back home again

I'm home again in Oakland after a week in LA, the bulk of which I spent gloriously prone on the couch, under a blanket and reading a book. Fire crackling in the fireplace, cat sprawled on the carpet, parents napping and reading magazines. I feel mellowed, in the fullest sense of the word -- gentled, relaxed, unhurried. And I'm off to Harbin Hot Springs on Wednesday for a long weekend with the chosen family, cleansing and blessing the new year together. I feel renewed, restored and thankful.

On my first day in Los Angeles I was fortunate to spend the day with Deena Metzger and her community, for their monthly Dare', or community council. Deena is a life-long healer, spiritual teacher, author, activist, and elder. She is a true witch, and I am deeply moved by her fearless and continual turning towards the heartbreak of the world, medicine in hand. There is a whole volume to be written about this day, the peacemaking work of this community, the powerful and uncanny familiarity I felt with so many people in the gathering. The deep, low, rumbling profundity of what emerged from our day-long conversation, which closed with a sharing of our dreams and their relevance to the times in which we live.

What I will say now is that watching Deena apply her magical soul-salves and weave together the threads of community into an image of the possibility of wholeness, illuminated for me some understanding of my role, as well ~ the role of medicine-bringer, through my words and through the love I give. The story of our human folly is scrawled carelessly onto the delicate parchment of every living system, but instead of dissolving into despair I am beginning to understand -- when I look at my guides like Carolyn Raffensperger, Caroline Casey, and Deena Metzger, among others -- that what I can do is give my heart over, again and again, in service of that story's transmutation.

Something about the safety of being in the bosom of my family allowed me to fully feel the extent of the sadness that I have been feeling about the state of the world. Of course Copenhagen was a farcical sham; shouldn't we all have expected that, given what we know about politics? Nonetheless, it is true that I did walk around feeling stunned and light-headed after I heard about the non-agreement that wasn't reached about the future of our shared response to the climate crisis. The despair gnawed at my heart, and as I unclenched myself with my family, the cry rose up in my throat.

I spent some time, too, wondering if there is perhaps an amorphous and free-floating hopeless despair that I carry with me, that I pin on targets like the world and my body. I've gained ten pounds this fall, and as sad as that makes me, as burdened as I feel, as removed as I become from the dance of attraction, it is true this experience feels very, very familiar. And it's also true that for the past year I have been dancing on this edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting to become fat again because I don't yet know how to live into lightness and ease inside my own physical form.

I won't get into the gory psychological details of all that here, but suffice it to say, I have been inquiring into myself about it. And in the midst of an anguished, tearful moment, I asked myself, "What would my life be about if it was devoted and dedicated to whatever it is that makes my spirit absolutely light up and shine?" What IS that thing?

Immediately, the answer came: "To love. Love is the joy, love is the richness, love is the source of everything. Love is all there is. The heart’s expansive flowing freedom to be with, to connect, to share, to delight, to marvel, to light up with possibility. That is my gift, the gift of love."

Love is the true medicine. Love is the only medicine. It is not weight loss that allows me to feel free inside my body, it is self-acceptance. It is not the flipping of some omnipotent, cosmic switch that brings order to all the world that will allow me to feel happy and useful on this earth, it is my open heart and my intention to do my work with love, for love.

In remembering this, I suddenly understand exactly what to do and how to do it. There is no complicated formula to follow, no threshold of accomplishment to be reached, no signal that will arise from the dim chaos of the world that I am free to expand, unfold, relax after biding my time for so long in a posture of contraction. There is only love, now, to be offered and to be received. Bless the food I eat, bless the water that I bathe in, bless the day and night, bless the body. Bless the moment of communion, the redwood tree outside my window, the quiet afternoon. Bless the land and the women who give all of themselves in service of its sanctity. Bless all that is not yet healed, and draw meaning from it. Bless all that has been healed, and give thanks for the unceasing miracle of change. Bless the life that stirs in me at each moment, the force that animates all that we see and share. Bless the form, bless the journey, bless the spirit that abides within. From that place, and in due time: bless the sacred Other, and bless the future generations.

So, after all this, on the plane I realized what my New Year's resolutions are. They're very simple: (1) Practice unconditional love (including of self). (2) Feel all feelings. (3) Count all blessings.

Should be a beautiful year. :)

cracks in the armor

You know what's wonderful? As soon as you make even the slightest opening, the Universe comes pouring in to offer all manner of unfathomable, unconditional love and support.

That's what this week has been like. I'm finding a new gentleness with myself -- a moment here and a moment there of softness, of the heart's upwelling. Glimpses of the truth that all the ways I berate myself are just habits of mind. Choosing kindness, choosing to feel. It sounds so basic, but it's momentous. My whole life people have said to me, "You're too hard on yourself," and I've never really understood what they meant until now, as I am finding the capacity to step back and just witness my mind's ceaseless stream of judgments.

So, what happens when that starts to let up? Well, I can tell you: themes happen. On Monday, it was trust. A whole series of events unfolded, reminding me of the power and sweetness and necessity of trust. Later in the week, it was rest, and my deep desire and need for true rest.

The other big one this week? Choice. I have been weaving in and out of a sense of despair, lately, from the state of the world. It came to a head this week when I learned about the "Danish text," a draft climate agreement between the major power players at the Copenhagen climate conference. This leaked document represented the power players' attempt to circumvent the negotiations process and write an agreement that would protect all of their (our) interests, essentially leaving poor and less powerful nations to suffer the mounting burdens of climate change and poverty without recourse. The discovery of this document was an outrage, and the conference fell into disarray until somehow negotiations were able to resume.

Upon learning this news I felt an overwhelming sense of defeat. What part of "the global climate crisis affects all of us" do our leaders fail to understand? Looking around at the world and witnessing the living hell that so many people and creatures must endure, the living hell that we ourselves have created, I find myself in a depression. And I grieve, too, for simplicity -- I grieve for our disconnection from the earth, from our bodies, from each other. My disconnection. Can my work really make any difference at all, especially if I feel numb and alone while doing it?

Last night I attended the opening party for the new restaurant that my dear friends Eric and Ari just opened, called Gather. Every element of this restaurant reflects a rigorous commitment to sustainability -- from the bench seats made of recycled leather belts, to the art on the wall made from packing materials, to the local/ seasonal/ organic cuisine, Gather is a paean to possibility in business and in community.

I love these two men so much -- one of them is married to my best friend and colleague, and both of them are like my brothers. Last night, more than ever, I felt so moved to be a part of the same soul family as them. They spoke of the initial vision that sent them on this nine-year journey: the vision that Eric received, out in the desert, of a place where people would come together to share delicious food and connect with the earth. From there, their company Back to Earth catering and outdoor adventures emerged, always with the foundational dream of this restaurant. And now it's a reality.

They were both lit up, not only from the strength of this beautiful vision itself, but from the accumulated strength they have actually received from their years of continual, conscious re-alignment with the vision, despite whatever setbacks arose. Ari spoke directly to the notion of choice: he told a traditional tale, where a grandmother tells her grandchildren that there are two wolves locked in a mortal struggle inside of her and inside of everyone. One wolf represents fear, greed, anger, hatred, and negativity; the other represents love, kindness, sharing and positivity. Her grandchildren ask her, which wolf wins? And grandmother replies: the one you feed. I've heard Ari tell that story a number of times, but each time I am struck by the profundity of it. Here we are, on this mysterious planet living this mysterious life, seemingly barreling inexorably towards our self-generated doom -- so what can we do? Choose life, over and over and over again.

Ari concluded his talk with this quote, from the Lord of the Rings:

Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding on to, Sam?

Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.

And then we went and enjoyed a feast.

So that's what I'm left with. That Life is worth my life. More than anything, that every moment provides the opportunity for me to choose between giving up and continuing on. What would nature do? Well, just look outside your window and you'll see. Rain, then rainbows, then green life regenerating in the sun. Then rain again, on and on.

It's astounding, what arises when you start to be kind to yourself and let yourself feel your own life.

What's next, true love? ;)

en las noticias

I haven't done one of these in a while! It's late at night and while there are many things happening in my world right now, most of them are personal and subterranean and might bore you. So in lieu of musings, I give you Gentleheart's Week in Review.

First, of course, is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I remember exactly where I was when it happened. I'm nine years old, and my mom is telling me that this is an important event in world history, that someday I'll remember where I was when this happened. And so I remembered it, and still do -- we were driving on Fountain Avenue in Hollywood, probably on the way to a piano lesson, listening to the radio. I remember feeling some upward rush of hopefulness, not really knowing why, but sensing that the world's interest was converging on something good and right, and feeling a part of it, even there in the car on a sunny November day in LA. I've enjoyed NYT's coverage, particularly this feature.

Second, equally of course, is the passage of the health care bill in the House. Can I say this? I don't understand the healthcare debate. Why is universal health care even a question? The reticence, at best, that American citizens and leadership display at the prospect of government-funded health care -- even as an option, co-existing alongside private insurance -- is apparently just one more facet to the Glenn-beck-veins-bulging belligerent individualism that is ultimately such a self-destructive force. What is so frightening to us about the prospect of ensuring that each of us is cared-for? . . . Don't answer that.

And third, of course, is the Maine gay rights defeat. I don't even know what to say about this. After the gut-punch of Prop 8, I just can't get emotionally involved. I'm so glad there are amazing people like Kate Kendell who are still so powerfully strategizing and moving on this issue.

Finally, the fork in the road in Pasadena. My favorite thing about this is that the folks who clandestinely set up this 18-foot tall silver fork statue dressed as Cal Trans workers to pass it off.

Ah, the news. Lest you despair at this world, let me leave you with something beautiful.

birthing feminine leadership

I'm in the midst of getting trained as a doula. I've spent the past two days learning about child birth and the role of the doula -- the one who mothers the mother, who offers labor support -- and tomorrow I'll go back for a final day. It's been beautiful and is happening amidst, or perhaps also provoking, a couple of important realizations.

The first realization is about the similarities between my work as a doula and my work as an advocate for and with women environmental justice leaders. The doula is spoken and written about universally as an advocate for the mother in an often-rushed and confusing birth environment; the teacher of the workshop, Felicia, also emphasizes the element of collaboration. It is not the doula making choices or speaking for the mother; the doula ensures that the choices and the voice of the mother are elevated above the din, to guide the birth process.

Same with environmental justice lawyering. Luke Cole wrote frequently about the role of the environmental justice lawyer as an advocate who is not out in front, but instead occupies a "tech support" position, making sure that grassroots leaders occupy a place at the table that is equal to all the other players, and making sure the community's agenda drives the process.

Felicia spoke about the doula's crucial service of ensuring that the mother always has the opportunity to provide her informed consent to the doctor's decisions about what should come next. One of the major items on the advocacy agenda of indigenous environmental justice leaders is the principle of free, prior informed consent -- no industrial project or mining operation will take place on indigenous lands without the rightful occupants of the land understanding and freely consenting to that endeavor.

The laboring mother, the Mother Earth -- whether subject to rushed, clinical interventions during the most intimate moments of birth, or plundered for minerals or fossil fuels, the feminine body in our culture is disregarded and desecrated. Her power, her choice, her wholeness, her agency -- all are undermined by invasive procedures performed on the hospital bed or at the strip mine site.

Again and again, as I access these stark and painful understandings I am nonetheless confirmed in my purpose in the world. First in Israel in 1999, then in the Inyo Mountains in 2007, I heard it clearly: healing the feminine principle, at every level. My body, the bodies and lives of women, the earth's body. Big task, for one kind of lazy, sort of naive only-child, isn't it? Yeah. But what else do I have to do?

The second realization is about my work in the world. Everything I am called to do, from coordinating advocacy for women environmental justice leaders, to holding space for laboring women, to dreaming up an activist women's health collective, is about supporting women to heal and to rise. And when I see it laid out so clearly, I finally start to make some sense to myself. In truth I can't separate the healing of my ancestry from my forward-moving participation in the earth's healing. All this work, I will be the first to admit, is deeply rooted in my lineage: my mother's mother was such a broken woman, whose brokenness damaged my own mother. But that brokenness stops with me. I am here to restore wholeness. That's my commitment to myself, to this world, to my future children.

Eve Ensler says: "when we give in the world what we want the most, we heal the broken part inside each of us . . . happiness exists in action, in telling the truth and saying what your truth is, and in giving away what you want the most." With all my various and seemingly incongruous work, I suppose I am giving what I want the most -- healing for the Mother. Wholeness, balance, respect, love. For my mother who did not have these, but who managed to survive and even thrive, nonetheless. When I see women who need support I go towards them with my light and strength, so as to buttress their own power and magnify their own radiance, so that beauty can live.

Last weekend at the Bioneers conference, women's leadership in the environmental movement was the concept on everyone's lips (along with the imminent urgency of fixing the climate). A diverse chorus of voices spoke to the redemptive power of women's collective, collaborative, inclusive orientation in decision-making and problem-solving. Nina Simons, who graced our WEA event earlier in the week, opened the conference on Friday morning with her wisdom on the essential qualities of women's leadership. I'll try to paraphrase them here, as best I can.

After telling us that the Dalai Lama in September said that "the world will be saved by Western women" (it's true, you can Google it), Nina shared with us the following principles:

• Women are learning that we already are and know enough.
• Strength comes from within, informed by the power of our love and service.
• Cultivating self-awareness is essential to grow beyond wounds.
• Power comes from purpose and inner authority, not credentials or permission.
• There is a dance between leading and following, speaking and listening.
• Every system has limits, and an ebb and flow.
• Reciprocity and synchronicity are essential.
• Flexibility counts: leadership can come from any position.
• Power is something sacred from within us all -- not power over, but power with and through.
• Vulnerability can inform our strength.
• We cannot do this alone -- our flourishing requires relationships of rigorous love and challenging support.
• We are learning to listen to land/ people/ intuition/ sacred spiritual traditions.
• We are learning to share authority and cultivate rotating leadership.
• Diversity is our strength.
• We are connecting and collaborating across boundaries despite our fear.

Reflecting on these, I feel relieved, buoyed and powerful. I am -- we are -- valid and valuable. Perhaps most significantly, I remember that there is something larger than me, larger than all of us individually, at work here, something to which I can and must give my life over.

Just recently a new bloom opened on my orchid plant, shining its long-awaited loveliness into the room. It was in bud for weeks and weeks. I wasn't sure if it was even going to open -- a similar bud had just shriveled and fallen off without ever blooming. But this one persisted, growing and changing from within until it was ready to reveal itself. And now it's here, and the world is a more beautiful place for it.

That's the other thing I'm learning: everything in time. All I can do is create the conditions that support life, and then allow life to do what it knows, by nature, how to do.

Come home. Write about it.

My old friend, with whom I was once in love -- he and I are back in touch.

I fell in love with him one night in my freshman year of college. There were many events leading up to that night, I suppose, but I remember distinctly the circumstances of the falling. We were at his dirty fraternity house. And I don't mean "dirty" like food on the floor and unsavory bathroom conditions. I mean "dirty" like loud music, cocaine, boys fucking girls and then hurting their feelings. (That's not what happened with my friend and I, exactly, but that's the kind of company he kept. Just trying to paint the picture.)

I should rewind, too, and tell you about the day earlier in the semester when our school flooded. It was the El Nino year, year of rains so torrential that an entire college campus infrastructure was overcome by water. The libraries flooded; important materials were lost. The day after the biggest storm, to all of our great glee, classes were cancelled. So my friend and I went on an adventure. He came and found me in my dorm and then we went to visit our french teacher. The sky was gray and the air was refreshing, moist, washed. We walked around our stunned campus that day. Spending time with him made me feel tentative and delighted.

He had this effect on me. He may have had the same effect on all the girls he hung out with, in fact I'm sure he did, because he paid such close attention. I always felt a little bit on edge around him, because he was, in fact, edgy. "Edgy" like you were never sure what he was going to say next. "Edgy" like he could leap across all boundaries of appropriateness with a single utterance. But he was also immeasurably sweet. People loved him. His frat brothers loved him. He clearly came from love, if not love and struggle.

And like I said, he paid attention. When I was around him I felt myself at a kind of tenuous balance point, teetering between a painful exposure, his piercing commentary peeling back layers before I was ready, and the surprising tenderness of being seen so clearly, with such generosity.

So, he kept after me in his odd way. Eventually, of course, we ended up making out with each other. And that night that I started telling you about: I don't recall if that was the first night that we spent together, but it was most definitely the night that the doors to my heart swung open. I remember him playing with me, locking me out of the room, and I remember how much I wanted to get back in to be with him. Then, back in the room: he rolling cigarettes, sitting at his desk, smiling at me.

I forget how exactly it happened but then there it was. The long, slow tumble towards another person, the heart's bright gasp of recognition. But it wasn't meant to be -- he fell away from me almost immediately in the ensuing days, in his maddeningly edgy and inaccessible way. I wrote him a letter demanding that he show up, be with me, let me love him . . . which, as you can imagine, was the death knell. We fell out of contact almost entirely for a long time after that.

But he found me again the following year, I think, and started reaching out to me again. And since then we've re-kindled something of a friendship. I've felt him kind of tracking me all these years, staying in touch one way or another, with a kind e-mail or a random text or chat. Our contact has been frustrating, compelling, loving. In the intervening time he got married to a beautiful woman and is achieving success as a producer. He could have gone in so many directions but he has triumphed, has chosen life. I see that and I am truly proud of him. We finally got together a few weeks ago for the first time in years, over lunch with another friend of his. It felt like no time had passed at all.

Tonight we chatted a bit online, and in our chat he wrote me something of a poem, that ended up cutting straight to my heart. It surprised me, but it also didn't, how swiftly I was transported back to our brief moment together, 12 years ago. The shock of being witnessed was as electric then as it is now, as veiled and elusive as the witness may have been. I was surprised, but I also wasn't, by the tears rolling down my cheeks.

Some living quality of our contact is frozen in time and space, caught, left behind. What has survived all the time up until now is just a piece of it, held at arm's length. But words like these cast light on the ice and melt it down. They're nonsense words, elusive, cryptic; nonetheless, they reach me. In being reached I can recall what's possible: gentleness at close range, ceasing to scramble away from contact and instead breathing quietly in its sight. And that gift yields a flood of further treasures. Later in the evening, after we chatted, I went to the dance and found myself opening up right to the edges of my body. Whirling through space I remembered trust. I remembered safety, my own; and perfection, the mystery's. I smiled wide and gave my life to Life, once more.

All because of a few silly words from an old friend.

Thanks, DOC.

~

i'll say this.

...

put your shoes on

the same way you did

when you were still under 20

and still excited to see something brilliant

or repulsive that defined you.

Come home.

write about it. You deserve the opportunity and command.

don't be so green.

You words may emit bad carbons.

or brilliant diamonds.

and that

exactly

is why it is so trying

and hard and sad

to be brilliant.

you are like you are.

there is a violin playing in my living room.

and a man speaking.

saying, "stand up"

but he is very young

and knows nothing of the world

like you

or I

which makes him so small

and you

and I

so big

and important.

feed your stream

of consciousness

and dance.

tonight,

you will not regret anything

except for not listening to yourself more

adding lamps to your bedroom

photographs to your wall

and removing the television from your home.

and of course calling me more often,

which makes me sad

because I always believed so much

in your capacity

to change the world.

and that, my dear friend.

...

is terribly sad.

the converse...

of your smile.

it is sad to wait there

and pass the last ten minutes of your evening

in something I wish i had a long time ago.

so sister,

please

live it out.

that is what the world needs.

the black and the white

the yin

the circle

the square.

and some dumb bastard to stop typing

when he's not getting paid to do it.

service and exile

A friend writes, on his blog: "the degree to which we serve is the degree to which we are no longer in exile."

This sentence resonates like the long note of a bell. Over the weekend I cooked in the discomfort of exile: after ingesting plant medicine, I found myself caught in a rushing river of thought which cascaded over all the events of my life, finding fault with each one and my role in it. Everything I've ever done is a horrible mistake, I "realized," and I am a horrible person for having done all those things.

This is not an unfamiliar experience for me, this shattering, devoid of self-kindness -- usually, however, it is a murky and subterranean unfolding, whereas I found it suddenly crystalline in the light of consciousness and my community's love. This weekend was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, and I spent several hours each day praying in synagogue with my community and then several more hours in precious moments of just being together. I found myself again and again in awe of the sweetness of sharing this life with those around me, so open-hearted and committed to growth and joy.

I'll spare you all the gory details of my personal process around this experience, and will just say that I had an experience I'd never had before in this particular go-round, which is that I felt for the first time able to share myself from within the experience and find myself received with unconditional love and positive regard by my friends. It was immeasurably healing, after having found myself guilty in the court of my own mind, to be guided back into the expansiveness of the heart by the love of my chosen family here (with a little help from Big Mama Ocean).

Today, at the Brower Center, there was a blessing ceremony for the building -- it's a new building (we all just moved in a few months ago), and today we gathered together to thank the ancestors for allowing us to be there and pray that our work for the healing of the earth would be good and successful. We stood in a circle as a beautiful Ohlone elder woman called in the directions and asked us each to speak about our work. It was a special ceremony, one that made me feel so blessed to be where I am today.

The photographer for the event was wearing a shirt with a quote from David Brower on the back: "Have fun saving the world or you are just going to depress yourself." It struck me, especially after my experience of going into my own shadow this weekend and then re-emerging into the light of love, that this is really the best thing that we can do. Love the earth, love one another, give everything. I am learning that I can heal myself when I give over all of myself -- in prayer and in action, when I offer my fullest heart, my fullest service to the need of the moment, my own experience is transformed.

I used to wonder what people meant when they say, 'the more you give, the more you have.' Wouldn't giving everything just leave me spent and empty? But I see it more clearly now, as I swim in the chaotic waters of creativity and collaboration, as I discover what it means to show up as a person in the world, being open to loving and being loved. Giving everything, having fun saving the world, is really the only way to go now. The alternative to having fun is depressing yourself. The alternative to service is exile. On this planet -- which could go up in flames soon if we don't all make profound changes, or possibly even if we do -- as scary as it is to be alive and do things and make mistakes and fumble and stumble on, what is the alternative? Safety, inertia, numbness. Exile.

It is a stark calculus for stark times, and the choice to serve requires constant sensing and re-calibration, like a baby learning to walk. But there's really no question about what choice to make, is there?

re:indigenous

During my second year of law school, I took a course called Law, Markets and Culture, taught by the only tenured female African-American professor on the faculty of the school. It was a ranging examination of the intersections of economy and jurisprudence, and the struggle for human thriving amidst these often-forbidding forces.

I wrote our 24-hour final exam in that class about Burning Man, analyzing the festival, in the context of Western culture, as an "alternative for structuring relations." I dug the paper out of my files as I thought about this blog post, and read through it with glee. I'd just returned from my first time out on the playa when school started, and suddenly I thought I had discovered the secret to fixing our poor, broken civilization. It was like I was in graduate school, or something: my Marxist-inspired critiques of the market economy flowed without pause into a discussion of race, gender, and morality. The final ingredient in this intellectual goulash was a statement on Burning Man's potential to revivify our humanity as we traded in goods and services:

". . . Burning Man participants bypass modes of market-based relations and their attendant alienation, and experience interpersonal interactions as holistic sites of creativity and growth. Festival participants spend each of the seven days of the festival in pursuit of joyful experience, creative self-expression, and basic survival needs; in these simultaneously common and radically divergent pursuits, participants interact not in service of the market, but in service of one another. This departure from traditionally limited, stifled and hurried relationships in the context of the market arguably allows participants to more fully reveal themselves and more fully witness one another, thus contributing to one another’s human flourishing."

(Yes -- yes, I did just quote myself in my own blog.) My main point, couched in all this clap-trap, though, was that Burning Man is a rare and valuable opportunity for urban-bound privileged folks to taste some form of indigeneity. How do we live on the earth together? This is the question that 50,000 people work to answer each year, albeit at the world's largest party, one utterly reliant on fossil fuel, from the gasoline in the cars to the plastic wrap on the Trader Joe's peanut butter pretzels.

I've been reflecting a lot on that tension in recent weeks, since returning from my own pilgrimage to the playa. Looking at other people's pictures on Facebook and remembering my own experience of all that wildness, all that tribal chic, all that effort in one great undulating paean to unpredictability, dancing with the flames of chaos -- I recognize the seed of remembrance of who we are. We go out there to lose our minds and find our way again. So many of the most magnetic Burning Man stories are stories of hearts cracking open, greeting the dawn in the arms of a friend or a lover or the mother earth herself, sobbing and rejoicing at the truth of our connection and the ultimate truth of the love that is everything. It is so easy to forget, but out on the playa, even in the midst of all the noise and excess, people can be reminded.

And that is really the project of our time -- the remembering that all of us are indigenous to this earth. We all live here, we all belong here. Martin Prechtel writes, "every human being alive today, modern or tribal, primal or over-domesticated, has a soul that is original, natural, and above all, indigenous in one way or another. And like all indigenous peoples today, that indigenous soul of the modern person has been either banished to some far reaches of the dream world or is under attack by the modern mind."

If we are to survive, we must remember.

I spent much of today lying in my cozy treehouse apartment in the rain, spending time with my mother who is visiting from Los Angeles. I was reading magazine articles by Prechtel, by an Ojibwe woman who developed www.fourdirectionsteachings.com to make indigenous teachings accessible, by Jesse Wolf Hardin of the Anima Center in New Mexico. I oscillated between these reminders of the immediacy and immensity of the challenge -- how we must utterly transform our way of being on this planet, grieve the failure of our culture, learn how to return home to the earth and to one another -- and work on the internet, punctuated by visits to Facebook.

I started to notice the difference in my physical feeling, even my own self-awareness, when I was reading Sacred Fire magazine and when I was scouring the web or looking through my friends' photographs. Connection and distraction. Remembrance and forgetting. A continuous loop.

It is no longer a question, though, in my mind, that remembering is the great task of our time. And how does this work take place? Another article I read today suggested that it ultimately requires a releasing of all thought, all preconceived notions no matter how grand and carefully-wrought, and instead allowing for listening. Listen to the earth, watch what is going on around you, and be with the web of life that will emerge before your eyes. Find your place in that sacred web by witnessing the living points spanning around you and beyond you.

Maybe the world wide web teaches us, in some way, how to think in a web -- how to intuitively track the thread leading from one node to another, how to recognize interconnection. Maybe it is our unique position at this time in history to re-indigenize even that gift, so that we can again find sight of our link to the life that exists around us, inextricably connected to us, and remember how to be with it now and into the future.

dusty and exalted.

I can barely stay awake right now but I am bound and determined to keep writing on this blog, so let me provide you with just a few highlights from my week of bacchanal.

First and foremost, methinks, was the moon. We got to see her wax into fullness, then start to wane again -- one night she even wore a halo. It is rare for me to be that intimately connected with the night sky, the night wind, the night earth. I let myself feel what moon light feels like, and it is somehow reminiscent of the feeling that I had at the saltworks in Moray, Peru -- dense, quiet, intimate, snowy. The moon was a silent and unwavering beacon for me, a reminder of the place within, which brought me to centeredness again and again amidst the noise and pageantry.

Next, of course, the community. The homies, the peeps, the familia. The big, sweet love. Not to mention our camp was more tightly-organized and smoothly-run than ever, with a separate kitchen tent, shade cloth over all of our personal tents, and a separate lounge structure. The gravitational pull of home and family, especially in the heat of mid-day, was hard to resist. I remember with fondness and bemusement my first year, basically all by myself out there, when all I had was a tent and a few cans of tuna fish. The co-evolution of person, friendships and city, to be sure.

Cannot fail to mention the airplane ride. A friend of a friend was in the skydiver camp, and she got us tokens to ride up in the plane as "fireflies," or passengers. Three things to say about this, primarily. Thing one is that I had, and still have, a good deal of trouble wrapping my head around the fact that four people, seemingly otherwise sound in mind and body, leapt out of the airplane in order to hurtle towards the ground! I myself did prefer to remain IN the plane. Thing two is that immediately after the divers dove, and the door closed, the pilot turned the plane essentially on its side. Pure, adrenaline-coursing exhilaration at that, as we ourselves made a relative plummet towards the earth again. And thing three is of course just the view of the city from above -- not only the place itself, but the beautiful rift valley in which it sits and the mountains on either side. Truly breathtaking to take such a bird's eye view.

Then, the WORK. I got some good ceremonial work done out there, people! Did some healing, moved some energy, opened some doors, released some long-awaited sobs, created some alignment. As a result: shift. 'Nuff said.

And of course: the flow. Somehow, not having any expectations this year, just intentions, made it really easy to drop into the glee/ sweetness/ gravity/ juice of whatever moment I happened to be experiencing. The more I allowed it, the more it astounded me -- my favorite was on Friday night, when my original buddy and I parted ways early in the night, and I kept flowing from beautiful interaction to beautiful interaction (including a serendipitous pee-squat next to a dark RV with one of the skydivers from our experience that very day!), until finally I found four or so of my favorite people from Women's Herbal Symposium. We brought in the dawn out at the trash fence, with a visit to my friend's beautiful installation of four five-foot wooden feathers, painted black and white, in flight along the orange netting. I asked her what it meant and she, woman of few but evocative words, said, "they're finally free." Ah, yes.

On the walk back to the city, the sun newly-emerged and the full moon sinking into the cradle of the mountains, we saw two black birds in flight. My friend, the artist, found a black and white bird feather on the ground. Mind you, there's no wildlife to speak of out there.

So that was what it was, and so much more . . . I still feel a kind of lingering momentum, an explosiveness, a desire for further and ever more dizzying expansion. So much of the magic of the playa is around What Could Be. The sense of possibility we find from walking amongst evidence of unadulterated human creativity, from being free to express ourselves freely together, from touching extremes of experience and witnessing our own awe in the face of all that exposure -- that sense is unique to the playa, and the inevitable passage of this yearly ritual brings a bittersweet taste. But -- but -- it just began! We were just anticipating it, a week ago! Amazing, how it all unfurls and then retracts upon itself, with nothing but an empty, dry expanse in its wake.

But really, words can't do it justice. If you want to know more, you'll just have to experience it for yourself someday.

three seasons in one

I'm pleased to report that the fluctuations and vagaries of my spirit and soul have conveniently corresponded to the months on the calendar this summer.

June was all festivalia and flights of fancy. I danced on more than one huge lawn, swam naked in more than one body of water, and found myself being courted by more than one eligible bachelor. I had a peaceful, easy feeling that snowballed right up until the end of the month, when it went splat and melted in the July heat.

July saw me break up with the man I was dating (which, let's be honest, was a welcome relief), return from my herbal apprenticeship backpacking trip covered in mosquito bites, and gain back some of the weight I'd lost. Turns out I can't just cross my fingers and hope that an unhealthy pattern will somehow heal itself. The work still has to be done and I'm still the one who has to do it.

On the road home from the mountains I picked up a dead bird on the side of the highway, and once home discovered that it was a perfectly intact owl. I wouldn't have gotten a gift like that if I wasn't worthy of it . . . so essentially, I'm in trouble now. The last weekend in July I participated in a fire ceremony that spun me out into the deep recesses of my shadow: disconnected, alienated, alone.

And almost immediately across the border into August, a shift: this time, a roller-coaster ride along the spiral of life. I officiated my oldest friend's wedding; spent a week on the road with my father; served as a kind of doula at my friend's birth; and got word that another friend and teacher, a true luminary, has died. Niall and Rivka's baby dropped into this world like a sheer miracle just a few days before Frank Cook, legendary plant teacher and wisdom holder, passed out of it, well before his time. I'm still stewing in the many hard and breathtaking truths of these past few weeks, as I rest here on the cusp of a journey to the world's strangest neon desert bacchanal.

But I notice an awareness, a lightness in me that I have never known before. A sense of being quietly awe-struck, holding a reverence for the meaningful meaninglessness and the meaningless meaningfulness of life, the world and everything. Some veil has lifted and I find myself viscerally aware of my power to choose at every moment, and the possibility of landing, over and over again, in the present. I am smiling into the mystery and in so doing find a tenderness, a forgiveness for myself that is entirely new. Facing darkness enables me to allow light in, as it turns out, and this bemusing and wondrous reality is the seed of my practice now.

Onward, into the dust . . .

spoils of the weekend

It's Sunday afternoon and my dining room table is overflowing with apples, blackberries, figs, tomatoes, calendula flowers, and seaweed. The apples, a bit bug-bitten and bruised, will eventually emerge as sweet and leathery rings from the dehydrator, a perfect snack. The blackberries stained my fingers purple, and there's a streak of tomato juice and seeds drying out on my cutting board. The figs are just perfect. And the seaweed was a trade for three or so hours of my enthusiastic saleswomanship at the Grand Lake farmer's market yesterday, hawking my friend and teacher Trish's mineral-rich wares from the sea.

The calendula flowers? Harvested in front of my friend David's apartment in Berkeley, before we drove up to a farm in Sebastopol this morning for a four-hour plant medicine class. We got there a bit early so I got to spend some time plucking blackberries from the bramble and picking apples off the ground.

During the class I sat with a living stand of calendula flowers for a long time. It's a simple, strong plant that wakes with the sun and sleeps with the night, a renowned topical healer. I talked with it for a while. Just open yourself to the world and shine out your light, it said. Don't question your choices. Just live, love, give your healing gift, rest when the night comes.

Over my time out there today I felt myself slowly coming into a human pace; my frenetic heartbeat smoothed out. Getting in the car and driving back to Oakland felt like a contraction.

I live in this city because this is where my life is, my community, the people I choose to experience life alongside, and who have similarly chosen me. I live here because my work is here, because I learn so much from the urban-based eco-intelligentsia's discourse on the environment, the world scene, the self and the spirit. I live here because it's fun and interesting, with great music, varied cuisine, and sexy people.

But when it comes down to it, I use that word "live" pretty loosely. When I am in the city, I do many things, I grow, I learn, I enjoy, I work and I play. When I am on the earth, though, I live. What's the difference? The best way that I can describe it is to say that when I am close to nature, my heart feels like it can open up and smile with life. Here in the city, the rushing and the fear tend to close my heart, or even break it.

That sounds dramatic, I know. But last weekend I got to witness part of a birth; I was there for about six hours while my dear friend labored, and then I was there the next day when their beautiful, miraculous baby girl was just a few hours old. The experience brought me into a visceral awareness of our fundamental embodied-ness, our fundamental animal-ness. We are mammals! We're given life by the waters and the plants and the sunshine around us. Women's bodies even cycle with the moon, which cycles with the tides, which cycle with the seaweeds, which bring nourishment to the community. We're part of this earth and when we deny that, there is always pain, however subtle.

It is when I am out on the earth that I feel the pain of this exile, when subterranean longings surface and come into sharp focus.

When am I moving to the countryside, you might ask? Not anytime soon. For now, I remain compelled to seek love and fortune within the urban grid. So I continue to eat wild foods, learn the plants, practice listening to the world, slow down every day. And give thanks for all of the abundant blessings that grace my life, including the greatest blessing of life itself, each day no matter where I am.

*In memory of and in gratitude to Frank Cook, master plant teacher, who left this world too soon*

OMG girl, where have you been?

The truth is, I've been scared to write.

Lately I've spent a lot of time looking back at all my old stuff, grimacing, wondering how I could ever have thought any of it was any good at all. It's purple! It's self-important! It's predictable! All I've had for myself is a panoply of distaste.

But today I had lunch with a friend, actually an ex-lover. We sat in the sunshine and conversed in the way that only ex-lovers can converse -- sweet, ranging, full of recognition. She asked me if I've been writing and I said I hadn't, that I'd been stuck in self-critique. Snap out of it, she told me, you're a great writer. Just start writing again, so you get the hang of it.

It reminds me of being in high school at the always-dramatic Young Writer's Retreats, which took place every year up in Lake Arrowhead or some such place. Watch what happens when you get 100 high school students from L.A. with a penchant for angst together for four days of writing instruction! A pot-fueled hook-up fest, that's what. But I digress.

I'm reminded of something that one of the teachers said to us, one morning in that big bright lodge. She read to us from an essay that was actually entitled "Shitty First Drafts." Oh, were we titillated! But she pressed on because the message was important. "Don't think, write," she read. I remember feeling distinctly giddy upon hearing this, and I remember the way it affected my writing immediately: I was suddenly liberated to just put words down on the page now and worry later about how they looked, sounded or tasted. Just find your big block of stone first, and then you can carve it into whatever fanciful shape you choose. Amazing! There's no room for self-critique in such an approach; it's actually against the rules.

So I've decided to start a practice for myself of writing in this blog at least once a week. To prime the pump, keep the wheels greased, make sure the ol' hamster is running in the wheel. You know? Keep the words flowing out of the chute. And stop fretting so much about how the words land on the page, that the chute breaks down for six months at a time. Keep 'em coming.

So that's what I'm doing! That's my commitment. So please expect to hear from me a lot more often, and perhaps in more experimental forms. And if you don't, please feel free to come check on me, and even nag me a little (but only a little) if I'm gone too long. Deal? Thanks.

oh it has been such a long time

What's been going on? Where have I been? Everything's changed in my world since last we spoke. I've left my job at the law firm, taken a trip to Peru, unwound. It's been a season of healing. I haven't done much writing at all, which I do regret because the insights from this time have been myriad and rich - but it feels like a deep integration rather than some kind of transformational rollercoaster. I feel like I'm getting my land legs again - trusting my intuition, practicing only kindness towards myself. Spending lots of time in the kitchen, on the couch, outside. Thank Goddess.

I'm thinking about shaving my head, just to spare myself the experience of clumps of hair coming out into my hand every time I brush my fingers through my hair. But you know what? Hair loss is the most profound catalyst for change that I could have asked for. Here's what I'm realizing:

(1) The Universe does not hate me or want me to suffer. In some ways I have been making choices all my life that have been leading up to this experience.
(2) I now know what choices I need to make for my body to experience optimum wellness, and it's up to me to make them.
(3) It's never as bad as I think it is.
(4) Complaining, crying, and feeling like a victim *don't* grow hair.

The choices (see #2) are dietary and attitudinal ~ I'll spare you the gory details regarding the former. As to the latter, it is truly a mindblowing thing to see how I have this particular experience-frame, or thought-structure, or formula, and all my life I just plug in different variables into the formula for approximately the same result. Oh, woe is me, I am suffering from (_insert physical appearance issue here_) . . . nobody will ever love me! I am doomed to remain small, unseen, and unexpressed!

Um, no. Useful though that system may have once been, it yields only diminishing returns at this point. The butterfly, all dripping wet, inevitably nudges its way out of the chrysalis. So blindly I go, making one choice at a time, with only self-love as my guide through the unfolding present moment.

Say it with me: I am ok. I am ok! Feel that. It can be difficult to really let such a radical statement of self-acceptance into your body, but when you do, it's pure medicine from the tips of your toes to the crown of your head. That's where I want to live, so that's what I'm practicing. And I'm getting stronger all the time.

Last week I went with my mother to New York City. Being there, I admit, interfered somewhat with my faith in humanity. There are just so *many* of us! And we all want to consume what we want to consume, get what we want to get, realize the dream. We all walk around Manhattan dazed from too much light, noise, heat, linearity, from too many people. It's nearly impossible to avoid the endless cycle of purchasing and throwing away things in plastic containers in New York. With all that endless speed and aggression, all that disregard for geologic time, how do people even remember themselves to be human?

On Thursday my mother and I stood in the rain at the family gravesite, out at the Flushing Cemetary in Queens. I made a small ceremony over the beautiful box containing my grandmother's ashes. We prayed, my mother and I, for her spirit to pass with lightness and grace, to go home gently. Even such a troubled soul as she should be received by the earth for her rest. Even such an embittered lineage may be sweetened with a honey offering.

Kindness. Returning to the body. It is ok, everything is ok, I am ok. These truths arise in my field of vision again and again, like curious hummingbirds. I am learning that there is nothing to heal, after all; only a life to accept and to joyfully live. It's so easy!

to turn, turn will be our delight

After getting in line at 6:30 in the morning, and being, with my group of 7 dear friends, one of the very last people to make it into the sold-out showing of the inauguration at Oakland's Parkway theatre;

after watching President-Elect Obama emerge from the White House with President Bush, with just a few moments remaining of the latter's devastating possession of the title;

after squealing at Michelle's gold and the girls' vibrant blues and oranges, and at Jill Biden's Boots!;

after laughing at Rick Warren's flourish on Sasha's name, and shouting "except the gays!" every time he made some comment or another about equality and freedom;

after Aretha simply was the queen;

after Vice President Biden's swearing-in on the biggest Bible ever, thereby ending the reign of the true evil mastermind of the last eight, destructive years, now crippled and confined to a wheelchair;

and just before Michelle held out Lincoln's bible in her two gloved hands, to aid her husband Barack Hussein Obama in assuming the office of the Presidency of the United States America --

this is where I really lost it.

What came through for me, in this most beautiful adaptation of "Simple Gifts," was a sense so pure and so strong of the human heart. Rising above the joyful din of the day, the lilting music from the inaugural platform required no words to convey the simplest and most redolent of human longings -- to be good on this earth, to do good hard work and live in communion with others, to transcend separation.

Today we say goodbye to George W. Bush and the searing wounds he inflicted on the world, on our own nation and our national psyche. Our collective hemmorage would have been stanched today had Hillary taken the Oath of Office, or even, in some way, John McCain. But that Barack Obama assumes the mantle of the Presidency brings a great, earth-moving healing for us that we can only begin to grasp in our imaginations.

The first few lines of a new chapter were written today. None of us know how the story will continue to unfold, and I am personally certain that our fragmentation will persist until the masculine principle which pervades our politics, our commerce, our very way of being becomes balanced by the feminine. But I know, too, that a turning has occurred today. It is a softening, a re-membering of what has been frozen in a traumatized rift for decades and centuries. I weep today for the way that this inauguration, this President, opens the hearts of the people to one another again. We look into each other's eyes -- eyes set into brown faces, Muslim faces, queer faces -- and instead of snarling mistrust, we recognize in one another what lives within each of us. Heart, soul and spirit rising, yearning, reaching out to love. Eyes that watch the horizon, summoning in the simple gifts that are our birthright on this sacred earth.

I am so proud to be an American today.

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where you ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.