blank blank fullness

I want to fly 

I want to paint

To sing and dance and breathe the winds of the ocean in

Exhale the mountains

To dream my life into being

To walk with inspiration

I don't want to wait

I want patience made of faith and vision,

Understanding higher messages, missions

Hearing when I'm lost or unsure

Knowing growing upon knowing as the intuition roots deeper and deeper

I want to sweep away the stagnant

Put the world on hold to hold my lover

I want to live in truth and laugh with joy,

Open to the mysteries of each new day

And open to the people that come my way

I want to be self-realized

And compassionate

Remember the down days when someone needs a hand up

I want it to be effortless

I want to feel what yes means in my bones

No more confusion

No more moans and groans

I want to wake up to a day before me with inspired action aplenty and my own decisions guiding 

A schedule of right mind and left action

Meditation, love, interaction

Soft and strong

No more waiting

Time for Flying, celebrating

fruits tumbling, mossy notes and straw baskets
sweat equity at its peak, born to the careful farmhand
hands salved in salvation, owning his station
"It ain't fancy but here -- take a bite"
fragrance precludes the watering
like a root thirsty for the whole tree
the nose gets the mouth gets the body gets the soul
ready
to experience that simple bliss
of a first taste
and when you've been on the journey
for the length of the year,
picking out seeds
preparing the ground
consulting almanacs, the moon, feeling the wind on your back
a push from the elements, all aligned
planting, persevering along with the sprout, a spout
supplying water
or
Indra, responding to the grains, the fire, the
thank yous
offering in return a bit of
quenched desire
to grow and grow and
that magic-trick of a little bud
still green, still young
pushes forth
this is how the man can be the mother
and the mother, the man
with just a little work
and just a little listening,
waiting
for the ripening
for the harvesting
of the bounty of September

...which was apparently banned in much of Europe and the US. Too many good/powerful messages...

You know that untapped percentage of our brain? It's actually a treasure trove of eternal / timeless knowledge and wisdom, deep psychic abilities -- radio towers / signals with which to communicate without words; a dream-power so intense, it will actually project out into reality, as if a hologram took it to the next level and bound into atoms and solid matter. And the puny percent we do use? Well that's just a storage locker for new information, a small allowance to take in certain temporally-influenced, circumstantial realities. Trouble is, we're cramming that tiny locker with information, with reflections of reflections, distorting the original film, blocking the harmonic, universal rhythm, it's compressing in on itself, short-circuiting the whole system.

The huge trove? Picture this: a brain with only a tiny section lit up in colors, sparks, motion, commotion -- the rest is grey and dead-looking. That grey matter? the untapped, forgotten well-of-all we'll ever need? Fully equipped. It just needs a good dusting, to be plugged into a higher source. Tesla on to it, the capstone of Egypt? Check. Vedic scripts? Yip. All these under, above ground truths in myth.

____________

I saw God in a new way today. Well, not entirely new, but the rasa, the feeling, was newly nuanced.

God could be our best of friends, a well-wisher supreme, but we exclude Him from our lives. Like, how would you like it if the people you introduced and help get together just started hanging out without you, having tons of fun on your dime, on your resources and, let's say you're an inventor and artist, on the things you've built and designed? Would make you feel pretty annoyed huh? But if we were to include you? Guess what, you'd probably be super happy and want to share more of your discoveries, your personality, more of your light. Yea, God too.

_____________

This life is actually a hologram of a higher reality. It's not that the invisible, higher platforms of thought, action and existence are manifestations beyond reality; it's that they are reality, and we are living a dream, and these days, an increasingly darkening dream. I find it painfully ironic that in order to maintain 'security' (ego security), police forces are using violence and causing harm. Oh how the natural order has been reversed.......

_____________

The Six Loving Exchanges:

Offering gifts in charity
Accepting charitable gifts
Revealing one's mind in confidence
Inquiring confidentially
Accepting prasada
Offering prasada

are the six symptoms of love shared by one devotee and another.

More of these, please. Always.

______________

Krishna's birthday is this weekend.

______________

What are we living for? What are you living for? Is it your family? You career? A good salary? Your community? Satan? God?

Which of these things echo into eternity and which, like the periodicals that land in the litter box, turn over and pass into history, forgotten and buried in the sands of time? How can we develop understanding of the former, and remain cognizant of the latter, checking the ego towards the pursuit of what is inherently beneficial instead of what twinkles and fades? To develop understanding of eternity... huh, from some little contact I've had with yoga, 13 years of my 28,  (such a drop in the ocean) I've come to understand that being properly situated is half the battle. So many distractions today, I certainly get caught up, especially the political ones... Hmm, like father like daughter. And seek the balance in the spiritual... Hmm, mama I owe you. So, so many distractions. Seemingly benign. But our most precious resource, our consciousness is sapped... I find solace in the yoking of the two. It's not that we reject the world and its delights, it's that we include God in our pursuit of it all and fit that last puzzle piece into place; so that we can find some measure of completion while we still have time to breathe... With the right association and friendship, anything is possible.

Three of my favorites:

If one offers Me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, a fruit or water, I will accept it 

Whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever you offer or give away, and whatever austerities you perform -- do that, O son of Kunti, as an offering to Me.

In this way you will be freed from bondage to work and its auspicious and inauspicious results. With your mind fixed on Me in this principle of renunciation, you will be liberated and come to Me.

It's nice to spend time with new people sometimes.

With the right consciousness (reality) we can transform our lives (dreams, they take shape and fade into the night with the dawning of death and a new life). It's just a little consciousness that needs a polishing. The lens of the heart needs some dusting. Prabhupada said that the heart is like a camera, it takes so many pictures, snapshots of memories; hurt, love, joy, pain, celebration, mourning; and they compress into the unconscious mind. These layers become so heavy, our wings fold down our backs and we forget how to fly on, float on the miracle of here, now, all together as soul. We need to clean that lens, the mirror of the heart to see clearly again. To see the true picture. Sound vibration. The most powerful energy there is to aid in this cleansing. Mantra. From man - Sanskrit for mind and tra- to cross over. Seed sounds which originate in another platform, the transcendental platform, of life and reality. When we utter them, from the heart, sincerely, listening with all of our ears, inner and outer, we begin to become transformed. Something softens. The layers caked onto the heart begin to dissolve from the powerful acid-like potency of nectar in sound. Every time, I shit you not, every time I'm mad or my mind is running a story, a cheap and ugly one, maybe, a junk-food thought, I chant and immediately it's pacified. The sensation increases hundred fold when in a group of people doing the same. We all might have different reasons or experiences, on different rungs of understanding and acceptance, of devotion and insight, but the brilliant thing is -- that heart is getting clean.

_____________

There was a period of time when I was annoyed by "Waiting on the World to Change". I thought it was so defeatist. So weak and lame. I understood the general gist, but it felt impotent. It made me feel jipped. I didn't want to get messages telling me, subliminally, to give up, or worse, not even try. But then I realized tonight, it's really just the wheel of time turning, and when it's our turn, how are we going to handle reality, and temper the dream?

I really do believe it's our turn. So, are we going to act selfishly, or are we going to share resources, share our toys, playing with each other through the consciousness of the divine as our lens, inviting God to the party, working together with hostility a faded shell, buried in an ocean of grounded bliss.

DISCLAIMER: I wrote this to myself (now, to whom ever can relate to these words & find inspiration) a few months ago… I'm kind of a natural teacher, an impulsive sharer. If it isn't shared, I think, what's the point? Just like ol'boy in 'Into The Wild'… I just won't need to starve myself and forage alone in the wilderness to figure it out… Here goes nothing:

Everything's on the line for you

Oh all the flubs and magic too

You made the choice 

You walked the wire 

Committed to the power of fire

High above the rest

Warrior making the most of the mess

Simply born different

Oh you were trained up all right

Spent your shakti on the wise needle hidden in the hay of night

Bypassed the stomping grounds

Quietly marking up the books to tip the scales

In your favor the heavens unveiled

Ohhh I'm so excited to tell you about this gem of a troubadour!! His name is Robert Leslie. I found him on the subway platform at the 2nd avenue station of the uptown F. Which is a terribly smart place to be on a Tuesday night as a blossoming musician. I had just gone to see another great act, Zane Carney (actually, two great acts because his brother was playing with him that night and hot damn they were good) and myself and a flood of other show-goers were treated to Mr. Leslie's stylings while waiting for the train. What good luck. I even skipped getting on the first one so I could hear some more of his tunes.


Such a cutie! Though he can't be older than 25, he's got a from-another-age-like quality, just a hint of something special that's not too modern and not affected either; the way he speaks in stanzas and impossible imagination, with the confidence of a young person too dependent on intuition and too wary to accept authority. He's a writer, a poet. A singer and musician almost only as if by necessity, to make his musings come alive in another way off the page. Ok, so maybe I'm projecting and whipping up stories a little bit. But if you're a sensitive and interested person, ya can't help absorbing more than what is told and shown when consuming another's intimate arts. And album explanations. The back-story along with his latest album, Sense of Distance, stirs the vagabond in me to wake in a palpable dream. I fell in love more. When I met him, he was wearing the obligatory hat with a big old poppy-like plastic flower and a knit scarf. He told me he's from England but also American. Ah, tis a certain blessing to hold multiple passports.

Anyway -- I just got to listening to his CD and am I excited for what I hope will be his inevitable success. Good stuff like this, souls that strike your inner chord clearly, you just want 'em to succeed.

Great to listen to on a run, by the way. Especially if, like me, you haven't gone for a run in AGES and are panting and ready to collapse after one minute and find yourself walking every other block; nice and soothing in such states of mild physical distress.

LYRICS
.....Piece of mind or piece of ass / gotta live and make it last / and gotta get it down somehow / pocket all the cents and dimes / And if another lecture hall / locks me in or tries to teach / more flawed ideas or battle calls / tell them that I can't be reached / tell them they've already leeched my happiness, my wherewithal / they must be sick of all my sighing / oh come on now everybody stop / I'm leaving soon I've had enough / I've jumped the cliff, I've made the drop / don't think twice now call the bluff / yes it's painful, yes it's rough / but I'll be gone before ida flop / so long guys I'll be alright

One of my favorite little-known blogs for getting highly salacious knowledge/information and the in on issues mass media, your silly friends, and the general populace doesn't even know about or, if they do, wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole for fear of being ostracized or 'unrelatable'. Frankly, I find that the status quo is, at its core, usually far more more disenfranchising and alienating than the truth. It's just too bad the majority are on the wrong boat with little idea of what else is out there, with lesser taste for the truth and not much interest (or support or patience) in applying that truth. Though Matt Taibbi is off to start his own independent publication so maybe there is still hope.

Mah Bootlegged Book Club is finally getting tits-deep into the mythos master, Joseph Campbell.

I Have News for You
by Tony Hoagland

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.

So here's what. A radio news program on in the car tonight spurred a conversation (well, I was calmly speaking and the passenger to my right was having a coronary) on gay marriage. They were all like it's unnatural for people of the same sex to get married because they can't reproduce and I was all like, is that why people even get married?! That makes no sense, they should have the same legal rights since that's all that "marriage" really is anyway because love don't need a paper. Anywho. 

Here's the conspiracy: there's a species, let's say an alien, reptilian species known as the Masonic, Atlantean elite which has been plotting to reduce the birthrate by entrapping people into vain pursuits which only end in self-satisfaction and conspicuous consumption. No one wants to have kids anymore because then how will they be fabulous and go out to dinner and shop and work and fuck like crazy and play and jet off to Turks and Caicos on a whim if they have to tuck the tots in? Too much hassle. 

They got you in their web of carnal delights. Muahahahaha. No more babies. Ok. Big deal. 

But wait -- there's more. 

'They' full-well know that there are souls in holding, waiting for a physical container to keep playing out their karma, their samsara. These souls NEED to go somewhere. They're clogging the soul sphere, in limbo. The universal balance is in peril!!! But we ain't makin babies on Earth. Where ever shall those souls take birth???

Dun dun dun... There's an alternate universe. Another life-sustaining planet which they are cultivating for that New New World. Order. 

Clever right?! I tell ya, where my mind goes when I'm washing dishes.........

*copyright Alexandra Moga 2014 don't be stealin my movie idea y'all* (lolz I know you can't copyright ideazzzz shush)

XOXO

So, as if I needed one more project to occupy my time and mind and energy...

I've decided to run with and develop an idea which implanted itself at the end of last year (oh man, 2013 is last year, isn't it?).

The idea came out of the ether, where, of course, all ideas float and stalk, awaiting a perfectly idle yet engaged mind upon which to descend. I connected with this idea mostly because I love to interview people (read: get into their heads and feel out what makes em tick) and then share those findings, usually in totally disparate ways and places, like as an anecdote in a yoga class, or a totally vague and obtuse metaphor in a poem. Usually, I'm just having a conversation (secretly interviewing) and that conversation informs me about much more than that person; myself, society, life, that vibe/lexicon/tendency that no one consciously gets yet but is still happening right now. Natural born sociologist.
 
Any whooooo. I make you, dear reader, wait so long to find out what the F*Ck I'm ever actually talking about in these posts of mine. HAHA. HAHAHAHA.

It's this:




I'm on a quest to extract and expose the makings of a 'yoga teacher'. Whatever that 'is'. Whoever they are.

Inspired by the Proust Questionnaire. Tailored to the yogis out there, to inspire an understanding of yoga, in all its colors, shapes, and makings. Because, as you may or may not know, it's more than moving around on a plastic mat. And, I'd venture to say, yoga is our natural state, regardless of profession, occupation or beliefs.

Musicians losing themselves in their instruments, the sound. Yoga.
Improv performers responding so intensely that they can't even hear if the audience is laughing. Yoga.
Writers pouring out words to paint a story to move you and you and you and silently cheering and laughing and fist pumping to themselves because they're in the flow. Yoga.
Investment bankers manipulating stocks, wholeheartedly consumed. Iw. That's a kind of yoga, tainted, of course. 

You get me.

I Love Yogis. World-wide. The panoply of styles and schools of thought.

Dig it here (tumblr). And here (facebook). 

Maybe one day it will be a purty little book. With portraits of some of those teachers. Because I also love faces. And zooming in on them and painting them. But that's a whole other level of commitment/art. So for now, it's another blog in the sphere.

Hope you find something in there to connect to, to converse with, to inform your life.

Love,
A

This video fills me with such insane amounts of longing, admiration, love and gratitude, you'd think I was falling in love for the first time ever.

A friend and I were recently talking about falling in love and she shared an analogy with me that I found to be quite powerful and sticky. Here it is:

Our ability to fall in love with another totally and give of ourselves and our hearts in a deep relationship is like a band aid. The first time you put it on, it's really sticky and stays on well. If it gets ripped off, the second time it doesn't stick as well, the third time even less, and so on and so on. My friend shared how she wished she'd been more selective about who she gave her love and heart to in the past because she realized that being torn up had an effect on the love when she was ready to give it to the one she decided to spend the rest of her life with. It just wasn't as vital as the first time. Can anyone else relate to that?

That was a bit of a digression to make this point:

Although my love's been ripped off in the past, and my love band-aid might not stick with the fervor it had the first and second times, this video and the love it elicits in my heart transcends all notions of limit-bearing mortal love and drives into a core part of me so deep that I can but marvel at the utter windfall of grace I was lucky enough to receive to take me there. That I was even able to perform an iota of devotional service is nothing short of miraculous, a mystical gift. My experience of living in Mayapur (the place depicted in this film) for 4 months is emblematic of waking in another realm of reality, another dimension of the material universal manifestation. There is no place on this earth quite as magical, as real, as important to discovering the essence of one's humanity as Mayapur.

On one level, my wish is for everyone to receive the kind of mercy and grace it takes to arrive to such a place. On another level, I know that not everyone is ready or consciously seeking this kind of love and life experience. You can't just buy a ticket to a place like Mayapur. You have to be led there, invited by the pure sincerity in your heart manifest outward. If you ain't got it, you ain't goin'. And for that, a part of me is glad. Because when you love and appreciate something or someone so much, the last thing you want is for them to get ripped off.

As the rising moon dispels darkness, spreading its soothing rays in all directions, so too did the Golden Avatar Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu appear in this world to bestow infinite light, hope, and love. Day by day, the worldwide bhakti revolution He ignited accelerates, as the background noise of doubt and fear is drowned by the vibration of sacred mantra. Entrance Into Eternity is a multi-part film series tracing this sankirtan movement back to its divine source, the epicenter of devotional ecstasy, the kirtan capital of the universe, Sridham Mayapur.

In Mayapur, the sweet melody of kirtan is never far, and hearts are awakened to the sacred flow of mercy. Men and women, boys and girls, from all corners of the world, pierce through divides of caste and color to harmonize their voices and deeds in service to the Supreme.

Some say Sri Caitanya was crazy. Some say he's gone. Others who know better still dance in His earthshaking kirtan, bathing in His limitless love and grace.

Dedicated to His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

--------------------------------------------
Music: Anthem by Emancipator

http://facebook.com/kriy8

writing is based first and foremost on an idea. and ideas are nothing without the seeds of emotion. emotion like pollen transplanted from person to person by the dancing feet of a bee of happenstance. a miraculous element one part independent and utterly necessary. of impulse forcing outer circumstance and inner conditionings to collide on some platform of decrepit or evolved. emotion, that is. tempered perhaps by studied logic, or scriptural injunction. no, not blind and sentimental religion. but intelligent and divine law. i can hear the thinking man scoff. or the emotional woman nod in rapt agreement. both are, for lack of a better word, wrong. man is a thing of reason. of potential to calculate and rise above by sheer will. but alas, not for long. for along came woman. woman is a thing of feeling. of intuitive curves interrupted by skeptical seeking. or of darkness expressed beside the point, expressed to bring to light what we all sense is there, but who's got balls big enough to say it? so what if the timing is wrong. there are emotional men and rational women. and there are times when we'll all fall into line with a camp, regardless of gender. be it to keep the peace, to strategize, to declare, silently, a kind of psychological warfare. to win. to let others think they win. to learn. to teach. where man and woman collide, be that softly, ferociously, unexpectedly, psychically; there emotion and idea come together. there we have writing in motion. drama alive.

writing is nothing without an idea. and any shmo can have an idea. so writing is certainly more than an idea. it's the ability to toe the fine line of pretending you know what you're doing as you walk down the highway into the unknown. with only a name on a piece of paper. or a page out of the phone book. or a terrifyingly inspiring dream. be it generated by the day or night. assuming, of course, that said highway is on a strech of desertland and the payphone you took shelter in at the truck stop housed a phone book. there are still places in america that use phone books. there must be.

the details. the unexpected. the juxtaposition. the allowing for someone else to show it for you. the use of a middle man in the pursuit of direct experience. the subtle worship of contradiction in order to maintain wholeness. the inconceivable oneness and difference. the painting of pictures within pictures as you paint a picture of a picture you're painting. the pretending you know what you're doing off of feeling while groping blindly just like everyone else. the confidence of well-placed lies. the weakness of self-sustaining truth. the expert who has compromised the unknown to serve those who have compromised structure for the unknown. the complementary and the questioning. the fragmented adapting to serve some ideal of whole. holiness.

the breakdown. the build up. the background track. the improv.

the next generation of repetition. in new! colors.

generated by a vision seen in sound, in listening. writing is listening to the same thing, and hearing something new. maybe even like you know what it means.

When the pebbles dig into
that fragile state
You know,
The one which seemed so
Solid last week

and today, you want to run the other way
No one can ever really tell you
that thing you have to find out
on your own;

You gotta stay.

When you grow weary of
what always was so sure
Anymore and evermore or just some more
What you want
What you think you need
What is there
What is still a dream
converging
and swirling
like the virgin snow dancing on a blacktop road;

Nothing sticking
yet;

You gotta play.

When you're so carefree
easy as you'd imagined
like a Disney movie
coming true

You gotta say;

Thank you
and

There's more to do
And nothing to claim

You gotta pray.

When you took too much
Never gave back
Turned your back
Funds in hand
Had the chance
So, with it, ran

Eventually;

You gotta pay.

Dues sent in,
Pieces missing accepted
A sock turned up
In with your destiny's laundry
Wrapped in their towel
Across town
Static cling
When on the street corner
You two met
Finally.
Then;

You gotta lay.

Girl is GOOD.

You heard her yet?

Well, hear her...

I first caught her from the mouth of one in Bali. I had to double-check the name. "Allez-la?" "Yea, Alela Diane". Funny because it's a French word (that's not actually a word but two words melded together) that my friend (whose name just so happens to be Diana...waaaaow) made up which we always use as a kind of "yeah I'm hyped" "come on!" "for reals!?" expression. Anywho. Alleeeeezla

This girl is good. These lyrics just hit me for the first listen and I gotta share them. Poetry. Set to a good twangin'. Loves. Cause she's a-singin', oooooh she's singin' meeee.

The whole album is solid....

'Black Sheep'

Sometimes I'm riding high in the rusted sky
Sometimes I sit right here miles off from anywhere
Some days I'm a black sheep, baby
Suddenly I'm elegant as evening
Most of the time, I'm on the line

I remember waiting by the phone pining away the nights alone
A tarnished coin into the slot, my number lost in your coat pocket
Some days I'm a black sheep, baby
Suddenly I'm elegant as evening
Most of the time, I'm on the line

Ooh a black sheep, black sheep dark as thunder
Ooh evening, evening is harder still
And I am on the line and the line is rusted blue
I am on the line and the line is rusted blue
Rusted blue, rusted blue, rusted blue

I just finished watching Shane Salerno's documentary, Salinger. It has left me at once troubled, motivated and hopeful; hopeful that with the right blend of intention, immersion into his work, consistent, heart-sourced writing and those mystic siddhis that years of yoga practice have offered me, I might be able to communicate with him telepathically over time and space; much like he claims to have communicated with his first, ex-Nazi wife. That detail, the Nazi one, may not be so important – except that it highlights the marked, man-making trait of flat-out unwavering allegiance to not giving a F what people, what a misshapen and misguided society might believe to be right or wrong; an allegiance, moreover, to a transcendent code that, given some of his actions to the contrary, could only be truly understood and appreciated by a minority.

Indeed, his seeming contradictions are enough to set page-loads of questions after him, though departed he may be from this mortal coil. That's the part that troubled me: that the media, fans, writers, reporters, all felt the need to question him, to hound him with questions, nay – with insignificant questions. When faced with such a mind, a spirit, a being; if you're going to take the effort to go after him, wouldn't there at least be a "How's your heart?", "How's your life going?" rapport? Perhaps there had been, but as the documentary painted it, his enigma drew out the crazed and demanding vs. kindred seeking-souls. Though the truth is, the world we face (or would it be the world which faces us?) really is our mirror.

His contradictions were just indicators, signs pointing to some deeper truth, a bigger question begging to be asked, one I don't believe he pretended to have the answer to, but was at least astute and interested enough to uncover and present to the world for the unpacking. That is, "Don't you see what a waste this all is?" And then, “So, what’s golden?” What frustrated me some is that, instead of asking him about the root cause for and therefore, solution to, The Catcher in the Rye (which in truth, could only be Salinger’s own inner state), his hounds wanted to know what to do about their own lives, their own writing careers, how to manage their own frail and suspicious conceptions of self. This newly revealed conception of self and society, by the grace of Salinger’s cutting observation and commentary, caused many to lose their grip on life as they thought they’d known it, leaving newly disillusioned (some might even say awakened) souls foundering amidst and fighting against the foggy motives of a superficial, lie-filled world, just like Holden Caufield. But I do understand that to stand face-to-face with a writer, an artist, a being of incalculable depth and intelligence, one who has so suddenly invested you (and so many of your generation) with the utmost meaning, is debilitating on a critical, frontal-lobe-level.

This artistic process of projecting one’s psychology onto a character (or a work), sending it into the world to come head-to-head with similar experiences and perceptions contained in receivers, who in a moment of utter mercy and open-armed acceptance, look into that long-sought for mirror, reveals the essence of the primum, the primal, the original exchange. Therein, his occupation with Vedantic teachings doesn't surprise me in the least. Indeed, it reassures me that his talent wasn't a clever fluke, but instead a studied and soulful stream stemming from the artery of eternal knowledge, of timeless truth, of ecstatic bliss. And like many connected voices who, almost besides themselves, cannot but tap into the thoughtsphere to hungrily (even manically) draw out the marrow for the times, he had this higher understanding before he even knew what it was. Via his commitment to his craft, his dharma, he was led back to the spring, the fountainhead.

Which brings me to Roark. Howard Roark, Ayn Rand’s protagonist who refused to sell out. I couldn't help but marvel at and find joy in their parallels: the indefatigable commitment to the creative act as the path, the goal and the reward; the rigorous dedication, self-control, and determination to remain 100% integral, or at least the attempt to. Perhaps the figure falls somewhere at 98.6%. But could you ever measure integrity? Even those bold enough to strive for perfection, for total integrity in purpose and execution must realize the sheer madness, vanity and self-indulgence it requires, thereby nullifying any possible arrival at such an unwieldy apex. Yet most men (and women) of significance are fiercely uncompromising. And the best of them, a rare breed if there ever was, never have their own interests at the center of their integrity, have instead built a wall of growing greens around higher principles meant to serve a core of love, beneficial to all who come in contact with them, keepers of the most precious commodity. The warrior surely can be understood to be he who, despite his raging gift, chooses to remain unexploited, protected from the selfishly motivated (no doubt existing within himself as well) by a buffer of nature as they buy-in to what may appear to the uninitiated as strange ways.

Which is where Salinger’s contradiction came in. After sharing the most intimate parts of himself through his story telling, he turned around and held fast to his privacy; to his right to unequivocally own his life and mind and time. He insisted on being published in the most celebrated and widely respected journals. And when he got his praise, dancing with a world ready to throw their arms around him and toss him to the heights, he glimpsed a bigger picture, and backed out; recommitted himself to a deeper dedication, one detached from the rabid recognition that comes with great talent. Nevertheless, he allowed a select few to penetrate those walls. He exchanged countless letters with young women (girls, really). They kept him soft-hearted. I would imagine, connected to some sense of innocence and purity that only a war-torn soldier (aren't we all?) could seek with such fantasy-tinged desperation and consistent need as he.

Which leads me to his overriding need for absolute control. He was in love with a striking and intelligent girl. At the same time, he was let off the hook from military service, considered unfit. If that’s not some sense of fate, then I don’t know what is. I'm sure he saw the acceptance of this rejection as utterly fatalistic. Perhaps the real fate was, in all actuality, his self-created destiny, his obstinate, hard-working character (he was a Capricorn, after all). He insisted on going to war. He eventually got his wish, and lost his lover. What could compel such a hard-nosed insistence on calling the shots, on demanding another, what some may consider lesser, hand of cards? Was it inspiration he was seeking; knowing that through war and the head-on confrontation of death one is assuredly on the path to emerge on the other side? It’s a truly beautiful, if not awe-inspiring understanding of duality: to know that if you go so far in one direction, you will come out on the other end, moreover, having culled some hefty fodder (certainly the most precious of resources for artists) along the way.

A divine play, is it not?  And oh, to live on that level of consciousness!

The thrilling thing about biographies for me, for most of us I'd imagine, is the opportunity to view a life in its entirety, to glean the bigger picture without being mired in a myopic scene or temporary drama as we may often find ourselves in our own daily lives. There's a free-handed ease in approaching the drawing out of another's life from start to finish. And with that comes a sense that I too, that we all, can take our lives into consideration on this scale and play out the stages with full-faith and commitment to a cause – should we be so lucky to grasp one as all-important, as transformative as JD Salinger had.

I'm pleased to announce a very special yoga retreat this January. We'll be heading to an oasis of calm and nature on Shelter Island, just 2-hours outside of New York City.

I've developed this three-day retreat with the intention of Rebalancing your body, Refocusing your mind, and Renewing your spirit.

We'll be practicing detox flow yoga classes to stir up stuck energy and activate the body's innate healing and detoxification system, yin yoga classes to stimulate deep relaxation and release, and a special SynchroFlow class I've developed which blends postures, charged breath-work, archetype and mantra meditations to get to the core of your personal, unique inner truth and to synchronize it with the innate pulse of cosmic energy -- your bestest friend, wisest guide and biggest helper.

Light, clean vegetarian food, herbal teas and juices will round out the cleansing, restorative and inspiring weekend.

I'll also be meeting with participants one-on-one, for SynchroGuidance sessions.

I'm SO excited to bring this work I've been putting together over this past year out to play!! I hope you can join me and take the time to take care of yourself, to pay attention to the divine spark of life within, and examine the ways you can bring it out to shine in your life.

One of my favorite friends in writing: across time and space his words have padded my inner safe place at moments in this decade of soon-to-be-done 20 where all that was certain was the uncertainty. Yes, I usually tried to love it and through that somehow it became so: loved and somewhat bearable and known and alright.

In that snare of paradox I found my own rhythm of loving, trusting and letting go; of knowing what to pick up and when. It's a dance with the world that delivers and the self that desires. An ongoing lesson in bridging the work expressed without and the sacrifice unseen within, the quiet messages received and the waiting for your will to come through and commit. All a certain kind of effort in parsing the light from the sin, the tiny crimes against the heart we all sometimes commit.

That writer is Rainer Marie Rilke. His name even soothes me somehow. Like a tender-sighted sage, a good grandpa or woolen-clad neighbor, bearded, who knows that all will be well, and can dispense of compassion and bolstering wisdom. Maybe standing on the porch within earshot of your sighs, offering a helping ear from his rocking chair in the early darkness of a crisp, cool night.

The bits and pieces of his sweetness strewn across the halls of the web can maybe sum the feel of what he stands for as a being. Might not match quite what I feel, but that wouldn't need be the clue for you to know that his contribution paved a humble road made of some kind of real noble truth.

And here, in this simple stanza, is captured something in the way of why... Why I dedicate my time and my life to spiritual practice. The farther I go down my road the more I sense the very precarious edge, the sword that sets me apart from the ways of the big bad world and sets me into the bush of a journey towards the soul. The soul of man, of God if I dare can, of my own intimately brewed blend of breath in the skin.

To unfold all the creases and lies pressed into me, by me, with or without my consent over time, over eons perhaps: this is the nature of the cutting through, of the making, of the walking the path; the nature of blazing fires I set time and time again, like a ranger who knows that to clear a new season, some damage must be done to what's simply overgrown. May it bring us closer...

I want to unfold,

I don't want to stay folded anywhere

Because where I am folded,

There I am a lie...

- Rainer Marie Rilke

More of him here

A humble place based in simple comforts

A world of magic at my doorstep, lush

And true

I step into the shower

To cool my toes

No curtains or tiles

Just stones and water

And the moon

Bright and lighting my riffs, even half-way

The sky, the ceiling in this pitch perfect place ((made of love vibration))

Casts my glance in its evening play

And I smile upwards

As is only natural to do

When someone wonderful smiles at you

Quoted from the brilliant mind and right sight of Andrey Tarkovsky...

"Modern art has taken a wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for its own sake. What purports to be art begins to look like an eccentric occupation for suspect characters who maintain that any personalized action is of intrinsic value simply as a display of self-will. But in artistic creation the personality does not assert itself, it serves another, higher and communal idea. The artist is always a servant, and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that had been given to him as if by a miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of self can only be expressed in sacrifice. We are gradually forgetting about this, and at the same time, inevitabley, losing all sense of our human calling...

The absolute is only attainable through faith and the creative act

In science, at the moment of discovery, logic is replaced by intuition. In art, as in religion, intuition is tantamount to conviction, to faith. It is a state of mind, not a way of thinking.

The artist reveals his world to us, and forces us either to believe in it or to reject it as something irrelevant and unconvincing. In creating an image he subordinates his own thought, which becomes insignificant in the face of that emotionally perceived image of the world that had appeared to him like a revelation. For thought is brief, whereas the image is absolute. Art acts above all on the soul, shaping its spiritual structure. 

The artist has a duty to be calm. He has no right to show his emotion, his involvement, to go pouring it all out at the audience. Any excitement over a subject must be sublimated into an Olympian calm of form. That is the only way in which an artist can tell of the things that excite him. 

The beautiful is hidden from the eyes of those who are not searching for the truth, for whom it is contra-indicated. 

Modern mass culture, aimed at the 'consumer', the civilization of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being. 

The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good."

...and 'Souls A'fire'



with 'Lay You Down' rounding out the trifecta

The Fadeaway punchline edited by a stroke of luck

The breeze of autumn picks up and lifts the little pieces of my life I've yet to nail down. I'm revealed to myself. The shifting sights of folks move from fun in the sun to new horizons, new projects, new jackets, new crushes and classes; it ripples through the atmosphere in step. In step with the 9-5'ers at the crosswalk. In step with the commuters on the mini air jets. Going the distance to stay within a structure they struggled to get, to keep them from struggling against themselves again and again.

My life spills out of bags, all around me a chaotic mess of stuff. Stuff, stuff, stuff - sometimes it's just, ahhhh it's too much! Each item pin-points a moment in time, a certain state of mind. What do I carry over and what will I leave behind? Oh if I weren't such a pack-rat attached to this and this and ooh no, can't let go of that. Thinking, always wondering, what if I want to embody that again? What would it go with that I haven't seen yet? So many pieces I never even filled. So many stories waiting to be lived. Shirts and skirts and jackets, maybe lived their tales one night here, one night there across the pond. Another, I'm dreaming for an event to put you on...

My life spills out of bags waiting to be packed again. And again. And another climate, what to bring? My life fills up closets in more than one place. Isn't that the nature of a life such as this? I'm one but my identities look to be many, flung and flung and strung around, left like mile markers to come back around. A bread-crumb of a heel. A chalk-marking of a hat and scarf. Well, the life I'm heading to won't require that. It's all about the lifestyle isn't it? So what will this outfit say to me? What will it bring me to see? Learning lately sometimes you come too far to look back.

When you're trying to figure it out on the run, pieces are more likely to get lost, aren't they? Like thoughts when you spot a memory in a smile, or a realization in a quote, a talk, a teacher, a heart beat, a moment behind closed eyes when your disk gets realigned. You make a note to make a note, too deep in the moment to break out and jot. And inevitable, you forget, but it's still in there somewhere yet. And then you come home and you find your cat is dying.

Down on my knees at her little calico body I've been sitting, crying. Oh but I know, I know, she's not that body. Oh and though I can remember I've been told not to lament for the changing of bodies, I lament that she won't jump on the kitchen counter anymore, who will be there to help us cook? Like the changing of clothes, we put one on to take it off for another, there she slowly goes. Guess I still have some practical lessons to live out. Guess I'm still clinging to worn out outfits. Theory feels good in my backpack where I can carry it safely. But out on the streets, things play out a little more dangerously.

My love of the last two decades is dying. It's my birthday soon too and I wonder if she'll go when I get renewed. And I'm crying, I'm crying, I can't help it, she's hurting, she's lying; broken and bones, barely breathing, so slowly, fluids every now and then seeping. Every hour or so check back to hold the water bowl to her nose. Tsp tsp tsp tsp. Feeble lapping, and I forget about my life spilling out of bags, strewn about the rooms of my house of a life. And I'm taken with this sight of death in progress, with the soul inside her quiet body so close to being free. I check back every hour just to see. Is her little breath still moving what's left?

I half hope it is. I half know she's so close to being free. So I do what I can with a heart full of faith and praying her next life she finds home where the changing seasons won't blow the pieces around so easily. So I do what I can and lean in close to her cold little ear, soft as the day she came home wrapped up in my sister's hands. I whisper the secret prayers, praying the sound makes its way to the spark in her heart and takes this spilling life into a container that won't break anymore.

When you can endure

Life clicks into place and the signs race with a fervor
Or is it my mind trying to align what's already been assigned
A reflection of god's grace seen in the eyes of every man as I walk by him
He recognizes me and startled
Jumps back to make room for the space between us suddenly filled with light and meaning
As if to ready himself for the purpose which has been revealed
Seemingly out of nowhere
Now we're here
Words like fate and free will
Reflections and devotion; still my beating heart to catch a glimpse of
What is this?
Fire rises as you hear yourself sing in another
Sing the knowing electric
The co-creating
Thoughts of one becomes love for others
The moon beams on this night full of
What can I call it but-
Life
Synchronicity
I's connect to find that line, that nectar of the soul tempered as it pours back and forth
Between two
Between levity and hope

'Words, words, words'--in real life these are mostly so much water, and only a rarely and for a brief while can you observe perfect accord between word and gesture, word and deed, word and meaning. For usually a person's words, inner state and physical action develop on different planes. They may complement, or sometimes, up to a point, echo one another; more often they are in contradiction; occasionally, in sharp conflict, they unmask one another. And only by knowing exactly what is going on and why, simultaneously, on each of these planes, can we achieve that unique, truthful force of fact of which I have spoken.

- Andrey Tarkovsky