OH MY GOODNESS

My mom makes the best apple crisp!

The space between the words

As a writer, I am always perplexed and shocked when I start typing. The fear that hangs before the first letter appearing in front of my eyes is unexplainable. It's like I'm afraid of looking at what I'm capable of creating. Afraid of what I might find. And underneath that afraid of what energetic reaction may be created from my voice. 

My voice is cleaner more truthful and more visible when written. My heart more open and more available when indented into the screen or a piece of paper. My words, my soul, my energy more visible in what I pour out of my finger tips. My vulnerability front and center spotlighted.

So I hang in the space between the words, holding my breath not ready to exhale the voice that crazily vibrates within the silence that I create. The yoga of writing is one that I am just learning to breathe. My breath so much a part of my power with words as it is with my power of my body. My timidity hangs in the feverish exhale that lasts much shorter than my deep inhale of inspiration. Yet the inspiration shifts inside of my loins and inside my heart and inside of my throat. Stuck like the stickiness of a sore and knotted muscle. Begging to be massaged and used so that it can wander and create what it's been so inspired to do.

That space. That space between the fingers craving for artisanship. That space between the delivery of me to the world around is sacred space. Space where I hide and feel safe, but there is only so long before that space feels crowded with unsung songs and unwritten stories, which then makes me feel like screaming because I just can't bare the fact that I have gone so long without saying anything. Without accessing my voice, my truth, my power, my gift. 

Why am I so frightened by the exhale? Why am I so frightened by what I have to say? Why am I frightened by me? 

I don't think I'm abnormal. I think there are many people who given gifts that are full of power actually find them a bit frightening because of how consuming they can be. 

Knowing how you're meant to use your gifts is a trial and error experience. At least it is for me. My passions and my inspirations ignite so many ideas in my hands and in my heart yet I feel at a loss for words or for that matter action. I find myself consumed with the responsibility of what it means to begin and to commit that I hold my breath in action because I'm worried about failure. 

It seems much easier to stay in my safe space, however, the more I stay here the more crowded it feels the more restless I am and the more unsatisfied I am with so-called safety. Plus it is only hurting me, therefore no longer a safe haven. 

So as I face the truth of my own voice my own power and I experiment with it on the mat; I've begun to realize that I don't need to be afraid of my voice. It's much scarier to know that I've been denying the world my full attention and spirit. 

Humility is something that is heard not hidden. And from humility their is an intense amount of power and truth. 

I end with this because we so often times consider humility to be one of the "unspokens" but I beg to disagree that humility is one of the greatest voices. And I leave that to resonate in space...

Where do Labels end and I begin?

I have a very close friend is going through a battle of life or death with himself. Doctors continue to label him. Society continues to label him. But the most difficult part is that he labels himself. Brands himself with a label that is not who he truly is.

His heartbreak, his struggle, is one of the most difficult things I have ever had to witness in my life. And I have had to walk away because it is too difficult to feel his pain. I can no longer watch him turn into something he is not. And I am helpless to help him change because he is the only one who can decide how to rip the labels off and find the truth.

What is the truth? Well it's not always what everyone tells you it is. I have learned that about my own journey. I face it everyday and in every moment. Is this real? Is this true? Is this truly what I need? When we discover the truth sometimes it sucks. And sometimes we have to deliver bad news or realize that we can't do or be what the outside label says.

There are moments in life where you feel like you've got your clothes on inside out and everyone's judging you by the brand on the tag, only it's not necessarily the clothes you're wearing.  You're wearing you. And you don't know how to be you without someone telling you who you are. But the real you is you. There's no label you just are.

So where do I begin and labels end? Where do you begin and the label ends? Where does life begin and fairy tale or nightmare end?

I wrote this during work because I was so inspired by my friend's label of himself that I had to wonder a little bit about the necessity of labels and if there is the possibility of removing them.

When we tell someone what's wrong with them or label a problem or label ourselves--how is that effective help? Labels don't help. They box people in. 


What do you truly believe? That is your truth. That is who you are. You must feel it, it must cause your bones to shake and your heart to spin. There is no answer that we can give ourselves or to others that is going to be RIGHT. There is no RIGHT answer. There is only exploration. And that may not even be accurate. 


BE.


BE IN THE MOMENT.


BE WHO YOU ARE RIGHT NOW.


Don't try and change that.


Healing comes through awareness in the moment. 
It is our awareness in the instant time and space that allow us to recognize what we see.
We cannot count moments, but we can feel them with our gifted sense.
And from there we can feel life with our entire being.
That is the true gift of being human--feeling.


WHEN DO WE HAVE ENOUGH LABELS?
COULD WE LIVE WITHOUT LABELS?


I work in an industry that makes its living creating labels. Competition.
"I'm better than you are."
Can we just respect each other and recognize that if we all fit ourselves together that then we would have a very beautiful world and a balanced world because we would understand how we all need each other and operate as a collective unit by living in our being and feeling the moments that we are blessed with. 


Then maybe we wouldn't have such a difficult time believing in who we are. But we are currently a world of labels and that unfortunately causes my heart to hurt. So maybe if we begin to remove the labels and begin to accept who and what things are. Then maybe we'll create a little more peace.

A soliloquy

Can I write you a story? Can I play you a song? Can I dance with you in one arm and carry flowers in another? Can this be simply beautiful without an interjection of “what if?” Can I put my sail up and float along on this ocean’s wave even if it is just for a while? Can I just be swept away with the magic of your eyes gazing at me? Can I just forget all the yesterdays and feel free? Can this be what it is without one heart becoming wounded? Can love just be rather than end in misery? Can I just be me without causing an undesired effect? Can this be fun rather than a shotgun wound to the heart? Can I be with you without worrying if I will change my mind? Can we just be a harmonious melody even if there is a finish line? Can life allow for ending without dead ends? Can both of us see that if this is meant to be perhaps that means there may be a dropoff point?

What responsibility do I carry when exploring new territories? Am I really a Spanish Pilgrim carrying havoc and distress? Where might my joy take me if not into new discoveries? Is this not just an experiment of unconditional love for one another? Where then does this all leave me at the end of the day when I look at you and say, “I don’t know now, but I’m afraid I’ll know later and then I will only cause pain?” When are we allowed to have fun and let that be our love?

 “Who are you?” they always ask, “To not be with someone.” When does my answer “I am with someone and that someone is me,” become the right fact?

I am baffled by this role, this life of playing roles that are constantly misunderstood. I am baffled that there is this “need” to be with someone else to feel complete. I do not believe in this any more. I do not believe that I am missing a half. I do not believe that there is just one “just right” for me. I believe that I have been lucky to have fallen in love more than once and I believe that I am lucky to have discovered that I really am complete without the other “thee.” The mystery of belonging, of longing to be together, is something that I do not believe to be a healthy act.

Now I would just like to be and actually enjoy another’s company without the bells and whistles of future ringing in their eyes and ears as I speak my soliloquy. I do not want to apologize for casting a spell that causes you to see unclearly. I do not want to apologize for an end that may occur. I do not want to apologize for a fairy tale that may never end happily.

I simply ask for this moment, this bit of time, to be happy with what we both have given rather than worrying about tomorrow’s broken heart pedigree.

My facebook status tonight

Listen intently to that which is not heard within the babble...there are melodies that bring beauty and joy to the heart that are not audible to those who just hear. Listen to the silence that falls around empty words and you will discover the true melody.


Perhaps this is the beginning or the end or a complete poem...I do not know. I just merely felt the words come out as I sat down to type a status tonight.

A night at the museum

I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art this evening hoping to be inspired and driven to write a lot this evening. Per usual I was unexpectedly surprised by how my expectations were soo wrong. Note to self, when inspired before going to an art museum, just go home and write, don't go to the museum.

It was not that there was really nothing cool to look at...although I was disappointed by how uninterested I was in 1960s and 70s Italian art. I feel rather bad about the Italian artists these days, they have such high standards to live up to with Caravaggio, Michelangelo, and Da Vinci. No wonder they went to extreme lengths to try and regain something creatively inspiring.

I was most taken aback by the sculptures. I never imagined myself as a sculpture lover until I saw the "real" David and started crying by how extraordinarily beautiful he was. He is the perfect man. And then tonight, it was the dead corpses covered with blankets that I couldn't get out of my head. I was taken aback as I walked down the hallway to find these 9 covered bodies--all of them contorted in different ways.

What struck me was the mystery of the story below the blankets. How did they die? Who were they? Did they suffer? What was their last thought? Questions rang through my head like the ambulance sirens that were supposed to come pick them up and take these sculpted dead bodies to the morgue.

And on my walk home, I laughed at the fact that death is beautiful. And with that thought I was transported back into the scene in American Beauty when the boy is showing the film to the girl with the dead bird in it.  Death is beautiful. There is a peace that takes over no matter what pain the person was in. Morbid, maybe. But it triggered an avalanche of thoughts and questions.

There is fear about death everywhere, yet we depict it artistically all the time--movies, music, visual art, and even in the food we eat. We in many ways feed off of death. That may sound like a strong statement, but when was the last time you ate something that didn't result in the death of something living? Even if you are a vegetarian there is still death involved for that plant.

Death deserves some respect and less exaggeration. We are all terminally ill and we are all dying. Which raises the question of dependence. Life depends on death, yet as humans we feel so much sorrow and grief when death occurs--we don't want it to. However, if it did not occur life may perhaps cease to exist. You cannot talk about death without encompassing all living things. Death won't stop just for humans, that would break the balance of everything. The earth needs us to die just as much as it needs trees to die.

It is the lessons of suffering that we don't want. I agree suffering is difficult, but it exists to teach and to make us aware. Death teaches us. Those 9 artistically molded bodies taught me something. Death is merely an artistic end to a story. We never know when ours may come.

Me and Moon

Me and Moon have been talking
We have been talking for as long as I can remember
No, it is not the "Man" in the Moon I talk to
Just Moon
The entire white orb of light

Moon and I have interesting conversations
Last night Moon wanted me to come visit
To bring in the New Year from above
So I traveled to the Moon
Or I traveled as best I could
And there I sat
Like a Nursery Rhyme
On Moon

Viewing the world from an objective angle
And there, up above, I talked with Moon
We discussed great things without word
Moon's light and fullness was like my heart
Radiating peace and unconditional love

I saw my friends and my family
I saw people I barely knew
I saw parties that I was invited to
but did not physically attend
Moon and I laughed and watched
as the world celebrated a "New Year"
And then the Moon said
"Watch this"
He slowly eclipsed

I found myself opening my eyes
Smiling knowing
Moon had allowed me to give my compassion
to the world for a few minutes