Pizza

Reindeer in lieu of chicken
is what our receipt said.

We must be in Alaska.

Primal

I fed some pigs the other day
and some cows
chickens and ducks, too.
Some were young,
one a needy calf

Sustaining life is such respite
No room for skepticism
because there is nothing to pick apart

Hunger is fed
Thirst is quenched
Heat and shelter provided
All by a person in a green jacket
Carrying buckets of water
to a cozy barn
in a valley

Caving

The advocate waits around a clipped unfortunate. What is a clipped unfortunate? You may ask...well, it's something that would have been really unfortunate, nearly devastating, if it hadn't been clipped. That's right, devastating, about as bad as the time the advocate brought a bologna sandwich to a PETA conference...hey, he was just an advocate, he couldn't afford the vegogna.

..........

Alright, I'm doing it.  I'm going to try to get paid to blog.  Why not?  I enjoy writing, and I'm not opposed to shamelessly plugging someone's product (as long as I approve of the product) to the handful of people that read my posts.  Furthermore, if I have the possibility of getting some cash for blogging, there is a 100% chance (is it a chance any more at 100%?) that I will post more often than once every three months.  In order to prove that I own this blog....I had to post the first line of this blog as a verbatim line that the payperpost folks sent me.  It seemed like an interesting line to start a short short story.

Broken

While unpacking

I found this picture of you

It had broken in transit

The one of you sitting on a black chair

With a white background

Floating

Our pictures are there too

I am on the same chair

In the same white room

There are shadows in mine, though

Our pictures are unscathed

Funny what shatters

And what doesn't.

The Universe will Open Doors

Bliss is an oft overlooked emotion.  When do we hear anyone refer to his or her state as "blissful"?  We have "wedded bliss", the idiomatic "getting blissed out," there are cities named "Bliss," people named "Bliss," and plenty of companies trying to capitalize on the idea of "bliss" (although, can we really attain bliss at 50% off?).  There are films, cartoons, bands and artists named or alluding to this elusive feeling.  I have felt bliss in the not so distant past.  It is such a distinct feeling, yet it is characterized by a state of near emptiness or openness.  Being carefree and full of so much euphoria there is no room for any negativity is bliss.  It is much more than happiness, yet it seems that being happy is an integral part of bliss. However, happiness has less to do with bliss than I previously thought.

Dictionaries contain several definitions for bliss, most commonly, "a state of supreme happiness or contentment" or "the ecstatic joy of heaven."  (The latter makes me think of the great disappointment that was May 21, or Jesus' failed "rapture."  I, and many more, expected so much more!).  Yoga teachers love the word.  I'm not sure if yogis love the word.  I'm not sure if I'm a yogi.  However, I do love yoga, and I often do feel bliss after a good yoga session, or while attempting to follow a more yogic lifestyle.  I can enter a yoga session with a mind full of aggression, a body distracted by some discomfort, and the patience of a toddler in a waiting room;  upon rolling out of a few minutes in sivasana, I am truly blissful in mind, body and spirit. 

I've been trying to pay attention to personal instances of bliss for a little while now, and I have a short mental list of times I've noted it...it is most commonly recognized after the fact.  I feel bliss when my hands are in the dirt, and I can witness plants grow.  I feel it when I hear my nieces laugh in unison, when I can read in the open air and when I dream of vacations unvacationed.  I feel it when Evan kisses me on the cheek in the morning and when I get to cook with my mother (and I definitely feel it when I eat my mom's desserts!).  

So, you three faithful readers of my blog, what blisses you out?  what brings you to this magical state of mind?  I hope you are well, and enjoying these long days approaching the summer solstice.

Be blissful.

Riding the Rails: Part I - I Took a Train

I just read this article from Orion Magazine.  It reflects on one environmental writer's experience riding the rail throughout the United States after swearing off airplanes.  She speaks of the romantic nature of traveling by train--from the folk tales of people traveling across the plains and up and down the coasts of our country's past to hobos hitching rides to the European ideal of traveling easily by rail from country to country.  So, here are a few parts on trains...we'll see what happens.

Part I: I Took a Train...

"King's Sleeping Quarters" © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS

As a child, I thought riding a train was an exotic way to travel.  I rarely saw trains, and the ones we did see were purely for moving goods, like coal.  I imagined riding a train to be a luxurious adventure of eating meals in the dining car, coughing my way through the smoking car, sleeping in a fully serviced room the size of an RV and waving at passerby from the caboose.  Upon further thought, I still imagine traveling by rail in the U.S. to be like this.  Hopefully my dreams will be realized or quashed sometime soon.

While I have never ridden the rails in the land of opportunity, I have been privileged to travel by train in Europe and India.  My experience in Europe happened years ago, in a sleeper car with my mom, traveling from Krakow to Prague...I think.  I don't really remember!  Some memory I have.  I do remember a middle of the night pound on the door to check our passports.  It was nice, as I recall, but not as fancy as my childhood fantasy.  It looked something like this:

That is a far cry away from what I imagined as a child, but not too shabby!  Traveling by train offers a much more comfortable way to get from place to place than sitting in a cramped airplane seat, and it lets one relax and sit back a lot easier than a car ride.

After a ten year hiatus from trains, not necessarily by choice, but from lack of trains/abundance of other forms of travel, I took them again in India in April 2010. It was sticky, loud, uncomfortable, crowded and awesome.  The trains are cheap, five to twenty bucks to get nearly anywhere in the country in the horrible sleeper cars (not the same as European sleepers!).  The trains are often fully booked, but that doesn't keep large families and holy men from hopping aboard and taking your seat.  One train I took had the old babas on the top bunk of every single berth.  the lower berths were overflowing with families...about twelve people in a space meant to hold six.  Coincidentally, my seats were often taken.  I wish I had a picture of all of the old "holy men" stealing the upper bunks as seats. Combine the following two photos, and you'll have an idea of what it looked like:

Imagine two Babas on that one bench, hunched over, with their tridents lying across their laps.  After spending some time standing in the aisles with my large backpack, someone else kicked one of the poor schmucks off so I could be the hunched over whitey on the top bunk.

While on the trains in India, I had the pleasure of reading Atlas Shrugged, which follows the building of a high speed railway in the U.S.  It was coincidental reading for this experience, although wholly different.  After getting very ill after my ride from Varanasi to Agra, I made sure only to eat the train food that mothers purchased for themselves and their children...it kind of worked.  I still got sick, but not quite as sick, and I still got to eat the delicious food of the tracks, from samosa and chai (I miss the voice changing chai wallahs) to strangely long cucumbers with spicy salt:

A Train Vendor Selling Strangely Long Cucumbers to a Family Below Me.

Sleeping in the "sleeper" car was a very different experience.  Theft is common, so I snuggled with all of my belongings on an eighteen inch wide bunk and spent most of the night listening to my iPod and reading.

The train from Trivandrum to Madurai, in southern India, weaves through one of the largest wind farms in the world.  We sped through it at twilight.  It was amazing...the soil there is a deep burnt orange, and the sky was purple with these graceful towers of energy spread as far as the eye could see.  The view from the seats of the trains are bothersome because the windows are barred.  I don't know if you can do this on an American train, but I stood in the open doorway of the train, nothing but the wind between myself and the landscape.  My hair slapped my face and my skirt billowed in voluminous waves as crimson, tangerine and hues or purple flew past, diced with the crisp white of turbines.  It was absolutely gorgeous.

Of the few trains I have ridden, the experiences have been amazing in their beauty, stench, accessibility, convenience and memories.  One of my friends takes trains in the U.S.  I should hop aboard soon.