I’m a Maker, Baby

I realized today as I was walking through the snow that I am a content producer. I love to make stuff, and I love to share. When I’m going down the path of fear, I just consume stuff I find online and regurgitate it on Facebook and Twitter; some people say I post too much, some thank me for all the inspiration I fling about. But it’s not fulfilling.

I read so much, I listen to so much music, I take so many many pictures and videos, I have so many ideas to write about, I have so much jewelry crap I’ve been dragging around the world with me and hiding in my suitcase.

When I can shake The Resistance, when I’m allowing myself to be led up the path of my heart, I’m creating.

I’m starting to unblock. These past few weeks I’ve been making videos, making mash-ups, making mixes, making websites, making jewelry. I’ve been singing, playing harmonica, playing guitar, playing my chicken egg shaker. I’ve been creating. I can feel the floodgates opening. It’s about time.

I wonder if the inspiration is coming from the snow. I’ve never lived in snow before, and it’s certainly conducive for keeping one inside… creating.

Today’s Daily Dose of Sanity from the as-named book by Alan Cohen:

“God lives in your heart. If you take your heart to church, there God is. If you take your heart to the woods, there God is. There comes a time in every person’s evolution when he or she must decide the truth for him- or herself. You are the one who has to live with yourself, and the closer you live to what you believe to be true, the happier you will be and the greater the contribution you will make to the world.”

Lone tree near my house, somewhere in the Italian countryside, Italy 2013

Today.

Morning maté and eggs laid fresh by chickens that live in gypsy caravans
Crostini and raw honey with roommates sussurating in French
A still duo-chrome world outside the windows with white snow draped thick on black branches
Fog and god misting over the mountains…

How Thanksgiving Changes Your DNA

“Every time you appreciate something; every time you praise something; every time you feel good about something, you are telling the Universe: “MORE OF THIS, PLEASE!” You need never make another verbal statement of this intent and, if you are mostly in a state of appreciation, all good things will flow to you.”
- Esther Abraham-Hicks*

This crisp blue-sky autumn morning, as I walked down the Italian country road I live on, headed towards the Temple of Light for the Thursday morning purification ceremony, I listened to Radiolab’s newest podcast about how you can change your DNA by being grateful and feeling good.

The story was actually about what happens when rats lick their babies, but it all come around to the fact that feeling good => releases serotonin in your body => changes the epigenome of your DNA and REMOVES proteins that block the healthy expression of your genes and behaviors… Feeling good changes your DNA for the better, and Appreciation and Gratitude are the most effective ways to feel good.

I hope on this Thanksgiving day, wherever you are in the world, you spend some time in appreciation and gratitude, and that you’re feeling good. Sending love!

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice.”
- Meister Eckhart*

The Temple of Light at Ananda Assisi, Fall 2012

*quotes from the fabulous www.TheDailyLove.com

I’m here!

I’m still here.

Planet Earth > Europe > Italy > Umbria > Assisi > Nocera Umbra > Ananda.

I’m in Ananda’s “library” with artist Mavis Muller. Mavis traveled from Alaska to Spain to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of an oil spill that happened in Galicia. She wove a basket sculpture in the form of a fractured heart, which was exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Vigo. The public was invited to begin to tie the heart back together with rainbow-colored ribbons, and the plan was to release the basket by burning it. But the museum was unable to secure a permit from the fire department to burn a sculpture on the streets of downtown Vigo. So, the fractured heart sculpture is being shipped here to Italy. On 12/12/12, we will have a community ceremony to burn the sculpture after Ananda community members have had the opportunity to add their own white ribbons!

The leaves have been turning here in Umbria the last few weeks. I’m loving the blazing colors, the brisk cold fresh fresh air, the smell of firewood burning.

This is my second autumn with the actual seasonal evidence (sorely lacking in Los Angeles), and I love it.

The day after tomorrow will be my second Thanksgiving abroad.
Last year I was in Argentina, and had a big fat steak with an Australian friend (click here for the blog and here for photos of the meal).

This year I will be having a vegetarian Thanksgiving in Italy at an Ashram with Italian, Portuguese, Greek, French, British, Croatian, Swiss, German, Canadian and American friends.

I love my life.

CoincidenceSynchronicityManifestingMagic

Coincidence. Synchronicity. Manifesting. Magic.

Lucky shot – stuck the camera out the window and took a photo of Assisi behind us, without knowing there was a rainbow in the sky!

Whatever you want to call it, I love it. I love finding evidence of magical creation in my life.

We’ve been taught that we live in a logical world. But we’ve been lied to. We’ve been taught that logic will keep us safe. But the illusion of safety keeps us limited, trapped, unempowered, and fearful.

All children believe in magic. And as children we’re encouraged to believe in magical lies – Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny. Eventually the lies are revealed, and we’re taught that to be an adult means to accept the fact that magic is a lie, and to grow up we must relinquish our magical powers.

Well, I think that’s crap.
There have been more, but here are a few magical synchronicities that have occurred in the past few days:
#1
On October 5th, I wrote: “Maybe I should take an improv class.” I wanted more laughter in my life, and I wanted to be actively participating in comedy, rather than solely consuming it, as we do by watching funny videos online, movies, etc.

The next day, I found myself in a Clown Workshop. A famous clown, Moriss, from Milan had come to the Academy to give a one-day workshop, and though I don’t have much interest in Clowns or Clownery, I had to be at the Academy to open the doors, so I decided to join.

The Clown had a red nose, white and black face paint, and strip of long hair on the front of his head that he strung through a toilet paper roll, wrapped around and rubber banded, giving himself an absurd, blunt unicorn horn.

The Clown spoke of love. Loving everyone you meet, looking at them with love, feeling it in your heart, having an eternal smile on your face, smiling at everyone you meet because you are loving them, open, fearlessly. He spoke of using the power of Clowning to break out of the normal oppressive boundaries of daily life, the dead feelinglessness of the people in cities, trapped, joyless, in subways and on busses. He spoke of learning to stop thinking and of learning to just feel, and react. Feel and react, without planning or thinking or worrying about judgment. Like a child does.

We did an eye-gazing exercise, a hugging exercise. We learned a few clown secrets, we learned the foundations of juggling. We did improv performances for each other, our courage bolstered behind the red clown noses we wore. It was, of course, terrifying for me to get up in front of everyone and attempt to make them laugh. But I did it anyways.

(I also told the Clown about Burning Man, which he said sounds like his idea of heaven on earth. Yep.)

#2:
October 8th was a grey and foggy day here in Umbria. I wanted to stay at home and work on some personal projects, but I’d told a few people that I’d be available at the Academy. So around 10am I packed up my laptop and put on my boots. It was cold outside, and the walk from my house in the countryside to the Academy is about 20 minutes along a lovely dirt road.

I stepped out the front door, and it was raining. Hard. I don’t have an umbrella, and I didn’t want my computer getting wet on the walk to the Academy. So I figured I’d wait for a break in the rain. There is one guest staying at Villa Gioia (where I live) who has a car. Briefly I thought: maybe he’ll come by and give me a ride! But he didn’t appear.

About ten minutes later, one of my roommates came home. She’d walked home and gotten fairly wet, but she had an umbrella she’d left in her room, and offered it to me. I accepted, ans as I stepped out of the house to make the trek to the Academy, a car I’ve never seen before pulled up. Aside from the occasional guest who has a car, cars rarely pass by the Villa.

The car stopped in front of me and a good-looking italian man rolled down the window. “Vuoi un passaggio?” Would you like a ride?

Why yes, yes I do.

So my new friend Gianluca drove me through the rain to the Academy.

#3:
Yesterday I skyped with my friend Captain Dave in Marseille, France. He goes rock climbing on the weekends, and I expressed how much I wanted to go rock climbing. I have been telling various rock climbing friends around the world that I want to go rock climbing for the past few years, but it just hasn’t worked out.

Today at breakfast, out of the blue, a member of the community here at Ananda walked up to me, and asked: “Do you want to go rock climbing tomorrow?”

Why yes, yes I do.

I know he hadn’t heard my conversation Skype conversation – no one had.

Believers in logic say that it’s just coincidence, a result of me looking for meaning behind happenstance. But if you have the choice, why not choose magic? We create the meaning in our lives, our experience is a result of our beliefs. If I can choose to experience and enjoy a magical life, why wouldn’t I?

As I was typing this today, sitting in the after-rain sunshine in the rolling hills of Umbria, Italy, a big fat ladybug walked up to me, and sat on my arm for awhile.

Which reminded me of this post about Life and Ladybugs that I wrote back in January of this year.

“Though small in size the ladybug is fearless. As fear cannot exist amongst joy, the ladybug brings a message of promise, for they get us back in touch with the joy of living – we must let go of our fears and go back to our roots, to love. We are also taught to restore our trust and faith in the universe, we have to get over ourselves, our egos, and allow life to take its course going with the flow.”

Magical.

KITTEHS! In Italy

Zenzero l’Impavido.

Kittens. Nature’s antidepressant.

Neve la Timida.

When we moved into our apartment, we were greeted by a small, sleek, cuddly calico cat. We decided to name her Bella – I know, cliché, but it’s fun to come home and say “Ciaooo Bella!!!” We later found out her real name is Matilda, but we still call her Bella.

Bella and Neve.

One day, about two weeks after we’d moved in, Bella showed up with these two little fluff balls following her. We immediately tried to grab them, as you do with kittens, and they hissed at us and tried to puff up and look ferocious. This, of course, elicited a lot of squealing from us girls.

Zenzero being fearless.

We called the orange tabby Zenzero l’Impavido (Ginger the Fearless) and the white one Neve la Timida (Snow the Timid).

Neve being timid.

When we sit outside for breakfast in the mornings they’ll scamper about, pouncing on twigs and leaves, pouncing on each other, and generally spazzing out.

Neve living il dolce far niente.

After living with a wise woman in Patagonia (yes Ginny, that’s you! ) and learning about Native American animal symbolism, I wondered – what can kittens teach us?

Lost in deep thought.

Observing them, I see that through playing they develop what later become skills – focus, courage, determination, secret attack strategies. I see that they grow a little, day by day.

Developing secret attack strategies.

They’re full of energy, they’re curious. They’re present.
They encourage me to be more playful, to be ok with risking looking silly.

Zenzero picking olives.

Then, of course, there’s the pure joy that you feel when you see a spunky, wobbly little kitten bounding around aimlessly. Feeling this joy, this wellbeing is, I think, the main point of life.

How can we have more fun, today? How can we be more present, more joyful, more playful? How can we enjoy life a little more than we did yesterday?

Having kittens around is a good start.

Blog-a-Day + Dream Life

I think I should do another Blog-a-Day Challenge. I am entirely out of the habit of blogging, and I need something to get me over the resistance/fear that accompanies creating. Plus there’s been so much amazingness going on in my life these past few months, I feel guilty not sharing!!! (I’ve ditched most of my general guilt, but I still haven’t managed to completely shake the blogging guilt…)

So I’ll do a blog-a-day starting today and going through September 20th, when I leave my home of the last month and a half for a trip to Florence and the Ligurian coast.

For the last three weeks I’ve been renting a room with two lovely roommates about 5 kilometeres from the Ananda center here in Italy. We’re an international bunch, me being from the states, one roommie, Calypso, hailing from Greece, and the other, Luigi, an Italian native (obviously… Luigi). A Portuguese woman named Lakshmi normally occupies the three-room apartment; she’d been house-sitting but is moving back in next week.

After a year and two months of Nomad Living, the thought of committing to stay anywhere for more than a month at a time brings up some issues for me. Though I don’t want to keep traveling forever, and I don’t actually enjoy the act of traveling, I haven’t entirely shaken the itch to keep moving. But life here at Ananda is pretty close to my dream life. I’ve got a community and group of close friends who already feel like family. Everybody meditates and does yoga. The community is working towards self-sufficiency, and I’m helping to launch the Academy of Art, Creativity, and Consciousness. I’m speaking Italian every day. The air is fresh. It’s beautiful. It’s quiet. My house is in the countryside overlooking olive groves, and our neighbors make home-pressed olive oil from their orchards, which we can see from our bathroom window.

For now, I’m happy here. Very happy! Yet at the same time, not entirely sure I’m ready to commit to staying… I feel I still need to be following my bliss and inspiration, and I don’t want to confuse myself and my path by making commitments to other people and becoming entangled in their plans… So, I’m sorting through some things, figuring out which is the voice of fear and which is the voice of my soul.

My house! Complete with bunches of grapes and outdoor dining area…

View from my bathroom!

My backyard. I’ve climbed almost every tree.

View from my terrace. Yes, that’s a giant fig tree. Best figs I’ve ever tasted.

Cat and kitten included (Names are Bella and Neve=Snow)!!!

Dinner party!

My roommate loves to bake organic bread. #luckyme

Every sunset here is gorgeous…

One Month of Ananda

I’ve been here at Ananda for a month, and it’s flown by. It’s beautiful here, and I’ve been meeting new people every day. Most of them thought they knew me or had met me before, that odd sense of familiarity – what is that? Is it the knowing of a prior lifetime? A soul recognition, a soul resonance? Is it a product of my Irish/English face, the genes that have spread around the globe? Is it merely my love for people in general, my work at being open that causes them to feel that we are closer than strangers normally are, that I accept them like an old friend would?

My days at Ananda usually begin around 5:30am. Recharging exercises (a series of breathing and muscle tensing exercises), kriya yoga, and meditation at 6am or a shorter one at 7am, in the temple or the yoga hall. Breakfast served at 8:45am – homemade yogurt, fresh baked bread, honey, oatmeal, cream of rice, corn flakes, fruit, coffee, tea… and, occasionally, unfortunately, Nutella. I cannot NOT eat Nutella if it’s within eyesight.

While here at Ananda I participated in the ‘Yoga in Action’ and ‘Service is Joy’ programs, so for a discount on room and board I volunteered around 20 to 30 hours per week, washing dishes, peeling potatoes, vacuuming the large dining room, cleaning bathrooms. We were given a few tips on working joyfully that were actually quite effective, so I almost always enjoyed the work – I even learned to scrub toilets without minding. This for me was quite interesting. I feel like I didn’t really learn to clean the house growing up – searching my memory banks (which are fairly sparse on childhood memories), washing dishes, cleaning windows, washing the car and taking out the trash were some of the chores I remembered doing. I don’t remember ever actually cleaning the house or bathrooms, so I think for those reasons they were always chores I’d avoided after growing up. Through this work at Ananda I learned (and practiced) cleaning efficiently, without negative feelings or resistance. The daunting concept of cleaning has become more manageable.

Sometimes in the morning we would have Sadhana meetings with Tony and Namasia, the two directors of ‘the Service is Joy’ programs, during which we would meditate and discuss spiritual readings and topics – part education, part therapy. During ‘Yoga is Action’ we were allowed to take one of the courses offered at the center – I did “How to Live With More Energy” and the incredible art workshop with Dana Lynn Anderson “Painting from the Heart and Soul”.

Lunch is served at Ananda at 1:30pm. Vegetarian/vegan, always a salad bar and fruit and steamed veggies and rice and then the day’s offering – gorgonzola pasta or stuffed zucchini or a lentil dish. I’ve been eating entirely too much as I always want to try everything, and the fresh bread is so good.

Afternoons are more work or class, yoga and meditation around 5:45pm, dinner served at 7:30pm. Most evenings there’s something to do after dinner – kirtan music and dancing, a talk about art or community, a concert by the resident cellist or a visiting violinist.

There are about 150 people who live here in the Ananda Community, and anywhere from 30-100 guests who stay at the retreat center. So there are always people around to chat with and new people to meet.

Everything is in Italian and English, which I absolutely love. I’ve gotten to translate a few times – in a yoga class, in a meeting. It’s a skill I’ll have to practice more – it’s challenging to be talking at the same time someone else is an trying to keep up – but I enjoy it.

Sunsets here are amazing. In 30 days I think I only saw one sunset that wasn’t spectacularly vibrant reds and oranges. And the views are 100% Italian – rolling hills, patchworks of fields, green trees, stone houses.

Italy to Spain to Nowhere and Back

I feel like I’m living in a dream. Not a freaky weird dream – an awesomely surreal dream, a dream of my own invention.

To pick up where my last blog left off, on July 2nd my couchsurfing host/new friend Dario and I flew to Barcelona to attend the Nowhere festival, the European equivalent of Burning Man. I spent a week in the Spanish desert dressing up in crazy costumes, meeting crazy and fascinating people from all over the world, dancing, and laughing my arse off. I joined Costume Camp, which was perfect since as a nomad I don’t have any costumes with me. Some of my favorite moments include being a part of the Baywatch Flash Mob, during which we ran slow-motion through the desert and “saved” “drowning” people by pouring whiskey in their eyes and giving them boob-to-mouth resuscitation with our Pamela Anderson sized balloon breasts, and watching a group of Pirates pillage the Babycham camp while my friend Sam grabbed a 5 kilo jar of Nutella from the French camp and smeared Nutella all over the pirate’s faces.

Nowhere, somewhere near Sariñena, Spain

Costume Camp Camp, best Camp ever!

Costume Camp Camp at twilight (the mosquitos cometh)

Dapper young gentleman

Are we Nowhere yet?

The caravan home

I’d left my return from Nowhere open-ended, and ended up in a van back to Barcelona with a few of my favorite new friends – the stunningly fit and hilarious South African couple who coordinated Costume Camp, the British ginger-haired stylist who lives in her pimped-out caravan and travels around Europe, and an 11-time Burner veteran from San Francisco who we call “The Solution” because he solves every single problem you throw at him (including sand in the lens of my brand new camera).

Post Nowhere, our motley crew spent the week in a beautiful house in the mountains outside of Barcelona. I fell in love with the Spanish architecture and got my first taste of Gaudi. I was mightily tempted to just stay in Barcelona forever, and ditch my plans to come back to Italy for a yoga/meditation/service program at Ananda in Umbria…

Our home away from home in Les Planes, Spain

Composting Cocks

Nowhere Decompression

Looove it love it love it

Old stone

Eastern Influences

Gaudí!!!!!!

Ceiling mosaics

Sunset with Montserrat on the right. MUST GO!

But in the end my spiritual drive won out and I caught a plane and a train back to Italy. So now I am living a dream I never even knew I had – doing yoga and meditation and serving at the Ananda Center/spiritual community in Umbria. All the yoga classes and lectures and meditation classes are in Italian… Heaven!

I’m sitting in a little glass house where you can access wifi. It’s late and I can see lightning flashing and hear thunder rumbling – time to go to bed. More on Ananda next week…

Love and Cities

I wrote this blog post about a day and a half ago in the airport, waiting to fly out of Argentina, but by the time I went to post the internet connection had gone out. I am currently sitting in the lovely kitchen of my lovely couchsurfing host in Firenze. Directly after this posting I am going to head out into the Tuscan summer sunshine and get reacquainted with my old love. (Oh, I’m talking about the city, not… a person. He’s married to an American now, I hear. )

I’m sitting in the Ezeiza International Airport outside of Buenos Aires, waiting for my flight to Italy.

I love blogging in airports. I love being in airports and eating a bunch of crap food cuz hey, I’m at an airport, what choice do I have? I even love picking friends up from the airport.

I got here really early – three hours before my flight. Synchronistically, a friend who lives in BA was flying to Europe the same night as I, a bit earlier, so we split the cab fare and a lovely chat.

Check-in and security took me about 11 minutes. I don’t remember having been in such a nice airport – friendly security, nice design, comfy chairs. Kind of funny as Argentina is a strange combination of first and third world. I would expect an airport like this in Germany, not Argentina. Of course, I was reminded I was still in Argentina by the porter guys with dark hair and blue eyes out front who asked me if I knew how beautiful I was, and the boxes and boxes of Alfajores stacked in the duty-free shop. I’m pretty sure I’ve consumed enough Dulce de Leche to last me for a long, long time.

I have about 60 pesos left that I should probably spend before I leave. Right now that converts to about $13 US dollars, but judging from what the Argentine government’s been doing lately, it seems another economic collapse is on its way. Either that or the president will be ousted. So I should probably spend my pesos before they’re worthless.

Over the past few days I’ve been wondering how I’ll feel about Firenze when I get back there. When I came down to Buenos Aires, everyone asked me: “Do you LOVE it there?!?” And the honest answer was: no. I never loved the city of Buenos Aires.

Buenos Aires did grow on me the longer I was there – mostly, I think, because of the wonderful people I met, Argentines and Expats and travelers, many whom I know will be life-long friends. That, and the desserts.

But as for the city of Buenos Aires, I didn’t love it, though I didn’t hate it either. The drawbacks of the city never bothered me much – The broken sidewalks, the piles of doggie doo-doo everywhere, the stinking fumes of exhaust, the cars that try to run over your toes, the inattentive waiters, the artless tagging on the fading elegance of old unkept French-influence buildings, the shantytown slums hidden near train stations and developments. But six months living in a city as dense as Buenos Aires was definitely not healthy for my soul.

Of course, there were certain aspects of BA that I did love: the smell of all the blooming flowers and trees during the springtime and summer, the jasmine everywhere, the haunting fragrance of Damas de la Noche, the Tilo trees; how you could hear birds singing day and night, even over the sound of traffic (at least in the barrios I spent the most time in, Colegiales, Belgrano, Saavedra, Coghlan); all the tall leafy black-barked green trees that arched over certain lovely streets, like Melian and Olleros; all the cafes that I could go park my butt in for 8 hours without being bothered with a bill or feeling like the waiter wanted me out – ever; the delicious food and pastries and cakes and helado and licuados that I discovered; the abundant public transportation; the beautiful street art (photo of my favorite artist at top); the crazy mix of adventurers and travelers that stream endlessly through the once-cheap Paris of the South; the ability of foreigners to live there endlessly and uninterruptedly without immigration or visa problems, made possible by simply popping across the river to Uruguay, getting your passport stamped, and popping back; and the Argentines who are so kind and cry when you leave, even when they’ve only known you for a few weeks.

I’m interested to see how I feel going back to Firenze. Did I not love Buenos Aires simply because I don’t fall in love with cities anymore? I really loved living in the natural beauty of Patagonia. Maybe cities just don’t hold the allure that they once did.

Or is it something that Italy holds that Argentina doesn’t for me? I fell in love with Firenze when I spent a single day there in 1997, when I was 18. I told the people I was with at the time that I would be back. And I went back, seven times in as many years. But now seven years have passed. I wonder if I’ll still be in love, or if that feeling was just a side effect of my youth, of romantic idealization, of escapism…

I suppose I’ll find out in a few hours. Have the feelings faded with time, or are they still here?