No going back

As a person who protects herself a lot, I find the majority of inspiration in my life from creatives who bare their souls in a purposeful way.

There is only so much self protecting I can do before I realize that many of the things I protect myself from are actually things that might benefit my growth, creative and evolution as a human being. But like many of us, the fear often outweighs the benefits of risk for me.

This often leaves me feeling very disjointed, fragmented, and frankly a little crazy. I'm a classic Gemini (yes, I drink the astrology juice) so I'm already prone to multitudes of expression. And as someone who expertly evades, avoids, deflects and distracts myself, I have begun to realize that there is a difference between protecting oneself from real danger, physical, emotional and mental and neglecting or depriving myself from true connection.

The people whom I admire the most are able to purposefully and sometimes erratically expose themselves and their vulnerabilities in order to make connections, to learn and to share experiences that help themselves and others to grow.

One of those people is my husband. When I first met him, he was a student at City College, studying to get his degree in ESL to be a teacher like his mother. We were both on the staff of the Promethean Literary Journal at the time and both creative writers. I will tell you something that will sound very simple about what attracted me to him most. It was his kindness.

I'm not really sure we put much emphasis on how important kindness is. Niceness yes. Politeness of course, but kindness, not so much. Kindness is something we all have but which society often grinds underfoot very early in our human development because of it's close relationship to what we call being naive, or I guess I should say, our fear of being thought of as naive because of our ability to be kind. My husband is kind in a way that reminds me that kindness is powerful and touching in ways that are hope giving and revolutionary. He has no agenda. His concern for people's well being when he expresses it is genuine in ways I had never seen before and which disarmed me completely and somewhat unnervingly. I have guards up all the time and I don't have to have any guards up around him. I don't know how to explain how utterly refreshing and relieving that is for someone like me. It is truly a blessing.

When you have your guard up all the time you can start to believe you're actually smarter than everyone else, that you have some kind of advantage over some poor sap out there with her heart on her sleeve. You're gonna get crushed out there if you don't keep all that sappiness under wraps sucker! Smarten up! Save it for when you're safe, in private, alone or with people you trust if there any people you trust.

But the thing is, I am a sap. I like to cry at movies, correction, I like to sob at movies. When I really like someone, I like to hug them. I like hugs. I pay attention to the really good hug givers I know (some of you could work on that) and touch is very important to me. I kiss, hug, nibble, snuggle and love up my husband all the time. My child is going to get more than their share of hugs and kisses and nibbles and I love yous and cutesy names. It's going to be sick.

But in my everyday life, my work life, my friendship life, I....like many of us, hold back. And there are countless reasons for this. We all know them.

But back to what I was saying in the beginning. As a person who guards and protects myself a lot, I am only inspired and moved by people who let themselves be vulnerable. I always feel like I'm being given a gift when someone, anyone shares something with me or with masses of people that I would never dare to reveal for fear of take your pick, embarrassment, shame, rejection judgement, etc. And yet as a creative person I struggle with the imbalance of being someone who is extremely private and guarded yet simultaneously wants to express very intimate things in my work.

I share poetry at a venue called Open Expression at Lenox Coffee once every month and have been since it began in March 2013. This last month I read a couple of my poems. I had some fun little jabber with the audience before I plunged in and I got a great reception. And that always feels good.

When I get to Open I usually feel exhausted, sluggish and occasionally irritable. I don't consider myself to be a people person but I can be very sociable when I need to be and I when I enter that space, my energy transforms and I immediately become more receptive to people. As a result of that I became immediately engaged with a really cool woman at the bar where I was sitting. It was her first time attending though she looked familiar to me. We exchanged names and info (I never do that!) and after I was done reading and returned to my stool next to her she gave me some really heartfelt praise. But then she told me something that I've heard before many years ago and not since. She told me that she felt I had something to share that people needed to hear.

My smiles started to contort their way into a grimace. I started reaching for my protection and my guards. Where was this coming from? Who am I? I'm nobody. I wrote a few poems. So what. What does she want from me? Is she serious? Who knows. It doesn't matter. Okay, all this adds up to is the fact that...well I don't like being held responsible for anyone's enlightenment.

Ain't that some shit?

But here's why.

What if I let you down? What if I'm full of shit? What if I'm not so nice? What if I'm mean instead of kind like my husband? I mean anyone can have a moment where they shine. We all have it in us to shine. It's why I love and rely on a broad range of artists in order to remind me of that which I am most passionate about, the ability to take our everyday lives, and turn it into poetry, not by defining beauty but by revealing it.

But the responsibility of having to be purposeful about it has frankly always scared me.

*But why can't I just take a compliment?*

Thanks. Great, glad you enjoyed it. Now what am I supposed to do with that?

Here's what I will be doing with that today. I am ending this blog and continuing over at Wordpress where I have also been posting poems every single week now since June at eternalista.com. If you have followed me here and wish to continue I have launched another blog there at Urban Eve which is still under construction but soon to be structured...with...erm...purpose.

Hope to see you there and give you a big internet hug!

*but only after I get to know you better. I mean, no offense but you could be crazy for all I know.

^__^

New Definitions of Meditation

Take one

So I just got finished reading my sister's blog over at Life as I know it about one of many revelations she's had since attending Oprah's "Live The Life You Want" trailblazer tour. She's the one who challenged me to blog everyday in September and I have to say that I am so proud of the both of us for sticking to it every single day this month. It has meant so much to me to have her be a kind of co-blogging friend. In ways she may not be aware of she pushes me, motivates  and holds me accountable simply by being her best self which is by the way, a freaking amazing self.

In her latest entry she talks about Mark Nepo, a poet who toured with Oprah and his emphasis of the importance of being still in meditation and how that meditation need not only be the practice of sitting in silence but anything that brings your spirit fully into the present moment. Wow! So creation can be meditation. Journaling can be meditation. People watching can be mediation.

A few weeks ago I was at lunch in the park, which is where I try to be every single day. I generally eat lunch alone and for the most part I always have. As I mentioned before, it's really important for me to get my alone time in, because for me, it's never really like being alone. I need it to check in with myself, to enjoy things, discover things, observe or even just be in my feelings for a bit. But I need it. Whenever I make a date to have lunch with a co-worker I understand that I have to give all that up and be present with someone else, so I'm always very careful about who I'm having lunch with, if it's only one person I try to gauge what the energy is like. I like to give people what I think they need and often that requires being a good listener which I do well.

But getting back to meditation. I was at lunch one day a few weeks ago and it occurred to me that sitting in silence for long stretches of time without talking is something that I do almost everyday. True, I may be reading, writing, listening to music or a podcast and of course eating but there are often times when I'm doing nothing but sitting in silence and watching. Watching people, children, babies, birds, feeling the sun on my face and the wind on my skin. I'm very aware that this hour is a time when I get to just do me and I really appreciate it. It's rare that I pack a lot of errands into that hour and when I do I always miss that quiet time of just nothing special but everything special. It occurred to me then, can't this be as much like meditation as setting my iPhone timer to 15 minutes, and sitting cross-legged not moving and observing my breath?

Years ago I read a small book called "The Knitting Sutra: Craft as Spiritual Practice" in which the author, while coping with a broken arm, came to recognize the repetitive act of knitting as prayer/meditation and explored the practice in different cultures. Sutra is Sanskrit for prayer. I liked this idea very much since knitting and crocheting are very meditative for me. When I'm doing it, I lose time and a sense of my self in the traditional ego based way we are all familiar with. All I am is making, is doing. And it's a wonderful feeling that I think women are perhaps more readily able to access because, as my co-blogging friend also mentions in her entry, women are more connected to our hearts. And it's true, we're always made to feel like we are weak because of it, that we should hide our vulnerabilities and operate from our heads 100% of the time, the way that most men are conditioned to. But therein lies the key to our purpose. So it's no wonder that so many of us feel so cut off and disconnected from our true purpose. We have been conditioned to believe that heart based activity is of less or no value when compared with head based activity.

Feminine qualities are for the most part undervalued and diminished in the realm of mainstream ideas about success. And we cannot be our best selves when we're not even being our true selves. Where women are concerned, this journey has to start first from knowing what it means to truly love ourselves, support your own needs and then support and encourage one another to lead the lives we're meant to live instead of being each others greatest competition and or obstacles. There is room for us all at the table. But the truth only matters when you believe it.

Animal Farm

My husband petting a cow

Well actually it was called an Animal Sanctuary. I just like saying Animal Farm because of the George Orwell book. Apparently the Woodstock Animal Sanctuary is much more humane than either the book or apparently most farms. It was a place that was recommended to me to visit during our weekend there. My husband loves animals so I knew he would enjoy it. I had this whole idyllic, Charlotte’s Web image in my head the whole time but our tour guide was very plain about the fact that he was going to tell us about all the animals there but that he would also tell us horrific things that would possibly make us, uncomfortable, sad and or angry and depressed.

YAAAAY!!!

Let’s just say this. I’m a vegetarian who was raised vegan and after that tour I was feeling sorry for carnivores. I mean the things you have to do to manage and rationalize your contribution to the regulated murder and torture of animals while you watch them grazing is something I really struggle with. Apparently, we’re not even supposed to drink the milk of goats or cows because of the way in which they are treated. Listen, I’m not preaching at all. I’m just saying what I heard. I eat something with cow’s milk in it probably every day and I never think about the shitty, awful horrific conditions of the thousands of farmed cows while I’m eating it. After this tour I thought I would. Oh man. Morrissey hates me. Oh well.

I will say that the first most immediate reaction I had to the animal sanctuary is just how huge these animals were. I mean huge! Cows walking around in their grazing patches could probably hurt you by accident if you  got in the way of their swatting tails. They are gigantic. But they are also very humbling in their large slow stature and the one we engaged with was clearly used to people and relatively interested in us. There were kids there, college students, older people and the sun was beaming like crazy. It smelled like farm which wasn't bad but you have to really surrender yourself. There’s poop in animal pens. You’re not getting away from it.

The pig house was so clean! I mean I approached the pigs with so much trepidation, not only because of the whole dirty pig stigma (I mean they are pigs) but because these pigs were humongous! As we approached the pig barn, I was amazed not only by how clean it was but the fact that it actually smelled nice. This sanctuary is really fully functional and really well looked after by staff and volunteers. That being said, I had no interest in petting or touching pigs. I kept a safe distance. I will say that while we were checking out the sheep across the way, we could hear the pigs going crazy during feeding time and I was totally freaked out by how human they sounded. It was a bit alarming and the guide was like “Don’t worry. They’re just pumped for feeding time.” Okay.

There was no baaing by the way

My favorite animals were the sheep and goats. You don’t know wool until your fingers are deep in sheep back. I mean it’s hard not to love sheep. I realize that it’s all romantic idyllic conditioning but seeing the sheep was just so normal to me. It was so easy to be around them.  The only question I asked during the tour because I love to work with yarn is whether it was possible to shear sheep without hurting them and being brutal to them which is often the case apparently. He said it was but that it was not often the practice. He tended to tell us the all the worst stories about the ways in which food, milk and wool were taken from farm animals. I and I’m sure many of us on the tour were  looking for ways in which we could perhaps get what we feel we needed from animal without feeling like horrible people, though no one actually said it. This one young girl was wearing a black t-shirt which read Vegan. Under that was a list of things about non-violence. But she didn't say anything, didn’t preach or ask questions I can recall.

Here’s the thing. Whenever a city gal like me is on a drive through rural New York or America and I see cows, horses, or goats grazing on some farm, I get a warm fuzzy feeling inside that has zero to do with reality. These animals are not pets. They are property, being fed, breed and or injected to produce for someone’s livelihood. Can’t I even keep the sweet image of dairy maids in my head? I mean I was brainwashed like every other child in America and I was home schooled and vegan! My mom used to kill the chickens they raised with her bare hands when she was a girl. That’s a lot to process; how what we like to believe or have been conditioned to believe has no place in actual reality. But there is an even deeper question here, a question of morality mostly and of just how much violence and torture if any with regards to livestock is manageable.  My husband and I talked about it afterwards and he was making the argument that the tour guide obviously had an agenda because he didn't talk about the fact that even eating plants and plant based food requires the killing of plants.

I haven’t really formed an opinion on that as yet. I do know that people need to eat in order to live and if we can’t eat plants, we’re definitely screwed. I mean we’ve been eating plants since the beginning.  So there is something to human life and the sustaining of life in general through a natural food chain but I feel like there has to be some balance there and I haven’t quite figured out what that means yet. 

Trust me, rectangle

I’ll tell you what I do know. Goats have rectangle pupils . They are rectangle and vertical. I stared at enough goats at the sanctuary and noticed this and I have no idea why this fascinates me but it does. I know more about how the cat eye works having had a cat for years as a girl. And I think that cat’s eyes are more accurately represented in popular culture than perhaps any other animal. But I think that vertical rectangle pupil in Goats are something I missed when mom was reading us “Billy Goat’s Gruff.” 

Ever present

Lavender calms the mind and eases stress and tension

Sometimes going away, even for short while really does gives me the distance I need to detach from useless energy. I’m always a little sad when I have to return to the “world” but I guess I wouldn’t appreciate the respite if there was nothing to retreat from.

I really am kind of a ridiculously private person. I don’t know where I get that from but I always feel way more energized after I’ve had sometime away where I’m able to be quiet and just listen to the silence of nature and watch the night stars. Saturday night the stars in Woodstock were just incredible! There were so many of them! My husband and I stood outside just looking up at them in total awe.

The really crazy thing about looking at stars is that it’s like time travel. You are looking at light that has taken millions of years to reach the human eye. I mean what the f*ck! Can you even really comprehend that? I shine a light somewhere in the galaxy and millions of years later someone sees it? Huh?

I can’t wrap my mind around it even now. Its just makes me realize how much more there is to this life, this universe than we will ever know, and how thankful I am to be able to cut off all the noise of my internal dialogue, all the chatter of external dialogue and tune in to something that is ever present. It is that ever-present quality that is at the core of what I seek most often in life. When I am able to connect to it I feel so much relief and contentment. It cannot be likened to happiness, which is more momentous and fleeting. It is simply a feeling that all the things I obsess over, think about, worry about, stress about, don’t really matter and are not really real essentially. They are dwarfed by the presence of something, which is eternally within reach and accessible to anyone should they wish to connect with it. No one has a monopoly over it. It belongs to us all.

Woodstock Weekend

This house has a lot of class. I mean D. has a really great interior eye. It’s personal but generous. It invites you in. Everything just emanates a sense of comfort and familiarity. There are mirrors placed tastefully in the right places. There’s a room on the second floor that just pours out the light reflected from the small window because the room is painted a light yellow. It’s soft, not overwhelming. It bathes you in light. It’s very soothing.

And the day bed outside across from that room? I am all about a day bed. I love the lounge quality of it. It’s a great touch. The master bedroom in the attic has a deeper mood. The back wall is a deep blue while the side walls are light blue and the floor is this thick smooth amazing wood. There is a rectangle skylight above the bed. The light that comes through just illuminates the blueness inside. There is an old chest at the foot of the bed, a sitting chair and a rocking chair and a lamp sitting on a wide African drum. It’s brilliant, simple, cozy yet intelligent.

It makes me think of how I might decorate a house for other people to stay in. How would I construct the mood of each room? What is my idea of comfort and peace? I really do like the idea of collections and things in sets of two and three.  Like old rusty keys or sea shells or what have you. Collections tell a story about the owner. D. loves art, history, craft, colors, music, design, culture and food. But she doesn’t shove it down your throat. Nothing is laid on thick. There is still space for you to be you. Or that’s how I feel any way. But I’m biased. I’m very partial to D. and pretty familiar with the things she is partial to.

There is a rain stick on the main floor by the entrance in the living room that just dematerializes me when I turn it over. It just sounds like so much more than rain! This level of relaxation should be accessible at will. It really makes a difference.  Everyone deserves that opportunity. Imagine how different the world would be if we could release our anxiety at the exact time we most needed it?

Everybody writes a poem

AT the very end of every Open Expression in Harlem, our host, my friend Cece reads the group poem aloud to the audience. The theme is different every month. It's usually a line like "If you really love me..." This line is written at the top of a piece of lined paper that gets passed around the entire room so that anyone who wants may contribute a line; those people who didn't sign up for open mic at the door, those who said they didn't have anything to read that night or those who have never read in front of an audience before.

And I have to say that nine times out of ten, the group poem, when Cece reads it back to us, is amazing. Collectively, each line represents the whole in a surprisingly cohesive sounding way. I've never heard a bad one. And in the end people are not only cheering for the feature poet but also for their own own unique collaboration together. It costs nothing. All you have to do is show up, listen and participate. It always inspires and awes me, the love, magic and generosity that flows from Open Expression and I'm honored to have been apart of it from the very beginning.

It's a place where I feel I can be comfortable being myself around a bunch of friends and strangers, people who get to see me exercise a muscle that I used to work out about 90% of the time. It's like returning to an art form that I used to identify with in a very serious way. I guess I still do, although I no longer harbor the same romantic aspirations I once had of being a poet, who supports herself with poetry alone.

Still I think it would be erroneous of me to say that poetry does not still support me in many ways. I've just begun to explore a broader version of it in the years since I left the safety of being supported as a full time student. I still love to watch spoken word poetry performed in the way in which it is most traditionally known, mixed with music and instruments, improvisational and or formatted. It is so very close to something ancient and universal as a form of communications between peoples about issues both political, and personal.  It is a report straight from the village, straight from the mouths of generations, live and direct. It's a prayer and a song. It's one of the very few soul connections I experience that requires me to engage willingly with the energy of others and I am eternally thankful for it. The opportunity to put down my technological devices, look up from all the blinding screens and participate in life should happen way more often than this.

Check in

There is a lot going on right now. The first episode of the latest season of Scandal aired tonight. I missed it because I as too busy checking in with my life at Open Expression. Yes, that will be a poem I write. Wow, did I just open with a rhyme?

Yes, well I meet old and new people I really appreciate whenever I'm at Open Expression in Harlem. Had a lovely sister give me really heartfelt encouragement about my work. And we're getting out of town for a bit this weekend for a little retreat from the buzz and crush of city life. I need that kind of refuge at least three times a month. Yes, that would be my ideal life. Three weekends a month in an upstate retreat, writing, meditating, "satelliting."

Jeter just played his last game ever and won it for the Yankees. Now I don't watch baseball at all butI know how incredible his contribution to the game has been. And my husband (ding ding ding!) is super happy and psyched about it so that makes me really happy.

We're all packed and ready. I couldn't get out of the office fast enough today. I'm exhausted and just looking forward to sleeping in a different bed. I get excited about that kind of thing. I like hotels, and not just the fancy ones, even the mid level ones. And B&Bs. Don't get me started. There's one in Hyde Park we're very fond of.

So I'll be reporting from said retreat by tomorrow.

Thank you Jewish Holidays.