You and Me

I am to be wed.

Say whaaaaaat?!

Yes.

The man I love proposed to me last night under an eclipsing full moon on the night of the winter solstice. This is a combination of cosmic circumstances that only come together once every 450 years. HOW COULD I SAY NO?!

So I said yes. Yes, yes and a thousand times yes. But it just so happened that in the moments before he popped the question, I was staring at the sky contemplating my fears surrounding marriage: worries of eventually disappointing the person who in this moment loves you so much, or of falling asleep in life so that you forget what tingled your spine in the first place, the monkey mind that always wants to find a problem not letting you live being happy in love, or that he/she won’t get you or worse of all that he/she (this is my greatest fear) will judge you silently for your humanness and slowly build up a brick wall of repulsion. It is not enough for me to survive this journey… I must forge ahead and expand the limitations of what is possible between two people in the realms of understanding and LOVE. But from a young age we are told that we have to “be sure”, “think things through”, as if through a careful series of questionnaires and time spent buzzing about in our already maniacal minds we will come to some quantifiable conclusion. Where is freedom to rip open your heart and let its contents scream to the heavens “OH MY GOD HELP I REALLY WANT THIS TO BE BEAUTIFUL PLEASE GUIDE ME!" This is such a magnificently tender and frighteningly exciting time and I want to be fully open, free of self judgment enough to see the gift in front of me. And I can’t think this through, I can only feel my way through it… and it feels so delicious.

Always an advocate for self-honesty and the dissolution of expectation based paradigms, I am embracing the fears I have of all the many challenges that lie ahead. I’m not going to pretend that I am fearless in the face of this immense change in my life. I am a human woman who is evolving at the rate of as-fast-as-she-can, praying for the state of grace required to take another human being into the deepest folds of my heart and release my fears at a sustainable rate so that more moments can be lived more fully, until one day when I am very very old and wise and a grandmother a dozen times over, I will know what living truly is. But until that day my vow is to compassionately monitor my human mind (and sometimes sulky heart) and let myself walk forward over the fire of good intentions and promise that I will use my human hands to build a home for our ethereal hearts to find solace every night when we need to lay down our too full heads. Let us feel the fullness of this experience. Block nothing, allow everything: fear flow freely, you are my many mountains upon mountains and ignoring your existence only means I’ll miss the views at the top of your infinite peaks.

Ask me your questions. Whisper to me your fears in the dark. My story will become your story and yours will become mine. And I will always be me. And you will always be you. There is space enough for all our love and for all of our crazy. And forever more it’s going to be you and me.

The Earth Will Turn Again

Climbing atop skyscrapers
my eyes seek a sunrise
mid day-
beginning, peeling back,
somewhere on the horizon
around the curvature of all there is,
The earth turns
but we call it sun rise

Maybe if I undulate to the rhythm
of the earth beating against the metal
thrown upon it
Maybe then I will strain my eyes
to see
A new sky
That in it
Always has Suns rising
Moons fat, full, slivered up
and Stars falling, crashing
into the artful splash

Say I needed something
would that be all that bad?
You who are untainted by need-
Teach me not to need a sun rise…
To accept darkness when it comes
and judge not the sticky web
of night fall
- and all she brings to minds too
fast for hearts to know much at all

Back on the ground
(Beneath the silver masses of impermanence
atop the playground of the life cycle
of all the creatures that we are)
A cat calls to the dust pan alley
She’s hungry for the wildebeest
she used to be
I’m ferocious, she’ll tell you
Don’t you dare leave me no milk

Catatonic, lost, dreaming of these fearless times
We tread too lightly and for what?
I’m a sodden lampshade hung from a gnarly branch
Outside a haunted house
You just see your own eyes
And deep within the rings of years there’s a better story
I see you
And I know of this lampshade
Of your raggedness
Tender, pulsing, too hot, laughed at, sacred sorest spots
All is well
The earth will turn again

Each Time I See the Light

Things can be so clear sometimes: intentions, life changes, awakenings, personal reformations, compassionate understanding for “other”... then a moment comes and passes silently and it is only later that we realise this could have been the place, the time, or the person with which to practice this new found hopefulness for life.

All too often we block ourselves, we hurt ourselves, we perpetuate patterns of pain that keep us trapped in the cycles of suffering we are for some reason terrified to leap beyond. With the power of a reflexive mind this is often all too clear... as we move far beyond having to provide for basic survival needs into the frontier of creating our own unique realities based on the principles of freedom and individuality, we are at every turn confronted with the shackles that keep us tied to the notion of struggle. For some reason we are addicted to the drama of self sabotage. And the tenderness that comes with the willingness to transform is often so acute that we shudder and turn our backs on progress when the metamorphosis begins. How will we relate to a new kind of identity, one that goes beyond form and categorization? Can we let go of the attachment to the idea of who we think we are and what hardships have molded this tiny speck of humanness? Could we accept a life that is joyful? A life beyond struggle, inner or outer?

We continue to create... what will we do with this immense power?

Invisibility Cloak

Today is one of those days that I don’t want to leave the house. Today is one of those days where I feel too tender to be looked at by strangers. My heart is an obvious malady sticking out of my chest ready to be gawked at. On these days I want to live this intense sensitivity, honour it, and invisibly slide across the sidewalk to my desired destination completely unnoticed.

These, I believe, are important times. They are acutely pointing toward a truth nearly ready to emerge. They are footholds up, up and away. They are vortexes, opportunities to receive by their intense forcing open. These are times to listen, to be alone, to feel everything and allow it to penetrate and affect my being. These are times in which I want to distil myself into a piece of fabric, or a drop of a flower essence, or three bars of music and then feel, taste or hear the truth of what I am.

Life does not allow for these times to flourish. Things are fast and all at once; there is little room to unravel. That’s why our heads are down on certain days. You don’t want to look at anyone on the subway? Okay, you can be invisible for a day.

Today I honour the propensity of those in the metropolitan marketplace to withdraw, retreat and be alone even though surrounded by millions. I get it.

Patience is a Simmering Soup That Knows its Going to be Frozen for Months but Flavours Itself Up Anyway

Patience is your annoying little brother being right

Patience is your rib cage pried open by field mice

Patience is the only hope for sanity

Patience is everything everywhere that was ever once something else

Patience is the only thing more beautiful than an old dainty woman in a fancy hat

Patience is mostly stumbled upon for pockets of non-time

Patience is usually denounced in favour of turmoil

Patience is a fat birthmark in the shape of the essence of creation

Patience is no body’s business but mine for me when I want to feel it

Patience is no coconuts falling but the taste of sweet milk filling your mouth as you stand below shaking the tree

Patience is the only way out of the fear trap

Patience is an orgasm on the cusp of enlightenment

Patience is a naked tree in January

Patience is the smell of a half inked tattoo bleeding with the promise to be something beautiful and forever

Patience is a halo

Patience is the power to live through it all, especially love

Patience is my black coffee not waiting for my sugary spoon

Patience is the baggage handler with no passport

Patience is my father

Patience is unconditional love flavoured ice cream on a hot night of the soul

Patience is the letters we used to write on paper that came from trees we used to cut by hand

Patience is Shakespeare waiting this long for Sir Ian McKellen to be born and grow old enough to play King Lear

Patience is my intestines who never get any thanks

Patience is a whole nights sleep with no peeking at what is coming next

Patience is kneeling at the foot of desire

Patience is walking only on the cracks with reverence for how they formed

Patience is not advised for the weak of will, it will only lead to the throwing of plates

Patience is the mouth on my face and the mouth in my mind shutting for long enough to feel the mouth of my heart open and
get her turn

Patience is the reward for its own effort

Patience is so boring sometimes

Patience is the journey of every single rock on earth breaking free from some giant slab and becoming itself

Patience is God’s funniest one liner

Patience is the most aerobic activity out there

Patience is something I one day hope to feel as easily as I do feverish desire or reaching outwards

Patience is the sandiest bathing suit of all time

Patience is the impeccably shiny brogues on a gentleman standing at the arrivals gate

Patience is a necklace made of broken hearts worn only on special occasions

Patience is no game or trickery or cunning slight of hand

Patience is the earth’s response to the incessant stream of dirty footprints on her living room floor

Patience is no place for a stranger in search of revenge

Patience is my obsession

Patience is the sound the sky makes as every colour on its canvas turns carefully towards sun-setting brilliance

Patience is the stick you dropped from the bridge into the stream and watched disappear into the reeds

Patience is the renunciation of the need for a spiritual teacher that lives outside my own heart

Patience is the name of the Cobbler who I want to make my walking shoes

Patience is a yellow brick road toward the real Oz

Patience is the threshold of pain exceeded in childbirth

Patience is the visionary who sees the beautiful future unfolding but knows not to break the snow globe in an attempt to climb inside it

Patience is the word before the thought knowing its worth something

Patience is the anti-feeling in the belly of the glassy eyed teenager who just lost his virginity

Patience is the cut off crusts of the lunchtime sandwich

Patience is the catapult we must climb into in order to reach the castle beyond the battlefield

Why I Love New York City Part 1

On my way home from the grocery store ,with my purse full of ingredients for a delicious veggie chili (I paid for them… was just saving a plastic bag, not shoplifting shoving things into my purse I swear!), I saw a woman on the corner of E 4^th St and Avenue A with a giant tropical bird on her shoulder. Un-accustomed to such sights but wanting to look cool like "Yeah, of course. In Canada people chill on their cell phones with exotic winged creatures perched pirate-like on their shoulders all the time”, I waited until a local family stopped to gawk for my cue to join in and stare in wonderment.

“Look!” exclaimed the father to the son. “Wow, a parrot!” the five year old replied. “Mom, look a parrot!” he yelled to his mom who at this point had already crossed the street and was about to enter the same grocery store I had just exited. “Cool!” She yelled back “Stay with your Dad, I’ll be there in a minute”. They just yelled back and forth at each other while the rest of the after school crowd rushed around them, and then father and son proceeded to observe the bird, taking no notice of the woman it was attached to and not for a second questing her or her reasons for having a bird of this size and origin. All the while she continued her conversation like everything was totally normal (you got the impression that this was her version of totally normal), with the knowledge that we were fixated but with little regard for our general existence, or the bird’s for that matter. And let me say, this is the heart of my point: there was no nastiness or irritation or even ignoring of us… everyone was aware of everyone else in this… but come as you are and do as you please: have a crazy parrot, stare at people with crazy parrots, talk on your cell phone, yell across the street….

There are over 8 million people in this city, so do whatever you want because even if someone DOES notice, they either will have seen it before, or find it mildly amusing before moving on to the next sensational sight or heading home to make veggie chili.

Good Morning Star Shine

I am a British Canadian which means that I am usually either repressing some deeply rooted emotion or apologizing for it. The thing is, I am actually a highly sensitive, overly expressive human. This combination of nature, nurture and my truth as an individual soul apart from where I come from and what I’ve been taught, has led to some pretty confusing times. Add into the mix that I can be extremely intellectual and analytical, wanting to understand everything that is happening all at once in real time, and you have for some very interesting dark nights of the soul!

How on earth do you find your truth? It is a line of universal wisdom “Find your truth, find your truth, find your truth”, a mantra that resonates deep inside but cannot be comprehended or explained. Seekers, if determined enough, will embrace the inward journey and maybe, if this lifetime is meant for it, find some sense of it all eventually on the other side of infinite personal mountains and canyons. Most people will pretend they never heard the words at all, feeling a kind of dread at the thought of unravelling all their personal demons and being laid bare at the sight of their own imperfection. Because we all intuitively know that the process of finding one’s truth is a rocky, scary, lonely, weird one and if fully committed to WILL lead to some very revealing, vulnerable moments and probably some uncomfortable changes both at the core and periphery of one’s worldly life.

Well, that sounds hard.

It is. It sucks a lot of the time, especially at the beginning. I know this because for some glorious and extremely annoying reason, I apparently have no choice in the matter; my entire life, I am learning, is and always has been propelled by this unravelling, this innate need to understand through a process of exploration. Every major choice I have made in my adult life has been driven by this burning desire to expand. I need it to keep on living. It’s completely exhausting.

It has also led me to some pretty incredible places, people, and experiences. I have stood on literal mountain tops and smiled at the cloudy face of God, boarded many a plane with a heavy heart or smiling heart or nervous heart, I have had many a homecoming hang out with friends feeling safe and cradled after a particularly ragged soul stretching city stint, I have lived in the bottom less pit of depression and then found the light, felt my molecules shift in the slow stretch of my favourite yoga class, I have spontaneously sung reggae on the London Underground with an illegally busking Rastaman amassing a crowd of commuters willingly missing trains to stay and hear our version of “Natural Mystic”, been ignited in a fury of creative fervor and written a song in a matter of minutes, then burned my brain trying to remember it months later! I have done all these things and much much more; the things I have experienced as a result of my willingness to journey past artifice and really put my guts into it are my greatest accomplishments.

Something came to me last night as I lay in floods of joyful tears and raw feeling... even though I know that this kind of behavior is usually reserved for the insane, it is in these moments of expressive emotional ecstasy, when I am feeling to the fullest reaches of my capacity to unite my spirit and humanness in an epic unravelling, that I feel the most true. I have tried for a lot of my life to keep my bubbling emotions in check with the pointy stick of a sharp mind. But, in those moments of unrestrained in the moment experience, I can't understand how I can ever move through a day or minute WITHOUT constantly choking on huge emotions in response to my very existence! The majesty of it all, the sheer dumb luck that I am even here in the first place... my life is magnificent in every small and luminous way. Some mornings I shake and groan in response to my first delicious sip of tea, or before that even - languor in bed for an indulgent moment (or 60) because my face and the pillow are making some sweet sweet comfort love, or when I am relaxed enough to actually hear the music I am listening to and cannot do anything else but exclaim or gyrate wildly in response, this is when I know that I am LIVING, that I have cleared out enough mental and emotional cobwebs to actually get to FEEL. But, these magical moments are most usually experienced alone... especially that last one...

I cannot reserve them for only my private moments any longer. It is simply not possible. It is busting, bursting out of me and I can’t care what anyone thinks. The sensorial expression of experience makes people uncomfortable... especially the British! I love my family more than anything, but they all think I’m completely nuts. They love it, and embrace my crazy, they actually love it the most when I am so beyond overboard: putting on a show either on stage or in the kitchen being overly dramatic or silly or singing Frank Sinatra into a ladle. But folks, it ain’t just pretend. The life we are actually living is always infinitely more amazing... because... it is REALLY happening! Dress-up and Story time, elaborate Opera’s, massive graffiti tags, free-jazz, fantasy, Monet’s enormous three paneled “Water Lilies” (went to the Museum of Modern Art in NYC last week... had NO IDEA it was that big!!!!!), it is all this... the need to expand. And we LOVE it! But we just don’t all want to do it all the time. Which is totally fair, I get it. If I had any choice in the matter I might not do it all the time either.

We now have arrived at the definition of what it means to be a star-shine. Everyone HAS star-shine, it is our birth right... but having star-shine and BEING a star-shine are two very different things. Being a star-shine is the willingness to try and live your star-shine. The truth. For you. Whatever that is. Star-shine, it is something ineffable, something magical at the heart of creation. You could call it many things, but I guess for these purposes we can call it truth, there is nothing more magical than truth.

I am a star-shine. There. I said it. And the people I am aligned with are almost all star-shines. They either, like me, have no choice in the matters of unravelling and discovery or have uncovered this option to live out their wildest dreams, going to great lengths (sometimes purely within themselves, clearing out old pattens and beliefs that are blocking them) in order to experience their life fully. Then there are those who resonate deeply with the meaning of star-shine, who have been given a shit-load of it (pardon me) but are afraid to love themselves enough to use it. There are a lot of these people in my life too and I try and keep my big mouth shut about it because I know how freaking hard it is... but you know who you are!

Life is crazy and beautiful. But for the star-shine its double time (that should totally be a bumper sticker and if you’re a star-shine you’ll get the joke). I pray for the support of the star-shine. Not just the artist. But those who are willing to go on this journey and make the world better one heart and mind at at time. We are at some points suffering from the weariness of the journey and at others want to open ourselves and rejoice. Let us support those who are willing to feel everything, who are working to make the insides match the outsides and be a clear and experiential contribution to the network of energy we are all connected to.

That saying: “Do something today that scares you”, is not wisdom because its healthy to give yourself heart palpitations everyday, it is true because we are afraid to expand but breaking through that barrier of fear feels FUCKING AWESOME.

Again, the Canadian in me apologizes.