Category: Update

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.

XO

a.

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 –

XO

a.

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.”

So precious… Happy Tuesday, all.

XO a.

The manifesto: LIVE YOUR LIFE.

Wanted to share this beautiful Hafiz poem with you:

The sky
Is a suspended blue ocean.
The stars are the fish that swim.

The planets are the white whales I sometimes
Hitch a ride
On,

The sun and all light
Have forever fused themselves into my heart
And upon my
Skin.

There is only one rule on this Wild Playground,

Every sign Hafiz has ever seen
Reads the same.

They all say,

“Have fun, my dear; my dear, have fun,
In the Beloved’s divine
Game,

O, in the Beloved’s
Wonderful
Game.”

(translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

XO a.

scribbled into my notebook after the REZ reading series debut –

there is a point in hurting. there is a point in writing, in reading through the moments that still make you ache. in sharing and cracking open, emptying your soul into a warm glass for loved ones and strangers alike to partake. in standing outside alone with the amber lights and the glistening tree branches and the snow blowing directly towards you, into your hair and eyelashes, the heart of you full and stirred into a fervor because in actuality, in real reality- this matters, always has mattered, always will. thank all the gods and the god inside me- for the hurting, the healing, the depth and spectra, the calm and perfect storms inside the WRITTEN WORD.

ajd
3.7.13

(great readings this week – great connections, great feelings

sending all the love back out and around again..)

XO

a.