sunday after friday

thank you for easter, i pray. then it occurs to me i cannot say thank you, like easter is a nice little gift that is wrapped in beribboned shine and presented to me with a flourish.

i can say, in a fashion i think, thank you for good friday. because after all, my lord died for all and that includes me. 

thank God for the resurrection, i gasp to my relief. it is far wider grander and more consequential than i can imagine. i profit from bystander advantage before i realize i am in deficit. 

great love can choose to die. but only power can bring life after death. thank God for both.

baby A

we welcome baby A into the fold. in gratitude and in wonder.

i pray my first prayer for baby A. in humility and in sheer amazement.

may you grow and thrive, child. may you drink deeply of the well of rich joy in your heavenly Father's garden. may you be blessed and a blessing.

frustrated thought

the problem with sermons is that sometimes you get a jumbled mishmash of religious tropes strung together haphazardly into half an hour of mixed metaphors presented to a captive congregation and because we are church we are supposed to be forgiving loving all-inclusive and accepting of all manner of pretentious rubbish. 

HOM tells me to accept that my poison is someone else's meat.

it's a good friday

 flawed

 unworthy

sullied

 undeserving

ransomed

loved

redeemed

restored

the dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day;
and there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away

this is what it sounds like - s.r. and o.o. (2022)

fascinating stuff at the intersection of neuroanatomy and art. what's not to be enthralled by?

i am ashamed to realize that much magic comes from a growing awareness that the world is far bigger than i have hitherto presumed. other fields have scientific method too! other people do research too! other topics are worthy of exploration too!

i discover music labs and the study of amusia and i find a name for my lifelong struggle with rhythm (which is to say, my difficulty in appreciating rhythm, which i may now describe as sub-threshold beat deafness).

and to my great delight i discover free jazz and alice coltrane.

food notes from ipoh

• the fishballs are ubiquitous but so-so
• the tauge are ubiquitous plump and juicy. very guifei
• silky smooth horfun. just inhale the stuff
• chicken any way you like. flavorful and scrumptious. i just wish they would bone it
• the kaya puff from sin eng heong is good
• the butter kaya puff from lam fong is better
• try the chicken floss-lotus paste-salted egg yolk pastry too
• the tauhway with ginger syrup is really nice
• coffee at the new cafes can rival coffee anywhere!

the freezer situation

wuz a sale.

m boutique, ipoh

newish hotel with a pretty sharply executed grunge aesthetic in the middle of a sea of used car lots. i hope the immediate area gentrifies quickly and gives this place a run for its cool.

very happily, the hotel delivers in most key requirements: cold a/c hot shower adequate water pressure firm-ish bed good coffee downstairs and walking distance to the old town. my only gripe is the etiolated wifi signal. most distressing in this modern day.

notes from a weekend in ipoh

• it's gentrifying. purists hate but plebeian i rejoice
• their core business appears to be the used car trade
• outside of the tourist areas, it's not for pedestrians
• it's mighty dangerous to be a chicken here
• the kaya puff is all they say, and more 😋

this is my song (finlandia)

this is my song, o God of all the nations: a song of peace for lands afar and mine. 

this is my home, the country where my heart is. here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine. but other hearts in other lands are beating with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine. 

my country's skies are bluer than the ocean, and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine. but other lands have sunlight too and clover, and skies are everywhere as blue as mine! 

oh, hear my song, o God of all the nations: a song of peace for their land and for mine.

- lloyd stone

a fit song for our times.

leap year leapt

and just like that we've leaped over the first two months and the weather is getting hot and muggy now the monsoons are coming to an end and 2024 is well and truly established.

questions for the year:

• does one continue doing stuff that somehow one enjoys doing and does reasonably well or does one embark on a new adventure and bid farewell to independence some autonomy and possibly much agency?
• what needlepoint project next?
• shall i get me a new zuri?

one summer in paris - sarah morgan (2019)

coming of age women's friendship love lost and found and across the oceans and years betrayal and redemption plus addiction to boot.

rollickin' good story, is what i say.