"They've messed with the wrong one now!"

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To read more about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, go here.
To read more about Rosa Parks, go here, or read her autobiography, Rosa Parks, My Story.
To see the story of the restoration of the bus, go here.
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"Don't think about getting off from work" (and I don't think he means my 9-5 job)

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my office window

The Sunrise Ruby


In the early morning hour,
just before dawn, lover and beloved wake
and take a drink of water.

She asks, Do you love me or yourself more?
Really, tell the absolute truth.

He says, There is nothing left of me.
I am like a ruby held up to the sunrise.
Is it still a stone, or a world
made of redness? It has no resistance
to sunlight. The ruby and the sunrise are one.
Be courageous and discipline yourself.

Work. Keep digging your well.
Don't think about getting off from work.
Submit to a daily practice.
Your loyalty to that is a ring on the door.

Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who's there.


- Rumi

So. What is "the work"? Somehow (apologies to non-American friends who don't follow our political soap operas) I don't think it's trashing and bashing Martha Coakley for being an idiot or Scott Brown for being the male version of Sarah Palin or John Edwards for being a slimy bastard, or any other number of my responses to the frustrations of the last week. Maybe Haiti has brought out the work in a lot of us. But I think that work is far away - as good as it is and present in my heart - and still not what Rumi is talking about. How to bring it closer to home? When he talks about lovers, is he talking about sexual love? I don't think so, even though that's the language he uses. You have to get even closer than that intimacy. He's talking about quarrying out divine love inside, through the rock of the ego. When I manage to dig, listen, knock, and see the joy look out, that's when I stop seeing the difference between me and someone else, when I stop saying in my head, "Oh I would so not have done what you just did." I can think I am so much better than a lot of people. But when I stop saying and feeling that, tension and exhaustion just disappear - becoming one, like the physical act of lovers, but on the inside.

This digging isn't for sainthood. It's not applying for doormat status. It's not la·di·da·ing oblivious to evil and stupidity. I think it's realizing that I am capable of everything I see behaved by humans - from the top of the chain to the bottom - as the parade goes by. Not seeing someone else as the other. That's the work. If it weren't hard, we'd all be there. But when you see joy look out to see who's there, it's ecstasy, and worth digging for again.

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friendship in a mobius strip

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The best most amazingly wonderful boss I ever had was a mathematics professor named Ed. Once he tore off a strip of paper, twisted it and then joined the ends to show me what a mobius (or moebius, or moëbius) strip is. In case you don't know, as I didn't, it's a surface with only one side. That's right, if you run your finger along any surface, you'll see that there is only one. It is one of those deliciously annoying impossibilities that tells me I can't be a scientist. I just can't get my head around it, and that bothers me. If I couldn't get my head around it and it didn't bother me, I might be scientist material. (You scientists are going to correct me now.) A mobius strip is also a non-orientable surface. If you want to understand that physical concept, try this. "Orientability is a mathematical property of surfaces in Euclidian space measuring whether or not it is possible to make a consistent choice of surface normal vector at every point dot dot dot"



Whatever. So this is a mobius strip bangle.

I have this friend, a person in authority and power. This is her bracelet, which I admired on her wrist. One day many months later, she publicly scolded me very vehemently over something I thought trivial, and I didn't deserve it. After that I had to seriously consider whether I wanted her to remain in my life as a friend. It took several days and a mini vision quest of sorts to really search out my heart about her and what had happened. I decided I did want her in my life, in spite of her sometimes abrasive ways. There are many things I love about her and our relationship, so I talked with her about it, we patched things up better than before, and a few months later she came for a gathering at my house on my birthday. She handed me a gift box, and when I opened it there was the bracelet. The significance of its twisting and single surface touched me as a symbol of our friendship, one that was pliable enough to go on after a rift that almost tore us apart.

I love it so much that if a fire broke out I would grab it with the photo albums, camera and the external hard drive with all my photographs - after making sure Don is out ok.



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