The Only Way to the Other Side is Through

"...It is the time of burning, hate exposed.

We shall have to live with only Kali near.

She comes in her fury, early or late disposed

To tantrums we have earned and must endure."

In a previous #1000Speak post I wrote that I hate certain people. That seems a jarring juxtaposition with the concept of compassion.

I was talking about the period of time after I'd left a horrible husband and was just trying to make it through divorce proceedings without my children and I being eaten alive by the machinations and manipulations of a vengeful, angry man whose lawyer rated just this side of shyster. I was talking about the arrival of Kwan Yin and my life, and a beautiful, affirming experience that has stayed with me all these years. And I wrote "I fucking hate those people," and I didn't edit that sentence out despite the theme of the post...compassion.

But...compassion doesn't have room to fucking hate someone...does it?

It does.

I also wrote about being determined to take the high road and to stay positive, to refuse to be drawn down to the level of petty spite and tit-for-tat shenanigans that so many divorces are composed of. It was a lofty goal, and one I kept to, and I was proud of myself for not taking one action or speaking one word I could regret.

But divorces take a long time to be finally over, even after the ink is dry on the papers, when there are property issues and especially when there are children. Long after our particular divorce was final, my ex kept it up. I won't go into it other than to say if there was a Stupid Pet Trick he could pull, he pulled it. Anyone who has been through an acrimonious divorce knows of what I speak. Every time, I sighed and laughed it off, continuing to take the high road -- until that one big one that I just couldn't laugh off.

Really, after crap like this has been going on for years now, how can it not become a bubbling pit of noxious green in a smoking landscape? What's surprising is that it took as long as it did. Because what I saw, finally, was that I had not escaped the abuse at all. I'd merely escaped close physical proximity. As long as there was anything binding us together, he was going to keep trying to control and manipulate and inflict injury every chance he got, and it didn't matter to him if he hurt his own child in the process.

Boiling point reached.

One evening, I blew. I mean, blew. I ranted, I raged, I threw things (sorry, but when I let my temper go, it's the kind that only the sound of breaking glass can assuage), and before I knew it, I was screaming, "I hate that goddamned son of a bitch!"

Finally the storm blew itself out and I collapsed onto the couch. I was hoarse, shaking, out of breath, and utterly appalled at myself. Who was that horrible woman, screaming her fury and shredding an invisible face with her hands and stomping all over invisible guts on her living room floor? This was not the person I wanted to be. That was not the emotion I wanted to be filled with. This was not the evil I wanted to be reduced to. Feeling disgusted with myself, like a failure, I crawled into bed and cried myself to sleep. Again.

But then something happened.

Public Domain.

When I woke up the next morning, the sky seemed bluer. The birds sounded sweeter. I know it sounds smarmy, but it's true. My kids both seemed happier, for some strange reason, and so did I. I felt lighter, almost like I was walking an inch above the kitchen floor as I poured cereal and coffee. I felt freer. As I checked backpacks and kissed  my children out the door to the school bus stop, I knew we would be all right. And we were. As simplistic as it sounds, it's true: things got better.

And then I knew that I hadn't lowered myself at all. What I had done was to release something that had been inside me, eating at me this whole time. Anger and hurt are like an infection under the skin. No, not like - that's what they are. Pretending it's not there accomplishes nothing; it only makes you sicker without you even knowing it, until all of a sudden it brings you down. If you don't acknowledge its presence and lance it and get the poison out, the infection will spread. You will not be free of it until you admit that it's there and get rid of it. The earth stops shaking and rumbling when the volcano blows. No sacrificial virgin required.

I had no need to feel guilty, either. I'd been afraid that my negative feelings would do damage if I let them out, but I had it backward. They do damage when you don't let them out. (Reminds me of a doctor I used to see, who told me my ulcers would ease up if I'd just learn to be a bitch.) My anger hadn't hurt my ex at all. But it had set me free to do the work I needed to do, to clear the landscape and build anew.

Kwan Yin's gift to me was many things. It was a nod from the Universe, that I was handling things and myself correctly. It was falling and skinning my knee and being drawn onto the comfort of a lap, with no minimizing, just "there there" and all the hugs and reassurance I needed. It was a call to serve, to have compassion for those in my life and for those I don't know at all and will probably never meet again. And perhaps most of all, it was a reminder that I deserve to be taken care of too, and that means shining a light into dark corners and getting the bad things out. Doing what we need to do for us: self-compassion.

I sat down to write this #1000Speak post on building from bullying based on my own recent experience with workplace bullying and the Demon Boss from the Seventh Level of Hell, and that is when I realized that I haven't built anything from it. Not really. I'd sought counseling when I was in the middle of it, and I'd identified it, and I've escaped it. I've made enough progress that I am no longer a stew of anxiety, worry and fear thrumming through my veins like electricity and tears always ready to brim and sleeping one or two hours a night, if that. But I haven't gone much beyond that. I've found refuge in school and a job where my talents are utilized and appreciated, but I haven't built. In spite of getting out alive and moving on, I still feel helpless, I still feel worthless, I still feel sad. I am still afraid.

The poison is still there.

Photo: niecyisms

This is the part that really sucks: Even though I didn't do this to myself, and I am where I am because someone else behaved in a cruel way toward me, it's still me who has to do the work to get out of it. And there is work to do. Bullying and abuse hurt. They harm. They cause injury and lasting pain that most of us aren't capable of just bouncing back from. A band-aid doesn't cut it. And even though it isn't fair, we, the injured ones, are the only ones who can do the work to make ourselves right again. They do the damage, but we pay the price if we want to get back straight.

It's not fair. Who ever said life was fair? It has to be done. Cruel people knock us down, but it's not until we allow them to keep us down that they win.

"...Kali, be with us.

Violence, destruction, receive our homage.

Help us to bring darkness into the light,

To lift out the pain, the anger,

Where it can be seen for what it is--

The balance-wheel for our vulnerable, aching love."

      ~ May Sarton, Invocation to Kali, from the collection Grain of Mustard Seed (Norton: New York)       1971

My beloved Kwan Yin is always there for me, always, but now it's time for Kali, time to tear down some noxious walls and dig up some poisonous weeds. Then I can build.

2015 Reading Challenge

So, yeah. I have Spanish homework, and a research paper to be writing, three assignments for The History Class That Ate My Life and the truckload of reading that goes with that, and of course finals to study for. But...it's a blog challenge about books! Must blog about books! Must blog...must...aaaaahhhh...

OK, here's my list for the 2015 reading challenge.

A book I've been meaning to read:

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg. I loved the movie. I hope it didn't ruin me for the book.


A book published this year:

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. Plus, I just entered to win a signed first edition. Letmewinletmewinletmewinletmewin!


A book in a genre I don't typically read:

I'm generally not a huge science fiction fan, and I'm not sure why that is since I've read some stellar science fiction books. I should have read I, Robot by now.

A book from my childhood:

El Jardin Secreto, aka The Secret Garden.  Reading an old favorite in a new language should be a treat.

A book my mom loves:

I've already read several of Mom's favorites but I've never tried a J.D. Robb, so I'll start at the beginning with Naked in Death.

A book that was originally written in a different language:

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

A book "everyone" has read but me:

The Great Gatsby. I don't even know why. I just like the title.

A book I chose because of the cover:

The last book I picked because of the cover was The Sisters Brothers, and it was a good pick. This time I'll go with The Supernatural Enhancements by Edgar Cantero. I'm overdue for a bit of Goth.

A book by a favorite author:

How did I miss that one of my favorite writers has a new book out? The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler.

A book recommended by someone with great taste:

East of Eden. Kathleen loves Steinbeck. I've read other Steinbeck books, but not this one. It is time.

A book I should have read in high school:

My high school didn't have us read much literature, really. I'm picking The Three Musketeers. Because, musketeers. "Come, D'Artagnan! We're saving the king!"

A book that's currently on the bestseller list:

The Girl on the Train. I've been on the library's waiting list for about 2 months. I've made it up to 326th in line! It's like being camped out for Warped Tour tickets. I hope I don't have to bump this one back to 2016.

Walking You Home

"We're all just walking each other home." ~ Ram Dass

I was flattered when I was invited to take part in #1000Speak, and I'm honored to be here. As much as I myself suck at it sometimes, I'm all about compassion, and I couldn't wait to be a part of something even bigger than the blogosphere, to be a drop in the rolling wave of human kindness, to be a part of being the village.

Then I thought about what I wanted to write about compassion. What did I want to say? What is the point that I want to make?

I can effortlessly write a bonkzillion words about domestic abuse, about bullying, about homelessness, about energy reform and caring for this beautiful blue sphere we call home. I can rant about racism and intolerance, because my loathing for bigotry probably makes me a bigot about bigots. I have a lot of topics that are absolutely deserving. But which one? They were all so tempting.

I had to bark my mental shins on the coffee table about a dozen times before I finally had the sense to see it.

Everything I'd thought of, the ones that came easily and immediately to my mind, none of them counted. Not for this post.

It's easy to be compassionate when it involves a cause we care about, something we have a personal stake in for whatever reason. I'm an endless well of compassion for targets of bullying or abuse. I've been there. Poverty and homelessness are causes that come naturally to me as well. Bigotry, as I said.

But those things aren't a challenge. And what I can't help feeling about #1000Speak is that while it should be humane and uplifting and inspiring, it should also be just a little bit hard. It's like the parable about the rich man and the beggar who both give a silver penny: which one gave more?

The answer, then, is to look in a place where it's not so easy.

It can be hard to admit that there is a certain someone, a certain class of people, whether it's the homeless, or battered women, or a particular race, or illegal immigrants, or fat people, or addicts, or people who like peanut-butter-and-pickle sandwiches, whom we think are not as entitled as we are to...anything, really. It's the people we consider to be pathetic wastes of oxygen at the least (Kim Kardashian, anyone?) or consider to be evil personified at the worst (such as The Demon Boss from the Seventh Level of Hell). And those hard places that I'm loathe to even admit exist, those are the places I should be looking.

Go ahead. Set aside the justification, and you know it's there. They're only homeless because they don't want to get off their lazy asses. They must like being knocked around or they wouldn't stay. They can stop if they really want to. They have no right to mooch off of honest hard-working people. Their skin is a different color from mine or they worship the wrong god or they love different people than I do, and that makes them evil and it's my duty to hate them. You know how the tune goes.

That's the one. That one, there. The one that really makes you wrinkle up your nose, brings disgust welling up out of your gut, really makes you feel like that doesn't belong in my face, in my space, on my planet. The one that you just can't find it in yourself to be kind about, no matter how hard you try.

It's time to get past that "no matter how hard you try" part. In the words of the great Yoda, "Do. Or do not. There is no try."

And looking, I see it. Just scroll up a few paragraphs and it's right there. The ones I ultimately have no patience with, no sympathy for, would like to see jettisoned off into cold blue space, are the abusers and the bullies. If I'm going to be a part of this movement that's worth anything, if I'm going to walk the walk like I talk the talk, then I have to own it. Bullies and abusers: I fucking hate those people. (And yes, the expletive is necessary. It is a small verbal indicator of my abhorrence, and it means something here. That's what words are for.)

The Queen of Digression now digresses. Several years ago, I had taken my children and left an abusive husband. I was living paycheck-to-not-even-paycheck, anxiety and depression threatening to overwhelm me amidst the stalking and death threats and his suicide/manipulation attempt in my living room. I was determined in spite of it all not to give in to my natural Scorpio tendency to lash out in a fury of righteous vengefulness and utterly decimate him - legally, in open court. I was determined not to sink to his level and to keep to the high road. I kept reminding myself that he hurt me because he himself was hurting and empty. I took more deep breaths and counted to 10 more times than I can count. I deflected, I cast protection, I cried myself to sleep, I prayed. And as I slogged through day after changeless day, I had never felt so alone.

Until the night, after several months of this, I had one of the most realistic dreams I have ever had.

I was looking down at myself, watching from above as a flower and words that I knew to be poetry, in a language I couldn't read, were tattooed onto my lower back. I felt the needles, I saw the vibrant colors, I could smell the scent of the living flower being embroidered into my flesh. I didn't need to understand the poetry to know it was the lyrics of the cosmos. The whole dream was heartbreakingly beautiful, and I felt at peace as I never had in my life. I woke weeping, tears of comfort and release, with the sure knowledge that everything would be all right, that I was loved and Someone Up There was seeing me through all of this. Along with the images, I had a sounds-like in my head. I called in sick to work (sorry, John) and fired up the computer and consulted the Great Google with my sounds-like, and there she was.

Kwan Yin, Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva in Sanskrit. Kwan Yin is a Buddhist goddess of the sea and of compassion, the Mother of Mercy. A bodhisattva, she is often shown sitting on a lotus blossom, symbolizing the purifying of the soul as it struggles through suffering up to the godhead. One of her epithets is She Who Hears the Cries of the World. She is said to have 10,000 arms, to comfort all who suffer. If you call her in need, she will answer.

I learned some time later that the tattoo on the base of my spine was meaningful too. That is where kundalini energy is coiled inside us like a snake, the spiritual energy that purifies our spirits and helps to unite us with truth and divinity.

That dream is one of the most profound things that has ever happened to me. I'd had virtually no knowledge of Buddhist practices and had never heard of Kwan Yin. I did not doubt at all that she was there, that she had answered a call I hadn't even consciously sent, and that she was calling me in return. Because one truth I was left with was that I was very right to have compassion for a man who had treated me as though I was merely a possession and not even fully human. As hard as it had been, and would continue to be, that was the only right way to treat him, because in the grand Universal end, it matters. And the other truth I was left with was that it matters because what I give for others, for him, was also there for me. As alone and broken as I felt, I was cared for. We are all children of the Universe, and we are all worthy of kindness.

All. Even Kim Kardashian. Even The Demon Boss from the Seventh Level of Hell. Perhaps especially her. This is where it gets so very hard, for me.

Back to #1000Speak and the point of this whole post. Compassion is impossible alongside judgment and condemnation, and to refrain from judging and condemning can be one of the hardest things ever. As I think back to the cruelty I've seen people exhibit, and the satisfaction some of them seem to take in it, I am certainly not inspired to want to be compassionate toward them. It actually makes my stomach roil a little just to think about them. And this is the part where I stub my toe and hop around on one foot, cussing at the Universe. Who am I to call them pots without making myself into a kettle? I've been a waste of oxygen many times. I've been cruel to others in order to feel better about myself, too. Oh, yes I have. And that makes my stomach roil even more, to admit that I am one of them.

But there is compassion for me. I am getting better at being compassionate toward myself, and I know why I behaved as I did, and if everyone else is just as human as I, then anyone else is entitled to be imperfect as I was. If I am entitled to compassion, so are they. I am reminded that I need to grant all of these people the same grace I extended to my now-ex, the same grace Kwan Yin gifted to me that night. I need to remember that people abuse other people because they are trying to feed their own hunger for love, trying to fill their own voids of emptiness and lift themselves up. Their reasons were my reasons.

This is what it all comes down to. My experience is theirs, and theirs is mine. If I look closely enough at them, I will realize that I am gazing into a mirror, and will see my own self yearning back at me. We are all walking different paths to the top of the same mountain.

Make no mistake, this does not mean I have to invite these people into my life. Just because I recognize the need to save an endangered species doesn't mean I'm foolish enough to share my house with one, like, say, an alligator. I deserve better than The Boss Who Shall Not Be Named, and I'm not going to stop reading Ronald Takaki so I'll have time to be a Kardashian groupie. I cannot link to my ex ("Throw Your Darts HERE!") because he has been excised from my life, and rightfully so. But that doesn't have to keep me from looking upon them with something more than derision or venom. For some, it is even possible for me to say the few words or perform the one small act that can help them see, help them feel, help them know that they are not alone and that solace and and empathy and a twining upward to the Sun are there for them, too.

It is true that what we put out is what we get back, that we reap what we sow, that like attracts like. When we extend ourselves to others, we create a ripple in a Universal pond of energy, and add mojo to the big circle of connection that runs like the strands of a silvery web, one to the other.

And we are all just walking each other home.

 Daniel Racovitan, used under Creative Commons license

I'm in! #1000Speak

I'm in!

Why do I think this can make a difference?

On a mass level:  In 1993, The Global Peace Initiative conducted a strictly controlled experiment, where 800-1400 volunteer Sidhas engaged in mass, simultaneous meditation in Washington DC, accompanied by other unofficial participants from all over the world. Crime dropped by 23%, attributable to nothing else but the meditation. Before the experiment, the police chief had been quoted as saying that the only thing that would make crime drop by 20% was 20 inches of snow. Ta-daah! Meditation...even stronger than Mother Nature?

Or part of Mother Nature?

More and more, science is learning that thoughts are things. They have force, they have power, they may even have mass of some sort. When we persist in looking at the world a certain way, that is what we will see. When we optimistically expect that everything will be all right on a consistent basis - everything is all right. Some people call this luck. Some call it faith. Others call it magic, real magic, not bibbity-bobbity-boo stuff.

I call it...reality.

It doesn't have to be meditation. Not everyone meditates, but everyone practices their own form of sending will and desire out into the Universe. It is a prayer, it is a candle on an altar, it is a spell. It is a wish on dandelion fluff, or a lucky shirt, or a personal ritual, or a smile for a stranger, or a random act of kindness. It is that fervent "Oh pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease" accompanying a midterm or a biopsy. It is a blog post.

When we focus our thoughts and our will and send them out with intent and purpose, it creates a ripple of energy throughout the aether. When we join with others to focus energy and intent on a common goal, the results can be wonderful and amazing.

It makes my heart melt a little that #1000Speak exists.

I'm in.

Tarcio Saraiva, used under Creative Commons License

Drowning in a Sea of Books

Dear dedicated readership of maybe 10 people:

Please know that I may be a bit scarce. This quarter at school is trying to kill me with reading. Trying.

I'm not complaining. I love being back in school, and I love to read, and I love to learn, so doing all three simultaneously is my definition of a good time. Well, one of them. All of my classes this quarter require a lot of reading, and learning to read, write, and speak another language is particularly time-consuming. I am grade-motivated and protective of my GPA, notwithstanding the fact that Sadistics...er, Statistics...tried to tank it.

Photo by austinevan on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons license.

In fact, my only real complaint is that I was unable to finish I, Claudius. I tried, but Graves' fiction is quite academic, a bit ponderous and lacking in dialogue compared to bestseller fluff. After two weeks I hadn't even made it to Caligula's assassination, and the machinations of Imperial Rome were interfering with my absorption of the finer points of the Greco-Persian Wars. Perhaps I'll give it another shot during the summer break.

Still, I may surprise you. An idea may take hold of me and not let me sleep, or I may be unable to sleep and end up scribbling something out. It's happened before.

Back to Attic tragedy...

A Lost Art

I have recently regained something I hadn't known I'd lost.

When I was 11 and my family moved halfway across the country, I would spend hours sprawled on my bed, writing letters to the friends I'd left behind. Throughout high school, if I was staying at my grandparents' for the summer or if other friends were gone, I wrote letters. On one of those occasions, I asked my grandpa for an envelope and a stamp. He said, "Sure, whatcha got?" and frowned the tiniest frown when I held out the letter to my very bestest friend ever, scrawl-covered, scraggly-edged paper torn from a spiral notebook. Grandpa mailed my letter for me without further comment. But when I got back to the house the next day, arrayed on my bed were three different boxes of pretty writing paper, matching envelopes, and an elegant pen. "A lady," Grandpa said, "writes her correspondence on proper stationery." I never forgot that. I still have the pen.

I never forgot it, but it got left behind. I drifted away from all of those friends. My letter writing was confined to one or two hastily written pages (on proper lined writing paper, you can be sure, Grandpa) tucked inside annual Christmas cards. With the advent of the computer that annual letter became a Dear Everybody newsletter, typed in a festive font and printed off on elf-decorated copy stock.

Eventually, during one of my many moves, I got tired of lugging around the various boxes of stationery and notecards I'd collected over the years, never used now, and donated them somewhere.

If I had to hand-write a letter now, all I'd have on hand is a spiral notebook.

Even more than stationery was lost; also lost was the art of writing the letter itself. Technology is wonderful, but it buries things, too. As I was getting ready to sign and send Christmas cards recently, I realized that I had nothing to say, not really, even in a short note on the blank side of the card itself. With Facebook and texting and blogging and Tweeting and other things I've never heard of, all the people we are connected to know what's going on with us already. It might be that they know too much. Would I include in a letter that I enjoyed a raspberry tart at a French bakery yesterday? Possibly; it's a snapshot of life some recipients might enjoy. But thanks to social media, everyone already knows it, and they probably saw a picture of it too.

On the other hand, how much would most of the people I connect with through social media really want to read a lengthy letter? Our lives are not what they were, walking to the mailbox, spying familiar handwriting while sorting through the envelopes, sitting on the porch to savor the news. All of this technology was supposed to have made our lives easier. It may have, but it's made them busier too. Between emails and texts and faxes and junk mail and tweets and telemarketers and Facebook statuses and spam and all the other noise of modern life, who has time to sit and read a letter anymore? Or to write one?

It's a lost art.

I might never have seen this but for the gift of recently establishing a correspondence with my birthmother. It has been a joy to connect with a stranger whose heartbeat I once shared. Writing a letter is one of the things she is very good at, and I have had the additional happiness of rediscovering what smiles are borne from both writing and receiving a good old-fashioned letter. Kathleen and I are not connected online; we are not as in-your-face as the rest of life is in the cypersphere. I smile and take my time with each letter, picking and choosing what parts of myself to share this time, finding the perfect words to paint a picture of myself and my life. Her words, on the hand, strike me as effortless, but she has always been rather mythical to me. Reading her words to me brings the same beauty slowly revealed, like the unfurling petals of a spring flower. Effortless or not, it means so much. Both the sending and receiving are things to take slowly and savor.

But that's only one of the best parts. I'd forgotten the mundane pleasure of walking to the post office and choosing a postage stamp I like. I used to be picky about my stamps; they had to have a design I thought was attractive and meaningful. It was even better if I could find one that somehow matched the stationery I'd painstakingly picked out, because I certainly couldn't write to the same person on the same letter paper twice. It's like wearing the same dress to two proms - it is Simply Not Done. What with being able to do everything online, from paying bills to licensing my dog, I hadn't bought a stamp since they cost a quarter. I think. It's been quite some time. I'd forgotten the irrevocability of dropping the letter in the post box. I'd forgotten how I like picturing my letter shuffling and sliding among hundreds and thousands of others, from mail bin to sorting machine to transport bin to loading dock to sorting machine to postal carrier to the waiting hands of the one person on the planet it's meant for. And in the back of my mind as I make my way through my days is the promise of a reply making its magical way back to me. The anticipation!

The silly things I fill my mind with.

But I'm not alone. Perhaps it's even genetic. Kathleen tells me that letters are her favored form of communication, and she keeps the ones she receives tied in ribbon. The thought of someone keeping the me I share, safely tied inside a silky bow, almost makes me want to swoon.

I will keep her letters to me bound in ribbon too, as soon as I go pick some out. Nobody keeps ribbon on hand anymore, either.

Photo credit, in order of appearance:
Letters in Ribbon: Karen Cox, Flickr/ Creative Commons License
Fountain pen: Power of Words by Antonio Littorio, Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike Unported License

Happy Things #3

Another post about random things that make my days good things to be in. I'm looking forward to having so many of these posts I lose track of the installment numbers.

1. Hats.

United States Public Domain.

I could totally rock this look. Perhaps not as well as Garbo, but I could rock it. I would have loved living in these times, just for the hats.

2. The Tominator.

A few weeks ago I said to him, "You know, I believe I could commit cold-blooded murder and you would be steadfastly convinced I had a damned good reason." His reply: "Yep." There are no words for that kind of unconditional love and backing. And, he thinks I look amazing in hats.

3. Grinching.

I bitch about various aspects of the holiday season, including the commercialism ("Christmas, it seems, doesn't come from a store"), the supposed "War on Christmas" (honestly...why can't everybody just let everybody celebrate how and what they want to?), and holiday homesickness, but it's all good. I spent an hour listening to The Lost Christmas Eve by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and wrapping presents and enjoying my pretty little improv tree. and everything was all better. Christmas is Christmas no matter where you are and what you have, as long as you keep your heart open.

4. Rhinos.

Many years ago, someone gave me a stuffed rhino as a gag gift, the story behind which is salacious and not suitable for sharing as it could be used against me. Someone else gave me another, and then I got another, and then people began thinking I collected rhinos, so that it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. It felt more like rhinos were collecting me. This is how totem animals announce themselves, and Rhino has much to teach me. At last count, I have over 125 rhinos, from stuffed to carved to ceramic to key rings to Hot Wheels rhinos to wind-up toys to...you name it. I have not purchased a single one of them; they were all gifts. They're all my favorite but this is one of my favorite favorites, a Christmas gift past from one of the best bosses in the world.

5. Maps.

Maybe I should have been a cartographer. I can entertain myself for hours with a road atlas, a globe, or just a street map of a strange city. I roll the names of cities and avenues off my tongue. I daydream about getting there and being there. Maps are groovy.

Used under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.