Beached

You’ve heard of the phrase, “I feel like a beached whale.” I actually know this feeling firsthand, and it has nothing to do with the astronomical amount of peppermint bark I ate tonight or the christmas cookie gorge out I had this weekend. This past February I traveled to Hawaii on a solo journey. Partly for my good friend’s wedding and partly to heal a little hole that had been punched out in my heart from a breakup breakdown. I flew to the islands to let them nurture me in their maternal waters and bathe me in their sweet tropical breezes. They did just that, and it was a wholly and holy healing experience. I had never had the pristine honor of swimming with a sea turtle. When friends would mention the experience it would only make me burn with jealousy and annoyance that they had and I hadn’t. My one non-negotiable goal on this trip to Oahu was to swim with a sea turtle. End of story. So I paid my $15 to swim at Haunama Bay and was delighted that there was barely a soul around to interfere with my snorkeling adventures. The park ranger on the cliff top pointed out a tiny puff of water off the edge of the reef below us and said that there was an orphaned humpback whale swimming around by itself. A newborn calf that had most likely been separated from its mother in a recent storm. The maternal fire in me blazed and I had this overwhelming urge to get my ass down there and help that baby whale. I think he saw the look in my eye and warned, “Swimmers are not allowed beyond the edge of the reef. It’s too dangerous out there with tiger sharks.” Hmm. Tiger sharks. Not my favorite. So my visions of cradling a newborn humpback in my arms and whispering comforting words in it’s ear hole were temporarily abated. I switched my attention back to operation sea turtle. Down in the bay, in the actual water, my attitude changed. Suddenly I felt very much alone and longed for the company of some friendly Asian tourists. Heading out into the bay I was literally alone. Not a single other snorkeler to be seen, largely because it was 9am, windy and cold. I shivered from the chill and a spike of fear, but headed off for the edge of the reef, kicking my dorky little flippers and bobbing along over pretty fish and coral. It was beautiful, and perfect and like something out of National Geographic, but I wanted my sea turtle moment.

After about a half an hour, I saw something large and flat up ahead. I followed it and as I drew closer I almost fainted. There it was…..a giant Green Sea Turtle! It was like a floating dinosaur, and it had such personality in it’s eyes. I swam closer to it and it barely cared. I recall the distinct feeling that it reminded me of a little old British man. It gave me this ho-hum look, as if to say in a droll British accent, “Oh, it’s you. Hmm. I suppose you’re going to follow me around and bother me.” Sea turtles have very dry senses of humor. They are somewhat cranky. Like an irritating golden retriever puppy, I followed it through submarine avenues and ally ways. It munched algae as it went, and occasionally looked back in my direction, although generally ignoring my existence. The water grew more and more shallow, but I continued to follow my little British turtle farther and farther across the reef. There was just enough water to float me over the reef layer, but the turtle moved seemlessly across, flying like a glider. The turtle glanced back at me, and I’m pretty sure it winked. If I could have read it’s mind, it would have said, “So long sucka!” for the next moment, the tide slipped away and I found myself beached indeed, atop the coral reef of Haunama Bay. I glanced around me and on all sides the water level had dropped to the exact volume of the reef surface. I sat atop it like a giant whale, unable to move unless I stood up and walked to the edge. Coral is very delicate, and in the Bay it is illegal to harm it in any way. Walking on coral falls into this category. It is also insanely sharp and would have cut my feet to slivers. So I waited. I looked up at the cliffs and noticed the barricade overlooking the water was now teeming with Japanese tourists awaiting their shuttle down to the beach. They all had a front row seat to watch the American flounder in the middle of the reef like an idiot. Every now and again a tiny wave would roll in and I realized that if I timed it appropriately, I could catch it.  Like a walrus maneuvering on dry land, I inched my way across the reef towards the edge. After about an hour of this, I found a crack large enough to slip into. Not knowing where it lead, I decided to give it a shot and jumped in to follow it’s underwater highway. It was narrow and sharp and the surge of the tide knocked me around like a toy. I finally snaked my way through enough to reach open water, from which I could then swim back to shore.

By the time I made it back to the beach I was bloody and bruised to all hell and looked like I had just had the crap kicked out of me. I walked past the extremely attractive, bronze skinned lifeguard and asked him if he had caught any of the action. “Oh yeah I did. My buddies and I saw the whole thing. We were wondering how long it would take you to get off that reef.” Great. I’m happy you enjoyed the show. So I saw my sea turtle. Mission accomplished. And yet again, I learned the valuable lesson of respecting the ocean. Don’t mess with the ocean folks. She’ll kick your ass, and all of her creatures are on the same team in that endeavor. The sea turtle is like her secret agent. Dolphins are her spies, stingrays and jellyfish are her snipers and and sharks are her assassins. But man is she pretty, and every now and again, humans deserve a good ass kicking. We cause a lot of mischief on this planet. That sea turtle beached me as a way to fulfill on a family vendetta. “That’s for my cousin Joey who choked on a plastic bag, thinking it was a jelly fish.” We deserve what we get when we play in the ocean.

Learning Curve

This past week was equal parts awesome, in that I learned quite a lot about myself, other people and how to coexist in harmony on this planet, and equal parts hard as hell and totally humbling. I live in a beautiful home with two really amazing young women. The three of us get along well, laugh a lot and enjoy a nice space that is super artsy and always clean. For all intents and purposes, we make great roommates. This past week however, I came to realize that 3 people living under the same roof are 3 unique personalities thrown together to hash out their differing opinions, values, views, priorities, likes, dislikes and pet peeves. We are 3 different beings, each equipped with our own arsenal of quirks and behaviors. For the most part we coexist in harmony, all doing our own thing, and then little things crop up and have us realize where we differ and clash. These are micro learning opportunities, if embraced and used as such. If resisted, they become baby wars and can escalate into distance, dislike and distrust. I learned this week just how important it is to create a home environment that is built on a foundation of similar values and passions. For me, it’s the environment. Having been steeped in a conservation ethic since childhood, it is now in my blood. It would take a major act of will to NOT live a consciously Green lifestyle. In other words, I’m a complete Earth loving tree hugger and I ain’t turning back.

My roommates, although interested in living lightly on the Earth, do not share my depth of passion for this topic, and I realized clearly that they may never, and that’s okay. People are free to live the lifestyle of their choice and should not be imposed upon by others in a way that is forceful or dominating. This week I learned that to live in peace with other human beings, we have to understand and respect exactly where another person is coming from. We have to literally force ourselves to see and hear them through the static of our own automatic judgements. There is a moment in life with other people where we have the opportunity to make a very critical choice. If you are paying attention, you will see the window of opportunity very clearly and you can then choose to walk one path or the other. Path number one is the path of defending your position against that of another’s. It is a delicious feeling, yet fleeting, like a hit of heroine. The momentary adrenaline cocktail you enjoy is an unfulfilling high and accomplishes nothing. It entrenches you into your little valley and they in theirs. It is the path of war. Path number two is a voluntary surrender to the situation in the name of peace. It is supressing the acidic urge to defend, argue, belittle and fight. It is pausing long enough to seek what will heal this moment. What will bring peace to this life situation. It is the path of love. Sometimes it downright sucks to walk this path. It is like swallowing a bitter pill of humility, knowing that the alternative is instantly gratifying and sticky sweet, like melted candy. But every time I have the awareness to choose love over war, I am grateful, and my life expands a little more. My heart widens to accept more of my own humanity and those around me. This week was challenging. I learned many lessons. The learning curve is steep and sometimes I get tired of the relentless pace with which I am schooled on how to be a better person.

But when I go to bed tonight in my beautiful home, asleep next door to two amazingly unique women, I am happy to walk the path of love, no matter how steep and difficult it is. It’s worth the climb.

Damn!

Is what I yelled at the doctor today when he cut a gigantic frickin chunk of my cervix out during a “Colposcopy” proceedure, which is code for: the entire lower half of your body is about to hurt like hell! I didn’t know what I was getting myself into this afternoon. I knew I had some abnormal tissue down below and that something needed to be done about it, but I had no idea it was going to be an instant pain session. For all you guys out there (who most likely won’t be reading this), you should be stoked you don’t have to deal with this seriously unpleasant business! It just about ruined my day.

When you’re lying there, vulnerable as a newborn to the whims of a doctor who you can’t see, lots of thoughts race through your head. I had no idea what sort of pain to prepare myself for, because I had no idea I was even having the procedure until about 5 minutes beforehand. I tried to be brave, to breathe through it, to think about other stuff, to hold my breath. Anything really.

In that moment, a thought flashed through my head: I’d read in magazines and heard on NPR stories of women who have endured horrible suffering at the hands of men. Gang rape, violation with objects, the infections that ensue afterwards, the contraction of STD’s, how they are forever tainted after their assault as unclean women at no fault of their own. These poor women. Virtually unknown. The Congo, Rwanda, India, Thailand. The back streets of NYC on a dark night. I heard of one story where a Congolese soldier, after having raped a woman, shot a gun off up inside her. She managed to survive, although her life was virtually ruined and her health compromised forever. I tried to think of this woman in that moment. I tried to be brave for her, knowing all the pain that she had experienced and I couldn’t. My own pain was too great.

The difference is that my moment of pain was done in an effort to protect my life and to ensure good health. Hers was not.

Inglourious Basterds

The other day I found out that my astrological rising sign is in Libra, which makes total sense. The defining attribute of a Libra is the possession of an overwhelming sense of fairness. Nothing angers a Libra more than seeing  injustice go uncorrected. Easily upset by cruelty, violence, bloodshed and strife,  Libra is the champion of harmony and equality. I often find myself in visceral turmoil over the history of humanity. The Holocaust makes my stomach churn, as does the Civil War, the inequality of men and women throughout history, the civil rights movement, the Cultural Revolution of China, the murderous reign of Pol Pot in Cambodia, the military regime of Burma, genocide in Rwanda, rape in the Congo, the clear cutting of forests, the illegalization of marijuana, the forbiddance of gay couples the freedom to marry, the extinction of animal species, the mistreatment of animals, child abuse, the exile of the Dalai Lama….the list is long.

Tonight I watched the movie Inglourious Basterds. A good film. Welcome back Quentin Terrantino. This movie had me on the edge and I could have used a little stress ball to squeeze or some Tums, because my stomach was in celtic knots for 2 and a half hours. I had a mild case of anxiety from beginning to end, partly because of the suspense, partly because it ignited in me some deeply rooted desire to fight anyone who attempts to muzzle life and inflict harm. It’s not even conscious for me. Somehow it’s imbedded in my DNA and I like to imagine that the interstellar particles that collided to form my body and spirit 28 years ago were the floating debris that trickled down from whatever galaxy the Libra constellation resides within. To my core, I hate what the Nazis did. It hurts my heart. They are the byproduct of some dark and horrible tunnel humanity stumbled down and got lost in. Throughout the film I wished to have been alive then. To have been a part of the resistance to snuff out their evil. My lineage is German, and there is no way to know how I may have developed, given the circumstances of a life and the argument for nature versus nurture. However, for me, I feel so clearly that had I been alive in the 1940’s in Western Europe, I would have been perfecting the art of conspiring against the Nazi’s. I would have been part of the underground. I would have been an inglourious basterd.

I left the movie wanting to beat the living hell out of some perpetrator of injustice. My hands were shaking. Who knows. If you consider the concept of reincarnation, perhaps I was there. Perhaps I saw the injustice and died trying to right it. Perhaps I  hid a Jewish family under my floorboards or ushered a black family across the Confederate line. Perhaps I marched with Dr. King. Perhaps I stood my ground before a tank in Tiananmen Square. You know what? I fucking did. I was there for all of it and I still am. Whatever it is that courses through my veins, informing my heart of what is right and wrong, it’s been around and it’s gathered momentum.

My heart still beats with equality and harmony and justice and it always will, whether in this lifetime or the next.

“Isle, a childhood friend of mine, once found a raspberry in the camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present to me that night on a leaf.

Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry and you give it to your friend.”

-Quote from the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston

Human Spirit…

 

Last night I had a dream. It was not pleasant. I will spare details, but it took place in a concentration camp. Perhaps this dream originated on a recent trip to Northern France where I spent time traveling amidst WWI battlesites where some 1.5 million men were killed in a terribly bloody war. Perhaps that had an impact on my delicate mental and emotional landscape. Most likely, and I’m glad for it. I am reminded that the human psyche is a highly liquid medium, capable of great manipulation, inspiration and influence. I think of war propaganda and the commercials spliced between Saturday morning cartoons and the impact that these barrage of informational bullets have on us overtime.

I can tolerate war and accept it even. It has been a part of our human experience since the beginning and we are learning to manage ourselves as a species to mitigate its impact and lessen its presence. Pain and suffering still exists in this realm of life action but it’s impact has been significantly diminished. I understand the warrior nature of men and their pursuit of glory in protecting what is theirs and what matters to them, be that women, children, land or natural resources. That is not likely to go away, although the face of this expression may change.

What pains me in my thoughts is not the war itself with its death and demolition, but rather the deadening of the human spirit. The dimming of the human flame, not in death, but in life. I never pity the dead. I exalt them. There is peace where they are. My heart breaks for the living who have been snuffed to mere shells of the vibrant and dynamic beings they once were.

Nowhere was this more systematic than in the Holocaust, and other periods of highly organized torture and execution throughout human history. A grim subject upon which to reflect, but a valuable place to look from time to time. To check in with ourselves and with life and make sure that we are present to our own presence on this planet. Our own health and in tact limbs. Our own living families and endless oceanic expanse of choices and possibilities.

For those who died casualties of war, the tortured ones, I do not mourn their death. I mourn their death before death. The wilt of their essence before the flame went out. The numbing of their sweet smile. I want them to know, to feel my love for them and my gratitude for their role in the unfolding of the future. Their light glowed and then left us, and my light glows brightly now in their memory. I think of the vibrant life flames of my young students, ablaze with the future before them. Thank you. For me and for them. For humanity. You now exist as pure human spirit, and I envision you circling us with delight as we live our time here on Earth. I am grateful to you.

The Jin Ping Effect

(The following is a guided meditation that I wrote from an experience that I had while traveling in China in a small village called Jin Ping)

Close your eyes, breathe deeply, relax.

In the imaginative eye of your mind, you find yourself ascending a gently sloping hill, following a path lined with Banana trees and dense bamboo. A makeshift bamboo gate sits just at the rise, closed to some unknown space beyond.  As you arrive at the gate a well worn elderly women of great antiquity silently beckons you forward with a toothless smile. She bids you passage thru the gate and your eyes meet the deep wisdom within hers as you pass her on your way. She is you, the feminine, welcoming you home.

Walking thru the bamboo threshold you arrive at the precipice of an emerald state of expanding peace. Before your eyes stretches endless terraces of rice paddies, green, like the deepest spring grass. From your feet, the terraces build upward and out towards mountains veiled in tropical mist. You stand atop one scalloped edge of earth, containing a shallow pool of cyan water, silently seeping from one reservoir to the next.

You are bathed in green light all around you, breathing an intoxicating sea of warm air that rises from thick jungle clinging to the distant mountains. Like a little girl, you hop from the edge of one scalloped pool to the next, balancing on the damp earth as you are drawn deeper into the watery fields of rice. You reach the center of what seems to be a grand ampitheater of emerald beauty, surrounded on all sides by green mountains, steep and lush.

In this centered space, the terraced fields radiate outward from a solitary stone, an ancient volcanic relic, pitted with time and pulsing with vortex power. You sit upon her and settle into yourself as a part of the enchantment swirling all around you. You become the stone, silent and connected to the flow of the mother. Tapped in to the intricate network of criss-crossing energetic fibers, pulsating above, below, within and without you and every thing.

You feel the warm tropical humidity on your bare skin like a soft blanket, enveloping you and taking your body to a perfect balance of internal and external temperature. You have no concept of cold, no thought of being hot. Your body is at peace and you float in the water-saturated air, buoyant and heady.

In a dreamlike state you see tiny glimmers of iridescence flashing on and off across the fields. Tiny wings, the color of crystal, come into view and you notice that the green fields are alive with bright blue dragonflies, hovering all around. One alights on your drawn up knee, and you ponder each other’s perfection. The pools of the rice paddies, like gently cascading fountains catch the sun in their mirrored surfaces and beam metallic.  Below the surface of the pool at your feet swim tiny, rainbow hued tetra fish, curiously swimming to the shore of their world to inspect your presence.

Everywhere, you see green. You feel green, taste it and breathe it deeply in. From the fringe of jungle you hear the conversation of birds, harmonizing sweetly. Within the dense cloak of humidity floats the intoxicating aroma of some unseen tropical flower, jasmine or plumeria perhaps. As you sit in this space, you begin to experience a profound sense of peace that washes over you in waves of blue and green. Your heart space feels deep rejuvination as though the reservoir of your soul was being filled to the brim with sweet water. As you gaze out upon the terraced world before you, a gentle rain begins to fall, warm and delightful. The warm water falling from the sky becomes one with the rivers of liquid life flowing within you. There is no distinction. As above, so below. As within, so without. You are but one beautiful collage of elements loomed together in the grand matrix of the universe. The air is alive with a gentle vibrating hum that you feel throughout your every cell. You find the confines of your mortal body dissolved and become transparent in form, melting into the latticework of the universe. And the scene of Earthly beauty, which you behold before you, melts away to reveal a more intricately woven layer beneath, extending deeper, into multiple dimemsions of time and space

You see the whole, and you see yourself as but one miraculous strand within it. One prism in the multi-faceted eye of a dragonfly. You are, in every cell, every atom, pure peace. Divine love.

Now slowly, with grace, you return from the universal perspective back to the scene of beauty before your eyes. You gaze out at the world around you, holding the peaceful essence within your heart. You are fulfilled. Standing, you acknowlede gratitude for the opportunity to have visited a place of such holiness. You walk away from the stone, out of the center towards the gate. Before thru passing the bamboo threshold, you turn and drink in one last memory of the emerald perfection. Take with you the essence of this experience. Return to your lives full of beauty, energy, healing, peace, love and the understanding that you are one with all.

Sit with this in your heart for a moment. Breath with it. When you hear the bell, open your eyes.

The Temple

 

Temple Burn

 

I stand in the middle of the Nevada desert holding the hand of my dear friend Carsten. Thousands surround us as we wait and listen in silence while the flames at the base of the Temple begin to lick higher. The Temple. A giant wooden effigy erected in the middle of a dry desert lake bed. A temporary confessional where for the past week people of all walks paid homage to their own humanity by adorning her walls with their hearts. Small tokens of remembrance and surrender. Photos of loved ones lost, of children, friendships or lovers. Declarations, apologies, forgiveness, love, longing, sadness, rage, anger, shame, regret. All flavors of emotion are expressed within her walls and she takes it all. She listens to the stories. She hears the prayers. She catches the falling tears and braces herself against the fist. She holds it all in her sweet gentle beams and floorboards like a treasure and swells with the weight of the past. 

Tonight she burns, and with her goes all the pain. All the stories. I stand in the middle of the Nevada desert holding the hand of my dear friend Carsten and tears stream down my face as I watch it all go up. Smoke fills the air with prayers and release and I feel the shift in the space. Complete reverent silence, save for a distant electronic drip. Poignant and perfect. 

Carsten squeezes my hand tightly and flames reflect off the tears that roll down his gentle face as we share this moment of love for our species. For our people. The Human Family. Being alive takes great courage. It takes such immense courage to maneuver the maze of the human experience. The losses, the failures, the pain that dips us into valleys and canyons of darkness. Yet we always rise, like unwavering Phoenix lights we always rise and walk forward. We carry the weight of our unique paths and smile anyway, although our hearts are deeply fractured. 

As the flames from the burning temple glow across the desert and the smoke bends in whirling twisters upward into the midnight sky, I feel the world exhale a great release. She takes it all away and up. She burns it all. 

It is hauntingly beautiful. Sacredly beautiful. I stand in the middle of the Nevada desert holding the hand of my dear friend Carsten, watching a temple representing the sorrows of humanity burn and I feel one with all.

My Therapist

 

Noa

 

 

Wild Horses

Driving home last night my head bobbled up and down and side to side with wild thoughts of doubt and perplexity. Looking to the past for clues on how to approach a budding relationship rarely delivers, and the future is yet unspoken, so its wisdom and insight lies unseen. All there is to do is be calm, as the central point of entry for the pebble dropped into the rippling water of a life scenario. Plop. The circles radiate outward and I want to chase them to and fro, to figure it all out, but instead I sit. There are tactics for dealing with such ripples to maintain inner sanctum. I turn on the classical music station. The rain-like dripping of a piano solo takes the edge off. Suddenly, I know exactly who to speak with: My Therapist.

 

I exit the freeway and head towards him. It’s late, but I know that even unannounced he will greet me warmly. I haven’t been to see him in years, although he is always there, awaiting my arrival. I pull into the parking lot and my headlights flash on many pairs of large doe eyes. The horses. 

I greet them with a pat on the nose as I walk directly to Noa. My Therapist is lying down in his stall slumbering. He sits up and watches my approach as I walk over and sit down in the dirt beside him. With golden mane and his pale yellow coat he looks like a unicorn in the moonlight. I hold his velvet face in my hands and breath in the smell of comfort. The smell of horses. He gums my hands playfully and sniffs the smells of dog from my clothes. I scratch and massage him all over like the fat king that he is and he basks in the attention. 

Behind him I kneel and drape myself over his huge belly like a polar bear cub and he lets me. A visit to my gigantic, beastly therapist was all that I needed to set my heart alight again and free my little sparrow spirit from the confines of confusion. With gratitude for his presence in my life I hug him goodbye, and exit his office. I visit his associates before heading back to my car: Cracker Jack, Sierra, Trouble, Cloudy and Sassy. They all greet me with equal warmth and playfulness. 

Nothing soothes my heart like the presence of horses, and it never fails, no matter where I find myself. From Colorado to Mexico, Switzerland and China, I have always, always found peace near them.

Great Full

Let us take a moment to be grateful, and to remember from whence we came. To blink back into the light tunnel of the past and see the tiny buds and shoots we once were, and to be grateful for the ripened lives we live. We met on a branch eon ago as swollen globes of orange persimmon pulp swaying and laughing together as birds scratched in our hair and children grabbed for us just out of their reach. We fell to the rich loamy soil with a thud and melted away into granules of family and friendships, picked up and carried tenderly in the canines of a coyote we were deposited along the banks of the San Juan Creek. We sat there, looking side to side and smiling at each other as creek frogs chirruped and spit water into our faces. The rains came and caught the hem of our wisteria garments and carried us seaward through cattails and the slender legs of snowy egrets who glanced down at us like great feathered dinosaurs with Mohawks. We became frothy bubbles of browns and greens, coalescing in the eddies and bends of life’s flow and in our dreams we rode tractors thru orchards and barbequed sweet corn. We tracked horned toads and hunted for avocados drooping like lanterns.

We slumbered at the base of great grandmother oaks like kittens and we listened together to the mournful soul of the Barn Owl as she cried for those who have gone on ahead. Our journey has been long and lazy like the golden trickle of the Ganges, and we are caught up in this current of family and memories, winding the years around our fingers and weaving them into a labyrinthine cat’s cradle of love. We have floated far downstream and there is no turning back, save for in our hearts and minds, and where we are headed I am grateful to travel with you. Give thanks for the story of your life, and for the characters who share in its perfect unfolding.