Polar dipping

My writing voice is rusty, very rusty.  It’s been a long time since I’ve maintained my writing practice and I feel the effects of it tangibly in my daily life. When I’m not writing, a dull depression creeps through my waking life (and in dreamtime). The flow is dammed. 

Dammed...

I’ve wanted to write a million pieces using the river as my metaphor.  She's a dynamic teacher - each time I sit with her sharing some new simple, practical, and undeniable truth.  The nature of my writing practice being one.  I’ve never been the fastest learner.  Most times the message catches up with me long after it’s been spoken.  I only hope to integrate this lesson in my own time, and I trust my great teacher will stick it out with me until I do.

I'm sure whatever I write now will be imperfect.  Already it lacks a smoothness and flavor I can’t pinpoint (too much cheese? ;), and won’t be able to until I practice more in the kitchen.  Maybe not what I'd like to serve, but I’m not writing for that reason…

On the first of the year, at home, I did what we call the Polar dip – I jumped into the freezing cold river.  When I got up the nerve I put on my suit, walked down to the river (making sure to walk faster than my mind), jumped in, then jumped out faster than I jumped in. And for a moment, the iciness of the water brought me warmth. I felt wide-awake. My breath deepened and all the stale air at the bottom of my lungs quickly made way for fresh new valley air (sense the sarcasm). It felt good!

When the endorphins were still running through my body I told myself, “I’m gonna do this everyday!”

Ahahaha!!!

I didn’t. 

Buuuut…I did do it a couple other times after that.

And every time I did it, it felt good.

And I had the same afterthought, every time.

Which led my impulses to do it again the next time.

So I’m not home anymore, and I have to find other ways to keep the endorphins, or freshness, or “good vibes”, creative juices, life force, or whatever-you-want-to-call-it. Those. I have to find ways to keep those flowing.  Like…my writing practice.

Just do it.

Every year at the end of the summer, the rivers at home turn green as the water stagnates and grows thick algae.  I recently discovered that it’s possible to cure and eat these algae so rich in nutrients.  This is to say that as much as we dislike stagnation, there is always a reason to the season.  A necessary cycle that brings its own benediction, its own style of blessing.  Destruction is never bad.  It’s always at the same time an invitation for something new. Something useful.

Right before everything goes dormant for the Fall and Winter seasons, when the heat of the summer has everything thirsting for new life, there is a period of uneasiness and agitation that seeps through the thick, hot air.  We're left waiting, watching out for that impulse in the air to change, to shift, that will replenish the spirit and land.  A “dull depression” seeps in from the knowing that the sky can never be forced to do what it does naturally in its own time.  We can try to force this exchange with our technologies, but nature knows when its being manipulated and usually doesn’t react well.  If and when the rain comes – when the earth, listening to its own impulses, gives back to itself in a free dance of ecstatic undulation – it experiences genuine nourishment. So the water sits in stagnation until the sky inspires – in-spires: breathes life back into – it.  And one day, amidst the sweeping, cooking, reading, smudging the house, internet browsing, twiddling my thumbs, then smudging the house one more time, I look out the bay window from my favorite daydreaming spot and notice rain clouds hovering over the Sierras.  And soon enough…

The water rises. Flow speeds up.

And if it feels right, maybe the sky will do it again.

And hopefully again after that.

Until the water flows clear. The hills turn their Winter shades of green.  The air breathes. And the depression lifts. 

And from this place I sit down with my laptop to write and share something.  From my own natural cycles, I was compelled.  Inspired.  And even though it may not be great,  and even though it may not come often, it feels good and perfect for now.  Most of us know how a good rain in these drought years are enough to raise the spirits.  If I try to force, change, and edit myself, creating will never feel good to me, and I will absolutely never do it. But I’ll always thirst for it.

So I take Her heed and I follow my flow,  and I look to the Sky for inspiration as He smiles down to Earth. 

“I’m gonna do this everyday!”

ha ;)

Love,

Julia

Mother Yasuní

I wrote the following when I first read of President Correa’s decision to end the Yasuní-ITT Initiative and to open up the Yasuní for oil exploration and drilling.  In my upset I attempted to write something of significance based on my experience visiting the area, however in my attempt to write from a place of struggle and fight, I struggled and fought to write it. The following is what came naturally, it became about the Mother…

Breathe in. Take a very deep breath in through your nose until your lungs are completely full, and then exhale until your lungs are completely empty.  Envision this:

You are visiting the Yasuní National Park in Ecuador, full of its life, greenery, smells, humidity. You are on a boat heading up river. It doesn’t necessarily matter where you are going, but you are there on the boat feeling the wind hit your face, the water from the speed of the boat splashing your clothes, and you feel all at once a very intimate reunion with the Earth.  It has been so long since you’ve been with her in her majesty such that exists here in this moment and place.  You’ve experienced this before in your dreams but every time you were reminded that it was just a dream.  Here, your reality is daunting.  This majesty literally brings you to your knees and stops your breath as you are completely humbled by her beauty and total power over you.  Though her power, you realize, is not one of selfishness or greed – she seeks not to dominate you.  For those who wish to truly see her will experience the breath of life. This breath she breathes into you rages past your lungs and falls deep down into the seat of your soul where a distinct, long forgotten part of your biology awakens to the knowing that you are not separate from her. That this is not something to fear.  You’ve wanted this, dreamed of this, for so long, and here she offers your deepest desires to you. You need only to open your heart in order to see.  You do this. Un-suppressible tears fall down your face.

In all of her majesty you suddenly feel a wave of guilt. “What have we done to you?” You ask yourself. Though she seeks not to wrong you.  She feels only compassion as you too have been at the mercy of the same forces seeking her captivity – Greed, Control, Domination – all children born of Fear.  She knows they sought to conquer her because they were confused by her powers, fearing their own powerlessness if hers were made to roam free – making her human children blind.  Driven by this fear, you have sought to control all that is truly free, to predict the unpredictable, never seeing the magic born of these mysteries.  You have tried, but to little avail, for she is alive and so contains the powers of transformation, healing, and growth – and as her child, so do you.  She seeks only to remind you of this and to invite you back home.

At this she plants in your heart a seed of hope and reminds you that she will never leave you. She cannot ever leave you, for you are one in the same, bound up by the same chemistry.

We must find a new source of power. One we know never dies. Allow the possibility of solution to ring louder than the problems at hand; the politics don't represent the humanity; Our sickness is the denial of our interconnectedness. We must allow our wild hearts to grow.

In dedication to the Mother spirit of the Yasuní Rainforest and to her children who live there.

Hey there...

Welcome to my blog, a working dedication to my ever-growing curiosities, insights, and biases about the world.  I would like to leave the theme of this blog somewhat aimless and open ended, though as tribute to its intent, I can say this...

My love, pain, and curiosity for life grows and shape-shifts from day to day.  As I move into each new experience, each stage of life, I find those external circumstances continually shifting the internal (or is it the other way around?) That experience can be both extremely inspiring and unnerving. 

I’ve been seduced by music, cultures, foreign lands, mystics, intellectuals, intoxication, seekers, healers, liars, and love. I’ve found tears I never knew I had for strangers, nature, and the spirit world. Laughed at four-leaf clovers and my own fucked up thoughts. Spent years on end wallowing in shallow insecurities, and with weeks notice jumped on a plane to a foreign country; fought to the death to hold  fast to stubborn belief systems and given it all up in a moment of faith.  I’ve felt stuck, clear, inspired, bored, nervous, lost, small, unimportant, entitled, free, and everything in between. But I feel pretty normally messed up, eh ;)

Somewhere in the flux of it all I find expression to be a primal evolving factor - be it through acts of healing, movement, conversation, or art.  A voice is found there and despite the confusion of change lays a proof of something more permanent - a spirit. When we release our experiences through expression, rather than holding tight to them, I find that things instead flow through us - pain is freed, lessons are learned, balance is renewed.  We prevent the deadening of stagnation. Expression, as a release of all we think, do, and feel becomes almost crucial to maintaining our flow of life.

When the written word is allowed the freedom to fall on the paper as it may - all restrictions, boundaries, rules removed - something beautiful happens.  Through language we begin to reconnect.  We begin to straddle the worlds of heart and mind, and reenter that space between. A place familiar to us all.  A wise woman explained these creative acts as "standing between the worlds of rationality and mythos." She says that land is that inexplicable place we all recognize once we experience it, but its nuances slip away and shape-change if one tries to pin them down....except when we use poetry, music, dance, or story.  

Here are my stories…my revelations, insights, memories, questions, or just random crap without any substance whatsoever.  As my experiences were gifted to me, I offer them back to you. Through an opening of heart and mind in whichever form they find themselves on the screen. I hope to find the words that we can meet at that familiar place where truth and matters of the heart reside - never to be pretentious, preachy, or superior.  Though I do wish to move you, to speak to a part of you yearning for that one conversation to stir it back into existence.  Come with me if you like and explore this long forsaken land so that we may reconnect.  The land between my experience and me, me and you, us and whatever there is left to discover.  I hope you might find a place for yourself here too, in my world of words.