i woke up exhausted yesterday. i was discouraged. dis. courage. without it. and it's borne out of a lack of energy. but. asana gives answers. too tired for balance poses when i've been living life at a high-speed wobble (kerthunk, kerthunk), i rested in child's pose. and i realized: there is rest in being humble. in humility. in submitting to the Universe, God. In letting go. submitting to the flow of life, i can't silence the sound. listen: i have an ocean of soul lapping against the sure notion that today exists. and i am. humbled by the rising of the full moon over the mountains covered in january snow.

i serve at a small restaraunt so i can support my teaching habit. and because we live to serve, our christmas party was tonight. after all the other area business had been served with smiles. one of the owners joined another teacher and i for a chat. "beautiful," he said to her, "isn't she just beautiful?" and then to me, "krista comes to us from the big city of mineapolis minnesota. with her mind, you'd be the perfect woman." and krista questioned why. "well, you know, she was born and raised in this little podunk town. i mean, come on, how much can you really see or be between here and the supermarket?" and really, he hit my fear right no the head. and really, set my brain into a mental tailspin for a moment or two again. how provincial and insular am i? i teach at the same high school i graduated from. i have left for short periods of time to live elsewhere, have taken a few vacations away from these mountains, but am i insular? what do i see between there and the supermarket? i see: the frost twinkling from the trees, growing even in this frozen moment because their roots give them a quiet strength. i see my smiling students, many younger brothers or sisters to people i know. i see m grandmother walking, skin weathered and worn--the kind that tells a story of her happiness even when she is not smiling. i see the sun, shining on everything i can't see. i see beauty. and maybe you can be insular in a big city too. i've certainly met the type. there's a world outside of my little mountain town, but there's also a world outside of new york and LA. there's a world outside of the most remote and adventurous places on the planet. and there's also a world within. unknown and unexplored (for some) and constantly changing (for all). and. there is a connection in all of it. if i can see the world in a grain of sand, then my mind will be far from small and dark, and a little closer to enlightened.

Forgiveness. Yes, I've been thinking about this. Because last week I forgave what I couldn't forget. i'd been holding onto this for almost a year. but I70 @ sunset and van morrison i took as a sign. one i could read. so, palms a little sweaty, heart a little shaky i dialed a dream. but Not. so surreal and awkward. so full of answers....and the answer is no. i do not feel what i formerly felt, and so closure came. my serendipitous forgiveness. i didn't know i70 could lead me to a place i haven't been before. i've only known it as the road that takes me further away from or closer to home. even though i'm not sure i have a home anymore. i'm feeling "home"less again. a little lost, a lot dreamy, a lot scared. i can forgive the fear if i can find the courage. but can i forgive the mistakes i've made in being lost? can others? i am not perfect. I am not Perfect. I am. I be. and being beings breath. and breath brings life. and life brings mistakes. if you can't forgive, can you forget? i don't know. but i do know that you can't forget what you can't forgive. maybe that's why we are all so egocentric. no one forgives themselves really. and the most memorable friends and foes are the most unforgettable because they have righted and wronged us. And maybe we remember not only what they did to us, but also and more importantly, the moment we forgave them. i'd like to think this. but then again, i've always been an idealist. forgiveness is easier with age. the older you are, the more collective experiences you have had. the more you surprise yourself-doing what you never thought you would do. good or bad, right or wrong. and the more we experience, the more we understand. and when you understand someone's story, you can't help but forgive them. and the longer i live, the more i realize that we are all a part of the same story. you know this story. you want it to be about you. and somewhere along the way you will find that it is. this is a love story. it's our life story. it's about sharing and laughter, forgiving and forgetting. if we would make it so. we are the authors. what's your story? our story? i'm listening....

today was the first organized sweet thursday at the high school. incase you missed previous entries, sweet thursdays are reserved for planned random acts of kindess. i know it's slightly neurotic and oxy-moronic. but it's a way to create beauty, to inspire conscious kindess and hopefully will lead to constant kindness. eventually. if only in this small corner of the world. the action: create kindness cards. as shown above in the kindness log. put a quote on the inside (ex. "no act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted" Aesop). leave the card blank. put a sticky note inside of it. choose 4-6 people who need a boost, who you've seen look a little sad or lonely in the halls of the school, or that you intuitively feel would like to help others. write them a note on the post it: ("Tag!, sara, i chose you because of your quiet smile, the kind way you treat others in the hall, and because of your sillyness. what to do? choose someone, anyone, fill this card with the same goodness that inspires me, and give it to them to keep.) I've seen a few reactions. a smile is a soul hug. such a beautiful sight to see at our school.

ah! lobster john tagged me. so, here goes, 5 things you may not have previously known about me: 1. before teaching high school i was a park ranger. but it's hard to find a modern day walden, or have posthumous conversations with thoreau. so i quit. 2. that's not entirely true. i quit because i fell in love. and got severely lost. for 3 years. until i found the strength to remember who i was again. when i remembered, i fell out of love, gave back the ring, called off the wedding, and bought my own little house in my home town. i was searching for comfort, for a place to rebuild myself and nourish dreams. 3. when i first moved here, i washed every room with tears, and then planted prayers in every nook and cranny. now the rooms are filled with love, and laughter, and creativity. and the strangest thing is happening in the front lawn. dreams are growing taller than redwood trees. the latest one is teaching overseas. i'd like to go to stockholm to meet family and learn the culture my ancestors come from, but i have a feeling that the japanese exchange program i applied to will be it. 4. i feel most self-conscious and stupid about the fact that i haven't ever left the US. i'm scared of being insular and provincial. and of becoming too comfortable and complacent. these are two of my biggest fears. 5. this is difficult.....hmmm..... in my next life, i'd like to come back as a rainstorm in the desert. if i get to choose. next tags: back at you, Lobster John. Also, Artist X, Crudebliss, Saytou, and Wanderer. What are 5 things people may not know about you?

On a night like tonight…. Tonight there is no moon. On a night like tonight, darkness lingers in every unchecked corner of each room, even where there is no space for it to hide. Tonight the moon shrugged the gravity away from its shoulders and sauntered out of the sky. And I can’t say I blame her. Who wants to reflect the light of the sun forever? The air is sweet, warm. I do not need a sweater or a light jacket as I wander out into the night. My feet are bare. The beach is not. Mementos of the day litter more than the memory of the sand. There is concrete evidence of tangles that the beach combers left snarled on the ground that lay still and untouched by the waves. A shoe, a bucket, fishing wire, t-shirt, soda bottles, a broken necklace, ear phones, Tupperware. I walk past them and leave them where they are so as not to disrupt unborn stories. Tonight I give birth to mine. In this story, I labor over tears as the water breaks the barrier between my foot and the sand. I am washed away into the remnants of a day, a week, a month, a lifetime beyond this moment in an ocean of littered shores under a moonless sky. * * * Breech. I suppose it’s only fitting that I start at the beginning. And while this may seem extreme, the fact is, the perhaps perceived hyperbole does not negate the necessity of this detail. So I’ve chosen to include it. I was a breech baby. From the moments seven months past the point of my conception, the world—as far as my parents were concerned---was upside down. My mother nourished a world of worry for the two months before my birth. My father didn’t seem too concerned. He simply told my mother, “There’s really nothing to worry about. A quarter of all babies are breech during this point in the pregnancy. He’ll turn around.” But even as I was full term, I remained part of a rare 4%, and still had not come around. My mother had a septum in her uterus; it was divided. And I have always wondered if what we create is a product of ourselves, if I am a product of my mother-- at odds, separated. She, from herself and my father; and I, from my environment. Anyhow, there were procedures. Acupuncture. Chiropractics. External Version. To no avail, all methods were defective (and though speculated, I was not). I would not turn, and my mother had complications with her cesarean, a hemorrhage. Because of our small town and her rare blood type, my mother almost died due to a delay in the shipping. Supply nearly didn’t meet demand in my mother’s case, and the price would have been her life. However, in the case of my father, supply did not meet demand. I was a girl. And the price was mine. But the check is well past due. * * * One of the earliest memories I can recall: Darkness had pitched camp at the edge of daylight. A heaviness sweated through mid-summer air. My hands felt slippery, nervously clutching a hand-me-down bat. My father directing without emotion from the pitcher’s mound. The field lights flickering on, moths flittering upwards, toward the light. I was reprimanded for watching them, and not the pitch. At this time of night, I was not up to batting. Not up to the mental beating of never enough. And never as interested in baseball as I was in the way the grass felt under my bare feet, legs, arms, back of my neck, as I left the bat at home, matted down the grass in left field and watched crowds of clouds pass in a summer sky. My day dreaming had tested the edge of my father’s patience. And when I refocused my eyes, in an effort to swing into the advice he was pitching, I no longer saw him on the pitcher’s mound. My eyes seemed to adjust from the light to the darkness so slowly, and I blindly scanned the bases for the image of my irritated father. Only the fuzzy edge of darkness lingered over the dusty bases and carefully touched the dandelions which sparsely stood in the field. We lived only three blocks away from the field, but in my young mind it seemed like miles as with each step, darkness grasped at my ankles and choked any uncovered skin with the weight of being left alone. Frozen, I stood at home plate for several minutes before fearfully running home. Tears glazed my cheeks, and my breath became short when I could no longer breath from my nose. I still don’t know now what I was more afraid of---the darkness of my father’s anger or the weight of that summer night, the heaviness of being alone in it. When I arrived home, my mother picked me up and nestled me next to her on the couch. She told me a bedtime story, something about the metamorphosis of a caterpillar, and I dreamt of flying away. * * *

at 4:55 a.m. the air is thin and dark. in winter, the darkness is not thick as it is in the summer. in colorado, the air is thin, dry, and sharp. i am running in it. each breath seems to pierce right through. my lungs, my skin. each step seems to tip the point of gravity and the chill of this pre-dawn moment spills into my palms. though they are closed into loose fists, and push on through the air. i could say no one is out but me, but that would be a lie. trucks pass on the early morning commute to aspen. aspen, which supports most of the valley. i am glad i do not yet have to go to work, and push on. i am the only person on foot. running in this weather. my eyelashes freeze. the frost lines them from the tip to the lid. and i think about my breath, and motion, and clarity. the kind of clarity that comes from the cold. maybe this, i think, is where the idiom comes from: the cold, hard truth. and i think about truth. cold and hard. and the beauty in seeking truth. the beauty in sacrificing for the search. just like i am now, at 5:10 a.m. in the cold. sometimes when you lose, you win. i think about this now, at the end of the day, and i'm smiling. ready to begin again.

=) i'm running a marathon for my birthday =) (hence the early, frozen morning run described below)

picked up in a while: (Untitled) the last days you were cradled in the cool blue light of sleep mouth open like a beak unsinging and soundless sourrounded by the fuzz of fussing people. a syringe dripped and drizzled down your chin. even the sky was morphine blue. the last days we were stupid with what we knew: tip-toeing around as if you were gone already. spit up sticky in napkins and fading to the floor the cool blue evening moon dimming the room with the sun's demise. the last days I was held under and in between your hands-- swollen and woolly. Told stories i had tried to forget what i wasn't and what you were. you dripped patience like a cloud. i dropped you like a stone; metastasized into a ball of unspoken disappointment (this was written for my grandfather and brought back a tempest of memories)

(an assignment i did in class with my students today) and so it is that love is synonymous with sacrifice. to say "i love you" means nothing or next to nothing. to show it means a little more. but the depth of love is found in an ocean of soul. and at the bottom is sacrifice. the kind that makes your heart sink but gives the other, the object of your love, the hope to makes them float. life is. one wave after another. we keep swimming. we keep kicking and getting our feet wet. we keep breathing. we get tired. and whether we keep putting effort into our form, into continuously diving in head first, is dependent upon who or what we are swimming through life for. if it's for yourself (if you're like me) it would be difficult to keep up the pace. but when others depdend on your actions you can't quit. you sacrifice your body and don't succumb to fear. you swim. you don't give up. and this is all so romantic. so lovely. it's like i'm advertising for sacrifice. some travel brochure. but the truth is: sacrifice doesn't always yield results. you may sacrifice your dreams, your goals, your time, your enerrgy, your desires, even your soul. and maybe you'll prove your love through this. but your sacrifice is not a guarantee that your love will be returned. i don't kow if romantic loves carry this depth. maybe that kind of sacrifice is only known by parents. and if it's highly unlikely for this kind of sacrifice in romantice love, why do we say "i love you"? do we have that right, when we've made no sacrifice?

http://www.shape.com/media/HeavenlyDay.mp3 again. okay one more time. one more. i will listen to this song on repeat for just one more time. it's so beautiful. so true. it's what life is like when you live in the present moment. because each moment is bursting at the seams. seems to sing out reasons to be filled with gratitude. unabashedly beckons the kind of creativity that comes from chaos. so much of life is song. so much is about the music. someone told me that music was the voice of the human soul. this song is a soul hug. listen, and from across whatever distance lies between us, you will hear my soul hugging you as friends embrace after ages of being apart. here is what my heart sings in this moment. what song is on repeat for you lately?

(another in class writing prompt that i did with the kids. they chose my topic: soul mates. i modified it slightly) when i was young, i believed in soul mates. when i was filled with hope and dreams. now that i'm older, i'm still filled with the same things. but the desires are different. now that i'm older, it's not that i don't believe in soul mates. it's that i don't care about that idea. we live in a disposable society. we throw away what could be saved. we throw away recyclables. we throw away old clothes. we throw away our health. we throw away marraige. i don't know the percentage, but i know it's high. how many of those marraiges that end in divorce had partners who once thought they were soul mates? and, if you throw away a marraige, are you throwing part of your soul away? i don't care about soul mates. i care about souls wasting away. i care about the concept of Soul Makes. there's so much more value and integrity in that. soul makes may not have been or may have been made for each other. it doesn't really matter, what matters is the life they made together. maybe they had a dreamy and romantic beginning. what matters though, is that two souls made to choice to live a life of love. together. soul make is the older couple i see holding hands on an afternoon walk after the "i love yous" have been said. after they stopped remembering that they loved eachother for years, and then fell in love all over again. soul makes sacrificed something of value for their love. they endured. they found beauty in the truth, even it was not pretty every day. they made the choice to grow, seperately and together. it didn't happen by fate. and so. and so it didn't fade away. and it didn't end in seperation.

tagged again: 1. i haven't had a tv for the last 3 years.i doubt i'll ever get one again. i'm really glad i don't have one. but i still watch movies sometimes (on my laptop). 2. i hated being tall until 4-5 years ago. i'm 5'10". without shoes.i spent most of my teens and early 20s loathing what i looked at in the mirror, and being tall was one of the reasons for it. but in the last few years, i've grown to embrace my height. sometimes, i even wear high heals. 3. i have one brother and one sister. i am soooo completely proud of them. they amaze me. 4. every year i make new year's resolutions. last year's: start a club at my school for recycling and other environmental concerns. we meet every friday. we recycle white paper, card board, and co-mingled. the five dedicated students who show up are people i admire greatly. 5. sometimes i like listening to cheesy pop music---like fergalicious. or: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6948691 --as long as the lyrics aren't completely degrading.

yesterday we met to prepare today's action. preperation: i went the the store before shool to get magazines with interesting images that didn't have gender-specific connotations. a few students and faculty meandered into my classroom. we remembered quotes or poems that had helped us through difficult times in life, inspired us, or made us think. we found images that connected to the poems and quotes. pasted the images on white paper and wrote in the message. a few of us set aside a couple $5 bills that went with certain quotes. today's action: visit various libraries in our three communities and used and new bookstores. place the messages and $moola$ in books that we have drawn some sort of wisdom from, or whichever books call out to our intuitive senses. we hope people at random will enjoy our acts of kindness and pass them on in whatever way they can. or that they will draw comfort or inspiration from our work. it's nothing big. just a small way to serve. but maybe there's something to Mother Theresa's quote: "In this world we cannot do great things. only small things with love."

my dreams are organic. they live and grow inside my head. some i have given a voice to. others i have given legs or hands. these are the dreams i am of which i am conscious. i have given a voice to my dreams of traveling. i have spoken. let those gutteral utterances out. let them fill pages and fly over America, over the ocean, over my silly fears, let them travel beyond me. i have given a voice to my dreams of writing. i blog semi-religiously. i write because i have to. i write because i breathe. i have given legs to my dreams of running a marathon. i have given achy knees and old hips up to miles of pain. i have given my dreams of making this world a better place my hands. hands that dumpster dive every friday morning to sort through what can be saved, recycled, remade into something that will later be of use. like space. i have washed these hands and tried to let go. let go of what i have done wrong and what i have left undone. i've given hands to my dreams of kindness. made images with words to give to others. crafted, created, clung to acts of compassion. i've prayed with these hands. these are the dreams i'm conscious of. these are the dreams i've made real. made my reality. but there are other unborn dreams swimming through dark corners of my mind. some i see in sleep. and others are just beyond my vision... my dreams have been broken. i have scarred the skin of my soul while picking up the shards of what i couldn't manifest. my dreams bend to my will. extend beyond my thoughts of and hopes. when i could find the way. my dreams have been deferred. but they weren't langston hughes' dreams. my dreams do not sleep. they are vigilant. they keep their eyes peeled for reality. they steal the darkness from the day. they have taught me to live this way. and i wonder if my dreams will ever die. if like my body, such a moment is inevitable. if it's only a matter of time. then again, if time is the manifestation of my mind, then my dreams live outside of time. my dreams know a freedom that is beyond me. i can only hope to have faith enough to follow.

1. Tilt. sway. arch. lend all you are into this day: give, dry up, decay, bend! bend or you will break. maybe we are all broken- shards of scarred hearts cutting through each day? i can't tell which piece is mine. i lose a little more each day. maybe the razor edge of light will illuminate enough to cut through the heart of what really matters. it's an art: this life. the balance of building up and breaking down. of remaining softened though scarred. what insanely brave dance is this? 2. life is this insanely brave dance. this brave insanity of glowing like a small flame in the unforgiving darkness while it exhales apathy everywhere. flicker. dance the shadows into dawn. flicker. dance until the darkness fades to gone. flicker. shake your finger at the windmill that stands over your dreams like a hungry dragon. impale your fear with the lance of your longing. you know its sharpness. you've felt it slice through your soul. you've spent hours on your knees and bleeding, fingers sifting through the fragments of your life. maybe each of us spends a lifetime fastening the small pieces of our souls together. maybe each us are a mosiac in constant progress. life is the breaking down and building up of what you do have. it's making the most of the moments given to you before fear or anger or jealousy rob you of them. take what is rightfully yours. 3. life is. be. do. have, what is this compulsive need for more? this need to say more than life IS? what is worth more than this moment? because it's all i know that i have. all i have is the space i'm filling, this breath, this paper. this pen. these students. this opportunity to learn.