audrey nova di mola : wilds of the deep heart

Journeys

I feel very grateful right now to be able to connect with people through my own work as well as through my cultural efforts in Queens. I am forever indebted to the art and words of people from present day to centuries past – the inspiration that has pulled me through some of my darkest days.

To be able to pay that forward – to connect with the universe in such a way that it allows me to deliver a message to someone at the particular moment they need it – be it a piece of my work, direct spoken encouragement, sharpie-scrawled words on a wall outside, my book, a poem sticker, or just a smile or an outstretched hand.. There’s just nothing better. Because I know how important those moments have been for me – and to be that for someone else is just unbelievably precious.

I had an absolutely WONDERFUL time at my first solo featured reading at First Tuesdays in Jackson Heights. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to Richard for the opportunity and to everyone who shared the evening with me!

Among many other reasons to be overjoyed, I was also so happy to hear that the following poem delivered its message – something I feel very strongly about. WHEN will we take ownership of who and what we are? WHEN we will give ourselves permission to be exactly what we ARE? No gatekeeping, no being held back, no waiting for someone ELSE to say yes. What validates you as an artist? Is it within yourself? Or is it when someone else acknowledges you – publishes your work, accepts you into a festival or a gallery? It’s something I know we’ve all struggled with. Here is my take – or at least what I try to remind myself as much as possible – it’s a poem from my book, “Decisions We Make While We Dream.”

“validation”

it seems to me
validation
is the muse’s silent killer..
you write and stand on a street corner
holding a sign,
or shouting from a mountaintop,
or thrashing in the sea,
waiting for someone to notice.
we writers have to ask ourselves
over and over –
does it matter?
in so many ways
the greats, and others like them,
have said – write not for an
audience.
the purest writing comes from you,
unadulterated.
praise or criticism may come
afterwards –
or alternately, you may
have only silence.
but whatever you are faced with,
i tell you –
picking up the pen is your
validation.
you have realized
the grand illusion –
created something
out of nothing.
and do you know what else?
have you considered
how much of your audience
is invisible –
simply part of the pen and ink,
the walls of your heart,
the fragments of memory..
spirits of the past,
circumstances of the present,
possibilities of the future –
star-trails and planets
and the universe all one –
it all moves to an
infinite,
luminous bloom
when you take that breath,
that step – to create.

how much more validation
do you need?

In other semi-related news! I’m very, very excited to be hosting the first QUEENS LITERARY TOWN HALL on October 18th from 6:30-8:30pm 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. Part performance, part soapbox, and part networking opportunity, the Town Hall event will serve as a platform for local literary organizations and reading series to connect with each other and to writers/lit lovers in the borough. Please join me for this sampling of literary Queens – all in one place, all in one night!

On that note – this week I put together a list of all the Queens literary resources I know of (including reading series, literary organizations, workshops, bookstores, etc), posted on the new Boundless Tales website. Please check it out here and share it with your contacts!

We’re all fighting this good fight together – closer than we may seem. Keep walking your path, sharing your stories, and making your art. It’s the only way to live authentically – and to connect with others authentically, too.

Looking forward to this season of transformation..

UPCOMING EVENTS:

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 [More to come!]

INSPIRATION:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
– ‘Wild Geese’ by Mary Oliver

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

Midsummer

Very strange that we find ourselves already in mid-July. In less than a month I will be twenty-seven years old..!

I remember all the markers on this path – memories I feel even more strongly I need to release to the world, to honor them. To honor myself. To honor the beautiful people I have come across.

My Nana passed in December of ’11 – a chain reaction of transformation set off since then. I released my first book on what would’ve been her next birthday.. I am sitting on all the words that spilled from me in the months and months after – they will be the next chapter. “TRAVERSALS.” Soon..

I listened to voicemails of hers I hadn’t heard in more than a year, a day ago – completely cracked in half. Sometimes you forget how necessary it is to do that. Really crack. Really break.

And if you can – write from the pieces.

A friend of mine showed me a visceral poetry performance video yesterday and it set a fire in me. The ways we can show others what we feel, and have been through..

I feel blessed for the opportunities to be onstage again soon – to channel this energy. To remember what I’m here for. To hear from others where they too have been, and where they hope to go..

Speaking of – tomorrow I’m happy to be participating in the soft opening of one of Astoria’s brand new and MUCH needed indie bookstores, Enigma Bookstore! See below for details and please come out if you’re around. I am so proud to be a part of QUEENS LIT – we have all come so far in this past year..

I was also so pleasantly surprised to see my poetry sticker project picked up on Flavorpill’s Flavorwire.com! Street art and street poetry/performance is infinitely inspiring to me, and I feel so honored to be included on a list with people all over the world who put their expressions out there in such unique ways. The Compass Project will be back soon..

Looking forward to what the rest of the summer will bring. More sharing, more biking, more moving, more sun, salt, sweat, water, mountains, waves.. Words.

Always, always words.

Bowing to the power inside me, inside the universe, and in all of us that is greater than our sadness and fear –

UPCOMING EVENTS:

Reading at Enigma Bookstore’s soft opening/Kea’s spoken word – 7/19/13 [Facebook invite]

Reading for Boundless Tales at the 3rd Annual NYC Poetry Festival on Governor’s Island – 7/27/13 [Facebook invite]

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

INSPIRATION:

High overhead, isn’t half of the night sky standing/ above the sorrow in us, the disquieted garden?/ Imagine that you no longer walked through your grief grown/ wild,/ no longer looked at the stars through the jagged leaves/ of the dark tree of pain, and the enlarging moonlight/ no longer exalted fate’s ruins so high/ that among them you felt like the last of some ancient race./ Nor would smiles any longer exist, the consuming smiles/ of those you lost over there – with so little violence,/ once they were past, did they purely enter your grief. – RILKE

Out of your head and into your heart

This was supposed to be a Wednesday update but – here we are! Making a promise to myself to update, starting… NOW!

I’m sitting here sweating after riding to and from amazing yoga at my beloved The Yoga Room. Eddie Teboul’s incredible Vinyasa class couldn’t have been any more apt (THANK YOU) – Independence Day. Independence from fear, anger, jealousy, sadness. Suffering is inevitable, we all know this. It’s how we deal with it..

There’s an awesome Summer Sixty challenge going on at TYR right now and although I’m not officially participating, I’m doing a challenge of my own. The nature of MY beast is sometimes inconsistency – yet I’ve come to the point where I realized.. Hey – I’m one of those people. I need this. I need yoga. I need the sound of OM resonating. I need chanting. I need sweat. I need communion with myself and others.

I put my head to the mat and think: I am bowing to the power in myself and in the universe that is greater than my sadness and fear.

And after – I feel the palpable difference. What more evidence do I need?

We are all so cerebral. Sometimes you can analyze yourself to death and still get nowhere.

There is a source we all come from that is greater than THIS – whatever external or internal affliction we are dealing with, imagined or actual, mental or physical. We all need a way out, but a way out and INTO awareness – into the VAST, infinite space we are actually occupying.

It’s like curling up in a cave in the corner of a HUGE, beautiful forest we are refusing to acknowledge. It’s there. It’s endless. And it’s beautiful.

I hiked in Cold Spring on the Breakneck Ridge trail and it was exhilarating in ways I can’t explain. Not only to feel the somewhat imminent danger but to stand up there and know we had traversed it – hand over hand, one foot in front of the other. Our sweat, our exertion – brings us this.

Overwhelming.

But everything is like that.

I am reminding myself to be patient. Every single day counts. Every single effort counts.

And there are ways beyond trying to conceptualize it in our minds. I have felt stuck beyond BELIEF. But today riding out of that yoga class – I feel the knots loosening. I want to flow freely. Heart broke loose on the wind..

Here’s hoping you acknowledge and celebrate your own independence today.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

Reading for Malini Singh McDonald at REZ Reading Series in Kew Gardens – 7/11/13 [Facebook invite]

Reading for Boundless Tales at the 3rd Annual NYC Poetry Festival on Governor’s Island – 7/27/13 [Facebook invite]

INSPIRATION:

When water gets caught in habitual whirlpools,/ dig a way out through the bottom/ to the ocean. There is a secret medicine/ given only to those who hurt so hard they can’t hope./ The hopers would feel slighted if they knew. – RUMI

Choices

My best friend‘s words, heart, handwriting. XII

Ruin, the most real
and palpable conclusion. It is leveled, face down.

Ruin gets up. Once brushed off, it glows.
There are moments when I no longer live

in the future tense. I walk forward as if I am
limitless. The angels come to impart a message

as they scribble on brick, revise the landscape.
Grace is an arrow shot through air. It hits a surface

and the surface hums. It rises and lifts above
the crosshatch of collapse. I believe this hope

is a table I dance on. […]

– excerpt, ‘Tiny Souls’ by Tina Chang

“Ruin gets up. Once brushed off, it glows.”

Step by step..

Recently

There are depths inside you too infinite to explain. When you need a reminder.. Look up. @audreyleopard on Instagram

Hello, hello out there! A little update from the road thus far..

I’ve added some new work to the site including performance videos and poems published, and everything is now organized into two categories: Poetry & Performance for poetry, prose, singing, creative projects and the like, and Articles & Media for journalism, blog posts, photos, and etc.

And away we go!

* I’m now part of the co-hosting team for Astoria’s Boundless Tales Reading Series! We just sent out an open call for writers with some interesting themes for each month – if you’re a writer/performer please check it out and submit your work! The next reading, which is also the last one of the season, is on June 20th at Waltz-Astoria and I’ll be hosting.

* Queens’ own Newtown Literary Journal is launching issue #2 at Odradeks in Kew Gardens (home of the rebooted REZ Reading Series) on June 6th. My prose piece “requiem (soon to be),” a written moment of silence for an LIC building on the chopping block, is published in it – thanks so much! Come on out and support QUEENS LIT! More info on their FB.

* I was really excited to be a part of some amazing events over the past few months..

** The second edition of my Nature of the Muse reading and live writing event was truly wonderful – I couldn’t be happier with the way it turned out and was FLOORED yet again with the talent of the featured artists! THANK YOU all so much. And thanks to my lovely pal Paul I also got to sing for the finale ;)

** Reading at Oh, Bernice! was a huge highlight – I got to perform some new work including a piece crafted with some classic tunes, which meant a lot to me. My parents were also there, and I remembered the last time I performed at Cafe Marlene – it was the second reading I did back in 2011, and the first time they saw me read after getting back into performing. Coming full circle and finally getting to read and sing a hybrid piece – I was absolutely floating that night..

** After reconnecting with her at Nature of the Muse, I was so excited to be invited by the incredible M. Leona Godin to perform at her new WITH SPECIAL GUEST series at The Delancey. She really thinks outside the box and is a ridiculously entertaining host – at the beginning of this month I read my work for her show accompanied by fantastic singer/cellist (and total sweetheart) Calum Ingram, who played to my words, totally improv! LOVED IT.

Yoga warriors on the beach in Coney Island with instructor Dina Ivas

** Later on in the month, the weather wasn’t exactly on our side, but it was a testament to good vibes and good friends that Lola Star and I’s Coney Island Oasis still went on – we did misty yoga on the beach with teacher Dina Ivas, heard some music and poetry, and shared snacks. SO grateful for all the attendees who didn’t let the chill spoil their fun!

** And – last week.. I got to faux-officiate a wedding! Ever-lovely Sammy Davis referred me to the folks at The Not Wedding, which is a bridal show alternative in the form of a big, fake wedding with vendors, food, music, dancing, and more. This was the very first NYC Not Wedding and I had such a blast performing spoken word for this real couple’s ceremony. They were just shy of their actual one year wedding anniversary and used it as a kind of vow renewal – all beautiful, kick-ass people I am so glad to have met!

Faux officiating, REAL LOVE at The Not Wedding – Instagram by @dolcedreamsevents

Currently – plotting out my next course.. I cannot wait to experiment with more forms of performing and collaborate with my beautiful friends. And hey, if you have a project you’d like to work on, if you want some poetry at your event or a fun MC – let me know!!

Stay tuned for the next Nature of the Muse later this summer, and updates on my next book. :) Just in case you’d like to check out my first book, Decisions We Make While We Dream, it’s still on sale right HERE! Earlier this month we passed the one year anniversary since I released it, in memory of my beloved Nana. Time sure does fly..

But – here we go. Flying right along with it..

Crawling out of the dark into an infinite summer –

Riding the waves

Poetry sticker from my Compass Project phase II, last summer in NYC

To praise is to praise
how one surrenders
to the emptiness.

To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.
Praise, the ocean. What we say, a little ship.

So the sea-journey goes on, and who knows where!
Just to be held by the ocean is the best luck
we could have. It’s a total waking up!

Why should we grieve that we’ve been sleeping?
It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been unconscious.

We’re groggy, but let the guilt go.
Feel the motions of tenderness
around you, the buoyancy.
– RUMI, from ‘Buoyancy,’ trans. by Coleman Barks

These days have been about riding the waves. Learning again how to be kind to myself, to work with my mind, and to fight for myself, the people I love, and what I am here to do.

Sometimes all we have to do is reach out to realize again and again that we are not alone. Such a simple fact – yet how often we forget. We are sitting crouched in the corner of a room with our legs drawn up, head on our knees – not realizing there are others in the room, doing the very same. We are all fighting the same battles, having the same fears – regardless of what it looks like on the outside. We have to keep walking, keep fighting, keep knowing that – things can change. And all we can do is roll with them. Ride the waves. On and on..

“Cry out in your weakness,” Rumi writes. “Crying out loud and weeping are great resources. […] Cry out! Don’t be stolid and silent/ with your pain. Lament! And let the milk/ of loving flow into you.”

It’s the only way to begin to help yourself, to help the universe help you, and also to help the people around you.

This sense of separation, of bewilderment, of disconnectedness – it derails us completely. We’re staring at the door but we can’t get ourselves to move. We lose our sense of purpose, we don’t want to get out of bed, we resist every situation instead of embracing it. We feel detached from the source energy of the universe, from our infinite potential, from the love and goodness that surrounds us always.. We become so completely entrenched in this feeling of isolation and emptiness that we cannot possibly fathom the illusion it actually is.

That current, that potential, that love energy is always there – just a breath or a moment or a perspective shift away.

“The grief you cry out from/ draws you toward union,” Rumi writes. Be honest with your longing, your sorrow, your restlessness – be KIND to yourself in feeling such things. Everything happens for a reason.. Even those things that seem completely pointless. “Your pure sadness/ that wants help/ is the secret cup./ Listen to the moan of a dog for its master./ That whining is the connection.”

We are all on this journey together. And even feeling nothing – is feeling something.. One day at a time, one foot in front of the other. It’s not where we’re going, but what we learn along the way.

Trust yourself, trust the journey. Ride the waves.

Because this – this sadness, this emptiness, this strangeness. It isn’t forever.

It just isn’t.

Thank you to everyone who has shared their moments of darkness and their ways back out into the light with me over the past few days. Thank you to everyone who has been patient, stoic, honest – lanterns in the shadow.

Peace and joy to you, my dear friends – especially when you need it most.

Something for me

Every man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. -the always incredible R.W. Emerson

It has been a very strange time for me lately. Let me preface that by saying – National Poetry Month was incredible, insane, wonderful, beautiful. And the days leading up to it, too – so much happened, so many events, performances, new pieces written.. I am grateful, beyond grateful.

But two things just happened that have forced me to put on the brakes. One – my phone got stolen, and two, directly after – I’ve been struggling through one of the worst times being sick I can ever remember. Perspective changers, either way.

This is a case for taking time. For saying STOP. For remembering who is ACTUALLY in control. For feeling that THIS. IS. TOO. MUCH. And realizing that it’s OKAY.

Technological ADD. The noise that doesn’t stop. Your mind split into a thousand places. Notifications. Txts. Emails. Calls. Multiple email accounts. Google chat. Facebook messages. Instagram. Every single way to contact a person, ever. Updating this, updating that. I was a list of to-do’s. Events to run to. Things to promote. I wasn’t taking care of myself. It wasn’t fun anymore. It was endless.

But it doesn’t have to be.

The phone was stolen and because I got so sick I just – didn’t get a new one. I suddenly didn’t want one. I needed to rewire my brain – or at least try to.

“THIS” – the clutter, the documenting instead of living, the constant voices/words/text, the endless notifications, the obsessive checking and updating, the knee-jerk reaction to pull out your phone and monitor something, the conscious/unconscious avoidance of stillness/silence, the zoning out on news feeds for hours, the 100% WASTING of your life and your time – THIS doesn’t matter.

THIS – life, STOPPING, breathing, laying in the sun, enjoying the world without having to update about it or take a picture and send it somewhere, focusing on ONE THING at a time, your family, your friends, your loved ones. Being healthy. Getting your life back on track. Using technology in a more progressive/positive way, controlling IT without it controlling YOU.. THIS matters.

And so I will try to be a better me, for me.

But if you read this, I urge you to take a shot and reexamine the way you’re living. Can you go without a phone for a night? Can you keep your pledge to check Facebook only once a day? Can you be okay with your entire social network not buzzing in your ears for a second? Without being able to be reached in every possible way, at every possible moment?

PLEASE note – in no way do I mean to pass judgment on anyone who lives tethered to their technology or, alternatively, throws it out the window. At the end of the day, in all situations, you have to do what works for YOU, and what you realize on your OWN time, in your OWN way. It’s not going to work or make sense otherwise.

That said – if you feel inclined, just do some experimenting with yourself. If you feel stuck, un-stick it. Try. Just try. You’ll be happy you at least got some movement and perspective out of it. Whatever way we “think” we are – we don’t have to be.

When I was in my early college years I still remember sitting shotgun in my friend’s car one night outside my house as she told me what her mother always used to say: If nothing changes, nothing changes. I can’t let myself forget.

Love and gratitude always for your support

Be well –

National Poetry Month ’13!

Long Island City garden, @audreyleopard on Instagram

National Poetry Month! It’s here again.. It’s been a beautiful time of writing, productivity, and connections. I am excited and grateful for what these next months will bring.

“NATURE OF THE MUSE” is THIS THURSDAY! Thank you again to all the local media outlets who have been so, so kind to help promote – Newtown Literary Journal generously ran this piece they recently invited me to post on their great and growing blog, and BORO Mag featured it online and on their FB, calling it “one of the most exciting literary events in the city” (!!!) – but you can come on down and find out for yourself ;)

Newtown Literary is also throwing a fantastic fundraiser/series of local writing events called QUEENS WRITES! It’s next weekend, April 13th and 14th and if you’re a writer or literary person you should BE THERE! More info here. They’re also publishing my piece, “requiem (soon to be)” in their Spring/Summer ’13 issue!! EXCITED!

Cristian Zink of The Queens Ink by Liz Nieves

My longtime friend/collaborator Liz Nieves (of glitter unicorn photo fame) & I recently launched a webzine called GLITTER & DOOM featuring photos and interviews with everyday creatives + special content to come! Check it out!

Local arts collective Mission to (dit)MARS made me their Featured Artist and ran a great little interview! Check it out here. I also had the true pleasure of attending the inaugural event in their Launch Pad Reading Series for playwrights – Courtney Lauria’s “Bridges & Boundaries” really struck me. It was poignant, timely, funny – well-written, acted, and directed. Loved the concept and looking forward to more! Check out their website for info.

AND MORE EVENTS THIS MONTH! APRIL 18 I’ll be hosting @ Boundless Tales Reading Series in Astoria and on APRIL 20 I’ll be reading @ Oh, Bernice! Reading Series in Sunnyside. YES!

You never know where life will lead you next… @audreyleopard on Instagram

Infinite love & gratitude always!

See you ’round town-

XO a.

PS: I am also overflowing with joy and gratitude for my beautiful mom who had an amazing opportunity to present the work she does at the NEWLIFE EXPO, America’s largest mind, body & spirit expo, last month. If you need some good vibes or energy blockages removed (and much more) – please talk with her or check out her upcoming event on APRIL 26. So beyond proud.

Connecting

This was tonight – what I scribbled in my notebook as I walked over the entirety of the Queensboro Bridge for the first time…

(ps – happy, happy, HAPPIEST spring)

there is something to be said for the PROMISE of this moment – walking over the queensboro bridge alone at night – cars whizzing past, cerulean expanse dotted with infinite beacons of light – i feel it – opening up, and i break out into a run, smiling so hard i nearly cry, breathing cold air into beating heart, gazing upwards to moon glowing in hazy cloud-smoke between turrets of dizzying urban ingenuity, and this – i breathe, i feel, i KNOW – this is LIVING. this is my one precious life. everything inside me is rushing forward and i just want to fling my arms out in the spirit of perpetual motion and HOWL from the depths of me, but i just – marvel, marvel, marvel…

i am here.

i am enough.

It all has a purpose

Bethesda Terrace in Central Park, on a recent trip this winter

Holding my book in my hands still makes me sentimental sometimes. I am constantly chasing dreams – relentlessly. One after another.

But this is the dream I had since I was a little girl – realized. We’ll be coming up on a year since it was released, soon…

I wanted to share this stanza from the Tenth Elegy in Rilke’s incredible Duino Elegies, which are honestly just too stunning to put into words. I feel like I could read them a thousand times and still come up with something new to strike me.

“Someday, emerging at last from the violent insight,
let me sing out jubilation and praise to assenting angels.
Let not even one of the clearly-struck hammers of my heart
fail to sound because of a slack, a doubtful,
or a broken string. Let my joyfully streaming face
make me more radiant; let my hidden weeping arise
and blossom. How dear you will be to me then, you nights
of anguish. Why didn’t I kneel more deeply to accept you,
inconsolable sisters, and, surrendering, lose myself
in your loosened hair. How we squander our hours of pain.
How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration
to see if they have an end. Though they are really
our winter-enduring foliage, our dark evergreen,
one season in our inner year–, not only a season
in time–, but are place and settlement, foundation and soil
and home.”