Someone…

It’s 2am and I’m hauling ass down the freeway, head thrown back and howling this Spanish pop song that I love. I’m sweaty and happy, having just salsa danced the night away with friends at Tapas. The city all around me sleeps but I feel alive.

I see lights up ahead and slow a bit, but not quick enough because I almost tag this cop going about 30mph as he stands blocking the middle of the slow lane holding a flare. I come so close to hitting him it’s absurd, but he just stands there, unfazed and intent on slowing traffic to a halt. There is a buzz of lights flashing all around and I wonder what the hell happened. It’s late and I want to get home. 

Then I see the car. Crushed beyond recognition and propped upside down against a cement pilaster, the entire top half demolished. No human being could have survived that. I see medics and police officers and firefighters, gurneys, rescue equipment but no bodies. Then I see the blood dripping from the center divider wall. The red of it hits my eyes like a massive wave. It impacts me deeply. 

I think to myself that was someone. I start to cry. That was someone. There is no evidence to indicate who that someone might have been. My brain can not even muster an imagination of that someone being a woman, man, mother, father, child, brother, sister, friend. All I can think of is that was someone, and that is enough for me to care.

Breath as Prayer

I’m hiking up Junction Creek in Durango, Colorado. Bailey the Wonder Dog walks beside me, my best friend with four legs with whom I am pleased to share this afternoon. A most perfect companion on a day I wish to spend in peaceful silence. We walk. The trail is narrow and fringed purple with blooming alfalfa that smells like honey. Pine trees form a mottled canopy that blocks the summer sun. A ubiquitous hum of cicadas on the breeze complements the white noise perfection of Junction Creek as it rushes along. It is a perfect day. Friendly mountain bikers and hikers cross our path from time to time, but for the most part the trail and the creek are ours.

Our cruising pace is best described as an amble. In no hurry, noticing every detail of the landscape. Soaking it in with a naturalist eye, small details come into focus and the woodland world matrix envelopes us. I begin to converse with the woods and chatter to the creek via internal dialogue with myself. A sense of gratitude fills my every breath and I am deliberate and conscious with each inhale and exhale. Breathe in a delicious oxygenic prayer directly expelled from the soil, herbs, shrubbery and trees. Breathe out a carbon monoxide offering of alms to the saintly blue spruce minarets lining my pilgrimage. Quite pleased with my life I offer thanks to the spirit of its genesis. I am greeted with a cool breeze upon my face. Smiling with love for the diverse wonders of life on this planet I offer thanks to the spirit of creation. I am gifted with a cavalcade of yellow swallowtail butterflies lighting overhead. Seated by the creek, feet emerged in snow melt coolness I close my eyes and think of my beloved family and friends, offering thanks for their lives. I am visited by the whirring curiosity of a hummingbird. I was once told that hummingbirds represent the dancing joy of God. I close my eyes and laughter wells up inside my heart.  I am present to the divine workings of the natural world, large and small, inside and outside. Magic. Thunder sounds in the distance.The raucous boom grows closer and my pulse quicken. Indigenous peoples of North America believe that the Great Spirit dwells in the clouds. The Thunder Gods. I hear their booming voices, drawing closer. They seek me. Raindrops begin to fall, fat like tadpoles. Here and there they glitter upon leaves and my bare skin until more and more unite to form a sheet of cool, cleansing sky water. Let go they coax. Let go. The water beads upon my shoulders and runs down the contour of my chest forming rivers of goodbye. Goodbye to hidden sadness, doubt, worry, guilt, anger. Goodbye to all that is not love. Rain soaks my clothes, into my skin, pooling with my blood, percolating through bone and diluting my cells. I let go and tears slide down my cheek, salty rain from the cumulous clouds of my mind and heart. I am one with all and I smile through the tears and through the rain. Bailey walks silently beside me as the rain thins to mist and we near the end of the trail. 

 

 

I Fall…

…in love easily. It’s almost problematic. It matters not age, gender, culture. The spectrum of love falling is broad and diverse for this little sprite. I meet an exciting, delightful new species of person and little glitter hearts form in my eyes. I share a sweet moment with a man, a conversation full of nectar and I am smitten. I’m not shy about this phenomenon. I wear it like a little blinky pendant on my breast, I LOVE YOU it reads and I don’t care if you know.

I share this with a sagelike lady friend. She cocks her eyebrow knowingly as if to suggest, “Ah yes my child, I know of such symptoms. At your age I too fell swiftly into the pools of others so beautiful and fascinating.” She then speaks, “It is not these people you are in love with. You fall so deeply into love not with them as individuals, but with elements of their spirit, most notably those which you love about yourself. It is a recognition, an appreciation of your own soul reflected in another that has you so delighted by their presence.”

This sits well with me. I think of all the people I encounter and all the personalities I adore, all the characters I cherish, all the quirks I celebrate in all the beings I know. Simply put, I love people. I love them for their humanity and their courage. I love them for their unique journey through the adventure of life and how they weave their own river paths and shine their own kind of brilliance. I truly love people. From this new perspective I enjoy freedom, in that I no longer feel the need to censor my love. I no longer harbor embarrassment of my abundant love and I realize that it is ultimately the divine nature of another that I am loving anyway. And that divine nature is a prismatic facet of God expressed in the form of human being. In short, I am loving God. 

I fall in love easily. 

 

The Clearing I am…

This evening various questions were posed to me. I resist the hell out of them, because I know there is something for me to see here and I’d rather be righteous about how I’ve already got it figured out, but I can already feel the weight of all that I bring to the table from my super saturated past. This exercise is an opportunity to get into the world of reality in regards to the clearing (space) that I am and that I ongoingly create for a relationship to emerge within. 

1. Regarding romantic relationships, what do I regard as sacred?

What I regard as sacred within relationships is the presence of childlike love. The playmate/soulmate vibration between two hearts like kindergartners in a cosmic sandbox. The deep listening of who the other is, beyond what they are capable of seeing in themselves. The laughter shared between the smiling lips of lovers. Lazy hours spent creating love. The knowing. The undeniable knowing that all is right. 

2. What do I know to be true about Relationships?

They are delicious narcotics. They are short lived. They are fucking minefields of game playing and power tripping and statistically, in American culture at least, they boast a strikingly high rate of failure. That I’m going to get hurt. That I’m going to hurt someone else. That I both want one and want to run as fast as I can in the opposite direction of being in one at the same time. 

3. What do I already know to be true about the way I need to be in relationships to make them work? 

Open and honest. I need to be an open book, expressing exactly what’s there for me otherwise I sit on communications and they fester to the point of explosion. I need to be independent and inspired by my own life otherwise I’ll turn into this obnoxiously clingy little twerp that I don’t even want to be around. I need to be careful, otherwise I will fall hard and fast and then be picking myself up off the floor, justifying all blame to the opposite party. I’ve got to be charming. I’ve got to keep score.

4. What do I know to be true about the people I encounter in relationships?

When I meet them its like I have beer goggles on and they look a hell of a lot better in that moment then they do farther down the road. And by that I don’t mean physically, I mean that after a while I start to get to know a man and he becomes less and less appealing. Everybody comes to the table with their suitcase full of past and baggage. That they are just as jacked as I am in this department.  That I can’t read the intentions of men. 

5. What are my strongly held views of relationships, what they are, what they are not, what they have, what they don’t have and what I must have in place and never violate?

That I want a family. I want a partner. I want someone to be the wind beneath my wings and live for me and for us and for himself as part and partial of our collective life together. Commitment. What must be in place and never violated is a communication about boundaries. Structure. Communication. 

6. What am I certain must be included in the future of relationships for me?

Failure. Settling for something less than what I would choose if I could choose exactly what I want. Mediocrity. Survival. Short lived glory. 

At the end of this exercise, I realize that I undoubtedly have some stanky dankness in the space around relationships. It’s no wonder I feel so inept at creating one that flourishes for longer than a few weeks. But to create something brand new….never seen before ever, I need to get to the ground zero of my stories and resistance to relationships. Ultimately, when I look at my current relationship status it is truly no surprise that I have what I have. I have more and will continue to have more of what I’ve always had…because that is the clearing that I presently am for relationships. 

To be continued….

La Luna

We are walking on the trail, guided by moonlight, holding hands. We don’t know each other very well, but there is some magical appreciation. Some mutual acknowledgment of spirit. We bump into each other from time to time as we walk, not on purpose, but victims of our bodies magnetized by the moon. It’s really beyond us. There is something greater at play here.

We emerge from the trees into a clearing and the moon greets us in all her luminescent splendor. A glowing orb of energy in the sky that envelopes us and we succumb to her beauty. A clearing in the sand beckons and we sit, entwined, drinking red wine and laughing. 

Like a braid we overlap and drink each other in, tasting the nectar of a moment, delighted slaves of the moon. 

The Fragility of Life

It’s so fragile,  this Life and we are so unconscious to it’s delicate nature as we plummet through recklessly, rarely honoring its divinity. Time on this planet is brief and we stubbornly pretend otherwise. It is an opiate, this denial of presence,  and ignorance of the Life gift we have been given in ourselves and others. It all ends, and never as we plan. They will all be gone, those people who fill your days. Gone with them go the tonation of voices, the smell of their skin, the ring of their laughter, the color of their shining eyes. Their stories. Those we love go, and they do not return. We hold them present in post departure memories and photographs, but however vivid they linger in our psyche, they are gone.  

Tonight I mourn the loss of my mother and my heart is split in deep faults that run down to the core of my 27 years. My eyes rain the loss that I feel and collects in pools of aching remembrance. Never again will I hold her strong hands, weathered by life and our shared love of horses and the earth. Never again will I laugh with her until breathless. Never again will I see her beautiful face, her enchanting, moss colored eyes, her smooth tawny skin,  her raven black hair. Never again will I feel her warmth. Never again will we share our hearts secrets like schoolgirls. Never again will I enjoy the small, subtle nuances of her unique life. Her vibrant love for everyone and everything. Her generous heart. Her little girl self that hides behind the years but that ventures out to play with me from time to time. All of the countless ways of my mother are gone, never to return and I ask myself, am I complete? Did I say all that I wanted to say and share with her all of my dreams? Did she know how much I love her? Did I know how much I love her prior to this moment? I never told her how proud I am to be her daughter or how honored I am to have been made in her likeness. I never thanked her for giving me my life, and for how truly magical it has been. I never wrapped my arms around her and comforted her sorrows. I never committed my life to her the way she gave herself to me. I never took the time to look her in the eyes and presence myself to her soul. What has us wait and selfishly hoard our love and emotions toward our best beloveds? Only when they are gone and it is too late does the facade split and the river of feeling flow wildly. Only then do we speak so that our hearts can be heard.

Tonight I mourn the loss of my mother although I will tell you a secret……she is alive. I stood in the future where her death is written and got present to that life altering moment yet to come and realized that I have been given this insight as a precious treasure. I have been given a second chance at loving my mother full out in life. A second chance to say all that I want to say and really look within myself at what stops me from expressing the natural currency of emotion between mother and child. I promise to be conscious of Life’s fragility and to be a stewardess of it’s blessing. I promise to honor its perfection and divinity and love each day and face and human being as God. I promise to nurture my presence to the gift that I have been given, and I will start by sharing my heart with my beautiful mother. There is no time to waste….

The possibility of…..

I’m sitting in my seat and tears are streaming down my face. The gathering has adjourned and I am left helpless. Hopeless. What just happened? Arguing, shouting, long withheld anger suddenly bubbling to the surface. The Muslim students and Jewish students hashing it out in open dialogue for the first time, possibly ever. This in itself is an accomplishment, but what does not work are the wounded elders, longing to be heard themselves popping off left and right with opinions, recitations, demands and slander. The topic is Israel and Palestine, and how students from both Jewish and Islamic backgrounds can coexist in an academic setting despite political unrest and cultural polarization. The gathering has adjourned and tempers are hotly activated and old wounds bleed fresh. 

I sense to my side the presence of a man, but do not turn to acknowledge him until just before rising to leave. I face tearfully and meet his wide brown eyes full of instant compassion. He moves to my side and sits close, his leg against my own and his arm around me. I do not know him, but my heart softens and relaxes in his comforting presence and I feel peace. It is strange, but I feel love and a gentle stirring in my heart. We rise together and walk to the exit of the building, engaged in conversation and mutually intrigued. I want to know all about this man, to lapse into conversations of great depth and learn about his life. 

I have 5 minutes before I must leave for a scheduled call but I want to stay in his presence and soak up his safety and comforting space a bit longer. He is a concert violinist. He is Persian. A delightful combination I was previously unaware of until that moment. He tells me he has performed concerts on the grounds of the old San Juan Mission but has never actually seen it. I tell him I will show him sometime. He gives me his card and I dash off, feeling much like Cinderella, being whisked away leaving behind nothing but a glimmer of who I am. I sit in my car, completing my call but cannot leave. I walk back to where he is standing and see him engaged in a conversation with a mutual friend. I begin talking to an acquaintance of mine and this beautiful man and I find ourselves in separate conversations yet side by side, he facing one way and I the other like a modern dance Yin/Yang posture. In this moment I glimpse the future. I see for the first time in my entire life an opening into the possibility of being a wife. Into the possibility of family. I had intellectually speculated on this previously, but never had I seen it as truly possible, right by my side. I thought to myself….this could very well be my future husband, and of course! He a musician, myself an artist. Both fully committed to furthering dialogue for peace and conflict resolution in the world, both multicultural and beautiful. Of course! Suddenly I can taste this future like rich chocolate, feel it on my skin like warm water, smell it across my senses like sandalwood, hear it like mournful and decadent violin hues. I see us standing in the world side by side. Inspired by who the other is and in love with the creation of a future unwritten and free. In that moment, I see the possibility of love, partnership and family and it lights my soul aglow. 

 

Letter to God

Dearest God and Spirit of Life. Today I felt you close, for the first time in some time. I saw your expression all around me, speaking to me and coaxing me to let go. Release the grip of control and just be. Just flow with the current and enjoy the splendor of all the shiny, magical fluttering things. All the colors. All the scents. You speak to me through moments of peace and appreciation for the gift I have been given to simply exist. Thank you for this and for all expressions of you that I dance with in delight. I awoke this morning with a pain in my heart, for something missing and I realized the significance of always needing to know and how this poisons my life like a narcotic. This needing to know that bores its way into my ability to be present in a moment. To enjoy a moment for the sake of itself rather than NEEDING TO KNOW what lies around the next bend. I have always been that way. Even as a child I would literally, sneakily open my Christmas presents to know what I was getting and then re-wrap them so no one would know. It’s seems funny now, but it did not stay in my past as a childhood attribute. It extended into my future and permeated my every action with this obsessive and detrimental requirement to know the outcome. To know the ending of the story. To foretell the future and plan accordingly. In my own life terms, this is my personal version of insanity. It drives me to doubt. It drives me to question and to disempower my own gifts and blessings. So today, I reminded myself that it matters not. None of it. Needing to know robs me of miracles and serendipity. I relinquish my need to know. I stand peacefully in the unknown and accept what flows my way willingly and with gratitude. I lay on a rock this afternoon and smelled Jasmine and Roses. I watched a giant, beautiful moth flutter its last moments amidst the brambles of a primrose bush. I picked it up and held it to the sun, admiring its place in the universe. I was visited by hummingbirds throughout the day, watching me through the window and buzzing about as I enjoyed the garden. Reminding me of my joyful nature. I observed bees in their ubiquitous drone going about the day. I saw Gamble’s Quail, Ravens, Lizards galore and a myriad of wildflower varieties. Today was lovely, and infused into each moment and each filament of perfection was you. God. Spirit. Life. Thank you for my Life and the senses to experience it. I love every facet, every moment, every being as a mirror of your amazing beauty. All is perfect. All is a gift and I love you for it.

HAPPY

From across the street I see him, dressed all in white, standing on the corner in San Francisco with his white-tipped dreds and his ivory smile. A cream suit perfectly coordinated in detailia and offset by flawless mocha skin. Gently rapping on his bongos and singing songs through a smile he pied pipers me over with lyrics of love, peace, unity and happiness….the usual buzz words that entice my wondering intrigue. I stand beside him for a while as he sings, and with his eyes closed he is unaware of the world swirling about him. A Saturday night of San Francisco craziness marches on, yet he notices not, completely complete in the hymns he trills. I just love this man….     One who stands and sings in the night for what he believes in. For what he longs to see live in the world. A break in the tune and he opens his eyes, still smiling. Always smiling. Somehow he knew I was there and he addresses me with the instant warmth of deep friendship. I ask him if I may give him a hug, yet in reality I am the one who desires the blessing of his energy. He is like an angel, and he says his name is HAPPY. He sings for my friends and I a lovely A Capella love-song to life itself and we bow in gratitude for each others presence in the world. My friends and I say goodbye to HAPPY, leaving him as such to adventure into the brisk and bustling city night.

Orbit In Love

Orbit in Love

Scientist and Futurist Buckminster Fuller had an interesting
perspective on love.
Love , being an expression of energy, like all components of the
universe, is subject to extraneous forces that either repel, propel or
maintain its position in a state of balance. For instance, the common
phrase “falling in love,” is an accurate statement for many, in that
when you fall, you lose momentum and cease movement, stopping
indavidual and mutual expansion.

If one references physical falls from childhood up through adulthood,
it is easy to recall the downward sensation and loss of control,
followed by a period of stillness while you’re on the ground, and then
an attempt to rise again, commencing motion forward.

The same can be true in relationship, as we allow ourselves to FALL in
love. We dreamily tumble, intoxicated by the euphoria and before we
know it we are picking ourselves back up, trying to recover the pieces
of the motionless self.

Bucky proposes another paradigm for love. Rather than falling, he
suggests orbiting, where each individual comprising a pair rotates on
their own axis, while orbiting the other like the Earth and her Moon,
and the planets of our solar system around the Sun.

Two people successfully, powerfully and creatively rotating on their
own individual axes, while simultaneously orbiting eachother in love ,
create a dynamic nuclear reactor of energy and expansion. Such a
relationship is mutual and self sustained, generating its own power to
grow and expand. This creates a unique variety of energy that is
complementary and mutually beneficial. This also allows for necessary
space between individuals. Not enough space runs the risk of
collapse…or a fall where there is loss of momentum. We all know what
this feels like!

Two people orbiting in love, whether romantically or otherwise allows
for freedom to be, freedom to learn and freedom to teach. There is a
give and take, a sharing of strengths and qualities and a compensating
balance of weaknesses.

In orbit, there is no need for co-dependency, and a renewable and self
generating love energy is the byproduct.