Favorite Parts of Today 5.21.12

My cello lesson, even though my vibrato still sucks. The notes are ringing more beautifully and my fingers know where to go sometimes without me having to tell them.
Harmonizing foghorns.
Sticking my bare hands in to a pot of hot sticky rice in a failed attempt to make onigiri. It all stuck to my palms and fingers, which is what made the rice balls not work, but was also the best part.
Standing outside my apartment looking at trees.
Setting up my tent in the living room.
Eating so many longan berries.

What were yours?

Favorite parts of today

Favorite parts of today:

My roommate making me strawberry peanut butter nuttela toast to thank me for cleaning the fridge.
Waking up to birds singing.
The part of Sweet Potato Bug that I play with my index finger walking up the D chord.
Finding the salsa I wanted at the grocery store.
Drinking water out of a big jar.
Sitting on my bed and reading.
Finding out a childhood friend is engaged and seeing her cute family photos.
Vacuuming my toenail clippings off my bedroom floor, finally.
Thinking about my sister and how despite everything, I love her so much.

What were yours?

Update from a little later:
Hearing that coyote outside my apartment.  My San Francisco apartment.

Drunken Beetle

Sweet Potato Bug
Sleeping in late again
You never ask for anything but to be loved
And the world offers itself to you.

Sweet Potato Bug
Staying up late again
Smiling you dance when you're drunk on the light of the moon
Like a beetle in a Hafiz poem

Finally, the beginning of a new song. It's been a while. This song may never get finished. I may scrap it by next week. But it's good to have a song happening. And thanks to Serra Sewitch who first introduced me to the Hafiz poem "What Should We Do About That Moon?"

Letter to Ira Glass and the Producers of This American Life

Regarding the Retraction Podcast


Dear Ira and producers of TAL,

Over the years, I've come to really love This American Life, and you Ira, in particular. I feel like I know you like a friend. A friend who is always telling me good stories and listening to others with compassion, and beginning sentences with "I feel..." and being open about how others see things and willing to really try to understand why they think the way they think. I feel that approaching others in this fashion builds bridges between people, which leads to peace. Inner peace, peace between people, world peace. Some kind of small piece of peace. This approach matters to me because this is a way of moving in the world I constantly strive for. And this is what makes me feel like you are my friend.

I just listened to the Retraction podcast (#460) and it has moved me to want to be there for you the way I am there for a friend going through a tough time. This has been the most moving episode of TAL that I've heard. Really.

When I was 16 or 17, I found out that ####### had been sexually molesting a number of my friends. When I confronted him about it, he twisted the story. He justified. He lied to me. The silences between your words and between Mike Daisey's words sounded to me like that day in that conversation, when ####### whom I loved and trusted, turned my world on it's head. I wanted to believe him. He also wanted to believe himself. He needed his version of the story to be true. And that made things even worse. 

In your voice, I could hear you wanting to believe Mike Daisey. Wanting him to just explain why he lied. I mean, you even said that. You went so far as to point out to him why it would be okay to admit it, giving him a very human reason why he may have chosen to lie. And he wouldn't do it. He needed his version of the story to be true. And that made it even worse. I am so sorry, Ira. I recognize that finding out someone lied to you in a journalistic sense and finding out ####### is a child molester are different in many ways. But I imagine you are sick over the possibility of your loss of credibility, an intangible thing it takes years to develop and can be broken in an instant. This is not so different from breaking someone's trust.

####### later admitted to me that it was true. This may be the main reason I've been able to reach the level of forgiveness I have. But today, a decade and a half later, I still don't completely believe anything he says. I hope so much that this doesn't make you less trusting of people on your show, less compassionate or willing to hear their stories. I hope you are still able to build bridges of sound and understanding between people. 

Maybe there are listeners out there who will be angry with you, who will trust you less. Who will like TAL less. I'm writing to let you know I'm not one of those. I am impressed at how you and the producers of TAL are handling this. I empathize with your fear, embarrassment, anger, broken trust and feelings of betrayal. I stand behind you. I still love and trust your show and the part of you that I know through the radio. I think even more now than before.

Thank you.

Diana Caplan

P.S. I donated $10 tonight, just to prove that I mean it. I know it's a small drop in your bucket, but it's enough to make me feel better about all the times I haven't donated to your pledge drives. 

P.P.S. If this email goes anywhere public, please just replace the parts that say "#######" or "#######" with "#######" or whatever. I will speak out against him in an instant (and have in the past) if I think he is still molesting kids. I honestly don't think he is right now though, so I don't want to mess up his life unnecessarily by going public with it again. Thanks.

Hummingbird nest over the trail.

Twin hummingbirds this morning in the nest over the trail. Waited until the mother bird came. Watched the feeding amazed her hummingbird beak didn't poke holes in their throats.

I Caught A Rat By The Tail Today

Journal entry from 2009:

I caught a rat by the tail today.  

Sorting through my things in the driveway, I heard rustling under the tarp. I looked and there it was. I thought it was a mouse. It wasn't very big, the size of a large chicken egg, big cute eyes, big cute ears, furry tail. Furry tail? Yes, furry tail. 

Reaching down I tried to grab it's cute tail but it moved. I then put my finger on it's tail and pinned it. I yanked my hand back, afraid it would turn and bite me. It ran off then. 

Later, I saw it again. This time I grabbed it. Holding it up by the tail I was suspecting it was sick. No way would a healthy rat mouse let me grab it twice like that. Just lean over and pick it up? 

Ma said it must be a kangaroo rat. That makes sense to me. It was way cuter than any house mouse or city rat. Holding her up, looking her over, I wasn't sure what to do next. Didn't want to just kill her. Didn't want to let her go in the field. If she was sick it was probably from rat poison, and anything that ate her would get sick, too. 

I ended up putting her in one of my plastic boxes with a dish of water and a piece of bread. She'll get better or die, then I'll let her go or throw her in the trash. She's dying though. Getting weaker. Laying sprawled, eyes closed, reacts less and less when I come near. She'll probably be dead in the morning. 

I never want to use rat poison. I'd rather use a trap than poison. What a terrible way to die. What a waste of life. What a terrible way to poison an ecosystem.

Epilogue: The rat was dead the next morning. I threw her in the trash. Later that day, in my mom's shed, I head rustling on the shelf. Another rat peeked it's head from behind a plastic tub, beautiful and alive. After briefly weighing pros and cons in my head, I pushed the box suddenly backwards, breaking the rat's neck against the wall. Threw the still beautiful dead rat in the field.

On Listening To My ipod In Spring

Sometimes the world has too much to say to just stop listening.