It's Kwanzaa Time!!

Happy Kwanzaa!
Today is the first day of Kwanzaa (Umoja / unity). I am spending the day doing quiet, deep contemplation and reflection. I am thinking about the ingredients that make for quality and meaningful interactions with other humans including peace, love, and integrity. Of course, I'm thinking about and channeling good, warm Kwanzaa vibes a very special someone.

Symbols of Kwanzaa: Mkeka (mat), Kinara (candle hlder), Muhindi (ear of corn),
MishumaaSaba (seven candles), Kikombe cha Umoja (unity cup), Zawadi (gifts)

Kwanzaa also builds upon the five fundamental activities of Continental African first-fruits rituals, which are as follows:

Ingathering: A time of ingathering of the people...of family, friends and community...in order to reaffirm the bonds between them.

Reverence: A time of special reverence for the creator and creation in thanks and respect for the blessings, bountifulness and beauty of creation.

Commemoration: A time for commemoration of the past in pursuit of its lessons and in honor of its models of human excellence...the ancestors...all the people and actions that have come before.

Recommitment: A time of recommitment to the highest cultural ideals...both personal and communal...in an ongoing effort to always bring forth the best of African cultural thought and practice.

Celebration: A time for celebration of the good...the good life and of existence itself...the good of family, community and culture...the good of the awesome and the ordinary...in other words, a celebration of the good in all its manifestations on the Earth.

It's Kwanzaa Time anthem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGR1963aezY

Talk About Traditions

It's Christmas Day and it's the first that I've spent away from my immediate family. By this time we're usually either making our rounds to the homes of relatives or taking calls from friends and family while we nest on the couch in front of a Christmas movie.

This year, I'm doing the same thing at my aunt and uncle's in San Diego. We've just said our goodbyes to a few visitors who popped in to spend an hour with us before heading off to their next family destination. The fireplace is blazing (even though its 60 degrees outside) and we've got our movie queued up for an afternoon matinee at home. We had pancakes this morning and now the snacks are out and accessible for snacking: various cheeses and crackers, sparkling ales, and of course, copious amounts of little chocolates. Sometimes on big holidays when you're keeping it low key at home, there's always a lull between morning activities (breakfast, talking with family on the phone, and gifting by the tree) and evening activities (a nice family dinner, a movie at the theater, caroling or lights festivals, ice skating or whatever else it is you do.) So, spending the time in close proximity to family has always been our go-to, whatever we do, wherever we are. Together.

Lately, I've been thinking about the value of traditions and how wonderful it is to have a habit unique to you and yours this time of year. For me, I've always looked forward to the holiday because it's a time I get to spend with family doing the things we love to do: eat, laugh, sing, play games, visit with extended family and make things festive. Family traditions are the pinnacle of closeness and I love finding creative ways to get closer together and have fun! This morning, I made the most delightful pancakes you've ever tasted and I think those will be back next year, for sure! I've been reading and exploring other people's traditions and found a few others that I think are really great:

• Making special ornaments for everyone in your family for Christmas and/or Kwanzaa.
• Enjoying a very casual Christmas Eve meal with friends like homemade pizza or chinese food.
• Having people over on Christmas day for a friend and family potluck.
• Agreeing that everyone makes one handmade gift for someone else.
• Reading holiday stories to the kids (big and small) at home.
• Spending time outside in the snow the day after Christmas (or making a trip to it if it's not right outside) for skiing or just to make snow angels, forts, and castles.
• Gifting funny slippers or pajamas.
• A champagne toast on Christmas Eve paired with something savory and sweet.

What are you favorite traditions?

p.s-- I'm looking forward to making them with you, Lasana Kazembe.


Merry Christmas and Happy Kwanzaa!

xo

Miracles

"It is a miracle if you can find true friends, and it is a miracle if you have enough food to eat, and it is a miracle if you get to spend your days and evenings doing whatever it is you like to do, and the holiday season—like all the other seasons—is a good time not only to tell stories of miracles, but to think about the miracles in your own life, and to be grateful for them." —Lemony Snicket, The Lump of Coal

The Person I'm Going To Marry

Success

It's precisely how I thought it would come along vs. how I feel getting there. Lasana is older and wiser, so this is probably a good laugh for him. I, however, have really been struggling with accepting that everything is not completely effortless nor can it always appear that way. 

I guess the squiggles are much more interesting when you look at them on paper. The picture resembles how I used to draw scrambled eggs, a head of curls, or popcorn in my primary years. Now those turns, and bends and curves are real life changes and all the uncertainties that come along with them. At times, it's completely confusing, frustrating and sometimes dismantles confidence. Little "wins" in life give me a boost. Like being asked to lead on a project at work, making the most perfect homemade muesli in my electric oven, nailing every piece of choreography in dance class after only seeing my dance instructor (who danced professionally for 20 years) do it once, getting through an entire hot yoga class without losing my breath or getting sweaty...

Easy to see the problem here when fingers hit the keypad. When I become skilled at something, suddenly I expect that I should be able to do and finish with perfection beyond human capability. Just one too many impossible expectations. Going to have to work on cutting some of those out and embracing the squiggles and color outside the line. Possibly even getting comfortable with doing it intentionally. Gulp!

image credit: demetri martin

Raining in Chicago

Lasana just sent me a note that said:

"It's raining in Chicago...

Dreary rain. Falling out of an endless expanse of gray sky. There are intermittent white holes of light scattered around. The whole thing looks like a gigantic silver and pale blue tarp that is faded and devoid of life."

Poets are always taking the weather so personally :)

I'm used to reporting the same thing from Portland but it's surprising sunny and clear today. Rain serves me best when I'm curled up in bed. I get my rain on demand here.


photo: weheartit

Wuthering Heights

In Wuthering Heights (a film adapted from the classic novel by Emily Bronte) a poor boy of unknown origins is rescued from poverty and taken in by the Earnshaw family. There him and his new foster sister, Cathy develop an intense and agonizing relationship that breaks and tries to reconvene completely vain and all too late.

I have never read the original book, but the new film released on the big screen this year apparently adds more twists to the already convoluted plot. Certainly the 1847 novel  a romance. Heathcliff and Cathy, raised as adopted siblings, fall in love but are torn apart by their agonized passion and a jealous brother, Hindley. They find solace on the desolate moors, but Cathy’s marriage to a wealthy neighbor, Edgar, turns Heathcliff bitter, and he disappears for years, returning a rich man but reconnecting too late, as Cathy dies after giving birth to a daughter. However, in the original story, Heathcliff was not a black man.

Heathcliff in this case is played by the actor James Howson, perhaps a reflection of scholarly arguments that Brontë was writing about race and class in addition to sexual inequality and the dangers of revenge. With such a complex plot, not to mention hundreds of pages of period language and social norms, I wonder what challenges the screenwriters had developing dialogue and characterization for the new Heathcliff.

Fascinating!

On pleasure...

    

Then a hermit, who visited the city once a year, came forth and said, "Speak to us of Pleasure."
      And he answered, saying:
      Pleasure is a freedom song,
      But it is not freedom.
      It is the blossoming of your desires,
      But it is not their fruit.
      It is a depth calling unto a height,
      But it is not the deep nor the high.
      It is the caged taking wing,
      But it is not space encompassed.
      Ay, in very truth, pleasure is a freedom-song.
      And I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart; yet I would not have you lose your hearts in the singing.
      Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all, and they are judged and rebuked.
      I would not judge nor rebuke them. I would have them seek.
      For they shall find pleasure, but not her alone:
      Seven are her sisters, and the least of them is more beautiful than pleasure.
      Have you not heard of the man who was digging in the earth for roots and found a treasure?
      And some of your elders remember pleasures with regret like wrongs committed in drunkenness.
      But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement.
      They should remember their pleasures with gratitude, as they would the harvest of a summer.
      Yet if it comforts them to regret, let them be comforted.
      And there are among you those who are neither young to seek nor old to remember;
      And in their fear of seeking and remembering they shun all pleasures, lest they neglect the spirit or offend against it.
      But even in their foregoing is their pleasure.
      And thus they too find a treasure though they dig for roots with quivering hands.
      But tell me, who is he that can offend the spirit?
      Shall the nightingale offend the stillness of the night, or the firefly the stars?
      And shall your flame or your smoke burden the wind?
      Think you the spirit is a still pool which you can trouble with a staff?
      Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being.
      Who knows but that which seems omitted today, waits for tomorrow?
      Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived. And your body is the harp of your soul,
      And it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.
      And now you ask in your heart, "How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?"
      Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
      But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
      For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
      And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
      And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.
      People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees. 

Words by the prophet, Khalil Gibran.

Love in the stacks

Lasana and I are both book worms. He loves history and poetry. He also has a massive personal collection of scholarly reads. I have a thing for cookbooks and autobiographies. Right now, this book is dog-eared on my nightstand. Libraries can be such mystical and adventurous places to discover something new. It's even a good place for a date. These libraries are astoundingly beautiful and so inspiring. Could you imagine roaming through the aisles, fingering the spines of the books in these places?

-->                             The Astronomy Library of the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, displays also some historical instruments. 

 

--> The Royal library Black Diamond at the waterfront of Copenhagen owes its name to the black granite 

from Zimbabwe used for the facade of the building. 

 Sendai Mediatheque, designed by Toyo Ito, Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan

Library of Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt [via]

More bizarre libraries here and here. 

Synchrony, Sounds, Sights

Synchrony
It is important for you and your mate to be on the same page. Years ago I encountered this book titled "The 5 Love Languages." Essentially, the book describes the different ways in which men and women communicate. Like any guy encountering this "type" of literature I was hesitant to open the book. In fact, it sat on my shelf for months before I even read the back cover.

Fast forward. I have developed (I think) a better appreciation for communication and this concept of "working on one's relationship." There are real and serious benefits to be gained by "happening to" to your relationship as opposed to simply letting your relationship happen to you.

Sounds
I am a HUGE jazz fan. Everyone who knows me knows this. Just stumbled upon "The Heart Speaks," a smokin' jazz album by Terence Blanchard. Essentially, it's a jazz+samba+soul fusion. Great, great stuff with lots of subtleties and sultry sweetness.

Sights

Let's get back to Black!