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"Take off from here. And don't be so earnest,
let others wear the sackcloth and the ashes.
Let go, let fly, forget.
You've listened long enough. Now strike your note."

From "Station Island," by Seamus Heaney

I caught the following conversation between two pretty women in the ladies' room of a Manhattan restaurant. One of the women was pregnant. And she said, "So my acupuncturist made me take the ring out of my belly button."

"Really?" her friend exclaimed.

"Yeah, he said, 'Let's give this baby a chance.'"

Enthralled by this ripe exchange, I called Manhattan acupuncturist Robert Abramson and asked him about it. "Oh," he softly chuckled, "Maybe her acupuncturist was me!"

Turns out belly button piercing is an especially bad idea from an acupuncturist's perspective.

Abramson explains: "The belly button rests upon a central meridian known as the 'conception vessel,' and this meridian is of paramount importance for conception in all of its aspects-- obviously in the conceiving of a child, but also in the conceiving of new ideas."

Any ornamental piercing on the body (a well as the metal object that rests in it) will interfere with the smooth flow of the body's chi (or vital life force), so when considering a new hole (even in your ear or nose), you must weigh the costs and benefits. Abramson says he's heard that pirates of yore pierced their ears to offset the symptoms of sea sickness. Changes that look purely ornamental, can have accompanying--if subtle--physical effects.

The social pressure to conform to fashion and pierce the ears or nose today is so great, however, that Abramson has no enormous reaction when he meets a new client who has pierced these areas. But key to the practice of Chinese medicine is the notion that anything you do to a part influences the whole. He asks his clients to consider that in all they do. And even though a piercing or tattoo (which Abramson sees as even more benign) creates a physical change, you've engaged in behavior that has mental and spiritual implications. This behooves us to pay close attention to our actions and stay flexible, he says. All permanent decisions should obviously be evaluated through a filter of future time. How's this going to look when I'm older? And in the case of the belly button: how will this effect me if I ever want to conceive? Even men, Abramson says, aren't the best candidates for belly button piercing if they want to impregnate a partner.

"We all want to be peacocks," Abramson says. But it is generally wisest to leave yourself unaltered in as much as you can.

And belly button rings? Well, they've got to go.

I hope the woman I eavesdropped on is enjoying the full flow of her chi now, and has had a great pregnancy!

Here's some information on illness, acupuncture, and navel-piercing.

And here's a fascinating-looking book, "The Tao of Piercing," that explains how to pierce consciously.

Well, it is that time of year again when you go to a wedding and come home chattering over how painful some of the wedding toasts were.

The warm, loving wedding toast seems to have fallen by the wayside in this age of reality television and talk show therapy. Today, we must hear how many loser lovers the bride lured to her bed, and how the groom got drunk one telltale spring break, and threw up on his Bermuda shorts.

Ah, memories! I've seen a groom savagely mock the social strivings of his new mother-in-law as if she were a dragon he had to slay. I've witnessed toasts that made note of the hapless groom's slovenliness (before he was domesticated by the conniving, neat-freak bride, of course).

So where is the politeness, the sacred moment when guests weep for joy that two people, both comfortable within their own skin, have united as a greater whole?

I'm thinking that the wedding toast has suffered from the demise of the old-fashioned "rehearsal dinner." This bawdy night-before-the-ceremony meal was usually the best place to rib or "roast" the bride and groom in a small-group setting. In this meal's absence, folks find no other avenue down which their jokes and jollies can turn, so they now insult the bride and groom within an hour of the actual wedding ceremony in in the presence of 10-year-old nieces and 93-year-old great grandparents.

Believe me, I've been on all sides of the wedding toast problem. I spent the first day of my own Barbados honeymoon weeping over a toast that was given by a college roommate. I've also botched a toast or two of my own. (Oddly, I aced the first one I ever gave.) My most surreal wedding toast memory, however, is set at a pre-wedding Big Sur bonfire party, when I heckled one of the bride's drunk best friends whose toast became so obscene (grandparents and kids were there) that I could no longer listen to it. "Oh, hurry it up. Other people want to go on!" I shouted from the shadows of majestic redwoods. Sadly, he only paused. Other members of the audience gasped at my intrusion. But some thanked me later for hastening him along. Next morning, the man's mother accosted me for interrupting her darling boy, and when it's all said and done, I learned not to heckle anyone ever again. These are tender moments for any speaker, even when the speaker's in the wrong. Better to go off and fix your lipstick when the wedding toasts take their lurching, rotten turns, or resign yourself to watching them in silence like the amazing HBO series they always are!

If you're saddled with toasting responsibilities yourself this spring or summer, here's ChatteringMind's best advice:

1. Don't wing it. Even the most experienced public speakers jot out thoughts in advance. It's a good idea to rehearse your toast the night before in front of a person you trust. Then that friend can help you analyze where you might be off base.

2. Divest yourself of the fantasy that your toast will impress people, and make you look good. Rabbi MarcGellman once said that wedding toasts, like eulogies, should be egoless. How smart that is! While you'd like to look witty, sexy, and well-read, your aim here is to graciously wish your friends a happy life. Your toast is about them, not you, you silly doufus! Ask your ego to shut up for a few minutes. In doing so, you will look fabulous (but forget I told you that).

3. Never mention an ex. Never mention an ex. Never mention an ex! Unless you are the ex. And even then, or especially then, don't mention it.

3. Eliminate all sentiments that don't spring from a loving place. Now is not the time to settle old scores, or march us through a relationship that has had more lows than highs.

4. Keep your toast short. If you're running over two or three minutes, you're in over-time. Exceptions exist, but are rare.

5. Have an ending. You need a little "kicker," or conclusion so that people will know when to raise their glass. Round it up. Close it out. Wish your friends nothing but happiness. When folks start applauding, and you finally sit down, you'll want to feel happily married to yourself, complete, in the face of a challenge that could have exposed your weaknesses, but didn't.

Wedding guests are so shell-shocked nowadays that you could recite anything sentimental and get a huge, warm, loving applause: "To the lamp of love--may it burn brightest in the darkest hours and never flicker in the winds of trial." If you've got ample planning time, buy any one of these books. Read Rumi. And Rilke.
Write in your journal. Confront your own desire to tease or humiliate. Let your love direct you, and you'll shine.

What are your best and most ghastly wedding toast moments? Let's get a good conversation going on this!

It bothers me that Al Gore is holding onto the weight he's gained.

Not because I'm anti-fat. Not because I want him to run again.

But because I've always believed that his weight gain was due to the personal trauma of winning the popular vote and losing the election, and that in the early years of the Bush administration, I imagine Gore must have been eating, grieving, and beating himself up over not having been a more perfect candidate.

With the weight, he holds the whole country's grief (well, he at least holds the sadness felt by the chunk of the country that voted for him). If he lets the grief go, we can all breathe easier. We'd think: Well, we've all taken a hit, but we still have our health.

Since Gore knows what fitness is and has enjoyed being lean in the past, and since, for God's sake, he has won an Oscar, come into the limelight again in a big way, he can now lose the weight and feel victorious.

Al's flab seems attached to our sad, communal casting back, our head-shaking, grief-stricken imaginings over what might have been. None of us want to live that way any longer. We need to get back into fighting shape, so we can build something new. So Al, hop on that exercise bike (you can watch CNN as you pump). Not since Kirstie Alley has a nation been so fixated upon a public figure's girth. Letterman even did a Top 10 on it in early 2001. So let's get it, as a topic, off the tables. What do you say, Al? Please!

I once wrote an article for "The Washington Post" about the dreams people have about Washington D.C.

Turns out lots of people have dreams that involve the Washington Monument.

When I queried a Jungian analyst on this, we both agreed it was hard not to see this 555-foot tall obelisk as our nation's phallus. "A great country needs a great phallus," the Jungian analyst said, stroking his beard. This remark astonished me, and then made sense for a time, and then stayed with me long after I'd moved on to other projects.

Well, the folks who march around the Tagata Shrinei carrying phallus flags in central Honsu every March 15th to commemorate the Shinto Hounen Festival have the same general idea. Only their phallus isn't nationalistic. Their ritual parading of a thirteen-foot long phallus is all about their gladness for the universe's creation and their hopes for a fertile farming year. "It is the time plants come into bud and [we] feel the power of life," says one website. Couples longing to become pregnant also come to meditate and celebrate.

Here's a pretty amazing (and amusing) film of the 13-foot long penis (called Oo-Owasegata) that will again be on display at Tagata Shrinei this coming Wednesday. Pass this link around and wish your friends their own Happy Hounen Festival! (Do any readers know how to say "Be fruitful and multiply!" in Japanese?)The men carrying Oo-Owasegata offer drinks to attending farmers in hopes of inseminating their fields for a bountiful year, according to Anneli Rufus's "World Holiday Book" and Waverly Fitzgerald. So you could lift a glass yourself, in honor of spring and everything fecund.

P.S. Regarding that Washington dream project I mentioned earlier: People didn't only dream about phalluses. They also had dreams of being served a sumptuous meal by a motherly Barbara Bush, and other understandably odd things like that.

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