www.solbeam.com: January 2007

January 28, 2007

strange math

I’m in Boulder, Colorado.

I’ve been deferring that declaration; hesitant only because not even I know what that means.

There are certainly known variables – like that I’m broke, that I love my job and the people with whom I work, and that there is hardly a healthier place in the States for me than this sunny and snowy little town – that are easy enough to factor in and out of the equation. Less quantifiable, is the feeling that I’m on vacation; roaming around Disneyland, waiting in lines for rides with bags of goodies and big eyes; seeing (and enjoying) but not quite believing and having a sneaking feeling that while I’ve got my hands up in the air, Time is pick-pocketing me from behind. But since the last few months spanned years in memories, I guess I have some to spare and won’t fret over a little lost change.

And I am happy. I know. It’s crazy. And if I spin around in my head and catch the shadow running, I can see that I feel guilty for feeling happy here – which is plainly ridiculous (right?). Don’t worry. Half of my happiness is rooted in the fact that I AM on vacation. That’s another constant for the equation: even if my “path” treads occasionally through it, I still see no potential for a long term commitment to this continent. Actually, it’s exactly because I AM engaged to a lifelong pilgrimage that it’s so easy (now) for me to flirt with and court this country.

So I’m here. And, (turning around real fast; watching it flee)… happy. In my office, I’m surrounded by an inspiring community of people who share my travel history, living ethic, and personal mission statement. After work, I have salsa, break dancing, (new) art classes and I just signed up to volunteer with three different local community outreach programs. At home, I have a black lab who smothers me with kisses from feet to face every time I walk through the door and barks and moans in anticipation of the “w” word (which excites me equally). And only in Boulder do the clouds graciously dump six inches of snow and then quickly move along and make way for blue skies and sunshine to do that thing where they make the whole world glitter and glow.

I guess there’s always a chance I’m fooling myself. Maybe, at the core, I’m miserable and just wearing a faux coat of luxurious delusion. Or maybe I really have just turned a corner and found that the calm confidence of knowing I’m always on my way again to another side trumps my old need to have a fire chase me there. I’ve heard that accumulations of experience/years can do that kind of thing to a person.

France to Senegal to India to Colorado; I wonder if it’s the leapfrogging of extremes that’s leveling my experiences of reality all to the same shade of gray? I think I get it now, why the wise men all hang out in caves. It’s not indifference. It’s acceptance and it’s faith. It’s not that it doesn’t matter. It’s that it already makes sense. And it’s not about the numbers or even isolating the variables; it’s simply knowing the equation exists. And maybe that’s a clue to the mystery of how I always did so well in math, but never learned a single solid thing? If I’ve lost you, don’t worry; I think I’ve lost myself as well. But for what else are Sunday evenings other than long diddle-doddling rambles as the above?

*****

Thank you for all the sweet letters and notes regarding Hanley; the shared soft words and stories all helped in letting the peace settle in.

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*sol bows her "namaste" and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

January 21, 2007

touching peace upon

Where does one feel sadness?

It’s not in the head. Not the heart really either. For me it sits at the bottom of my ribcage, quivering, where if it decided to make a run for it, it would escape by the way of my esophagus; a wrong way exit where words would scrape against the walls and form into something wretched on their way out.

Maybe it’s our efforts to restrain and contain that squeeze tears from our eyes in exertion. Because the more I live and see, the more I feed that small beast that quivers in that cave; it has grown to a size that makes crying one of the things I do best. Not only in sadness, but in anger, happiness, compassion, love, shame, horror, bliss and even emptiness. In fact, I would say my emptiness-onset tears are my most beloved and sacred – as when they are shed, I feel heaviness relieved and lightness filled, lifted closer to something divine in leaving a body of self-fullness behind. But emptiness tears are not those I cry today. Today my tears are heavy. They pull my shoulders down. They wring my neck. They choke my throat. The pinch my mouth together. They crease my forehead and scrunch my eyebrows. They plant my feet into the floor and make my whole body want to cringe close to the ground. They take my hands from the keyboard and make me put them over my mouth. Not wanting to let escape that wretched sound.

Wailing.

That is the term that was used to describe the women and children on the streets outside of the morgue in Guatemala City. I know. I knew Hanley well enough to understand why those women wail. Because I witnessed a few, I can see every; moment that she stepped into a life and handed a mother of seven a rice sack full of food, or provided antibiotics to a waning infant, or put shoes on the youngest daughter and sent her to school or offered skill training and a job to the oldest son, or sent a social worker to listen to the story of a missing father. I know why those women wail. Because having grown accustomed to the dark of living life in shadows, the one person who unexpectedly reached out, touched them, and acknowledged their existence and right to live, has died. And do we dare even ask, will she take the only hope she had inspired in all of us with her? No we don’t ask. We don’t want to know. It’s easier to wail and cry.

I have written about Hanley Denning a number of times on this blog. She was first my boss and then my friend and mentor. Today, I clutch my chest and hold that quivering still for a second, thanking every star that aligned in my favor to give me the opportunity, last fall, to hug her and tell her face to face, “Hanley – you are the most inspiring person I’ve ever met in my life.”

In six years of travel around the world, I have never met anyone who personally molded humanity to higher goodness more than this woman did with her own hands. She is. She was the most valuable player I’ve ever encountered, and I simply cannot rationalize why, of all on this planet, she should be sacrificed.

I don’t cry because I miss Hanley. Hanley would not miss Hanley. And Hanley would never, ever cry for Hanley. Hanley did not leave behind possessions or offspring or life partners or personal passions. She never did anything but work tirelessly to care for everyone else. In a way, there was no Hanley. She was nothing but her goodness and gifts to others. And now that I reread that sentence, maybe I can summon some of those sacred emptiness tears too. For if ego grounds us, then Hanley never lived among us. And is she was only her goodness, then she immortally walks alongside us. And if she is what she inspired, then those right intentions and actions can only be shared and grow on cumulatively.

Although I do feel the world right now cringing in her absence, after the wailing, comes always a calm. And now that I have cried, I find that it isn’t her absence, but rather her continued presence, that touches peace upon that which quivers within me.

*****
Crash kills poor children's 'angel' - Portland Press Herald

I Have Lice - 2001 Reflection on Volunteering with Safe Passage

www.safepassage.org - Hope, Education, Opportunity

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*sol bows her "namaste" and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

January 14, 2007

just being

Call it a block, but I just haven’t any will to write. I've returned to the blinking cursor no less then twelve times today and begun fifteen different sentences that I deleted before I came to a period. And I've bitten my lip and fingers in frustration of my fruitless mental dig for a single carrot to hold over and entice my fingers to type. But nothing! Not that the content isn't there. Because it is. I see the story on the other side and I’m standing in front of the bridge. But something in me just won't budge on taking the steps necessary to cross. So I surrender. I've certainly seen my life to be an undulating wave of giving and receiving, acting and waiting, phases. And I suppose it's time for me to just sit on the bank of these thoughts and let what wants to surface, surface. And what wants to sit, sit. My sudden case of shyness is nothing to worry about or take personally. All week, I've been quick to turn every inquirer's question around as fast as proposed, and even my father is accusing me of "hiding something." But I don't think it is so much hiding, as it is holding. It was my nature as a child to hide the small sacred charms I found or was given. I would find a secret spot: a hole in a stuffed animal, a knot in a tree stump, the bottom of the old sewing chest, a forgotten drawer in the garage, and stash my small find to be treasured in silent moments when I found the time to slip away from playmates and siblings. I can only guess this is what I'm doing: hoarding my experiences, revisiting them in silent spaces, touching them to make sure they're real and fondling the fact that they belong to me. Although my loyal and high self-standard striving self would like to deliver a few self-inflicted mental bruises for not "coming through when due," it equally respects the rule of, first, following ones own advice. And so, instead of "dancing on tables," I'm going to "sit in the corner and be shy" on this one; Breathing. Forgiving. Embracing. And just being fine with it. :)

January 04, 2007

intermission

Sorry friends. Having suffered for four years from chronic logic board fatigue syndrome, my apple ibook has fallen from the tree of grace and crashed into what I fear might be a final irreparable form. And while I’m tempted to claim myself a victim of abandonment on a keyboardess island of thought, the truth is that my train/plane/metro/bus/tram/car/foot pilgrimage from India to Austria to France to Belgium to Holland and back to France again has left me with little time to pause and catch a composition breath on any such hypothetically living laptop.

The last four months have felt like two years with six different lifetimes within (if that makes sense). And the task of composing a script to the epic charade of events, whilst still fumbling in the chaos of a final act, is proving itself an added item too many to juggle. So please pardon me for just a minute as I pull the curtain for a pause. I have just a few more time zones, continents and lives to traverse till I find myself, again, with the time, space and tools to share.

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*sol bows her "namaste" and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

www.solbeam.com