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.
Sunday, January 31
Thursday, January 21
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 12
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...
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...
Monday, January 4
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.
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.
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