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Saturday, July 24th, 2010
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4:08 pm
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Hi All - Just a couple of reminders for tomorrow:
1) If you want something to drink afterwards, bringing a cooler with your beverages of choice would be good. It will be hot, so bring water.
2) Anything like sarongs or flowers you would like to bring to pretty up the place, please feel free to bring along - it would be most helpful!
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| Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
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7:37 pm - More details on mom's service this sunday
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*** Note that Sunday is 7/25, not 7/24 (thanks Bran)***
Date, time, and location:
Sunday, 7/25
3pm - 9pm
Spirit Haven
9706 Anchor Ranch Loop
Flatonia, TX
* We are asking folks to wear bright, exuberant colors if you feel comfortable doing so. She would much prefer that people show up celebrating her life in lieu of mourning her transition.
* There will be a potluck afterwards in the air-conditioned med building, so please bring something to contribute if you can. We've liked the idea of folks bring foods she liked, so here is some stuff I know of off the top of my head:
** german chocolate cake
** havarti cheese with dill
**candy orange slices
**pot-stickers
**prime rib
**sushi
** broccoli and/or asparagus with cheese sauce
**cheese bread
** mead
If anybody has something to add, let me know! If you'd like to bring something on the list, let me know too so we can make sure we're not all bringing the same thing (though I think that she would appreciate the possibility of ending up with nothing but a bunch of german chocolate cakes!!)
* In lieu of flowers, donations to a children's or seniors' charity of your choice has been requested. That said, if anybody would like to pick up flowers or some small pretty things to put on an altar we'll have for her, please do so!!!
* Not sure the situation regarding chairs and tables, but if you'd like to bring some camp ones, it wouldn't hurt!!
Thanks to you all. I'll let you know if there are any more changes or updates you should be aware of.
I am very sure that this is going to be a beautiful and special afternoon for all of us, so thank you all again for being part of it.
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| Sunday, July 11th, 2010
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9:50 pm
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Update on ceremony:
For those who have expressed interest, mom's ceremony will be on Sunday, July 25th at Spirithaven (the CMA land). The time has been tentatively set for 4pm and our lovely Goo will be officiating.
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| Thursday, July 8th, 2010
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1:40 pm - Ceremony for Mom
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We are planning on having a ceremony for mom on Sunday, July 25th. The initial idea is to hold it in a pretty, natural area somewhere between Austin and Houston (please let me know if you have any good suggestions there). I'm flying into Austin on the evening of the 24th (hate to cut it that close, but tickets were vastly more affordable for that day). I will be staying through Mon. 8/2 so I have time to catch up with folks.
Let me know if you are interested in attending. Also, if you're inclined to help out with the planning and logistics, please let me know too. Help in this regard would be extremely appreciated as it would vastly reduce stress levels.
Love you all, thanks for being around through all this.
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| Wednesday, May 26th, 2010
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12:25 pm
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I am very, very grateful today for the mirrors we become for each other.
current mood:  calm
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| Sunday, April 11th, 2010
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8:29 pm
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I am going to give being the priority in my own life a shot for awhile. Let you know how it goes.
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| Thursday, March 25th, 2010
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1:29 pm
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Mom's in surgery right now.
Kind of nerve-wracking for me at the moment, but that may also be because I'm on break and don't have lots of things to occupy myself with.
All told I've had some incredibly strong, positive feelings about this surgery (compared to in the past months when I've had misgivings about proposed dates). On a deep level, I know that whatever is happening now is Good. All I get to do at the moment is stay clear and simple about things.
I'm very, very glad this is happening. Thanks to all for the good thoughts/energy, and please feel free to keep it coming throughout the day and the coming weeks of recovery.
Love you all.
UPDATE: Mom is through her surgery! Everything went "perfect!" Thank you all for the wellness you are sending along! She'll need a bunch more, especially in these next few crucial days as she gets started on recovery and healing, but after many months of waiting, we're past this critical milestone!
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| Thursday, March 11th, 2010
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3:48 pm
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| Saturday, February 20th, 2010
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3:24 pm - Update
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Mom was moved out of ICU into an intermediate unit a couple of days ago. Wanted to wait until she was more stable to say anything, but I just talked to her and she was sounding incredibly better. Thank you to all you beautiful ones out there for your support...it means the world.
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| Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
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6:03 pm
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Mom is in the ICU with an extremely high fever. This is happening after she has already been on very strong antibiotics. I would be tremendously grateful for all the love, energy, prayers, and good thoughts you can spare for her.
current mood:  tired
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| Sunday, January 3rd, 2010
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7:00 pm
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School starts back tomorrow.
All in all, I've had an effing awesome winter break. I also have reason to believe that I'm looking at having a seriously awesome winter quarter.
Here's to a life that is awesome not because of a momentary lack of tough moments, but because the goodness of experience as a whole seems to no longer be hindered by such things.
2010 is totally the beginning of the payoff for all that work undertaken in 2009!!!
current mood: content
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| Monday, November 30th, 2009
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2:47 pm
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Looks like I have some extra time in Austin left over from Thanksgiving travels elsewhere! If folks are free tomorrow, I'll be at La-la land all day and evening Tues. I don't have a car, but thought if starting after 12pm people wanted to come by here if they had time, it might work out! Let me know - sorry for the lack of mobility on my part!
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2:41 pm - staying awake
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Awareness used to be a knife's edge on which myself and others would be cut - a precipice over which nothing could fall and survive intact. Now this thin line of understanding is my refuge. It is the place I return to again and again as these relentless forces of change threaten almost all of what I have understood myself to be and have. I am surpassingly grateful for the time spent with those who have nurtured and softened this place such that I can go to it without fear wherever I may be in this process. Thank you for making "knowing" a warm, safe space.
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| Monday, November 16th, 2009
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10:53 am
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At this point in my life, I have brought myself a situation where in my day-to-day life, I have had nowhere to go but myself.
That's not such a bad place to be, as it turns out. In fact, it is actually quite lovely. There is a profound level of security in realizing that no matter what else happens, I'll always have this wonderful "me" to go to. I knew that at some point after the old world fell apart, the basis of a new one would begin to emerge. I think this is it - a new fixed point, a new axis mundi.
It is a true shame that it took me so long to come to this beautiful place. I know exactly those things that delayed me, and realize a lot of the pain and fear that I've been through lately were the guardians at the gate to myself. They were set there long ago to keep protected what needed protecting, and they did there job well. I had to be ready to unconditionally accept and love what I found here in me, and they made sure that I was able to do so.
Just as I was typing the words "thank you" for what has arisen in these past months, Alanis Morissette's song popped into my head. I looked up the lyrics. I watched the video. I cried in gratitude.
This is ~exactly~ what the past months have been like:
(Some of you reading this were those people who stopped to give me a moment of love and comfort from the outside...thank you, thank you, thank you...no words, really)
( Thank You lyrics )
I really had stopped believing that what was on the other side was going to be worth it. Turns out, that was ok - I didn't need to know (in fact, at points should not have been able to). All I had to do was stay true to myself and where I was in the moment. Turns out, that is all you need to do to have the life for which you have always hoped. I don't think I will need to try nearly as hard now - time to relax into myself and enjoy the work and fun that is living a human life.
Thank you.
current mood:  grateful
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| Sunday, October 25th, 2009
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12:34 am - A sudden affirmation
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I love the world tremendously. I want to show it something about itself that is so beautiful, so moving, so eternal, that the wonder and gratitude it incites within us causes the tremendous pain we have been seized by to loosen its grip for a moment and gives us the strength, the hope, and the courage necessary to move assuredly forward into the hard, ambiguous work that lays ahead. I live to fulfill this, my small role, in our collective unfolding.
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| Thursday, October 8th, 2009
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9:30 pm
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I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to swing Samhain this year. School started last week and I have not had the time to even ~think about~ whether or not I'll be going. That doesn't bode well concerning my amount of future free time, especially if it's this hectic prior to any major assignments being due. I also teach on Fridays now, so if I were to show up, I could only be around for Saturday.
If I don't go, then I will just have to make Yule, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Being this busy is not all bad, but it is definitely an adjustment.
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| Sunday, September 27th, 2009
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9:07 pm
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So I'm considering going to Pallas Samhain this year. How many of you out there think it is likely you'd be showing up?
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| Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
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12:30 pm - Innocence Maintained
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So in a profile elsewhere, I've written "presently fighting an epic battle on behalf of my innocence" in the description of what I am currently doing with my life. Someone messaged me to say that it seemed a battle that was absolutely worth fighting, but what if it is the case that once lost, innocence is a thing that cannot ever be regained. I responded:
" Taking the substantial risk of prefacing this with a pop culture reference (a la Jewel), innocence in my opinion is not a thing that can be lost or regained, but a particular quality of one's relationship with self and the world that can be maintained.
In terms of guilt or lack thereof, I would say innocence is a state wherein there is an unconditional acceptance of how one simply ~is~ in this world. It is a moment of personal grace in which all condemnations of self/other and remonstrations concerning how one "should be" fall away, and the natural perfection of our being becomes evident. When a person is in that place, I have found, kindness, beauty, and joy always follow - not because of efforts made toward those goals, but simply as an unavoidable consequence of realizing how beautiful and miraculous a thing simply "being" is.
Perhaps as very little children, we are innocent in this manner because we have not yet inherited any other ideas of how we are supposed to be. I think as adults, it comes from the liberating understanding that no idea could ever, ever contain anything close to what we are. They're just too small to do that. As such, ideas about either what we should strive to be or what horrible thing we are afraid we might become lose their power. They become just representations of the possible things I could choose to do next (which I choose or not depending on the adventure for which I'm in the mood).
In terms of level of experience, I think it is what we put ourselves in relation to that matters when it comes to our innocence. To be innocent implies that there is very much of the world still to experience and understand. As children compared to adults, this can be seen - there are many things, good and bad, that the child has not seen when compared to what adults have been through. When we become adults, however, we tend to compare ourselves against one another (or against some idea of our younger selves) and find out that we have partaken of a much wider range of experiences compared to most people or those previous versions of ourselves. This can lead to the sensation of knowing a great deal about life and a willingness to classify most if not all new experiences in terms of what has gone before.
If, however, we compare the seemingly great body of things we have experienced with our incredibly limited faculties in our surpassingly short time here to what *could be* experienced, the whole ratio changes. If you take the entirety of what I have ever been through, from the few most transcendent moments to that great body of unnotable mundane ones, it is almost nothing compared to what is capable of being experienced. Taking on this standpoint, suddenly life becomes all about the discovery again. It is no longer simply a time spent cataloging all new moments and relationships into terms of what you have been through before, but a connecting of past, previous, and potential experience into ever greater and more concrete understandings of what is. With such a perspective in place, I can be the wisest person on the planet and still honestly say that compared to what there is to know, I essentially still know nothing.
So I would say that fighting for one's innocence is an active dedication to maintaining a perspective wherein all the greatness I've touched is understood as just a taste of what there is still left to be experienced. I can't do that by invalidating what I do know or operating from some desperate denial of the harsh understandings and ugly truths I've encountered (about myself or the world). Instead, I have to accept and validate as much of what I've ever been through as I can and then make that next statement that as far as it stretches me to contain all that at once, there is still worlds and worlds more of things out there.
Culturally, we're inclined to shut that process of recontextualization down and instead raise up the incredible little we do know to the status of unassailable fact on "how it is." That's true for great expanses of human society today, from the bible belt denizens to the ecoactivists. I think we are afraid that if we do look at all we know and compare it to what is still left to be understood, the smallness of our lives and capabilities will be too terrifying and painful to live with. What actually happens though, is that this miraculous inkling of just how *much* there is comes rushing in and provides more than enough power to carry us through several rambunctious, powerful, compassionate, bold, and joyful lifetimes."
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| Friday, September 11th, 2009
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11:44 pm
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This would be a good time to get through the flu for this season seeing as I don't have classes right now...
See, there's even a silver lining to fever, stuffed nose, etc (and it's actually *not* that statement above...it's the loopy-inducing cold medicine that made this post seem like a good idea that I refer to!)
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| Saturday, September 5th, 2009
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2:04 pm
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Things are starting to look really, really good in unexpected, small, and delicious ways.
Sometimes the road rises up to meet you when you least think it possible.
I'm off to go continue taking care of myself and enjoy the Universe's seeming impulse to do likewise. :)
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