from an email I wrote to a fellow blogger about guys and stuff.

(jcontent)

If I'm actually in shul, I daven (as long as I'm there, might as well, you know?). The only dude I'd ever looked for in the men's section before was my dad.

But there I was at this wedding, and there were all these men (and after quickly determining who probably had a wedding ring on or was under 18/over 50 and ignoring them, there were still some guys left over. Huzzah! Probably-single men in nice suits ready to rip it up like folks at orthodox weddings do.

It made me realize it will be impossible to marry anyone, or at least I'll have to send an acclimation guide [along w/audio disc of od yishama and other tunes people should know at weddings] to my non-Jewish, music-loving friends to prepare them for that sort of experience, along with the invitation, if/whenever I do wind up getting married.

I'm thinking a bonfire wedding at Harriman on L'ag B'Omer in 2010 (it falls on a Sunday, then). Oh, wait, I'd need to meet someone first. lol Someone that I like and who likes me.

I think you hit the nail on the head the other day when you wrote something like having a blog means running into cool people -- yes -- marriageable, not so much.

I don't even know what hashkafically means (I have since learned what it means), but I think it's agreeing about whether or not to cover hair/wear skirts/etc., based on context. That stuff's pretty important.

On another level, and maybe it comes from being a few years older (and that I'm willing to be w/someone and wind up being more observant, not less observant [and I feel like a jerk writing people off for putting "not at all" in the slot about keeping kosher, but I'd really like to be with someone who cares to some degree about that, and (I'm adding returns so it's easier to read. I know how to form a paragraph.)

I'm not going to feel bad for wanting to be with someone who understands that not eating milchigs and fleishigs together isn't about being some sort of penguin droid with no brain [which is not to say by any means that all who dress like penguins are brainless droids -- far from it], it's about being compassionate -- and

I wouldn't want to be with yanky who sits and learns all day if he doesn't understand that I don't eat cheeseburgers anymore 'cause I want what I eat to remind me to be compassionate and to reflect compassion as a conscious choice,

not to rack up points on some tzivos hashem mitzvah mission like when I was a kid, or because some dude with a beard in the sky played telephone with moshe a million years ago), or to get me a good place in olam haba

(I'm the one who's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to. -R'Hendrix)

but I also write people off who don't write cat in the pets they like, so I guess I'm really, really shallow]. (kidding -- I have cats. I don't want to be with someone who can't hang with cats. I don't feel bad about that, either. If I met someone [not online] who was super-allergic to cats and he and I fell in love, I'd consider finding them homes. Online, though, it's easy to be picky, I suppose.)

Yeah, it's time for me to get a blog of my own. lol
Good. Maybe it'll help me meet somebody.
Gotta fix my front brake first, tonight.
Priorities! :) Camp rides.

3/18/08, 8:38 PM
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Post-script: Brake pads have been changed, but the actual brake needs adjusting. -4/16/08

Kicking it off

with a little Kook (Disclaimer: I don't agree with everything by anyone)

The Fourfold Song

There is a person who sings the song of his soul. He finds everything, his complete spiritual satisfaction, within his soul.

There is a person who sings the song of the nation. He steps forward from his private soul, which he finds narrow and uncivilized. He yearns for the heights. He clings with a sensitive love to the entirety of the Jewish nation and sings its song. He shares in its pains, is joyful in its hopes, speaks with exalted and pure thoughts regarding its past and its future, investigates its inner spiritual nature with love and a wise heart.

There is a person whose soul is so broad that it expands beyond the border of Israel. It sings the song of humanity. This soul constantly grows broader with the exalted totality of humanity and its glorious image. He yearns for humanity's general enlightenment. He looks forward to its supernal perfection. From this source of life, he draws all of his thoughts and insights, his ideals and visions.

And there is a person who rises even higher until he unites with all existence, with all creatures, and with all worlds. And with all of them, he sings. This is the person who, engaged in the Chapter of Song every day, is assured that he is a child of the World-to-Come.

And there is a person who rises with all these songs together in one ensemble so that they all give forth their voices, they all sing their songs sweetly, each supplies its fellow with fullness and life: the voice of happiness and joy, the voice of rejoicing and tunefulness, the voice of merriment and the voice of holiness.

The song of the soul, the song of the nation, the song of humanity, the song of the world--they all mix together with this person at every moment and at all times.

And this simplicity in its fullness rises to become a song of holiness, the song of God, the song that is simple, doubled, tripled, quadrupled, the song of songs of Solomon--of the king who is characterized by completeness and peace.

-Reb A.Y. Kook Orot Hakodesh II, p. 444 (copied and pasted from: http://ravkook.net/universalism.html)