SARK :: Who Knew?

I spent time this morning listening to the SARK interview, really listening this time. Last class, I recall putting it on and maybe tuning it out a bit, something was not reaching me that time around. I am not familiar with SARK, have yet to seek out her stuff so she was uncharted territory for me. I heard that her stuff is in the self help aisle and then it was something about her voice, her ebullience bordering on annoying. I recalled those feelings when I started the audio interview this morning but then I made myself stop. I was alone with headphones in a quiet place internally and I told myself that I needed to stop listening with that filter. The one that says I already heard this, there is nothing new here, I can't be helped by this woman. And once I did that I began to hear what it was that I needed to hear.



It's funny like that, I am realizing. The filters I use can do so many things; protect, dilute, alter the words. But once I acknowledge the way the the filter acts, which is actually just another way of saying how I am acting, it allows the message to come through.

Do you know what I heard in that 30 minutes? The exact right thing. That everything and every dream has DIVINE TIMING.



And that was the message I needed. She said that dreams do not die, do not have timelines, cannot be quelled or buried or lost once they are dreamed. The fact that I did Mondo and did a list last year and did that work and it is sitting back there in old blogs posts was totally FREAKing me out. I was feeling afraid of the list, of the dreams that I set, as if they were reminders of all that I had not done in the last year. But I listened this morning and heard that there is no need to panic, no need to get breathless and worry that I am doing/dreaming it all wrong.

That felt good. Letting it go. Not the dreams, oh no, but the idea that there is some arbitrary timeline during which it must occur. I feel new courage and belief welling up, albeit, a little slowly but coming.



I am so glad I listened this morning, really listened. I hope if you listened too the message you needed came to you.

And after I finished listening I did a quick google search and came back with this SARK image. It was like a little note from the Universe as I drove home to my kids. I loved reading through this image and hope you do too.

At the Heart :: Core Values

Last year when I embarked on my Mondo journey, I had very little idea what I was getting into. This time around I feel the format and I am trying to remember that it is good to be open to each lesson, each small preparation because they led to a pretty big change in my life.



This lesson askes us to identify core values, two people we admire and why. I posted about two folks last year here. And I have to say not much has changed since last year, which is good because these are core values, people. But then, in reflection I realize so much has changed in the last year and a half.

When I published that post I had yet to meet Kate, she was a person on screen but not in person. I think we all understand what that means these days; some emails exchanged, comments here and there, @ on twitter as a way to communicate and make contact. But not yet real. And I did meet Kate and found that she is as lovely as I thought her to be. And we still communicate via the occasional contact online, mainly because she lives half a world away. But the thing I love about asking the Universe in my Mondo list for a meet up was granted in the oddest of ways. NYC and a few minutes to laugh about shirts; tiny, big and borrowed. When you ask the Universe, it answers in its own way.

And my husband. He is still my husband. And yet, a different version of that man that I have known for so long. He has gorwn and shifted out of what he was and is on his road to becoming what he wants to be. He makes furniture from scrap and manages a household when I am away and gains confidence in himself in ways that I never anticipated. And he turns 34 tomorrow ... so many years have passed since I met him at 17 but he will always embody my core values because he always has.

I didn't work my way through the exercise this time because I feel that these values did not shift ... much. But I think I know that I can state them in a clear way this time around.



I think these people came to mind for a few reasons. They exist outside of the box, outside of a faith system, a school system, the system. They thrive on reflection about themselves, and are very good at realizing that. Kate does it very publicly while my husband does it very privately. They just might not give a damn about what others think (at least, not all the time). Shirking responsibility is not an option.

From my post later year.
And my revised conclusion

I cherish respect for life and the way we each walk through it, freedom to allow ourselves do it the way we will and allow others their way, awareness that we are part of a whole and not always right, self reflection becuse the only way to self is when you know how to see self and movement becuse when you stop moving you are, well, dead.

Bam.

The List 10 Months Later

Buy our vanagon and sew it a perfect pair of curtains.

Be in New York for Blogher '10 just so I can meet my blog idols.
Go to Canada for 2 months with the boys in the vanagon.

Go back to school to be a doctor.
Go back to Perth and drink beer at Little Creatures with awesome Australians.

Meet Bon and Kate, Andrea and Jen and Neil. Someday meet Ben.

Move to Canada, buy a farm and raise sheep and grow a garden.
Buy the Paradise resort, restore the restaurant and cabins and make it a center for gathering yogis, artists, writers, mountain bikers, boarders and dreamers.
Raise buffalo on acres of land just North of Yosemite and South of Tahoe.
Home school my children.

African dance, modern dance. Dance.

Choreograph a whole dance concert to the soundtrack of Mr. Bungle.
Meet Jessica Whitt and hug her.
Avoid cancer.
Sew my own pair of jeans over and over.
Hand embroider a dress.
Own a Mercedes.
Travel easily and lightly whenever we choose.

Have a 'home' every place we go.

Teach my children to tap dance.
Go to Bhutan as a volunteer PT for three months. Take the family too.
Live in France for a year and speak French everyday.
Participate in a downhill mountain bike race.
Be free of the monetary world in the way of sustainable living :: solar power compost toilets food production.

Make a wedding ring quilt.
Go to Africa to dance with my sisters.
Take photos of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and the Dakotas (again.)

Go to NYC to see old friends and make new ones.

Be a professor of Physical Therapy.
Have so much disposable income I can give it away.
Have one more child, easily (not twins).
Go to Iceland.
Go to Alaska and hike for 7 days.
Watch my boys grow old.

Make friends that last, that care, that like Me, that are complex and smart and whole.

Not grow old and sick and demented.

My (Late) List

A few months ago, my tribe and I decided in order to keep Mondo alive in our lives, we would 'gather' monthly and hold ourselves to a lesson and sharing. Er, obviously, this has come with some challenge and setbacks, but my lovely Kat extended an invitation to write down 10 things that I need. I did it. A few weeks back actually. I wrote it in one of my (too) many small notebooks. The list did not make it to this space, it did not make it to our shared emails, instead it sat in the small closed notebook, written and then left until the next 'breathing' moment.


In the last few weeks I have felt challenged and sad and tired and desperate for support (that email did go out with a plea for hugs and returned to me with folds of love to envelope my soul...thank you, lovelies). And I have felt bolstered and revealed and opened and as if some light balm has been applied to the soul. Right now I feel that I should share this list in a hindsight manner and let it speak for itself ::

Written in the car with a Sharpie pen a few weeks ago...

1. A clean house :: desired due to then upcoming birthday party for the boys (4/24)...achieved on that Saturday with realization that not many cared just how sparkling my windows were or about that hole in the drywall once the kids and water balloon fights set in.

2. Courage to write to a big blogger I love :: I was so on the fence about this but I love this woman and have dreamed about meeting her and her son. I did write, she did write back in a very lovely way and now there is a very real possibility of a meet up.

3. A serger :: Placed on back burner until my fervor over hand sewing dies down. But I did meet a woman (heavily pregnant, Swedish and designer of sweet baby girl clothes) that gave me excellent recommendations on the machine to use, steering me away from what initially was my first choice.

4. To bind in marichyasana :: Not there yet. But so much more open to the possibility. I also shared this need with my yoga teacher and ever since she has been pounding on us with shoulder openers. She is going to get me there, I know it. Be careful what you ask for.

5. A clean slate with work paperwork :: My lack of commitment when it comes to finishing paperwork really gets to me on a subliminal level. I was swimming in undones until I sat down and made it happen. A few hours and no distractions help...but it comes from inside, internal desire to clean up and I did. Of course, that was last Sunday so I really should finish this and switch into work mode. The undones have redone themself.

6. A plane ticket to NYC :: Done. And I found it for the same price I once paid in 1998. 300 bucks. Use www.bestfares.com, they really came through for me.

7. Tow hitch for the Subaru :: This is when we thought we might borrow a pop up trailer and hit the road for a month. Yes to the month, no to a tow hitch. We figured that we have gotten by this long with a tent, we should break in the boys with the lowest lap of luxury there is. And spend the difference in a budgeted condo in Whistler for three days while Tim bombs the sloped and I play a heavy rotation of The Incredibles, The Jungle Book and Peter Pan on the conveniently located DVD player in the mountainside accomodations.

8> Courage to take an African dance class :: Now this is an odd one and a story. My middle sister Amanda is a phenomenal West African dancer. I attended a conference in Sept with her and baby sis Em and vowed to embrace the movement and available class in L.A. I did not. I never went.

So she was down for the week in the beginning of April and we headed into L.A. for a mid-week class that we had Googled. Fighting traffic was a bitch at 6:00 p.m. but we made it 30 minutes late and pulled into a small street in deep L.A. and parked and got out fumbling our dance clothes and what-nots and consulted our iPhones and realised the class was not happening when the address given gave us a shop front of tax preparation tables. But the community was crazy good around there, lots of West Aftricans in dress wandering so we were convinced it was there, somewhere. We wandered a bit and again realised we were out of place and then my sister dropped another pair of panties out of her dance bag and a guy honked for us to pick them up and it was time to get in the car and head home.

But the amazing thing about the two hour detour was that it was the first time in about ten years that we have been alone for more than a few minutes. Time to talk and process being sisters and wives and mothers and others and talk, let it out. Ask and receive.

And the other gift? She is coming to stay with us for a week with Baby girl Kayda and she will be all ours, to completely immerse ourselves in this family that we are. And take that dance class with Mareme Faye on Saturday. Oh, yeah.

I only got to 8 but that was more than enough. And I know it is late and after the fact but I find it interesting that blogging the list afterwards shows just what kind of power listing has. It is almost frightening, the clarity it can bring. And the realisation of potential.

And here it is...the wildflowers taken root in my life. They look like weeds until they flower. A very good metaphor for my life as it is.


Oh, yeah, there is this guy and this guy and this guy that make it pretty right (usually) too.





I have also decided that wearing a white Fedora is completely acceptable sun protection as it makes me feel fab and the husband asked it is cam with a 'costume' post-kid hours. So the courage to wear a hat (if it was number 9) has totally been found.

Nod to my Homegirls

Feeling a little less than inspired in some of the dream categories but I have been following the unfolding of my tribe avidly. They are in such wonderful places and I am loving all that they do. I went to the Library to find some new reads, one on writing after Kat spoke of it so beautifully and the other just jumped out from the shelf as if to say "Well maybe you can. Have you tried?". The third novel with no spine...yeah that is just a trashy novel in case I find it all too heavy.

Other wonderful reads....A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I almost cry as I turn the pages because it means I am getting closer to the end and I never ever want this book to end. And my friend's first novel, a final draft that is so good and oddly enough, set not far from the neighborhood illuminated in Tree.

And hoping that the reading will help generate whatever it is that I need in order to find movement. We'll just have to see.

Continuity

I am struck sometimes about the continuity of my life as it is now. These thoughts are prompted by the late afternoon sun slanting at the very same angle it did when I was a small child. I view it from the same seat; the chair is different, the table also, the children running in the gold light are mine own now, but still, it all feels so familiar. Because it is.

This is the same home I grew up in, I just saw the mildly retarded woman in our neighborhood on her scooter, moving through the light...she is the same one that used to ride a bike and one morning as I biked to school in the early foggy day we came head to head, our bikes colliding, me into the street and biting right through that thin spot under my lip from the crash and she frightened and befuddled and then my brothers ushered me into the school office with a white collared shirt stained with blood and it was all okay. Now my brother owns a home one street over from where the crash happened and she still rides the neighborhood, now from a comfortable motorized seat and I still love seeing her and remembering that morning.

It was not the plan, you know? To return to my town of origin, have my children in the same home I grew in, put them down every night to sleep in the room I once drifted into my own childhood oblivion. I did things in that room that make me blush now when I recall, some of them not with my now husband. And I watch as this home reincarnates itself over and over, first to accommodate 4 then 5 then 6 then 10 then back down now to 7, you get the idea.

(taken 'at work' today)
There is something so comfortable about it all. I thought it would make me feel constricted and pained, that I would feel as if I have done not enough, not proved my worth. Instead I spend my days moving about and through it, occasionally frustrated by the eternal mess and undone doorways, but most often embracng the light and the continuity of it all.

I just saw a patient that lived next door to my husband as he was growing up, her grandchildren and grandnephews played with him in the small leftover orchard of orange trees behind their joined yards. We talked of the time she has spent here, in her home, we laughed about it. And then I took a short drive north into a canyon just above our home. It was ravaged by fire in 2004 and only four homes are left. Homes built by hand, by folks who like to be just a little bit removed from the norm. The notes on her computerized patient chart cautioned me to look in the trees for cougars if I visited in the early morning or late afternoon. These are my stomping ground.

My formative years shaped by the gentle upslope and canyon breezes and me tromping silly and drunk through the parks where I now take my kids to play. I still remember being in those same parks with my mama and wondering what those big kids were doing, over there on the park tables, slumped over, trying to hide something. And now I giggle just a little when I see those same kids when we are there, remembering when I became one of them. Knowing now someday my kids might be them too.

I love my home. A quiet passion. I always have designs to leave, my Mondo dreams made that awfully clear. But it is only because I know I have somewhere to come back to. So solid, a rock, a place to call mine own. It will be here, flowers blooming, bulbs planted years ago coming forth when they receive enough rain to flourish. It will be here as it is, home. Nothing special. Ranch style, 1450 square feet of square rooms and beautiful foothill light. There was no grand architect, no special planning, no gate to get in. Just a cul-de-sac and a small home. But it holds all that is dear to me, all that is good and beautiful. I leave because I can always come back. Always have been able to, and I always have.

That is continuity.

March Mondo Update

Our little Mondo tribe agreed to make March 13 a check-in/Mondo lesson. And it has come upon me with stealth and I find myself startled to see the date. It seemed like so long ago when we took the class, but then the March date seemed long off. When will I learn about the tricksy-ness of time? Probably never.

I suggested that we use one of the last Mondo lessons as our guide....the search for synchronicity. What a word, what a word to let roll off the tongue, into the air and let hover around. The interesting thing about synchronicity is that it did not seem that hard to find when I started looking for it....it hovers like the word, hovers around all the events of the days, longing to be acknowledged. Or maybe it is just my longing to find it. Anyhows...


1:: For example, Wednesday, unwashed and unkempt from yet another long morning struggle with Owen (the child that occasionally wakes at 4 and will not go back to sleep so instead sits on my pillow by my head twitching and talking), I head out for work. I am disgruntled and tired and my schedule is totally off. There is a one hour gap between patients that needs filling, instead I head to Starbucks to sit with the laptop and do paperwork. I notice a young women across the table, she notices me and strikes up a conversation. Turns out she is in a Master's program at the school where I thought I might seek eventual teaching employment...her mother is faculty, she deeply involved in student body activities and deeply knowledgeable of the whole interesting tangle that is post-doc education. She speaks with energy and commitment and at the end of our conversation hands me her card and asks if I would be interested in speaking about my experience in my health profession to the student members she gathers for inservices and such. She is all of 26 years old. And I really liked her vibe. I think we will be seeing each other again.

2:: I had this idea about France and moving there. That dream may be long off, but a few weeks ago just writing out the dream prompted me to re-visit long forgotten spaces in the brain that hold small silly French phrases from my one year of studying the language. I started saying them to the boys and Mace immediately mimicked me with a very passable French accent. The kid is like a parrot, but his adorable lisp seems to allow just the right intonation to the words.

And I thought how fun it might be to teach them rudimentary French...and work on my own skills at the same time. Google translator has become a good friend lately. That way when France does happen all four of us can order a beer (I mean, bread and chocolate).

3:: Years and years and years ago, Tim and I rode down a street not far from our house. We were on our way to one of those long, ridiculously hard mountain bike rides that he loved to take me on, the ones where we had to climb fire roads for miles and my face would get all crazy red and I would want to kill him but then we would reach the yellow gate and from then on, for miles and miles and minutes and minutes we would race down the single track, I would be holding my breath as I tried to charge corners and berms and my arms would burn from the rattling the trail delivered.... but, yeah, on the way that day we came across a thicket of wild flowers. They were rioting on the side of the road...hip height and thick, all varieties, all colors. This was pre-digital cameras but I had a small camera and I took a few snaps. I would look at those pictures and long to see and smell them again. This had to be at last 10 or 12 years ago.

But finally, this year, a large swath of hill cleared in the backyard beckoned and for the nominal fee of 5 dollars and change I picked up a can of wildflower seeds and Mason and Owen and I scattered them before the rains came. Now, 5 or 6 weeks later, we see the evidence of the simple effort...thick green growth exploding over the small hill, the first tiny blooms are white and shine like sparkles in the midst of the green.

And I wonder at myself. For years I rode past that same road, seeking to find those wildflowers again. My printed pictures are long long gone, but their memory lies there, so close. And yet, for years and years I did not do the simple actions above. For many years, I sought wildflowers in other places: Yosemite and Toulumne Meadows, Dinkey Creek Wilderness, Mt Hood. I would pick a few and press them, but the pressing would leach them of their vibrancy, their impact. And still the memory held strong.

Now, today, I wait eagerly to see what comes of this simple backyard experiment. What blooms, what fragrance. The torrents of rain fed those seeds well and the green is so promising. Will they be hip height and full of life? Let's hope so. And if it happens in the month that we are away I will just have to laugh with the true irony of it all...and know that wildflowers usually re-seed themselves and I will be around to see them in all the years to come.


(And yes, I know these are not wildflowers but bulbs....I just really loved the color...and good hold over until the next wave of blooms)

Synchronicity? Tell me, where are you finding yours these days?