in


so much time has passed. he's a different person, now. that much is sure. more gray hair, a sadness in the eyes. lacking the trademark buoyancy. something in him has broken, i can see that.

so much happiness

in








































It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against, 
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
It doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records…..
Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,


you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known. 


So Much Happiness | Naomi Shihab Nye



the gorgeous photo is by: rion on flickr



what i want to hear those politicians talk about for this upcoming presidential election.

in

i'm on my third attempt at brewing a pot of coffee this morning.

i put in the grounds, the filter, turned on the light and upon returning to pour a cup...i had forgotten the water.

so i turned it off, put in the water, gave it a minute...never turned it back on.

now it's on, there's water, and i'm still waiting. let's hope the third time really is the charm.

i tell you this in warning. if it was that hard to get a pot of coffee going this morning then, well, i'm really not sure what might come of this rambling post.

okay, here goes:

i am not a foodie. i count this as a blessing. i am not a person who tastes the gradations of good in food. once it's good, i'm set. i don't taste the subtleties beyond that. i realized this upon a visit to tom colecchio's restuarant craft. i sat with five friends around a massive wooden table and watched and listened as they made sounds and faces usually reserved for the bedroom. this is soooo goooooood they crooned. and i sat there thinking, yeah it's good. it's good, but...hmmmm. tell you the truth? i was far more interested in the rustic decor and the simplicity of the dishes--the fine, local ingredients that had been sourced.

i've been a vegetarian for coming on two years now. few things can i say with such pride. (though i must admit that every once and again someone i live with throws bacon on the stove and the smell infiltrates every crevice of our apartment and i can barely contain myself. i'd give it all up for just one slice of that stuff, i think. but i haven't--not yet, anyway).

food is fun again. for me, it is fun. after so many years of it being anything but, it is suddenly fun again. there is a challenge to the art of eating locally. to eating well and wholly. to reducing the amount of oil used in getting the food to our table. we are a nation of gas guzzlers. i think we can all agree on that. so we talk about riding bikes and commuting together and taking public transport and we pass judgement on those with unnecessary suv's (oh, you don't do that, it's just me when i'm home in texas? hmm. well, okay). and all of those things are good and right. but i don't hear too many people talking about all the oil that we guzzle in getting our perfectly packaged, hermetically sealed foods. consider the following:

americans put almost as much fossil fuel into our refrigerators as our cars. synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides use oil an natural gas as their starting materials, and in their manufacturing. but getting the crop from seed to harvest takes only one-fifth of the total oil used for our food. the lion's share is consumed during the trip from the farm to your plate. each food item in a typical u.s. meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles. in addition to direct transport, other fuel-thirsty steps include processing (drying, milling, cutting, sorting, baking), packaging, warehousing, and refrigeration. energy calories consumed by production, packaging, and shipping far outweigh the energy calories we receive from the food. if every u.s. citizen at just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week.   (animal, vegetable, miracle...page 5)

when i was really sick, really in the throws of an eating disorder i was accused by more than once of being terribly selfish. and i was. it made me into an entirely different person--a terribly, unbelievably selfish human being and that is something i have to reconcile myself with day after day.

but we americans, we're not doing much better, are we? we want it and we want it now and we're entitled to it. forget the impact on oil consumption and those multitudinous political ramifications, forget the impact on the environment--in fact, why think about those things at all?

we cast off environmentalist as radicals or tree-huggers and we blame big-oil for much of the world's problems, all the while demanding more of it, more oil.

before the catastrophic bp oil spill, does everyone remember the exxon valdez spill? of course you do, it's been a watchword for years, a warning, a catch-all for the harm the oil industry rails against the environment day after day. but in 1995 smithfield (america's leading pork producer) spilled more than twenty million gallons of lagoon waste [pig shit] into the new river in north carolina. the spill is twice as big as the iconic exxon valdez spill six years earlier... smithfield was fined $12.6 million, which at first sounds like a victory against the factory farm. at the time, $12.6 million was the largest civil-penalty pollution fine in US history, but this is a pathetically small amount to a company that now grosses $12.6 million every ten hours. (eating animals...pages 178-179).

every ten hours. wow.

why am i blogging about this this morning? i'm not sure. i guess because i feel like not enough people are. children are getting fat. and people are dying from obesity related illnesses. and all the while we're depleting the environment at a terrifying rate. so shouldn't we all be talking about this? shouldn't this be what the 2012 election is about? shouldn't this be the hot-topic issue?

one meal. one organic, locally grown meal a week and we'd reduce the united states oil consumption by 1.1 million barrels per week. that's easy. one meal? that's nothing. there are things we can do. steps we can take. we just have to get off our fat asses (literally) and do them. and demand the government make it possible.

girl talk.

in

i'm not good at being a girl. or rather, i'm the worst of all things female.

all that stuff that guys attribute to girls--the things that drive men nuts about women--i embody them.

i think way too much. i overanalyze everything. i worry. i gravitate towards nuttiness. i get lost in my head. or at the foot of my bed (i've been lost for days at the foot of my bed).  i disappear inward. have unknowable, unwordable thoughts.

and i cannot say what most needs to be said when it most needs to be heard.

i sat with my best girlfriend alisha last wednesday. in a diner on ninth avenue. it was pouring. we rushed in under the cover of a single, red umbrella, slid into the dark, brown booth and began an epic and important session of girl talk:



dating is hard, i said.                               {profound}.

yes, it is, she replied.

i've had enough, i said.                         {it's  not been a terribly successful month}.

okay, she replied, the way i see it you have two choices, meg. you can be done with dating.  for the time being, if you've had enough, then sure, fine, okay. but you gotta get yourself two cats then. and every day after work you have to go home and feed those cats. and then you have to sit on your sofa watch some bad television and eat some unsatisfying ice cream. then you have to go to bed and do it all over again. 

don't mock me, alisha.


i'm not. i'm really not. i'm just being brutally honest. so you can do that. or can you soldier on. and accept that it's hard. for everyone, dating is hard. and we all struggle and we all worry and don't be so ridiculous to think you're the first or the last person to have ever had these thoughts--to have ever wanted to give up. 


alright. point made, i said, half-smiling, leaning back, reluctant to admit that i was lapping up her wisdom.

not quite, alisha continued on, you have to be hard on yourself. you can't go on one date and be satisfied for a month. you have to keep pushing and going and moving forward. you have to be courageous and hold yourself accountable. 






alisha is one of those dear no-nonsense friends (part of the yesterday's blogged about cocktail for happiness). and i'm trying really hard to hang onto all of her wise words this week.

claire (another dear no-nonsense friend) coined the phrase "cocktail for happiness" and suggested honesty is a part of the mix i forgot to list. i suspect she's right.

so courage and honesty...my two signposts of the week.