brown & white shells

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today & yesterday & always & never

i was wandering in a zig-zaggy circle around the island, combing the beach for shells - little kerikil and pieces of awesomeness...

for some reason my eyes were pulled to brown and white yesterday.

it's weird, there is every color shell on the beach and different days, my eyes are pulled to different colors.

today it was brown and white.

maybe that's how the world looks to me right now.

i guess that's better then seeing the world in black and white, like my old therapist used to say i did.

i know that i do that... i go to extremes.
but the thing is... its not ALL me.

my life has been dealt out in an extreme way... it seems i just get dealt Aces and Twos when everyone else gets 8s and 9s and 10s

it's just how it works out for me.

i've realized recenthat not everyone knows so many people who have died.
that's a really big thing for me to see.
the more i travel and meet people, the more i find that i have friends who have never been to a funeral in their entire lives.
whoa.

my funeral dresses in LA got more use then my fancy glittery party dresses.
that's shitty.

but you know, i feel lucky, in that i have gotten a really interesting perspective on death.

...as i was combing the beach looking at these brown and white shells i actually started think about it.

maybe when a friend dies its like musical chairs...

only when the music stops you don't take a chair away, you take a person away.
and then there is this empty chair there.
it's like a totally different perspective... you see the room from a whole new place when you sit in another chair.
so it affords us this great possibility to see the world in such a broader, more rounded overall perspective.

i have a lot of empty seating in my room.

i get to skip from one chair to the next... maybe that plays into why i am such an energetic chameleon.
i feel like i can step into any circumstance or situation and shift my little diamond around and see the world from that paradigm and totally vibe out with whoever im with in whatever circumstance.

it's like this hipstamatic app i have on my i-thing.

when i shift the lens it makes this awesome little shifty slide-y sound... like FWHHP
that's what i feel like i have the ability to do.

all my experiences and friends departed, have given me little lenses in this case of mine...
so any circumstance, i just FWHHP... FWHHP... FWHHP... ah yes. there it is.
and i can see through your eyes.



i remember when we were kids we used to play this CD that had all these nerdy educational songs on it... we were obsessed with it.

our personal favorite was "knees up mother brown" - where we jumped all over the room with our knees up like a football player training that high run drill through truck tires laying flat on the field.

but there was this other song on the CD that said

"i wanna walk...
a mile in your shoes...
i wanna walk a mile in your shoes.

i wanna know what you're thinking...
what you're feeling...
so i really wanna walk...
a mile in your shoes.

remember that fight that we had?
why did we both have to lose?

it's because we both walked away mad.
instead of walking a mile in each other's shoes."

first of all: how the HELL do i remember that entire song?

that was around the time that we lived in long beach and i pushed tia through a 10 foot glass window into a bed of roses.
but don't worry... we had belted her inside a bunch of huge pillows and put a helmet on her head.

ya... trying to prove that it wasn't premeditated to my mother who was literally freaking out so hard i saw steam coming from her ears... that was hard.

man, i am so lucky.

i had such an unusual, amazing upbringing.

and in my adolescent years, there was a LOT of black and white.
i saw a LOT of pain and a lot of death and a lot of craziness...
and i was volatile and intense and emotional
but i also saw SO much love, and art and culture.
and i experienced a lot of peace and was exposed to soo much spirituality and magic, that i really feel sculpted who and what i am today.

i don't think i would take back a minute of my black and white life even if i could.

maybe wandering the beach yesterday reflecting on death and perspective, and marinating on the many many lessons in my life, have started to bring me closer to the center...
and thus, i am seeing brown and cream colored shells.

finally 27 years later, learning to self-sooth and breathe before i react.

see... i got really upset yesterday and found myself under the mosquito net in bed at 3:15 staring into space and listening to my breakdown music.

my "breakdown" music comes from an album called ONLY BY THE NIGHT

funny.

my guru poet Kahlil Gibran says "one may not reach the dawn, save by the path of the night"

and there i was yesterday, having a moment with my shadow.

...feeling the pitch dark of night eventhough these amazing palm frawns were gliterring with the golden sunlight sitting on the leaves right out the window.

but i had rolled over. literally and figuratively.

KG also says "you see but your shadow when you turn your back to the sun"

i lay there with my back to the sunlight, listening to these songs that pulled at a strand of pain in me... like self-mutilation. listening to the music that holds so much pain.. almost begging the darkness to come take me over and consume me.
because i well know, that all it takes is a single thought to open the closet door that is stuffed full of awful memories to allow them to topple out and on to me and suffocate me completely.

and then i heard this resounding voice of my father in my head that screamed "SNAP OUT OF IT."

and it shook me right back into the light. i flipped my body over and climbed out. of the bed and walked down to the beach to find some shells and make a necklace out of them with this neon green fishing line i found.

ONLY BY THE NIGHT had only gotten through about one and a half revolutions of the album. (considering there is a count on itunes of how many times you have played a certain song... and "Manhattan" from Only By The Night is at 382 plays... ya, i'd say one and a half times around the album is EXTREMELY quick for me to snap myself out of it and not wallow in my sadness.)


and then BAM i was on the beach
drawn to these brown and white shells
staring at my footprints that are the only set of human footprints on the beach as far as the eye can see...
and i am reflecting in this beautiful way about losing a friend and how its like reverse musical chairs.

i like that image.

and i like how i see the world.

and i wouldn't see it this way if i hadn't lost.

i wrote a piece on loss in november.... it was for a poetry thing that i never went to because we were drinking jugga wine by the firepit and i was too in love with that evening at the OM hOMe to go anywhere else, so i just stuck it with my poetry even though its not really poetry...

but here it is.

http://zaniroberts.blogspot.com/2010/11/loss.html

i just, coincidentally, right this moment had en email come through as i was writing this from my dad.

my dad is amazing, and has helped me more then anyone to sculpt the way i feel about death and transformation...
he is the one who first gave me the visual of sloughing a cocoon when we die... and emerging out into the ether as a cosmic butterfly. (one of my favorite images)

he was referring to the words of a priest we used to know....
the email was short and said:

The Priest would often say that when you pass away "You can only take with that which you have given away."
Words to reflect upon.

this is why i am the way i am.

this is why i think so deeply and reflect so intensely and write a blog like this while i travel the world after giving everything i own away...

because my parents rock.

here is a pic of them when they met.
they're amazing.



i can't hardly believe how lucky i am to have parents like these.

they saw me through the black and basked in the glory of the white, all the while loving me unconditionally and teaching me to be AS unique as i am.

it's a little embarrassing sometimes to put your feelings out there for people to read, but whatever...
i am who i am.

i feel these things.
i have these thoughts.
take it or leave it.

i am living for me. and i love that you are here with me.

blessings of peace and soft swirly brown and white shells from a beach far away from where you are. (but really not so far at all)...