The State house votes next week, and unless the universe turns inside out, there are more than enough votes there to pass the bill. The Governor has said that she will sign it into law immediately.

Opponents of marriage equality have until sometime in June to gather enough petition votes to put a referendum on the November ballot. I expect that will happen. And then we’ll see what we’re all made of out here in the Pacific Northwest, where we pride ourselves so much on civility and the common good.

Here’s what Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark NJ, has to say about putting questions of equal rights to public referendum: “No minority should have their rights subject to the passions and the sentiments of the majority.”

Period.

Enjoy your day. Mine’s been pretty interesting so far.

A 14-year-old girl decided to take her boycott national and posted a heavily scripted video on YouTube, complete with signs. I am not linking to that video because I have no wish to promote the content. And because she’s a kid, she has an opinion, she put it out there and it will forever be on The Google to haunt her through her entire life. She doesn’t need any more shit from me.

Nope, today I am here to bring you a passionate, graceful and thoroughly beautiful response from a young woman in college. Who is also expressing her opinion, and who is being an ally to trans Girl Scouts everywhere. It’s coherent, powerful and it has by god doubled the amount I plan to spend on cookies this year.

I was a Brownie and a Girl Scout back in the Stone Age when we had the full uniforms, including socks with the logos (I swear I am not making this up). I did not have this young woman’s experience of encouragement and support and community in my troop. I wish I had. I would give a lot to have been this clear, direct, articulate and fearless in my late teens and early twenties. And if the Girls Scouts have become the kind of organization that help to shape women like this one, then they are welcome to my cookie money.

If a girl with a sash and an order form knocks on your door and asks you to buy some Samoas, don’t ask her how she pees. Buy some cookies and tell her she’s doing a great job.

Enjoy your day. Peace out.

Incoherence alert: I don’t really know how to talk about wonder, which is a hell of a thing for a writer, but there you go. Sometimes things are bigger than words.

Today is not about wondering, not about the verb of it all. Today is about the noun, when wonder turns from questioning into an answer. Isn’t that the coolest thing, to get a blast-your-soul-open answer to a question you didn’t even know you had? Or to meet an old answer anew and find it has the same power to move you? That is the wonder of stories, for me. I read, and when it is good, whsshh, there I go into the story; and inside it I find a place which is also inside me. Perhaps it is a part of myself I have never before seen in the light. Or maybe it is an utterly familiar internal space, one of the places of dancing or thorns or nothing but sky. You know those places. We all have them. We explore them through our own experience, and through the stories we tell each other. Stories open doors inside us where we find ourselves.

So before the guy gets here with the mop, let me point you to the source of today’s holy shit, stories are amazing meditation on wonder. There’s a guy named Mark Oshiro who, among other things, reads and writes about it. And Mark is the Best Reader Evah in my opinion right now, because oh my god he is all about the wonder of it all. He blogs about each chapter of the book as he reads it, and he does his best to avoid being spoiled about the book before he reads. So he’s coming to it fresh with a critical mind and an exuberant heart. Mark Oshiro comes to reading ready for joy, sorrow, fear, hope and love. Ready to find the world in a book.

And right now he is reading — for the first time — The Lord of the Rings.

So do yourself a favor and go share the wonder of that. (Follow the links back to the Chapter One post and work your way forward).

I am enjoying it so much that I actually find myself saving the posts as rewards. I want to reach through the internet and give this guy a hug for loving stories so much that he gives himself to them and finds the wonder.

Because wonder is good, my friends. To be astonished into sorrow or joy. To go on a journey with people who aren’t real except they by god are, aren’t they? Isn’t that part of the magic, this ability we have to make them come alive inside us? Story is real, it is, it is, I don’t care what people say because I know. I have lived so many of them. I am stuffed full of Frodo and Sam, Morgon and Raederle, Gil and Rudy, Harry Crewe and Aerin, Candy Smith, Travis McGee, Jack Reacher, Johnny Smith and Danny Torrance and Stu Redman, Jack and Stephen, Hazel and Fiver, Alexander, Ged, Mia Havero, ‘Glory’ Conway, Lazarus Long, Aud and Lore and yowsa, just you wait for Hild…

Edited to add: And not just books: the novels of television and the novellas of film, whose people also inhabit me: Mal and Zoe and River, Buffy, Al Swearengen and Trixie, Stringer Bell and Bubbles, Ripley, Sarah Connor, Ree Dolly, Raylan Givens… Oh my goodness, it’s crowded in here. But somehow there is always room for more. (end edit)

And then there are all the stories of my own that tumble inside me like the surf. I am deep and restless these days with story, teeming with characters that only I have met, moments that only I have known, that are every bit as real to me even though they are only mine. So much of what story does to us is private, don’t you find? Almost inexplicable.

And there you go, I just took 650 words to not explain the inexplicable. Ah, well, incoherent for sure, but you know what? I will let it stand, and perhaps do better some other time. Or maybe just let the stories I love speak to me, and the ones I write speak for me. And I think it’s time to take a trip with Tolkien again.

Thank you, Mark. Thank you all who share my love of story. Enjoy your day. Go read something wonderful!

And it’s also good to belong where we do, and to be who we are right now. Last night we celebrated 22 years of living together. The nice people at the restaurant gave us a dessert (gooey chocolate cake, espresso flan, profiterole!). We talked about small moments and big ideas. We remembered, and we looked ahead… It was a lovely evening. And it reminded me that I am both a creature of yearning and big dreams, and one who prizes the beauty and joy of the small daily moments. I’m grateful for those things, and although there is much about me I would change, I am grateful to be what I am.

And since I am currently in a mood to eschew the authority of the calendar (Hah! to your structure I say, hah!), today is my thanksgiving day; and because I am so goddamn busy, I’ll let other people talk about the yearning and the big dreams and the everyday beauty and joy. They say it so well.

Here’s John Scalzi talking about right here, right now.

And here are many of your sister and brother humans talking about their lives at The Rumpus.

Whoever we are, whatever may have come to us in life, we have this day. I’m thankful to spend part of mine with you. I hope you enjoy yours.

The best way to celebrate the lives of others is to remember them in our moments of joy.

 
Enjoy your day. Dance if you have the chance.

Thankful, me, for all of it.

The possibility of weather passing through on its way to somewhere else; the possibility of going with it.

The possibility of lightning, how it speaks of power and passion and lets us see spontaneity writ large.

The hurricane that so easily persuades the stupid that death won’t spoil their party.

The blue of summer so hard it stings the eye, that makes us want to put our hands in it up to the wrists because it’s summer, summer!

The blue of winter that feels too high to touch, that teaches us in the most literal way why cold is a metaphor for distant. And that distance is what moves us to reach higher.

They say that everything we’ve ever seen stays with us. Stays in us. I hope that’s true. I enjoy thinking that I am full of sky.

Hdr skies from Tanguy Louvigny on Vimeo.

Enjoy your day. Look up!

Enjoy your day.

I encourage you with all my heart to take the 12 minutes to experience this song. It’s just fucking amazing.

 
(Here’s the link if YouTube pulls a whacky in the embed.)

Enjoy your day. Let some music in.

It will take Far Too Long to load in Vimeo. Please embrace the delay. Go out for coffee, or something. It’ll be worth it.

 
Just magnificent. All the things I love about the west, how it makes me feel so big inside… and the time-lapse gives it a sense of timelessness that I can’t articulate but really respond to. Must think about this.

Enjoy your day.