I fought the blog

and the blog won. I fought the blog and the blog won....

Finally took the blog down three weeks ago! And lo, here it is again. Dern thing. I'll spare you the uninspiring details of internal and interpersonal angst, and suffice to say that I'm sorry for yanking this away without any sort of goodbye. In the future, when I feel complete with it, I'll just leave it up here. O! My kitty's home! Alabaster just arrived at the door.... ok I'm back. He didn't come home last night. Steve and I called for him, but he was busy with his late night kitty escapades, which sometimes include eating mice whole and regurgitating them whole- all wet and ratty- on our doorstep. I love you, Alabaster! He's like a little black lion with his great fuzzy flag of a tail. He just presently finished eating in the other room and came beside me and yelled out some meows and rolled on his back. So I rubbed his belly. He likes to know he's adored. I mean, who doesn't! He just went into the kitchen to talk to Steve. Now he's back at my feet squinting his eyes and purring. It's very difficult to write when the kitty is such a lovey beast. Anyway! Anyway! I'm sure there was some sort of important point to make here, unlikely as it may seem.

Hmm. Well, no, no there doesn't seem to be a point. But if I do find one...

o wait. Yes now I remember! Read some of a book, Illuminations, that I wanted to share with you by a Frenchman named Rimbaud. The name "Rimbaud" was chiseled high into a stone pillar inside the pyramid of Luxor about a hundred years ago, though not by him- he never went to Egypt. Here's one small bit from the book:

From ILLUMINATIONS

"The sight of him, the sight! and the old boot-licking and the penalties null and void when he comes.
His day! the abolition of all blatant and restless sufferings in music more intense.
His step! migrations more far-ranging than the invasions of early times.
O he and us! pride more largehearted than lost charities.
O world! and the clear sound of up-to-date adversities.
He's known to all of us and has loved us all: let's, this winter night, from Cape to Cape, from uproarious pole to the castle, from the crowd to the beach, from look to look, our energies at low ebb, announce him and see him, and send him on his way, and down under tides and high in deserts of snow, go after his sight- his breath- his body- his day-"

This from the notes in the back of the book:
The real poet, he writes to Paul Demeney, "Makes himself a seer by a long, immense, and reasoned derangement of all the senses." in order to become the instrument of higher powers that long to speak through him. The poet can transfigure the drab "real" world into the paradise that shimmers, precariously, right under the skin of mere brute appearances. This is what Rimbaud means by "illuminations." An "illuminist" is a person who can transmit light because he enjoys and possesses light himself. Rimbaud knew that occultists have always taken the sun to be the symbol of universal creative energy. Swedenborg says that God appears in the heavens as the sun because he is the Divine Love by which all things of the spirit exist, just as by means of this solar light all natural things exist. When a seer has transformed himself into pure light and has placed his own mortal will in direct touch with the voice-tones of divinity, his words will be magically transmuted into a luminous new kind of language that will change life itself! His powers are now unlimited because he has become one with divinity. He's now a creator in his own right....the first duty of man, according to Levi, is to perceive full the significance of what he's able to experience and to utter (to "utter" is to "make outer") Then humanity will glow in the dark like stars and angels. That's the burden Rimabaud was laying... in Illumination: "I'd made a vow, in absolute sincerity, to bring him back again to his primitive state of son of the Sun."

And from Adi Da:
"This is not a place of comforting. Only those who realize that are fit to love here."

Steve and I are going to give it a go anyway. We married each other! It was just completely fantastic in all the ways that wonderful is. Our friends and family were here (o happy day!) and we danced and sang songs and ate cupcakes and smoked a peace pipe. Here's Aly the beautiful flower...






And I had to include this picture from Steve's Bachelor party. Before they left in the RV headed for Massachusetts, Steve and the guys were all raucous and rowdy. I heard a bunch of times, "Hey what happens at the bachelor party stays at the bachelor party!" "Yeah!" "Yeah!" accompanied by chest thumping and tough guy walks and all that. Steve got home really late that night, and in the morning when he woke up I asked him as he was fresh from sleep, "Did you have a good time?"

As he opened his sparkly eyes cozy in his pillow he said, "Yeah! We went to the spring and drank so much water and then when we picked up Ryan at the farm, Sarah fed us all blueberries and vanilla ice cream!"