bet your bottom dollar

                  divine little place where i shower

when i was a little kid, i wanted to be an orphan. i romanticized the holy heck out of the secret garden, the little princess, my side of the mountain, and especially my beloved annie. as an eight-year-old, i once entertained myself and my bemused aunt and uncle on a visit to family in aspen by smearing mud on my face and begging the people getting off the shuttle at the apartment complex for 'spay-uh change'. both my (early) love of adventure (escapism) and my perception that orphans actually ended up with much more love-filled and magic lives than regular kids with (albeit divided) houses and regular meals, made for a weird love of the genre. the deep desire to be rescued by magic circumstance and secret (male) benefactor guided my life all the way up to right now. thank goodness that life has given me such a hellish set of trials that have forced me to take great leaps out of that way of waiting. the rescue is being so heart rendering completely here now, through all circumstances, battling and accepting with love, acting on things before i can talk myself out of action. nothing i think is remotely right. what is happening is completely right. there is a huge difference sometimes between the two, sometime none at all so that i slip into a state of unreasonable sweetness just to be feeling the air move into and fill my body through no effort of my own. how amazing is that? we never have to try to breathe, either we are breathed or we are not. i'm not an orphan. i have two living parents. and there is magic and it's better than circumstantial magic because it's inherent and always available when letting go of the story.

                         mangos

happy new moon

this was my walk yesterday, watching the fog roll down the mountain until i realized it wasn't fog, it was a cloud full of rain. i walked home slowly, soaking wet with my face to the sky. 

last week was a big week, here's what i learned:

1) emotional wisdom trumps intellectual wisdom. period. the emotions know, the body knows. the mind, well, it thinks it knows and if it doesn't know then it has to figure it all out and six thousand different issues and problems arise at once and one can sit forever at the kitchen table paralyzed. what is felt may not be what is wanted by the mind. go there and dance there in terror and in freedom until only freedom remains.

2) it is really not easy to follow the heart. it sounds simple and it is but it isn't easy. it's a true discipline and badass warriors of light didn't get there by not leaping into the heart's unknown deep.

3) it sucks to lose a key and have to pay to rekey a whole house.

4) i don't care about most things i cared about before i came to stay on this island. i was totally misinformed as to who i was and what i wanted. 

5) leap into and towards what scares you in action as well as intention. scared to try something, talk to someone, BE someone? do it right now.

6) the results of anything you do can't be predicted. do not try. the greatest gifts come from being with and seeing the present moment. they can be totally missed when you don't accept them because they don't look like you think they should. 

7) chocolate and peanut butter are still a perfect thing. 

8) don't hide. you know what i mean. 

real luxury

i've been packing and organizing this past week and this weekend i discovered that it was more important to me than anything to not bring certain things with me to where i'm going next. 

i can live without many things, nearly everything, but i can no longer live with what isn't true. the voice that i have become so used to over these decades, the one telling me i'm not capable or worthy or talented or beautiful, is a voice that i'm no longer able to believe. it is the greatest luxury in the world to no longer have to listen. i don't know what the path looks like but i realize it's made of a million tiny decisions to live as one who is worthy and strong and kind and loyal and brave and talented and wonderful. these truths are based on nothing. they are not because of what i do or how successful i am according to any standards but my own. they can't be because of anything transient for if i lost a measure of my own success then it wasn't really mine to begin with. to actually embody this has taken incredible will and some pretty fierce solitude and i am amazed and honored by my own strength and power. i am an amazing human being and the proof of this is in the fact that i am here at all. 

the opportunity to say out loud who we really are is here. to surround ourselves with friends and loves who support our truth is not easy but it can make the difference between a life lived in misery because we are reaffirming untrue beliefs about ourselves or a life lived in the total joy of being so deeply in love with our own existence that the love we are filled with brims over and spills everywhere, touching everyone we touch, feeding the earth, and encouraging its own expansion. i wish that for me and for you.