tilt-shift

Sometimes I think my brain is like a camera. Besides the fact that I do have a slightly photographic memory (nothing cool or helpful, by the way, it just takes "pictures" of random words on websites or book pages I'm skimming and then I have to go FIND THE WORD or I go insane), my brain has an insane zoom lens that is able to single-handedly wipe out everything else that is going on in my life and, with laser focus, shine a thousand points of light (or darkness) on any given situation. It's this astonishing lack of perspective that I live with on an everyday basis, and sometimes it just kicks my ass into my teeth. My yoga teacher asks, "How are you going to get yourself through this moment?" when we are sometimes in a difficult pose, and I raise my eyes to her in a sort of silent you tell me because damned if I know. I have no idea how to get myself from one moment to the next sometimes, and it alarms me, my lack of perspective.

Yesterday I came face to face with someone else who shared my fabulously craptastic lack of perspective, in LA traffic of all places, and he purposely tried to run me into oncoming traffic with his car. I was deeply afraid, incredibly pissed off, but most of all ashamed for my part of what had happened. Had I done anything violent, stupid or illegal to him? No. But I could have done better. I could have put up with his bullying and just moved over into the next lane to let him pass, as I do for so many other bullies in this town. Because in LA, the person who is the most insane driver, who cares the least for the safety of others, who is the most selfish, wins, up until the day he or she dies in a car wreck, and you just hope to God you're not around on the day that bully's time runs out. My perspective failed me in the worst way possible, and I almost paid a very dear price for it.

But other times my perspective is sharp and clear, with minimal soft-focus on everything that's going on around me. I'm planning a wedding, which has kept me plenty busy, and yet I'd say my stress level, on a scale of one to ten, is probably a three. (I'll get back to you in a month.) But I intuitively know that a wedding is not supposed to be stressful to plan or execute - no matter how many times people have told me otherwise in a sing-songy voice. I'm not supposed to go through a year of hell just to have one perfect day. It just doesn't work that way, even if I believed perfect days actually exist, which I don't. And while it seems that I get to watch everyone else lose perspective around me, I feel like Cassandra, the prophet no one believes, telling them it's going to be just fine. Because, honestly, if Benni and I end up married at the end of the day... it's a good day.

Perspective is scale. It's measuring things against each other, weighing each moment's importance, and being able to toss out what is taking up more energy than it should. It's comparison, it's asking Well is this as important as that? and it's figuring out each moment's place among all the other moments in your life. Is this what you want to focus on? perspective asks, lightly touching each moment like it's in a store, poking fingers into soft sweaters. How about this one? And this one?

It's up to us to have the discerning eye. We cannot grab every moment and treat it as equal, and there are some moments of such utmost important and magnitude that they demand we put down EVERYTHING and simply stop and pay attention. The moment I tell Benni that I will be his wife for the rest of my days is important; the way the napkins on the reception tables are folded is not. The way I treat every person with kindness and respect while driving, whether they deserve it or not, is important. Making a bully embarrassed about the fact that he's a bully is not, in the grand scheme of things, that essential.

Perspective is the art of weighing and measuring and categorizing each moment in our life - and yes, how we are going to get through it - and we are the artist, and our lives are the canvas. And it is the work of a lifetime.

 (Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson)

I'm not dead/just floating (again)

Sometimes the most unnerving aspect of life is when we take a step back to get perspective and, in doing so, we recognize the patterns in our life. I was trying to come up with a title for this post and kept coming back to the title from that song by Pink - I'm Not Dead, Just Floating. And then I realized I'd used that post title before, so I went and found the other, older post and read all about how I was in a bad place and wasn't blogging or sleeping well and was sorry for pushing people away and not talking about it. It was from July 2011.

So here we are, full circle. Another July post with the same title, same issues. It's tempting to feel discouraged, to feel like I haven't moved forward or progressed much in a year. That my patterns are just endlessly, mindlessly repeating themselves. That I'm walking down the same street, making the same mistakes, falling into the same holes. That I've got no one but myself to blame for the record-skipping that happens in my life.

But nothing feels farther from the truth, actually.

Yes, I still have the personality of someone who doesn't like to ask for help or talk about it. I might always have that. Yes, I suck at blogging on a consistent level. Life keeps me busy enough that I might always do that too. But sleeping is getting easier. Stretching is getting easier. Breathing is getting easier. I am back to doing martial arts, even if it's not as often as I'd like, and I started yoga, and God help us if I don't become a yoga enthusiast by the end of the year with how wonderful it feels, even when I'm doing Pigeon Pose and trying to flip off my instructor at the same time (SPOILER ALERT: it's hard to give someone the bird while doing yoga. Just thought you should know). The strength that I feel, that I remember from before, is coming back and it feels fantastic.

One of my earliest (good) memories of spending time with my family is while hiking. As a family we were a mess. Angry, violent, crappy at communicating. But when we went up into the hills by our house in New Hampshire to pick berries in the summertime, somehow we were able to put our shit aside. Something about being outdoors, about putting one foot in front of the other. Maybe it's that when you're on the side of a mountain with four other people you don't understand and don't particularly like and actually wonder how on earth you came to be related to them, you also realize you can't just leave them there. That you're all in it together.

Or maybe it's perspective. Maybe when you're on the side of a mountain you realize how small you and everyone else is, and the things that you thought mattered don't actually matter all that much. And the anger that usually tightens up your shoulders and jaws just leaves, because you don't have the time or energy for it.

I kept hiking, long after we moved from New Hampshire, whether it was in national parks or deep in the hills of Santa Ana or Angeles Crest Forest or trendy Runyon Canyon in LA. I kept putting one foot in front of the other, taking each step one at a time, listening to my breath and my body telling me what I needed at that moment. Rest or keep going? Rest or keep going? Rest or keep going? I would slowly ascend up mountains, circling around, seeing the same view but each time from a little bit higher perspective. And regardless of whether or not I got as far as I would have liked, I enjoyed the journey and what I learned about myself along the way.

I like to think hiking is the perfect analogy for life. I am higher, much higher up the mountain than I was last July, and though the view looks the same the perspective has shifted. I am stronger now than I was a year ago, and next year I'll look at the same place from an even higher viewpoint and there will be no loss, just gain upon gain upon gain. As for the rest or keep going question, I rested for a few weeks, and now it's time to keep going again. The burnout I felt was a response to pushing myself to do daily uninteresting tasks that will nonetheless yield very great rewards, and I simply needed to step back and get perspective on why I'm doing the things I'm doing and to enjoy the journey, not just the rewards. And finally, to set aside non-negotiable time for myself to do things that rejuvenated, refreshed, and inspired me. Yoga. Naps. Gratitude lists. Prayer. Poetry. Lunch time walks. Good books. I can feel the changes happening under my skin as I take my time for myself. My lungs and heart expand. My fists unclench. My shoulders are less heavy.

The girl who wrote the blog post a year ago probably felt a lot more trapped than I do today, and hadn't quite learned yet that she needed to take care of herself just a little bit better. I am miles away from that girl.

I'm not scared/just changing.

gravity sucks

Just a thought here, guys -

After I decided to turn my life upside down and change the way I was doing everything and how I was conducting my relationships, I floated for a good ten days on a pure, exhilarated air of confidence and joy. Then it ended, as it always does, and I was left shaking the dust off my boots and trying to get back to where I once belonged, upset and confused. Did the fact that I was no longer cruising in fifth gear mean that the changes weren't real? Or that they weren't big enough?

It only occurred to me a few days ago that what I experienced is what I like to refer to as a runner's high. If you're a runner, which I am not, (and never will be unless I'm being chased by zombies, or a Tyrannosaurus Rex, or I have a bucket of chili cheese fries being dangled in front of me), you know what I'm talking about. It's this burst of energy that hits at some point in the middle or two thirds of the way through your run and it propels you forward and gives you additional momentum. What it does NOT do is finish the race for you. And it doesn't make the fact that you're running much easier either.

It took me a while to be okay with the fact that I was no longer soaring above and beyond my problems but was instead back down on earth where there was still a crap-load of work to do. I tend to get inspired easily, and, like most artists and Gemini's, feel the weight of what uninspires me pulling me down just as easily. Maintaining that runner's high is difficult because it requires me to keep running in the first place - whereas whenever I have a success I convince myself that the race is over and now I can go home and sleep.

Um, it doesn't work that way.

So if you're going through some hard stuff right now, and honestly, who isn't, and you've just hit a milestone or had a major breakthrough and thought, whew, now the hard work is over, and found yourself slightly crushed when you looked up and noticed that there are still 14 more miles to go...

Well, this post is for you. Because we are all running a hard race and doing the best we can, and the times when we are floating on air because we just did something awesome are definitely worth celebrating. But when you find yourself back on the ground and a little tired and wishing you could be above it all like you used to be...

Just remember that you're doing exactly what you need to do. The only way out is through, and no matter how rad we are (yes, I just used the word rad) we don't get to cruise through life. It takes hard work and guts and showing up and discipline and consistency and patience to get back up from a fall, or come back down from a cloud, and just keep going. You don't need to hang on to those victories and successes because I promise you, there will be more of them.

The only way out is through. And you're exactly where you need to be.

energy conservation

I'm a big fan of conserving energy, I really am. I have my computer and printer plugged in via a power strip that I turn off when I'm not using it; I unplug my cell phone charger, fan, and lights when I leave every morning so no extra electricity is getting sucked out.

But I'm an even BIGGER believer in conserving emotional and mental energy.
Think of the last time you were completely mentally or emotionally exhausted and were left feeling a little used up and unhappy. Was it because of someone you spent time with? Was it the evening news? Was it a crappy conversation with That Really Bitter Co-worker? (C'mon, we all have one, and if we're self-employed it's probably our cat.)

What if we could conserve our energy in another way? You see, when I wrote a few weeks back that there were big changes coming in my life, I didn't just mean confronting one person. I meant changing the way I deal with everyone and everything. And yes, progress is small, because it's supposed to be - the only change that sticks is the change you make one day at a time, one step at a time. Anything bigger or more radical and you end up bouncing right back to where you started, because that's just not how people work. (Not for my lack of trying, rest assured.)

Lemme give you an example: I have a lovely friend named Sara. Actually, she's my friend because she's dating one of my ex-boyfriends, but that just means her fabulous taste in men is yet another thing we have in common. Anyways, Sara is a lot like me - feisty, opinionated, and likes to be caught up on political and current events.

So there's this asshole douche-bag somewhere out there in the blogosphere who is claiming that men raping women is merely "equalization" - that, because women have affirmative action, the violation of womens' bodies is merely equalizing the power shift and that men should not be condemned for such actions.

Well, you can guess Sara's reaction as, oh I don't know, a member of the human race, unlike this piece-of-work blogger who probably climbed up from the same primordial ooze as the Westboro Baptist Church, those classy kids who protest at the funerals of military servicemen and servicewomen because God hates the United States due to the fact that we haven't branded The Gays and locked them up in concentration camps yet. (I think the question What Would Jesus Do? is a tad hypothetical at this juncture.)

The truth is, a couple weeks ago I would have been right there with my friend, all offended and worked up and pissed off and wanting to give this guy a piece of my mind (and no, I'm refusing to link to his blog, I will NOT give this guy more blog traffic)...

but I didn't care. It was energy conservation at its finest. He wasn't worth my time or energy. This blogger's point, coming from a place of ignorance and a button-pushing attention-whoring, was deemed unworthy of even the slightest glance backwards. I didn't read the blog my friend linked to. I just simply told her that it wasn't worth it for her to even pause in her life for a millisecond to get worked up about it.

This is evolution, my friends. Evolution of an attitude and perspective shift that is so powerful it can take the smallest moments and make them victories. We don't have to throw any more emotion than we want at people or places or events. We get to choose - that's why we're adults.

When I told my therapist about this incident, she clapped with such an amount of force and glee that somewhere in Neverland entire hives of faeries probably came back to life.

Conserving energy works the opposite way as well - sometimes the world is a bad and scary place. Instead of standing in the face of what is wrong in the world and freaking out at it... why don't we just turn on a light? Doesn't it take less energy to light one tiny little candle than it does to curse the darkness?

So here's where I turn the microphone to you guys, and you can answer anonymously if you want (it's not just for leaving snarky comments with no repercussions! Who would have thought!) - Do you have something, or someone, in your life that takes a lot of emotional energy out of you and leaves you feeling kind of crappy? If so, what can you do about it? I wanna hear all about your own efforts at energy conservation - because I'm digging how much happier this is making me and I can't help but want to share. :)

ohhh....we're halfway there....

"You were happy once; you were sunshine and smiles and a brightness that radiated. You may be cloudy now, you may not want to sing. You may just want to fold inside of yourself, on the oldest couch you can find, by the biggest window, and watch it rain.

You used to find that little things made you happy; now you can’t even find the big things. Somehow, along the way, you lost yourself.

One foot in front of the other, sweetheart, and you will find your way back."



- working on it, kids. Change is a foot (get it, get it? Double entendre FTW) and I'm going to be making some big decisions soon about how I've lived my life...and how to move forward and live MY life.

Stay tuned...

well, well, well...

Look who disappeared from blogging for two weeks and then has the nerve to come crawling back... (Oh wait, that's me.)

Hi guys!

Life has been, uh, interesting, for the past couple weeks and I honestly didn't get many chances to post much...nor did I really want to. You see, on top of all the other crazy stuff that is going on in my life, which includes but is not limited to financial problems, family health emergencies, friendships exploding in my face, errands and duties to do now that I've been tapped to be in a friend's wedding as a bridesmaid (where I get to walk down the aisle with my ex, no, I'm not kidding) and a client's crisis landing in my lap to deal with (yes, all of this happened in the last two weeks... I can take one day at a time but when they all attack at once I get my ass kicked) I got...The Phone Call.

Now, mind you, I'm getting about four to five hours of good sleep these days. When my life is spontaneously combusting, my mind does not shut off and rest and relax for a good 8 hours at night. No. It runs over possibilities and anxieties and worries again and again and again, like a damn marathon runner in my brain. My skin gets a little thinner, my temper a little shorter, and suddenly I find myself crying during Dr. Who re-runs or having a freak out attack because Trader Joe's is out of my favorite ice cream sandwich. I need that ice cream sandwich to cope with life, dammit.

So my mother called me early last Thursday morning while I was still in bed, and the conversation went something like this:

Phone rings. I pick it up.

Me: Mrghghgsmmmhello?

Mom: Tracy. How are you?

Me: Mrghghmmmokay?

Mom: Is there something going on? Something you'd like to tell me?

Me: ::blinks:: What?

Mom: Is there something that you haven't told me yet?

Me: Uh.... I'm getting a tattoo?

Mom: About you and Benni?

Me: (briefly wonders in my sleep-deprived state if I'm pregnant and my mom somehow found about it before I did. Dismisses the idea, moves on.) Um...

Mom: Are you and Benni engaged?

Me: What?! No. No, we are not engaged. (turns over to a sleeping Benni in bed beside me and fights the urge to whisper, did we get engaged last night and I completely forget? How many root beers did I have last night?)

Mom: Oh. You're not engaged.

Me: NO! No, we're not. Where did you get that idea?

Mom: We-ll....

So it turns out that someone who reads this blog (and yes, I know who it is, and no, I'm not naming them here) read my last post, the following sentence in my last post, to be precise:

"So blogging is going to be light this week because I'm up to my eyeballs in work AND I'm in the final days of getting ready to throw my friends an engagement party this weekend ( I promise I'll take pictures - the theme is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies!)"

and decided it meant that Benni and I were engaged. And then decided to call my immediate family and tell them that I was engaged. Which immediately set my brothers and mother off as they were sure (and rightly so) that if I ever DO get engaged they will not find out from someone else who read my blog that one time.

Isn't life cute?

So my life officially went to Defcon 1 at that point, and I sort of walked away from the blog for a little bit. Because if you think you love firing up your computer and sitting down to write another blog post because the coolest, funniest, most awesome thing just happened to you... try sitting in front of a blank screen, feeling like whatever you write will be used against you to f*&k with your personal life. It's considerably less thrilling.

Now, here's the thing: I have a public blog. I'm fully aware that I have a public blog, that I do not use a pseudonym, that I post pictures of myself and use the real names of my friends, family and loved ones. This comes with consequences... it always does. I don't moderate comments, anyone can find this blog if they Google search me or go through my website...and for the most part, this has worked out totally fine. My reasoning is, if I blog like an adult and treat my followers and commentators like adults, the drama will be at a minimum. And although I'm sure there will come a day when that reasoning blows up in my face, today is not that day.

So if 99.8 percent of the time I get nothing but coolness from everyone, and .2 % of the time things go a little haywire, I'm fine with that. It was just the most excellent display of I Really Don't Need This Right Now that I've seen in awhile.

And please, please, from a (mostly) adult blogger to her (mostly) adult followers and commentators: don't take the time or energy to guess who this person is or say something crappy about them in the comments section. They were made aware of their mistake, they feel awful. Life goes on.

Last Sunday I was telling someone I respect quite a bit about this whole incident and she just sighed and said, "As human beings we will spend the rest of our lives accidentally hurting each other's feelings." And I nodded, because I did that this past week too, I hurt someone deeply simply by opening my mouth and using what I thought were totally innocuous words, but they hit a nerve and someone I cared about was a little wounded. Right now I'm a little wounded too. It hurts that someone scanned my blog, leaped to a very important and very incorrect conclusion, then felt the need to alert my family and cause more chaos and bad communication.

We will spend the rest of our lives accidentally hurting each other's feelings. So instead of holding ourselves back or giving up on others, we learn to forgive ourselves, and forgive each other, and know that tomorrow is another chance to get a little bit closer to becoming the person we want to be.

meh.

I had a slightly rough weekend of not feeling so well, which made me miss not one but two parties that I'd been looking forward to for quite a while, so I'm a little bummed. And I've really got no real reason to be bummed, as I've got good and great things happening in my life that I will be sure to post on this blog later, but I won't today- today is a day for a little perspective. Let me tell you a true story from a couple years ago, okay?

**********

It's my first year of being out of college, living on my own in LA for Christmas, and it's hard. I have three jobs that I work at seven days a week, one of which is holiday retail, and I'm barely making my bills and surviving off of ramen and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and lots of macaroni and cheese for dinner. One of the jobs I'm working is at an accounting firm as a file clerk/girl Friday, and I've been sent off, along with my best friend Stacey and her then-fiancee-now-husband Ben, to find authentic Mexican decorations for our company's Christmas party. And even though at the time I've been in LA for less than a year, I already know where to go: Olvera Street.

So off we go, the three of us, and Stacey wants us to take the Metro instead of driving. Okay, fine, whatever, we take the underground train, we get there, have dinner, shop for some party favors and leave fairly late at night. The train ride home is quiet, each of us resting and exhausted from the day, and the train stops, people board, and there's one girl in particular that grabs my attention: she is fairly intimidating in size, she is aggressive as hell, and she is obviously hopped up on something. Her friends provide her with an audience as she loudly berates and makes fun of every single passenger that makes eye contact with her. Nothing is off limits - their race, their clothes, they way they stand or sit - she aims to humiliate everyone who dares to cross her path. I ignore her and close my eyes, daydreaming of a sun-washed beach on a warm spring day.

An older man boards the train at the next stop and finds nowhere to sit, so he plants himself almost directly in front of me as he hangs on to the handle bars. In this tired, worn out man, the girl finds an easy target - his clothes are torn and faded, his hands grimy from a hard day of labor, his eyes cast down at the floor.

One stop goes by, and another, and then another as she continues to focus her taunts on this particular man. It's making the rest of us slightly uncomfortable now, as the man just stares up at her (she is almost twice his size) with confused and tired eyes. He shifts where he is standing, looks around the rest of the train at all the rest of the tired people who have spent the day holiday shopping in the cold and just want to get home. And as I have a perfect view of his backside, I am the only one who sees him pull out a knife from his back pocket.

It's one of those moments that you tell yourself, if that ever happened to me, if someone ever pulled out a knife and I happened to see it, I'd be totally cool, I'd be able to pretend like I never even saw it. Yeah, I could totally do that.

That's what I used to tell myself. Now I know better, because he turned ever so slightly towards me, to see if I'd seen it, and here I am, this barely out of college IDIOT, staring at the knife. I can't look away. I look at him. He looks at me. He looks at the knife. I look at the knife. We finally look back at each other.

His voice is quiet and tired and if I could put a voice to all of the exhaustion that I feel sometimes, it would sound like his.

"I work hard." he says, flicking the knife nervously. "I work hard and long hours and all I want to do is get home to my family and this is what I get?" He nods towards the girl, who has moved on to another unlucky subject and has yet to notice the knife. In fact, no one has noticed it except me, and I feel like I'm in a completely different universe from the rest of the oblivious passengers.

Think think think think think. Say something. Think. God, help me do this better. Think and THEN say something. Don't do it the other way around like you do all the freakin' time-

"I know," is what I end up saying. "I know you're tired. But you don't want to do this. It's not worth it. Your family needs you to come home tonight." I have no idea where I got those words, but I managed to choke them out.

He looks at me, and I look at him, and it has not even occurred to me for a second to be afraid of him. There simply isn't enough time. Years pass before he answers.

"Okay," he says, and that's it. He puts away the knife, the girl and her groupies get off at the next stop, and he gets off on the one after that. About three stops after that, I remember to start breathing again.

When someone asks me what I love most about the holiday season I have to admit that I don't say it's giving and getting the perfect present, which is what I used to say. The reason I love the holiday season so much is that for approximately one month, we remember that each and everyone of us is innocent. And as we see that innocence in each other, it is reflected back as our own innocence. We are all good people at heart, I really do believe that, just trying to get from one place to another, just trying to get home to our families at night, and even if we forget it the other 11 months out of the year, at this time of celebration we always remember how similar we all are, and how easy it is to love one another.

giving thanks

“Herein lies the well of life; let us laugh and let us sing for in truth we are blessed by everything.” - Isadora James

Sometimes, when I am stressed, I take a very deep breath and let the air fill every single inch of my lungs and then I am able to find myself deeply affected and moved by how beautiful the world really is. In reality nothing has changed, but when I breathe I find myself looking at the world differently. Time slows and where once there was impatience and frustration in my heart, I look again and find grace. There is enough, there is always enough; enough time to do all the things I want to do, enough love so that I don't have to worry about competing for it with others, enough space to move around in, even if it doesn't always feel like it in Los Angeles. Enough supply to help me get through each day without feeling lack, enough challenges to keep my mind and body working hard, enough meaning in what I do, even in the smallest of actions, so that I am able to move confidently through this world, knowing that I have a purpose.

When I inhale and exhale and follow my breath as it moves through my body, uncurling and relaxing muscles I didn't even know were tense, I suddenly feel very small, but not in a bad way. My body has made room for all the little surprises and small moments of happiness that flitted my way during the day, the ones I brushed off impatiently because I had different expectations or didn't want to be bothered with such tiny acts of kindness. I am aware, almost simultaneously, of how unimportant I am, and how much I have to offer to this world.

I think this is the nature of gratitude as well. It helps me make room in my busy life, it stills the pointless noise in my head and refocuses me; it reminds me that my drama is unimportant but my love for others is more needed than ever.


Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, everyone.

autumn - a wish list

Meh. I'll blog more personally tomorrow. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning and came up swinging. And I'm still not quite over the weekend.

Plus I don't drink coffee, so when I wake up in a bad mood I just have to sit in it, wallowing crankily, until it ebbs out of my system. Onwards and upwards, people.

autumn wish list:

lovely evening walks

yummy hot chocolate

succeeding in carving pumpkins

getting to go apple picking

"exploring" the Halloween candy aisle

sipping hot apple cider with cinnamon sticks

snuggling in fuzzy blankets

finally getting to wear my boots

laughing at the babies who are wearing the most ridiculous and/or adorable costumes

falling asleep with the heater on

wearing my new fingerless wool gloves (and not getting them caught on any of my swiss army knives)

falling in love with new poetry ( I always fall back in love with poetry in autumn)

buying cheap school supplies (hello, life time supply of post-its!)

finding more hiking trails to explore

taking more photographs

good tv shows this season (both new and returning)

holidays, holidays, holidays

enjoying the leaves changing color

being stoked about the possibility of camping in October

putting candles in the windowsill

baking again

and the promise of change and transformation, towards a brighter moment and better version of ourselves...

Wake me up when September ends...

So one of you, I think it was my beloved JMarls (who writes beautifully, by the way...go check out her blog if you appreciate a little creative writing in your blog dashboards) asked what I actually said to those poor unfortunate kids who were stuck listening to me for five whole minutes at a youth conference in LA over Labor Day weekend, after they'd spent the day getting all hyped up on the glitz and glamour of Hollywood at Universal Studios and Grauman's Chinese Theater, and I figured...meh. Maybe I should share.

It's just that I've been in a quiet mood lately, as you might notice with the light posting last week, and then I had a full and busy and wonderful weekend with many, many pics that I will post, and now I'm back on Monday and my head is spinning a little and I'm feeling a very strong urge to burrow and then nap for the rest of September.

I also really didn't want or feel like blogging on 9/11 because everyone's got their stories to share, so maybe the quiet was just a little bit more than usual because it is what it is when you really come down to it. I know that sounds all zen/vague but I can't really sit here and wax poetic about something that still burns so fiercely in all of our hearts and pretend we don't all wince just a little bit when someone mentions it. It's the bullet in the room, and every time it's mentioned it kind of goes zinging around and then you're left feeling sad about why you're still sad and angry about why you're still angry. I don't know, maybe the point is that we're not supposed to ever stop feeling sad or angry.

Anyways. Back to my youth event/pep talk/spiritual kick in the butt, because I'd much rather use this blog to move forward than to look back.

Labor Day weekend, Santa Monica: So I'm holding a microphone OH THE POWER in front of 90 or so kids Saturday night and I'm thinking, What would I have liked to hear when I was their age? What would I have wanted someone to tell me about spirituality in Hollywood? Or in general?

So I told them what I thought they might like to hear. I said, "What I would have liked to hear when I was your age is that spirituality and religion help you get everything you want."

I paused as the kids nodded enthusiastically, then went on to say: "And that's absolutely NOT TRUE."

Their faces fell. I have to admit, I felt a little bad. But I wanted to give them something that had never been given to me when I was a teenager contemplating my bad ass spiritual self. I wanted to give them honesty, and perspective. Two things that most teenagers royally suck at. Most adults do as well, and no, I'm not excluding myself, have no fear. I suck as much as everyone else, I just blog about it.

FYI, I'll just clarify right now: I enjoy using the words "spirituality" and "spiritual" much more than I enjoy using the words "religion" or "religious." Spirituality to me connotes open-minded questioning yummy goodness... when people tell me they are "super-religious" I think close-minded, found-my-answers-thank-you-very-much-not-interested-at-all-in-growing. You might disagree, and feel free to (politely and respectfully) beg your argument on this blog. I'm just letting you know what language I use so we don't get all lost in translation.

So this is what I said to those kids and adults grouped together in that small room, a stone's throw from the sunset soaked Santa Monica beach:

Don't use your spirituality to get what you want.

Spirituality isn't selfish. It's not Me-driven, it's growth-driven. If you're going to pray to a god or gods, why are you only interested in blessing yourself? Spirituality is NOT The Secret -- it's not there to use when you want more crap, like that sports car or better job or nice jewelry. Spirituality is based upon an agreement of service, of giving to others without asking for anything in return, in the spirit of GIVING vs the spirit of GETTING. We are a very getting culture.

I remember hearing someone say once that if you pray to God for a better job, and you then receive a better job, but you have not yet learned to love your neighbor better, then you should consider that prayer to have gone unanswered. Because in the end, it's not the cars or jobs or paychecks that allow us to lift up our own thoughts and lives and the thoughts and lives of others, it is our love for each other.

God lifts up those who lift up each other.

So with more personal stories and less soapbox, this is what I said to those kids, because I really would have liked someone to say that to me when I was nineteen and praying to book that audition or for that boy to like me and I really didn't care how much I loved other people or what that had to do with me getting absolutely everything I ever wanted and feeling smug in the notion that God would deliver all of it if I was a Really Good Person. I didn't understand it then. I wish I had.

So I gave what I had to offer to that room in Santa Monica that night, I gave them my gift, for them to forget or discard or remember or treasure, and I told them that in the spirit of service, of pure, un-needing love, for them to go into any career, not just acting, and show up every day, to every audition, meeting, handshake, Starbucks purchase, job interview, whatever, and look someone in the eye and say, "Here's what I have to give. Can you use it?"

And if they can't use it, no harm, no foul, let it go, someone else can use it, because we all have purpose when we decide to live our lives so that our love may shine through, regardless of which (if any) religion it shines with.

And if you're feeling all preached to or judged right now, rest assured: no one needs to learn this lesson more than I do. It is the lessons we most need to learn that we best teach to others.

Have a fantastic Monday, and I'll catch you guys tomorrow with So.Many.Photos it will make your head explode. No seriously. Heads.Exploding.Everywhere.

imagine all that is shining and new

It's the end of what's been a long, frustrating week for me, not without its good moments, but certainly a few bad moments as well. Today I had another setback and felt, well, a little defeated, to be honest. Feeling discouraged and a little beaten by life, I did what I usually do when things aren't going well -- I go someplace else, in my mind. The change of "scenery" always gives me new perspective, and I remember how transitional life is, slipping from one moment to the next like a cloud changing shape, and nothing is forever except love.

I close my eyes. I breathe. I open them. I am in Laguna Beach, with my mom, sitting on the warm grass in the Friday sunshine, watching the aqua blue waves crash against the shore, the volleyball players, the little kids swing on the swings. We eat mozzarella and tomato sandwiches and ice cream cones and I listen to her tell me stories about when she moved to Boston by herself without knowing anyone, or how she once got to interview the prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, before he was assassinated.

My toes are warmed by the sand and I can practically feel my shoulders freckling, and there are jokes and stories told and a lot of them are about all the cats we've owned, and we give each other advice and make references to how we still think The Gilmore Girls totally borrowed from our lives, and when my mom gets home she will play Jeopardy! over the phone with me because there was a Shakespeare category again and she loves how I know 95% of the answers to all the Shakespeare category questions. And when I get home I will dust the sand off my flip flops and put some aloe on my shoulders and go to bed, dreaming of summer days of warmth and love, and I will know that yes, this too shall pass. It always does.

Life Is...

Well, you get the picture. Enjoy your day and know that sometimes life's joys are in its simplicity, quiet moments that gather and help you find peace.

on the way to work this morning...

while driving through my favorite canyon, the traffic ahead of me came to a gentle slowing and cars starting driving very precisely and carefully. One of my favorite reasons for driving the canyons in Los Angeles is the sense of community you just don't get on the freeways -- it's usually one lane, down winding residential streets, and there's a better sense of "look, we're all in this together" than in most driving areas of Southern California. I think we forget that we're all in this together.

Also, there are trees. I will take tree-lined streets wherever I can get 'em.

As I drove by, I saw what every car before me had seen -- three deer; two adults, one baby fawn, peacefully and calmly munching a mid-morning meal, either oblivious or accustomed to the traffic that probably drives by their favorite eating grounds every morning. I smiled, something lifted off my shoulders, and the world was new again.

We're all in this together.

tomorrow is a new day

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. "

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

photo: Bobby the kitten asleep on Christmas Day, the day we got him for my mom :)

perspective

"Into each day put equal parts of faith, patience,
courage, work, hope, fidelity, liberality, kindness,
rest, prayer, meditation, and one well-selected
solution. Put in about one teaspoonful of good
spirits, a dash of fun, a pinch of folly, a sprinkle of
play, and a cupful of good humor."

I don't know who said the quote. I do know who took the picture.