Adios Amigos!

Well, I think it might be time to put this blog to bed since I am setting down roots (to some degree – I think my gypsy spirit will always take me far and wide!).  That said, I have a few blogs going now so pick your new poison…

MetaphoRmula – http://www.metaphormula.com
Equations of creations by yours truly

And It’s YOU!? – http://anditsyou.wordpress.com
Two kids fall in love, and twenty years later, they fall in love again, and the move across the country/world to make a home. Their story continues…

The Tarty Monks – http://tartymonks.wordpress.com
Musings on a spiritual life

A Modern Romance – http://amodernromance.wordpress.com
My love for style and all things modern and romantic.

Home is Where the Heart is

On one of my low moments, a friend asked me in Sydney a few years ago what it was I truly wanted and to answer him as quick as possible.  To my surprise, after traveling the world and wanting to live like a cross between Indiana Jones and Angelina Jolie, I answered, “A home.”

Fast forward to me, right now sitting in an internet cafe in Ho Chi Minh Vietnam swatting mosquitoes and frustrated with a keyboard that is annoyingly a step behind.  I’ve spent a great deal of this month working on getting into the flow of travel – getting used to being out of your element and loving the NOWness it brings.  It has been difficult, mainly due to having fallen in love shortly before getting on the plane with  my first kiss from 20 years ago.

I have no idea how things will be when I get back – where I’ll live, how I’ll make a living, etc.  I have gotten so used to living my life up in the air that what I crave most – a home – has been a faraway construct.  But being in love with someone that knows you in ways that only an old love does, that is where home is.

Have Heart, Will Travel

Flying High

I’m currently at Tokyo’s new Narita airport awaiting for a flight to Manila where I will be met by my Little and LOUD crew/friends, Michelle and Mirjam (perhaps my name should also start with an “M”? I digress…). This week has been a whirlwind of travel complete with amazing life’s gifts. I don’t even know where to begin…

I started in San Francisco where I enjoyed the city with the beautiful Tania, my ex art studio mate and ever so more a good friend. Her going away drinks was so much fun! Her friends were wonderful which is no surprise with someone as magnetic as Tania. We ended the night singing karoke (my first time!) and then a ride home in the back of a pickup truck looking up at San Fran architecture and all the while being kissed by the Bay Area brisk night air.  Then she left me to my own devices the next day but I was well taken care of by a friend of hers that I had just met the previous night.  After only 24 hours of knowing me, this incrediblly trusting and generous man invited me to his parents amazing house in Marin county where I had dinner with his family and got to stay in a lavish guest room until the following day all by myself taking in the gardens of their beautiful home. Later that day, I took my gigantic rented truck to Stinson Beach and took in the serenity and freedom of traipsing about on one’s own.

As soon as I got back to LA, I had to pack and was amazed by my own ability to cram 3 heels, 2 sandals, 6 dresses, hair curlers and all the toiletries a girl needs into a little hand carry sized bag! By midday I was met at the airport by a dear friend, who is also my first kiss and love from 22 years ago! We had the most amazing weekend full of laughter, love, friendship and complete bliss of “being”. Surprisingly, after not having seen each other for about 15 years, our paths are parallel and we have grown in similar ways and the result was a deeper version and understanding of everything – the past, ourselves, love, friendship, the future. I learned so much… I believe the most beautiful gift that Life has to offer is loving and being loved – unselfishly, honestly and forthrightly. I feel so blessed and grateful for my life and my new found abilities to feel and give to this magnitude.

Now I’m off to begin another adventure! I’m excited about what Life will bring next. I’m in love will Life and it seems Life is in love with me too

(more pictures will come soon!)

Building Castles at the Beach

Hi Lovies!

(HOME:)

My temporary hermitage in Santa Monica

I’ve been a hermit as of late but it was necessary in order to decompress and settle in.  About a week ago, I was finally able to secure a personal haven at my friends’ house in beautiful Santa Monica, just 7 blocks from the beach!  It’s a gorgeous California craftsman house completely personally remodeled by their loving creative hands and I feel blessed to make this my temporary home for a myriad of reasons: 1) the lifestyle around this neighborhood 2) it’s a beautiful place to set-up a hermitage of my own 3) I live with good friends I have fun with and 4) i get first hand lessons of what it means to be in what i view as a “model” relationship (my friends have been married for 22 years and I have witnessed 13 years of it so far!).

(LOVE:)

Firstly, I would like to let you know, that at this moment, I am in a really good space.  I attribute this good head space with the aforementioned recently created personal hermitage.  I was lucky enough to have moved here just after me and a nameless man ended the dating debacle we were forcing ourselves into.  It took a week for me to process and grieve not the loss of him but the loss of an old way of approaching love and relationships and the created romantic view of what “could be” but I am better for having gone through the situation.  I am happy to say that I have learned so much and have nothing but positive feelings for what is to come in this area of my life.  I’m reading, “The Art of Loving” (Thanks Simon!) and it has given me an idea of how to approach love/relationship if I am to transform this area of my life – art takes knowledge and practice.  I must say I never learned the knowledge part and have always jumped into things, making decisions based on the past or knee jerk reactions of pain, fear and need which I poetically called passion   So, as I mentioned, I’m learning from being around my married friends, seeing things objectively and from a higher perspective and good old sound recommendations that most of us have all heard before but never practiced like: be friends first.  What a concept!  The new way I view relationships is best summed up by an acquaintance, Sam’s Sydney Morning Herald blog post.

That said, I have an old friend back in my life who reminds me of the easy going way it is to be with a friend, even if he is a man .  With him I’m practicing to be myself in all different ways without self judging, giving into my perfectionism and overall just taking things as they come without too much dialogue/story creating.  And to answer all the questions in your heads, no there is nothing more than friendship with this one. I am sure of it!

(FAMILY:)

My niece Mia at dance class

I must say, I miss you all but I don’t miss Australia.  Not that here is “better” than there but rather I am truly enjoying being here!  Case in point: last night, I watched the Pacquiao fight at my auntie’s house with my cousin’s biker friends that I grew up around since the age of 7.  Imagine a giant rented blow up movie screen in a backyard filled with bikers, old Pilipino aunties and uncles screaming at the screen amidst TONS of delicious food and drinks.  What I loved most about last night was sharing it with 2 of my best friends here.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been proud of my family and really enjoyed being in the midst of all that love and fun.  In fact, I don’t know if there was ever a time I was this proud of my heritage and past.

I LOVE being with my 2 year old niece, Mia.  It was funny because when I was in a delicate state after the declaration of non-dating status, I was actually hurt when Mia would get cranky and not want to be around me.  The rejection was unbearable!  It was an interesting exercise to see that each time I was centered and present, she was wanting to spend time with me and each time I was needy or angst ridden, she pushed me away.  We have so much to learn from children!  It is wonderful though to witness all the amazing things she says and does.  Like counting in english, spanish and then throwing in a letter or saying things like, “wishing makes me tired.”  The most remarkable was an affirmation of our ability to remember (as I’ve learned from doing breathwork rebirthing) when she said to her mum: “papa bought that dress for me when i was in your tummy!”  She totally remembered this and was not something she was told about.

In addition, my cousin and so called “twin” is pregnant so I’m even happier to be here in order to witness this remarkable and special time in her life.

(FRIENDS:)

Cinco de Mayo - Pathetically Fake Gangsters

I’m having a great time with my friends.  I’ve reconnected with friends from elementary, middle and high school.  It’s been great to catch up and see how much we’ve all grown and what kind of things happen in all those years – babies, divorces, marriages, breakdowns, deaths, etc. One of my best friends has a 7 month old that I also love being around.  This little dude is so happy and smiley, one can’t help but feel joy around him.

Me and Luca ready for a walk

Some things and some people don't change but thankfully all experiences taken mindfully informs me of  what to be aware of.  One ex-lover from High School, asked me if I was still a "hot little wild thing".  This "friend" who is married also wanted to call me for naughty reasons.  From this, I learned how important it is to be committed to consciously going towards the vibration that will manifest the world you wish to create.  All in all, I feel blessed to have friends here that understand me and my world views.  The most important thing about this is the ability to hold each other accountable for living life in a new way. I know this sounds spiritually/neo-hippy esoteric to some of you so, for an explanation of how I view reality, read my previous post below or the latest post on this blog and it should make sense even if you think I’m nuts and disagree.  After all, everyone has their own right to their own reality!

(LIFESTYLE:)

California wine-ing

I haven’t done much partying.  My life is pretty tame besides a few drinks during dinner here and there.  I have gone to Yoginanda’s lake shrine in Pacific Palisades a few times and have had open hearted states of bliss complete with tears of joy.  (celebrity alert: I saw Alanis Morrisette there the last time I went.) I have been meditating and yoga-ing, both almost daily and I started a meditation course this week just down the street that I’m really enjoying (Ha! Am I still a wild little thing or what?!).

I’m also looking into voice lessons.  It seems my singing voice is not so bad having tried it out during a music night here at my friends’ house.  It was so much fun playing instruments I didn’t know how to play and singing songs despite being self conscious of my voice.  After this, I will tackle french!

The food here is soooooo good. There has been a new crop of mexican fusions from indian to korean and it is so tasty!  Also, Pilipino food at my family’s house is amazing and I have to watch my propensity for gluttony :-9

I still need a job, a car and because I’m so close to the beach, a bike.  It’s great to have nature all around and the mindful healthy living that is so typically Cali.  I’ve gone for mountain hikes in the middle of the city, biked down the boardwalk, walked through farmer’s market filled with organic fair-trade everything and seen about a zillion hybrid priuses.

(SUMMARY:)

I feel grown up and totally capable – grounded in self assurance although I’m floating on uncertainty. I feel strong and ripe with self-knowledge and possibilities.  Perhaps, just in need of direction but I have no doubt it will come as needed.  I think this is what it means to be “grown up” – to be fully accepting of oneself (even insecurities) despite circumstances.  And to bring it back to the title of this post, although I live near the sand, I’m building my next stage of life on solid ground – solid castles that I invite you to come visit and see when you can!  Until then, I send my love across the Pacific with digital kisses xx!

f(x) = 1/(SQRT(2π)*σ)*e^(-(x-μ)^2/(2σ^2))

I took yet another stupid Facebook quiz (they are quite addictive!) and apparently, as an equation I am:  f(x) = 1/(SQRT(2π)*σ)*e^(-(x-μ)^2/(2σ^2)).  Hmmmm… Okay…

I was going to write about Irony and I think the very search for an equation that sums myself up is quite ironic in of itself!   It’s also ironic for me to have started this blog as a way to communicate to people back home when I traveled and eventually settled in Australia and how I’m now resurrecting it so that I can communicate to people back in Australia since having moved back to LA a little over a week ago.  And all this is not just ironic because of flipping antipodes.  In reality this blog has been about flipping the funnel (to borrow the term from Seth Godin).  Having no real intended specific reader but needing to vent somewhere, it became a passive aggressive way to rant about my inner search for a personal equation and therefore hearing my own words echoing fed back to me a location of where I was and in between the words, where I wanted to be.

So now I’m here – the location where I grew up, where so much happened and didn’t.  How am I fairing in my old home town?  Bukowski asked, “who put this brain inside of me?!” and I’m feeling that exact frustration.  Who put this brain in me that refuses to rest, to says, “yes” to the steep hills and that questions everything?  Being in LA is bringing up so much… stuff, mainly fear.

This is my present location and that is all there is, meaning there is nothing “to do” but be present here and now.  Meanwhile my human frailty screams, “I’m lost!” and the rest of me is trying to skate above it all and find acts of doing – doing all the things to keep myself grounded – yoga, beach bike rides, coast drives, reconnecting with friends, spending time with family and generally trying to find my place in this city – but still doing.

It’s creating a life that is scary. It’s one thing to just do what you feel you’re supposed to be doing and it’s another to actually carve out a life for yourself.  I keep reminding myself a quote I created, “Fear is an indication of the path to growth.”  After so many years of actively pursuing growth in a painful but rewarding manner, I’m not sure how much more growing I can do!  But that is an old paradigm way of looking at things.  After all, we never stop growing and pain is inevitable.  It’s all an illusion anyway so why not have fun with it?

And so I try.  I was blessed by a conversation I had yesterday with a friend which reminded me there’s no need to live in the old paradigm anymore.  That was chucked out ages ago with the bathwater so why keep thinking I’m bathing in it?

The ideas of fear, trust and security also keep popping up.  I was reminded by my own incessant brain that a sense of security is a construct that simply does not exist so why not relish in the absolute crazy ride of it?  I mean, we are hurdling through space, spinning around in an incredible rate with a bubbling bit of land underneath our feet while we dodge cars, trains and basically romping through the park with good ‘ol reliable Mr. Grim Reaper at our heels.  Safety? Hah!

Still… finding my place in this city is like the process of writing. Filtering through words, trying them on and at times frustratingly flinging them back from where they came, sometimes angry at myself for being too attached instead of letting it flow.  I shall take my own advice, stare irony in the face and recognize it as a deeper and more insulting form of understanding but understanding none the less.  After all, understanding is just another word for awareness.  Thank you whoever you are for putting this brain inside of me.

Always Check Your Child’s Homework…

A cute little funny piece my sister sent that reminded me of our Little and LOUD workshops…

Always Check Your Child's Homework

(Here’s the reply the teacher received the following day)

Dear Mrs. Jones,
I wish to clarify that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an exotic dancer.
I work at Home Depot and I told my daughter how hectic it was last week before the blizzard hit.  I told her we sold out every single shovel we had, and then I found one more in the back room, and that several people were fighting over who would get it.    Her picture doesn’t show me dancing around a pole.  It’s supposed to depict me selling the last snow shovel we had at Home Depot.
From now on I will remember to check her homework more thoroughly before she turns it in.

Sincerely,
Mrs.  Smith

A Very Malaria Christmas

Diagnosis Malaria: Positive

Christmas and New Year’s in the Solomon Islands was not as I expected. This time around, the 2 weeks in a 3rd world country got the best of my precious princess nature. It seems Paddington has made me soft and I wasn’t prepared to go without my creature comforts for too long, but it was being sick that really highlighted it. It was all a learning process and one that I am grateful for.

It all began from the moment I arrived. I was having trouble being present and taking in the environment and the reason why we were there – to deliver “Christmas” to a remote village. The idea in of itself seems romantically condescending on one level and yet fulfilling in another. Here we were, 3 women who had worked very hard in the last 3 months to fund-raise support for a school in need and was playing Santa. A part of me had a hard time being with it all and was frustrated with not knowing why when I truly feel it’s my life’s purpose.

Then Malaria happened. Quickly. I started feeling nauseous on the ferry and all around sickly. The 3 hour packed-to-the-gills boat ride and 1 hour packed-to-the-rafters truck didn’t help. I was also busting for the loo and when we got there, we couldn’t settle in right away because the whole village had been planning our welcoming – with warriors, pan pipers, and sweet little girls who gave us leis. Needless to say, it was an amazing experience and made me forget about how sick I was feeling for a brief amount of time. Luckily, it rained very hard and we were able to go home and settle in. I stayed in bed until the next morning when I got up early to catch a truck for the 1 hour ride back to the main town to get tested for Malaria. That was also interesting… It was underneath this house, will all the dirt and clutter of a 3rd world country. The nurse (I assume that’s what she was), wiped the glass slide on her shorts and then pricked my finger (thankfully with a packaged sterile pin) and put my blood on it. 10 minutes later, diagnosis: Malaria – positive. Off to the chemist where locals were very apologetic upon hearing my affliction and why I was there – “to help their school.” It made me want to cry for reasons which has no words.

Waiting for Malaria

Then the questioning happened. I hated myself for judging the environment, then judging myself for being a princess. I was in turmoil for days with my Malaria mind not being able to relax and just enjoy the view or the people or for the sheer sake of relaxing – away from technology and city life. I even questioned what I was doing, my life’s purpose was crumbling and I felt guilty for even thinking of quitting Little and LOUD and voicing concerns to Michelle. I felt like I was dumping on her but also needed to be real and tell a friend. There was no way I was going to fake my way through anything. I had done enough of that my whole life. So I sequestered myself most of the time and my saving grace was reading Echart Tolle’s ‘A New Earth’. Meanwhile, I knew I was missing out on spending time with the kids, enjoying nature and getting to know as many people in the village as I had wanted. I was miserable all around. Miserable staying in and miserable interacting.

There were very sweet moments but they were fleeting with my ego going on overdrive. One time was spent washing dishes in the river and then splashing around with kids on my 2nd day of Malaria. I also learned how to make fans, balls and stars with coconut palm leaves. Creating gives me the most simple joy. One magical afternoon was spent with the children walking us to the sea hand in hand singing made up songs with our names (I wish I had that on video). But even that was a pleasure short lived when within minutes of being in the ocean, I started getting bitten by maggot like sea lice. My inner misery was manifesting in annoying ways I couldn’t stuff away.

I decided I was going to make everyone else around me uncomfortable (at best) if I continued on so I left Fote to get back to Australia ASAP, only to be stuck in Auki for 2 days due to a ferry not showing up. All flights were fully booked and I just had to sit and be with it all. I ended up waiting 11 hours on a cargo boat to leave and another 12 hours later I was in Honiara (a ferry usually takes 2-3 hours!). The time spent waiting was actually just what I needed. I spent an afternoon and evening in Auki drinking SolBrew beer with 2 friends talking and watching the sunset from the veranda. That same day I spent the morning at the hospital with 2 other Rhodas getting tested for Malaria again. This time, diagnosis: negative!

The Smack Down Crew

Then awareness happened. At the hospital, as 4 year old little Rhoda was throwing up, I watched people waiting for doctors and visiting their sick loved ones. I became aware of how “the other half” lives and how beautifully meaningless it all was and how beautifully precious it all was. And when I got to the part in the book about how Stephen Hawking said that he couldn’t have asked for a better life, I had to hide uncontrollable tears. Again, for reasons which have no words. I had learned that not only am I NOT my thoughts and emotions but I’m also NOT my physicality, which is a moment of glad grace for an ageing woman destined to fading physical beauty. The next day spent on the boat was actually pleasant thanks to my new found awareness, I finished the book and enjoyed the sunset and laughter with my new friend, Danny.

I flew back to Brisbane early and spend a much needed luxurious weekend with my good friend Melissa. I spent, I splurged, I took long hot showers and slept in a fluffy bed with more pillows than I knew what to do with. Mel and I shopped, went to the museum and had lunches and dinners out with wine. I was consciously being self indulgent and I loved every minute of it. I was definitely aware of how blessed I am to have these luxuries. Which makes me all the more angry and compelled to question and expose and therefore attempt to change why there is such a great divide. I’ve gained new legs for Little and LOUD – all thanks to a very Malaria Christmas!

A major decision was made due to this life lesson which I will write about in my next post…

Love in the time of… Simulation?

He (who shall forever remain appropriately and protectively nameless) didn’t break my heart. To be exact, He slightly cracked it and that cracked reminded all the other cracks that they were there.

Step back. Rewind.

This past year, I’ve learned a lot about how the mind works through practising and facilitating Breathwork. I used it as an experiment – a way to pick apart my own psyche and pitting it against other people’s realities in order to explore what it means to be a human being and what I want to do with what I have left with after all the common denominators are set aside. I also learned a lot of theory and scientific explanations of how our internal world is outwardly reflected in our physical world, the one we share with others.

It all makes perfect sense that because of how our human brain develops from a purely physical standpoint – the forming of the reptilian brain to the mammalian to the neo cortex and frontal lobes and especially how memory is created through the use of templates – psychological effects occur in the background through unconscious behaviours because they are borne from cells which were developed at a snapshot of a time/space which seemingly has no bearing on the present situation but in actuality forms the basis, and therefore determines the decisions we make. The end result is that we are the embodiment of chemical reactions – a bunch of equations summing up all the sum of our fears and dividing them by the knowledge of fractional pain and then choosing the least perceived painful path. Simply put, we are determining our future by living out a “forgotten” past. And I’m not even going to go down the philosophical Free Will road…

No wonder we are so fucked! The odds are against us and to make matters worse, we are the ones that set up the odds to begin with but believe otherwise! Beating our heads against a very old wall, we wonder how we can possibly be unsatisfied, why life is harder than it should be, why Love eludes us, etc.

Fast forward to the present.

Baudrillard theorised about how signs are more significant than the actual signifier in a post-modern age. This explains one level of my current predicament. Not only does He become another sign, a replica of fantastically failed romances (not to mention the childhood ideas of relationships) but also, because I’m being honest with myself and a bit more aware than I was earlier in the year, the fact is, in the background, what’s running is a very old movie of being a child not getting what I want.

To bring it back to Baudrillard, it’s even more fucked that there is no frame of reference to any of this madness. The fissures are all overlapping and all there is, is simulacra, a signifier without a corresponding signified, against which I’m judging my own position. What’s a girl to do but give in to the odds? Resigning myself to post-modernity nonsense, I suppose there is a sense of comfort underneath the surface frustration, a knowing that it doesn’t really matter. After all, the powerful play does go on and this is not even a word in my entire verse.

And if I throw another theoretical ball in the air and kick it back to Saussure (whose theories are direct opposite to Baudrillard) and try to distinguish and work with only the signifier of the present situation, I see that at the heart of the matter at hand, He is right. If sign is the basic unit of a language, I honestly see we don’t share the same language, at least judging from the very small blip of time we’ve had together. To appropriate Saussaure’s quote and apply it metaphorically, “in language, there are only differences, and no positive terms.” The odds, it seems no matter where the balls land, really are against us…

Meanwhile the romantic in me just plain misses the palatable sweet softness of being close to someone that I simply like (for whatever reason my sum of chemicals have decided, my inner poet cares not). Oh me, oh Life! Give me the simplicity of limbs intertwined and the excitement of learning any day thank you very much! This is my natural language and it seems to be a foreign one to most. Perhaps even this word dribble will only be yet another misunderstood gesture, a feeble attempt to communicate falling on deaf eyes, even to those who know me best. Oh me, oh Life…

So what now when all we have left is the sum of no common denominators, externally or internally? I for one see:

X = 1 heart that longs to stop, rewind and start over.

Exercises for the Heart

“It turns out there are few things that are more chaotic than that of a human heart. Speeding up, slowing down, pretty face, flight of stairs, it’s always changing no matter what happens. It’s an erratic son of a bitch. But underneath all that bump to bump mess, there is in fact, a pattern, the truth. And it’s love. Most important thing about love is we choose to give it. And we choose to receive it, making it the least random act in the entire universe. It transcends blood, it transcends betrayal, and all that dirt that makes us human.”

This year of breathwork has taught me a lot about the heart. Not just allowing my lungs to expand but also to keep my heart open, despite all that comes with life, and especially when remembering all that has passed to its full extent, whether full in bliss or full of pain. When you think about it, the very breath of life – the rise and fall of the cage that holds our heart – is a reminder of love, the capacity for contraction and expansion. Metaphysically speaking, the amount of love we allow it through experiences of joy and the the amount of pain we feel as we contract with fear. And sometimes, when we are brave and aware enough, we can allow it to contract during extreme pain which is the hardest workout of all.

I realised something tonight. My capacity for love has definitely grown – but not just for others… for myself as well. I suppose you can only know the extent of true love through your own practice of loving yourself, firstly. I haven’t forgiven myself for a lot of things and therefore I have been living in quiet pain. For being too little to fight off baddies, for believing I was not good enough in countless ways and how many more times can I beat myself up for a marriage that ended? Ultimately, it’s all summed up to not forgiving myself for all the times I put myself in situations that always resulted in being alone and having to look after myself, whether it was real or imagined. What if I knew all these things were going to happen from the beginning but I chose to live anyway? Perhaps I knew my father wouldn’t protect me and that my family would be oblivious with their own hurt. Perhaps I knew that certain men wanted to take things from me rather than see me as an equal. Perhaps I knew my ex-husband would not love me unconditionally. Maybe I knew all these things and chose to be born anyway and live the life I have lived. Perhaps all this was an exercise of the heart. Maybe I even made all these things happen so that my heart would know its full capacity. With that first breath to each breath now, its all an act of learning for the heart… Maybe that’s why it hurts so much. Because understanding it this way gives me the ability to acknowledge how much it hurts to be human and to be actually proud of the full breath of myself which is to say, to be awed by how brave we all are. And isn’t the act of forgiveness, the hardest act of love? I know that when my father was in hospital dying, the first thing that went out of our frame of relationship was blame and just as quick, unconditional love was there to take its place. Just like that, quicker than a heartbeat. I wonder if his failed heart had gotten enough exercises of joy, of expanding to the point of bursting. Maybe that’s how he died, finally realising the full breath of just how much he was loved, despite how he lived his life. It would be nice to think so.

We are so fragile. Made up of tender capillaries that could burst at any moment causing instant death. Blocked arteries, failed organs, diseases, viruses, and accidents… We are so goddamn fragile. Like someone who loved me (and painfully so) described how I looked when I was in hospital in so much pain of all levels I can’t possibly describe… “fragile as a snowflake.” When I say I have lived a lot, I mean I have hurt a lot. Sure there are people worse off and I’m not going to go into how sad my story is. All I know is, I am so ready for the good stuff. The stuff that brings joy, personal boundless happiness, pure unadulterated bliss. I have driven myself to the ground in so many ways – to prove something, to be something, to learn and grow. I know that love can be easy and wondrous and freely given without pain and hurt. I know there is lightness in the world. I want that. I crave it. I’m ready for the fun flying part of this uphill ride. If only there was some guarantee of its possibility, a treasure just for me. If only I could hold my breath and make a wish and make it so… Because I do believe I am the creator of my life, and I have chosen all the pain I have known, it shall be so that I will learn bliss of my very own. The kind that lasts and it shall be like the feeling of being tucked safely into bed and read a bed time story – things I have never known but can imagine. And if I can imagine, then it is possible, right? Right.

Infinite Possibilities

me and my 8 legs with some zombie dude from the party

While growing up in the U.S., Halloween was a magical time for us kids who were allowed one night a year to be whatever we wanted to be and explore the neighborhood in ways that we weren’t usually allowed – knocking on strangers’ doors asking for treats – and actually rewarded for the audacity.

I was reminded of this as I donned on my 2 extra legs to become a spider this year. As an adult who has just quit a job this week without any savings, maxed out credit cards, and enough bills and financial responsibilities to be in terror of what I’ve done, I reflected on how I far I’ve come to trust that the world is filled with infinite treats, possibilities creeping out at every corner waiting to be snatched up and eaten whole. I have no idea what is to come in a few months as I leave my job except that I’ll be going to the Solomon Islands for Christmas nor do I know if we’ll raise enough funds in this time of recession to fund the trip much less provide Fote Primary School with our intended support. I have no idea which country I’ll live in if I don’t find a contract web job in order to keep my Australian visa or what I’ll do to pay for the trip to get me there. What I do know is, I have a purpose and a drive that keeps me going and I suppose that is the trick I have up my sleeve which will hopefully get me the treats.

I was inspired by this quote today as I watched Bill Strickland on Ted.com: “You must be prepared to act on your dreams just in case they do come true.” I suppose that is what I’m doing… This IS my dream. I really feel that I’m doing everything I’ve set out to do regardless of the difference of how it looks in actuality versus what I had imagined (because this is not at all how I imagined it!). In a way, I feel like I’ve been preparing for this moment my whole life and along the way I have been given the treats that have egged me on and for that I am thankful. I’m thankful to my brother Jonathan who taught me how to look at the world and simply draw what I see, to my sister Josephine who has an immense will and drive to make things happen when she wants to, my brother Ronald who has always been curious and wanting to learn, my mother Emma who reminds me that you’re never too old to be young and my late father Justino who managed to find a way to live bigger than what was expected of him as a product of his environment and for giving just as big when he had it in him to give. I’m also thankful to the friends and partners who gave me opportunities to practice love and for the same family, friends and partners who allowed me the space to fail in love when I needed to learn certain lessons which usually ended in having to let go of something, someone or someplace.

I’ve had to let go of who I used to be (sometimes on a daily basis!) in order to make room for who I could be and I suppose that’s why I’m thanking all these people – for co-creating the life I now live. I have no idea what goodness is creeping just around the corner but whatever it is, I’m ready to snatch it up and eat it whole. It might be the sense of extra legs that provides courage but surprisingly I’m not all that scared standing at the world’s very big front door knocking.

Hope your Halloween was wicked!