Diggin life, despite the painful stuff and that bad vibe...

Diggin' life, despite the painful stuff and that bad vibe
Damn. Life is a trip.

OK, so maybe I've had a few plastic cups of red wine, but I earned them. We all did.

The Nekyia just finished filming four (4) videos for Peko productions aka Hollywood Music, here in lovely Glendale. I don't know why I thought that filming four videos in one day was in any way a good idea. Perhaps because i am a maniac obsessive perfectionist pyscho dancer? You tell me.

But here is the thing. Being a performer is really hard work. We work and work and work creating and training and rehearsing and perfecting. Then we lie awake at night thinking about our creation and training and rehearsal and lack of perfection. We don't make any money, because people in this country don't value the performing arts, particularly dance, which is the Cinderella of the arts world. But I'm not complaining, here's why.

It is all worth it. Every second, every bloody blister, every sweaty tear. It is all worth it when your art touches people, and when it inspires them. When you dream and dream of performing and then find yourself in front of a packed house when the lights come up.

The Nekyia has had a wonderful trip to LA (not over yet, Hips of Fury on Saturday). We have enjoyed a warm reception from Leela, Princess Farhana, Margaret Cho, and the friendly folks at Peko Records. We have received so many encouraging words, love and generousity, and appreciation for what we do. Honestly, I am overwhelmed.

So I am reminded, in this moment, of The Nekyia's unofficial motto: "Diggin life, despite the painful stuff and that bad vibe." This was our first tag line, never used in promotion materials because of its length and dorkiness, but nonetheless bandied about between Scott and I, particularly on those off days.

You always gotta dig life, because it bring such marvelous gifts, but only if you embrace the painful stuff, and weather out that bad vibe.

OKay, maybe it's just the red wine. I'm going to watch the X Files and do backbends before bed.

Thanks to everyone who has been to our shows over the last week. Your support has inspired us!

Besos,
Kristina

I'm Blogging, Must be Insomnia

I'm really worried about the future of the world. I also have an allergy that's making my eyes red and puffy and itchy. Plus I'm overworked. Result is that whenever I lie down to sleep I have this feeling like my internal engine kicks into high gear and I get vertigo so badly that I have to open my eyes again to figure out which way is up.

I have been reading Carlos Castañeda's book on The Art of Dreaming and I'm wondering if my attempts at lucid dreaming and spiritual travel might be part of the problem as well. I am trying to stay conscious as I fall asleep in order to begin to create more cohesion between my waking life and my dreaming life. My dreaming life feels just as vivid and meaningful as my waking life. I have friends, mentors, favorite spots, and ongoing themes. It's just hard to remember everything and to integrate the knowledge of one universe into another.

But perhaps I'm just trying too hard. Again. After my wonderful birthday visionquest epiphany I realized that I need to stop pushing everything so hard and just let things happen, but I feel like I'm running out of time.

Which leads me back to my initial reason for sleeplessness, my perennial worries for the future of our planet. I heard from a friend about the new treaty opening up 25% of Peru's untouched virgin forest lands to oil and petroleum prospectors from the US. It's just another story, story after story and all the same.

Hastening on the eschaton. Whipping on the dark horse of the apocalypse.

I think of one of my favorite poems, Keat's Ode to a Nightingale. It is flowery and overly romantic but it holds a special place in my heart because it meant so much to me when I was an angsty dramatic teenager. I will spare you, whoever is reading this, from a full recitation of the poem (though I am capable of it, I assure you) but the long and the short of it is that this melancholy fellow is standing in a dark field listening to a nightingale sing and the song is so beautiful that it makes him want to die. Is this the disease that is gripping humankind? Are we so overawed by the terrible, wild, impersonal beauty of the universe that we simply can't bear it so we have to destroy ourselves by any means?

More and more my thoughts are plagued by this question. Why are we destroying ourselves and our home? It is nonesensical. Ridiculous. Bizarre. And yet very real. I am sticking on an article that I have been sending around that appeared as an op ed in the Boston Globe on New Year's Day. It isn't new news, but it is well-written. No one wants to hear it.

This is the truth. If we don't make some drastic modifications to the way we live then the planet is going to go through some very uncomfortable changes. Either way, the life that I grew up with, the future that I imagined I would have, our very reality, all of it is going to change.

What will it take to wake us up? What do we need in order to understand the preciousness of all that we are so cavaleirly destroying?

Usually blogging helps me to get stuff out of my head so that I can sleep, but all I am finding tonight are questions without answers.


Watching as the world vanishes

By Roxana Robinson

Boston Globe
January 1, 2006


IT WAS SHAMEFUL, everyone agreed afterward, that no one did anything
at the time. Because people knew it was happening. There were
reports, early on. People saw things, near where it was happening.
They knew. Later, they said they hadn't known, really; they hadn't
understood the scale of it. They explained their reasons for doing
nothing. They said the government was responsible, there was nothing
they could do. Certainly the government was determined to carry out
its plans, and maybe people felt overwhelmed and helpless. Maybe this
was a place where the curves of ignorance, courage, and survival
instinct intersected, to exclude the possibility of action.

The affected population knew about it, of course, but they had no
political power, no voice. As they diminished in number, they became
increasingly less important, which seemed to validate what was
happening. How could they be important if they were gone?

Even the people who were distanced from it, and not in danger, knew
about it, but they did nothing either. Maybe they didn't believe what
they heard. Maybe they felt it did not threaten them, it was too far
away and too terrible. There are things too terrible to consider. If
you acknowledged their reality, you would be unable to function. And
where would we be, if we couldn't function?

The news has actually been coming in for decades -- from the field,
from eyewitnesses, from relief organizations. We can even see the
evidence ourselves -- it's happening near us, wherever we are -- but
we don't believe these accounts, even our own. We don't want to,
because they are too terrible to consider. We're afraid we won't be
able to function. The more tremendous a threat is, the harder it is
to comprehend. As Raphael Lemkin said in 1944, ''. . . reports which
slip out from behind the frontiers . . . are very often labelled as
untrustworthy atrocity stories, because they are so gruesome that
people simply refuse to believe them." What we're hearing is too
frightening to believe.

The evidence is still growing, and growing worse, but we're still
resisting it. When the scientists grew more serious and more
impassioned about the situation, when they began giving numbers,
offering proof, asking for action, we decided that we no longer
believed in science. We distanced ourselves; we hoped we wouldn't be
affected. The population at risk is not our population, at least not
right now, so we needn't do anything right now. We might do something
later. The government can do something if there's a real crisis. We
trust the government to take care of us, to act responsibly.
Believing this is easier than taking drastic steps to stop what's
happening, particularly since this government is very much opposed to
stopping what's happening. This government is very much intent on
pursuing its present course, which results, as a side effect --
though the government would not acknowledge this, or even comment on
the fact that it is taking place -- in the complete destruction of
the affected population. The affected population is one-half of all
the species presently living on earth.

Fanaticism is a driving force here, as it often is behind great
crimes. This is a crime against nature, and this fanaticism is
economic -- the belief that money and profit should outweigh all
other considerations, including survival of the species. If we
maintain our current rates of consumption and environmental
strategies, by the end of this century, one-half of the species now
alive on earth may be extinct. We don't know what the specific
effects will be, but we know they'll be extreme. We're presiding over
the greatest extermination of living species since the end of the
dinosaurs. We're eliminating habitat, reliable climate, fresh water,
clean air, and nourishment. We're imposing intolerable living
conditions on thousands of species. The current rate of extinctions
is thought to be at least 1,000 times higher than the natural level.
Right now, one-quarter of all mammals are endangered with extinction;
one-third of all species, animal and vegetable, may be gone by 2050.

It may not be evident to us, as we sit in our cubicles, at our
laptops, but we need these other species, even those that seem
impossibly small and remote. We need the Northern lapwing, the
Scottish crossbill, the king protea (South Africa's national flower),
the albacore tuna, Boyd's forest dragon (an Australian lizard) -- all
of which are in dire straits. We're interconnected to everything. The
scrawniest weed in Patagonia absorbs carbon dioxide, which poisons
us, and produces oxygen, which we breathe in New York or Houston.
Plants provide air, food, and medicine; every living being occupies a
niche in the global mosaic. Birds transport seeds and pollen; they
destroy insect pests; they clean our harbors and cities and
landscapes. All living species perform functions valuable to the
ecosystem, to the planet, and to the people who live on it. But
species everywhere are being systematically deprived of the
possibility of life.

We know what we're doing. We hear the reports, the gruesome stories,
but we've decided just to wait and see. We think the scientists --
all of them -- could be wrong. Maybe we'll just do nothing. Short-
term self-interest suggests that we do nothing right now. Why should
we drive slower cars because of the Scottish crossbill?

Cutting fossil fuels and reducing greenhouse gases would save many
species from vanishing, but we're not committing ourselves to that
strategy. One hundred eighty-two nations ratified the Convention on
Biological Diversity; the United States -- largest producer of
greenhouse gases -- is the only industrial country that refused. We
didn't want to be subject to any regulation over our destruction of
the air, the water, the habitat, and the voiceless inhabitants of the
earth. Others agree. Many developing countries wanted nothing in the
treaty that might limit their freedom to exploit -- and destroy --
their natural resources. So the treaty is neither very powerful or
effective, since almost everyone involved places short-term economic
goals ahead of the long-term health of the planet. Similar issues
affect the Kyoto Agreement. It seems we're all in this together, this
destruction of species. This is an international effort.

Do we not think we need a healthy planet? Do we think that the
animals dying all around us means nothing? That this wholesale
destruction won't affect us? Where are the birds, most common and
vivid form of wildlife? Intensive agriculture destroys hedges, woods,
and wetlands that birds need for feeding and nesting; toxic chemicals
poison the pests and the seed-bearing wild plants they need for food.
Logging destroys whole regions of habitat; industry pollutes air
around the globe. The birds can't build nests, they can't find food,
they can't feed their young. They're dying off. Migrating birds used
to move in flocks of thousands. Now they straggle past in groups of
20 or 30. Remember the passenger pigeons? Once they darkened the
entire sky, across the prairies; we wiped them out in a few decades.
We're watching life being extinguished all around us.

The use of fossil fuels, and the resulting climate change, is
wreaking havoc everywhere. Monster storms, temperature spikes, and
erratic, destructive weather all take their toll on agriculture,
construction, transportation, and communication, as well as wildlife.
Do we still think we don't belong to the affected population? What if
the group we're destroying turns out to include our own? Don't we
remember the canary in the coal mine? The canaries are dropping like
flies. Why are we standing here, holding the cage?

Whom will we believe, if not these scientists -- experts in the field
-- with their gruesome and alarmist facts? How long will we keep
denying the evidence? What will we say to our children, and their
children, when they learn about the beautiful, rich, and varied life
on earth that we were privileged to know? The fields of rippling
grasses, the graceful trees, the strange and marvelous wild creatures
-- how will we explain that we stood by and watched all this vanish?
What kind of courage do we need, to respond to what's happening?

And this time, there's no one else to blame. It's us.

Roxana Robinson is a novelist, most recently of ''A Perfect Stranger."


www.boston.com/news/globe...d/articles/
2006/01/01/watching_as_the_world_vanishes/

Life is Good, Strange but Good

It's interesting. I am generally what one might refer to as a bit of a scrooge when it comes to the holidays. I often get depressed around this time of year what with all of the rampant consumerism, henious Christmas carols, forced gaity, and familial pressures. I haven't been home for Christmas in over ten years because my general strategy is just to try to pretend that December 25th is a day like any other, watch a movie, eat take-out, and not answer my phone.

Why I have such an aversion to the holidays is an old and tender subject perhaps a bit too much for the blog, but here is the interesting thing. This year, I actually feel kinda happy. I mean, I'm not depressed. I'm excited about my life. I'm doing exactly what I want to do and it is more or less working out for me.

But this sense of peace isn't really about anything external. Sure the new successes of my dance career don't hurt. I just returned today from a fantastic trip to Los Angeles where I performed along side of dancers who were previously only known to me by there extensive video lines and books and big huge shows. I was so honored to be welcomed by these dancers who encouraged me and were genuinely supportive and welcoming. Special love and thanks to Anaheed, Dolphina, Margurite, the sassy and sexy Rachel Soto, and above all to belly dance royalty Princess Farhana, my new friend and mentor. I also had the opportunity to hang out with my friend MC Rai and hear his new CD, which blew my mind. I went out salsa dancing and met my ideal salsa partner (adorable Salvadoreno boy with a leopard-spotted mohawk who dances in wrestling shoes and leaps in and out of the rhythm like a dolphin). Perhaps best of all I got to spend a great deal of time with my dear friend Kiersten who is one of my sisters on the path (doing the Work, must do the Work) and who is always a source of inspiration for me. Now I am in rehearsals with my dancers putting together our first ensemble piece, getting ready to start teaching three new classes, going back to LA to teach a workshop and perform belly dance burlesque (hee hee), starting a regular spot at Kan Zaman, freelancing for Evolver magazine (coming soon to a newstand near you), and preparing a workshop on movement and healing in dance. Does it get any better than this??? I LOVE my life!

But seriously folks, all of this yummy goodness is just the sauce. Or rather, it is the byproduct of the real change that is happening inside of me. Somehow, slowly but surely, I have come to understand who I am and accept it. So simple and obvious, but not at all an easy thing to do. Somehow this one accomplishment of self-love makes everything else manageable. There are still parts of my life that hold pain and sadness and loss, but I still feel good. I feel hopeful and confident and ready to leap into 2006.

So this Christmas, I will not sit around and be a pooper. I will drink eggnog (one of the things I really like about this time of year) with brandy, eat too much, and spend time with my wonderful beatiful friends who help to keep me steady and remind me of all of the above ideas when I get a tad overwhelmed. I am looking forward to it.

Thank you for tree help!

Dear Everyone,

So many people wrote and gave me suggestions on gorgeous trees that I can't even possibly write back to all of you so I'm just going to say thank you on my blog.

I have located a number of dignified, muscular, photogenic trees and I'm hoping that all of you will get to see results of the photo shoot around the end of January.

I'm so happy to know that everyone seems to have a favorite tree out there in the world that means so much to them.

Besos

Damnit why make everything so difficult!!!!

What is WRONG with us????

Why are we so hell-bent on self-destruction?

How did we get to this point that we so loath our bodies and the earth that carries us that we are ready to send the whole thing into the pit?

Sigh.

Sometimes I just get pissed off. I try to be positive as much as I can, but if I am going to be honest then I have to also get angry. Angry and scared.

I'm angry at all of us and our stubborn, myopic, childish desire to hide behind our childish walls and poke each other with our toy spears even when we have grown, as individuals and as a species. We continue with this primitive behavior even now that the walls have become nation-states and the spears have become atom bombs and biological warfare. We are fighting the monsters under the bed with genetic engineering and nanotechnology; we are babies with guns.

Terence McKenna says that the universe is becoming increasingly complex, and that speed of complexification (my word, not his!) is ramping up like crazy as we zoom into the modern era. And it seems that we have become too complex for our fragile brains to keep up.

Jung (I am becoming such a fan of this guy) said that the world hangs by a fragile thread, and that thread is the human psyche. We now have the technological power to completely destroy millenea of evolution, and we busily engaged in doing just that. Scientists who are not on the payroll of the Bush administration generally agree that half of all forms of life on earth, all forms, will be extinct in the next 50-100 years. And that is the optimistic estimate. Everyone from the elders of the Western Tribes to the Mayans to the environmental activists to the Christian fundamentalist rapture nutcases is counting down to the end of days, whatever form that may take. And we are whipping on the dark horse of the apocalypse.

But in the beautiful words of Dylan Tomas "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

I refuse to believe that our psyches are without redemption.

There is so much here to cherish. Why do we not see it? I know that life is scary and painful at times and I too have been sorely tempted to sink into the bombed-out wasteland of postmodernity. But damnit, wake up!!!

What dark corners of this world are so profoundly unpleasant that they are worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Is it our true fragility that scares us so, until we have to ride full speed over the cliff just to see if we can live through it? I think so. Like a brash youth we are set to prove our omnipotence by yanking repeatedly on the tiger's tail. We cling to our illusions of immortality and power to avoid the dark truth--that we are the mayflies of the universe, our lifetimes hardly registering in this cosmic unfolding.

What is the price we pay for keeping this white-knuckled grip? We have completely lost track of all things that make life worth living--Plato's triad of goodness, truth, and beauty. We have spiraled out into a meaningless world of isolation, subjectivity, and glitz because you can't only block out the bad parts of life. If you block out fear, you must also block out love. If you block out pain, you must also block out joy. All that's left is the shallow end of the pool where we splash around in unfulfilled frustration.

The concept of yin and yang, dark and light, masculine and feminine, we need to stop glorifying the one and hiding away the other. And I'm not talking about feminist theory or some nostalgic longing for a mythic matriarchy or anything even remotely along those lines. I'm talking about something much deeper--accepting the fear and pain and chaos that is inherent in our mortal, incarnate existence. Acknowledging that we are someday going to die and everything that happens to us before then is, to a large extent, out of our control.

Oh, I can already feel the feathers ruffling with that last statement, but it is true. And though confronting it is ultimately terrifying and accepting it is nearly herculean in its difficulty, the attempt alone is liberating beyond any past concept of freedom. If you give up trying to control things that you can't control, it gives you the space to affect things that you can. If you acknowledge your fear it frees you up to move past it and feel other things. It gives you permission to be what you are: human.

Yikes, it got late. Here I am philosophizing all night again. Sometimes the snake just needs a hole to crawl out of so it can stop coiling around my brain.

One Pill Makes You Smaller

Guilt

One Pill Makes You Larger: Compassion.

Perhaps I am simplifying a bit, but roll with me on this one for a moment.I had an epiphonous experience of divine revalation a few weeks ago and this is one of the clearest messages that came through to me.

Guilt is a pernicious disease that plagues our society, a disease that has been purposefully inflicted apon us by church and state to make us smaller, more docile, easier to control. We feel guilty about everything from our anger to our desire.

Guilt does have a purpose, it makes you smaller when you have grown too big for your own good and stomped around doing damage to others. But needless guilt, guilt for being who you are and not who others think you should be or even how YOU think you should be, that makes you smaller than you are. You can't be whole, you can't be balanced. Our guilt makes us hunched and withered, turns us in on ourselves. When we are guilty we cannot love ourselves, much less someone else.

I had a moment that all guilt was lifted from me, all feelings of shame, all of the "shoulds" and "had better hads" and "because I wasn't good enoughs" were simply gone. In that moment I was completely me in all of my power and beauty and ugliness and fear and love and it was GREAT! I was able to love myself fully and to have compassion for all those parts of myself that I usually feel badly about.

And, amazingly enough, the ability to accept myself with compassion meant that I could look around at all the people in the world and feel compassion for them. Yes, all of them, even the Bush family. I could see us all as we are, and see the limitations that we impose on our own selves, and understand the difficulties and rewards of eliminating those limitations.

The moment I felt all these things was like emerging from the underworld into the sun for the first time in many, many years. I felt one part of my life ending, as a new part begins and I embark on a new journey. I know that the underworld is always part of me and I know I will have to go back, but this journey is over and I have healed the guilt and shame that has kept me from being a whole person.

I want so very, very much to share with all of you what this felt like and how much it has helped me in my life already. Even though it was only a short while that I was in it, and we cannot stay curled in the palm of the divine forever, having been through it I am completely changed, on a cellular level, in ways that I am still discovering.

I understand that it is my life's goal to try to convey the things that were given to me in that moment to as many people as possible. I don't really know how, but I guess that this little blog post that feels garbled and hippie is a dart into the darkness.

We have to find our way home to each other. To the world that belongs to us as we belong to it. No matter how dark the darkness there is joy in the most unexpected corners and we are absolutely obligated to be joyfull in this life. No one is supposed to be miserable. No one is supposed to suffer. Martyrdom is not helpful. As misery loves company, joy creates joy.

Okay, enough for now. Thank you all my friends for your support in this process. I love you.

My Sordid Youth

I know that my blog entries are usually really deep and meaningful, but I just HAD to share this with the world. Out of the blue I received an email with this photo attached today. That's me with my three best friends when I was 13! One of them found my website and emailed me this. I laughed so hard I think I pulled a muscle. Check out the excessive Guns N Roses paraphenelia! And the black lipstick! And the surly little pouts on all our faces! Can you just die!?!?!

On a slightly deeper note, do you ever wonder what the younger you would think of the you that you are today?

I wonder if that cheeky little cupcake were to step out of that picture and talk to me, what would she have to say about my life now? I imagine her wandering around the house, poking through my belongings, finding her favorite leather biker jacket still hanging in the closet. She would certainly be dismayed at my music collection. A mere smattering of old heavy metal albums dotted in between rows and rows of rumba, bollywood beats, gypsy violin, and batucada.

She would absolutly love my Melodia pants, hate my salsa queen dresses, and try on my Luichini boots. She would growl at my favorite furry pink purse, and be horrified by my shelves of books on philosophy and spirituality, wondering where the Anne Rice novels got to.

The truth is, for the most part I think we would get along really well. She may be disappointed that I don't have two PhDs and have yet to publish my own Nobel Prize winning novel, but being a fire eating belly dancer may make up for all that. I think that she would understand why I chose to become an artist instead of the high-powered academic she saw herself becoming. She was an artist too, that young girl I used to be, pouring out her unhappiness in surreal charcoal drawings that my mother called "disturbing," and choreographing avant garde dances to speed metal.

I wish I could talk to her, tell her to hang in there and that freshman year of high school is a low point for most intelligent, gifted people. I wish I could tell her to beleive in herself more, not take so much crap, and appreciate what she has. I wish I could give her the love and appreciation she craved, and urge her to demand it from others, reassure her that she deserves it, give her a hug and remind her that life is hard but life is good, and there is sweetness hidden in the most unexpected places if you just keep your eyes open and look for it.

Of course, I can't go back in time. That girls is frozen in a picture taken 17 years ago (gulp). And yet, she is still here. I realize as I write this that all the things I needed to hear when I was 13, I still need to hear now. Only now I can tell myself those things, tell them to the 13 year old who still lives inside of me, insecure and surly but full of energy and dreams. Maybe that means that I am really a grown-up now (about time I suppose, given that I turn 31 next week) because I am finally able to be the parent I wished I had had.

Damnit, I think I might actually be a grown-up. I was so sure I would stay young forever!

Surrender

Over a year ago I was going through some tough transitions and a woman who I barely knew told me this story to help me.

She told me how she had moved to the US from Colombia with big dreams of making big money and success. She worked extremely hard, studied, and landed herself an excellent job that enabled her to ascend the corporate ladder like Jack up the beanstock, into the life she had dreamed of. She worked constantly, and the more she worked and tried to build her dream life, the more unhappy she became.

Then late one night she was returning home from work and it began to pour rain. She kept on speeding, thinking about all the things she had to do, until suddenly the car hit something on the freeway (found out later it was a tire) and skidded completely out of control. She was going over 70 mph and all of a sudden the entire world was spinning, the streetlights running crazy circles across the windshield, the car filling with the sound and stench of skidding tires.

Terrified, she gripped the stearing wheel, trying to regain control of the car, but it continued to spin down the freeway towards the cement girders that warned of a deep gully beside the road. She fought the wheel, fought the spin, certain that she was going to crash through the cement and fall to her death.

Then the moment of transformation occured. She remembers looking at her hands on the wheel, locked in a white-knucle grip against the momentum of the car. She realized that she was not in control. No action of hers was going to affect the trajectory of the car. And at the same time she know that everything would be alright, whatever happened. So she took her hands off the wheel and leaned back.

And the car stopped. It came to a stop sitting neatly on the meridian, as if she had just pulled over of her own accord.

The next day she quit her job, and is now happily rennovating old houses with her brother. In that moment she realized that for all of our best efforts, so many of the things that feel vitally important to us are out of our control. All the world's functions, from the rain and the tires on the road to the vagaries of global economics to the thoughts and actions of those we love to the mysterious inevitability of life and death, all of it is moving to its own rhythm. When we try to steer it off its natural course, we not only waste our best efforts on rolling bolders up hills, we can disrupt the balance of our lives and the lives around us.

In the end, we may get what we thought we wanted, but it will not make us happy.

When I was growing up I was convinced that faith was only for bible-thumping televangelists and my schitsophrenic neighbor. I thought that surrendering control meant being a victim, or not caring about anything.

But more and more now, as an adult, I find myself facing situations that I cannot affect by force of will. I may desire a certain outcome with all my heart, but if I try to steer the world around me in the direction I want, I just end up hurting myself and the people around me. I am learning that faith is essential to living a life of peace; without it we will just be constantly fighting everything around us.

So now when I am faced with a situation that feels unteneble, when I am compelled to kick and scream and push and cry, I try to just let go of the steering wheel and see what happens. It requires faith, and patience, neither of which come naturally to most of us. It is much more difficult than fighting, because when we fight we can drown our fears in actions, and maintain the illusion of our own power. It is so much harder to just accept that that which we desire may never come to pass, and if it doesn't then it's because it wasn't the right thing at the right time.

But there is joy in that realization, and a deep peace. And it frees up your energy to focus on the one thing that you can affect, which is yourself.

At least this is what I am working on, cultivating, when I wake up in the morning and life doesn't offer me what I think I want.

I still hate insomnia

I'm lying here with the most precious little baby sleeping on my chest. She is so sound asleep, her mouth open, drooling lightly on my pyjamas, little snuffly noises eminating from her nose.

Yes, baby Shasta is visiting me again. Yeah! She had her surgery today and it all went smoothly. They removed a congenital cataract from her eye and though she is only one month old, she is recovering quickly. She is also sporting a swashbuckling eyepatch, thus earning herself the name Pirate Princess.

I have spent very little time around babies in my life, being as I don't have one, and I've always been a little freaked out by them. They are fragile, all they do is eat poop and sleep, and they aren't very good conversationalists. Or so I thought. Perhaps it is testimony to my growing maturity, perhaps it's because I've reached the advanced age of 30, perhaps this is just one special baby, but I'm finding that spending time with her is actually a deeply spiritual experience. Babies, in many ways, are far wiser that we worldly old people.

Some worldly old person once said that we are born knowing everything, then we forget it, and spend the rest of our lives trying to remember.

Being with Shasta reminds me of things that I forgot a long, long time ago. Some kind of primal love and need and trust that this scary world beats out of us. Sometimes at a very young age.

I guess that our goal is to seek out that innocence in the midst of fear and pain, to trust despite betrayal, to love despite heartbreak. I'm not much of a Christian, or really any kind of Christian, but perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said to turn the other cheek. That we are supposed to offer up our hearts fearlessly even in the face of danger, knowing that we could be slaughtered.

It goes against everything that our society teaches us about being tough, protecting ourselves, and trusting no one. But what power there is in loving through the pain and fear and anger. In some strange way it actually makes you invincible, because you are choosing to love no matter what happens, and you hold that love no matter what anyone else does. Ghandi, King, Mandela, Mother Teresa... they were masters of this. I am definitely not a master.

But imagine if we all learned this lesson from babies who sleep and drool while we lie awake, staring at the ceiling and tossing and turning as we hurt and worry and stew in our own juices.

It doesn't matter what anyone else does. It only matters what you do. You are responsible for yourself and no one else. No one can hurt you if you understand this. The secret to real power lies in giving up control completely knowing that no matter what happens, you are going to be just fine.

Starting to get sleepy now. Why is blogging so therapeutic anyway?