Where do you invest your love?

I’ve been having a rough time with work lately. I grossly overbooked myself and I’m burning the candle at both ends. In the midst of all the awful stress and craziness in the last two weeks I stopped in Trader Joe’s during rush hour to buy myself some food for dinner. While waiting on a line so long it wrapped around the store and had TJ’s employees policing it, I saw a card on the wall for 99 cents. Blank on the inside, the cover said:

I don’t feel like costume design is what I’m supposed to do for the rest of my life. But, I do feel like if I hadn’t taken that path I wouldn’t have realize what I want to do, and I wouldn’t have met the people who make my life worth living. From best friends to my mentor to learning some damn good ways to deal with the world, costume design has brought me lots of things. It has enriched my life though it may not fulfill me in the ways I’d like my career to. I bought the card and slipped it into the clear cover of my show bible binder and it’s been sitting there as a reminder. I decided I would one day send it to myself, when I most need it.

I feel like we need to have these kinds of affirmations in our lives not when we’re most successful, but when we’re taking huge risks, putting ourselves in the most vulnerable and maybe not always the safest or surest or even logical situations. Let’s say farming does turn out to be something I want to spend my life doing, lots of people think that’s not a smart choice (though I think it’s the best choice – feeding oneself), and I’m sure lots of people wouldn’t support/agree with that choice. But, where you invest your love, you invest your life (thanks Mumford & Sons), and I can’t say I love costume design (I love the people and skills it’s brought me), but I do know this:

I love the land that gives me life, and the sky that brings rain and sun. I love the smell of the earth and the air in the spring, and the the sound of leaves crunching under my feet in the fall. I love watching a tiny seed grow into plants exploding with food that can feed me, and from those seeds more seeds grow, it’s cyclical. Nothing in this world is a straight line with a starting and finishing point. It’s all cyclical. Someday I will die but that won’t be the end. My body will return to the earth and from my decomposition, grass will grow, trees will grow, and a part of me will be in everything; in feeding the birds, I will see through the eyes of the hawk, in feeding the deer, I will always run with them. I will not die, only give life. I must give back to the land what I have taken from it- life.

This morning I read a Taos Pueblo Indian poem:

I have killed the deer.
I have crushed the grasshopper
And the plants he feeds upon.
I have cut through the heart
Of trees growing old and straight.
I have taken fish from the water
And birds from the sky.
In my life I have needed death
So that my life can be.
When I die I must give life
To what has nourished me.
The earth receives my body
And gives it to the plants
And to the caterpillars
To the birds
And to the coyotes
Each in its own turn so that
The circle of life is never broken.

What more could I ask for?! I can’t think of a more comforting thought in all the world.

In my life I have needed death so that my life can be.

When I die I must give life to what has nourished me. 

If that’s not a prayer, then the Pope really is the voice of god, and I’ll be the first in line to buy my indulgences.

Yosemite HD

Here Comes the Sun

Nine years ago today my grandfather died. Almost a decade. Almost. Nine years ago today things started to change and life became a little different. George Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun” was the first song I heard after he died, and it started to pop up more in my life after that during other trying times. Or maybe I just started to take notice more. Either way, it brought me comfort and gave me hope.  I was no stranger to people dying in my life, and by the time my grandfather passed away the smell of flowers already always reminded me of funerals. But, it was the first time I could see how the death of one person could make a whole family that had seemed so strong, unravel and come apart. At his funeral two days after he died, a friend came to pay her respects. It surprised me because we were rather new friends, but quickly becoming closer. She wrote me a ten page letter with comforting words and thoughts.

“I hope all you ever wished for comes true- and that joy comes out of your smile until it seems to drip out of every one of your pores. Happiness is what is wished for you because happiness is what you are.  I know you miss your grandpa, and I remember all too clearly that indescribable pain that locks right into your heart and makes the world seems so distant. I saw what death could do to my own family and I never want you to fall apart like I did – you are so strong – always stay strong.”

That little passage from her letter has resonated with me these past nine years. Joy that drips out of my pores. I loved the way it sounded, because it meant so much happiness and joy that my body couldn’t contain it. I overflowed with happiness. Happiness is what is wished for me, because happiness is what I am. I’d repeat those words to myself.

Joy hasn’t dripped out of my pores in quite a while it seems. It’s not unusual for a death to remind people of other times in their life when they’ve experienced a loss. Today marking the ninth year since my grandpa’s death inevitably makes me think of the other major losses in my life. Not too long ago I was overflowing with grief. Inescapable grief. I fell apart. I wasn’t strong. Indescribable pain locked into my heart, and the world did indeed seem so distant. But, I had to find some way to take power over the things happening to me in my life. It wasn’t easy, and it made my grief even worse for awhile. But, if I didn’t do that I may still be stuck in that terribly hopeless place. The first step to getting my strength back had to be descending into those dark places. I couldn’t really know my strength until I knew just how weak I could be. I had to know just how far away and gone it was possible for me to feel, so that I would know how strong I would need to be in the future.

The first song I heard today, nine years later, again, was Nina Simone’s cover of “Here Comes the Sun” this morning in a Starbucks. It was also the first song I heard when I turned on my computer after I got home from work tonight.

Turning overflowing tears into overflowing joy is hard but necessary. And I want to be so joyful that it drips from every single one of my pores again. I’m working on it. Smiling feels too good to never smile again.

The smiles returning to the faces, it seems like years since it’s been here.

Whole Foods and China

It came up recently in a conversation with someone I know that Whole Foods is importing lots of its produce from China, including some “organic” produce. I read about this a while ago somewhere, but couldn’t relocate the article I originally read. So I found this one, and learned something new that Trader Joe’s does not carry Chinese products on its shelves and awhile ago phased those products out due to customer’s concern. Then, I found this video

I don’t know how up to date any of this info is, I know Whole Foods made a big stink about only its organic edamame comes from China, but this video would suggest otherwise? Unless the reporters are confusing natural with organic. Anyone can slap natural on anything these days (and the same is nearly true of organic – standards need to change in this country, the organic guidelines have too many loopholes).

In any case, the best way to avoid all this (because how do you REALLY know that that organic produce from China is organic? You don’t, the USA doesn’t approve the organic label for imported foods) is to buy local, organic produce from your neighbor farmers. You can ask them questions about their farming practices if they are truly organic or a new up and coming standard higher than organic – naturally grown. Face to face with a farmer gets you answers you can never get from corporations like Whole Foods.

New Year

Happy New Year to you