cue round two

Ladies & Gentlemen....

round two of a love ninja goes global.

fade to black. slow fade in to a train.


I mean... guess I could start anywhere.

I could really determine any point along the path as the official start of round 2…
but i am calling it today…
now.

Here on the northbound Amtrak from San Diego to Los Angeles, i sit by the window and my eyes kiss goodbye this coastline that i won't see for a while…

My bags that will be with me for the next chunk of time… maybe 6 months… maybe a year or more… are stacked on the shelf at the top of the stairs behind me.

I am leaving again.

Last night my parents had their monthly Opera Party in their Cardiff Beach house.
We all dressed up.

The crew of eccentric neighbors that have been hand picked by my parents arrived in hats, ties and glittery dresses carrying wine, hors devours and a selected opera aria to play and then have my father explain the story and tell personal stories about the piece itself and the featured singer.

One guest, an 85 year old woman in a floor length glittery gown walked in with escargot in her hands and a sparkle in her eye. (I of course chose to ignore the dead snails and look into the sparkle.)
She had danced with the River Dance guy and had an exciting life of travel and adventure. Her husband, who she had been married to for 60 years, was the joke teller of the evening and ended up leaving early since he was on chemotherapy. (something i had NO clue about until they gracefully announced that they would be leaving early.)

Before she left, she looked deep into my eyes with her own and assured me that i was making the right choice.
I was young and single… regardless of whether or not I really had the money to be doing it… i had the time. I had this amazing opportunity and i had to seize the day.
I would never regret this.

My fingers nervously wrapped around one another as i stood there taking it in and believing what she said to be true, but knowing that i would go back to questioning it soon… wondering how i could hold on to this assurance and wondering why i couldn't find it on my own when i would spin into the fear of what ifs…

But i have made the first step (again)… and packed my life into a backpack, a suitcase, and a duffle bag… stacked it on my person, kissed my mother's wet, salty cheek and promised her she would see me again. Then I turned and walked into the train station to buy my one way ticket to LA.

In about 72 hours I would be on a plane to Sydney.

I have NO clue what Australia holds for me.
It has never really called to me before… not like India or Peru (where I still have yet to go).
I guess because i spent so many years in England, I just feel like I know what its like to live in an English speaking foreign country. But I know that Australia will probably slap me upside the head, as most places do.

I get more excited about places then i do about people… and i am a people LOVER.

Sometimes i look around at my friends and fellow Americans i just cannot gather or understand for one MOMENT why they don't travel…. but then i guess i have to ask myself why exactly it is that I travel.

It is certainly a roller coaster of emotion and sensation, I know that. It is intense in almost every way.
I guess I just really enjoy intensity.

For instance, two days ago i boxed up everything I wasn't taking with me, to store at my mom and dad's house.

Again, it was a foggy, dramatic day like today.
I listened to Sigur Rós, an Icelandic band as i gingerly folded my treasures and beloved belongings into Artichoke and Red Wine boxes. (an appropriate home for my California life, i felt.)
It felt like a super collision explosion of poetic emotion.

I threw out many many things, as I always do when i move, or leave to go away for a while… and really cherished the few things i realized i wanted to hold on to, tucking them into the two buck chuck wine boxes after wrapping my hands around them one last time, trusting they would be safe in the attic until i returned.

I think this is what we do when we travel too…
We shed layers of ourselves.
We let go of the way we used to view ourselves… the way we have held ourselves together… and release the things that no longer serve us.
We consciously choose what should remain - the parts of us that are most important. We cherish them and find gratitude.

Traveling has taught me to be more minimalistic, adaptable, and okay with discomfort.
I feel I am more accepting and much more self-reliant then I was a year ago.

But still… I feel the swarm of butterflies in my stomach and the well of emotion buckling under my ribcage and I am scared.

Yes… even brave gypsy love ninjas get scared about leaving.


We passed San Juan Capistrano and i spent a few moments breathing in the beauty of this place. Orange groves and the fields that inspired George Balachine to choreograph Serenade, a ballet I was lucky enough to be in years ago.
Wow… lifetimes ago when i really think about it.

Patricia Neary, Balanchine's ex-wife set it on me and 16 other girls, including Jessica my best friend of almost 20 years.

I texted her moments ago from the train "tell me i can do this."

I wish i didn't need so much reassurance all the time.
I wish I could just tell myself that i can do it.

"you got this." Jessica replied.

Half of me says "duh. you know you got it. you're fine. look at you!"
and the other screams "LIAR!" and secretly aches to hear more.

This reminds me of the poem i wrote called "comfort junkie"

'a hand to stroke my head… a voice to tell me the words that i already know… that i already said'

i am a comfort junkie… its true.

Maybe I can dedicate this next leg of my life… this next international adventure to kicking that out of my life.

AS I said earlier here, i am more accepting and self-reliant then i was before… though clearly still not totally there.

_____________

I arrived at Union Station and unable (unwilling) to find someone to come all the way downtown to pick me up i decided to take the bus, even though it takes an unbelievably long time... but really? where did i need to be?

Right there... on the busstop at Ceaser Chavez and Vignes in Downtown LA.

I sat right down next to a heavyset black man who I later found out was named Jimmie and fell into an incredible impromptu conversation about meditation and connecting to the divine source.
He referred to prayer and Jesus whereas i translated into my own interpretation using meditation and connection to universal energy.
2 sides of the same coin if you ask me.

He talked about watering his relationship with the Lord every day and watching it grow and provide.... and i of course reflected on watering and caring for the relationship with my own mind or soul. Nurturing my connection with divinity through yoga and meditation.

I had forgotten to meditate when i woke up... immediately caught in the onslaught of thoughts and emotions about leaving.
How could i leave out the most important part of the day?

I guess we always do that right?
Forget the most important things.

Maybe that's why we keep coming back into these bodies... Maybe that's the whole reason there is a round 2 for me right now.

What did i not remember from the last time i went mermaid gypsy?

I think that is what this year will be about...

Remembering and locking in these things that i know and somehow forget over and over again.


_________________________

I took a jacuzzi at Tawney's house with our other Goddess girlfriend Hannah Leess, who is a killer musician and inspirational soul.
I cried to the girls.
I shared what was tormenting me and was honest about how hard i have been on myself lately.

Tawney took the proverbial bag of chips from me as i was binge eating them.
We are cleansing - so there were not really any chips... what i mean by that is that she closed the book on my story i was wrapped up in and feverishly writing and re-reading to myself.

She reminded me that i needed to let go of the story... because it could be (and most likely is) totally different through other people's eyes.

What i see is not what everyone else sees... and i am reminded of that not to discredit the way i feel, but rather to remind me that we are all just perceiving this existence and writing a story about it. And that's all fine and good... but at the end of the day there is much much more to life then the bag of chips we know we shouldn't devour but can't stop until someone comes and takes them away.

I got suddenly sick and ended up throwing up all night.

I think i stayed in the hot tub too long and had gotten a migraine from dehydration... or maybe i just needed to purge out the monster bag of chips i had been eating, beating myself up over it as i did it...

I needed to let go of the story and remember to be still.
To connect to the ground underneath me and connect to source above me.
And just be... and remember to remember.

It definitely pulled me back to earth and allowed me to spend the morning in my Aunt Lauren's guesthouse meditating and getting calm all morning.

Round Two... NOW i am ready....

i think.

Ride out the wave

Ride out the wave



A few weeks ago my friend Paul packed up his life in San Francisco to move literally half way back around the planet to Sydney, Australia.
We talked at length during his transition and I imparted what wisdom I have acquired over the last 27 years of my life which has moved me to a new location nearly 30 times in a heaping handful of various countries.

I can shell out advice like its my job... And in fact, it has been my job in several of my life's incarnations as a preschool teacher, yoga instructor, art director and wellness companion... But mostly as a professional friend- which is the occupation I take most seriously in my life.

I shared with my 11:11 loving soul brother the words that I needed to hear too... And found myself really really needing to repeat today.

**Side note: I read and write as I walk. I started doing this while living in London walking through Hyde Park everyday to go to work.
I stumble often but get into the flow while my feet are moving.

Just now, I wrote the first bit of this piece as I walked down mission street from my Goddess sister Laura's house to the BART station after the scalding hot shower i took in the dark while I blasted Kings of Leon and stared at the world map shower curtain and felt the waves of nausea and fear wrapping up under me.

Ride out the Wave...
"the face" by K.O.L. reverberated off the walls of the bathroom.

I was suddenly pulled back into this world and remembered the skills I have as a yogi, as a Buddhist meditation practitioner... I drank in a long deep breath and observed my fears ... solidly committing to riding out the wave... An idea I always share with my friends when they're in this place I now stand in today.

I turned off the water, dried off, ritualistically bejeweled my body, wrapped an orange sparkly strand of beads around my head, doused myself in Laura's lavender oil and set off on my day's adventure to Berkeley.

At the BART station, i saw through the corner of my eye a fortune I had found in a cookie after dinner with Baba Aaron a few nights ago, fall out of my pocket and sail to the ground.

"you are often unaware of the effect you have on others"

Just as I was writing about my commitment to being a solid friend to the people I love, this fortune tumbled out to remind me of its truth.

I hope that I do impart good advice and share my (normally) positive vibes... But I get scared that when I'M stuck or in the dark, I will pull others under with me and suck them into this place I am in today.

Trying hard to ride out this wave alone right now... Figure out where I am and what is happening... And taking all the advice I can, whether regurgitated from myself, or the Kings of Leon, or friends who happen to have picked up on my freak out and have sent me gentle reminders.

I have been inundated with messages and one liners that have come my way in the last few days and made it into my ongoing list of quotable sentences I keep to remember and look back on.

Laura referred to me a tumbleweed last night as I sat in her floor twiddling a wine glass between my fingers nervously.

I asked her if she thought I kept moving and making my life so impermanent in a way so that I have an excuse... If I'm always "about to move" then I can't get stuck... Even though a part of me craves and aches for roots. I stay slippery as a defense mechanism.

Parker Ainsworth - a musician from Venice who I've fallen into a parallel flow with as of late, sings about his hands holding space for roots yet to come.

I know they'll come one day.

And I know that I'm making a choice to be free right now...
And I'm learning that there will always be these waves to ride out along the road.

What I don't understand right now is why I have to crash before I go.

Is it the old rebirth thing? Am I about to reborn... Again?
I know that we have to die to be reborn and I accept it.

But the last few days have been a crazy collision course it seems...
The meeting of many roads and paths- many loves and interpersonal relationships that have met at an intersection where all lights went green and in the middle was an explosion of emotion, leaving me standing in the middle of the road a little numb and lifeless... Much like I did a year ago- when a car collided into mine the week before I moved.

This year it's happening in an emotional realm rather then a physical one... But I feel sore and achy and detached from reality again... Like I'm floating in the space between fear and acceptance but I can't figure out which way is which and where is up... I don't know which way to swim to get air.

Jessica reminded me that "it's not about waiting for the storm to pass... It's about learning to dance in the rain."

I think I already KNOW how to dance in the rain... I just need to be reminded to do it, just like I need to be reminded to meditate and practice yoga and eat raw foods and drink coconuts and green juice when I'm anxious.
Those are my tools that I forget I have in this tool box.

I find that I can always reach in and grab out a band aid for a friend when they are hurt but somehow I let myself bleed and forget that I can help myself too.

I took some medicine today... A yoga class at "Yoga to the People" where i got a message to "travel with love"... Some Kings of Leon therapy and now I am sitting on a train en route to Berkeley to eat an intermezzo salad and dance in the rain (sit in the sun) and remember how high I get on life.

"I hate commitment and communication in relationships. In fact- I think it's just about the only thing I don't like in life. I just want to go ostrich and bury my head in the sand an not deal with shit." I told Laura last night... She laughed and nodded knowingly, sizing me up after almost two decades of friendship.
She knows how I am and always tells me how it is. She calls me out on high drama and brings me back to earth when I catapult into some scenario I am feverishly writing in my head. She knows that I will splatter paint a conversation with wild colorful words to avoid saying the simple things that are caught in my throat cuz I'm scared.
She knows that I'm a hopeless romantic and a total commitmentphobe at the same time.

"It's like snowboarding, Zani. If you don't fall down and get hurt and wake up aching, then you weren't riding hard enough."

I don't know what exactly I am afraid of because I kind of like pain. It's the numbness that scares me more. The NOT feeling.
And today I'm a little dead to feeling.

I know I love traveling... I know I have tons of friends in Australia and am embarking on an awesome month of fun and laughter and love... Followed by my return to Indonesia... The land of literal wave riding and home of my gypsy heart... And as soon as I am gone I will be so happy to be out there in the world.

But today my feet are sticking to the floor. I'm standing on the sand staring at the waves, paralyzed with fear... The sand feels really inviting under my feet. A perfect place for an ostrich's head.

I've made a series of weird decisions lately that have created a disharmony in my life and I guess I'm just sitting in the dissonance.

It just occurred to me that sound waves are the kind I need to ride too.
Maybe this dissonance will resolve into a harmony I can't yet anticipate... But it will come.

Ironically, just last week I was preaching out to anyone who would listen about the chords made by this duality we are blessed to exist in... Recognizing the darkness and minor keys are a part of the whole.... All just elements of this magnificence.

...just straight enough to breathe.
Ride
Out
The
Wave




Epilogue:
I arrived at intermezzo cafe to eat my favorite salad of the last 10 years to find the restaurant had burned down.

I can't help but find symbolism in it all.

On to Cafe Gratitude to give thanks for the dissonance and the donation poor people bowl...
And for the minor chord ringing out today.

And for my guides and friends I'm blessed to have... Specifically Laura, Jecca, Tawnski, Baba Aaron, Danny & Brother Paul.

I think together we could definitely make a greeting card company with words of wisdom in one liners.

I think the first will be simply "Ride Out the Wave."

Car accident anniversary- still alove

One year ago today I was driving two of my most beloved friends Tawney & Josh in Venice Beach... The top was down (as always) even though it was sprinkling rain that night.
Kings of Leon "pickup truck" was more then likely on the stereo...
Getting ready to make the left hand turn I've been making since I got my license at 16, something happened.
The next thing I remember, i was in a bubble of stillness though half of my car was gone and the rest was still spinning and screaching... I smelled smoke, heard panicked screams and saw blood all over tawney's face as she somehow leapt out of the passenger seat and collapsed on the corner curb.


I turned around to see Josh, still in the back seat holding my guitar in a white knuckled grip. His beanie was now somewhere in the middle of Ocean Avenue after flying off his head during the collision.

I had finished my Emergency Medical technician license 2 days before and felt myself just barely wading through a familiar dream as the ambulance arrived and EMTs "c-spined" my friend... A procedure I had just done that week while on my ride-alongs working with the ambulance company.


I had borrowed a collared white shirt and watch from Josh and a black jacket from Tawney's house - leaving the compound at 7am to go work in the ambulance that week. Josh & Tawney were my two friends who had helped prepare me and were now beside me in this weird surreal nightmare.

I was trained to know what to do... And instead, i just sat there shaking, in shock, unable to formulate coherent thoughts, but rather floating somewhere beside this reality that was hazily painted before of me...

In that moment i remember feeling more detached from reality than I had ever been before... And this was culminating a year where my feet barely touched the earth.

Why did this happen?

I know... I know...

Why ask why? It just makes you crazy. But ironically, out of all my friends, Tawney and Josh are the two friends who I have the most "why" conversations with... Together uncovering clues and ever-present cosmic symbolism in all that we do and experience.
We read and follow signs and omens, like The Alchemist.

For his birthday, I actually gave Josh a pouch with 2 stones- one a piece of black jade from Big Sur and the other, a piece of pinkish-white quartz from Santa Fe... To act like the Umim and Thurmin (yes/no amulets from The Alchemist) To help guide him through troubling decisions, which is essentially an artsy hippie way of flipping a coin...

Though in all my answer seeking during the weeks leading up to the accident, I wrote a poem that would remind me to let go of the "why"...

I had just finished a particularly amazing day at UCLA's EMT program where we had been studying neurology... Awakening every cell in my body... Igniting the insatiable appetite for this kind of knowledge inside me. Blowing my mind in a million glorious pieces.

I left class and got in my little blue convertible, put the top down and started writing with the engine running. The poem just ran out of me... coming out in one long stream of very conscious consciousness.

Within a week I found myself at the hospital bedside of Tawney, holding a bucket for her to spit blood into and helping the doctor put temporary stitches in her face that would last until her reconstructive surgery.

Josh stood in the hallway and looked in at me from behind a pale face and bloodshot eyes.

My feet scrambled to touch the earth like a toddler being held in the air against his wishes.

Did the why even matter?

Were we just rearranging matter here? Smashing the reality we thought we knew... The reality I so desperately ached for in that moment.

We were alive... I think.

I was still high off "who cares" from a day spent riding bikes with Josh and feeling alive... Spreading out arms out wide at the pacific ocean and feeling grateful to be alive before riding over to Tawney's house and piling into my car.


Suddenly, the gratitude became significantly more real, having brushed death on the corner of Ocean & Navy.

I left for Indonesia 2 weeks later and we all continued to search for meaning... Emailing one another to check in and touch base and make sure we were still alive.

Its one year to the day.... We are still alive and still without a why.


I am on a train en route to LA to celebrate life with Tawney, Josh and all the amazing lights who turned on and came to the compound during the healing process... Musicians, healers and friends... We are gathering for a sound bath and dinner to celebrate being alove.

(that was a typo... And I really really like it so that's staying there and totally coming into my vocabulary.)



The poem:

January 26, 2011
"The Art of the Healing Art"

The perpetual edge I find myself upon...
Tip toes on the tip of 'I've got it. I'm there.'...
Forever at dawn.
Into breaking light, I stare...

Finding a key and unlocking a door...
We enter to find just ten thousand more...
Creation in life, the constant metaphor...
Unparalleled beauty, and yet always more...
I find myself dumbfounded by each truth I explore...
Reminding us to remember what exactly dreams are for...
The brush has that painted from the very earth's core...

The selfsame hand has sketched our souls...
Written poems in the sky, in medicine, in all beings born...
A loosley tied bow holding life's fragile form.

All it takes is a gentle breeze...
Someone to sneeze...
And the next mystical mystery is released...

I let my mind swim towards the enigma and try...
To quench this insatiable thirst for the "why"...
Clarity so clear, yet so clearly awry...
Abstractions in the science of why birds fly...
Lessons abounding that beg us to try...

Books written... songs sung... prayers chanted...
How could anyone ever take this life for granted?

The elation of creation.

We are creatures of this magnificence upon an unseen canvas ball.
It is the prophetic, anonymous poet who is writing the ALL.
With gratitude and awe, on this earth, my tears fall

But does the "why" even matter?
For that's all we are anyways, right?
Just matter.

So, know that YOU matter.
You ARE matter.

the perpetual pun is probably intended.

love is...

do you remember those comic strips that said sappy stuff like...
"love is... a necessity, not a luxury."


??

i can honestly say that even in my sappiest, romantic comedy marathon watching, girlie girl moments... i never thought those were cute.

what's "love" about weird looking naked babies with upside down triangle noses prancing around gazing at each other with bizarre carnal knowledge that weird looking naked babies shouldn't have?

i spent the last week in LA among my beloved Venice Beach friends. The adventure started at Joshie's house.
Josh and I lived together in the OM hOMe before i moved to Indonesia and started this journey around and around the world.
We were FINALLY reunited after a long year apart exchanging cool weird gifts and beaded jewelry, drinking margaritas at a mexican dive, bike riding to a liquor store and breaking the bottle before we even left the parking lot, and laughing hysterically while making up sound effects to demonstrate our feelings (just like all times).

Josh was one of the first to get the L ☮VE tattoo on his wrist.
I have one too.
i think there are about 20 of us now...

what the LOVE on my hand means to me has changed over the course of the last few years since i got it at one of our Collective CA Manifestivals.

See... at the time, i believed that we were in the midst of something really big. I thought we were breaking the mold, and shifting the paradigm into a state of Unity Consciousness... I saw the tattoo as a symbol that i was a part of a community that valued true unconditional love over anything else...
That i would forgive and let live anything and everything.
Our tribe grew and grew... pulsating with awesomeness until we exploded and dispersed into what now feels like a million different directions.
I like to believe that we are just acting as light carriers... spreading our LOVE consciousness all over the world now.

In my Buddhist Meditation Course up at Tushita Meditation Center in Daramshala, India... I asked why we cup our left hand underneath the right one when we sit in meditation.
The answer was that the right side is compassion and the left side is wisdom, and we need to cultivate the wisdom in order to hold the compassion.

i wrote underneath my LOVE tattoo on my left wrist "... with wisdom"

Thats a lesson i need to remember.... Love with wisdom.


I am the type of person who will fall in love with everyone and anyone and everything. See this piece i wrote for Live Like You're On Vacation.... Unfortunately I willingly give my all to people who often don't reciprocate... and I tend to be taken advantage of.
Luckily, I am a full on gypsy these days... so there is not much i can give away besides my love.

But again... what IS love?

My adventure in LA was wonderful and full of happiness and music and laughter...
I sat on the beach benches with Spencer and Carrie and drank tequila for hours...
We did a part 2 adventure with the same trio a few nights later when we ended up in Spencer's new van and had a sleepover.

I went to an amazing party called "Aquarius Rising" where many of my friends performed including Tawney, Hannah Leese, Parker Ainsworth, Carrie Turner, The Makepeace Brothers, and my old OM hOMies and beloved lovers, The Mowgli's

The Mowgli's sing a song called San Francisco... the place where this last adventure started, and where i will be returning to next week!

The lyrics are:

I've been in love with love
and the idea of something binding us together
you know that love is strong enough

and i've seen time tell tales about that systematic drug
ya that heart that beats as one
it's collectively unconsciously composed.

If you don't know the song... you should. Its really uplifting and amazing... and they have just recorded an album that they are trying to raise money to release... check it out:
http://thecollectiveca.com/the-mowglis/

I remember when Mikey Mowgli sent me a text message with those lyrics.
He had just written them up in SF and I was down in LA.
I was so excited to hear the tune.
It became a tune that my heart danced to... and has continued to dance to all over the world.

The Mowgli's sing about love all the time.
But what is it?

I finally jumped on a train and came back down to San Diego.
My first day back, I went with my cousin Britta to drop her kids at school.
I had the pleasure of going into Caleb's kindergarden class and found this thing he wrote on the wall...



I'm with him on everything except the Oreo... I've been on a bit of a health, juice, vegan, non-processed food rampage... so i would amend this to say that Love tastes like the Valentines red juice I just made...
Carrots, Apple, Ginger, Lemon, Beet & Red Bell Pepper...

Cutting beets is awesome.
You make everything look like a murder site.

and the juice tickles your soul.

If you don't have a juicer, i highly recommend buying one IMMEDIATELY... also - watch this documentary:
A Beautiful Truth - you can watch it on youtube for free.
Just do it.


http://www.youtube.com/movie?v=wvzDHGLEUyw&ob=av1e&feature=mv_sr

SO... Love is beet juice?

I still don't know... but i like that answer better then the weird naked babies.

<3