Sitting in the Osaka Airport in Japan for 9 hours waiting for my flight connection back to America. Its been just 6 days shy of one year since the last time my feet touched American soil and wow what a long strange trip its been. From the mountains of Spain to the Sahara of Africa to the volcanic islands of Southeast Asia and back again. I have now lived in 5 of the 7 continents in this world. So what? WHY? Maybe for some people this life style doesn't seem logical or practical or some people say its just a matter of "getting it out of my system" so that I can one day settle down again, get a 9-5 job, get married, procreate...you know the "American Dream" right? I think its time to recreate the idea of the American Dream....completely throw everything we have conventionally thought about what it means to be happy and successful in this life time out the cosmic window of our reality and challenge ourselves to find true bliss in its purest form. This doesnt mean that we all need to become Gypsy travelers like myself...in fact I would love to be able to stay in my birth country without feeling like a serial coded robot. Without feeling like I am slipping into the depths of debt. Without feeling like a rat caught in a race. So how do I do this? How do we all do this? How can we completely recreate our reality within our twisted and tangled realm of the society that has been created for us? How can we learn to escape from the negative pathways that have been created around us? We are reaching a level of critical mass in our existence a breaking point in which we will no longer to continue living the ways that we are used to living. Change is a scary thing for all of us but its time we take action ourselves in order to offset some of the intensity that is about to consume our current consumer lifestyles. These questions I am asking are questions that I can only begin to speculate the answers for my self and my body and my experience but I can only hope to inspire each and every person who reads this to begin to apply these same inquisitions into their own lives. How do I bring consciousness into every aspect of my life? How do I begin to take back control of this auto pilot reality I have been living in for so long? Studying meditation and learning more and more about awareness and presence has helped me tremendously. Being open to new types of healing such as Emotional Freedom Technique, Theta Healing, SCIO technology, and many others have helped me begin to heal the scars of my past and my Karma's. I have also been resonating more and more with the idea of getting back to our pagan roots. I have learned so much from eastern religion but at the same time I feel that I am able to connect, learn, and relate with my roots of pagan tradition on a completely different level. Community is huge....I believe in the future we will all be teachers and healers...the time has come to break away from traditional school systems in which children spend so much time learning things that are completely irrelevant and often times completely untrue...and yet have no idea where a tomato comes from or how to feed themselves from the land. I look at my high school, for those of you who don't know I went to Columbine High School the year after the tragic shootings. I couldn't handle more than one year in that school as I was completely shocked and appalled at the way nothing changed after the killings. There where no community building activities or communications. The "jocks" where still bullying the "nerds" the only thing that changed after 14 people lost their lives in that building where the amount of cameras, metal detectors, and police officers roaming the halls harassing us skater kids and smokers. One of my dear close friends committed suicide that year because he has been caught smoking cigs so many times his dad was going to send him to military school. THIS IS NOT OK!!! We cant sit back and let things get worse because if we do its going to me much more difficult to adjust when the pole change occurs in 2012...I don't think the world is going to end anytime soon...but I do believe that it will be a huge time of transformation and we have 2 choices, we accept change and we evolve or we die. I am excited for our future and am grateful everyday to be alive in the this pivotal time in human experience. My ideas for personal, communal, and global evolution......breath and bring consciousness into every breath. Bring consciousness into every aspect of your day to day life and use tricks to remind your self to be conscious. For example every time you turn on a light switch or walk through a door way use it as a reminder to come back to the present moment and breath. When you find your self off in the past or the future with your monkey mind...compassionately remind your self to come back to the present moment and breath. Gratitude! Everyday for everything! Be in communication with your idea of higher spirit, God, the Universe....and be thankful for everything it gives you...even if that moment it appears to be a negative situation. A Balinese man told me the higher you are the harder the wind blows and you are being tested to see if you can remain strong and happy thought out the hard times. Pray over your food and water, this increases the vibrational level of what you are putting into your body. Plant a garden, learn as much as possible about seed banks and how to grow using non genetically modified seeds...without intervention we will soon only be left with genetically modified seeds WE CAN NOT LET THIS HAPPEN! Learn, teach, and share as much as possible about alternative healing practices and ways we can naturally heal ourselves. Take time every day to meditate and exercise in one form or another....no matter if its yoga, hooping, tennis, guitar, or swimming. Find something that you can do that allows you to turn off your mind chatter at least 30 min everyday. Read more. Start doing Laughter Yoga! Its amazing and we all need to laugh and smile more. Group meditations and mantra are so powerful and raise the vibrational level of the world around us. Do some form of art...even doodling on a regular basis. Create a better and closer relationship with your family and the people around you...even the "strangers" see every person you meet every day as a brother or sister. Listen to recordings of Eckhart Tolle and Alan Watts, Saul Alinsky or any other mind stimulating people who get your wheels turning...the brain is a muscle use it or you loose it! Above all remember that we are all just crazy random expressions of energy just bouncing around space time interacting with each other and having this human experience. Try to make is softer and lighter and remember that love is the source of it all and we all have an inexpressibly large amount of love inside all of these molecules and that this love is completely inexhaustible no matter what happens.
Ok there is my soap box...take what works for you and leave the rest. I am going back to America for 5 months and this is now my challenge to see if I can integrate this knowledge into the Western world. I will be living and working in California for the first time and I am very excited to be immersed into a whole new culture shock! I have been so graciously given the opportunity to play with fire with the conclave which performs during the burning of the man at the Burning Man Festival this August. I have been given the amazing opportunity to design jewelry in Bali to sell this summer in California. I have been given the exciting opportunity to work for my beautiful friends at Holistic Hooping in there hoop store during the festival season. I am so blessed. I will be living around San Francisco, bouncing around with friends all over the Bay area and Golden Triangle. Home base will be in Sebastapol. I will be coming to Colorado the end of June and will stay for about 3 weeks for the exciting birth of my first niece! I am sooo looking forward to seeing all my loved ones back home!!!!
Until then...
ONE LUV!
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Jambo Sana Sana Sana......
This is my favorite expression in Kswahili. The direct translation is- very hello. This is a perfect example of the friendly people in Kenya. No its not just hello, its very hello! You gotta love that! You gotta love Kenyan people! One of my Kenyan friends told me she was amazed that I didn't completely write the county off after being pick pocketed so many times. Really, at first I was pretty pissed ok I admit, but I have come to realize that the people who are desperate enough to steal from me need my love just as much if not more than even my closest friends. The government in Kenya is, well lets be straight here, fucked up and corrupt as hell. (not that my countries government is that much better but at least they are better at hiding it) A government that steals directly from the people and doesn't really even try to hide it, you see drivers of buses (matatus if you will) have to stop at road blocks to pay bribes directly to cops sooo frequently its insane! Money is stolen from schools, hospitals, the poorest of the poor. When your government is robbing you blind and you can't afford to feed your family what do you do? You lead by their example, after all they are sitting pretty in some of the biggest houses you have ever seen....next door neighbors to some of the biggest slums I have ever seen. Of course their going to pick pocket me and honestly I don't blame them. Kenya is an amazing country and has soooo much potential. Only if the people can unite can they claim back the country that they deserve. In my opinion this means calls for Kswahili being the first language taught in schools, not english, not the tribal tongues. If every one can communicate the people will start to realize that they are all the same and the government can't pull the same bull shit they pulled over 2 years ago. They used the separation of the tribes as fuel to cause one of the biggest, most deadly, and extremely brutal riots we will see in our generation.
If you ask a person from Tanzania, Kenyas neighboring country where they come from they say, Tanzania. If you ask a Kenyan the same question they will spout out a huge variety of answers including; Maasi, Samburu, Meru, Kikuyu, and the beat goes on.
Tanzanian learn Swahili first, then ether their mother tongues or English second. The reason Kenyan learn English first is because of the colonization of the country by the British around 100 years ago....but thats a whole notha soap box.
So for now I leave Kenya as a country I will always know I can come back to, a county that has taught me sooo much about life, a place with smiles that go for miles, a place where everyone wants to meet you and know your name, a place that is overwhelming with possibilities for the future. Kenya is real life...uncensored, it is history in the making, it is amazing and facsinating.
Goodbye Kenya and thanks for all the fish!
Until next time....one love
If you ask a person from Tanzania, Kenyas neighboring country where they come from they say, Tanzania. If you ask a Kenyan the same question they will spout out a huge variety of answers including; Maasi, Samburu, Meru, Kikuyu, and the beat goes on.
Tanzanian learn Swahili first, then ether their mother tongues or English second. The reason Kenyan learn English first is because of the colonization of the country by the British around 100 years ago....but thats a whole notha soap box.
So for now I leave Kenya as a country I will always know I can come back to, a county that has taught me sooo much about life, a place with smiles that go for miles, a place where everyone wants to meet you and know your name, a place that is overwhelming with possibilities for the future. Kenya is real life...uncensored, it is history in the making, it is amazing and facsinating.
Goodbye Kenya and thanks for all the fish!
Until next time....one love
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Spinal Meningitis Got Me Down-and a brighter tomorrow
Why they wanna see my spine mommy?
Why they wanna see my spine?
It's gonna hurt again mommy
Much worse than last time
Am I gonna see God, mommy?
Am I gonna die?
It really hurts mommy!
Am I gonna die?
Never did the words of that song make sense to me so strongly as when I was lying in the bed at Cottage Hospital. Dean or Jean must have once been through the hell that is SM. Ok so sorry if you have no idea what I am talking about that you don't know the magical wonders of Ween...
It started last Monday around 3 in the afternoon. The cursed headache. I thought it was possibly the remnants of the beer that I drank the day before at my going away party, which was not a huge rager but did involve a fair amount of hooping and Tusker (Kenya's finest brew). I start pounding the water and drinking Neem tea, which is a local tea here pretty much good for any ailment you could think of, but to no avail. The headache grows worse and I grow desperate as I have a glass of wine, then another. I head to bed at 9 even though this is that last night I am in my house with my roomies and its supposed to be this wine guzzling girls night but I can't stand the pain, or the sounds, or the lights. I doze for a short time tossing and turning when I notice the cramping taking hold of my neck. Its about 1am when I get up and take half a vicodine. The pain gets worse, I have woken up my room-mates with the sound of my tears and my roomie from Cali, Kelly, who has a doctor dad asks me if my neck is stiff. Shit. Yes. Why? How did u know that? What do you know that I don't. She calls her dad. The other roomie Siobhan calls our friend in town who is a homiopathic dr. They all say go to the hospital right now. I don't have health insurance so my instant reaction is NO, I am fine...really. I am trying to convince them and myself. Siobhan rubs my head and I fall back asleep. They take turns coming in my room every hour for the rest of the night to make sure I am still alive. Apparently the fact that I made it to the next morning is something of a miracle. The morning finally comes and I am only getting worse...fast. So I agree to go to the clinic to get checked out.
Getting up, getting dressed and getting to the hospital was so intensely painful that by the time I got there they put me straight into the emergency room. The next couple of days are a blur of the most intense pain I have ever felt in my life, blood work, pills, and vomit. I start to feel like I will never be normal again, but I am trying so hard to be strong and breath and meditate on the darkness leaving my body and being replaced by light as I inhale. Despite all the pain meds they have me on the pain won't leave...imagine a migraine or the worst headache you have ever had in your life multiply it then make it last over 5 days. Hell. The pressure in my head was so intense I couldn't move my eyes in a direction...I literally had to turn my head to the door if I wanted to see who was coming in my room. I prayed, I cried, then I woke up Thursday morning and the pain was tolerable....I mean it was still horrible but sooo much better. To the point that I thought they were slipping morphine into my drip that they had me on. I ate for the first time in 3 days. I knew at that point I was going to make it. My body was finally starting to win.
Its been a hell of a long week but I have such amazing, loving, caring friends here and they took such good care of me. As well as the nurses at Cottage Hospital who put up with me, and wow I mean I can't image what I possible could have looked like to them I was probably such a bitch. And yes there was electricity and technology in the hospital, it was very clean, there are porcelain toilets, it is a pretty modern hospital (I have really been asked these questions).
I was released Friday, they didn't want to let me leave until today, Sunday, but I begged the doctor to let me go if I promised I would stay close and take it easy. I am now staying at a friends house close to the hospital so that I can go in for my shots of super strong antibiotics...which I finish tomorrow. I am feeling much better other than the spells of dizziness from time to time, but I know I am going to be ok. So my plan to run away to the beach for a couple weeks before leaving is shot...I imagine if this happened once I was already on that little beach island, Lamu....I am lucky for many reasons. I am thankful to my friends and family in Kenya and all over who were sending me love and prayers, I am thankful to Dr Butt (I swear I am not making this up) and the supporting staff at Cottage hospital. Keep the love coming while I am still healing please....
On a muuuuuuuch much muuuuuuch brighter note....like shining star brighter, I am going to Bali!!!! I am buying my plane ticket today and will be flying out of Nairobbery on the 11th. I will be spending some days on the beach then participating in a 6 day hoop dance workshop in Ubud the cultural hub of Bali, followed by a 5 day festival called the Bali Spirit fest. Workshops on yoga, dance, movement during the days with nights of music from all over the world!!!! I am ecstatic! I have been cuddling with the Bali guide book my friend lent me. I can't sleep I am so excited. I don't know how long I will be on the island but I do have a friend to meet in India in May and I have a job offer in Goa in June so I will probably be in Bali for 2 months but who know? Go where the wind takes me and hope to stay healthy and learn something along the way.... Until next time beautiful friends....ONE LUUUUUV!
Why they wanna see my spine?
It's gonna hurt again mommy
Much worse than last time
Am I gonna see God, mommy?
Am I gonna die?
It really hurts mommy!
Am I gonna die?
Never did the words of that song make sense to me so strongly as when I was lying in the bed at Cottage Hospital. Dean or Jean must have once been through the hell that is SM. Ok so sorry if you have no idea what I am talking about that you don't know the magical wonders of Ween...
It started last Monday around 3 in the afternoon. The cursed headache. I thought it was possibly the remnants of the beer that I drank the day before at my going away party, which was not a huge rager but did involve a fair amount of hooping and Tusker (Kenya's finest brew). I start pounding the water and drinking Neem tea, which is a local tea here pretty much good for any ailment you could think of, but to no avail. The headache grows worse and I grow desperate as I have a glass of wine, then another. I head to bed at 9 even though this is that last night I am in my house with my roomies and its supposed to be this wine guzzling girls night but I can't stand the pain, or the sounds, or the lights. I doze for a short time tossing and turning when I notice the cramping taking hold of my neck. Its about 1am when I get up and take half a vicodine. The pain gets worse, I have woken up my room-mates with the sound of my tears and my roomie from Cali, Kelly, who has a doctor dad asks me if my neck is stiff. Shit. Yes. Why? How did u know that? What do you know that I don't. She calls her dad. The other roomie Siobhan calls our friend in town who is a homiopathic dr. They all say go to the hospital right now. I don't have health insurance so my instant reaction is NO, I am fine...really. I am trying to convince them and myself. Siobhan rubs my head and I fall back asleep. They take turns coming in my room every hour for the rest of the night to make sure I am still alive. Apparently the fact that I made it to the next morning is something of a miracle. The morning finally comes and I am only getting worse...fast. So I agree to go to the clinic to get checked out.
Getting up, getting dressed and getting to the hospital was so intensely painful that by the time I got there they put me straight into the emergency room. The next couple of days are a blur of the most intense pain I have ever felt in my life, blood work, pills, and vomit. I start to feel like I will never be normal again, but I am trying so hard to be strong and breath and meditate on the darkness leaving my body and being replaced by light as I inhale. Despite all the pain meds they have me on the pain won't leave...imagine a migraine or the worst headache you have ever had in your life multiply it then make it last over 5 days. Hell. The pressure in my head was so intense I couldn't move my eyes in a direction...I literally had to turn my head to the door if I wanted to see who was coming in my room. I prayed, I cried, then I woke up Thursday morning and the pain was tolerable....I mean it was still horrible but sooo much better. To the point that I thought they were slipping morphine into my drip that they had me on. I ate for the first time in 3 days. I knew at that point I was going to make it. My body was finally starting to win.
Its been a hell of a long week but I have such amazing, loving, caring friends here and they took such good care of me. As well as the nurses at Cottage Hospital who put up with me, and wow I mean I can't image what I possible could have looked like to them I was probably such a bitch. And yes there was electricity and technology in the hospital, it was very clean, there are porcelain toilets, it is a pretty modern hospital (I have really been asked these questions).
I was released Friday, they didn't want to let me leave until today, Sunday, but I begged the doctor to let me go if I promised I would stay close and take it easy. I am now staying at a friends house close to the hospital so that I can go in for my shots of super strong antibiotics...which I finish tomorrow. I am feeling much better other than the spells of dizziness from time to time, but I know I am going to be ok. So my plan to run away to the beach for a couple weeks before leaving is shot...I imagine if this happened once I was already on that little beach island, Lamu....I am lucky for many reasons. I am thankful to my friends and family in Kenya and all over who were sending me love and prayers, I am thankful to Dr Butt (I swear I am not making this up) and the supporting staff at Cottage hospital. Keep the love coming while I am still healing please....
On a muuuuuuuch much muuuuuuch brighter note....like shining star brighter, I am going to Bali!!!! I am buying my plane ticket today and will be flying out of Nairobbery on the 11th. I will be spending some days on the beach then participating in a 6 day hoop dance workshop in Ubud the cultural hub of Bali, followed by a 5 day festival called the Bali Spirit fest. Workshops on yoga, dance, movement during the days with nights of music from all over the world!!!! I am ecstatic! I have been cuddling with the Bali guide book my friend lent me. I can't sleep I am so excited. I don't know how long I will be on the island but I do have a friend to meet in India in May and I have a job offer in Goa in June so I will probably be in Bali for 2 months but who know? Go where the wind takes me and hope to stay healthy and learn something along the way.... Until next time beautiful friends....ONE LUUUUUV!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)