POEM | Orfeo by Louise Glück

"J'ai perdu mon Eurydice ..."

I have lost my Eurydice,
I have lost my lover,
and suddenly I am speaking French
and it seems to me I have never been in better voice;
it seems these songs
are songs of a high order.

And it seems one is somehow expected to apologize
for being an artist,
as though it were not entirely human to notice these fine points.
And who knows, perhaps the gods never spoke to me in Dis,
never singled me out,
perhaps it was all illusion.

O Eurydice, you who married me for my singing,
why do you turn on me, wanting human comfort?
Who knows what you'll tell the Furies
when you see them again.

Tell them I have lost my beloved;
I am completely alone now.
Tell them there is no music like this
without real grief.

In Dis, I sang to them; they will remember me.

What Would be the Alternative?

The ego always seek to protect, to harden, to defend. Why put yourself in the position to be hurt by rejection? Why?

What would be the alternative? To stay in that place of alienation? To not make effort to mend hurt, to smooth out misunderstanding. You should try, though you do not control the result. This is better than the alternative - to let friendship stay broken because of pride.

Never let someone out of your heart.

Thanksgiving

I am thankful for my friends, the ones that stayed with me, especially the ones that stayed through my darkest hours, and for the ones no longer here - for the time we shared.

I am thankful that I am here in Cambodia, fulfilling a long time dream of mine.

I am thankful for the quiet time to reflect the past few days.

I am thankful for a heart that remains open in spite of pain. I am thankful for love.

I am have been so blessed my whole life. It took me so long to learn that.

Namaste all.

Blogging from Cambodia

One of my dream was to travel to Cambodia, to see the temples of Angkor. Somehow I never got around to it, until now. I am tired of just dreaming. What is holding me back? Fear? Procrastination? Nothing is holding me back except myself.

Image of Bayon, taken by me on 19 November 2012. The sky was *that* blue.

My Little Yellow Bicycle

As part of my effort to work out more and to reduce my carbon footprint, I have purchased a bike and will start cycling to work. The fact that my chosen bike is cute and a bright egg yolk yellow, and my helmet is cute and a fun grey and yellow helps.

Now, to install the bell and the safety lights.

I am making positive changes in my life bit by bit.

Records for 2012

Books Read 2012

1. Man's Search for Meaning • Viktor Frankl
2. The Five Things We Cannot Change: And the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them • David Richo
3. Slaughterhouse-Five • Kurt Vonnegut
4. Up at the Villa • W. Somerset Maugham
5. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? • Jeanette Winterson
6. Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change • Pema Chodron
7. Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World's Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself • Rich Roll
8. Chicken Soup for the Soul: Runners 101 Inspirational Stories of Energy, Endurance, and Endorphins • Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Amy Newmark & Dean Karnazes
9. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead • Brene Brown
10. The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate • Gary Chapman
11. Eat & Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness • Scott Jurek with Steve Friedman
12. Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living • Allan Lokos
13. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail • Cheryl Strayed
14. Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama • Alison Bechdel
15. Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears • Pema Chodron
16. Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow • Elizabeth Lesser
17. Fierce Medicine: Breakthrough Practices to Heal the Body and Ignite the Spirit • Ana T. Forrest
18. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do and How to Change • Charles Duhigg

Surrender

But what does that word "surrender" mean? As I let myself float that morning, my body fully supported by the warm ebb and flow of the sea, the words of writer Daphne Rose Kingma came to mind: "Surrender is a beautiful movement in which you gracefully, willingly, languidly fall, only to find midway that you have been gathered into some unimaginable embrace. Surrender is letting go, whether or not you believe the embrace will occur. It's trust to the hundredth power--not sticking to your idea of the outcome, but letting go in the faith that even the absence of an outcome will be the perfect solution."

- Finding Ultra, Rich Roll

13 Books to Read 2013 - draft

Time to plan next year's reading list. Reading is about progress, not perfection.

1. Come, Thief: Poems • Jane Hirshfield
2. Paths to God: Living the Bhagavad Gita • Ram Dass
3. Everyday Zen: Love and Work • Charlotte Joko Beck
4. Nothing Special: Living Zen • Charlotte Joko Beck
5. Beyond Happiness: The Zen Way to True Contentment • Ezra Bayda
6. A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life • Jack Kornfield
7. Smile at Fear: Awakening the True Heart of Bravery • Chogyam Trungpa
8. Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism • Chogyam Trungpa
9. A Year to Live • Stephen Levine

We Are Powerful Beyond Measure

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

- Marianne Williamson

Change

Someone I cared about told me something about myself a few months ago. She told me, if only I was the person I write about, and she told me I had a lot of potential. Potential, but somehow not yet met.

 It was one of those things that dropped like a stone in your stomach. Deep down inside I have always felt like I wasn't fulfilling my full potential. I talk a lot, I complain a lot - but it always seem hard to put things into action. So much fear within me. So afraid of failing, that I don't even try, or make excuses. 

And it had to come from her. They say some people come into your life for a reason. I would hate it if she came into my life just to say this to me.

Another friend reminded me yesterday that we are close to the end of the year. It is time for introspection. My mind has been foggy these last few years. I need some quiet space to think. I have been putting some things in place the last few months, trying to change things for myself. My life feels like a major detoxification exercise, and I am going through major withdrawal symptoms.

I surrender. Help me through this.

Becoming Real

“What is REAL?" asked the Velveteen Rabbit one day... "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When [someone] loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.

"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand... once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit or How Toys Become Real

Remembering wanderlust

Last weekend I was in Kuala Lumpur for a short break. I met up with old friends, was brought around for meals and sight seeing. It was fun. It reminded me how good it feels to be surrounded by good hearted people who are funny. It has been a while since I felt so relaxed among people.

The weekend break also reminded me of how much I miss travelling. I miss the discomfort of having to wait in line at the airport. I miss waking up to a foreign airport, where I don't know what to expect when I go down an escalator. I miss the strangeness of a train route which might be in a language I do not understand. I miss that sense of disorientation, of feeling lost - it wakes me up and makes me feel just that little bit more alive.

I have allowed work and other things to distract me from doing what I love. Reading, travel and quiet time - these things recharge me. Yoga brings me to that quiet space. I deal with stress better.

I have neglected myself.

I told myself that my word for 2012 will be 'alignment'. One of the ways I want to align myself better is the alignment in words and action. I talk a lot about the things I want to do, I often allow other things to distract me from following up with things. Let's start doing things differently.

I will be going to India and Nepal in November. It will be a pilgrimage of a sort, going to the sacred locations in the Buddha's life.

Let's just do it.

Wholeheartedness

Wholeheartedness is a precious gift, but no one can actually give it to you. You have to find the path that has heart and then walk it impeccably....It's like someone laughing in your ear, challenging you to figure out what to do when you don't know what to do. It humbles you. It opens your heart. 

~Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape

Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form

Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form. Friends are enemies sometimes, and enemies friends.
I was a tiny bug. Now a mountain. I was left behind. Now honored at the head. You healed my wounded hunger and anger, and made me a poet who sings about joy.
If your guidance is your ego, don’t rely on luck for help. you sleep during the day and the nights are short. By the time you wake up your life may be over.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded. Someone sober will worry about events going badly. Let the lover be.
Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.
Most people guard against going into the fire, and so end up in it.
My friend, the sufi is the friend of the present moment. To say tomorrow is not our way.
Nightingales are put in cages because their songs give pleasure. Whoever heard of keeping a crow?
No longer a stranger, you listen all day to these crazy love-words. Like a bee you fill hundreds of homes with honey, though yours is a long flight from here.
No mirror ever became iron again; No bread ever became wheat; No ripened grape ever became sour fruit. Mature yourself and be secure from a change for the worse. Become the light.
Only from the heart Can you touch the sky.
Patience is the key to joy.
People of the world don’t look at themselves, and so they blame one another.
Since in order to speak, one must first listen, learn to speak by listening.
That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquility.
The intelligent want self-control; children want candy.
The middle path is the way to wisdom.
The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.
Thirst drove me down to the water where I drank the moon’s reflection.
To praise is to praise how one surrenders to the emptiness.
We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.
We rarely hear the inward music, but we’re all dancing to it nevertheless.
You think the shadow is the substance.
- Jalal-Uddin Rumi (1207-1273) — Turkish Sufi Mystic Poet

Not Till We Are Lost ...

"Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations." ― Henry David Thoreau

I'm putting this here to remind myself to appreciate the journey. I have a tendency to be goal-oriented. Being lost sometimes means a fresh point of view and nothing feels familiar - and that is a great opportunity for learning.

I forget sometimes. A friend of mind reminded me recently, we are not works of perfection, but works in progress - and that felt like so much wisdom.

All Beings Just Wants to Be Happy

I'm in a kind of mood today. It's a quietude - a little harassed because of work, but still, I sense a stillness within me about some things that used to pain me. I was reading this article on elephantjournal earlier ... and I felt it. It's about pain - it's about acceptance. Everyone who hurts you really just wants to be happy. All the pain they caused, is just a misguided way of trying to be happy. There comes a time, when the pain simmers to a sweetness. You learn maturity - although you may still slip and act up in the future. You learn acceptance, and you see - that the other person is just trying to be happy. And it's ... so human. Forgiveness no longer is an issue then, because you understand. You understand that this is what you do. This is what we do.

Why Twinkies cost more than Carrots?

I have been coming back to cooking my own meals lately. Some of you who read this blog from my early days might remember that I used to be a vegetarian for about six years. I have been eating meat the last three years, and to be honest, I haven't been as healthy as I used to.

It's all water under the bridge, as they say. I can choose to eat healthier any time I want. I just have to make it a priority. Since I returned to my yoga practice, that urge to eat healthier, to add more vegetables to my diet has returned. I just need to find the motivation though. It takes a lot of energy to get up earlier in the morning every day to prepare lunch. Eating out with friends becomes more complicated when I was vegetarian.

But that's digression. What is happening is my thoughts are on food lately. How to cook, what to cook - and what's in our food? I am embarrassed to say I have not read Michael Pollan - I have read about him. But I really respect him for speaking so honestly about food politics as it is. In the video below, he asks a simple question: Why does a package of twinkie cost more than a bunch of carrots? It's all because of government food subsidies. It all goes down to food policies.

Learning Morals through Stories

Coles believes one of the most powerful ways we learn morals is through stories. Literature and poetry bring us deeper knowledge of ourselves, life, and the world. “The whole point of stories is not ‘solutions’ or ‘resolutions,’” he writes in The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination, “but the broadening and even a heightening of our struggles.”

- from Robert Coles and the Moral Life

From Wild: Fear

It was a deal I'd made with myself months before and the only thing that allowed me to hike alone. I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I ws brave. Nothing could vanquish me. Insisting on this story was a form of mind control, but for the most part, it worked. Every time I heard a sound of unknown origin or felt something horrible cohering in my imagination, I pushed it away. I simply did not let myself becomes afraid. Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn't long before I actually wasn't afraid.

- Wild, by Cheryl Strayed

Wait: The Useful Art of Procrastination by Frank Partnoy

Reading this month.

Write up from Brain Pickings here.