Life is always a tightrope, or a featherbed. Give me the tightrope. - Edith Wharton

With impressive skill and mimosa-induced confidence, I'm pleased to report that our Brunch for 35 was an utter hit. It may not even be just our innate perfection of the giddily bulbbly aftershocks of orange and Moet but rather have something (significantly) to do with the little funtoys provided by Williams Sonoma that help even the biggest brute (moi) execute nearly anything in an urbanely acceptable manner, but, either way, we did it, and everyone was happy. The menu was nothing short of ambitious, either, and I hereby declare us the Brunch Royals.

After Hollendaise sauce success --
Joe: We are kings among men, Raleigh.
Raleigh: I am a Queen among kings, Joe.


Other than that, not much happened. We got landlordian approval on our swing (hoorah), which we agree is the absolute in our apartment, and there were Oscars, of which I didn't catch much, there was an attempted trip to the MoMa sidetracked by a crepe cake I never want to repeat in my life, and there was a whole Sunday of reading and drawing and painting and Bubby's... life doesn't get much better than that.

In fact, if we all are like Yoshimi, then happiness is easy to create:
Morning Edition, February 26, 2007 · I believe we have the power to create our own happiness. I believe the real magic in the world is done by humans. I believe normal life is extraordinary.

I was sitting in my car at a stoplight intersection listening to the radio. I was, I guess, lost in the moment, thinking how happy I was to be inside my nice warm car. It was cold and windy outside, and I thought, "Life is good."

Now, this was a long light. As I waited, I noticed two people huddled together at the bus stop. To my eyes, they looked uncomfortable; they looked cold and they looked poor. Their coats looked like they came from a thrift store. They weren't wearing stuff from The Gap. I knew it because I'd been there.

The couple seemed to be doing their best to keep warm. They were huddled together, and I thought to myself, "Oh, those poor people in that punishing wind."

But then I saw their faces. Yes, they were huddling, but they were also laughing. They looked to be sharing a good joke, and suddenly, instead of pitying them, I envied them. I thought, "Huh, what's so funny?" They didn't notice the wind. They weren't worried about their clothes. They weren't looking at my car thinking, "I wish I had that."

You know when a single moment feels like an hour? Well, in that moment, I realized I had assumed this couple needed my pity, but they didn't. I assumed things were all bad for them, but they weren't. And I understood we all have the power to make moments of happiness happen.

Now, maybe that's easy for me to say. I feel lucky to have fans around the world, a house with a roof and a wife who puts up with me. But I felt this way even when I was working at Long John Silver's. I worked there for 11 years as a fry cook. When you work at a place that long, you see teenagers coming in on their first dates; then they're married; then they're bringing in their kids. You witness whole sections of people's lives.

In the beginning, it seemed like a dead end job. But at least I had a job. And frankly, it was easy. After two weeks, I knew all I needed to know, and it freed my mind. The job allowed me to dream about what my life could become.

The first year I worked there, we got robbed. I lay on the floor. I thought I was going to die. I didn't think I stood a chance. But everything turned out all right. A lot of people look at life as a series of miserable tasks, but after that, I didn't.

I believe this is something all of us can do: Try to be happy within the context of the life we are actually living. Happiness is not a situation to be longed for or a convergence of lucky happenstance. Through the power of our own minds, we can help ourselves. This I believe.
-- Wayne Coyne, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7572601

The Invention of Fractions

God himself made the whole numbers: everything else
is the work of man.
—Leopold Kronnecker

God created the whole numbers:
the first born, the seventh seal,
Ten Commandments etched in stone,
the Twelve Tribes of Israel —
Ten we've already lost —
forty days and forty nights,
Saul's ten thousand and David's ten thousand.
'Be of one heart and one mind' —
the whole numbers, the counting numbers.

It took humankind to need less than this;
to invent fractions, percentages, decimals.
Only humankind could need the concepts
of splintering and dividing,
of things lost or broken,
of settling for the part instead of the whole.

Only humankind could find the whole numbers,
infinite as they are, to be wanting;
though given a limitless supply,
we still had no way
to measure what we keep
in our many-chambered hearts.
-- Jessica Goodfellow