Monday, November 30, 2009

work with love



  I'm never wanting to learn.. no, that's not quite right.... i just need to learn through action. And by "need" i mean I want-cant hold me back- give me the paddle I'll spank er myself NEED to learn through action. I like the doing.. the intial burst into a project. I'm great at the vision part. Good at knowing what needs to happen when you're working with a BIG mess. I can see how to make it simpler in one fell swoop and I'm all for doing the labor required within that swoop. The detail work can be left to someone else.
In acting: I can read a play, see a part and just know, go in there and start working flying to the rafters releasing into it and then it's that homework, the getting down to details I'm constantly reminding myself of. Aha! Details. Here be the theme.          
  When I'm learning I want to be given a quick lesson, show me how it's done and then let me at it. To be of action is good (I just told myself). But then patience must follow. Not to be moving forward at a speed where you're missing the instructions along the way. But carefully stepping as is you're planting seeds and looking out, always out, out and over it all like the overseer on a plantation.
 
On top of that, I think we have to approach work with love. Any work. Because, it seems, all beings must work (build a house, find food, survive). So we must do that work with the utmost care, love and gentleness. You can fill a whole day, every day with the down to the dirt details of just living. And the process of doing that work is the enjoyment, not all the possibilities of what you can own, the "if i do this, it'll get me this" mind-set thang. Process oriented. Not goal oriented.
  I'm jumping around a bit. It is how I do my do at times. These big Ideas lead to many more. 
  If you've ever gone to yoga school or read the yoga sutras or the bhagavad gita, or any other teachings, philosophy, religion, practices for a way to be you know it's big. It's vast. And it's attainable. It just is... but oooo.. meditate. Put the phone down, no! the computer can wait 3 minutes, release your brain chatter and just be. AAh! You know it's so good. You can read the Prophet and it's a fucking weight off your shoulders. Ah, god. This person is telling me how to be. Simply, Humbly. And if you know, you know! That YOU that is everyone else hears when someone is speakin your truth.
  So when I think of these teachings, things I've heard and am constantly learning, I understand that that first impulse to jump into something without the patience for the details is just the first part of my cycle. Perhaps it's the ego getting in the way. I can't bear for someone to teach me because I already know.... because I do (the collective intelligence) but that ego is the saucy spouter of sass that forgets I can always learn again. The basics. The planting, hunting, building and surviving of your soul.
  And if that's the FIRST part of my cycle there must be two more... for everything that has a beginning has a middle and an end. The om cycle. Delicious. So then next, it seems, comes the detail work, the tedium I avoid.. but you know when we dig, dig, work, get down farther, planting deeper it is the tallest, firmest tree that grows; always.. Something of which we are proud because of the love we put into it. I could put the 38 garbage bags from yesterday's party on the street.. and then I can god damn paint the walls if i wanted. I can KNOW a character because it is me and then I can get to really, really know the things that are not inherent in my personality, and yet saturating someone elses (the unique details of human stories) and know that although we are the same there are these tiny vessels walking, crawling everywhere having a ball doing different adventurous things.
  And then the end. To finish the work. Delve so deep into the details that the thing is just devoured and done. To do the work with such care that there is nothing left to do but end it. That's it. It sounds scary,doesnt it? The end. Death. Completion. "But it was so fun!" And now it's over. Leaving room for the next adventurous thing... leaving all the room possible beause the thing we were doing before is done. Because we finished the work with love. We are Empty. and Ready. for the next.... ........
*photo courtesy of samantha casolari

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Sojourn South



So my girl sab is a bad ass works-from-home surfing action business capoiera-livin may i repeat, bad ass. And we roll down to San Diego to hit up a big business thang. I drive so she can do her lady things and phone calls. We stayed up late and got up late(r) than expected. So i drive and we listen to david bowie singing and screaming about 5 years over and over. And we sing along. Scream along. And smile. And drive down down to diego.Put the car in a garage and walk out into the sun. She goes to meet her people and I go to explore. I walk across town to a bank. it's closed. I walk around. Enough walking that all there's left to be done is have a drink. There's this outdoor debacle with a lifeguard stand at the front entrance. I think of it for a second, walk a bit more and.. "Yes." Here's a place. The design looks damn good. I walk in the door. The bartender looks good too. We smile, it's on... a bit of talking.. he used to live in brooklyn, around the block from me.. Wait this place is Australian. Ah.. My girl sab had said this is the place we were going to meet for lunch. she shows up. we drink a fabulous bloody. two guys sit down at the bar. One had just been with us in the desert. Alright. My people are everywhere.It's quick like this. Friends made in an instant. This new bar friend is a musician. He's playing a hotel pool roof party. Ok. We're on the list. Ok.We go to the car to grab suits and necessary daytime things for people like us and on the way out of the spot someone's on a bike with a broken foot. "How'd you hurt that foot?" "Wanna get a beer?" "Ok." New friends.(Now, I forgot to say on the walk to the garage I'd seen this girl sittin on the steps and she smiled at me.. right as I looked away. And I tried to look back but she'd looked away... and I said, "damn. I wanted to smile at that girl.")So.. new friends go for a beer.. there's my girl from the street. sittin in a chair. And we recognize. Another new friend.So we're rollin 5 deep and we go see our musician/bartender and other really lovely folk singers on this roof, in downtown, and we were in the pool drinking tequila and doing the narlwhal yell and having a fan fucking tastic time. We go for sushi. Good sushi. Fancy sushi and we're yelling in the middle of the room.. just making ridiculous noises.. as loud as we could... and playing spin the bottle at the dinner table.. and people are asking if we can get kicked out, but the waiters love us and we tip and PAY a lot of money, and we grab a room at the nice hotel with the view of mexico and we listen to the radio and laugh and drink and smoke and fall asleep and all share an omlette and coffee room service breakfast and we hug and we kiss and we all go on our ways. Numbers exchanged, happy, happy feelings and I'm left feeling I've got friends everywhere. My people are out there... and I'm coming to find you.
*photo courtesy of samantha casolari
http://www.samanthacasolari.com/