Jump

When do we learn to jump?

Is it before we run

Is it before we hide

Is it when we find joy

or is it when we are scared

When do we learn how to defy gravity?

Is it on the high dive

The graduation podium

The one-way ticket to a land far far away

How do we jump?

With eyes open or closed

With our nose plugged or unplugged

With a scream or with silence

How do we know?

With love

With pain

With intuitive wisdom

With our heart wide open

Where do we jump?

In our heart

In our homes

In foreign soil

On stage in front of 1000s

When can I jump?

Now.

Jumping is something we use as a way of expressing joy, or when we have no other choice. But, in my life jumping has meant facing fear. It has physically meant jumping off 70 ft waterfalls. 

Jumping has been a metaphor in my life that often did not involve the physical "leap of faith" but the "leap of faith" in myself. The physical examples of it are the best ways to describe the "leap of faith" --waking up one morning and deciding that I would ride my bike without anyone at the age of 4, climbing a 500 ft exposed piece of rock, doing my first back walkover on the balance beam, moving to Chicago without knowing anyone, and performing on stage in front of hundreds of people.

 

I have jumped so many times, and have fallen more times than I can remember. 

But, now there is a jump that seems higher than any of my previous ones. One that will land me in a valley unlike any place I've ever been. I keep wondering when the timing will be right. I keep wondering...I keep postponing this jump...this leap of faith.

Take my hand

I'll hold on tight

we'll walk this rope

we'll fight this fight

Together

there is no letting go

interlaced in love

enlightened through life

Take my hand

I'll do my best to empty 

the promises of yesterday

into the truth of today

There's nothing to fear

my strength is strong

if you can handle

where I'll lead you

Take my hand

let me show you

what I need you to know

what I need me to be

where I need to go

Take my hand

trust that there will be 

a road

a sign

a resting spot

a journey with hope

for you and I

wherever we go

Can we move on from here

Can we move on from here

It's isolating

cold and dirty

slippery when spoken

a hole when silenced

takes peace and 

empties it with the noise 

of a garbage disposable

grinding to bits the seed

that was to grow 

Can we move on from here

the pollution is suffocating

boiling up with tears that

won't come 

dehydrated it is this place

ground unfertile to grow

Can we move on from here

I hate it here

it's dark the sun doesn't shine

words misspoken descend

like storm clouds

detonating lightning 

wiping out connection

Please can we move on

I cannot... 

I cannot stay

not here, not with you

not now

Please let me move on

these walls

I was laying on my nasty bedroom floor tonight, eating sweet potato fries with hot sauce and a good ol' cup of chamomile tea staring at the same bedroom ceiling and walls that I've been embraced with for 4 years. Cancun blue walls and a ceiling that's hardly white that holds one light bulb. 

I laughed. The ceiling is crooked with signs of water damage and foundation shiftage. Over a hundred years old, this house has held many secrets and has been called home by many people. I thought to myself about everything that these walls have witnessed in the past 4 years, and I couldn't help but feel all those memories rush back at me pulling me into the past. 

A lot of love, a lot of pain, a lot of sickness, and a lot of late night work. And through all the memories I saw change, I saw myself become who I am right now. All the stuff in this room makes me claustrophobic next to all of the memories. I see shirts, sheet music, shoes, and stationery that I never use or haven't touched in years. Some of the stuff just takes up space and I don't even know what it is. 

I want to get rid of it all and keep only what I need. This room, this house, reflects stagnancy and the past, yet it is a place where I have found comfort, yet never felt completely at home. The moments it's felt most like home have been the moments when I lose track of the space that I'm in. Therefore making the point that home is not about material buildings. 

These walls have held me safe, but as I look around all I see is the possibility to change. To make the choice to stay or leave these walls will be change. 

I saw another set of walls tonight that were very foreign and empty of memories, but full of peace and possibility and requiring me to simplify. They offered me a new opportunity to live with my beautiful friend and her adorable little dog Nutmeg. The synchronicity of where I'm at and this opportunity couldn't be more aligned. 

Of course, I hover. I hover on this change because of the responsibility it involves. 1)Simplify by getting rid of everything large (car, furniture, etc) 2) Helping to take care of Nutmeg 3)Living with a new person.

How it aligns is that 1) I have flexibility in staying 2) It's cheaper 3) I get to have a dog 4)I get to walk to work 5) I'm going after a dramatic shift that's already happening in my life.

As I stared up at the ceiling, I realized that this felt like a road sign and that it was a blessing. I am given a chance to go a different direction. An unexpected direction, but a direction full of many possibilities. 

When it comes down to it, I don't think this decision is about the money that I will be saving. It will be much more than that. 

Contradictions

When we look around at things in nature there is this juxtaposition of rough and smooth. A rough surf  next to the smooth sand of a beach. The porcupine's thistle next to the smooth outline of a bird's feather. The color blue next to the edge of a mountain peak. 

We take these visuals as normal presentations of how things are and use them to define our world. Smooth and rough--textural differences but a reflection of natural contradiction present in ordinary life. Contradiction in the sense that the eye sees and feels two different things simultaneously, consecutively, or disproportionally. 

Yet in human speech and human thought we often find contradiction as a place of weakness in thought, intelligence, or in ethics. We judge and assimilate inaccurate opinions of contradictions supposedly apparent in our own experiences, yet, without realizing it, we are also "walking contradictions." 

Deciding to believe something one day, and then changing our minds from one moment to the next. Evolving in opinions and dissolving into the line "to err is human." But, I'd like to argue that we are not erring, rather discovering that there is never an absolute and that there is always change present. There are great things to discover in contradictions about yourself and others. 

Rules contradict, words contradict, time contradicts (it's 9 am here, it's 10 am there). 

You are allowed to contradict. The important part is the reaction to contradiction. And in many circumstances contradictions can cause upheavals and judgments passed upon others that are frightening. Hence, the evolution, the cycle of change, the unavoidable nature of life.

I contradict so often I cannot keep count. But discovery always occurs. And forgiveness is always needed--whether for myself or for others.  As I move forward, I realize that promises are not a good way to live your life, because you're up against an absolute. More often than not promises have only led me to broken promises.

So I say this all now, and tomorrow it all may change. 

Unexpected-spectations

When I woke up this morning, I felt like I had been awakened by someone tapping me on the shoulder telling me I had to do something. So I woke up, made an awesome cup of tea. Drank some oj and ate my cereal--typical morning things. Sat down to write, but nothing came. That tapping finger feeling made me feel like I was expected, expected to know what to do, yet it was so very unexpected. 

I stared at the cursor, then I remembered the awesome Chaco sandals I bought. I put them on my feet and threw away the box. But, unexpectedly I flipped through the catalog and actually paid attention to the text. To my surprise I found 2 amazing little vinyettes about 2 amazing people doing really amazing things. I hate the word amazing, but this is the truest way to describe how I felt. 

I logged into their sites. www.bendinggrass.com, and www.wildernessclassroom.com.  And immediately knew what the tapping finger feeling was all about. "Hey Anne, it's time to wake up now." The wake up was literal, but there is some metaphorical truth to it as well. 

"Wake up. This is your life. Go after the pounding in your heart. Dig into the energy. They too were like you, and they went after that pounding in their heart, that crazy psycho feeling of wanting to do crazy psycho things that other people think you should never do. Stop listening to the crazies. Wake up."

Expectations of who I am and what I'm supposed to do have done some really crazy things to me. And, to be quite honest I don't like what they've done to me. More often then not expectations have led me to the unexpected and left me like a pile of poop out of a jackass. And grant it the unexpected have put me face down in my own poo to realize some really awesome stuff. But it's when the unexpected are preceded by expectations that I have a really really hard time pulling myself up by the bootstraps. 

Therefore, the unexpected-spectations are the best, the most beautiful, and the hardest bestest lessons life can hand you.  So, this morning after I woke up, I woke up to the fact that I have no idea why my heart pounds and my eyes feel ten-times wider when I read about the stories of women and men who dive into the ocean rather than taking the boat. All I know is that I want to swim too. I want to feel the water rather than fear it. 

The boat is an expectation of safety. But really the boat faces just as much unexpected as the swimmer. The swimmer needs to trust her strength, needs to use her own instincts, it is just her and nature. She doesn't expect anything more than that hope to be able to keep swimming and the hope to not be eaten by a shark. 

This metaphor has holes, but what I'm trying to say is that when we stop expecting to be happy, to know what to do, to find that man or woman of our dreams, to win the race, well then we'll always be thankful for what we have right now. Life is a surprise.

Start swimming. Take that longboard with when the waves get big. Let go of the GPS system and let that heart of yours direct. Staying on the boat is mistaken security--you still may drown. Yes there may be more risks swimming, but at least you'll have learned your true strength, your possibilities, and you'll go place you never would have gone internally and externally. 

You'll never be ready for it. There's never a guidebook of how to prepare for things, you just have to go through them. Failure does not exist, your expectations are the only things that will tell you to feel like shit when things don't pan out the way you "expect." 

Live. It's ok to be afraid, that means you've got the energy to get through it. Fear often tells you what direction you need to go so long as you have courage to let it direct you smack into it. I need to tell myself that every day. 

Little by Little

After a 10 day sabbatical from the comforts of my own home, but the joys of 5 am dog kissing alarm clocks followed by the humm of a space heater and my own sacred space to breathe, practice inversions, and wake up to the world with prana, I feel very grateful. 

Although I was a mere 10 miles away from my own familiar life, I feel like I just returned from a safari on the other side of the world. You don't have to go very far in Chicago to feel like you're in another land, time zone, or perhaps at times dimension. Garfield Park a place that transported me into a different level of awareness. (I made the comment a few days ago, that it was like going scuba diving for a secret cove of seahorses. I had to go deep into a void. A void filled with a lot of fear.)

The best part about it was, I had no choice. Dogs, cats, and an entire crop of garden seedlings were depending on me to take care of them. Responsibility was consistent, the fear was high, but I had no way of turning back. It was like climbing a 5.11 without having a choice. There was no other way to return without going up the path that seemed challenging. 

Like everything in life, the journey through a very unexpected experience with fear, gave me strength, healing, and a more heightened sense of self truth and trust. 

A dog, Wasabi, taught me something that I will never forget. Hesitation and fear sends out doubt of trustworthiness. More accurately it sent a message of "trusting myself." 

Wasabi was abused as a puppy, and his current parents rescued him. He does not befriend strangers and without the right type of energy present, you cannot touch him without him growling, barking, and biting. He does not trust what an emotionally healthy dog would love--touch. 

He sensed my fear or hesitation around him by the way I'd walk or talk. Yet when I would be tired or not thinking about him barking/snapping at me he would cuddle up beside me in bed and fall asleep. After 8 days and a lot of gentle tests and a lot of awareness on my part. Finally, he let me in. 

I came home from work, started playing with him as if I were another dog, laid down on my back and he started licking my face. I was ecstatic, and hugged him. No barking, no biting, we had come to trust and respect that neither one of us was going to hurt the other. 

I was ecstatic. More accurately I felt like I had learned an amazing amount about working with something scary and learning how to trust myself to be strong enough to change and allow someone or something in. Energetic presentation. I'm continually working with it in everything I do. 

It's very very hard work. 

The other dog, Hana. In many ways brought me a lot of peace. Her personality is so beautiful, so loving, so humerous that no matter how bad you're feeling she knows how to woo you into a smile or a laugh. 

The dogs practice yoga with me and when their parents are home, with them. They sit on this big cushion, snoring and beckoning you to breath the peace that so effortlessly put them to sleep. I was meditating one night...I lost track of time, and I started crying. I was angry about love. I was battling the lesson of loving, forgiving, and letting go. I thought I had come a long way, but some days it creeps up on me. 

That night, I had my own space and I felt surrounded with really loving energy, so I just cried. I let stuff go, and Hana got up and came over and started licking away my tears. I clung to her like I would cling to my dad or mom after having a nightmare as a child. She kept licking my face. My anger began to dissipate and Hana just sat there staring me in the face. Those brown eyes told me everything. They told me that this pain that I felt brought and would bring more love into my life, and she was a reflection of that. 

Garfield Park in and of itself is an environment that tests your panic buttons. As a white fair-skinned woman, I was the minority, and I could feel it everyday I'd walk down the street. At first I would feel just radiating amounts of nervousness as cars would drive by honking at me. I'd avoid making eye contact with every car. I just wanted to get from point A to point B. 

After a few days I realized that I was creating the nervousness unnecessarily. I realized I was wasting tremendous amounts of energy being afraid. And asked myself, "What are you afraid of?" I had no answer other than the fact that I was afraid of being who I was where I was. And that was not going to protect me even if I was in danger. 

Little by little I stopped. I made every effort to walk without fear down a street that was supposedly one of the most dangerous neighborhoods. Little by little I started to laugh when a car full of men would honk and yell out their window "Hey pretty lady." And little by little my awareness let me see that intuitively there was nothing to fear unless I wanted to attract it. 

Little by little, that's all we can do to transform our awareness and to energetically present our truth.