You're Cordially Invited

Someone I look up to from afar shared this with me tonight, and before I start blogging about absurd situations I bore witness to over the recent weeks, I thought I should share it with you... Enjoy. xx

The Invitation

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

By Oriah Mountain Dreamer, 1999.

With Deepest Regret

First, an apology.

For slacking off.

One to the reader(s) I knew not existed (yeah, that comes as a big shock to everyone, right?), and one to myself. Yeah I know this tangent I'm about to go off on might be lame, but I took an unnecessary two week long break from this teeny little blog that, even if for no one else, made me happy. And aside from my own selfish desires, much to my surprise, I learned from an old friend (younger than me, but in many ways wiser) that this little blog does have readers. Well, at least a reader. And if the occasional photo posted, words written, or anecdote told brings something to just one other person in the world, the five minutes out of my day I may have even intended just to give myself by blogging on here would be worth it to an even greater extent.

But "sorries" only go so far, actions speak louder than words, and one day, to quote Mr. Belding from Saved By the Bell, you just have to ask yourself "Hey hey hey, what - is - going - ON - here?" And then I hope you will remember to return to what makes you happy, precisely for the reason that it does so.

I know I am.

The best dreams happen when you're AWAKE.

[ cherie gilderbloom ]

Shocking Discoveries

Doing some reading today, I came across a shocking discovery: George Washington Carver did not invent peanut butter. Of course, this news should be nearly insignificant to me, a girl with a lifelong deadly peanut allergy who has never even tasted peanuts, let alone peanut butter. However, I have been living all almost-19 years of my life believing that GWC was the inventor of such a profitable good, when, in fact, he was not. To his credit, he did reportedly discover hundreds of uses for not only the peanut, but also soybeans, other nuts, and sweet potatoes. Some of the most fascinating uses of such ingredients include: shaving cream, linoleum, mayo, and shoe polish. Guess there are some new things I will have to start avoiding unless I want to enter another kind of shocking discovery - anaphylactic shock.

Gee-Dubbs Carver may have not invented peanut butter, but he did discover many things I, as an allergy-prone individual, now know to avoid.

Just a couple of hours ago, I experienced 5:06:07pm on August 9, 2010... Otherwise known as 5678910, which will only happen again in 3010 - so I'll probably be too old to remember when it is happening again by then. Exactly at this moment, I was in an 105 degree, 45% humidity hot room with 17 others doing fixed firm pose. You only get each moment of your life once. What were you doing during this one?

Happy August!

Where did the summer go?