::: a meditation on ecclesiastes 2 :::

v. 2> i said of laughter, "it is mad." and of pleasure, "what use is it?"
stages of laughter [from some journal of nursing]:
1. smile
2. smirk
3. grin
4. snicker
5. titter
6. giggle
7. chuckle
8. chortle
9. laugh
10. cackle
11. guffaw
12. howl
13. shriek
14. roar
15. convulse
16. die

"laughter is a form of letting go, which keeps you from getting dragged too far. laughter is a control issue. it is not your look that indicates how spiritual you are so much as your laughter. when we laugh at a situation, we are not avoiding it--it may be that we are admitting we cannot control it. our laughter indicates that we take God seriously and everything else, including ourselves, less seriously." --from laughing all the way

but a cheerful heart is good medicine. and i like laughing. tell me a joke?

[oh, and this isnt funny, but did you hear that the pope got the bird flu?]

v.3> i searched in my heart how to gratify my flesh with wine.

ok, the entire wine industry does not make any sense to me whatsosever. at work, we have these people come in and drink lots of alcoholic beverage. now, i dont really have a problem with alcohol consumption, as long as you dont get drunk, and you watch out for other people and all of those things. but if you want to have a glass of wine with dinner, knock yourself out. but what i dont understand is what justifies spending a thousand-plus dollars on it. like at work: say we have a party of 10 people come in.
10 people x $25-30 for the meal= $300.
+ 10 people x $ 7 for dessert= $70
+ 30%ish tip added to that= $115
----------------
$485 [plus tax]

and thats almost $500 right there but if they get any alcohol at all:
10 people x 5 glasses each x $8 dollars a glass = $400
or:
2 bottles of white wine x $36 + 2 bottle of sparkling wine x $80 + 3 bottles of red
wine x $90= $502
+ 10 people x 14 glasses of sundry liquor x $2.50 [average price? i have no idea about this.] = $35

----------------------------

$435 or $537
[plus alcohol tax]
+ $485

-------------------
$ 920 or $ 1022 [plus taxes]

this much is sure: i am not rich enough to drink alcoholic beverages.
you know, if i had an extra $500 laying around, i dont think my first instinct would be to buy alcohol with it. i mean really: i could buy a laptop [or half of one, if i do decide to get a mac]. i could buy 7/8 of a plane ticket to europe. i could go to new york city for a week or two. i could buy a lot of clothes, or shoes or books or movies or cds, and with a little more, i could buy a car. i could feed 164326728 children in africa for a month. there are a lot of things i would rather do with 500 dollars then get tipsy. maybe someone can explain the logic, because its really rather mind-boggeling for me. if that is how you spell boggeling, cause i dont think it is.

and you should see the stuff they drink! one description of this bottle of wine [and this is one of the more expensive bottles--its like $150] reads: blackberry and raspberry flavors, with hints of herbs, leather and earth" leather and earth?! i could blend my own blackberries and raspberries and add some dirt for a lot less than that. talk about gross. what would entice a person to drink that?
and then, theres the drunk thing, which is not actually appealing. on friday night at this wedding i was serving at, the mother of the bride threw up in the doorway of the womens bathroom. it was disgusting. and i didnt even clean it up. [ i dont do well with throw-up, you know.] and the bride was osovery drunk, too. when i get married, i want to actually be able to remember it, you know?
and then i have to worry about driving home, because i know that there were just 150 people at a wedding who are mostly drunk. and i dont want to die yet.

v.4> i made great works; i built houses.

"It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for you kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place." [--garden state]

i think most, if not all, people are homesick for a place that doesnt exist--at least on this planet at this time. we are not from this world, to paraphrase a friend [and probably a few other people.] but here we are. so: do we try to make the best of it--settle, if you will? [lots of people have told me to settle in these past few months. pretty sure thats not a good idea?] perhaps what we are looking for is right in front of our noses--we just have to stop or look long enough to see it. or do we keep looking? do we chase so hard after some thing, some place or ideal or time or person that will provide that feeling for us? i dont know; im inclined to think that it may be under our nose, if we stop to look for it, but we may have to move our nose around a little bit. cliche though it may be [and you know how i feel about cliches], i dont want to miss the trees for the forest. and i dont want to grow a wishbone where my backbone should be. [this is hard, sometimes, though.]

v. 7> i bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house.

the other monday, we went to abraham lincoln's museum and stuff, and it was pretty much cool. i dont have a terribly strong opinion on lincoln either way [i mean, i really do like lincoln and im sad he died and stuff, although he probably would have anyway, but we came home and my littlest sisters and i watched gone with the wind. we decided that we are both northerners and southerners.] but it was a really great museum. the weirdest part was the wax figures. do you remember the weirdest reading rainbow episode where they showed how they make lifesized wax figurines? it was weird. and one time when i was like 7, my cousin and i watched this infomercial-ish special on TV about hair implantation. and it was weird. and later, whenever i watched the reading rainbow episode, i thought of that hair implantion special, cause making wax figuring hair is a lot like implanting it into people's heads. actually, i think both my cousin and i were scarred from watching that. but anyway, this museum had a lot of wax figurines, including a really creepy one of john wilkes booth, but the people that worked there told my parents to keep such a bunch of pretty girls like all of us away from him because he was known to be a womanizer. but mother did make us take pictures beside the lincoln family figurines, because she is trying to document our life.
anyway, i remembered what a lovely writer abe was, and here is the end of his second inagural, which is almost the best of them all. [but really you should read the rest, too, especially if you never have. it makes me think about things, and its so very gracious]: yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so it must still be said: "the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
with malice toward none; with charity toward all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the light, let us strive on to finish the work we are in;...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."

v.16> seeing in the days to come, it will have been long forgotten

sometimes i am a mess [especially when im packing], i think and in the past few years [especially with moving back and forth from school so much] i have lost some things that i really rather not have lost. i lost a teddy bear that i have had since before i was born. i lost a picture that my mother started when she was my age, and i finished. --to name a noteable few. the art of losing isnt hard to master? oh, it is hard to master. i am a stuff person and i miss my stuff [!] and i dont like to use stationary, because i want to save it for sometime when i might really need it. and i dont want to wear those shoes today, because its raining.
but what im so-slowly learning is that who even cares? i can get more stationary--probably some that is better if i want to--and the other person will be so happy to get a note on a cute little card. and who cares about these shoes? when else am i going to where them? and if they get ruined, i might not have needed them in the first place [or, i could get more, whichever comes first.] and who cares if all my sisters eat all the cookie dough in the batch of cookies im making? its funner that way, and i dont have to fuss at them, and cookies taste better when lots of hands have been in the dough, im convinced. if im not there exactly 5 minutes before something starts, it will be alright. if i dont get to that load of laundry today, the world will not end. and while im sad about my bear and picture: my mother is still around, so theoretically we could make another picture. and since i keep stuff, i might still have that pattern for the picture, and we could make that one again. and my sweet little sisters got me a bear that looks just like the last one to stand in.
no use holding on to stuff too-too tightly. your hands get all cramped. and its a lot less pressury if you dont.

v.17> for all is...a striving after the wind--

down in the valley, valley so low
hang your head over, hear the wind blow
hear the wind blow, love, hear the wind blow
hang your head over, hear the wind blow


[ oh, and he caught it from his cardinals.]

Posted: 6/18/06 5.41 p.m.