Between Two Whiles

While I am never surprised to stumble upon a new restaurant in New York, I am continually amused by the relevance with which particular places waltz into my life.  This week I had the pleasure of dining and drinking with one of my dearest friends, Amara.  Unforeseen events, which shall remain unknown to the internet consciousness, spurred a last minute change of plans, necessitating a choice of restaurant other than the one I had tentatively planned for our order-in evening.  Ever the adventurer, Amara proved yet again to be a more skilled player in the where-to-eat-in-Manhattan-tonight game.  And, much to my delight and–as previously mentioned, amusement–we ended up at Moustache!

Yes, moustaches are just generally amusing, however, the word, the sight, the mere idea of one has tickled a particularly personal funny-bone of mine for about a month now.  My hirsute boyfriend, Jim, is now a week into the Movember campaign, after an entire month of thinking, linking, and indulging in not shaving.  ”Movember (the month formerly known as November) is a moustache growing charity event held during November each year that raises funds and awareness for men’s health.”  Check EnemyOfPeanuts daily to watch the moustaches of Jim Gibbons and his Movember ‘mo growing teammate Matt Lubicky grow, in effort to change the face of men’s health!  Together, as The Venerable Gentlemen…from Space, Jim and Matt have already raised over $550 and there are three weeks to go!

So, if you are a man, or you know and love men, click here and donate now!  And, why not click here and buy a Jim Gibbons original t-shirt to support The Venerable Gentlemen…from Space!  (All proceeds go toward the fundraising efforts!)

So…back to dinner at Moustache, now that you better understand just how perfect the choice was that lead me here–thanks Amara!

Moustaches, bringing together friends, food, and the fight against cancer!

Moustaches aside, I must say that this dinner (delicious middle eastern food and wine) was truly about love and friendship and the inexplicable passage of time.  I am blessed to have an intimate number of friends that represent the very best of what people can be in this world–an intimate number, and still more than I can imagine I deserve.  So let me, in the midst of this silly post, thank you each for your individual way of embodying love in its undeniable truth. I find silliness works its way into each of these unique incarnations, a statement by which I now hope to flow seamlessly into my own bit of silly fun…

Falafel, Fighting Cancer

With this fusion of all that “Moustache” now means to me, I leave you with this thought…

Don’t let these chickpeas outdo you!  Everyone knows that moustaches are chick-pleasers!  (No? Really bad?  Sorry…No, no I’m not.)  Go grow one and tell everyone who asks “Why?” why!  And send your spare change or awesomely generous gifts here!

Artifacts from my recent tree-gazing amblings.  

There are words for these images.  As of yet, they lie underfoot, twisted and full of refusal.  Reflected in their leafier and fruitful skyward counterparts, I am quite sure they must, at some time or another, ripen and fall.  Though I know not what they sound like, or how they feel on the tongue, there is a sort of contentment that comes with sitting underneath and upon them, capillarily responding to an unnamed certainty.  Experiencing the inexpressible.  

“Trees are living organisms comprised of three separate yet intimately connected parts.  Even without a sophisticated knowledge of the complex chemical interplay carried on via the capillaries of the trunk between roots buried in the ground and the branches and leaves that spread out far above them, the early human observer must have understood that each of the tree’s three general areas somehow needed the others for the whole to continue to flourish.”  Ptolemy Tomkins, This Trees Grows Out of Hell 

I have always been drawn to trees, and have happily looked at them with wonder without asking myself why.  My unchallenged fascination progressed to such a degree that I found myself in line at a bookstore to purchase a book based on the fact that it had “Tree” in the title.  (Before you snicker or mentally hurl some adage about books and judgement and covers, I must add that this lazy, impulse purchase was a raving success!)  Impulse, intuition, instinct, inkling–whatever you want to call it, I am glad I yield to it sometimes.  This book, Ptolemy Tompkins’ The Tree Grows Out of Hell, turns out to deal with the question I have been asking myself without actually asking it.  It combines history with mythology and a little theorizing, positing a perception of Mesoamerican culture with the tree as a cosmic cipher.  How cool, right!?  With another half to read, this is to be continued after I finish gathering nuggets!  But for now…TREES!

Roadtrip scenery

Last weekend, Jim whisked me away to Vermont in celebration of our one year anniversary.  (Knowing and loving me entails knowing that I love lush green landscapes populated by more trees than people–and loving such things too!)  I spent the first day absorbed with far too much awe to think of taking pictures.  However, as time grew nearer to that which would required our departure, I turned to the camera to assuage my fear of forgetting just how lovely land can be.  

More roadtrip scenery

"MY COWS!"

The constancy, firmness, stillness of mountains arrests me, moves me.  There is a different quality of consciousness at the intersection of movement and stillness.  Like the photographs above–taken from a quickly moving vehicle–even still moments, isolated from their place in a succession of those that make up an experience,  cannot but be filled with teeming movement.  There is movement in stillness and stillness in movement. 

Into this Universe, and Why not knowing
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing;
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.
Omar Khayyam XXIX

Up from Earth’s Centre through the Seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate,
And many a Knot unravel’d by the Road;
But not the Master-knot of Human Fate.
Omar Khayyam XXXI