Friday, February 01, 2008

A rose is a rose, and so much more



















Let's start the new month with something beautiful -- a photo of the roses that M. brought to Bindi's birthday party. Shout out to everybody: when you need a surefire great gift, bring a dozen roses to someone. Huh, I just noticed that this configuration of roses is a mandala itself. And of course, each individual bloom is also a mandala. I am so drawn to the form, and it appears everywhere.


Had lunch with MS yesterday. She's so great, but is being wildly exploited at her job. Then I went to the dog park with the Bindster and ran into a massage therapist I went to once, a long time ago. I always go to women, but one day when I just walked in to see if anyone was available, he was the only one. And while I was on the table, and telling him about the tension in his neck, he made a very inappropriate comment that the weight of my breasts might contribute to my neck tension. I never went back to him. I've been to a lot of massage therapists, and never has anyone made a comment like that. Uck. Then, when we were chatting in the dog park while our dogs ran around, I told him about spending $3,000 on having Bindi's knees operated on. He said, "I'm very pragmatic. I would have put her down." I was kind of shocked, and felt it was a very cold thing to say to me. Again, uck. He said, "There's always another dog that needs adopting. They're not children." Puke. I mean, sure, if you don't have the money, or you're not attached to the animal, perhaps this would be the best option. But most people I know with animals are attached to them, and would go to great lengths to maintain the life of the animal who means so much to them. And he had this amazingly gorgeous dog, an Australian cattle dog/some kind of shephard mix.


Today I'm going to register to vote in this new town, then take S.'s birthday present to her (thanks, IKEA!), and pick up my new glasses frames, the red wire rimmed ones. I need the lenses replaced in my every day glasses, my computer glasses, and my reading glasses. That's not gonna be cheap.


To be against happiness is to embrace ecstasy. Incompleteness is a call to life. Fragmentation is freedom. The exhilaration of never knowing anything fully is that you can perpetually imagine sublimities beyond reason. On the margins of the known is the agile edge of existence. This is the rapture, burning slow, of finishing a book that can never be completed, a flawed and conflicted text, vexed as twilight.


Eric Wilson

Against Happiness: In Praise of Meloncholy




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

that is a common complaint, though, in curvier women, neck and back problems. Maybe he didn't mean to offend or be inappropriate, just to state one possibility. But I'm sorry he was rude and cold and uncaring, or came across that way.

Post or email a pic when you get your new glasses! :-)

John Pluecker said...

i'm gonna look for that book. maybe a book review one day on the blog? it would be fun.