courage

F.L.O.W.

2010-12-26T07:16:00.000-08:00

Flow. Go with it. Like a lot of good ideas, it came to me in the shower. In the 21st Century costume of a Facebook status update. Sarah is … yes, that is what I would write. Flow. Go with it – my digital smoke signal to the connected world. I could even incorporate the word ‘Flow’ into that imaginary tattoo, the one with the infinity symbol I wouldn’t put on the back of my neck, the one I’d been thinking about not getting since that day in Brazil last year, whilst enjoying fresh fish and caipirinhas at a restaurant you can only get to by boat.

Some things are best left undone, untattooed. You can always change your mind about an imaginary tattoo, because you’ll never need to have it removed. It’s permanent in pure thought form, and that’s as close as I may ever get to ink on skin.

Why flow? Four letters. There is something snappy about four-letter words. No, that’s not it. Flow because that’s what water does, and water melts rocks down to sand, which is a lot more than I can say about rocks. A rock may temporarily block water from its destined flow, but water, being patient, will eventually find a way through. Because part of its persistence is wrapped up in knowing when and how to wait it out. Not as a torture or strategy, but as a natural state of affairs. So, flow.

Flow is about being here, right now, as the moment is flowing, it is not static, and it does not wear pointy shoes. It is round and generous and carries a basket of fruit on its head. Flow does not target or manipulate or try to fit a square peg into any other hole. It is accepting and grateful for God’s gifts, and can recognize them as such.

Flow looks forward but lives fully in the present. Flow is happy, because it doesn’t know any other way to be, unlocking the chakra energy channels of the body, allowing breath to enter fully, freely, rejuvenating and creating a safe space for movement and love to come on through. Flow is definitely love. A love with open hands and complete trust.

Flow is boundless and abundant. It knows no limits. It’s answer is always yes. Yes! everything is possible. Transformation is its daily rite. And we know that we are one with the Flow when we smile, when we feel good, when things are going our way. Because flow wants things to go our way. Every day, it presents us with opportunities to let us in, to embrace it, to let it carry us. Flow is letting life carry us where it wants to take us, because it knows better. It’s been here before.

Flow is ancient and timeless and newborn. In the same instant. And the very fact that we can’t wrap our beginner’s minds around that is proof enough that we should just go with it. And get carried away. Flow wrote this post. I was just the lucky scribe. And when I am in Flow, I am lucky in everything.

Love is holding a balloon in the park on Sunday.

Hand holding string holding balloon flowing in the wind.

Easy Does It

2010-12-26T07:03:00.000-08:00

I need a massage. But I’m happy. My life is in constant evolution, transformation, full flowering. I’m putting the pieces together, and making an effort to keep the lessons when things go apparently ‘wrong’. There is a separation between needs and wants. I have the thought, or feeling, rather, in the body, my back in particular, that I need a massage. Fact is, I probably won’t get one. And it will probably be okay. No, it will definitely be okay.

I think about this search for a partner. Which is bogus, and doesn’t lead to its target, in fact it leads away from it. I’m tired. Not in my life, but in my head, in my heart, of hitting the same wall. Instead, I’m going to stay where I am, in this space of love that I have created inside, and radiate that, not as a means to an end but as a state of being, a directive and a state of grace, because I owe that to myself, and because it feels good. Easier written than done, but certainly possible, if not necessary to well being and inner peace. That means looking at my life and thinking, feeling rather, as that is more essential and immediate, that what I have is enough. That who I am is enough.

I accept fully and totally what today may bring, with the apparently ‘good’ and ‘bad’, without labels wherever possible, with a dose of serenity. The serenity to walk through my life and know that as Bob Marley said, ‘every little thing is gonna be alright’. And when I have that thought, it makes me mushy and sentimental inside, and I feel the fragility of my heart, the tenderness of my soul, and I start to melt.

The computer that I am too much of the time, the blonde-haired machine as the wise sage at Concord, Jean, told me once, is draining. The image projected is tiring and inauthentic. I am so much more than this desperate 30-something girl trying too hard at everything and ending up alone, only to feed her own story of helplessness and victimization. It’s an old and worn-out idea, and I set it free, as it doesn’t belong to me, and I don’t belong to it. I let it go, let myself go, and rise and fall and rise again.

There is an unrelenting strength inside, beyond the façade, beyond what is usually shown to the world, beyond the endless pleasing rituals and poses. As crude as it sounds, as a friend said, I can feel free to ‘rock out with my cock out’. I know, that is beyond vulgar, but you get the point. I do not have a male member, nor do I want one. But until society stops using masculine genitalia to illustrate strength – to have brass balls, et cetera, I can show my real self, in the true intention behind these expressions.

I have had an experience recently, with a guy, who first became a good friend and then turned into the possibility of something more. Like the Romanian woman in the winery said, ‘things happen according to you’. She was referring to a German enologist who was very uptight and cold, and when she worked at the vineyard, the bottling machine was always breaking down and they lost a lot of time repairing it. Instead, the current enologist is down to earth and relaxed, and the machine for the most part works like a charm.

Her simple comment, along with the typical question and answer ‘are you married?’, ‘no’, and ‘you have plenty of time’ (am I a ticking bomb, excuse me?!), sent me into the bathroom crying. Certainly they were tears that needed to be come out, and she offered me the occasion to pierce the balloon inside.

I had the realization that I had put too much pressure on the guy, and that was why things were apparently falling apart. To be fair, it takes two to tango, and I was not alone in the story, but I want to own my half of the dance. It was a slowly flowering situation (and still is) with someone who I’m not 100% convinced is ready for a relationship, and therefore all the more delicate. I had walked on eggshells, to be fair, and didn’t communicate how I really felt, a part I thought I had to play, because I didn’t know how to authentically be myself without losing him. That is the crux of it, right there, fear of being left, which manifested itself ultimately, as it always does in these situations.

There it is, I didn’t allow myself to be authentic from the get-go. And so that downward spiraled into confusion and miscommunication and an eventual blow-up, specifically I got annoyed at him for being indecisive and wishy-washy about whether he was going to come visit, after he told me that he would, which of course backfired and made him run away. He has since come back into my sphere, don’t’ think he ever left really, he just took a few days out, which in my state was more than enough to consider him ‘gone fishing’.

To not digress into mental masturbation, I was afraid to lose him before we even established a relationship. How crazy is that! I was afraid of losing something I didn’t even have. That is insanity. So I lost it, temporarily, but long enough to feel that deep abandonment labor pain.

Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. But the lesson here, to be learned at all costs, once and for all, imprinted in my head and heart, is that life is not a pressure cooker, but a flow. There is an expression in Italian: se sono rose, fioriranno. If they are roses, they will bloom. Seeing as I can feel my life in full flowering, and that is happening organically, and destiny and free will play equal parts, I resolve to view love and relationships with the same lens.

If they are roses, they will bloom. Roses bloom because it is in their nature, in their DNA. They need water, but not too much, sunlight, but not too much. Even the things we see as positive work exclusively in moderation. Everything functions in moderation. Otherwise it’s suffocating, in every context of life. I vote for freedom, for flow and peace.

Taking Back the Light

2010-10-06T15:27:00.000-07:00

Time marches on while I dance in the garden, dressed in garlands of bougainvillea and ripe yellow roses. I am not a soldier, and I do not march. I will not act my age, or be dictated by a calculation between the year I was born and today’s date. You, all of you, can continue to play your games, bien sur, just don’t deal me in.

I am on a train to Monaco, past the rocky precipice of the blue French Med. I am on a beach in Rio, shouting back at the coconut man in Portuguese. I’m sitting on my stoop in Brooklyn, watching the hipsters pass by. That’s how I roll.

Wine school? Hell, yeah, and I’m doing it in Colorno, in the province of Parma. What about the international TV business? Sure. I happen to be an expert.

So, form an orderly queue. I’m not taking numbers. And I’m not giving mine. Who said soft couldn’t be hard? Who said sweet-looking blonde girls have to behave like fluffy little bunny rabbits? I do not come when called. I come when I want to. And seeing as I can come on my own, you better bring something more to the table.

Surprise me. But don’t expect me to be waiting at home for you to show up with your token of ‘wow’. I might just be dancing in the garden. Garden, whose garden? Hmmm, that would be too easy, now wouldn’t it?

And now, for some decoding:

Right, I have been lectured left and right, from a New Yorker to a Paulista (Brazilian from Sao Paulo), about not being too available, about keeping my cards close to my chest, about having it my way. A bender, pleaser, organizer, pacifier, this does not come natural for me. Should we assume that all of our natural instincts are for the best, that there is no room for improvement? I beg to differ.

It is fundamental to recognize, value and respect one’s own achievements, because if we can’t shine a light on ourselves, we must always wait for others to come round and do it for us. Which doesn’t really work in the end. And so, I’m shining my own light. Which means I might stop listening so much, waiting to be validated.

It’s kind of like coming off drugs, the realization that one can and must have a ‘good time’ without substances. Compliments, positive reinforcement and attention are all drugs. They feed us from the outside, and don’t last very long. They can often take us lower than where we started from. If I know my own worth, that is indivisible, independent from situation and circumstance, and is really the ultimate freedom.

The only person I need to please is myself. Why would I want to please anyone else? The very action presupposes that what I bring to the table isn’t good enough. Well, there will be no spectacle this evening, or any other evening. What you see is what you get. If it don’t jive, it ain’t jazz. And everything I’ve gone through to get to this place is a blessing. It is my journey.

Whole

2010-04-02T09:33:00.000-07:00

Seeking is one of the stages of being. When a child attempts to crawl for the first time, or reaches for something, or reaches for everything that is just beyond its grasp … this instinct comes from our curious nature, which gets elevated to spiritual ends, in our search for God or the universe within or higher power or whatever/whomever we may call it - that which some believe gives life, for those who believe.

It can happen that one realizes there is no actual seeking to do, or rather that there is nothing to find. However, it is hard to ‘arrive’ here (if it is an actual arriving) without having first done some seeking … and this is a bit of a puzzle. Why do we need to seek to stop seeking, or to realize that our seeking wasn’t necessary? It’s like we have to look until we get to the place of not-looking, because there is nothing to be found but ourselves, and we are the seeker, and we are already there/here. There is not a finding but a re-discovering that one is already whole and complete, that one is not missing anything.

Speaking to the separation from the greater energy, the longing or loneliness of feeling oneself cut off from the universe, may ebb and flow as one feels more or less connected to the All. But it does not take away from ones’ essential wholeness, ones’ essential completeness, the true state of being into which we were all born, with nothing to add, nothing to take away, that we all had at birth and will carry to death and perhaps beyond. Whether this wholeness points to being part of the Universe and sensing that as a stronger force is irrelevant.

Intellectualizing that any further is unnecessary. Wholeness is enough at the moment. Whether in enlightenment terms, that realization is seen as first base and not a home run, that might just be where I am personally ‘at’, developmentally, and there is more to ‘get’.

For now, as someone who has suffered the falseness of a supposed missing piece, and that something or someone could fill that gap, knowing that I am already full just as I am and don’t need anything else is already such a state of grace and relief that I’m happy to float here for awhile and see what else comes up, whenever it does or doesn’t choose to come up. But this kind of thinking can be dangerous, because then enlightenment becomes something to ‘get’, and that is not at all the case. The spiritual mountain may in itself be a trick of the mind, the concept that we must climb and actively be doing something, when actually we are already at the top, because there is no mountain.

The typical pointer to love and especially romantic love as a way to feel whole without any climbing is tempting. If wholeness can be triggered through the love of another person, our work is done for us. But essentially that just proves our incompleteness all over again, putting us back to where we started.

Idealized love means we can just go bumbling through life and then this outside thing happens to us, and bam, we are complete. It is as if our incompleteness was a necessary waiting game, and then poof, we are fixed. This is the stuff of fiction, and not at all true. If two people who don’t understand their intrinsic wholeness then come together, hoping to fill their emptiness with each other, it is just a recipe for more experiences of incompleteness, now with extra fuel to the fire, in the form of expectation that the other person will make up the difference, which can of course never be fulfilled. And yet, we’ve based much of arts and literature and music on this fallacy. It is very dangerous. I am the first to champion love, but fear I’ve been doing it for all the wrong reasons. I really thought it could replace everything, and most of all, replace the bit that I thought was missing in myself. Which isn’t missing.

The idea of romantic love as a path to enlightenment or wholeness is just one of many false spiritual cure-alls, and it happens to be an extremely strong and pervading myth in our culture. The concept of twin souls or soul mates and the implied separation and reconnection in that has caused a great deal of suffering, for those that have not ‘found’ that person, and believe that to be the meaning of life, and for those who have ‘found’ that person, the slippery slope of a pedestal with a very high place to fall from.

If belief is seen as married to doubt, then the following of a faith or doctrine as a thing outside of oneself which will bring wholeness is just as dangerous. If God is seen as something intrinsically separate, it only serves to reinforce our separation. Faith is then seen as a life-preserver that we must hold onto to not drown in the sea of life, and in that we are not relying on ourselves to do the navigating. I do not posit that there is no God, or we are alone, quite the contrary, that in our wholeness we are absolutely connected to everything, which means that God is neither inside us nor outside us, and with our very being, faith or trust is not necessary because life is the proof of everything. We are here, and that is enough. When we point to God in church, we are actually pointing to ourselves, to our own existence.

On a personal note, having found my own wholeness, I can share that with others, and help them to recognize at least intellectually that such a thing exists, and has existed all along. If we remove the sense that any one person can complete another – which assumes falsely that one is born incomplete, then we must also look at the notion of complementing, for to compliment is to supply something with the other lacks, and essentially implies the same meaning. What are we left with, then? Relating is a start, to have or establish reciprocal relationships, of separate and whole beings coming together.

I do not attempt to project this singular moment in which I understood my own wholeness onto the whole of human nature. Just like the animals on one island who started to use a rudimentary tool to open a nut or fruit, others followed suit on another island, and that happens with human experience as well, so I am making the assumption that if this has happened to me, it has happened to others as well.

“The richness of not wanting wrote these poems” – Kabir, Love Poems from God

Waiting is resistance hard at work. Because it implies a state of not having, and the drudgery of patience while one is in that place of lack. It is resistance to the most simple of truths – wholeness. It is not sexy or exciting in itself, although the initial moments of release from the pain and exhaustion of looking can feel like ecstasy, if momentarily. Separation collapses, and it can’t really be put back together again, because it wasn’t real to begin with. It is the illusion that collapses, the yearning that has itself as the object beings to fall apart – the wanting to want loses its power. This is a surge for the one no longer seeking, because all of that power had been given away in the search. There is so much more energy to tap into once the searching is deemed unnecessary. With nothing to do but give it away, nothing to do but share it, to be in the wholeness and enjoy it, because it is a gift that we’ve all been given. It is our birthright - wholeness, completeness, just as we are, nothing to add or take away.

Happy Birthday, Dad

2009-09-28T22:47:00.000-07:00

The day I remembered my father’s birthday, or rather that I learned when it was again as if it were the first time, was September 25th, 2009. His birthday is the 29th, tomorrow, or today as it’s 1:30AM.

I’m certain that the date was in my head somewhere, pushed under a seriously heavy carpet for the past twenty years, literally. The years, not the carpet. Well, that all depends on your imagination of course, and belief in metaphors as real, living and breathing things. Not to digress.

I now know my father’s birthday, on a conscious level, and don’t think I’ll ever go back to forgetting it. Something has shifted there, and only in the checking of the email for our next planned conversation, this our second in two weeks, after speaking sporadically over the past 8 years, as in sometimes years without contact if I remember correctly. See, it’s the remembering that’s been the problem, the haziness, the cloud around all that happened, and all that didn’t, and it has somehow centered on numbers and dates.

It’s quite telling that I was having trouble sleeping a few weeks ago on a trip to Sao Paulo, and I started playing with numbers in my head, calculating my salary and how much I needed to live or something to that extent, and it was soothing to me, comforting.

And then I remembered how I would watch my grandmother do people’s taxes, with her old-school calculator that spouted out paper and made loud noises, and the long, long lists I would make on yellow legal pads for the things I wanted for Christmas, with the item number, cost and any other relevant (usually numerical) information. To the point of the list I made, possibly mental, possibly written, of what I would do if I won a million dollars, the amounts earmarked for different family members and how … all of this gave me comfort. I suppose that something concrete that I could hold on to, that wouldn’t leave or lie or bring me confusion, was to be found in working with numbers.

I don’t know when the haze began, if I knew and stopped knowing, but for years now I’ve not remembered how old I was when my parents separated, was I eight or nine or ten … if people asked or I was telling people ‘oh yes, my parents are divorced, they separated when I was …’ and I drew a huge blank, for years.

Just a few weeks ago, as I was in the throes of a highly emotional moment, I asked my mother. Funny that I never thought to ask her. I suppose I was still content in the fog. It is lifting. Hallelujah. Maybe just one cloud at a time, but it’s lifting nonetheless. And now I know the date of my father’s birthday, because I happened to decide to contact him a week before his 55th birthday. Otherwise, a year might have passed before knowing, if not longer.

I do not think I ‘happened to decide’, instead it was written that the long passage through the dark tunnel is coming to an end. The light is clearly visible. The light of forgiveness, of remembering and not needing to forget anymore, the living of it all in equal beauty, grace and measure. Of saying, this is okay, I accept this, I accept my life, and it has been chosen for me just as much as I have chose it, on the soul level from both directions.

The old ways no longer work. And so they are shed, like snakeskin. Because new skin needs air to breathe and it can only be nourished in the open air, in the clarity of the oxygen and unrestricted space. Something is moving through me, and not just because I want it to, but because it wants to.

It is egotistical to think we’re doing everything on our own, and silly to think everything just falls from the sky. Perhaps one of the keys to life is finding a balance between the two, between destiny and free will. Between our understanding of their mutual forces and individual relationships with their energies. I’m not sure there is a final understanding, to be fair. Some things are not for us to know.

Maybe it’s just about accepting the way that things are, without needing to figure it out all the time. Precious life energy is spent on analyzing, obsessing, reviewing, that’s a lot of churning for the head, a lot of heat and blood in the brain that could be better spent elsewhere.

For me, in my own, small pocket of the universe, I am shedding skin. And it feels really good. It’s a skin as old as the oldest landscapes in my life, the earliest characters and accoutrements and misc-en-scene, and it’s making way for something new. What a remarkable feeling.

And it’s not about going somewhere or doing something, because my life has always been movement. It’s more – and I’m starting to get the tip of this iceberg – about a way of being in the world. And a way of not being. A growing up of sorts. I’ve slithered on the ground long enough, and it’s time to find out what’s up there after all. What’s up there in the land of the soul’s freedom, with open hands/eyes/heart.

Because our journey here is samsara, a circling, but there can be evolution. There can be a barrier crossing. I think for a long time I didn’t think it was possible. And there are still certain emotional moments I’m living now that I fear will last forever, but this opening of remembering, processing, passing through, is proof that those moments too will be digested and hence exhumed. What a relief.

I get what Buddhists say about uncomfortable moments, and how they are lessons in patience and sitting with ‘what is’. And not judging. That’s a big one. A great one, rather. Knowing there is just as much to learn there, if not more. I’ve spent so much time running from ‘what is’, and now there is some recognition.

And what is recognition? It is not only an act of recognizing, but also a state of being recognized. It is the perception of something as existing or true, a realization. Further to that, it is the acknowledgement of something as valid or as entitled to consideration. It is expressed as appreciation, and lastly, most importantly perhaps, is the acknowledgement of the right to be heard.

I am giving myself the right to be heard. The right to passage. Of what wasn’t able to move. I think that as a kid there wasn’t much room for me to be heard. Even the fact that all those great acting classes that Rachel and I used to take with Hugh King just ended, and just after that I started writing poetry with Mrs. Webb’s sixth grade class, having found a new outlet.

There was so much going on, at home, so much change, and certainly emotional turmoil that wasn’t spoken, that I created a character that didn’t recognize or appreciate or at least let the world really see this fragile, deeply sensitive girl who was also so full of life, joy and reckless abandon.

I know that my soul is older now, I am a woman now, and re-finding and re-membering those qualities and incorporating them into who I am now, or who I think I am, is a challenge. Not associating the qualities to personality is already one step in the direction of not assigning them an age, per se. It’s tricky territory, better not to over-think it, just allow for the joy and curiosity and sensitivity to be there, the tenderness.

A recent emotional trauma has given me the license to let my emotions be there, to practice inner kindness. And in that realize that I wasn’t actively taking care of myself on that level for a long while. For this I lost my faith. Because abandonment on that level was equivalent to abandoning God, denying the gift of life. As I flow out of that experience of loss and grieving, I do not dwell in what could have been but wasn’t. That has not been my choice.

And so I take that energy into my life – in my nuclear familiar background, for starters, my sister Rachel and I were born, that could have not happened, but it happened, and much joy has come to the world if I can say so without appearing egotistical.

When Rachel lost her first baby, there was a lot of sadness, but she got through it. By at a certain point no longer focusing on the void. And where there were none, now there are two – twins! This gives me hope as well. Hope not in the sense that things will fall from the sky ad infinitum, but how 360 things can change, in her case 720 … !

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. I think that sentence should be reversed. Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s not, it’s just how we deal with it all with deep breaths that makes all the difference. Well, it’s 2:19am, time to go to bed now. Big life decisions to make tomorrow, and a birthday call to my father, whose birthday is now firmly, always, always, in my head and heart on September 29th.

Is this it?

2009-08-08T15:37:00.000-07:00

Eternal myth and superconsciousness. The intuitive understanding of how and why the world is, all that is seen and unseen, the motivation for this life beyond mere human desire or motivation as a moving forward, a locomotion of sorts, is present and intact when I sit in my room and read Joseph Campbell. My mind and soul standing on the shoulders of this and other giants, perched high on books that reflect that inner, sacred knowledge of what is.

And yet, in the world of preoccupation, the majority of this existence spent in worry - will I make mistakes in the editing this week, can I afford this party, will I get my visa, what will happen with my job, will I get married and have children? much of it spent in ego - if I wear this dress to the party, there will be looks, and that will fill me with confidence, or I think I'll douse myself in some self-tanner tonight, pump up the light bronze of the afternoon.

And back to the books, and the wisdom of the soul, and the battle with how the outer world of things, feelings and impressions possibly fits into the higher leanings. Terra firma is anything but, it is a constant yearning and striving and disappointment and wanting to be elsewhere or not wanting this place to end, or fear that it will. This turmoil gurgles at the surface. And underneath is a peace, that much has already been decided, it is only a weak body and mind reacting to life, as it does, as it always will, until it awakens in death.

There must be some divinity to this existence in forms, in opposites, in carnal desires, or at least a parallel, and not a fight, not a negation of all that is outside of oneself. For separation is a trick of the mind. The bible says,"The kingdom of God is within you," and yet another translation replaces the word 'within' with 'among'.

I suppose the real, burning question is why have we (I, you) not created an outer world that reflects our inner world, our innermost knowing, our superconscious selves, the light of God and truth. Why do we prefer to sit in the darkness? The answer is not mine to know, not now, maybe not ever, but I will certainly pose the question, be it pregnant or be it frail and wanting, the question at the very least opens the door for an answer and perhaps on some small level, redemption or light.

And, yes, I know, we've been here before. Many times. And we'll come back here again. Until, until ... tomorrow's undoing, I suppose, if the word's meaning can be sophomorically dissected. Un-til. Up to a time. Until death do us part. But perhaps not from each other, but from our selves. Our outward, individual, small and sometimes helpless selves. And to the greater energy of the universe, and so the saying could go "Until death do us reunite."

Adventures in Africa

2009-07-13T18:59:00.000-07:00

This is an old one ... May of 2005. I was living in London with a boyfriend called Antonio, who I was very much in love with at the time. As I was cleaning up my in-box, I stumbled upon this, and realized that it's not only my in-box I'm cleaning.

We had taken a trip to South Africa, and I wrote a little something about the trip, which changed my perspective on poverty. Here it is, rough around the edges and largely unedited ...

One of the big jokes of the trip was that The Westcliff in Johannesburg checked us in as Mr. and Mrs. Coursey, which my Mount Holyoke feminist self got a big rile out of. I asked my boyfriend Antonio if he would take my name, and he said yes. We enjoyed two days of reading The Corporation (think Michael Moore for big business) and Life of Pi. Just kidding about the name. He actually laughed!

Down to Cape Town, we checked into Mount Nelson Hotel, named after the British explorer Lord Nelson, which ironically shares the name of the country's liberator from the vestiges of racist, colonial rule, Nelson Mandela.

The market stalls are filled with Kenyans and Nigerians who sell hand-carved wooden tables for 8 British pounds, and understand the favorable value of their currency to the extent that they say, "We make it cheaper for you so you have to pay extra for the weight at the airport and it's still OK!" Thank God the three pound carved hippo we had to have didn't tip the scales. Haggling is easy & friendly compared to northern Africa, and they even tell you the best time to come and get a good price at the end of day!

CAPE OF GOOD HOPE!!!!!! Where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic, the world ends and begins again, Vasco de Gama called it Buona Speranza (good hope) because he was the first to circumnavigate the continent of Africa and seeing that he had reached the "bottom" was certainly an encouraging sign. Smooth seas become harsh and temperamental, as edges are rough by nature, and the edge of the warm, temperate Indian becomes a tiger upon meeting the Atlantic. Just on the other side in Mozambique, further up the eastern coast, that same Indian Ocean is soft and lazy, a practical bathtub. Proving that a play of opposites often swings the pendulum to just one side alone, once again there is no melting pot, no happy middle and in-between.

Interesting to see that everywhere on this planet the natives and settlers have had conflict, and to this very day in our modern cities of the Western world we have pockets of ethnic communities, ie people that haven't assimilated and become white, as there is no reverse movement to becoming dark or 'other'. Are we naturally different, and must we celebrate our differences by learning to live apart in harmony, to live separately and together in the same city? That could be alright, if that's the way things are (and that IS the way things are in most places), if the opportunities, facilities, education, water, roads, etc, were equal in both places. This is unfortunately not the case.

This brings me to the Townships. I wrote an SMS to a friend and my sister upon arriving in Cape Town that read: 'this is a moral injustice, living in shacks like this'. The sadness that confounded me would not be shared by the people of the Township. On the contrary. I have never seen such a true community, in every sense of the word. In 1966, a community of 60,000 working class people living in the center of Cape Town was forcibly moved outside the city, their houses bulldozed and demolished. This neighborhood, called District 6, to this day hasn¡¦t been properly re-built, and the people still live outside in townships, more or less shacks with little facilities/water.

Each room sleeps three families. Each family gets one bed. Clothes are hung on the walls, and sheets are tacked up as curtains. Some sleep together on the bed, others on mats in front of the beds. They eat mostly tripe and chicken on barbeques and something called African salad, a soupy dish of corn mixed with sour milk.

In the houses without water, there is an area for sleeping and an area for kerosene cooking, equal to 2 closets put together; and unisex public toilets are lined up outside.

What surprised me is that these Africans seemed more happy and together, with tremendous community spirit, than the white South Africans we encountered in the city. If a mother calls her child to eat, and that child is playing with 20 other children, they all come to eat, everything is shared. Money, clothes, food, whatever they have. And food, for one, as we were there just before dinner time, is pouring out of their kitchens and on the street, and our guide pointed out that nobody goes hungry. With basic needs of life provided for, a people who have no separate word for cousin (they are called brother or sister instead) come together and live quite happily and in peace.

If a man coming from the country has a friend in the Township from his village, that man will share his bed, his food, his clothes, his money, and find that person work, and the man is not expected to pay anything back, because it is understood that there will come a time when he will be able to do that for someone else.

They took us to a traditional healer¡¦s workshop, with dried lizard skins and animal bones and eggs and earth-colored powders and tinctures in unlabeled cans and jars. The healer returned my eyes as we were leaving, and I hoped that he was not judging my Western ways, a stupid and perhaps instinctive urge for what being different can mean to someone else. We were taking a tour in his neighborhood, and he had perhaps not done one in East Hampton or New York to see how we live. It would certainly be less interesting from his perspective. One of the shaman's tools was a string of condoms, hung up on a clothesline in a candle-lit makeshift garage. All of his tools are meant to ward off evil spirits from the body and the house, and of course AIDS is in this category. Condoms are available free everywhere in the Townships.

THAT is all I have to say about Africa, as you can imagine on a safari we saw animals, but this doesn¡¦t need explaining. For all you non-vegetarians, I ate elephant biltong (dried meat), impala, springbok, crocodile, ostrich, and potato ice cream. I got really close to buffalo, and really far away from lions (not such a bad thing).

What I took away from this trip is that nothing material will bring true happiness, neither the lack of running water nor having to share a bed with your family. People can get used to anything, and while I am in no way condoning the disenfranchisement of 90% of South Africa's population, I can say that living in close spaces has created a massive, beautiful intimacy. Happiness is when you take care of everyone you love, and they take care of you, nobody goes hungry, and nobody is alone.

hanging up clothes

2009-07-04T16:44:00.000-07:00

It's midnight in Ibiza, maybe later. You are carrying a basket of wet clothes to be hung. The clothesline is attached to a tree on one side, I forget what is on the other. We hang up your clothes. Together in the dark. There is light coming from the house, from the terrace where everything that doesn't happen in the kitchen happens. Enough light to hang up clothes. Together.

You show me how to hang up your t-shirts and jeans upside down to avoid tedious ironing once they dry. I think, simultaneously, wow, anal, and hmm, cool tip. I laugh and you make a comment about how it may be anal but it saves time later. Smiling, hanging up clothes, one clothespin at a time, in the front yard with you.

Fast-forward to Rio, Saturday night. I'd been out all day with friends and left wet clothes in the washing machine. I walked downstairs, through the internal courtyard which has a hip-level divider made of small potted palm trees and other tropical plants. Then up a few concrete stairs to where the clothesline is kept.

The far wall belongs to a family who are cooking dinner while I hang clothes. Bubbling sounds from the stove filter out the window and into the small washing area. I pick up my pink cordoroys and attempt to hang them like we did in Ibiza. Together in the dark. They are still too wet, and the clothespins in Brazil must be different than Spain. I have to fold them over the line. And think to myself they will have to be ironed. Which makes me smile. Which makes me think of you. With saudade.

I go back upstairs to my flat, and start to rummage around the kitchen looking for a snack to have with the coffee I'm making for Clarissa and I. Until I realize that I'm not really looking for a snack. I'm looking for you. But you're not in the kitchen. You're in Ibiza. But I have the color of your jeans fresh in my mind, and how the legs looked upside down, like they were worn by invisible people doing handstands in the dark, in your front yard. Which makes me smile.

Acacia and other Small Miracles

2009-06-26T21:12:00.000-07:00

He might have thought he was picking up just a coat or a hat, or perhaps an umbrella as the rain outside was growing stronger and stronger as we sat in that house, talking as the candle grew smaller and smaller, until there was no light left in the wooden room, in a house made of wood. We both knew that it was time for him to leave, and as the lights grew dimmer there was so much more to see, so much more to feel, in these last moments.

These last moments arranged themselves in front of us on the parlor table, like delicate objects brought back from far, far away, from places that involve animal transport and days of walking on foot. It was inconceivable to imagine his parting, and in the same moment it was sitting there on the table with all the beautiful things, lumpy and stiff, like death waiting at the door. The last flicker of light married the candle to the stars outside my door, half ajar, half of his body already gone, the other half still there. Still there.

And there, in an instant, I wished that he would never leave that room, that we could build a garden there, tear away the floorboards and find earth, find water, find all that we needed, right there. But I knew his journey was long and the night unforgiving. It was time. The departure caressed us ever so softly, little was said, gestures were sparse and few, he simply took up his things and bid me adieu. What went unnoticed in his passing was a tender beating heart, delicate and eternal, hidden in his jacket pocket. Between a tobacco tin and a stained scarf, it was offered without question or demand.

There was no exchange of words nor promises to keep. He closed the door behind him and melted into the night. Only the Good Lord knows how I went to sleep that night, knowing the morning would come to find me in the arms of Heaven, limp and free. Breath became my lifeblood, filling in the spaces left behind, the echoes of pumping and stirring around the body. I would make do. It was the least I could do.

It was a time when men were men and women were women and to sit in the parlor until the small hours meant a great deal. To sit in the parlor and feel that nothing else could ever matter as much as this moment meant a great deal. And one didn't fight that. Once something was known, it was known forever. There was no questioning. And I knew. Death did not scare me, as I had already lived a thousand lives that evening. His gift was my life. It was the least I could do.

Morning came with a warm breeze borrowed from a summer's day. It was late autumn, and the birds had all but left the homestead. I woke up to the sound of whistling, and realized that I was not in my bed. "It's the best time of year to plant evergreens, and so you see I reckon we can do with some acacia. See you let it take root and let nature do the rest." He brushed the sweat from his brow and knelt down to kiss my forehead. "You just get up slowly now, it must have been a long night."

Love your Work, Work your Love

2009-06-21T15:53:00.000-07:00

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. - Kahlil Gibran

Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.
— Theodore Roethke

Still working through Ibiza through these posts, still healing (thanks be to God), still sifting and churning and living the stuff called life. I have freed myself to all possibilities, and am aware that my preference is just that, a prejudice.

What the ego asserts as its identity, ie I am this and not that, or being defined by one's likes and dislikes, is actually a giant wall. It is built on good intentions, and derives from the rainbow of being. Its mistake is taking one color and confusing it with the rainbow. This not only makes all other colors wrong, but it sets up the ego for disappointment should that shade not appear.

It is a big challenge to keep the heart open, let love in and let love out, and at the same time not make it personal. Real love is not personal. This is a transformational one to get. I understand it intellectually, but not on an energetic level. That's where I'm at.

It's important to look around and recognize this place, see how high the grass has grown, and sit in the chair in the front yard with blades caressing the calves, breathing in, breathing out, just letting be. That's where I'm at.

And I realize in this moment of reflection that I have been in the past attached to the object of my love to the point of consumption, coloring everything in its wake with that one, solitary color, to the point of blindness. This is what the first blush of chemical hormones can do, but the real challenge (read: transformational opportunity) available in a spiritual or real love is to let it go, because it may look and feel similar to a first blush, and so the ego wants to go into its mono-chromatic auto-pilot.

Letting something go is very different than throwing it away. It means not attaching a spiritual connection with the person the experience is tied to on the earthly plane. This does not take anything away from what took place. And it does not mean that the two people need to separate. It just means that they have acted as prisms for one another, where the light of love and God has come in at one end, through their bodies, which act as energy channels, and has then been exchanged in an infinity helix. The vibration has the power to get exponentially greater and greater, and the only thing that can stop it is fear.

Most of the time, it doesn't even get the chance to start its journey. This is why the experience of spiritual or real love has been mythically thought to occur once in a person's lifetime, and hence the concept of a soul mate or other half as one solitary individual that one must find in this lifetime or else. Or will get lucky enough to meet by chance, depending on how you look at it.

But that opening doesn't happen all that often, and if/when it does, we will happily label it that 'one and only', and give the other person all the credit for having shown us the light, the way and the truth, when in fact we have just created the opening for the energy to flow.

Essentially, we mistake the message for the messenger. And even as I write these words, which are also flowing through me, as opposed to coming from me, the dominant paradigm is so strong and unforgiving that it makes it hard to get the words out. Recognizing that is powerful, though. There is this fear, which wants to stay closed, wants to keep things personal, wants to stay the way it is forever, with the best of all intentions, of course.

The message here is that life is like one long session of open-heart surgery. Surgery not with scalpels and doctors and blood, but with courage and fear and energy. You can choose to fight that, but in the end, death will scoop you up in its arms either way. If you can release and let things (love, joy, happiness ...) flow when they seem so specific to just you, you, you and the other person; the full magic of the universe is in your hands.

Benirras Beach, Ibiza

2009-06-21T15:36:00.000-07:00

So much has happened since I first laid eyes on this strip of sand and sea. Coretta invited me to join her on an Ibiza yoga holiday to start the summer season. We would combine a week of bending and energy work with a weekend of parties, followed by a few days to recover before heading back to Blighty.

Melchior and I met at Aura, the chill lounge and nightclub of the Island's northern bit. I was in the middle of 18 hours of yoga, three hours a day, with an amazing instructor called Jax. A girl from Essex made good, she taught us to question 'what is too little and what is too much'. Melchior would teach me that spiritual connection between a man and a woman is part of life's abundance, and to let go of the outcome. This last lesson has stung like lemon juice on a cut - you might wince with discomfort, but in the end you know it's good for you.

I have also learned that my energy is full of Yang, and that the deep, calming postures of Iyengar can provide a welcome balance. Tears and release came on the day we focused on hip-opening postures. The hips hold the body's anger and sadness.

Flexibility from a childhood spent in splits in gymnastics class was in effect outward or extension flexibility. The inversion work is a challenge to the body - and therefore energy body - as it is a counter-intuitive movement - contradicting the status quo of the ego, and unblocking whatever has been held in that area.

I had a reflexology session from Allison, a fellow Concorder (www.concordinstitute.com) and friend of Coretta, and got a dose of chill with a note on my ability to give and receive love. Note taken. It resonated deeply with the yoga work, on how to open up and let things in, how to be a permeable membrane.

What is too little and what is too much. Trusting my own sense of balance. I left Ibiza after ten wonderful days of energy healing and decided to come back just five days later. Melchior said that Ibiza either swallows you up or spits you out. I'm afraid that I left some piece of myself on the island, and each time I return that piece will just get bigger and bigger, until I succumb to not leaving.

partire e' un po' morire

2009-02-02T03:56:00.000-08:00

it's a cold day, so cold that it's cold inside the flat, and i lay here wrapped up in one of Kate's blankets, knowing that she's sunning in the Turks & Caicos, which I am not sure is one island or a chain of islands, but I do know it's in the Caribbean. And that it's warm. I'll be under the rays soon enough, in Brazil. there is a bigger matter to attend to, that of my leaving. partire. lasciare. to depart. to leave (someone, something, a place, a thing, as in leave the keys on the table). we don't use 'to depart' much in modern, 21st century English. it would denote a trip alone, and expect some kind of return. for good. a pause in one's consistent life. my life instead has been consistently staccato, cut here and there by country and city and friendships that fade in and out of being near and far, of being daily and physical or not. i don't know if i expect that to change. i'm not expecting anything, really. for the first time in my life, i have no plan. dangerously impractical, i understand. and yet incredibly freeing, if not a tad bit daunting. it's like Simon & Garfunkel said in I am A Rock, sarcastically, 'and a rock feels no pain, and an island sheds no tears' - this is being human, and i must be a sucker for sucking the marrow out of life, for experiencing as much as possible, and even when i plant roots there will be lots of branches doing their thing, with a strong trunk. see, the idea originally, wow how many times it's changed this year .. well, one of the key ideas then, was to go to New York or Los Angeles, and get this or that job, and follow along, and that still could happen, but i'm not anchoring myself to any plan. i wanted some roots. i still want roots. i know that roots belong in place and in people. sometimes home is a person. sometimes it's a family. or a house. or a calling. all i know is that i'm leaving, and all that is not yet written will come to the page as the days pass. and i am like a bird. i feel very lucky in that i am not tied to anything or anyone, don't have an agenda and can so choose every thing with a pure heart.

i truly believe i have met the best people in all of london, and made them my friends. i fiercely love each and every one, and there is no leaving to be in their case, barring the quotidinian absence. and it hits me with tears on my face that although my heart breaks to not have the daily contact, i am a mother hen. i am a mother hen and couldn't be happier to realize i have been this way all along, but have just noticed. i bring people together, always have, always will, and in my nature i just want to nurture and feed and protect and make everyone laugh and have a good time and feel loved and warm, and this part of myself i have cared for and shared, and this is life, i will do this everywhere. and this is a very deep root, for all the countries i have lived in, and will live in, if i am indeed not done with all that, then i will continue planting the seeds for the whole table, cooking, gathering the chicks to my breast and pouring out the love onto their plates.

just this

2009-02-02T03:39:00.000-08:00

snow dancing in the kitchen to Kings of Leon
me falling in a million pieces out the window

snow taking form and staying warm and happy to be barefoot on a cold floor,
me wisping, gusty, a farewell blanket, a white flag at the war's end,
i've broken up every moment and every expression and stumble into a small flake
and will continue sprinkling until i have given all of myself to this city.

snow walking to work, wishing it was homeward bound, not knowing where home is,
talking to colleagues and being sent home, trudging in chunky heeled boots,
thinking all the way back, each step a thought, barely touching the ground,
me still flowing from somewhere in the sky that can't be felt or seen, covering
the grime of the streets, playing with children and dogs and mothers and birds,
as they make chunky balled people out of me, trying to put me back together.

snow you are sitting on the couch knowing the month has arrived, the leaving,
this pregnant pause of nature so gracefully frozen, so knowing and wise.
me hugging the rooftops, laying claim to a place just for this one day, just this,
i fall and fall and fall,
and may not be here tomorrow,
but you will know that i came.

Psalms 23:5

2008-12-08T02:58:00.000-08:00

"In the end, prayer is more profoundly creative than art can ever be." - Joanna Jamieson (Benedictine Nun)

It's hard to flip on mindlessly to the article about the National Theatre's facelift after reading the anvil drop of that line. What could possibly be more creative than art? Is it not the very human expression of creativity, in carnate? If art is not the most creative act on the planet, childbirth aside, what is it? And more importantly, does it matter? And what of the near-idolatrous praise of artists? Is art just one of many ways to manifest creativity?

What if we took the box out of the box and dared to speak about the other theme of her sentence, that of creative prayer. And its profound creativity. All this time I thought I should just be writing as if that was the ultimate fruit of creativity, as if it was the best I could ever hope to do in life. How shortly, how swiftly, and how invisibly I would have fallen.

Creative prayer. Active devotion to God. To Love. To Life. With diligence and faith. These thoughts bless my Being. Not because I'm special or unique, but because I'm listening. I'm listening to the laughter of a child, to the sound of hello, to the spoon on the plate, not with my ears but with my heart. A heart that is not even mine, separate and distinct, but instead of piece of Heart, which resides in this body I call Me, to keep me alive and beating. Beating to God. Beating to Love. to creation. What else in the whole world could possibly be worth beating to? And so I ask you, dear Reader, to not confuse these lines with a poem or prose or spoken verse. These words are a prayer, a humble and unrefined one at that, but still a prayer.

Have you stopped today to say Thank You? Thank you for this Life? And then, stopped to ask who you are talking to? That's all. That is all. I just wish that everybody could plug in every so often, get a shot of it, get an injection of Love. Because we all want to be loved. And in these moments when I'm in the flow of Life, I realize that is all there is: If I have life, I am a walking, talking, breathing, dancing expression of love. And so the only direction to that force is outward and upward. My cup runneth over. I have so much more to give. As Eckhart Tolle put it," you are here to enable the diving purpose of the universe to unfold."

We must remember to bathe ourselves daily in a deep knowing of oneness and love. It is our birthright, our sacred grant, our Heart beat, our single chant.

On the One-Fifty-Three

2008-12-08T02:48:00.000-08:00

Oh Industry. Oh industrious, huddled masses.
of thinly bricked warehouses at dawn, their chipped teeth biting down on persistent, dark night.

Oh Night. Oh loft-for-rent-we-subdivide sign creaking in the wind, unseen behind overtaking brambles, unread, in vain.

Tidy suburbs turn their aluminum backs on barbed wire and metallicized sweat of time time clocks and empty bus depots and parking meters.

America, what of your industry, what of your industrious nature?

loyalty, integrity, sacrifice
exchanged for
convenience, money back and guaranteed?

we've lost our tools, lost our might, lost our fear of God,
time like a tennis ball marks only firm ground between movements,
of sunlit air and wind, in the blink of a century, the first
THUMP
of the assembly lines
bounced
to
wartime manufacturing and
LANDED
hollow, echoed, on the factory room floor.

If a widgit falls in the warehouse and noone is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If a country falls from grace, and noone has the courage to speak it, does it but marr the ground? Show me not your shopping malls or monuments or front rooms. I would like to see the wrong side of the tracks, the billiard parlors and war vet halls, the after-hours, the gang of dogs at the powerlines, what is consciously not remembered and yet refuses to die. what hides in the dusty flint corners of a neatly packaged soul, what still freaks, what forever crumbles, in this denied delapidation, of calloused hands, overalls in the attic,
in dust, in dust, in dust,
of stuttering, staggering, industrial trepidation.

A Shy Patriot

2008-12-08T02:36:00.000-08:00

The language has changed. The signs have changed. The mood has changed. The clothes have changed. Penn Station, frozen in 1994. Has time not marched on whilst I have dilletanted around Europe, picking olives and making oil, speaking the Old World, sometimes fluently, often broken ...? America, what have you been up to, besides eight years of Dubya and pharmaceutical dog biscuits that tranquilize poor Fido, sexual enhancer strips you put under your tongue, advertised on the radio? Have I landed on the Moon, or in 1994, or am I just in Nassau County, suburban Long Island, which happily oversleeps in its Prozac-induced time warp. The great hope of Obama lingers on the horizon on this Thanksgiving day, eight weeks to inauguration and counting. When I return, let it not involved any doubling up or turning back or dare I say decline of sophistication, lest I find myself absentmindedly correcting the grammar of highway billboards. 'Only Place in Philly to Get One' - get what? 'Dunkin Donuts, Eagles Fan Fuel'. 'Gasolean'.

I'm sure I know you.
I'm sure I love you.
I'm sure I am you.

But who are you people?

It's an overcast, London-esque day in Philadelphia. And the world is my home. I am nostalgically American, classically American, just like in the movies American. When abroad. The conflict of belonging on native soil strikes a chord of betrayal to seven years of international living. This chord is, however, tinny and faint and false and fearful. The truth is I belong everywhere. The world is a funny place, that's all. What would great nations be without great neuroses. The ddefensive 'you're in America now', leave all imported knowledge at the door propaganda is to be smiled at, warmly, and promptly forgotten. I am who I am because of everything I've seen, everyone I've ever met and had a laugh with, every wine I've supped, every question asked, even the roads untravelled, decisions taken and laid aside, in absence and in plenty. It's a small world, indeed, and this shy patriot is packing her bags.

Dusk on my Birthday

2008-10-22T02:08:00.000-07:00

at this hour
in this light

i stop asking myself if i like it here
if the architecture pleases me
and settle into the freedom of early even ing
a world between two spaces
that i drink in slowly and deliberately
back sat tight in a black london cab
i have nowhere to be but here
for i am the shore that greets times gentle, rolling waves
i am the field, the child playing in the field,
the setting sun in a clear sky and her mother calling to sup.
in this endless samsara of cities, borders crossed,
oceans traversed and still cities,
i carry the countryside in my heart.

Kayaking Into Autumn

2008-09-18T08:07:00.001-07:00

I wrote this for my uncle's newspaper Hampton Life. It's a tourist paper for my hometown area, which happens to be one of Earth's most beautiful places ...

As the days get shorter and the beaches cool down, what better way to enjoy the golden Hamptons light and fall foliage than exploring Accabonac Creek in a kayak. It’s hurricane season, and apart from die-hard surfers who live for stormy days, the calm and peaceful waters of this insider’s hideaway deserve a good paddle or two. The perfect solution for nature-loving types who seek to re-visit water sports without the rough and tumble of the ocean, kayaking is a great way to see marshlands and bays as well as marine life and birds while getting a bit of exercise. Families will appreciate the safety element without losing the charm and beauty, plus there are no nasty resident parking regulations at the Creek’s entrance.

Forget the Hamptons of golf and expensive fashions, this sport is down home, so much so that the locals will actually talk to you whilst paddling about! Do say hello to the fishermen, clam-diggers and the like; they will get that you are practically a Hamptons native yourself. Your humble writer enjoyed a chat with a man who commented that the mud was a bit thick and he was looking for clams, digging his hands deep into the waters with the patience of a beekeeper. The area is protected by not only its inhabitants but by the esteemed East End organizations Accabonic Protection Committee, East Hampton Preservation Society and the Peconic Land Trust, who have ensured that your journey will be pristine and unpolluted.

Kayaking is rooted in the earliest traditions of the East End, tracing its history to the Native American dugout canoe. The kayak’s wood-carved antecedent was used on these very same waters as a mode of transportation and livelihood for tribes that fished, clammed and navigated the Creek. Think of the Montauk tribe folk silently gliding along only to pounce on their marine prey while you navigate these waters in all of your modern paraphernalia.

Old-school kayakers will claim it is a west coast thing, but don’t be fooled. The sport was reinvented in the mid-90’s as it migrated from river to ocean to more placid marshland waters. Companies like Cobra and X started making boats out of plastic in their garages, tinkering with high-tech and lightweight materials that didn’t cost much and could eventually be mass-produced. One such invention was the self-bailing boat, from Cobra, which was made for ocean waves, with holes in the middle to release water from the boat. This improvement ran alongside the slimming of longer, thinner designs intended for speed, the skinny frame perfect for rivers. The kayaks on offer and ideal for Accabonac Creek are medium-sized, in both one-man and two-man varieties, with enough girth to be comfortable on flat waters yet streamlined for the more adventurous jaunts possible into Gardiner’s Bay and other open waters.

You can rent a kayak or two and explore the area with or without a tour guide, but there is one essential piece of the Creek to visit: Louse Point. This thin stretch of land that acts as a natural buffer to the opening into Gardiner’s Bay is such a graceful and beautiful piece of earth that it was celebrated by one of the area’s most famous artists, Willem de Kooning, in his painting “Rosy Fingered Dawn at Louse Point”.

The safety do’s and don’t’s are pretty straightforward: paddle in pairs so there’s always someone to pull you out of the mud or call for help if you should tip over or fall out; and always stay with your boat, no matter what – after all, it’s a floatation device, even if it should capsize. You will want to bring a camera to get action shots of your group and to capture the gorgeous landscape and water views to tease your friends at home, but be sure to either get a waterproof or keep it locked tight when you’re not using it in the kayak’s airtight container. Lastly, if you are kayaking early morning, do bring along some bug spray.

Many come kayaking to lose their type-A-ness, to chill out, relax and de-stress from the pressures of work and urban living, or to further delve into the gorgeous nature that is Accabonac Creek. One of the tour leaders perched down at the Creek waxed poetic when he said, gazing at the water and the kayaks lined up along its edge,” this sport will transform us if we let it”. He recalled a specific tour that he was leading of high-powered lawyers who once a bit of mist had settled onto the Creek, blocking their visibility and way home, became very human and real when they realized the power of nature and the importance of keeping calm, cool and collected. Movie mogul types and TV stars are attracted by the anonymous, un-Hamptons style in which kayakers go about their sport, with nothing flashy about it, and no paparazzi in sight.

The wildlife on display in and along the Creek is rather outstanding, with a graceful collection of bird types topping the list. The ubiquitously sexy, nasty swans (don’t get close to their babies, the grayish-brown ones) are bobbing about, and they generally like to hug the shore, where they can dip in and out of the water. Next come the osprey, also known as sea hawks for the way they swoop down into the water to catch their pray. You may notice they dim out in numbers in the fall, but look to their nests, built by the town on tall, thin wood platforms. The real beast of burden for fishermen are the cormorants, who have a lovely deep blue color and look at first glance like blue herons, but are certainly much more friendly and approachable. They tend to travel in packs, and are hated by those who fish as they eat traps. Catch them doing a characteristic move of extending their wing span, a beautiful sight, as they dry their feathers. They are a species in mid-evolution, as they swim to catch fish but still have their feathered ‘clothes’ on, which as humans know is not the easiest task.

Whether you come for the sport, the fresh air or the impressive natural beauty, one thing is for certain – kayaking is the way forward this autumn. I’ll see you on the Creek.

Written by Sarah Coursey

When not kayaking on Accabonac Creek, Sarah can be found whizzing past double-decker buses in London on her trusty Vespa.

Power, Intent and Evolution

2008-08-25T08:37:00.000-07:00

In a wooden, A-framed hall bathed in light next to a misty, rolling field, we started each morning of PIE (Power, Intent and Evolution) waking up body and spirit. This coming back to nature is a perfect metaphor to a return to self and, deeper still, the infinite possibility for life that rests underneath and beyond personal identity. By shedding the layers and shackles of what we are still “working on”, engineers still tinkering away at old stories of who we think we are or have to be, we become free. And that freedom is hard-earned and sometimes fleeting, but it is there and available and through PIE, I sampled a delicious taste.

The components of Tensegrity and dialogue are the foundation for the energetic opening of PIE. The ancient Mexican shamanic movements of Tensegrity, revealed to the world by Carlos Castaneda, serve to release and nourish the energy-body, allowing it room to breathe, to grow and to be acknowledged as the true life force. Memories, outdated patterns and beliefs come bubbling to the surface and get dispersed. Through recapitulation, scars from the past are healed energetically. And real change pokes its head out from under the sand just long enough to remind us that evolution has something else in mind for us. That it is not done with us yet. This is not all there is.

The dialogue sessions drove home this concept through the distinction of the First and Second Attentions. The First Attention is bound in finite, limited time and space, defined and stuck in the Personal Story that we have made up for ourselves about who we are and have used to get us through life. The Second Attention in contrast is infinite, unlimited and unbound by time and space, and therefore free. Relationships, for example, that take place in the Second Attention have a holistic approach to loving and being loved, whereas the First Attention relationship is still keeping count of affections and compromise, altogether conditional. Most of life as we know it is lived from the First Attention and its principal movement is involution, a circle of energy directing ever smaller and tighter. Fears are stored and harvested here.

Through a conscious conversation in the PIE dialogue sessions, the invisible wall between these two ways of being is quietly shattered. Taboo subjects, secrets and embarrassment and topics to avoid are explored in one-on-one talks between participants as well as with the group as a whole. This simple and yet incredibly difficult act of defying the dusty and cramped social conventions unblocks precious life force that laid dormant under our own weight. And ownership must be stressed, for the power in Power, Intent and Evolution does not come from an exterior source. Evolution is the real mysticism of this work, as a part of that in our humanity we have access to the power that created the universe, as we contain in every cell of our bodies that potential for infinite evolution.

Another crucial base for the work is the gourmet, macrobiotic food offered up to participants, biologically supporting both dialogue and Tensegrity sessions. Clean, calming and revitalizing, this food is a foundation for transformation and supports PIE reaching its final destination as a course and an energetic opening.

Divorce Party

2008-07-25T04:49:00.000-07:00

okay, so this is a first that i thought i would never live to see. not that i live entirely in the fairy tale zone of happily ever after, but it just seems a bit early for that. i mean, i hope that this is my first and last. not that i'm surprised about the event, the guy was not up to snuff and she was miserable and said she's happier than she was on her wedding day. which stopped me dead in my tracks. the thought of someone leaving a bad situation as happier than entering with hope and love into a union of marriage. the release as compared to the dive. these are not happy endings. or are they?

i struggle with the question of things not working out. of why some people are alone and others aren't. of where i fit into the spectrum. the success of a relationship and the ultimate union, marriage. one that works. and lasts. and doesn't have an end in sight, but a being, a sense of the every day. i don't have any other friends who will God willing be getting divorced anytime soon, and so this will have to remain an anomaly. so not necessarily a first, but a one-off. she doesn't seem to mind, really.

maybe i'm the one with the hang-up. the belief that someone couldn't possibly be happy after such a rupture, such a sign of failure. and only because of my 'personal story' is it so important to me that things work out that i don't completely give my heart away for fear they won't. well, that's all changing. i am open, open, open. doing things i am scared to do, breaking patterns, speaking my truth, understanding that nothing is easy and having a good life takes hard work. especially when one has been programmed for much less. of no fault of my own, or my mothers, or her mother, or her mother, it's just an inherited pattern, but the good news is that it's not forever fixed. anything can be changed.

Not Black, Not White

2008-07-18T09:26:00.000-07:00

There will be casualties. Some of the casualties will become fertile ground for new growth, new life; and that too will be revealed. Others are just that, things that die that would’ve died anyway, they just get clipped sooner. They might’ve been tangling and energy-draining, something to do, someone to see, not much meaning but lots of company. The relationship that could’ve been, whose time was never really right, which might’ve been about more than the months in the calendar, but never knowing is its fate. The blindness of it all, of deciding to jump off a cliff and not knowing if it’s a ravine or a lake, causes its symptom, the headache of not being able to see, the mind buzzing with unanswered questions that eat each other whole and become bigger and stronger as that is their nature, the high-pitched asking only serving to accentuate the silent spaces in-between. This is called confusion.

And yet I sit here in my fishbowl looking out at clouds every day and think ‘is this it’? Is this it? Is everyone miserable at work? Is this what life is all about, is this what we’ve been evolving for millions of years to do, or is there something else out there? What if that something else was handed over? An alternative route. It might not be the right route. What is the right route? Is there only one right route? Could two routes be right? They can both lead to the same things, actually. That totally didn’t occur to me. There is no wrong decision.

Wow, that takes pressure off, doesn’t it. It’s okay if I go, and it’s okay if I stay, so no pressure! Even if it’s a big decision, it is not an exam. Not at test. There will be no punishment, no reward. It’s only what I make it. Because I make it. I take the opportunity and then turn that into something real. I think I’m ready. I needed that, a sit-down with myself. Because my gut wasn’t making any noise. Rather, it was hard to hear it over all the other noise. In a transformational sense, I was getting lost in either/or. I put up the dualistic dilemma and blew it up and had a field day with it. Classic confusion, boiled down to its most essential elements. An excuse for the pain body to go into its favourite sport – mental masturbation. Well, I’ve broken free !!!! I’ve broken free and there’s no going back. The world is full of abundance. And joy. And there are many paths. They are all right when they are worn with an open heart. Courage is key. Because it’s not afraid of the darkness or the uncertainty.

If we could really go to a palm reader and have our whole lives spelled out, would life really be that interesting to live? If we knew exactly what was going to happen next, it’s just like going through the motions really. I don’t even like having a two week social schedule, days packed with events and meetings, because there’s the feeling of having to ‘get through the diary’. It’s a big world, and the things that need to get through will get through, will change their shape to fit different spaces, that’s just how it goes. The Phoenix forever rises.

Size is Everything

2008-05-04T15:52:00.000-07:00

there once was a boy
with a heart so big
he had to hide it behind a really big sweater
and I am talking a REALLY big sweater,
and this sweater would sweat and his brow would get wet,
and all would get muddy, clouds into rain and fear into pain
and his heart
was still hidden away.

He walked through this life
Thumping away, left sided and slanted and true,
and the people beside him, could not comprehend, upright and even as two,
they couldn’t see past his halfway ways
And called him at last

the boy with the barrel chest.

But don’t you all see
The boy once did cry
It’s not my chest at all
but a really big heart.
And they laughed and they snickered
And he cowed and he dithered
Until finally
He did agree. He would be barrel-chested and loud and brave
And hide behind not sweater, no no, but a cool demeanor and aftershave
The girls they did flock and the boys were a-wonder
At how our big-hearted boy did not fall under
The spell of the masses, the primary school classes,
But just stood, cool demeanor, not a second too late.

Until.

One day came along a girl
With a heart so big
She had to hide it behind a really big mouth
And I am talking a REALLY big mouth,
She huffed and she puffed and wouldn’t shut up
And so they all laughed
and then cried
“would you please give our ears a break
and your conscience a gentle shake?”
But she grinned knowing
the silence was growing
in the heart spaces kept out of reach
and with no way of finding
a heart like hers
hence the to-ing and fro-ing,
it was a lesson she learned to teach.

So the boy with the sweater and the girl with the mouth
Met with pistols in the churchyard at dawn
She shouted “get going”, and he shirked, not knowing
That she was all talk and no fire.
For the pistol was empty, it clicked and it clacked
And he called her so coolly a liar.
But she turned with a shrug, pulled a moth from a jug
And proceeded to tap his big chest.
I know what you’re keeping, I hear the creeping
Of something too big to protest.
And before he knew a hole formed and the beat-beating one could not deny,
so with nothing to say, and nothing to do, in silence their two hearts now lie.

Monster

2008-05-04T08:30:00.000-07:00

and every once and again, a monster
who locks his children in the basement
arrives to make us feel free, to remind us of
original sin, to tap at the core of our
vulnerability, to remember in the midst of
back-patting laughter at the dinner table
how very far we have to go.

some take these
newspaper clippings and smile on their
neighbors with love, while others squint small
eyes with scorn.

we are too many islands
huddled on dry land. the immaculate lawn that
separates our white picket fences, an ocean of
misunderstanding, a blanket of misshapen manners,
a break in trust, the involution of loneliness like a
cosmic gutter sucking out the water of life.
if we let it.

and yet.
we all just want to be seen.
to not be forgotten.
to be tapped on the shoulder and chosen for the team.
for a monster sleeps in the cool, dark corridors of our hearts.
and our cloaked claims of separation are the oxygen he breathes
as we the outraged masses turn our gaze and fill our glasses,
misery waits merrily in the color tube that brings the morning news
as hazy heads make sense of shapes, words and pictures.
monster. ah yes. we'll be needing one of those.

She and Her Here and There

2008-04-25T07:19:00.000-07:00

She and Her Here and There is a journey through words, emotion and abstraction; tracking the forgotten histories and secret alleyways of London's Isle of Dogs. In a Subterranean Homesick Blues fashion, "She" flipped over pages of words a large pad, indicating bits of history in a very personal, colloquial voice; whilst the audience followed "She" through new residential developments, along the water facing Canary Wharf and through the vestiges of an old ghetto to arrive at the converted-church theatre/bar The Space.

"Her" punctuated the piece with symbolism and sound, popping up in the most unexpected of places - in an outside cupboard holding up a small wooden windmill, or dragging a rolled ball of vinyl with an old travelling man's suitcase. A small scratch of modern brick buildings revealed a courtyard with wooden sheds and allotments where a wide-faced Asian woman tended to her lettuce patch. This while "She" offered us an annotated tea break with real biscuits and a marble game to play while "Her" played the screams and cheers of children playing in her stereo-fitted suitcase. Home for anyone who's ever known a real community, leaves the afternoon streaked with children's voices until dinner time, and this poignant, emotional tome to the dock's history was beautifully captured in this symphonic tea break.

The inevitable interaction with the piece from passersby, many of which presumably local, added a rich layer of present-day community to what was for the most part being performed as an homage to community in the historical sense. Neighborhood girls dressed in the latest streetwear contrasted with a photo held up by "Her" of two young girls in fluffy bonnets from the McDougall's factory at the turn of the twenty-first century. In a dance between language and abstraction, "Her" told the physical story of the flour-shop's daily rhythms through the tossing of a white ball inside a clear plastic sphere, mirroring the famous mixing bowls in the experimental kitchens that gave the world self-rising flour.

For every blue plaque in London there is a wealth of socio-cultural information, and the objects, sounds and symbols that we conveniently dub 'history' are very much alive if one scratches just beneath the surface. She and Her Here and There delicately and powerfully conveys that to the audience in an abstract, participatory style. Go. This Saturday, if you're not working, go. And follow She and Her Here and There.

http://www.myvillage.com/docklands/arts-gallery-Dianna_Brinsden_and_Martina_Von_Holn%7C_She_and_Her_Here_and_There.htm

What will become of me?

2008-02-25T07:23:00.000-08:00

This prose piece was written in response to a request on a course I am on at the Concord Institute called the Foundation Course, to which I refer in the piece. I read this in front of my class this past weekend, and opened my heart and voice. It is about transforming, becoming, and wondering where the seams are to this life.

What will become of me?
How will I know?
Who will I see?

What will become of me?
Where is the forest in these matchstick trees?
On a march to this sea of oblivion
I have no life jacket
where is the soul in ego's empty packet?
is the thing called 'me' just a clever racket?

What will become of m?
How will I know?
Who will I see?
I don't believe myself
I don't believe my self
cries a voice so soft it wilts when I cross my arms,
so small it can squeeze between two quick thoughts,
so weak from knocking at my closed heart's door,
so tired it can hardly speak at all.

Disbelief lifts its curtain on a figure pulling cords
on my throat,
up and down, up and down, like six o'clock church bells
snuffing out the days' last candle, like so many men in
so many towers, as I count the lies, they count the hours,
up and down and up and down and up and --
STOP! who is counting, who is pulling, is anyone winning this game?

What will become of me?
How will I know?
Who will I see?

2008-02-14T00:29:00.000-08:00

Sarah's Dating Manifesto (because it's Valentine's Day!!)

Alright, ladies (and gents if you can just stop for one second and stop pretending you don't want to meet someone ...) welcome to my Dating Manifesto. To navigate this tricky terrain, there is one Cardinal Rule, to which all rules will adhere: Pretend you're on the Dating Game! And if you're not old enough to remember the show, you shouldn't be reading this ... That's right, one contestant, three members of the opposite sex, a screen (this last bit is optional).

Bachelor Number One, Two and Three. They all come out from some kind of conveyor belt system, one after the other, and do some kind of dance about who they are, what they like and don't like, et cetera. The beauty of the conveyor belt is of course that the casting department is there and ready with a replacement to come in after the commercial break. No hard feelings, it's show business, and if something doesn't work out, there are many waiting in the wings. Each bachelor must prove his worth to his potential date, but it's supposed to be funny and fun and light and not at all 'will you marry me' but instead 'do you fart in bed' or 'would your ex say you are a good lover'.

Ladies, I know what you do when you meet a guy - you're not playing the Dating Game - you're playing the Marriage Game - wrong, wrong, wrong! I know, because I used to do this. Run for the hills, fair gents, if a woman starts giving you that 'so, how many babies do you want to have' talk on the first date - that is not how you play!! It's all about flirting and testing out the waters, and for this you need 3 contestants. The last one standing wins, it's only fair. There are billions of people on this planet (okay, not SOOO many billions, but still), and why should you meet someone in a bar, or yoga center, or beach, and decide 'this is it, i'm gonna be Mrs. So-and-So (insert his last name here), and he must do all the right things, or else ... this is not light or joyful or happy! Show some self-respect, and get 3 boys on 3 high chairs and play the game yourself. And remember, they aren't winning a permanent place on the left side of your bed, they are winning a date - just one - not sex or a weekend in the countryside. So ... Happy Valentines Day & let the games begin!

Email to my Family (first Trista's then mine)

2008-02-08T08:46:00.000-08:00

PS that's my sister Rachel, with the funky glasses, and me eating something (chicken?). This email exchange is with me and Trista, a mega-right on chick and friend of Rachel's, who lives in Amsterdam and wrote this email.

FROM TRISTA:

After escaping Kenya, I found an email waiting for me: 'Are you back yet…how was Kenya?' Jean was the sender. Hmm, let's see, I hadn't had a boyfriend or even a pretend one for a while and I recently been gagging for some good huggin' and cuddlin' and lookie what we have here, an email from ze super affectionate French ex-boyfriend…hmm indeed. I conspired to meet him for drinks and/or dinner. Conspired because he's in love and living with a Brazilian broad for a year and half now. Strangely, I felt comfortable thinking about kissing another girl's man, normally guilt keeps me away from the other woman roles but the need to be ooh-la-la'd with caresses overwhelmed. Anyway, I hadn't decided I was going to do anything yet, I would see what transpired.

He cycled round mine. I wanted to show him my place because I was overcome with the urge to show off: 'See, look at me now…I have my OWN place…on a canal no less…I'm not dependent on you…I have my own life and you can't take it away…WAAAAA!!!' Of course, he didn't ask for this confirmation but I was convinced I needed to give it to him. Plus I thought it prudent to check out my crib at the beginning of the evening because if I showed him at the end of the evening, it wouldn't be the end of the evening if you know what I'm sayin'. I wasn't yet sure what I wanted to do with him.

We made a quick enough exit to the tapas joint a short walk away from my pad. I know this may sound diva but I love going out with Jean because he'll foot the bill and encourage me to get whatever pleases me…YAY! He offers, I oblige. Yes, the beers turned into a bottle of wine, which morphed into after dinner cava. And yes, the thought of my lips touching his grew stronger in my head. Et oui, the vision of his girlfriend fizzled away with each sip of bubbly. We did a lot of review and reminiscing of our relationship…he came clean about many of his faults, which made Jean more appealing. It's so weird, we were together for 3 months, 2 years ago but the relationship still seemed to carry some weight…more weight with Jean I gathered. I didn't choose to grasp the depth of Jean's feelings while sipping champagne but it became sick clear he was still in amour avec moi. I'm sure I picked up on that vibe somehow, which is why I wanted to see him and be adorned with his affections.

And adorned I was! He has a sweetness of touch that I totally respond to. He kissed me like he adored me and I sopped it all up. His hands gripped me because he didn't want to let go. It was so slow and savory and scrumptious…our auras or chis or feng shuis were uniting and multiplying. I find these times irresistible. 'Ewe 'ar eevin mohr buuteefal than befohr.' Frenchtastic! That shit sounds so damn good. My sister pointed out, 'duh, that's because he really means it…he's still in love with you.' Ohhhhhhhh… We fell asleep on the couch, my head on his chest, one arm around me, the other hand cupping my head like a baby. We knew we wouldn't be making whoopie, he still had a girlfriend to go home to and it wasn't necessary, the kissing was enough nourishment. Then one of us stirred and broke the sleep. At 1:30am, he left into the cold and I went happily back to sleep.

The picture didn't stay rosy. Jean showed up to my improv show the next night and that's fab and all but he wanted to be all kissy kissy and touchy which struck me as a little possessive. Plus, it was my turf, he didn't know who I may be laying it to, he could be cock-blockin. AND, he's got a woman…did I mention she's 37 with a 5 year-old son Jean declares is his best friend? Him trying to steel kisses off me sprouted new feelings of guilt for the previous evening's rendezvous. Again, my sister had to point out, 'duh, he's in love with you and you were making out the night before. What do you expect him to do?' Ohhhhhhh…

I was pleased he left during the second show. Some other night he texted me during the booty call hours. I replied with an email the next day stating: 'our time at my house was lovely but guilt is setting in and I don't want to repeat the event.' He apologized and agreed. I felt redeemed.

Am I some sort of sorcerer who conjures up feelings from thin air like how XMEN's Storm makes it rain in an instant? As Jean cradled my head in his hands, drew me gently close and blessed my mouth with his, I was in love with him. A voice in my head rang 'I love you' each time we kissed…an hour later nothing, I was happy he left so I could sleep in the bed. At work, there are these dudes I simply salivate over. Anne (it's a boy's name, really) takes my breath away which is a totally weird thing to be happening at work. I catch sight of his back and I'm verklempt, physically I'm swirling inside…just from the sight of his back…clothed no less! I have such a strong reaction to the sight of him…what is that about? Am I meant to follow these rogue feelings? Is it Anne who sparks that fire or is it I and my wizarding ways who creates the magic? I'm good at fantasy-making, I can pimp out any dream. Yet, at other times, I can't be asked to pay attention to him, his glow seems to disappear those days or I need to take my wand in for re-servicing. I don't know much about him but I can sing you a song about his forearms, his long legs and blue eyes…Damn, he's yummy.

I am learning about this pull I have with some people. I will discover how to harness it like clock tower lightning and use it for my purposes. I will find my next partner this way. We will pick up on each other's frequency and draw ourselves to each other via uncontrollable forces. We will find ourselves in front of each other, we don't know how or why but we will be infinitely happy for it. We will have satisfied an amazing urge to know each other and we will just stand there and smile on one another.

More and more, the things I dream of doing are made manifest. I'm taking tango lessons! How brilliant this dance is! I'm learning lessons about myself, like, apparently, I'm a tad controlling at times. This dance only works, only shines, when the man LEADS the woman. Woe betide the young man who is doomed to partnerdom with me…I am wretched! The man prompts the lady when to move and places her where she needs to be and she follows unflinchingly. Unless she's Trista and thinks she is the man. I'm diabolical! This dance rests in the confidence of the man's arms but since we're all just starting, the men have a bigger hump to hurdle, which is prime time for me to jump in and TAKE OVER THE WOORRLLLDDD!!! The poor guys can't tame me, I'm stacked in confidence because I love dance and because my balls are bigger. I end up leading and making him step to my beat, I'm not willing to have us fuck up in his command…but…but…this dance only works when he leads…I have to be patient and trusting and accommodating and just let it go…a beautiful lesson to learn. The lady teacher chastises, 'you must follow.' I'm not even aware I'm taking over sometimes. When the man teacher takes me in his arms to show my partner a move, he commands my surrender. He is physically sturdy, he puts me where he wants me and I obey and that feels tremendous; to go loose and be whisked away…I AM PRINCESS.

I'm taking singing lessons; here I learn not to judge myself so damn much. My divine Swiss teacher Anna encourages me to play and have fun…she's also promised chocolate from back home. I'm taking snowboarding classes when we drive to France for a week-long ski trip at our catered chalet in the mountains! I'm going to be so badass! I plan to take Portuguese lessons because the language is too damn lovely, I want to try, I want to try. I FINALLY enrolled in a writing workshop because I declare, I WILL write a book this year.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, guys, listen. I've been reading these books and trying new things but I haven't revealed my full commitment for fear of sounding possessed. I didn't want you to think I was in a cult because nobody thinks those guys are cool. Plus I wanted to convince myself I hadn't stumbled into a cult somehow before I came forward. I saw a documentary on Jim Jones and the Jonestown Massacre and thought, dude, I could've been one of the ones who slurped on the spiked Kool-Aid; he was that convincing. My point is, even if I preach like a loon, I have no aspirations of being the leader of a cult or a member or the girlfriend of a member of a cult…maybe the girlfriend of a leader, just to see what perks come with the post.

I am not now or will I ever be a member of a cult and thus, any advice I give is not intended to make you one of us…one of us…one of us. I'm no longer afraid of you thinking me mad. I just want to share what I've learned.

Our lives as we know it have served us but not served us well. We're all hooked up in the Matrix of fear and insecurity and she has bigger tits than me and his kids are smarter than mine and I'm sooo stressed out. Take the blue pill or whichever pill it was and wake yourselves! We've got to expose this because on the other side of this realization is our salvation. I don't care how you go about it, whom you talk to, what you read, but please PLEASE, at least once in your life, challenge your beliefs. Make sure they're yours and if not, find out where they come from, ask yourself if you still believe, ask yourself what you want to believe. Shake this shit up my friends! If you think you're an old dog with no new tricks, if you don't have enough time, it's not for you or any other poor excuse for an excuse, it's all BOLLOCKS. It doesn't fly anymore, you have a responsibility to your life to make it sing.

I'm going through it right now. I'm talking peace like I've never known it, joy so great I get to pass some on, fulfillment, nourishment, growth, change and hot boys and lots of money too! I'm figuring out how to get some happy in my life and I implore you to do the same.

Please find yourselves. It's not cheesy to talk about your inner child anymore, there's more support these days for those who want change. Those of you with bambini, I speak more immediately to you because you can teach a new generation to love itself from the start! How wicked that would be!

I should not delude anyone; this journey I'm on is the hardest thing I've done. Dude, I wanted to jump off cliffs and throw toasters in my bath water the emotional turmoil was so strong at times. But I'm here and doing much better thank you. I live in fucking Amsterdam on a canal in the sweetest neighborhood. I cycle around a drop-dead gorgeous city populated with blindingly fine people. I get on stage and make people laugh. I get off stage and make people laugh. And this is just the beginning.

Do it. Do it now. Do something different. Be happy.

Stuff that's helped change me:
Drama of the Gifted Child
Power of Now
Divine Madness (about love with allegorical reference…ps. I'm not sure what 'allegorical' means but I'm using it damn it!)
Artist's Way
Attractor Factor
Conversations with God Book1,2,3 (I'm on 2)
The Secret
some Existentialist dudes
my sister
my writing
you
me

RESPONSE FROM SARAH, YOURS TRULY :) :

OhmyGod … that is too much! I have to say, I can relate so 100% to what Trista is saying about the magnetic energy and finding oneself … I have been literally thinking about friends lately and then getting their calls, emails, texts – or even bumping into them in the tube (okay, careful what you wish for, the last time was that guy I dated last year and he was all kissy-kissy with this girl who wasn't that cute – ooh Shallow Sarah strikes again ;-) . I realize that I can call people into my life by just putting them in my mind, and then they materialize. The next step is calling people, things, situations I don't know or haven't experienced – into existence. With time, with time. I haven't fully shared the experience of my Being in Action course, or the Foundation Course which I am now on – with the Concord Institute. The Christmas table might not have been the best place … what with the whole family gathered round for some serious food action – politics doesn't conflict with gravy, same-ol, same-ol, but transformation might ! It's the same thing as when you digest and all the blood goes to the stomach so your body gets cold – that process happens when you start eating and so the brain doesn't want to handle big shifts. And what a big shift it has been !! Yeah, like Trista I get funked and fonked – this week for example is a funk, but I am sit-sit-sitting in it instead of running away. And getting to the heart about what it means to be human. I created a blog – finally !!! http://www.courageiskey.blogspot.com. That's right, courage is key, is the key to making life possible, the devil may care, go for it, be brave attitude to life. No matter what. Especially no matter what. The harder it is sometimes, the better it is to go through it. So I've been going through it, streamlining my body, mind and spirit with seriously healthy foods – lots of fish, vegetables, grains, very little meat, cream, butter and white flour/white sugar. We literally are what we eat, and I am making a big temple out of my body. This morning I did an hour of yoga, cleaned the dishes and steamed some vegetables, before work !!! So, it's actually a perfect day to be inspired by someone not too far from the little Anglo island I call home to be having similar jazzed, real feelings and experiences. I wasn't like this yesterday, that was the end of my fonky-funk. I decided to step it up, break the pattern by breaking the pattern … and it worked – I didn't really want to get out of bed this morning at 7, but I knew if I just got past those first five minutes of tiredness, everything would be fine. And it was. And it is. I am learning more about yoga and a bit of shiatsu and energy flow and am inspiring my friends to transform – two close girlfriends have done Being in Action and hopefully both will sign up for the three month Foundation Course. Wise womanhood, here I come! I am getting beyond who I think I should be and getting to who I really am. Looking inside, going deep, not staying on the surface, and of course being fully, openly presently in the world. With a truly open heart and mind. The boyfriend piece will surely follow, but I am no longer looking for it as a means to an end. No person or thing outside of yourself will ever make you happy; it's what you put into it that matters. Every time I went home, on walks on our lovely Wainscott Beach, I had the same conversation with you both, about whether I would meet someone after the 'failure' of my most recent long relationship, as if that would just snap me into life. How insane to wait for someone else to give you your life? And If they can't? Because they can't … it's not possible to give what one does not have to offer, what is not theirs. And so instead of making strategies to do this to get that, I am living – without taking actions because of where they lead, but buzzing on what life is – in the joy and monotony, in the bliss and the boredom. To find my own path. To carve my own happiness. To sow my own bliss. And share the harvest with others.

The books that have helped me in the past months are:

One Taste – Ken Wilbur

The Power of Now – Eckhart Tolle

Happiness – Lessons from a New Science – Richard Layard

The Secret – various writers

Excuse me, your Life is Waiting – Lynn Grabhorn

I still need to read Castaneda, and suggest that you do as well, and forgive the sixties for having brought him forth into the world of letters – he goes much deeper and wider than that generation. The key is to throw out the book though, all the books, read them and then throw them out. I don't mean this in a literal sense, but in the figurative 'don't get stuck' sense. There is no bible, no temple, no shrine, no totem of 'this is gonna save your life' out there. You are it. You are the connection with the divine. It's that simple, and yet for many, and for me on most days, it is that very difficult. But worth it. Way worth it. I am so connected that the other day, I was having a rough time of it and thought of my dear friend Solange who I thought I'd like to talk to, 'heard me', and got in touch. Life has really big plans for me that may not appear that way on the outside, nor may they manifest necessarily in 'outside things', but things are already starting to shift and move and percolate. I feel like brewing coffee on an Italian hourglass 'Moka'. And these beans are the business. They never would've thought all green and sunny on Columbian trees they'd end up all warm and smoky in a cup. Transformed. Because life is alchemy.

on being a bud

2008-02-04T16:12:00.000-08:00

I walked past some daffodil buds on the way to work yesterday. Which wouldn't have been a big deal if it weren't for the month of February. Winter's last full capsule. And they looked quite impatient, ticking their sunny pulses as if to say, "time is running out, we absolutely cannot wait for spring." And my mind, no less a child than the flowers, dutifully planted a garden, denying the buds their very being. In a flash, I sent up purple and white crocuses, pink hibiscus with their waxy yellow stamens poking through, and so on. I called in extra hands to drum up early tulips and late roses alike. How quickly we rush to the illusion of future, the dream of perfection when the day of perfect bloom will arrive and we will for one millisecond have the breathless moment of 'Ah', this is what we've been waiting for. There is one problem: the buds may never become flowers. They may make it all the way and get killed by frost. Or get swept away by the wind. And yet as a culture, as a human race, we are obsessed by this moment of magic where we have scaled development to something so small, we can't even measure it. Let alone touch it, or live in a circle around it with our arms open wide. The buds are perfect, as was the bulb and as will the drooping, season's-end flowers turning from yellow to brown. And back again. To the old woman and the young girl, to the first bliss-blast of honeymoon love to the mature, 'where-did-you-put-my-slippers silver couple, it is the same thread, the same bud, the same love that we put into boxes of time and meaning to give ourselves some semblance of control. Which is its own illusion.

arctic dreams

2008-02-04T16:05:00.000-08:00

The sun set on Lulea today at half past two. Ingemar took me down to the frozen river, thickly coated with a meter of ice and topped with fresh, frothy snow, the kind of snow that feels like winter clouds hovering low, ankle-hugging and cozied up for a long, dark sleep. The days are both wide and low in northern Sweden this time of year. A rich brew of night arrives at four, its upright air steeped in cold caution. The elements rule supreme - better to check the ubiquitous thermometers stuck on the windows, better yet not to break a sweat - clothes layering having risen to an art form in these parts.

We set out for the mountains, made our way through mile aftermile of blanked boughs, a symphony of light from land to sky. Every now and again we passed clearings of diamond-white, sparkling like fallen rainbows, shattered into uncountable pastel pieces. A local herd of reindeer had evidently been alerted to welcome all passers-by, and slowly crossed our path of asphalt and ice. One seemed to say, his deep, marbly eyes locked with mine, "It's alright here. This is our natural habitat. We don't mind the cold." And in an instant, I didn't either.

Non-Swedes hold the notion of the north as a place caved in darkness, bleak months of hard liquor and even harder waiting for the light to return. In reality, there's plenty of crisp sunshine to go around. November is the only month to fear - dark ground can't reflect a single ray, and it is difficult to tell a tree from a person. And yet, on a snowboard carving powder down to a sunset-pierced valley, the measured world - and its time-stained cares - is quickly put to right. Be still my melting Arctic heart, cradling the sweet ache of such magnificence and simplicity, whilst the last rays of so called 'day' drip onto the blue mountains ahead.

what it is

2008-02-04T14:54:00.001-08:00

Courage, also known as bravery, will and fortitude, is the ability to confront fear, pain, risk/danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. 'Physical courage' is courage in the face of physical pain, hardship or threat of death, while 'moral courage' is the courage to act rightly in the face of popular opposition, shame, scandal or discouragement. - Wikipedia

I had a choice and I knew it. To live in fear or to live in courage. There is something incredibly comfortable about the dull, constant pain of fear, it covered my life like an itchy blanket, better than nothing but ultimately unsatisfying. It never actually occurred to me that fear itself is always worse than the object of its disaffection. And so, I begin. This picture was taken on a river in northern Sweden. Yes, I am walking on water. Frozen water. A change in temperature, season and climate makes this possible. And that shift, spiraling from spirit to matter, is what I will attempt to explore in this blog.