Piano Keys

Fuel the fire inside

Like a flea ridden air mattress

Nah- make them bed bugs

Bed bugs I say

Are you ok?

What is wrong with this poem?

Where are you going

1, 3, 5, 7

get your head in the game

wrap your brain around it

make it understood

make it make sense

nay – feel the shared experience

the connection

side to side

lets slip in slide

down this candyland, shoots and ladders

reel reel reel them in

one by one

hear they come

the gunshot sounds of angel trumpets blaring and white light shooting out of the end of your horn

horn

horn

think what you will

but I am not a pervert

perverted by your will

will skill fill bill

plague

identities

in the night

like the cats meow who has not come out of her shell for days upon days

plays

see some plays

foreay

where are you going

where are you roaming

up up up up

and to where will you be once you are up

whole and free

Whole and Free

Whole and Free dammit that is where this light longs to be

Feel the energy

Whole and free

We must always be

Whole and free

A personal melody

A personal melody

Will you play for me

Better yet – will you play with me

And we will make magic music that sings our songs of liberation, possibility, holy shit, intense, connections

With I could remember more

This lion mane is long

This fire will keep growing

Growing, growing, and growing

And one day

And not even one day

NOW

NOW

A confident force of creative resurgency will splatter paint on the walls of your Andy Warhol, Jackson Polluck dreams

And you will cry no more

Heart pains

Heart pains

Heart pains

I long for you

Whole I must be

Whole we are all

One

One

Unity

Celebrational feast where only love not rescue or security enter the space

Pause break pause

Finding community challenges

Energy

Flow

Flow

One

Son

Sons and daughters

Mothers and sisters

Lovers and belovedes

Fathers and daughters

Faughters and sons

Namaste

Namaste

Sing it loud

Sing it proud

play those drums in unison

lalalalalala

lalalalalla

Focus on Your Healing

Heal

Whole

Healer

Healed

Wounded

Wound

Sound

Crash

Clamor

Clang

Bang

Choo-Choo train

Heal heal heal

Am I a dog in training?

Need this process be ever waning?

Draining

It is to always desire that which is yet reached

My fortune I seek in glass houses of pink-ribboned saffron churches blistered nights with snow capped fountains churches, merches, splurches, searches

Everythings coming up roses

Miss moses regrets she’s unable to lunch today

Come out and play

Play play play

Life is but a dance of snow joy frosted cupcakes in ice cream cones

Serious like a revolutionary ballet

I want to play

Serious serious

Lives touched by revolutions peaceful powerful rap induced furies of frustrations and anger and wanting something more more more

More more am I only looking to score

Score a line of crack from your sister down the block

I think I met her yesterday

With her head in a bag full of milk cartons

Who are you to judge what I have to say

Let us not become so boring and controlling that we lose the splendor of our vices

I will take mine on the rocks or over a cup of joe schmo hither me timbers and shivers of sunlight draped maidens in corsets with bosoms overflowing so nice to look at

The softness at the top where the tissue bulges out over the clothesline

Is a place I like to call home

So soft and fluffy

Land land land

To heal

Or to Heel

The latest from the journey

I'm back. Hello blog. How have you been? Nice to see you. Right where I left you. Thanks for waiting for me.

Currently I am deep in the quest of contemplation. As I began to write this sentence the word understanding came up, yet I like the word contemplation because that is all we really can do. To think that I can actually understand something of this complex universe is probably a bit perverse. But I can contemplate as long as I am here. That's probably only the I that is the ego that will contemplate. Okay that's about enough of my ranting, I can tell that I haven't written anything in awhile because my words are not flowing as freely as with practice. Practice always brings a feeling of ease.

One of the books that I was drawn to at the library is called "Holistic Anatomy" by Pip Waller and so far I am really enjoying the way that she expresses connection and the system we inhabit and call the body. I want to share a quote from the book about how we are all connected in essence because we are all made of organism's that formed with a reliance upon other organisms for survival.

She writes, "In the morning, an alarm clock made in a factory across the sea wakes me. I get up and dress in clothes made somewhere else. I eat food grown by people of many countries - packed, transported, and sold to me. Before I even leave the house in the morning I have been touched by thousands of other lives. Is is impossible for a human being to be separate. We are connected to each other and to all life, to the earth we live on, as intimately as our cells are part of us. Likewise, in creating this holistic anatomy, physiology, and pathology book, I am roaming through body, culture, society, Earth, politics, healing and spirituality."

I just want to note how interesting the last part is and why anatomy and what is going on in the body cannot be explained through only one lense. I am grateful for this art of contemplation and the mystery (and also perfection) of the human body.

I am a healer

I want to be able to call myself a healer. To say "I am a healer" and to know that my heart's work is as a facilitator of the release of pain. I am so thankful that I am finally on that path. I am also inspired with the knowledge that my journey is just beginning and that it need not ever end. In fact, perhaps my journey isn't just beginning and all of my life's experiences have been set up to bring me to where I am now. I don't know if I would be here without the "wounds" of my past. And I am certain I owe much to my deep spiritual experiences - beginning at an early age, shaken up during adolescence, abandoned while reconciling my desires, and found again from a rebirth of sorts.

I went to a reggae concert this weekend and I want to use one of their lyrics as a metaphor for how I feel deep inside: "There's a fire in my soul." Indeed, there is a fire there and I just want to keep adding wood to the fire so it can grow and remain nurtured. I also went to another show and heard another lyric that stuck with me. I can't remember the words exactly, but basically it was about "maybe the point to life is there is no point." Standing on it's own, this lyric sounds kind of harsh, but within the context of the song it resonated with me the idea that as human beings we are constantly trying to make sense of and understand the meaning of life. And maybe the meaning of life is much more simple than all of the religious philosophies hypotheses? We are all here to touch others and to be touched ourselves. So whatever the point to life is, let me live each moment in gratitude of the beauty of this world, the connecting of souls, the wonder of imperfection, the freedom to be me and to know that in simply being me I can and have made a difference in other's lives.

So there, I am already a healer in my own way. You are too, you just have to believe it. God, it just sounds so good.

The Gift of Life

"The Gift of Life" - Alan Jones (An episcopal priest speaks of his daily practice in the art of "Contemplative Dying)

In my tradition we try to practice dying every day so that we ay be fully alive. What I understand of my prayer life is to place myself on the threshold of death, to participate in my dying, so that I may live each day and each moment as a gift. What I cultivate is a grateful heart; each moment then becomes a new thing. My gratitude comes from the sheer gift of life itself.

Who you are cannot be contained in what is happening to you just now. You are part of a love story. You are desired and longed for. There are thousands of witnesses before you who would claim that you are held in the arms of love. And I'd like to leave you with the prayer that one of the Franciscans left with me -

O my God, you are here. O my God, I am here. O my God, we are here. And always, always, always you love us. Always, always you love us.

May the angels of God watch over you; may Mary and all the Saints pray for you, and all those whose lives you touch, this moment and forevermore. Amen

Ritual

Today I began a new ritual, at least I am hoping and praying that I will have the strength and self discipline to continue this practice every day so that I can one day call it a true ritual. The experience I had was profound.

A few years ago I worked as a hospice volunteer coordinator and I was given a two disk c.d. set called "Graceful Passages." The first c.d. has a bunch of soothing messages from various cultural traditions about death and dying set to beautiful, peaceful music. The second c.d. is just the music without the words on the first c.d. I lost track of this c.d. for a few years and then a couple of months ago I went home to my parent's house and when I was searching through my things, I happened upon it and brought it back to the city with me. I first listened to it again when I was suffering from a few days of insomnia and thought I would give the calming nature of the c.d. a try in my varied attempts at falling asleep. I wasn't entirely successful, but thank God that I listened to it that day because the messages touched my soul and I have been thinking for awhile of using the c.d.s in a daily practice of some sort.

Today, I took the idea out of my head and put it into practice. I just created a mini-altar in my bedroom that consists of two sculptures I bought from a medicine woman in Bolivia (one represents Pacha Mama and the other Pacha Papa -- mother earth and father earth), a wood sculpture of a Yogi, and a bunch of incense that I brought back with me from Vietnam. I lit a stick of incense which conveniently sits inside the Pacha Mama figure, turned on the music portion of the Graceful Passages c.d., got out a comfy pillow, knelt down on my pillow and began to pray. I started off thanking God and acknowledging the energy of the universe and of Pacha Mama and asked to be filled with the energy from both the heavens and the earth. The rest of what I said is fairly inconsequential, but once I let go of the words and simply sat with my thoughts and the smell of the incense wafting in the air, my thoughts turned towards the love and beauty that I have received from my family in Ecuador. These people are not my family through birth and while we don't communicate fluently in each other's languages, the love I felt from them when I was there filled my body and came pouring out of me as my eyes filled with tears which I let roll down my face one by one. I simply sat and felt filled with love and gratitude.

After I got up from the pillow, I played one of the messages from the c.d. I want to share that message here because I think it is incredibly beautiful. Actually, I changed my mind. I think I will give the message it's own post cause it is deserving of standing alone.

You're the inspiration

I had dinner this weekend with my friend from Mexico. He has lived here over ten years and has worked in restaurant kitchens all over the city; usually clocking around 80 hours of work a week. Most of his wages are sent home to care for his two children that he has not been able to see since he came to this country. Every time I hang out with him, I can't help but feel grateful for all of the things that I take for granted. He never feels sorry for himself, his view is that he is doing his duty for his family and he is happy to have money to send to his kids so that they can go to school. I just wanted to write this post as a tribute to him as an inspiration in my life.

His attitude of finding the positive in every situation was never better illustrated for me than one day at my old job when the front of house workers were all complaining about how we weren't being paid on time. He told me, "I worked at a restaurant before and I went to work and it was closed and I never got paid $1500 that they owed me." I thought that was ridiculous, "Are you kidding me?" I exclaimed. His response I will never forget, "Yea, but I got to work with a really great chef and learn a lot. So basically it was like I paid $1500 for school which is pretty cheap."