Hey Hey music lovers!
There’s a great band called /\./\. \/\/ /\ ll /\ [ E (a.a.wallace)
They have a tour set-up for next month. mostly the UK. but check them out and keep tabs if they come your way.
Good for a sweaty dancy time that will throw your endorphins hay-wire!
that’s all for now. x
Hello Love,
I know it’s been a while, but I really lost my drive to put words to experience this year. Frankly I had spent many years in a cognitive spiritual phase: Working the hard way towards Enlightenment through mental activity – books/girl talks/ youtube videos.
Then last November, I dated a guy who was blatantly stuck in his cerebral spirituality. At first we talked a lot and seemed on the same page. He also read and understood a lot of fascinating things, but as our relationship deepened to actions, it became quickly clear to me that our connection was shallow. I realized that any actual understanding of the workings of the universe has to happen outside of the brain.
** Sidebar – I saw a psychology video recently that stated that “the brain controls every aspect of our lives” and it was comical to me… “is it just me, or is it convenient that the brain came up with that idea?” I thought.**
I resolved to NEVER KNOWING: Purposefully neglecting my intellect, doing consistent physical and emotional check-ins that involved nothing more than acknowledging that something was present and allowing it.
The spring months were made up of turbulent uncertainty and continual accidents involving my iPhone (perhaps because of an earlier post titled The Habit of Making Space…?) I unplugged from technology and plugged back into my internal environment. I spent a LOT of time alone. If I felt any particular emotion towards another person, I purposely retreated to find my balance.
Things were really crawling along. Patience in this world is a top commodity.
In June, I went to Seattle. I don’t know if it was mixed into the air coming off the Puget Sound, but something my cousin Jeff said in passing triggered a dramatic shift in my perspective:
“The Muni Tribe believed that starch in the diet stifles people’s will.”
I suddenly remembered my own will! The one that I had tucked secretly away, so many years ago, when I was learning to please those around me.
A feeling unravelled underneath my cerebral understanding. That feeling that I had been counting on for so long to evolve of it’s own volition and change my default settings! It appeared in an instant, shooting up and through me: a formless but powerful will! (I can’t tell you much more than that because I don’t think words can reveal it.)
But now it is here and so present in my day-to-day experiences - My life has become a series of easy choices: healthy food and friendships, productive activity and bubbling creative desires. Inspired actions replace forced ones. My various projects are moving forward of their own accord. My brain has given up the driver’s seat. For now.
Why not cut back on starches for a day, and see what your will has to say!
Seattle 2012
I lie listening to the lie
- bah-boom bah-boom bah-boom -
that sound is an old window pane
broken latch
flapping in the wind
hitting it’s frame
the owner is locked out in the rain.
Inside the chambers are vacant
the functions set to automatic timers.
words fall on empty ears
echoing from the depths of a Carpathian cave:
“The heart is made to be lived in.”
cave in the Carpathians
There are so many ambitions in this world and yet the only one I seem to adhere to is the ambition to follow the wordless and incomprehensible musings of my heart – whose muffled and distorted signals tend to drive me to make bold and drastic decisions to compensate for a lack in overall design.
Perhaps I am on the scenic route to my own inevitable end, and perhaps that is the material point!
On the other hand, perhaps I’ve got it all wrong and the point is to build an empire; a family legacy that will provide the means for my many (so far unaccounted for) descendants to do literally whatever they can dream up. Compromise my humanity – sell it to the highest bidder – like the Rockefellers, Hiltons etc – ad nauseum.
Does success amount to a bronze plaque somewhere Important with my name on it?
I muse at times on what I will have I accomplished with my life when I die. At this rate, my headstone will probably say -
Here lies Jozel, a floating philosopher – she didn’t succumb – she didn’t commit
If only she could have bottled the air she was living off of
If I could get a famous poet or two to write on my headstone, it would add intrigue… or poetry… at the very least…
In any case, it definitely will never say -
Here lies Jozel – who succeeded in living 98 years without ever holding a lit cigarette
But by 2081 there won’t be headstones anymore, who am I kidding? They’ll probably be disintegrating my remains to fuel the newest wave of Alternative Reality Social Interaction devices. or something.
The grave of the Lazar family - Bucharest, Romania
I like to smoke a cigarette by the light of the full moon. (only one, Dad, I promise!)
It may partially be for spiritual aspects of the ritual, but the cigarette is mostly just a social permit, allowing me to gaze contemplatively at the moon in public.
- Why should I need a prop for my spiritual practice? you ask. Damned if I know. -
A few years ago, I wrote a song under a blue moon (2nd full moon in one month) – sitting out on a bay in Bainbridge Island, Washington.- it’s not a particularly great song, but it marked a significant night for me.
Since then I’ve gazed up at her from both coasts of North America, and even various parts of Europe. And yes, the cigarette is a useful prop in all of those settings. Funny how “strange” it is to stand solitary and look up at the full moon with nothing apparent to do.
But the full moon! Her magic draws me in every time. When I open my heart to the glowing orb, I begin to feel expanded and awakened again. It’s my favourite touchstone because I can nearly always see her, unlike the mountains or the ocean or the prairie skies. And even the thickest veil of clouds usually thins out for a brief moment on the night of the full moon. No matter where I am or how alone I seem, she is always there, to bring me back to the middle of Life again, making distance seem arbitrary and insignificant.
I dare you to give it a try tonight or tomorrow. Just step outside and look up with an open mind, you don’t even have to smoke the cigarette… though it does help if you’re not in the privacy of your back yard. The longer you look, the brighter she glows, the closer she seems to get until it feels like a tunnel has formed between you and her.
I promise, she’ll recharge you like a battery.
Her presence is comforting in this world of inconstancy and seeming chaos.
back when I thought I knew stuff.
May 21st 2007
Just as a pebble is polished by years and years of tumbling along the riverbeds and up and down beaches, so must we allow ourselves to be shaped by the elements throwing us around.
First the boulder falls from the highest peak of a mountain, then crumbles as it falls. More often than not it is carried down to a stream by another avalanche and a series of rain falls. Once it has reached a stream, it must roll along the bottom, to be left at dams, or left at points that join a larger river, or even left on the bottom the ocean. Years can pass at different phases – the whole span of transformation takes hundreds of years. The stone must allow itself to be tumbled about and finally thrown up and down sandy beaches by the volition of the tides.
So it is with the effect of life on our human souls. Every fall brings us to a new bump that we can smooth out if we so choose.
The individual does have free will: to decide whether or not she wants to follow the stream or fight against it. Whether or not he chooses to be tossed around until he is smooth of bumps and imperfections. We can decide to stay on the mountain continually abused by falling debris, or we can decide to keep our bumps and scratches even though nature will constantly hustle and bustle us. We cannot change the course of nature, but we do get to choose to let these events shape and mold us into soft, beautiful pebbles, finally collected by a sweet mother and her five-year-old staying at the cottage for the summer.
In life, we must expect to be thrown up against each other, dropped and carried at random by passers by. Every piece of the journey holds obstacles, yet to reach the most desired state, we must be patient with our little pebble-souls. Not all of our bumps can be worn down after merely one avalanche, risen tide, or waterfall. Only with patience and the passing of time does a pebble begin to achieve a somewhat smooth surface.
pink skies at night, sailors delight - Edinburgh
“The dark night of the soul is a profoundly good thing. It is an ongoing spiritual process in which we are liberated from attachments and compulsions and empowered to live and love more freely. Sometimes this letting go of old ways is painful, occasionally even devastating. But this is not why the night is called ‘dark.’ The darkness of the night implies nothing sinister, only that the liberation takes place in hidden ways, beneath our knowledge and understanding. It happens mysteriously, in secret, and beyond our conscious control. For that reason it can be disturbing or even scary, but in the end it always works to our benefit.”
~Thomas Moore
full moon over Edinburgh
The timeless moon,
gazing down on her,
filled her once again with faith
in the inexplicable mystery of existence.
She was revived
for the time being.
sister love
My sis and I have spent a lovely week in Halifax.
Seafood, redecorating, home-cooked meals, beach day, night bike ride, watching waves crash on the rocks, and discovering a huge box of vhs movies.
Today especially was a gem. A series of developments we couldn’t have deliberately organized:
Ate brunch at Jane’s on the Common, stumbled onto a hiphop festival, walked through the Public Gardens with live jazz in the gazebo and beautiful flowers, went to a free moksha class and then wandered through the old graveyard.
To top it all off, we found this mark in the sidewalk on the way home for tea. It really couldn’t have been a more splendid afternoon.
Why isn’t there a sister version of Bromance yet?
Sis-mance? Sistermance? Sisteromance?
From their lofty seat, the Salisbury Crags admire the city of Edinburgh, including the Queen’s Palace and the great fortress, mortal-built stone legacies which pale in comparison to the 340 million years that the crags have been here.
Like a great cloud of ancestors, the crags watch the self-important actions of those below in detached amusement.
