(autobiology)

wandering.

2009-06-29T21:38:00.001-07:00

I've moved. Do come visit.

ici.

2009-04-21T18:44:00.000-07:00

I miss writing here more than I care to admit. I get hungry sometimes for an existence outside of my treasured community, and get hungry to explore so many other topics, from hospice to breath work to poetry to breathing to presence to transformation to currency to love, and love, and love. I want anonymity. I want attention. I want to know what I want again.

How is it that the whole internet can feel too small, and too intimate, and too close?

notes.

2007-11-11T20:00:00.000-08:00

I'm still here.

My 27th birthday was on the 27th of October.

A month prior, I moved to Colorado.

A month prior, I bought a house near downtown Boulder.

I work, now, in a beautiful office with a view of the mountains, surrounded by both blue skies and amazing people and I'm a little wide-eyed about all that's unfolded over the past few months.

I am still very much in love.

imposter.

2007-07-14T12:03:00.001-07:00

I went to a salon yesterday on the topic of Dying Well. The dialogue was wonderful, and I could fill a small book with the ins-and-outs of the discussion, but I just wanted to share one fragment.

(I wish you could have been there for all of it, but this, at least, is something.)

Midway through the conversation, someone at the table brought up the notion of the “imposter syndrome”: that feeling that, despite your position or accomplishments, you're still just “faking things,” and that you've fooled others into thinking you're smarter or more capable than you really are.

He mentioned that it took a great deal of pain and struggle for him to come to the understanding that he wasn't “faking it” any more. He went through a difficult period in his life, and surviving that test meant that he was no longer afraid of being unmasked. He looked around the table, and wondered out loud whether that pain and suffering were necessary. “Are there any of you who feel as though you're no longer “faking it” and who haven't experienced some great or painful challenge?”

A beautiful question, I thought.

Various voices spoke up. A few mentioned how it was the gradual accumulation of successes in their lives that made them feel more self-assured. They mentioned how launching a few companies and seeing these businesses thrive made them feel as though their was something to that sense of competency that others saw in them, and they began feeling as though they were actually accomplished and capable—that they weren't acting “as if” or, again, “faking it.”

I appreciated this, but I couldn't help but share my story. I'm not one of those who was spared the crucible.

I no longer feel at all as though I'll be “found out” or that my accomplishments and abilities are somehow the result of me fooling others, but I came to this understanding only after hitting rock bottom.

I was destitute and jobless and scrambling, a little ball of self-hatred whose entire identity was more a puppet to addiction than anything recognizable as a personality. I hated what I'd done to myself, and, even more, the damage this self-sabotage had wrought upon my family and friends and those people I purported to care about. It was more than a life wasted—it was a life that was inflicting pain in the mere being.

And it was from there that I came to realize despite all this, it was a life worthy of being loved. Despite all this, I was still a human being who deserved to be cared for. It was from that position, of having literally nothing else to lose, that I realized I already had everything.

I don't know. I'm sure that there's nothing wrong with a self of self-confidence founded on the evidence of success. I just find a certain peace in knowing that even were I to lose, again, everything, I'd still be fundamentally okay. My concern with the other route would be that, if I started suddenly to fail and if all my projects were to collapse, that I'd wonder again at my abilities. Maybe I was once worth something, I might fret, and perhaps I'll be worth something again in the future… but right now I'm a failure. I feel an odd comfort that I'll never have to worry about this again.

I'm not sure why I feel so compelled to share this here. I'm not sure how it will come across. But I do wish I could instill this in others: there is nothing you can do that will make you unworthy. You're loved. You're worth it. There is no other way.

two truths.

2007-07-07T19:48:00.000-07:00

What is the difference between seeing connections and making them? I feel as though I've fallen into some strange universe where coincidences no longer exist.

But here are two poems.

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.

Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

- M. Strand

&

There are times when I can't move.

I feel roots of mine everywhere,
as though all things were born of me,
or as though I were born of all things.

All I can do then is to stay still
with eyes open like two faces
at the moment of birth,
with a small amount of love in one hand
and something cold in the other.

And all I can give someone passing by me
is that motionless absence
that has roots in him too.

- R. Juarroz

momento mori.

2007-03-11T22:37:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about death recently, perhaps too much.

I suppose this makes sense; 2007 has already been a record year for me as far as suicides alone are concerned. I feel close to my mortality; the edges feel raw.

I was at a talk yesterday morning that included a long digression on the problems facing our world; about Iraq, about global warming, about the struggles in our administration; about natural resources; about Africa, about change, and about what we have to look forward to in the future.

The speaker (the former director of Amnesty International) ended his impassioned speech with a paraphrase from a theologian. “In this time, we have one choice: dialogue, or death.”

There was a space, where others emptied themselves of their questions, and I sat silent until I could no longer be still. I asked, from the circle, ”Or death? Death is not optional. Death is always an 'and.' These stories we've been listening to, about the shift that's occurring in consciousness and about how we're waking up to what needs to be done, are beautiful, but are we not all just avoiding that we each much die? Individually, each of us, and, eventually, as a civilization and species?”

I felt immediately chagrined; dumping the skull on the banquet table is a bit of a faux pas these days. Still, most people seemed not just to forgive me, but to want to engage more with the question. The conversation that followed was rich.

Those conversations mean so much to me.

Because I don't think at all this means I'd want to abandon any effort at gentling the world, or that I'd want to give up hope about healing; I do think that there are likely many generations to come and I feel a heartfelt obligation to make sure that I limit my contributions to the pain and suffering they'll experience, and to do what I can to increase the joy (assuming these two are separable). But I can't help but look at the popular apocalyptic cries of Peak Oil and the assertions that our culture is on the brink of collapse with a wry smile. Somehow I can't help but imagine that every preceding generation believed the same. Living in a time of perceived crises means that our lives become meaningful; we have a project; the world depends upon us. Far better to imagine catastrophe than to admit the more likely scenario: that our generation too will die, to be subsumed in the oncoming waves of future humans, and that we too will be mostly forgotten.

I don't know. I find, I suppose, some peace in this latter fact. It makes life, now, for me, and the meetings I have within it, all the more important.

yes.

2007-02-05T15:56:00.000-08:00

Today is the 126th anniversary of Thomas Carlyle's death.

Carlyle was a Scottish historian and sociologist whose thought and writing influenced American Transcendentalism; the letters he exchanged with Emerson comprise hundreds of pages. To my mind, though, he's an incredible thinker in his own right.

Carlyle wrestled deeply with, and eventually lost faith in, his own Christian tradition; which is part of why I love him so . . . there's a certain tragic Kierkegaardian existentialism to his struggle.

He wrote about the concept of "The Everlasting Yea," a sort of divine affirmation of the world - and of faith - "wherein all contradiction is solved: wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him." This, for Carlyle, is in contrast to "The Everlasting No," the denial of the divine in the world, and "The Centre of Indifference" a detached agnosticism.

I find all this beautiful.

But this I love more: Carlyle had an unblinkered awareness of the suffering inherent to the world. He believed the point of life is to make man blessed, not happy, and that the pursuit of happiness is one of the things that prevents people from achieving blessedness.

Ai. Perhaps I like this so because I feel so blessed, and for me, this has little to do with feeling happy, and more to do with gratitude, and acceptance, and - yes - affirmation.

Anyway. My grandfather (Farland's father) was the first I ever heard speak of Carlyle, and though he's no longer alive, some feathered whisper prompted me to write.

Yes.

shadows.

2007-02-02T11:58:00.000-08:00

Something came up again for me last night.

(I'm going to keep this next part vague, because I'm sensitive about confidentiality, so my apologies for any lack of clarity that results. I'm trying to speak as much as possible from my own experience, and I'm trying to do so as authentically and blamelessly as I can. So please, if you read this, read this with that in mind, and read this, too, knowing that while my intentions are pure, the lenses through which I see are grubby indeed. Forgive me, please, for that.)

There's a group I'm a part of, a group of about twenty-five other individuals of various ages and from differing areas, individuals of different races and various cultural backgrounds. In most respects we're remarkably close: these are people I'd trust, and have trusted, with my deepest secrets and most personal truths. With most things we're able to hold each other.

It's become apparent, though, over the past few weeks, that the topic of race, within our group, is a deeply painful issue.

(An aside: it just occurred to me that all of this should go without saying; the fact that people have different backgrounds, that I feel I can trust them; that racism is a tremendous reality … ought not these statements be true in any group? Anyway.)

So far we've been dancing around this elephant in the room. Some of the group members in the white majority censor themselves because they feel awkward; some of those in the minority have expressed that they don't feel safe speaking about what they really feel, and, too, that when the topic does arise it's overshadowed by the issue of 'white guilt'; some of the biracial members of the group feel torn; and everyone, obviously, has their own personal take on the matter.

But things have come to a head, and the tension has gotten to be too much, and so next week I'm going to be helping to facilitate a discussion on the dynamic, and about what all of us might do.

Needless to say I'm a little anxious about this conversation.

This issue is so, so deeply painful for me. It's painful for me because at one point it wasn't an issue. It's painful for me because there was a time in my life when I would have not seen it as my problem. In high school, I was sure I wasn't racist. I believed in the myth of a colorblind society; I thought, in trying to treat everyone the same, that we could all be made equal. I had no idea how incredibly damaging this blindness of mine was.

And I don't feel particularly guilty about it. I feel, rather, a deep rage and sorrow at the fact that I live in a society that allowed me to grow up so utterly oblivious to the rampant oppression and pro-racist ideologies it perpetuates. I feel, rather, a deep sense of grief at the entire history of not just the US, and not just Colonialism, but the human race as a whole.

It's Black History Month. Affirmative action is again in the news. The topic came up for me recently around law school; blacks make up 13% of the US population, but only 6% of law students. This statistic, combined with the fact that 12% of black males (compared to under 2% of white males) in their late 20s in the US are in prison, indicates that there is something supremely wrong with our society. (Here's another little fact: In South Africa under apartheid, the incarceration rate of black males was 851 per 100,000. In the U.S., in 1994, the rate was 4,919 per 100,000. This is America, in comparison to the most openly racist country on the planet.)

I know that looking at this requires looking at the fact that the history of the country and our current capitalist system is deeply stained with the atrocities of the slave trade. I know that looking at this requires accepting that the European development of the new world was made possible, in part, by the use of the “free labor” of African slaves, which provided the wealth – from the cotton and sugar and rice within the plantation system – necessary to make such technological advances. And I know that looking at this demands all that goes with it, from the fact that Christopher Columbus sent more slaves to Europe than any other individual in his time to the history of exploitation and cruelty that stand as the dark unexamined underbelly of development.

This is an ugly topic, I know, and I know, too, that it's easier not to look. But I'd suggest, in not-looking (assuming, that is, you have the “luxury” to do so), that you might be making yourself complicit in the very perpetuation of such injustice.

I know this, but what I don't know is so much greater. I don't know how to heal any of it. I don't know how to make a difference. I don't know, at all, what to say when faced with this past.

I don't know. It makes me so sorrowful, and so, so full of anger.

Thich Naht Hahn said once that, when anger arises in you, to think of three sentences to tell those you're feeling anger toward. These sentences are: “I suffer and I want you to know it.” “I am doing my best.” “Please help.”

Please help.

cinq.

2006-12-22T16:29:00.000-08:00

I rarely accept these tags, but because I'm in good company with this one, and because I adore Evelyn, I'll have a shot. Following are five things you do not know about me.

1. You do not know the first words I spoke.

2. You do not know what it feels like when I open my eyes in the morning and stretch my legs together under my white muslin sheets and shake the sleep from my shoulders and look out the window from between dream-matted eyes and try to resituate myself in the world, and you do not know what it is like as the reality of my day-to-day life starts seeping in, and you do not know the particular quality of reassuring delight and somehow heavy comfort of that settling.

3. You do not know how hard it is sometimes for me to understand myself.

4. You do not know why I choose to live my life the way I do, and you do not truly know what my relationship is with you, and you do not know what it is like, at all, to be me.

5. You do not know how much I wish you could.

Does it matter if I opt not to tag others? Can, instead, I tag anyone who wants to be tagged? If you're reading this, please . . . consider yourself invited.

why do you write?

2006-12-22T15:37:00.000-08:00

Orhan Pamuk had a beautiful answer, but it was not mine.

I write because I have to write. I write because I am in love with the world. I write because my tongue is too wet and sloppy a tool for the elegance of language and because I feel more comfortable speaking through two splayed hands, through the pianoing dance of my fingertips. I write because the world is created through language and story and because I have a role to play in weaving the future. I write because I believe in the human beings around me with a passion so intense and so vivid and so bright that I can't help but want to reach them, and I want to reach not just them, but every future generation, and to tell them to keep trying and dreaming and striving, because it is worth it, and because the only way we can know each other is through these stories. I write to discover myself. I write because there is no other way. I write because I would go crazy otherwise. I write because I am crazy. I write because I need to make sense of the hideous intricacy of the universe. I write because I am happy. I write because I am in pain. I write because of the sheer joy of it. I write because sometimes it is the only thing that keeps me here. I write because, right now, I am breathing, and I can feel the beating of my heart within the rise and fall of my ribcage and I write because moths drink the tears of sleeping birds.

phalène

2006-12-21T20:20:00.000-08:00

I've found the most inadvertently poetic news headline of the year.

Moths Drink the Tears of Sleeping Birds.

solstice.

2006-12-21T10:17:00.000-08:00

It's the winter solstice, and I'm mindful of the weight of the planet, and the emergence from darkness, and, too, the tug of the new year. And so, in the spirit of that, I wanted to share a poem.

Drink Your Tea.

Drink your tea slowly and reverently,
as if it is the axis
on which the world earth revolves -
slowly, evenly, without
rushing toward the future;
live the actual moment.
Only this is life.

- Thich Naht Hanh.

connexion.

2006-12-19T22:14:00.000-08:00

I always feel awkward breaking a silence.

I've been writing more emails reccently, and connecting more with individuals, and connecting more in the world "out there" than I have been blogging. While I've been involved in a few certain circumscribed online communities, on the whole I've I've been less immersed in blogs and more sunk into the world at large. But recently I've started writing a bit to the author of How to Save the World. And I felt somehow that I wanted more people to read what I was sharing with him. So here's a version. It's mostly in response to this post.

For someone so dismayed or disheartened by dialogue and language Dave certainly wields it well, though I'll confess as another wordsmith to having those precise fears; namely, that the more elegantly and eloquently I use these letters the more inextricably tangled I get, and the more in the way of letting my self be my Self.

Sometimes this seems blindingly obvious. Of course language is an impediment, I think. Of course these abstractions are exactly the wrong way to approach this nearly intractable problem. Of course I should just be still. Sometimes, though, I delight in the nuances of being conscious of this dilemma. There's something beautiful about awareness, even when it's accompanied by pain.

And though I should be still, I'll say a few more words.

I was involved an Open Space Technology event not long ago and had to take some time during the weekend to write about how inexpressibly sad that sort of systems work inevitably makes me feel.

I can never begin to connect, fully, with a group without falling headlong into that horrifically deep felt sense of greater connection . . . of an awareness with my own connection with the earth, with our gasping biosphere, with the pain and misery of so much of humanity in the global south, with the entrapped desperation of overweight suited executives unable to believe what their little-boy-selves have become, with the confused and angry systems in my own body so dead-set on tearing into each other . . . for whatever reason, allowing myself to connect fully with any community drags me into the rest. I feel it all, so strongly, and it's for this reason that I both adore and pull back from group work.

In that OST I offered to convene a session on sorrow and grief. I introduced the 'topic' with a few stumbling attempts at I just wrote. I took my paper to the back. And I was the only one there.

So I wrote. I don't mind holding that for people - indeed, in some ways it's an honor - but it's still hard. When I allow myself to sink into stillness and being, when I allow myself the space to reflect on the materials that went into the building I'm perched in and the labor that went into the clothes I'm wearing and the vast networks of production and energy on which my whole environment depends, I feel so much of it in my heart and my ribcage and it feels all the world as though I'm being held underwater, or trapped somewhere, and I can't quite get my breath. There's no way out of this world, and it's becoming toxic, and this interconnection, this sentence, makes me want to cry.

Oddly enough I have some gratitude for this, too; sometimes I think it's the toxicity that helps me realize this extreme interdependence, and for whatever it's worth, I'm glad we're all so bound up. If there were a way off the earth, or a way to escape this . . . I don't know. There's something to the realization that I can never run away from myself.

I meant to take this elsewhere though. Sometimes, for me, I can just breathe. Sometimes that helps. And sometimes I can just write.

mère.

2006-10-09T22:46:00.000-07:00

I don't have much to say. It's Monday, the end of a long and exhausting weekend. I don't have much to say but I have far to much to do; a situation I'm getting used to.

But I wrote, not long ago, about a book my mother had sent me, and how much I loved reading the notes she'd scrawled in the margins. It was such a beautiful glimpse into such a rare life, and it's a glimpse I want everyone to have.

She is an incredible writer.

presence.

2006-09-17T08:22:00.000-07:00

I've been corresponding, recently, with a man who told me, crypically, that I was someone who "created life." He told me I was a weaver, of stories, and, I suppose, of networks.

I hadn't put much thought into this, until yesterday I revisited what's rapidly becoming one of my favorite books.

One of the final chapters of Presence investigated the idea of power, and of how the usual sources of power in the world today - technological power and governmental / corporate power, say - are fundamentally and overwhelmingly powers-to-destroy. (Somehow I feel that most "external" power is of this kind, but that's another story.) Obviously this sort of power is not the sort I could imagine anyone really wanting -- I'd hope that it's apparent that our world is small and interconnected enough that the destruction and abuse of anything in it can't help but affect the one doing the abusing -- but nonetheless, it does exist, and nonetheless, there are people with the horrible burden of holding this sort of power. It's not a role I'd relish.

But it made me start thinking about what it means to have or to own a power-to-create; that is, a power-of-life.

To me, "storytelling" (be it either writing or speaking) has the potential to fall under this category. Weaving stories involves generating meaning . . . and creating meaning is a life-giving and obviously creative activity. It involves the ability to communicate to people a greater vision, a reason for their being, and is the one of the few ways in which it's possible to facilitate that connection of individuals to the deeper, greater life, to a sense of purpose, to the is-ness that's already existent. It's one of the few ways to encourage the connection of people to themselves, and to begin to bring about and work positively with that human, that necessary, search for meaning. I can't think of anything else that has the power to do this . . . and thus I'm somewhat humbled by being awakened to my role as an instrument in the process. (We are all instruments in the larger system, whether we're aware of this or not, and we all play roles within it, and I feel, again, a deep sense of gratitude for being an instrument of - or for - life.)

I'm still struggling to articulate this; again, it's something that I've only recently begun to really appreciate. And I feel, still, a little shy about this posting; it feels half-finished and not-quite-born. But it affected me, deeply, and it's the start of a new story, and stories are nothing without being shared.

temps.

2006-08-31T20:18:00.000-07:00

Oh, where to start?

I've had an insane few weeks.

I'll start with the news that I've been coaxed away from my current writer / editor position with an online adult personals site to one with a far more ambitious dream. Starting next week, I'll be owning the role of Synchronicity Coordinator at Zaadz. I'm embarrassingly enthusiastic about the new gig; I'll be working “in the area of partnership development, community building, media relations, and corporate communications,” and I've already had the opportunity to try my hand at an ENN interview and a few tantalizing writing assignments. It's such a treat to get to interact regularly with people who share my own values, and I'm still a little stunned that I'm getting paid to do such things as ramble on at length about self-empowerment, personal responsibility, the inseparability of people and planet and product, the growing demographic of individuals for whom non-eco businesses are no longer an option, and additionally, get to grow partnerships with others who believe the same.

And I get to work from home. Crazy.

The transition from my job at Various to the new one at Zaadz was interrupted by a workshop I'd signed up for months ago. I just got back from spending a week at a Community Building Facilitation training. It was, perhaps, one of the most emotionally intense experiences of my life.

Imagine waking up in a world of sixteen strangers, with no other instructions than these guidelines. It's a bizarre and more-than-surreal experience, and the best crash-course in interpersonal psychology, family dynamics, and the workings of systemic oppression I can imagine. (I've had experience doing community building before, but it never ceases to amaze me how these experiments become such microcosms of not just family systems, but cultural and global systems as well. It's one thing to understand how this "works" academically, and quite another to get it from within.) I wish I could describe in the abstract what the week was like, but this would be like attempting to impart the taste of a loaf of warm bread by giving the ingredients. And I wish I could write about the week from the inside, but I'm bound by confidentiality.

I'll say only that the net result of putting people in a room and instructing them to reach community turns the group into a miniature model of the global community; it becomes a pressure cooker for conflict and the way in which conflicts get resolved without leaving the closed system. (No one can leave the retreat, or at least not without violating their commitment to the group, just as no one can leave the human family on our planet.) Again, though, I was most stunned by the way in which the larger patterns of oppression and patriarchy manifested themselves in this collection of people, all the more so because everyone there was highly self-aware and able to talk beautifully about issues of sexism and ageism and racism and culture. It was humbling, to say the least.

There were other aspects that contributed to the profound intensity of the week; sometime around the second day I - or we - had the collective experience of a strange transcendence of time. I'm familiar with the experience of flow, of losing myself in a project or activity and losing all sense of self and time as a result. This, though, was something different. It was after a particularly combative encounter, and the emptying that followed it, and it was as though all time fell away and everything in the world had already happened and was always in the process of happening and what was going on was so ancient and so eternal and so always. It was as though the circle we were in was the same circle we'd always been in, and no different from the larger circles of the whole world. And it's another one of those things that I can't speak of, but can only - barely - remember from the inside.

In any case, I'm still struggling to integrate the week, whilst trying at the same time to gracefully exit my job (a dear friend will be taking my current position and I want to make the transition smooth) and start the next.

I'm very, very glad I have a few weeks before classes start.

profondeur.

2006-08-15T09:58:00.000-07:00

Last night, a college friend came by. He was in California for the week, and took the opportunity to visit, showing up on my doorstep with a brand-new mohawk and an overflowing box of ripe organic strawberries. We spent the evening sprawled on my livingroom floor, talking over mugs of tea and fingers stained red with berry juice.

It was one of those conversations that ramble into increased depth and complexity, the sort of meaningful, heartening, rich exchanges that approach the emotional equivalent of the more awkward intellectual variety I remember from my university days. It makes me wonder why I don't encourage more of this in my life; my days seem to get so full with work and classes and the sorts of social activities that involve doing something, and somewhere the time for just being with others gets lost. Or lost isn't quite right; that time is always there. It's just so easily skipped over, or forgotten, or otherwise ignored.

We talked about this, some, about the way in which, though we've become experts at the technological aspects of communication - we keep our phones on us; we can make instantaneous contact with someone across the globe - we seem to be utterly clueless when it comes to deeper connections with the real human beings around us.

It has to do with so much, I think. There're the general scare-tactics of the media that encourage people to mistrust their neighbors and lock their doors and to be wary of strangers. There's the distraction of all manner of entertainment, from shopping to television to the internet. There's the general denial that we're all of us in; really connecting with another demands a certain degree of openhearted authenticity, and I can't help but think that the vast majority of the US is incapable of getting to this point. I'm biased, I know; it's hard to talk about this without my social and poliitcal beliefs coloring the dialogue, but for a country at war, we seem to have an odd aversion to talking about the suffering involved. We'll skirt political issues and heap abuse on our administration, but I so rarely encounter any acknowledgement of the pain and sorrow and anger that can't help but accompany the death of thousands. Doing so entails taking some sort of responsibility, however minor, for the situation, and doing this is hard. And so we stay safe on the surface and talk - if at all - about facts and weather and celebrity weddings. But I digress; last night was a welcome contrast to the usual, and it's made me commit to discovering, and creating, more of these evenings. I love my across-the-world connections, but I'm hungry, too, for community I can touch.

And to that end, I'm going tonight to this exploratory salon. I'm curious and excited about the other unknown guests. I'm in need of a little impassioned slowness, I think, and this event seems just the thing.

mémoire.

2006-08-11T20:12:00.000-07:00

Write in books.

I am reading a book my mother mailed me a year or so ago, and the scribbles and jottings and underlines, the notes in the margins, the asterisks and exclamation points and her inimitable handwriting, are nearly enough to make me cry.

I don't know. Perhaps it's because, as someone recently reminded me, so much of our correspondence is so ephemeral (who sends letters through the mail anymore? Unless you print out your words they will all disappear, and likely sooner rather than later; servers go down, computers crash, and we all know how fragile CDs are); perhaps it's just because of the mood I'm in, but I love that this book is one I can keep, and love that it's been made so much more rich by her thoughts.

pause.

2006-08-08T20:24:00.000-07:00

A Peregrin falcon attacks a starling flock.

. . .

Opening Words

I believe the earth
exists, and
in each minim mote
of its dust the holy
glow of thy candle.
Thou
unknown I know,
thou spirit,
giver,
lover of making, of the
wrought letter,
wrought flower,
iron, deed, dream.
Dust of the earth,
help thou my
unbelief. Drift
gray become gold, in the beam of
vision. I believe with
doubt. I doubt and
interrupt my doubt with belief. Be,
beloved, threatened world.
Each minim
mote.
Not the poisonous
luminescence forced
out of its privacy,
The sacred lock of its cell
broken. No,
the ordinary glow
of common dust in ancient sunlight.
Be, that I may believe. Amen.

- D. Levertov

raccordement.

2006-08-06T16:44:00.000-07:00

Dave Pollard, of How to Save the World, again contributes a post that makes my heart thrill. He proposes Let-Self-Change a "theory, framework, approach and/or methodology" that flows from the integration of change agents and social activists with an appreciation of complex systems, and complex adaptive systems theorists. Pollard's been working at piecing together tools such as Open Space Technology and notions like Collective Wisdom and systems thinking for some time, and this recent post uses the lessons of The Other Side of Eden: Hunters, Farmers, and the Shaping of the World as a point of inspiration.

Do go read his proposal. .

Again, as someone ridiculously in love with the challenge of systems thinking, I adore Pollard's vision. Still, I can't help but wonder at the way in which these net-dialogues tend to focus on tool-kits and methodologies and new languages and frameworks. It's true that these are crucial, but I worry sometimes that they miss the point. I've been involved in a few Open Spaces, and I can't help but think that a huge part of what makes the practice successful is the way in which it teaches - or demonstrates - a new way of being. How to put it? My thought is that it's less the solutions and results that come out of these practices than it is the experience of being in a true community that makes the difference.

(I wanted to write that I thought that if the directions / paths that came from OST were merely imposed on the group from the outside, they wouldn't be remotely as effective, but as I was thinking this I realized that such a separation is impossible, and that the mere existence of the outcome is dependent on it being literally birthed through the group.)

In any case, I do think it's this embodied education that makes the difference in the success of many of these examples of collective wisdom. I'd venture that beyond the obvious benefits of intelligent collaboration, it's the experience of trusting in oneself and in community that contributes to sustainable outcomes. It's this, I think, that we could all stand to see more of; this felt-sense of being-in-a-collective.

It's strange for me to say this. I myself (like Pollard, I imagine) tend towards being a loner. I appreciate solitude more than what passes for company in this society. I'm only just realizing that what I always mistook as a preference for isolation was more a preference for being, and that it wasn't so much, growing up, that I didn't like socializing, but that I didn't care for the endless stream of entertainment and distraction that seemed always to accompany the experience of being together. As I become more skilled at holding to the present even in the midst of bustle and confusion, I've come to appreciate - and to love -being with others more and more, and the more this happens, the more passionate I feel about the heavy significance of communal projects like Let-Self-Change.

But I digress. Go read Dave's post, or don't. Please, though, be present with the next person you meet. Because connection, really, is all that there is.

écoutez.

2006-07-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

I would like to listen more.

perception.

2006-07-17T14:23:00.000-07:00

My friend Duff posted a link to - as well as some scathing commentary on - Steve Pavlina's recent post about resolving global conflicts. Pavlina is of the view that the war in Iraq can best be addressed by meditation and consciouness-raising; Duff believes this is a myopic and narcissistic approach and that the oil crisis is not going to be served by sitting on a cushion and thinking good thoughts. My personal view is that they're both right: I'm including my response here.

It takes a tremendous amount of courage and awareness to get to the point at which we realize our responsibility for the violence in the world and the situation in the middle east. So many of us prefer to see the problem as “out there” – as something beyond our control – instead of taking an clear-eyed look at how WE are responsible for it. The more we raise our awareness, and the more we're able to respond to the world and to those beings in it with love and compassion, the more we'll be inspired to tread lightly on the planet, to reduce our dependence on oil, and to contribute to peace in the world.

What other route is there? Coercion? Forcing people to behave in more peaceful or less exploitative ways? In my view this merely displaces (if not downright exacerbates) the problem. So while I agree with Duff about the paramount importance of reducing our dependency on oil and of working to reverse global warming and directing our efforts at creating more sustainable communities, I'd also bring up Al Gore's point in An Inconvenient Truth. We already HAVE the techologies available to us. What's required is a shift in perception. What's required is a change in our belief systems . . . there must be enough of us willing to adopt the practices and processes that already exist. And this willingness amounts to, really, a shift in consciousness.

It is imperative for people to understand that we can't compartmentalize the problems we face -- nor can we externalize them. Peak oil, war, overpopulation, global warming, the environmental destruction of the planet, soil erosion . . . these are all OUR problem, all the result of the way we live in the world, the result of our day-to-day lifestyles, and the result of the fact that we are OF the world. Our problems stem from our unwillingness to see this. We need to move to the level of social consciouness in order to care about the planet, and in order, thus, to change. This is why meditation is importance. It enables that fundamental realization.

So I think they're both right, and that the two approaches are not separable. But then, what is?

guerre.

2006-07-06T21:04:00.000-07:00

This is what I wish I dared to say about Iraq.

libre.

2006-07-04T13:48:00.000-07:00

Happy Indepedence Day, I think, though this holiday tastes a little bittersweet. Is it a truism to say that no one is free until we are all free? Or that it is sheer idiocy to think that we can work toward freedom abroad (not that anyone believes this is what we're doing in the Middle East, but still . . .) while sacrificing it at home?

Happy Indepedence Day, then. Freedom is one of those fantastic things - like happiness, and like inner peace - that can only be attained by giving it to others. So go let someone you're close to, or attached to, or that you want something from, be free. Let go of your expectations of them. Free them from whatever obligation you think they might have. Free them, and see how you're freed in the process.

It's a small thing, I know, but I think this is how freedom works on a grand scale, too, and this exercise is a little more simple and a little more practical than freeing your favorite political prisoner. And if this is too much, or makes no sense, than do something else small. Go out and encourage someone - preferably a stranger - to realize how beautiful it is out, and how lucky we are, and how needless our battles. Smile. Be beautiful. Be free.

While you may have seen this already, I did add this site's blogroll to the black navigational box in the upper right. So go have a visit . . .

pleurez.

2006-07-03T13:07:00.000-07:00

I had a dream the other night in which I was demonstrating an ability to weep on command.

In real life I can't do this - at least not that I know of - but in my dream I was in a conference room, at the end of a long table, around which were seated a dozen or so suited strangers. I was standing at the front, and I was asked, again and again, to cry. Each time I was asked I turn around, so that when I turned back to face the room, my eyes would be wet. The panel took studious notes, but were otherwise unimpressed.

I woke up with tears on my face, and I still don't know what they were for.

plus.

2006-07-01T10:46:00.000-07:00

Dave Pollard posted, not long ago, a link and a response to a recent article in Orion Magazine. It's a excerpt from endgame, the latest book by Derrick Jensen (one of my favorite writers). It's painful and heart-breaking and well-worth reading; if you have time - or even if you don't - I'd encourage you to have a look.

I wrote a quick reply to Pollard's post, and wanted to include it here. I wrote that I found myself mostly in alignment with Jensen, but that (and I worry about this, because Jensen has seen so much more than I have and experienced much greater pain) my heart is so, so filled with such a love for this world, and not just for the brilliant biosphere, but for the tragic fear-filled and bloated persons and systems that keep stumbling toward their own misguided hopes.

Dave wrote that "love exhausts and consumes us." It's my belief that this is only true if we don't love enough. I think that the only way we can afford to love the Earth is if we love the damaging systems more: we are a part of them, after all. And I don't mean to support or to contribute to the projects they represent, but to see them for the obviously self-destructive, self-sabotaging, sadly unsustainable operations that they are.

I do not hate invididuals bent on paths of self-destruction; I feel a deep sadness and sympathy and love. It's okay, I want to whisper. You're okay. You don't need to do this. It's this attitude that I feel toward our civilization as a whole. It's love. And this, at least as far as my heart is concerned, is the way to freedom, and that is the end of fear.

feuillage.

2006-06-29T16:27:00.000-07:00

On the way to work this morning, I saw an elderly asian man out on his balcony. The platform was overflowing with an amazingly green and vibrant garden: there were flowers everywhere, and the foliage was spilling over the edge. And as I watched, the man began studiously kissing the leaves of each plant.

I nearly cried.

It is beautiful out, today.

vocation ii.

2006-06-16T13:26:00.000-07:00

What I want to / need to do is not completely unrelated to my grad school work; it's still involved with person-to-person authenticity and awareness-raising and responsibility-encouragement. It's just at a group or organization level instead of one-to-one. I want to do what's known as community building.

There's really very little that I can find about it online (here's one piece, which I like because the writer mentions Spiral Dynamics, a theory in which I'm pretty well-versed); basically, it's a process designed to strengthen the capacity of individuals and organizations to develop conditions that sustain healthy interaction. I hate this description, because it's a vague attempt to describe an intensely powerful tool. It's HARD to explain; it's more something that needs to be experienced.

In any case, it's helpful for groups who are looking for greater cohesion and awareness, for groups that need to increase productivity, for difficult groups such as though found in prisons, for struggling organizations or companies, or just any collection of individuals looking to learn more about themselves and to feel less lost. I've been involved in a few such experiences of community (and they are intense and wonderful and raw) using Peck's model, but I'd never considered myself becoming a facilitator . . . it seemed such an immense and frightening task. Something deep shifted in the past few weeks, though. I want to take some time this summer either get officially trained or to volunteer to facilitate a group of, say, Stanford students or other local groups in reaching community.

And then I'd offer it in workshop form to businesses and nonprofits and schools and other organizations . . .

I know. This has a total pipe dream feel, and it's also SCARY work (it's not easy to be comfortable with the chronic not-knowing involved in those groups) but I feel I have no choice, and frankly I don't care if I only do it by volunteering. The vividness of true community is an amazing raw and real and vivid and expansive experience and all I want to do is give as many poeple as possible a visceral understanding of what that means.

vocation.

2006-06-15T22:18:00.000-07:00

A few unrelated* things.

1. Psychoneuroimmunology is one of the most fascinating fields I've ever heard of. I'd known about the relationship between stress and illness for a while, obviously, but didn't know that PNI had a name, or that it was so extensively researched, or that neurology and the immune system were so intertwined. Awesome.

2. You know when you have one of those hit with a 2x4 insights in which you realize there's something else you were meant to do with your life? Ai. I don't know how I missed this. My calling is screaming so loudly I'm afraid I'm going to do something rash and stupid like quit my job and grad school (both of which I love . . . I know; it's that intense) and end up totally undone. Expect a few impassioned entries here soon.

3. I got on a scale for the first time in months yesterday. My body has homeostasis down to an art form: I weigh, to the pound, exactly what I did last summer.

* Although 'unrelated' is always a lie.

dette.

2006-06-11T14:18:00.000-07:00

The Sunday Magazine this week is fanscinating. The topic is debt. The opening article -- Reasons to Worry -- I think, is a beautiful argument for the fact that we do all need to work together. Thinking only of yourself is foolishness; if the economy collapses, we'll all suffer. It's a truism to say that the US perspective of thinking in terms of individual gain is backfiring. We're all of us part of the same social institutions, and the better and healthier those systems are, the better and healthier we'll be. (And I know; the inverse is true as well. I just happen to think that the latter fact is the one that's more easily overlooked.)

Though if you want a more personal angle, check out the piece on student loans. The one above it, on the problem of on-line gambling on college campuses, is also excellent. (I think I liked that one in particular because of how much I resonated with the feeling of that trap: addiction is addiction.) But do go have a look.

Because I don't like spreading bad news, I feel compelled to tack on a little note. Don't get let yourself be scared by all this. Fear is useful only if it leads to the restoration of a sense of security, and given that the US seems to be in a constant state of fear as is, I think the healthiest thing to do is to try and look for what it is that would make you feel safe. Forget the money angle - if the economy goes; the economy goes - and think about the fact that you have friends and family that care about you. The psuedo-luxury we'll all used to is nothing when it comes to feeling loved, or to feeling part of a community, and these latter values are dependent only on your own sense of trust.

Love hard, people.

santé d'esprit.

2006-06-08T11:21:00.000-07:00

This man is my hero.

Please look. It's a beautiful interview. I'm glad such sanity still exists.

O'BRIEN: . . But at some point, one would think, is there a moment when you say, 'I'm glad he's dead, the man who killed my son'?

BERG: No. How can a human being be glad that another human being is dead?

. . . When Nick was killed, I felt that I had nothing left to lose. I'm a pacifist, so I wasn't going out murdering people. But I am -- was not a risk-taking person, and yet now I've done things that have endangered me tremendously.

I've been shot at. I've been showed horrible pictures. I've been called all kinds of names and threatened by all kinds of people, and yet I feel that I have nothing left to lose, so I do those things.

Now, take someone who in 1991, who maybe had their family killed by an American bomb, their support system whisked away from them, someone who, instead of being 59, as I was when Nick died, was 5-years-old or 10-years-old. And then if I were that person, might I not learn how to fly a plane into a building or strap a bag of bombs to my back?

That's what is happening every time we kill an Iraqi, every time we kill anyone, we are creating a large number of people who are going to want vengeance. And, you know, when are we ever going to learn that that doesn't work?

miracle.

2006-06-07T22:33:00.000-07:00

Today, walking (though I can hardly call it walking; I was dancing; I get in these moods) home, I was the opposite of drunk, and the world was too too clear. I was so absorbed in the beauty of the afternoon; the very air was stunning.

And I passed by a pair of crutches that someone had left propped up against a tree.

I started laughing, and I couldn't stop, and the whole scene became so sweetly silly -- it seemed the evidence of a miracle, or some crazy wink toward the thought.

And then I started laughing even harder, because really, after all, what isn't?

terre.

2006-06-05T23:15:00.000-07:00

I just got back from seeing An Inconvenient Truth.

I can't say enough about this film. Please go see it. (I only wish I could impart how serious I am. If you can't afford the ticket, or are remotely ambivalent about spending the money, tell me. I'll buy you one on Fandango.) It had it s problems - what movie doesn't? - but they're nothing compared to the significance of the lesson.

I've admired Al Gore for years - I read Earth in the Balance shortly after it first came out and the vivid passion and intelligence of the book couldn't fail to win me over - and this cinematographic synopsis of what he's committed himself to, and why, is overwhelmingly powerful. The thing that's the most wonderful is how beautifully inspiring and empowering and motivational the movie is. The facts it lays out are brutal and undeniable, but the vision Gore paints of an accessible future is clear. He manages to present the attainable project of a generation -- something that's truly meaningful, something of such critical importance, and something that concerns not just humanity, but so many other species on earth. It's a profoundly touching film.

While I'm tempted to write here about I was encouraged to redouble my own efforts to reduce my own ecological footprint, I'll spare you, and trust that after seeing this movie, you'll feel similarly inspired. Again, please, please, please go see it. This will, perhaps, sound strange, but I don't think I've seen such a carefully apolitical movie, nor one so responsible, nor one so non-blaming, in ages. And this will sound stranger - given Gore's reputation - but I'm not sure I've seen such a human film either. I don't know. Go watch it yourself. Please.

coups.

2006-06-02T19:40:00.000-07:00

Every so often, I run into a small group of Jehovah's Witnesses, traveling by bicycle around my town knocking on doors and doing their Jehovah's Witnessing thing. I've found myself thinking of what a potentially wonderful practice that would be -- that is, to visit the houses of total strangers with the sole intent of engaging in some sort of spiritual conversation. Of course, the conversion angle makes me somewhat less-than-interested in the JW approach, but what would it be like to do the same as mere 'Witnesses,' traveling your community to just witness the beliefs of others?

I think it would be incredible to go door-to-door, asking whether you could take a few minutes of the person's time merely to talk to them a little to find out about what their own sprituality consisted of . . . with no agenda other that the mere process of dialogue.

I'd like to think I'd be brave enough to try this at some point. I'd love to think about what sort of seeds might be planted.

morte.

2006-06-02T06:44:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a life span development class this quarter. Next week is our last week of classes, and so, because we've been working through the life span chronologically, we spent yesterday evening talking about death and dying - and our own, in particular.

I suppose there is something strange about me, in that I enjoyed the intensity of that class vastly more than the kegger I abandoned to attend it. But this is beside the point.

What was interesting is that we took a survey at the beginning of the class. It was about 10 pages, and consisted of questions such as "How would you prefer to die?" and "Where would you prefer to spend your last days?" (each of these were followed by a list of ten or so options, to be ranked in order by the surveyee), along with queries about wills, eulogies, questions about what ought be done with your body, and personal beliefs about what, if anything, happened to you once you died. We all filled out our responses, and then had an open discussion about the sort of issues that were raised by the process. Needless to say it was a powerful three hours.

One of the things I most personally enjoyed, though, was noting my own reaction to the survey. I'd filled out an identical form before I started working with the Centre for Living with Dying, and my reaction then was one of severe discomfort. I didn't allow myself to think too deeply about that many of the questions, and dashed off a series of poorly-thought-out responses to what I thought about euthanasia and my wishes about life support. It was fascinating, and humbling, to see what an impact grief counseling has had on my reactions and wishes.

I won't go into that here, but I did want to recommend looking at something like this.

What would you want to happen if you got in a car accident on the way home tonight and ended up on life support? How would you want to be remembered? What regrets would you have? Who would take over your obligations?

I love how this topic makes my heart feel so full that my throat chokes. It reminds me to tell people I love them more often. It reminds me how small my own life is, and how fragile, and how important it is not to squander it.

communauté.

2006-05-30T13:27:00.000-07:00

It strikes me as ironic that the progressive voice in this country is the one so often reduced to using negative, reactionary language. There's an anti-Iraq-war movement, various protests against the war on Terror, activist groups opposing global warming, and reactionary flare-ups about everything from wiretapping to airline searches. I understand that these issues might seem like things that need to be stopped, but there's something both disempowering and desperate about such shrill and panicky responses.

Why can't we make demands for what it is we DO want? Perhaps it's the psychologist in me, but I know full well that setting up resistances tends, overwhelmingly, to just make the problem worse. Even if you're throwing negative energy at the issue, it's still energy. (Wasn't it Mother Teresa who wouldn't particpate in anti-war rallies -- she was holding out for a pro-peace movement?) Why can't there be more enthusiasm for positive changes?

I don't buy the argument that people would be adverse to the difficulty or sacrifices involved in creating more sustainable communties, or to working, say, on small peace-building groups. This country is obnoxiously gung-ho about self-improvement: from diet books to fitness groups toward generic self-help tomes, we seem to have no problem working to better ourselves. I can't imagine it would be that difficult to expand this obsession with perfection to a community level.

I'm a terminal optimist, I know. I'm blessed - or cursed - with an idealistic streak that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to quell. But I don't think my dreams of working locally, on a small scale, to bring people together and to work toward positive change are either unfounded or misguided. I'm not one for the bumper sticker mentality, but there's one I saw recently that articulated perfectly what I believe about everything that's going on in the news: "We're all in this together." I think the more that's done to bring this home - and it can be as small as smiling at strangers or waving at your neighbors in the morning - the better.

We're all in this together. Sometimes, strangely, I can't think of what could be more wonderful.

(Also, though I said I'm not much when it comes to bumper stickers and t-shirts, here's another that I love. Because really: who could argue with that?)

prière.

2006-05-24T09:34:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine, when I mentioned Simone Weil, reminded me of something else she wrote; namely that, for her, prayer was attention and attention was prayer. For me, this spoke brilliantly to a question Lorianne asked a few weeks back, about how non-theistic people can respond when suffering friends put out requests for prayers. I've felt similarly at a loss in the past; I don't pray, at least not to some benevolent monogod waiting to hear my pleas, but it seems heartless to tell this to someone in pain.

But attention . . . this I'm comfortable with. After all, what higher gift is there than fully paying attention to someone? Words are clumsy vehicles when it comes to grief; so often they tend to prod and poke rather than support, and sometimes even the gentlest phrase hurts. But attention and presence amount to a literal total giving of oneself. While I don't know how I'd phrase that response, especially, again, in the context of praying, and especially given what I just wrote about the blunt infelicity of language, it's still something I'd put forth. Or, I suppose, something that would allow me to comfortably tell someone I'd pray for her.

J'attends.

coeur.

2006-05-22T12:03:00.000-07:00

Oh, Beth.

attention.

2006-05-21T21:34:00.000-07:00

I think it's time for me to revisit Simone Weil. I was obsessed with her when I was in college - my broken little anorexic self was impossibly drawn to the similar rumors about her abstemious self-denial (she died of starvation at 34) and her penchant for elective suffering - but I stumbled away from her Christian martyrdom for a more pointed selfish variety after graduation. For some reason, recently, though, I started thinking about her again.

I'm not sure how to proceed; I'm not sure how to say why; and so I suppose I'll just jump right in.

Over the past week or two, though nothing explicit or objective in my life has changed, I've been overcome by these absurd washes of love, which come from nowhere and which I can't explain. I can't focus on anything for too long or I get choked up by the perfection of whatever it is I'm seeing. It's at turns absurd and embarrassing and it's made even meditation difficult. I keep crying in the middle of my sits.

Yesterday, though, I remembered being struck at one point by Weil's observation about the relationship between love and attention. "The highest ecstasy," she wrote, "is the attention at its fullest." I wish I remembered more of her spiritual algebra. I'm curious about the details of the equation.

(I remember something else she wrote that for years I was in a denial too deep to appreciate.

Life does not need to mutilate itself in order to be pure. )

This, though, is not something I'm so concerned with. I'm more interested, again, in the connection between paying attention to something, and loving it, and vice versa. I'm not sure whether or not I should be skittish about revisiting this particular Christian; I'm not sure what perversity in myself still exists that I want to associate mortification and mysticism. Certainly there is something laughable the fact that I still want to intellectualize everything; I want to know how it was she worked the details of this connection. I want the satisfaction of a map.

Silly.

I'll consider this a note to myself, then, to come back to this, and to come back soon. Right now I have a paper to finish.

terre.

2006-05-21T17:29:00.000-07:00

Do go look at this, please. That picture breaks my heart wide open.

I've never seen anything so perfect.

haine.

2006-05-21T17:28:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine asked, yesterday, in another online venue, why it was so much 'cooler' to hate things that to love them. She dredged up all manner of legitimate examples: it's more fashionable to be disillusioned with the government, cooler to make fun of a celebrity or artist, hipper to express disdain at a new trend. I think she has a point, but I don't think hate is somehow 'cooler' than love. If it were cooler to hate things than to love them, then Pat Robertson would be the James Dean of our time.

This is nothing new, I know, but I see hatred as sad. Hate is little more than a sign of insecurity and bitterness and a sense of lack. Our culture places a great deal of emphasis on both ownership and comparison. If you hate something, you don't need to worry about the fact that you don't possess it. You don't need to be envious. You don't need to worry that someone else has it and you don't. Love takes egolessness. Love takes self-assurance. To be able to look at something clearly, to see it for what it is, with all its seeming flaws and imperfections, and to love it regardless is a radical act.

I believe this.

But you might not want to listen to me. I'm the one who, at the end of this week, broke down in tears, at random, on the sidewalk, because of how in love I felt with the whole crazy perfect messed-up world.

(And now I wished I'd written about that, because I think in some ways we were shedding the same tears.)

.

I went to San Francisco last night to see Modeselektor with a new friend (whose last name happens to be Qua. If I weren't already engaged I might have proposed to him on the spot; Qua is possibly the best surname I've ever heard); it was the first show I'd seen in well over a month and the mere sensation of being back in the city at night was blissful. The show - which was held at the Rx Gallery, an art gallery / wine bar not far from Union Square - was excellent; the crowd wove a pleasant intersection of chill and enthusiasm; and I danced my skinny little ass off. I love living where I do - the peninsula is cultured and quiet and in general provides a nice retreat - but those occasional forays into the city make me wonder whether I shouldn't look more seriously at moving there.

Not that this, now, is a real option. I have two more years of school to go. Still, I do like the reminder of what I'm missing.

.

I still feel clumsy, writing here; my words used to flow more easily. It's a delicious clumsiness, though, ripe with the memory of how natural this odd public expression once felt. It's like a combination of the awkward guilt I feel when I run across, accidentally, someone whom I've been meaning to call for months, and the more physical memory of strapping on a pair of skis at the beginning of a new season. Classes will be over at the end of May, and I'll have a summer of truer writing ahead.

Or so I hope.

poésie.

2006-05-15T21:41:00.000-07:00

Stanley Kunitz died yesterday. I only just found out. Please, read this. It's fitting.

The Long Boat

When his boat snapped loose
from its mooring, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.
Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.
He was content to lie down
with the family ghosts
in the slop of his cradle,
buffeted by the storm,
endlessly drifting.
Peace! Peace!
To be rocked by the Infinite!
As if it didn't matter
which way was home;
as if he didn't know
he loved the earth so much
he wanted to stay forever.

S. Kunitz

joie.

2006-05-11T11:54:00.000-07:00

I wish I had words for how in love I am. I'm still amazed sometimes that he's not just some wishful figment of my crazed imagination, or the result of some fantastic mirrored dream. It's crazy. I wish I could better describe this mutual incredulity.

But life is mysterious and wonderful and strange, and I'm so happy to be sharing it with someone who feels so much the same.

livres.

2006-05-09T10:13:00.000-07:00

This list of meaningful books - according to men and women - is both fascinating and funny.

My personal list is, or would be, much more close to the male version than the female. I've never been able to so much as finish anything by the Brontes' or Jane Austen, The Handmaid's Tale I understood to be important but bored me to tears nonetheless, and Toni Morrison has never done it for me. By contrast, Camus remains one of my favorite writers, The Catcher in the Rye was one of those books that I read at just the right time (I wanted to be Holden), and while I place Pynchon above Heller as far as 'life changing' goes, I think the two are comparable enough.

But if I were to make a list of books that had changed my life? Off the top of my head:

Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

Ken Wilber's Sex, Ecology, Spirituality (also Grace and Grit which was about the death of his wife; also a few of his earlier books)

Robert Nozick's Philosophical Explanations

George Lakoff and Mark Johnsons's Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought

Earnest Becker's The Denial of Death

Sartre's Nausea

I know. Only the last of these is fiction. I'm a little reluctant to recommend any of them, either, because I read these books in high school, and with the rare exception, haven't revisited any. I want to say that they were life-changing, though, because of how powerfully I remember them all. These are the books that I literally cried over.

Funny, no?

Pirsig's book in particular I thought was the most beautiful thing I'd ever encountered; I think even today I'd enjoy it. The Nozick inclusion could have, I'm sure, been substituted with any other book on philosophy (in fact, I'd guess that today I'd be nowhere near so smitten with what I know now is a fundamentally libertarian approach), but it was what I had at the time and at the time it took my breath away.

I was such a sad little creature back then. I was so hungry for answers and meaning, and so utterly confused by other people. Intellect and spirituality and the structure of systems seemed so pure and beautiful and safe, and these books seemed to recognize this.

Anyway.

écoute.

2006-03-30T09:38:00.000-08:00

I walk to work along a four mile stretch of highway 82, which necessitates some form of substitute noise. Ordinarily I don't mind being totally in my environment, but the whoosh of traffic at fifteen feet is not the most grounding of sounds. The journey has given me a renewed appreciation for my iPod, and for fast and glitchy techno: I like listening to music that complements, rather than battles, the highway shrieks. My daily hour-long concerts have made me more aware of my aural environment in general, which is unsual for me. I've always been the sort who's been able to easily tune out the sounds around me (don't most readers develop this defense early on?), but now I find myself inadvertently listening.

I'm lucky to be in an office in which I control what I hear. There is always a low radio on in billing and customer service, and if I worked in one of those departments, I'd be surrounded by some form of music for the majority of my day. This seems a recipe for the disenchantment of sound. Then again, I'm not sure that the empty pop that's piped into Suite C qualifies as music. In any case, my space right now is quiet. I have a hard time working and listening to music.

Over the past week, I've assigned myself a little project during my morning walk. I look for something I've never seen before. The world is full of such things; today I saw a sky blue crayon, unused, lying next to a puddle on the side of the road. I spent the next few blocks dreaming up stories as to how it had gotten there.

aperçu.

2006-03-18T19:49:00.000-08:00

Do you know how much I love it here?

I spent most of this evening at a coffee shop, curled up with one of my favorite authors, and indulging in occassional breaks to eavesdrop on the coversations going on around me.

(For instance: the couple sitting next to me consisted of some sort of children's therapist and her quasi-boyfriend, a man whom she was seeing but who, from the sounds of it, was dating other women as well. The therapist was surprisingly judgmental in her evaluations of her clients, and was also prone to swearing: her ongoing monologues were heavily punctuated by the word 'fuck.' The man she was with kept touching her suggestively -- stroking her thigh, giving her a footrub, etc. -- as he asked her about how to handle his other relationships. They were fantasticallly inappropriate, on so many levels. You can see how this exchange could easily have been as intriguing as any novel.)

I walked home as the sun was setting over the palm trees. I saw a man with a fishing rod on his front porch, perfecting his cast over the front lawn. He waved at me as I walked by. It was beautiful.

Now I'm supposed to be getting ready to go to some sort of party put on by the friend of one of my professors. It's apparently an annual affair -- something to do with the beginning of spring -- and I'd be more excited about going if my throat didn't hurt so badly. I can hardly swallow, and I'm worried that I've caught strep from one of my co-workers.

Still, though, life is very, very good.

vouloir.

2006-02-27T20:23:00.000-08:00

I felt so frustratingly restless today.

This generally comes about after M leaves; I anxiously want to scoot into the future, toward the time when we'll be able to live together. Our occasional weekends are wonderful, to be sure, and all the more vivid for their infrequency, but I still can't help but hunger for something more.

It is frustrating, though, because I know I'm fortunate to be here. I love my job. I love my grad program. And at the same time I want to be finished with both; I want to have graduated; I want to have obtained my license. I want to take a year off to travel and learn at least one language; I want to decide in what country I want to live. I know this eagerness for the future is silly. Life won't be any easier, certainly, once I get there, and god knows it can't possibly be any more enjoyable than it is now.

Still. I want, as usual.

autre tentative.

2006-02-26T12:31:00.000-08:00

I need to write here again. It's getting ridiculous. I miss the community I used to be more a part of. I miss the luxury of sitting down and sorting out my thoughts. I miss the habit, and the easy fluidity with which words start to flow. The writing I do now is exclusively for work and for my classes, and it has a different feeling entirely. This? This is heaven.

I haven't been writing because, I say, lamely, excusing myself, I haven't had time. This is not entirely true, though. I don't have an exorbitant amount of time, but there are days in which I don't have class in the evenings, days in which I do get home before ten or eleven at night, and there's no reason why I can't put aside a few of those minutes for an entry.

I haven't been writing because, I say, lamely, I have nothing to write about, or, more to the point, because I feel the need to censor. I don't want to expose anything about my day job, and don't want to betray the confidences of my classmates or clients. This limits me. This makes me think I'd be better off keeping a private journal. Perhaps I'll talk myself into it yet.

The thing is, I miss writing here. I miss, again, the interaction. I miss the checks and balances on my thought process, and I miss being able to cull and respond to the richer ideas of others. I don't know whether I need to just recognize that now is not the time to move back here; I don't know whether these fleeting efforts to reestablish myself on these pages are anything more than lazy nostalgia.

I have too much going on, I think, and I relish all of it, but at the same time I feel the pull of wanting all this too-muchness to be over. It bothers me, this eagerness to race ahead. I'm happy now; why am I squandering an entirely pleasant and challenging and frankly wonderful period on impatient wishes for post-graduation? I know full well as soon as I get settled into private practice (this has been a dream for so long) I'll start getting anxious and restless and eager to travel. The tension I feel has nothing to do with my outside environment, and everything to do with internal regulations. I am content here, when I take the time to notice.

It's these miniature insights, these gifts to myself, that I miss when I don't write.

pénitencier.

2006-02-09T09:14:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across a New York Times article two days ago that I read with mild interest. It was a brief description of the role of moral disengagement in prison staff members, especially those who worked on death row: it chronicled an ongoing line of research at Stanford, in which the conclusion was that the closer the staff was to the execution process, the higher their levels of justification (moral, social, and economic), and the greater their denial of any personal responsibility.

I hadn't given much thought to the topic, but I was meditating this morning and later, on my way to work, I realized how the article related to a central Buddhist tenet. It's not a particularly brilliant insight, but I appreciated the connection nonetheless. It's merely that a deep engagement in life - that remaining as aware as possible in and of each moment - is the path toward compassion, and thus toward a more ethical and a more moral life. It's awareness (and a commitment to staying aware), and not reason, that provides the clearest path toward skillful behavior.

I am not denigrating reason and rational argument by any means; rather, I was just struck by the power of justification - and the depth of their belief - and how essential this was to allowing them to do the work they do. I'm doubtful that many of them could be argued out of their actions, but I'd be very curious to see what effect meditation would have.

dansent.

2006-01-27T21:59:00.000-08:00

I am humbled by surprise, and I have no shame.

Last night, my graduate program was introduced to a practice with the embarrassingly unblushing name of authentic movement. I'd had a vague notion of what the exercise entailed; we'd been already well-steeped in the verbal equivalent, in the sort of radical community building in which a group of adults sit together in a circle with no agenda and no direction, and speak - honestly - only when they felt personally moved to do so. I'd known full well the intensity of that form of relating, and, too, the excitement of such an unpredictable situation. Still, the prospect of exploring the same realm without the use of language seemed ridiculous. I had dinner with a few of my classmates before hand, and commented cynically that I didn't think I'd be "moved to move" that night. I thought, frankly, that the whole notion of dance therapy fell within a bubble of pretentious exhibitionism.

The description of the exercise served only to solidify this belief. We sat as a group in a dimly lit room, and were told we would be split into dyads. We would take turns at moving and witnessing the movement, with half the class first taking center stage, closing their eyes, and exploring what they felt, while the other half watched. The movers were instructed only to stand, or sit, until they felt within themselves the impulse to move, at which point they could follow that impulse; the witnesses were instructed only to make sure their partners didn't inadvertently injure each other.

It sounded stupid.

I volunteered to move first.

I stood, eyes closed, limbs relaxed, and waited, and waited, and waited, and because standing in one position cannot be done for long, I eventually felt a pull, a tug, a plea: some tension in my body was asking to be released. And so I started moving, tentatively at first, and then with more assurance.

There is nothing more I can say; the experience was incredible. I don't remember exactly how long our sessions were, but my own exploration led me from a tense prowl - imagine being blindfolded in a room, surrounded by other moving bodies, and you can get a feeling of how alert one's senses become - to the oddly luxurious sensation of rolling, cat-like, on the carpeted floor, with all manner of utterly unforeseen motions and rhythms and moments of relaxation in between. I felt like laughing; the entire experience was ripe with indulgence and relief. My body felt amazing.

And so the time spent moving was over too soon. The bell rang and I reluctantly opened my eyes. Half the class reluctantly opened their eyes. I felt exhilarated, but it was time to watch, and I took a seat at the edge of the room. Those who had been watching stood within. I waited.

I've never seen a dance more elegant, or more raw, or more true. It sounds like an overstatement, but the looks on the faces of this collection of persons were so peaceful, and so self-contained, and so utterly and blissfully alone; it was like nothing I've ever seen before. It sounds like an overstatement, but the intricacy of the movement, the way in which this collection of blinded individuals moved and circled around each other, looked like nothing less than brilliant choreography. I wanted to cry at how beautiful it all was. I wanted to cry at how wrong I'd been.

We talked a little, after the exercise, about what we'd felt, but this discussion, while wonderful, paled in comparison to the practice. I wanted nothing more than to come home, to sit as in meditation, and instead of directing my body's gestures, to allow them to direct me. I couldn't believe how fascinating such a thing could be. I couldn't believe how out-of-touch I'd been.

I'd thought I'd danced before. I'd taken ballet for years. I thought I'd danced before; I'm not unfamiliar with clubbing. What I'd done before was not dancing.

I write this only as a reminder. I don't know whether I have the courage or the commitment to make a practice of this - it's a frightening and bewildering and uncomfortable exercise to explain - but I want to remember how lovely it was. I want to remember what it was like to be, creatively, in my body. I want to remember how different it was than running or yoga or swimming. I want to remember how free I felt, and I want to remember how grateful I was when my cynicism so easily dissolved.

I had no idea.

Close your eyes. Flood your body with attention. See where it wants to move.

effilent.

2006-01-14T12:18:00.000-08:00

I posted this as a comment at another site, but wanted to save it here as well.

I've been reading with half-hearted dismay the recent revelations about James Frey's A Million Little Pieces.

I feel terrible for Frey. He's obviously got some incredible lack within him to feel the need to fabricate something so extreme, and to feel the need to lie so drastically in return for affection. The whole story is just sad. I don't by any means want to excuse what he did, though; I've already seen any number of attempted defenses of his work, people who've said that they felt the emotional timbre of the story is true, and people who've said they credit him for capturing the psychological reality of addiction. Because of this, they say, and because of how his work has served as the inspiration for others to heal, he should not be villified for the work.

I dont' believe he should be vilified. I also don't believe that he came anywhere near to capturing the emotional truths of addiction or recovery. He did put his finger on the pain and compulsion associated with being an addict (there were entire passages that could have been the blind and blunted howls of my own brain), but being able to describe the primitive nature of those drives is only part of it. It was strange to me, when I read the book, that Frey didn't touch on the petrifying emptiness, the inability to love oneself, or the reasons behind the viscious attempt to escape. He wrote he was focused on the future; that he didn't see the point of blame, but it sounded more to me as though he hadn't come to accept the roots of his past.

(I say this in part because is no necessary blame that comes from exploring these roots, an important realization that he didn't seem to understand. He wanted to take the entire blame for his history, but this claim rings so hollow. I take full responsbility for my own wrong-headed youth, and full responsibility for the damage I inflicted on myself and those I loved, but I don't blame myself, nor anyone else, for it. I understand the difficulties in my childhood that led to my decisions, and I accept them. Blame plays no role.)

I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt - his path was not mine, nor could mine possibly be anyone else's - but the fact that he so virulently rejected AA and the 12-step program in favor of 'will-power' seemed a little unbelievable to me. No one recovers alone, and it's irresponsible and cruel to tell other addicts that it's merely a lack of will-power that's destroying them. It's not will-power that saves, but love, and this seems so sadly absent from both Frey's book and his situation now. It might be true that not every addict 'finds God,' but every addict does and must surrender to something greater than his or her own ego. Frey never does.

I don't wish to say much more about this, though, other than it's a sad story on all fronts and it's tragic that the pain and insecurity that lead to the book being published is causing so much more pain and anger now.

retourner.

2006-01-13T13:32:00.000-08:00

I survived Las Vegas. No; that's an understatement: Las Vegas was wonderful. I had a good time there last winter (I went with a friend of mine in an attempt to escape the holidays: we chose the least Christmas-y venue we could think of, curious about what sort of human being would end up on the Strip on December 25th), but this post-New Year's event was phenomenal. The Adult Entertainment Expo was itself a bizarrely wonderful experience, but M and I, who stayed through the entire weekend, managed to take advantage of far, far too much good food (Rosemary's was outstanding), and one excellent show. We spent Saturday night at ICE, where I danced my legs into jelly during John Digweed's set. To say I was pleasantly surprised would be putting it lightly: the stereotypical sense of a weekend in Vegas is not exactly my idea of a good time, but I was thoroughly impressed by the nightlife and the dining and the general voyeurism of the place. I made it back in time to put in half-a-day at the office on Monday, although my attempt at compiling a database of all the contacts I'd made was a little embarrassing. I have a pile of business cards, and stacks of material, but the starlets had started to blur together by the second day, and I'm still trying to make sense of my notes.

We drove back; I was at work on Monday, and it was only then that I realized that the winter semester was starting on Wednesday. I still feel exhausted. I'm still trying to get an idea of my workload this semseter (it's going to be a bit more; I know I have papers due weekly; I'm a little overwhelmed already by what we're expected to produce for my Thursday class) and still trying to readjust to the grad school mindset. It'll happen, I'm sure. The next few months are going to push my time management skills to new levels.

This entry is the product of a dulled mind, though. I'm looking forward to establishing a necessary routine over the next few months: I've been keeping up with my meditation and weights and I want, desperately, to start running again. I have a feeling that I won't be engaging in anything particularly exciting before March, when this section of classes end, but I also have the sense that this will be a period of accomplishment. I need to focus on myself for a bit. I've written this before.

I just finished writing a review of Jessica Vale's (excellent) Sex Album; though I feel as though I haven't been as productive today as I would have liked. I have another book to cover, which I'd like to get done before this weekend, and another puff piece on one of our members, but right now I'm lacking the motivation to produce anything work-related. I'm too distracted by my poorly-shaped weekend (two papers, an art project, a scary amount of reading, and the fact that I want to catch up with a small group of friends post-holiday). Sad, this; I'd just determined that one of my goals for the upcoming 6-8 months is to remain as engaged as possible at work: I want to focus on the writing I do here, and I want to affect the lives of those I write for, and those I write about. I feel fortunate to be in such a position and it bothers me when the demands of the rest of my life interfere with my ability to feel connected.

I'm going to go for a quick walk. I'm going to write more tonight. I'm going to be gentle.

abouchant.

2006-01-04T19:51:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about work recently.

This short week is leading to a little added pressure; I'm allowing myself a little slack in the number of articles I come up with because I've got extra background work to do before this weekend's Expo. I haven't really had time to think about what it is I need to do there, and haven't had time to so much as think about packing. I've been preoccupied with my sets of interviews and conversations for the community magazine I'm responsible for. And so I've been thinking about work.

It took me a while to find a voice and a place for myself in this fledgling production. When I was first brought on board to the company, which runs all manner of online networking sites, and first given the task of shaping the new magazine, I was at a loss as to what direction to take. The magazine is, ostensibly, part of a dating site, yet the articles I posted, fluffy cosmopolitan bits about big-city serial daters, about how-tos for sharp profiles, about navigating that first face-to-face meeting, received only a lukewarm response. I tried for spicier. No luck. I tried more conservative. Nothing there either. My confusion grew. I was used to writing for a specific reader, yet this readership was too wide-spread to easily pitch anything to. It was impossible to please them all.

A few months into the job, still frustrated by the broadness of the audience and their seeming disinterest in any of the topics I approached, I stumbled across a member profile that sounded interesting. I wrote, curious about this woman's story, and ended up conducting an impromptu interview about what turned out to be an extraordinary life. I shaped it into a quick feature article, posted it to the site with a link to her profile, and found, to my surprise, that the response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic.

I'd found the answer. The site members, it turns out, love reading about their own. They love reading about the variety of lives, and the shared threads of emotion and growth and occasional loneliness they all experience. They love reading about other members who live in other parts of the world. And I love doing the work . . . I love scrounging around for intriguing voices (not always easy . . . the most banal personals ads hide the most incredible stories), and I love engaging them in conversation, and I love teasing out what's most remarkable about their lives. I wrote about a woman who'd survived last year's tsunami. I wrote about an Australian who witnessed the car accident that killed her long-estranged sister. I'm working right now on a short article about a former civics teacher who took up triathlons after he retired, and has now completed five Ironmans, including one in which he crashed and fractured three vertebrae in his neck. These people are all amazing; their perspectives on life are beautiful; none of this was mentioned in their profiles.

I love hearing these people's stories, and I love telling them, and it's funny, because when I took the job, I never thought I'd end up making the connections (and by this I mean the connections between others, not personal connections for my own ambitions) I do. I never thought I'd end up spreading these little seeds of community. It's gratifying, and I'm surprisingly happy to be there.

After I commented, at lunch today, on this sense of satisfaction, one of my co-workers reminded me that it was my doing: I could have just kept on posting pieces about the perils of singledom in NYC, just as I was hired to do. Instead, I kept hunting for some way to engage. It's funny how much of a difference making a difference (however minor) can make in oneself, and to one's approach to work. I feel, now, as though the writing I do matters somehow: I give voice to the humanity behind all these searching faces. It's small, but it's something, and I'm happy for this.

I'm happy, too, that I'm being flown to Las Vegas tomorrow, to cover the Adult Entertainment Expo for another site the company runs. The AVN Awards are on Sunday. It's not every job that gives you the opportunity to attend The Oscars of Porn.

pluie.

2006-01-02T17:27:00.000-08:00

Today I had a beautiful talk with Lorianne; today I requested my birth certificate from the New York Vital Records department (I'm working on getting citizenship in the EU. Today's demand was a first step, but a significant one); today I holed up in my apartment while the rain poured down and made, contrary to my earlier indignancies about the New Year, all sorts of lists of what I wanted to do before I die and the dreams I have for this next year. (It's a strange position to be in: I at once both love my life and, given the chance, would not change one iota of it, but also am looking forward to so, so much in my future. Sometimes it's hard to stay present.) I committed to 100days, and though I think I'm already a few months into this dedication, I like checking in with a community.

(And a note of happiness. M is on his way down to visit. It almost scares me how I just keep falling more and more deeply in love with this man.)

It's daunting, writing again. I feel as though I'm stumbling over myself with all I want to express, or all I want to commit to the page. I keep wanting to go back and catch up (I could write about Christmas; I could write about Syriana, the first film I've seen, or wanted to see, in theaters since June; I could write about how I looked at a newspaper this past weekend for the first time in weeks and wondered how it was that I ever used to need that morning ritual; I could write about this sound and how it reminds me being a little girl again), but this seems somehow both useless and silly. I'm here now, and that was then, and while the past is invaluable and there is nothing wrong with reflection I should come at it from a place of enthusiasm and curiosity, and not overwhelmed obligation.

Now, though, here, there is triviality. I'm looking forward to a short week. Today was a vacation - one which I'd forgotten completely about; it was an admittedly appreciated surprise - and on Friday I'm flying to Las Vegas for work. Fortunately I don't have too many other obligations - a client on Tuesday and my own Wednesday appointment - but it's still going to mean I'll be a little more cramped for time than usual.

Did I mention my New Year's Eve was wonderful? Did I mention I love the word auspicious? Did I mention that these three questions are intimately related?

astiquer.

2006-01-01T12:04:00.000-08:00

I’ve been forced, this morning, to take a bath.

A week ago, our building manager, in a poorly-planned attempt to clean the pipes in my apartment complex, managed to clog the cold water line feeding the showers, so whilst my sinks function perfectly, I’ve been stranded with a shower that spews forth only scalding water. I have a high tolerance for heat, and a love of spa-like excursions, and for a while was able to improvise with what I can only describe as a steam shower: I would stand next to the boiling flow and ‘bathe’ in escaped droplets. While I didn’t ever feel entirely rinsed, it made for pleasantly relaxing mornings at work.

Today, though, I feel I really do need to get more seriously wet. And so I’ve drawn a tub full of superhot water, I’ve lit a stick of mild lavender incense, and I’m waiting for the Jacuzzi to cool enough for me to step in.

It’s a nice excuse, I must admit. I’ve been here for half a year and have only once made full use of the Japanese tub; ordinarily it merely serves as the area in which I stand to shower. It’s a nicely symbolic exercise: a cleansing of the past year.

The thing is, I don’t want to wash myself of this past year. I’d been intending to write a little retrospective (this is expected, no? a reflection on the past twelve months, a summing up, a setting of goals for the future?), but year has been too wonderful to wrap up in a package of assessment, and the weird feeling of transition I have right now doesn't lend itself to the arbitrary snipping of tonight. I'm in the middle of too much; I'm happy with my life, giddily so, and not much interested in reflection.

Perhaps this is an excuse, though. I’m not sure why I’m expressing any reluctance to summarize. I feel embarrassingly proud of what I’ve accomplished, and there is still something in me that feels unable to take complete credit for it all: I feel so much more as though life has slid beautifully in to place. This, though, is absurd: I’ve worked hard – more so than I’ve ever done in the past, and this is saying something – over the last six months especially. I feel a little, too, as though to take the time to breathe into it all might somehow jinx things, though this is also absurd. What I feel most of all, though, is that I am still in transition, and what might seem like culmination on the outside, what might seem like objective accomplishment, is, subjectively, merely another step on a path I’ve only just begun. It’s not that I’d feel dissatisfied with stepping back, or disappointed, but more something like impatience: yes, yes, this is all good, but let’s keep living . . . let’s work with what’s here now.

I don’t know.

I feel the need to say something about this time last year.

M had broken up with me a few weeks month prior. This, while not the worst, was certainly the most painful experience of my life: for the first time ever I was learning what it meant to allow myself to feel, and for the first time ever I’d understood what emotions meant. I felt more in that relationship than I had in my entire life up to that point, and to have it so brutally ripped from me was devastating.

His reasons were clear, and understandable; he was worried he was getting in the way of my recovery and was worried he would end up inadvertently enabling my still-limping addictions, and my anorexia especially. I don’t want to explain this; there were certainly events that, in retrospect, I was too flippant about. Still, when he told me he couldn’t see me anymore, I’d thought I’d stop breathing.

What I wrote to a friend of mine not long ago was that the month that we spent apart was overwhelming valuable. I gave M up entirely; I thought I’d never see him again. And in doing so, I realized during that all the love and brilliance and perfection I'd felt for and from him was something I was responsible for. I realized the relationship was merely a mirror for projecting those shining parts of me I couldn't bring myself to take credit for on my own (to do so would seem unbearably narcissistic). I realized that if I was capable of feeling that for and with him, then it was certainly possible for me to experience that on my own. I relished the pain because it was MINE: I'd walked into that relationship, and chosen to make myself vulnerable, and it was me (and only me) who could bear responsibility for the result. So it was my bliss, and my pain, and I reveled in both, and walked (and sobbed and wailed) through the latter.

The paradoxical result was that experience freed me to love so much more fearlessly. I know that I’m perfectly capable of being – in the fullest sense of the word – on my own, and knowing this allows me to love (and not just in a romantic sense, but my family and friends as well) without expectation and without fear of consequences. And I’m unbearably grateful for this.

My point, though, in writing that, was merely to say that the month of December and early January were a period of amazing growth for me: the health gains I made, not just emotionally, but physically as well, were tremendous. My point is that I feel in many ways as though I went through a similar growth spurt this past month: from the outside markers of making certain financial investments and launching my new practice, to the interior (and harder to express) changes in how I relate to myself and my future, I feel as though I’ve grown a great deal in a short amount of time. I’m looking forward to the shakeout over this spring.

But I think my bath had cooled enough by now. It’s time to sit.

rêve et resolutions.

2005-12-29T21:19:00.000-08:00

I'm looking forward to Saturday night. Last New Year's I spent meditating with a local group in San Jose; last New Year's I remember was colored by the tsunami that had just occurred; last New Year's had a somber air. Sitting in meditative silence, surrounded by candles, and breathing toward the alleviation of suffering, seemed not just appropriate, but somehow necessary. This year a friend of mine, along with her boyfriend, is coming to visit from the east coast. We'll be indulging in long conversations fueled by a sauna and champagne at my apartment. I know I have quite a bit to reflect on, and even more to look forward to, and I know S and I have literally hours of life to discuss.

But this is not what I meant to write about. What I meant to write about was the phenomenon of New Year's resolutions. Last year I adopted what then seemed like a good policy: I was determined to have none. My resolution was to accept myself just as I was. I knew, then, that I had a long way to go. I knew, then, that my life was far from perfect. I knew then that I had all manner of changes to make. I also knew, though, that hunting around for those parts of my personality and lifestyle that were wrong, and that needed to be righted, or that were flawed, and that needed to be fixed, was precisely the wrong way to go about it.

What I needed then was acceptance. Setting up some goal that I had to make, and that I might possibly fail at, would have just provided me with fodder for self-abuse, and while at that point I was recovered enough not to worry too much about relapsing, the danger was there. I knew the downward spiral of criticism all too well. And so I resolved to love myself, and to want no changes.

I think that might have been one of the most difficult resolutions of my life. Luckily I'd already been practicing for a while.

Now, a year later, I've attained more than I ever would have allowed myself. It's a little humbling; I know if I'd laid out a set of goals a year ago, or if I'd been asked where I saw myself - and even where I hoped to see myself - in twelve months, I'd be nowhere near the level at which I'm currently living. It's more than a little humbling; it's unbelievable.

This year, though, I'm torn. I don't feel I need such kid gloved treatment any more. I think I'd be fine with setting up a series of even challenging resolutions. I can set a direction and set goals and harbor expectations without worrying that I'll somehow fail to support myself if they turn out to have been too ambitious. Still, I'm torn. On the one hand, the overwhelming effectiveness of this project of self-acceptance is undeniable to me. The changes that happened over the past year seemed less demanded as they did merely necessary: they happened in spite of myself, because they were right, and because I could see no other way.

(These changes included, just to keep a list: finding a new full time job as a writer; getting into graduate school; moving into a new apartment in a different town; buying a new car; opening a coaching practice; maintaining a long-term-and-distance relationship; and all manner of small habits such as daily running and meditation, weight lifting, a healthy diet, and so on.)

And so, given this, I feel that it would be logical to set the same resolution for this year.

On the other hand, I am feeling the need, or at least I'm aware of the desire, to direct my life a little more. This is partly because I find myself suddenly in the midst of a bizarre spurt of extreme energy and enthusiasm and curiosity about life, and my own in particular. It's a strange situation to be in - feeling at once that my days are filled to capacity with for-now satisfying activities, yet at the same time feeling puppyishly eager to cast myself into some amazing future that I can sense but not quite see.

The desire to shape this future, or at least to think it out, is admittedly strong. I want to start setting out particular goals. I want to start actively moving toward something more ambitious than my degree, my practice. There are these things, to be sure, and while they feel right, even necessary, they don't quite feel sufficient. I'm hungry for more, but I'm worried only that I have no idea as to the scope of this call. What specific goals do I set? What do I look for?

But this is getting silly. I went from New Year's resolutions to major life goals. It's late; I'm getting sloppy. I think this writing, though, has helped something. I'm holding last year's non-resolution, and adding a rider: being open to the most absurdly grand possibilities.

And being open, too, to laughing uproariously at my own fantastically naive ambition.

viande.

2005-12-28T13:02:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine asked recently about whether someone who was vegetarian, but who wore leather shoes, should be considered a hypocrite.

My response was no, or at least that it depended on that person's reasons for their diet. If they were vegetarian for health reasons, or even environmental ones, their choice to wear birks isn't necessarily at odds with their decision to eschew meat. And even if this alledged perpetrator did claim to be a veggie because he or she wasn't comfortable killing animals, there's still no reason to lambaste her. After all, she's doing something. Every little bit helps.

The topic got me to thinking, though.

I'm not a vegetarian. I was vegan for a while, macrobiotic for a while, ovo-lacto for a while . . . etc. I have no moral pretenses for my diet back then: I was anorexic, and just wanted an excuse to cut out as many foods from my life as possible. What's funny is that now, most days of the week, and most weeks of the month, I eat an overwhelmingly vegetarian / low-suffering / low-ecological impact diet. I eat mostly fruits and vegetables, a little dairy, whole grains, with some variety of fish for dinner. It just occurred to me, actually, that, in the six months since I moved in, I haven't cooked any variety of meat in my apartment.

Still, I do like to indulge myself. I don't care for even the taste of mass-produced, factory farmed chickens or cattle, but if I'm at a restaurant and there's foie gras on the menu, I have no qualms about ordering it. Ditto a nice grass-fed steak. I'm not really interested in justifying these decisions (I like good food and I like treating myself), although I do know that the sort of restaurants I favor do tend to obtain healthier meats, not the sort you'd find packaged on styrofoam supermarket trays.

Again, I could do the calculus and say that, on the whole, my diet now is much more earth and animal friendly than a) it's been in the past and b) that of most Americans. I say this because I now buy farm fresh produce and eat no (literally no; it's one of the problems with being celiac) processed foods. At the same time, again, I don't really care about the cost / benefit ratio, or about arguing with others about my position.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that, again, every little bit counts. I think one of the big detractors from people adopting a vegetarian diet is because of the all-or-nothing approach. What's wrong with eating mostly vegetarian? It beats rejecting the practice entirely. Subscribing to a vegetarian diet and swearing off meat forever is a daunting prospect, and I think both the ecological and animal-rights causes would be more effective overall if they'd just encourage people to just cut down a little.

Secondly, these are the sorts of decisions people need to make up their own minds about. If you don't feel compassion for a cow, or if you don't feel the earth is something that should be treated more gently, no amount of arguing is going to help. Even comparisions (you wouldn't eat your dog, would you?) aren't effective. Beating someone over the head with their moral failings is really not the way to bring them to your side. Encouraging their deeper, more compassionate nature is. And the only way to bring this out is to show that you understand them.

But now i'm getting off topic, and flaunting my beliefs all over the place. While I'll agree that awareness raising in schools helps, and increasing conversations about the misery of factory farming is important, once people have this information, there's no need to give them more. In this equation, compassion is more crucial than knowledge in bringing about change. Argument defeats the purpose.

As does the fear of being hypocritical. Again, as long as you're not screaming at others that they're murdering cows, it's fine if you're a vegetarian-for-moral-reasons who wears leather shoes. You're doing something. it's better than naught.

un nouveau projet.

2005-12-28T08:51:00.000-08:00

I feel the need to say a little more here. I want to place at least one more footprint, with the intention of following with more. I'm looking forward to coming back to this place. I've missed it.

There were a number of reasons for letting go of NEN; the purpose of the journal originally had been to track my recovery process through a manner of less-than-happy addictions and troubles, and I the more I moved forward in my life, the less I wanted the repository or monument of my struggles to define who I was. This is not to say I'm somehow denying my past; rather, I feel I'm so much more that now, and I don't want my earlier challenges to precede who I am now. Also, my school and later job meant that I could no longer be as candid as I'd been in the past: I had the privacy of others to be aware of.

In any case, I've missed the process of writing as myself for even a minor audience, and I feel grounded enough now, here, to start thinking about re-starting the practice. It seems all the more essential, too, given the number of projects I'm involved with, that I create a public space for myself in which to keep checking in with my committment to myself and to others. After all, I believe whole-heartedly in the value of sharing one's path.

I've found myself putting an unusual amount of time recently into pushing myself to define what it is I want from life, to making my values explicit, and to actively writing down my goals and desires. I'm looking forward to writing more about this process, but for now, I'll share only the vision by which I've directed my life for the past six months. I came up with this statement at the urging of a fellow ITP graduate, who made explicit to me the difference between a mission statement, which has more to do with your objectives and how you intend to reach them, and a vision statement, which has more to do with the way in which you want to live your life. I've found that my own quick statement serves as a reminder of how I want to behave on a day-to-day basis, helping to ground and clarify my actions.

I live my life with awareness, assurance, and compassion, loving myself so that I might help increase the capacity of others to be aware, to love, and to be loved. I create connections. I commit to peace.

I'm tempted to write some kind of disclaimer here, about how even a year or two ago I would have rolled my eyes at such a silly exercise -- and even more so at the embarrassingly sentimental results -- but I've gained a firm and intensely experiential understanding of the power of really and truly accepting oneself, and my vision is something I believe in deeply.

I may come back and write a little more about the process of discovering (or creating: use what works for you) a vision statement; if not, I'll move on to values next. It's funny: I sat down with the intention of jotting a few words. It turns out I have more to say than I thought. At this point, though, this should not surprise me.

réseau.

2005-12-24T23:26:00.000-08:00

I'm excited about this. It came along at the perfect time, although I'm not sure whether the invitation to join that community was what precipitated my recently redoubled efforts in actively creating my life, or whether it was just another synchronicity that happened to coalesce. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that over the past month I've been more committed than ever to making sure the life I'm now so blithely enjoying is the one I want to enjoy. And I'm excited about this project.

I suppose it's part of the reason why I've chosen to disable comments. I recognize that this, on the surface, is a fantastically narcissistic pursuit. I'm working on such seeming banalities as fitness and productivity and self-improvement, and I don't particularly expect or want a great deal of feedback - or advice - on how I'm doing. What I want is accountability, and, too, to be helpful, and to inspire. The words 'on the surface' and 'seeming' in the first sentences of this paragraph were there for a reason. In my heart of hearts, I believe that projects like these - projects in which individuals make a radical commitment to accepting themselves and living their own truths (I hate how trite this sounds) and to both recognize and grow their own essential values - are what make the greatest difference in the world.

In any case, I'm excited to see where this is going to end up. End up? With luck it won't. I'm excited about the process.

encore.

2005-12-23T19:44:00.000-08:00

I'm taking this up again not because I have the time. I'm taking this up precisely for the opposite reason: that I don't. Between my work and graduate school and a long distance relationship and, most recently, this new coaching venture I'm embarking upon, I feel spread thin. This does not trouble me as it once would have; I'm no longer worried about the consequences of stress and overwork. Still, I can feel that I'm losing touch with myself, and I don't like the acid defenses I adopt as a result.

So I'm taking this up again in hopes of creating a space of dialogue and recognition. I know how much more beautiful the world is when I operate from a place of authenticity, and I want to do this as much as possible. I'm taking this up again because over the past months I've been pushing at others to examine their own lives, to ask themselves whether they're happy doing what they're doing, and whether or not they're content with who they are, and it's impossible for me to ask these questions of anyone without, at the same time, questioning myself.

I could attach a summary here, a brief overview of where I am right now, from the perspective of education or career or family or spirit or in terms of my relationship to myself, but I'd prefer to let this unfold naturally. I'm writing because I want to be more accountable to myself. It's this that matters.

loren ipsum.

2005-09-11T04:40:00.000-07:00

Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit . . .

"There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain . . ."