I shouldn't be writing this. I'm sitting in accross a large square discussion table participating in my 2.5 hour once-a-week Totalitarianism seminar. I should be paying attention, but my mind drifted, I remembered my in-class internet connection, and I read Ester's journal and got inspired--couldn't help myself.
Believe it or not, I am paying attention and actively participating in the discussion on Hannah Arendt--I am in a multitasking mood. I even have IM on. It feels so wrong, and yet oh-so-right.

I have recently begun trying to start my day by saying Modeh Ani and begin and end my day with shma. I say "trying" because I often forget.
||Trying to remember|| in itself brings me closer to the spiritual home I seek.
I can find nothing more valuable than existence. Too often I forget to be grateful for this gift, when in fact I can never be grateful enough. Such gratefulness increases my pleasure in life--not in a mindless, numbing way, that "opiate of the masses" type religion might--no, not like that.
No, quite the opposite. Gratefulness increases my pleasure in life because it increases my sensitivity--inspires me to grasp at all encounter with greater force and sharper feeling.

Locke defines (in awfully written prose) identity for plants and animals as involvement involvement in a process of living. In this way the flowers, fruit, leaves, branches, trunks, and roots, participating in the process called life, could together possess the identity of a tree. I like this idea, and am tempted to snatch into my arms and run far away with it. But what of the seeds in the fruit of the tree? Do they belong to the tree? Or to the new trees they will birth? And what of the bacteria lining the roots of the tree, without which the tree could not properly nourish itself? Don't they too participate in the life process--and therefore belong to the identity--of the tree? Aren't these root bacteria also the tree?
Dirt. Dirt feeds the roots. Dirt is also part of the life process of the tree. Dirt is also the tree.
Water. Water is also the tree.
Sunlight, And sunlight also tree.
We=Tree

eck. i'm glad no one else reads this. I love being able to embrace ridiculous sentimentality. Effusive, poor writing. Somehow I can excuse --even embrace--it even when I would never expect others to do so.
Sap. I drink from the tree.