The Will to Live

It happens that I am tired of being a man.

It happens that I go into tailor's shops and the movies

all shriveled up and impenetrable, like a felt swan

navigating on a water of origin and ash.

The smell of barber shops makes me sob out loud.

I want nothing but the repose either of stone or of wool.

I want to see no more establishments, no more gardens,

nor merchandise, nor glasses, nor elevators.

It happens that I am tired of my feet and my nails,

and my hair and my shadow.

It happens that I am tired of being a man.

Just the same it would be delicious 

to scare a notary with a cut lily

or knock a nun stone dead with one blow of an ear.

It would be beautiful 

to go through the streets with a green knife,

shouting until I died of cold.

I do not want to go on being a root in the dark,

hesitating, stretched out, shivering with dreams

downwards in the wet tripe of the earth

soaking it up and thinking, eating every day.

I do not want to be the inheritor of so many misfortunes.

I do not want to continue as a root and as a tomb,

as a solitary tunnel, as a cellar full of corpses,

stiff with cold, dying with pain.

For this reason, Monday burns like oil

at the sight of me arriving with my jail face

and it howls in passing like a wounded wheel,

and its footsteps towards nightfall are filled with hot blood.

And it shoves me along to certain corners, to certain damp houses,

to hospitals where the bones come out of the windows,

to certain cobbler's shops smelling of vinegar,

to streets horrendous as crevices.

There are birds the color of sulfur and horrible intestines

hanging from the doors of the houses which I hate;

there are forgotten sets of teeth in a coffee pot,

there are mirrors which should have wept with shame and horror.

There are umbrellas all over the place, and poisons and navels. 

I stride along with calm, with eyes, with shoes,

with fury, with forgetfulness,

I pass, I cross offices and stores full of orthopedic appliances

and courtyards hung with clothes on wires,

underpants, towels and shirts

which weep slow, dirty tears.

-Pablo Neruda

     

     An unhappiness has settled on me recently.  In the past, I would have called it depression, but I don't like that anymore.  I don't want a disorder to pin this feeling on-it is what it is-unhappiness.  Has anything in my life changed?  Not really.  Has something horrible happened to me?  No.  So why does this happen?  Why do I suddenly wake up one morning and lose my will to live?

     I found this Neruda poem when I was a teenager, and have listened to Samuel Jackson recite it on the Il Postino soundtrack hundreds of times, but this morning is the first time that it has made me cry.  I felt such kinship with the desperation of his words and the hole of longing that we are born into.  I realized that even a poet who sees beauty in everything can, at times, wander the streets with hatred and disgust.  I realized how truly exhausting life can be.  I'm not depressed, and I'm not grieving-I just get tired sometimes of being human.  I get tired of being a mother, and all that it requires me to give.  I get tired of being a wife and the constant work that it takes to change and grow and be in a relationship.  I get tired of the fact that I haven't succeeded in anything yet, and I get tired of all the hard work that still needs to be done.  I get tired of how many people need help, and how many people there are that I could be helping.  I get tired of cleaning-my house, my car, the planet, myself.  I get tired of being nice to everyone.  I get tired of myself-my insecurities and fears, my weaknesses, my mind, my aging body and my long list of unfulfilled dreams.  I get tired of the work that it takes to follow those dreams.  I get tired of people beating themselves up and putting themselves down.  I get tired of all the ugliness and hatred that I'm faced with each day-in myself and in others.

     This morning as my alarm pulled me out of my dream life, I could feel my energy plummet.  The sadness I felt at leaving that world and facing another day of malaise was, of course, the perfect way to start my day!  I am very familiar with this scenario, but here's the thing.  I don't let myself linger in that anymore.  I put on Christmas music, or I Love Lucy or the blues.  I have a good cry.  I get myself out of the house and volunteer or I stay home and work-I make the best out of what my day has to offer, and this helps...but the sadness is still there.  I feel it rise up as I slow down.  Then I get busy and forget about it.  Then I sit down to rest for a moment and it returns.  I feel frustrated with myself for all that I haven't done.  I feel uninspired in everything.  I notice that I have less to give to the people around me.  I am less complimentary.  I smile less.  I have less patience.  I begin to treat people the way I know I don’t like to be treated.  So much of our lives seem so pointless, and I wonder why we bother.  I never say these things to anyone, even on a day like today, but I am here to tell you that sometimes I lose my will to live.  

     The will to live is not always the battle.  Sometimes the battle is fear and worry.  Sometimes it is anger, trauma or grief.  It could be fatigue or even boredom.  My point is that on many days of our lives, we will be fighting a battle with something.  It means that something important is coming up inside of us and it wants our attention.  It means that there is an area of our lives that needs work.  Our minds don't always know, because they continue to spin off in various directions throughout the day and night, but somewhere deep down, we know what's wrong and what needs to be done.  We always have the power to face our problems and turn bad days around.  We always have the power to stop resisting the work.  Whether it's talking to a friend, or taking a nap, or drinking extra water...whether it's finally facing an addiction or confronting someone  hurtful-it's days like this that push us to the very edges where the real work can be done.   In the meantime, let me show you something that helps me remove all traces of self pity in my life.

  Daily life in a concentration camp

     What amazes me when I see things like this is that these people, in the worst of all possible conditions, continued to retain a will to live.  I read an account of a man whose 13 year old son was knocked dead by one blow from the rifle of a Nazi official, right in front of him.  Why did that man not throw himself down for death as well?  Babies were thrown up into the air for target practice.  What kept the people who witnessed these things quiet?  What kept them waking every day?  With heartbreak after heartbreak after heartbreak, where does one find the strength to continue?  As people watched their loved ones abused and murdered in front of them, as they worked endlessly without nutrition or sleep, what kept them going?  Was it shock?  Hope?  Fear of death? 

     Elie Wiesel wrote in his novel, Night, “Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.  Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God himself.  Never.”  But he also wrote in his novel Open Heart, “I belong to a generation that has often felt abandoned by God and betrayed by mankind.  And yet, I believe that we must not give up on either…We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children.  Between the ugliness of hate and the will to oppose it.  Between inflicting suffering and humiliation on our fellow man and offering him the solidarity and hope he deserves.  Or not.  I know-I speak from experience-that even in darkness it is possible to create light and encourage compassion.  That it is possible to feel free inside a prison.  That even in exile, friendship exists and can become an anchor.  That one instant before dying, man in still immortal.”   

     It is immensely important for us to learn from our history as humans, so that we can do better.  It is immensely important to empathize with those who have suffered, so that we can feel both gratitude for our own lives, and a firm resolve to end our indifference and our infliction of suffering on others.  It is imperative that we face unhappy moments in ourselves during our daily lives so that we can learn about ourselves and take responsibility for our own peace and healing.  So that we can experience unhappiness without the need to spread it.  So that we can hold each other up on the weight of our own broken bones.  If I cannot go through a bad day in my own life without hurting those around me, how will I ever be prepared to handle more?  If I cannot be a light, even in my own darkness, how will I ever find the will to grow and change and love and live?  I don't want to compare my exhaustion and tiny trials with the Holocaust, because there is no comparison.  But with all the moaning and groaning about depression and anxiety in our society, shouldn't we be stopping to reflect on what human beings are actually capable of?  If a violinist can find the strength to play one last song as he dies, we can find the strength to be gentle when we are pushed to the edge.  If a person can suffer nightmarish atrocities and then continue on into a long life of gratitude, doesn't that show us that life is truly what we make of it?

Everything is a Present

Alice Sommer Herz-108 year old Holocaust survivor

     So although I feel a sadness and longing some days, although my heart is sometimes broken by hatred and anger, although I may be tired of working and breathing and getting up every morning, I owe it to myself and to everyone around me to turn my focus around.  We will feel the sorrow anyway-there is no protection from this.  We will inevitably have moments in our lives filled with severe longing, and moments where there is a dull ache.  Our lives will continue to break us open until we die, pushing the throb of experience into us and spitting us out onto the ground.  But in that moment that we're on the ground, if we just open our nostrils and smell the earth, if we open our eyes and see the sky, if we open our ears and hear the life all around us, our brokenness can sing with a beauty we've never known.  There is no need to beat ourselves up.  There is no need to feed the negative.  Life is so near.  Death is almost here.  Gratitude in the midst of it all is the real path of our belonging.

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Have a beautiful week everyone, 

R. Noelle

The Courage to Change the Things I Can

"Evolved human beings have very calm breath.  Normally you breathe fifteen times a minute.  If you breathe ten times a minute you'll be very energetic.  If you breath five times a minute you'll be very intelligent.   If you can breathe one time a minute you will become invincible.  The power of the breath should be under your own control." 

-Yogi Bhajan

     Moving past worry and anxiety is not about finding the best meds or drugs, or running until you drop.  As humans, we are hard wired to have fearful and negative thoughts pop up in our minds-that's something that may never end until we each individually accept our complete lack of control over the universe.  We hold our lives in great importance.  We make deeply moving connections.  We plan and build and hope and dream in a world where literally anything could happen at any moment.  Of course we are going to want to hold onto the things we love.  Of course we are going to be scared of what life may bring.  But how can we actually live our lives in this limbo of consciousness?

     We have control only over ourselves-our thoughts, our words and our actions.  Because we cannot control the Earth, and because we cannot control each other, the only thing we can do for relief is learn to control ourselves.  Now, I'm not just talking about being virtuous, although I do believe that virtuosity and integrity are a part of our spirit's true nature, and the ultimate ideal.  What I'm talking about is the dirty work that we do in the moment, while we make our way through the heaven and hell that this life brings.  Each person should have a toolbox of healing techniques that they know will work for them, and that they can access and practice throughout the day.  Knowing that you can rely on yourself and your own skills when times get hard brings you self reliance, self confidence, and inner peace where you once had uncontrollable emotions, and insecurities, and anxious mental babble.  

     At any moment in life, you could be faced with an emotional, worrisome or let's just say negative thought or circumstance.  The first thing to do at this point is to stop and remove yourself from that voice in your head that is turning you upside down.  Let me just tell you now that the voice is not you.  You are the one who can listen and observe.  You are the one underneath it all that is never changing, that is alive and aware even when you are sleeping.  You have many voices moving through your head-arguing with each other, justifying things, worrying, talking yourself up, talking yourself down, talking others up, talking others down...try to just stop for a moment and listen.  Are the things your mind is saying true?  Does your mind contradict itself?  Try writing thoughts and beliefs down, and then read each one and ask yourself, "Is this a fact?"  If it is a fact, and you don't like it, do something about it.  If it's not a fact-if it's a belief, then it's just a thought, and there is no reason in the world that it should stay in your mind if you don't want it there.  If you find something there that you want to replace, write it down and then come up with the opposite-an affirmation.  Replacing the belief, "I'm not enough" with "I am whole and perfect just the way I am" may take constant daily vigilance, but eventually it will begin to sink in.  I know-I've done it.

     Once you realize that you are stronger than your mind, your ego and your emotions, you are ready for on the spot healing techniques-exercises to do when you don't know what else to do.  One incredible technique I have in my toolbox is called "tapping."  Thought Field Therapy, developed by Roger Callahan, is an incredible way of healing from trauma and stress, both in the moment and after the fact.  Here is a great video from the man who certified me at "TFT Bootcamp" a few years ago:

Dr. Robert Bray teaching TFT 

     Emotional Freedom Technique is what I learned from my therapist a few years ago, and it is also a very useful and life-changing tool.  Here is a basic tutorial of EFT:

Krista Jane teaching EFT

     The possibilities for your toolbox are endless.  Prayer, meditation and exercise are also huge aspects of my life, but the one element that transcends all methods of healing work is the breath.  Getting the stale air out of your body and constantly replenishing it is imperative to growth.  Feeding your blood, your muscles and your brain with oxygen and using your breath to release tension is a free, simple, and always dependable way to open up your life.  One of the quickest and most transforming breath exercises I have found is in Spiritual Cannibalism by Rudi:

     "A breathing exercise to use for drawing in cosmic energy is as follows:  you draw in the breath high up through the nose and into the heart chakra.  As you start the breath into the heart, you swallow in the throat and try to feel the swallow travel down to your heart center.  The swallow is to release tension in the throat chakra and allow energy to expand there.  After swallowing, you continue to inhale breath into the heart center until the lungs are filled to their maximum capacity.  The breath is held in the heart chakra for about the count of ten.  This time count may become longer as strength is gained in the breathing.

     "During the time when the breath is held, you bring your mental concentration to the heart center and ask to surrender and try to feel very deeply inside the heart center.  You must ask into the very core of your being, or deeply into the subconscious, to surrender to and receive the cosmic energy.  

     "After the breath has been held for the count of ten, you exhale one-fifth of the breath and inhale again, bringing the energy and the concentration to the energy center just below the navel.  The breath is retained in the navel chakra for about the count of ten and then exhaled very slowly.

     "This double breathing to heart and navel chakras may be repeated from eight to ten times in a half-hour period or about every three minutes.  You should think of the breath as energy and develop the sensitivity to feel deep expansion of energy and to let the breathing be governed by that sensitivity as your strength and capacity increase."

     I very, very highly recommend this exercise.  Doing this even one time makes me feel like a new person.  Like I just took a nap and I'm awakening with renewed energy.  The awareness of the breath opening various parts of your body, and the intention to surrender make it the perfect momentary healing exercise.

     I realized a few years ago that there is nothing I can do to prevent certain emotional triggers.  The only way I can lessen the pain and fear that these triggers bring me into is to have grounding techniques ready in the moment.  The hardest part about this practice is that in the moment that I'm triggered, I have the most resistance.  I don't want to work on myself.  I don't want to open up.  I don't want to surrender.  I just want to curl up in a ball and hide forever.  Finding the deeper part of me that can hold that scared, angry little child and that has a clear perspective on life seems impossible in these moments.  It seems impossible, but it's not.  What I really am is underneath all of that fear and anger, and it understands.  It has complete power over me if I just surrender to it.  If I just let go of my relentless ego, or my constant worrying, or the extreme hurt that I feel, I can latch on to the golden thread-the energy of breath or the beautiful words of an affirmation.  Maybe I can't change every situation, but I can always change the way I feel about it.  Maybe I can't control the sequence of events in my life, but I can always control my own presence of mind.  It's the daily trials and triggers that give us this practice, that bring us self confidence-if we can just get over the resistance to the work itself.

     Although we can't tell each other exactly what should go into the toolbox, we can practice various methods on a daily basis in our own lives, and share them with others who are looking for guidance.  Maybe it will click with someone, maybe it won't-but the important thing is that practicing, sharing and teaching self-healing techniques enforces that health and vitality even more into you and your life, making you more likely to positively influence the world.  I think it's a mistake to believe that anyone else is responsible for our health but us.  Our bodies need oxygen, so we must learn how to breathe correctly.  Our minds need rest from worry, so we must learn to surrender.  We need sleep, laughter, exercise and good food.  We need to be authentic.  Sometimes these simple things are the hardest things in the world to give ourselves, especially when we have let our stress spiral out of control, but if we do, we are giving ourselves a better gift than anyone else could ever give us.  We are living the life we were actually born to live.

"We are separated from our spiritual life by layers and layers of tension.  Laziness and dreams do not make for evolvement.  Work, hard work, is the essential ingredient...Until you understand that you are responsible for your own consciousness, you are dead."

--Rudi

R. Noelle

     

Finding Bliss in Surrender

"At birth we were awakened and emerged to become visible in the world.  At death we will surrender again to the dark to become invisible.  Awakening and surrender:  they frame each day and each life; between them the journey where anything can happen, the beauty and the frailty."

-John O'Donohue

     I've been having these flashbacks lately of my own birth.  I didn't see it coming, but when it did, I felt blessed and horrified at the same time.  I can't remember when the first vision came, but I suddenly had this feeling of being stuck inside something stifling, wet, and extremely, suffocatingly tight.  I wanted to go back to where I had come from, but the kicking of my own feet and the crushing squeeze of everything around me kept me inching through the darkness.  Not knowing where I was, where I was going, or even who or what I was, I could do only two things-surrender to the experience, and push my way through, into the unknown.

     The flashbacks of my own birth led me to flashbacks of the births of my three children.  I had taken natural childbirth classes, where they showed us videos of women having orgasms during birth, or lying there peacefully with sweet smiles on their faces.  I really believed that I would be just like them, and I relaxed perfectly in class as the ice cube melted into my palm...but in reality, the pain was vast and overwhelming, and I, at 19, was not prepared for this.  But oh, how can we be truly prepared for the moments that will  bring us into something we've never known?  Something that will change us so that we can never go back?  This was my rite of passage, and when I walked out of that door after having my first baby, I was no longer afraid of pain.  I felt that there was nothing anyone could do to me that would hurt more than that, and not only had I survived, but I had helped clean up!  But ask me in the middle of my labor, and I would have said that I didn't know what I was going to do, that I didn't think I could make it through, and that I thought I was going to die.

     It's funny how when we're in the middle of our suffering, we think that it will last forever, or we think that it is stronger than us.  Isn't it funny that during our biggest moments of transformation, we begin to lose all hope?  We scream and cry and curse our maker, or we allow our mind to talk itself in circles.  We just want the hurt to end, we want to push it away and find a happy, pain-free place again.  Or we want to sulk back into the norm of status quo.  Anything but face our own painful growth.  And we want control.  No more of these unknown places!  These little, tiny humans on this spinning planet in the middle of the Universe want control!  We want to control the pain, and we want to be happy, and every second away from that is so uncomfortable that we wonder why we're here.  

     Maybe it's less about trying to find constant happiness, and more about experiencing things deeply and letting them change us.  Maybe it's more about finding the golden thread that connects your pain with the cry of humanity and the heartbeat of the world.  Mark Nepo says , "If the thousand moods are waves in the sea, joy is the ocean that holds all feelings.  Peace is not the absence of pain, fear and difficulty.  It's the depth of being that holds all of those things."  Happiness is one of the thousand moods, washing up as we live our lives, and I don't believe that we can be expected to feel happy in every circumstance, as is the case with every one of the thousand moods.  Pain will come and go, and so will sorrow.  We have no protection from these things.  As Jonathan Foer writes in in Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close, "You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness."  Either you are closed to experience and feeling or you are open.  

     If you allow yourself to scream or weep, you will find that underneath the shell of feeling is the joy of being alive.  Even in the agony of birth and rebirth, you are holding onto the golden thread-the thought of the new life coming into view, and this experience that's opening you, changing you, bringing you, kicking and screaming into yourself .  For the baby being born, the golden thread may be complete surrender to the unknown...or maybe it is the ability to kick and squeeze its way through the constrictions of the mother's body.  We don't know what the golden thread is for the dying man, and we will not until we reach our own moment of death.  Another mystery we can never solve during our lifetimes.  Another reason to just surrender.   

     In birth, as I imagine it is in death, we are taken by something we have never known before, something we could never have prepared for.  This feeling is the feeling of transformation, our movement from one level to the next.  In the moment it may feel like pain, and in life transformations, we often wonder if we'll even make it through.  The thing about transformational experiences is that they are meant to make us uncomfortable and scared.  They are meant to make us realize that we really have no control over anything but our own minds.  Time, our lives, our bodies, our feelings, our planet, seasons and events are always moving forward, always changing, but underneath it all, waiting there in every cloud, or wave, or cry, or moment, or complete crumble into surrender, is a limitless ocean of joy.    It is waiting for us to surrender to the experience, to give ourselves up into our own nakedness, into our own birth and our own death.  For me, that joy came in labor when I had finally had enough of deep breathing and fog-horning and I released a terrifying animal scream.  It took me to a place where I could endure the pain.  It felt natural to be there, to be who I was, to be bloody and sweaty and screaming in a voice I had never heard.  With all my plans for a peaceful birth, with all my expectations of myself, I found my peace in the guttural call of pain that I had avoided my whole life.  Sometimes peace is where you least expect it-right in the middle of hell, and right in the middle of the shedding of all knowledge and expectation.

     My new favorite story is an old Sufi story in which a man is making his way through a desert on a long journey, away from his old home and old life, in search of a better one.  As he is traveling through the desert, he begins to sense that a tiger is following him.  He moves a little more quickly, feeling the beast bearing down on him, breathing down his neck, but in the middle of the desert, there is nowhere to hide.  Amazingly, miraculously, at the very last moment, he comes across a well.  He runs to the well, and jumps, but as he is falling in, he realizes that there is a dragon at the bottom of the well.  He reaches towards a branch he passes on his way down, and miraculously it holds his weight.  As he hangs there, halfway down the well, he wonders, "should I fall into the dragon's mouth, or should I climb back up and be eaten by the tiger?"  As he hangs there, pondering his predicament, he notices that at the end of the branch is a beautiful, perfect, lighted drop of honey.  Right there, in the middle of this dark well, in the middle of the tiger and the dragon-one single drop of honey.  He looks up at the tiger.  He looks down at the dragon.  He thinks about his life and all his plans, his certain death.  He opens his mouth, and licks the honey.

     One of my favorite teachers, David Deida, always says, "You're already dead.  You have nothing to lose."  The truth in this is so much bigger than we really realize.  We really are only here for a moment, and if we can just surrender ourselves completely to this moment, we are free.  What's so great about the moment of birth or death is that you are 100% in it, whether you like it or not.  In much of our lives, there are other places we can be, other things we can think about, but when life comes right up into our faces, when experience sweeps us up completely, then we are fully alive, and living like we are already dead. 

"But on condition that we liberate ourselves from our own interior despots, we are the most poetic beings, the newest, the most virgin in the world."

-Helene Cixous

"Oh wow.  Oh wow.  Oh wow."

-The last words of Steve Jobs.

     

     

     

     

Hello!

     Hello everyone!  I recently decided to turn my one blog into two blogs...my Divine Punk blog will be devoted to dreadlocks, beauty, makeup and things of that sort, and the Inspiration for Evolvers will be devoted to spiritual and philosophical writing, poetry, and such.  I have moved past Divine Punk posts to this blog, but they posted backwards chronologically...so starting next week I will be posting with my current format.  Thanks for reading, and have a beautiful day!

Beauty, the Invisible Embrace

     Hi there everyone-Rebecca here! Now that I've graduated and I have my cosmetology license, I am free to do things like wander the apartment looking for food, and writing a blog. Being that I'm still mentally and emotionally exhausted from the state board frenzy, I will be pulling my inspiration today from my favorite author, John O'Donohue. Because it clearly describes both the fleeting nature of youth and glamour, and the ancient depth of true beauty, his book Beauty, the Invisible Embrace, has been my lighthouse in the dark of cosmetology school. Don't get me wrong--I adore glamour. I love hair and makeup and dressing up and jewels and sparkles and everything pretty. I also love youth, and as a 30 year old mother of three in the beauty business, I feel compelled to somehow stay young at heart and embrace the wrinkles as they come. After all, as my mom Cate said recently, "Plastic surgery doesn't make you look younger. It only makes you look like an old person who had plastic surgery."

Here is one of my favorite quotes from O'Donohue's book:

     "There is something in the nature of beauty that goes beyond personality, good looks, image and fashion. When we affirm another's beauty, we affirm something that cannot be owned or drawn into the grid of small mindedness or emotional need. There is profound nobility in beauty that can elevate a life, bring it into harmony with the artistry of its eternal source and destination. Perhaps Beauty does not linger because she wishes to whet our appetite and refine our longing so that we enter more fully into the limitless harvest of our inner inheritance."

     "The limitless harvest of our inner inheritance..." While I wouldn't give up my Vintage Vogues, my pearls, or my patent leather stilettos for anything, the true inspiration for me comes from connecting with beautiful people. The more kind and open I myself become, the more my life opens to opportunity, friends, and limitless connections. According to John O'Donohue, "Each of us is responsible for how we see, and how we see determines what we see." It is my intention both in my life and in the beauty industry to be a person of class and integrity, and to continue a forward march toward incredible glamour and deepening connections.

     On another note, I'm getting married in three weeks! My fiance Bill is an incredible human who has been a huge part of my growth. He loves me whether I'm up or down. He has taught me what it means to love your partner, and to face "forever" with one person. This is the third (and LAST ) marriage for both of us, and believe me--if it wasn't right, we wouldn't be here. So here we are, three weeks away, and I haven't even tried on the dress with the shrug with the hat with the shoes. I have barely started working on flowers and decorations. I will be relying heavily on the kindness of my mom and my friend Kaska, who are both incredible artists, to help make me, the apartment, the children, and the wedding beautiful. What would we ever do without our loved ones? They flit around us, working, obsessing, laughing, crying, hugging, kissing, and suddenly without expecting it...beauty is there.

*This photo is one of my entries for NAHA 2011. The photo was taken by Aaron Cota and the graphic art was done by Misha Birmele.

Morning Glory

 Do I dare depend

 Upon you for

 Firm friendship

 Dear morning-glory?

  -BASHO

     Every morning I walk my kids to school through the Little Italy

neighborhood of downtown San Diego. Every morning we pass train tracks, garbage trucks, puddles of dog urine, homeless people digging for recyclables, and the weather is usually gray. Towards the end of our walk, right in front of the Little Italy Association maintenance building, is an overgrown mass of morning glories. We pass them in the morning, the afternoon, the evening, and their colors constantly change. Sometimes they're open, sometimes closed, sometimes blue, sometimes purple. They are bright and transparent in the sun, and deep blue in the shade. They are a miraculous sight to behold, growing fiercely out of the city ground.

     There are days when beauty seems scarce, but if you turn another corner, there it is again. Any despair we might feel during this lifetime has the potential of cracking us, and opening us up to experiencing great beauty. Someone who is suffering and cannot process the sadness can be emotionally moved by the beauty of a loving hug, or an incredible sunset. The older I get, the less I cry over sadness and loss. The older I get, the more I cry from the miracle of this life, and the beauty that can creep in and change my day. Just like morning glories, we are planted in the Earth, made from the Earth, and we grow fiercely in the direction of the light. We close up sometimes, retreating into an inner solitude that prepares us to open again into a proud radiance.

Take in the beauty that surrounds you. Let it move you and break you. Let it light you up. Make it a part of yourself, and give it to others. Notice the gifts that were given to us as humans. Notice the gifts that you yourself were given. You are here for a reason. What are the gifts you have for the world? Would you rather receive the light, or would you rather be the light? Life is short, life is a gift, and we're almost dead anyway, so what have any of us got to lose?

*The last photo is one that I took of my good friend Lori. Isn't she beautiful? :-)

Keep the Channel Open

Hello everyone! Happy 11-1-11! It's been a while since I've been on here...partly because of wedding plans, partly because of Halloween, but mostly because I went through an inspiration dry spell. Whenever this happens to me, I have to battle myself kicking and screaming, because half of me wants to create anyway, and half of me says, "Well, then what the heck are you going to create?" Then I wrack my brain for inspiration, and when it's not there, I think there's something horribly wrong with me, and that I will never create again.

I have moments of creativity, enlightenment, inspiration--where everything flows, and I feel that the world is my oyster. Those moments last for as long as they want to, and then I'm often left dry, and uninspired by everything. I try reading the same books that inspired me in the first place. Nothing. I listen to music. I watch the sunset. I go out into the world with open eyes and open arms. Nothing. It seems at those times like I have nothing left to give, and I wonder if I ever will again. In defeat, I finally turn inward and put my efforts into things like eating, sleeping, family, and every day responsibilities. Then, one day, out of the blue, inspiration hits like a tidal wave. I can't write fast enough, and when I go back to read what I wrote, I think, "Where did that come from???" I can't create fast enough, and I can't spread my inspiration fast enough or far enough. Everything flows. Everything is easy. Hard work is easy and fun, because the final picture is so clear in my mind.

So here's a question for you: do you believe that inspiration is always inside you, as a part of you that you can only access when things are "flowing" in your life? Do you believe that your creativity, or lack of it, is a reflection on you? Do you believe that your work is a reflection on you? Is your self worth wrapped up in whether or not you can create something "wonderful?" This very idea is what I accepted as truth for most of my life. I was a very creative person, but also a very self destructive person, always judging what came out, how much came out, and how other people reacted to what came out. Appreciative audiences had me walking on clouds, while unresponsive audiences, or (EEK!!) bad reviews put me into a deep depression where I would rethink my whole existence as an artist.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of two of my favorite books, Eat Pray Love and Committed, spoke once on TED about creativity. This video changed my life. Make sure you watch the whole thing, because some of the best stuff is at the end.

http://youtu.be/86x-u-tz0MA

Around the time I found this video, when I was beating myself up about every single thing I did wrong in dance and theatre, my mentor at the time sent me this quote from legendary choreographer Martha Graham:

"There's a vitality, a life force; a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.

No artist is pleased. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the rest."

Wow. Synchronicity?

Although my old self believes that it is my business to judge everything I create, there is no way I can continue my life as an artist with that belief. Look at what has happened to so many creative minds of the past centuries. I spent too many years in depression and anxiety over my self worth as an artist, and the more I judged my work, the less it flowed. Changing my beliefs was not easy, so I printed out the Martha Graham quote, framed it, and put it next to my bed. I now look at my "artist's depression" as a "queer, divine dissatisfaction" that keeps me marching, and makes me "more alive than the rest."

Whatever your passions are, whatever it is that you alone have to give to the world, just remember that the only way it will exist is if you keep the channel open. Let the spirit of creativity move through you. Catch it and make it your own. Give it to the world, and then let it go. Take care of yourself, your body, your heart. Go within when you need to refuel, and do so without judgement. Be kind to yourself.

Be more alive than the rest.

Photo 1--Model--Melissa Mc Ewen (everything else by me)

Photo 2--Model--me/ Photo by Nathan Machain

Photo 3--Model--me/Photo and graphic art by Nathan Machain

The War of Art, The Martha Rules and Spiritual Cannibalism

     Howdy doo my friends!  I don't know why it takes me so long to get back on here each time, but I think it may have something to do with RESISTANCE!!!  :-)

     Can you tell I've been reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield?  Well, I have.  Apparently my mom bought it for me long ago, and I just stuck it on a shelf...but boy am I ready for it now.  His own words will tell you more than I possibly can, so here are some quotes from the book:

     "Rule of thumb:  The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it."

     "Henry Fonda was still throwing up before each stage performance, even when he was seventy-five.  In other words, fear doesn't go away.  The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew each day."

     "The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration."
   
     "The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit.  We don't just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed.  Never forget:  This very moment, we can change our lives.  There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny."

And one more...

     "We get ourselves into trouble because it's a cheap way to get attention.  Trouble is a faux form of fame.  It's easier to get busted in the bedroom with the faculty chairman's wife than it is to finish that dissertation on the metaphysics of motley in the novellas of Joseph Conrad.
     
     Ill health is a form of trouble, as are alcoholism and drug addiction, proneness to accidents, all neurosis including compulsive screwing-up, and such seemingly benign foibles as jealousy, chronic lateness, and the blasting of rap music at 110 dB from your smoked-glass '95 Supra.  Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance. 
    
      Cruelty to others is a form of Resistance, as is the willing endurance of cruelty from others.
     
     The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work.  The working artist banishes from her world all sources of trouble.  She harnesses the urge for trouble and transforms it in her work."

Amazing, right?  And that's just the beginning.  As the book says on the front, it is "A vital gem...a kick in the ass."  -Esquire

     I recently finished Martha Stewart's book The Martha Rules, which is an incredible inspiration and a wealth of information for any artist/entrepreneur who needs guidance in finance, marketing, budgeting, prioritizing and all of those daunting details of business.  She explains everything straightforwardly, in words that are easy to understand and process, and she always comes back to what's important-loving your life, and creating and sharing beauty.

"I believe that the best way to be organized and productive is to follow a list, and I try to make one for myself every morning.  Always at the top of my list is to make life better.  I am always asking myself how I can improve the lives of my customers, my colleagues, my shareholders, my family, and my friends.  Making their lives better is important to me, and in doing so, I feel that my life is better."

I just love that lady.  

   One more book that I am in the middle of, and have been recommending to many people, is Spiritual Cannibalism by Rudi.  This guy was so interesting-a New Yorker swami who owned an antique shop and developed thousands of followers before his death in an airplane crash in 1973.  Here is a tiny piece of what Rudi has to say:

     "It is only through extraordinary effort that an extraordinary life is possible.  Dedication must be of a fanatical nature in order to compensate for the depth of inner resistance.  We must swim against the stream of the instincts which seek to drive us into the ocean of passivity, into acceptance of the status quo.  Working toward evolvement is working for the possibility of what we can be.  You do not accept what is.  Only by the continual surrender of the now can you begin to see the future." 

     There's that mention of resistance again.  Definitely something to think about.

     Soooooo, here's what's going on my my world.  I am finished writing my book, The Almanac of Life:  Inspiration for Evolvers, and after a few more portrait sketches, it will be ready to load and retouch.  Mentors are appearing from unexpected places to walk me through and advise me on the publishing experience, with viewpoints on both self publishing and traditional publishing, which is such a wonderful thing.  

Celia Straus  http://www.exploringwomanhood.com/mindbodysoul/straus/
Jennie Hernandez www.jenniehernandez.com

These two are amazing authors, delightful women, and very generous mentors.  They are mavens, which is what I aspire to be, because it is obvious that only by sharing our gifts with others can we truly reach our own potential.

     Now that the book is basically finished, I am starting to get that insanely illogical fear of both rejection and success, but these days it comes in wild, fleeting moments before I stamp it out.  I remind myself that these feelings are the strongest right before something big is about to happen.  I remind myself that although I may never be the best artist or writer in the world, I will always be authentic, and that is my goal.  

Here are a few random pages from my book, the The Almanac of Life:

      So much of this is just moving through me, and I am honored and excited to be the one whose voice it is in.  The book is about transformation, creating it was a transformational experience, and I believe that reading it will be as well.  I'll keep you posted on what happens when I start approaching agents and publishers...

      I've been teaching art in 2nd, 4th, and 6th grades and it has become so obvious to me that our biggest block is not our lack of talent, but our fear.  Some kids know they're good and so they create freely.  Some kids have never thought about whether they're good or not, and so they create freely.  Other kids complain about how they're not good enough, or they don't like it (because they think they're not good enough) or they only want to draw ONE thing over and over and over again because that's what they're comfortable with.  Are we born with these fears?  Maybe.  Are they instilled by critical parents, teachers and classmates?  Definitely.  My goal is not to teach these kids some specific way of creating art, or what their work "should" look like, but to teach them that they have everything they need to create authentic, interesting work.  I give them college level drawing exercises to challenge them, and then I set them free with something wildly creative.  Every single one of them has a unique style, a unique eye, and something wonderful to offer the world.

 I told my 6th graders to plan a design in marker to color in, and that they could do anything they wanted as long as they used negative space and patterns.  Here are a few of their pieces:

We also did self portraits with mirrors.  They had to draw themselves twice first without looking at their paper before even starting their final portrait, pulling their focus deeply into the details of what they saw in the mirror.  Many of the kids really captured themselves.  Here are a couple of them:

     Not only has my work in schools changed me-it's changed my artwork and inspired me to create so much more and freely.  After working with the 6th graders on marker designs, I ended up designing an entire coloring book, which will be available soon on Amazon and used as coloring pages/menus at Cafe Aroma.  Finally my hard work is paying off, and in such an unexpected way.  Here are a few pages from that:

     I will leave you with my latest two paintings-a portrait of my best friend Jen that I painted for her 33rd birthday, and a cityscape of Venice that I painted for a local Italian restaurant.  Slowly but surely, I am learning.  Slowly but surely I am improving.  It seems that life is a balance in lessons of hard work and patience, and if you learn the two together while doing what you love, you will fulfill your destiny, and you will succeed.  I hope that you have found some inspiration and motivation in all this, and I wish you a wonderful Easter! 

Au revoir!

R. Noelle