There’s a difference between calling a girl fit and hot and calling her pretty and beautiful
When you call me beautiful I imagine you noticing the way my hair falls from the clip over time
I imagine you noticing the way my giggle sounds and the way my smile lights you up
When you call me pretty I imagine you noticing the complexities of my eyes, the way my freckles come out in the sun and and depth of my dimples
Pretty is noticing the way my legs are sculpted when I walk ahead of you and the way my nose flares when I genuinely laugh

Fit is the body two ***** and a waist
A pair of lips you can only imagine what they do
Hot is the low cut top exposing my cleavage and my ability to open my legs for you
Fit is a one night stand word or the words of a man in a club hoping that that night you are feeling especially vulnerable and insecure

Beautiful is the text she gets when she lies in bed at 11pm asking if she wants to go on a walk
And although she professes to him excuses when she walks out the door of a lack of make up and three jumpers to keep out the cold and her insecurities encapsulated by her self destructive smile and her hair pushed behind her ear
You lift her face and examine that untouched smile
The rawness of her appearance and the purity of her eyes
That is beautiful
And you call it so

When fit is the way a body looks and how much makeup can look like none
Pretty is the way she smiles when she sees you and the way she feels looked upon.

More folk need to learn
About Cause and Effect
Respecting others
Is fundamentally what earns respect

My dad was raised Christian
Episcopalian
But left
No disrespect
He just wasn't convinced

So when I was a child
Our attendance at church was
sporadic
Sometimes a source of contention
And, usually, more pain than joy

The summer of 1969
Men walked on the Moon
And my parents
Split
My dad moved across town
I saw him one day each weekend
The most time we had ever spent together.

When I was twelve the earth moved
Sixty-four people died
And my father embraced Buddhism
And Buddhism embraced him
In a way nothing else ever had
and he learned moderation
Regaining his freedom

What got him was the Law of Causation
Cause and Effect
What goes around comes around
The Golden Rule
Unencumbered
With the baggage from his past
The philosophy of common sense
His pianist's artist's teacher's mind
Could comprehend
Grasp and hold for good

My twelve-year-old mouth
Would not be denied
And so I one day announced
That chanting
Was simply another form of prayer
A fact he acknowledged
reluctantly
but ultimately
with humor and grace

And was it my father's turn to Buddhism
That sparked my own
Journey into Spirit?

In 1972
With Godspell on the radio
I saw Jesus Christ Superstar
At the Universal Amphitheatre
Twice
And when my sister joked
"Let there be light"
And all the lights came on
Then she genuflected
Before taking her seat
It was only partly in jest
For there was reverence in the air
And a sense of the Eternal
The foundation of the story
Of every story
Cause and Effect

Later that year I was baptized
Before I realized
That no church held the key
For the key was within me
As it resides within us all

More folk need to learn
About Cause and Effect
We are here on earth to Love.
And respecting others
Is fundamentally what earns respect.

6/7 July 2005 Approx. 2 AM