Thoughts on Love, Addiction & Be-ing the Change

I fall in love easy.

Sometimes all it takes is a certain look, or lilt of the voice, and then that's it I'm all rosy-chested and sparkling.

I'm addicted to it--but (I feel like I've been quoting Buddha a lot lately) addiction is the human condition so this is me non-demonizing. We're hooked on feeling good or feeling bad, in general we're hooked on feelings and it is that reliance, and the anxiety created by wishing those sensate states would remain, that is the root of suffering. We are attached, essentially, to our self. But this isn't about suffering or Eastern theology other than perhaps experimenting with personal and varying applications of such... Really for me today this is about love, and people and humanity. And doing, according to my own spirit, the right thing.

What I am getting at is that I am in love with almost everyone that I know.

Guy, girl, old, young. Doesn't matter. In general, I think people are amazing and really the only thing that I've found that can instantly, and I guess permanently, turn me off is ingenuity. Any really abrasive signs that you dont think for yourself. But even that quality or immediate projection I've learned to try to be gentle around though, I've begun to learn to practice love-ing anyway. If I am around you and you are at ease in yourself, then pow. Watch out. Now we're in love!

I also am baptized again and again in synchronicity and so look out for it, especially in the subtle ways. I heard this guy tell a story--he was making fun of himself because as he related it he went to the beach to be alone and find silence and maybe the grandness, too, and it turns out there was this crying ass kid going nuts just a couple hundred yards from him. So the guy starts totally bugging out because damnit that kid stole his peace, and then he thought maybe that kid needs help? And he turns and inspects the scene more closely and what he finds is this mom of three, struggling like with a capital s, and this little kid's ball in the waves. So the guy goes and gets this ball for the little one, and the little one's like thanks and stops crying and through his little snifflysniffles beams. And the guy he realizes, holy shit. There's always a million little ways to better the world. He thinks, it all comes down to paying attention.

He wonders, deeply. Am I paying attention?

Well isn't that just it, in any given moment, am I paying attention? Where can I give or practice love? Practice, as in the principle, open-heartedness? Am I paying attention?

So stay with me here. Am I paying attention in my own life? In the past few days again and again the same message has come to me in different forms, and it has to do with staying away from negative people. Now I am not too sure how I feel about this. At first, I was like o yea, yes yes that is it. But really, is it?

If we are trying, really trying to be the change we wish to see than do we purposefully stay away from negative people? In that I am someone who falls in love with everyone I know, it means that I have had to learn good inner boundaries. In other words, making sure I am not seeking from you something I need to fulfill in an inner way myself, and/or giving too much of myself in a way that depletes me and disempowers you from your own personal stance of filling your self up from within. So the question is, in the presence of someone negative isn't it our duty to really let loving actions and thoughts shine through? Isn't it than up to us to double down and really stand true to who we are and could be? True, at times there have been some people who are so stuck on there own downer trip and going further and ever down more and more that I have had to limit my time around them. There are others still that threaten my inner-security and how I feel about me, and too I've had to honor that. So I know the necessity of self-protection, but all the same. I'm wondering....

Ok so I'm gonna say it. What would Jesus do? Jesus, who hugged the lepers and broke bread with the whores. Now that of course begs recognition of a primary difference: those folks were socially stigmatized NOT negative; but truly, what is the inherent lesson, the principal taught in that?

For me I know the answer that resonates to my most current truth. When I am true to myself, to being who I can be when I am out in the world and to as much as possible caring for and loving the inside broken, or twisted or funny and also glorious and unique and beautiful parts of me, then I can better do the same with whomever I come in contact with. And more, my path seems to naturally connect me to those who most easily resonate in a true way with me when I am flowing according to my own truths and rhythms, too. In other words, when I am good to me and practicing love, all else sort of takes care of itself. Look, back to last week--it is a fucked up unfair world. BUT if I am alive and loving than inherently I say yes to all of it, right? And do the best I can to love anyway even if it hurts.

Hurt passes. I stay in love. Maybe the message isn't to stay away from negative folks. Maybe the way I'm going to practice it is to work to be around the positive ones.

Gone Sitting

~may all beings beeeeeeeeeeee happyyyyyyyyyyyyy~

woooooooooohoooooooooooooooooooooo!!

No Better Way

…This is actually a commitment to joy. When you feel momentary happiness, or you want to burst out laughing, or you smile for no apparent reason, you are glimpsing eternal reality. For a fleeting moment the curtain has parted so you can experience something beyond the illusion. In time these moments of joy will begin to knit together. Instead of the exception, they will become the norm. There is no better way to know that you are growing…
~Deepak Chopra

Happy Easter, Happy Spring!

Happy Easter!

Happy finally getting outside cuz it's Spring!

Happy celelbration of the renewal of the eternal spirit!

My favorite thing about the stories of Jesus is that he was a man of the people. Kept company with the livers of real life, valued the differences between all the various classes and backgrounds of people and never made any one out to be better then. Taught by walking it how to forgive, how to walk with integrity standing true in your beliefs, how to walk with courage in your truth, how to walk with faith despite the most challenging difficulties. And Jesus was a political radicalist, too. As my own readings of his stories and myths go, I think he was a pretty rad dude. Whenever I need to practice the actions of true compassion, understanding, tolerance, or forgivness I find myself envisioning him, striving for the warmth of those feelings in my heart as I set my intentions for the day.

I got to celebrate with my family~mom, dad, bro and me together just the four of us~for the first time since 2002. Wonderful.

The pictures of us turned out with too much backlight tho. So much for the easy setting on my digital.....

I even got in a fine walk down the beach today, too. I went for reflection, stillness. And ended up mostly all shiny, full of sun and joy....

Long Dirt Road

Signs that I am getting better, # 1:

I was driving home tonight and Feist came on the radio. Pardon me if I am late with this, but I love this woman...and tonight, or this evening dusktime in farm country with the returning ospreys low swooping and the black trees against the mute orange and greys of the sky--Mushaboom came on. To say I was obsessed with song may be rather mild--indeed this past summer it was on constant reply in my head, an antagonistic message I couldn't quite grasp. (The words may indeed tip you off as to why, gentle reader, that is if you are at all a regular follower of these here words/this here life.) But I've never heard this song on the radio before. Well I lately only listen to pop music, silence or talk radio in the car because the slippery thin line between depression and real life for me is so subtle~~so fucking subtle but so MAJOR, you dig? And guilt, shame (which I've learned to re-identify for myself as self-judgment) and pity for me in the months since I moved out are a torturous landslide of boundary-less-ness, much like a brutal watercareening mudslide in a mean torrent of rain. There's just no way to tell once I've slipped over the slope and am stuck swirling within, no land to grab in sight. So tonight I'm driving along and on comes Mushaboom, contextually a song that would call up that ol tramp Melancholy and give her reason to let it rip. But tonight I drove along aware--aware you guys!! of the outline of my heart! You know, like blissing along with the music, aware of the tenderocity of life, actually feeling little tweaks in my heart but sure as those tweaks were one with the song they were one with the trees and those birds and that farmhouse over there, too. My sweet blessed broken healing heart, widened now and once again, even more softened at the edges. And thank god for the edges--that they were there and it wasn't just nebulous, patterned pain... If you have a minute visit this youtube video of her singing Mushaboom it's a trip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDZwThM7vAg
People do not do near enough choreographed dancing! I mean, cmon, I came from the eighties, you dig--the apex of MTV and the step step step kick and up, down and hands through the hair seductively and step and kick and again! Thank god for that, and thank god for dancing in general--which is probably sign # 2 I am getting better: I am doing an awful lot of bad pop song car dancing lately...

Anyhow. I read two excellent posts tonight, Serendipity number 6 zillion and twenty-two and 6 zillion twenty-three. The first, here, is a fascinating succinct read about body energy/the earth's energy, found on flip flopping joy. It took me a third of the way down to realize it was written by a man--there shows my clear gender bias, but his instinct on feminine/divine feminine patterns and injuries is so, so well done--and a full half of the way down to realize it was written about sex!!! Which just goes to show I am not always good at reading the titles. The second, here, is by my first writing mentor's husband, Jeff, and is in tune with my own recent re-discovery of the bliss of the great Mystery...

I have laundry piled up, literally, to my head. Time to go be a grown-up.

Why Not? On G.O.D.

I have a Higher Power. I call it that for lac of a better term, and because it is easier and less loaded than say God for example. Once, when I was a kid, I was just home from Sunday school one morning--I remember because I was still in a dress and maryjane shoes--I was probably 6 or 7, maybe 8-years-old. And I dragged my little desk, one of those blue metal things with the opening for your books under the seat and the desk welded onto an arm that came up on one side, over to my closet to stand on and reach something on the top shelf. And this feeling of incredible warm calm came over me and it was almost as if it said, I wouldn't do that if I were you. And I literally stopped what I was doing and responded with my own internal mind talk: Jesus, is that you?

I stood on the desk anyway, and, top-heavy it pitched me forward into an entirely nonsteady wall of clothes which did not stop my fall but certainly softened my landing. My father came clamoring up the stairs yelling because he was scared and I, not for the first time, learned the hard way.

I dont know if it was Jesus. I'm saying, if that's what you want to/like to call it, more power to you, though I've never been comfortable identifying it, or I guess I should more aptly say limiting it by giving it a personality or name, at all. In highschool marijuana was a the placebo that got me to more or less trust in that inner "hunch", and I called it It then. In the years of partying and hanging that came after that I literally followed the coincidences into the gnostics, info on mysticism, paganism and more. By college I had taken to meditating, or preparing my mind for that quiet guidance to grow. And around that time I got turned on to the Celestine Prophecy, and Simple Abundance, and as result grew encouraged about actually owning, and using, and growing my own access to the inner-calm or guidance.

A year or so ago, maybe a year and a half now, I was laying under a tree at Anngar, under my tree (animism is also a tenet I live, again I can't say believe here because I project this onto my subjective reality, so there is no way for me to say it's merely a belief as I live the Oneness) and I was talking to the Higher Power and feeling the receptivity of my tree and my body relaxing into the earth around it. And I said to HP I just really feel like I need some time alone. My next thought was that I was due in town for something at 5pm. At which time I met a random stranger who invited me (I was between jobs at the time) to come to a 10 day, 10 hour a day meditation retreat happening at a camp right outside town, for free. We weren't allowed to talk the whole time. I went. And sat Vipasanna, a form of stringent Buddhist meditation, for those 10 days.

At Vipasanna retreat the guru was very clear that we were not to invoke any higher power or god, no praying or anything like that was allowed. That was tough for me, as I start my day, everyday, with a prayer, and usually (after coffee at least!) settle in for a minimum of 10 minutes of open meditation to align myself with my own inner calm, and then focus my mind on my gratitude and intentions for the day. Vipassana was amazing. I clearly saw the direct connection between somatic emotional wounds and our otherwise unconscious reactive thought patterns that all humans hold. I fully realized the absolute alignment between these unchecked beliefs and illness. And the experience of sitting Vipassana was an amazing challenge, the validity for which I fully understand: utilizing the inner "Watcher" to unkink our patterning, or samsaras, by witnessing rather than running with them, thus disavowing these patterns of ego attachment and thus of their power. But here's the deal ya'll, when I meditate, before I sat that 10 day period, and since, I always first give thanks and then ask that my own Higher (or, to be more factually precise insofar as how I feel it, my "Inner" or "Deeper") Power to be "on."

And here's the point of this whole post: It works. Perception changes, clear healing of thought patterns or un-"kinking", unthinkable coincidences, serendipity like you wouldn't believe. And usually all I do is witness the movement of my mind with love and non-judgement, after having asked my "Power" be turned on. And after a while of that I seek to clear out the inner-noise and sit in peace and thanks-giving. I really try to feel it, to make it warm and gold-feeling inside. Then, and this is key for me, whatever it is that I think I can't do--like empty a six-bedroom farmhouse with my hatchback and no plans for assistance--I say ok HP (or Great Love, or Holy Mystery, or Grand Mama, Deep Power or whatever whatever) take this ****** (insert exhausting life detail here), and thanks for taking care of it in my own highest good (with blessings to all involved etc etc.) Or whatever whatever... (insert grateful expression of faith who cares the semantics here.) And then I really do let it go, and I gotta tell you, always, always the details easily take care of themselves.

It's all a matter of aligning my heart with my faith in that power. Of not needing to know, just trusting. Of recognizing I, the Ego-I anyway, am not the end all. And in that, for me, the Power is vital. No matter how I define it, the words I choose to use or what I call it. It's using it, really with my heart using it, that counts. I believe that this is vibrational. (For one unsciency follow-up on this idea, click here; for a sciency one, here.)

And if your doubting right now, allow me to question: have you ever tried it, really tried it, your self?

Remember the Oregon Dialogue? I Get Esoteric on that Ass...

(skip down to get the esoteric highlights for the next several days!!)
Ahhhh, my dear friends.

Here's where I wax nostalgic and take us a back a mere three years ago to when Brandon and I, freshfaced and PacWest-eyed, returned home from the West Coast and sought to empower the ideals we learned and lived on the road and out there right here on the Eastern Shore, Chestertown, USA.


We began with gathering in our living road at Truslow Road--remember that joyous spot--and eventually created a newsletter around our efforts. Our "efforts" were largely principal-based, concerned with lots of potluck-inspired meetings of the minds. We were educating people, and each other, on environmental stewardship and community building. For me the substance of this always was ethical responsibility first, thus self-knowledge and personal accountability--inner development--were integral to such a movement in my mind. Likewise, the importance of the arts, of self-expression, of inner-reflection through practice of submitting to the impulse itself and then further, sharing one's experience with each another, this all was equal to me in the foundation of community building. Eventually during that time I stumbled on to Starhawk and started reading her stuff--we have a lot of the same viewpoints--(you can read her thoughts on ethics and accountability and earth spirituality here) and also met Regina at LightPaths in Centreville around that time, too. She turned me on to nightlightnews.org, where the author, Risa, gave me permission to disseminate her great esoteric insights. Esoteria to me means the hands-on walking of self-development, in other words utilizing the symbolism in various myths and messagry to apply to your own inner growth. For me, further, it has to do with an autonomous understanding of all things being universal, or divine, of all energies rising and falling and influencing and blending one with the other with the other as the ultimate reality is we are all one energy, blending and surging in chaotic harmony.


The Oregon Dialogue, our short-ran newsletter, and the community gatherings around it evolved in to the oregondialogue emails, where by I would network, invite people to community events, keep people informed of issues, and most of all share my esoteric thoughts at certain opportune, or energetic, times of the year.


Dig it: for those of you first finding yourselves opening up to this tip, let me just tell you, this self-development esoteric trip has been, in a conscious way anyhow, going on about 10 years now for me. It's so common I don't even know any other way to live anymore--like as example I don't even get it anymore that people don't know about Imbolc coming up, or the influence--major!--of Mercury Retro right now. To me it's all so natural a part of my understanding of the oneness of things--of GOD if you will--that it puzzles me to have to remember that to most people this is new, or even not true! information.

So to those with their own wonderings: I Speak To You. It's there, it's real. The transformation, the new consciousness, all of it. It's tough though, it's a step by step you being the change from day to day process. There's no wizard with a magic wand who's gonna appear in your steps all a sudden and tap you on the shoulder and say Hey, It's On!! It's a gradual thing, and we are all here to wake up to it. So if this message is coming to you, good! Welcome! Say yes! Then begin to look, and listen, to within....

Important Esoteric Highlights:
1. Monday was New Moon with a solar eclipse. In terms of inner-development: our sun is our light, think daily awareness. Our moon is our night, think mystery or unconscious, as in sleep with dreams. They come together, the subconscious to block out the regular awareness for a brief, deep jolt. Each voids the other out, then begin again together, having merged, in a dancing and magical blend--starting for you and your soul a whole new spiral of energy and light. Think DNA double helix, vibrating with not yet formed thoughts through-out your whole soul. New moon is new beginning, solar eclipse is new beginning in the physical world--remember--it's "light of day" stuff. So actual real new thoughts, ideas, opportunities etc. What newness came to you? Think about it. Woohoo!

2. Mercury ends its retrograde this weekend. Thank gawd! Hope you made no major decisions the past three weeks (at work we are changing everything!! I've had to try so hard to keep my mouth closed about it, wanting to say ahhhh!!!just wait til were out of Mercury cuz all new information will surface and change everything!!) You've been in deep, almost unconscious soul review. Running over and over those double helixes. Anicha anicha, the nature of everything, changing changing. If your head's been loud that's why. Pay attention to the messages you got. For real.

3. Most important! To me bewitched as I am anyway--Imbolc is Monday. This is the old Druid or pagan holiday of first light, benefactor of the Goddess Brigid who is my patron. Later she was claimed as a St. so if you are more comfortable with Christian symbology this week coming is St. Brigid's day, Saint of the Hearth, of fire, midwifery, and poetry. Any way it's a celebration of the first light of life--of fire, of new idea or passion or spark or creativity. For old agricultural societies it was literally time of first seed when they celebrated with the last food of their Harvest and got ready for the growth of the year to come. Also known as Candlemas, this is really archaic Christian/ancient Judaic (with clear roots in the politics of misogyny evident) in application--where in old earth traditions Brigid venerated passion, arts, fire, life, all things symbolic of fertility and creativity and the natural cycles and gifts we each embody within; Candlemas, or Purification of the Virgin, was a time for new mother's to cleanse through various offerings, including that of sacrificial animals, in order to receive the blessing and cleansing of the priest after the dirtied experience of child-birthing. Ain't mythology a trip!?!? Anyhow,

Two Important things about Imbolc. One)I have, in my own life, learned that these old energies and archtypes behind holidays are real, and if you dig the earth as oneness thing, look back to the Full Moon of January 11. This is the traditional lunar celebration of Imbolc. What new energy, new thoughts, new ideas, new passions were sizzling around in you? I just realized myself that that important moon passed unattended by me. So, retrospective learning it is...consider what new passions your soul shined its first light on for you, what is it that your deep self wants for you to grow? Two) This message from the full moon will revisit you this coming week. Because merc is out of retrograde it will seem like ahhhh fresh air. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR CLARITY. If you experience anger or stuckness in the early week these are old archetypes (see the explanation just above) that you are meant, indeed you were sent here, to heal. Go within. Rebirth, reclaim yourself. Listen. Listen.

4. There is a stellar sooper cool alignment coming up on Valentines's Day. I'm gonna be with my sistas no doubt raising up the power. Read about it here. Or, go put on that cheesemonger song from the old show Hair, This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius...and listen to the words. You know, about the moon in the 7th sign and stuff. Yea. That's what's happening, literally.

5. That's all. No, it's not. One more thing from my soapbox. Ever ask your self just what the hell you're doing here? Like really looked in to your darkness, disheartened, afraid. Well this is the answer. Wake-up to your self. So we can all help all of us people do the same....

What I'm listening to (support independent music people!): The High and Low outta Cincinnati. They remind me a little of when I first realized my riotgrrrrrrl soul....

Now, that's it....enough outta me.

Cuz it's my favorite kind of meditation & it reminds me of Sammy G

First Day of the Hunt

The schools always close,
knowing we're so country
all our boys will skip anyway,

and the valley rises together before dawn—

daughters pulling wool caps
past fathers' ears, reciting the profound
and elemental list:

rifle, rounds, knife, rope,

only to send each heavy man to the woods
where he'll slump the day in drifts
of solitude and prayer

while most deer stay down, evading
the unlucky, the night spent

visiting cousins: stroking curves
of antler, lengths of blood-stiffened fur.

Every year it's the same
soft and deliberate snow prints,
the waiting—

as if mine could emerge from his last hiding
place and walk the evening,
empty-handed, to me.

poem for the day by Paula Bohince

Seriously, if you've never tried:
let's posit that meditation is simply a means of going within
or, let's not posit, let's visit dictionary.com:
meditate
verb, -tat⋅ed, -tat⋅ing.
–verb (used without object)
1.
to engage in thought or contemplation; reflect.
2.
to engage in transcendental meditation, devout religious contemplation, or quiescent spiritual introspection.

okay, so if that's the case, reflecting or contemplating, even devoutly religious or quiescent
(-adjective 1.being at rest; quiet; still; inactive or motionless: a quiescent mind. ) or spiritual introspection that involves the mind. well. i am obsessed with this experience, maybe, naw likely because as a teenager and thus when my identity schisms were being chemically cemented by way of the all mighty hormone, i was early engaged in conscious-changing experiments that always involved substances of some sort. so now, sans-substance of course, i really dig on what can still take me to more open, or heightened, or even Still levels of being from within.

try reading a poem, really connecting the movement of it to your inner state. as means of quiescent introspection. join me in the tribe of the holy yogic creatix: from ecopoetshaman gary snyder "The yogin is an experimenter. He experiments on himself. Yoga, from the root Yuj (related to the English \yoke") means to be at work, engaged." join me in this fabulous dance of self-creating, supplication, sublimation on into beginning and beginning all over again....

p.s. also, if you read this far. the poem above reminds me of my friend sam. who i want to mention bc i dig him so much, too. brandon told me last nite he was headed to sammy's for some of the overflow of venison he's got this season. it made me so full of longing for hard, cold earth days that you walk through gingerly but assured purely by the warmth of your friends. the pond out back of the corn pokes and over the hill at sam and tim's. the goose blinds there that always mildly disturbed me, til the nite same cooked us goose soaked in oj in the black cast iron top of his wood stove. how it chokes me to look back on those times. growing up together: knowing sam as this goofy lanky dude that one time was already up in a tree that i suddenly needed to climb. or the night, last january time of Cold moon and god was it cold, and we walked through the woods at anngar the air with its bluehue that reminds you of the ghosts there in the body and bones of the ancient old land--and we were so cold that all at once bran and sam and me looked at one another and ran, under the full moon with cold cheeks and air that burnt our runny noses, all the way back to the farm house, and scraped together a meal of what sam had brought--oodles of noodles, and what was left of ours--some veggies and a little cheese.

how this time of cold calls for warmth. for friends. or good poems. or surrendering, at rest, quiet, still, to within.

Poems Poems Poetry

When the winter wheat comes I will think of you

It is now that we cast long looks
at the setting sun,
remember;
we are privileged. We take stock,
assessment of the jobs we have done.
The winter wheat will grow soon
where the corn stood in rows.
The green meat of the tips of those
tender stalks will in vibrating shadows
lift voices to the heavens—
So swift, so soon will be the color
laying there
all force will draw out from us, from this
our unifying center
where, ah
with catched breath
we will realize we are waiting
and have been,
since the fall.



that is a poem for the day by me



i think part of the reason i am writing so much lately, besides this sleepfull time of year always being sooo creative for me, is that i am reading a ton a ton a poetry. that and with all the changes i personally have undergone in the last three months, now with the retrograde my head is freakin goingoingoin. so it's easy to catch some automatic voices up there and channel um on to the page...



here's who i'm really in to today:





obviously you can't click to look inside. but you can click here to check her out. it was one of those total on instincts grab and buy. entirely by the feeling, the swell in the heart area when i lifted her off the shelf.

ok that is all.

My Great List, cont

Today I am grateful for....
25. Friends who I can talk simple, profound spirituality with. Who believe in joy-following and making others feel good. Like my pal Cindy, who sent me this link

The Interview, which reminded me of

26. The book Conversations with God. Which is a life-changer. Word. This book dropped a complete but simple understanding of basic zen, of basic tao, on me in less than half a page. It took me three tries and the first thirty pages of eye-rolling to finally get in to it. Don't let the word God throw you off...


27. ESL and spanish speakers and speaking spanish. Getting the opportunity to meet different people and learn so much that is not commonly considered "our" culture. Expanding my values.


28. Ridiculously fly boots bought at 5:00am Black Friday morning. If I were really lame I'd write humunuh-humunuh write here.


29. My family, who choose to spend Saturday afternoons sitting around bonfires together.


30. Wise Women Wisdom. Knowing and learning rhythmically, cyclically, when to let go, when enough's enough, when to put me out there, and when to just sit quiet and listen to within.

Angel Moves

Wow. Lots going on. The MGY gang just left--hosting this conference for young ppl recovering from drugs and booze is a loooot of work!! but enjoyable work, and we are officially at t-minus 17 days and counting until the big event. i am wowed and awed by the simple, powerful preciousness of bringing hearts together for a common good. two of the ppl on our committee have been clean and sober for one whole year! this week, it is like a room full of sunshine to see the smiles on their sweet faces as they celebrate themselves and anticipate the conference that they dedicated this whole past year of their life to, too.

i am blessed.

(you are too.) (believe it.)

listen, if you want to see something beautiful that absolutely tears at your heart strings, go to this link and watch "Cameron Dances." it's my "baby" amy's baby doing those angelic moves....
http://www.youtube.com/user/keithojensen

i am working like a maniac at my new job, and getting ready for this conference, and loving fall and in general showing up and believing in life. that's really all it takes sometimes, huh?

may you, too, believe....

10,000 Ways

Smile...

There must be 10,000 ways to kneel and kiss the earth...

by Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi, 13th century mystic and poet who inspired the All Faiths Beautiful exhibit, in its final week at the American Visionary Art Museum, Bmore.

Go there! (but dont get caught snapping photos cuz the guard'll yell at you...)

Sarah Ban B & Sacred Spots

I have this quiet place where I go. It's in my room. (Yes, Brandon and I, in addition to our bedroom, have our own rooms.) (This is probably the only reason that we've lasted as long as we have.) This idea of a quiet spot, which I actually refer to as my sacred spot, is not original. It came to me from the book Simple Abundance by Sarah Ban Breathnach. I was 21 when I got that daily meditation book for my birthday in March of 98. And by the Fall, when I was moving my stuff in to the slant-walled wooden-floored attic-apartment on Washington Avenue in Chestertown, to start my first semester at a real four year school, I was sold on the ideas that Sarah Ban shares about personal sacred space. But my translation, back then, of seeking bliss within included bong hits to catalyze that written about state of quiet and rapture. In my first Chestertown apartment I sat on a big stuffed maroon pillow from Wal-mart in the center of my bedroom with my little pink "daybook of comfort and joy", a gratitude journal, and my Cabbage Patch lunchbox with the pink plastic bong and insence in it rested by my side. I sat cross-legged, lotus style like I'd seen all the hip wise ones do, and tried to tap open those doors of consciousness I'd heard so much about.

By January, 1999, my mom re-handed me a copy of the same book she'd gotten for Christmas. I was so out of my mind on script tranquilizers that I most strictly associated myself with a big amoebic blob. I felt sludgy and goopy and like I just sort of melted across the floor towards whatever I direction I was heading in rather than actually using feet to walk. And the floor was heavy: it weighted me down. My face felt large and pulled at the same time. The rest of my body felt spinny and without actual confines. And worst of all, I didn't really know it. My consciousness was so numbed I couldn't tabulate any vision of my real reality. Meds are like that, or can be, anyhow.

I was two or so weeks out of the mental hospital and heavily overmedicated. I was diagnosed with a mental illness, a severe one, and put on gnarly doses of anti-psychotics, anti-seizures and anti-depressants to tackle it, to tackle "me". I swarmed around and around inside of me, sludging along on the outside. I dont remember much. But I do remember sitting down in the living room trying to read that book again. And it did not click. Those meds left my brain neurons, and all that life juice, just about two steps behind.

I dropped out of my second semester at Washington College to stop there at the Ward. One institution to another, how I've always looked at it. Is it dramatic to say the two aren't too terribly far apart? I'll never claim non-drama. So I didn't really have a room at my mom's then, when I came out of the hospital to recover. My room was vacant, in my little spot on Wash Ave with the pillow and scuffed hardwood floors. Which is why when I again went looking for a sacred spot, a place all of my very own, where I could celebrate me and relax and give permission to and better know me, I found myself crouched down on the floor next to the old pleather covered toy box that still sat in the corner in my brother's old room. And I took one deep breath and bowed my head there. And I whispered something--to something? I dont know what on either accounts but I am almost sure that it had to be something like help me. And then I heard mom's footsteps on the stairs, and I quick got up and zipped, or anyhow sludged away.
It was years before I was off the meds. And by then I had learned, from my own self and much due to regular daily pauses of reflection and time within, which just means true honest time with me, that I was not mentally ill but quite chemically sensitive--or in other words the medical definition of a drug addict. And who cares the nature of the drug--street or pharm--they all affect me different.

That book changed, or maybe saved, my life. To this day when I am funked I guarantee you it's because too much time has passed since I got to sit down a while with me. I had a great sit-down this morning. And a decent enough one with me yesterday, too. It had been a while. Again. Try it sometime.

Me, in my Sacred Space or "Meditation Spot" on Wash Ave, Spring 2002, sans bonghits, booze & most of all my "ideas"

My tribe, my art, my madness, my home

They say write your madness. Or specifically, your obsessions. Cuz that's what makes you a liver of this life, a qualified human being with your own unique something to say. It's true. Natalie Goldberg, in Writing Down the Bones (read this book) tells us it's okay about our obsessions. Actually she goes as far as to say make a list of them, because when you get down to writing and having to be there, alone with yourself on the page, one of two things is going to happen. You'll either tunnel in and extol on and on all about those couple of things that whirl away most of your brain activity from day to day and at the very least be self-informed when you're done, or else your going to try to avoid them, and in doing so, either not write at all or else end up ONLY, with sort of neurotic blinders on, writing about the one thing that in every other waking moment of your life you spend so much time trying not to look at.

I am mad about my family--my tribe and friends and the people I seem to have come here with. Their karmic patterning and how they are reflected in me and we are all rooted up in each other. Knowing this, really getting in to the stink and the light of it, helps me better decode who we each are trying to be. I'm mad about my art, the self-expression of my madness, and of anything that prompts that or helps me digest it or want to pump it out of me. I am mad about my madness: my spiritual growth or anyhow the experiences of this here soul. Sometimes I am mad about people, certain people, but I chunk them in with the tribe thing. I am mad, I get mad, about this idea of one single word, about the digressions and assertions and the alertness and sensitivity and the conflicts of mine and everyone else's ideas about this one word God. I am mad about Home, and place. And Youth. Music. Soul. Nature. But these all come back to the same couple things, in no particular order--my tribe, my art, my madness, my home.

I want to go back and write about a couple of momentous experiences from this summer but I am also not sure where this will take me, and so it may take a couple days/a couple posts. Firstly, Artscape. The nation's biggest free public art festival--on the streets of Baldamore every year in July. Mom claims we went there to the festival alot as kids, up to the top of MLK in the heart of the city a block away from the hospital where she worked and sometimes got to go sit in the nurse's lounge and play. I do have a mass of memories from childhood labeled city. The physical fragments I recall are of half-way up stuff and commotion: from the knees-up of people in Lexington Market or the other one on Cross Street, the door-up of tall tall buildings in the commerce section where dad worked, the tires-up of fast moving cars on the grey corners and the light coming down the eyelevel alleys from the way-up sky. And the way the bay at the Harbour made you aware of all that sky. The towering sense of life all about you in little splotches of movie-slide detail: how the city brings all that life in a magnified way right on top of you as a kid and you can feel it pulsing there, wizzing on top of you and moving all around you and passing you ever so quickly by and how all that power, all those dizzy half-up visual moments are compounded in to the couple of memories the soft grey flesh of your brain was willing to stop and say hey, I'll take this one down. Mostly my memories are visceral: the cool feeling of the water that spritzed me and my three-year-old boyfriend Kurt when we walked under the misters at the Harbour after the Science Center or the Constellation or the Aquarium and my socks and my shoes got wet. The heat on my ankles that rose up off the street tar. The sweet smell at the Greek festivals that I will forever associate with sticky fingers and bahklava. Being a kid, being so close to real life there on the ground. And the music, the music brushing my ears and the magical feeling of grass in the middle of all that concrete, the music literally moving by my head on the air, through my hair and me with the grass and the late twilight heat of July and mom's artist friend Ellie: being a kid and the touching throb of life that is art and how as kids all that art which is life is still so natural a rhythm to us. Tired after a long day in the sun with all the half-up views at the festival that made mom's eyes twinkle in wonder and her breath go breezy: Artscape.


Sean my brother said it ain't Artscape if it ain't a hundred plus fucking degrees. Yep, that's to be an adult at Artscape. We drove up from Chestertown and got there on Sunday, the last day of the festival, around 11 in the morning. We were laughing and rolling our eyes with tender family humor and had made decisions to go with the day because my mom and her family, her sister and brother-in-law and three of their kids were all coming up from the beach, too, and my mom's family likes to claim to plan things but really it's an excuse for them all to complain a little and at once laugh at each other I mean really laugh until tears come and then in private each one say something mildly injured but also always very funny. And the plans never ever go according to schedule and mostly just get lost or forgot and that is mom's family, and why I love them, how human they are, how imperfectly annoying but able to laugh so frolickingly hard at each other cuz at least they sort of partly see the imperfections and the laughter reminds us we all have that in common. But before I remembered that I just got alot of phone calls from mom and Sean, who was going to the festival to meet us with his new girl from his home in Columbia, about trying to plan and to meet and if there is one thing I cant stand it's going to a wide open place of Life and trying to manage or create the experience. So Bran and I did what we do best. We agreed to quiet. We started the day in the front lawn of our farm, corn rows all growing high above the street and us in the sun Thanking the Day for the Harmony it was meant to bring. With our arms up wide above our heads our hearts open pointed at the sky. Then we got in the car, drove an hour and fifteen minutes cuz I only know how to drive fast, to Lombard Street found free parking and had the best day we could have never planned...

The Wailers were scheduled to headline as the final wrap-up act and that was at 6. First we walked Mt. Royal on the right side and I relished in every single vendor stand that I came across. Right away I saw something that I wanted to buy. This guy doing little sculptures made from rail ties. The were small like the size of a fat grey Barbie doll and on a little steel stand. And they were so alive--enchanted! I loved them. They had little placards that said things like "The Morning After" with a railroad tie-made man perched over a railroad tie-made toilet. Or "Chiropractor" with a railroad tie patient getting his leg yanked above his head by a railroad tie doctor. They were so gloriously irreverent it was like they were smiling wryly at you and winking their non-existent railroad tie eyes. I wanted the waitress one. Immediately, art came alive and life spoke to me: the sacred mundane, ahhhhhhhh.

By the time we got to the top of Mt. Royal where the local music stage was we were hungry and wanted a snack. Best part of Artscape besides the free music and the street performers and MICA being open and the Symphony Opera House being open and Lyric being open for free shows all day and the many many vendors and the children's theater's and the hands-on displays is all of the all of the all of the very good food. This year they had a green/organic food court too but we never even made it there. Instead we split a big serving of chicken curry sitting on the curb listening to a funk/punk fusion local band. And when we were done we got up to walk down the other side of Mt. Royal and see those vendors when what do you know there was mom, Aunt Lori and cousin Mason and he was jamming with this short wiry dreadlocked black guy like they knew each other forever calling each other things like chief and smiling and sweating. We chilled with the fam awhile. Then here comes Sean and his girl, and of course we all found each other by happenstance there in the middle of the festival come together under the hot sun.
This is a card from a pack that the non-profit Art with a Heart gave to me after buying a craft from them. The image was done by a woman who lives in a shelter for homeless women and their children. Art with a Heart basically does programming throughout the city, empowering folks by giving them tools and permission for self-expression through all kinds of different art forms. Half the profits of what they sold at Artscape that day went to the artist, the other half back to the organization to keep it going. HOW EXACTLY IT IS THAT? A real live art co-op functioning in the midst of some of the most hopeless accounts that life can deal. I bought a decoupaged mirror from a fat-faced boy who shyly showed me his work and beamed when my heart jumped because the colors he used for his mirror are the vital colors of me in my joy essence. I bought it spot on out of sheer joy essence though whether it came from his beam or my love of the colors I am not sure. Support these people and this group.

The other thing I bought was a print by James Mayfield, out of New York, called Woman Grounded In Thought. His site is under construction right now, but when it is up if there is a link to this piece check it out. I love how this gals whole body has been shaped by the forces trying to move her, and how stalwart and solid she is in her conviction to stay right there. How you can tell that whatever reason she is standing there, veiled, being pushed by the wind but staying so still against it all the while, is deep enough a part of her that her very being will be shaped by it ever after, like water wearing on stone. That is me. Has been. Busy, stuck and grounded going nowhere. It made me melt a little inside and get a teenybit wet-eyed. Even though the very polite James' buddy grabbed my brother aside and pointed out that the reason he liked the print was cuz of the woman's "poppin booty".

Other than that my big moment of the day was seeing the Full Circle Dance Collective at the Lyric. They performed a shortened version of a piece called the Sacred Body. Exploring the various experiences of religious sublimity and such themes. I love to dance, to let my body go, and this was the first time that watching dance actually made me feel the same exact ecstasy as when it's me doing the moving. I was sitting there in the dark, during the first act called "Supplication", a very Christian theme which I at once struggle with and am enraptured by, and suddenly I was crying. Like sob stifled in my throat so no one could hear me crying. The Sacred Body was intensely religious for me, of the oneness in-bliss, truest kind.

All in all it was an amazingly flowing day. And ohtheirony, it brought me home to me, grounded in thought as I'd been, insistent this year on going my own way. Remembering the bit of good there is in every single side of how one looks at a thing.....

**

First Harvest just past. The birds outside our windows are crazy busy, making nests and gathering food and the noises they make sound like someone digging frantically through a box trying to find some lost piece of something in order to take with him back home before anybody sees it's gone. They flit around a lot. The sun is going further away in the sky. Things are turning. The birds know.


I am going to the beach today. Got a ocean of floating to do.

First Harvest

So I'm no astrologist by any definition, I don't know anything about degrees of planets and what influences are occurring on subtle levels from day to day. But I do know, innately, about symbolism, in fact metaphor I think is my first born language. I also know what I have lived. And perception, based on one's own lived experiences of their "reality," I think, is all a person truly has ever got.

The first time the earth talked to me I was 17, and smoking a lot of pot. It was summer, the air itself was a ripe and breathing green, I was on my mom's back deck and quite suddenly the joint on my lips was as true and as sure as the vines of forest rope that clung to the trees all over the woods in my backyard. I became, quite simultaneously, one with all that atmosphere. And more, and strangely, the poetry that came pouring out of me was of me, but certainly not in any way of which I was wholly cognizant. It was different, not good but also not of Smells Like Teen Spirit Riot Grrrl angst, all tight-wound hormonal and in need of an outlet that all my plastic-spiraled paper journals from then sing. It was deeper, whole, more naturally flowing. By the fall of that year I clearly recall, stoned or not, the way the woods affected my body--how I could feel the wind blow in the woods in my belly or raise up on my neck. I, who had fully dismissed "God" and shuffling into the auditorium for Catholic Mass around the time that I was 16 and coming to school on Monday's hungover, began speaking to this presence, to this power, to this energy coming from the woods. Now it's been years since I've smoked pot or blown myself all open wiley on acid. But I sit quiet alot. And for my own peace, I still talk, or let the earth, talk to me.

Tomorrow, August 1, is the traditional celebration of Lammas, of First Harvest. Now what can traditional mean exactly? We are talking ritual and customs that have been handed down from centuries and centuries of peasant, agricultural societies the world over. Handed down often in the oral, folk-style of sharing generation to generation from the elders, from those who had farming and cultivating experience that sustained them within the elements that provided their nurturance. So these customs we're not obligatory, they were natural expressions of living within the quite organic cycles of life. First Harvest was, quite literally, the first big gathering of the yields of the field, the first big celebration of "putting up" food for the winter.

Tonight is also the New Moon, or actually tomorrow morning at 6:13 am EDT. Which means it peaks this evening. And tomorrow is a Total Solar Eclipse. Dig it guys, I don't care how you slice it, (for me it's simple, the applicable premise that on our molecular level all is one is a practicable, grade-A spirituality for me, the kind I can get my hands around--you know, energy neither is created nor destroyed, simply changes forms, and attracts like kinds...) the energy of right now is very, very powerful.

Symbolically: The moon is the light that shines in the dark. The sun of course is the "Light", or what shines the day to day awareness. Dark, or night, is the unexplored side, the un or subconscious, the imagination, the spirit, the sleeping. Whatever. The "moon" illuminates this. Day is what we see, what we take for granted. Tonight the moon is there, but not. Tomorrow the sun is there, but not. And Friday is Llamas, or First Harvest. Symbolically: Time of reaping.

Yowza.

So, here we go: New moons, total darkness, this is when the sleeping gives birth to first light of idea. Eclipses, these are catalysts, like a pin-pop in the consciousness, something that shoves you awake. And Harvest time, well, this is when we see the first real picture of what we've grown in our life this year. And with the clarity of having the light yanked off then turned on again, real quick. New moons, especially harvest times, can be seemingly a time of great restlessness if one is not wanting to contend with whatever darkness they trying to avoid illuminating. With this eclipse, it will almost be impossible to avoid. Again, I dont know about any other influences, I just know the Oneness of Time and Metaphor. So be awake, but don't take yourself too seriously right now(trust me on this one!! that's the sure way to miss your soul's messages!) And get outside to just be still and soak up the power. Re-connect to the earth, to yourself, and once the Full Moon gets here in two weeks (Lunar Llamas) or so I almost promise you that any changes you are going through will have fully catalyzed, or at least the path will. And the clarity will be breath-taking.

Now's a time to start to clearly see and harmonize with the gifts of you that you are meant to give to this world.


Woohoooooooo!!
!

Be Ing

I got this book yesterday called Fandango by Sandy Hill. I read about it in my Vogue and had one of those sensation-al juicy reactions that i am always craving for and so am very sensitive to when they hit. The book, to my best description, is this women's compilation of years and years worth of over the top entertaining--she believes that celebrating, as in life in general, is call to give your very very most. The full title is Fandango: recipes, parties and license to make magic. Of course the word magic in the title sold me, as i am a full believer that life itself is the miracle, and that we, fragile humans, are merely the blind fools with capacity to turn our own inner glow on at any given moment--and this is magic, alchemical, to me. Of the highest form.

So let's talk about this for a moment. I wandered in to our local bookseller yesterday to pick up the book, which I had ordered some weeks ago. One of the sales people shared that she'd enjoyed looking through the book, and I casually mentioned that I found out about it through "my weakness...reading the pages of Vogue...Or more, just looking at the pictures." I giggled I think kind of shy and then looked up at her. Wow, you'd of thought she swallowed poison by the look on her face, which she politely tried to cover. As if intellectuals can't be full-bodied, juicy persons? It got me to thinking: in the Spring of 2005 i was living in a trailer in an anonymous fishing town on the Oregon coast. It rained everyday and the midst in the air was indecipherable from the grey sky and the clouds that swirled in and out of the tops of all the luscious green trees. Our trailer had walls like papyrus and when it rained or when the wind blew the weather actually happened inside our house, too. Mold grew on the walls. And i was living there, waiting tables and bar tending and taking up smoking again for the trillionth time in a roadside steakhouse. And most of all, I was sorting out my life--or what I thought was sorting out my life, ignorant as we all are at times, and me at many times! to the fact that life is actually what's going on right now, while I'm in the midst of trying to figure it all out. I had just sold everything I'd owned, quit my "career" job and all its associations, and then lived out of a truck for five months in the national forests of this great land. I spent alot of time in quiet. I learned again to listen to, and to love, the sound, the feel, the heart of our precious giving earth. I emerged from this in an in-between place, quite sure I was not who I was when I left my old life, but not sure at all who I'd become. It was my first cognizant experience of realizing that I, we, are always in the pure infinite stage of be-coming. That it has to do with be-ing. In the beginning in that trailer I was in such distress and discontent: restless all the time. My 28th birthday came and went and I took me shopping, bought myself an amazing flowy pink skirt that made/makes me feel like a fairy whenever i wore/wear it. How alive it made felt! Then I realized, I had fallen in to a rigidity of thinking: that because I spent my weekends on my hands and knees in the wet detritus of the Oregon forest floor, that because I knew how to simplify and live a life of utility on the road, it somehow meant that I had to shun off the other sides of me--the glamorous, the sexy, the diva me's! I began a list of all the me's I know me to Be. (And to this day that's a practice I continue to revisit.) I spent days in my wardrobe dressing in various combinations, oh it was like coming home to me after a long, strained no-fun vacation: this is independent photojournalist traveller kelly. This is hippie moonmama magic maker kelly. This is cross between simple forest liver kelly and diva-lishous kadada b! It felt so good to stretch those soul muscles, to flex my wings that way!

So now I laugh a little when someone makes me stop in judgement of Me. And I sadden a little when I recall how quick I used to be to judge someone for who they currently are be-ing. (Oh, those jeans didn't come from second-hand? Oh, you like labels?). Now I recoil a little when someone gives me the idea that theirs is the only way to Be. Because I don't know much, but I am sure enjoying knowing and be-ing me. I relish, I crave for that juicy feeling of alive-ness. I want that as much for you on your own terms as I demand it for me. Carl Jung and Joe Campbell and talking about archetypes, which is nerdy and boring for many I know! does that juicy aliveness for me! So do the amazingly hot stiletto strap-ups in my coworkers Anthropologie catalog. And so does dancing dirty and barefoot against the shadows thrown by the flames coming from my own handmade fire barrels out onto our trees and in my head and my heart and my soul and also against the sky. Or the sunflowers growing all simple in my garden. Or chatting w a girlfriend on gmail. Or the taste of melty creme brulee after a delicious salad feast.

Juicy. Making magic. Be-ing me.

On Poetics and Diane diPrima

I'm working obscene amounts of double shifts lately. obscene. so yesterday i forced myself in to the obligatory doing absolutely nothing. the night before the prospects of no plans no calls no errands no nada to have to do seemed great, but actually going through with it was a little tough. made me feel less than worthwhile. have always been in to identifying the mean teeth of doubt in my consciousness, the terms of which like a tape looping i or one plays over again throughout the head without really separating out from and seeing, and so take for granted. so i'm programmed to think that taking time off is lazy or gluttonous. go figure--of course i am.

anyhow hell yeah let's hear it for 8 episodes of the first season of SexintheCity woooohooo and also Knocked Up and the very stupid Walk Hard. and front porch time and, oh yes, an hour and a half lazed in bed w my new Vogue and a cup of hot mint tea. got my rest, got my soul full again, got my juices flowing--which was necessary if i want to get a blog in before today's 12 hour shift...

***

So the afternoon before last Laura Walsh and I drove to Newark to U Del to check out the original manuscripts (oh god my heart beats faster and the water tingles in my mouth whenever i say that) of Diane diPrima's Freddie Poems. What is of interest to me here is a fine, exact example of my take on poetics. Firstly, her Freddie Poems, far as I'm concerned, is one of diPrima's clear transitions, visible within the poems themselves, into her experience of poetry as an alchemical function. Thus we witness her own self-transition and initiation, in the alchemical tradition, of go-between if you will, of she who transmutes self and journeys between the outer and inner worlds, or between the levels of consciousness. Secondly, in the exact tradition of this and in a very personal and real way, this piece of diPrima's work specifically impacted my own life many years later. This is a prime function of poet-(or artist)-as-shaman, as Gary Snyder explains in his Real Work interview with Paul Geneson of the Ohio Review (Fall 1977): "For the poet in particular, a sense of the need to look at the key archetypes image and symbol blocks and see if the blocks are working. Poetry effects change by getting at the archetypes and getting at people's dreams about a century before it actually effects historical change..."

You see, diPrima wrote this collection while in the midst of grieving the loss of her close friend to suicide. This was nearly fifty years ago. I discovered the existence of the Freddie Poems when reading her memoirs in the Fall of 03. At that time I too was in the midst of grieving the suicide of a close friend, and keeping a journal to him which would eventually become my first complete collection of poetry. I was actually calling that project the Mike Journal then! And likewise, the experience of chronicling my process of grief and understanding was my induction in to the tradition of poet as journeyer through other forms of consciousness by mere means of creation.

Wow, I am so wholly took by this concept of poetry, or any art for that matter, as means of transcending our ordinary incidences in life by penetrating to a more intuitive and in-depth, in-bliss experience. Seeing the Freddie Poems for the first time, and in their original form! was so powerful for me. I still do not, and likely will never, have words to give justice to how rich an opportunity this was. What I can do, rather, is defer to Snyder again. Reading those poems, finding the eternal echos of archetype and symbology that diPrima encountered, and nodding in recognition that I too found those same rhythms, themes and postures in my own poetry to Mike was a home-coming of the purest sense. It was affirmation of the the most primal patterns of our humanity, of the never ending cycles of lifedeathlife, and it made me beam with love to have this opportunity to exist. It was acknowledgement in my own soul, a deep-breathed sigh of comfort and relief, and mostly of pure elated satisfaction and awe.

From Snyder:

As a poet, I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the late Paleolithic; the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth; the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. Whatever is or was in any other culture can be reconstructed from the unconscious through meditation…the coming revolution will close the circle and link us in many ways with the most creative aspects of our archaic past.

Queen for the Day: List 2

If i were queen for the day, you all would be subject to the following mandates:

1. NO CELL PHONE USE IN RESTAURANTS OR STORES. Obnoxious cell phone use is Western entitlement at its best. I don't care if its your sister or Aunt Jodie calling just for a sec get off the phone and focus on the task in front of you. Also, you are in full right to not call people back if you are currently involved in something else, even if that something else is the very important necessary for your soul mandate of DOING NOTHING. This stress and always being busy and worry of us and our culture is compacted by the insane idea that just because we all have cell phones now and Gen Y never knew any different that we all have to call each other back right away! Or feel guilty for it if we don't. No. Engage in the life in front of you without deluded expectations. When it is time to be on the phone, then be someone fully engaged with your friend or loved one or business person or whatever on the phone. No excuses.

2 . LEARN TO BE ALONE. QUIET. BY YOURSELF. I don't care who you are, I am suspicious of anyone who can't sit a while doing nothing but sitting a while in the presence of their own soul. Take mandatory quiet time or time-out time with you and you alone. This is different than doing nothing. Though it is, after the initial restlessness dies down, a genuine relief to take a big breath and say to yourself, No, no, there is nothing left to do right now other than just be me with me. Make it a custom. Explore the world you are unto your self. Should the Death face come today, or the hangman or the angel and It stands there and says to you what good did you do, you can say to Yourself, I knew quiet. I surrendered to what I came here with, to what I'll go out of here with. What more courageous thing could there be?

3. HOLD DOORS OPEN FOR PEOPLE.

4. SMILE. On both number three and four: The following is perhaps the most simple principle there is, applicable to or perhaps even relegated by the beating heart. We like to feel good, we don't like to feel bad. We ALL have this in common, even the birds and the deers and my cat and your dog--just for them good is food and bad is danger of predator. Feeling good is a contagion as is feeling bad--literally, the chemicals behind each of these emotional reactions do nothing but stimulate more of the same chemicals. Chemicals are the body's ensured unconscious response to see to it that those good experiences are enhanced and repeated and those bad are feared and avoided. There is great , great power in this. So do your part! Make a small difference every day. Help people feel good. It will make you feel good, too.

5. BE CONSISTENT. Stick to your word. Do what you'll say you do and don't say you'll do something if you can't or you wont or you have to drag your feet about it because secretly it makes you feel bad or stresses you out or drains your energy. If you change your mind don't fear the consequences or make excuses. Simply see to it that your actions now stick to your new word.

6. RECOGNIZE WHAT YOU RESIST PERSISTS. Simply put, wherever you go there you are. What you don't want to deal with will constantly nag and drag you down all quiet or loud until you are forced to confront it in an explosive manner. Be good to yourself--have courage to look at your nagging good or bad feelings even if initially scary and running you down. This is called preventative action. Or personal responsiblity. Be easy on yourself when yet again you slow down only to find, oh damn, my eyes were closed again.

7. TRAVEL. I don't mean go to hotels and restaurants for 7 nights and 6 days. I mean get out on the road in your own state or in a foreign country and find the things and try the things the locals do there. See a new part of the world with new eyes but with the same precious sky and earth and sun. Keep yourself fresh, vital. Come home and see how very alive and boundless you're able to feel in your own little home corner of routine and regularity. PRACTICE THIS.

8. REMEMBER INFINITY. At its base level the world, our whole universe in its entirety is nothing more than endless amounts of protons neutrons electrons and that odd space in-between. The very base level application of this: anything is possible. ANYTHING. That makes everything ordinary extraordinary, and everything extraordinary actually quite ordinary. Modern science itself is a mere hundred years old! As recent as the late 1800's people actually believed that the size of one's skull actually determined not only their intelligence but their superiority--making women and non-whites "scientifically" incapable of certain levels of intelligence and inferior as well. Stay open. Don't settle.

9. TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT. Be brave enough to try something different for the sake of your own infinite human spirit. The most dangerous thing isn't conformity, it's unconsciousness. Recognize the world for the series of opposites that it is. Whatever action you take throws equivalent energy in the opposite direction. So if your a peace lover go militant for a day. A godlover go totally nihilist tonight! A warrior soldier sit passive attentive Zazen all morning, action of non-action. Counter-balance yourself. Stay fresh--open yourself to the content of this--avowing yourself to the experience of the present, not a dictate of your own reactive unconscious measures.

10. FORGET WORDS. Forget words, forget lists, forget all you've read. Words are words. Yes, they are the first form of contractual obligation of action. Yes they harness the power inside of you in sound form given out to the air and to ears or the eyes and to the breath and the water and the fire of the sun. They are the first tangible form of action after your thoughts. But action is every step you take. So forget words, this list, all you've ever read or heard. Touch down within yourself until you realize, until you know for sure that who you are is how you be. Make your own list. Be your own King, Queen.

11. BREAK THE RULES, every one, on your own list. Remedy your unconsciousness. Don't be afraid of it. If you are accept you are. Then love yourself, forgive. And open again, again, again. It's the surest tool you have to bring you closer to other human beings or breathing or living creations.

12. CLOSENESS IS A BEAUTIFUL THING. Realize the choice is yours: closeness could be the very reason that you're here.

Wow wow wow--On "Revelation"

Since I don't have the rest of the photos back from Maine yet, I will have to finish my travelogue in the days to come. Here instead are words that paint the light going on in my soul since I've returned from my trip. I surrendered to "living the questions". And of course soon after the desperate letting go came clarity all clean and pure, slow-coming but crisp quite the same. And now since I've been back I'm reveling in nothing but the joy of the present, and my mornings starting with still quiet time adoring in the presence of Life, where I cherish the sanctity of humble remembering: the world does indeed offer itself to our imaginations..... And I'm wide open and ready to give...

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert,
repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours,
and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of
the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean
blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese,
harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Thank you stranger

It’s one of those days when I have to just buck-up and power through everything—we are leaving for Maine in the morning around 6am. Bran’s old homie is getting married in an itty town on the Coast called Sorento. My WhiteHouse/BlackMarket steal of a dress is still at the dry cleaners, I haven’t packed, haven’t even considered what poetry/books/writing materials are coming I am on a double shift today and its been a long minute since I sat in my room lit my candles and just went still. Good thing vipassanna is a tool that travels.

Bran checked out his uncle Jerry’s new downhome walk-in spot yesterday for country cooking and local steamed crabs. If your coming through Galena check them out: Jimmie Dicks Cluckin Chicken: 410 648 5670, open 7 days. He’s a rockfisher and married to a great cook, they know their stuff.

Anyhow I am in to reading blogs, following links to new stuff etc. I haven’t put a list of my roll up yet but will soon. One of the ones I check out periodically is Confessions of a Young Woman and last night I found this quote on there. Check her out please, because it’s my way of giving props back to someone who gave me some much yearned for light, without even knowing it, when I was deeply in need….

"Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves liked locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." - Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet

Made me remember one of my very fave quotes, a perspective-keeper, how Zora Neale starts out Their Eyes We’re Watching God:

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” Not only a soul-sigh quote, but too a good trick as to identifying a good read. Check out the first paragraph of the book, if you are magnetized it will keep you through a good read. Has worked for me evreytime.

So I’m off to Maine. I’ve got some open-hearted living of questions to do….