A breath for these tough times

Sending out extra wishes of Safety & Sanctuary for everyone in the path of the hard things, what a scary time we are in, inhaling and exhaling, for compassion, strength, courage, swift and steady miracles.

Announcement / last chance for Emergency Calming Down Techniques

I’ve been reeling hard lately in some cursed combination of heartache, numbness, political anxiety, winter stuff and some wild panic episodes.

Have been holding on (for dear life) to my Emergency Calm The Hell Down Techniques from a long time ago, and it’s been helping.

I am giving away a copy of these (ebook + audio recordings) to anyone who gives any sum of money to the appreciation funds / discretionary fund in the hopes that we can all keep practicing together, for each other and for the collective, and also for ourselves in these scary times. ❤️

Peace within / the disharmonies / beaming

A breath for acknowledging the many things

I know I always open these missives or essays lately with an acknowledgment that we are existing in painful, challenging times, and you may have noticed that this is also escalating. A time for fast-paced, exponential turbulent shifting, in some good ways but also in a lot of terrible ways.

A breath for how overwhelming this can be, and the tidal wave effect of the news, as well as just the experience of existing in crumbling times. My heart breaks / our hearts break.

My heart breaks / our hearts break / the collective breaks

And I am not only referring (though also yes, absolutely directly referring) to genocide in Gaza and the horrors of starvation; the ways we are directly confronted with this knowledge of the travesty as it is happening.

And I am not only referring (though also yes, absolutely directly referring) to the way the United States is in a celebratory chaotic freefall of extremely bad things, and the one-two punch of increasingly [bad things] combined with watching people celebrate them in real time is a particularly cruel cruelty. Not a new one, admittedly, and still…

What I am attempting, inelegantly, to arrive at is that a great discordance abounds in this current moment.

A Great Discordance Abounds

And that somehow, and this is an additional level of discordance, we need to get through each day of mundane [tasks, chores, errands] within this cacophony of horrors, and this is a destabilizing experience as well.

This is not what I will be writing about today, or at least not directly, because I prefer around to through…so this is just an extra pause to take a breath and acknowledge how hard things are.

Discordance, generally

Discordance; the quality of sounding harsh or jarring due to a lack of harmony.

The quality of sounding harsh or jarring due to a lack of harmony.

Harmoniousness (and grace)

I went to dance outdoors in a park again, and many harmonious things occurred. Moments of harmony and grace.

For example, I made friends with a bus driver while waiting for their bus to arrive, which was also my bus-to-be, and they did not charge me to ride the bus. No one on the bus was weird about my mask, which was also a blessing.

My falling out with a friend from a decade ago resolved itself elegantly and lovingly, and other potential drama related to this also resolved itself, so now I am able to dance with my beloved long-lost friend again.

We talked everything out over the course of five hours while sitting on a bench, beneath stars, adjacent to water.

There was a skunk who appeared but no disharmonious occurrence between us and the skunk, or between us. All was and is well.

Discordance, again, in a moment

While waltzing in the park with a different dance friend, we noticed that the song was a little challenging to improvise with, and then realized that the time signature was 6/8 instead of 3/4…

As we were adjusting ourselves into harmoniousness with ourselves and the dance, two buskers arrived at this outdoor location to play their music, separately, not together.

Neither of them seemed to care that there was a dance event going on, with a DJ playing beautiful music through speakers, and one began to play a fiddle and the other a saxophone, in different parts of the park.

A bewildering cacophony

They were not interested in harmonizing with the music coming over the speakers, they just wanted to play their music.

The result was a bewildering cacophony that made dancing even more challenging. A great discordance.

Not in the big way, like in the geopolitical, or the nightmare of all that is unfolding in the United States currently, or in the way that sometimes my heart and mind can be overwhelmed by trauma resonance.

Just too many discordant sounds, too much information to process or interpret, while trying to dance the song.

The contrast, as well

I was feeling an intense desire that bordered on murderous rage. I wanted to make the saxophone and fiddle sounds stop, so that I could hear the complex song we were improvising to at this dance event.

A big part me of was feeling pretty stabby and violent in reaction to the great discordance.

Particularly in reaction to the introduction of loud disharmony into this specific moment when I had been harmonizing so beautifully (or trying to) with the song, my partner, my body, my dancer self, the floor, the outdoors, the magical moment of connection…

So many beautiful relationships and interrelationships, moving in harmony, and then: this great discordance.

Vibrance, in a dream

The night before, I had had a dream about The Arborist.

I wrote to The Arborist about the dream:

“You took me to a cabin where you lived or had once lived, there was an older woman who was related to you in some way, maybe an aunt, she and I had met before, last time and she was not happy to see me, you and I danced in the living room and then you carried me into a bathroom and gently placed me alongside an empty tiled tub…

“The tiles were a vibrant blue that reminded me of Turkey but with a pattern that was an illustration that spread out across the tub, and I was entranced by the blue and the pattern, trying to place it because I knew it from somewhere else…”

The resonance

“You said to me, ‘Okay we are going to speak now, it’s time.’

“And the tiles in the tub were so familiar to me, like I knew this pattern intimately, maybe from childhood, but not as tiles, maybe an illustration in a book or on a blanket…”

“I felt very sleepy and tried to tell you about the familiarity of the pattern, out loud, and you said, ‘wait, I was not prepared for the RESONANCE.’

“We leaned in towards each other and you shook your head in a very small way, and I said oh right I forgot, and you repeated, ‘the RESONANCE’, and kissed me on the cheek.”

Look at all the beautiful people

The Arborist and I had never spoken, or not out loud in words, before this day, the day of the great discordance while dancing in the park, but we know each other intimately and this has been true for a long time.

And I know, for example, that when we are standing together and observing a group of people dancing, I am thinking about how I would love to give everyone a ten minute posture intervention so their dancing could look better.

And I know that The Arborist is thinking: LOOK AT ALL THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE.

This is why

This is why, over the past [well over a decade] since I first encountered The Arborist, who had been prowling the outskirts of my life for even longer before that, I have tried to channel this lovely and loving perspective of theirs.

I have tried to be or to become or to embody the person who can think LOOK AT THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE , instead of thinking about how they would all be more comfortable and their dances would look and feel so much better if they weren’t tilting their heads forward and slumping their shoulders.

There is a time and place for everything, and sometimes the time and place is a class on how to stand and move in a way that is both upright and relaxed, and maybe some day I will teach a class on that, or I am happy to recommend other people’s classes on that…

But mostly it is the time and place for beaming love, and channeling The Arborist: LOOK AT ALL THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE. So I try to do that instead of using judgment-eyes or assessment-perspective.

Just bask in the beauty of people enjoying the magic that is dance. Why not.

Back to the discordance

So in this moment in which I wanted to smash the saxophone and the fiddle and throw them in the fountain, I was aware that The Arborist was probably amused by the astounding cacophony.

Like, “listen to all the many sounds doing different things!” Amazing. Amazing that this person even exists.

I am not like this. I need the discordance to stop, I will do anything for a return to harmony.

But I love that The Arborist can beam love in so many situations and directions, because they love the resonance of life.

We are both right, and there is a time and place for everything, including for both of our ways to be right.

The high beams versus just simply beaming

Over the duration of our five hour conversation on the bench in the darkness, more disharmonious moments kept happening

Teenagers in cars honked at us or yelled at us. There were sudden bright lights or loud people on the walking path.

I am someone who is visiting a city where I once lived, but normally, in my daily life, I live in the wilderness, or wilderness-adjacent, at the edge of the forest, in the middle of nowhere.

So I am very much not accustomed to any disruptive lights and sounds at night, or at all, never mind so many of them, and in such close proximity.

It was disorienting and overwhelming for me. I kept having to pause our conversation, our first ever conversation, so that I could recalibrate after each interruption. The Arborist appreciated this, and kept beaming.

The beeping

Days later, we were at a picnic table outside a gluten-free bakery, another wonder that does not exist where I live, and The Arborist was telling me a funny story that involved many people, something about the brother of a colleague.

A delivery van was trying to parallel park in a tiny spot, and was beep-beep-beeping each time it backed up.

I had to ask The Arborist to press pause on the story, because I cannot assimilate the story and the beeping. I can’t hear anything until the beeping stops.

The Arborist was happy to wait peacefully and beam at me delightedly until the beeping stopped. We were in a state of harmoniousness within the discordance, and also we understood each other, even though we have different needs.

Then I got to hear the story, and follow all the ways everyone was connected, and it was a good story. We were both glad we waited it out.

The tidal wave

This is a similar but different story involving many of the same moving parts.

A big rippling-out effect had come to pass in The Arborist’s life, and they wanted to meet with me and discuss it with me, but I was experiencing a tidal wave of energy being directed towards me, and so I was not available to have that conversation.

I explained that I did wish to have this conversation, along with all the conversations, and that also it was going to have to wait until I moved through this energy tidal wave or it moved through me.

First I had do something with all the energy that was not mine.

They were very happy that I shared this information, and happy to wait, and happy that I wanted to move the energy first. I was very happy to have the conversation once I was ready.

There had been a discordance, but then harmoniousness returned. Yes?

Choosing love

In January, when I was deep in the pits of despair after a big heartbreak a couple months earlier, I started using a guided meditation recording each morning.

The meditation asks you, towards the end, to choose an intention for your day, and says, that if nothing comes up, to simply choose love: I choose love.

I rarely have trouble selecting an intention from whatever bubbles up during the meditation. For example, today what came up was: “I am beautifully clear, focused, motivated and intentional.”

But then I always add: [I Choose Love].

I choose to be love

At first, in my winter heartbreak, it was too painful for me to choose love, or to state that in words, and so I would say, instead: I choose to be love…

I choose to be love or in a state of love…

Or to somehow glow love into the world or towards myself, if I can.

And now I choose all of it:

I choose love, I choose to be love, I choose to be loved, I choose to be in a state of love. I choose all of it. Love.

Look at all the beautiful people

Choosing love, in my mind, is a lot like “look at all the beautiful people”.

Or waiting for the beep-beep-beep-beep backing up to subside. Or moving away from it.

Or the way I seeded [I Choose Love] over and over again over the course of months, and then suddenly now being in this situation of an abundance of love and loved and loving. Not in romantic ways, just in a state of there is lots of love in my life, and it is beautiful and I feel lucky.

Sustained mutual delight

Another dance friend saw me dancing with my long-lost dance friend, and texted the next day:

“I enjoyed seeing the two of you dancing together and your sustained mutual delight in each other.”

What a world. What a superpower. Sustained mutual delight.

How can we channel more of this, all of us. How can we find some good beaming among the horrors, or: how can we be good sources of beaming, even while things seem to be collapsing and disharmonious.

I don’t know, or I don’t know yet, and yet: I am committed to being a light source, a place for harmony and harmonizing.

Peace within

A favorite yoga teacher says, “Notice the peace you have created within”, and then invites you to contrast that with what is going on around you, so that you can echo out the peace into the disharmonies. She doesn’t say it exactly like that, but that is the essence.

There is great discordance, and there is (or can be, at times) peace within, and sometimes these can co-exist, and sometimes we need to swiftly remove ourselves from the discordant situations if we have the privilege or option of doing so.

(over-clarifying, for clarity)

I don’t wish to imply that you need (or that anyone needs) to be so internally peaceful that the disharmonies don’t matter.

And I don’t wish to imply that we should ignore the bad things or glow past the bad things, or stay in situations that are bad, or any of that. God forbid.

This is more about noticing and acknowledging that many things can happen at once, that there are harmonious options available, sometimes, and that it’s okay to crave peace and quiet, and to fight for that or not-fight but something else, a secret third thing.

A return to beaming

What is yes, for me, right now…

Protecting my sanity through prioritizing harmony. Not ignoring the scary or disruptive and disharmonious things in the world but also separating myself out enough to be able to function so that I can be a source of beaming love for the collective.

Seeding

Seeding wishes for peace within — and peace without, and peace around, and peace through, in all directions in time and space…

In much the same way that I have been seeding [I CHOOSE LOVE], and then tending to those seeds.

Maybe I can’t always say “Look at all the beautiful people”, maybe sometimes I want to stab a saxophonist, I can meet this part of me and beam love for that too.

Yes, okay, I am both a being who beams and a being who is reactive. Can I appreciate and welcome all of this? Maybe!

The resonance

A hand-on-heart breath, a humming hum, for me, and for the collective, and for things getting better, and for elegant simple solutions, and for all of us doing our harmonious part, whatever that might be.

It might start with rest and replenishing, self-tending, getting quiet, reducing some of the beep-beep-beeping. It might start with a solo dance party to the music that feels right and moving lots of energy.

Sometimes some healthy screaming is needed. Or sometimes some big yawns. Time and place for everything. We try things. We brainstorm next steps. We do whatever we can to support the good fight against the bad things.

What invites more resonance

What feels resonant, or what invites resonance? This is what I am trying to remember to ask myself these days.

Anyway, I love that you are here, reading these thoughts and musings. I love that we are in harmonious connection with each other.

I love LOVE, and I choose love and wish to keep choosing LOVE. I hope this can in some way be a beaming and a healing, or a seed for that.

A sanctuary of beaming

Here’s to more love, and a wish for miracles and action and magic and something even better, because these hard and scary times require all of that.

Beaming for us all, beaming outward and also inward.

A sanctuary of beaming.