The Power of Strums

When Inspiration Strikes...

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"Spiritual progress is a spiral advance. We start as infants in the animal eternity of life in the moment, without anxiety for the future or regret for the past; we grow up into the specifically human condition of those who look before and after, who live to a great extent, not in the present but in memory and anticipation, not spontaneously but by rule and with prudence, in repentance and fear and hope; and we can continue, if we so desire, up and on in a returning sweep towards a point corresponding to our starting place in animality, but incommensurably above it. Once more life is lived in the moment -- the life now, not of a sub-human creature, but of a being in whom charity has cast out fear, vision has taken the place of hope, selflessness has put a stop to the positive egotism of complacent reminiscence and the negative egotism of remorse. The present moment is the only aperture through which the soul can pass out of time into eternity, through which grace can pass out of eternity into the soul and through which charity can pass from one soul in time to another soul in time."

- Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy

La poule mouillée

There's a point in time when it's no longer cool to run away from your problems. Perhaps it's when you're using a walker or maybe it's when you look like a wimp, but there's definitely a time.
Life comes at you. And you better deal. And you better stick up for yourself and heck, you might as well even get what you want.

So remember to cliff jump. And to go to the beach. And do things you like.

This has been a personal pep talk.

Merci pour ta considération.

Oh yeah, and this happened

I fear stopping my education, that I won’t acquire continuous insights, random facts and weird foreign names. What if graduation means I don’t come across new books or pieces of art? I fear not being told stories, I fear not wondering about new things. What if I get stuck in my ways? What if I think I’m always right and there isn’t a professor to tell me I only put in a C-worthy effort? I fear the lack of stimulating conversation and goofing off.

Now my education is up to me. My graduation allows me to choose even more precisely what I want to know. But what if my personal education leads me astray, what if I become irrelevant? What if my personal education leads me to follow intellectual trends too closely and encases me in popular knowledge?

Now my education is up to me. Just as it is not up to me. Life isn’t going to toss me textbooks any longer. Life is going to toss me paying loans, dealing with human relationships and managing my multiple interests. Life is going to challenge me with new jobs and tasks. Life might even challenge me with stagnation and frustration. Life is my professor and I’m going to need a tutor.

Now my education is up to me. I’m pledging as a B.A., B.S. that I will continue to question and wonder about the arts and sciences. I write this with a sense of utopian exploration hoping that my personal education leads me to move forward, seek positive change and look for reasonable solutions. Because now, my education is up to me.

A Toast!

A toast to those days when nothing quite seems to work out. 

May you rest in peace Mr. Toothbrush.

Wearing My Red Welly's in London

Finally got motivated to write a story about one of my favorite adventures : London!

Chapter 1

Did you know that when you fly those cheap flights between various European cities you don’t get peanuts? Nothing salted, nothing honey-roasted and definitely nothing that will parch your thirst. 

I was dropped off at the one hall terminal in the very north of France by one of the farm hands. And just like how the rolling green hills of Brittany frolicked past the car window did they retreat underneath the wonky airplane’s wings. London, where they spoke English again would be my destination. After nine months in a country where grunts were affirmatives, I couldn’t wait to be in a land where they spoke my language in an ever more charming way than home. Although mum wouldn’t pick me up from the airport and whisk me off to my favorite Tex-Mex restaurant, going to a sister country seemed almost just as comforting.

As I landed I was struck by its green charm, even just at the airport. As a converted outdoorswoman, my adventure lied elsewhere: the museums, the arts, the music, the buildings and of course, the music festival I had a ticket for. Now while I wish (now) that I could say that my independence in Old Britain was my idea, I can not take credit. Like a broken bride, I was left at the altar. My partner in crime had missed their flight. My first night in the city was hardly pleasant. I spent it pacing the dimly lit streets around Earl’s Court waiting for news on a flight arriving from Athens. Quickly, I became dependent on the hostel frontman sitting behind the glass window. I realize now that I had broken down his annoyance with me into simple pity as I practically sobbed in front of the Facebook screen that had no reply from my friend. He offered me a bowl of cereal and some tea. I refused three times. Finally, after my final effort by the bus station at four in the morning, I realized my emotional hunger and sat to calm down with some corn flakes and the company of a middle-aged Syrian man. 

The meaning of life seems quite inconsequential in the early morning and thoughts of your friend dead in a plane crash, or on a bus, or kidnapped in a city we hardly know swirl through your head. However, he was adamant on hearing my philosophies and retorting with a painstaking showmanship. While I munched on the corn flakes that always get too soggy before your spoon hits the milk, questions and debates on purpose, enjoying simple pleasures and Tao theories flew through my worrying mind and only seemed to put salt in my wound. 

“Are you happy?” he finally dared. How was I supposed to answer that?! Well, yes… I was? I thought so... But being a foreigner in a foreign country thinking your friend has died and thousands of miles from your American mum hardly makes it easy to think life is all roses. I couldn’t believe his prying eyes and words; my only response was a blubbering sob. I left the cereal for dead and excused myself with a haste. On the way to my room, I realized my possible over-reaction and rudeness and quit my sobbing immediately. Sometimes the greatest personal pep talk is just a simple snap and slap. The mascara partially smeared on the back of my hand would only serve as a reminder of my pact.

As I tucked my streaked face into crunchy hostel sheets and the snoring of large Australians lulled me to sleep I promised myself I would not let this trip be ruined. My friend would be fine, I would run around London in single solidarity and I would do bloody well as I pleased. 

I awoke the next morning feeling hardly refreshed but determined to see what should be seen when one goes to London. Big Ben, check. Westminster Abbey, check. etc. etc. Perhaps what I fell in love with most were the strolls I navigated between all the sights; my map had been folded too many times and tore in crucial creases. I circled where I’d been and tracked the routes I took. However, a daytime later, my feet wore tired. I stumbled upon an interactive culture night at the National Portrait Gallery. They handed me a clipboard and instructed me to draw one of the paintings hanging on the wall. A General-of-High-Nobility, in an all white costume looked demeaningly at me as if knowing that I would never be able to recreate his greatness. However smug his grimace, his head was too small for his body that looked to stand only 5’2’’. His face was crow-like and the hook of his nose seamlessly graced his crooked upper lip while his jet black hair blended into the dark background. Drawing him became a challenge that he himself dared me to take on. I was not going to back down, this regal portrait of an unfortunate looking military man would be my bitch. I became so engrossed I failed to notice the room filling up or the teacher telling all the other participants to put away their supplies. When I came to, a jolly looking Canadian man approached me to show me his rendition. Rather than a leader of army, my curly hair sprung from the pages. He had drawn me.

I left the Gallery exhausted and enthralled. I had spent my entire day listening to music and only muttering single words when ordering coffees. I had convinced myself that my map and I had slipped into our own world that was not shared with anyone else. As the man showed me my cartooned self I realized that I was hardly invisible. And although I didn’t mind falling into silence or my personal daydreams, it was a lovely reminder that there still exists that greater whole. I’d like to have thought that I had fallen to insignificance amongst the great leaders hanging from picture frame hooks, but the Portrait Gallery seemed to have different plans.  

Feeling satisfied, I went to go rest my feet and prepared myself for a whole different world.

Part Four : Chimes of a Different Rhyme

In place of church bells, this is what chimes through the city of Istanbul five times a day.

A Circle of Misunderstandings Only to Understand

Once we understand that we don't understand we understand that we'll never understand and then, and only then, can we understand that the misunderstanding is the fire that can help us let go and feel free from the pressures of having to understand. Because in the end, we understand the misunderstandings in our own way and realize there's nothing to understand anyways. It just is; and it is all a big misunderstanding.