Meditation on my first NY Years

I have believed too long in sinking ships,
have too many times,
made myself the unrelenting honey bee
of lost coordinates.
I’ve chased dead-end jobs
and full time loves
and wandered onto sinking ships

While standing starboard again, startled
suddenly somethign just occurred to me-
should they strip it down to just the wood
this ship would still a worthy vessel be.
For I am filled with eagerness and hope
and although I may grow weary
I am full to brimming
with or without the sea.

So if un-sea-worthy deemed,
and chopped me down to bits of firestarter-
the hottest licking tongues of flame would be
Proof
of the burning, seeking, searing fire inside me.

Occupy Wall st.

A question to the United States of America:
In the spirit of revolution why don’t we just impose a limit on the 1%- the wealthiest person in a job place or network can only make x amount more than the lowest paid person working there. That x amount is determined by the quality of life of the lowest paid person in the organization. When the CEO wants a raise, the minimum wage might then be raised, as well. Accountability in action, is it not?

the coffin of one is the cradle of the other…

“Look, look! This is a divine moment! The caterpillar is dying and the butterfly is being born. the coffin of one is the cradle of the other. But at this moment, though the caterpillar has died, the butterfly is not yet been born- so there is nothing. I am photographing nothingness.”

From page 38 of The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky

“The coffin of one is the cradle of the other.”

‘Leonora added, “We, too, should open ourselves as the chrysalis opens, to emerge completely new our hair prickling like rays of light, unimaginably other.”‘ – Jodorowsky38

-from The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky

Other Pages

I can remember all the way back to the trees. The feeling of birds lighting from one branch to another.  Before my fibers were dredged and pulped, strained and pressed. I remember the day my seams were bound and I became anew again.
I recall each drop of ink which dried into symbols, illuminated a man’s inner world, filled me with his universe. I was imbued with new meanings, some i didn’t know at first but came to understand as the ink set. 

Passed through many hands and shop windows, the next thing I choose to remember indellibly was the feel of her hands, which passed over my covers, fingered the leaves of each of my pages time and time again with intense care. That is how I came to know love. Love for her and for all the dreams I represented.  For her, the love one human can transmit to another through worlds crafted by word. She loved me because I was the vehicle which brought her closer to him. I was the vessle which passed his painted world to her.

She carreid me in a large bag- there was the smell of damp burlap and the muffled sound of her belongings jostling and settling again the day she took me to see him. Where I met my Maker. I knew him immediately by the sound of his voice, so filled with love. A deep and resonant purr. He picked me up with strong, knotted hands not unlike the knots my own form used to know… the hands of God took up fresh ink and scrawled additional words between the sheets to consumate their bond in me.

Rich words on Art

“There is a permeable membrane between art and society
a continuous dialectical motion.
Tides brining the estuary.
river flowing into sea…
Likewise: the matter of art
enters the bloodstream
of social energy.”

-Adrienne Rich

Great TED Talk: new feminine model for coprorate business as usual

Namaste Yoga and Tranquility Center in the News

From the NY Times online:

Hindu Group Stirs a Debate Over Yoga’s Soul

 ”…For many practitioners, including Debbie Desmond, 27, a yoga instructor in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the talk of branding and ownership is bewildering. ‘Nobody owns yoga,’ she said, sitting cross-legged in her studio, Namaste Yoga, and tilting her head as if the notion sketched an impossible yoga position she had never seen. ‘Yoga is not a religion. It is a way of life, a method of becoming. We were taught that the roots of yoga go back further than Hinduism itself.’For many practitioners, including Debbie Desmond, 27, a yoga instructor in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the talk of branding and ownership is bewildering. ‘Nobody owns yoga,’ she said, sitting cross-legged in her studio, Namaste Yoga, and tilting her head as if the notion sketched an impossible yoga position she had never seen. ‘Yoga is not a religion. It is a way of life, a method of becoming. We were taught that the roots of yoga go back further than Hinduism itself’…”

see the rest of the article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/nyregion/28yoga.html?_r=1&hp

N. Ireland Journal- post “We carry their secrets”

Last days with the group in Derry. After everyone leaves I will be staying on- it just so happens that in Derry, a block away The International Culture Arts Network is having a conference on theatre and performance art for social change and I’ve been invited. It is a big deal.

 

I’ve just returned from the Playhouse where I saw a film documenting the making of a play created here last year; a theater of witness peace about “the Troubles”. there is something so deeply stirring about being back in a place so foreign from but so much like Rwanda- except here there is a current underlying every interaction – a tension in the pulse which tells me that the war is not over, here. Today I tried to buy a gift for my host and couldn’t read the suspicious look I received from the clerk until my currency was denied- We are in Derry and inside the city walls where it is mostly Protestants living – (they fly the union jack along the gates, which are the original walls built in the 17th century. )To do buisness inside the city limits you must use Pounds sterling. They only use Euro ”on the bog side.” meaning, outside the city walls, where the bog has been covered over by paved streets and crowded Catholic living space. two different currencies for different lives. Separate…and equal? Equal in suffering, certainly.

 

something is deeply moving to me. I remember myself in seeing these theater peices. The stories told are not my stories but I know I can aid in their healing. somehow. I don’t know if I should go back to Rwanda to assemble a team or if it will be in Hungary with Romani youth or where…but i know the path is revealing itself to me and that the people are identifying themselves. the community becomes apparent. 

peace

Peace is not resting, but an active state of  engagement and expansion.