(xaris and shalom)

"So what do you do when you're not  working at Panera?" I asked one of my coworkers this morning.  Most people react to this question as if they're not sure where I'm going with it, but mostly I'm just curious.  I like to know something about the people I'm spending hours with on a daily basis. "You know," she said, "sleep off working at Panera --" she often is there before I am, even on days when I work opening, "--cook for my family, clean up the house...go to bed.  Sometimes I do stuff with friends.  What about you, what do you do?" "Cook," I said.  "Read... I'm working on applying to grad schools.  I actually did submit one yesterday, because that was the deadline." She laughed.  "What are you going to grad school for?" "Maybe political science, maybe something with languages and literature --" "Really?" she said, suddenly interested.  "That's what I want to do

I've never really kept a bucket list, I think partly because I don't like being disappointed, and making a bucket list seemed too -- vulnerable?  too much like setting myself up for disappointment?  -- I don't know.  Too something .  But lately, my mind feels like a continual bucket list generator, constantly thinking of statements that start with I want... I want to get a kitten.  (Grey.  Or black.  Probably because it's the most cuddly pet that is feasible right now.) I want to go back to Israel.  (Preferably for a few years.) I want to see my friends in China. I want to get a tattoo.  (Of what?  I don't know.  An ichthus?  A cross?  Xaris [in Greek] and Shalom [in Hebrew]?  You see why I stick to sharpies.) I want to get a PhD degree. I want to get married and have kids. I want to actually get the massive story that I've been working on with friends for the past few years into readable order. I want to cook all the things . (Well, maybe not quite... but not s

I love finding quotes that, at some point in the past, I found interesting enough to write down. Here are a few that had been stored on my old computer. "There is no longer earth-bound purity."   "If a man asked what was the point of playing football it would not be much good saying,  'in order to score goals', for trying to score goals is the game itself, not the reason for the game, and you would really only be saying  that football was football  --which is true, but not worth saying." "She still believed in words so much.   Farid believed in other things:   in his knife, in courage and cunning.   And in friendship."  "Every time you decide, there is loss, no matter how you decide.   It's always a question of what you cannot afford to lose."