givingthanks.

i am grateful for this body: these strong arms and scraped knees. these myopic eyes and sensitive ears. these nibbled nails and small hands. these red painted toenails on feet that could never model. this brown hair with strands of gray and these creases at the edges of my eyes and mouth. grateful for this sacrum which grounds me, this naval which feeds my desire,  this abdomen which strengthens my will, this heart that breathes compassion, this throat which communicates, this third eye which intuits and this crown that understands. this flowing blood that supports, these lungs that accept and release, this skin that protects.

grateful for this mind that keeps exploring and this consciousness that keeps expanding.

grateful for this resilient humor. and for these mercurial moods which lead me forever to balance.

grateful for the wind in the trees, and the sun above the heavy and full clouds. grateful for the rains that fall to the roots that drink for the stems that ferry to the leaves that collect from the sun that shines for the fruits that develop to encase the seeds that hold….promise.

grateful for this food that sits on our tables today and on all days. grateful for the soil in which it grew, and to the hands that harvested it and prepared it. but also shamefully aware of unseen sacrifices that were made against the will of the earth and at the expense of humans for some of what we are eating…hence grateful to the earth and to those humans and thus committed to creating change that will lessen those sacrifices and heal those pains.

grateful for my mother who gave me life and then offered the most nurturing nine-month home in which to begin. grateful for my father who gave me life and whose love has always been given boundlessly.

grateful for my family and friends who gift their time and presence and grateful for people everywhere contributing to the collective love.

a new residency for this blog @ furrawnflow. a result of arriving at a rich arc in my cycle of self-realization: the anais nin immersion segment. my last visit here was a long and meaningful one that lasted throughout 2010. i started by reading her diaries, turned on by this quote of hers that i stumbled across one day: "When a higher moment comes, all details recede into the background. I never lost sight of the whole. An impeccable dress is made to be lived in, to be torn, wet, stained, crumpled." the words spoke to me; i've always delighted in ignoring clothing codes and in wearing my most precious garments (which are hardly precious) at my most active and creative times like biking or baking or gardening or painting, thus making luxury feel alive and not sterile and removed. of course after falling in love with nin's words, i started listening to old henry miller talks. i also acquired DH Lawrence and Baudelaire and Georges Sand books that I've still yet to dive into. i bought pearlescent nail polish, a red pencil skirt and beige 1940's pumps at the thrift store, reveling in my femininity in a new way: celebrating it rather than objectifying it, something that nin did so well.


what is unique about where i currently am in my journey is that, for once, i am hearing and seeing things in a language that i inherently understand, a language i have mainly used for internal dialogue over the past 32 years. to hear this language spoken aloud or to see it written on a page gives me the feeling of wading into a current that has long been flowing and which has long been pulling me, but from which i've been physically distant. it's a powerful, dynamic and vibrant current, but it's quiet and you must find your way to it because it is impossible to just happen across. you feel its pull for long before you swirl into its waters...


'furrawn' was one of nin's favorite words, a welsh word that she translated to mean: the kind of talk that leads to intimacy. this is something that i seek constantly, and particularly at this time in my life. i hunger for more intimate dialogue and connections with people, perhaps because i feel starved for both. i am a firm believer in being the change, so perhaps if i open, others will too? many of us are so compartmentalized, lacking recognition of the constant flow between our hearts and our heads. but this reality is not up for discussion! we are biologically integrated systems. pretending that we can marginalize how we feel in favor of how we need to act is a fruitless effort. integration is where there is a ripening.

in hopes of ripening my own fruits, i speak in furrawn on this blog. i want people to read and respond; i want this to be one of many avenues that dissolve the barriers to true and meaningful expression and connection. please, if you read this and are moved to, do respond, share, open.

as i mentioned at the beginning of this post, i've arrived at a place that i am vaguely familiar with, with my bags packed entirely differently than last time i visited. but this place is one of exploration and i know that it's less important for me to be properly equipped than it is for me to be, simply, willing to immerse.

it is a place where my appetite for words becomes intense and my desire to express what is alchemizing inside finally manifests into action. 


at this moment, the occupy movement is in action across our country. i will write more to describe how i see it soon, but first, these words from nin which struck me while reading them and thinking about how i fit into the change and energies that surround us now.

in her essay, notes on feminism, nin says: " We waste precious energy in negative rebellions [...] I believe the lasting revolution comes from deep changes in ourselves which influence our collective life [...] I see so many [people] in the movement thinking in obsessional circles about problems which are solvable when one is emotionally free to think and act clearly. Undirected, blind anger and hostility are not effective weapons. They have to be converted into lucid action. Each [person] has to consider [his or her] own problems before [they] can act effectively within [their] radius; otherwise [they] are merely adding the burden of [their] problems to the collective overburdened majority. [Their] individual solution, courage, [becomes] in turn like cellular growth, organic growth. It is added to the general synthesis [...] Many intelligent [people are] alienated by generalizations [...] The group does not always give strength, because it moves only according to the lowest common denominator of understanding. The group weakens the will and annihilates the individual contribution [...] destiny is interior, in our own hands [...] I never gave up on [the] relentless disciplined creation of my awareness because I realized that at the bottom of every failed system to improve the lot of man lies an imperfect, corruptible human being."

more in this vain was shared in her lecture on truth and reality: "Even in the darkest periods of social history, outer events would be changed if we had a center. It is only in the private world that we can learn to alchemize the ugly, the terrible, the horrors of war, the evils and cruelties of man, into a new kind of human being [...] We need to create a center of strength and resistance to disappointments and failures in outward events [...] The world from which we draw our wisdom, our lucidities, our power to act, our courage, is in this other world which is not an escape but a laboratory of the soul [...] Culture tries to make us feel that the active individual  is really endangering the growth of his fellow men [but] for me it was the place where I did my most difficult spiritual work, where I practiced the confrontation of psychological obstacles, in order to be able to act and live in the world without despair and loss of faith. It was the place where I reconstructed what the outer world disintegrated. Because it is just as important to live outside of history as it is to live within it. Because history is only an aggregate of personal hostilities, personal prejudices, personal blindness and irrationality, there are times when we have to live against it. Our American culture [makes] a virtue of living only as extroverts. We [discourage] the inner journey, the quest for a center [...] The creation of this perfect personal world was the root of my inspiration [...] Just as the deep sea diver carries a tank of oxygen, we have to carry the kernel of our individual growth with us into the world in order to withstand the pressures, the shattering pressures of outer experiences [...] 'Whatever we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.'"