Fight.

This summer has been beautiful – I’ve done a bunch of things I’ve wanted to do, sometimes for years – kayak on the East River, yoga in the park, yoga on the roof, climb the highest mountain I’ve hiked thus far, perform at the NYC Poetry Festival, ride my bike to work four days a week..

It’s also been a difficult one – but only in the sense that in life the strain helps us to learn. Our discomfort is speaking to us. Change is ever-present. It’s all in our heads. Loosely in the way of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths – life is suffering but there is a way OUT of that suffering..

I am trying to hold on to the fact that things will never be straightforward. Some days you won’t want to get up. Some days you won’t want to see anyone. Some days you will be completely consumed by fear, cut off from the universe and from gratitude. Some days it will feel like it will never end.. Like you’ll never come out of it. Like you know better but you just don’t GET IT. Like something is wrong with you.

But we need these moments. We need these moments to learn, to expand, to grow. To remember where we came from. To learn to let go. To remember we CAN be happy, we can exist without the ten ton weight of anxiety sitting on our chest all day.. To return to what we knew we always were. To fully savor the light because of the time you spent in the dark.. To live openly and freely within the ebbs and flows of life – dancing and moving with them, not in fear of them.

Your heart must always be ready to leave
and ready to begin again,
must form new bonds
with courage and without regret.
Every beginning offers a magic power
that protects us and helps us to endure.
– excerpt from “Stages” by Hermann Hesse

And today is another beginning. With the help of my best friend and fellow neon rebel on the other side of the world – we are taking control back. Rising early – yoga, running, meditation, IMAGINATION. Singing songs. Feeling love. Doing work. And going forward..

I turned to a random page in the Bhagavad Gita and the quote struck me to my core.

This is where I’m going.

My favorite season will be drawing to a close soon but “there is eternal summer in the grateful heart” (C. Thaxter) – and I am looking forward to fall. I have my first event as the solo featured reader at First Tuesdays coming up, Boundless Tales is returning, and I am planning a QUEENS LITERARY TOWN HALL in October – part performance, part soapbox, part networking, and a place for all the movers-n-shakers of the Queens lit community to come together. It will be presented as part of Queens Council on the Arts‘ 3rd Space series, which offers artist-led performance and exhibition opportunities the third Friday of the month. For more info email info@queenscouncilarts.org with 3rd Space in the subject line.

MORE DEETS TO COME!

Find your light – don’t hide from what you are. And rise before you fall. And hope for something more.. Live if you really want to. –Yuna

UPCOMING EVENTS:

Featured reader at the season opener of First Tuesdays: A Neighborhood Reading Series in Queens – 9/3/13 [Info]

Celebrating the return of Boundless Tales Reading Series! – 9/19/13 [Facebook]

Hosting Queens Literary Town Hall as part of QCA’s 3rd Space series – 10/18/13, 6:30-8:30pm [Deets to come!]

INSPIRATION:

Therefore, thou noblest child of Bharata!
Govern thy heart! Constrain th’ entangled sense!
Resist the false, soft sinfulness which saps
Knowledge and judgment! Yea, the world is strong,
But what discerns it stronger, and the mind
Strongest; and high o’er all the ruling Soul.
Wherefore, perceiving Him who reigns supreme,
Put full force of Soul in thy own soul!
Fight! vanquish foes and doubts, dear Hero! slay
What haunts thee in fond shapes, and would betray!
– Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita