Here's the Story...

We all have a story. We are all starring in our very own movie, wrapped up in the thick of a plot rife with problems and resolutions. We move about in search of contentment, fulfillment, solace, companionship, acknowledgment, money, power, security, love. We find these things and then we lose them. We meet new challenges, new setbacks, new opportunities. We change scenes, change roles, change beliefs, change hair color. We grow older, wiser, jaded, wrinkled. It's a lot. It's a really long movie.

Our stories define us. They complete us. They are a road map of the chapters of our lives. We cling to them and exploit them and obsess over them. We build little villages in our heads and our hearts to keep our stories safe and alive and a part of who we are, always. We get lost in the weight of our narrative and we lose pieces of ourselves in the tangle of the plot. Life becomes rote; we write ourselves into corners.

Life should not be lived on cruise control, heading towards the inevitable. Life is rich and chaotic and unpredictable. We can't wrap it up in a pretty bow and call  it any one thing, The End. Don't buy into that. Don't believe you're someone who doesn't get what they want. Don't believe you're someone who is unlucky, someone who won't find love, who is getting old, who is failing. Don't believe you're trapped, it's over, the moment is lost. So long as we're still breathing, we never reach the end. We are radiant, spontaneous, organic, resilient, never-ending stories.

And we are all part of a much larger tale. We are each just a speck of dust along the corridor of this vast and magnificent universe. Lose yourself in that.  Lose yourself in the moments for which there are no words. Lose yourself in the parts that surprise you, the unexpected joy and sorrow and commotion and jubilation that shake you, that make you feel full and awakened and alive. You can do anything. You can be anyone. Forget the story. Wipe the residue of your past from your mind and heart, and just make it all up as you go along.

Definitely Not the Dalai Lama

I want things. Is that okay? Is it okay to want inner peace and a really large house? Is it alright to want to reach the pinnacle of spiritual enlightenment, while driving a black Range Rover Sport with tan leather interior? I apologize to those of you who expected more from me. I am owning up. And the list doesn’t stop there. I want things. I want material things, and despite all my efforts to find zen, these desires continue to badger.

What can I say? I’m not the Dalai Lama. I can’t seem to let go of this steady stream of desire. I want shoes and handbags and brand new pots and pans. I want chiseled abs and nicer hair and someone to read this blog and offer me a book deal and maybe a stint on Oprah. I do. I want to be rich and accomplished and look beautiful while doing so. Uh huh. That’s right, I said it.

It is so easy to believe that there are conditions that are prerequisite to finding happiness. We are filled with “I can’t wait until”s and “as soon as we”s. We live in anticipation of days to come. We believe that we need certain things and perfect situations in order to be satisfied and content. But here’s the big joke. Here’s the cliché of clichés. Here is the nugget of truth that we can find on bumper stickers and in graduation speeches and hung up in frames on the walls of diners across America: “It is not about the destination. It’s about the journey.”

It is not about the destination. There is no destination. We will never reach the end. The Range Rover will rust and the abs will mush and at the end of it all we turn into dust. Nothing is permanent. Nothing will ever truly satiate us. The wanting is boundless. It’s an animal. It will always arise within us. We have to choose to find happiness and peace and deep satisfaction in the utterly unpredictable and impermanent journey that is unfolding right now. We have to choose to find contentment in the moments in between the wanting.

It is within the soft subtle breath between our desire that the marrow of life lies.

Spring Cleaning

Excuse me, hello? Have I lost your attention? Are you quite sick of hearing me grasp desperately at figuring it all out, arrive at hopeful conclusions, and then tumble into confusion once again? Oh really? That’s’ funny. So am I. Yet here I am once more, having another go at it.

My head is on super-speed. My thoughts fly in and out faster than I can lasso them up and get them down on paper. I’m not boasting. It’s the human condition. We spend far too much time in the administrative power house that is our brain. I suppose we need it. To, you know, function and stuff. But I think it's overrated. And I'd like to turn the damn thing off.

I need a vacation from my brain. I need it to sleep for a while whilst I run up there and clear some junk out. I need to feng shui that thing. Swifter duster it. Get rid of the old. I need to go through those dirty old file cabinets and throw some shit out. It’s time for it to go. It’s time to let it go. It is time to make room for the new. It is time to stop beating the drum of what is and start looking with new eyes at what hovers right beneath those thoughts that pound our brains.

It’s so close. We’re so close, always, to the revelation, to the paradigm shift, the “ah ha” moment. It’s that heavy file cabinet that binds us, those old thoughts and ways of behaving, the deep ruts we’ve dug ourselves into after years and years of doing it the same way, the only way we’ve known, again and again and again. And then we sing, this is how it is, this is how it is, oh woe is me, this is how it is. I say get rid of that old tune. Climb out of the rut. There are new ways. Clean, new, shiny, better ways! Stretch those legs. Get a little uncomfortable. It’s alright. It’s time. It is time. It is time for some real changes.

So get out your swifter dusters, people. Summer's just around the corner. It is time for some serious spring cleaning.

A Noble Attempt

I’m thinking about changing my blog to “A Noble Attempt at Finding Zen.” Or maybe “Finding Zen For a Fleeting Moment…woops, I’ve Lost It.” Or even better, “Has Anyone Found Zen?! If So, Please Call 867-5309.” I’m kidding. Don’t call that number.

Finding zen is no easy task. I wonder why it isn’t easier. Shouldn’t we want to be content? Joyful? Blissful? Shouldn’t we want to be at peace? Shouldn’t that be our default? Like a survival instinct? Because struggle can surely feel like demise. Heartbreak can surely feel like death. Fire is painful; we pull our hand from the flame. Struggle is painful; we are paralyzed. We sink into the hurt.

When it comes to matters of our non-physical selves, we are not very well-equipped with the means to heal. Emotional pain is sticky; it lingers. It can stay with us for a lifetime. It runs deeper than flesh and bone. Much deeper than the city of neurons and synapses that live beneath our skin. Mending our heart is a skill, not an instinct. It takes work to stitch up the nameless, bodiless, whatever-you-call-it that lives in the center of the center of our spirit. We can’t touch it, put a band aid on it, suture it up. We have to tap into it. We have to tune in. We have to connect with something that is much bigger than we are. And we have to love ourselves enough to want to make the effort.

It is in our nature to want a quick fix, easy and painless. I wish I had one for you. I wish I had one for me. I don’t. Not really. All I have is this: At the heart of all struggle, there is a peaceful and enduring center. It is the calm at the heart of the storm and it is the steady quiet pulse that carries on - undying. The storm can only be survived from the center. And so we must look to the center when we are struggling, suffering, lost. We must connect with the steady quiet pulse in that nameless, bodiless, whatever-you-call-it that lives in the center of the center of the center.

The storm of our experience can be endured when we come face-to-face with it, lean into it, walk through it. We spread our battered wings, become unstuck and the bleeding starts to stop. It takes time. It takes effort. It’s work. But in time, with effort, it becomes our default, our instinct. Feeling good becomes a habit. I know it’s not a cakewalk; it’s not easy, quick or painless. But for now it’s all I’ve got... If you find a better way, you’ve got my number.

Elephant in the Room

I want answers to all of life’s questions. Like right now. I want to know everything about everything about everything, and I want to digest it and I want to eat sleep and breathe it with every molecule of my being, with every beat of my blood, with every breath that I take til death do us part. I want to fill each moment with the truest, purist, most honest, unfeigned answers to quiet all of the questions that feverishly lash my brain. I want to unveil the mystery, the secrets, the “what-the-hell-is-it-all-about” that is a noun, a thing, the elephant in the room of all of the rooms in all of the places in all of the world.

I want to get to the bottom of it. I know I’m not supposed to. I know I’m supposed to sit cross-legged and breathe deeply and live in the moment and find peace in the experience, not the analysis of the experience. I get it. But I’m obsessed with the why and what and how. I’m addicted. I want to know, want to know, want to know. I want to know how I ended up here. I want to know why I was blessed with two of the most amazing human being as my parents. I want to know when it all will end. What it feels like when it’s over. I want to know how everything just seems to fall into place, and even when I’m digging deep into the dark, a part of me grows toward the light.

Because tell me there isn’t a reason. Tell me it is all happen-chance dumb luck. Tell me deciding out of thin air to move to Boulder, Colorado where I served my future husband a Grande 7-pump Chai Latte was a fluke. Tell me the psychic who told him he would meet a “petite blonde-haired blue-eyed” woman who would be his wife was full of it. Tell me those magical moments when we plummeted into love were anything but magic. Tell me Angelo met the head of Oncology one month prior to finding a lump because he was lucky. And that the head of Oncology got him in for tests and diagnosed the next day because of good fortune. And that his cancer turned out to be aggressive and rare and God knows where he would be today because he was “in the right place at the right time.”

I think there is no right place at the right time. The right place at the right time is every single moment we live and breathe. It is here now and yesterday and tomorrow and it is twenty years after we are gone. No one holds the answers to our questions. And twenty years after we are gone, no one will hold the answers to our questions. Our children and their children and their children’s children will be left with the same unanswered questions and the weight of the mystery.

And as for us? When we are gone? When it’s over? We become the mystery. We become the answers. We become the truest, purist, most honest, unfeigned answers to all of the questions. And we whisper life’s secrets into the ears of the elephant that carries us in the room of all of the rooms in all of the places in all of the world.

More Than Enough

A beautiful day, warm, breezy. I sit with nothing to beef at except the slick sick feeling that time moves much too quickly. I don’t have enough, and what I do have is squandered. I have continually the sense that this time is invaluable and the opposite sense that I am paralyzed to use it, or am using it wastefully. I find myself wishing, wishing, wishing to have a corner of my own. I want to open mines of life, permeate the matter of this world. And how else to do it but plunge out of this safe scheduled time-clock wage-check world and into my own voids and the shimmering plasma that is life.

The minor hiccup of a problem is that I have not a very clue where to land. At least not in a solid, matter-of-fact, I-know-exactly-where-I -belong kind of a way. I tend to look outside myself, to be itched and kindled to some great work, something burgeoning, fat with the texture and substance of living. Where oh where do I belong? Life shines, beckons, and I feel caught, revolving on a wheel, locked in the steel-toothed jaws of my schedule.

I’m complaining, I know. I can’t help it. It’s the human condition. We are constantly giving birth to desire. We are always wanting more, always reaching, always looking, always lacking. But there is enough. There is enough time. There is enough space. There is a corner for me and my shimmering life mines. It’s all here for all of us. And until I find it, I will keep moving, keep working, keep making dreams to run toward. Because until I find it, I am satisfied. Truly. I am happy, anchored to life by deadlines, laundry and lilacs, the daily bread and a man, the most wonderful man, the dark-eyed stranger, who eats my food and my love and goes around the world all day to come back and find solace in my arms. And that - now - is more than enough.

My Heart is Raining Butterflies From the Sky

I find lately that I am so filled with gratitude I feel I might burst right open. I feel my heart might just leap right out of my chest, sprout wings, fly up into the sky and start raining butterflies and fairy dust and daisies. I am beyond blessed. I am so well beyond blessed it is oozing out of me in bucketfuls, in boatloads; all I can do is dole it out here in verbal parcels so as not to completely drown in the stuff.

I don’t want to preach or boast or annoy, but I kind of feel like spinning around on the top of a hilltop belting “the hills are alive with the sound of music.” Okay, I won’t. But my god, have you looked around lately? The hills are alive with the sound of music! And so is the grass, and the trees, and the clouds, and even the perfectly dimpled orange sitting on my desk weighing sweetly against the post-it dispenser. It is all good. It is all God. It is all exactly as it should be.

It is all exactly as it should be.

I don’t believe in God, I believe in everything. I believe in love. I believe in love until the end of time. I believe in happiness. I believe in the bright side and silver linings and it will all work out. I believe in kindness and compassion. I believe in chocolate and wine and french fries. I believe in pure indulgence. I believe in good company and good books and laughing to tears. I believe there is no mountain too high. I believe there is always up. I believe time heals. I believe dreams come true. I believe we can do anything. I believe we are all stronger than we could possibly imagine.

I believe we cannot possibly wrap our heads around it all. There is more than this; there is so much more than all of this, and even for that I am grateful. I can’t fear what I don’t know; I will immerse myself in it; I will wrap myself up in it and make friends with it and cozy up to it and lean into it and have faith that I will not fall. There is no beyond. There is only here, the infinitely small, infinitely great and utterly demanding present. It does matter. Every little tiny thing matters and must be found and picked up and redeemed. Every little tiny thing is an ingredient in this great big masterpiece, a note in the grand symphony, and if you listen closely you’ll hear it; if you listen very closely, and with much gratitude you will hear how the grass is growing beneath your feet and how my heart is raining butterflies from the sky and how the hills are indeed, alive with the sound of music.

Our Most Glorious Promise

I’m beginning to realize that I’ve had it all wrong. I know what you’re thinking. How could I be wrong about anything? But it’s true. I’ve spent a good amount of my life trying to “figure it out.” I’ve questioned God and religion and faith, studied psychology and philosophy, read poetry and history and books on spirituality, the evolution of consciousness and Darwinism; always seeking, seeking, seeking answers. I have found some. I’ve found pockets of peace and moments of understanding through speculation or insight, through trial and error, falling again and again and figuring out how to pick up the pieces.

But in all of this trying to figure out why why why and searching for life’s promise, I’ve missed the point entirely. The point is (I believe) quite simply: To Be Happy. The point is to do everything we can to make ourselves happy. The point is to know that we have the ability and the right to attain happiness forever and always and no matter what the current situation looks or feels like. It is possible. It is possible.

Here’s how it works: You are here, wherever you are (mad, sad, happy, disappointed, rich, poor, married, single, young, old, black, white, yellow), now. Start here. Now. Even if here and now is not where you want to be. Even if here and now seems like an impossible never-ending trek into the darkness or a bad song on repeat. Because guess what? You don’t have to trek into the darkness; the sun will come out again and you can take a leisurely stroll if you’d like. And you don’t have to suffer through even one Michael Bolten song; you can change the station. No, really!

You are the only one in control of you. You are the only one inside your head, swimming in your thoughts, wading in your emotions. It is your experience. It is your world, you rule, and you have the choice to find joy in each moment. It is there for you; this is a fact. Love and fulfillment and utter bliss are always at your fingertips if you choose to see it. And I’m not suggesting denial; things must be addressed. But they mustn’t be obsessed over. They mustn’t spin your thoughts into wildfire and singe your world to gray.

The truth is, we may never know why. We may never figure it out. We may seek and seek and grasp and flail and throw our arms up and cry and think ourselves mad. We may never get to the bottom of it, never, never. But we don’t have to. We don’t need answers; we need to grab our life by the reins and choose to see the light and love and wonder behind every moment. Never getting to the bottom of it is a minor detail, a detour on our path to bliss. Bliss, that utter happiness waiting beneath our thoughts right now, is what we must take for our hope and our shield and our most glorious promise.

Word Play

We’ve already established that I enjoy words. I enjoy the way they look – the circle, dip, loop, tail of a cursive “q”, the matter of fact, marks the spot “x” – the way they sound and how you can taste it on your tongue, the way letters thread together into little explosions of thought with a place and a purpose.

Words bring me great satisfaction, and if that makes me a complete loser or an utter bore, well, frankly I don’t give two {insert your favorite four letter word here and add an ‘s’}. So in celebration of my fascination and their existence, I am sharing some of my very favorites:

Discombobulate
Clobber (sounds best with that mid-western nasal-y twang)
Juxtaposition
Enunciate (e•nun•ci•ate)
Lackadaisical
Perpetuity (use this in a sentence today; people with think you are very distinguished and smart)
Luminescence
Elucidating (for you mom)
Perpetuate
Fuck (verb, adverb, adjective AND noun)
Relinquish
Profusely (often succeeds “Ang, you’re sweating…”)
Schlep
Shvitz
Shlimazel
Shlimazel
Shlimazel (really, is there anything better? Say it out loud. I dare you to disagree)
(….and while we’re going there, honorable mention to: tchatchke, shmaltzy, and chutzpa….oy vey, yidish is vunderbar!)
Gesticulate
Exacerbate
Razzmatazz (tell me that didn’t make you smile)
Articulate
Wonky (a recent fave…the perfect adjective for just about everything)
Lollygagging
Polypeptides (not entirely certain what they are, but so fun to say)
Smarmy

I assure you the list goes on. But I will relinquish as I do not wish to perpetuate smarmily or exacerbate wonky verbal gesticulation…

What are your favorites?

Love, In Little Parcels

Today is Sunday and I slept in, awoke refreshed to bright sunlight and words from last night’s conversation a hazy blanket of contentment, assurance. Now I sit on the cool concrete of the driveway, bare arms soaking in rays of light filtering through the swaying trees, raped deliciously by the sun. Every querulous fiber is satiated into a great glowing golden peace, and I feel there is nothing more than this moment.

It seems this happens every so often…the forces of the world come together in a thunder crack of understanding and I peer into the window of infinity, binding the passage between heart and mind. I am a feather of perception, unbodied.

I think it’s time I get serious about taking myself lightly. Too often I live in fear that I’m falling short of some abstract perfection. Life becomes a form of safeguarding or conquering or boasting. Thinking I can “attain” happiness with a given situation or accomplishment is a fallacy. Happiness is not a fleeting possibility, a means to an end. It’s not a “something” to attain. It’s a feeling that no matter what the ideas or conduct of others, there is a unique rightness and beauty to life which can be shared in openness, in wind and sunlight, with a fellow human being.

I am not perfect. And perhaps I won’t be famous or wealthy or renowned. But I will give of myself and my passion in minute homeopathic spoonfuls to the world. I can give my love, in little parcels (and perhaps the occasional baked good), and this just might be enough.

Love can melt doors.

Spill Your Tainted Heart

We are all imperfect. We walk around this world in our own little orbits, taking things in, filtering them through our little built-in perfunctory sorter-outer that is shaped by our temperament, our parents, our past experiences, our egos; and then we spill them out into the universe and onto other people who take them through their own little filter sorter-outer and on and on and on we go. Information is lost, feelings are misinterpreted, thoughts misconceived, beliefs misconstrued, and things can get really messy.

How do we pour our hearts to one another without it getting all muddied up? How do we get back to what is true and pure and good, that virgin untainted center, unaffected by the pollution of life’s circumstances? It seems that somewhere along the way we start taking things with us, collecting baggage from heartache, disappointment, grief. We get older, our load gets heavier, and soon we can’t even remember what it was we threw onto our backs years ago; it is buried.

I don’t know why we do this – why we carry things with us, why we are unable to forget, unable to start anew each day and live in the moment. We are shaped by our experiences. We are fundamentally changed; we create our little orbits and we lose a crucial connection to what life is all about: Love. Connectedness. We are all the same – you and I, those we don’t know, those we don’t like and even the things we fear. Everything at heart follows the same beat of life pulsing beneath the distractions we create and the baggage we carry.

Indeed, we are all imperfect. And it’s okay. Go ahead and walk around in your little orbit. Spill your tainted heart into the universe. Carry your load. But take a look at what you’re holding onto. If you can’t remember why it’s there or what good it’s doing weighing heavy upon you, put it down. Lighten up. Clear out your filter sorter-outer. Love, connectedness, and the common beat of life will be much easier to notice without all the mess.

Restless Ramblings

It is 2:00 am and I lay, restless, in the dark. I have given up my battle with sleep and decided to plunge fully into the fluttering vigor beating through my veins. There is nowhere to go at this hour, nothing to do really, accept sit here stewing inside myself, marinating in my rambling thoughts and this body that begs sleep.

I feel anxious. Afraid of something. What? Life passing by? Angelo thinks about this more than I. Each heartbeat, each clock-tick is a fatal subtraction from the total number we are allowed in the beginning. Or not being such a complete fatalist, from the variety of numbers we are allowed to work from.

Time is such a sham. It is so sly. It slithers past us unsuspectingly and all of a sudden the sun has set, the calendar turns, years pass, we find ourselves with a (beautiful) husband and two dogs, paying bills, worrying our ‘grown-up’ worries and amassing wrinkles.

Life wears us, no doubt. And we’re all here working through it without any real idea of what it’s about. We walk around with this drive, this determination. We make plans. We work hard. We move forward with our blinders on. We take things for granted. We lose perspective. We seek solace outside ourselves. And then where is there to go? Either we break the surface shell into the whistling void or we grind ahead, turn jaded, learn to live with the daily bread? Suffer and become Shakespeare? Paradoxically, we suffer and do not become Shakespeare.

We suffer and become cynical, angry, discouraged, sad. We throw our demons around and drown our pain in another more palatable distraction. I myself prefer baking a batch of cookies, eating the whole bunch warm from the oven and going to bed in a nice carbohydrate-induced coma. So in finding myself awake at 2:00 in the morning, husband and dogs sleeping sweetly beside me, and no mind for baking at this hour (although, believe me, I am tempted), I come face-to-face with my demons and the endless questions that weave my fibers.

And because I have not the ability or genius to write a big letter to the world about it, I write you. And go in circles, writing the same thing over and over again, asking the same questions that keep knocking at the gate of my daily (and nightly) reality. With any luck, tonight, I will spin myself dizzied into slumber, sinking dreamily into the night, black velvet sky weighing heavy upon me...

New Beginning

Where have the days went? I feel I have been swallowed into time’s vortex and spit out at the foot of this new summit, 2010. Good riddance 2009; goodbye forever. I have tucked you into a dark corner of my memory where time will turn you into dust. I have thrown you into the wind, let you sink to the bottom of the ocean, left you in Laguna Beach to dance in the echoes of the past.

This New Year marks a New Beginning. I feel I should write something inspired, inspiring, about moving forward, resolutions, goals, hopes and dreams. After all, here we are, in a beautiful new home in the foothills of the glorious Trabuco Canyon, starting anew. But the truth is, I don’t want to await the future, anticipating salvation, absolution, or even enlightenment. I want to subscribe to the premise that this flawed perfection, this now, is sufficient and complete in every single, ineffable moment. Because it is. After the dark days of cancer and the turbulent waters of its wake, I finally feel my world slowing, settling. I am back to my breath. And I breathe in now, sitting here on this wooden bench overlooking the pasture, grazing horses, and a sunset so magnificent I think I hear it singing. Oh how I am blessed.

I bask in the quiet. It is so quiet here. The quiet is thick; it’s tangible, heavy, sweet. It is the pause at the end of an exhale, the stillness in between in between. The roots of the deepest things that shape our lives live here, I am certain. Under this bench, beneath these fallen leaves, inside the silence that envelopes me now. We spend a lifetime slowly gaining grain after grain of this wisdom. We grasp and search, wanting more. We turn the calendar and resolve to reach new goals. We take years of living trying to understand what is already here. It is here; it’s already written.

I am not suggesting we stop striving. Keep creating. Keep growing. Just know that there will always be more to want. And perhaps we will never be satiated. Each new year will bring new resolutions and new challenges and life will always be hard. This year, dare to be present in this flawed perfection, this now. Every day is a new beginning. Watch how the moon goes down into the night. Open your eyes. Gaze at the stars. Open your nostrils. Smell leaves. Sink into the quiet and let life happen. It is going to be a great year.