today was wonderful!

i got to have lunch with my mommy!!! so wonderful.
i got new glasses and contacts! got the tickets! got my tax return!

i finished a good draft of my inkwell article, and had a super fun time in the doing it! (so much support from everyone!)

i got to hang out with carolyn! and talk! and laugh! and be ridiculous! (this is all maybe overkill on the exclamation points, but i am excited about it all so !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

DANCE PARTY. of epicness (to the degree that a dance party can be epic with two people in the kitchen with the lights on... but still)

oh. and 8 consecutive hours of sleep probably contributed to my good mood.
just sent in my article + author's note. meeting with sandy on friday!

now... ott, incense, winding down. trying to get use to wearing glasses again. its been almost a year since i've been able to see without wearing contacts. whoa dude whoa.

okie doke. its about 1. if i go now i will get another solid 8 hours in tonight.

what if the identity that i have had over the past 7 years was one life. 14-21. depression. high school. society. environmentalism. and last year was my shedding of that skin, and this year is the revealing of my next identity. and the next stage requires me to leave some of that other stuff behind?

i was talking with someone in the past year about how our cells are fully regenerated after 7 years, and our body is completely new. and though many of them are expressed similarly in a further/different manifestation. morphogenesis.

i'm just listening to this conversation that trevor is having with a tutee in the writing center. its about a book. it reminds me a lot of what i have been reading in 2012, and talking to Cameron about.
"Hero with A Thousand Faces"
shedding values you hold tightly. breaking down identity. rebuilding the self.
initiation --> visual markers of change
--> all about hardship and pain

"And after the storm,
I run and run as the rains come
And I look up, I look up,
on my knees and out of luck,
I look up.

Night has always pushed up day
You must know life to see decay
But I won't rot, I won't rot
Not this mind and not this heart,
I won't rot.

And I took you by the hand
And we stood tall,
And remembered our own land,
What we lived for.

And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

And now I cling to what I knew
I saw exactly what was true
But oh no more.
That's why I hold,
That's why I hold with all I have.
That's why I hold.

I will die alone and be left there.
Well I guess I'll just go home,
Oh God knows where.
Because death is just so full and mine so small.
Well I'm scared of what's behind and what's before."


this is just one, but i feel them all right now.

my neighbors are yelling at each other.
jesse got mad at me today.
last night was full of anger between us.

and i just feel so broken by it all.

I am sorry.

I love...

I want love to be stronger.

I want love to be enough...

finally making headway on this article! it will be sent in two or three days late, but luckily my co-workers are incredible and are letting me be loose about the dates. I have til Thursday to get a solid draft, and i am actually somewhere along the right road, and approaching that goal. i hope to have a session on it tonight with Andrew after some more writing. then i will keep tweaking it with the time i have. Elissa suggested I meet with Sandy... that would be wonderful if I could catch her soon.

i'm still not convinced it is the BEST idea for me to keep pushing it forward. i thought i'd drop it when i missed two deadlines. and there are so many other projects going on, and then craziness in the personal life. but... i want this. even though i sent in my poem as an alternative possibility for publication (which Cam helped me realize is closer to my personal experience), i do have something else to say with this article, and i am slowly but surely discovering/developing my way to say it.

i am afraid of losing momentum. i am afraid of getting burnt out. but i tried to drop it, and i cant yet.

"....not an escape from reality, but a magnifying glass held up to it"
Jay Michaelson

"It's important that we learn to see the good intentions in each other, always."

really glad I'm not going to spend the next three days in agonizing pain in a hospital bed in Peru (knock on wood).

"All through my childhood, I felt certain that something extraordinary--absolutely amazing and out of the ordinary--was going to happen to me. The world seemed bursting with a secret that nobody would divulge, and someday this tremendous mystery would be revealed. Simply because they were older, I assumed that all adults had passed through this portal into the miraculous essence of existence, although they never spoke about it. As I approached adolescence, I begun to suspect that my deepest hopes were going to be unfulfilled. By the time I went to college, I had realized, to my horror, that "maturity" meant accepting constraints and being bound to a limited career path, rather than blossoming into a deeper dimension of possibility and wonder. This was a painful shock.
I now suspect what I felt is a nearly universal disappointment for young people in our world; I was yearning for initiation into a culture that had abandoned it....
Personally, my youthful sense of being cheated of some deeper potential melted away once I discovered shamanic practices as an adult, and explored visionary states of consciousness in traditional ceremonies... Through this work I restored the primordial connection to the sacred that I had lost after my childhood, as well as my original sense of wonder, and this was tremendously healing and empowering. Through my own shamanic journeys, I realized that modern culture was facing an initiatory crisis on a global scale. We have created a planet of "kidults," perpetual adolescents trapped by material desires, with no access to higher realms and little sense of purpose or moral responsibility...
As Westerners, each of us has to follow a personal path to recover the numinous for ourselves, shedding our self-limiting beliefs and narcissistic complexes in the process."
-Daniel Pinchbeck, "Toward 2010: Perspectives on the Next Age"


"from my point of view the only breakdown was the delusion that I was in control of my life. All the walls -- of identity, ambition, and security, of any illusion that I knew who I was, or where I was, or that I had any clue at all what was happening in life -- all of this collapsed like an obsolete civilization and permitted eternity to course through me as never before. Insofar as apocalypse derives from the Greek apokalyptein, meaning "to unveil," this was some version of my personal apocalypse, and since apocalypse is the etymological antonym of hell, which derives from the Latin helan, meaning "to veil," the only thing to mourn was the liberation from my own illusions." -Tony V, Reality Sandwich website

hope. and

"May your days dare delight with your dreams"

and talking with an old friend about new old ideas.

Seattle
this weekend.
I could go if I left after Procession/alley business on Saturday. Then I could visit my family on Sunday.
This is all becoming very tempting... besides the fact that I need to buckle down on my article and the other work that has managed to pile up despite my best efforts. I just REALLY miss my family, and would LOVE to see those cave men too.

Heidi posted this cool song on facebook by an artist from Sweden. I went to check out the singers website and found these lyrics which may or may not be the translation from the song, but are really beautiful anyway.

"By the embers it is peaceful
The air is mellow
Resting close to you
Northern lights dance under high heavens
with sundry forms of fires
The full moon keeps watch of weak wanderers
so the coldness of winter won't trick us
beyond the border of eternity

Surround my world
with radiance and warmth
red beauty
Let me be in the center of life
where it's boiling, burning hot
Listening to the sound of life
where does it come from
Following its path, in pursuit
brings me close to your colours and warmth
which shimmer, shine and seduce me"

Anyway, check out the song Irene by Sofia Jannok on youtube or on her website http://www.sofiajannok.com under the "music" tab.

check out the blog for our Alley Revitalization Project at olyalley.blogspot.com <----CLICK

now

my own.

"I feel that I was meant for something more,
My curse, this awful power to unmake..."

the mighty oak tree was once a nut like me"

to defy, challenge, or dare.

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you will help them become what they are capable of becoming."

"Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul."

looking at where i want to go instead of doing what will take me there...

don't i have any way to make fire?

this

"it was a musical thing and you were suppose to sing or dance while the music was being played."

"man always kills the thing he loves" -Aldo Leopold

"I want to be strong enough,
To not let my fears decide my fate
Surrounded by jingoists;
I don't want any part of this

I want to be strong enough,
To not let my terror turn to hate
Surrounded by jingoists;
I don't want any part of this"

__________________________________

The flame deluge
__________________________________

Tell me, are you free
in word or thought or deed
tell me, are you free

"You don't change things by solving problems, you solve problems by changing." -Paul Hawkin

and i just
keep
letting myself
take
the easy way.
i'm so afraid right now
of myself
and everything

Today was bound to be full.

A year ago tonight I was in Miami with Ben and we were sleeping on an airport floor; the first night of my journey. Today seems to be the marker for so many beginnings and endings since last year, and I have been anticipating making it here for a while. I didn't realize today would be so intense though.


Two people from my graduating class died this week. Nick Harmon and Jacob Lund. There was another person from the valley too. What else is there to say about it? Nick had been a good friend of mine, though many years back it was. Jacob and I didn't get along at all. I drummed in band with both of them. One of them died by accident. The other by choice.
So strange, the difference.


I ran into Shane after the Writing Center meeting and we ended up having lunch and a powerful conversation together. It feels as though we are old friends, and yet we have spent such sparse, short time together in the past. I was surprised how easily and openly I could talk with him. But the interaction fueled me to do some much-needed writing and thinking. So much writing happened. "So much" being relative to the little snippets of thought I periodically record and it call writing. No. I actually felt like I was writing today. (But I just looked at it, and its like a page, front and back. Sheesh... what's happened to me? ...Granted, I was interupted by having to go to a meeting, but fuckin' still... I wish I wrote more. I wish I had the time and inspiration to just sit and write more often).


Oh, after Shane left, I was pleased to also see Ben walking by. I thought he'd left for Turkey already. I called him over and he sat down to talk for a few. Was glad to see him today.


My run was good. It had been the first time I've made the effort to go on a decent run since I left last April. I needed it though. I was bursting. I've been craving that release for so long, but put it off because of my ankles, among other excuses. Halfway on my way to DA PEOPLE's house my right ankle started throbbing and I told it "too bad" and kept going. I needed to run. Was just hitting my stride when I got to the house but decided not to keep going. Wanted to spend time with Ari (who's visiting) since I decided not to go to the movie with them. It got bad reviews and seemed far too violent for my current state.


Eric drove me home though, and I sat and tried to work on my Inkwell article. Ended up writing something completely different than my intended article. It's for Inkwell, and I may do it in stead of or in addition to my Dialogue article.


Yea, lot of built up energy today. Lot of expression.

op, time to go

HOW I FEEL RIGHT NOW <----- click

and...

fuck it,
I'm going on a run