the train rumbles softly

TRAIN RUMBLES SOFTLY.

PRAYER BEADS FROM INDIA.

THE TREE ROOTS WITHIN.

So how about it.  How about this spacesuit that holds our consciousness.  How about this magical existence we ride along.  What a cosmic game. 


Its actually more of a cosmic joke.  hahaha. I'm not laughing, I'm crying for you and for me. How can this be? How can this be the ticket to ride? to wrestle with whatever is going on inside. to have it all laid out in front pretty in a row.  its alll so messy with so much in tow, cant turn this way or that, not without causing a stir.

when our hearts collide

The words, they are nothing without the power of your heart;

the Time will come for You to do your part.

As sure as the sky above and the oceans so wide, 

I will see You when our hearts collide.

The moment will be in a curious flash. 

The elements of air, water, fire and humanity shall combine,

and the result will be a piece of our heart's mind.

- Global Youth Peace Summit 2010 Amala Foundation

 I have no exacting words for  camp that will encompass and encapsulate the experience.

 While you are there trekking about, running into the love and tripping over the open hearts, you are in another world.

A world fueled by love, respect, honesty and community. It is a feeling; a state of being.

Language does not reach it.

 Language was not bearing or a barrier.

 When coming towards someone who did not speak my English words, their heart and eyes held a conversation with mine.

Opening up to possibilities and new pathways.  
Conversations and community created with one passionate purpose. 

Truly One Village

My duties were to hold space, offer support, assist with kitchen set up and clean up for three meals a day for maybe two hundred campers and volunteers. 

I also elected myself the peace keeper of the ranch house: bringing goodies of crystals, sage, candles, rain sticks, drums and my guitar,large plastic flowers, flying monkeys, space aged flashlights, red feather boas, blinking lighted caterpillars and a radio to keep up the spirits of the volunteers :) 
I brought way too much and loved it!

WE stayed up late, others stayed up later.  
WE cried and others cried more.  
WE laughed until our bellies were sore and others laughed even harder.  
WE laid on the road to see the meteor shower in the dark country sky.  
WE gathered in silence around a flag pole for Peace.  
WE hugged and played soccer.  
WE swam in The Blue Hole and Blanco River.  
WE sang songs and banged on drums.  
WE made art pieces and wrote PEACE statements.  WE circled up and shared. 
WE became ONE village and.....

WE EMERGED PEACE LEADERS.

The cat is named HERCULES...

So the cat.  The cat is named Hercules. Without fail, the lovely fur ball will begin the morning ritual.  He wanders across my chest paying no mind to my supine resting and sleeping body.  He then sits near my face in an effort to be close enough to begin the process of pawing at my nose.

Sometimes he will even take steps to put his "finger" into my nose and play a masochistic game of "Pat My Master's Nostril".  Most times his claw will come out and he will lightly sting my inner nostril with the claw...ARE YOU KIDDING ME!  Although not painful this is not Comfortable AND I don't do this to him!!!

He sleeps 16 hours straight every day and I don't come up on him and play "Toothpick to the Kitty Nostril Game", but lately I have begun to think this is a bright idea...

So it's 6 AM and HERE'S Herky, going to town, making bisquits on my chest and working on my left nostril. Then he starts the staring contest.  I come out of REM and feel the shifting in my sleep pattern.  What the hell!!  I become more awake and squinting ever so slightly to try and stay asleep, I see a cat point blank staring at me.  If this cat had a gun I would be afraid!!! Then he turns on the purring motor to try and trick me into thinking it is love that he is after.  He revs the motor a bit and seeing no results in that, comes closer, pacing around on my head and around and around and around my crown.  I try the Ostrich Technique of putting my head in the sand, in this case under a blanket or pillow OR BOTH, but the paw will sneak in the pacing continues. 

Most times I am able to go back to sleep and he will stop for a while until closer to 7 or 8 AM, but once a while I will hiss at him kick his ASS out and close the door. Half asleep I forget to push the door completely closed and in my stupor wonder how he magically got the door open!?! 

One time I got so pissed I stormed out of bed and grabbed some kibble and tossed towards the cat bowl.  It was a spray of dried bits that landed in an arc on the floor.  I mean I probably just fed them around midnight, which was ONLY 6 hours ago... They don't know about 4 to six small meals a day.  Who told them!! Who let the cat out of the bag ?! 

The saga continues... I need to pet him to fall asleep and he thinks he need to pet awake me for breakfast.

 :)

paper vs cat

I would like to write to you
but my cat likes to sit on my notepad.

If I'm reading a magazine
 he will come and sit right on it.

I don't know if it is because
he knows that's where my
attention is
or he has a
penchant for the slippery surface.

Thing is he likes
 to lay on many different types of paper surfaces.


From maps to books to computer paper, bound wire journals even bookmarks and bills.
If it is near me and face down then it is "the spot"!

Familiar Strangers

There is a saying that a stranger is a friend we just haven't met yet.  I try to uphold this guiding rule when going about my daily interactions.  Recently I have had some travel opportunities and made it to Pennsylvania, Myrtle Beach SC and Port Aransas TX. I have also been doing informal "research" by assigning myself homework. 

My summer reading list has focused on travel themes and the authors have created scenarios of deep interaction within their scope of study. 

I have been reading Familar Strangers, Uncommon Wisdom in Unlikely Places by Gotham Chopra, son of Deepak Chopra.  (A great garage sale find!!) And here he aligns his travel assignments to War Torn countries with stages of Buddha's path.  He reveals his inner discoveries of fear and death and love intertwined within each road trip. He writes a short story about an instance where he and his father discussing death and Deepak says, "until one is ready to die, can they really begin to fully live." I chew on these words and find they ring very true. To release and relax is the full state of awareness and aliveness.  

Gotham reveals a scientific finding in one of his fathers books on a trip home.  It is an old Science manual that outlines a elementary experiment, but illustrates a very significant result.  1. Put a rat under a glass globe and leave it for a few days.  result: it will use all of the oxygen and die. 2.  Put a small potted plant under a glass globe and leave for a few days. result: it will use all of the oxygen and die. 3.  Put the rat and the potted plant under the glass globe and they will coexist, providing the other with necessary elements to survive. The plant provides oxygen through converting the rat's emitted carbon dioxide.

Gotham concludes that the element that stands out from this experiment and also his traveling experiences, is RELATIONSHIP.

Pg 143, Gotham writes...."It's not an entirely mind blowing experiment--the science is fairly easy to explain. It's simple and rather cool--their only chance at survival is in their relationship with one another. Simply put, Life is a relationship."

Our relationship within ourselves is paramount.  How we open our eyelids and bodies and cells and souls to others is the next level.  How we allow and open our hearts to the collective neighbor is another layer.  The relationship of all humans to all humans is a level unto itself.  The relationship of humankind to her host mother earth grows and is strained.  The relationship of our home Earth to the Universe is also relative in our day to day existence.  

How do you relate?  I find that the way I react to things in my daily two hour yoga class is how I relate to the world.  My teacher Pamela B says that exactly, the way we react and approach life on the mat is how we react off the mat.  The on goings and communication between students and each other and the teacher.  I look at myself as a new yoga student and fast forward to today, five years later and that is the woman being human awakened I have become.  Without yoga practice I would not be who I am today.  Another path or relationship would have blossomed, but for me that was the path.  I am glad that it is unending.  There is no destination.  

Rather grumpily today, I was running an errand, taking two boxes to be shipped.  As I returned to my car in a huff, from the heat and band of back pain that has made residence in my lower right quadrant, I saw a blackbird dive toward my bumper.  The car was not on and parked still, so I glance out the window as I turn the key and see the crow nab a wasp or hornet and bite it in half spit it out, pick it back up and two gulps gone.

He shrugs it down the gullet and goes of in search of another bug meal.  I, meanwhile, am stuck staring at the memorial imagery in my mind. Life.  It is just that precious and precocious.  My attitude somewhat realigned I find a special relationship to the road and drive to the yoga class I was thinking of skipping.

Another quote from the book is the last.... PG 185... as Gotham and his father (Deepak) are spending some time together at breakfast on a train in India...

"Both of us stare at the plains outside, the strange but familiar world. 

Deepak:"At the end it'll have been a very interesting trip,"

Papa says, his eye fixed outside on the yellow haze hovering over the dusty earth."  

Gotham: "What Varanasi?" (their destination in India)

Deepak:"All of it, baby" he says tenderly, "All of it."

  

Georgetown Sun City Tennis

Sun City Georgetown is a  community with a bounty of activity for its residents.  There are several golf courses, garden centers, community halls, events and sports leagues.  There is an extensive Tennis community that thrives here.  The residents have formed an intricate system of brackets and substitution rules and monitor this themselves in a professional manner. 

 This Spring, May 21, 2010, Ron Niksich won the Mens A Tennis League Championship. 

Ron is a recent arrival to Sun City; he and his wife Peggy have set up "camp" in a house after five years of touring North America in an RV.  Their Rig of choice was a 40 foot Alpha Gold fifth wheel trailer pulled by a 2005 Dodge Ram Dually 6 speed.  He has recently joined the Sun City Tennis circuit, but is no novice to Tennis at this level of competition.  He has polished his Tennis skills at the McAllen Winter retreat for the last five years and played in leagues in Clear Lake City TX during his professional life. 

Congratulations to Ron Niksich !