My Favorite Feeling

One of my favorite feelings in life is showing other people how amazing something is and sharing in their awe.

I recently went to Bali for a retreat with some friends, and the bungalow where we were staying had a direct view of a waterfall, which BLEW MY MIND. It was so magical sitting there looking at it, listening to the sound of it, and feeling the mist rising up from it through our open-air windows.

That feeling, my favorite feeling, was present every time someone new came to our bungalow. I was so excited to show them. I wanted to take pictures of each person in front of it, so they could see how luxurious and magical they looked sitting there on the daybed with that waterfall in the background.

I think this detail about me underlies my obsession with visual arts, and photography specifically. My enthusiasm, paired with my eye for composition and aesthetics, creates this irresistible urge in me to share what I see, to show people how incredible it can be, and to feel them sharing in my excitement.

Shared awe and enthusiasm. That is really the core of what I want in life and the gift I want to bring to the world.

Thoughts on Possibility

I accidentally made a coffee and now I have to wait to do my meditation or I won't be able to get into the present moment, away from all my temporal and materialistic wants (like another sip of coffee...)

So while I have my coffee, I thought I'd write some thoughts I've been having this morning as I prepare to call in an unknown future full of awe and possibility. ✨🧘🏼‍♀️

They go like this:

Why are any of us resisting the thing we know we want?

Like, I had this feeling keep coming up that I want to be in quaint, or exotic, or exciting locations, waking up there in luxury, sipping some warm morning drink (Ok, sipping coffee probably), and preparing to go out and be creative with my camera and other creative folks.

This flash of a vision keeps coming to me and then I would close it down every time, because I live in LA and I don't want to give up my home base and the only way I know how to have that thing I described above is how I've done it before... which is :::alone:::, financing it on my own, worrying about how to make money when I'm not allowed to work on a tourist visa, with no home base anywhere, feeling like I can't actually deeply invest in anything, anywhere, or anyone.

So, in essence, a desire is coming through me (which, btw, I think is obviously a message from God about what I'm meant to do). And I'm comparing it to my past experience and determining that I don't want to pursue it because I'm juggling all these ideas of scarcity and associated problems.

I was laying in bed with Micah the other night and we were about to go to sleep and I had been frustrated with him about something and he was, in turn, frustrated with me, and I just felt done with the loop we kept finding ourselves in, so I asked him, "What do you need from me? What can I do?"

He replied, "Stop looking for problems in everything."

And BAM!!! it hit me. I go, "You're right," and I really meant it. My life flashed before my eyes and I really got it. This thing, looking for problems, is literally the only reason things don't go well for me sometimes.

So I stopped. It's like something just broke in me... the limited little loop I'd been traveling around in a circle on for years just broke and I had to go somewhere else with my thoughts.

There is no point in shutting down these voices of desire as they arise in us. I know, I know, we do it because we're afraid of what it means, afraid we'll be devastated if we admit we want it and then we don't get to have it, afraid of how it will disrupt our known circumstances.

However... I believe that acknowledging the desire, getting super specific about it, and allowing ourselves to feel how it feels to actually have it... doing this will actually make this possibility possible. It might even just drop the thing in our laps without us having to make much effort.

But we have to stay in the energy of it. And banish the problem oriented energy each and every time it comes up.

Open to possibility, truly, and it is abundant and available.

Pray {A Poem}

Don’t pray from under the water

When the falls stand above you majestic

Face them, feel the spray on your face

Kneel

Or play, joyous, in the river

Because this is your one life

The only life that’s promised

At once, singular and infinite

At once, fleeting and eternal

Never static, never stagnant

As the water flows and washes you clean

This moment and every moment to come

Love Story {A Poem}

You are not another one of my tragedies

Another man I loved once upon a time

You are not an untied ship, drifting slowly into the fog

You are not a story with a sad ending that could have turned out differently, if only…

You are not a story I know how to tell

Because I write tragedies

And you are a steady horizon

You are the sun, rising daily, shining in my eyes each morning

No matter what happened the night before

You are like clockwork with an apology

With an “I was wrong”

With an “I will do better”

You take my hand when I think I’m not allowed to reach for you

You say “I love you” when you’re mad

You ask me what I need

You and I, in a thousand moments of softening what wanted to harden

Of looking for the perfection in the collapse

Of sitting up straight, breathing deep, and learning to listen

Have written a new kind of story

And declared it to be so

And so it is

Alone {A Poem}

You thought about being alone again

Waking up alone

Coffee in solitude

Walking into rooms full of people

And seeing where your magnet wanted to go

An alone that always felt like a deep inhale

Between one heavy foot and the next on your chest

You remember the men, taking up three quarters of the room while you gathered your things into one small corner

You had always wanted each of them to stay

And yet, you longed for the room to yourself again

To breathe again

To stretch out lazy on Sunday mornings

Listen to your music, loud

Make the empty walls echo with your footsteps dancing

However, alone has changed for you since him

Alone no longer means freedom

Not now that you’ve seen who you are the way he sees you

Not now that you’ve been reminded

Of who you are when you are free to trust

To crack yourself open, to bloom

And to be held always with softness

To take your deep breaths

To lean into him

And exhale straight into his mouth

Trading, sharing air

You thought about being alone again

And for the first time in your life

You didn’t miss it

Let's Not {A Poem}

Let’s not pretend we have done this before

In that way people protect themselves from hope

By conceding that this is just another in a long string of loves

And that each one has its end

And that each one is just as significant as the next

In that way people protect themselves

From the pain of love poorly tended to

The pain of love left to spoil into contempt

The pain of love meant to show us what does not fit

Let’s just be grateful that we found each other

And not a moment earlier

And that all those other loves had their chance

To mold and shape us

And make us ready

Kingdom {A Poem}

You know that terror?

Of obliterating your identity in union with another?

Of losing your edge?

Of giving up your freedom?

I noticed today that the terror had left me

It was not simply that I am more myself with you than anywhere else

Myself isn’t what I’m after now

I would merge myself into oblivion and pure presence if that’s what it took to touch your soul with mine

Not because I’m attached to the idea of our souls touching

Or how I imagine that would grow me

But because I am surrendered to what is clearly meant to happen

—

I used to fear heartbreak

And then I learned to embrace it

And then I woke up this morning longing for rupture

Because our hearts are meant to break for each other now

To break barriers to deeper realms

And I don’t know what it’s for, but it feels beyond you and I

A state of grace

Where I’m no longer governed by an arrogance or audacity that would drive me to try and control a natural disaster

With petty constrictions like codependent, addicted, irrational, irresponsible or imprudent

In fact, I would be all of these things with you

In fact, I would prefer it

In fact, they aren’t constrictions when used to unlock sealed places in our hearts

In fact, I know they are the keys to our kingdom

Cathedral {A Poem}

The truth has a quiet ring

A tenor in the body, soft and tender, never overpowering

Patient, it waits for the other notes to finish clamoring, and then rings gracefully true several decibels below the rest of the noise

With authority but never force

It’s possible to pretend I didn’t hear it, but then the tenor changes

No longer gentle and pure, the note of truth feels like a silent collapse

Warped wood, vacant wind, a garden neglected, a house condemned

I’ve lived there before, made a home for myself in those abandoned corridors

But you

You are a cathedral

Each archway, each tower, erected from devotion

I would come every day to hear the bells ring

To humble myself at this altar and lay my fears upon it in prayer

To be awed into grace by this noble gesture of beauty that you are

And find my truth here

Where the sound of truth is unmistakable

Wind {A Poem}

A thousand fast fingertips of wind caress me

Flowing between my fingers like holding hands

But never holding, only blowing through

I have, and probably would again, offer up my sovereignty just to be held

But the wind never asks that of me

And besides, I would only take it back in the end

I remember my first time driving fast into the wind

It wasn’t safe and I liked that about it

I drove all day and ended up at the beach

Surrounded by families and lovers, all holding each other

Finally, I held myself

The Gift {A Poem}

I've been given the most amazing gift. 

It's more valuable than skill or even talent.

More valuable than results, than arrival, than mastery.

I have been granted the gift of a persistent and maddening craving to create.

The gift of pure, unadulterated desire.

And its message reverberates throughout my body so loudly that I can't not hear it.

"Make shit. Go deep in and far out to touch it and work it through you! Channel it and transmit it. Make it gorgeous. Share it with everyone."

This message calls me back to God, to connection, to the earth, and always to myself.

Every day. "Let me consume you. Let me guide you. Let me free you. Let me show you all the sparkling wonders of this life."

It does the hardest parts for me: the true wanting, the being pulled toward, the reason why, the what and the how.

My desire is the kindling of a riveting and fulfilling life.

It provides.

If I choose to receive.

If I choose to let it lead me.

If I choose to trust it.