veteran blamer’s mind, but it is incumbent on the spinster aunt to reiterate every ten minutes or so that our objective is liberation from male dominance, not the opportunity to mimic the patriarchal model of oppression .

fred on civility

"The Ramones rock!" is a statement, albeit an ambiguously defined one, about the world, about our shared reality. "I enjoy the music of The Ramones," is a statement about me. You can agree or disagree with the former, but not the latter, which is irrefutable but also -- as far as the world and our shared reality goes -- irrelevant.

To be civilized -- to live together -- we need to be able to talk about the world we share. We need to be able to talk about art, politics, religion, economics, science and all the other vital components of our civilization and not just about our own feelings. This conversation doesn't always have to be nice, but it has to be honest and it has to be responsible. That is what "civility" means.

Link. I may have said this before, but I'd like to marry Fred when I grow up.

Also, East Germany lives! (source)

Also, I'd be willing to marry Glenn Greenwald, too.

four cups of coffee

Sometimes, particularly when I've had a cup of coffee prior, I get excited in class.

Excitement, unfortunately, doesn't correlate very well with coherence. We were talking in Ethics about the Niebuhr brothers and critiques of pacifism. Reinhold critiques most forms of Christian pacifism as being little more than humanistic optimism, and advocates instead a realistic amassing of power to counter other power centers in global politics.

(Something like that- I've now had four cups of coffee, so my thinking is faster than my typing. Good for the thinking, not so good for the clarity of writing.)

Anyway, I heard something or other about balance of powers and my caffeinated mind said 'Dahrendorf!' Then, because I am ever-so-embodied, my mouth followed suit, leading the class to ask me what the connection was between the ongoing discussion and my animated citation of a British sociologist of whom no one else had heard.

Enter incoherence: "well, he wrote Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society, and he's roughly contemporary with Niebuhr, and he was interested in how power is divided and diffused among groups so that, um, oligarchies... yeah, so that the power doesn't get centralized... which is sort of what Neibuhr is saying. So they're connected...?"

I have a bookshelf in my house. It's not big enough to hold my books, so they sit in stacks two deep. They aren't organized, either, just thrown in out of boxes from when I moved over the summer. I've tried a bit to put the books I don't expect to use toward the back, but it's a subjective process that sounds like this:
Hm, Acts of Faith, I might want a little rational choice analysis of religion, I'll put that toward the front... yeah.
I don't do well at anticipating which books I'll want on a whim, though, so of course Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society was buried under a stack in the back.

Enter motivation, though: I drug it out. No clue when I'll look back through it, but it's in my backpack waiting. The connection is clearer to me now than it was in class- I really like our buddy Reinhold, and his critique of active Christian pacifism makes sense to me. It would make more sense, though, if he were writing from a secular position... in which case he would more or less be Dahrendorf.

And I do like Dahrendorf. And coffee.

I'm not a militant, but...

Some friends and I were talking, Friday afternoon, about young women who will say "I'm not a feminist, but..." and proceed to make feminist points.

The only relation between that conversation and the following link is that they both appear in this blog post:

Swiss Accidentally Invade Liechtenstein

What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.

According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered just over a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

A spokesman for the Swiss army confirmed the story but said that there were unlikely to be any serious repercussions for the mistaken invasion.

''We've spoken to the authorities in Liechtenstein and it's not a problem,'' Daniel Reist told The Associated Press.

Link. Made my day.