| [ o d y s s e y ] 2001. It has become a cliche in the last few months to quote from 2001: A Space Odyssey, so I will instead make an observation about the ties between a book written more than 30 years ago by Sir Arthur C. Clarke and where we stand now. I consider myself to be a futurist. There is something about the numbers that I now write as the year that intrigue me. We have truly opened the “pod bay door” to a completely different way of life. We have managed to open ourselves up to Toffler’s predictions, we are experiencing the Third Wave of humanity.The pace at which we live our lives is mind boggling. Multitasking is all I am capable of. I work in an industry that moves forward at such an astonishing rate, that i’ve been honestly concerned about taking short vacations, for fear that I’ll be left behind. Lost in the shuffle. Lost in the vastness of it all. We are in a world of versions and bandwidth, handheld personal computers and robotics. We are in 2001. The future is now. The future is binary……When I first got on the internet and started writing I didn’t imagine that anyone out there would read what I had to say, much less relate to it. It was a digital diary. A glimpse into the inner workings of my machine. No smoke and mirrors, just a naked slice of brainstorms. I don’t think it ever crossed my mind that so many people in the world would be ‘online’. So now online means something different. It means being ‘in tune’, it means being in the loop. It has meant that you are a piece of the traffic on the information highway… So here we are brought together in the global cyber village entering into a brave new world. Progression is such a daily thought that I can’t imagine where we’ll all be 5 years from now. What will 2010 bring us? Will we have sent a manned mission to Mars? Will we finally recieve that long awaited message from the outer reaches of the Universe…? So the question comes…In what way do we travel? Where is this planet headed at this very moment? We move through this Universe at 500,000 miles per hour, it takes 250 million years for us to make a single circuit… So where are we going in such a hurry? Will we ever reach the ‘end’ ofthe Universe, is there one? I feel like there are so many things I have to do before this Galaxy reaches its destination. Maybe one day we’ll just arrive in some different space and time, or maybe our galaxy will collide with another and an entirely new civilization of beings will fall to our Earth….Perhaps one day we’ll be forced to vacate this planet for another that’s less damaged, less used and abused. Waking up every morning to think of how lucky we all are to have such an amazingly beautiful place to live. So as we enter the 21 century, I wish you all the best year yet, I wish you innovation and wonder. May this truly be an Odyssey….. Reflection 04/03/01 Sometimes you look back on things and you can’t believe how things work out. How your expectations lead you to believe things would be a certain way, and then it all goes completely the opposite. Though you aren’t surprised in the least when the dust settles. Does that make sense?I was lying in bed the other night, and I was just letting my mind run. It ran over with possibilities and fascination. I sat awake for so long, that I just tried to go over everything I remember about my life so far. Putting together lists about the best things that have ever happened to me, the worst things. The things that I want to happen next…. Then I couldn’t sleep because I started thinking about all of the things I wanted to say to the people around me. About all of the thoughts, and respect I have for them.Then I couldn’t sleep just thinking about all of the things I wanted to tell you. How i’d run away and hide out with you somewhere until the end of time. How I wonder what you’ll say next. How innocent it all is. How many times before and again that i’ll feel this way. That I want to drive up to the middle of nowhere and just get lost in the stars and our reflections in the sky. As domestic as that sounds, the sheer honesty of it – just drives me into Spring Inhale As sweet fresh air filling my lungs. Distinct heartbeats beneath my ribs. Eyes closed tight, feet firmly planted. Slow developmental rhythms are pushing me forward. Slight confusion, shyness, blush. Lifting my head and smiling at people, fuel, fervor, flavour. Bigger, broader, faster, smarter, defined. Caught up far beyond all rules, every single blushing shaky whisper- into the said and done. Again the distance strikes a chord. Life is wonderful, exciting. Sometimes I feel like i’m falling so gently into someone’s arms like a feather. caught. I am in the space where lips meet. Where like a nebula, ideas and conceptualizations materialize. Life is beautiful. My mind races at what there is to learn, from you, from them, from myself. At where all of this could go if I just let go. Already overwhelms me, I sit across the dancing hands. Leave myself completely open to all of the possibilities-that breeds reproduction. Fast and furious, gracious and intune. part 2. You are a myth. A mystery, a second coming. As I progress I revert back to you. My world was where you were and I am stunned. Your mouth speaks, solves, knows- everything I ever asked and then….my heart hits the floor. Plunges into the pit of my stomach, when I am not the ‘she’, ‘her’, ‘you’. Recovery. Shielding my psyche from the disappointment that is the future. Paused Jilted, back into the center of the adventure. When your eyes are on me they’re like quasars pulling, and they make my tongue break. I am born though, burning brilliant- – all I can feel is a pull like no other. Rhythm dances fleeting across my memories. Default setting I am speechless. I lie back and emit propellsions unlike any i’ve ever known. Only to speak your name, if only my eyes were to see something different, instead of the beauty. Whirlwind These past few months have been a complete whirlwind. Total upheaval. Somehow, i’ve managed to land back on my feet. Life is funny like that. I had been so caught up in the tunnel vision of day-to-day that I was missing out on the light at the end….I’m seeing that now, and I am ecstatic. It’s amazing. I’m in a new place. It’s absolutely unbelievable. Sometimes I think when you look back there are those moments that have the capacity to fundamentally change who you are. This is one of those times. Full circle. I just look up and I am so in awe of it all. In awe of what my life has become, what it is becoming…. I have found a place that’s too good to be true mostly. I truly feel a part of something much bigger. Vast. I had deja vu the other day, just the feeling of meant-to-be-ness. It was amazing. It just felt right. I am so enjoying the process right now. So challenged by the constant innovations. As much as things can change in a short period of time. They have done so, greatly. Transition, and I know what i’m looking for. I know what I need and I am so amazed to have found myself back through the looking glass again. Renewal. Reconstruction and Re-evaluation have enabled me to feel ready to move forward, to take that next step. Relief Sometimes you just get a glimpse of what things will be. How they will all fall when they come floating down from the air…. I am having a glimpse of it right now. I want nothing more than to leave where I am and get in a car and drive to somewhere closer- closer to where things will end up. It’s one of those days where you sit still but you feel like things are running faster than you are even capable of moving. Faster than anything you’ve ever felt before. It’a one of those times where you don’t even mind. The time is just there to pass and you wish someone would just reach out because you’d just collapse and melt into them. Forever. Then I start to wonder how old these feelings are, whether anyone is feeling this exact same way right now. Or whether it’s a totally unique feeling to me. Because all of a sudden you’re so detached from everything. Every moment, every second. Sometimes I lay awake at night and I ask all these things of myself and there’s this sweet air of sinking into it. You don’t have to be afraid of anything and you are just taken care of. Nothing to worry about ever again. You just feel like everything is thick like a dream and that everything might just come true all at once, and that the intensity of it will be more than you can take. Like a promise that you never though another person could make to you. Like a promise that you wished forever that they would make. Relief is a better feeling than anything else I know. It’s when everything is right in the world. Sometimes you can see glimpses of it in someone’s eyes. That’s better than anything else-ever. Code – 05/08/01 There’s something completely bionic that happens in the spring. It’s like some unearthly genetic coding gets embedded beneath my skin and I become someone entirely different. Like the difference between being sick and being well. You don’t truly appreciate being well until you are sick. You start thinking more about the concept of time. I am entirely in love with how the spring makes everything look. It’s as if my thought process becomes more advanced, as if the sun stimulates the cells of my being-ust a little more. Just a little extra, a discovery of something so much more than everything you thought. No expectations of perception. Just seeing everything for what it is, and what it might be. Stripping down to the ideas of what could have held you back and bringing together pure real balance. Sometimes I think that everything that’s happenned has just led me to this place where I stopped relating. Now I realize it’s just made me relate differently, selective relation. Looking with a different set of eyes. Climbing by the windows of experience. Rising through the ideas that I thought were unchanging. Only to change and morph into something different so rapidly. I can only imagine where this road is going. I’ve stumbled upon something so different that I can only just enjoy the surprise of it. What a brilliant surprise it’s been. Descriptions and aspirations are so trivial now. I don’t know if this is what it’s supposed to feel like or not. I just know that I can’t stop thinking about how wonderful it seems. There’s something so funny that happens when people see the little details that you don’t. You are just trudging along, dragging your whole life behind you, walking down a path that seems so unique. Only to run directly into someone else who is just doing the same thing. There is something so brilliant about that multifaceted unique-ness Stock – 06/22/01 Time is passing at this unimaginably fast rate, and I feel like a lot of the time I am not truly seeing how wonderful everything has been. The past few months, i’ve found my smile again. Found my belly laugh, my giggle- something I hadn’t really made use of in a long time. Sometimes when you take a step back you realize how important those moments are. How you if you thought about it, about how much you care about things, you start feeling sad that you may never have times like that again…. Sometimes there is people in your life who are supposed to be there by default and they aren’t. When they aren’t there, at first you wonder why. You turn it back on yourself and you start defragmenting your entire being. You wonder what you possibly could have done to make them ignore your place in their life. Then you realize maybe they no longer have a place in yours, as much as you want them to. You accept the fact that you tried. You accept the fact of things are they are. Then you begin taking stock of the people who are there, the people who you realize are the most amazing ones. The ones choose to be there, which is so much bigger than being their because of duty. I am so fortunate to be constantly surrounded by some of the most incredible people in the world. Easily-hands down. This is for you. You have given me the greatest gifts. You make me better. You have been the light at the end of the tunnel and without you I would be a lesser person. I love you all. This is a more personal note than i’ve written in awhile but some things that have happened to me this week have hit me on a very emotional level. I am full. I am so amazed that I can share this with you. Have a wicked summer. 10 million miles- 07/19/01 Miraculous moments when i’m lying in splendor and I almost feel like i’m enveloped in the grass. Wind beating across my face and I feel hot wetness- I raise my hand to my mouth and it is Truth that bleeds from my lips, I bite my tongue, my lip, my words. And then my head is on your heart. A small piece of me is laid out on what makes you more alive, than I feel. It’s rhythm beats out the moments, like the ticking of a clock. When my heart is somewhere between flying and falling 10 million miles per second. My knees buckles and it’s a good thing that i’m lying in the imaginary grass. At that moment I realize that nothing lasts long enough any more. While my mouth forms the words, my voice falls silent, unimaginably I lay in waiting. I feel like i’m halfway between sleep and awake and each second feels like i’m slipping into unconsciousness. I wonder if it’s the honesty making me weak. Making me want to just close my eyes. My breath is hot on your neck and it filters down into the sand below the grass. I’m slipping into the sand, i’m disappearing down into the earth somewhere. My ears fill with sounds, my mouth fills with words, my mind is already full- of wonder…….i’m 10 million miles beneath the surface. [The Fates ] 11.15.01 The past few months have been life impacting. I don’t have to elaborate because I know that anyone in the world at this moment knows what I’m talking about. I know that I will never forget where I was that morning, or what that evening was like. The bubble had burst, for the first time in my life the images on the news were real to me because i’d been there, and I also realize that even though there was great fear, horror and pain in those days which followed September 11th there was also hope. Hope and an overwhelming show of love among humanity. This still amazes me, it made me re-learn a lot of things, it made me re-think how I look at the world. As worldly, or aware as I thought I was, I wasn’t. A lot of us weren’t. I remembered in the days after hearing the word ‘Taliban’ the months before when I heard that ancient statues of Buddha were being destroyed, and I remembered the word ‘RAWA’ and what I had heard about the horrors of what was happening to Afghan women. How a select few were standing up and quietly forming a resistance. Bravery comes in all forms. I look at the people in my life differently, and I see people making a difference everywhere. People are just trying to do their best. These are strange times. This holiday season is going to be different. It is going to be one of those times that changes everything. It makes me think about Family and what that really means. My family comes in all forms, sometimes I can’t believe the people in my life who are not related to me by blood, but by love. How those people stand up again and again, because of what is there between us. There is something there, you can’t see it, but it runs deep. It only comes along a few times in your life and when it does you just have to hold on. Sometimes I think we forget how rare it is to make one of those connections. How rare it is to be able to be truly close with someone. How few times it truly touches us in our lives. It’s those tiny moments that change things. Those moments that deliver you through times of tragedy, when you can look at someone else and feel that they really know you. Happiness comes from those moments. Life is changing for me, for a long time I tried to fight it, to make it something bad. I carry with me a lot of choices, things that I would wear as a badge of honor, or a right of passage, and other things I would just as soon sweep under the rug never to be seen again. We all have that. I realize now more than ever what a gift it all is, how amazing it is that any of this happens to us at all. That if nothing else -life is about the bonds you make, the impressions you make on people, the way you affect the world around you. .How incredible it is to me at this moment the window of opportunity that surrounds everything that has ever happened. I don’t believe in coincidence, and perhaps that eliminates what many people use as an explanation for all the strange things that happen to them. I believe that everything happens for a reason, and all of those little moments happen as they are meant to. So what comes next? Whatever is supposed to.. |