Checked into the boards by Mr. Universe

I'm not sure about heaven, but Oklahoma...

Not how I wanted to start. Sorry.

Let me start again. There's a beauty in the universe and I suspect it's hanging around everyday. It's like beauty smog and it just sort of infiltrates everything around us. We breathe it in and stare it down and sound waves ride gondolas steered by able-bodied smog Venetians through it on the way to our ear canals. Most of us get caught up in too much other stuff to notice the fog of the smog of beauty flatulence. It takes an elbow to the throat to jolt us into noticing. I've had great fortune this week to take at least three elbows to the throat.

Elbow the first: I know that babies have a high cuteness quotient, but so few of them run with my crowd so I don't usually realize the depths of that power. Last week, I met Anya for the first time. It was a pleasure. She was fascinating. She'd move her hands while dreaming and the room full of people who had not stopped staring at her would collectively smile as if we were her puppets and she controlled our mouth muscles on strings. I was not immune to her power. It was a calming sensation and it put my whole week into perspective. The false complications, the various manufactured stresses- what is all of that compared to a tiny baby? Nothing. Each of us was once that small and that helpless. Each of us started out only wanting to eat, sleep, poop, or some combination of the three. We only pretend we have passed that stage.

Ulna the second: My iPod mini is full of music. Some of it makes me want to shake my tailfeathers. Some of it makes me want to grab my banjo and slow dance with it. There's music that makes me smile, makes me rock, makes me appropriately sad, fired up, or makes me want to break out my falsetto. There is one band though that reaches down inside of me, plucks out my soul, and serves it with cream of mushroom soup as part of the growing-in-popularity hotdish. That band is Hem. This weekend I got to sit in the front row while they served my soul as a delicious meal. Somewhere in the last few years I lost track of how much meaningful music they have put out. I delighted in nearly every song as they carried me through love, loss, and that place of peace that I can only recognize when I hear it in my innards.

Codo de tercero: High on a hill in grassy field in Virginia, framed by the Autumn colors of reds, yellows, and greens, chilled slightly by October air, a group gathered to play a game that has come to mean so much to me. That game- Ultimate. My mistress, my salvation, my social network, my release, my happiness. My first game of the season. I twisted my "good" ankle just before we began to play. With my bad ankle and my quadriceps already causing concern, I feared that I was done, but the switch clicked when the game began and the pain vacated. White plastic cut through chilled air and I gave chase. We carved tracks back and forth across the grass and let youth, joy, and beauty run into the indentations our pounding cleats left. The indentations overflowed and so we leapt into the air, diving, bounding, jumping, and hollering to pursue it all. Beads of sweat formed, deer appeared to watch this display of natural beauty as the disc spun on sometimes just out of reach. Bodies extended to fly through the air, feet darted, sometimes slipping, but panting and smiling we soared to meet the high of activity.