no harvest :<

I've eaten a lot of junk these days as a round about way of managing stress . Not so smart. Anyhow, at the end of a vigorous and beautiful yoga class today, we were taking our final pose, a resting pose, and as usual, i felt the expectation for an onset of great joy and calm. Not to happen though! I could not harvest it from my body. The immediate image I had was of my fingers and eyes scanning barren soil with the expectation of finding some beautiful flowers, vegetables, apricots. But there was nothing. And there was no joy or calm, even though there had been during my practice. In the beginning of the class i had set my intention as using my body with joy, and filling it with lots of breath. I felt connected and alive and joyful during most of the poses (as opposed to feeling like i was expending energy and thinking too much), so i should have had a wonderful rest. Instead i felt like from the neck down was alarmingly disconnected from me. Of course I began some terrified internal berrations against my mind's lousy decisions about what to feed my poor defenseless and choiceless body, but later on i began to think that there was a bit more going on than a junk food spree. There's a lot of spirit shifting going on. The winds are blowing hard, and I'm not sure what will be left when they let up. All I can say is that my life has been one of consciously asking for guidance from the holy spirit, and seeking wisdom and knowledge of God, so how can I be afraid of these uncertain days, and say that this is not from god? I honestly want to believe that the whole Biblical explanation of life is the way - I deeply desire for this to win out. But right now I have sufficient doubt. And I'm not sure what it would take to convince me. This isn't a dry spell. This is a severely cracked slab, or maybe just deciding i want a new dwelling. I'm sort of disinterestedly thinking about myself from the outside on this one too - interested in where i will end up. are the arms i thought were there really there or has it been me or what? maybe knowing god when i'm 25 is vastly different than knowing god at 24. i'm either losing god or being taken into a deeper level. I think it was the night of this yoga class that I decided to start skimming the Bible a bit and found this passage: "Land that drinks the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned." This passage threw into sharp relief the seriousness of what's occuring in my soul, if i'm still dealing on the biblical plain. part of me is very okay with passively riding it out, and waiting for some event or experience or reading to restore my sense of surity. Part of me thinks that I should be more disciplined in paying attention to my soul. I think all of this has been coming on for quite a while. I know this is a well-trod road, so it's not like I fear wandering off the map. It's one that I have been on before and thankfully one that people far wiser than I have documented traversing. I think I need to appreciate the experience of actively searching again, and thinking without the usual lenses and coloring. I don't know if this is just pure ego responding to the fact that I think people who are consistent are generally boring, but I think I like the fact that I'm not steady yet, that in the deepest parts of my life there is still room for surprise and shifting and destruction and creation. It's so much more dynamic, and there is such an opportunity for depth. I've noticed that I have been very silent with God these days. No chatting. Just trying to silently observe this crossing without judging. Really hoping that I continue in this explorative vein rather than getting depressed or lost. But if that's what needs to be then okay - there's not much to be done about the moods the undercurrents push up to the surface except look for the reason. While reading one of my favorite thinkers i ran across this, and i thought it fit - "when normality explodes or breaks out into craziness ot shadow, we might look closely, before running for cover and before attempting to restore familiar order, at the potential meaningfulness of the event." yeah yo.

"Touching the Rock"

Excerpt from Touching the Rock - An Experience of Blindness by John Hull "For me, the wind has taken the place of the sun, and a nice day is a day when there is a mild breeze. This brings into life all the sound in my environment... A day on which it was merely warm would, I suppose, be a quite nice day but thunder makes it more exciting, because it suddenly gives a sense of space and distance. Thunder puts a roof over my head, a very high, vaulted ceiling of tumbling sound. I realize that I am in a big place, whereas before there was nothing there at all. The sighted person always have a roof overhead, in the form of a blue sky or the clouds, or the stars at night. The same is true for a blind person of the sound of the wind in the trees. It creates trees; one is surrounded by trees whereas before there was nothing."

Ha!

Today in the afterglow of clearing yet another life hurtle with a certain amount of ease and grace, I am reminded of a conversation I had on an airplane to Maui with a somewhat militant honeymooner. I was bemoning the state of a non-existent and very traumatizing relationship in which I felt that the One For Me had slipped out of range because I wasn't obvious about the fact that I was rather smitten with him. Anyhow, her approach to life was that she saw every negative happening as the doings of an unnamed evil force that was trying to push her down, and whenever she faced opposition or disappointment, she would respond with a burst of competative "Ha! I know what you are up to, and I will win." Something along those lines. I think it will increas your ability to visualize this if I tell you that she was a small-boned, strong-minded black woman with lightnening fast judgement calls, which I probably unquestionably ate up at a time when all I could do was waver. I think I thought about this six year old memory because lately I do feel a little like that - but mine is a joyful "Ha!" that comes from landing lightly on the other side of a hurdle, and continuing on strong. And there's no evil force trying to push me down, just me trying to max out my time on this planet. Back to the plane, I remember going over all the joys and then the sad and mysterious decline of this relationship with this woman while her husband snoozed next to us, and parting by exchanging info and having her tell me to invite her to the wedding. Silly me! I felt so certain that she would be the cause of a joyous reunion, could imagine her being an interesting but intregal addition to a wedding day. (thank god for unanswered prayers, eh? although the thought of red-headed children is pretty tempting... i don't know...tough call) Anyhow, there is such an enormous amount of bonding that can occur between people as a result of talking about botched relationships and deferred hopes. And that is one of the major ways that I have become closer to friends and strangers. So, I suppose that that is some silver lining that I need to focus on when I feel all weighed down with second guessing myself and trying to guess the motives of a man's heart. At least I get to spill me heart to my friends a bit more, and get to see them show their love for me. And I get to explain my crazy dreams to them and hear them analyze it with such knowledge of me. I'm feeling rather blinded at this point by the brightness of my silver lining. Lucky me, to be surrounded by such support. I'm not trying to be profound here. I'm just trying to be a little more thankful for getting to run the race. Shift my focus off my aching lungs and burning calves. love ya all.

here's my old friend again: the giant space

random thoughts

Well, I don't really have an idea about what to write, but I feel like writing something. As I was looking at my friend Grace's blog and seeing all the comments that she gets from various friends, it has occurred to me that I am very slowly and quite selectively going about the process of giving out my link. I think I feel like some of my freedom will be gone, and I will have to sensor things a bit more if I do something wild like attaching the link to an email signature. Also, I don't necessarily like the thought of people I'm not so sure about knowing what I am doing and thinking about. Anyhow, I have decided that a major part of this blog will be dedicated to updating my soon to be even more scattered siblings.

Today my brothers and I went to Magic Mountain. We tackled the two-hour long wait for "X" first, and I have to say, it was a pretty thrilling 90 seconds, or whatever it was. I have to say, my favorites of the day were Goliath and Batman. The good ol' Log Jammer was pretty entertaining too. My head still aches a bit from all the twists and turns. On the way home, we tackled a dessert calzone at the Claim Jumper, conveniently located five minutes from the park. Yum, yum, yum. Some thoroughly unregretable indulging.

Well, the temperature is picking up, and next week I have finals. The hills are already yellow in some spots and I just said goodbye to my first class of children. It is very nearly summer. Time for reading, and maybe a couple long weekend camping trips before the heat really sets in. I'm excited to be more self-directed and to have regular time for yoga and hiking again. And to cut my hair even shorter.

Anyone interested in a backbacking trip in June?

Giselle

This weekend I saw the ABT (American Ballet Theater - a biggie) perform the wonderful ballet Giselle at the LA Music Center. For those of you as unfamiliar with the story as I was, it is about a peasant girl who falls in love with a nobleman disguised as a peasant. They are of course blissfully (and briefly) happy with one another and display their love with many impressive balletic feats. Alas, a less worthy suitor, earger for her hand and jealous of the nobleman, exposes her lover's identity and out tumbles the fact that he is engaged to a prince's daughter. By the end of the first act, Giselle's lover walks past Giselle to kiss the hand of the haughty prince's daughter, thus signaling where his allegiance lies. Giselle goes mad, as she is engaged to him as well, and her grief kills her. I know the story line sounds pretty trite, and I'm not even going to tell you about the second act, except to say that in death she is initiated into a whole group of young ghost-girls jilted by fiances, destined to roam the night forest. While the first act is all flowers and light, the second is darkness and deep blue moonlight. But, it really was very moving when you see all these emotions being danced out. Very catharic. The fact that there are no words really gets you thinking about the pure emotions. The thing that makes this so frustrating is the fact that the noble guy really did love Giselle, and probably would have chosen her over the prince's daughter. He was taking a side trip in a world free of responsibility and genuinely loved Giselle. So, he wasn't a rotten guy out to do harm. He was simply enjoying the tide of love. So you can't blame him. But then there's poor Giselle who has to see her lover forsake her for another, and goes simply crazy with grief. How do you deal with the thought/emotion shift that would go along with this new knowledge? Poor Giselle. She seems to be the true innocent of this ballet. Anyhow, what do you do if love and life situation just don't match up? I think I'm slightly a sucker for these types of tragic situations. My friend Erin and I had a discussion this past week in which we decided that we are firmly seated in the category of brooding. Often lonely brooding. But this is going to change. Brooding is not a place of power. So bottom line is, there is plenty of room for a little objectified brooding in this story line. The ballet had so many gorgeous scenes. The dancing was phenomenal - anyone would appreciate the ease with which they do sequences which require so much balance, flexibility, strength, speed, muscle memory, grace, and to top it all off, emotive quality. What an impressive instrument the human body is. Really. Let me know if you want to go next time the ballet is in town.