Cookies are Round and So is the Moon

It’s a full moon tonight and I seem to have limitless energy. I sit here at 1:15 in the morning, baking cookies and making tea. What’s come over me? Late night baking is usually the last thing I want to do. Maybe there’s some romantic urge in me being extracted by the gravitational pull of that full moon which inspires me to undertake such domestic expressions. Perhaps it’s my need for silence, discipline, and simplicity. There’s something humbling about baking, especially when your baking requires the omission of many usual suspects. For me, it’s gluten grains, eggs, soy and often times, dairy. My sort of baking is a meditative adventure. Following a recipe systematically, being as exact as possible so as to allow the magical chemical reactions to take place and end in a tasty oral experience, is much like knitting or singing a well known song. Follow the steps, take your time, let it flow, don’t think too much, feel it. One of the best things about baking is that I’m not a baker, and I don’t aspire to be. It doesn’t matter if the world loves my cookies. I don’t spend my days assessing my strengths and weaknesses or trying to decided just what sort of baking I should specialize in. I can follow the rules, or tweak them a bit and experiment, i can eat the batter as I go or I can throw it all out the window if I want. There’s really nothing at stake for me. My identity is far from invested in my baking ability and experience, or lack there of. It’s a liberating endeavor, especially considering that so often, the things I aspire to accomplish are mired in a life time of illusions, expectations, hopes, fears and dreams. Staying up till the wee hours on a juicy full moon night and baking for the sheer experience of it is a way to remember the sunshine feeling of joy and to rediscover the centering silence of play.

Creation no Expectation

I have no direction, no discipline, no purpose beyond surrendering to moments of creative transference. I shed the need for an artistic identity. There is no singer, dancer, composer, or artist in me, those are only words. Words are boxes that I cannot fit inside of. I wish I could. I wish it were so simple. I wish words could solidify my identity and sense of purpose and give me direction. Words only mask the confusion. I have been long lost, and I will not find my way again to a place that one word can contain. I am here, in a cacophony of words which I often try on, one by one, just to see if they give me clues as to who I am and what I'm to do. So far the words briefly sooth my raw nerves, but soon enough bounce back into the whirl around me and again I grasp for answers. There will never be answers. I am here to simply dabble and stumble and perhaps if I can remember how, to play. I am nothing and everything. What you call me, what I call myself, is not really who I am. I am beyond the words, my identity means nothing.

Making a Point to Remember Goodness

All too often, it seems I fall into the habit of fixating on the negative events of my life. I brood over them or complain, trying to figure out how it all could have been better. This is, I think, a huge mistake. It's not that I want to bury the difficult moments in my life, but they certainly don't deserve the important place they usually find on my personal time-line, especially when the good times aren't placed there to represent the true balance of things. In honor of all the good, even great things I've experienced in my life, I have decided to make a small list of highlights. This way, perhaps when all I can see is the bleakness of life, I can look back and remember the goodness. I encourage you to do the same for yourself!

1. Digging up earthworms, catching butterflies and lizards and snakes on childhood adventures.

2. Eating parsley straight out of the garden, pretending to be like Peter Rabbit.

3. Dancing furiously to ballet music on records.

4. Playing for hours with barbie dolls, creating complex story-lines for them to play out and building barbie worlds with random objects from around the house.

5. Camping out in my backyard for about a week in a lean-to that I built.

6. Watching the Little Mermaid with my sister everyday for like two weeks during summer break.

7. Performing in musicals and plays at my high school.

8. Watching lambs being born.

9. Watching babies being born.

10. Listening to Tori Amos' Boys for Pele on vinyl.

11. Skinny dipping for the first time under a huge moon in Vermont with a bunch of women and one man.

12. Hiking barefoot and stopping to watch a slug for 20 minutes.

13. Going to the opera for the first time, I think it was Manon.

14. Winning the Oregon State solo vocal championship in the soprano category my senior year in high school.

15. Going dancing at Hive (a goth night) on Christmas Eve with my friends.

16. Writing "The Story" with my friend Jennifer over the course of many, many years (it's still not done).

17. Falling in love on a train.

18. Drinking Guinness and singing at pubs in Ireland.

19. Camping out with Keela the dog on Vancouver Island.

20. Soaking in hot springs that were really hard to get to in Washington.

21. Going on a backpacking trip to learn about alpine herbs with a bunch of really cool people.

22. Rolling around in the mud on a cold January night.

23. Picking cherries on my way home from middle school. Picking blueberries with my sister on Sauvie Island. Picking blackberries in the walking path on my way to an from work. Picking raspberries in people's backyards! (And eating them as I go!).

24. Being adopted by my cat Dyna, who's been my loyal companion for 11 years.

25. Trading tarot readings with Annie.

26. Contact improving with Jiro at Sacred Circle Dance.

27. Finding "new muscles" when learning to bellydance.

28. Dinners and rehearsals with Chelsea and Catherine.

29. Eating wild violets on a sunny February day (faerie medicine!).

30. Drawing cool pictures from random lines.

....I could go on and on!