RAMPANT MEANDERING

8.06.2011

A Reminder on Perspective

"We think too small. Like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view."

Mao Tse-Tung

Sometimes all it takes is an epic river day as a reminder to keep a broader perspective...

"It’s a secondhand world we’re born into. What is novel to us is only so because we’re newborn, and what we cannot see, that has come before- what our parents have seen and been and done- are the hand-me-downs we begin to wear as swaddling clothes, even as we ourselves are naked. The flaw runs through us, implicating us in its imperfection even as it separates us, delivers us onto opposite sides of a chasm. It is both terribly beautiful and terribly sad, but it is, finally, the fault in the universe that gives birth to us all."

Katherine Min (Secondhand World)

"For the Earth itself is a blossom, she says,
on the star tree,
pale with luminous
ocean leaves."
Rolf Jacobsen

7.20.2011

Reinforcement

I got this email this morning... and it fit so well following my last post that I had to post it...

It's kind of strange, Jessi, but first you have to know what you want, defined in terms of the end result. And then you have to physically move towards it, without defining the hows.

At which point, the thing you want actually starts coming to you, on its own terms, from a direction completely unexpected.

Just carry on, Jessi, detached from the details and timing, and perhaps act like you just couldn't care less. Meow.

Not unlike a cat,
The Universe

7.18.2011

It's Summertime...

...and the livin' is pretty easy.

Or at least simple... ish.

July holds a slew of birthdays in my close circle, including my own (July 11). For the fifth year in a row now, July has not only been my birthday month, but also a month of big transitions and changes; these changes include (but are not limited to): changes of mind, changes of scenery, changes of the tide, and last, but certainly not least, changes of heart.

It's interesting to look back at last year's July 11, of which I have one photo...

I went to out to dinner in New York City in a little black dress and black Jimmy Choo's.

This year was a little bit different...

I baked a pie in my magical California gypsy home far, far away from civilization in a well worn sun dress, barefoot. The restaurant was delivered via dirt roads on the back of a truck...

It's ironic because when I think back to what I felt turning 27 in the big apple, the most poignant emotion I can recall was the longing I felt to get back to exactly where I am now, today, at 28.

This is particularly of interest to me now because I spent much of the last year feeling like I was facing an event horizon: To change, or not to change... that was the question. I felt the looming of an imaginary deadline that I, myself, created and had to change everything by, or else deem myself a failure. Enough with this gypsy life... time to grow up... basically.

Last year's July held a massive change of heart, tide, and scenery. But my mind essentially stayed the same.

This July I'm starting to get the hunch that a change of mind may be coming. I've fear I've been thinking about things all wrong this past year.

I have been preoccupied with where I wish I was rather than where I actually am. Not only that, but I've been so preoccupied with the future that I wasn't fully appreciating the present.

"You don't really need to go from A to B to C to D to get to X. You can really just go straight to X."
Thanks buddy.

For the past few weeks, I finally feel like I'm more in my skin again.

"Let not the fruits of action be your motive to action."

. . . .