The Logic of Leaving

 I spent a week in the tundra that is Minnesota and was presented with the logic of leaving and the reasons for returning. I felt my high school wild child at the soft spot in my neck gasping for a breath, after two days home I had opened my mouth so wide that she almost had access to the open air. But I've spent time gaping with her peering out before and know that she tends to steal all my oxygen. I slept in my sisters bed every night our temples touching, willing myself to remember the curve of her neck and the length in her feet, I wrapped my fingers twice around her hair mourning the loss of this sight. I left the tiny block in my heart under the floorboards, something tells me that old and colorful house can handle what I've left behind.

The Tyrancy and Truancy of Time

Thinking seriously about what a trickster Time is and how I never agreed to let him rule my life. Maybe if he had showed up at my doorstep in his winter coat, shivering and asking if he could come inside, I would have opened up the door hesitantly and asked him to kindly remove his shoes. Even if he kept them on perhaps I would have acquiesced to his presence.... or at least if he had asked me out for tea I may have agreed to acknowledge him when we passed each other on the street, but I never met him and I still am not even sure he exists. Though somehow he has a way of winking at me through the windows of this plane as I fly back to Minnesota, and he is beside me when I notice the weight gain of a friend in high school who I always thought was invincible. I hear his inaudible laughter when I shake my head, dizzied because I can't recall ever allowing him to lend his heavy tendencies to me, though he has spun me around to face a decade ago and it feels so close I can almost call it home. Though invisible he is infectious and I wish he would just appear in his physical form so I could finally understand who he his, this tyrant Father Time and what he wants with me, and if we will ever be happy coexisting.

deliciously reckless

These days I have an inexplicable hunger to unstitch the threads that encompass me. The fabric hangs heavy from my collarbones, claws at my neck, dares me to rip it at the seams and let it lay where it belongs, in a bundle in the corner of your room.

These winds so far, it seems, are the only thing that can penetrate these walls. As of late they’re the only thing to rock me to sleep. Like the Santa Anas I believe deeply they are here to welcome change, and at night I lay skin to silk and think about all the changes that just one change will bring. I feel deliciously reckless.

At the same time I am reeling at the openness of these possibilities and this invites countless stomach flips so that I find my diet consisting mostly of black tea and whiskey. My best friend is I-70, my home a scarf flung loosely around my shoulders to ground me, I laugh at the biting cold that whips through my open windows and I don’t turn the radio down until I’m exactly where I want to be. Staying in one place seems impossible; I can’t stand to sit down anymore because I’d rather feel the length of my legs beneath me.

 The wind burns me raw and I welcome it.

The Allegory of the Cave

My hope is to invoke Plato’s placement of a cave, and stand up one day to realize that this binding thing I once knew as ‘right’ was really a chain around my ankles (it wasn’t always a chain but the only truth is change) and what I once saw as shadows are really daring licks of fire and that my heart does have wings because though all are unified sometimes we are meant to be alone.

In Plato’s infamous cave the Freed One staggers across the rocks from Illusion to Belief, by the time he reaches Reason his chains are only a memory and when he finally finds Wisdom he is forced to look directly into the fire that has been his only source of warmth. Though he is accustomed to the wholesome dark and though he feels so terribly alone his bones ache, he also recognizes that he lacked substance before and knows deeply now that nothing will ever, thankfully and most regrettably at the same time, be the same.

As time rolls on and on as it always does I find the spaces in which pain used to dwell become more fluid. I sense my subtle body, the ninth body of ten, unfolding in tantra. Where there was once tension there is now movement. I have created length out of the things that once felt like hard and secret stones. Small and cool in my palm I carried them, one by one, and laid them out in the warmth to absorb what they needed to unfold. Once gray and rounded like the hunched shoulders of broken men they smoothed under the sun, the breadth of them leveling and rooting, the corners lifting up as though grinning; they crisped.

I watch now from my ninth body and marvel at the beautiful symmetry of my hands and my thoughts. Observe the dank green as it spreads from Anahata Chakra, dampening across my chest. I find less and less time for the things and the thoughts and the people that don’t serve this mossy growth and find myself drifting farther away from the drafts that dry me, from the foods that sink me, from the scenes that smirk at my attempt of Samadhi. Even my hips agree with my progression, I notice glinting along me more pointed bones that arch forward like a question. I can hook my thumbs around those tapered points and rub; they beam.

I am lighter but understand with gravity that I may always beckon, however unaware, some weighted eastbound winds. There will always be an awful piece of all of us that allows for deeper engagement of the pain body’s senses, as we call into feeling the things we wish we didn’t know how to recognize. But we have a name for them, we call them home for supper, we accept a smaller sliver of the bed to make room for their great girth. Sometimes at night we awaken to their cool breath at the neck’s nape, we shiver and clutch the covers. Then nothing more. My hope is that you will bare some day a winter that will challenge you to seek your own warmth, and when the time comes you will no longer shiver in a shared bed. On the eve of this awakening the fine hairs at the atlas of your vertebra will erect, your fingers will uncurl in a beautiful progression, your eyes will open for the first time as such and as you turn over you spread your legs and claim the space as your own. I see you, the wings of your shoulder blades tucked beneath you creating a shelf for your heart space.

" He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye.” –Gautama Buddha

You Have Within You A Babel of Cultures

I

A tower of contradiction

A brick for stone

cold confusion

One a brick of fear, on

Top of that is anger, cemented

Rock by rock

II

an elaborate system but

you lay victim to crumbled stone

III

Once I knew

Or once I thought.

Austin claimed you can never know anything. For this

Great philosopher, I reinvent myself daily.

IV

Danger like the rain

To mudbricks exposed

Is assumption

V

And so you circumvent

Break bricks of reason

Deny.

Deny.

Accept.

You are unbending, instead

You build upon yourself

A brick for rock

hard resolve

one a brick of valor, on

top of that is compassion, cemented.

Rock by rock

A tower of contradiction.

VI

Cracked and split

How much weight

Can your foundation hold?

VII

Autonomy refers to selfish claim

Your Babel a self infliction

Your God a selfish God

Intrinsically, self-destructive.

VIII

In the fertile plain

The Euphrates tell of broken bricks.

And

This is all that remains.

Ho'oponopono

After the scare tactics of a Mercury Retrograde (I capitalize it out of fear) and the daunting possibilities that come with a new moon, I can firmly say that many people were experiencing a case of the Monday blues yesterday. Myself especially. I struggled through my work day, only getting by with the help of frequent chamomile tea refills, one blessed caramel apple cider, a short walk under the last leaves of Fall, and many weepy phone calls to my sister (I’m convinced she’s not actually my sister but an angel of positive reinforcement, other-worldly wisdom, and ancient grace). 5:30 rolled around and I peeled myself out of my chair and did the only productive thing I had done that day: I listened to the tiny voice that sometimes makes herself known at the pit of my throat (VISHUDDA), she said go to yoga. And I did.

I spent the next hour in a candlelit corner crying in backbends and uprooting all emotions each time we took a heart-opener. After class I had one of those all-encompassing encounters with a soul who recognizes its counterpoint in you. I sat down with a woman who had just come from a weekend-long silent meditation retreat. Needless to say, she had much to say now that she was able to talk again! The universe works in mysterious ways and I can affirm that she was sent to me from a higher source. She taught me a little bit more about kindness, and instilled some hope in me about the inherent goodness in humans, and made me think twice about thinking hotly, selfishly, and quickly.  But most importantly she taught me how to ask for forgiveness. Once I opened up the universe for forgiveness, I forgave myself and so did everybody else. I then proceeded to laugh hard, enjoy a great meal, joyously lose 5 bucks in a game of poker, and dance with my loved one abashedly.  It helped me so immensely that I wanted to share it with you:

Ho'oponopono : the Hawaiian Code of Forgiveness, made to essentially make things right between you and the universe. Based on the belief tht you should never carry guilt any longer than you have to, and that there is transformation in release. We carry within ourselves pieces of everyone we’ve chosen to fit inside our minds and hearts. Ho'oponopono is the process we use to align with the others inside of ourself. The process goes something like this: sit still and come into your minds eye. Imagine an infinite source of love and healing flowing from your Higher Self above you through the top of your head, filling up your body from your crown chakra to your root. Repeat the mantra: I’m sorry, Please Forgive me, Thank you, I love you.

Repeat for as long as necessary… you’ll know when that is.

GRATITUDE

Today is magic. Never in my life have I felt the support of so many people at one time. I am full of the creative potential energy of the universe. It's like all these beings in my world are coming together to help me move forward in my yoga, my wealth, my career, my writing, my dancing, my eating and more.

I feel obliged to send gratitude to the following:

• First and foremost my sister for being an absolute angel, my beacon, my source of calm and wisdom, and a thing of utter beauty.
• Ally K. for providing the creative outlet needed for my voice to be heard, and for my soul to realize that my voice deserves to be heard (as if I ever struggled with that notion…)
• Melanie P. for showing me that strangers can be your best friends and your guardian angels, for speaking from the heart, and most especially  for sharing the practice of Ho'oponopono. What a wonderful gift its already proven to be.
• Celia A. for being a true friend this weekend and for giving me a ride to work accompanied by joyous conversation this morning.
• Jacob M. for being the most consistent source of love, fun, understanding, soul connection, and  forgiveness I could ever imagine. Every day I get to spend with you is a gift from Higher Source.
• My dad for always being the source of reason and tranquility.
• My mom for being the source of everything else EVER.
• Nicolai for re-igniting my love for Texas Hold ‘Em, and for buying me a decadent Pumpkin Ale
• George for dancing in a way that can always bring a lightness to a heavy funk beat
• Genna S. for making my dream of traveling to Peru, promoting environmental awareness, measuring black carbon, and basically saving the world come true
• Amy H. for speaking honestly and openly as a yoga instructor. And for being a secret agent for the forces in the world that remind you to BE HERE NOW
• Anonymous in the office who brought a big box of Brueggers bagels to work. And for the honey almond cream cheese that made me want to weep.
• All the other invisible angels that gently guide me on this day and all other days.

Black Carbon

Dear Readers/Universe/Empty Space/Lovers/Abstract Blogging World,

I wanted to take some space today to share with you about the work that I do.Through my work at the GO3 Project, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit that provides students around the world with exciting, real-world science projects that promote environmental awareness and the application of science skills, I have become deeply involved in the science of air pollution. On a day to day basis I get to focus on the measurement and sharing of air pollution data so that international students can act as citizen scientists and become increasingly aware of atmospheric environmental issues. Most specifically, I am increasingly concentrated on the science of black carbon and its effects both on the environment and human health.

Black carbon has recently become center stage in international discussions on climate change.  Studies suggest that black carbon may account for up to 25% of the observed global warming to date, and up to 40% of glacier melting.  Human health effects of black carbon include asthma, lung cancer, cardiovascular problems, birth defects and premature death. Because black carbon’s lifetime in the atmosphere is only about two weeks compared to several decades for carbon dioxide, reducing black carbon emissions may be the most effective way of slowing climate change.   Due to its prominent impact on the planet (and its people), black carbon has presented me with an impassioned topic which I have built into curriculum used in schools around the world. The international reach of my curriculum is vital; air pollution knows no geographical or political boundaries – with air pollution levels in the U.S. being affected by emissions in Asia – thus the issue requires global participation.

What’s more, the issue can be easily mitigated in the communities where there are dangerous levels of carbon black; like the townships in Africa who have used slash- and-burn agriculture for generations, the villages in Peru who depend on inefficient, polluting cookstoves to feed their families and warm their homes (both major sources of black carbon).  In fact, nearly 3 billion people use rudimentary, polluting cookstoves which accounts for more than three-quarters of the world’s black carbon. Dirty cookstove smoke kills 1 person every 16 seconds and almost half the world’s population still cooks food, boils water, and warms their homes by burning wood, animal and agricultural waste, and coal in open fires or  cookstoves- not to mention how this disproportionately affects women.

Luckily, the Alliance for Global Cookstoves is busy saving our planet by bringing clean-burning, environmentally friendly cookstoves to all corners of the world. These clean-burning cookstoves mitigate black carbon emissions; not only do they improve livelihoods, empower women, and protect the environment, but they save lives as well. While this organization brings technical solutions and a sense of empowerment to rural villages around the world, as of now there is no way to monitor the improvement in these villages’ environmental quality. And, while the GO3 Project builds sophisticated black carbon monitoring instrumentation to measure black carbon concentrations in local air, we have not yet been able to distribute our black carbon package to the affected places to marry our science with the social capability for empowerment and transformation overseas.

In February, I will be going to Peru on a ten day program to bring the GO3 Project’s black carbon station to two rural schools for young women. These schools are in communities that suffer from extreme poverty and bear the brunt of environmental degradation. They have little access to health services and education. Once I’m there, I will be providing education on the science, environmental and health effects, and mitigation techniques of black carbon. I will be leading training on how to install and maintain the black carbon monitoring station, measure air concentrations, and share collected data. Together with the local women, we will install the stations and begin measuring black carbon (this data will be available on the GO3 Project’s website for the public to see).  Soon after, we will introduce clean-burning cookstoves to each community. Because the black carbon stations will be continuously monitoring the air, we will be able to see the mitigation of black carbon levels in the air after the introduction of the efficient, non-polluting cookstoves.  To see first-hand such a staggering reduction in a critically toxic pollutant will not only be eye-opening, it will be life-saving.

I am deeply honored to be working for an organization that serves as a beacon of possibility to bring air quality awareness to the corners of the world that deserve our conscious dedication. This initiative will not only significantly mitigate unhealthy levels of black carbon for these targeted communities, it will provide an experiential foundation to foster these Peruvian women’s sense of self and develop the leadership necessary to succeed in sustainable social and environmental change.  In other words, my trip to Peru will not only be providing young women with important science education that would otherwise not only be inaccessible but incomprehensible, it would be empowering their own growth and personal development as they become strong and motivated leaders in their communities.  

But it doesn’t end there- the GO3 Project hopes to bring our black carbon stations to all corners of the world, and build the first ever international database of black carbon pollution. If you’re interested in sponsoring a school or donating any amount of time or money (from one hour to one dollar!) we would be honored to accept your gift as part of this amazing and necessary work. Together we can drastically cut black carbon emissions, bring environmental awareness to international schools and rural communities, and SAVE THE WORLD!

If this article touched you please visit our site or email me at kali@go3project.com

witches brew

a tawdry truth

Been playing witness to the funny and beautiful things that are happening to me now that I’ve started up my meditation practice again. How the whole world has elegantly collapsed into the palm of my hand- everything feels more manageable, filled with more potential, a bit more sparkly. It kind of reminds me of that quote from the Alchemist, how when you discover what it is that you want, the whole universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. Suddenly the universe is my best friend, dropping tiny clues in many corners that hint at our affability. I saw a big glowing purple dot in the corner of my bedroom this morning that reduced me to sheer giggles. It was like a Blue’s Clue’s pawprint from the celestial world.  I visualize muladhara’s glowing red ball of energy when I need some grounding, and have felt from time to time significant heat building up in my root. I’ve started to pick up other signs in my external world that previously I would have only ever expected from a thorough excavation of the Tarot – the fox that looked like she was winking at me, a bumper sticker that seemed to warn me, even a spilled Chai that tapped me politely on the shoulder and reminded me not to take things so seriously. It’s been suggested to me once that the mark of pure joy is finding pleasure and empathy in the smallest of things. I find myself imparting silent blessings on the driver in the car in front of me, or truly hoping for the best outcome for someone that in all honesty I thought I couldn’t care less about.  There is an amicable density between the air and my skin; it cloaks me.