A New Year, A New Life.....I'm Back!

I'm back in the saddle again....I'm ready to go! I feel the New Year around the corner and I'm ready to embrace 2010, the Year of the Tiger. For some reason, when I say that, the Rocky theme song, Eye of The Tiger, starts playing in the background of my mind. I think "Tiger" best defines how I feel this year will go. When I think of a Tiger, I think of strength, precision, focus, and beauty.

(Picture courtesy of Wikipedia)

I didn't feel like a tiger two weeks ago. I felt more like a mole or a bear in hibernation. I just wanted to bury myself in a hole in the ground and remain in it. It wasn't that I was depressed or sad or worried, it's just that I felt the need to let go of outside things and go inside. I needed to feel myself again. I needed to retreat.

I'm coming out of my cave now. On Dec. 9th I went to a 10-day silent meditation course in Onalaska, WA.


I had a room with hardly anything in it and I didn't speak for 10-days.





People may ask, "Well what did you do then?" I meditated...and that's it. No other activities except eating, sleeping, and bathing and responding to calls of nature. I do this at least once a year and I have a daily practice. I find it very beneficial. It's easy for me to get lost in the drama of life otherwise...to be tossed and turned by what is going on around me. A 10-day Vipassana course is not easy, it's rigorous. Many people have an idea that going to meditate for 10 days is like going to the spa....ummm...it couldn't be farther from that idea. It's serious work. It's surgery. The benefits I get from practicing meditation outweigh the benefits I've gotten from anything else in life, so I keep practicing. It's been almost 14 years. I feel clarity, peace of mind on a very deep level, balance, and understanding of the impermanent, changing nature of things.

Before I started meditation, I felt a lot of anger, worry, and self doubt. I don't feel these as much anymore and if they come to pay a visit, they don't stay long. The most amazing thing that has happened since I started meditating is that I find myself exactly where I need to be. There's no second guessing. Things fall into place very easily. I get lined up with the right people, places and things. I feel a connection to those I meet and feel the importance of those who come into my life, whether they be a reader of this blog, an author or fellow blogger on another blog, a yoga student, an ESL student, a neighbor, the postman, a stranger, whomever it may be, I feel the importance of why they are in my life. I'm not saying that things don't go wrong anymore, they do, but I don't seem to have a strong reaction like I did before. I'm able to observe the situation a bit more from a distance. I don't feel so attached.

Another thing I've felt like doing since I started meditating is share with others the things that I have learned or the peace and happiness I feel. There's a lot of negativity in the world these days. If I am not aware, I can follow people right into the hornet's nest of negativity. Realizing that I can't please everyone is a big lesson for me. Some people will not be happy with what I say or do, but if I feel o.k. with it, that's all that's important. My purpose in life, I believe, is to share, open up and extend myself to others. Also, there are times when I need to retreat, gain energy and take care of myself.


When I came back from meditation, I wasn't quite ready to come out of my shell, but Christmas was right around the corner and my family had big plans. We had planned to meet at my father's lake house in Washington. I went from the nothingness of total silence right into the craze of Christmas shopping at Northgate Shopping Center near my house in Seattle. Christmas shopping at peak season, if anything, will shake you from your shell. I was still moving slowly through the hordes of people and had to sit down often.

Christmas with my family was nice. It was nice to see everyone and spend time together. I'm not sure I really had time to get into the "Christmas Spirit". I was kind of thrown into it. When I was young, I celebrated Christmas because my family did. I don't think much has changed. The Christmas I see in America seems to be about spending time with family, buying a Christmas tree, buying presents, decorating the tree, making Christmas cookies, watching Christmas specials, listening to Christmas music, etc. Christmas is also about the birth of Christ, but that gets lost sometimes, I feel. I am not a member of any religion and I am member of ALL religions. Maybe it's good to celebrate everything. ..to celebrate life! I was happy to finally be celebrating at this peaceful lake setting with family.

I think I was more excited about the new year.... I already feel things are lining up. While I was meditating, my husband and his friend decided to start a yoga business together and they already found a building in Seattle that they are interested in. I feel that this will happen. The most amazing part of the "possible" yoga school is the atrium.


It has an indoor Eichler-style atrium. I've never seen an older building in Seattle with this feature. It's perfect for a yoga school. I feel like my husband and are I both working towards our goals and dreams simultaneously and they both support the same goal of sharing peace, happiness and joy with others. The creation of his yoga school will be a collaborative effort of friends who are painters, gardeners, designers, construction workers. I think it will be so interesting to see this process of so many people coming together to leave a part of themselves for others to enjoy. It's like one big art project. Stay tuned for more information as this project progresses. Happy New Year everyone!!

Finding our way Home on Christmas Day

My favourite memory of Christmas this year: my grand-mère's ridiculously happy smile when she realized I was there to play and sing for her.

Grand-mère is in a nursing home, this will be her third week. She's a tiny woman, all shriveled up and bent with shaky hands and a lost expression on her face. She wasn't always like this, but I always remember her as being 'old' and difficult. I always defined her as "grandmère" and other as opposed to "woman" and similar to myself.


With a little bit of thought, her history comes alive and allows me to glimpse into her life as woman. Her mother was extremely ill with asthma, forcing Evelyn to quit school before grade 8 to care for her. She also cared for her two cognitively impaired siblings until their deaths. Her mother passed away when Evelyn was 18 years old, and left her to be the matron of the household. 


She always said that she refused to marry Albert (grand-père) until he returned from the war. "What if he came back missing a leg??" He returned physically whole, they married and had four children. She didn't bargain for what being in the front lines in WWII could do to a man psychologically. She now had a family of four children, two cognitively impaired adults and an alcoholic husband who woke screaming at night.


Grand-mère was also bulimic. My mother remembers her throwing up after each meal. I remember grand-mère's snide comments made to my mother about her weight.


Although we all knew that she was absent minded, her world began crumbling apart three years ago when her youngest son died suddenly. The following Christmas grand-père passed away after a long illness in their home.


And now grand-mère is no longer the capable mother, grandmother or woman she was. She has forgotten that my uncle has died... time passes in snippets for her. New memories refuse to stick and pass as quickly as the electrochemical-signals created. She remembers her husband. She remembers that he's no longer with her and talks of the day she'll join him. Her husband whom she spent years fighting, the love long gone. He was her anchor, his mind keeping her grounded while her physical health kept him with us.


Christmas day, only hours after our happy caroling sing-song, we arrived to take her to Tante B.'s for supper. Mom had been preparing her for weeks. We found her in the lobby, sitting forlornly in a huge, overbearing rocking chair. Her hair all askew, her clothing worn and haphazard. Looking like a tiny lost child surrounded by other wrinkly, lost children. All waiting.


Gone was the happy Grand-mère of Christmas day, and here was a confused woman. Where were we going? It's Christmas day? "Qu'est-ce que vous faites icitte??"



She allowed my mom to guide her to her room in search for her Christmas outfit that was opened yesterday. We arrived to find everything in her room packed into plastic bags. As my mother questioned her, grand-mère sat on the bed and shrugged her shoulders. She had no memory of packing her things, of the gift, of our singing. 


With a sigh, my mother asked me to draw the curtain so she could dress her own mother. I couldn't help. I stood behind the curtain, certain that if I saw them I would fall apart.


We left with assurances that we were taking her 'breathing' medication with us (she had a panic attack upon our arrival) and the half hour drive on the highway consisted of a cycle of approximately 6 questions: "aimes-tu ta job? c'est-ty ta car à toi? travailles-tu à Halifax asteur? Sauves-tu des cents? Les enfants aimes-ty leur madame? Quand-ce qu'est les noces?"...



Although she sat amidst the hub bub of her family, her thoughts too slow to follow conversation around her, she announced that she was so very happy to have gone. A few repetitions of how we were missing one this year (Albert) and a few reminders as to where she lived now and my mother and I were on our way back home.


"I hope I'm never that lost"


(post dedicated to grandmère Evelyn, whom I love dearly)

The Art of Creation

I wanted to post something before I left Korea, but instead what I have done is to write this post for the future. I happened to go through an old blog of mine that I still post to on ocassion.

The words are mine, the images are the works of artist, Philip Brooker, who has been an artist who has poured his life into his work. He was born an artist. He will always be one.

At this reading, I will be in Paris, the day after Christmas, the journey will have been long. I will be going through the usual arrival processes and getting myself settled in with moist eyes because it took me so long to come back to a place I love.

I wrote about the valley of darkness we all go through. It was strange reading this post, because it almost seemed prophetic. It has been a very difficult year in the West. There has been much suffering, but do your best to touch as many lives as you can.
(C) Philip Brooker
In a World of Art...

It is out of the forces of great pressure from this earth great jewels are formed. It is through great oppression that heroes have arisen. It is through much struggle that voices have risen to create some of the most incredible views of canvas, of scultpture, of words, and of music.

Through the valleys of want some of the most incredible renderings have been produced to reveal more to humanity. Most aspire to greatness, yet fail to walk along a path, choosing comfort and safety of the commercial.

Is real art, the most private kind of work? Where there is no interpretation...no message, but the state of being? This is a time where through much adversity there will be the most incredible works to come. Remember, Paris had vacated the artists, and because of the war, many came to try to rebuild their success over here. Some succeeded, some starved, and some were forced to try to survive in concentration camps and their voices were never heard from again.

The mediums of light and dark, the sweet and the sour, and our current state of alarm are the seeds that can be turned into the muse we seek. For it is out of conflict we grow and it is revealed what really matters. In our state of humility we begin to see the larger truths...those universal ones that we have ignored...those whispers of our heart.

It is one thing to be paid for doing what you love to do. It is another to sacrifice to do what you love...and another to have the courage to live the life you want to have. The displaced community of creative genius who mime their way through other outposts, playing roles of other vocations who scream inside to fuse their words, images, and displays as long discarded dreams...

Of course, there are still dreamers. Waking up in the world of illusionary security being told what is of value in a society that struggles to find its way. What a time to be alive...for a new awakening is beginning. Where there are worlds of currency but no real wealth, except what we bestow upon each other with random acts of kindness without seeking reward.

Yes, this is the greatest resource available...more than credit lines that people have snorted like lines of economic cocaine. There is us...the creators of our own destinies.
12/17/2008

Happy Holidays

Christmas Morning


There was a sidewalk troubadour, twelve-string in hand, he said
"Come hear me warm up my guitar..."

A vagabond in tattered old rainbow poncho
Was pushing a shopping cart, a cart decorated with snowman
Reindeer, garland and a sign that read

"Happy Xmas, I'm homeless, please help."
A red, white and blue striped wolf, visible only to me
Moved him down the sidewalk nipping at his heels.

A group movin' to a jazz trumpet and drum said
"He's a taco short of a combination plate!"
Their laughter rose into the sky...

The full moon floated in the sky like a white plate.
I wanted to walk into the mountains
find the place heaven split apart and fell to earth...

But the troubadour sang a Christmas song
of three ships in a harbor on Christmas day in the morning, he sang,
"And all the bells on earth did ring on Christmas day in the morning."

An angel, audible only to me, sang into my ear, "And who
Will ring the bells for the poor on Christmas day in the morning?"
The singer sang on, he was warming up, he sang for me

He sang for the bum,
Christmas morning, Monday night, December 15th.



Rayn Roberts
2003

Let Me Show You Paris

Along the Champs Elysees, where the wealthy come just to shop at Louis Vuitton, you will see a world pass by any cafe in clouds of cigarette smoke mixed with Chanel number 5. My eyes saw the world that is ignored, a woman who prays for the pennies to come in to survive on the streets of Paris. I feel the March rains and think for a moment of my own heartache of waiting for an artist, a friend, and the pain subsides with the stark hunger in the streets. The beautiful lights lose their luster as the well heeled passer-bys mock the woman I find my heart breaking all over again. These were my beginnings in Paris, where I came solely to pursue my passions of writing and love...only to see I could not be blind.

As I found the beacon of the Eiffel calling me, I replicated the picture on my vision board. I found the park at the foot of the Eiffel and was dazzled by the reflection in the water. At night, alone, an Algerian man try to seduce me with butterfly kisses that lacked the passion that could only be answered by a familiar mouth. An imposter's heated heady stare was extinguished by my icey blue eyes. I was not for the plundering of such feeble seductions. A hunter that seemed to approach with sophomoric fumblings. Not even the power of the Eiffel could spare this man's humilation as I rolled into laughter...a woman with a closed heart..and a deadly kiss of a black widow. I winked and watched the lovers and visitors pay homage to the iron maiden. The modern goddess of love.

It was in this secluded square where I fell in love with the brilliant finger of this classical guitarist...and I swooned. There was no audience to speak of, and I stood there, out of his view to listen to him play as he would close his eyes and be enraptured by his own melodies. I wanted to dance and feel the music in my blood. I thought to myself of how so much comes through Paris. Who was I to knock on her gates and proclaim my dreams? I came to write about my search and quests along the way. In a city, a life, foreign to me, who challenges the world...a city of cities, of revolutions, of art, of intellectualism...I hungered to taste Paris.

Across from Notre Dame is Shakespeare and company. The library, the bookstore, the flop house for wayward cash strapped travellers...so close to the center of Paris. I fell in love again...with the smell of books, stacks upon stacks that I would wrap my arms around. My eyes fell upon a piano that begged for Chopin, and up the stairs I went to a writer's area, cramped, with an impossible typewriter with torn and worn ribbon, a writer's lamp...and an invitation to leave my mark...a dare to proclaim my dreams...

So I did. I return to Paris, I promised her I would return, as lovers do...and I will go and see the real streets and feel the real earth, and look at her with a full heart...to walk the streets of artists, of writers, and I realize as long as I breathe...I will write with every bit of passion within me.

For my dream has been realized, and now it is time to build bigger ones. J'adore Paris. I will see you again in 10 days darling.

Just Being

I sat outside with  Monte this afternoon ... and yeah we just ...sat.


We are all staying at my parents at the mo' (house reno's nearly finished) and as a result Monte has a fair bit of stimulation all week.

He has had his fair whack of "No, don't touch that" "Look at this!" and " Come here!" .

He has been grabbed for cuddles,  hands held to try and urge him to learn to walk, pulled away suddenly from the sausage dog and rescued often from the jaws of the dishwasher.

The little sod just wants to make sense of the world around him - but he has giants coming at him from every angle and telling him to "Be Careful!"

 I feel for him!

He is curious about stuff , and so he should be.

So today I took him outside, which is where it is at - as far as he is concerned.

  I said and did nothing.

I didn't pick him up or urge him to look at things I thought he should look at.

I didn't talk to him or give names to the things he was looking at.

I just sat and watched him and let him be.

Let him soak in what he wanted to soak in.

I didn't know just how fascinating a gumnut was until today!

 He looked at gumnuts and leaves in great length and tried clapping a couple together, as he does.

Everything is clappable.

He watched the little butterflies weave around him in fascination.

Every now and then almost hyperventilating from the excitement of it all.

After a little bit  he would look back at me to see if I was looking , give me a smile- and  go back to what he was doing.

I just sat there and watched.

I actually fell into a really tranquil state just trying to see the world through the eyes of an almost 1 year old.

 I really conjured up the power of now.

Ekhart would be proud.

For a few moments I detached myself from my head and just listened to the thoughts going around:

"He should have a hat on, I hope he doesn't eat that gumnut, it's probably too hot...." 

I just let them swirl by without giving them any heed.

I could smell eucalyptus, I could hear buzzing of flies and insects - the hum of the air-conditioner on the roof - birds chattering, I was lying on the grass and above me were great big trees overlooking the river - it was beautiful.

When Monte tried to crawl the gumnuts weren't so pleasant on the knees so he got up on his feet and crawled in the funniest style I have ever seen!

He then gave up.

He looked over at me with the most massive grin.

He crawed over and flopped on me and nuzzled up to me.

I'm pretty sure he was saying "Thanks Mum for just letting me be"