Friday, September 30, 2011

It's Simply a Matter of CHOICE

I can't eat my words
and I can't drink my books
Concrete doesn't feed our crying babies
& steel cannot be passed
through these very real human organs

We can reason our way
down any rabbit hole
we can analyze further and further
until it is all just tiny bits of plastic
floating on a Pacific Garbage Dump

We can produce more and manage less
we can talk more and feel less
we can wave our fists and spit in the face
of our own mirror reflections

We can pretend that it all exists
without - an outside, external force
that is independent of our very real human will
We can want to improve that which is, ultimately, within
by narrowing our gaze solely upon that which cannot by improved
by focusing on the bad and the ugly, & all of the intolerable suffering
as it burns its image upon our retinas

We can choose to see only that one, gigantic tree
supported by an unsustainable foundation
as dis-ease winds its way up its withering trunk
We can seek to lop off the abundant bounty found atop its limbs,
as the leaves float and rustle in an easterly breeze,
especially when not all of the ailing squirrels have an equal ability to reach the same acorns

Or, we can climb up what remains and with our swift, swords of justice
we can free some of the fresh sustenance from its perch,
we can watch it tumble to the ground rolling to a final, resting place,
where bird, ant and mammal all have the same opportunity to feast
We can shift our perspective upon the wide, open prairie and instead of only recognizing the oppressive visage of Grandfather Oak, as he towers dying and lonely, we can envision
all of the bushes and the trees, all of the plants and the flowers,
- all of the you and all of the me -
giving birth to a new season.

We can celebrate Grandfather's passing
(because death is inherent to life)
together in all of our diverse unity and resplendent color.
We can dance and we can sway, as the butterflies flit and the bees pollinate.
We can trust that reproduction will ensue, that new seeds will be planted, take hold and bloom,
as vegetables flourish and harmony sings.
We can know that, eventually, Grandfather's body will be turned back unto the soil
feeding a dank, nutritious Earth where our future unfolds -
one in which our collective nourishment is tended to.

YES, We Can.
Si, se puede.

JOIN US!











Friday, September 23, 2011

Tears Roll

Once upon a time, we suffered together...

An autumn equinox sky opened up and briefly poured down on a San Diego city morning today.
As the last few months have been demonstrating, "the inner is the outer" and it was as though the Earth was responding in the same exact way that my Bodymind has spent the past week.  Feeling has been moving through me and its powerful current - mimicking the potency of this time now - has led to repeated tears being shed.  Lately, it isn't sadness or, even, pain as much as it is a release and an allowing for what isThe uncertainty of change is here and it's palpable.  The simple act of surrendering to not knowing what is to come or "why" is great.  It just is and, lately, all I can do is release this energy in the form of rivulets running down my cheeks.

Fall has come, bringing with it the collection of all that we have spent good time sowing and seeding as well as a celebration of harvest.  Soon, the land will once again be barren.  Leaves are turning, from vibrant green to decaying browns and yellows.  They fall underfoot, as we march by in our steady stream to nowhere - yet always here.  A shedding of skin,  my ego lessens its hold on its belief in linear time.  Like a snake in the grass, I settle in.  She encourages me to tap these roots, deeper,  to draw stronger breaths and to tone the core.  "You already know where this is going," she says and I believe her every word.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

What We Will Always Have



A few weeks ago, I was introduced to the idea of "Creative Placemaking" during a presentation made by the phenomenal, Carol Coletta, past-CEO of CEO's for the Cities - "a civic lab of today's urban leaders catalyzing a movement to advance the next generation of great American cities."  Speaking from her heart, Carol addressed a Friday afternoon, Hilton Bayfront crowd, made mostly of local real estate developers, during which she wove the sentiments of the day's earlier presenters into her talk.  A true intellectual, Carol kept coming back to the day's main theme.  The question was how do we, as San Diego, attract and retain a vibrant and diverse downtown demographic of urban dwellers - because, as we all know, this is what makes a city a major cosmopolitan, power house.  The answers, as always, lies in both our artists and in the future as we know it.

Statistics now show that 18-24-year-old's want to live within a three-mile walking radius of both work and play; are driving later in life; and are less apt to purchase vehicles.  In other words, proximity is key.  Looking around the downtown San Diego landscape, we notice that our current public transportation system does not provide for the convenience that our future dictates.  It took me over an hour of public travel time just to arrive in to downtown La Jolla - which is roughly 20 miles north - on Monday.  UC San Diego, also located in La Jolla, is a major internal organ for our region.  Aside from its large student body of almost 40,000 people, it is the primary home of our bio-medical research industry.  A main artery should be, free and clear, for moving people to and from the city's heart to it's other, main organs.  

So, how do we create the sustainable region that we all know is possible?  TOGETHER.  Full self empowerment is the recognition that the answers we seek do not come from outside of us.  Rather, they come from within.  If we want change, we must endeavor to create it ourselves.  It isn't up to the government to "fix" anything.  Just like it isn't up to large corporate entities to create jobs for us.  It is up to us to demand that what we need is seen to and we do this by shifting our priorities and, thus, changing "Supply."  This is how we affect change.  

We are San Diego - it is time we stood up together and moved in the direction of true prosperity for all.  Yes, this does mean that we will each have to give a little and that I will have to let go of some of my passionate convictions.  In the end, it matters very little, though - because what we will always have is each other.  This is true sustainability - all of us together leading fulfilling lives and enjoying a rich level of well being.  Yes, it will require some transition for some of us and a lot of change for many of us.  The question becomes: what do you choose?  What feeds you?

I know what feeds me - you do.  
And I hardly need for much more. 

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Musings on LOVE: On Being Gentle, take II

We are just babies in grown up bodies 
Over the course of the past year, I have been put through an accelerated path of (hopefully, finally) learning how to embody COMPASSION.  For years now, whenever I struggle others have always advised to "Be Gentle."  Personally, I find this absolutely confounding!  We have been raised within a culture as well as a civilization that practices degrading violence and horrific acts of force.  We plunder the Earth's natural resources to feed our addiction to greed.  We steal from each other at the threat of the sword and then we force those who we have stolen from to buy back from us what we have taken.  Without a second thought, we condone these behaviors with our own mindless consumption.  We refuse to notice our culpability in the whole and instead we use words like, "I love you," in a feeble attempt to make it all better.  It's confusing and, as a result, we should all allow ourselves to recognize how normal it is to be confused by such notions, as love, gentility, peace and compassion.

Last Thursday night, after I found myself hurt by what I allowed another to project onto me, I was advised that I should "love my neighbors like I love myself."  After a miraculous evening during which one of my "homeless" neighbors wandered into the Hive, enjoyed copious helpings of food and then wandered back out at his own timing and pace, I found this advice to be highly insulting.  Rather, in learning to be gentle to myself, first and foremost, what I am recognizing is that I cannot allow myself to just stand there and take the invisible blows cast upon me by those who are suffering.  In learning to have compassion, I honor that the behavior I must model is to not allow my neighbor to abuse me.  Turning the cheek after somebody slaps you is just plain silly advice.  I am finally learning to let go of my desire to fix, to let others be exactly where they are and to keep a healthy distance between myself and those who would strike out in their confusion.  As I recently shared with a sweet, new friend, "the hardest part of this now is that, like we were taught when we learned to swim, you cannot try to save a drowning person with your own body.  Rather, you must simply toss them a life preserver."

Hence, this blog is direct evidence of this.  My writing is a life preserver - take it and do with it what you will.  I have no desire nor need to be understood.  I understand myself in that I am a perfectly flawed and flawlessly perfect human being.  I allow myself my process, after all I am, like all great art, a work in progress.

  


More Musings on LOVE: On Being Gentle

My precocious nephew whom I love dearly

Preface:
My last blog posting details how I was unplugging from Facebook.  After an amazing evening of community connection and communication fostered around the topic of sustainability and cultural vibrance, I found myself triggered by the words of an Other.  My reactive response was to withdraw from the virtual realm where I had been accused of trying to be "understood."  At 3:30am, I attempted to cancel my profile, however deactivation is much harder than the social media platform presents it to be.  Hence, I am still online and active, although I have now shifted my relationship with and to it.

Last week was brilliantly pockmarked with scores of people enlivening the Hive with their presence and healing.  Beginning on 9/11, a robust group of us gathered together to drum back in the regular heartbeat of a healthy society.  For hours, we sowed this honey-colored, wood floor with our footfalls and our rhythm, with our song and our laughter and with no rhyme or reason but to call in release and a letting go of past wounds.  On Monday night, the merry voices of men singing floated into the rafters overhead as I began to come together - in cooperative comaderie - with a growing team that is committed to our collective, highest good.

On Tuesday evening, Amrita Joy Ananda Ma once again graced the Hive with her Extra-Terrestrial Shamanism.  Thursday night brought a group of 30+ artists together to begin envisioning what a sustainable San Diego could look like.  Ariana Saraha, the Gypsy Fusion Muse out of Colorado, was back underneath the Peace Stage on Friday night.  After which, a lovely sleepover followed with two of my most cherished, new friends.  Saturday, like the week that came before it, kept us moving and grooving from meetings to presentations regarding the future of America's Finest City.  By the time I was finally to be left alone, with just myself to entertain here within the comforting yellow walls of the Hive, I had to honestly give voice to the fear that was arising in me.

Before he left, M and I spoke of LOVE and how we do, or don't, show up to love ourselves, first and foremost.  I recognized that I had been rejecting myself, and my most basic of spiritual necessities - like singing and dancing - over the course of the past few weeks.  It's so easy to take care of and see to others and their needs.  It's so easy to sing and dance when I am sharing space with others who are doing the same.  However, it is also easy for me to distract myself when I am alone - for me to negate my BodyMind's needs by crawling up and into a virtual reality and a more heady way of existence.  It is so easy to not show up to ME when I am by myself.  It is as though there are these little holes that give way, and just as soon as all is still and silent once again I can begin to hear their loud screams to be filled up - "Eat something!"  they cry.  "Go, buy some alcohol," they demand.  "Call someone."  "Do something!"  "Go out."  "Watch a movie."  "Get on Facebook." 
"Do anything but don't just BE."

Friday, September 16, 2011

Pushing the Reset Button

I gone and did it.
I deactivated my Facebook account.
Yes!
Freedom is here. 

It's ironic.  Considering the fact that I've spent the past few weeks
espousing the merits of social media.  Obviously, I am still typing to this location.
However, who knows, perhaps my online blog writing will be next to follow.


I guess I am just wanting to push the reset button. 
Kind of like what my Body recently did.  (Which was absolutely in tune with Universal timing.)
A few weeks back, I was dancing my a$$ off on a Tuesday night in Encinitas, all the while thinking I was seventeen again.  The tunes that were pouring out of the loudspeakers was sugary, southern California pop and it took me back a lifetime - to when I first flew the proverbial nest, headed away from the dysfunction of my parent's home and into the solace of undergraduate life.  I was so energized by this embodied memory, as well as by where I find myself now, that I spent an hour jumping up and down, down and up.  On one, final elevation, I felt my right ankle joint move down and away from my lower tibia and fibula bones.

Responding immediately, I landed on my left leg and then lowered myself to the floor.  I spent some time caring for, caressing and loving my ankle.  I also chuckled at the fact that I am no longer that lost and confused teenage girl.  And then, I experienced a surge of deep gratitude for the lifetime of experience that has flowed in between.  "I am no longer that little girl, thank God!" I exclaimed.  Although my ankle didn't feel good, I intuited that what I was experiencing was the remnants of an old injury finally righting itself.  So, I danced out the remainder of the evening by placing most of my weight on my left ankle.

As a junior in college, I had broken this ankle and I have struggled to move forward in my life ever since.  Time and again, I lacked compassion for myself.  I berated and beat myself up for the smallest of infractions.  Or, I refused to accept others - thereby, rejecting myself.  I disrespected ME by being out of integrity - in my word and deed as well as in how and with who I spent my time.

What's different about now is that I have 110% committed to my spiritual evolution.  I am no longer choosing to suffer.  For a little while there, I was confused about why I had re-hurt this ankle but I now know that I didn't re-hurt anything.  The fact of the matter is that I have been hurting for too long now.  The hurting is over and the ankle is re-set.  It's time to move on.      


As for Facebook, it sure was a good friend.  It re-introduced me to my love for creating chronicles of my life now.  I've been a scrapbooking, journal-writing, photo album maker and keeper since I was a little girl.  Facebook reminded me of my role in this world as an active documentarian.  It also taught me that a Revolution can be started with a singular woman posting a video to her profile.  For these, I'll always be grateful.  But I don't think I'll miss it.



Sunday, September 11, 2011

Presenting the Body: A Rallying Cry


“I feel.  Therefore, I am here, I am now.” 

Ten years after the fall of the Twin Towers, and we are on the brink.  Walking a tightrope, we precariously teeter above a deep chasm that lay between the modern, 20th century and an increasingly machinated, new era.  The brilliance of this now is the balance that we can endeavor to walk – with one foot sinking into a moist, dank Earth, we can also dance with our neighbors across thousands of miles of invisible frequencies with the other.  It is an exciting moment, rife with potent opportunities.  However, this balancing act requires a great awareness, for there is a silent war being waged.
Just days after 9/11, moved by fear and propaganda, the American public willingly gave up its constitutional right to “Habeas Corpus.”  Literally meaning to “Present the Body,” the Patriot Act eradicated hundreds of years of democracy in one swift motion.  It was no longer necessary for anyone, including American citizens, either remotely accused or even wrongly associated with terrorism to be granted due process of law.  Rather, our presence before a body of government was rendered obsolete.  
Then, in 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected our Bill of Rights by granting personhood to corporations.  Corporate entities, fictional in nature and lacking a physical body, were given a disembodied voice with which to vote in presidential elections.  In just one, short decade, life as we have known it was overturned.  And, now, our access to fresh, healthy foods grown and raised on local, family farms is under attack.  Forced to stop by new FDA regulations[1], and even sometimes violently acted upon by misguided government bureaucracies, thousands of dollars as well as gallons of raw products – such as milk and produce – have been thrown down the drain.  In a time period when we have reached socially alarming rates of physical and emotional dis-ease - cancer affects 1 in 4 Americans; heart disease is our nation’s leading killer; obesity and diabetes are chronic illnesses for children and teens; and we’re popping pills like they’re candy in our prescriptions for depression and anxiety - can we really afford to further diminish our relationship with the very real Earth under our feet?      
Stemming from a millennium-old, left-brained approach to life, this is not by any means a recent campaign.  Although our analytical thinking has led to continual leaps and bounds in our technological advancement, what we have not realized is that, like our human population, these evolutions are exponential in growth.  What is different about this now, however, is that our level of distraction has reached such a fervent pitch that we no longer hear the army’s trumpeting call.  Like sheep to the slaughter, we absent-mindedly chase after the dangling carrots leading us to the shimmering mirages of iPads, breast implants and Genetically Modified Organisms[2].  Unfortunately, what the horse really craves – true, tactile connection in real time – it cannot be forced to drink, especially if it does not recognize its own deep desire. 
Almost 400-years ago, Rene Descartes penned his now famous words.  In his Discourse of Method (1637), he wrote – in French, not Latin - "Je pense donc je suis,” and, ever since, our western institutions have been ruled by Cartesian Thought - by a worshipping of the mind over the body.  Centuries later, we - as a people - have forgotten how to listen to the stirrings of our heart song.  We have willingly accepted mindless work that does not feed our Spirits as par for course.  And, we can no longer sense the ancient wisdom of the Earth nor intuit the deep psyche of our collective consciousness.  What’s more is that we do not know how to be in stillness and silence.  Daily, we negate the immense power and deep well of meditative thinking.  We have become numb, the walking dead - Zombies pulled towards the external call of media and mayhem. 
Today, it is our dire responsibility to remember - for we must rebuild this great nation by relying, once again, on our own Self-Empowerment.  It is we who must create sustainable, innovative industry and, thus, supply the everyday human with a true, inalienable right - self-sustaining and soul-feeding work.  In our cities, we must create a community of people that holds, at its core, a fundamental belief in the necessity of: connection, collaboration and communication; our soul's meeting in real time and fluid space; the strength of vulnerability in our mutual surrender; and in the sweet taste of sensuality.   We also need to pool our resources, share our strengths, and honor our weaknesses.  We have to re-teach our youth common sense as well as critical and outside-the-box thinking.  We must call upon our solution-oriented artists to draw on past models, like FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps, for the time is now to recreate a flourishing garden where our real, human toes dig into a replenished soil.  There is no other recourse.  This is a rallying cry for it is these human bodies that are at stake in the future that is soon to come.  It is up to us to remember, to teach and to pass on our human legacy.  Join US!


[1] www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-875
[2] www.naturalnews.com/gmos.html

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Suspended Between

Suspended between
what is to come
and all that I have ever known,
I teeter.

A surreal dream,
reality is no longer mere reflections.
All that is within is without.
Brilliantly attuned, I dance with the Universe.
A sparkling macrocosm, my microcosm made manifest.

Walking into a future,
the vision no longer just a shimmering mirage
for my choice beckons me in the present.
"The time is now," he says.

My Body, still so earth-bound & passionate
shakes in violent convulsions
at all that I must leave behind.
My Spirit, however, has finally committed.

Hawk medicine, screaming my name
for months now, is pure and clear.
"It is time to spread your wings
and take flight." 
The time is now.
The time is now.

And, the sadness is gone.
The fear, no more.
All that remains
is LOVE.

Ready to rise and elevate,
like a whirling eddy of leaves
blowing in the wind
on a city street corner.
Then, gone. 
And, never to return.

"You're almost 35," my mother admonishes.
"It's time to settle down."
"Perhaps, that isn't my path," I finally declare.

Still not knowing what truly is to come,
I remain
Open
and Flowing,
like the Ocean.

A Taste of the Collective WE

Enjoying the Mexican art form of Son Jarocho at the Hive

On Thursday, Spetember 8th, 2011, my mother's 70th birthday came with a BANG!  At around 3:38pm, power went out all across San Diego County as well as north to Orange County and east into the state of Arizona.  During the eleven-hour outage, some reports indicate that close to 5 million people spent an evening reveling in the dark together.  The week had already been surreal - it began with unusual gray skies and drizzle on a Labor Day, during which I walked by a motionless body laying prostrate on a Golden Hill sidewalk and then police sirens blared late into the early morning hours of Tuesday.  It then progressed into also including a rare heatwave that I was closing this 5th floor loft's blinds to in an attempt at keeping the Prosperity Hive cool.  By Thursday afternoon, although I had noticed that the small fan I was using for a minor reprieve had cut out as I sat typing at my desk it wasn't until a dear friend had phoned from Carlsbad, inquiring as to if I had also lost power, that I took the time to really pay attention.  BLACK OUT! 

The day continued, somewhat according to plan.  I met with a ShaktiRising apprentice, an ongoing occurrence that has been taking place since spring, in the goal of sharing the everyday of transformational growth through the language of the dance.  On this afternoon, however, we were joined by two men who struggled to escape the monkey mind of their brains.  Caught up within the rapid firings of analytical thinking, they could not present their selves to the here and now of this moment.  Together, we discussed the potency of this time.  Melanie was excited to greet the possibility of change that the power outage represented.  "Remember," I shared, "the counterbalance of excitement is pain."  "Hmmm...", both she and the men reflected.  "What we strive towards is a neutrality of being in which we allow for life's experiences while not experiencing ourselves as being pulled off of our centers," I continued.  "Neither up nor down, neither happy nor sad, we simply experience it all as par for course."  Yes, indeed.

Later on that evening, as darkness had fallen and I found myself alone within the comforting, yellow walls of the Hive, I took my BodyMind on a walking meditation around my beloved city.  Of course I was pleased to find what I endeavor to create - people gathering together, in community and communication.  Homes, streets and neighborhoods had truly come alive.  Voices could be heard, ringing together in a tinny din.  The glow of candlelight and campfires burned.  Shadows moved across the darkened pavement.  Television - our one and only true competitor - had, finally, fallen silent.  We were free - to enjoy each other, and these moments, now.  Although oil was not flowing through SDG&E's main SoCal pipeline, the air was charged with electricity.  The excitement was palpable.  It was beautiful and true poetry in motion.  Dear God - Let's turn if off more often.

And, yet, being the wizened, close-to-35-years-old that I am, I wondered, "If this blackout were to persist - indefinitely - how long will it take for the excitement to be transmuted into fear, the joy into pain?"  "If we can no longer walk to the neighborhood store to purchase our food - our very livelihood - what then?"  The answer is, I don't know.  But what I do know is that we have to cultivate the discipline to pull ourselves away from the media and to spend time with each other again.  Then, we have to relearn how to gather our own food - how to grow it locally and, if need be, how to hunt for it here in the coastal desert.  This isn't about fear.  It's about LOVE - for, in moving forward, we do not know what will come.  All we can do is be prepared and respond.  And, by preparing, we simply present ourselves to what is.  Presence is our Collective Movement Forward - JOIN US!


Monday, September 5, 2011

The Deep Well of Compassion

A Day of Mind-Fullness at Escondido's Deer Park

I was twenty when I was first introduced to the literary prowess, as well as compassionate philosophy, of Thich Nhat Hahn.  A Nobel Peace prize winner, renown poet, political activist and Tibetan Buddhist, Thay has created worldwide intentional villages that celebrate harmony.  At the core of his teachings is a belief in Mindfullness - in being deeply present to all of the wonders that each and every moment holds.  From the get go, I recognized Thay's wisdom.  However, I had to thrash against my own suffering and resistance before I could arrive here, now.  Although Thay makes regular visits to San Diego County to visit one of his monasteries, Deer Park in Escondido, only yesterday did I finally enjoy a morning spent in Thay's presence, joining a walking meditation in Sangha (community) and then listening to a Beloved teacher impart a Dharma talk.

Under an oak grove up a winding Escondido hill, close to one thousand people gathered round as the 86-year-old Thay sat with a circle of children facing him.  Feeling the wind on his face while listening to the morning sun drying the dew, he slowly sipped his tea.  Then, he invited a Tibetan singing bowl to sound.  He spoke not.  Rather, he offered us a glimpse of the true embodiment of presence - no past, no future, only this, now.  Blessed with a near front row seat, I opened all of my pores and my cells to such an extraordinary display of humanity.  The camera remained in my purse for I sought not to remove myself from fully experiencing this gift of presence.  Each time the singing bowl sang, I turned into the north and breathed in the mantra, "I have arrived.  I am home."  I have arrived.  I am home.

In the great meditation hall - that Thay designed himself, inspired by the vibrant, American barns that dot the Vermont countryside - we sat packed like a can of sardines.  Knee to knee, and shoulder to shoulder, the palpable call of this now was evident.  Thay's Dharma talk was sweet, peppered with mantras for Beloveds.  "Darling, I love you.  I am here," he advised us to speak to each other.  With the caveat, "But you must be present, otherwise it is not true."  He also lectured upon Mindful consumption and how we must be aware of how everything we see, hear, touch and engage within is consumption.  He warned of the dangers of our craving, violent and fearful media.  He advised less and then he invited us to enjoy a Mindful lunch together, provided by the brothers and sisters of Deer Park.   

What inspired me most was Thay's deep, infinite well of compassion.  Even though fifty+ years of non-violent action, including the penning of over 100 books - all in the name of PEACE (peace begins within and is in every step) - has not yet yielded the results we all seek and hope for, Thay has not been dismayed.  Even though, just yesterday, he requested a lunch of Mindful eating and, only minutes later, I witnessed the same walking and eating, the same standing and eating, the same talking and eating, of our everyday mindlessness, he still offers.  Even though we receive his lessons in one, giant gulp as just another experience to be consumed and then regurgitated for a willing ear, or eye.  Even though his open palms get slapped away and his vulnerable heart is rejected, by us and our mindless actions.  Even though we take, take, take from this Master, walking up to him, post Dharma talk, asking for his autograph for our individual books, or thinking that we are entitled to sit upon a wooden bench before him as the women, elderly and children are relegated to the floor, he still gives.  He still loves.  His love is boundless.  Without form or container.  A flowing well, it spills forth.

Dear God.  Please grant me just an ounce of such humility and compassion.