DailyOm
January 18, 2010
Choose Love
What We Are Made of
Love is often presented as the opposite of fear, but true love is not opposite anything. True love is far more powerful than any negative emotions, as it is the environment in which all things arise. Negative emotions are like sharks swimming in the ocean of love. All things beautiful and fearful, ugly and kind, powerful and small, come into existence, do their thing, and disappear within the context of this great ocean. At the same time, they are made of the very love in which they swim and can never be separated. We are made of this love and live our whole lives at one with it, whether we know it or not.
It is only the illusion that we are separate from this great love that causes us to believe that choosing anything other than love makes sense or is even possible. In the relative, dualistic world of positive and negative, darkness and light, male and female, we make choices and we learn from them. This is exactly what we are meant to be doing here on earth. Underlying these relative choices, though, is the choice to be conscious of what we are, which is love, or to be unconscious of it. When we choose to be conscious of it, we choose love. We will still exist in the relative world of opposites and choices and cause and effect, and we will need to make our way here, but doing so with an awareness that we are all made of this love will enable us to be more playful, more joyful, more loving and wise, as we make our way. Ultimately, the choices we make will shed light on the love that makes us all one, enabling those who have forgotten to return to the source.
This world makes it easy to forget this great love, which is part of why we are here. We are here to remember and, when we forget to remember again, to choose love.
I work very hard at not repeating songs (or books, poems and quotes)... but this one begged for duplication... especially since today is my sister Mari's 42nd birthday and, not only did she turn me on to The B-52's... but she is also a huge fan of Sugarland (so imagine my surprise and delight at discovering the above video!)...
Today I e-mailed, I called, I sent flowers - I am shipping a present that is currently out of stock. Mari is hosting a slumber party this weekend so I'm having something delivered then (it's a surprise!) - however, the very best present (in my mind) is that I've asked my collaborators at Star Maker Machine if we could choose songs with Mary in the title as our theme for the week of January 17-23... and they very sweetly agreed. Go here to see my kick-off post yesterday (which links to my post on this OV site about Mari almost two years ago)... and here to check in throughout the week to see what's been added - the proverbial icing is that I'll make a mix CD of all the contributed songs as an additional gift (thanks, SMMers... :-)
It's been hard, since this is Mari's first birthday since Mom passed July 19 - we miss her always... but special occasions evoke such a mix of dread and finality (it hits home that Mom won't be calling to wish us a happy one)...
SONG: Love Shack by The B-52's
BOOK: My Sister, My Self: Understanding the Sibling Relationship That Shapes Our Lives, Our Loves, and Ourselves by Vikki Stark
POEM: And the Cantilevered Inference Shall Hold the Day by Michael Blumenthal
Things are not as they seem: the innuendo of everything makes
itself felt and trembles towards meanings we never intuited
or dreamed. Take, for example, how the warbler, perched on a
mere branch, can kidnap the day from its tediums and send us
heavenwards, or how, held up by nothing we really see, our
spirits soar and then, in a mysterious series of twists and turns,
come to a safe landing in a field, encircled by greenery. Nothing
I can say to you here can possibly convince you that a man
as unreliable as I have been can smuggle in truths between tercets
and quatrains on scraps of paper, but the world as we know
is full of surprises, and the likelihood that here, in the shape
of this very bird, redemption awaits us should not be dismissed
so easily. Each year, days swivel and diminish along their inscrutable
axes, then lengthen again until we are bathed in light we were not
prepared for. Last night, lying in bed with nothing to hold onto
but myself, I gazed at the emptiness beside me and saw there, in the
shape of absence, something so sweet and deliberate I called it darling.
No one who encrusticates (I made that up!) his silliness in a bowl,
waiting for sanctity, can ever know how lovely playfulness can be,
and, that said, let me wish you a Merry One (or Chanukah if you
prefer), and may whatever holds you up stay forever beneath you,
and may the robin find many a worm, and our cruelties abate,
and may you be well and happy and full of mischief as I am,
and may all your nothings, too, hold something up and sing.
QUOTE: "Love doesn't make the world go 'round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile." ~ Franklin P. Jones
Monday, January 18, 2010
Love Shack (The B-52's)
Thursday, December 31, 2009
[Hard] Rock Lobster (with apologies to The B-52's)
Guess where/with whom we're spending New Year's Eve? - good guess!
A history of my love for them can be found here on Star Maker Machine, the weekly-themed collaborative blog to which I contribute - I've only seen them once before live... and that was with my sister Mari about 15 years ago, when I danced so long and hard I thought I was going to have a heart attack... :-)
My daughter Sarah works at the Hard Rock Cafe and was able to get us tickets - the show doesn't even start until 10 p.m. but we'll get to the area a few hours early and have dinner at our favorite restaurant in the complex. Calamari, a Bluepoint chopped salad and a dirty martini - oh my!
We have the option of following The B-52's into the Center Bar for a New Year's Eve countdown... but that's going to be "a hot mess", according to Sarah - we'll probably just follow our regular tradition and head home to the jacuzzi to drink champagne and watch neighborhood fireworks...
Happy 2010! - may it bring us all health, peace, blessings and boundless love... <3
SONG: Rock Lobster by The B-52's (YouTube video here)
BOOK: The Totally Awesome 80s Pop Music Trivia Book by Michael-Dante Craig
POEM: At the End of the Year by John O'Donohue
The particular mind of the ocean
Filling the coastline's longing
With such brief harvest
Of elegant, vanishing waves
Is like the mind of time
Opening us shapes of days.
As this year draws to its end,
We give thanks for the gifts it brought
And how they became inlaid within
Where neither time nor tide can touch them.
The days when the veil lifted
And the soul could see delight;
When a quiver caressed the heart
In the sheer exuberance of being here.
Surprises that came awake
In forgotten corners of old fields
Where expectation seemed to have quenched.
The slow, brooding times
When all was awkward
And the wave in the mind
Pierced every sore with salt.
The darkened days that stopped
The confidence of the dawn.
Days when beloved faces shone brighter
With light from beyond themselves;
And from the granite of some secret sorrow
A stream of buried tears loosened.
We bless this year for all we learned,
For all we loved and lost
And for the quiet way it brought us
Nearer to our invisible destination.
QUOTE: "Then sing, young hearts that are full of cheer, with never a thought of sorrow; the old goes out, but the glad young year comes merrily in tomorrow." ~ Emily Miller
Saturday, August 30, 2008
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (The Rolling Stones)
Loved this article! - FYI, for my friends reading this: should I ever slip into a coma, I hope you know which song I'd like on Repeat Play until I wake up - Love Shack, baby ("tin roof, rusted"... :-)
Rolling Stones classic wakes grandfather from coma
A 60-year-old grandfather woke up from a 10-week coma after his favourite Rolling Stones song was blared into his ears.
By Chris Irvine, 07 Aug 2008
Sam Carter lost consciousness after contracting severe anaemia but was brought back to life when "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" was blared into his ears.
The anthem was the first single the retired baker from Stoke in Staffordshire ever bought, released in 1965 when he was just 17.
Despite only being given a 30 per cent chance of survival, he woke from his coma after his wife Eva, 65, took the doctor's advice and played him his favourite tunes through a set of earphones.
After three days of listening to the local Stoke station Signal 2, his eyes opened as soon as he heard the sound of Mick Jagger's vocals and Keith Richards' guitar riff.
Sam said: "I can't remember much from being in a coma, but I do remember that when that song came on it took me right back to when I was a youngster.
"I could remember how excited I was to get it down at the record shop.
"I suddenly had a burst of energy and knew I had a lot more life left in me and that's when I woke up - to the sound of the first song I ever bought."
Sam, who has three children and six grandchildren, added: "I would love to thank Mick and the rest of the Stones personally - I feel they really did help wake me from my coma."
Wife Eva said she had switched on the radio at Stoke's City General Hospital in a last-ditch attempt to bring him back a fortnight ago, after growing increasingly frustrated with his lack of progress.
She said: "I didn't really think it would work.
"I couldn't believe it when he started opening his eyes and looked at me. It was like we had been given another chance."
SONG: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones
BOOK: Time Flies When You're in a Coma: The Wisdom of the Metal Gods by Mike Daly (author), Mark Weiss (photographer)
POEM: Chrysalis by Joan Murray
1
It's mid-September, and in the Magic Wing Butterfly Conservancy
in Deerfield, Massachusetts, the woman at the register
is ringing up the items of a small girl and her mother.
There are pencils and postcards and a paperweight--
all with butterflies--and, chilly but alive,
three monarch caterpillars--in small white boxes
with cellophane tops, and holes punched in their sides.
The girl keeps rearranging them like a shell game
while the cashier chats with her mother: "They have to
feed on milkweed--you can buy it in the nursery outside."
"We've got a field behind our house," the mother answers.
The cashier smiles to show she didn't need the sale:
"And in no time, they'll be on their way to Brazil or Argentina--
or wherever they go--" ("to Mexico," says the girl,
though she's ignored) "and you can watch them
do their thing till they're ready to fly."
2
I remember the monarchs my son and I brought in one summer
on bright pink flowers we'd picked along the swamp
on Yetter's farm. We were "city folks," eager for nature
and ignorant--we left our TV home--and left the flowers
in a jar on the dry sink in the trailer. We never noticed the
caterpillars
till we puzzled out the mystery of the small black things
on the marble top--which turned out to be their droppings.
And soon, three pale green dollops hung from the carved-out leaves,
each studded with four gold beads--so gold they looked to be
mineral--not animal--a miracle that kept us amazed
as the walls grew clear and the transformed things broke through,
pumped fluid in their wings, dried off--and flew.
I gauge from that memory that it will be next month
before the girls are "ready." I wonder how they'll "fly"
when there's been frost. "And they'll come back next summer,"
the cashier says, "to the very same field--they always do."
I'm sure that isn't true. But why punch holes
in our little hopes when we have so few?
3
Next month, my mother will have a hole put in her skull
to drain the fluid that's been weighing on her brain.
All summer, she's lain in one hospital or another--
yet the old complainer's never complained.
In Mather, the woman beside her spent a week in a coma,
wrapped like a white cocoon with an open mouth
(a nurse came now and then to dab the drool).
My mother claimed the woman's husband was there too--
"doing what they do"--though it didn't annoy her.
Now she's in Stony Brook--on the eighteenth floor.
I realize I don't know her anymore. When she beat against
the window to break through, they had to strap her down
--and yet how happy and how likeable she's become.
When I visit, I spend my nights in her empty house--
in the bed she and my father used to share. Perhaps they're
there. Perhaps we do come back year after year
to do what we've always done--if we can't make
our way to kingdom come, or lose ourselves altogether.
QUOTE: "There is nothing in the world so much like prayer as music is." ~ William P. Merrill
Monday, October 15, 2007
Love Shack (The B-52's)
As a wrap-up of this week's discussion of death, I share the following... which I wrote, and made the accompanying mix (on a cassette tape!), in February 1998 - it's heartening to know my philosophies and choices still stand (except I've long since traded in my white zin for the much-preferred Pinot Grigio... :-)... and I'm already putting together a list for Volume 2 (hey, lots has happened musically in the last ten years!).
~ Big Nuthin' (The Roches) - Hey, they had to make it on here somewhere - what better song than one that tells us that we have a tendency to blow things in our life out of proportion, even death! Suzzy supposedly wrote this after their experience on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, when everyone told them that the appearance would be a turning point in their career - and nothing changed. "I guess I just never knew how big nuthin' could be" - yep, that about sums up most of the things we worry needlessly about...
The gift of death glows through the October afternoon.
Only a god would look to the left like this
and feel the sun and cold wind sweep
barely remembering when things were different,
a poem. And this moment too will end, is ending,
the gray neighbor dragging her recyclables to the curb
but my hearing’s tuned beyond any murmurings,
