Month in Review

• I went to see The Importance of Being Earnest with my homie. Theater is so much better than the movie, once you're used to the theater. Come to think of it, I am thinking of seeing Frost/Nixon. All that fits in my schedule is this Thursday or next Thursday...anybody interested in joining me? Even more so, I want to see Crazy Enough. Do I really want to see the first? If I don't, several people could join me for the second.
  
• I've started following a website in blog format called Neuroanthropology....absolutely completely my kinda thing. I've found there such gems as Buddha's Brain.
• March 20 my status said: I just said over the fence, "Hey neighbor. You need to get a handle on your anger. Let it be." He was yelling at his wife/partner. He stopped yelling. Five friends liked it. What I liked was the way my friends' responses were such a perfect reflection of what they know of me, and who they are. What I couldn't say, because Facebook didn't allow that many words, was that I hovered there for a bit, wondering if I should say anything. A woman walking her dog had also paused, noticed me, and came up the driveway to confer. That decided me. I didn't think it merited a 911 call, but he was worrying people. Within a few days, first one, and then the other, moved out, and I think it may be that a new owner simply had given them notice. The overheard yelling did have something to do with moving.
• <-- A sample from a set of photos I uploaded to flickr. See the rest here.
• March 22, talked to friends about my secret facebook project. I completed it at 3 am, April 22. If you want to take my Which Bodhisattva are you? quiz, you gotta get on FB. Or wait the month it'll probably take me to get it online at some other quiz place. I figure it took me about 15 hours to review information, take notes, create a grid of categories the questions would address, create the questions, and then the answers. At some point, I may upload the grid of questions and answers.
  
• This is good to know if you ever have to go to the hospital.
• March 27: I did my first storytime. I hadn't yet been evaluated, but my library branch needed me. I did my storytime for evaluation on April 6, which went as well as I have the ability to do. I think I passed, but I don't know for sure. As far as I know, nobody from the classes knows their final outcome.
• My Zen center experienced a very important moment in its history: a beloved Lay Teacher receiving dispensation to have students. The next week, her first two students were given lay disciple ordination. This is a first for us. I'm still not so sure how I feel about the "separate but equal" lines...monk/priest and lay lineages. Here's a hint.
• Of course, yay Iowa and Vermont!
• I watched a heart-opening documentary on Ansel Adams from the PBS series American Experience. There is dharma there. I'm saving it to watch again. Quote below.
• Facebook's monthly electricity bill is over $1,000,000, but then there are over 200,000,000 unique users.
• Here's something to respond with anytime someone attempts to derail a witnessing or naming of oppressive phenomena.
• New things so bad they're good: Keebler's Chocolate Malt Chunk Chips Deluxe cookies
• Tigger and friends!
• April 18: a poem:
  

  Extra smiles.
  Long gazes.
  It feels like all are flirting with me.
  Oh! We're tripping on that spring
  sunshine rush that feels like a
  glimpse of love.
  I shouldn't take it personally.
  ...Damn!

• New light rail getting put through its paces (photo) yay, Trimet! This will be the 4th light rail line.
  
• Great interview on Alternet with the author of the first book on Polyamory that I read, The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures Probably not-so-great comments. I haven't read them yet.

For the first time, I know what love is, what friends are, and what art should be. Love is a seeking for a way of life, the way that cannot be followed alone, the resonance of all spiritual and physical things. Friendship is another form of love, more passive perhaps, but full of the transmitting, and acceptances of things, like thunderclouds, and grass, and the clean granite of reality. Art is both love and friendship and understanding, the desire to give. It is not charity, which is the giving of things; it is more than kindness, which is the giving of self. It is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light of the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit, it is a re-... Read Morecreation on another plane of the realities of the world, the tragic and wonderful realities of earth and men, and of all the interrelations of these. ~Ansel Adams