I listened to an incredible interview between Jian Ghomeshi and K'Naan the other night while driving home. You can watch it here....K'naan interview
I was struck by how much he embodied what an artist is. To be driven to do something because of what is in you. He said he is driven to write and make music because it is something that comes from within him. What hit me to the core was how he kept saying that he continues to seek the meaning of why. Why here? Why success? Why now? Amazed at his impact on others, yet he openly said the stories of others touch him but are not what he thinks of when he writes.
K'naan spoke on giving everything when performing and then feeling no warmth left afterwards. To need to re-collect. To some extent I completely understand this feeling when you do something with all that you are and then, you have nothing. I so strongly identified with this as everything I have ever done that has a feeling of success or 'right-ness' in the doing has left me with a sense of this. When I teach or present, I give a peice of myself. I am not able to half ass it, not able to just push a button for a job. I simply am driven to be who I am, express it, reach out and connect. A blessing. A curse.... who knows. It is.
His struggles with darkness and depression and anxiety, his struggle with to find its meaning and place in his life -- this struck me. More and more people are opening up about their own mental/internal demons and I am amazed how much we all share the same issues and concerns. What is most incredible about the interview is the beauty of K'naan's persona... a poet who contains his pain and experiences as a refugee etc by encapsulating it in music
Lyrics | Knaan lyrics - Take A Minute lyrics
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
What is your AWESOME!???
http://1000awesomethings.com/the-top-1000/I had heard about the list and thought cool idea. Then my brother emailed me a link to one of the items he read and immediately thought of me about. I checked it out and laughed. Then I read on. It is addictive and I started chortling and laughing, then howling. All alone, by myself. Laughing. Love laughing aloud.
What struck me is that we all think we are so unique, and yet truly we are all so much the same taking pleasure from the same darn things. The little things. The crawling back into a warm bed after getting up to pee in the night (LOL!), the super dangerous playgrounds of our youth (we are all still here are we not?!), fresh line dried sheets..... I thought I could come up with a list of **10**
1. Feel of holding someones hand that fits just right in yours with no effort
2. Explaining something and having someone laugh with you part way through just getting it
3. The feeling of swimming in a lake with the smooth water sliding against your body
4. Reading a really good book and when you finish it you sigh and feel complete for a moment.
5. Laughing really really hard and long and being totally in the moment.
6. The feel of a cool toilet seat or bathroom floor when you are nauseated!!
7. Being hungry, not really knowing for what, choosing something and when you take that first bite and it is just perfect....
8. The little things people do that tell you they really understand you and when they do it or say it you feel so good and understood, or appreciated or 'seen'
9. Driving and having the perfect song for the moment on and the wind blowing and sun shining....
10. Dog greeting me when I come home and he is so damn happy to see me he is wiggling and snorting and being all ridiculous and you cannot help but laugh and smile!
So many little things! Peeing when you have been waiting for ages to go..... to gliding down a hill on a bike (sans helmet of course) and feeling the wind blow through your hair.... smell of my Dad's jacket when I was a kid that was part wool, part cigarette smoke, part cedar closet, part cologne.... smell of my daughter's clean sun warmed hair....
Smiling... are you?
What struck me is that we all think we are so unique, and yet truly we are all so much the same taking pleasure from the same darn things. The little things. The crawling back into a warm bed after getting up to pee in the night (LOL!), the super dangerous playgrounds of our youth (we are all still here are we not?!), fresh line dried sheets..... I thought I could come up with a list of **10**
1. Feel of holding someones hand that fits just right in yours with no effort
2. Explaining something and having someone laugh with you part way through just getting it
3. The feeling of swimming in a lake with the smooth water sliding against your body
4. Reading a really good book and when you finish it you sigh and feel complete for a moment.
5. Laughing really really hard and long and being totally in the moment.
6. The feel of a cool toilet seat or bathroom floor when you are nauseated!!
7. Being hungry, not really knowing for what, choosing something and when you take that first bite and it is just perfect....
8. The little things people do that tell you they really understand you and when they do it or say it you feel so good and understood, or appreciated or 'seen'
9. Driving and having the perfect song for the moment on and the wind blowing and sun shining....
10. Dog greeting me when I come home and he is so damn happy to see me he is wiggling and snorting and being all ridiculous and you cannot help but laugh and smile!
So many little things! Peeing when you have been waiting for ages to go..... to gliding down a hill on a bike (sans helmet of course) and feeling the wind blow through your hair.... smell of my Dad's jacket when I was a kid that was part wool, part cigarette smoke, part cedar closet, part cologne.... smell of my daughter's clean sun warmed hair....
Smiling... are you?
Monday, April 19, 2010
I hate rules
I think I have always hated them. As a child I remember being told not to do something and being filled with the overwhelming urge to do just that. Oh yes. I was an obstinate child. Guess what? I have a daughter equally this way, payback!
Rules confine, restrict and stop us. So often rules exist beyond reason. Remember when your parents told you not to 'rush the season' when it was 25 C in April and you wanted to wear shorts? I caught myself thinking this parental thought as my kids begged to wear shorts in April. I thought "what the hell!". I did however draw the line at getting the sprinkler out!
So back to rules. How often do we question them? Why do we need them? Are they black and white or able to encompass grey? Every day I get older the more and more I realize nothing seems to be black or white. What is bad in my life might be good in yours! Societal rules exist to keep us all in check and promote harmony. Honestly though, those that break them would probably break them whether they are there or not!
I wonder if our desire for rules and regulations and government policies and programs and and and.... doesn't stem from how disconnected we are becoming from one another. How we can go to the grocery store and not talk to another person beyond the cashier. Years ago you conversed with the butcher, borrowed from a neighbour, chatted at the mailbox. I live in a smallish town so I can have connectedness but as people get busier and busier even in small towns this is tough.
Obviously I think too much. I guess we do need rules, just not stupid ones! Not ones that are ambiguous or unfair. In my own life I have rules but think of them more as guiding principles. A few of them are:
1. Be polite. That means to everyone. It is a civility thing. (man, hate people who are rude to cashier, waitress etc.)
2. Be good to the earth as much as possible. So purchase less, recycle more. (can't buy yourself out of ecological crisis!)
3. Think of others, try to be empathetic and less judgemental. What works for one, might not for another. (what was black and white years ago is increasingly grey)
4. Do things with good intent and heart. (what you do might not turn out right, but if at least if you do it with good intent you will know this and be able to take away a lesson in the failure)
5. Be yourself. Even when others struggle with it, at least you are YOU! (you cannot change someone else, just yourself and hope you influence others positively)
6. Strive for authenticity, seek a true existence where you see yourself honestly. (hard hard hard. Don't be distracted from the shiny, the status, the lures. Find what is right for YOU).
7. Don't expect from others what they are not able to give. And when they disappoint you, recognize it is your own expectations that let you down. (this has been a really hard, but valuable, lesson for me)
8. Recognize that happiness is all around us at all times. It is just our own perceptions of reality that make it hard to let it in. (Can you ignore the ick and focus on the bright?)
9. Be kind. (to kids, animals, people, nature. Society is judged on how the most vulnerable are treated).
10. Instead of complaining, try changing it. (If you didnt vote, you don't get the right to complain. If you want a change, ask for it. Volunteer. Change yourself and help others follow)
Rules confine, restrict and stop us. So often rules exist beyond reason. Remember when your parents told you not to 'rush the season' when it was 25 C in April and you wanted to wear shorts? I caught myself thinking this parental thought as my kids begged to wear shorts in April. I thought "what the hell!". I did however draw the line at getting the sprinkler out!
So back to rules. How often do we question them? Why do we need them? Are they black and white or able to encompass grey? Every day I get older the more and more I realize nothing seems to be black or white. What is bad in my life might be good in yours! Societal rules exist to keep us all in check and promote harmony. Honestly though, those that break them would probably break them whether they are there or not!
I wonder if our desire for rules and regulations and government policies and programs and and and.... doesn't stem from how disconnected we are becoming from one another. How we can go to the grocery store and not talk to another person beyond the cashier. Years ago you conversed with the butcher, borrowed from a neighbour, chatted at the mailbox. I live in a smallish town so I can have connectedness but as people get busier and busier even in small towns this is tough.
Obviously I think too much. I guess we do need rules, just not stupid ones! Not ones that are ambiguous or unfair. In my own life I have rules but think of them more as guiding principles. A few of them are:
1. Be polite. That means to everyone. It is a civility thing. (man, hate people who are rude to cashier, waitress etc.)
2. Be good to the earth as much as possible. So purchase less, recycle more. (can't buy yourself out of ecological crisis!)
3. Think of others, try to be empathetic and less judgemental. What works for one, might not for another. (what was black and white years ago is increasingly grey)
4. Do things with good intent and heart. (what you do might not turn out right, but if at least if you do it with good intent you will know this and be able to take away a lesson in the failure)
5. Be yourself. Even when others struggle with it, at least you are YOU! (you cannot change someone else, just yourself and hope you influence others positively)
6. Strive for authenticity, seek a true existence where you see yourself honestly. (hard hard hard. Don't be distracted from the shiny, the status, the lures. Find what is right for YOU).
7. Don't expect from others what they are not able to give. And when they disappoint you, recognize it is your own expectations that let you down. (this has been a really hard, but valuable, lesson for me)
8. Recognize that happiness is all around us at all times. It is just our own perceptions of reality that make it hard to let it in. (Can you ignore the ick and focus on the bright?)
9. Be kind. (to kids, animals, people, nature. Society is judged on how the most vulnerable are treated).
10. Instead of complaining, try changing it. (If you didnt vote, you don't get the right to complain. If you want a change, ask for it. Volunteer. Change yourself and help others follow)
Thursday, April 15, 2010
What the heck? Am I a teenager again?
Angst, frustration, confusion. These seem to normal things everyone experience. Lately, I have been so busy I am close to forgetting to breathe! They say stress, combined with tension can lead to frustration and disappointment.
Interestingly enough.... I found directions online on just how to deal with my current teenager like set of feelings.....
Step 1
Lower your expectations.
Ummm... not likely. I am a go hard or go home, it is never okay to shoot for second best kinda gal.
Step 2
Accept life as it is. One thing is guaranteed in the game of life, you will be dealt a bad hand from time to time.
hmmm. Possible, but also unlikely. To accept life as it is means to give up dreaming, aspiring, growing. I accept what is happening right now, but I do not give up that I can change the next moment to something better. Hence, my frustration at feeling caught, impotent in making change and confused.
Step 3
Take nothing personally.
Hah hah. Put that up there with "constructive criticism". Criticism can be constructive but don't pretend it doesn't mean it won't hurt your feelings or put you in a tail spin.
Step 4
Take time to put the situation into perspective.
Okay, finally one I can do.... and I am trying to put it into perspective. Yet, here I remain.... frustrated, stalled in the status quo, struggling.
So what the heck? I feel like a teenager in that my emotions are all crazy. Like I have lost the ability to find perspective. That I question the feelings friends and family profess to have for me yet don't SHOW me. The whole actions speak louder than words is big for me. All I need are small things. Small efforts to show love, care, a bond.
Lower your expectations girl! This is what I should tell myself.
I am working on finding the way to tell people I care deeply about the way I really feel. How small efforts mean a lot to me. That I need to be reminded that you are there. I guess I really am high maintanence in a low maintenance costume.
SIGH
Interestingly enough.... I found directions online on just how to deal with my current teenager like set of feelings.....
Step 1
Lower your expectations.
Ummm... not likely. I am a go hard or go home, it is never okay to shoot for second best kinda gal.
Step 2
Accept life as it is. One thing is guaranteed in the game of life, you will be dealt a bad hand from time to time.
hmmm. Possible, but also unlikely. To accept life as it is means to give up dreaming, aspiring, growing. I accept what is happening right now, but I do not give up that I can change the next moment to something better. Hence, my frustration at feeling caught, impotent in making change and confused.
Step 3
Take nothing personally.
Hah hah. Put that up there with "constructive criticism". Criticism can be constructive but don't pretend it doesn't mean it won't hurt your feelings or put you in a tail spin.
Step 4
Take time to put the situation into perspective.
Okay, finally one I can do.... and I am trying to put it into perspective. Yet, here I remain.... frustrated, stalled in the status quo, struggling.
So what the heck? I feel like a teenager in that my emotions are all crazy. Like I have lost the ability to find perspective. That I question the feelings friends and family profess to have for me yet don't SHOW me. The whole actions speak louder than words is big for me. All I need are small things. Small efforts to show love, care, a bond.
Lower your expectations girl! This is what I should tell myself.
I am working on finding the way to tell people I care deeply about the way I really feel. How small efforts mean a lot to me. That I need to be reminded that you are there. I guess I really am high maintanence in a low maintenance costume.
SIGH
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Running to Standing Still
I recognize all to well that I move and do so that I able to not have to think. And those who know me would say "huh"?? I am never not thinking. When I sleep, I think. I awake with ideas.... When I am awake a million thoughts seem to flow through my brain though most go ignored! It is like sparks are being fired constantly and part of the reason I love interacting with people so much is that often they focus me into one or more of those sparks. Or start a new train of thought.
So what am I running from? Ah, the list is long. Just like the rest of you. Don't pretend you are not working well towards ignoring those hidden wounds, silent internal beasts or skeletons in the closet. How some people manage to live their lives so seemingly blissful in their lack of self-enlightenment amazes me. How I wish I did not know myself so well sometimes. And so I run, though my running is trying to be successful and "good enough" at what I do so that I may have all that chases me stand still.
How do people go through life unaware of their impact on others, their environment, their world? Able to feel no guilt, no responsibility to change? My own opinion is "what a shallow and bloody pointless existence!!!" but.... boy would it ever be easier. To blame failing marriages on others, situations beyond your control, but never your own failings. To say your child's misbehaviours are a result of society, school, and hardly your own parenting! Or to bitch and whine about society, social challenges, your situation within these and not make any effort to participate in democracy or not make a difference!
Running to stand still is not easy. But at least I am alive. I fuck up all the time. I am not right all the time. As much as I would like to think I am! I don't have the answers. I too am scared to make choices, to move forward. But at least I try. At least I am asking for more, striving towards something, dreaming big and planning the small steps towards those big dreams. My life is far from perfect, far from what I thought it would be--- but it is mine. And I'm still running.
You got to cry without weeping
Talk without speaking
Scream without raising your voice
U2
So what am I running from? Ah, the list is long. Just like the rest of you. Don't pretend you are not working well towards ignoring those hidden wounds, silent internal beasts or skeletons in the closet. How some people manage to live their lives so seemingly blissful in their lack of self-enlightenment amazes me. How I wish I did not know myself so well sometimes. And so I run, though my running is trying to be successful and "good enough" at what I do so that I may have all that chases me stand still.
How do people go through life unaware of their impact on others, their environment, their world? Able to feel no guilt, no responsibility to change? My own opinion is "what a shallow and bloody pointless existence!!!" but.... boy would it ever be easier. To blame failing marriages on others, situations beyond your control, but never your own failings. To say your child's misbehaviours are a result of society, school, and hardly your own parenting! Or to bitch and whine about society, social challenges, your situation within these and not make any effort to participate in democracy or not make a difference!
Running to stand still is not easy. But at least I am alive. I fuck up all the time. I am not right all the time. As much as I would like to think I am! I don't have the answers. I too am scared to make choices, to move forward. But at least I try. At least I am asking for more, striving towards something, dreaming big and planning the small steps towards those big dreams. My life is far from perfect, far from what I thought it would be--- but it is mine. And I'm still running.
You got to cry without weeping
Talk without speaking
Scream without raising your voice
U2
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Books above me and in me
Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry
Lamb by Christopher Moore
Pilgrim by Timothy Findlay
Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler
Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
An Equal Music by Vikram Seth
Soul Prints by Marc Gafni
All the Harry Potter books....
Soul Mates by Thomas Moore
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Narnia series by C.S. Lewis
Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
This is a selection of books within arms reach as I sit typing this post. I love books. A bookstore is my personal heaven. I could get lost in the shelves. As a child I would hide in a corner of our town library and just read. If I owned every book I had read I would be surrounded! I am a voracious reader. But I also have a policy for belongings... if you don't love it or if it is not useful, pass it on.
Each of the books were pointed out to me by different people, at different times in my life. Each with a different style or content. Fiction or non. Yet I could pick up any one of them at this second, sit down and become embraced by the story immediately. The list is not one of favorites or must reads. Just books I happen to have loved and read more than once or twice. How much I admire those who write fiction and weave characters, lives and experiences together in a way that captures us the reader. I have tried to write, but it all sounds like something I have read. I will stick to non-fiction I suppose. I think what people love and cherish from favourite music, to food, books, people ... tells us much about them. Perhaps I will formulate my own list of things I would like to know about all people I meet... I do know that one question would be to list the books on a shelf that they have read and why they kept them!
Lamb by Christopher Moore
Pilgrim by Timothy Findlay
Barney's Version by Mordecai Richler
Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
An Equal Music by Vikram Seth
Soul Prints by Marc Gafni
All the Harry Potter books....
Soul Mates by Thomas Moore
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Narnia series by C.S. Lewis
Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
This is a selection of books within arms reach as I sit typing this post. I love books. A bookstore is my personal heaven. I could get lost in the shelves. As a child I would hide in a corner of our town library and just read. If I owned every book I had read I would be surrounded! I am a voracious reader. But I also have a policy for belongings... if you don't love it or if it is not useful, pass it on.
Each of the books were pointed out to me by different people, at different times in my life. Each with a different style or content. Fiction or non. Yet I could pick up any one of them at this second, sit down and become embraced by the story immediately. The list is not one of favorites or must reads. Just books I happen to have loved and read more than once or twice. How much I admire those who write fiction and weave characters, lives and experiences together in a way that captures us the reader. I have tried to write, but it all sounds like something I have read. I will stick to non-fiction I suppose. I think what people love and cherish from favourite music, to food, books, people ... tells us much about them. Perhaps I will formulate my own list of things I would like to know about all people I meet... I do know that one question would be to list the books on a shelf that they have read and why they kept them!
Friday, April 2, 2010
the luxury
Ah, the luxury.
To lie on a couch as the sun spills through the window
Yet the room remains cool
Blanket covering my arms while toes are cool
Snoozing, Dozing, Sleeping.
I love feeling those stolen moments
Sleeping during the day
When you hear all that is going on around you
yet feel disconnected from it
just far enough away to float into the light sleep
waking for a moment and feeling the bonds of sleep still tight
relaxing again into the warmth of dozing
feels almost like being wrapped in arms and feeling collected in
ahhhhh
sadly when i wake up i feel disconnected and strange
and an hour later i can barely summon those warm sensations
yet i know how lovely they were
To lie on a couch as the sun spills through the window
Yet the room remains cool
Blanket covering my arms while toes are cool
Snoozing, Dozing, Sleeping.
I love feeling those stolen moments
Sleeping during the day
When you hear all that is going on around you
yet feel disconnected from it
just far enough away to float into the light sleep
waking for a moment and feeling the bonds of sleep still tight
relaxing again into the warmth of dozing
feels almost like being wrapped in arms and feeling collected in
ahhhhh
sadly when i wake up i feel disconnected and strange
and an hour later i can barely summon those warm sensations
yet i know how lovely they were
Thursday, April 1, 2010
that time was like never, and like always.
IV - Pablo Neruda
The last stanza spoke to me today as I leafed through a book of his poetry I had picked up.
That time was like never, and like always,
So we go there, where nothing is waiting;
we find everything waiting there.
Is this not the feeling we have when we are with people of significance? We are swept into the moment, the time ceases to exist and we are moved by how quickly and effortlessly the time goes. Yet, we marvel how that seems to always be the case with just those such people.
We love to go there with them, be they friends or family or significant others for to lose time is to free ourselves from the confines of life for a moment. With special people, those I smilingly refer to as "kindred spirits" we aim for nowhere, have no specific route and yet it all is well. Nothing needed but to be there. To centre, to focus. To simply be and be seen and heard. To sense and be sensed in that moment.
We cannot access that space on our own, not that space we created and shared with others but we can feel the glow of it remaining. Funny thing that time lost, place of nowhere, nothing that is something. The hearing of what is left unsaid.
Beautiful.
Wonderful that poets exist to string words together to create an expression and explanation of a moment otherwise inexplicable.
The last stanza spoke to me today as I leafed through a book of his poetry I had picked up.
That time was like never, and like always,
So we go there, where nothing is waiting;
we find everything waiting there.
Is this not the feeling we have when we are with people of significance? We are swept into the moment, the time ceases to exist and we are moved by how quickly and effortlessly the time goes. Yet, we marvel how that seems to always be the case with just those such people.
We love to go there with them, be they friends or family or significant others for to lose time is to free ourselves from the confines of life for a moment. With special people, those I smilingly refer to as "kindred spirits" we aim for nowhere, have no specific route and yet it all is well. Nothing needed but to be there. To centre, to focus. To simply be and be seen and heard. To sense and be sensed in that moment.
We cannot access that space on our own, not that space we created and shared with others but we can feel the glow of it remaining. Funny thing that time lost, place of nowhere, nothing that is something. The hearing of what is left unsaid.
Beautiful.
Wonderful that poets exist to string words together to create an expression and explanation of a moment otherwise inexplicable.
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