my power dinner party

If you could have any 10 people over for dinner, who would they be?  I was talking - or rather arguing - about this with a friend and we decided that included any historical figures and fictional/nonfictional characters.  Of course, me being me, I couldn't decide on only 10 so I had to just have more than one dinner party to accommodate them all :)

Here is a favorite (in no particular order):

1. Mark Twain

2. Eleanor Roosevelt

3. George Bernard Shaw

4. John Stewart

5. Oscar Wilde

6. Shakespeare

7. John Steinbeck

8. Henry David Thoreau

9. J.M. Barrie

10. Bach

I'm listening to Penderecki right now.  What a crazy motherfucker.  It's like hearing the earth die - creaking, groaning, wailing, exhalting, crying, whispering.  I want to turn it off but can't.  It's haunting and alluring, which keeps me stuck here subjecting myself to these frightening, mystical emotions and continually wondering why I haven't turned the damn thing off yet.  

On a lighter, happier note - it snowed tonight.  Not the cheap, icy stuff we usually get.  Big, beautiful, fluffy snow.  Of course it didn't stick or anything, but it was just so incredible to see here in Austin in the beginning of December.  I stood outside for about 20 minutes in nothing but my pajamas, feeling utterly alive and thanking God for stuff like this - these magnificent, short-lived surprises in life.

"I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy"

- Louise Bogan