Verbal Excursions

This year was full of road trips for me… But the most fun I had was on a quick, turnaround trip in early November. Captain Amazing and I flew into Burbank to pick up my new car, and drive it back to Phoenix the same day. What should have been a commando mission turned into a slow mosey, full of adventure detours.

I have a theory, that if you ever want to really get to know someone, you should travel with them. The most carefree friend can turn into a control freak – the most lighthearted turn into a horror story – I have had both of those experiences previously, and this was (thankfully) neither. We jammed some tunes and sang out loud. We randomly stopped in unfamiliar neighborhoods. We met the nicest lady to ever grace a smoothie counter. We spotted a discarded playground slide in a dumpster neighboring the freeway, and then made a twenty-mile scavenger-hunt detour through construction traffic to see if we could fit it in the car (sadly, it was not destined to be). We made out in the back of a parking lot until the streetlights came on. We talked. Alot. We made a six hour trip last over twelve hours – we wasted some serious time… and neither of us cared.

This was our first joint traveling experience, and I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better one. What would have been an uneventful, somewhat boring drive on my own was turned into a surprisingly cool excursion… and I’m now looking forward to many more.

The topic for today is “a word or phrase that sums up your year”. Many of the words which initially came to mind surrounded turmoil, confusion, and conflict… but these words sounded really negative. And my year, though challenging and difficult in many ways, was really overall one of the most positive years of my life. Looking back one year from today, comparing where I am now with where I was, I can say with no creeping hints of doubt that I am in a much better place. Period. So I turned to the all-mighty google for some help. And I came up with this quote –

“Amidst the confusion of the times, the conflicts of conscience, and the turmoil of daily living, an abiding faith becomes an anchor to our lives.”
Thomas S. Monson

And this sums it up perfectly for me. Because despite the heartache, despite the tumult, despite all the disappointments and unfulfilled expectations, and the incredibly epic fail of what should have been the most awesome journey of my life – I find myself closing this year with the utmost gratitude in my heart, and the simple, quiet conviction that I am, indeed, exactly where I need to be. That everything that has passed was necessary – that it all occurred with the utmost precision, to place me right here, right now… and that the year to come, though sure to have it’s own set of challenges and disappointments, will be absolutely soaked with amazing.

Chakra 4 Cafe’s Lucerne Swish definitely wins for my top tea of 2009. A handmade blend containing hibiscus flower, rose hips, orange peel, apricot, lemon peel, and marigold petals – it has a fresh and uplifting flavor, a natural sweetness, and zero caffeine. It’s tasty when brewed fresh, but I prefer to make it as a sun tea, and drink it chilled.

This is the ultimate relax-in-your-hammock-enjoying-the-sunshine tea. You can buy Lucerne Swish (and other fabulous teas and herbal concoctions) from the lovely folks at Charka 4 by clicking this link.

I have three Best New Foods for 2009…

I have never liked chocolate. Historically, when I have made this statement, the women in my life have reacted as if I had just announced that, not only do I have a contagious illness – but I also used their toothbrush. I’m not sure what it is about women and chocolate, but apparently my dislike of it revokes my membership to the “normal” club. Maybe it will be reinstated when they read this – I have discovered and developed a deep and intense affinity for cacao. Not the sickly-sweet-Hershey’s variety of candy – but the simple, dark, rich and velvety deliciousness of cacao. Unsweetened is perfect, but lightly sweetened and mixed with chili? I’m drooling while I write this, actually.

One of the great tragedies of my life is the development of an allergy to dairy products. Especially since, for many, many years, my answer to the question “What is your favorite food?” would have been an emphatic “ice cream.” The alternatives have never cut it… soy substitutes are gritty. Rice substitutes are thin. Sorbet, no matter how you might wish it to be different, is still just frozen juice. But this year, I was introduced to the most wondrous food product since Wonder Bread itself… Coconut ice cream. It’s creamy, it’s delicious, and I’ll even go so far as to say – in some ways, it is BETTER than regular ice cream. I have been systematically trying every flavor I can get my hands on, and so far, I have liked them all, except for the plain vanilla. Plain vanilla has more of a vanilla aftertaste than a vanilla flavor… but that’s ok, because only boring people choose plain vanilla, and I am far from boring. Some purists might try to argue the necessity of vanilla in the makings of a root beer float, but having done extensive research on the matter, I can attest that that an exemplary float is, indeed, made with chocolate ice cream. And chocolate-flavored coconut ice cream adds a creamy chocolatey awesomeness unrivaled by your standard selections. Mmmm.

And, last but not least?

While traveling, I had the opportunity for the first time in many years, to eat chicken that tastes like chicken. Not store-bought chicken, not conveyor belt chicken, not Colonel Sander’s vat grown animal 64 – but REAL chicken. Chicken that had lived a real chicken life, full of scratching and pecking and grubbing fat bugs – and was, therefore, infused with the amazingly tasty essence of real chicken. Many of you will have no idea what I am talking about – you will read this, and ask yourselves what I could possibly mean by this nonsense… and to you, all I can say is – you have probably not ever tasted real chicken. Think about your favorite strawberry candy… it’s sweet and very distinctive. Now, think about the flavor of a real strawberry. They may both be enjoyable – but the flavor of candy won’t really compare to the lusciousness of an actual strawberry. This is similar to the difference I am describing. If you have never tasted fresh chicken, you should. Immediately, if possible. You may find that your standard store-bought chicken does not, ironically, taste just like chicken.

Bon appetit!

This year, I took my first trip to Peru. It was amazing. I am greatly appreciative of every second I spent in this beautiful country, surrounded by the extraordinary people I met along the way. I fell in love with the city of Pulcullpa, in particular (and almost didn’t come back to the states).

While traveling within the country, I had the good fortune to be invited to visit the Temple of the Way of Light, for a private visitation with the women healers who live there. After an hour-long boat ride down the river, and another hour of hiking through dense jungle in a heavy downpour, we reached the center. It was truly one of the most stunningly beautiful places I have ever been in my life, and the vibe there was incredible.

I felt like a giant surrounded by these tiny Shipibo women, but they crowded round me, embraced me and loaded me down with beaded necklaces. I spent the remainder of the afternoon relaxing on the floor of the moloka, watching these ancient old ladies embroider and string beads, while listening to their irreverent chatter. That night, I was invited to participate in a healing ceremony with a few other guests. Words can’t describe accurately the nature of that experience – but the singing of these tiny women was so powerful and so moving that I will never forget it.

This is a slide show of photos of the center, which I found online –
Temple of the Way of Light
Or, you can visit them directly, here –
www.templeofthewayoflight.org

My partner of five years and I called it quits in the middle of cross country RV road trip. We had left our home and our families behind, sold everything we owned, and launched this expedition together – and then nine months into it, one random summer day in Northern Idaho, he told me it was over. Due to financial restrictions and shitty circumstance, we agreed to travel together for several weeks before finally going our separate ways. I’ve taken to calling this The Exodus.

It was a long trip. And because I was not the one who initiated the break up, it was also completely fucking brutal. It wasn’t horrible – there were definitely times when it was good – we were happy and had fun and I would even forget that this was our break-up. And then the moment when that reality resurfaced was like having a tooth pulled – only instead of going to the dentist, let’s pretend that it’s your best friend removing this tooth, with zero anesthesia. Using an ice pick and a hammer. While they tell you that really, this is the best thing for both of you.

So, it was that pain that drove me into the woods. We had camped the night before, and today was the day we would be leaving. We were on the final stretch – just a few days left to go. And he made me a peanut butter sandwich, and the ratio of peanut butter to jelly was weird, and I was just about to ask him if he would make it differently for me next time, when I realized that it didn’t matter, because it was the only peanut butter sandwich he would ever make for me. There would never be another peanut butter and jelly sandwich shared between us, ever. And it was silly and it was lame and I couldn’t even tell him why my eyes were suddenly teary – because this was exactly the sort of thing he would have no patience for. So I stood up and walked into the woods. And I kept walking until I found the biggest tree I have ever seen in my life – and next to this tree was the stump of a smaller tree. And I sat down in the sun, just outside the shadow of this enormous tree, and I cried.

I cried from a place so deep I didn’t even know it existed. I cried so long, and so hard, that the crying stopped coming from inside of me, and instead stood up out of me and became it’s own thing. I cried so intensely that when the crying finally stuttered to a halt, my guts had been wrung out. And in the place where that crying had come from, there was all this space. All this empty, quiet space. And I rubbed my swollen eyes, and sniffled a few times, and realized that where I sat, the silence was profound. Every tiny leaf rustling, every bug buzzing, was precisely audible in the midst of this tremendous stillness. And I stopped sniffling, and I let the composure of that place seep in through my pores – and it was so serene. I stayed there for a long time, letting that tranquility settle into the hollow left behind by those tears – breathing it thick and deep. Inhaling it with the smell of old wood and deep needles and the soft smell of peaceful decay… recognizing that this is just the smell of compost. It is the old, being made new.

Love is not like air.  You can breathe without even thinking about it – and yes, you can love this way, as well.  But you know that air exists because, at the end of this moment, you are still alive.  Love has no physical proof – it needs to be perceived, and to be perceived it needs to be experienced.  Love does not soak into our pores via osmosis – it must be inhaled, and exhaled.   It must be expressed – and there is no time like the present.

So, you love someone?  Act like it.  Put that love into your actions and your words.  LIVE IT.  Love actively, not passively.  LOVE LIKE YOU MEAN IT.

She’ll never how how much she means to you, unless you tell her.  He’ll never see how you feel, unless you show him.  Own your love, by expressing it fully.  And, if your relationship fails, or your love is unrequited – at least you can take solace in knowing that you loved your best and most beautiful at every opportunity.

Love makes no mistakes.  And, if you live your love in every moment, eventually that shining beacon of good vibe you send out into the world will attract the kind of person who is ready to love back, full blast.

(by Tom Robbins)

Mental Bungee-jumping may not be your sport of choice, but there’s a cerebral ledge that sooner or later each of us has to leap off. One day, ready or not, we glance in a mirror, cuddle an infant, attend a funeral, walk in the woods, partake of a substance Nancy Reagan warned us to eschew, chance a liaison, wake in the night with a napalm lobster in our chest, read a message from the pope or the Dalai Lama, get lost in Verdi or lost in the stars – and wind up thinking about our soul.

Yes, the soul. You know what I mean.

Popular culture to the contrary, the soul is not an overweight nightclub singer having an unhappy love affair in Detroit. Nor, on the other hand, is it some pale vapor wafting off a bucket of metaphysical dry ice. Suffering, low-down and funky, seasons the soul, it’s true, but bliss is the yeast that makes it rise. And yet, because the soul is linked to the earth (as opposed to spirit, which is linked to the sky), it steadfastly contradicts those who imagine it a billow of sacred flatulence or a shimmer of personal swamp gas.

Soul is not even that Cracker Jack prize that God and Satan scuffle over after the worms have all licked our bones. That’s why, when we ponder – as, sooner or later, each of us must – what exactly we ought to be doing about our souls, religion is the wrong, if conventional place to turn.

Religion is little more than a transaction in which troubled people trade their souls for temporary and wholly illusionary psychological comfort (the old “give it up in order to save it” routine). Religions lead us to believe the soul is the ultimate family jewel, and, in return for our mindless obedience, they can secure it for us in their vaults, or at least insure it against fire and theft. They are mistaken.

If you need to visualize the soul, think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It’s a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you, the Mystery. The one that can never be solved.

To one degree or another, everybody is connected to the Mystery, and everybody secretly yearns to expand the connection. That requires expanding the soul. These things can enlarge the soul: laughter, danger, imagination, meditation, wild nature, passion, compassion, psychedelics, beauty, iconoclasm, and driving around in the rain with the top down. These things can diminish it: fear, bitterness, blandness, trendiness, egotism, violence, corruption, ignorance, grasping, shining, and eating ketchup on cottage cheese.

Data in our psychic program is often nonlinear, nonhierarchical, archaic, alive, and teeming with paradox. Simply booting up is a challenge, if not for no other reason than that most of us find acknowledging the unknowable and monitoring its intrusions upon the familiar and mundane more than a little embarrassing.

But say you’ve inflated your soul to the size of a beach ball and it’s soaking into the Mystery like wine into a mattress. What have you accomplished? Well, long term, you may have prepared yourself for a successful metamorphosis, an almost inconceivable transformation to be precipitated by your death or by some great worldwide eschatological whoopjamboreehoo. You may have. No one can say for sure.

More immediately, by waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe. And on a day to day basis, folks, it doesn’t get any better than that.