Ayn Rand.

I am currently reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand... I want to save my comments for when I finish, but for now here are some quotes related to abundance.

A house can have integrity, just like a person, and just as seldom.

I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build.

To say "I love you" one must first be able to say the "I."

Worry is a waste of emotional reserve.

I have come here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. . . . It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.

task: unwarranted Fears.

When I am writing I am often struck still. I am unable to move, I am rigid with panic and doubt. “Everything has been said!” the committee screams. There aren’t enough words, you are drowning! No air!

This is a fear I rarely give voice to… why? I am terrified that if I say it, just speaking of it will render it true. And real.

So I neatly sweep it under the rug – hide it beneath some pressing thought about boyfriends, girlfriends, dinner, whatever.

To silence this scream I am paying it mind.

What are your unwarranted fears?

last day in Curacao...

Before I left for Curacao, a physic informed me that “on an island surrounded by water,” my “third eye” would open. At the time I imagined a dramatic flourishing, a lightening bolt from the sky and striking me religious.

But of course, what happened was unexpected, and what was expected never happened. As is the way of the world. The awakening was more subtle, more graceful – like the slow and delicate opening of a flower.

Every morning I wake up and the slate has been cleared by someone nameless, someone who slips through my window and kisses me calm. I can’t hold the emotions from the previous day. I awake before my eyes open, when my body is tense with the idea of awakening. I know I must rise, but I let myself drift in darkness a little longer – I am on vacation, I have the time.

I brush my teeth, I brush my hair, I pull on a tee shirt and shorts. I walk onto the white washed porch and watch rays of sun slash green water. My friend tinkers with something indoors, but I ignore him. I am obsessed with the clean slate: who and what is the cause?

Sometimes I make breakfast, most of the time I do not. I wait until my body informs me of hunger, then I eat. I write for thirty minutes to shake the night’s dreams from my head to the page. I sip coffee and wait for the sun to stand at it’s full height, yellow and burning in a blue arch of sky. I undress and lay on a porch chair, absorbing the heat with my burning body.

The day moves on, with and with out our knowing. We move to an internal rhythm. When we feel like drinking, we drink. When we feel like singing, we sing. Dancing, cooking, swimming, laughing.

Often we jump in our start-and-stop car for a drive through the country. We wave at passers-by and stick out our tongues at children in buses. We lose track of where we are and lose track of ourselves in the island city of mazes and nameless streets.

We always find our way back.

Every night ends with a feast we prepare in celebration of the day. Seltzer chills in the ice box while my friend strings shiskabobs and I chop vegetables. We eat outside on the porch. We light candles only to watch the island winds blow them out. My friend plays with his music until he settles on a playlist that always includes Van Morrison.

This island is a place for extremes. The rugged earth and charging ocean intensify once mundane affairs. Each moment the past and the future fade to gray, and I am left with the primary colors- the here, the now, and the breath.

****

filling the well with: jeanette winterson.

I just finished The Passion. I can not believe I haven't read this book before! The writing is extraordinary, the plot is enchanting, the characters are so rounded and rich. I believe the historical details are accurate, from what I can remember of ninth grade history.

Why have I never heard of this author until now? Have any of you heard of her?

I can’t remember the last time I read such an apt description of love!!


I say I’m in love with her. What does that mean?

It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly, she explains me to myself. Like genius, she is ignorant of what she does (122).

Whatever she touches, she reveals.

I was angry. Whoever it is you fall in love with for the first time, not just love but be in love with, is the one who will always make you angry, the one you can’t be logical about. It may be that you are settled in another place, it may be that you are happy, but the one who took your heart wields final power (145).

My passion is for her, even though she could never return it, showed me the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love.

The one is about you, the other about someone else (158).

journaling.

Why do I journal?

I journal for reasons you might not expect. I keep a diary to document the present so that I can remind myself later that it wasn’t that great. I am a backward-looking thinker; I tend to glamorize and romanticize all that was. So if I record the here and now I can salvage future “here and now”s from a devouring, greedy, and presumably glorious past.

How many of you keep a journal? What are your reasons?

filling the well with: Osho.

Everyone has their own path to enlightenment. Some never get to the end of the path, others arrive and leave, and a very few stay. The lucky ones stay.

Even in my seeking I know I am wrong. I know the Zen saying, “stop walking, you are already there.”

But part of my journey is the seeking: despite the pain it has to be done.

Osho’s thoughts on Enlightenment:

It is said that the path of enlightenment is like a bird flying in the sky: it leaves no footprints behind; nobody can follow the footprints of the bird. Every bird will have to make its own footprints, but they dissapear immediately as the bird goes on flying. Similar is the situation, that’s why there is no possibility of a leader and a follower. That’s why I say these people like Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Kirshna—who say, “You just believe me and follow me”—don’t know anything about enlightenment (78).

Enightenment is a very individual song—always unknown, always new, always unique. It never comes as a repetition. So never compare two enlightened persons; otherwise you are bound to do injustice to one or the other, or both. And don’t have any fixed idea (81).

childhood.

When I was five I concocted a methodical life-theory one blazing afternoon.

I was sitting in the front seat of our blue minivan, and I was still damp from swimming. Dad was driving. Unlike other adults, he would let me roll down the window and lean my forehead into the wind. Never my feet, though, because he told me it was “illegal” to stick your feet out of a moving vehicle.

Is that true?

I sat cross-legged in the front, gasping at the rushing air like a puppy. I thought: Good, bad, good, bad: that’s what times are like in life, there is a good time, then a bad time, a good time and then a bad.

Dad parked the car and turned to shoot me a mischievous grin. “Who wants ice cream,” he yelled, so that my sisters in the backseat could hear him.

In the rearview mirror I watched Cassie and Jackie clap and laugh, and as I imagined the milky sweetness melting on my tongue, I thought: this is a good time.

rut.

I apologize  beforehand – please feel free to skip! I need to vent:

We’ve hit a rut. An “island living” slump.

To start, Omar got in a fight with B, an argument which I want to know NOTHING about – it’s not my biz. But it's bugging him, and B keeps sending me emails, and I don't want anything do with with any of it! I'm staying way out of this one, but it still weighs heavy on my mind.

Tropical Storm Bertha rained us out of our snorkeling, and quarantined us inside this tiny, albeit beautiful, house. We watched a movie and chewed bubble gum. I ate too much sugar and suffered a massive stomach ache, which I can tell you did not help my mood.

I really miss Jackie and Sampson. I have so much to tell my little sister, and I want to talk to her all the time, and phone cards are so damn expensive, AH! 

everything is going to fix itself -

- But before optimism strikes, let me say that I sorely miss working internet, my cell phone, my email - I REALLY miss reading all of your blogs – I want to catch up with everybody, I feel out of the loop!

I don't like this "scheduled post" thing, but unfortunately it's the only option. 

More tomorrow, now I’m going to walk in the rain to cool my hot temper. 

Bon Day, all <3>

Oh, Osho.

If you want to work on your art, work on your life. –Chekhov

I am reading Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic, about Osho, in tadem with the Artist’s Way.

He isn’t a very good writer, but his message is clear and powerful.

This excerpt describes the way I feel about the ocean. I grew up in Florida, and from my birth until now, I have engaged in a constant love affair with the Atlantic.

Whenever you are in love with flowing things, moving things, you have a different vision of life. Modern man lives with asphalt roads, cement and concrete buildings. These are nouns, remember, these are not verbs. The skyscrapers don’t go on growing; the road remains the same whether it is night or day, whether it is a full-moon night or a night absolutely dark. It doesn’t matter to the asphalt road, it does not matter to the cement and concrete buildings.

Man has created a world of nouns and he has become encaged in his own world. He has forgotten the world of the trees, the world of the rivers, the world of the mountains and the stars. There they don’t know of any nouns, they have not heard about nouns; they know only verbs. Everything is a process. God is not a thing but a process.

What flowing things are you in love with?

dipping and diving.

Today we went snorkeling. I can now see why this place is called a diver’s hotspot!

Multicolored reef rings the banana shaped island. Purple, blue and magenta fish dip and duck through orange and yellow rock… black sea urchins crouch below jagged coral, schools of fish scatter like leaves, rusted canons and barnacle covered boats from the 18th century hide half submerged in the sand.

---- Well, to clarify, Omar SAID he saw a cannon when we were swimming from the beach. Supposedly there was “like a twenty foot one” near the shore, but upon returning we tried to find it – for thirty minutes – and we couldn’t. Mysterious canons! I told him maybe he was imagining it, a tropical form of p*nis envy… he didn’t like that too much. -----

The sand is white, so white I pretend its snow as I swim along the ocean floor. The water can’t be less than 75 degrees, and waves are nearly non-existent. Curacao sees perfect weather almost year round, yet tourists are known to flock to the other AåBC islands, especially Aruba, due to the semi desert landscape. The advantages for tourists, then, is seclusion and great preservation of the natural domain.

I am quickly falling head over heels for this enigmatic, hidden place… I can remember every moment, feel every second, and understand the brilliant purity that surrounds me!

More later : ) Off to search for that canon.

Kon ta bai? Mi ta bon.

Sky(Water?) Line

at Hook's Hut

Willemstad Colors

in honor of the Jackster, so far away : (

WINNING in paradise : )

Willemstad is the one and only city on the island of Curacao. We went there today, thinking we were headed to the infamous “CENTRUM” market. We can’t find it ANYwhere, and I want to go!! ARG!

On the way to Willemstad we got lost and loved it. We stopped at an out of the way restaurant called “Hooks Hut,” loved by locals and tourists alike (as our slightly rude waitress told us).

Afterwards we headed to the capital city in our stick shift vehicle. I can’t drive stick, so Omar has to… I like to snap photos out the window though : )

The best way I can describe Willemstad is a tropical Amsterdam with out rain and sexed up window ladies. The colonial buildings are extraordinarily preserved, and are washed with vibrant blues, greens, pinks and yellow. The people are nice, everyone sounds like they are singing… shopping was like taking a time machine back to the 80’s.

Tonight we are making shish kabobs and Omar doesn’t know it, but I bought some marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers – S’MORE time!! Yet another childhood treat.

I have been writing every day, and feeling more clear than ever. I think I am finally letting go of the past, my recent break up especially, and embracing the present.

more later, now it's chow time <3

Filling the well with: Marilyn Hacker.

Rondeau After a Transatlantic Phone Call

by Marilyn Hacker

Love, it was good to talk to you tonight.
You lather me like summer though. I light
up, sip smoke. Insistent through walls comes
the downstairs neighbor's double-bass. It thrums
like toothache. I will shower away the sweat,

smoke, summer, sound. Slick, soapy, dripping wet,
I scrub the sharp edge off my appetite.
I want: crisp toast, cold wine prickling my gums,
love. It was good

imagining around your voice, you, late-
awake there. (It isn't midnight yet
here.) This last glass washes down the crumbs.
I wish that I could lie down in your arms
and, turned toward sleep there (later), say, "Goodnight,
love. It was good."

Curacao, first few days...

from the plane,

our private beach-

Omar's sandy feet-

losing (mini putt) in paradise!

bon appetit : )

Curacao is unbelievable! I am writing this in my air conditioned house-for-two-weeks, looking over a turquoise cove Curacao is unbelievable!

This is an island of rugged juxtapositions. Cacti line the white beaches, pink and orange bougainvillea colors the sparse grey landscape. Rocky hills nudge the calm Atlantic coast. Even the language, Papiamento, is a bizarre mix: Spanish, English, French, and “something else.”

Synopsis of today’s adventure:

… We awoke after a 12-hour sleep. I felt incredibly refreshed, having slept off my plane weariness. For breakfast I ate stolen miniwheats and wrote morning pages in the “outside living area,” what Omar calls his “naked place” (he has delusions about nudist living, NO they aren’t realized). I wrote, I read, I photographed our surroundings. He jogged the rocky hills.

Later we reconvened to hit the beach and float on fraying rafts in the clear Caribbean water. Nobody is here; we have the place to ourselves. Down the road there’s a hotel, and we are permitted to use their facilities for $5. They have a charming staff whose language sounds like a song. Combined with the crashing waves and whistling winds, this place is absolutely paradise.

After baking for hours we played mini-putt-putt and guess who won? Moi. Victory is sweet : ) but the pina colodas we drank afterwards were sweeter.

Hope you all are having a great July!