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Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

T S Eliot, The Waste Land
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I like books. I like reading. I like reading books. It's wonderful how those all dovetail together so nicely.

I have a lot of books. Sometimes, when I run out of furniture, I build furniture out of books. A large plate or sheet of glass placed over a stack of books makes a lovely and functional endtable.

I especially like reading books about religion. Which works out well for me, as I'm going to be in school for a long time doing just that. My plan is to keep reading books about religion until someday I get to be so good at it that someone just decides to pay me for it. Let's hope...hey, it's worked for others before.

I also listen to a lot of music. Enough music that my extremely anal-retentive upstairs neighbor complains about it. If you like listening to music, enough so that you are bored with the standard tripe forced upon us by commercial radio stations, I have a few words for you: Peter Murphy. Loreena McKennitt. Gavin Friday. Tori Amos, Nightwish, Sheila Chandra, Curve, Garbage, Bauhaus, Bel Canto, Afro-Celt Sound System, Brother, Delerium (older stuff first), Ednaswap, Kate Bush, Coco de Mer, Melissa Auf der Mar, Fruit, Julee Cruise, Vanessa Daou, Dead Can Dance, Garmarna, Gravity Kills, Stabbing Westward, Hagalaz' Runedance, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Orbital, Oingo Boingo, Jocelyn Pook (a must-listen for all jaded music fans--try Flood first), Pussy Tourette, Robbie Robertson, Daniel Lanois, Gabrielle Roth, Sky Cries Mary, Vas. If you are still bored after all of that, I have only one thing to say to you: Go read a book.

If you need a book to read...well, I won't try to really start listing those. Just start with "Phantom" by Susan Kay, then move on to the Neil Gaiman collection. After that, Jane Eyre, because everyone should read that before they die. A few others would be "The Wiccan Path" by Rae Beth, "The Spiral Dance" or "The Earth Path" by Starhawk, and "Sweat your Prayers" by Gabrielle Roth. Excellent stuff for the spiritually independent-minded.

I will not bore you with other random facts about the mundanities of my life. My only other word to you: Live every day, every moment, from the fullest expression of your truest self. It's not a tidy system of morality, but it is by far the most beautiful. And, if you think that sounds too touchy-feely, give it a try for a day--you may find it's rather harder to be so honest with yourself than you might at first think.

Merry meet and merry part. Shanti.

PS--If you are looking at this page and you are wishing you could actually see more than a half dozen of my posts, friend me. I f-lock most of my posts because, well, the internet is a scary place. If I know you, I'll return the favor...if not, I probably will anyway. :-)

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