:: Shine On ::

Everyone and everything are moving around me at light speed. I am sure that some days I must look like one of those die hard monks in Tiananmen Square, standing at the epicenter of a busy intersection like an anomaly exhibiting her humanity. My arms are at my sides, my posture is upright, my eyes are closed, and I have a look of peace about my face that reflects the dissociative episode I am undergoing in the name of enlightenment and progress. They say the treatment for this kind of behavior is restored memory, but they aren't genuinely interested in finding the source of my affection for modes of escape. The task of remembering is easier said than done once you learn that limitless freedom is born of forgiveness.


The irony is that there is nowhere I would rather be than right here, and no time for which I would rather be present than this very moment. It is not the hour I am escaping, but rather the obstacles that impede my ability to see a masterpiece in front of me, hear a chorus in my ear, smell the scent of fresh calla lilies, taste the sea salt that's floating through the air on my tongue, and feel the warmth of a sun that is determined to shine on someone, somewhere. Today and everyday it shines on me. It shines on you, too, but all too often you are moving too swiftly to receive its tenderness.


I wonder where it is you are going with such haste. Can you imagine what it would look like if you pursued this very moment with as much urgency? Forget that you are headed to a meeting, a game, a film, an art opening, or a funeral. Instead, survey your surroundings as if you are already in your meeting. Coach yourself to believe you are already playing in a game of sorts. How well are you performing? How much of your talent and skill are you utilizing in this game, and is it indicative of your true potential? Imagine that it is you on the screen and you are the lead in your own feature film. You are the artist exhibiting your work, whether it takes the form of a business proposal, a landscape painting, a birth, a kill, a stitch, a peel, or an act of kindness. Pretend you are going to your own funeral, because you are.


How quickly do you move now? At what speed do you cut through the air once you realize that in the act of running to moments which have not yet arrived you deny the only true moment that exists: which is this moment. Now this moment. Now this-- and where are you now? Are you busy seeking happiness in a future moment that is slated to fall short of your great expectations, or are you basking in the soft sunlight that greets you?


I am not embarrassed to admit to my molasses momentum, nor am I too proud to profess that I am still learning from my reflections on every lesson learned. Sometimes I open one eye wide because I am still aware of the judgment I encounter, although it remains ineffective at best. It is in these moments that I catch a glimpse of one member of the herd glaring at me with searing indignation. I am reminded that I stand no chance of fitting in here until I help others achieve presence in this moment so that we can all understand each other better.


This much is true: we are all giving a presentation, each of us is charging the field, we are all delivering an Oscar-worthy performance, each of us is exhibiting and exposing our souls by way of creative expression, and we are all marching onward toward our own funeral. Since there is no sense in running to where you are destined to arrive, won't you stand beside me for a while and shine?

:: Winchester Waltz ::

Everybody’s got a little bit of Winchester Syndrome these days.

Sarah Lockwood Pardee Winchester married herself to the cursed legacy of the Winchester Rifle--the bloody instrument that claimed the lives of hundreds upon thousands of people during America’s Civil War. Upon losing everyone near and dear to her, she set out to claim territory out west where she fabricated cryptic blueprints that she hoped would shield her from the Spirit of Justice that was coming to collect...

For thirty-eight years she commissioned bizarre architectural projects in her labyrinthine mansion which included windows with views of walls, staircases that led to the ceiling, doors that opened to sheer drop offs from the top story, and various decorative salutes to her beloved number, thirteen. She had been told that if she ever ceased adding to the construction cue, she would surely meet her death. With this prophecy in tow, Sarah Winchester formed an identity out of her fear of the inevitable. Ultimately, it still claimed what was owed, and to think of what adventures she could have had with the $20 million she’d inherited.

Each of us is facing the assured conclusion of our own story with every breath, every thought, every word, and every deed. Some of us are discreet about our fear and anxiety regarding the final feelings, words, or actions that will compose our fateful exit. Others choose to publicly invest their inheritance in attempts to outrun, outdo, and outthink the ominous soul clerk that keeps the books. Either way, we all behave as if we’ve discovered how to cheat the same source that has given us life in the first place.

There exists an infinite number of ways in which we distract ourselves from acknowledging our powerlessness over the hands of the clock: menial tasks, round the clock labor, side hobbies, drugs, sex, violence, films, video games, spa treatments, shopping sprees, gossip, comparisons, judgments, denials, tabloids, eating, exercise, daydreaming...

My mother and sister are serial shoppers and avid fans of Perez Hilton smut-news columns. My father likes to watch Western films in the afternoons once he gets off work. One of my brothers spends three months out of the year hunting sacred animals in every corner of the world, and my other brother likes to golf with his real estate buddies on the weekends and occasionally during the week when they can write it off as an “important business meeting.”

There are people who sleep up to twenty hours a day and others who are too high to sleep for longer than two. There are people who are terrified to be alone with themselves and drift from one relationship to the next avoiding the self work that would otherwise offer them freedom from their insecurities (which is what they’re really after). There are people who cheat, lie, steal, and conceive of master plans to sue large corporations for exorbitant amounts of money to pay off their gambling debts or support their addictions.

There are people who go to the gym six hours a day and dedicate themselves to beautifying and glorifying the very body that they will one day forfeit. There are people who have never read one piece of classic literature but can rattle off every top designer and their respective wonder bra that’s sure to make “your man” go wild this summer season.

We can all think of more examples of how we dance around our imminent departures, but lately I’ve been tuning my lens of perception to the ways in which people are boldly confronting the life-death continuum rather than running from it. I’ve realized that the people who I consider to be my heroes have all lovingly accepted and embraced the final curtain call. They formed their identities not out of their dreaded nonexistence, but rather out of their unbridled passion for a shot at fully living.

Their distractions serve as inspiration for my own defiant death march: painting, sculpting, leading revolutions, traveling to sacred sites all over the world, meditating, photographing, storytelling, singing, dancing, laughing, winking, smiling, loving, giving, serving a cause that’s greater than myself, writing, speaking the truth, observing the beauty in a dew drop and a waterfall and ruminating over their dependence upon each other, filming, acting on stage and screen, sketching profiles and landscapes, sweeping, watering, nurturing, gardening, swooning, breathing, learning something new, exploring, discovering, unveiling, opening, greeting, swinging, sighing, hugging, holding, indulging in life’s myriad ecstasies, building, cooking, explicating poetry, preserving natural habitats and their resident species, delivering research on potential cures for the manmade diseases that plague our planet, solving mysteries, resurrecting the Divine Feminine and protecting women’s rights, peeking into each other’s souls and awakening someone’s inner flame, playing, dreaming, swimming, walking, cycling, kayaking, surfing, kissing, twirling...

Every day serves as an opportunity to either add to your celebration of life and its infinite possibilities, or to keep adding rooms without doors, staircases to roofs, and chandeliers that lie strewn across the floor of your own personal Winchester Mystery House. You don’t get to take the mansion with you when you go, so let’s dance while we’ve still got the dance floor...

:: She is Punctual ::

I killed the final four minutes of my shift by pacing across the floor as if it was part of my initial job description. I stood guard over the hands of the clock and dressed them in satin white gloves as if I had the right to govern the direction and activity of each of Her fingers’ un-lived seconds. I remained close, and even so, I left three minutes late.

My car waited outside like a steel sculpture I’d abandoned abruptly, without fair warning, but with the intent of returning to eventually. As pieces of art often do, it took me to where I told it to go, and despite my late departure it assured me that there remained plenty of time.

It explained that there is no such thing as "late" or "early." They do not exist as states of being, only as concepts that serve as motivation to walk some middle road called "on time." We arrive when we arrive. We get there when we get there. In fact, the "there" of where it is we are going does not exist until we reach it. So we can never be early or late; rather, we are sharp and present exactly where we are supposed to be at any given moment. Call me a bullshit artist, but this is quite the argument for those of us who often find ourselves being penalized by those who have not yet embraced this radical idea of punctuality.

I left three minutes late according to the clock, but I arrived at a Judah crosswalk at 6th avenue at the precise moment that an innebriated fool had taken to prancing from one side of the street to the other. Once he had traveled nearly 2/3 of the way to his destination, his direction changed. He’d been slapped in the face by the palm of a memory of superstitious rituals he had once given up when he traded his innocence for adolescence and then adulthood.

I had left three minutes late and still arrived just in time to observe an old man avoid all cracks in the road in an effort NOT to break his back. You could tell by the extreme caution he exercised with each step that his back had been broken several times before... by illness, by disappointment, by heartbreak, by loss. I could tell by the way he calculated each dismount--first right then left--that he had no desire to take any chances this time through.

This grown man found himself crossing a childhood playground instead of the stretch of painted pavement in front of me. He was six-years-old (when one superstition opens the door to another) and the child becomes overwhelmed with the rules, codes, scripts, lessons, rubrics, assignments, disclaimers, qualifiers, guides, suggestions, demands, and decisions that he either makes himself or receives from others in his world. Each time his foot grazed a crack and just barely found sanctuary in the contact of skin and street, his heart sighed and his eyes smiled with relief. Just a hopscotch away from the curb with moments left before achieving success, I watched the old man’s arms fall at his side and his shoulders sink inside his blazer.

Do it. You’re almost there.

And then he leapt, both feet in the air at once, and landed flat on a crack in the concrete sidewalk at 6th and Judah that has needed patchwork for some time now. His entire journey had been a struggle, and it’s only reward was meeting failure on the other side of the road.

I left three minutes late and did not rush to make up for time since I realized that in every moment I am right where I am supposed to be. I did not anticipate that I would learn a lesson from a six-year-old in the body of an old lush in a neighborhood I could have easily missed altogether had I chosen a different route. And as it goes, I arrived promptly on time to witness an old man laugh at his blatant rejection of a superstition that at one time in his life seemed to be an absolute necessity. He giggled and I giggled, and we both moved along.

:: Big Bang ::

I'd like to think of these as the lost years between 12 and 33.

When I was 12-years-old, I found myself sitting in an abandoned temple on the lower East side, entertaining a debate among female rabbis whose merit as scholars and students of the tablets will never fully be realized by the misogynist powers that be. It did not occur to me that I had any answers until one of them demanded that I speak and stop sketching her profile.

"It's true," I told them. "It took billions of years and seven days to get it all wrong. And it was all She could do on the seventh day to sigh and look on with relief as She planted the weight of responsibility in the soil of the garden."

An atom exploded with laughter during a cosmic snowball fight that resulted in chaos and life. Without realizing it, the children had accidentally created a universe that would never hold itself entirely accountable for mistakes made and disasters orchestrated. So it was joy and harmony that indeed brought us to where we are, and yet the children are all running away from us at speeds proportional to their distance from the shuttle launcher. They're running with our matter, and we're too stubborn to think it matters.

I asked her to put her chin down and tilt her head to the left. I reached for the vine and cross-hatched her halo before sharing pearls I had fished out of conversation I'd discretely overheard in dreams. "It isn't important to make sense of fingerprints that aren't yours. Just because you find some doesn't mean they deserve analysis. We're all born with enough time to make decisions that affect the seconds in the minutes in the hours of the performance as it happens right Now and in succeeding moments. Those of us who learn this early on find our way into the scenes that follow intermission."

Bewildered and unsatisfied, the rabbis left the temple where they'll no doubt find themselves again when I am 33. My model raised her chin, tilted her head back to the right and said, "In this act, I will love."

:: Heart ::

It is a fact that when a human being is recognized for exhibiting certain admirable qualities, she is inclined to further develop them. We become self-appointed experts at what others tell us we are "good" at doing. When I was young, my mother would always tell me that I had a great heart.

That's what I chose to develop.

:: Gaia's Butterflies ::

The cell precisely divides itself and maintains a divine balance with every reproduction thereafter. A few moments pass, and suddenly it takes on a fractal pattern with a sacred geometry that intimately creates, expands, and unites all life.

We are all the sum of this poetic, synchronized equation and still we insist on identifying with synthetic differences that keep us separate: man vs. nature; male vs. female; love vs. hate; race vs. race; class vs. class; creed vs. creed. But beyond these illusive divisions there is a tapestry where you and I are fibers of the same thread.

For the mad few who resolve to solve Gaia’s riddle, she reveals how music and rhythm and magic all dance the wanting soul into a dimension beyond superficial dualities right into the infinitude of oneness. These brave hearts discover that the key to unlocking peace is to revere the feminine yin principle of all life--yours, mine, the trees, the ocean, the butterflies...

The senseless, unbridled, and violent masculine aggression that has made a spectacle of raping, ravaging, and ruining her grace has no ticket to eternity. Please, return her shoes. Return her garments. Return her innocence. It is not too late to resurrect her, no matter what those who justify their unconscionable behavior may tell you.

The butterfly arrives at her destination despite her disadvantaged design and against all manner of insurmountable odds. It is only when her yin and yang wings agree to make the journey together that she succeeds. You are the wings. You are the riddle. You are the answer.

:: Stations ::

when we are decisive our actions are informed by charts
that establish fundamental knowledge of value and hue
when we are sensuous we acquire a palette with parts
to paint the lines we playfully follow with our shoes

when we are naive we assert our entitlement to Truth
and etch our egos with initials into bark that no one owns
when we are wise it means our souls are solid and couth
and dwell in hearts that sound off notes loud as trombones

:: Stay for Love ::

You are the Magus.
You are the Artist.
You are the Composer and the Composed.
Get on with it already.

There is no point of reference for any of this. There is no beginning point. There is no crux, no climax, and no denouement. Life goes in circles. Within the circles there lie cycles. Within the cycles lie moments that pile up on top of each other to create what we perceive to be a chronological unfolding of events that make up our lives. These moments transpire in accordance with social constructs that we establish out of fear. These constructs, and the institutions that enforce them, employ a hierarchical structure that produces class consciousness. Without class consciousness, we would have no way of dividing and policing ourselves. Without policing ourselves, that would mean we were free. That's a scary thought even to people who want freedom.

Where to start...

Begin by divorcing yourself from your ego. Drop your identity for one day and see how long you can handle it. There is nothing worse than being a marginalized human being--ask anyone who qualifies as such. That sense of displacement, of not being enough, of feeling unworthy incarcerates the heart and cripples the soul. It's a state of limbo without the viable option of grounding oneself within the comfort zone of an identity group. It's separation by way of ideology that we reinforce by decorating our personalities with colors, brands, music taste, sexuality, religious denomination (or lack thereof), political agenda, gender identity, homes on wheels, and technology that has absolutely surpassed our humanity. These things are arbitrary and have nothing to do with your soul, which posits the next challenge after surrendering your ego to the dance: reclaim your essence and take back your power. Get on with it.

I've made a solid life out of being a castaway and an untouchable of sorts. As a byproduct, I've become a keen and impartial observer of human behavior. It goes beyond being the sketch artist on the sidewalk who captures your stolen kisses, your gazebo waltzes, or your batting stance at the plate. I've spent unspeakable nights in San Francisco that I should not have survived--the kind that sent me to a rooftop at 3 AM with a bloody nose and one foot dangling over the edge. Had I not been ostracized growing up for being overweight, having the wrong zip code, being a dyke (when I identified as such), being a tomboy, being a heathen, or being a general shit-disturber and threat to the established order at every institution I graced with my enrollment, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to ruminate about the inner workings of society and culture in my isolation. It has taken me a long time to say thank you to everyone who contributed to my status as a social leper, but the truth is that I am in [your] debt.

Whatever insights appear to you in these pages are not mine to keep. They belong to you and everyone. I am just a means of manifesting them for those of you who have not yet encountered a dark night of the soul for yourselves--an experience that threatens to destroy what lust is left for living after you've been beaten to a pulp by your circumstances (which you create yourself). The idea is that my raw and honest account might deter some of you from silencing the music within before you are awakened to the reality that you were born with the key to your own freedom. You are not only capable of but responsible for creating your destiny, by which you contribute to a Whole so beautiful that it silences even the most erect ego, for lack of a better term.

We share a fate of merging with an infinity so intricate that it synchronizes even the breaths we take, the synapses that sound off action and reaction, and the corresponding external events that develop on cue. Our reality is composed of a web of dualities, a fragile and illusory net of space and time, and the interdependent relationship between free will and evolving destinies. For twenty-four hours, attempt to look at the world around you as if every sound, every scent, and every word or signal compose the map that helps you uncover who you really are. Close your eyes, select a page from a book or a newspaper, relax into yourself, and open to see what guidance awaits you in that first word or sentence that catches your eye. Give birth to the restless outsider, the rebel-rouser, the hell-raiser within, and liberate yourself from your fear.

A track record of tragedy in work, relationships, and school inspired a hiatus from my life in San Francisco during the winter break of my senior year. I hibernated at my parents' house with the complete Woody Allen collection and a veritable smorgasbord of drugs. I stopped making art, stopped making music, cut myself off from the outside world and became very comfortable identifying myself as a victim of ignorance and a seemingly meaningless existence. In one last shot at tripping over inspiration, I forced myself out of misery and traveled to book stores lifting flashy quotes and token words out of volumes of poetry and prized prose, but none of them housed my DNA. None of them plucked a heartstring like my own song, and this record of my experiences is merely an instrument. This is my way of telling a story I couldn't check out at a bookstore for myself when I was starving for the ass kicking that I ultimately got.

The long and short of it is that I'm the youngest of four children in a Mexican-Italian family with two warm, loving, and selfless parents. (So far so good.) Money was an issue and continues to be. (Nothing out of the ordinary just yet.) We were all put through a Catholic education which proved to be both a benefit and a detriment, though I am grateful to my parents for investing in our minds to that end. My siblings are all married heterosexuals and working professionals who are well-established and highly regarded in their respective fields of dentistry, law, and education.

There's our red flag: I'm a single, starving artist who dated women for the better part of seven years after coming out at the age of fifteen at a Benedictine Catholic High School. I was a righteous gender-bender for a while who was often mistaken for a boy. In response to a series of tragedies that included a close friend's suicide, a grip of deaths in my family, and your standard, college heartbreak, I dropped 115 pounds from my 225 pound frame after committing myself to anorexia nervosa and a cocaine addiction. I ritualized and rationalized both vices and refused to accept that I was slowly killing myself until a near death experience forced me to face my own music. Too proud to ask for help out of the hole, I recovered on my own sans rehab or a guidance counselor.

My survival does not make me any better or worse than you. I don't know what each of you has endured or is going through, but I do know that we are responsible for each other. We are inextricably bound by the same unyielding scale of truth and love. I offer my vulnerability because I feel that I owe you (and myself) that much. Some of you are waking up to the absurdity of our suffocating social conventions but are too afraid to lift the veil with your own awareness. Bold interrogation produces liberation, and the answer to every question lies inside the Self. Get quiet enough to find out who that is, and when you can confront the light and the shadows within with acceptance and forgiveness, then you can access the power you harness to change your world.

If you've ever touched the void, gone deep enough to ask yourself what it is that keeps you hustling along with the rest of the herd, and needed some unfiltered encouragement in a bad way, then I hope the timeline of my self-discovery will offer you a new perspective in your own quest for meaning. At worst, you'll be adequately entertained and delay your own voyage to that silent center within that dares you to live from the seat of your soul. Know that no distraction will satisfy your hunger for truth, and ultimately you will be called to assert what it is that's keeping you here.

I stayed for Love.

:: When I'm 84 ::

I met an 84-year-old woman tonight with a beautiful soul, and I felt compelled to share some facts about Margie, the woman who helped me put things in perspective:



She has the most beautiful smile, the most genuine presence, and eyes that laugh. One of her favorite sayings is, “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” She tells her neighbors if they ever catch her outside playing with a jump rope, they shouldn’t wonder whether she’s gone off the deep end, they should just join her.


Once, when she was in a hardware store trying out step ladders, a gentleman walked past her in the aisle and without thinking twice, she blurted out “I’m taller than youuuuu are” with a sassy six-year-old girl’s voice. It took the man a moment, but then he turned around, stepped right up another ladder, surpassed her height by a good foot and said in a six-year-old boy’s voice, “No youuuu’re nottt!”


She has an IQ of 165, and immediately married after graduating from the University of Oregon because her only other option was to return home to live with parents who never hugged her or told her that they loved her while she was growing up. She’s raised three brilliant children, one of whom is a professor in Texas who set up a fund for low-income families to provide their children with an education.


Her one wish in life is to know what it means to be “in love.” When she was my age, she’d received eighteen marriage proposals from men who were just returning home from the war. She picked the smartest, most handsome, and most emotionally maladjusted bachelor in the bunch. They were married for thirty-nine years, and not once did she get to experience what that feeling really feels like.


I suggested that any moment you feel a deep relatedness to something--a song, a scent, a great work of art, or even a taste--that counts as being in love. That feeling is so transitory as it is, and it goes through so many stages of its own evolution... I told her I fall in love once a day as a rule. I did a poor job of selling my position, but I did get her to smile for a moment and recall a song that’s brought her some much needed peace lately.


She is a poet and revealed to me that her greatest source of creative inspiration is death... at that, I mentioned Rumi’s poem “Die Before You Die” and we discussed what it means to die to one’s past in order to be reborn to the present. It seems funny for us to be meeting each other at opposite ends of the spectrum--our own spin on “Benjamin Button.”


She recited three of her most prized poems for me with her eyes closed and her heart exposed. The closing lines of the third poem were all I managed to remember:

I may not be able to win the battle
This time around
But don’t count me out
I’d like to be around long enough
To give it a try
Please be sure to wake me
When it’s time to die


I thought: I’ve never been married, I have no children of my own, my IQ doesn’t quite hit the 165 mark, and I’ve only been here a little over 23 years (this time around), but I know what it feels like to be in love... and despite its equal parts of pain and pleasure, I wouldn’t trade it for anything else in this shared world.


To Margie: Here’s hoping some lucky fella sweeps you off your feet, and if he never comes, may a bird’s chirp, the scent of a rose, the chill of a breeze, the sun shining through your window, or reciting a poem to a perfect stranger introduce you to what it means to be helplessly, recklessly, and fearlessly in love.

:: When You Wish ::

a moment ago i wanted to kneel down
in front of a canvas and have a go of it
just trace the woven threads with
some horse hair that’s been dipped in
cerulean blue or cayenne
to illustrate the cryptic beauty that is
dancing for my inner vision on this
blissful august night

but people are clapping and laughing and whistling
and now i want to hop in a canoe like i used to
when i was a kid alongside tom sawyer’s island
or go on a jungle cruise and sketch elephants
while they bathe themselves under waterfalls
and there’s a train on its way that’s going to
take us to the grand canyon where mountain lions
are eternally perched high above laughing hyenas
and some fiberglass rocks

i used to think that falling in love meant
necking it with an awkward teenage boy
while waiting in line to ride the matterhorn
i can still remember how brave and bold i felt
the day i became a certified autopia driver
“permanece sentados, por favor”
but i can’t remain seated because i can’t sit still
i’ve got fireflies tickling my nose and
many miles to go before this pirate ship sails

wise esmerelda and her penny arcade prophecies
once warned me against wearing rubies
and said my lucky number was 17
i was sure she was telling the truth when she predicted
i would marry rich at a young age and
travel all over the world pursuing my dreams
at 23 i am not yet married
but i’m so rich i carry gemstones in my pockets
and i’ve been traveling around the worlds that are inside me
since the day the real world turned out to be small after all

i want to stroll through the french quarter under a parasol
that’s got my full name embroidered on it in pearl white thread
“j-u-l-i-a-n-n-e” in big flowing cursive...
i want to jam with some country bears and
buck up for a few rounds at the shoot-out range
before we keep our arms and hats inside
for the wildest ride in the wilderness
i want to pretend i’m wendy and follow tink
to see peter and the lost boys so we can all
think happy thoughts and never grow old

there’s this whale that’s so big it once swallowed a little boy whole
and it used to frighten me but now i think
we’d get along just fine and i might even ask him for a ride
to the kind of place that makes your dreams come true
when you wish upon a star
maybe we’ll end up in aurora’s tower and finally get
love’s one true kiss and free humanity from the collective karma
that’s sedated us all into a dangerously deep sleep

i want to wake up
and share this kiss with the world now
no more lying long noses
no more villains and poisoned apples
no more spindles and slithering serpents
just a waltz across a dance floor with
guests that change from time to time
just a laughable splash at the end of a long journey
that nearly took us to our demise
just an arrival at the pearly gates
after passing through mr. toad’s wild version of hell
just a stroll down main street
under a parasol
on our way to breakfast with the characters
and then off to tomorrowland

:: Magic Mirror ::

I've become fascinated with the discovery that at any given moment in time, there exists two of me... there exists two of everyone of us. Not only do we incarnate in different eras in different locations as different sexes performing different genders of different classes, races, and creeds with likes, dislikes, skills, talents, fears, joys, fortunes, misfortunes, husbands, wives, lovers, mistresses, children, grandchildren, parents, doctors, priests, friends, enemies, bosses, coworkers, and heroes,... but in every lifetime, we share our existence with a mirror self. Stay with me on this one...

This mirror self represents our deepest hopes, dreams, desires, fantasies, goals, fears, anxieties, insecurities, promises, and ideals. In every moment, there's part of us running around in a parallel universe that is either dancing to the beat of a celestial heart song or digging ditches for hollow egos in revolving rings of hell. What's really wild is that your collective trip--the sum total of every self and mirror self spanning millennia of conversations between space and time--is what is influencing your every decision --right now--.

This is the truth that sets you free after it has thoroughly pissed you off...

I'm finally starting to get a kick out of it. I am overwhelmed by the thought of how much grace and compassion we are shown by being given fifty-some-odd chances to get it right:

To live our lives completely and without restraint;

To brush off whatever illusory limitations we have acquired through years of suffocating conditioning and instead faithfully follow our inner guidance for once;

To replace fear and anxiety with knowledge that empowers and love that conquers doubt;

To give all of ourselves away for one small, altruistic and benevolent act that adds to life's blinding mosaic of kindness, purity, selflessness, and peace;

To surrender to the transformative and renewing elixir of forgiveness and heal old circles with mercy and understanding;

To imagine what we would look like if we were fulfilling our highest potential, and to strive everyday to take one step towards realizing and manifesting that ideal on the physical plane;

To shine a light where there is darkness, restore faith where there is disbelief, and ignite passion where there is apathy;

To plant a garden in a concrete jungle, perform an operetta in a subway tunnel, paint a mural on a prison gate, serve a meal to mouths that have forgotten the texture of food;

To speak your truth whether or not anyone is ready to listen, is capable of engaging, or is willing to take responsibility for their own soul and act;

To dare, risk, and see the magic in every moment that you are not busy trying to escape;

To live the life that you and I were born to live which is happening --right now--... not in two weeks when you get paid and can take time off, not in three months when you fail to maintain your New Year's resolutions, not once you've completed your graduate studies and can apply for your dream job, not in ten years when you're married with children and living in your dream home... but right now. It's happening right now.

You are only as good as your last achievement...

What are you doing? How are you living? Are you happy? Are you fulfilled? Are you at peace with what you are creating? Are you proud of the company that you keep? Do you show reverence for human beings who share your space? Do you stay in touch with the people who change your life? Do you challenge yourself to try something new everyday? Have you learned how to love and accept yourself for your faults and imperfections as much as your good features? Do you feel whole or do you feel incomplete?...

Could it be that you are forgetting to nurture your mirror self and your soul... that part of you that longs to live and is begging you to release yourself from fear and color your world in with love?

Wake up.

You can either shake a tail feather with the angels or dig a grave with Beelzebub. Every second lived offers you a chance to join the drum circle that sets you free.

:: Brave Toast ::

This city has 7 rolling hills

I find that it's best

With arms crossed over chest

To roll heart first

And head last

Sometimes you'll go slow

Sometimes you'll go fast

Mind the style that you bring

To the trip

Tumble

and

Fall

And when you land

Stand up

And laugh

At It All

:: Cuore Metéora ::

I am a ladybird

suspended in mid air

The Greeks have a word for that

it’s “ Metéora”



When the fog rolls in

my wings look clipped

But don’t be fooled

it is just an illusion



In truth my wings span continents

In truth I can fly miles without growing tired

Around the world I charge

At the speed of light



And then I return

Without having traveled very far

If at all

To the air suspended

within my chest

To the heart

within the heart

:: The War Within ::

I have put my body through the ringer in this lifetime, and now she is pleading with me to restore her to balance. I’ve come to embrace myself wholly and unconditionally, but this acceptance could not come before experiencing a variety of phases ranging from healthy and active to morbidly obese and then anorexic. After recovering on my own from an art-induced drug addiction, I oscillated between anorexia and binge eating, stressing my body to such extremes that I am still struggling now to find the center. I have made excuses for every habitual pattern I have endured and survived: for either binging or “abstaining,” for my lack of appetite, or the “special days” I created especially for gorging on the best food San Francisco (or my mother) had to offer. I choose to release myself now from these cycles and free myself from all karmic debt that I have accrued due to my erratic and indulgent habits so that I may finally take care of my body and focus on the real reason for nurturing myself: to show reverence, respect, and appreciation to my body for housing my soul and my consciousness.

I am putting an end to the war within myself--my own battle of light v. dark. I acknowledge that I have a skewed perception of beauty which I must unlearn once and for all. It is a perception of surface beauty that I have learned, been fed, and felt that I had to maintain and adhere to all my life. The greatest irony is that the very beauty myths that I was conditioned to believe and uphold are meant to appeal to the heterosexual male appetite, more so than the women whose attention I admittedly seek. That is to say that it is for [his] pleasure that I am supposed to look attractive. It is to [his] liking that I was told I had to tailor my figure, my features, and my personality. I have been fed this lie by nearly every person, every institution, and every set of circumstances in my life. Even when I tried to rebel against it, I simply transferred one set of codes and scripts to a different identity group. The imprisoning effect of those belief patterns has always haunted me regardless of how I have identified or who I have associated with.

I see this now so clearly. I accept that I have permitted these perverted concepts of beauty to poison me, literally and figuratively. My body and its scars, while they are beautiful and real to me, are a living testament to the fact that in my own quest to restore integrity and respect to the divine feminine spirit, I have fallen short. I boldly accept the fact that I am the one who must atone for my self-inflicted abuse and mistreatment. I am the one who must account for the way in which I have either appreciated or depreciated my body in this lifetime. I am the one who must account for my image of myself--regardless of how accurate or distorted it may be at times. I do not feel sorry for myself for what I have gone through; I am not filled with self pity. I know myself to be brave, courageous, and strong-willed. I know myself to have a confidence that is eternal and not dependent upon this personality through which my Higher Self is operating and evolving toward a greater state of enlightenment and illumination.

I know that there are others with this strength. I know this, because I have met some of you. Your outer beauty is a direct manifestation of your radiant inner beauty. You are intelligent, witty, creative, and genuine. You glow from a distance, and up close your sense of security makes you shine. Thank [you] for showing me how it can be done. Thank you for giving me the hope that someday I’ll return to that calm center I once achieved... the center that exists in each of us... the center we are operating from when we remember that there is no uniform beauty, that nothing compares to natural form, and that nothing can ever be added or subtracted from authentic grace. I choose to free myself from the prison of high standards that has kept me from breathing deeply and celebrating my individuality. I choose release.



I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
:: Walt Whitman ::

:: Miracle Fish ::

I catch myself attempting impossible feats with a grin because I half expect to fall and half expect to fly

I watch myself focus with all my strength only to immediately become distracted with the symmetry of a flower, the tickle of autumn, and the movement of a leaf that’s naturally left its home to drift without any point of reference to wherever it is destined to arrive

I release myself from one fear only to be confronted with another, and I laugh as I repeat the process of defeating the illusion and embracing the truth:

that I am eternal

that I can still sing

that I can still strum

that I can still breathe

that I can still rise

that the six trillion some-odd cells that make up this lovely shell are dancing to their own rhythm and pulsing as they please

that when doubt arises

all one ever need do is consult the wisdom of a miracle fortune telling fish

and the answer comes

when I placed the piece of space-aged, heat sensitive polymer plastic in the shape of a bright red gleeful fish in the palm of my hand

She told me that I was in love

:: World Atlas ::

I am going on a trip around the world, and I thought I’d have a look at my mother’s Superior Edition of Hammond’s World Atlas (1978) for a preview of the ever evolving regions I intend to see.

I opened up to a spread titled “Our Family of Planets” and that reminded me for a minute that I belonged... that is, to a greater family: one that is itself connected to an even more extensive galactic tree that spans eons and obliterates all concepts of time and space.

Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and the dime-sized illustration of our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy all seem so harmless in this layout. The sun looks more like the center of a sunflower, and for those who may not know, if you look closely at the center of a sunflower you will observe that these light worshipers expand in two opposite spirals.

Let’s make this a metaphor for the two lives each of us is living at any given moment, and continue...

I’ve turned now to a feature about the Moon, the “Earth’s Natural Satellite.” She spins as we spin around the center of that flower which is itself oscillating in two separate directions... rotating around its own center... She spins and the planets spin and the galaxy spins and the rest we assume remains still... but I know now from studying this outdated text that this is not true.

Some spinning is going on that we can’t observe right away. Those who fear the unknowable have a term for things we can’t see, hear, taste, smell, or touch. They call it “Dark Matter.”

I see it as the spiral of petals that is simply twirling in a direction opposite to us. It is as much a part of us as the twirling that we can observe and experience with our given five senses, if we are graced with the use of each of them... a gift people so often neglect to praise and give thanks for in my estimation.

When I spin around the globe going wherever my feet and heart will take me, I will breathe love into the dark side of my own moon and mimic the mesmerizing balance one must possess if she is to twirl without losing her footing.

:: Kaleidoscope ::

We’re all thoughts. We’re just a kaleidoscopic arrangement of thoughts that constantly evolves into new and unique patterns with every pivot of the interconnected cosmic joint that blitzes about the vibration of All That Is. All of us are just our thoughts. We are seismic, dancing energy that causes worlds to spin on their tails. We are never the same. Each moment consists of death and rebirth. Every inhale and every exhale is new love.

It’s relatedness and not marriage. That’s how I feel about all of [you]. It’s how I feel about all of [them]. It’s how I feel about [me]. It’s relatedness that grows deeper with each exchange of high frequency thought. The roots bury themselves a little deeper in the proverbial soil each time the kaleidoscope shakes out a new mosaic of love and light. We’re all just fragmented beauty that’s flawless because of (not despite) our imperfection and raw truth.

I felt like I was pegged between having the answer and asking the question earlier and I almost got trapped in a temporary standstill marked by fear and a familiar anxiety until I reminded myself that we are all just thoughts... just kaleidoscope, dancing light... fragmented and blinding shades of beauty that are never the same.

:: Time Began in a Garden ::

I took a day trip to Filoli’s gardens to marinate on some things and found myself in a place that was familiar and otherworldly at once. A dream I had one year ago to the day came true in the garden... at least part of it did...

And there were roses everywhere--one named for every occasion, every hero, every monarch, every color, every letter of the alphabet... every great composer, scientist, philosopher, and artist...

Queen Elizabeth was bold and proper red; Michelangelo was vibrant golden yellow; Princess Diana was a pure white that bled into soft pink; I could have sworn I heard a hymn coming from Johann Strauss, and the petals of "Taboo's" rose were suspiciously loose...

Of course this was the garden I'd imagined a year ago...



PART I: November 29, 2008


Dream of Palm Reading



The echo of [your] well-timed sass draws a smile across my face with the kind of quill lovers once used to write each other updates and sonnets... Much synchronicity has led me to merge with my own daydreamed sequence of us...

When I romanticize the “what could be” of our next rendezvous I see us in a garden somewhere that’s florid with brilliant color. We’re sitting beside each other on sacks of soil and I’m reading your palm, except I don’t know palmistry very well yet and so I make up most of what I tell you about your fate and heart lines.

I know you don’t know enough to dispute my reading, so I add a wrinkle at the end where I tell you I’m going to give you a blessing. I press my fingers into the base of your palm near your wrist and gently spread my fingertips out until they reach the tips of your own. We both feel a tingle and I assure you that the power is now in your hands.

But because I’m so stubborn and so bold and so brave, I usurp the power I’ve just given you and seal a new gift of energy instead with a kiss. You’re so beautiful and you drive me nuts. I tell you that and we both laugh. Look at those gorgeous poppies I say out loud. In my mind I’m thinking your life line is looking quite short.



PART II: November 29, 2009


The Roses I Expected



I’ve found that garden now. I’m sitting at that bench near those sacks of soil I knew would be here once I arrived. Only [you’re] not here with me, not in the flesh. Maybe you’ve all taken the form of one of the thousands of roses that are here... Mother Nature’s version of witness protection.

The only company I have now is everything and everyone. I’ve learned that by not limiting myself to this “Self” and its programmed attributes, I can become instead this bench, this soil, these roses, these grounds, the bricks of this house, this archway I am sitting under, the guests, the water, the ripples, the trees, the keys of the grand piano just inside, the birds and the bird feeder, the sunshine, the breeze, the dialogue, the silence, the dying and being born--all at once.

I am the path leading up to me and the path that leads back to you because both exist inside of me. Now that this infinitude has been established, it is not possible to acknowledge any distance between us because none exists--we have all become a breath in and a breath out--

the bricks
and
the water

the pebbles
and
the sunlight

the soil
and
the roses

the dream
and
its realization.


“Be alive,” the land says. “Listen--This is your time, your world, your pleasure.” :: W. Stafford ::

:: Mezza Luna ::

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. :: Anton Chekhov ::


A moment ago I walked up the stairs and back into my childhood bedroom to see a brilliant half moon shining through my window. I’m no authoritarian on waxing, waning, coming, going, swooning, spooning, grinning, or glowing gibbus moons, but the way it looked like it was rocking in a hammock made me wonder what sort of promising significance la mezza luna may have in store for me tonight.

Within minutes of searching for information about moon phases, I came across a thread in which someone had posted, “Trust and believe in whatever feels right for you.” There was a grip of helpful knowledge, insight, and astrological history on that particular page, but nothing gave credence to the playful satellite that I saw smiling back at me quite like those words did. It’s funny, but when I read them I felt like a bit of freedom I’d almost unconsciously forfeited was instantaneously restored.


So on this eve or early dawn of Christmas...


Let the Half Moon stand for the middle path and those that walk it;


the point of balance that exists between all polar opposites: the place where


light and dark,

good and evil,

strength and weakness,

beauty and dullness,

integrity and imperfection


all b*u*r*s*t*

upon meeting each other

into a glowing satellite that smiles and rocks

in a sky

that’s inside us

in the hope of being observed and appreciated for every shape it takes,

every feeling it evokes,

and every quest its lure and magic sets in motion.


Let the Half Moon signify that this cup is half full,

that we all somehow reflect the sun,

that this heart is pure enough to smile back,

orbit her chosen path,

and carry on.

:: Newton's Gravity ::

Every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle with a force that is directly proportional to the product of the masses of the particles and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.


The climate in the room changes when weakness exposes himself, and this makes it easy to pinpoint the moments when you shy away. We stand before each other: two Machiavellian princes who tickle one another’s fancy with a wink and a snarl. We contend for control immediately before we entertain the possibility that we’ve each met our match. Except that I am not afraid to be loved rather than feared. For a moment I consider if this might be where I’ve gone wrong, but then I look over at you.

I observe how carefully you construct your sentences as if they were blueprints for a wall so impermeable even honesty stands no chance of earning entry. I sit back--a satisfied idiot--watching security suit us up in the only armor we would ever need. For the first time it seems there is a formula for the madness that can be solved simply by substituting our names and purpose. The solution denotes the degree to which our nurturing of this spring’s harvest is successful (where the harvest is your vulnerability, and the irrigation pipes we arrange with our conversation become the dry map that guides us to your reasons for letting the air out of the raft).

The reality is that your attempt at accessing what little control exists between two feverish femmes is unsuccessful at best. But in case a warden is, in fact, present on this cell block, one might describe her as having my build and my voice. She is 5’6" by morning and 5’5" by night--her height naturally compromised by Newton’s gravity, but more specifically by the inescapable weight of her heart. She has an affinity for masochism, sympathy for sadists, a biting tongue, and a brutally honest disposition. She enjoys long walks with listlessness and uses pigment as a peace offering to beings that are at a constant state of war. She calls this human condition the only truth a lying Aristotle ever told, and she knows that she is in good company when she finds herself alone.

She’ll tell you that your profile is pretty when you’re too afraid to look her square in the eye. Her humility humbles erect egos, her confidence confuses comfortably-numb audiences, and the strength she exerts with each step she takes shames the fault line that has the nerve to shake her ground. She does not seek your approval when she dresses her eyes in crow’s black, nor does she beg your forgiveness when she chooses to either mute or amplify her sexuality.

She smiles at you crooked but kindly when she whispers her truth to you under your own breath. She knows that the weak souls look away while the brave ones blush. And you will know where you stand if she is forced to observe only your silhouette.

:: 1,000 Words ::

I came across the adage “Take nothing but pictures; leave nothing but footprints” recently and it has set me squarely on the path of kodachrome and solitude.

I never really feel that I am alone when I am with art, and in truth, none of us is ever on our own. All matter is surging with life that goes largely undetected by the human eye, but the heart knows something of the invisible world. Sometimes she helps you capture it on film.

At this very moment, I don’t know for sure where I am going, where I will be tomorrow, next week, or next year. I don’t know whether my words will ever reach [you] or if my efforts to narrate our intricate and shared heritage are futile or effective. I can’t see far enough into the undecided future to be sure of anything at all...

But the uncertainty of this moment is accompanied by an awareness of the fact that if I don’t keep exploring, daring, observing, writing, growing, learning, reaching, smiling, laughing, dancing, singing, dreaming, trying, or taking these pictures of (transitory) overlaps of space and time, then I will bring my existence to an untimely end.

And I’m not ready to be over.

:: Diamonds on the Inside ::

Nothing is created or destroyed


In my senior year at USF, I took Environmental Science for the first few weeks of the semester before deciding that Fridays at Baker Beach were more important than fulfilling my Friday lab requirement in Harney. I still have the textbook which is, of course, in mint condition.

The 40 students enrolled in that class in the spring of 2008 were a mix of athletes, artists, writers, and business majors. No doubt there were a few criminals and rejects in there as well to make us a bonafide Breakfast Club. It goes without saying that I took little away from the class before dropping it, but one very important discussion took shape before my departure which has had a lasting impact.

For whatever reason, our class had gone on a tangent while talking about mineral deposits and we arrived at the chemistry of carbon and crystals. The token obnoxious grade grubber who isn’t afraid to ask stupid questions in order to boost his participation points shot up his hand and asked whether a human being could undergo a chemical process that would result in his or her becoming a diamond.

Our teacher fielded the question with a dignified response noting that, in theory, such a feat is entirely possible. Everyone in the room either chuckled or rolled their eyes. For the remaining 40 minutes of class, I couldn’t put down my pen...

Nothing is created or destroyed. The Law of Conservation of Mass paired with Einstein’s theory of relativity, Mohr’s Kraft, Galileo’s interrupted pendulum, and every other iterated and illustrated version of this truth make the Human-Diamond possibility a source of comic relief and poetry at once.

It’s absurd and it’s not likely to come about in my or your current life cycle, but the dream of dissolving into a crystallized kind of brilliance even in theory makes this human experience more thrilling than it sometimes portends to be. All it takes is a chemical reaction and a willingness to let go of what we are at present in order to burst into a fantasy of what we may be.

It's a daunting challenge, but here's a place to begin: Rather than running away from the things we dislike, our task is to transform them into what we would prefer to experience. Rather than dismissing or denying our shortcomings and flaws, our objective should be to transmute what is weak into what will be strong. We cannot change or release ourselves from the things and people we fear or dislike unless we take up the task of rearranging them within ourselves in order to manifest our ideal kraft.

Light becomes Darkness; Darkness becomes Light. Beauty becomes Ugliness; Ugliness becomes Beauty. Truth becomes the lies we tell; the lies we tell become the Truth. We decide how to shape the energy that passes through us with every breath, every glimpse, every wink, every smile, every laugh, every hiccup, every tear, every tone, every embrace, every honest word written or uttered, and every question asked whether it be educated or ridiculous.

We are born with the power and potential to create our world as we see fit--to rearrange energy and matter to represent our ideals and dreams rather than our nightmares. Nothing is created or destroyed. Even the least likely candidates can become diamonds.

:: Hold Your Breath & Make a Wish ::

When I was younger, my sister and I would hold a contest to see who could hold her breath the longest while passing through the rainbow-clad Waldo Tunnel just beyond the Golden Gate Bridge on our way north to visit family. The wish belonging to whomever emerged red-faced and victorious would be granted. I always wished silently for Love. It occurred to me this morning when I followed my own tangential stream of consciousness from one clever memory to the next, that I never qualified the Love I asked for.

I think I used to know some things when I was a little girl that I forgot in the mix of desperately trying to grow up and live life in the proverbial fast lane... I used to tell people in grammar school that we all reincarnate and meet each other at different points in our lives when we need to teach each other lessons or help each other along. I used to affirm daily that anything was possible, and more often than not, the things I set out to manifest with my imagination came to life.

I see now that I also knew the art of surrender and allowance. By not calculating or posing any limits on the Love I hoped to one day receive, I opened the door to all manner of possibility.

Love has taken many shapes in my life. It’s taken the shape of poetry, prose, lovers, friends, photographs, flowers, laughter, music, other lovely things... but it has also taken the shape of pain, long-suffering, betrayal, failure, and the marginalization I was awarded for never fitting into the socially prescribed “Charmed Circle.” Love encompasses light and dark, good and bad, pleasure and pain; it’s what transcends the dualities that confine us, and it’s what delivers us into the Oneness where we can’t tell each other apart...

(There’s no need to make any distinction.)

I’ve lived a full spectrum life and I have an amalgam version of my 6-year-old, breath-holding, love-wishing self to thank for that.

Here’s to passing through every tunnel unscathed and filled with breath... You find out you get what you wish for... I might suggest not limiting your hopes to things you can rationalize, intellectualize, or deny yourself in the event you should feel unworthy of it once it arrives on your doorstep.

Hold your breath, make a wish, and let Love open the door. It may not take the shape you expected, and that will always be for the best.

:: Illuminated ::

all matter is an illusion. it's energy that is moving at a slow enough vibration or frequency for us to experience it. the less density you put in an carry around with you, the more you allow light to pass through you. it infuses itself into the very nucleus of the undetected subatomic particles that exist in every atom in every cell of your being, and in so doing, itinstills the light within the core of your very core of what is moving slowly enough to be identified as "you."

in reality, you are not from here. you are infinite and undefinable by finite borders, by finite personage, by finite labels. the moment you let in light, you transcend your physicality and operate at a higher frequency than you've ever known in this world of matter that never has, never does, and never will matter except to help you evolve into a being of light. you become illuminated.

maybe living life in the fast lane isn't so far off, after all. we were just traveling the wrong highway, desperately searching to reconnect with that velocity that is more real to us as souls than it is to the dense bodies that we inhabit in the name of progress and growth. we were speeding up our senses when in reality, it is our senses that we must forfeit. admit defeat but be not defeated.

release yourself from yourego and let in the light. the senses are dense with arrogance and the light is brimming with freedom. forfeit illusion and become the truth that is beauty and the beauty that is Truth. you are not leaving you are returning. leave the light on for others who've lost their way.

:: You Were Right ::

when you said that i deserve better.

when you told me that i was wonderful and said that the fact that i didn’t know it was part of my charm.

and now i can admit that i was wrong when i disagreed with you.

and that i was wrong when i settled for less.

now i don’t settle. i move around quite often. i see more of what i didn’t get the chance to see when i was stuck inside a dark corner of some dark room listening to music and staring at shifty walls with ears.

i am a nomad. i never confessed this to you when i was near you. but if i had, i don’t think you would have heard me anyway. so i’ll say it once again, just in case your eyes are open more thanhalf way and your attention is focused not only on yourself...

i am worthy of better. i am happy and doing fine without (insert several names, places, and things). i am a dreamer and a doer. i make history by living freely. i move slow instead of fast these days, and still you will never catch up. i am a wanderer with a bag full of stories from my travels.

i’d read the ones i’ve written about [you] but they’re just not as inspiring as the rest. not anymore. and besides, i’m too busy being born, notbusy dying.



:: Disorder ::

:: Chain Mail Art ::

On a day that may as well have qualified as any other Wednesday I participated, albeit unwillingly, in the collaborative process that serves as the framework for all chain-esque interaction. A seemingly innocuous decision to purchase dinner with a twenty dollar note instead of a ten, resulted in another random consequence of a random circumstance that your everyday fundamentalist defines as a "miracle," and your everyday atheist as "luck"...

...fourteen dollars slipped into my pocket by way of a hand that earlier that day had gone numb from a heartache-induced stroke. The same hand, once it later regained feeling, pulled said change from my pocket and meticulously unfolded each bill, rotated it so as to adjust each president's profile to the right, and secured the wad in a pile fit to meet the needs of other obsessive compulsive folks such as myself who engage in similar rituals of organization...

...before I could digest how little control I appeared to have over anything else in my environment at that moment, I was caught off guard by words so well arranged that they could pierce the page they stand on should they feel inclined to join in such an act of rebellion. It took three read-throughs before I felt the weight of their sincerity and fell with buckled knees to a floor I'd been dying to hit gracefully for so long.

"He's been dead for 8 1/2 years," it says, "some nights, I lie awake guilty because I can't remember if I thought of him that day."

You have no idea how far I've traveled to receive these words if for no other reason than to be humbled. And I am humbled. I am affected. I am--without fear or reservation--a participant of this damn chain.

:: Alchemy (for Mandy) ::

the thought occurred to me just now that
it is possible you were happiest in the very moment that you
scribbled down your last sentence--
not as an author, but as a funnel.
maybe, in the moment before that moment,
you thought that nothing could ever make you as happy
or compare with the beauty that--right then--replaced
your emptiness.
i know what it is like to doubt the return
of such contentment,
and i don't blame you for protecting that bliss by the act of smothering it.
i guess that i am more of a masochist.
i put my self-agency and my sanity and my love on the line
and i walk out the door just in case i come upon
one of those moments that makes me feel so complete
i would welcome death like a hospitable hostess.
studies show that pleasure comes only as a pair with pain
and i relish the idea of yielding transitory happiness
by the act of suffering so much
that i actually increase my odds of feeling--for one more moment--
like a smiling
shining
happy
idiot.
you knew the value of cashing in the chips you had earned
(rather than pushing your luck)
even if it only meant you'd break even.
i say
that there are things more valuable than our chips,
that there are things so simple-and-imperfect-and-awesome
that have the potential to create and destroy
or more plainly--that can rearrange me--
that i will give every chip away if only to catch a glimpse
of a grinning fortunate fool like myself in the eyes of another.

:: 6 Words Poetry ::

6 words: fuck, alive, glass, lace, river, hum

Cut-off shorts and a pair of bruised knees
Grass-stained shirt and a world at my 'tips
I can't find the river but I found a nice stream
The water kisses rocks like we kiss our lips

A low droning hum sounds off swinging branches
That are laced with sticky sap and pretty rings
I feel quite alive despite the circumstances
And my energy illuminates my guitar strings

There's a water glass on the sill that's half full
And a thirsty girl mesmerized by her reflection
At this moment the world is fucking wonderful
And each sip's a step in a better direction



6 words: expresses, visions, elitist, try, right, possible

I cross paths with so many women who are downright terrified
to listen to the inner wisdom that's [trying]
to direct them all to their highest ambitions
--to their divine life missions--
to get them to [express] the beauty of their hearts' true [visions]
'cause a while back they all sat under a sorting hat that
grouped them with [elitist] witches who've got no time
for New Deal pitches unless they lead to empty riches
all I want is to make just one of them believe their dream is [possible]
and if I phrase my message [right] we'll all be unstoppable



6 words: now, karma, evolutions, two, uses, interviewed

I can think of [two] [uses] for this moment right [now]
one involves remaining silent
and the other means living out loud
in both cases the soul in question is making some kind of bold move
by choosing how to answer every question in this invasive [interview]
her silence seals the truth and her voice sets off a riot
but with her [karma] on the line she's more likely to keep quiet
the institutions eating at her spirit are
threatening to remove her chiseled name
but the [evolution] of her species was ensured
long before she ever came

:: La Paloma ::

There’s a dove outside my window and she’s pruning her proud feathers
Perched fearlessly on an antenna, she is challenging the weather
It’s time for rest and when she’s ready she’ll sail across my window pane
To her, existence is enough -- she knows there’s nothing she need gain

Our worlds radiate from within and never from without
This law affirms your divine worth and leaves little room for doubt
What you see outside your window is what exists inside your heart
And when that bird takes flight [we] can’t tell [you two] apart



::