proper prosperous

My bones are cobblestone and I drip red wine. I think nothing of it when I take the stairs two at a time, I breach worlds between each step and I count the lifetimes it's taken me to get right here, I am right now. Here the indigenous place clay figurines on their rooftops to welcome in prosperity. I sleep across a mirror I never noticed until now that reflects the rounded humbros, the painted white, the silhouette of abundance. We attract what we convey. Red clay sculpted and stacked underneath me, tasks mount high and souls bridge across and on the top rung of the ladder I glide my fingers across the wooden beams and think, remember when this defined my ceiling? 

What does it mean to be limitless, I asked in all the languages I can express myself in.

On Familiarity

Call it continuity; recognizing that the meaning of a place will continue to deepen for you. That's what it feels like here. Every time I light the sage, or pass that corner, or the way I felt the angle of the high sun on my breastbone. You know the feeling when you come to an understanding with the path that's been underneath your feet, and all of a sudden it rises to meet you. And for a glimpse of 4:00 when you take your first bite of solid food all day, because you're running strong and haven't had the time to be weighted down, or the dawn that breaks overs your skylight because lonesome mornings excite you now, or knowing exactly which key to use and pushing the heavy door open against a dark and pulsing night. For a moment a slice of your life is extracted from the stream of consciousness and you get to hold it in your hands, and turn it over and sigh and say, oh yes- this is a fragment of the flow.... this is when that stone deepens significance in the stairway, and now that door, this key, the stick of sage, is even more a part of me, and this story, than it ever was before-
and the world turns slightly so the kitchen never really was facing east, we've always been bound westward it may suddenly seem, and you're never quite the same again.

Each glance of this city's story adds another layer of what I will someday recall.
I can't describe it more directly than this.

I was sitting on the stone in the courtyard at my first weekly Wednesday potluck when I thought, oh yes, this will continue, and I'll sit here again someday soon, and the stone will look even more familiar. And one loose fray curled around the outside of my understanding will now be cut away, a clarity seeps in, and I'll remember how I felt the first time, and I may even know when the next time will be.

Each room we occupy, and each thought that contains us, and each person we are retained within, we leave a part of ourselves there waiting for us, only to swing by unexpectedly at some point near or far down the line (that is inconsequential), and oh yes, here I was, and pick ourselves up from the schoolyard, to be more richly defined by the places we once were, and the places we are, and the places we will be again....

on airport chapels, throat chakra, and coming home again

Back to the Lima airport chapel; I can't tell you how many chapels and corners and cafes in how many different airports I've been to in the past nine months. I always find such serenity in these nexus points- maybe all the travelers that have invested their energy, taking a pause between transit, have infused these spaces with so much potential energy, so much charge, it's like I can sit in lotus in freezeframe and watch the electronic pulse, the comings and the goings, the salient journeys.

Peru has always done something so right to my energy body; the breath is round- not two dimensional but a sensual and voluptuous being, and she is soft and deep and wants to play.

In this particular airport chapel meditation, in which there have been many, I lifted my chin and felt my neck open wide. At once I could see these charged ripples being released from underneath my chin, and I've never been this sense-aware of the throat chakra- she is lovely energy and open and heightened and alert- she sent these charged ripples out from her center like geometric waves, like tendrils, that I could feel were sending themselves out in front of me, making the connections with the language  and the people and the sensations that await me.

as I touch down in Cusco

I felt breath like i haven't even remembered as soon as I touched down in Cusco. Like I had forgotten all this time what it was like to be at ease,to breathe. Like when you realize you had been tensing a muscle only because you release it. Suddenly a lot more is joy. I can feel acutely the spaces in my body where I had been holding on to tension, and all the muscle memory of stress patterns peels off in layers. My feet are so much happier here, the edges curl towards the floor to pick up more earth energy and pull it in from the soles each time I inhale. 

I guess subconsciously I knew from the space in the back of my heart that this is the place and the time, but I definitely never would have imagined it would happen so immediately.

Buenos, dulces noches. I have arrived. 

en route to Peru

If I hold my breath in my chest I can just barely brush up against the life which will be mine tomorrow. It's a faint outline of a brick wall I'll run my fingers against as I pass by. It's a faded coverup I can feel hanging from my elbows, but I'm not exactly sure how it will warm me, nor how my body shall inhabit it. I can see the joys of a language unfolding, of students bent and breathing, of a window that sings to me, of a tea mug that sings to me, of a hallway that calls me home. I hope to succumb to a routine of and for solely my Self. New fruit and new words.

But like de Botton claims so starkly in The Art of Travel, we bring ourselves with when we escape. Do not forget this is the most precious life you've been granted yet- and this is your era to Be. Yes the lumber in your belly with be there sometimes, and the tremor in your temples, and the tense in your jaw. Live the glimmer you watch along the edges of the stories you tell yourself when you feel proud.

The wall is ancient and sturdy, and many fingers brush the lining. The coat your brought fits your frame. You won't be cold, you are the very embodiment of the heat initiated upon action, before passion settles, when the mat has not fully been unrolled and you claim your spot on the floor.

Again, AKASHA, how wide does the toes stretch apart today? And the space between the thoughts and the universe between the eyebrows? Your seat of intuition.

Do not forget they are waiting to hear from you, they sit on stone, it's story time and knees knock together to form a circle around you. It's your love thats your knowledge, watch the ripples you cause and feel tickled by the way it feels on your skin when it's sent back to meet you.
It's the energy body, it's one cycle, we try to tell her over lunch. Giving is the same as receiving, dear, so just take a breath and put your palm out in front of you, only to feel it brush the nape of your neck, where old dreams curl up and whisper for you to recall them.
We are joyous in communion, merely expression.
Even the back side of the pond ripples when you throw your one stone in, and you will never know the impact you have had.

Akasha

What is she? The ether, the unknown that snags the breath, the slack between the ribs. The space I lay out on my mat between the ground and the sky, the layer of horizontal earth, a slab of sacred, that ripples and unfurls across bare threads. The length between my tail and crown. She dwindles with the backbends, baring down. Her presence lacking when I lift my sternum and open fully and feel the top vertebrae meet the base of my skull. The channel between my heart and throat, the pulled and prompted space between my toes, the difference in length between my mama's fingers and my own. Akasha, the unknown, unmeasured. My hips speak this desire, they tell me we are settled in this place, let's breathe easy here. No agenda. Do not fill the space. Akasha chooses solitude. Here in the hips invite spaciousness, pubic bone draws away from the spine, building caverns with the rounded points of the illiac crest. The orbs of woman beg expansion. Let us spread! I make the space in the morning, asana helps me widen the breath and lengthen the pause. Akasha; the space between my thoughts, throughout my day, across my hips, around my heart. Unknown, unbridled, infinite.