denim on denim

i wish i didn't have to title my blog posts

108

I just did 108 sun salutations.
I'm not the same person,
just like I was before.
          And also,
          my legs hurt.

nothing is wasted

It's been raining in New York City for three days, and it's chilly. When it feels like fall, whether it's really fall or not, I fall in love everyday with a person who's not there. I listen to a lot of Ryan Adams and I close my eyes and see the fire treetops and write so many poems in my head that never make it down to paper.

The universe is awe-some. A poet named Laura Gilpin wrote my favorite poem, and I just learned today that she died the day after Valentine's Day in 2007 in Fairhope, Alabama. She studied at Columbia University, so she lived in NYC for a while. So the circles keep opening and closing, and my life has become this beautiful work of art being created in each moment by something that is not me and I sit idly by and watch, sometimes laughing and sometimes smiling and sometimes crying, but always joyous.

life after death by Laura Gilpin

These things I know:
How the living go on living
and how the dead go on living with them
so that in a forest
even a dead tree casts a shadow
and the leaves fall one by one
and the branches break in the wind
and the bark peels off slowly
and the trunk cracks
and the rain seeps in through the cracks
and the trunk falls to the ground
and the moss covers it
and in the spring, the rabbits find it
and build their nest
inside the dead tree
so that nothing is wasted in nature
or in love.

just cuz

It's been a while since I blogged. Life has been amazingly hectic but mostly hectically amazing. I'm in training to become a yoga teacher. It's a 200-hour program stretched out over 10 weeks, six of which I have completed. I started in late June and will complete at the end of August, if all goes as planned. I'm training at Yoga to the People in the East Village. It truly has been a life-affirming, inspiring and altering experience. I feel like I am on my way to finding the truest expression of myself - which maybe sounds crazy considering that I only started practicing yoga in May - but when I found yoga it really did feel like I was coming home and unfurling at the same time, both coming back to my true self after so much searching and simultaneously branching out into the unknown parts of myself that also comprise my core. To have even an opportunity, as a future teacher, to help others also find this amazing gift - is an honor and a privilege.

Remember that short film Love Sand I wrote last summer and filmed with Zac? The leading lady, Haley Strode, just booked a film with Sean Penn and Ryan Gosling. I am so happy for her and honored to have participated in her journey - what an incredible thing. I knew when I met her last summer that she had something special and significant inside her. I wanted to re-post the film here so you can watch how wickedly talented and beautiful she is. She's gonna be huge.

Love Sand from LBO Productions on Vimeo.

Thinking about being the girl who wrote (and, at least partially, lived) the sad story of Love Sand is a weird thing. I opened this blog post hours ago and watched the cursor blink at me for a while - I felt an unexpected inauthenticity as I thought about what I would say here about my life over the past few months. So much has happened, so much has blossomed for me, and I am more my Self now than ever before. I am so happy. I experience sadness but I have finally learned that the sort of destruction I experienced before resulted from my own hand. I am coming into my power as a woman. I am teaching myself never to say I'm sorry unless I truly mean it and to love myself unconditionally. As women we are conditioned to apologize at every turn - for raising our voices, for extending our bodies in space, simply for being ourselves - and I am undoing years of that. I am not sorry. I have a voice, I have a body, I have a mind - and I have a power inside of me. As a child in Alabama, I dreamed of living in New York City, creating a space for myself and living a free life where I could dance and write and use my heart. I'm on my way to that very life - one might say I'm one foot in, or maybe just a toe or two - and what a gift. What a power lies inside me! I don't say this to selfishly lift myself up, but rather to shine a light on the Source of this power, which is something I'm only beginning to become intimate with.

I saw this written in a bathroom stall. It's important.

Because, beautiful as you are, you hide so much of what you are, which of course is part of what you are: the hidden and the hiding.

Xx

the dance

Tomorrow, when the guests have departed,

the balloons deflated,

and the champagne de-fizzed,

you will sit alone

and contemplate how the years zipped.

But tonight, tomorrow is just a figment,

and with my hand in your sunworn hand,

we twirl round and round,

and I hope that you see:

I’m yours now more than ever,

our eyes, thunderstorm mirrors,

and your heart?

I carry it in my heart.

torn

houdini streets

It was one of those magical nights that only happen in New York, where impossible things edify themselves right before your eyes, and you pump your fist through an open taxi window and the warm breeze electrifies you from your feet up, and you realize with no small amount of wonder that you perhaps have never felt so alive as you do right now.

You ponder what it is that's making you feel this way. What it is floating amongst all the concrete and lights that could possibly bring so much animation to your soul. You're running late and the cabbie tells you how pretty you look, you smile and thank him, you think of those blue eyes that wait for you at the end of your journey tonight. The bluest eyes you've ever seen, the ones you saw only twice a year ago and not since, but that have somehow been emblazoned on the backs of your eyelids for 365 days and counting. Your lids flutter, and you realize you've stopped breathing. You instruct yourself to push all the air from your lungs and then to take a deep, passionate breath in. 

 

Breathe like he kissed you, you tell yourself. Slow, and with purpose.