reconciliation

some nights you can feel insomnia sneak slowly up the back stairs–creaking a loose board, bumping into the rail, then slipping open the back door that i was sure i had locked. but tonight is not that kind of night. tonight insomnia shattered through wood and glass, launched itself across the kitchen, and bounded squarely on top of my bed and heart. i never even bothered turning out the light. i knew sleep would never come.

for the record, this is not how i wanted to welcome in the new year. sleepless and tired. restless and jaded. this is a time for fresh starts and resolutions. optimism. hope. at the very least this is when i should be getting a jump start on my new year's resolution of giving myself one of the primary building blocks to health and a happy life: sleep.

but we don't always get what we want. we don't always get what we deserve. we don't always get the answer or clarity or truth even when we ask for it. and deep disappointment has joined hands with insomnia to guarantee a long night dedicated to asking why and why not?

i find myself looking back to exactly a year ago, to the person i was inside my skin, a nomad eating pho in seattle one night, boarding a transcontinental plane with a compass and empty red travel journal the next, flying across the world to a fantastic city far away and embarking on a month that still means so much to me as insulated by distance and time as it now feels. and in particular, i go back to this moment looking out the airplane, when i turned toward the window to hide a rush of hopelessness and tears and immediately was presented a shooting star and the northern lights. and the voice inside my head accompanying the vision was calm and crystal clear: you are grieving but there is no need...all will be well...all will work itself out...this is your sign... 

i spent the next long while, tears instantly dried, watching in wonder as aurora borealis shared her glory.

and i have done my best. i have spent 2012 listening to that voice, listening to the truth resonating so clearly inside of me despite what prudence or reason would suggest. this voice is the essence of how i have always preached we should live our life: with our heart, our intuition, our gut, and through our vulnerability. and in this year i have made some great friends along that path, pushed them further along in their life and in turn been pushed myself, welcomed the magic of a gorgeous home space, and finally, with the help of several of you, begun the journey toward telling the story of sieve.

i realize all that should be proof that it's working, it's a successful way to live, but today, now, as i turn toward a new year, i also must consider a different way of life. one of reconciliation.

it's an attempt to acknowledge that my heart is a tender, optimistic organ, capable of clearer sight than i have ever imagined, but one that has been known to be mislead {by myself as much as others} and at the very least, too consistently open for repeat bruising. in the end, she must learn to live in the same body as my mind and the two have been in conflict, this entire year particularly, seeing the same life from very different perspectives. it's time compromises must be made.

and tonight.

now.

right now.

i begin the process of reconciliation: balancing the sight of the heart with the {hopefully} grounded, logic of the mind. i don't know how to do this without withdrawing from the realm of the heart altogether but i just have to trust that in the wake of this year of failure, this is the only way forward i haven't tried. the only way to find any sort of clarity and balance. i trust that the voices reflecting my life back to me will tell me if i go astray, but at the moment, i am so done with the arguments between what the two voices tell me. so done.

wish me luck on sleep and have a happy new year, however it welcomes itself into your life. my hope is that 2013 steps forward into my life with honesty, openness, and tenderness.

god, i long for tenderness. where has its soft caress gone?

snow globe

some nights should be held close in a snow globe, words swirling around gently like flakes, settling down after a while; clarity left visible in the stillness. we rest together in the peace and comfort of truths spoken out loud as the glass slowly fogs to opaque. the bottles empty. the cd changes. the words pick up again, shaking out our world with more truth, more flakes catching the flicker of the ferries passing by in the rain.

but the real victory is, for perhaps the very first time, the words not ready to be spoken, truths not ripe to be understood, rest patiently in the spaces between the now still snowflakes. they are comfortable knowing that one day they too will be tossed into the air and allowed to give voice to the life already lived out between us.

one day. not today.

until then, some nights, we should hold each other close inside a snow globe, care swirling around gently like flakes, settling down after a while; love left visible in the stillness.

awash

not running

if i had just registered in time for the half marathon on october 27th, i wouldn't be here forced to make an obvious decision. i would be on the other side of the race now with whatever significant thing that is left in one's hands after a physical test is passed. if i had registered in time i'd be done. victorious. fulfilled.

but i didn't. and last wednesday, a week and a half before my second-choice date {registration safely completely long ago}, my right foot started aching. it was a weird sort of ache, something stretching seemed to have a temporary effect on—annoying but not painful. so the next day i ran my 5 miles and spent the rest of the night limping in what was now something to pay attention to.

so i took it seriously but firmly held on to the goal of running on the 17th. i iced. i stretched. i went to the chiropractor twice in one week. i practiced yoga. i stayed off the foot and iced some more. and it was working. today, less than a week later the ache was quieter now than when it first appeared. things were looking up. my chiropractor hadn't said no yet and was even still saying might and could.

but this afternoon found me face down on the table in his office as he so very gently tore through the painful muscles and ligaments up and down my right side, enumerating all the factors that have added up to one sore foot: adrenal fatigue and stress to the body {training for three months}, not sleeping enough {guilty}, mental/emotional stress {in spades} and chemical imbalance {see mental/emotional stress for easy justification of indulging my usually in check sweet tooth}. now an increase of any one or two of the above would have been fine, but all of them combined was the perfect storm. so here i am, waves of reality crashing against me as i cling to my life raft called hope. hope to run, hope to achieve. hope to find something out there in the race to hold on to right now.

and in the quiet of the chiropractor's office, as we both concentrated on listening to what my body was saying, a few simple, obvious questions bobbed to the surface right under my nose: if i ran this weekend, why? and how could whatever i have in my hands after the race possibly be worth more than my longterm health and recovery?

yes, i'm aware that i'm not being asked to give up the olympics or a chance to qualify for the {insert prestigious name} marathon, but this isn't about the rest of the world or its standards, but about me and my life, my goals. me. i am drawing to a close one of the more intense years of my life, hoping to transition into a new decade with ease and strength. the past three months of focused training have helped me move toward that end. they have helped me find a physical fitness i have always longed for and a slimness i always doubted i could achieve. and above and beyond anything, the time, the focus, the goal, it was all for me. about me. in my life that is so busy, very little of it is actually about me. it's about earning money, making art, connecting with others, writing emails, sending postcards, preserving and understanding moments, cleaning my apartment. the list goes on. it's exhausting sometimes to think about it.

so the pressure to run isn't just because i'm a completionist, and the disappointment in the face of losing this chance isn't just about crossing a finish line. it's not just about about the act or the proof that i really have achieved the physical and mental space needed to run a solid race—it's about the surprises the test would bring, the discoveries i know i would make. in not running on saturday, i am losing one of those rare opportunities to live at the very edge of myself at a moment in my life so marked by a strange blend of transition and grief and progress. my first half marathon {posted here} still features largely in my personal narrative, and this time i am so much more prepared, so much more ready to focus all 13.1 miles, push myself harder. more than anything, i wanted to see what is out there at this particular moment of my life, what is just beyond my sight and understanding of myself, and most importantly learn what she has to teach me.

but if i have learned anything this year, it's that sometimes the strongest decision is to embrace the imperfections of the moment rather than plowing boldly {and occasionally recklessly} on toward what my brain/ego/hope/optimism sees as possible. so here, with you standing in for the friends i had {rather vulnerably} asked to stand along the race course for me, you invisible, silent witnesses are cheering me away from the route i should not run.

i surrender the race, surrender the hope, surrender the experience and insight and epiphany i might have had for a cost i am deciding i cannot afford: my body.

my body. my hope. my soft machine. you have carried me so far, so fast. i will give you the rest you ask for and we will try again soon. we will try again soon.


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on the topic of milestones, this is my 900th post.

celebrate

counting. sweeping. killing. the new is finally here. history made. remade. the next chance. restart. more words. more commitment. strength. truth. confetti. so we danced in the street, drank from paper bags we passed around, hit balloons, blew bubbles, found friends, hugged strangers, smiled large, and held the world closer in the moment when it was all decided.

again.


for the record, i was scared, but never doubted. hope never doubts. it's too pure. too clean. too bright. so let it shine a light forward and celebrate.

atoms for peace

atoms for peace - thom yorke

no more going to the dark side with your flying saucer eyes
no more falling down a wormhole that i have to pull you out

the wriggling, squiggling worm inside
devours from the inside out

no more talk about the old days
it's time for something great

i want you to get out
and make it work

so many lies
so many lies
so many lies
so feel the love come off of them
and take me in your arms

peel all of your layers off
i want to eat your artichoke heart

no more leaky holes in your brain
and no false starts

i wanna get out
and make it work

so many lies
so many lies
so many lies
so feel the love come off of them
and take me in your arms

i wanna get out
and make it work

i want you to get out
and make it work

i'll be ok

so many lies
so many lies
so many lies
so feel the love come off of them
and take me in your arms

word.

relationships are the battleground where we fight for what version of ourselves we become: honest or deceptive, independent or lazy. they reflect all of our potential and all of our weaknesses at the same time...when you start a relationship, you always have ideas about how the other person will broaden your horizon and lift you up, but truthfully a relationship will always redefine itself around the level of its greatest weakness.

-the tobolowsky files

clarity

i have been waiting for clarity to find me. but all the while, i have been holding it in my hands.

at last

you know that thing that is the scariest thing you can imagine asking yourself to do {emotionally speaking, of course}? that thing that defies all the defenses you've built up for yourself, that thing that would break down the illusion of control and safety in this wide wide world of ours?

well i'm going to go do it. give it up. bust it open. and i'm writing it here so i hold myself to it.

i can do this.
i can.
i will.
i am.

truth vs. honesty

i am in pursuit of truth. i always have been. and by truth i mean the capital T kind of Truth. the kind that resonates. the kind that you can feel spilling across the horizon, clean like the morning sun.

yes, Truth illuminates, usually catching me in the darkest moments, so often telling me things i'd rather not hear but somehow already know. i'm not sure how, but i have a knack for feeling it out there even before it begins its journey toward the curve of the earth, past the horizon and across the three miles of space and time to become a thought, an idea, or someone else's words that touch me. change me.

Truth always changes.

but even in the worst moments, the light of the revelation, no matter how harsh it falls, no matter how hard a reality it reveals, the light is comforting. it softens any blow like the welcome gaze of an old friend. but even if that weren't so, i have long known that Truth is much preferred to the alternative of darkness, confusion, and deception.

yes, i'm done with the rest. bring Truth on. bring it on.

---------------------------------------------------
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on the same topic, but said differently, this is a quote from the tobolowsky files. it follows a story about how stephen was bet by a friend that he couldn't hit his friend even if they were both standing on a piece of newspaper laid out on the floor, one on each side of the paper. stephen refused to take the bet and sure enough, the friend laid the newspaper out in a doorway, shut the door, and then proceeded to prove that stephen would not have been able to touch him and would have lost the bet.

then he said to stephen:

it's a lesson for you...in the difference between honesty and truth. most people live their lives and they think it's the same thing, but they're not. people can use honesty to tell lies...but honesty never tells the whole story. it only tells part of the story, the part you want to be heard, the part where you're right, but the truth...not only changes the way you see the situation you're in, but it changes the way you see the world from that point on. you can use honesty to bludgeon...to hit people over the head, but you can never go back from truth.

thank you, stephen. i am done with the rest. bring Truth on. bring it on.

clock winder

clock winder is on repeat tonight–a beautifully wrought piece embracing the uneven nature of time: the staggered rhythms, the dissonant chords. the poignancy. the beauty. the uneven descent into silence.


this song is on repeat tonight as i stay up long past my bedtime, to pass the time, kill it, and now, finally, to mark it.

time.

yep, time.

what's to be said about this thing we understand so little about? we think we've caught it all, scooped it up and held on to it possesively, assigned a set of sequential numbers to it, occasionally a second and a minute hand, and viola, it's ours. we think we know it, that we get to control it, and we are comfortable in that illusion we blindly clutch to our chests as we carry on through time. yet all the little symbols we bring along with us, trapped inside cell phones and adorning our wrists, they are just that: a symbol. nothing more. and yet, nothing less.



i am so ready to be in my 30s. so ready to feel the passage of time mark itself on my age. because this is not just another hash mark in a row, this is the start of a new row. and while age doesn't mean everything, i feel like i've earned my stripes this past year pulling myself hand over hand, dragging myself through the mud a lot, just to cross this line.

......................................................................thirty......................................................................

i feel clean at the moment.
baptized from so many tears fighting even more fears.
but they, too, are the markers of progress. milestones of terrors i can now turn my back on as i continue forward boldly into the fog of uncertainty and confusion and growth.

and that is something else i have learned {and by learned i mean my body is feeling the truth of what my mind has known for years}: this thing i've been fighting to get to the other side of, it never ends. the other side doesn't exist. the imbalance of change, of growth, of being challenged: it never, ever gets comfortable. yes, i have my days like everyone else, where i can navigate my limitations gracefully, where i can articulate my frustrations clearly and with kindness to myself and others, but similarly there will also be the days when it all breaks apart and things spiral out of control into a temporary and usually overwhelming chaos.

but now i know.
i know.
i know.
this is just part of the process. part of time passing through me, unerringly delivering a new part of myself to understand, breaking open a new space i never knew was there.

so with that, here is a toast to another year, another decade, and to the realization that i never will arrive anywhere but here and now, the only place time has no effect on.

bayou la batre {in photos}

here is the collection of production and location photos from sieve this past week. two days of driving. four days of shooting. six days of living a dream together with someone who believes in it as well.

it hurt going through the photos on the plane, feeling like i had left behind this new way of life that is exhausting yet so fulfilling, feeling like i had misplaced something important {where is the dodge journey? where is andrew? where is all the film gear?}...but none of that is true. this is just the beginning. everything is laying out in front of me faster than i can imagine. my only job is to put one foot in front of the other, keep grounded, stay centered & trust in myself and my worth no matter what.



p.s. all these photos are mine except the one where you can see my hands {that would be a neat trick}. that one is andrew newton's, my dp extraordinaire {pictured}.

in production

i have no words to spare at the moment, so i give you images.

here

i am here, less than five miles from my childhood home: that small, beaten house that was the first place i lived in this world. my life began there. my memories. my first words. i was given my first book there wrapped up under the christmas tree; saw the moon through my grandfather's telescope there out in the front yard with all the weeds.

and now there is here again and the three of us, myself, my memories, and my home, meet again to compare notes on what exactly we each have experienced in the eighteen years since we were all in one place together.

i have the hardest job of the three. the other two just have to show up and show themselves off. me, i have to work, to write, to perform and construct. assemble the piece converging into a story worth telling. a story with meaning. a story with beauty and truth.

and as much as i fear there is no possible way i can create a net of words and images big enough to contain what will happen here, i know in fact, my job is actually the same as theirs: all i have to do is show up. the words and ideas are already here, standing at attention, waiting patiently for me to look back at them as i sift and sieve through this world i am navigating. and so far, my memories are generous in return, loaning out freely from the vaults of my childhood so i can admire the patina added from the tender care of my later selves, polishing my young understanding of the world during the past two decades.

already i am filled.

driving through mobile tonight was surreal. the darkness of 9pm obscuring things i might otherwise remember, but even so, familiarity curled around details. moffett road. bel air mall {which i knew was coming long before the sign announced itself}. winn dixie. padgett switch road. half mile road. two mile road. mostellar medical center {where my blood was drawn on my birthday only a few weeks shy of exactly 24 years ago}.

the most haunting of all was a mysterious building with two white silo-like towers. the writing on them didn't make sense to my sleep deprived and road-tired brain and as i peered at them trying to place what they were for and whether or not i recognized them, i felt the curious gaze of a child step into my body as a sense memory returned. i feel the boredom of being in a car, unable to make sense of this building and strange letters all belonging to a foreign adult world. and as i drove onward tonight, wondering if the memory was real or imagined, i realized it didn't matter if i actually ever stared at that particular building. the truth of the moment, the truth that came surging back to me while passing this one building, that wash of curiosity and loneliness and awareness of the adult world around me, that was real. that was an undeniable marker of my childhood. and, here, tonight it was given back to me in full color and surround sound. and for now, that is enough.

tomorrow, the first thing we film is my home at 33 adams street.

i can hardly believe it: i am here.

green light

it usually happens at a stoplight: a swell of contentment that surges out of the sudden stillness. arrested motion. typically it proceeds a moment of taking stock of my life–a split second acknowledgement of all the successes and failures that have brought me to this particular intersection, waiting for this one light to turn green. and in the insulated space of the car i sit in my small world, outside sounds at a safe distance, breathing in whatever music is on the stereo, resting in a gentle acceptance of a life i usually try to nit pick to perfection. but in these moments, all that static is gone from the line and i just savor the thick flavor of happiness and certainty that i am exactly where i should be.



today i was in a massive black jeep. the stoplight was a left turn arrow to merge onto hwy 101 in santa barbara, california. the soundtrack was my friend's cd of rodrigo y gabriella. and the sense of peace was a calm and quiet wave. beautiful as usual.


the light is just about to turn green. i leave for my project in alabama at 7:30am monday morning.

the story of sieve

i'm reposting a piece i wrote a year ago because it's the back-story to sieve.

it explains the moment the short film project began and the surge of responses that welled up in the wake of its conception. despite a year passing the story is still current. the thoughts, fears, hopes, excitement–all are still relevant.

and here we are.

in a week's time, i'll be in dallas, finalizing the script and packing up the car with andrew, ready to depart for bayou la batre, alabama the next morning. tuesday, october 2nd.

{and a small plug because i have not yet mentioned it here, we are very close to having our project funded, so if you are so moved to contribute and help out, the kickstarter link is here. there was such an overwhelming response to the kickstarter campaign that i went ahead and dove right in and bought the flight southbound.}

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a week ago, a facebook friend messaged me late at night. and when i say friend, i mean he’s more of an acquaintance, the older brother of a classmate in college. a good guy, really, but no one i’ve ever spilled my guts to or gone out of my way to spend time with. no, more just someone i’ll laugh with when i travel to see his sister, a passing friend who’s “sunset a day” photo series i’ve been admiring from afar all year via said facebook. 

we all have these kinds of friends, collecting them in mass quantities, shuffling through their updates about what boring thing they ate, what boring thing their dog or baby or friend’s friend did, whining about how boring it is yet doing it compulsively all the same. it’s inane, i know, but the only reason i subscribe to this use of technology is because of photographic works like this "friend", andrew, has been displaying all year, but even more so for the magical moments of connection like the one i’m going to tell you about. it was the kind of magic where a simple late night question “are you back in seattle yet?” lead, in less than 5 minutes, through a series of the twists and turns of meandering late night conversation, to the confession of a driving desire on my part to go down to alabama to create a piece about memory, family history, time and place. 

and then, the critical moment happened when this man, this person i can count on one hand how many times i’ve hung out with, offers to come and document the project. and then, when i ask if he’ll help me make the short film i didn’t really realize i had been trying to figure out to make until just that moment, he even manages to get excited about it even more. giddy. the two of us typing away enthusiastically into the wee hours of the morning, andrew completely unaware of the emotional breakdown i had earlier that evening watching the last harry potter movie {sappy but true}, seeing the entire magical community mobilize behind one person, tears streaming down my face realizing that i want that experience of people believing in me so much they would die for me, then simultaneously realizing in the flash of an epiphany that i crave that belief from others because, dammit, I don’t believe in myself! and then fastforward back to the present moment, me at a keyboard, a mere hour or two later, being given the gift of this one person’s belief and commitment and oh-my-gosh-i-don’t-think-i-can-sleep kind of excitement in me and my project and my vision.

after waiting 18 years to return to my childhood home and 6 years to make a piece of artwork about it, everything is happening and happening with the ease that synchronicity brings {that’s not going to be a problem, nathania, i have all the equipment i need sitting 5 feet from my body}.

so here i stand, suddenly at the precipice, looking forward to this place i have been looking back to for so long. and let me tell you, it’s a scary precipice. because all that longing, all that patina of loving polish and care i have added to all the memories i have maintained over the years, all those things i cared for and have contemplated for many years that may no longer exist, or even worse, exist still but so changed as to feel defiled--all those things might be taken away, violated or not as i recall them to be.

and as the time and space between me and bayou la batre, alabama compresses, gets smaller, the anticipation is often overwhelming and i feel the pressure building, the hope and memory and excitement and inevitable disappointment already converging until all i can do is breathe. breathe. breathe.

breathe space and air and light and life into the memories i do have, take them out and look at them one by one before having them irrevocably changed by the reality of what these places look like now. because 18 years in geographic time has passed, where a town was built up by the tourism surrounding the placement of bubba gump shrimp company smack dab in the center of town {even though it wasn't actually filmed there}, bringing interest and wealth to a town that probably deserved neither, to the violence of katrina who ravaged more than just new orleans, and especially to the uncontrollable yet gentler forces of time and change.

and on top of all that there is 18 years of personal time, of me growing up, becoming an adult, seeing and feeling the world from 3 feet taller and decades older all the while hording the memories i had of this sleepy little town in the south that inhabited me more than i inhabited it as a 3^rd culture kid, never speaking the southern language of mooobeal {mobile} and the bi-youuu {bayou}, never eating the southern diet of everything fried in two inches of bacon fat and never really understanding the southern mentality of “traveling a ways” meaning going to the next zipcode.

but the south, it has always lived in me in ways i can’t fully understand even as an adult. maybe because it was the most reliable way of feeling beauty and connection from within a family with three older siblings who would really rather not have anything to do with their littlest sister, a mother too spaced out to mediate and a father too imbalanced, fighting the world, fighting his wife, fighting his children and most of all fighting himself, where i was perpetually submerged in that feeling of loneliness that was more of a chronic disease than a passing emotion. the kind of loneliness that comes from feeling so small and separate in such a big world. a feeling i find kind of ironic since as an adult woman i can’t seem to get over how big I am. 

so where could i turn to but the south? the spanish moss laden trees passing by outside the open window of our car, the yellow wash of light soaking the faded fabric of our living room, the louvers of the windows that we would hastily close each night the bug sprayers would sweep through the area, the pungent yet sweet and horribly toxic smell they would leave behind that i would drink in to saturate my vivid childhood senses. the jeweled crimson of magnolia seeds. the gentle chime of the draw bridge being brought back up that i would strain to catch the first sign of each time--these images sink deeper into the spirit than i fully know how to go, pumped with life by the thready pulse of my memory that so lovingly crafts the experience each time i draw them up and back into me. and it worries me that i have instilled in myself a confidence in my memory, not for the methodic memorization of numbers and words, though i’m not all too shabby at that, but for that visual and sense memory, of knowing a place i have been to only once and years ago at that.

what if i go now and it is not how i remembered it not because it’s changed, but because my memory failed?

so i ask myself now: how do i let go of what i know or think i know? how do i come to this place open hearted and free? because whether or not i want to, i come burdened with an abundance of nostalgia. but not the sweet kind of nostalgia, cloying and untrue, no, this is not the saccharine variety but rather the sacrificial. the kind of nostalgia that churns up dark waters, where everything that has been lost or taken or forgotten washes up in its wake to be burned as an offering for all that is to come. because as much as i go down there for the past, for what was and what has been, to honor and name it, present it in vivid colors, i am here to discover what it holds for the future, to see how it lives on in my life as it is happening right now and how that will all grace what is to come.

dessert: cookies with shame a la mode.

the skin of my hands is that special kind of papery dry. the wrinkles fading from being submerged in water for so long. there were a lot of dishes left from the night and i was the only one still up to wash them. but i was using the task to elongate and savor the fading flavors of what was already one of my favorite dinner parties in a very long time. the night was more than worth the task.

five friends and one mom gathered around a table. some food on the grill. a little bit of wine. my first attempt at gluten free baking from scratch and a lot of conversation. at first we jumped and skipped between topics, starting with movies–the latest hits, the ones missed, a few really cheesy ones from years ago–and moved on to genius, geniuses, theoretical physics, and hillary clinton's texts.

until things shifted.
the sounding of a gauntlet thrown down to lay staring up at us six from among the rubble of half empty glasses and cookie crumbs.

but the surprising thing is we took it up. each and every one of us. we joined hearts and hands and spoke out loud to one another those stories of shame and fear and desire. and more shame. and more. again. and still. and it opened into a night like i haven't seen since a quartet formed out of nowhere in the wee hours after eden's wedding.

we lingered knee-deep in our stories, a different kind of round robin with higher stakes, more vulnerable hearts: things shame keeps us from doing, the things we tell ourselves we can't have because we're ashamed, the things we won't even think about because of shame.

and even if i started the questions, even if i was surrounded by five people i count as my kindred, count among my dearest, the questions weren't any easier for me to answer, and i am disappointed to say i found myself chickening out of speaking in clear and vulnerable words the places where shame rests most in my story, and admitting, without shame, the thing that i am most ashamed of at the moment. and so now, a few hours later, to a wider audience i state what i wish i had said earlier:

i am ashamed that i have settled so often for less in relationships.
ashamed the deeply interesting ones have always just disappeared.
and finally:
i am ashamed that the reason i am single is that i am not good enough for anyone {and never will be}.

there.
those are my secrets of shame.
and they beat a deep and measured rhythm beneath the opposite belief i have steadily been listening to over the years {even if i lose track of its cadence sometimes}:

i am.
plain and simple.
i am. i exist. me.
and that is glorious.
and enough.

and the fact that one day someone will recognize that and want to share their am-ness with me and take part in my am-ness is not something to worry about. my job is to just breathe, be, and remember which rhythm to listen to.

---------------------------------

it's funny how hard it still is to confess. here, safely tucked away behind the screen and sheltered by the internet. i look at the words and throw blankets like cliche and petty over them, judging them and me. or perhaps giving myself a little dig about still not having confidence as i toe the line of thirty. but that's just the shame fighting back, trying to hide away again as it sits there and squirms beneath the light of day shining down on it giving it words and definition and spindly limbs. it looks up at me with beady eyes knowing it's just a matter of time before i gather up the courage to squash it with a paper towel and take it to the trash.

beirut - september 2012

i saw beirut last wednesday and came away filled as any good show should accomplish. usually that's enough to find a path to words and in turn recreate and preserve the night but i came home and kept erasing the words i had written. nothing seems to capture it. maybe i was just tired.

or maybe it's just because there were two stories happening at the same time.

1. the story of the show:

the show was perfect. strong. free. joyful and heartbreaking all at the same time. a fantastic setlist played by a row of brass blasting out their notes to us with such force sometimes i imagined i could feel the wind of their instruments brushing my face. and only a few feet back from the stage, a body or two between the band and me and i couldn't stop moving, smiling, pursing my eyebrows together in direct correlation to the shift between their vivid intensity and soul stretching joy.

my hand stayed over my heart the whole show. though occasionally it was there to keep my heart from cracking itself open on the piercing edges of the music. at one point my neighbor, this little slip of a thing who, until that point mostly annoyed me by her something-induced dancing, looked over at me holding on to my chest and gently tapped her hand on my heart empathetically. she knew. she smiled. i smiled. and for the rest of her show her dancing lost its annoying edge.

but most of the time, i didn't need to hold my heart together with my hands and they could joyfully play the heart and thigh drums by thumping them both in time to the music. shortly into the show i noticed the lead singer, zach condon, doing it as well {when he wasn't playing his trumpet or guitar}. we had became a mirror image to each other: my right hand on my heart and my left thumping my thigh as his left hand played his heart and his right drummed his thigh. and in our shared musical enthusiasm he became my long lost mirror twin i didn't even know until now i had been missing.

2. the story of the song:


the night of the show life folded in on me in a few ways* most of them around this one short song: a sunday smile.


a small tangent: the last time i went to a show alone, i was at the moore theater seeing regina spektor in 2007. it was a show i was supposed to see with two others but they bailed, selling their tickets last minute and so i went alone. i remember being put off by the fact that the people next to me gave me the cold shoulder, thinking that it shouldn't be too hard to at least be congenial with someone you obviously share a certain level of music kinship with. and it was that experience in particular that lingered with me four years later and motivated me to break the barrier of stranger and reach out to my neighbor at bon iver last september. it's been nearly a year and not only did i make someone's night that night {as well as my own} but i scored music friend #10, someone who quickly became a dear friend. to take this in a tidy little circle, tonight i went alone to a concert for the first time since 2007 and of course it was back to the moore theater to finally see beirut live. and halfway through, i called music friend #10 to share with him a sunday smile since he could not be there in person to hear it with me.

and so it was that a sunday smile was handed back to me that night, folding time and space once again to string together all the intense moments it has carried me through in my life. as soon as i knew i would be seeing this band, i knew i wanted to hear this one song the most. the first song of there i ever heard, given to me by another great spirit in my life: my favorite professor who sent me a mix of songs in early 2008. it was right as a relationship ended and my world came crashing down on me, leveling me for about a year at least, probably more. and it was the opening lines of this song on repeat for weeks in my car, perhaps months during this time, that helped carry me above the tides of my life. a lifeline out to better times.

all i want is the best for my life my dear
and you know my wishes are sincere
what's the say for the days i cannot bear
a sunday smile, we wore it for a while
a sunday smile, we paused and sang

while that was how we first met, the song has come up again throughout the years, marking several finite moments of courage in my life. these two stories are both from my 9 month acting course that was basically a study of pushing oneself beyond one's boundaries. they can be found in the archives here and here {the latter post being a far more interesting class, perhaps one of my favorites}. or if you are up for a little recording of me singing it pre-voice lessons, here is a silly little video {that still took a lot of outtakes and even more courage} with an ending that still makes me laugh.

and at the show, coincidentally {or not, depending on how you view the world} the song found me once more on a day when i needed it badly. one of those days i stared down fear in a way that made my stomach and heart shrink inside me, trying to squeeze themselves into hiding from what the rest of my body and spirit could not avoid. i had been so fiercely swept up by the anticipation of failure, of pain, and of shame just as i stood staring at the cusp of so much that can either build or break my heart. i even considered bailing on the show but i think it was the song that got there, got me out, got me into a crowd and exactly where i needed to be doing most: listening to amazing music and writing a long overdue screen play during set changes. ironically it was the usual behavior of scribbling away at a notebook that got connecting me to the audience around me who wanted to know what i was writing. and in turn they drew me into their excitement and enthusiasm, drew me into that soft warmth of bodies standing close, happily waiting for a band to take stage. so that when the band finally did come on, i was there. i was ready. my stomach and heart and spirit cautiously unfurled, catching the winds of change in my life rather than hiding from them.

about halfway through the show, zach did a long, gentle lead up to a song, inviting us to sing along, smiling in anticipation of giving us this true gem of sonic heartbreak. and all i can say is that halfway through i realized my knees were weak in a way i haven't felt in a long time. it was good. it was heart breaking. it was perfect.





*i must not take credit for this lovely image: life folding in on itself. that moment when you retrace the steps from the past unexpectedly, or find yourself tied to a person, particular relationship dynamic or song mirroring the past. you probably know what i mean, but regardless, these words are words of a friend i repeat here because they were so perfect.

a view from the top

i am afraid of so many things. some days i stay in bed an extra five, fifteen, thirty minutes checking email, facebook, playing solitaire on my phone, whatever it is i can distract myself with and insulate myself from life. a futile effort to hold at bay the waves when fear takes over.

luckily though these days don't come often, but they do come, and then they come back again in some unpredictable turn of the self-evolutionary cycle. i should be used to them now. should, would love to, but am not.

some of the things i fear:

failing
never even trying
not beating my previous half marathon time
never achieving all i hold in my ambitions
settling for less

wearing high heels and tripping myself up
worse: wearing high heels and being taller than everyone

pulling the emergency door on an airplane because for some reason i forgot my life depended on it being in place
getting shot on a run through central district {not so paranoid given this year's death by shooting count}

bowling
pool
karaoke
and all things that are sexy when you know how to do it well but i suck at or haven't tried...see "failing"

spiders

being left
leaving

heights
tall buildings
sky scrapers


these last ones are a bit of a theme for me and have featured in many nightmares throughout my life. it's the vivid pressure of gravity, of potential gravity, a visceral understanding of the force the fall would garner that comes out of nowhere and pulls at my body and fills my flesh. it is not a comfortable experience, but none of the above are whether they ever actually happen or i just sit in my fear of anticipation. a fear of potential realities could be added to the list.

short of being shot or opening the door on an airplane at cruising altitude, i need to remember i can handle all these things, live through large spiders leaping out at me from piles of junk mail {true story} or surprising me from under beds and landing on my leg {sadly, also true story}. i can weather the discomfort {or even humiliation} of a mediocre round of karaoke or game of bowling. i can run. i can be run from.

so when did i stop living at the edge of my fears, staring them down and telling them they can't win? when did i start tip toeing through my life? a month ago? six? when i settled back down and gave myself a space to call home? a place to return to? when i began living again in a daily reminder of my entitlement to safety both physical and emotional?

in a gentle effort to push myself, i went to the top of the columbia center last week and stood on the viewing deck of the 73rd floor. and all i did was let myself be pulled, just let it happen. and the terror i thought would come, the terror that finds me in the middle of sleep as i stand precariously on the roof of some skyscraper or another, or attacked by a massive spider, or just alonealonealone, that terror wasn't there. or rather, only came in small moments that rushed through me faster than i thought possible. a flicker here. a passing thought there. a good reminder that the reality of my fears are not impossible, and in facing them, i discovered that surpassing them all was a sense of awe. awe of the discoveries this new place had to offer. a bird's eye view. silence. warmth. the reminder that we are just so small in this great big universe {and that's only looking down at one medium-sized city} and that the story inside my head, that narrative that follows my every move and lords over every thought and feeling, it's not as important as it would like me to believe. and the quiet of peace and contentment, that quiet that says there is nothing really to fear here or anywhere, just take a good look and breathe, she speaks so softly in comparison.

there is always something here in these fears. the real battle is just remembering who to listen to. and breathe.






currently listening to "goshen" by beirut.


you're on in five, it's time you rise or fail.
they've gone before, stood by your door all day.
for what it's worth, defend your kind from shame.
the lights are down, go on inside, they've paid.
you're the face in stone, through the land i own.
you never found it home.
you're not the girl i used to know.

what would you hide from such a glow
if i had only told you so?

you're on in five, it's time you rise or fail.
they've gone before, stood by your door all day.
but you never found it home.
a fair price I'd pay to be alone.

what would you hide from such a glow
if i had only told you so?

the {un}welcome guest

i went to a family reunion this past week and met an unwelcome guest: mortality.

like a nuisance, he was everywhere, dressed in everyone's clothes, smiling behind everyone's eyes, lingering in small comments {gosh, we're seventy now, i wonder how many more of these there will be for us}, and ambushing me in jokes {you know when you turn 30 this year you'll be closer to 60 than to birth}.

he was telling me the same story with different words: the mortality of bodies and the mortality of things.

my great-aunt's family included us mikesell's {her brother's family} as they said goodbye to their lake house and more importantly to the bigger life she used to lead before she had a stroke this spring. but the sadness, the bitter in the parting mixing with the sweetness of all the memories, it wasn't a pall over the time, merely a depth to it, a call to reality. their own. hers. mine.

my great aunt's possessions were distributed: her travel memorabilia, jewelry, photos, knick knacks, china, silver, and the mundane – old playing cards, speakers, sewing basket. it was heartbreaking to watch as the connection between her and her things was pulled until thin and then softly broken to give them a new life, new meaning and a new home with one of the forty-five family members there. and even though reason {because she's sharp and together despite her age, 91, and her post-stroke body} has told her these things need to go, that she can't take them with her, it was hard to watch, hard to ask for this thing or that thing even though it would otherwise go to goodwill after tomorrow. hard knowing what it cost her, even amidst her never ending good cheer.


but these things we all carried away in the back of cars, onto planes, across countries, they carry with them the lingering residue of that sweet spirit of hers ensuring their destiny to be loved. though one day too soon, even if we are lucky enough to follow the mikesell way and live into our nineties*, the best these things can hope for is to be passed through weathered hands, onto the next generation. a little older, more love-worn and tired, but optimistic for their next life.


after all the work the family did over multiple visits and from both sides of the family, there was still a house full of things, possessions, sundries, and food. it was overwhelming. it was exhaustive. and i come home, to my home, so lovingly inhabited, lovingly designed, find it's also filled with things, even more than when i left for virginia, and yet there is a lot i want to clear out, let go of, pare down. limit myself so that the patina of my love and care is not spread too thin over too many objects, that it can steep into those pieces of true resonance, those possessions that somehow seem to make manifest a part of my spirit you wouldn't see otherwise. like the set of scales i inherited from grandpa, the antique ivory bracelet i have instantly fallen in love with from my great-aunt, my installation of birds i have yet to hang here at my new place, my jade tree that will one day be massive.

so i call do is begin the purge. that bottle of conditioner i'll never use, the shirt that has a small hole in it that i didn't like wearing much lately anyway, the wine glasses left from a mis-matched set, the vases i always thought weren't quite pretty enough. and as i struggle with the typical decade-turning questions of what am i doing with my life? and how can i get where i want to go fast enough? i can at least feel like my physical life, of my house and body, will be in tidy and in shape coming into this new year.

so here we go, starting now.

*even our descendants in the 18th and early 19th centuries lived into their nineties.

--------------------------

a little self-reflective self-portrait shoot from the end of the dock at the lake house just after my final swim in smith mountain lake.

11 weeks

in eleven weeks, to the day, i turn 30.

this decade shift has been a long time in coming, slowly sidling up to me these past few months, whispering promises in my ear. but even so, it will still be scary and it will still be significant, more than just a number. so here, tonight, i want to mark the beginning of the final stretch as i rush forward to meet something i have been eyeing for a while now, tasting the flavor that lingers each time i say this new number:

30.
thirty.

i still have so much time.
i still have so far to go.

but right now, i have a few ambitious goals for the next few months {almost three}:

1. this week, as i promised myself, i have started training for my second half marathon, this time giving myself the full 12 weeks of ramp up and training instead of just one. i have a fairly ambitious goal in mind which i set before i considered the practicality of choosing a race at a high altitude. oops. i hear bend, oregon is pretty so at least i'll have a great view as i'm wheezing down the course. i'll be running two days after my birthday and it feels like the timing so perfectly marks the last stretch of my 20's with the focus and drive of the training as well as sets a good precedence for my 30's with a race two days in.

2. earlier in october, i'm going to fly down to texas, drive with my dp {director of photography} to alabama, then proceed to document my homecoming to bayou la batre, my hometown i have not seen in 19 years. ever since i graduated from undergrad in 2005 i knew there was a project waiting for me down there and finally i go down to find it. i am excited. i am terrified. more on this later.

3. i want to shift my sleep schedule so i am getting a healthy amount at a healthy time. {i also want to meditate more, but one change at a time.}

4. my apartment is a bit disheveled under the luxury of so much space. i want to clean up my act. poke around in the corners. hang up my birds. finish settling into the springboard of this space that keeps telling me all that i can look forward to in our relationship together that is really just beginning. and i want to invite you all in a few weeks to come and celebrate the summer, celebrate the journey and celebrate my new space {all meanings of the word}. more on this later too.

wish me luck.

sigur ros - seattle - 2012

what is there to say after you spend two hours slipping and swaying between the melodies and beats of one of the most viscerally experiential bands? left in my hands, rattling restless in my head, keeping me awake long past my bedtime are the colors, the sounds, the harmonies that arrested my spirit.

individual moments stand out in perfect focus and flawless clarity: that golden silence they wedged into the middle of a song, shocking us all into breathless surprise, holding it long past you'd expect it, longer still until a clap broke out hesitantly {as we shook our heads to silence the offender}. a sold out audience's worth of collective anticipation lengthening the seconds even further, then further still to the very edge of our capacity to be patient, to not breathe. and still they made us wait. it was almost too much. my breathing returned loud and excited, squirming and full in those final moments of waiting. then payoff, the surge of sound immediately following jonsi's microphoned inhale was one of countless moments of glory.

countless.

others include:

the soft valtari greens of the opening song's visuals.
the hazy ship floating hauntingly across the projection screen.
the filament lights on stage.
jonsi's gentle curl of hand, encouraging us to sing along.
singing along.
the lines and shapes inside my closed eyes as the light danced through my eyelids, refusing to be shut out.
the excitement of hearing the opening sounds of a well-loved song {svefn-g-englar}, almost too good to be true, and the affirmation from one of my concert mates*, the one who is so good at answering my unvoiced questions.
the smiles passed around between my neighbors.
the colors. the colors. the colors. even if they were just sounds parading around as a color.
the final song at the end, untitled #8, that always starts off deceivingly slow until it builds, and builds, and builds beyond one's capacity to take in the sheer volume of sound and lights and noise and harmony pressed into us, until the spirit cries out to participate. the cheers erupting from the crowd around us were not a distraction but purely a primal reflex, an extension of what was happening on stage. a response to the unspoken realization that the vessels of our bodies cannot hold all that they give at the end of this one song. we must explode, release, even if it's just a rhythmic tapping of my hand across my heart. even if it's just a burst of noise from my neighbor's gut. the spirit cries out to participate. the spirit cries out: participate.

the band always comes out at the end to clap their hands warmly back at us, link arms, and then bow. the sweetest part of a bittersweet goodbye. sigur ros, please don't take four years to come back to us. please.


*music friend #1, joining me here almost exactly 4 years, two trips and six shows later {only six??? i guess we have shared quite a few others even if we weren't both at the same show at the same time including atoms for peace, sigur ros, bon iver, modselektor, radiohead...}.

 

setlist:


ekki múkk
varúð
ný batterí
i gær
vaka
sæglópur
svefn-g-englar
viðrar vel til loftárása
hoppípolla
olsen olsen
festival
hafsól

encore:

dauðalogn
popplagið {untitled 8}

the perfect stranger

oftentimes, it is a perfect stranger that helps me find my way back to myself. tonight it was the well-dressed, silver-haired gentleman weaving his way between the white acura next to me blocking the crosswalk, and my car, politely drawn up to the line but not beyond it. he walked around the back end of the other car then headed toward me as i quietly looked out at him through my slightly open window. we made eye contact and i looked back knowingly at him. it was a look and small smile that acknowledged my own experience with drivers inconveniencing pedestrians and i hoped to encourage him in his maneuverings.

but he read something else in at that moment, some secret my spirit told that i had no intention of sharing. it might have been my freshly sweated skin and flushed cheeks still warm from an arduous hot yoga practice, or more likely it was my right hand that gave me away, clutching at my heart, trying to still its aching throb that had, moments before the gentleman caught my eye, needed the pressure of my palm to calm and contain it.

but whatever lines he read between, he read them instantly and he read them well. just as he turned to round the front of my car and return to the crosswalk, he said so simply yet so tenderly: 


you're beautiful.

because inertia is just "transition" jumbled with an e added for good measure

zoe keating is on repeat tonight, switching back and forth between optimist and sun will set. i find this combination to be an appropriate mix of encouragement and fatalism as i try and overhaul my life, making a list of habits i want to form* and goals i want to reach this year. what's left of the year that is.

and as i look at the tidy handwriting stretched taut and tidy over large pieces of clean craft paper, i find, tonight, that i am ready to be reckless, ready to take my arm across all the carefully placed pieces of my life and slide them right off the end of the table. what a satisfying sound they would make shattering on the wood of my floor...then i'd be free to pack up shop and cooly move to a new city. hell, a new country even {europe, you will still have me and my dutch citizenship, won't you?} because somedays it seems no matter how hard i try, no matter how hard i push the understood boundaries of myself, stretch into uncomfortable new places and learn from my mistakes, i still get nowhere.

because really, where am i?

where am i?
where am i?
where am i?  
and what am i doing?

do you know? cause i sure don't.

and really, today, right now, what kills me most, and truthfully is the source of my deep-set frustration, is that i can't tell the difference between inertia and transition. and for the record they both suck anyway with their uncanny ability to kick my teeth to the curb when all i really want is a warm hand to hold.

i don't often pray. not in the way i was taught as a child, but tonight i will bow my head and ask for a sign. something small. something sweet. something clear. just tell me which direction to go, even if it's not what i want to hear. just make sure to tell me with symbols i can read clearly and words i can understand.

and please tell me with a hug to soften any blows.

and really, what i truly want is my happy-laugh to come back. the joyful, easy laugh that flies cleanly and frequently from my body when i am relaxed, when i am well rested, and when i am firmly connected to my sense of wellbeing. it surprised me after a long absence in the first weeks of the film festival and made a cameo appearance on my friend's wedding day and long into that night, but i want it back. for keeps. i want it to be the default laugh, not this convincing shade of a laugh that secretly isn't attached to my spirit.



*one habit being sleep i am still neglecting as my fingers move across the keyboard to vent this post into existence well beyond my bedtime.

the quartet

we were the talkers. we were the dancers. we were the laughers. we were the after party adventurers, the late night bar-hoppers, the cattle riding, car-window-crawling bridge seekers congealing somehow, suddenly, during the course of the wedding night. we read poems. we mocked the texans. we poked at ourselves. disagreed a bit, loved a lot, held ourselves up and out for each other, tried each of our friendships on for size and found not a one wanting.

with only a few connections in place beforehand, we added a perfect stranger to the mix and found something surprising and wholly new – the result of some sort of spontaneous combustion requiring an unrepeatable mix of alcohol, personalities, and photo booth spontaneity. and this thing we found ourselves inside, this many limbed entity of friendship, stood and breathed at the intersection of six dyads, three triads, and our single, splendid quartet. in a brilliant night watching two brilliant people gather their individual lives inside their arms and tie them together, this was our extension of their happiness – so fitting, so sweet, so playful in a way one could spend the rest of their life looking for it and never predict when or if it will show up next. 

the night was lush, the night was long, and eventually we found ourselves under a king-sized blanket, on an overly air-conditioned couch, resting in the quiet corners of the stories we were telling one another. exhaustion lapped at our feet stealing away the words we were speaking as we tried to stretch the hours in each other’s company until they were so thin we could see the morning sun through them. even after our neglected sleep chased us reluctantly to our beds, we woke, still firmly attached as others mingled in our midst. 

our goodbyes lingered as we hugged, clutching each other as much as the photos and phone numbers we had exchanged – all of them tenuous and unsatisfying objects functioning their best as evidence we existed together in a new way. 

and as space and time wedge themselves firmly between us, perhaps the most substantial thing left in our hands is the certainty that somewhere in that mysterious negative space between our quickly moving bodies and even quicker moving spirits, something glorious lived, however fleeting, and for that we are grateful.

moving on

a salt lake city sky and a dallas sun.

stepping away for the wedding and then some work travel (in portland) for the next week of being away. away from life. away from thinking too much. away from routine and the grind.

so once again my nomad shoes are on and my heart is free to the horizon.

simple wisdom

if i am not for myself, who is?
if i am for myself alone, what am i?
and if not now, when?


-------------
a quote from episode 13 of the tobolowsky files. it has been clinging to me since i heard it today. if i am not for myself...

dallas bound

in a few days i fly to dallas to see one of my favorite people in the world get married. i will be joined by two of my other favorite people in the world and together we will hold hands and dance and cry and laugh and drink and eat and speak and think and feel. definitely feel. already i almost feel too much.

i remember the first time i met e's fiancee. i even remember the very start of the crush, when all she could do was hope from afar. i remember the clear drive i felt to get to know him and the lengths i would go to to hang out with them long before they ever became a couple. sometimes these lengths included hijacking his meal from the microwave, bringing it outside to e's car {they were housemates at the time} and getting him to join us in the concert of music her speakers were blasting into the cavern of her SUV named henry. sometimes it was collaborating with e on a gift for his birthday when she was too shy to give on her own. sometimes it was front row seats at concerts we could all go to together. for the record, i was a very good wingman.

and the years have passed since then, since they've gotten together and begun to shape what their lives look like connected. and while their histories i hold so gently in my hards are not really mine to tell, what i can share, what is all my own to savor and name, is the gratitude, the overwhelming gratitude that i got to have a front row seat from the moment they entered each other's lives. the very moment.

and i try not to think about how someone else will sit in my front row seat to the stories that unfold after we no longer share the same region of the country. and someone else will be there for the long years of their children's lives and beyond. but i will be there in spirit and i will console myself that i was there in the beginning. and to be exact, it started before the beginning when this relationship was just something for e to dream about, when i was encouraging her with the words from bjork's song i miss you {but i haven't met you yet...so special but it hasn't happened yet}.

and the ghosts of all the hope i poured into her so many years ago are wraithing up to me, slipping invisibly through my skin to curl tightly around my heart, appearing suddenly out of thin air, surprising me late into in the night. their presence is exhausting and endless and i'm not quite sure what to do with them, but in the meantime, i get a few days to slow down and take pause, to honor and bless their new journey and to put on a pretty dress, have my hair and nails and have an incredible time celebrating with quite a few of the best people i know.


to be continued...

from the neck

i've died twice in my dreams.

the first was years ago. it was a death modeled after my memory of a childhood friend's mother who died slowly at home, each sense slowly fading until only her ability to hear remained. they spent the last day or two of her life playing her favorite musical on repeat. in the dream, i was lying in bed, slowly feeling myself fade. it was like i was leaving layer after layer of myself, inhabiting less and less of my body until i was only this small kernel of existence inside my heart. and then even that was gone and i was cut off, discarding the shell of my flesh as i realized with a little sadness that i had died. a ghostly, diluted version of emotion of my former self. i lingered as a wraith for a few moments, hovering near my body, then i woke up.

last night was not like the first time. this was a sudden death. a death born from violence.

we had been trying to find something, meet up with someone or find a location. i am not sure what exactly, but there was a journey or a search, a sense of going toward something with a goal. and then we were on a train passing stylized houses and buildings reminiscent of images from wes anderson's moonrise kingdom i had seen the night before. after the pressure to do something surrounding the first part of the dream, it felt like a calm and steady ride, peaceful to just be in one place and be taken somewhere. but suddenly the train was stopped and scruffy men in tattered black clothes rushed in telling everyone to get down. my companion next to me quickly complied and maybe even tried to help me {there was concern from me coming from them, i could feel it}, but i wasn't fast enough and as the hijackers fired a shot into the cabin i knew i was hit. they got me at the base of my neck, just above my colar bone and i felt my death as a rush of warmth and red spreading out quickly from my throat. i had just enough time to register the finality of my death, witness it in slow motion replay from outside from the murderer's perspective before i woke up.

i believe death in dreams is a harbinger of change. in order to become something else something must end, a part of you must die. and in a way, i feel like the writing is on the wall, on all four walls, actually, coming at me from every direction as many important people in my life voice the same few words: you need to relax.

yes, i need to relax, breathe deeply, and trust. it's time to learn to trust again. starting here, now, with me. trusting myself. trusting my instincts, trusting my gut even when my brain is yelling to run for safety in the opposite direction. trusting that i've done my best, that my worth is not dependent on anything i am, think, or do. that it is this moment, the one i'm living and breathing into right now. now. now. now. nownownownownownownownownownow is all that matters.

i start my meditation practice today. now.