rhythms

my life revolves around finding a beat that can pound me forward or hum me into peace.

my thoughts revolve around whether or not the rhythms i create are beats toward light, not a pulse that's making me numb.

and here i stand, 1 one-way flight and an outrageous adventure away from slaying all previous tempo & time from previous/current phases of life, about to create new rhythms and begin grooving to a new life, new perspective, new world.

i'm surprised by how restless i'm growing of my most recently released nannying/grocery shopping/grad school-applying beats. i'm surprised by how quickly i'm beginning to anticipate the unfamiliar, enticing beats of the world to the south. i'm excited to rock to the rhythms of harvesting/sowing/spanish-speaking, renewing the beats that i've grown with and remixing them to be fresh and life giving.

it'll be nice to stop worrying about the fruitfulness of familiar rhythms - now the only thing to do is start coming up with new ones.

seasons

the longer i drag myself up at sunrise, i see the necessity and prevalence of cycles.

these cycles seem to travel in constant growth and regression, bringing out a perpetual balance of warmth and light, stemmed by the unfortunate harmony of cold and darkness. the waves of sentience are saturated by crests of life & bliss crushed by troughs of death & heartache held together by the in between steadily sinking days.

sometimes these cycles are in the literal sense driven by life and death. i am reminded of the bedsheets that claimed the breath of my lovely aunt these two years past, where she met her end somewhere between the rafters and the floor. those sheets trampled hopes of shared laughter and endless music and milestones for her most precious daughters, and laid forth a unending hole where mother, wife, and friend once stood.

sometimes, these cycles are driven instead by deep set love and heartache. so fine is the line that divides our greatest love and ugliest agony at the affliction of that same love; the swelling of overwhelming adoration can topple and exchange itself for desolate aloneness. that same mouth that once spoke words that filled us with a sea teeming of joy piercing your breast and stealing that same joy.

but death must adhere to the same laws mentioned above; troughs too must rise again to the height of a crest, with time at least. in the case of my aunt, her daughters were the counter to the agony left by her eternal departure; they are uniquely able to shed the light that their mother lavished on those around her. with their absurd dancer legs and ridiculous humor, no one can forget the force that was the lovely billy gentry brown.

and the same goes for the heartache we all know and dread so well. those mouths that stripped the effortless side of love can bandage all those tears and breaks and erase all the wounds carved by their sharp words. with time those stabs we take at one another can turn into ways of understanding your love in new light, or ways of seeing bits of us we need to strip of ourselves.

sometimes, it may just be the cycle of sun to moon, budding leaves to stark branches, browning shoulders to winter jackets. either way, what goes down must come back up.

moments

those times that i have just myself and the night and that ceiling that's lingered as shelter these two and a half months...those are the moments when the sheets and the dark and the stillness of the day finally give my blown out brain a podium for speech.

a lot of times those speeches aren't ones i'm proud of; they tend more to be more of the times that i let my ugliness run unconstrained, rather than a glimmer of the beauty i hope to create. i realize then that there's this side of my so-called self that i hide so dearly for fear that its discovery will leave me so staggeringly alone that i'll never recover.

lately, i've started to take the reigns of those rampages and steer them into an avenue of life rather than death, and instead of speeches, they're more breaths of inhaling blessings and of exhaling thanks. instead of crushing my innards and outards and all, i'm working on soaking in the good and shutting out the bad by letting my head meditate on what i hold dear rather than what pesters.

freeing myself of the burden of myself is just what the doctor ordered: these shoulders of mine are already lookin up.

why, why, why

sometimes it's nice to be brought to a new self-perspective, especially when it's a freshly turned 4-year old bringing blinding insight and shoving it unintentionally but no less potently in my abashed face.

there were times when those little humans baffled and frustrated me to the greatest depths of my hard-to-come-by patience (if i even have any at all). with all their incessant questions and an inexplicable inability to understand the world in the accepting manner i at times fall victim to, i made little space for those creatures ranging from recently de-wombed to 10 or so.

but now i find myself to be taking lessons from one meadlowlark preschooler with wisdom greater than most pompously educated phDs or age beaten late-in-lifers with whom i've crossed paths. he keeps showing me that once i surpassed the years that were allowed some bits of imagination, i begin clambering through whatever this thing we refer to as reality might be with cloudy ears and deafened eyes...at least when i don't allow my strangest thoughts to take hold for more than a moment.

those miniature, painstakingly curious humans i once wrote off to be mere children are more often than not the only ones who have yet to succumb to the spell of cheap interpretations and hardly tangible interactions with the world around them. and it's that unyielding,(hopefully but unlikely) immortal desire to make sense of a pocket of the globe that has unknowingly gone mad that should be an indication of brilliance: all of us grown-ups or those of us who like to think of ourselves as such are the ones who should be causing the impatience we so easily bestow on our youngest counterparts. for we are the ones overflowing with half-assed answers to all those "why's" and "how comes?"; we are the ones crumbling our potentially powerful piles of cerebral matter with the inability to challenge and to question and and to truly be human.

i want to start cracking open my increasingly dense skull to start soaking in the leaves and sounds and words and seconds around me in a once known and recently forgotten way; the way of my previously knowledgeable self who i let die somewhere between the days that broke my childlike spirit. i want to let the flames of curiousity lash at the memories that i've let slay the best parts of me so that i can again be seeking out the answers to all of those "how comes?" i previously had no time for. i want to start being a real person again.

kids should be the ones ruling the world.
maybe they could at least find a way to stop tearing everything apart from the inside out.

ebbs & flows

the passing time trickles/gushes/snakes its way through my fingers, taking with it days full of two-year-old smiles, twenty-two-year-old frustrations of incessant paperwork, and moments that seem to disappear along with the steady rush of seconds ticking by. this era is overflowing with hellos, goodbyes, and hasta prontos. i like it, at least on the good days.

i love watching the people i love grow; i love to hear how they're stretching beyond their current known(s). be it boarding an airtight aircraft to begin grain-harvesting on the opposing side of the earth, learning to love & rear your very first and most devastatingly precious baby girl, or turning over a new leaf after being set aflame by your previous path. all of it - big or small, significant or hardly noticed - it is beautiful. and it is from this very beauty that my hungry lungs draw, what keeps each foot chasing after its sister.

as always, i find myself in awe of the glorious humans that make my life full.

"what's crazier: living and even dying for a cause you really believe in, or just running with the rat race until you die?"

adieu

it's so strange the way that along with the passing time pass friends, memories, jobs, loves, experiences, lessons, etc...etc. with each closing chapter, we're faced with yet another set of goodbyes, another rendezvous with the need to fill up the spaces those goodbyes left you with, and another need to reshape/redefine/rethink who we want to be and who we will be with the new people that will eventually fill those new spaces.

i'm trying to come to a place where goodbyes are less of an end, and more of a beginning for the chance of glorious reunions, endless reminiscing, and an opportunity to find new people to love and be loved by. rather than it being a moment of loss, goodbyes can be chances to grow separately, embark on our own adventures, and share with one another what our chosen paths have shown us. rather than greeting the conclusion of yet another season of life with tears and the desire to resist the imminent changes the coming season is sure to bring, instead this season should be welcomed and adored, with an ever-increasing amount of people to share life with.

out with the old (meaning freeing the ones i've come to adore these past 4 years to be who & where they must be for now), and in with the new (meaning homes/adventures/companions/and more.)

breathing in the breeze

sometimes a change of perspective is what we most need. this can mean a reinterpretation of memories of the past that give you some sense of new found peace/freedom. or this can mean taking the hand of your love, the hand promising your feet won't lose their hold on those steep slants of the tiled roof, so that you can stand tall with the trees.

from that very place, that space where it's just you, and me, and the trees and the breeze and that moon...that ever-present, lively moonshine pouring down and wiping our minds clean of all those thoughts/ideas/feelings that when you get down to it, just don't matter. there we both can be pure, there we both can be still and know who and what and where and why we love, why we're waking day after day.

and even though we have to eventually leave this midnight oasis, for now our feet really have left the ground. and as for the ground, it can't steal the moments we just made, the beauty we just shared.

pounding.

there are moments when you're most certainly more alive than others.

be it those times that you're lost in the growing pound of your heart, the faint taste of salt seasoning your thirsty lips, and your weary lungs drawing in the morning air that keeps the cycle going, while your legs are screaming as you force them to continue along the winding country road, 13.1 miles and counting.

or when you're rolling on to your back, your breath buried somewhere deep in your chest from the impact, your hands grazing the newly exposed flesh of your chin and chest brought to life by your own lapse of carelessness. remembering the moment of reveling in the freedom of the cool summer air kissing your face changing abruptly to a face full of earth and a body full of  shock and a mountain bike full of devastation.

or maybe those times that you're standing on the edge of certain death, toeing the edge of a three hundred and nine foot waterfall, tasting the almighty fall's mist that's hitting your tongue, swallowing the warm air around you.

or when you're climbing/crawling/dragging yourself up mt. sopris stone by stone, enveloped by clouds and trying to ignore the adrenaline threatening to overtake you as you peer left and right to immediate drop offs that whisper of your potential death.

these are the times when you become aware of what should be a self-evident truth, though one we so often forget - the truth of your very existence, the reality of you and your breath and heartbeat and sweat and blood and what we westerners have labeled your 'soul.' it's these experiences that shake you from the insidious complacency always threatening to overtake you. though it may mean anxiety, though it may mean ache, at least you know this one truth:

you're alive.

efuerza

those days when it used to be that stumbling into the lines which were drawn to show you who and how and what you were supposed to be, those are the most fruitless, hated days. the ones where the path of resistance was the end sought, the path that bore the person so horribly average that there was nothing distinguishable left about you. the path where you'd swallow those words that might have been spoken had you been able to resist, and stuff yourself into those clothes stamped and mass-produced to death, and blare the so-called music proclaiming so many things you truly would never do so yourself.


don't be branded. don't fall in line. and most certainly, do not remain silent.

molds

as i find myself going to bed on this blissfully ordinary summer night, i'm thinking about all the moments that brought me here. the moments of dragging myself out of bed to face another day of high school, another day filled with screaming lockers and glaring bells and florescent lights. the moments of dreaming of a new place, the place that would help me discover that person i so desperately desired to create, the place that came to be here - this place. my two-bedroom apartment on folsom st. with its' big windows, cramped kitchen, and hotel room carpet: the place where i now can be still and know that i am me, que soy yo, that i am free.

free from all the glaring bells and probing eyes and jagged words that once kept me from finding and meeting and growing this person that i am and have been since i found this two-bedroom apartment with its bubblegum pink bathroom counter top and squeaky, aged floors. this freedom is one i so often forget, but so adore to remember. the freedom to be veg/pescatarian depending on which day you ask me, the freedom to be a 22 year old girl that loves whiskey and ice-cold 40 oz. O.E.'s, and the freedom to be someone dreaming of a phD in cultural anthropology (that one still makes my heart jump a bit).

this freedom...it's beautiful.

balance.

 My hope for the way I live each day (an excerpt from Paulo Coehlo's "The Alchemist")

"A certain shopkeeper sent his son to learn about the secret of happiness from the wisest man in the world. The lad wandered through the desert for 40 days, and finally came upon a beautiful castle, high atop a mountain. It was there that the wise man lived.
Rather than finding a saintly man, though, our hero, on entering the main room of the castle, saw a hive of activity: tradesmen came and went, people were conversing in the corners, a small orchestra was playing soft music, and there was a table covered with platters of the most delicious food in that part of the world. The wise man conversed with everyone, and the boy had to wait for two hours before it was his turn to be given the man’s attention.
The wise man listened attentively to the boy’s explanation of why he had come, but told him that he didn’t have time just then to explain the secret of happiness. He suggested that the boy look around the palace and return in two hours.
“Meanwhile, I want to ask you to do something”, said the wise man, handing the boy a teaspoon that held two drops of oil. “As you wander around, carry this spoon with you without allowing the oil to spill”.
The boy began climbing and descending the many stairways of the palace, keeping his eyes fixed on the spoon. After two hours, he returned to the room where the wise man was.
“Well”, asked the wise man, “Did you see the Persian tapestries that are hanging in my dining hall? Did you see the garden that it took the master gardener ten years to create? Did you notice the beautiful parchments in my library?”
The boy was embarrassed, and confessed that he had observed nothing. His only concern had been not to spill the oil that the wise man had entrusted to him.
“Then go back and observe the marvels of my world”, said the wise man. “You cannot trust a man if you don’t know his house”.
Relieved, the boy picked up the spoon and returned to his exploration of the palace, this time observing all of the works of art on the ceilings and the walls. He saw the gardens, the mountains all around him, the beauty of the flowers, and the taste with which everything had been selected. Upon returning to the wise man, he related in detail everything he had seen.
“But where are the drops of oil I entrusted to you?” asked the wise man. Looking down at the spoon he held, the boy saw that the oil was gone.
“Well, there is only one piece of advice I can give you”, said the wisest of wise men. “The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.'"