Listening to the ...

Listening to the new Aimee Mann.She's awesome.When I first heard her many years after Voices Carry--I thought she was a little bland.But she has that effect of slowly and surely seeping into your soul.She makes me feel like leaning back in a comfy recliner and sipping on some good coffee with amaretto cream in it.She has this way of making you confront yourself without being down about it--just a simple confrontation.This weather is making my hair nice and straight.I LUUUUVE IT!!! Normally, I just let it dry back in a hairtie because if it dries when it's down it's always in that in-between curly and straight state.When the weather is cool and without humidity--it stays a lot straighter without much help:):) I know this is silly, but I'm sure some of you girls might know what I mean.So today was that blessed occasion again--LAUNDRY.Don't we just love those mundane tasks that take up so much of our time.Actually I don't mind cause I get to hang with my friend's chihuahua puppy.She is so cute.She is all tiny neck bites and energy for about 30 minutes and then she collapses in the crease of the couch all puppy-tuckered:):)It's the small pleasures that count:)Here's a good poem.It doesn't necessarily transport me--but it centers me.It's difficult to write it down because it's message is so tough to practice sometimes: To have without holdingLearning to love differently is hard,love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges,the cupboard unlocked, the windroaring and whimpering in the roomsrustling the sheets and snapping the blindsthat thwack like rubber bandsin an open palm.It hurts to love wide openstretching the muscles that feelas if they are made of wet plaster,then of blunt knives, thenof sharp knivesIt hurts to thwart the reflexesof grab, clutch, to love and letgo again and again.It pesters to rememberthe lover who is not in the bed,to hold back what is owed to the workthat gutters like a candle in a cavewithout air, to love consciously,conscientiously, concretely, constructively.I can't do it, you say it's killingme, but you thrive, you glowon the street like a neon raspberry,You float and sail, a helium balloonbright bachelor's button blue and bobbingon the cold and hot winds of our breath,as we make and unmake in passionatediastole and systole the rhythmof our unbound bonding, to haveand not to hold, to lovewith minimized malice, hungerand anger moment by moment balanced. --Marge Piercy--"To have and not to hold"--kinda makes you wonder if the concept of marriage as being the union of two souls was ever anything but a big fat cover-up for trying to posess that which you love.I know this could be considered a pessimistic line of thought--but oh well, can you tell me how making it "legal" would deepen the love between two people--or make it stronger??Why not let out actions speak for themselves by being present, by listening, by sticking by eachother, by being honest about who we are and what we need.Blah, blah, and big-blah....who cares!!! No need to get all introspective on a Sunday night:):) Little by little--I'm hoping I'll know more and get more comfortable in my own skin:)