by Diane Tate

The attraction of Crazy Beasties!

In December 1995 I went camping in Baja, California with two guys. Well, really, it was with Steve, and we corralled another guy into going with us to be an official chaperone.* Anyway, one thing we had to do before embarking was procure a means of transport to get us from San Francisco allllll the way down to the tip: Cabo San Lucas.

Steve – who grew up on a farm fixing cars – settled on a 1975 Chevy Blazer, with great joy because he got to work on it a lot before we left. And a lot during our trip. This labor – and these images – will all help you grasp why it soon became lovingly known to us as The Beast: it was The Beast’s very ugliness and unwieldiness that made her so attractive and beloved to us.

Lest you think I exaggerate, you should know that we nearly died in The Beast on one climactic night when Steve and our chaperone got into an altercation. When the argument subsided, we continued down the dicey Mexican “highway” in quiet tension, leading us to nearly snap when an unruly truck careened at us in the opposite direction, leaving us no recourse but to veer off the road. The drama made us appreciate our hobbling, graceless Beast (which somehow kept us whole) on an entirely new level. When I was charged with driving Her home after Steve had to fly back for a business meeting, my love grew all the more as she yawed the entire way back up the 101 (I say this now, of course…15 years later and indelibly marked by Her image every time I in fact hear or use the word “yaw”).

To this day, the ugly, unwieldy and beastly still hold a crazy kind of pull for me. Is it because I so want to redeem the beauty that I insist simply *must* lie within…some sort of savior complex?

I dunno. But I still love beasts. Lord help me!

My latest Beast spotting tonight in the Mission: isn’t she just *beautiful*??
* this had its own unfortunate end that requires a whole other side story…ahh, if only we blogged back then…

Mint | Free, Simple Personal Finance Software
by Diane Tate

Self I-Don’t-Care

I’m always kind of surprised when I hear people talk about how they need to “take better care” of themselves. That’s never been a challenge for me, who finds it second nature to get:
* Lots of endorphins,
* Quality time with people, with deep belly laughs.
* Quality time alone.
* Gourmet dark chocolate.

…all on a regular basis.

And when the external stressors ramp up, so do I. It’s during these times that I also get:
* More endorphins (plus some vitamin D on top).
* More time with people…but more selectively.
* More time alone….with deep belly tears.
* More spontaneity.*

I’d like to propose that it was this last thing – you know, that spontaneity which permits us to exercise our entitled sense of freedom – that led me to the 280 instead of the 101 to meet a friend at a restaurant located just off the…101…

After rerouting significantly, I managed to get there about 25 minutes late. You can just blame it on the inherent beauty and pull of the 280….all part of my “self care!”

‘Cuz I mean really: selfishness is *so* unenlightened!

* dark chocolate remains a constant

Mint | Free, Simple Personal Finance Software
by Diane Tate

Hierarchy of Holy days

I’ve always contended (well, since I was about 20) that Easter just blows away Christmas. It’s a no-brainer: the Triumph clearly trumps the Entry. But within Easter weekend (thus excepting Palm Sunday the week prior), we have a range of options to contemplate, and within these, Holy Saturday comes out first for me.

Not that the other days – Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday – are chopped livah:

  • Maundy Thursday provides the chance to wonder at how Christ revolutionized the Passover, or deliverance from servitude which, until that point, had most poignantly been instantiated in the Exodus story. By offering Himself as the ultimate sacrifice, He democratized and internalized this redemption for everyone beyond my peeps.
  • Good Friday is an important moment to ponder the gritty, real sacrifice made by Christ. The pain, agony, separation and acute trial He endured purely out of love, wholly undeserved.
  • Easter Sunday is a party: a grand celebration where we can take heart that death has been overcome, the victory sealed, and we simply wait until the full implications of this attained victory fill in.

….but Holy Saturday is beautiful and heartening in its very silence. The unfolding of Thursday and drama of Friday are over, and the closure of Sunday not at all a certainty. Instead, it’s a time in the gap…a time of waiting…a time where we must choose to trust and believe, in the midst of no circumstances or actions around us validating that choice.

Thus, Holy Saturday is the most like life as we live it today: we trust and believe that something dramatic and important has happened…and completion WILL happen…but right now, we live in the in-between. The silence. The ambiguity, where we simply must choose to believe despite signals around us which conflict – or simply don’t send us anything at all.

For me, the choice to believe is a no-brainer because the alternative – a life without hope, purpose, direction or redemption – is not really a life at all, but an animalistic, nihilistic bumbling about, hoping to attain enough pleasure or numbness to cover up this sad, broken, desolate alternative reality that is so unacceptable …because it simply is not The Reality. We struggle with it because we weren’t made for it.

So I will choose to believe on this Holy Saturday, and in this life, of the in-between. Because I really have no choice.


What does the Speck-ster Bunny think?
Mint | Free, Simple Personal Finance Software