Gratitude: September 30, 2022

1. Grateful my Intuition gets things right, even when i don’t. 

I knew I wasn't ready, so I took preemptive measures to try to prevent a regrettable outcome, but my impatience, idealism, and shadow struck hard in tandem and sabotaged, yet again. 

How to unravel being mortified and frustrated beyond belief in the midst of grieving? 

MORE YOGA. MORE MEDITATION. MORE DRINKING. MORE NUMBING OUT.

I honestly don't know. Too much cancelling out the progress in that mix for my comfort.

Goodgod please help me do better at honoring and trusting myself. 

 #iamonlypartfoolio #PERSEVEREMYLOVE

2. Thank you for the willingness to face my fears and check my ego.

Humble pie still sucks ass. 

Perhaps it's an acquired taste?

#tolookwithoutfear #momaondeck

3. Cultivating Patience

Wait

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become interesting.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. The desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a little and listen:
music of hair,
music of pain,
music of looms weaving our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

Galway Kinnell

4. musicalMood

5. Give Yourself Some Flowers

And in the beginning,
God gave your body
a checklist:

Keep your heart
on beat
and your lungs
dancing with oxygen,
not passive to air.

Make sure
the path of your blood
slows down
for checkpoints
and avoids
bumps
in the road.

Train your nerves
to keep a balanced pace
and stay within
the lines
of steady flow.

Push forward
without putting
too much
pressure
on movement.

Remember
to return to water
when your spirit
and its frame
are in drought.

Treat your body
like a well-rounded planet
built for all seasons,

or pretend you are
an adaptable star:

Float in the black
and stay there
if you need to,

save some light
for yourself.

In other words,
rest like the sun does:

Schedule some time
to stay out of sight
when too many people
praise warm energy.

Keep in mind
all of these things

when depression
tells you
nothing is working.

Keep in mind
all of these things

when it tells you
there is no
invisible force
connecting us,

when your veins
are stopped by blood clots,

when your bones are dry,
and the water
is too quick to boil.

Keep in mind
all of these things
when it tells you
that the soul is like the body:

Made to be broken,
open to deterioration
and doubt. Yes,

keep in mind
all of these things
and remember:

Even when it
seems like
the clock isn’t ticking,

you were made perfectly
for this moment
in time.

Marcus Amaker

6. letting shit go

 

“In the face of an obstacle which it is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid. If I persist in beating my fist against a stone wall, my freedom exhausts itself in this useless gesture without succeeding in giving itself a content. It debases itself in a vain contingency. Yet, there is hardly a sadder virtue than resignation. It transforms into phantoms and contingent reveries projects which had at the beginning been set up as will and freedom. A young man has hoped for a happy or useful or glorious life. If the man he has become looks upon these miscarried attempts of his adolescence with disillusioned indifference, there they are, forever frozen in the dead past. When an effort fails, one declares bitterly that he has lost time and wasted his powers. The failure condemns that whole part of ourselves which we had engaged in the effort. It was to escape this dilemma that the Stoics preached indifference. We could indeed assert our freedom against all constraint if we agreed to renounce the particularity of our projects. If a door refuses to open, let us accept not opening it and there we are free. But by doing that, one manages only to save an abstract notion of freedom. It is emptied of all content and all truth. The power of man ceases to be limited because it is annulled. It is the particularity of the project which determines the limitation of the power, but it is also what gives the project its content and permits it to be set up. There are people who are filled with such horror at the idea of a defeat that they keep themselves from ever doing anything. But no one would dream of considering this gloomy passivity as the triumph of freedom” 

― Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

7. Finally shed some tears today. 

Brought this piece by Thich Nhat Hanh to mind.

Gratitude: September 29, 2022

1. Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

2.. Noguchi Garden & Juju

3. ARTIC

4. The New Yorker 

5. Song For Autumn

Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now
how comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of the air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees, especially those with
mossy hollows, are beginning to look for

the fires that will come—six, a dozen—to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
stiffens and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its long blue shadows. The wind wags
its many tails. And in the evening
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

Mary Oliver

6. I Release

 "I release what is no longer 

relevant to make space for the 

magic already on the way."

7. LOW HANGING FRUIT

Devastating reminder from a beloved friend what not to be in the realm of men.

Gratitude: 9/28/2022

1. Level 42 brought smiles this morning..

2. Read a Little Poetry. 

forgive me for the parts of you i’m yet to kiss
Ifeanyi Ogbo

i used to think there was only one part of 
the body meant for kisses, 
but on your body I discovered a thousand places.

you were born naked so I could clothe you with kisses, 
my lips were made to adorn every inch of 
the landscape of your skin.

kisses on places you’ll never want your mother 
to read about, 
sinful actions too holy for confession.

and when we finally merge into one 
my body memorizing every part of yours 
i discover there are ways to visit heaven without dying.

(It's gonna take a minute to get there, and I'm looking forward to when I do...)

3. Rumi

“What you seek is seeking you.” 

#howdohugsworkinthischema

4. ;)

5. The Killing Eve G

6. This one too

Gratitude 9/27/2022

 1. Progression

 

Gratitude: 9/26/2022

A Color of the Sky

BY TONY HOAGLAND

Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,

driving over the hills from work.

There are the dark parts on the road

                     when you pass through clumps of wood   

and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,   

but that doesn’t make the road an allegory.

I should call Marie and apologize

for being so boring at dinner last night,

but can I really promise not to be that way again?   

And anyway, I’d rather watch the trees, tossing   

in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.

Otherwise it’s spring, and everything looks frail;

the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves

are full of infant chlorophyll,   

the very tint of inexperience.

Last summer’s song is making a comeback on the radio,   

and on the highway overpass,

the only metaphysical vandal in America has written   

MEMORY LOVES TIME

in big black spraypaint letters,

which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.

Last night I dreamed of X again.

She’s like a stain on my subconscious sheets.   

Years ago she penetrated me

but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,   

I never got her out,

but now I’m glad.

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.   

What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.   

What I thought was an injustice

turned out to be a color of the sky.

Outside the youth center, between the liquor store   

and the police station,

a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;

overflowing with blossomfoam,   

like a sudsy mug of beer;

like a bride ripping off her clothes,

dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,

so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.   

It’s been doing that all week:

making beauty,

and throwing it away,

and making more.

Gratitude: September 25, 2022

Performance After the End of the World 

The only piece of advice I’ve got for anyone
is to shout your precious name into the rain
& wait for a response. I’ve never been good
at caring very much about language except
when it matters the most. Look up. The sky
has never seemed bigger. Days when clouds
are so low it’s like the air is a ghost & every
person is a ghost & in a way that’s almost
comforting, bodies aren’t really bodies at all.
When you meet a body or a boy in the street
so long after the light has gone & every star
seems amazing. The sky as an appendage
to a whole other life. Have you ever thought
of the galaxy as something so infinitely big
it’s almost irrelevant. Bodies that whisper
at night like something amazing. Like every
sad poet, I am obsessed with the sky at night.
As if we could ever forget the horned moon
of our ancestors. My language has been called
diaphanous & imprecise. But you can cut into it
with a knife. When I look at a magnificent
white museum with so many dead objects
I can only think of it collapsing into a vicious
ocean. Water will exist long after we do. When
my body exists, I can feel something warm
as water swell up in my chest as if remembering
some primordial dream. We whisper to each
other in the dark as bodies do & the lights
flicker on. This is how electricity works in cities
that haven’t heard voices in thousands of years.
Imagine this planet once the world has grown
through it again. I feel bloodless. I feel like
the dust that created the universe. The earth
as all sea, just like Ovid imagines it. The ocean
as one gorgeous excuse for drowning. I feel
like the water inside of me. I turn to the boy
or body in the street & beg Tell me something
real Tell me something real & from nowhere,
an answer I will take you to it & I will take you
to it & I will take you to it & I will take you to it—

Talin Tahajian 

#readalittlepoetry #goodgod

Gratitude: September 24, 2022

1. I Want the Certainty of Love in Another Language

You walked in like the light

From every sun that rose 
This year had exploded
Symmetrically from your eyes
I was uncertain—no I was certain 
I wanted your eyes to shoot 
Laser beams straight through me
It was certain we were soon to be
Bound by something mythological
It was certain that when you moved
The hair away from my mouth 
A locust in your eyes 
Moved farther afield
It was uncertain if one day
We would be saying 
I will not love you
The way I love you presently
It was certain we spoke
The danger language of deer
Moving only when moving 
Our velvet bodies in fear

Christie Ann Reynolds

2. This is my body frozen in fear at a photo shoot a few years ago.  I was like 30 pounds heavier here than I was in the 90's and it was torturous for me to attempt to shoot in this condition, but I didn't know how to communicate how uneasy I felt in front of the camera and the session was an utter wreck. (Massive apologies to the photographer/designer!) The memory helps me maintain perspective about the ways my body has changed and aged and managed to regenerate itself when I apply some effort. 

This is me some months after taking the previous pic. 
The trauma of being so uncomfortable in my body 
and so utterly paralyzed at that photo shoot 
propelled me to get in shape pretty quickly.


I need this visual to remind me
 I can grow strong again if I try.



3. Audible, Pema Chodron, and Don Miguel Ruiz
 

“If you do your best in the search for personal freedom, in the search for self-love, you will discover that it’s just a matter of time before you find what you are looking for. It’s not about daydreaming or sitting for hours dreaming in meditation. You have to stand up and be a human. You have to honor the man or woman that you are. Respect your body, enjoy your body, love your body, feed, clean, and heal your body. Exercise and do what makes your body feel good. This is a puja to your body, and that is a communion between you and God. You don’t need to worship idols of the Virgin Mary, the Christ, or the Buddha. You can if you want to; if it feels good, do it. Your own body is a manifestation of God, and if you honor your body everything will change for you. When you practice giving love to every part of your body, you plant seeds of love in your mind, and when they grow, you will love, honor, and respect your body immensely. Every action then becomes a ritual in which you are honoring God. After that, the next step is honoring God with every thought, every emotion, every belief, even what is “right” or “wrong.” Every thought becomes a communion with God, and you will live a dream without judgments, victimization, and free of the need to gossip and abuse yourself.” 

 
  

“The basic message of the lojong teachings is that if it's painful, you can learn to hold your seat and move closer to that pain. Reverse the usual pattern, which is to split, to escape. Go against the grain and hold your seat. Lojong introduces a different attitude toward unwanted stuff: if it's painful, you become willing not just to endure it but also to let it awaken your heart and soften you. You learn to embrace it.

If an experience is delightful or pleasant, we want to grab it and make it last. We're afraid that it will end. We're not inclined to share it. The lojong teachings encourage us, if we enjoy what we are experiencing, to think of other people and wish for them to feel that. Share the wealth. Be generous with your joy. Give away what you most want. Be generous with your insights and delights. Instead of fearing that they're going to slip away and holding on to them, share them.” 

4. PHAROAH SANDERS: The Creator Has a Master Plan 


5. Finally made reservations to try Kumiko. :)

https://barkumiko.com

Gratitude: September 23, 2022

1. Guidance.

HOW DO I STOP TAKING THINGS PERSONALLY?

The way we stop taking things personally is by practice. But we also need to understand why we don't have to take things personally. We need to understand that we are dreaming all the time. We are creating our own story, and we live in the story that we create. But everybody around us does exactly the same thing. They create their own story and they live in their story. 

Other people think that they know us just as we think that we know them. But this is not true.  We really don't know them, and they really don't know us.  When someone talks about you, they are talking about a secondary character in their story who represents you; they are talking about an image they create for you.

That image has nothing to do with you; it's just a projection of that person's story.  If you take it personally, if you agree and believe what others say, their story becomes part of your story.  If you don't take it personally, the opinions of others do not affect you, and this helps you avoid a lot of suffering and conflict.

Don Miguel Ruiz

2. Mindfulness & Metta

Listening to Sam Harris today. 

Loving Kindness Meditation is omm.

May I be filled with lovingkindness.

May I be safe from inner and outer dangers.

May I be well in body and mind.

May I be at ease and happy.

May you be filled with lovingkindness.

May you be safe from inner and outer dangers.

May you be well in body and mind.

May you be at ease and happy.

https://jackkornfield.com

https://vaddhana.dhamma.org

“I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.”
– Walt Whitman

3. Prayer

Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that. 

Galway Kinnell 

#ifyouonlyknew

4. Quote I’m Pondering via Tim Ferris 

“The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.”

​— George Bernard Shaw ​

Gratitude: 9/22/2022

1. CHOICES

Between stimulus and response there is a space. 

In that space is our power to choose our response. 

In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Viktor Frankl

2. GOALS

In a mature relationship, your partner won't expect you to be the same everyday. they understand that you have your own ups and downs, and your own process of growth. instead of complaining when you can't show up 100%, they ask, how are you feeling and how can I support you?"

Yung Pueblo

3. VISION

I Married You

I married you

for all the wrong reasons,

charmed by your 

dangerous family history,

by the innocent muscles, bulging

like hidden weapons 

under your shirt,

by your naive ties, the colors

of painted scraps of sunset.

I was charmed too

by your assumptions

about me: my serenity—

that mirror waiting to be cracked,

my flashy acrobatics with knives

in the kitchen.

How wrong we both were

about each other,

and how happy we have been.

Linda Pastan

4. SISTERHOOD

 

 

 

Gratitude: 9/21/2022

1. Woman Without Shame

Remedy for Social Overexposure

Seek a _____ tree and sit 

beneath immediately.

Remove from

ears and tongue,

words.

Fast from same.

Soak in a tub of seclusion.

Rinse face with wind. 

In extreme cases, douse

oneself with sky. Then, 

swab gently with clouds.

Dress in clean, pressed pajamas.

Preferably white.

Hold close to the heart, 

_____. Kiss and

be kissed by same.

Consume a cool glass of night.

Read poetry that inspires poetry.

Write until temperament 

returns to calm.

Place moonlight in a bowl. 

Sleep beside and

dream of white flowers.

Sandra Cisneros 

2. Memories of Magnolias

Grateful for the kind of love that inspires people to climb trees every day to pick beautiful flowers for their beloveds. #standards  

 

3. Radical Self-Honesty w/ Tara Brach

“My prayer to god every day: Remove the veils so I might see what is really happening here and not be intoxicated by my stories and my fears.”

Elizabeth Lesser

"We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed, and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time.

Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being, soft and unrepeatable."

Mark Nepo

Thank you for the willingness to get to the heart of the unseen, unfelt, resisted parts of my psyche. I want to want what I want and what I don't without struggling so damn much to accept myself as I authentically am.

No more ridiculous compromises. 

No more pretending I can be ok with things I'm not. 

No more people who make assumptions about me and my life without asking me questions about what actually happened in reality. 

#thankyouforshowingmetherearepeoplewhoarewillingtoaskquestionskitt

4. This Joyful Vibration

5. Just started The Bear and now I want Johnnie's. 

Thank God for good stories and easily fulfillable cravings. :)

"delicious is impressive."

6. This guy on his bornday. 

#bcloveisthickerthanblood

#bcmygratitudeislimitless

 7. I've been feeling disappointed in myself for behaving like a petulant dumbass fairly recently and have been struggling to forgive myself about it. I'm still uncoiling from everything that's happened with my parents and am still pretty hobbled by it all. Grateful for the willingness to acknowledge my mistakes and attempt to move forward. #imsorry 

Openness

Here we are, naked lovers,
beautiful to each other—and that's enough.
The leaves of our eyelids our only covers,
we're lying amidst deep night.

But they know about us, they know,
the four corners, and the chairs nearby us.
Discerning shadows also know,
and even the table keeps quiet.

Our teacups know full well
why the tea is getting cold.
And old Swift can surely tell
that his book's been put on hold.

Even the birds are in the know:
I saw them writing in the sky
brazenly and openly
the very name I call you by.

The trees? Could you explain to me
their unrelenting whispering?
The wind may know, you say to me,
but how is just a mystery.

A moth surprised us through the blinds,
its wings in fuzzy flutter.
Its silent path—see how it winds
in a stubborn holding pattern.

Maybe it sees where our eyes fail
with an insect's inborn sharpness.
I never sensed, nor could you tell
that our hearts were aglow in the darkness. 

Wislawa Szymborska

omm: Moonage Daydream

 

dunno how to process grief 

about anything right now

so I do yoga

and read a lot 

and excavate 

a poem or two

to lend a little order

to my jumbled heart.

When does this end?

I don't wanna process any more losing endeavors.

And yet I’ve taken to swallowing

his leftover supplements

bc I refuse to keep losing over

wasteful shit like this.

40 years of however many expired bottles of 300 dollar algae.

 

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Elizabeth Bishop

OPEN YOUR EYES ARI