I just came out of Whipple Barn, the building at Hampton where you clear your student account and access your grades and transcripts. It's the first day for seniors to get their academic and financial clearance cards. The building officially opened at 9am. I got there at 8:45 to a short line and open doors--I guess they opened a bit earlier for crowd control. And...my grades weren't ready. So I'll be back. At noon. To a crazy long ass line I'm sure.
On the other hand...
I realize...
I really dooo love the Bay area, CA. Like, I miss it. ALOT. I was there this summer for an internship. It's such an amazing mix of nature and civilization. I Loooove NYC, but I'm not so sure it's my *home.* I feel crazy admitting it. And I'm totally glad I grew up in NYC--I feel like the exposure a city kid gets to so many different things in life is unparalleled. And I'm really looking forward to working in BK and getting to see what NYC is like for a 20-something. But there simply aren't enough trees and mountains there. I'm a sucker for trees and mountains. Like, I can literally be transported (internally) to a place of ecstacy when I'm just IN nature. Which is one reason why I like to garden. (Have I mentioned that before? I do. Watch me have a friggin farm in my apt :oD)
I'm listening to Waiting in the Weeds by the Eagles and I Will by the Beatles. And Wolf at the Door, by Radiohead. Youtube. The shizz.
I know very little about cultural and spiritual traditions of Native Americans. I have a lot of reading and traveling to do. But the little bit I do know inspires me to no end. I am often brought nearly to tears by its simplicity, at the reverence for nature that is so ever present in the traditions that I know a little something about.
Sidebar: In the last few centuries, we've witnessed and participated in humanity's darkest depths...when will we see our highest highs? When will we create our highest highs? Is it just around the bend, are we almost there...
"They keep us uneducated sick and depressed...with no choices there's no hope for us..." (e. badu)
There are many, many reasons why I love Clarissa Pinkola Estes:
"The craft of questions, the craft of stories, the craft of the hands - all these are the making of something, and that something is soul. Anytime we feed soul, it guarantees increase."
"The creation Mother is always also the Death Mother and vice versa. Because of this dual nature, or double-tasking, the great work before us is to learn to understand what around and about us and what within us must live, and what must die. Our work is to apprehend the timing of both; to allow what must die to die, and what must live to live."
"In a single human being there are many other beings, all with their own values, motives, and devices. Some psychological technologies suggest we arrest these beings, count them, name them, force them into harness till they shuffle along like vanquished slaves. But to do this would halt the dance of wildish lights in a woman's eyes; it would halt her heat lightning and arrest all throwing of sparks. Rather than corrupt her natural beauty, our work is to build for all these beings a wildish countryside wherein the artists among them can make, the lovers love, the healers heal."
"If you are surrounded by people who cross their eyes and look with disgust up at the ceiling when you are in the room, when you speak, when you act and react, then you are with the people who douse passions - yours and probably their own as well. These are not the people who care about you, your work, your life."
"What must I give more death to today, in order to generate more life? What do I know should die, but am hesitant to allow to do so? What must die in me in order for me to love? What not-beauty do I fear? Of what use is the power of the not-beautiful to me today? What should die today? What should live? What life am I afraid to give birth to? If not now, when?"
"If you want to create, you have to sacrifice superficiality, some security, and often your desire to be liked, to draw up your most intense insights, your most far-reaching visions."
"The original abandonment, the original abuse, the original horror has some reason and meaning in it. It is not senseless. It is not like being run down like a dog on the highway. Its meaning most often is the development of tremendous strength, tremendous power, tremendous intuition. And I will tell you frankly that most of the people who are the greatest healers living on the face of this earth are unmothered children. One of the great gifts of the unmothered child - and also the healer, and the writer and the musician and all those in the arts who live so close with their ear against the heartbeat of the archetypal unconscious - one of their strongest aspects is intuition."
"Be proud of your scars. They have everything to do with your strength, and what you've endured. They're a treasure map to the deep self."
"At bottom is the best soil to sow and grow something new again. In that sense, hitting bottom, while extremely painful, is also the sowing ground."
