Look what I found...

Jaelyn's name in chinese:



and Addison's:



cool, huh? (click them for info)

phth

the great thing about that word is that you can say it longer than almost any other word with consonants.

give it a try.

and for those of you who don't know what phth is -- it's the feeling on your skin procured when rubbing cordury, velour, velvet, etc...

while velvet is high culture, velour -- low, they have been related by the larger family of how my brother daniel experiences them.

i, unlike my brother, like phth.

jaelyn, like me, except more, LOVES phth. (she has a bit of a heightened sense of texture, though. She won't hug me when I'm wearing wool sweaters and sport coats. occasionally, randomly, she'll disappear upstairs and bring me down an alternate sweater. Not at my bidding, mind you. Before i even remember how offended she is by wool -- scratch wool, particularly. I wonder if someone has heightened texture awareness as part of one's DNA code or whether it can be socialized. If its the later, Summer Barry is to blame -- she used to take McKenzie to fabric stores to close her eyes and feel the difference in the fabrics. Of course I was hooked -- seemed like a good way to develop the mystic sensibiliity -- so off went Jaelyn and I to the fabric store.)

daniel, abhors phth.

I have to agree with him in the rare case that anything in the phth family touches the skin that my freshly clipped fingernails reveal.

Yesterday I walked outside, overcast, warm, drizzly, and I said this day feels like Phth to me.

I'm thinking that not enough people embrace moderate weather. there's always a flurry of conversation around "sunshine." Well what's so great about sunshine? I think its a little too, too. Like Jim Carrey's "acting."

(which I hear is completely non-stylized in Eternal Sunshine -- which I can't wait to see this weekend, and already recommend based on the praises and critiques I've heard)

Let's hear it for the Grey! Let's hear it for the Rainy! Let's offer a gentle round of applause for the gentle patter of drizzle outside. The water is almost invisible, almost not there, but there, still.

Being a pisces, i'll plunge into any opportunity to move through water...no matter how thick or coherent it is.

And the more I think about it -- the more I think -- YEAH. That underwater sequence in The Graduate -- and then sampled in so many other great movies (particularly, laudably, Rushmore) is all about phth. and grey days. and beethoven's moonlight sonata -- played ppp.

my brothers are over on the Faces of Dave arguing about whether God knows everything or loves completely.

I prefer grey days.

scrolling headlines

this weekend the family quarantined ourselves into the house all weekend. Lynn had some kind of debilitating illness on Friday night and healed slowly and gradually across the weekend. Our limited range of motion made for a slower pace of life and more centered feeling in general.

i think my life has been so defined by workaholism and frenzied action that i feel guilty when my life is moving at a pace that i can almost keep up with.

i've said to a few people -- and should have (if I didn't) say it here -- that last semester, I felt like the question every day was not "would i disappoint someone today?" it was -- "who would feel betrayed by me? and how egregious would that betrayal feel?"

I know I'm still a bit disappointing this semester, but less so. besides, i've got to at least *seem* human so that people don't feel too overwhelmed by me...

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Jaelyn is transitioning from "good nights" to all-night-sleeping-with-panties. This means that I'm waking up once or twice a night to carry her into the bathroom, helping her onto the toilet and then cuddling her back into the warmth of her bed.

There's something overwhelmingly beautiful and wonderful about the whole thing.

It seems like all aspects of waste production / removal / management. Should be the most awful part of parenting. But I think that right now -- with Jae turning into such a little girl -- shedding all the last vestiges of baby-hood -- that fragility is dear. I feel the timeless ache which binds me backward into the fabric of her being during these midnight forays. This person! (I feel in the darkness of the bathroom) I am bound to this person forever, by love!! She's almost too heavy to carry easily now, but the weight of her body and the way she burrows a cuddle into my shoulder as I stumble back toward her room, makes me feel like the very quiet smile of the universe is shaped exactly like the short walk from the bathroom to the bedroom in this creaky, beautiful old house.

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i watched the news last night.

Is it true that there are people who still conflate the "War on Terrorism" with the "War on Iraq?"

This blog is mostly not a political diatribe, but last night I heard a soldier's family saying that he died in the "war on terrorism." He was a victim of mortar fire in Iraq. I am pained and saddened by all of the deaths in Iraq...

I am enraged though, that our president has chosen to name the problem with terrorism with a rhetorical move "War on..." which annoints more violence in response to violence. Are the limitations of our language / our culture? So rooted in a notion of us / them that we can only imagine the flourishing of democracy premised upon a jihad of our own.

Ugh.

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snow - sun - snow - sun - rain - snow - sun - rain - sun.

This morning it is sun, but the weather, these days, has multiple personality disorder.

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Christian said in the early days of the backburner that he admired my choice to have one blog to deal with family / friends / politics / work / ideas / theory.

Well, Christian, maybe you didn't quite say *all* of that.

So anyway, lately I've been feeling the tension of multiple audiences / diverse friends / complicated identity / multiple - back - burner - interests.

And these tensions all exist in my life world -- but it feels odd to have feelings re-performed in the act of publication.

.............................

I finished three ten minute plays in the last two weeks. I'm going to host a reading at my house soon to try to "workshop" them.

I love these shorter forms of publication, but long to have FINISHED a play or a movie of more length / substance / gravity.

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i'm obsessed with the sauces in indian food right now.

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great _alias_ episode, last night, eh? i'm of the strong opinion that J.J. Abrams had to spend the first half of the season reconstructing a new rock and hard place within which he could employ the formula we know and love so well.

~peace...