Belay on?

It is smack dab in the middle of Paideia in my line of work. This is a greek word that roughly translates into "learning from other sources"-- and in practice looks like the same class all day everyday for almost 3 weeks. Some would say this could be very difficult, but I am lucky, lucky as I am at a climbing gym with two other teachers and 35 (!) young'uns. Today I only climbed once, but I clawed my way to the top of the boulder cave twice (I went up the corner with the least steep overhang). Yesterday I climbed three times and loved every second of it.

What a world. I am teaching rock climbing to future rock stars while somewhere deep in a far away place a woman whose name I do not know is a sex slave to mercilessness; while in a country I can't find on a map a young boy is learing how to shoot people; while the daffodils sleep under the snow; and while all our futures percolate out there. Is it possible for beings to live simultaneous incarnations? and if so: what do we gain from these parellel experiences?

I once lived with a beagle who inspired this theory of the simulltaneous incarnation and ever since I lusted after Garett's life I haven't really stopped considering the possibilities and ramifications of being both the sleeping dog and the paper-grading, lesson planning, rock-climbing dog moma. If the mystics are right-- and everything is connected on an ontological level (and that is the secret?!) then this theory of existance is true, kinda. It could imply that the woman living under a merciless enslavement is also a rock-climbing teacher here in the Valley, and that we are also learning to shoot people with a gun almost bigger than we are.

But what is the point? I feel that it really comes back to this question more than it dosen't. What is the lesson-- probably so obvious-- that the nature of our embodied self can not figure out?

Tomorrow and Yesterday

It is a cold and dark morning in the Valley. The sun is reflecting loudly off the half moon and I am up later than usual. Today offers another opportunity to write poems, be kind, and try again. Today offers another fucking growth opportunity, as my freind L would say. It turns out that, according to my doctor, I need to do some serious habit changing in the eating and exercising pockets of my life. This same prognosis happened to my friend A about a year ago and I remember how she focused and conentrated. She lost weight, she got more fit, she felt great.
But I happen to be a stubborn-as-a-brick-wall Taurus.
When I was growing up it was fat-free everything at my Dad's house (mmm chicken baked with slasa) or cheesecake and pork chops at my Mom's. There hasn't been too much middle ground in there, even in my own kitchen. So here today is, wintery and predawn offering me another shot to get my stubborn butt to the pool and swim; offering another opportuniity to forego the chips and the cashews and cookies. Here today is ofering this public, yet strangely anonomous way to address and speak out about what having a body is all about. Sometimes I float off into the postulating land thinking about other states of being-- unembodied phases in specific; the ball of light is what I call it in my head. I wonder to myself: when do I get to go back to that? Will this embodied part of existance be like a blip on the timeline of whatever it is in me that looks out of my eyes? And what does whatever it is that peers out of my eyes think about diet and exercise?
Well, much like and ecosystem, I believe that we are connected to everything else on a very basic level that can not be sundered even by the might and static of modern culture. And maybe, just maybe, this ________________ peering out of my eyes right now-- wondering with me-- knows how to become lucid in this waking life.

Maiden Voyage

3...2...1...Wow! Is this really me in the 21st century? Bloggin like some self-indulgent heiress? Putting waste words and poo-poo ponderings out into the interweb for all the thought police to monitor?

Is it true there are no things but in ideas? Is it true there are no more original storylines left for the novelists and film-makers of commercial entertainment? Geez, what is the real point, anyways? To dream big? To find ballance? To challenge the ones we love to fierce honesty and savvy truth telling?

I decided to start this crazy blog journal because the world gives me gas. And I also decided to start this crazy blog journal because my heart needs to write.

So with that, dear strangers, I shove off on my maiden voyage into the heretofore uncharted seas of blogging-- with its attendent typos, mispellings, and opiniated ranting. May my vessel be sound, may the stores stay dry, and may the fresh water remain plentiful. And, like Puck, I beg apologies for any future offence:

Think but this and all is mended:
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream