Rich Mind

Word of the Week

fris⋅son

NOUN /-ˈsõʊ̃z; Fr. -ˈsɔ̃/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [free-sohn; Fr. free-sawn-sohnz; Fr. -sawn]
. a sudden, passing sensation of excitement; a shudder of emotion; thrill.

Use: Seeing the man streak through the streets gave me a slight frisson that cascaded through my body. Thank you streaking man!


I first saw the word frisson used in an Anais Nin diary.

It's from the vintage French word, shiver (friçons). Oh that naughty Anais. She is well known for her tryst with Henry Miller's wife June (as well as a life long affair with provacauter Miller), however what's less known is that she wrote about some naughty with her father as an adult (I believe it was slight surrealist fantasy with the seeds of flirtatious truth). She was also legally married to two men (one on each coast, and one far younger than her) who never found out about each other until after her passing.

She often cited Djuna Barnes as a literary inspiration, when I was in NY last (best town for used books in the world) I picked up one of Djuna's books and can't wait to get my nose in it. In fact, I named my first jewelry collection "Djuna."

Monday Detox-sicle

Manic Mondays Post Debauchery Detox-sicle

"Pucker Up Parsley"

Juice 2 lemons
a handful of parsley

Juice, then immediately sling back. Hope to forget the barrels of naughty you committed the weekend previous.

Parsley is chock full of B vitamin (good for hangovers and energy replenishment), it contains three times as much vitamin C as oranges, and twice as much iron as spinach, Parsley contains volatile oils that have been found to inhibit tumor formation in animal studies, particularly those in the lungs (smokers, pars-it-up), Lemon juice is a great liver tonic, Ph balancer and a great potent aid to detoxing.

Going out on the lemon note, here's one of my fav poems.

Ode To The Lemon by Pablo Neruda

Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.

So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.

Burly

A big, burly samurai comes to a Zen master and says, “Tell me the nature of heaven and hell.”

The Zen master looks him in the face and says, “Why should I tell a scruffy, disgusting, miserable slob like you? A worm like you, do you think I should tell you anything?”

Consumed by rage, the samurai draws his sword and raises it to cut off the master’s head.

The Zen master says, “That’s hell.”

Instantly, the samurai understands that he has created his own hell—black and hot, filled with hatred, self-protection, anger, and resentment. He sees that he was so deep in hell that he was ready to kill someone. Tears fill his eyes as he puts his palms together to bow in gratitude for this insight.

The Zen master says, “That’s heaven.”

~ Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty:108 Teachings

for free audio zen teachings go here! you can also find on itunes
http://www.zencast.org/

We Love Mondays

Forgiveness is giving up all hope for a better past.

Stay tuned for the Monday detox-sicle and a new sketch of a devil in converse and a unitard. It had to happen. :*)

xo-Mo

Gogs

So the problem with having an 83 year old friend is that when she goes missing, incommunicado for a day or so, chances are she's landed back in the hospital. This is unlike my other friends who when I'm craving for a catch up and they have gone missing, usually meaning they are inconsolably hungover or camped out in a cave of love with a new captive.

Jacque, my "adopted grandma slash senior friend" has become a member of my inner circle. And that has nothing to do with the fact that she's a mean cook who loves to feed me. Sometimes her spirit is younger than mine and yet she's also an anchor as am I somehow to her. The kindest moment ever was when this road rager was about to go anger-epileptic on me because my car was blocking a driveway (selfishly sure, yeah sometimes I do think the world can pause button a mo' for me), yet as he was in mid-tirade about my life-threatening selfishness, she sweetly interrupted, unafraid of his lashing aggression, looked in his eyes and said, "she is the most unselfish woman you could ever know."

I'm sure there are compliments others pay me, unfortunately landing on sometimes def ears incapable of receiving compliments with grace, but that sweet arrow struck. And it melted a better part of the tough girl stuff in my heart. :*)

83 or 29, we live of borrowed time, tumbling towards our mysterious best by date. I'm not going to start a carpe diem pep session, I'm just saying, suck the plump nectar now. And be kind. To you and others. Some days we have the momentum to better the world and some days we are only able to better the day of another. This is enough. Start there.

Let's Take a Banking Moment

So let's get this straight. Regulators are paid by the people they are meant to regulate (OTS "regulating" AIG). That is simply amazing. And the Standard and Poor, the rating agency, gave AIG their highest rating of AAA deeming it an incredibly safe, recommendable investment.

A full, and actually edible, radio story on Ira Glass's This American Life on NPR is available. Episode link below.








http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=382

Wild Card Boxing Club

I went to the club a little later when they have boxers in the ring going rounds. I saw a female fight. One of them had the best smile, she's a force. Incredible. I'd love to fight her. She'd pummel me. One of the trainers asked if I wanted to do a round, he was either messing with me or overestimating me. By a lot. Those women have been doing it for 3 yrs, myself, 2 mo.

What I love about Manny Pacquaio is in his fight against Patton, he had a big, beaming smile on his face. For the biggest fights of our life, it pays to pack a smile. What is life worth otherwise?

xo mo