she lives her life in widening circles

33 at sea

2010-08-07T11:48:00.003+09:00

"my home is in my heart
it migrates with me."

-nils-aslak valkeapaa

the baltic sea...standing on the island of hiddensee...bathed in a soft july sunset...

breath is life

2010-06-25T22:09:00.008+09:00

how the novice should practice solar-lunar (alternate nostril) breathing, from the shiva samhita (sanskrit text on yoga):

"the wise beginner should keep the body firm and upright...close the right nostril with the right thumb, inhale air through the left nostril and retain the air as long as possible without discomfort. afterward breathe out slowly, not forcibly, through the right nostril. again, draw in the breath through the right nostril and retain it as long as comfortable, then release the air carefully through the left nostril. according to this method, try to practice twenty retentions of breath at each session, while keeping the mind free of all anxieties, doubts, and dualities. this exercise should be practiced four times daily, early in the morning (preferably at sunrise), at midday, at sunset, and at midnight. when it has been practiced daily for three months, all the subtle channels of the body will be fully purified and karmas will be destroyed."

you don't have to believe it, just try it...

what should we do about that moon?

2010-06-24T23:08:00.002+09:00

A wine bottle fell from a wagon and
broke open in a field.

That night one hundred beetles and all their cousins
gathered

and did some serious binge drinking.

They even found some seed husks nearby
and began to play them like drums and whirl.
This made God very happy.

Then the "night candle" rose into the sky
and one drunk creature, laying down his instrument,
said to his friend ~ for no apparent
reason,

"What should we do about that moon?"

Seems to Hafiz
Most everyone has laid aside the music

Tackling such profoundly useless
questions.

By: Hafiz

From: The Gift -- versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky

a song with no end

2010-06-23T23:52:00.022+09:00

drumming/music jam...my student damith, dear friend taeok, and group leader yatren

a couple who came all the way from pohang (2 hours away) to take part in the evening
wren and prem...
playing such a sweet little bird instrument

teddy on guitar and his friend who played stunningly on the violin
my student, "song"

when Whitman wrote, "I sing the body electric"

I know what he
meant
I know what he
wanted:

to be completely alive every moment
in spite of the inevitable.

we can't cheat death but we can make it
work so hard
that when it does take
us

it will have known a victory just as
perfect as
ours.

~ Charles Bukowski ~
From: The Night Torn With Mad Footsteps

drumming has come to daegu! as we gather every other saturday night in a circle at a friend's cafe downtown, the group is different each time...last saturday, two of my students and a dear friend joined me...we started out for an hour with only drums and later other instruments joined in...about 15 of us spent the evening drumming on djembes and congas and bowls turned upside down! a couple of folks brought guitars, one woman played the violin, yatren played his didgeridu...it was a wild magic.

singing...dancing....chanting..."om tara tuttare ture soha," which built up into an ecstatic, joyous rhythm.

"om namo bhagavate vasudevaya" (a chant for liberation)

teddy led us in a beautiful native american chant:

"the earth is our mother, we must take care of her,
the earth is our mother, we must take care of her,
hey yana, ho yana, hey yan yan,
hey yana, ho yana, hey yan yan."

when the clock struck midnight, no one wanted to go home...

creating spontaneous music together...no egos...only heart...experiencing the feeling of inhabiting the body, the present moment so fully. each person so brightly shining. bringing the essence of true being out to play...the collective energy pulsing with passion and joy. truly ecstatic!
the name that yatren has chosen for this drumming/music jam phenomenon is "sho ju ah tu," which has two meanings: "to be brave" and "when something comes, let it come...when something goes, let it go."

trust

2010-06-04T21:52:00.007+09:00

"it's like so many other things in life
to which you must say no or yes.
so you take your car to the new mechanic.
sometimes the best thing to do is trust.

the package left with the disreputable-looking
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—
all show up at their intended destinations.

the theft that could have happened doesn't.
wind finally gets where it was going
through the snowy trees, and the river, even
when frozen, arrives at the right place.

and sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
is delivered, even though you can't read the address."

-"Trust" by Thomas R. Smith, from Waking Before Dawn

...it's friday night and i'm sipping a mug of warm rooibos tea...fresh brownies are cooling on the stovetop...i can hear the laughter of the neighborhood kids outside...i'm home from the last day of this semester's classes...feeling richly full.

one student, who goes by "song," said to me this afternoon, "i will never forget the time we all sat together in a circle in the dark, looking at the candle burning in the middle, listening to the music. i felt like it was something spiritual, like all of our spirits were connecting...and that you were like the mother, holding us all in your heart."

as i walked home this evening under the setting sun, i thought about how much loss there can be in this life...and how much beauty. that no matter how much loss there is, there is always beauty. and the invitation to open the heart is always there.

2010-06-02T22:56:00.001+09:00

"Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control. We can love and care for others but we cannot possess our children, lovers, family, or friends. We can assist them, pray for them, and wish them well, yet in the end their happiness and suffering depend on their thoughts and actions, not on our wishes."
— Jack Kornfield

a forest full of poets...a room full of holy

2010-05-28T20:38:00.016+09:00

in the words of my students...

long time no see, nature
it passed long time to feel you
but you're always same
- hanna

day like this fine one
i wish i could have guitar
then i sing for you
- song

at silent forest
breeze blowing, trees whispering
small flower seems shy
- yae jin

nature give many
humans snatch things from nature
soon end relationship
-ye young

greatness of nature
it makes my mind flow freely
hugging my sorrow
-bo wae

no one knows my heart
the sun burning with my love
only breeze knows that
- ga young

go back to the woods
where many birds are singing
without shoes, with me
- ji young

the fickle weather
please find your own character
in every season
-sae rok

flowers are shaking
butterflies flying around
my heart is throbbing
- ga young

a few days ago, my students and i set out into the woods for inspiration...in the footsteps of the great nature mystics. we found a secluded grove on campus and in silence each settled into a place of our own. i sat on a bench under a big shade tree guarding a mountain of the gals' handbags. they looked so much lighter and carefree without those giant purses strapped over their shoulders. i spent most of the hour studying my students who were sitting nearby...finding great delight in how peaceful and relaxed they seemed...their eyes gazing quietly off into the canopy of green...heads turning at the echoing cry of a magpie...soft smiles on their faces...hands reaching out to graze the dandelion fuzz floating by on the breeze...pens occasionally jotting the language of poetry in their spiral bound notebooks.

students so peaceful
their faces glowing sunshine
heart door flung open

we have shared very intimate time together this semester. the kind where sometimes i am left breathless with amazement at what is organically unfolding in a moment. recently, we began class by sitting in a circle in the darkened lecture hall with a burning candle at the center. i played lisa gerrard's haunting piece, "i asked for love." as they gently set their eyes upon the flickering firelight and the music filled the space, i walked around the inside of the circle and dabbed a bit of frankincense essential oil on each of their wrists, as a way to create a wider sensory experience...to ground them and clear their minds....to create a deeper sense of sacred space. when the music ended, we remained in candlelit darkness and each person spoke one word to express his or her feeling in that moment:

holy

sacred

oneness

peace

stillness

strange

home

prayer

eternity

mother

calm

wonder

cozy

thankfulness

the students then moved directly into "free writing" (stream of consciousness) for five minutes. one of my students wanted to share her writing with me after class that day. usually i do not read the students' free writing work because i don't want them to write with an audience in mind; i want them to write solely for themselves...to allow uncensored material to surface. however, she insisted i read, as the experience in the circle had moved her deeply:

I feel I sit in church. Actually, I don't believe in the God. But at that moment, if I pray to the God, the God listens to my prayer. It's so comfortable, so relaxed...

2010-05-26T23:37:00.003+09:00

Even in Kyoto --
hearing the cuckoo's cry --
I long for Kyoto.

-Basho

for c. always in all ways.

possession

2010-05-09T16:30:00.003+09:00

"in the proximity of death, the whole concept of ownership stands revealed as ultimately meaningless."

-eckhart tolle, from his book "a new earth"

belly as drum

2010-05-04T22:20:00.017+09:00

"today, like every other day,
we wake up empty and frightened.
don't open the door to the study and begin reading.
take down the musical instrument.

let the beauty we love be what we do.
there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

these 12th century words reverberated through my classroom at the university this afternoon.
all students' eyes closed as i recited this rumi poem several times.

then, we all gathered into a large circle around the lecture hall.
curtains drawn and lights out, room dark and mysterious, vibrating with anticipation.
students have become accustomed to not knowing exactly what to expect in english composition class. their teacher recently resolving that life is too short and precious not to come fully alive and open the channels of creativity, infusing inspiration into every possible teaching moment. since said epiphany, the classroom experience has not been the same. music fills the halls...embodiment is key...and comfort zones are expanded each and every meeting. not a moment is wasted.

in our circle, we breathed deeply in and out together, sighing loudly on the out breath, letting go of stress and tension, as we have been doing since the first day of the semester. a new addition, however, the waking of our bodies by stamping our feet, shaking our arms, sounding "aaaahhh" with our voices, and playing our bellies like drums!
after the laughter died down and the timing felt right, i instructed the students to turn their backs to the center of the circle so they could drum against the wall or continue to use their own bodies as percussion instruments with no anxiety of others watching them. the room was a mix of nervous excitement and childlike giddiness.

i had cued up the song "zahrafat al sa'ld," which translates as "rejoicing in upper egypt," by the musicians of the nile. seven minutes of pure ecstatic drumming. i pressed "play" and away we went.
participation began tentatively at first with only a couple of kids diving in right away...most seemed unsure whether or not to let loose...since when do we drum against the wall, let alone our bodies, in a korean university classroom?!! gradually the energy of the doumbeks dissolved all inhibition. the students began to tap against the wall, some gently, others wildly...hands gravitated to drumming on their own bodies...hips began to sway...feet and legs started moving in time to the rhythm and the room was rockin'!

after the last drum beat sounded, we all turned back towards the center of the darkened room in silence. breathing together in unison once again for several minutes; there was a strong sense of aliveness, awakened bodies/minds, a sizzling experience of energy rising...and awe. when the students returned to their seats, they wrote stream-of-consciousness for five minutes, as we do at the beginning of every single class after listening to a piece of music. what they expressed on paper, i will never know, as that kind of writing is for their eyes only, but from the sparkling looks on their enlivened faces and the "wow, teacher!" from more than one, we shall be drumming again...and soon!

ah yes....may the beauty we love be what we do!

sufi dancers...whirling dervishes...

she had some horses

2010-03-15T23:58:00.002+09:00

by: joy harjo

"She had some horses.

She had horses who were bodies of sand.
She had horses who were maps drawn of blood.
She had horses who were skins of ocean water.
She had horses who were the blue air of the sky.
She had horses who were fur and teeth.
She had horses who were clay and would break.
She had horses who were splintered red cliff.

She had some horses.

She had horses with eyes of trains.
She had horses with full, brown thighs.
She had horses who laughed too much.
She had horses who threw rocks at glass houses.
She had horses who licked razor blades.

She had some horses

She had horses who danced in their mothers’ arms.
She had horses who thought they were the sun and their
bodies shown and burned like stars.
She had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon.
She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet
in stalls of their own making.

She had some horses.

She had horses who liked Creek Stomp Dance songs.
She had horses who cried in their beer.
She had horses who spit at male queens who made
them afraid of themselves.
She had horses who said they weren’t afraid.
She had horses who lied.
She had horses who told the truth, who were stripped
bare of their tongues.

She had some horses.

She had horses who called themselves, “horse.”
She had horses who called themselves, “spirit,” and kept
their voices secret and to themselves.
She had horses who had no names.
She had horses who had books of names.

She had some horses.

She had horses who whispered in the dark, who were afraid to speak.
She had horses who screamed out of fear of the silence, who
carried knives to protect themselves from ghosts.
She had horses who waited for destruction.
She had horses who waited for resurrection.

She had some horses.

She had horses who got down on their knees for any saviour.
She had horses who thought their high price had saved them.
She had horses who tried to save her, who climbed in her
bed at night and prayed.

She had some horses

She had some horses she loved.
She had some horses she hated.

These were the same horses."

to listen to joy reading this poem click here.

2010-03-14T16:58:00.001+09:00

"unbeknownst to me, while i was waiting for sudden change, i was changing slowly."

- gil fronsdal

2010-03-14T16:24:00.001+09:00

"the small man
builds cages
for everyone he knows
while the sage
who has to duck his head
when the moon is full
keeps dropping keys
all night long
for the beautiful
rowdy prisoners"

-hafiz

clear path

2010-03-14T13:29:00.011+09:00

sunday...early afternoon...a pot of black beans simmering on the stove top...heavenly scent of cumin rising into the air...chilling winter winds once again whipping at the window pane....i settle comfortably into my seat, fleece blanket wrapped warmly around my shoulders, a steaming mug of earthy puerh tea in my hands...gently, i close my eyes.
allowing words of dharma to permeate...truth resonating...heart opening, mind relaxing, body softening...
coming back to center...anchoring here...again and again.

"knowing somehow that the heart knows its way from here on."

clear path

by john travis

(from his dharma talk given at spirit rock meditation center on march 6, 2010)

"the white heron
standing so still
dignity of posture
so like the yogis in our own hall
knowing somehow
to draw ourselves back
back into the center of safety
consumed solely
by the center of our own flames
burning of the old
the old stories wishes fears desires
your own voice calling to yourself
only heard by yourself
back back from the brink of the remembering
to this place where the white heron stands
breath breathing you
untouched by a shredded past
an incomprehensible future
resting like the white heron
only the dignity of the posture remains
blessed by the faculty of our senses
knowing somehow
there is no other world
than this
simply this
there is a small point
infinitesimal point
where the worlds divide
one road
leading back
back into the flames of becoming
this voice speaking too quickly
desperately searching
through the crowded years
where life's hopes and fears
can be played
in this game of winning
and probably losing
grasping tightly
capturing
imprisoning
keeping it all
of the time
and there's the other path
the old path
caught
in the miracles of ordinariness
bewilderment
the price of the sand slipping through our fingers
knowing somehow that you have to surrender
leaving behind the hopes and fears in this grasping
resting nowhere
falling on your knees
knowing somehow that the heart knows its way from here on
knowing somehow that the heart knows its way from here on"

~you can find his dharma talk and many others at www.dharmaseed.org

modernity

2010-02-27T22:29:00.003+09:00

"we are running

running and
time is clocking us
from the edge like an only
daughter.
our mothers stream before us,
cradling their breasts in their
hands.
oh pray that what we want
is worth this running,
pray that what we’re running
toward
is what we want."

~ Lucille Clifton ~

(From: QUILTING: Poems 1987-1990)

my anthem

2010-02-13T21:57:00.007+09:00

By: Alanis Morissette

...As I cut the cord of home
I kiss my mother’s mother
and look to the horizon

Wide eyed, new ground
humbled by my new surroundings

I am a citizen of the planet
My president is Kuan Yin
My frontier is on an airplane
My prisons: homes for rehabilitating

Then I fly back to my nest,
I fly back with my nuclear
But everything is different

So I wait, my yearn for home is broadened,
Patriotism expanded
by callings from beyond

So I pack my things nothing precious all things sacred
I am a citizen of the planet
My laws are all of attraction
My punishiments are consequences
Separating from source the original sin

I am a citizen of the planet
Democracy’s kids are sovereign
Where the teachers are the sages
And pedestals fill with every parent

And so, the next few years are blurry,
the next decade’s a flurry of
smells and tastes unknown

Threads sewn straight through this fabric
through fields of every color
one culture to another

I come alive and I get giddy and I am taken and globally naturalized

I am a citizen of the planet
From simple roots through high vision
I am guarded by the angels
My body guides the direction I go in

I am a citizen of the planet
My favorite pastime edge stretching
Besotten with human condition
These ideals are borne from my deepest within

sudden unsought intimacy

2010-02-10T09:55:00.004+09:00

here i find myself in the tropical warmth of bali reading a book about the cold snows of winter! the book is called "st. nadie in winter: zen encounters with loneliness." written by terrance keenan. nadie is pronounced nah-dee-ay, a spanish word meaning "nobody." in ganesha bookstore downtown ubud yesterday, i stumbled upon this book which i'd never seen before and immediately felt drawn. i leafed through and found a mix of poetry, memoir and stunning insight.
there is a part i'd like to share this morning...

"picture a small boy looking out his bedroom window at dawn. he sees below him a walled garden under very old trees, the brick walls heavy with ivy. there is the scent of green on the air, of apples, of earth and manure from the nearby farm. the grass in the garden is wet, and the small flowers are heavy with dew. in the garden he watches a woman with long white hair, the first time he has seen it long, let down. she is walking barefoot. her nightgown and robe are wet at the bottom. she is holding a cup of tea, walking very slowly, talking to her plants softly, words he cannot quite hear, until he realizes they are words she has never spoken to anyone, they are czech, her birth tongue. he senses without words of his own to articulate it, that this is a private moment, how she places herself into her day. the unexpected intimacy moves him deeply. ...what it is to be with another without judgment, to enter their vulnerability, a sudden unsought intimacy that eliminates "other." it is the intimation that the "light itself" has no boundaries."

in the above passage, the "light itself" is referring to the buddha's words, which are said to be the only actually recorded words directly from buddha, spoken on his deathbed. the words in pali language:

atta dipa
viharatha
atta sarana
anana sarana

dhamma dipa
dhamma sarana
anana sarana

and a translation:

you are the light itself!
do not be afraid.
you are the refuge of the light.
there is no other refuge.

you are the truth itself.
light of the truth!
refuge of the truth!

a day lived in haiku

2010-02-08T22:07:00.008+09:00

pink lotus beauty
muddy waters underneath
mirror reflecting

4 a.m lizards
spitting fire in the bathroom
i wake with poems

jungle symphony
rice field singing electric
sunrise in my chest

-ubud, bali

imagining world

2009-11-28T19:59:00.001+09:00

in my dream, the angel shrugged & said, if we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination & then she placed the world gently in the palm of my hand.

~brian andreas "storypeople"

the basketball

2009-11-28T17:08:00.021+09:00

sometimes, if your lucky, something comes along, grabs you by the scruff and says, "wake up! wake up! there's more!"

there's much, much more.

"the artist's way" came along this fall, thanks to a dear friend here in korea, and is awakening me to the vast realm of so much more.

writing three stream-of-consciousness pages upon waking every morning and taking oneself out on weekly, solo artist dates are the core of the practice. those of us who are participating in the program also meet once a week to share our experiences and support one another. it's been 9 weeks now. how to even put into words what is unfolding, i can not yet. the seedlings are still germinating underground, fragile and still in need of darkness. however, i will tell you about the basketball.

at one of our last "artist's way" gatherings, we were going around the circle reading our wish lists. 20 things we wish we had. some answers were:

more courage

a million dollars

a house

a perfect lover

blue hair

a basketball was tops on my list. i have had the most insane cravings to go down to the courts and shoot around lately. the desire grabs hold of me in my legs, my arms, my hips, and it's all i can think about. as soon as i said, "i wish i had a basketball," one of the gals in the group said, "i have a basketball you can have!" "really!?," i exclaimed. "i could just borrow it, you don't have to give it to me," i said in my well trained, midwestern way. "no way, i want you to have it, it's yours!" wow. and that's the kind of goodness that's been happening again and again these last 9 weeks. the author of "the artist's way" calls it synchronicity. i think we're all at the point where if we didn't believe in it before, we certainly do now.

so, this afternoon, being an unusually warm winter's day, i decided to take myself on an outdoor artist's date! i hopped on my bike and rode down to the track/basketball courts on campus with my new b-ball in my backpack. the courts were full of students playing, so i ran a couple of miles in the meantime. it felt invigorating to be out in the fresh, winter air, surrounded by mountains, flying around that track again as if i had wings on my heels.

when a court cleared out, i claimed it, just me and my new ball! i have to say i felt a twinge of self consciousness at first, being the only gal out there, surrounded by 75+ guys shooting around and trying not to make their staring obvious. however, i stood my own ground and began shooting lay ups. right side of the basket, then left side, right, left, back and forth. after a few minutes the slight bashfulness shifted into an old familiar trance of single-minded focus. a feeling deeply recognized from the past. hours upon hours, year after year, shooting hoops by myself or bumping/setting/spiking/serving the volleyball against the side of the house after finishing homework until nightfall. it was like pulling teeth to get me to come in for dinner. i could have spent night after night out there in the dark, in a blissful trance-like, meditative state induced by the repetition of embodied activity and concentration. looking back on childhood, those were some of my most contented, peaceful moments.

as i shot around today, many vivid images came back to me of playing in childhood...and then later in high school and college. i loved the games so much when i was young that it didn't matter if i played perfectly or not. i just loved the playing. as i grew older and perfectionism really took hold, i found myself wanting more than anything to be the best, to execute each move, each play, flawlessly. that desire led to eventual demise. sucking the love of the game right out of me. what i am learning now, i wish i could have known then. how deadly perfectionism is. how it effected not only my experience of sports, but so many other things. how it is the master block of creativity. how it keeps us from exploring possibilities. how it shuts us down and blinds us to our potential. the grand kicker is that perfectionism has the capacity to actually make us believe we can't do something, before we've even tried!

these last 9 weeks have been an excavation. spelunking remote caves of childhood consciousness. unearthing what i used to love before perfectionism rolled on the scene...and sensing those feelings of excitement and passion bubbling up again inside. suddenly craving basketball, not to be the best or even to compete, but simply for the love of shooting around, the way i remember it from was when i was little.

i realized while shooting lay ups today that long ago i gave up practicing shooting the ball with my left hand. it must have been back in jr. high that i came to the conclusion that i wasn't as skilled with my left hand, therefore, if i couldn't dribble or shoot well (perfectly) with that hand immediately, i wouldn't even try. from that point on i solely focused on my right hand, blocking out the left side completely. i was shocked at this remembrance. how someone so young, only 11 years old, could give up so quickly for fear of failure, not knowing that with a little practice her left hand skills would surely develop. i felt tenderness for that little person who was/is me, who was so deathly afraid of what might happen if she didn't do it perfectly.

so this afternoon, at age 32, on a basketball court in korea, i began learning how to shoot with my left hand. i did it for the little girl in me that gave up on that over 20 years ago and is still kicking herself. it was humbling, all those air balls, with 75 jock guys watching, but boy oh boy i felt an aliveness inside that was powerful beyond any old, critical voices shouting "stop! before you make a total fool of yourself." today, both a little girl smile and a 32 year old, grown woman, "you're safe with me" smile met those voices and a softness in the belly that kindly said, "you've come a long way, baby...just do it!"

right then and there, life became new.

winter chrysanthemums

2009-11-13T21:26:00.009+09:00

this day begs to be written...

i hopped on the 8am train to mungyeong with my thermos of homemade miso, a small bundle of steamed rice and some dried seaweed. perfect breakfast for a blustery, cold winter's morning. two and a half hours later upon arriving at my destination, my dear friend, soojin, picked me up at the train station and took me to her husband's dental clinic where i received royal treatment. i had two cavities filled and a cleaning for no charge at all. i argued and argued, but it is no use arguing against the korean way of giving. it is a hopeless undertaking and such an amazing practice of receiving and letting in the bounty of it all. the gifted dental care was just the beginning.

we left the clinic and drove a few miles to a very well known potter/tea master's house just outside of the tiny mountain town of mungyeong. as soon as i saw him with his humble monk's clothing, his greying hair and beard and his kind, sparkly eyes, i knew we'd come somewhere special. wolpa songsangnim welcomed us into his teahouse/potter's studio with open arms and gentle demeanor. he, soojin and her husband go WAY back...15 years of friendship. we seated ourselves on cushions on the heated floor at a long, rustic wooden tea table. he served us steaming little cups of boicha (puerh tea). when he'd heard we were coming, soojin said he ran up the mountain and picked some fresh crysanthemum flowers to put in a vase hanging on the wall. the decor of his space was traditional korean style...sparse, zen-like, with just a few pieces of earthen pottery and a sprig of yellow winter flowers that spoke volumes of simplicity and beauty.

wolpa kept commenting that i look like demi moore! (not many foreigners come to mungyeong!!) after about 20 cups of boicha later, we headed out for a fantastic feast of tofu veggie soup and rice with all the usual side dishes. the owner of the restaurant gave us some mountain berry wine as "service" (on the house), so we ate, drank and were more than merry! wolpa's face turned beet red with just two small cups of alcohol and he began speaking in poems, as many koreans do. it was so sweet, so wonderful. his name alone is a poem. "wolpa" means "moonlight on the waves." wow. with a name like that, you're pretty much set.

we returned to wolpa's tea sanctuary after lunch for another hour of relaxing and getting giddy on cha (tea). the mayor of mungyeong showed up and told us that tea saved his life. i guess he has a hole in his stomach and a bum liver from too much alcohol consumption. needless to say, he's quit the soju and now only drinks tea. he swears on it's healing capacities. wolpa served us all a very rare brew called "young ju cha" which translates as "dragon ball tea." it is some sort of bug excrement that is scraped off of the tea leaves (usually puerh leaves that are aging in brick form) and supposedly does wonders for digestion/detoxification. soojin called it by it's true name, "poo tea." after only moments of steeping, the tea is as dark as the blackest coffee. the aroma is much like that of puerh. very earthy, like a damp forest floor. i had to really work with my mind around aversion and absolute disgust at the thought of ingesting bug poo juice...but i quickly rationalized that i've done countless things in the last two plus years of being in korea that have pushed me past my limits of what i thought i could handle (and i'm still alive), so why not add this to the list!? then i took a swig. almost identical to a rich, old puerh. we enjoyed what must have been seven or eight steepings. and yes, it was certainly aided the digestion process.

wolpa makes gorgeous matcha bowls, traditional korean tea pots, tea cups, tea serving bowls, pitchers, vases, etc...everything is one of a kind. the moment we arrived and i saw the tea pitcher he was using to serve our tea, i started drooling. so raw and earthy, rustic and tactile. the shape unlike any pitcher i've seen thus far. later, as soojin and i were wandering about wolpa's studio, admiring all of his creations, i saw a pitcher very similar to the one he was using. i called soojin over and asked her "how much do you think this is!?" i was sure it was at least $300, as his pieces are very expensive and sought after in korea. she just shook her head and said, "mmm...i don't know." he and soojin had a secret discussion a little while after our walk around his studio in which she must have told him of my affinity for that pitcher. later, he brought the piece out to the tea table where we were all sitting and used it to make one steeping of tea and then mindfully dried it and wrapped it up in a beautiful rust colored cloth and placed it into my hands. i actually started crying, overcome with gratitude for the overflowing generosity of the day, which shocked all of the koreans, as emotion is typically not the first mode of expression! however, i know it was very apparent how much the gift meant to me and that fact wiped away any self-consciousness i felt for wearing my heart on my sleeve.

"today i was happy, so i made this poem"

by james wright

"as the plump squirrel scampers
across the roof of the corncrib,
the moon suddenly stands up in the darkness,
and i see that it is impossible to die.
each moment of time is a mountain.
an eagle rejoices in the oak trees of heaven,
crying
this is what i wanted."

i realize that when i am drinking tea in the company of kind, good-hearted people...and when i am close to nature...i feel well in my soul.
soojin and me...september '09
the beautiful pitcher from wolpa...and my favorite tea cup!

cosmos

2009-10-28T22:23:00.002+09:00

"i heard once that it is better to meet god alone than with someone who wouldn't understand."

-noah levine "dharma punx"

child of the moon

2009-10-08T10:31:00.007+09:00

the words spill out
tumbling down like rain
washing away the salt of my grief.
time, waiting for no one, steals away
with the pain.
one day, i wake laughing
surprising myself into some kind of joy.
remembrance of something lighter,
wondering where it had gone for so long.
the light in my window
keeps burning
flickering to and fro
keeping time with the twinkling stars.
mother moon glowing kindly
upon my tired face
offering the promise of renewal.
"always," she says.
there is no such thing
as staying the same.

ithaka

2009-09-20T21:57:00.002+09:00

"As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean."

By: C.P. Cavafy

i wanna go to beautiful...beautiful...beautiful

2009-09-04T22:00:00.004+09:00

"Beautiful" by India Arie

	- - -

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

"I wish I could take language
And fold it like cool, moist rags.
I would lay words on your forehead.
I would wrap words on your wrists.
"There, there," my words would say-
Or something better.
I would ask them to murmur,
"Hush" and "Shh, shhh, it's all right."
I would ask them to hold you all night.
I wish I could take language
And daub and soothe and cool
Where fever blisters and burns
Where fever turns yourself against you.
I wish I could take language
And heal the words that were the wounds
You have no name for."

by Julia Cameron
From "The Artist's Way"
(thanks, mom...xoxo)

one last time

2009-08-23T20:38:00.002+09:00

back in south korea...swimming in a sea of flashing neon signs...happy to see friends, neighbors, familiar taxi drivers, and bread baking happiness....jet-lagged as hell...made it to 8:40pm, heading to bed at long last! more to come...

summer of thirty-two

2009-07-13T16:53:00.022+09:00

mountain home winery...hanging out after seeing emmylou harris, patty griffin, and shawn colvin perform. wow, what a night.

sweet nicoletoupe and mouth...on the sonoma coast
jen and me...relaxing in the japanese garden at osmosis on my birthday
i left my heart in san francisco
brenda, des, me, joy - at the cloisters, NYC
the cloisters
times square
jo jo and me, on our way to walk over the brooklyn bridge to eat at grimaldi's - the BEST pizza place in new york...in the world, for that matter!

"i am not afraid. i was born to do this." - saint joan of arc
mystic pizza...mystic, connecticut
newport, rhode island - the mansion cliff walk
dezers and me...on a quest for new hats in p-town
aahhh...the cape
provincetown beach...cape cod
at blackwater pond...mary oliver pilgrimage
reading oliver's poetry
toupe - back in black, baby! heading to martha's vineyard.
college gals
my little dudie...heading to seattle to make a new home...so exciting!! so proud.
mom and dudie
dad
gram and grampa making their first ever vietnamese spring rolls!
northern minnesota
this year's birthday poem...

as the layers peel back
as the hard edges soften
as the belly relaxes
as pure energy becomes apparent
as tenderness embraces what is
letting go
letting go
letting go
catching a glimpse that fear is no rival
not for the deepest thing
not for that which holds it all
real love is underneath
surrounding
holding
transforming
all that is not love
upon sensing this
trust pervades the heart

this is to mother you

2009-06-26T18:47:00.003+09:00

tonight i heard emmylou harris sing this song under the moon and stars at the mountain winery in saratoga, california. i had never heard it before. i couldn't believe the beauty of it.

"This is to mother you
To comfort you and get you through
Through when your nights are lonely
Through when your dreams are only blue
This is to mother you
This is to be with you
To hold you and to kiss you too
For when you need me I will do
What your own mother didn't do
Which is to mother you
All the pain that you have known
All the violence in your soul
All the 'wrong' things you have done
I will take from you when I come
All mistakes made in distress
All your unhappiness
I will take away with my kiss, yes
I will give you tenderness
For child I am so glad I've found you
Although my arms have always been around you
Sweet bird although you did not see me
I saw you
And I'm here to mother you
To comfort you and get you through
Through when your nights are lonely
Through when your dreams are only blue
This is to mother you."

the fire that holds it all

2009-06-19T21:46:00.006+09:00

three times my life has opened

by: jane hirshfield

"three times my life has opened.

once, into darkness and rain.

once, into what the body carries at all times within it and starts to remember each time it enters the act of love.

once, to the fire that holds all.

these three were not different.

you will recognize what i am saying or you will not.

but outside my window all day a maple has stepped from her leaves like a woman in love with winter, dropping the colored silks.

neither are we different in what we know.

there is a door. it opens. then it is closed. but a slip of light stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor, or the one red leaf the snow releases in march."

-from her 1997 collection: "the lives of the heart"

the sweetest cookie

2009-06-15T22:58:00.020+09:00

woopi, cookie and me outside of the children's library that woopi got up and running this spring in her apartment complex. it's beautiful. a group of women volunteer and over 100 kids use it after school and on the weekends. it's a wonderful resource for the community. woopi was very proud to bring me there and show me what she had created! "and i don't get paid," she kept saying!

hanging out with the kids

group photo before saying farewell
we went for sushi with one of woopi's fellow library volunteers and her two girls...soooo cute!
cookie and i jammin' with our microphones all the way to the mountains
waiting for the gondola to arrive so we could hitch a ride up the mountain...cookie was pretty nervous.
scary gondola ride up to the top of apsan (a mountain in the middle of daegu)
woopi and her best friend from high school and her friend's husband

in the restaurant on top of apsan overlooking a smoggy day in daegu

sweet cookie...

kissing cookie

woopi and her boys

with woopi and her husband

the lady of the snakes

2009-06-15T22:51:00.001+09:00

"Little pink dress, hanging by her knees
Just overhead on the old trapeze
In the old tent tonight, spotlight going round
One of these nights the old girl's going down
Hallelujah, the old girl's going down

She started with us on the back of a horse
Just seventeen and already divorced
She took to the air with the greatest of ease
Like she was born to be gliding on the old trapeze

Some people don't care if they live or they die
Some people want to know what it feels like to fly
Gather their courage and they give it a try

Some guy broke her heart and how her heart it did ache
So she went to the tent of the lady of the snakes
Who gave her a potion and she drank it in
After that her heart never ached again
After that her heart never ached again

Some poeple don't care if they live or they die
Some people want to know what it feels like to fly
Gather their courage and they give it a try
Fall under the wheels of a time goin' by

Little pink dress, hanging by her knees
Just overhead on the old trapeze
In the old tent tonight, spotlight going round
One of these nights the old girl's going down

Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah
Hallelujah"

-"Trapeze" by Patty Griffin

all we can do

2009-06-12T22:57:00.004+09:00

"Grief will come to you.
Grip and cling all you want,
It makes no difference.

Catastrophe? It's just waiting to happen.
Loss? You can be certain of it.

Flow and swirl of the world.
Carried along as if by a dark current.

All you can do is keep swimming;
All you can do is keep singing."

-From How Beautiful the Beloved by Gregory Orr

"dance when you're broken open...dance when you're perfectly free" - rumi

2009-06-07T01:36:00.004+09:00

"i'm not just dancing,
i'm dismembering muscular memory
and shaping things to come."

-jewel mathieson

all the time

2009-06-05T22:19:00.003+09:00

"sometimes i go about pitying myself, when all the time i am being carried on great winds across the sky."

-ojibway wisdom

castles in the sand

2009-06-04T00:07:00.045+09:00

a group of us from yeungnam university hopped on the train to busan last sunday for the haeundae beach sandcastle fest...and the opening night performances of the 5th annual busan international dance festival. upon arrival, we met up with a few friends who live in busan.

christina sandwich!
"stop nuclear war"
totoro

watering the sand!

gorgeous shot, matthew!
pegasus rides again....the stage set up for the dance festival, right on the beach
heaven...i'm in heaven.

love the little visor!
heather, jen and t dippin' their toes in!
so happy to be at haeundae!
the east sea
christina brought along a couple of games for us to try out on the beach. a cambodian version of hacky sac and a rope! the possibilities were endless! and the laughs too!

heather showin' off her rock star hacky sac moves!
as sarah would say, "j-fo, summoning her powers!"

chris and sarah - "stay down, gurl, stay down!"
ROPE GAME:
(in matthew's words)
"wrap rope half way around one person's waist, then feed the rope towards person two diagonally. again, wrap the rope half way around the waist. each person holds onto the rope with one hand. goal of the game, throw your opponent off balance without moving your feet and only using one hand to hold the rope. loads of fun."
heather and christina
pablo plagued with the giggles!
we finally got him to play, as he'd been watching our silliness with a big grin for quite a while!
and she's going, going....gone! finally, someone took down the reigning champion!

i will NOT go down!

sarah...aka: gumby
booty power!

i get such a kick out of the formality of beach attire here!

we had quite a few onlookers as we played our beach games!

a picture worth a thousand words
pablo and i sippin' on some complimentary drinks while waiting at outback steakhouse for an order to go!
a beautiful boat on the sea...gorgeous scene...and an extraordinary, balmy summer night.
hyun ja kim and korea art dance company - "sea"

in ja park ballet - "fantasy"

the canadian tap dancers (ZOGMA)

dance group from chicago - "hopelandic"

hong kong's city contemporary dance company "365 ways of doing and undoing orientalism"

australia's expressions dance company - "raw"

jikjisa

2009-06-03T22:58:00.021+09:00

one of the four guardians of the jikji temple gates! yikes.
jikjisa...in the pouring rain
chae and i struck up a conversation with a canadian woman who's here in korea visiting her daughter who teaches english (she also has another daughter teaching in china!). she kindly took our picture.
rubbin' big, laughing buddha's belly while making prayers of lovingkindness, abundance and peace.

peering into the temple of 1,000 buddhas
snowy winter temple grounds
kuan yin
bamboo forest

prayers made by pilgrims passing by
because of the rain, we had the temple grounds almost to ourselves. we meandered leisurely under our umbrellas. chae spent some time in the main temple making prayers for noh muhyun (korea's previous president who recently committed suicide), while i found my way to the back side of the temple where i stood mesmerized by a beautiful bamboo forest.
jikjisa is one of the oldest and largest temples in korea. i was surprised by how intimate it felt...similar to how unmunsa (the women's temple) feels to me. deeply feminine and nurturing. as we walked i saw many images of kuan yin, goddess of compassion. she had one entire temple building to herself....a large golden statue of her sitting with one leg extended, an active posture in which she is ready to assist those who are suffering.
when chae and i came upon the temple tea house, without question we went inside. we both ordered chinese date tea, as it is perfect for a cold, blustery day. two small tea cups accompanied our large mugs of date tea, as well as a bowl of popcorn! you just NEVER, EVER know what you're gonna get in korea! there is always some element of surprise. most of the time, i love this. we did not know the extra tea cups contained unbelievably strong alcohol, so we both took big gulps at the same time, which led to loud sputtering and laughter!
after we recovered from the shock of 30 proof plum wine and were sipping our rich, warm date tea, i told chae that i would love to have a tea house someday... he knows my dream of creating a healing center for women, but he didn't know the extent of my passion for tea. then i said, "i would love to volunteer in this tea shop for a bit and learn all about the art of tea - korean style." he got all excited and thought that was the best idea ever. before i knew it, he was asking the owner if my working there would be a possibility. as they were chatting, i was sure she was explaining all the reasons why it would not be possible for me to help out and learn from her, but then he turned to me and said, "she says, 'welcome!'" she immediately called the monk (on the phone) who is in charge of temple stays and volunteer programs. a few minutes later he entered the tea house and sat with us for awhile. he and chae talked about the possibilities of my involvement at the monastery. according to the monk i am over qualified to teach the english camps for kids (thank goodness!), which is their main volunteer opportunity for foreigners, and so he thought the best idea would be for me to come whenever i have a free chunk of time and work one on one with the tea house owner. my eyes grew wide and i felt my heart leap out of my chest. that means i would not have to be part of an official temple stay, which scares the bejesus out of me after that horror or horrors temple stay last fall at musangsa. according to the monk, i could just stay independently at the temple and focus on tea. this appeals to me more than i myself could have even imagined before that moment. i thanked the monk profusely, bowing a million times, and chae and i headed back to gumi for night class.

don't cry for me, argentina!

2009-05-30T02:58:00.014+09:00

mijeong's surprise birthday dinner
kate 'n mijeong
left to right: me, mijeong, heeana, boshim, and haesong...grilling samgypsal (pork) and veggies for dinner, along with steamed sweet potatoes, burgers, organic chicken, and rice. a yummy feast.
birthday candles, yogurt cake and "magic" brownies (well, not really MAGIC)
mijeong and kate rippin' up the noraebang (karaoke) floor!
jungwha

jungwha and elena goin' to town on the tambourines
elena, me, jungwha and heeana

a new soul

2009-05-29T21:08:00.003+09:00

yael naim, born in paris in 1978. when she was four years old, she and her family moved to a small town near tel aviv where she spent most of her childhood. i heard her music for the first time today in a little cafe near the university. her self-titled album released in 2007 has a great vibe. here's a little taste, although this song has a bit more of a pop-sound than her other stuff.

a trail walked a hundred thousand times

2009-05-28T23:06:00.016+09:00

"Meditation is the training of returning to the original self.
It is not something that only happens in a temple or meditation hall.
It is the work of gazing into our inner mind without illusion,
in order to throw the mind wide open,
in order to throw wide open
the mind that has been closed in, fold upon fold, and besieged with entanglements."

-Beop Jeong Sunim (Korean monk)

a dear friend sent me this quote today. upon reading it, something inside of me lurched forward in recognition of the monk's final phrase. it's as if the cells in my body knew the meaning of those words inside and out, like the back of my hand, or a trail walked a hundred thousand times. a knowing from merely this lifetime, or countless lifetimes before, whatever the case, the groove of being besieged with entanglements is deep. i sensed a great weariness in my heart as those words rippled throughout my being, as if recognizing in resplendent clarity, if but only for a moment, that i'd reached a point of finally having worn out that path. could this be so?
pema chodron says that those who have had great pain in their lives, whether they experienced it when they were young or later in life, those people are usually the ones who get really serious about a spiritual path. these days i notice that my relationship to the particular, eclectic spiritual path i choose to engage with isn't just icing on the cake for me. it IS the cake. and since, if i had my way, i'd prefer to eat dessert first, it goes without saying that cake is the full meal deal in my book. spiritual practice has evolved into a way of life, rooted in necessity. "it is the work of gazing into our inner mind WITHOUT illusion." truth. looking honestly at oneself. no bullshit. no blinders. no fancy footwork. recognizing what is true, even in those dark corners of the mind where we are sure our secrets are safe, even from our own eyes. looking honestly again and again and honoring what is true, expressing what is true, and living in congruence. taking that still-point seat in meditation...gazing with pure honesty...ceasing to deny or turn away from the truth, even when it threatens to burn us up inside...gazing with fierce compassion at all that is....a tried and true gateway into the depths of intimacy.

throwing wide open the mind....like the vast, spacious sky...where clouds pass by, just as thoughts through the mind....they appear then disappear....appear then disappear....come and then go....come and then go. and so it is. everything moves. everything changes. life in flux. so may we let go. may we let go. may we let go.

juice feast

2009-05-26T17:17:00.010+09:00

to support a friend who has recently had some health issues come up, i joined her on a juice fast or "juice feast" as she likes to refer to it!! she is dedicated for 7 days as a massive cleanse. i have decided to end tonight, which will have made my juicing extravaganza 3 days in length. it feels perfect for what my body needs at this time. these last several days have been characterized by increased physical lightness, quieting of the mind, feeling unable to move at my normal (accelerated) pace, deep and peaceful sleep, a brightening of my skin, and serious, serious cleansing!

the only fasting experience i've had in my life was when i went to the canyonlands of utah back in may 2003 on a "vision quest" with a group of people through the animas valley institute. we were together as a group, hiking and camping, for a majority of the time, but went off on our own solo journeys where we fasted for four days and three nights in the desert! no, the devil didn't come to tempt me, however, i did encounter myself in a very altered state which made for incredible dreams and dayworld imaginations! i remember we were encouraged by the group guides to call in anyone we had unfinished business with during our solo fast and converse with them as if they were standing there before us. the conversations that transpired under my a-frame tarp were pretty amazing. some dead and some living came to visit me and we expressed things never before said...there was laughter, tears and healing in ways i never could have imagined. when in such an altered state, as hunger seems to induce, the ego loosens its grip after awhile and within that state of being the possibilities of experience range into territory never encountered before.

the juice fast has not impelled such an extreme altered state, but i have sensed similar feelings as when i fasted that spring in the great canyons. i am grateful for this time to slow down and become more deeply aware of the way i move through the world. i appreciate the opportunity to clearly notice some of the ways i operate unconsciously. it feels great to give my digestive system a break from having to process solid foods. and most of all, i am experiencing a state of relaxation and restfulness that is so hard to come by these days in a world that moves at such a frantic pace.
as part of slowing down, i've watched a few really wonderful films:
10 questions for the dalai lama

the reader

stanley and iris

it's that time of year again!

2009-05-25T16:46:00.025+09:00

chris and jihoon joined me for a bike ride over to campus where the yeungnam university spring festival was going down!chris, inhui and i hanging out at the FLI (foreign language institute) festival tent where they were grilling up burgers, hot dogs and selling bowls of homemade chilisheila holding a bowl of chili in one hand, flipping burgers with the other!
bag 'o booze delivery man and pabloi'm not usually one for a cocktail in a bag, but that warm spring night had a buzz of adventure in the air! (jen, chris and me)inhui with her bag 'o booze (tequila sunrise)craig ("santa claus") talking with shawn (i wonder what's going through shawn's mind?!)heather and barbara edmondson from edmonton (alberta)!yatrensandy holding anandasangsoon ("jenny") - one of my dear students from my first semester in the english department. she will soon be going abroad to attend old dominion university in virginia.one of my students from this semester...great guy! "alex"rhea - one of my past students (she and her parents took to me to a temple last year)chili cook-off judgessandy's victory dance upon winning the chili cook-off!the main concert act of the night...surrounded by bubbles!chris, one of her chinese exchange students (jocelyn) and me
the bag o' booze cocktail guys prepping for their fire show!this was NO JOKE of a fire show!holy moses!chris, jihoon and one of jihoon's friends from culinary school

from a field of irises

2009-05-22T16:30:00.013+09:00

this week's gumi adventure
while chae and i were doing yoga in this gazebo, four women joined us with their korean wine and full spread picnic! they were super sweet, insisting we sit down with them, offering us a multitude of food and drinks. we enjoyed some mountain berry wine and herb tea, a few slices of melon and bell pepper. then out of nowhere a psycho hornet dove at warp speed from the ceiling into my shoulder, bounced off and flew away. i jumped up and yelped. thankfully it didn't sting. the others didn't seem to think this occurrence was a big deal. my feathers, on the other hand, were completely ruffled, but i sat back down to finish the picnic until i saw the hornet come back into the gazebo. i immediately excused myself, took my yoga mat out onto the grass and finished my wine and yoga routine from there.
chae soon joined me outside of the hornet's nest and found a relaxin' spot under the treesi find myself salivating over the trees in korea. so many varieties and all so beautiful. i don't know the name of the green one here, but i LOVE it. and of course the japanese maple...
chaeso, for the last two weeks we have relaxed all afternoon between classes at this park near gumi's big mountain...both times i taught chae some breathing exercises and yoga poses...we read...napped....and walked around admiring all the blooming flowers. it's been so good to get out of the samsung factory and into nature. we both noted that we feel so different in our bodies after an afternoon spent lying on the earth.

joggin' juice

2009-05-22T00:07:00.006+09:00

to start things off...

	Pink - Who Knew

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

	Kanye West - Heartless

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

pickin' up the pace....

	Chris Brown - Forever

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

	Rihanna - Umbrella [Feat. Jay-Z]

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

	Adele - Cold Shoulder

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

	Kings of Leon - Sex On Fire

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

	Gnarls Barkley - Gnarls Barkley - untitled 02

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

	Bedouin Soundclash - When The Night Feels My Song

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

sometimes it just takes the first few notes of a particular song to give that added burst of energy and we're flyin' again!

dream team reunion

2009-05-19T19:30:00.009+09:00

after teaching today, i rode my bike over to the baseball fields to watch the liberal arts department professors play their first tournament softball game against the natural science department. professor chae (who i go to gumi with every wednesday) and i cheered loudly from the sidelines! it was SOOOO great to see my old buds, professor woo and sahn...finally, the dream team reunited after our crazy adventures in gumi last semester.

professor chae, sahn and wooright as the picture was being taken, cheers erupted from our team as a homerun was being hit!professor woo up to batprofessor sahn and professor ju (pitcher)
WE WON! 10-8

disappearing

2009-05-19T00:37:00.003+09:00

"The day she first told me she was starting to disappear I didn't believe her & so she stopped & held her hand up to the sun & it was like thin paper in the light & finally I said you seem very calm for a woman who is disappearing & she said it was a relief after all those years of trying to keep the pieces of her life in one place. Later on, I went to see her again & as I was leaving, she put a package in my hand. This is the last piece of my life, she said, take good care of it & then she smiled & was gone & the room filled with the sound of the wind & when I opened the package there was nothing there & I thought there must be some mistake or maybe I dropped it & I got down on my hands & knees & looked until the light began to fade & then slowly I felt the pieces of my life fall away gently & suddenly I understood what she meant & I lay there for a long time crying & laughing at the same time."

-Brian Andreas

mindfulness-based stress reduction

2009-05-18T16:08:00.002+09:00

marvelous, marvelous, marvelous lecture by mr. jon kabat-zinn

Earth

2009-05-17T22:09:00.003+09:00

"Let the day grow on you upward
through your feet,
the vegetal knuckles,

to your knees of stone,
until by evening you are a black tree;
feel, with evening,

the swifts thicken your hair,
the new moon rising out of your forehead,
and the moonlit veins of silver

running from your armpits
like rivulets under white leaves.
Sleep, as ants

cross over your eyelids.
You have never possessed anything
as deeply as this.

This is all you have owned
from the first outcry
through forever;

you can never be dispossessed."

~ Derek Walcott ~
from Sea Grapes

i dream of africa

2009-05-17T16:56:00.019+09:00

ready to hop on my bike and roll out for an early mornin' run
the yeungnam university track surrounding the soccer field. a 5 minute bike ride from my apartment. when i arrived this morning a soccer game was already in full swing. i love running while there's a lot of excitement and action going on down there. i also love the times when there's not a soul around, just me and wind, sky, track and field.i have been running every other day for three weeks now. i started out thinking i would run a mile and then add on 1/4 mile every run. after a week of doing that i discovered that i'd been running two miles from the get go and had been adding 1/2 mile to each run! embarrassing mistake, indeed, and shows how little i've actually run in my life!! however, i was ecstatic to find out i had been wrong! since then, i've been running about 2.5-3 miles each time i go. sometimes more... when that "runner's high" kicks in, it's like i could run forever. i have never experienced that sensation until now. it's incredible.

i don't know exactly how to describe this urge to run, but it took me by surprise one sunday afternoon and hasn't let me go. my body is eating it up. i feel more physical stamina than i have felt in....well, a very long time. during a run, i feel as though my mind and body are set free. soaring, clear, strong, without bounds. after a run, i feel at peace, whole body relaxed, mind sharp and at ease. i feel a renewed sense of connection with my body and the immeasurable blessing of good health, strong muscles and sturdy bones. it's amazing the things we lose sight of and take for granted when we are lost in thought.basketball courts in the distanceon my way to and from the track, i bike by this beautiful viewand this sweet little brown creek with weeping willows and rushessantorini...local wine bar/coffee/teashopyesterday afternoon, i took myself and my umbrella out into the rain to santorini. during the course of sipping down two pots of loose leaf earl grey (with a little steamed milk on the side) and two pots of chamomile (to balance out the black tea buzz as the hour was approaching bedtime), i read "a new earth" by eckhart tolle and wrote in my journal. i was there for about 4 hours. i've taken to writing down passages that especially resonate while i'm reading and then if thoughts arise or memories, i record those amidst the quotes in a different color ink.

in chapter 3, "the core of ego," a part about forgiveness really struck me. eckhart talks about the nature of grievances and how we must look very honestly to see how we harbor them. we must become aware of the grievance on the level of thought and the level of emotion, which is the body's response to those thoughts. then, instead of TRYING to let go or forgive, which he says never works, forgiveness will naturally happen when we see that the grievance has no other purpose other than to strengthen a false sense of self, to keep the ego in place. forgiving is an undoing of one of the main egoic structures of the mind.

wow.

"beggie-dong" - building 102...my abode

an updated view from my 10th floor front door
this afternoon, kate and i went on a mini adventure to check out what we thought was an african restaurant that opened recently! it's called "AFRICA." after visiting, we still cannot figure out why it's been given that name! nothing about it even remotely resembles anything pertaining to africa. kate ordered "tenderloin rice" and i had "cheese oven spaghetti" (most menu items were a mystery, even though they were written in konglish, as well as korean, but still nothing african, i promise you)! the ambiance was posh. the food pricey but actually very good. my oven baked spaghetti was the epitome of comfort food. just what i needed after my long run this morning!!

after eating, we meandered a bit outside, as the restaurant is located in the countryside on the outskirts of yeungnam university. we came upon several newly built, western-style, suburban homes with white picket fences, decks equipped with weber grills and grassy lawns with blooming flowers and fruit trees. a scene i would turn my nose up at back in the states, thinking: "oh, that is so suburbia, cookie-cutter homes, picket fences, ICK!" it's strange the things that happen when you are gone from home for a long time and suddenly see something familiar in such a drastically different culture. my heart began to ache. i could actually feel a deep pain in my chest, a longing, a missing of home...of something so deeply familiar and comforting, from all the way back into childhood. kate and i both stood speechless, staring at the white picket fence scene in all its archetypal glory... then we both turned to each other and shook our heads, smiling in awe. then kate said to me, "do you think anybody who lives in those houses might want to hire a couple of english tutors?!" i said, "let's go see!" we didn't (not yet anyway!), but we both agreed that we'd revisit this place sometime soon. we both noted that the smells in the air were even reminiscent of saskatchewan...of the midwest...of the places we've known for most of our lives as home.

eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

2009-05-16T15:46:00.014+09:00

	Rosie Thomas - Farewell

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

"how happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
the world forgetting, by the world forgot
eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
each prayer accepted, and each wish resigned."

-from alexander pope's poem "eloisa to abelard"

it's saturday afternoon and pouring rain outside my window. i've been cozied up for the last couple of hours watching "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind." a good friend strongly recommended i see this film. it came out in 2004, somehow i missed it back then.
between tears and wow's, i'm left feeling pretty internal. i may watch it again, as most of the movie flowed backwards in time and a second go round would surely make more of the pieces come together.
i will say this, despite all of the hard feelings that can surround the ending of a relationship, this film is a testament that nothing is wasted. no time, no efforts, no love. and to erase someone from memory may seem like an appealing prospect in the height of hurt or anger, but ultimately, it is through the memory of love that we continue to love both backwards and forwards in time, that we continue to learn (god willing), and that we weave together the tapestry of our lives... the beautiful memories are the ones that bring healing and invite us again and again to trust in life.

from the film...

Clementine: This is it, Joel. It's going to be gone soon.
Joel: I know.
Clementine: What do we do?
Joel: Enjoy it.

from the soundtrack...

	Beck - everybody's gotta learn sometime

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

moon song

2009-05-10T20:08:00.019+09:00

haeundae train stationi spent all day saturday on haeundae beach...looking out over the east sea. the sun shined so warm with cool breezes coming off of the ocean. medicine for body and soul.couple shirts!?!! emerging from each having thrown the other into the water!not uncommon korean beach attire! three guys kicking a ball around in their dress clothes! i would be sweating like mad.
kiwi apple and strawberry banana smoothies (served with complimentary white toast and whipped cream!)....in a juice cafe with swings!
what a contrast, eh!? from peaceful seaside rest and sipping fruit juice in a swing to crowded, flashing neon soup.my first time smoking a hookah (at a turkish restaurant)! chad ordered cherry mint flavor for us all to try after a huge feast of a meal. i was skeptical as cherry mint sounds like a very strange combo, but he swore by it, and it was actually really nice...very cooling. being a nonsmoker though, my lungs and throat could only handle a few inhalations. it was fun to try as i've wondered what it might be like every time i've seen hookahs in restaurants around berkeley.something shocking was said at our table, right in the middle of my turn! choking and coughing up a storm followed!gwanganlee beach, with the gorgeous bridge lit up in the distance....a group of older korean men singing songs together as they watched their fireworks (in a tube - sold by vendors up and down the beach) go off against the night sky!
after dinner we sat on the beach for a while under the light of a full scorpio moon (often called "the buddha moon").

"It is said that Buddha was born, died, and received enlightenment on the Full Moon is Scorpio. Every year this great being returns to the earth plane to assist humanity towards enlightenment. The Buddha Full Moon or Wesak Moon is one of the most powerful Full Moons; in fact, many consider this the highest spiritual day of the year."

-from the May 2009 newsletter written by astrologer, Virginia Bell

-patty griffin "moon song"....sad, sad, sad...but so beautiful...the emotionality in her voice is exquisite.

one of the most important books i've read

2009-05-08T21:47:00.010+09:00

tonight, i curled up on the couch and finished this book. i feel infinitely grateful that this stunning read crossed my path. this book has blown open my understanding of human intimacy (both in general and my own particular strands of experience). it's written by three doctors from the university of california san francisco. the synopsis reads:
"'the heart has its reasons whereof reason knows nothing.'
in this fascinating account of the psychobiology of love, the authors uncover proof of pascal's famous statement. drawing on new scientific discoveries about the human brain, they describe the workings of our ancient, pivotal urge for intimacy, revealing that our nervous systems are not self-contained: from earliest childhood our brains actually link with those of the people close to us in a silent rhythm that makes up the life force of the body. these wordless ties determine our mood, stabilize and maintain our health, and change the structure of our brains, so that, in a very real sense, who we are and who we become depend on whom we love..."

the authors explain how our limbic systems are open-looped, meaning we are not totally self-contained or self-sufficient. the western ideal of the rugged individualist is nothing but a daydream here in limbic reality. we are conditioned to think we can make it on our own, as independent beings. our limbic brains beg to differ.
it is encouraged in the west for parents not to allow their babies to sleep with them in the same bed (move infants towards independence right at the get go), however just about everywhere else in the world children sleep with their parents for the first few years. here in korea, entire families sometimes sleep together on the floor in the same room. it is almost completely unheard of for a baby to sleep apart from his/her parents (i've been asking around!). "a general theory of love" goes into detail about the crucial limbic rhythms and regulation that develop when babies/young children sleep next to their parents. i think we in the west forget that most of the world lives more communally than we do. we mistake our way for normal...for superior.

just a little background: the limbic brain evolved after the reptilian brain. it brought forth a fresh neural structure that allowed mammals to care for one other, to form close-knit, mutually nurturing groups (families/communities), and to experience feelings/emotions.
the neo-cortex is the most recently evolved and is the largest of the three brains in humans. it rules the intellect.

in the authors' own words:
"evolution has given mammals a shimmering conduit, and they use it to tinker with one another's physiology, to adjust and fortify one another's fragile neural rhythms in the collaborative dance of love...we call this mutually synchronizing exchange limbic regulation...
because human physiology is (at least in part) an open-loop arrangement, an individual does not direct all of his/her own functions. a second person transmits regulatory information that can alter hormone levels, cardiovascular function, sleep rhythms, immune function and more - inside the body of the first...
even after a peak parenting experience, children never transition to a fully self-tuning physiology. adults remain social animals; they continue to require a source of stabilization outside themselves. that open-loop design means that in some important ways, people cannot be stable on their own - not should or shouldn't be, but can't be... stability means finding people who regulate you well and staying near them...
this necessary intermingling of physiologies makes relatedness and communal living the center of human life. we recognize instinctively that healthy human beings are not loners. of his famous retreat to walden pond, thoreau wrote, 'i went to the woods because i wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life,' but he did not front them alone. his nearest neighbor was but a mile distant, and the city of concord two miles; thoreau depended on both liberally, and dined frequently with friends."

a bit more...
"because limbic resonance and regulation join human minds together in a continuous exchange of influential signals, every brain is part of a local network that shares information... all of us, when we engage in relatedness, fall under the gravitational influence of another's emotional world, at the same time we are bending his/her emotional mind with ours. each relationship is a binary star, a burning flux of exchanged force fields, the deep and ancient influences emanating and felt, felt and emanating.
the limbic transmissions render personal identity partially malleable - the specific people to whom we are attached provoke a portion of our everyday neural activity. in the vistas of imagination, the self is a proud ship of state - subject to the winds and tides of circumstance, certainly, but bristling with masts and spars and beams, fairly bursting with solidity. we would scarcely imagine that identity could be as fluid as the seas that supposed self rides upon."

enough for me

2009-05-08T09:36:00.003+09:00

"The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead. A snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery, even if mixed with fear, that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty. It is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude. In this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. Enough for me, the mystery of the eternity of life and the inkling of the marvelous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavor to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature."

From: "The World As I See It" by Albert Einstein, published in 1956.

early morning enthusiasm

2009-05-06T11:25:00.004+09:00

i'm writing from the samsung factory in gumi, during my 7 hour break between classes. the sunlight is streaming in the window as i eat a bowl of organic strawberries with my chopsticks and sip lemon verbena iced tea. i've learned to bring my own snacks to gumi as the cafeteria here leaves me feeling a little unsettled more often than not.

the sky is unusually blue, the air unusually fresh. it's one of those rare, pristine days in korea, the spring perfume of lilacs in the air.

this morning i took the train to gumi, as the professor i normally carpool with cancelled his classes this week. i passed out hard during the 7am, 50-minute train ride, but luckily set my cell phone alarm to wake me upon arrival to gumi, otherwise i surely would have ended up in seoul. i caught a cab at the train station, and to my good fortune happened upon the most out-of-this-world, hilarious driver. first of all, he had some hard core rap music playing "from the dirty, dirty south." (quote from one of the songs) he was wearing enormous, brown-tinted sunglasses with gold rims and his hair smoothly slicked back, totally gettin' down to the music! singing, tapping his hands all over the steering wheel and wiggling around like crazy in his seat! did i mention that he looked to be in his 70's or 80's? yes...he was an elderly gentleman who had an astounding amount of vitality and spice for life! i found myself unable to stop smiling...refreshed by his uniqueness, his flamboyance, and his enthusiasm so very early in the morning! by the time we made it to samsung, he had changed the station to a traditional korean song that i've heard a million times and was singing as if his life depended on it!

thought for the day:
"look at you, you madman, screaming you are thirsty and are dying in a desert when all around you there is nothing but water!"

-- kabir

up to the mountain (MLK song)

2009-05-05T13:16:00.006+09:00

"I went up to the mountain
Because you asked me to
Up over the clouds
To where the sky was blue
I could see all around me
Everywhere
I could see all around me
Everywhere

Sometimes I feel like
I've never been nothing but tired
And I'll be walking
Till the day I expire
Sometimes I lay down
No more can I do
But then I go on again
Because you ask me to

Some days I look down
Afraid I will fall
And though the sun shines
I see nothing at all
Then I hear your sweet voice, oh
Oh, come and then go, come and then go
Telling me softly
You love me so

The peaceful valley
Just over the mountain
The peaceful valley
Few come to know
I may never get there
Ever in this lifetime
But sooner or later
It's there I will go
Sooner or later
It's there I will go"

-Patty Griffin

To listen...

	Patty Griffin - Up to the Mountain

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

isn't she lovely?!

2009-05-04T23:54:00.000+09:00

my new bike!!

raindrops, tea leaves and kraze burgers - happy birthday buddha!

2009-05-03T23:26:00.010+09:00

kate, chris and i spent a drizzly buddha's birthday at the largest tea shop in korea, which just so happens to be downtown daegu. we sat and sipped korean green tea followed by a rare oolong from taiwan...as well as a banana smoothie on the house! strange, but actually quite satisfying combo! i visited this tea house once last semester and made friends with one of the guys who works there. he speaks english fluently and gives amazing deals on teaware. he was very happy to see that i'd returned and brought my friends with me, so he was even more generous with my purchases this time. i could easily spend all of my hard earned money in that place. you should see some of the high end, hand crafted pieces. works of art. absolutely gorgeous.
after leaving the tea house, we wandered through the herbal medicine market...
chris and kate awaiting an truly american meal at KRAZE BURGER
the kraze burger photo tree
kate bissell: kraze burger's latest and greatest windswept, lusty-eyed model from the prairies of saskatchewan!

a trip to the big city for my first haircut in korea!

2009-04-30T18:29:00.012+09:00

it's taken me over a year and a half to take the plunge of getting my hair chopped in korea! i always get it cut the day before leaving california, from octavia, the hairdresser extraordinaire, and then i end up back in california 4 months later looking like a yellow-haired raggedy ann. well, this semester i reached the point where i didn't want to start looking like a scruff ball, so i embarked upon a daring mission to seoul. i spent the day in itaewon, which is a neighborhood that caters to foreigners...a variety of international restaurants and grocery markets, english bookstores, english speaking hairdressers, etc... i had lunch with a friend at "chakra," a delicious indian restaurant situated down a cozy little alleyway. then we went to "what the book," a fantastic resource for those of us who are limited to reading books written in english. i could bask in that shop for days. k and i perused for a couple of hours, then moseyed on to an indian food market, which was a little slice of heaven for someone who lives in country-bumpkin gyeongsan, where a packet of instant, korean-style indian curry is the best one can find in any of the supermarkets. and let me just say, it's a far cry from authentic indian food. so i filled my backpack full of tasty spices, papadi, lentils, chickpeas, dried apricots, raisins...! k and i said our goodbyes and i headed up to michel's hair shop, which k highly recommended. turns out the shop was closed because it was monday. UGH! i'd been gearing myself up ALL day! alas. so, i found a coffee shop instead and relaxed with a piece of biscotti, a latte and read my newly purchased book.

that evening i met my dear friend, jungmyung, for dinner and tea at a traditional teahouse. i originally met jungmyung several years ago while living in california. she was in the process of attaining her phd. she helped me to find a job in korea, and now she has moved back to seoul in hopes of opening a women's wellness center. she's doing radical work in a very conservative, resistant culture.
we both ordered the steaming hot jujube tea...very medicinal on a cold, rainy korean night.after an evening of catching up, we hopped into a taxi and went to jungmyung's house up in the hills of seoul. this is a view of her living room and front window, looking out onto beautiful trees and the city off in the distance. our beautiful breakfast that she prepared ready and waiting on the table... her home is a sanctuary. i feel so lucky to be able to go and visit her often.
i returned to michel's the next day before heading back home. here we are, post-haircut!
michel was an absolute hoot. he spent several years doing hair in vancouver, but said there were way too many white people, so he came back to korea and set up a salon in itaewon where foreigners frequent but many koreans come as well. i could understand where he was coming from. he gave me a quick shampoo and then sat me down in the chair. my heart was pounding, as the point of no return had arrived. i explained what i wanted him to do and he seemed to approve. after cutting some of the length off, he proceeded to twirl chunks of my hair and then vigorously cut at each twisted up chunk, up and down in sporadic, sawing motions with one of those scissors that looks like it's going to cut all the way through but only cuts partially to give the hair texture. before i realized it was a partially cutting pair of scissors, i exclaimed, "what are you doing, michel?!" he casually said, "oh, this is just a little technique a created! it will keep you from getting split ends." "right." after that, i decided i just had to surrender to the experience. he was moving way to fast and furiously for me to have any foresight or control over what he was going to do next. and it all turned out ok in the end.
now that i've had a few days to absorb my first haircut experience in korea, i think i'd do it again! it took me a few days to figure out exactly what he'd done to my hair and how to style it, but i think i've got it now. and he gave me some pretty wicked korean hair wax that works like aveda could only dream of.

eve ensler on security

2009-04-26T18:33:00.001+09:00

caledonia

2009-04-25T23:06:00.003+09:00

"i don't know if you can see
the changes that have come over me
in these last few days I've been afraid
that i might drift away
so i've been telling old stories, singing songs
that make me think about where i came from
and that's the reason why i seem
so far away today..."

-dougie maclean

a pasture for gazelles

2009-04-23T23:35:00.005+09:00

"my heart holds within it every form,
it contains a pasture for gazelles,
a monastery for christian monks,
there's a temple for idol-worshippers,
a holy shrine for pilgrims;
there is the table of torah,
and the book of the koran.
i follow the religion of love
and go whichever way its camel leads me.
this is the true faith,
this is the true religion."

-ibn arabi (sufi mystic and philosopher, born july 28, 1165)

pain in the heart

2009-04-22T20:02:00.011+09:00

"our grief shows us how we are 'attached.' but it also shows us the glorious part of our attachment - that we are woven into the fabric of the world, that we are linked to everything that is."
-anne cushman
"whenever suffering comes, i will find a form to meet it.
how can i not be there?
pain will always open your eyes to see me."
-suzanne ironbiter, "the goddess's promise"

coming back to our senses

2009-04-19T16:18:00.018+09:00

from the temple grounds, overlooking a sea of concrete...in kate's words, "it's just so wrong." i find myself becoming a bit desensitized as the weeks go by, which comes with living in that sea of concrete, 10 floors above the earth. thank goodness, as soon as i step foot on the mountainside, i return to my senses. i return to my bones and flesh, earth and trees, to temples and soft breezes, pine needles and clouds. i fall madly in love all over again with nature, with what is real; it all comes flooding back into my body, into my heart.
when i leave korea, i think one monumental thing this experience of living in a concrete jungle with forever flashing neon lights and the constant sound of music blaring, announcements over a loud speaker or south korean fighter jets flying overhead, is that a simple, quiet life lived near the earth is one of immeasurable value. and that it is one i want to live.resting from the humid heat i seldom see bugs or insects of any kind in korea, but here is a whoppin' hornets' nest. i guess they feel safe at the temple...kate trying to get the best possible angle on that wickedly huge nestbeautiful...kateonly in korea would there be a near-full length mirror half way up the mountain hanging from a log! you must remember, it is commonplace to see women hiking these mountains in heels, dressed in their sunday's best. men too! well, not heels, they wear their business suits with shiny loafers. i can barely make it up there in my hiking boots. there's something i must be missing.

shine on

2009-04-18T22:33:00.009+09:00

my dear friends, nicole and quang, made vows of partnership this weekend.
i wish so much i could have been there as i have been witness to their lives over the last almost 7 years...
a few months ago, they asked me to write a union blessing for their ceremony.
so, from my heart to theirs...my deepest wishes for their partnership:

in the words of the vietnamese buddhist monk, thich nhat hanh:
"the flower, the sky, and your loved one -- you can only meet in the present moment."

dearest nicole and quang:

may your bond of love be rooted in true presence.
every moment seeing each other anew.
creating space for the river of change that naturally flows through all of life.
may a vast, open heart of understanding and compassion flower at the center of your beings.
may you hold one another gently, with a fierce grace and ease.
by cultivating well being and peace inside of yourselves, may you love in such a way that both of you feel a deep sense of freedom in your hearts.
the dance of playfulness and pure joy that you have been perfecting over the years together, may it shine on like a sparkling jewel, spreading delight, as ripples across the water, to all whose lives you touch.
and may the beauty you create as partners in your daily life fill your hearts with wonderment and gratitude for the experience of being alive.
may your devotion to truth and reverence of the great mystery guide your moments from a deep, centered place within.
and may you always, always know how deeply you are loved.

the sufi poet, hafiz, writes:

"even after all this time
the sun never says to the earth,
'you owe me'
look what happens with a love like that,
it lights the whole sky."

MWAH!! i send you both so much love...a candle has been burning brightly in korea in honor of you on this day.

sometimes, this is all we need...

2009-04-18T22:30:00.000+09:00

this my excavation...

2009-04-16T19:36:00.008+09:00

"this my excavation and today is qumran

everything that happens is from now on...

there's a black crow sitting across from me; his wiry legs are crossed

and he's dangling my keys, he even fakes a toss

whatever could it be

that has brought me to this loss?

...this is not the sound of a new (wo)man or crispy realization

it's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away

your love will be safe with me."

-excerpts from the song "re: stacks" by bon iver
-(wo) = my addition!

have a listen:

	Bon Iver - -

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

i read an interview with the lead singer of bon iver, justin vernon, and he talked about how this song hints at a slow shedding of skin, rather than a complete catharsis. "it is not about getting over things and moving forward, it is about going through the sadness, taking some of it with you and being made whole because of it."

qumran is the site where the dead sea scrolls were found in 1947. vernon speaks to his use of this metaphor by saying, "when they found them it changed the whole course of christianity, whether people wanted to know it or not. a lot of people chose to ignore it, a lot of people decided to run with it, and for many people it destroyed their faith. i think i was just looking at it as a metaphor for whatever happens after that is new shit."

"new shit!" eloquently said, eh!? but, i get it. i really get it. there seem to be times in life that are clearly marked and everything that follows that point is "from now on."

when vernon wrote this song and all of the other songs on the album "for emma, forever ago," he had taken himself on solitary retreat for three months to his father's log cabin in the middle of the woods in wisconsin. he chopped wood, wrote music and faced demons. he was at a place in his life where he needed to "clear the cobwebs." vernon says, “i think the biggest thing that happened out there was i managed to make peace with a lot of dark circles that had started to pool in different areas of my life. you know oftentimes you don’t have the time or the strength to really deal with those issues. it’s a bizarre feeling because for the six, seven years prior to that a lot of these demons had started to creep up and take hold of my life in a secretive way, so to actually face up to them was bold and kinda scary.""on your back with your racks as the stacks as your load

in the back and the racks and the stacks are your load

in the back with your racks and you're un-stacking your load"

-chorus lyrics from "re: stacks"
-acrylic painting, "rust," by marc winters

a wily subterfuge

2009-04-13T22:13:00.007+09:00

"...only love is all maroon

gluey feathers on a flume

sky is womb and she's the moon...

only love is all maroon

lapping lakes like leary loons

leaving rope burns --

reddish ruse..."

-lyrics from "flume" by bon iver

have a listen:

	Bon Iver - Flume

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

photo: loon lake, mn

for women everywhere...

2009-04-12T13:33:00.002+09:00

on the 36th anniversary of roe vs. wade, obama made this statement:
"on this anniversary, we must also recommit ourselves more broadly to ensuring that our daughters have the same rights and opportunities as our sons: the chance to attain a world-class education; to have fulfilling careers in any industry; to be treated fairly and paid equally for their work and to have no limits on their dreams. that is what i want for women everywhere."

yes, the sun is comin' out

2009-04-12T09:56:00.003+09:00

the sun is comin' out, the sun is comin' out...it's gonna be a lovely day
jason mraz in paris, france

woodsmoke and northern lights

2009-04-12T01:20:00.006+09:00

"We bid our friends goodbye
We promised we would write them
And headed north up 95
Into the great unknown
We turned up our stereo
And felt so reckless and alive
We didn't know who we would be
We didn't know where we would end up
When we headed down that road
A little food and our guitars
In the backseat and that old cello
The one that would get stolen
In a town in Idaho

And it's a long way to Michigan and back
And it's a long way
Cause it's a long way, the clouds upon our backs
And it's a long, long, long, long way

And I have never seen
Reflections of the cleanest
Of blue as the Minnesota lakes
Those were the longest nights
Of wood smoke and Northern Lights
As we talked until the morning came
The light of glowing embers
As sweet as I remember
Among the rustling of the trees
The legend of the harvest moon
And sweet ballad of the loon
I felt as ancient as I was meant to be

And it's a long way to Tennessee and back
And it's a long way
Cause it's a long way, the clouds upon our backs
And it's a long, long, long, long way

I called you from a payphone
In windy, cold Missoula
And then from Midland in the rain
A place as proud and sad as
The South Dakota badlands
It touched me more than I could explain
The dirt poor reservation
Where the Avala nation
Tries to hang on to its ways
Feather and Peyote pipe and
A six pack of Miller Light
Sits on the dashboard of a beat up Chevrolet

And it's a long way to Washington and back
And it's a long way
Cause it's a long way on the worn out heels of Kerouac
And it's a long, long, long, long way

Out in California
We touched the other ocean
And I still have that jar of sand
In the Arizona desert
The sky goes on forever
You've never seen a thing as grand
And North Montana was cold
She keeps her secrets frozen
Under glaciers way up north
And people have got lost up there
In the home of the grizzly bear
And you can ask the mountain
But the mountain doesn't care

And it's a long way to Delaware and back
And it's a long way
Cause it's a long way, the clouds up on our backs
And it's a long, long, long, long way
Cause it's a long way on the worn out heels of Kerouac
And it's a long, long, long, long way"

-antje duvekot

tipsy temple day

2009-04-11T18:26:00.015+09:00

today taeok and i left mid-morning for a day at unmunsa, the nuns temple in nearby cheong-do. we stopped off for lunch at a traditional korean restaurant in the countryside. the rustic, log cabin ambiance was very cozy. the fluorescent lights were shaded by lanterns...blessed relief! we ordered pa-chan, which is a leek pancake with squid and oysters; kalguksu, which is a mild noodle soup with seaweed and sesame seeds; acorn jelly salad, and dong dong ju. i can't say i've ever downed dong dong ju in the middle of the day before! this particular rice wine has about a 20% alcohol content and it is served in a BIG bowl, filled to the brim. we drank it all. it goes without saying, my trip to unmunsa was quite a unique experience, like no other i've ever had at a temple!! i felt like i was floating along on a soft cloud...more giggly and enchanted by everything than usual! it was nice... on the car ride home i fell into a deep sleep! poor taeok, i think she wanted to have more riveting conversation...alas, i was out like a light.
taeok and a whoppin' serving of acorn jelly saladunmunsa
scoopin' up some holy water embrace

the land of not quite right dining experiences

2009-04-11T17:52:00.004+09:00

yesterday chris and i met for lunch at a fabulous oasis in this concrete jungle we call home. cafe myunga. there's even an outdoor patio that seems a world away from city streets and noise....surrounded with REAL plants and open to the sky...it took me a little while to wrap my mind around the fact that i was still in korea.
we split a bagel sandwich for lunch and cheesecake for dessert along with superb iced coffees. it's so funny because i've come to know that at every "western" meal there will be SOMETHING that is not quite right! for example - the cheesecake had the texture and flavor of vanilla mousse, not at all what we expected. and the bagel sandwich, which was on its way to being as gourmet as a bagel sandwich can possibly be, with thinly sliced apple, muenster cheese, and various veggies, had SPAM on it. yeah, they put two slices of SPAM on there. nasty. anyway, we just roll with the punches over here and feel grateful for the things that do go right! like my iced mocha...talk about a divine taste of heaven.
chris stopped to give this giant teddy bear a hug before leaving.later yesterday evening, a bunch of us met up at a mexican restaurant in siji (a nearby yuppi suburb of daegu) to celebrate jen's birthday. it was so good to catch up with everyone and relax with good company, tacos, and beer. i won't go into the "not quite right" aspects of that meal! it was good enough, considering mexican food is almost impossible to come by in these parts.

yes!!

2009-04-11T09:36:00.005+09:00

michelle obama has planted an organic veggie and herb garden, along with a bunch of local elementary school kids who came out to help. it's the first vegetable garden at the white house since eleanor roosevelt planted a "victory garden" during WWII. if this isn't true progress, i don't know what is... every day i say a prayer of thanks that the obamas are in the white house...every day, no matter how i'm feeling, i do a dance of joy.

2009-04-10T23:12:00.006+09:00

"One minute youre waiting for the sky to fall
The next youre dazzled by the beauty of it all...

These fragile bodies of touch and taste
This fragrant skin this hair like lace
Spirits open to the thrust of grace
Never a breath you can afford to waste..."

-from "lovers in a dangerous time" written and originally performed by bruce cockburn

here's the barenaked ladies version...have a listen:

	Barenaked Ladies - Lovers In A Dangerous Time

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

so apropos...forever ago

2009-04-09T22:41:00.005+09:00

just discovered this group....bon iver doing a spontaneous a capella version of their song "for emma" in a paris hallway before a house concert. from the album "for emma, forever ago."

ps. HOORAY IOWA!! ROCK ON VERMONT!! come on california....let's go minnesota!

here

2009-04-07T18:29:00.003+09:00

lost

by: david wagoner

"stand still. the trees ahead and bushes beside you
are not lost. wherever you are is called here,
and you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
must ask permission to know it and be known.
the forest breathes. listen. it answers,
i have made this place around you.
if you leave it, you may come back again, saying here.
no two trees are the same to raven.
no two branches are the same to wren.
if what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
you are surely lost. stand still. the forest knows
where you are. you must let it find you."

-from his book: "traveling light: collected and new poems"

"A Ritual to Read to Each Other"

2009-04-07T00:34:00.002+09:00

By: William Safford

"If you don't know the kind of person I am

and I don't know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders the circus won't find the park.

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider-

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep."

spring time again

2009-04-06T16:49:00.014+09:00

i held class outside today. the weather is warm now and the sweet scent of cherry blossoms fills the air. one of my students brought her camera to class and wanted a picture together. her english nickname is "spring!"
it's my second year of experiencing korea in full bloom...this last weekend the big cherry blossom festivals took place all over the country. people flocked in droves to the festivals to enjoy the fleeting beauty of the flowers. by next weekend they will have all fallen like pink snow to the ground replaced by sprouting green leaves.

magnolia blooms

welcome to couple-dom. spring time in korea is hyper-couple time. there are couples strolling dreamily about in their couple t-shirts, talking on their couple phones, wearing their couple rings, or riding their couple bicycles with their couple pencil cases in tote! you also find couples engaged in fire and ice couple arguments around corners of buildings or in the university halls....trouble in paradise is never too far behind the dreamy professions of spring time love.

i took the long way home today and stopped for awhile to sit on this lonesome bench under the blossoms.
fields of green...

this is it.

2009-04-04T21:10:00.002+09:00

"always we hope

someone else has the answer.

some other place will be better,

some other time it will all turn out.

this is it.

no one else has the answer.

no other place will be better,

and it has already turned out.

at the center of your being

you have the answer;

you know who you are

and you know what you want.

there is no need

to run outside

for better seeing.

nor to peer from a window.

rather abide at the center of your being;

for the more you leave it, the less you learn.

search your heart

and see

the way to do

is to be."

--lao tzu

a steep assignment indeed

2009-04-02T18:40:00.021+09:00

my intention upon returning to korea this semester was to set aside significant chunks of time twice a week to follow a portion of the meditation practice schedule that i had experienced on the spirit rock retreat in california this winter. it consisted of sitting meditation, walking meditation, sitting and walking, then yoga. well, needless to say, things do not always go as planned. i woke up one morning about a week or so after being back in korea and it was like everything i thought i knew was thrown into an abyss of uncertainty, and the things i'd been struggling with went further up in flames. anything i thought i had a handle on was flung a million miles out of reach. for about a month, i felt as though i was feeling my way along in pitch black darkness. i found it to be one of the most anxiety producing experiences of my life. suddenly no direction, everything completely unknown, a cloud of confusion and depression mixed with occasional frenzy settling down around me like a heavy, wet, and sometimes electric, blanket. i discovered that the only way to get through each day was to live, literally, minute to minute. to think about the next day or even the next hour would send me into anxiety.

i found that i could not meditate. i could not listen to the dharma talks given by teachers that i'd taken refuge in so many times before. i couldn't even do much yoga without breaking down into tears or feeling like my nerves were going haywire. i was shocked to not find solace in my aloneness or in the practices that had come to support me so well. i didn't have an appetite for the first couple of weeks and woke with diarrhea every morning (sorry!! i'm from the midwest and we talk openly about our bodily processes!!). this all seemed like a serious wake up call. my body desperately trying to tell me something.

the only things that seemed to alleviate some of the anxiety were to take myself to the gym, to spend time with other people (i'm so thankful that i was part of "the vagina monologues" theater production during this time), receive massage at the yoga center, and to bake! so, just about every day i put on my running shoes and went to ride the stationery bike, sometimes for over and hour...i imagined i was pedaling to africa while watching anderson cooper on CNN. i reached out to family and friends both here and far more than usual. i made way too much banana bread! i booked a massage for every thursday afternoon. shine (my massage therapist) told me several weeks ago that my spirit was always bright but she wondered lately if i felt lonely. i told her i felt a heaviness in my heart these days and that sometimes it felt like loneliness, but that i knew it wasn't about someone else making it better. she understood and said something about mother love. i said, yeah...we have to learn to be that for ourselves, don't we? her mother died when she was seventeen, so she knew what i was talking about in a way that i can't even understand.

i had a couple of intense dreams during this time.

about 10 days after returning to korea i dreamed...
i am walking down a path in a jungle that i walk every day to get where i need to go. on this path, i have to walk past a vendor with tables covered in blue tarp who also has snakes. the snakes slither to and fro across the path, so every time i pass by i am alert not to step on their slithery bodies. i feel some fear but it is so routine now that i don't think much of it. on one particular day i walk past the man, his snakes and his vending tables, and for some reason i turn around to look behind me after i've turned the corner and made it safely by. there is an unusually large snake with a big, red head over by the tables. as i look, the snake approaches me quickly. when it reaches me it levitates its entire body in the air and comes straight at my solar plexus, biting me right in the gut. i wake up filled with a rush of adrenaline and fear. i say to myself, "holy sh*t - what was THAT?!" i lay in bed awake for quite some time, wondering what on earth is going on.

i had a second dream, two weeks later...
i am in an airplane on my way back to san francisco from korea. there is sudden turbulence. i grip my seat feeling terribly afraid, but the turbulence subsides and i relax again. then suddenly the plane starts nose-diving, plummeting downward out of control. i am certain i am going to die. horrendous fear fills every cell in my body, it is totally somatic. i brace myself in preparation for the physical pain i imagine i will feel upon crashing and dying. it feels like i'm in this space of free falling, feeling as though i'm going to die with the plane diving downward for hours and hours. there is a point where i realize that maybe i will die instantly upon impact and won't feel a thing. upon this realization, i start to focus on my breathing and it calms me somewhat. suddenly we hit ocean water (i'd forgotten we were flying over the pacific) and we are all still alive. water starts gushing into the plane and we have to hurry to get out. i turn and see that the woman sitting next to me is someone i went to grad school with. she is a strong, sturdy, no nonsense woman. she gets out of the plane without grabbing her bag from the overhead compartment. i hesitate, unsure of whether or not i should leave my backpack. i decide to grab it and then i crawl quickly out of the plane onto a dock that just happens to be in the middle of the ocean!

going down in a plane has been a recurring dream for years now. i have always woken before crashing. this was the first time where the plane completed its descent. upon waking, i felt amazed and euphoric that i didn't die in the dream! i'd felt so sure that i would. in the past i've always woken filled with the rush of fear, thinking i'm going to die. but with this particular dream, i went through that feeling in the dreamstate and came out the other side, waking in awe and amazement that it had not turned out as i'd so deeply feared it would. this dream had an enormous impact on me, and i've felt in days since that it has given me access to a source of strength and courage inside that i hadn't been aware of before.

this morning, out of the blue, i decided to try meditating again. it's been almost a month and a half of not sitting. i chose to do a guided meditation led by jack kornfield, and then listened to debra chamberlain taylor's dharma talk titled "letting go into the golden wind." there is a part i'd like to share that particularly hit home...

the buddha taught, "nothing whatsoever is to be clung to as "i" or "mine." if anyone has heard this, they have heard the whole dharma. anyone who realizes this one teaching realizes the whole dharma."

debra goes on to say, "steep assignment!! why? because we cling all the time to everything, don't we?! sitting in meditation we can notice...i cling to my stories, i cling to my emotions, even when they are painful. i cling to plans, opinions, judgments..."

debra explains how the buddha did not say that we are sinful or bad for clinging so much, he simply compassionately pointed out, "my dear friends, the cause of your suffering is this clinging and the possibility of your peace and freedom is in your opening and letting go. it is the whole of the dharma."

in the tibetan buddhist teachings, it is said that "the state of enlightenment is the ultimate relaxation." imagine that....feeling completely relaxed in the body and mind, no holding or gripping, no bracing or anxious tension. just soft, languid openness...muscles fully let go, bones surrendered to gravity, mind quiet, not concerned with the clouds of thought that inevitably pass through.

one thing has emerged from this free fall into uncertainty and that is that i want to travel to kripalu in massachusetts this summer for a month-long yoga teacher training retreat. most of all, it is for the deepening of this journey of learning to let go in the body/mind...from the inside out. taking part in this in-depth training feels like the next authentic movement that wants to happen in my life. the rest still remains a mystery.

a dated news flash from gumi

2009-03-31T21:05:00.006+09:00

one day last semester, while craig (a.k.a. santa claus) and i were teaching at samsung in gumi, some folks with big cameras came into our classrooms for a few minutes and we made the nightly news! the sound is terrible, so you can't hear what is being said, but hopefully you'll enjoy watching anyway! after the clip of me sitting in a circle with my students, you will see professor chae being interviewed - he is the one i go on all of my adventures with in gumi. tomorrow we plan to head back to the movies...either "benjamin button" or "slumdog millionaire" with free popcorn in hand thanks to our samsung ID cards!

here we go stanford here we go!

2009-03-31T12:31:00.005+09:00

rock on, STANFORD! the gals are headed to the NCAA final four!
jayne appel had outscored iowa state BY HERSELF at half time. the team brought home the win 74-53. jaynie walked away with 46 points at the final buzzer, her career high! amazing game!

"THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES" in daegu, south korea!!

2009-03-25T15:14:00.013+09:00

that's about as radical as it gets! it was an enormous honor to be part of this show. below, i have included some excerpts from the script. there is some intense material, so (grandma and grandpa in particular!!) read on with that in mind. for those of you who read this who are not familiar with "the vagina monologues," it is a play written by eve ensler, based on over 200 interviews with women around the world. the show consists of monologues, women telling stories in celebration of female sexuality as well as painful, heartbreaking stories of sexual violence and shame. this play is performed in over 75 countries now every year, usually in the spring, to raise awareness about the violence against women that is happening every day worldwide. here in korea, one would never say the korean word for "vagina" out loud in public. EVER. so, to debut a play with the word "vagina" in the title - wow! big, big stuff. both shows over the weekend were sold out to overflowing. we are talking about taking it on the road!

i'm still working on figuring out how to post the longer video clips that friends of mine captured during the show, including my part as vagina #3!! i was part of a group of 3 women who performed "if your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?" and "if your vagina could talk, what would it say?" let's just say, we provided the audience with a bit of comic relief! here we are, skot, chloe, and me: the women of "say and wear!"
i would have chosen a different image for the poster, below, as it does not even begin to capture the essence of what the show is about....alas, i was not in charge!!jo!
whitney and bin nary ready to ROCK!
mj and jinjeong - the two women who performed the comfort women monologue
chloe and emmamj and melast minute make-up!right before the show on the last night, we circled round and did the hokey pokey! "you put your vagina in, you put your vagina out, you put your vagina in and you shake it all about! you do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around - that's what it's ALL about! YEAH!"
the intro to the show...with the entire cast
"i bet you're worried."
"we were worried."
"we were worried about vaginas."
"we were worried what we think about vaginas, and even more worried that we don't think about them."
"we were worried about our own vaginas. they needed a context of other vaginas, a community, a culture of vaginas."
"there's so much darkness and secrecy surrounding them, like the bermuda triangle. nobody ever reports back from there...."
kate performing "the flood."

intro to "the flood":"a group of women between the ages of 65 and 75 were interviewed. these interviews were the most poignant. possibly because many of these women had never had a vagina interview before. one woman who was 72 had never even seen her vagina. she washed herself in the shower and bath, but never with conscious intention. she had never had an orgasm. at 72 she went into therapy, as we do in new york, and with the help of her therapist, she went home one afternoon by herself, lit some candles, took a bath, played some music, and she got down with herself. she said it took her over an hour, because she was arthritic, but when she finally found her clitoris, she said, she cried. this monologue is for her."

"the vagina workshop" monologue

"my vagina is a shell, a round pink tender shell opening and closing, closing and opening. my vagina is a flower, an eccentric tulip, the center acute and deep, the scent delicate, the petals gentle but sturdy.
i didn't always know this. i learned this in the vagina workshop. i learned this from a woman who runs the vagina workshop, a woman who believes in vaginas, who really sees vaginas, who helps other women see their own vaginas..."

"little coochi snorcher" performed by louise hillsburg...with a deep, southern accent.

"memory: december 1965, five years old

my mama tells me in a scary, loud, life-threatening voice to stop scratching my coochi snorcher. i become terrified that i've scratched it off down there. i do not touch myself again, even in the bath. i am afraid of the water getting in and filling me up so i explode. i put band-aids over my coochi snorcher to cover the hole, but they fall off in the water. i imagine a stopper, a bathtub plug up there to prevent things from entering me. i sleep with three pairs of happy heart-patterned cotton underpants underneath my snap-up pajamas...

memory: seven years old

edgar montane, who is ten, gets angry at me and punches me with all his might between my legs. it feels like he breaks my entire self. i limp home. i can't pee. my mama asks me what's wrong with my coochi snorcher, and when i tell her what edgar did to me she yells at me and says never to let anyone touch me down there again. i try to explain that he didn't touch it, mama, he punched it.

memory: nine years old

i play on the bed, bouncing and falling, and impale my coochi snorcher on the bedpost. i make high-pitched screamy noises that come straight from my coochi snorcher's mouth. i get taken to the hospital and they sew it up down there from where it's been torn apart.

memory: ten years old

i'm at my father's house and he's having a party upstairs. everyone's drinking. i'm playing alone in the basement and i'm trying on my new cotton white bra and panties that my father's girlfriend gave me. suddenly my father's best friend, this big man alfred, comes up from behind and pulls my new underpants down and sticks his big hard penis into my coochi snorcher. i scream. i kick. i try to fight him off, but he already gets it in. my father's there then and he has a gun and there's a loud horrible noise and then there's blood all over alfred and me, lots of blood. i'm sure my coochi snorcher is finally falling out. alfred is paralyzed for life and my mama doesn't let me see my father for seven years.

memory: thirteen years old

my coochi snorcher is a very bad place, a place of pain, nastiness, punching, invasion and blood. it's a site for mishaps. it's a bad-luck-zone. i imagine a freeway between my legs and i am traveling, going far away from here.

memory: sixteen years old

there's this gorgeous 24-year-woman in our neighborhood and i stare at her all the time. one day she invites me into her car. she asks me if i like to kiss boys, and i tell her i do not like that. then she says she wants to show me something, and she leans over and kisses me so softly on the lips with her lips and then puts her tongue in my mouth. wow. she asks me if i want to come over to her house, and then she kisses me again and tells me to relax, to feel it, to let our tongues feel it. she asks my mama if I can spend the night and my mother's delighted that such a beautiful, successful woman has taken an interest in me. i'm scared and i can't wait. her apartment's fantastic. she's got it hooked up. it's the seventies, the beads, the fluffy pillows, the mood lights. i decide right there that i want to be a secretary like her when i grow up. she makes a vodka for herself and then she asks what i want to drink. i say the same as she's drinking and she says she doesn't think my mama would like me drinking vodka. i say she probably wouldn't like me kissing girls either, and the pretty lady makes me a drink. then she changes into this chocolate satin teddy. she's so beautiful. i always thought bulldaggers were ugly. i say "you look great," and she says "so do you." i say "but I only have this white cotton bra and underpants." then she dresses me, slowly, in another satin teddy. it's lavender like the first soft days of spring... there's a picture over her bed of a naked black woman with a huge afro. she gently and slowly lays me out on the bed... then she does everything to me and my coochi cnorcher that i always thought was nasty before, and wow. i'm so hot, so wild. she says, "your vagina, untouched by a man, smells so nice, so fresh, wish i could keep it that way forever." i get crazy wild and then the phone rings and of course it's my mama. i'm sure she knows; she catches me at everything. i'm breathing so heavy and i try to act normal when i get on the phone and she asks me, "what's wrong with you, have you been running?" i say "no, mama, exercising." then she tells the beautiful secretary to make sure i'm not around boys and the lady tells her, "trust me, there's no boys around here." afterwards the gorgeous lady teaches me everything about my coochi snorcher...she teaches me all the different ways to give myself pleasure. she's very thorough. she tells me to always know how to give myself pleasure so i'll never need to rely on a man. in the morning i am worried that i've become a butch because i'm so in love with her. she laughs, but i never see her again. i realize later she was my surprising, unexpected and politically-incorrect salvation. she transformed my sorry-ass coochi snorcher and raised it into some kind of heaven."

"memory of her face" monologue - spoken from the perspectives of an iraqi woman scarred from bombing, an abducted illegal immigrant, and a victim of domestic violence whose husband poured acid on her face. all three suffer survivor guilt and the constant reminder of that one moment each time they look into the mirror.

"my angry vagina" monologue

"my vagina's angry. it's pissed off. my vagina's furious and it needs to talk...all this sh*t they're constantly trying to shove up us, clean us up - stuff up us, make it go away. well, my vagina's not going anywhere. it's pissed off and it's staying right here. like tampons - what the hell is that? a wad of dry cotton stuffed up there. as soon as my vagina sees it, it goes into shock. it says forget it! it closes up. you need to work with the vagina, introduce it to things, prepare the way. you've got to convince my vagina, engage my vagina's trust. you can't do that with a wad of dry f*cking cotton."

kristin, the director of our show, performing the "reclaiming cunt" monologue

bae jinjeong and mj performing "say it" - the monologue about the korean comfort women and girls (some as young as 10 years old) who were forced into sexual slavery by the japanese government during WWII. some were forced to have sex with up to fifty men a day. it is estimated that 200,000-400,000 women were in the system and 80% of them were believed to have come from korea, which was a colony of japan from 1910-1945. it is estimated that only 25% of the women survived the ordeal. today there are less than 100 survivors who are still living in south korea. every wednesday since january 8, 1992, comfort women survivors have gathered to sit outside of the japanese embassy in seoul demanding acknowledgment for the suffering and injustice that the japanese inflicted upon them. they are still waiting. there is yet to be an apology.

the proceeds from our production are going to women in the congo who are still to this day forced to undergo genital mutilation. female genital mutilation has been inflicted upon approximately 130 MILLION girls and young women. it is practiced in 28 countries, mostly in africa.
the proceeds will also go to the korean comfort women. two weeks ago there was a ground breaking ceremony for the construction of the comfort women memorial museum in seoul that is being built as we speak to honor the stories and lives of those women who suffered immeasurably at the hand of the japanese soldiers.

the cast at the end of the show...
taeok, mr. lee and inhui with me. inhui has long been an activist on behalf of the comfort women. she is now writing her phd dissertation on that very topic. she brought information packets regarding the herstory of the comfort women and passed them out to everyone who attended the show. many thanks to inhui and her warrior spirit.

life was the ocean

2009-03-24T01:32:00.004+09:00

"Remember how we chased it like shadows
Life was the ocean; we wanted to swim
Looking back now, it’s just how the path goes
They tell you it’s over; you never begin

We don’t give ourselves time - the way that we used to
To watch it all happen, unfolding in sighs
You’d think we were blind, the things we can see through
The things we look past when emboldened inside

But it’s alright now, it’s alright
The ghosts of our glories are gray-bearded guides
The sound of our sorrows has stirred us inside
But I think maybe I’ve never felt more alive

I asked you just once if you thought we could be found
You never did tell me; but I think I know now
Whatever ship comes, by dark sea or gray cloud
As long as the well’s deep, we make it somehow

I don’t know how to make peace or find it
We’re most of us stories we’re scared to explain
But what if there’s sound, somewhere caught behind this
A song we can sing while we’re lying awake"

"It's Alright" - a beautiful song by Ellery