First day of school, grad school that is. Brand new back pack, brand new books, brand new perspective on life. I love beginnings. I love when I don't know what to expect but yet still have this feeling that whatever may come will be good, will be exciting, will be challenging yet energizing. One of the biggest challenges I've had to overcome in my life is setting unrealistic expectations only to be disappointed with reality once it sets in. I've worked hard at not having expectations because for awhile there I went from high expectations to low expectations which is not much better because it gave me a pessimistic view. No expectations or at least being open to "whatever happens" seems to be the best for me.

I had no expectations that riding Marta to GSU would be eventful at all and guess what? It was anything but uneventful. Buying my roundtrip Marta pass was easy enough. Stepping onto the train was easy enough. 30 minutes left before my meeting with my professor so all was good on time, until, the train stopped in the middle of the Inman Park and King Memorial station. Just stopped in the air on the track and didn't move for about 10 minutes until a conductor came barreling through our car saying "i'm gonna have to take yall back to Inman Park".

That is when the 20 something year old disturbed looking kid directly across from me began dialing on his cell phone. I'd noticed this guy from the time I sat down because he had his backpack at his feet and was reading a geography book but his eyebrows were furrowed and he looked a little off somehow. He just had this negative energy about him like he was irritated with the world or had a chip on his shoulder. I know I'm usually really perceptive when it comes to people's energy and soon found out that it was no different in this case. He proceeded to explain in a loud voice so everyone could hear that the train had broken down, "we're going to have to be cherry picked out of this thing with a firetruck" "we're 50 feet above ground mom, yes, I'm a little pissed off, everyone on here is pissed off and yelling" Wow, I looked around and everyone I saw was calm and minding their own business besides a young woman on her cell phone talking to HUD about her roach infested apartment and how she could break her lease without paying any penalties.

His anger and anxiety continued to escalate and everything his mother said to calm him down only pissed him off more. "Don't tell me it will all work out, that only pisses me off more mom" and "If they don't get this train moving fast, I'm going to have to kill someone, I'm stuck on here 50 feet above ground with a bunch of trained monkeys" All the while I'm looking around wondering if anyone else is worried about this timebomb going off. I chuckle to myself, "just my luck, headlines will read, 43 year old woman fulfills a dream by returning to school and is killed on the Marta train on the first day" reminded me of the Alanis Morrisette song "Isn't it Ironic?"

After 20 minutes the train begins to creep until we reach King Memorial and we are told to unload and catch the next train. We get off and I think to myself, God, please get that creep away from me and let me get to GSU on time or at least within 15 minutes of my appointment. Luckily I'd called Sasha from the train and asked her to get on my GSU account and email my prof about the situation so I felt some relief that she wouldn't think I was flaking out without contacting her, great first impression.

The next train came and we all rush to get on, it's full by the way so everyone is basically huddled standing in the middle holding on. The crazy guy is on my car but at least a few people away from me but still on his cell phone bitching to his mom. All of a sudden the guy in the picture with a book got annoyed, as I'm sure we all were, with this kid's whining to his mother and basically screaming into the phone so we all could hear. He screamed at the dude, "Shut the fuck up dude, we are all sick of hearing your whining to your mom, grow up and hang up the phone" and the dude got pissed and started screaming "you're going to jail" and the other guy said "why?" and the dude said "for assault" and everyone started laughing and chiding him right along with the man. One woman was screaming "This is too early for this shit, I haven't even had my coffee, shut up" and the more people were talking and raising their voices, the crazier it got as if all anyone needed was permission to get pissed at this dude. I was laughing but at the same time thinking this could turn into a riot and wondering if this is how riots begin, one person after another raising the bar on angry outbursts. We needed crowd control of some sort. I started looking for places I could duck and hide if someone pulled out a gun.

So that was my great start to my first day of grad school. Nothing else that day could compare to the excitement, fear, astonishment, unexpectedness of that Marta ride.

Walking into my prof's office having never met her before, I immediately apologized to her and to the other writing consultant that will be working with her in her other writing intensive class and briefly explained the Marta experience. I went on to say how you never know what to expect in life and I guess that was a prime example, I never thought the 30 minute Marta commute that morning would be all that it was and my prof said, "well, it really doesn't surprise me, anything can happen on Marta" good to know I thought, can't wait until tomorrow's commute.

May your day be filled with exciting experiences yet safe ones. At least safe in the sense of your physical well being but not safe from learning something new, being challenged to think outside of the box and gain a new perspective.

Kindness

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes any sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

I've always loved this poem and may have even posted about it before but today really needed and wanted to read it again and share it with the universe. It amazes me how at times people can choose to be other than kind to one another. Life is hard enough without the added stress of unkindness but alas through loss and we begin to feel how connected we really are to every other living being.

"What we reject out there is only, after all, what we reject in ourselves; and the most numbing pain comes from the protected heart." Roger Housden in "Ten Poems to Open Your Heart"

May you see your connection to every thing you come into contact with and may you not only show kindness to those people or things, may they recipricate in kindness.

Peace

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

To me, this poem is about change. Everything is temporary. Happiness. Sadness. Alert. Asleep. Excited. Bored. Restless. Fulfilled.

When I feel something uncomfortable, it's often difficult to remember that "this too shall pass" as it is also difficult to accept that when things are good and I'm happy, "this too shall pass".

I try to remember to be grateful for all that I have experienced as it has brought me to the place I'm at now. Sometimes that is hard to remember when the place I'm at "now" isn't necessarily the place that I want to be either emotionally or physically. I keep reminding myself that there is a reason for everything. I may not and most likely will not see the reason while I'm in the experience however remembering that when I get through it I'll often see the benefit of it.

At times I wish I had the ability to see into the future if only to console my restless spirit or my suffering because then I think I could relax into the experience knowing it would pass and I'll be better for it. Then I realize that part of life is not knowing, it makes it interesting and worth living. I think I've decided that by paying attention and being aware as much as possible and by living intentionally, I'm right where I need to be for my highest good. I must be patient and live in this moment no matter how uncomfortable it may be as it too shall pass.

May you live each moment as it were your last or maybe your first. May you stay awake and aware and live with intention so that you can shine like the star you are meant to be.

Innocence

Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it-----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?-------

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The Peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot ------
The big strip tease.
Gentleman , ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart---
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair on my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

I'm feeling a bit Plathish today if that makes sense. I do adore Ms. Plath, Sylvia that is. Her deep, introspective thoughts and questions never cease to amaze me and to think she was this way from childhood really makes me admire her more. I often think it's no wonder she wasn't long for this world. Her heaviness, her feelings of isolation, her struggle to understand her surroundings and make sense of the chaos inside and outside of her head was too much. I often feel at times I can relate to her feelings of "otherness" her feelings of either being misunderstood or not understood at all.

Everytime I read this poem, something different speaks to me. This morning it is the verse,
"Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well."
Not to worry, I'm not relating to the literal physical dying but the dying of something inside such as loss; the loss of a dream, the loss of desire, the loss of hope, the loss of an idea, the loss of a sense of who I am, the loss of innocence and the list goes on.

I do seem to have a gift for the melancholy, a gift is a term I use loosely as others would view this as a curse. I choose to view this as a gift because it is so much a part of how I see the world that to not claim it and somehow make use of it would be unnatural for me. I do love life and do want to live it to the fullest so this melancholy, this introspective way of thinking, of seeing, of smelling, of tasting, of touching the world, is with me everywhere I go. My son told me one day, "Mom, I had this dream of you going away. You were sad and you were walking around touching things that meant something to you as if to say goodbye. I didn't know where you were going, only that you weren't coming back."

His dream does capture a bit of how I am, a bit of how I walk this earth. I do often walk through the rooms of my apartment looking at the things I've collected and carried with me through the years. Not much outside of books but a lot of inspirational quotes, pictures, art, a small shrine in my room....Lately I've returned again and again to a picture of myself at the age of one or two, sitting in a highchair, chubby legs and cheeks, anticipating all that life has to offer and most likely a chicken leg to chew on that given day. But the point is that I look at her, me, and wonder if I've given her the life she deserved. Have I let her down? Did I sell out? Did I settle? Where have I quit when I should have kept going? Is she disappointed in me?

I say I have no regrets, I like to believe that. I keep seeing a quote lately that speaks to me "Never have regrets because what you did was exactly what you wanted to do" or something along those lines. It is true although it doesn't take away the fear that I might have done things differently had I put this little girl's needs and wants first at times. If I had allowed her to come out and play more often, to not take care of everyone else's needs before I let her discover her own. My mom said I was always a serious child so it's no wonder I'm a serious adult. I do know how to have fun and lately this little girl in the picture has been calling to me from my dresser, from her high chair. She's telling me that it's not too late to choose "living fully" and learn to do it exceptionally well.

May you get in touch with your little girl or boy inside and ask her or him what it is that has been neglected in your spirit. May you discover what you can do today, tomorrow and for the rest of your life to bring out that child inside, to rediscover innocence and playfullness and life in every corner of your world.

Believe

Sometimes I fear there's a place deep inside of me, a dark, vulnerable, scary, sad, innocent, trusting, disappointed, lonely, misunderstood place that no one will ever be able to penetrate, to see, to understand, to touch, to heal...I am scared that I’ll always feel separate from others due to the inability of either myself to allow others in or the lack of another’s patience and persistence to visit this place deep inside of me.

I wonder if maybe this feeling I get often when I’m alone in nature is really about my connection to my higher power and that nothing of this world is meant to visit that place deep inside of me. I wonder if this place I’m aware of is between me and my creator and only for me to know, to question, to ponder, to feel, to see, to understand, to touch, to heal.

I want to believe that there will be another that walks this earth and will walk with me on my journey at times, will have the patience, the desire, the passion, the persistence, the fortitude to listen and respect this secret place inside of me that is unique, is special, is worthy of love, kindness, and gentleness.

May you find a connection with another spirit on this earth that will share your journey with you if you so choose and may they be patient, persistent, kind and gentle with your secret place that holds the key to your heart.

Kindness

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you hold in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindess.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindess as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindess that makes any sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindess that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

I hiked Tallulah Falls trails yesterday and while preparing my backpack, I was trying to think of all of the things I wanted to bring with me all the while not wanting to bring extraneous "stuff" for two reasons, one to avoid the weight of a heavy backpack and two to keep it simple so that I could enjoy nature and not distract myself with worldly things from my apartment so to speak. But I knew that I wanted to bring something inspirational to read while sitting at the top of some beautiful lookout point so I packed one of my favorite poetry anthologies, Ten Poems to Open Your Heart by Roger Housden.

I've handsold his books to many a customer that wanted to buy poetry for the "not so feeling the poetry thing" person in their life. His books take 10 poems and break them down with his personal interpretations and life experiences in order to show that each one of us can get something from poetry.

A friend of mine thanked me the other day for inspiring her in some way and I said thank you for acknowledging me and that I needed some inspiration about now in my life. So imagine my excitement when I picked up the trail map from the man at the front desk of the interpretive center at Tallulah Falls State Park and discovered there was an actual "Inspiration Point" on the trail. I asked him if it was a strenuous hike as I was looking for a challenging hike. He clearly stated it was moderate to difficult but more on the moderate side.

Funny enough, this trail is off the path of all of the other lookouts so it means one would have to go the opposite direction to get to it and then turn around and backtrack to get to the main trail. Since of course I was all about getting inspired, it was first on my list of things to do when I picked up the map. What kind of message is it when on my way down this trail supposedly leading to "Inspiration Point" I happened to see an off road trail and thought that was the way to go. Not reading the "Do not enter without a climbing or repelling permit" sign clearly posted at the head of this trail, I excitedly took off on it. About 100 feet into it I was slipping and sliding and holding on to trees, skinny frail ones at that, as I made my way down to the rocks. I was thinking "Wow, if this is moderate, what is difficult?" as I was grabbing on to rocks and anything I could to avoid falling into the gorge. I finally came back up alive. I never really questioned how I never saw a sign saying Inspiration Point but oh well, nice view of a waterfall for sure. I was somewhat inspired to have survived.

After hiking the trail leading directly to the gorge and other waterfalls, I made my way back around and decided to go straight past the off road trail I'd hiked earlier just to see what was at the other end, and lo and behold, I saw the sign that I should have seen in the beginning. No wonder I almost fell to my death. I shouldn't have stepped foot on that trail without equipment according the front desk clerk upon my return. Wow, I feel pretty strong that I made it.

So eventually walking past that trail I saw a sign for "Inspiration Point" and just thought to myself "Inspiration isn't easy to find for me right now." I was determined to get some inspiration so continued up the steep hill without looking back.

Once up there, I sat on a bench and pulled out my book and flipped randomly to a poem for inspiration and this poem above is what I turned to. It is a very powerful poem and although I've skimmed all of the 7 or 8 books of anthologies I have of his, I believe the right poem finds you at the right time and this one did. He speaks of our pain not making us special but how it joins us to the human race. I believe this to be true. I've often isolated myself when feeling down and now realize that feeling down is not my own unique experience nor does it make me special nor are my issues, my problems, my fears unique or special. We all have pain and suffering and through experiencing suffering we have two choices, we can develop compassion for other's pain and suffering or we can isolate ourselves and close our hearts. I choose compassion, for myself and others. I choose to see my experiences as a way to open up my heart and share my feelings with others which hopefully will allow them to open their hearts. This is true intimacy. We are not alone. We are here in our phyical bodies to share with others. We aren't meant to be on an island.

He mentions the most numbing pain comes from the protected heart, from not allowing others inside due to fear. I've been guilty of this in my life but am now aware and that is a start. I am now at a place where I choose to put myself out there, to allow others in and to take a chance that maybe it will be reciprocated. That is not a guarantee so in the meantime, I'll continue to honor my open heart and take risks because I'd rather experience one moment of true, even if fleeting intimacy, than a million moments of numbness.

May you find the courage to open your heart today with your eyes wide open and no guarantees in sight. May you find true intimacy with another soul and may it fill you up to the top with love and gratitude and trust that all is good in this moment.

Peace

Live the Questions

I've always been deep and curious about my purpose in life, my intentions, what I'm creating in my life by my thoughts, my fears. I am told I was a serious child as well and often fell asleep in the hallway listening to the adults talk in the kitchen or living room. I found deep conversations preferrable even at a very young age when others my age were playing video games or watching tv. To say there has been a time in my life when I felt satisfied with everything would be an untruth. I'm always looking for ways to improve, myself, my career, my knowledge base, my relationships, just about everything. Instead of looking at something and saying it's perfect the way that it is, I am always trying to see how it can be improved, more efficient, more authentic, more clarity or whatever. So it's no surprise that I'm questioning a lot at this very time in my life.

I always try to see the bright side of things and keep inspirational quotes at home, at work, in my car and on my backpack with buttons. I have many magnetic poems on my refrigerator and one is from one of my favorite poets, Rilke. I often forget to refer to it when I need it most but today while talking with a friend on the phone I was basically quoting it until I realized I had it on my refrigerator and went and grabbed it. I want to share it with you.

"I beg you....to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them, and the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer......" Rainer Maria Rilke

I wish you peace with all of those unanswered questions that are nagging you in the middle of the night or when things slow down enough and the distractions stop that you go right back to that place of "why" or "it doesn't make sense." May reading this inspirational quote that has helped me so many times in my life to live in the questions without trying to answer them, give you the courage to step into the questions and live them with the faith that one day you will live your way into the answer. I wish this for myself but most of all I wish this for every soul in the universe.

Peace