Position, No Action

We do without doing and everything gets done

Our bodies are full of thoughts, muscles carry memories and charges of electricity run through cells firing off commands much faster than one can comprehend. The first step is getting to place of intellectual knowing; the next letting go of knowledge so that the body can take over. My brain longs to control, my body responds with tension, the horse is uncertain of my request. My brain shuts down and is still for a moment, my body relaxes, energy flows, the horse moves in harmony. Simple.

Bent to Breaking

This week I am taking that which I hold precious and close to my heart, and redefining my perception of it in one week. It is pushing me to the edge, the breaking point looms, to be in a position where the less I know the easier and better off I will be, this is a time for unlearning, unwinding the ego, yet this is a process that must be handled delicately as if it is crushed all that will be left is a quivering pile of unfocused goo. I cannot describe fully how to unlearn years of learning, but it happens and I am grateful.

Serious Lounge

It is Sunday the eleventh of September: my first day off in a month. I woke at my normal time, quarter passed six, since then I have been lounging in bed drinking coffee in a clicker trance (I learned fancy diy nail-polish tricks that I will put to use in all of my spare time.). It takes 21 days to form or break a habit. I am not concerned that listlessly shuffling through websites will become a habit. Yet, progress calls! Rumors of an heirloom tomato festival and the fog of Bodega Bay lure me from my sheets.

Long-Term Agreements,

The natural state of entropy and disregard have their own gravity. I was three, possibly four, when the nightmares began. Giants would swoop in from the sky and hunt me through the forests and skies of my dreamworld. They would come alone or in groups, cannibals hungry to eat my nose. I lived in terror of sleep. One morning I was sitting outside of the cabin and using my thumb I was squishing black ants. I had no conception of life until this moment, when I realized how unjust it was for me to squish an animal simply because it was small relative my the largess of my three years. I stopped killing bugs and made an agreement to not take the lives of other beings. This week I cleaned the small barn so that the horse of my heart could move into safe, clean, welcoming environment. This consisted of removing years worth of cobwebs from the walls, ceiling, corners. If I were a witch who needed spider silk for potions, I would have had gallons of tensile thread at my disposal. I uncovered a spider larger than a silver dollar, her round black body shone in the unexpected light of day, her eight legs, talons, the telltale hourglass mark on her back. She was guarding the nest I had just swept away, "Please get on my broom so I can take you outside." She didn't listen and pulled her legs close into her body to appear less dangerous or even dead. I looked for a jar to transport her out of the area, no dice. I tried again to encourage her to come with me on the broom, she would not leave the destruction of her former nest. My heart sank as I realized that this was the worst moment I had faced in years, I had a real and absolute choice to make. Afterwards, I wept, moved her body outside, left an offering for the life taken. I said a prayer and thanked her for her ferocity, the care that she put into her home, and the power of her life to help me remember the promise I had made long ago to honor all life.

Shuffle the Deck, Take One, Pass the Rest

There are blogs about a lot of things: how to eat and dress, do a fancy side-twist braid; the importance of awareness; loads of blogs about babies and the people they boss around; sand-crabs of santa cruz; however there are not a lot of blogs about learning how to live with roommates at the ripe age of 31. I have no solutions to this, I am not about to start, but I can say that it is a new challenge for me to learn how to define what matters to me in a shared living environment and what is not worth bothering about (why do people not always think of things in same way that I do at all times in all cases and about all things? what a bore. It is a treat to live with new people, the challenge is real, present, and an honest delight. ... Things I love: ... bananas, hard-boiled eggs (foods that come in portion appropriate portable packages) ... and... half-cartons of eggs and six-packs of beer ... 137... Love, chaya ;:

The Road to Hell is a Bowl of Cherries

I had a friend, once, who arranged my refrigerator magnets to say "the road to hell is a bowl of cherries." I saved those nine magnets for years before the tide of progress caused me to through them in the goodwill bin.

Half-way there. Things are falling apart--my car is having electrical problems owing to the fact that the muffler needs new rubber bands so it is hanging on by a thread; the mechanics who last replaced my air-filter used the wrong size, so I have been cruising for the last 13,000 miles with basically no filtration; the #12 fuse keeps blowing up; the battery fell out of my computer this morning.

Mercury retrograde always hits me a few days late and all at once.

Yet all of this is simple and relatively easy to fix and I am here in Ashland, the town of $2.50 cup of coffee (they try to serve me single origin Ethiopian as if I will be please to drink the cardboard dust) and it is beautiful, amazing, and I am happy to be stranded here, if only for hours rather than days.

And, it's September, the air at five this morning was so chill that I had gooseflesh running up and down my arms. I slept with the doors open, under three woolen blankets, listening to the crickets, the creek, the stars moving across the dome of the sky.

Juxtaposed between departure and arrival I dance in this limbo to get comfortable with these feelings of frustration, addiction, emotion. I move into the day fresh as sleep falls from my eyes.