everything is everything

that scene with the over protective father who screams at his daddy's-little-girl daughter. after she rolls her eyes, yells "but dadddddddd," and stomps away his scowl dissipates into a knowing grin. like, you may hate me now, but this is going to be the stuff of birthday cards in a decade or so.

self

The moment I start to feel slighted because people don't realize how great I am is the moment at which I am not great. I've been confronted with the idea that I am selfish more than once now during my past 2 relationships. And both times I've noticed that my immediate reaction was usually "how dare you, I am most definitely not selfish." Is this not, if I had not been before, proving that yes I am selfish? The minute  that I develop the attitude that I somehow understand things on a deeper level because I devoted more whatever to trying to figure them out is the minute that I only understand them on a shallow level. The minute I say I have nothing to learn is the moment at which I have the most to learn. I'm sure there's some witty anecdote for this truism, but I'm writing from my heart, almost emotionally, about something that could have been deduced logically and rationally. I've graduated school, yet there are so many things that people who are less educated than I know better. I look at my little girls in the gym and think, damn, I have the greatest teachers right here. It's like getting paid to learn vs learning because you paid. And the things that have "shoulds" attached to them, the things that have kept me "grounded" are the same things that hold me back.

just thinking

Old man #1:  See, I was just thinking....
Old man #2: Well that's your first problem!


- habitat for humanity NC 

There's this thing that I like to do at the end of my yoga classes and anytime I'm in a contemplative mood... like tonight when I was watching the sky darken in the forest. I like to listen (I haven't really experimented a lot with the other senses) and let everything sort of jumble into ambiguous sounds. Like I'll be lying there and people will start moving all around me and I'll hear the floor creaking and clothes shuffling and voices whispering or like tonight I'll hear birds chirping and leaves rustling and the wind howling and sounds of cars driving by in the distance and If I'm real good then everything will just be "sound" instead of "footstep" "bird" "wind" "whisper." I'll stop my mind from labeling. In these moments, I am neither happy nor sad, anxious nor peaceful.. I just am. Maybe you can call it being peaceful? I think I like just being better. These moments of just being are among my favorites. At least I think they are? I guess I can only appreciate them in retrospect. But I'm so beyond words happy that I have them because sometimes I feel so alone being around so many silence fillers. And when I'm not categorizing then I'm also not drawing any conclusions ie. I should be anxious right now or somewhere other than Here or going through a laundry list of other things.

I like the relationship I have with this blog at the moment. Now, when I write, I feel like I'm getting a hug. Like tonight, I was in this weird mood and I didn't know what I needed - meditation? company? food? laughs? something to stimulate my intellect? And I'm happy that I've given myself a place to write.

Silence can be the most courageous act. So can speaking. And vice versa. so funny, how we react to things ephemeral.

One of my uncles seems pretty hot tempered sometimes, pretty adamantly convicted of some of his decisions (ie. can I go out tonight with friends?) but as soon as you throw in an "I love you" he melts and you can get him to do whatever you want! I hope that I never grow so callous and numb that I am not moved by an appeal to love. I hope I am always capable of being (when necessary, a least a bit, maybe a lot...) vulnerable.

I've been thinking a lot about this: you are what you repeatedly do. Time always seems to be the necessary ingredient. If I decide that I want to be forgiving, keep forgiving, even when it hurts. If I decide that I want to be healthy, light-hearted, ultra-disciplined, insane, a good whatever....  repetition. Keep forgiving, especially yourself.

I've noticed that, for whatever reason, I REALLY like learning. It's not that I love music, dance, contemplation, etc. etc. etc. in and of themselves... it's really just that playing music or ballroom dancing or anything new gives me something new to learn. And I'm most happy when I can get to the point of being able to improv or "speak" with ease through any of these mediums. People keep saying why do you keep going to that stupid bar or why don't you find another job and the biggest reason is because anything that I've held tight to is a fertile garden of education.

And then what is all of this for, this learning biznas? I was thinking about "for better or for worse" the other day and I like it a lot, but I'm going to give whoever/whatever is at the other end of that as easy a job as possible by keeping my mind fertile, my body healthy, my spirit pure.

just

It’s just a thing we do,
Feathered and floating,
Dripping with concession.  
It’s our essential nature 
to just wade.

time

Right now, at least, it's not about God. It's not about the Music. It's not about the Dance. It's not about being the strongest, making lots of money, my ego, accumulating educational merits, being a greater lover, being the most flexible, the most meditative, looking good, talking pretty. It's about what happens mentally, physiologically I guess, when I sustain any of these activities for a good length of time. It's all about sitting in that split for a half hour despite the little voices inside my head telling me that I should be doing something else, that this is too painful, not worth it...anything negative. It's about strumming that same chord for hours despite the fact that some little voice keeps telling me how boring it is. It's about getting over that hump, that 'i-should-be-anywhere-but-here' phase to the inexplicably euphoric place of meditative absorption, then reaping all the after-effects. Stayin' alive, stayin' alive, oh oh oh oh......  it's about putting in the time and silencing anything that is not 'this is exactly where you should be right now.'

    Ironically, it was all about the music. It was all about God. It was all about the Dance and the love and the gymnastics and education. But really it's just about sitting with something you love or something you hate and getting to know it. Watching the clouds, laying in bed, painting your nails, reading a book, watching a movie, doing a dance, playing a song. repetition. Philip Glass comes to mind right here. Then anything mundane will quickly turn into ecstasy. And I'm tempted to say that the finished product doesn't really matter.. but it  does... it's a testament to a practice that has worked and it's what motivates the act of sustaining. it's a testament to commitment. And that's what it's all about; committing, being there. Keep up. It's happening right here right now, man. 

it's cloudy up there

Leila is eternalizing the sunshine of her spotless mind and letting thoughts pass by like clouds.