Day 117.

A customer at my job today told me that he's lived here for 30 years, and this is the first time it's rained on May 31.

Day 116.

What?

Day 115.

Today's guest stars: the brunch crew. :)

Day 114.

Today's guest stars: Ryan Li (aka The Boo) and Elliot Fukui (aka Friend from New York.)

Day 113.

Day 112.

Day 111.

These storms are troubling me.

I'm not one of those people who waits until a tragedy strikes my family or friends to start caring about it. I've watched as the Mississippi River has threatened to flood, and spillways have been opened, destroying the farms and livelihoods of people I don't know who are just as likely to be lovely people as they are to be mean or ignorant or racist. I still see what's happening and feel sorrow for their sorrow. Their homes ruined, their crops destroyed. So many lives, changed forever.

Day 110.

So tie-tie.

Day 109.

Gender binary assumptions and exclusion of trans, genderqueer, and GNC (gender non-conforming) folks aside, I mostly like this video. I really appreciate the part about Beyonce's husband shamelessly releasing a song about how he's got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one.

Day 108.

Day 107.

Day 106.

INVOCATION

Universe, I trust you.
I trust that my love courses through you,
That nothing I have given has gone unreceived.

Universe, I trust you.
I trust that the love of others courses through you,
That my needs and deepest desires will not go unmet.

Universe, I invoke your love.
I ask boldly for the opportunity to give
To serve the sacred cycle of time/matter/growth/decay.
I ask bravely for the opportunity to contribute
The song in my heart.

Universe, I invoke pathways, passages, openings, opportunities.
Universe, I invoke your love.

Day 105.

The blur behind me is Ryan Li trying to make me laugh because I looked so glum in my photo.

Day 104.

Day 103.

Day 102.

Same sh*t, different day.

Day 101.

My computer's charger cord is fried. This is unfortunate. With my remaining battery for the day, I present you with: my face, head, and hair, 101 days after I started this ordeal.

Day 100.

Some sort of milestone, this one-hundredth day. I wanted to have something ever-so-profound to say today. Something that would make you laugh, and cry, and comment. Something that would make you pick up the phone and call someone you haven't talked to in months to apologize or ask them out. Something that would inspire you to paint that portrait you've been dreaming of, or choreograph that dance, or cook that meal that seemed just a little too time- and labor-intensive.

In my wildest dreams I dream of being an inspiration. I dream of being a voice that resonates, that is listened to and heard. In the shower, I perform pieces about homeland, love, longing, fear, and power to an audience of a near-empty bottle of Dr. Bronner's and a washcloth. I sing songs and imagine myself on stage, with some kind of real, human audience. Always, even then, it's equal parts about the glory of being seen, noticed, and applauded and about wishing I could be some sort of inspiration . . . that something I'd say or do would help at least one person dream bigger, be nicer, act better, love harder.

I try to imagine myself with a microphone. There seem to be so many barriers to actually getting on stage with a microphone with people watching and listening (believe me, I've tried), that I've all but given up. I take to the internet and say some things here. It's never quite the same as those impassioned moments where my voice, a hushed whisper in the shower or as I walk down the street, improvises, channels words and melodies that seem to move through me, in a way that's so different from this calculated writing that is static once posted.

My fumblings, my imperfections . . . documented here for you. Perhaps they will inspire you to be boldly imperfect as well?

Day 99.

Random poll:

If you are reading this, would you might putting down in the comments section the number of people who you could call in times of struggle/despair/need? People who would drop everything to talk on the phone for a while, or come to you if they were able, pick you up if you were stranded with a flat tire, or do some other nice thing to let you know you are not alone?

All you have to do is put down the number that springs to mind after thinking about it for a second. (Of course you can write more if you like.) I am genuinely curious about this. Thanks for considering it.

Day 98.

Blogger was down yesterday. Here's what my head looked like yesterday. Today's headshot to come . . .

Day 97.

Day 96.

Day 95.

How to Come Alive

Wake yourself in the middle of the night by weeping
Cry for days
Take advantage of the opening
Let everything pour out, like a rushing river
Breaking branches, smoothing rocks, flowing into tributaries that lead to the vast ocean

Day 94.

Day 93.

Day 92.

This very special installment of Watch Me Cultivate brought to you by:

* The hospitality of Birthday Girl and "Professional Lesbian Debbie Rosenstein"
* Redeye flights with a cuddly hapa boi who twitches in his sleep
* The great Hillsborough Maple Massacre of 2011 (Driveway of Tears)
* Bloated midsections, aka pupik problems
* Sleep deprivation, resulting in disjointed and nonsensical blog posts

(written on a genuine North Cackalacky porch swing)

Day 91.

Day 90.

Day 89.

Day 88.

I am glad I am friends with people from high school on facebook. Though I have little in common with many of them, it's a fascinating glimpse into their lives and their communities. On days like today, where the responses to Osama bin Laden's death on my newsfeed vary from "does this mean the troops can come home now?" to "violence does not beget peace, death is nothing to celebrate" to "AMERICA. FUCK YEAH!" or some variation thereof, I'm especially grateful. Because you see, most of my friends fall somewhere on the left side of the political spectrum . . . radical, progressive, liberal. Call 'em what you want, but they agree on more than they disagree on. War is bad. Be nice to gay people. Taxes should be spent on education and healthcare and taking care of the people. Recycle. Compost, even.

So, even though it's a bit shocking to see some "friends" and even family members post things celebrating the death of this figurehead as though it's some kind of victory (OUR victory? Who is this "we," anyway? Since when have we all been on the same team?), I'm glad it's there. I wouldn't know otherwise just how many people have bought into the hate machine.

I started watching President Obama's speech from last night, and had to pause it multiple times. I almost threw up a little in my mouth a few times. To be fair, I believe that the job of the POTUS is harder than you or I could imagine. We've watched that man age about a decade over less than three years. I also believe that by definition, it's a job that can cause no real change, no real progress toward peace. By running for President of the United States, a person is in essence saying that they have no problem perpetuating genocide, destruction of the earth, resource wars, etc. There is no way somebody can get to that level of politics wide-eyed enough to think that they can magically stop the injustice in the world by becoming President. In fact, they've probably already made tons of shitty decisions that negatively impact the world and its inhabitants by then, and are more than willing to keep at it.

Still. How is this man going to stare into America's eyes with a straight face and say something like, "Yay, we took out the guy responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians." SERIOUSLY. Are you fuckin' with me, right now, Obama? Do you wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares in which your hands are covered in blood? Do the souls of dead Afghani children haunt you? Do the souls of orphaned American kids come to you in your sleep . . . asking how their dead parents were supposed to pay their hospital bills after the cancer ate their bodies, the cancer that came from the oil refineries or the incinerators in their neighborhoods? Can you sleep one motherfucking wink at all, shifting this blame around, painting the murder of one human being, trained by this country to be a killer, as some kind of unifying moment, as some kind of victory?

How, Mr. President, can you bring up September 11, 2001, and talk about it as a unifying moment? How can you say that Americans came together after that? Sikh men going through the special line in airports, Middle-Eastern businesses vandalized, hate speech pouring out of the mouths of white people who still somehow think this country, this land belong to them? How can you say we were unified? Those with names and complexions like yours, Mr. Obama, discriminated against, reviled, the newest ethnic groups that were acceptable to hate.

Learning history by reading books and hearing stories and watching movies is one thing. But the history we have lived through is so much more real. It lives in our bones, in our breath. I was born in 1980 in Tehran, Iran. While my mother was pregnant with me, bombs were dropping overhead, from aircraft manned by Iraqis, but funded by the good old US of A. When I was a baby, the lights would be turned off all night, so the Iraqis couldn't find the major cities and obliterate us. I never thought these would be things I could remember on my own. I was just a child. I'd piece together bits of story from here and there, weave it all together to flesh out who I was in my earliest years. Years later, at the age of twenty-nine, I encountered my first intense Mid-Western summer thunderstorm while driving on a dark freeway somewhere between Detroit and Minneapolis. It wasn't until then that I realized my body remembered, my history could pour out of me at any moment. Tears and terror and shaking, and aching for the sounds to stop, for the lights to come on.

What is terrorism?

President Obama, can you tell me that by taking out Osama bin Laden, that the United States is ensuring that no child grows up to be a 30 year old woman barely uncovering her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? Can you tell me who the terrorist is? I had it so much easier than the children now growing up in Iraq & Afghanistan and so many other parts of the world, learning that what the United States does is send people in uniform in to kill their families and destroy their homes and rape their mothers. Who is the terrorist? What is a terrorist?

Do you awaken, shaking, President Obama, from nightmares in which you are staring in the mirror, pointing a bloody finger, screaming "Terrorist! Terrorist! Terrorist!"??

Day 87.