In a speech Thursday at St. John Lateran, Nicolas Sarkozy said, "No one denies that the French system of laicism is a guarantee of liberty: liberty to believe or not; liberty to practice a religion and to change it; liberty to refuse to betray one's conscience with public practices; the liberty of parents to educate their children according to their beliefs; liberty from discrimination from government due to beliefs."

Sarkozy, who was at St. John Lateran to take the title of "honorary canon," traditionally bestowed on heads of the French state, said his country has changed a lot. "The French have greater differences in convictions than before," he said. "Now laicism presents itself as a necessity and an opportunity."

However, he added, "Secularism should not be a denial of the past. It does not have the power to sever France from its Christian roots. This has been tried. It shouldn't have been done."

Sarkozy met with the Pope at the Vatican on Thursday morning.

"Like Benedict XVI," he said, "I think a nation that ignores the ethical, spiritual and religious heritage of its history commits a crime against its culture, against the whole of its history, patrimony, art and popular traditions, which permeate living and thinking in such a deep way."

The president added: "To uproot is to lose meaning; it is to weaken the foundation of national identity, and to drain even more the social relationships that have such a need of memorable symbols.

"For this reason, we have to join the two ends of the chain: to accept the Christian roots of France -- even better, to value them, to defend the laicism that finally reaches maturity. This is the step I want to take this afternoon in St. John Lateran."

"I am calling for a positive laicism," he said, "that is to say, a secularism that watches over freedom of thought, of belief and unbelief, does not consider religion as a danger, but as an asset."

so I've updated my template - I don't know if it's all that noticeable. I'll probably make it a work in progress and play with it for a while. meanwhile I'll play with photos using picasa2 (yay free downloads) and post lots of stuff on my photo page...

snow is falling again - it's slowly been falling all day. it is dampish snow and i am somewhat afeared that it will freeze over night and make the roads hellish.

but for now it is simply and utterly beautiful. everything curves - the tree branches, the mounds collected on the holly leaves, the sinks where the leaves are fallen on th ground.
they are saying that it is likely to be gone tomorrow but i don't care. it is beautiful now and now is where i am.

I just got thank-you letters from an entire second grade class. I'd taken their class on a nature walk back in October - I actually don't quite remember doing it - and something must have made and impression (on the teachers at least...).
hmmm, I'll have to go and look the date up to see if it was just me or if I'd only helped... it would be a shame to take all of the credit.

in other news - paper cuts are a pain.

leaf blowing: one of the greatest exercises in futility that i have ever encountered.

they are blowing leaves off the roof and from around the building - again. this is the weather report. but as the man said "job security - they pay the same each time!"

there is something broken in our government...and i don't know if it can be fixed.

first snow!!!

it was just a light dusting but it did come down. and we're supposed to be getting more tonight and tomorrow...

...snow...

well, i had wanted to say something...

in other news - my computer hard drive is nearly full. it took longer than i thought it would though - nearly three years.
i really need to just dump stuff onto my external hard drive...

*thinking*

no time like the present...
it's saying that this is going to take a while... 15 mins remaining.

i downloaded picasa2 so that i could play with my pictures on my own computer. i need to figure out how i can resize the files - they are unwieldy when they come off my camera... is there something better out there for me to pick up for free?

i'll come back and ramble in a bit...

so i've added two more links... chaps i found while doing some research on the community gardens here in the park. the odd thing is they are in the UK and i'm in DC. but they write well and seem to be living the sort of modern globally and environmentally concious farmstead life that i would one day like very much to have...

so i thought i'd share...

the one rub is that the wizard is rather pagan...this makes reading rather interesting sometimes- leaving one with a feeling of "if he only know the whole of it..."

i've put up a new page for photographs... it has lots of color... and even a few pictures... more will be forthcoming...
see "photos" link in sidebar for more details

so i cleaned up my links... but i didn't have the heart to get rid of a couple of them so they've been filed under the heading of "maybe something new..."
i've thought about giving the whole thing an overhaul - i really like toque's and tasik's new pages... but i'm kinda sentimentally attached to this one... perhaps i'll wait until i learn enough to design it entirely on my own and then up it up...

yesterday's winds have stripped many of the trees and now there are drifts, great big ones, of leaves everywhere... the winds here sound different from the winds in socal...less big. not small, but having less magnitude. they say less. perhaps they are too busy taking the leaves off of the trees and moving them up and down streets and back onto people's lawns to be having conversations or carrying tales and messages. or maybe they are distracted by having to move through so many buildings...

my cell phone is making the pathetic noises that dying phones make, an ironic counterpoint to the bouncy happy folk music coming out of my computer speakers...

"there's a car on fire down at 13"
"really?!"

sirens echo off the valley rises and up the streets coming closer. i watch as the flames licking the hood of the car and the open doors are doused with water. they are very efficient these firefighters. in seconds all that is coming from the car is white smoke drifting away on the light breeze.

words fall as so many leaves
stripped from the trees by the careless fingers
of the east wind.
they drift along the lanes of my mind
gather in great heaps
ready for the bagging of conversation
or the burning onto paper with pen or pencil.
and yet they remain
scattered in heaps - unspoke - unwrit
to be kicked and scattered again
by whim or passion's unruly progeny
until, ground down beyond recognition,
the what of them is gone
leaving only an
"i was thinking..."

intensity

my brains feel like they are slowly trying to pour out from behind my eyes - the florescent lighting in the office is pressing down on my eyes which makes me want to close them so that my brains will stay in my head.

...now where was i with this education program outline...

i really don't want to be sitting at the computer any more

the tv is on in the next room but i don't think there is anyone watching it... just as well tv is evil... i have killed evil tv

i am tired and feeling very drained...physically and monetarily... i spent hours at the mall (mall is evil too) wedding shoe shopping. the worst of it was that i was suckered into buying insanely expensive tea in ridiculously large quantities ... after the first thrill of finding really good loose leaf tea wore off the reality of having spent a large portion of my small paycheck began to settle in...(this is the worst because i love tea and feeling bad about spending money at tea is not happy) *sigh* oh well tea is tea and it will be good and i will be able to share because i had to buy so much...

but now the weepies and kin are on pandora and and i have friendly glass of pinot noir beside me and lover in next room so life is looking better...

i did manage to find shoes. they are not really what i was looking for but they will do and they might even be high enough that i won't have to get dress hemmed... that would be good... i need to figure this out...perhaps i will do this when i go home tonight... guys have it so easy - all they have to do is go to a tux shop and find the right size. end of story. but the shoes put me one step closer to accomplishing my oct goal: my dress. still need to check on length and get bodice to fit...

next month's big goals are invitations and marriage prep.

i have list of things to do while in cali later this week:
-talk to caterer and figure out budget and menu
-talk to girlfriend (helen) doing flowers
-talk to dj (raab) for reception
-talk to hotel people (spi and bm) for guests
-see church hall for reception
-talk to choir director (john) about musics
-photo mission and hall
-see peoples!!!! (most important)
...but i really need to get all of the other things done too...without being arrested for grand theft auto... this might pose a challenge...

my da is getting married...everything is changing and feels so different... i feel different to myself... i'm not sure what to make of it all...

when i first stumbled upon these electronic pages they were as entrancing as any of my favorite books. one theme ran through them more frequently than others: that of wanting to leave, to just go somewhere anywhere, not here. at times i sympathized, sharing the author's frustration and cabin fever. sometimes i remonstrated saying that there was always something beautiful to be found around you where ever you were - it was just a matter of knowing how to look. and there were times it was my page that was bleeding the desire to fly, to have done and be gone.

i've lost track of everyone for a while making the excuse that things were busy or that the net connection was too slow or that i was trying to "get out and live in the real world". but that gives the lie to why i started writing in the first place...
i've begun again to read these pages again and the same themes are threading in and out between the lines on the screen. the desire for change. and now i look and see and know that desire and i am helpless.



i am so very far away - i feel so very far away.

more

so after having camera for quite a while now...I am finally going to put up pics... comments welcome...

note: i hate shoe shopping.

old green hills heat off blacktop breath of wind coming off the river caught amoung old buildings
music
peoples

he has long curly brown hair tied up in brown shoestring - has the sloping shoulder of a thinker - head tilt of one who listens to hear - bright blue eyes - full almost scruffy beard. the shoelace is caught on his shoulder, right above the shoulder blade. for some reason it caught my eye... on his feet are the fisherman sandals I somehow knew he would be wearing...

the tide of people in the tent ebbs and flows. it fills and empties the old metal folding chairs sponsored by some senator who from the look of the chairs should have retired from public office long ago...

black dress with red patterned dots - a bit of red lace at the hem and neckline. she is keeping time with the drumbeat, tapping her feet on the warm blacktop.

nora jones cover

pink and cream porcelain cheeks sticky with ice cream shared out of an over large cone with mother and older sis- blond hair pulled up and still escaping in wisps and waves - blue eyes with dark lashes.

hills swallow sounds down in the valley ridge after ridge rises leading the eye away far and away

A man who is 'ill-adjusted' to the world is always on the verge of finding himself. One who is adjusted to the world never finds himself, but gets to be a cabinet minister.
-Hermann Hesse, novelist, poet, Nobel laureate(1877-1962)

The day's have been cool for the middle of summer in DC - low humidity and filled with cool breezes. I have been lost in my reflections and reminiscences of last year. It's odd, I've been here a week and though it feels as though I've been back much longer I've seen no one but my fiance. I've been downtown once, to the memorials, and wandered around here in my corner of the neighbourhoodcity.

the air has been odd all week. it wants to rain - the trees and ground beg for the rain - and it does not come. the rains teased today, smattering and pattering the leaves and grass. but it would not rain. for long stretches of moments i feel as odd as the air, wanting to pour out something. but it will not come. so i sit and wait for it to come, to relieve...

20 May

The rearview mirrors gave perfect postcard presentations of the receeding senery. I peaked over and around Tasik's broad shoulders in effort to watch the road that was approaching, but that proved a more difficult task than watching the mirrors. As the familiar road flowed by I couldn't help but reflect on all of the times I had driven that road over the past four years. Watching the seasons change, the course of the stream and the road itself. It seemed fitting in a way that the road is finally open and unhindered by lights or extra stop signs, just in time for us to leave. But leave the way we found it - for the most part. As we passed other bikes most gave us the ubiquitous, knee-level, two fingered wave. I had to smile as we gave the correstoponding countersign. I'd passed countless bikers on that highway, always watched for the sign. Now on my last day as a resident of SoCal I am the one on the bike.

It's hot...much warmer than it should be in early May. The classical music playing behind me is being mixed with the sound of the fan that is trying to move the warm air around the small apt. The room is filled with late afternoon light, gradually becoming dimmer as the sun sets below the rooftops of the nearby buildings. I'm typing on a stolen computer and trying to argue the humor of Flannery O'Connor. This is proving rather more difficult than I would like - perhaps if I finish my glass of wine it will come more easily...

"I'll fight you on whether those stories are actually funny."
"They are actually funny."
"Are they actually funny or is it just the way you look at them?"

I was trying to say that she portrays the human condition - the humor of it along with its tragedy, patheticness, and pathos. I want to argue that she seems to say that humor is essentially part of life, whereas my friend says that the human condition has nothing funny about it, but the humor comes from the way you look at it.
Now granted there are somethings that are just not funny any way you look at them... but this is something different. I just can't quite put my finger on how...

right now I think I'd like some one else to take over my life; that way I could go off and do the things that I am really wanting to do. It feels like there is so much to be done, I don't even know where to start. I finally took care of getting the tires on my car looked at, but that was because Tasik took it in to someplace and came back and told me that if I didn't do something soon (ie before the next time I drove anywhere at all) I would end up with a blowout or two. So I got to cross that off my overstocked list. Perhaps at this point I just need the pressure of necessity to order things, that way I won't have to decide if it needs to be done sooner or later; it will just need to be done now.
*sigh*
I know, welcome to real life... I get it - but I don't have to like it.

I've been engaged in an ongoing battle with MSN messenger for the last hour and a half or so determined to stay online... It doesn't like me...

I find it ironic that I am drawn to chill, relaxed music to listen to when I want to complain about the seeming increase in the passage of days... Perhaps I am seeking a mean in the midst of it all.

It's friday at last - though the weeks never do seem to take up much time - and I am looking down a long week-end already becoming filled with "to-do's." I have a feeling of aliveness under my skin and it is quite nicely translating into thesis time (and productivity actually)... But I am still left with the feeling that I am losing something...what it is I can't quite say - and that is a good deal of the pain from the losing... It's almost like I am watching the people I love here slowly be drawn away from me, all of us being taken our separate ways...well, perhaps that is actually what it is. I am out of touch (more so than usual and that is saying something) and the distance will only grow with time...

I could say that it is part of growing up and leaving the proverbial nest, but I have given in too easily in the past and have lost too much as a consequence... now I just need to figure out what to do...

say a prayer for us when you have a spare moment

props to Sir Nicholai for the pics...

the random thoughts that class generates...

rain falling over fields - lines stretching out and away - line of earth in dull greens and blues - the falling rain coming down in lines of grey haze - imagining the feeling of openness all around while having clouds pressing down - the rain coming down...


why does beauty ache?

It rains!! I am happy - I've missed the fogs and the wet and the sent of cool damp air...

these fits of passion
possess and release my soul -
all at once feeling
too much to be expressed
then falling back exhausted, the embrace
gone
hollow and depleted, yearning to be content
creativity coming only in the evanescent
moments between rise and fall