And…a new random obsession for a kitsune….

I am once again enthralled by cute things.  This time in the form of Bento boxes.

Already my Ravyn and a Bunny have had to suffer through my sending them links upon links to bento related thingies!

Sometime after the holidays I will likely get a pair of bento boxes (one for me to take to work, one for mom to take to work) and thus I can eat more tasty diet foods.  More likely than not I will get the Laptop Lunches ones, which seem to be the superfunctional and not overly cute (amusing as it could be to pack my mother lunch in a Hello Kitty bento box), and they sell replacement inner parts for when I inevitably lose some or want to pack a couple up ahead of time with leftovers.  Of course, the internet is full of cute bento boxes – some of which cater to my cherry blossom obsession.  People, there are even chopsticks catering to my cherry blossom obsession!

So now when I win the lottery and have my very own commune, I will ALSO be making lunches for all my people to take away with them.  In addition to the soap making, jewelery making, and vodoun charms.  As long as I don’t get these things mixed up, everyone should be fine.  But I can’t pick up many more cute hobbies or I will not have time for my hookah.  And not having time for a hookah would be a tragedy.  Flavored tobacco for the win!

Should I get these boxes, I will update you with the pictures!  For now, I will leave you some links to fun/cute things.

Lunch In A Box! –  A fun blog with many links and pictures.  Load of tips and recipes.  Focuses on quick rather than time-consuming cute, so excellent for the kind of things to pack every day.  (Also – she has instructions for a relatively simple-looking apple bunny!)

Cooking Cute – Although this blog seems not to update frequently (like I can talk), it has a huge amount of resources and information on it.

Kitchen Cow – Full of pictures!  With BEEF STROGANOFF in a bento box!  (There is even a recipe for the stroganoff!)  However, all that really needs to be said for this site is this “zombie rising from the grave bento for the win!“

Happy New Year!

So…this is the first I’ve been back to a computer since the champagne and New Year’s kisses!  New Year’s this year was excellent – low drama, lots of fun, many drinks, and much love.

The East Coast most definitely feels like home.  I want to drive to New York, but I know there’s no time for that.  Still…coming here is like coming home.

When I return to the Land of Loud Birds I will write you more.

and sometimes also

And sometimes also that cotton candy soul tearing will happen.  But life will still be indescribably beautiful.  Even while you’re crying, trying simultaneously to listen to your ex-fiancee breathing and hang up the phone.

And get over the fact that you just responded to “tell me a story” with the plot synopsis of Chill Out Scooby-Doo!.

Or the fact that you’re still in love with him.

Falling in love with more than one person at once is not as easy as it looks – it is both a thousand times more complicated and a thousand times more simple.  It is a raindrop falling into the ocean and a fractal pattern of light and an unending number kinda thing like Pi.  Strawberry.  Strawberry Pi.

sometimes

Sometimes, I remember that love can wash the colors in the sunset clean.

I bought rose-colored glasses.

I have orchids that are pink, and a toe-ring that is a heart shot through with an arrow.

I am in love with such depth that it could tear my soul apart like cotton candy. Instead, love makes the world seem suddenly infinitely more precious.

This.

This is why I live.  Even now, when I can hardly remember who I am, this reminds me.

I am in love. It’s all been worth it. It all will be.

in which I come home by going to the market

As always, walking through the market makes me whole again. This market was the Hilo Farmers’ Market and was complimented by a stroll along the Bayfront shops. The first stop of real interest (defined as where I bought something) was the tobacco shop where I found cloves (Djarum Blacks) and while looking for those found something else from Djarum (do they make things I don’t like? Not that I’ve ever tasted!) Spice Islands Cigarillos (baby cigars!). I have never had a baby cigar (or even a grown up cigar) but Jason likes cigars and I hear generally good things. However, I would have to try to come up with a way to not look like a goof with a cigar grown up enough to have babies. These tiny cigars that smell like clove and vanilla and lust just might be my compromise.

After the tobacco shop (Where I got carded! People – I’m 26!) I proceeded to the the market by way of about four other shops. I saw some gorgeous coffee and tea sets (I am a home things addict and I want a nest! Now! My baby clock has confused itself with the countdown timer on a bomb!) which I passed only because I both had not enough money with me and had nowhere to keep them.

At the market, everyone wanted me to come see their things! If I keep walking, I’m not buying, and they have this habit of meeting my eyes. This is my undoing. I HAVE to acknowledge everyone who meets my eyes. I look. They look. I smile. They smile. I nod. They say hi. Now it’s escalated and I’ve already had to stop walking so I might as well look at their stuff. I deliberately carry under $40.00 to the market, because if I carried $4,000.00 I would still spend it all. I am in love with all things handmade, set in silver, made of Thai silk, or offered by a real human being and not a full on advertising campaign. I cry when tiny, locally owned stores are bulldozed for Walmarts.

This time at the market I got delicious soap in vanilla (Gentle Earth Vanilla) which is heavenly. I also got orchid soap, which smells amazing. If you need soaps….check these people out! The only way they could be better is if they also had chocolate soap. Which I will suggest next I see them. Yes – see! Because I met the person who makes the soap. She smiled at me. Clearly her soap would smile if it could! Fox, you say, this is no way to judge soap. To which I can only respond, this soap is fantastic, just like I knew it would be.

I also picked up a chocolate scented orchid. This is also like heaven.

There was a time I loved floral scents, but lately, this last year or so, it’s vanilla, chocolate, and spice. That’s what I want to smell like. That is what I want people to remember me when they smell. Smell is very linked to memory. Strawberries and champagne is not me. Please god, let people not associate me with freesia (which scent I wore for years as a teenager, actually). I want to be rum and death by chocolate mousse. Vanilla. I’ll take Grand Marnier.

Hello universe. I think that your fox has come home to you.

Sundays are also for the Makuu Market

if I had it
I would give you the world and all of the stars
nowhere else makes me feel beautiful
the careless smiles I get here
are not the same
as the triumphant leer of the men who buy me drinks
then try to take me to their beds
which I will leave in the morning with nothing more than what I came with
hollow and sad
as the walls which do not cradle homes
only furniture
walking through this market
feels like coming home
as if the colors and the gravel and the sky can cradle
what the shells of apartments and houses cannot
I can feel the leaves of orchids and rows of Thai silk
reach out to touch the bananas and the old books
who throw spiderwebs of their souls out to
jewelry and crepes and honey and soap
offering to hold the world
offering to hold me
though I know that the closest I will come to that promise
is the brush of fingers
as I pay for orchids and honey
the artwork and the silk and the jewels
that I wrap around me like a quilt to keep out the dark

Walking through the open air market always feels like coming home. This time before the market, we stopped at Sirius Coffee where the same man as last time made my coffee, and I swear that somehow he puts love in it. Or maybe that’s the extra chocolate. This time when I asked for a small mocha after contemplating, he negated that decision with a “how can more chocolate and more whipped cream be wrong?” He wins. I love that place. It has an internet cafe kinda thing, and one day I may go there to write to you, where I can have many mochas. If anyone reading this makes it to Pahoa and does not go in for coffee (and to read the many, many bits of paper and stickers on the counter) you are missing something you should have had. If you never make it to Pahoa, you are doing the same, but more understandably so. I understand that not everyone will fly to the islands, though much like Fuji, it is something I cannot imagine living without. There are some things, some places, that add a kind of richness to the world. I have cherished all of them I have found, though I have found few of them.

Today there were people to say hello to, people who are starting to know me. I was not going to buy honey, but my honey seller (there are two and I only buy from one – he charmed me and I think he may charm bees) had honey sticks! I still had honey for both the altar and the kitchen (and for my Ravyn, I so have to mail you your honey! Remind me!), but honey sticks! I could not say no. Anyway, he always makes me smile. And last time I was there I tasted both his new kinds of honey but didn’t buy any. 😦 I need to make money so I can buy his honey and ship it all over the earth. People who tell me what flowers the bees were eating and show me the different tastes that makes and talk to me like I’m a person should get my money. I just have to have it first.

Again, the man who sells the used books out of his truck was there, and though I have books I still looked and brought home a book on Islamic art. There are other book sellers, but this one has the unusual things, and he talks to people. He does not talk as much to me, but many people he recommends books to. I suppose he has to learn what I like first. That is where I bought Snow Falling on Cedars which I loved for its peaceful kinda sleepy longing and truth. More people should be able to use darkness to show us light. I highly recommend that book to anyone.

I brought home an orchid, who I believe is named Ishmael. He is in my room now and I smile to look at him. Delilah, the night blooming jasmine I have planted in a pot to live with me (Lucien’s sister cutting!) is here too, on the corner of my desk. So is the lumpy lemon tree I planted from a seed, who needs a name. So anyone who knows what a lemon tree might be named should tell me here. Ishmael and the lemon (who I think is also a boy) are sharing a wire basket because Ishmael is too heavy on one side and topples over.

We have a coffee plant too now, and it seems to me that the coffee, the vanilla, and the cocoa plants should all live together. But then, I’m weird. We have a few more cocoa bean I should start. I want to make a shade thing for the cuttings with some mesh, so they will not fry. I need to sort through my books and decide which will be boxed (until I have shelves, at least). And I need a table. I kinda want to make one. Then I can build in boxes to hold pens and plants!

I have to finish my resume and stuff (and do secrets!) and organize and…I’m just full of things to do. But I will leave you with quotes from the two beautiful cards I got at the market today.

“We often confuse spiritual knowledge with spiritual attainment. Spirituality is not a matter of knowing scriptures and engaging in philosophical discussions. It is a matter of heart culture, of immeasurable strength. Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.” ~ Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

“What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. And justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

Aloha.

good morning cosmos!

I am already returned from the garden. (I need a twelve step program for people who can’t help but revel in the scent of the earth.) Soon, I leave to go shopping for books. Mostly just saying hello, because that is what mornings are for.

If you need some more to read this morning….

read Be not Defeated by the Rain by Kenji Myazawa. I encountered this lovely poem on Slices of Life a kaleidoscope of poetry, pictures, musings, and rambles I am already falling in love with. I’ll end with the description of the blog actually posted there: This is a blog about magic, beauty and poetry. Actually, it’s just a blog about life. Not just any old life, but a life worth living, a life less ordinary. This blog is a reminder, for myself and for the others. Come one and all, make yourselves at home.

Molli still continues to amaze me with her poetry. Bedtime Stories is at once a poem that echoes with something primal and alive, a statement on society and the darker side of human interaction and perception, and yet another reason I am keeping my fingers crossed she picks up writing again. (Quick – peer pressure! *L* If everyone tells her how fabulous she is we can make her jump off a bridge write us more poems.)

new owners a poem by john at Freedom Melodies is a poem about the Muse that makes me want to write a poem about the Muse too, just from an opposite angle! I should change the name of this site to Reactionary Poetry: Because Kitsunes Can’t Help but be Mischievous and Get Into Everything! and call it a day. At…9:15am. Looking for chatter and not poetry from john…click here to view his other blog.

On a totally playful note (every morning should have one) who remembers watching Gummy Bears? And why didn’t anyone tell me seasons 1-3 are on DVD?

That’s all for this morning. Have a lovely day.

….

touch me ~ Reach a poem by rax

taste me ~ Thai Silk

hear me ~ anyone familiar with New York? skywindows is asking for help to plan a trip with her 10-year-old daughter who is recovering from cancer, she needs recommendations on child-friendly New York things!

see me ~ gorgeous artwork from Dosia McKay

know me ~ The Kitchen is Crying a book of poems by the delightful Burnie Washington – echoing with strength, faith, honesty, and love. I have been blessed enough to have heard this amazing woman read, and while this book may not be the recommendation people would expect from me I have never failed to be touched, humbled, and awed by Burnie’s faith, grace, and honesty. And, on top of all that – this book is illustrated in rich, tantalizing color.

help me ~ visit help.com and help some people or ask for help

remember me ~ faded a poem by nomadicjoh

love me ~ Dhaka by degrees combines poetry with history with personal experience to…I have no idea…to be awesome? I am at a loss for describing why it’s beautiful, I simply know that it is.

save me ~ light a virtual candle for someone who needs a prayer

What am I….

…in love with? —at the end of The Esplanade a poem post on in this silence, which seems to have poems that blaze with the immediate beauty and bravery of falling stars. Keep reading on this page – it’s the kind of night that is a meteor shower – not a single, lonely comet. It (along with an earlier e-mail mentioning it, followed by a surprise contact from the person who ran it) reminds me of how much I miss my poetry readings. I want to hear that poem read aloud. I want to read it aloud. I want to hear where my emphasis differs, where my voice would catch and where the author’s would. I want to hear my hear my lovers read it – I want to know at what second, on what word, they would meet my eyes.

—my girlfriend, who knits things that are fantastic – and will send one to me if I ask, though scarves are of little use here in the land of loud and quite tropical birds. I would love it anyway, and I am sure she would do it anyway. I am in love with hand made scarves, especially when made for me. I am all the more aware of them, because I cannot knit, and the very fact that it can be done seems somehow magical.

Perhaps I should get a poetry group going here. Or rather, a writings and et cetera group. I fear I would end up with something like the first poetry group I knew – carefully outlined and distant, and nothing like the second – intimate and fearless. I know I cannot create the second, that’s not the sort of thing you can engineer, and I will have little patience for the first.

I know where I would like to have it though. There is a coffeeshop not far from here, it’s a small place and the coffee takes forever in comparison to every other coffeeshop but I think that somehow they get love into the coffee because it tastes like no other coffee I’ve ever had. Even if I try and no one comes, it will be worth the trip just for that coffee.

second star to the right and….

Killing time between here and Neverland you might check out—

• Gumball Poetry which has such things to offer as Nude Badminton by Matt Sandbank!
• Modern Ruins photographic essays by Shaun O’Boyle – hauntingly lyric photography
• Poetry Thursday offers links to poems Thursdays, prompts on Fridays, and various other resources and articles
• Very Short Novels David offers 299 word snapshots of fiction rich with crisp images and a sense of character and humanity – proof that more words do not equal more intensity