Deconstruction.

"Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy."
-Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

This concept of things falling apart feels so true in my life, especially recently. It's easy to float along, but when the big waves come crashing down and cause you to flounder and get water up your nose, it's harder to keep your perspective. I get hopeless and scared, too. I get fearful and obsessive and my mind runs off the rails like a runaway trail and I have to rein it in over and over from dwelling on the things that scare me down to my core.

Avocado, cucumber, carrots, kamaboko, shiitake mushrooms and nori over a bed of black rice.

Tonight's dinner was metaphor for myself, really. A deconstructed sushi bowl to tangibly prove how life's discordant events can in fact, be beautiful. After I took this picture, I mixed everything up together. It was messy and delicious and colorful and reminded me of how grief and joy and loneliness and hope are all ingredients in life, and are not separate from each other. Life doesn't always present itself neatly, rolled up and sliced into perfect sushi rolls. Sometimes it falls apart, and you just have to be ok with experiencing it in a different form than what you initially expected.

I scribbled these words in my journal early this morning-

"I'm discovering now that writing is much more than transcribing words into a journal, in black and white, on a page. It's a lifesaving buoy, keeping us afloat, providing us with something tangible to grab onto- to rest our weary arms around as we make sense of our world and re-establish our voice and direction in the vast sea of life."

Even if things seem to be falling apart, I've found that making sense of things on the page can make life's obstacles more palatable, and I dare say, more delicious. Just like a deconstructed sushi bowl.

Time to Blossom.

Saturday's mini blessings...

How

did the rose

ever open its heart

and give to this world all of its beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light against its being,

otherwise we all remain too

frightened.

-Hafiz

Seeing Beauty.

"I want to see beauty. In the ugly, in the sink, in the suffering, in the daily, in all the days before I die, the moments before I sleep."

-Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

As I closed this book, my heart begged, "Lord, give me the eyes to see."

The War of Art.

"Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action.

Do or don't do it.

It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.

You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God.

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got."

-Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

This has been added to my Top 5 books list.

This entire weekend I've been submersed in amazing musical and artistic talent.  After watching the incredible actors performing Fiddler On the Roof on Friday and the mesmerizing performance of Mona Golabek in The Pianist of Willesden Lane, it is clear that the world is more beautifully expressed when everyone follows their own creative call.

Right now I'm loving Pressfield's book…get yourself a copy and armor up.

I can't wait to see what you've got.

Beyond What I Know.

First hike up Castle Rock 

Last night's beautiful sunset at Point Isabel

"I love going out of my way, beyond what I know, and finding my way back a few extra miles, by another trail, with a compass that argues with the map…nights alone in motels in remote western towns where I know no one and no one I know knows where I am, nights with strange paintings and floral spreads and cable television that furnish a reprieve from my own biography, when in Benjamin's terms, I have lost myself though I know where I am. Moments when I say to myself as feet or car clear a crest or round a bend, I have never seen this place before. Times when some architectural detail or vista that has escaped me these many years says to me that I never did know where I was, even when I was home." 

-Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Decadently Delightful.

As much as I love words, some of the best art contains none of them.

Someone described this as "decadently delightful," and I couldn't agree more.

I Am Thinking...

Photo cred: S. Sairam

I am thinking about love.

I am thinking about Valentine's Day and how it's strange to choose a random day to think about love because in reality, we are surrounded by it, every minute, every hour, every day.

I am thinking about how I watched The Notebook with a grown man and saw him cry for the first time and realized then how we all have experienced the simultaneous beauty and sadness of complicated loving- the kind of love that glues you together and rips you apart and never quite fades but never quite blossoms, no matter how many years or miles pass.

I am thinking of the beauty of how easy it is to connect with a new friend, and how I stare at her sad blue eyes and listen to her story and just offer space for her, and how I recognize her pain and sorrow and anger and regret, and yet in the very same breath, with the very same eyes, see her relief and her reason and her knowingness that things played out just as they should have.

I am thinking how I have known her heartbreak all too well, and how love and loss thread us together, even though we are different ages and have different hair colors and grew up in different states.

I am thinking about the drunk dials I've answered, listening to honest words, unfiltered and openly gushing the kindest of compliments, only to be forgotten the next day, and how that both stung and saddened me for secretly cherishing those moments of alcohol-induced flattery.

I am thinking about riding my bike with the sun warming my back, my ponytail dancing in the wind, my exhilarated heart pounding as I descend down Calaveras Road. And how that feels like love.

I am thinking about the power of random text messages and how words carry electricity- they can light up your whole day, shift your energy, cause you to smile wide, change your outlook.

I am thinking of my late grandmother, and how I would hold her soft, smooth hands, and how she radiated so much strength in adversity, as well as softness and grace, and how that dichotomy always fascinated me.

I am thinking about Praveena, and how she has cultivated in me a deep awareness of the present moment, of gratitude and mindfulness, and how it is beautiful that a single person can change your world so profoundly. She is steady, like the breath, and I love that about her.

I am thinking about how I still feel love for J, who now is happily married and holds his beautiful wife's belly, with a baby on the way, and how love can change shapes and shift forms and textures, yet buried beneath those decade-old bricks is a timeless love that is genuinely happy for his path and wishes only the best for him and his family. And how I cannot express or communicate that directly to him, but I know that kind of love transcends the miles and time and still arrives at its destination, full of intention.

I am thinking how heartbreak and sorrow were my most beautiful gifts because they caused compassion and tenderness to spew forth from my heart once it was cracked wide open- and how love was always present in those dark spaces, but it was camouflaged in different forms that took me awhile to recognize.

I am thinking how electrifying it feels to be in love, to jump in fully, to drop the umbrella and kiss in the rain, tasting sweet passion mixed with raindrops and feeling the heat of another's breath on your face- and how it feels to be on the same street witnessing that exchange, walking alone, yet soaked in all the grace that I've been given, and how that kind of Love is enough.

I am thinking how much more liberating it is to be love- unguarded, unpretentious, giving freely and openly because it will never, ever run out.

And how I would definitely want more than February 14th to be that.