EverydayBliss: Mystical Rhythm, Punk, & Health

The natural rhythm of symmetry is calming.

Listening to right now: Shanti/Ashtangi

Today's Happiness Formula: A post about drums is a great way to start your day!

Following My Bliss by: Monday's are my reading and "gathering" day mixed in with lots of yoga and walking. A day of thinking and developing and "composting," like I call it. I will also work on revisions.

The Hindu tradition, in its practical understanding of sound
in the mystical life, tells us that music is God
when it reaches its ultimate purity, focus, and effectiveness
in opening the heart, mind, and spirit.

--Russill Paul, The Yoga of Sound

And what is more pure, focused, and effective than drums? Percussion? Rhythm?

It has taken me some time to understand my love of drumming, my need, really, for music pared down to the essential.

About 15 years ago, I was in the midst of a dark night of the soul. I prefer to call it that than label it "depression." It was an opportunity. The moment in my life when I got to choose between living and being one of the walking dead.

At first, I did what most people do. I turned to "modern" medicine. This lasted about three weeks before my partner took the pills away. They made my mind feel empty of the crap, sure, but they emptied me of me.

But during the third day of this pill taking, we decided to attend the local Unitarian church for the first time. I could barely sit up. Everything seemed fuzzy.

It so happened that when we attended the minister was away and so the members of this church decided to have a drum circle.

I never went back.

It totally freaked me out -- all those people sitting around "playing Native American." That's how I saw things like that then. I had a ways to go.

Fast forward a few years and I'm getting things under control. No drugs, lots of yoga and journaling and talking...simply put, lots of "doing the work." I got a job with Pax Christi USA, the national Catholic peace organization. I went to their yearly meeting in Minnesota -- the Abbey of St. John, a most magical feeling place.

The last big mass of the gathering, there were drummers in the lobby of the magnificent church. They were local natives -- literally. And after mass, you had to walk through that lobby with them drumming.

It was like walking in water; pushing through the heavy sound, you were enveloped. I could have stood there forever, bathing in it.

Ablution. Baptism.

Fast forward some more years, and I am getting closer to being "me." Closer every day to health. Closer to bliss.

We went, by a friend's request, to hear Yamato, Japanese drummers. I didn't know what I was in for.

I was to learn that my heartbeat and the heartbeat of the universe and the heartbeat of music are all one in the same. That when we pay attention to this simple fact, when we open our hearts to the heartbeat of music, we are healed.

Those people at the Unitarian place were onto something.

Just recently, I have discovered my love for punk drums. Not the fast, crazy, I'm-so-angry punk drums, but the punk drums that say life is play -- the drums that wash over me like wave after wave, like the ocean on a windy but sunny day.

(For some of my favorite drumming ever, watch this. Go to the "Mediate" section at minute 3:24.)

And like I've mentioned before, this is important -- pay attention to the type and quality of drumming, of music, because the wrong kind, the chaotic kind becomes noise, becomes harmful:

"So sensitive we are to sound that noise pollution has been called the most common modern health hazard," writes alternative physician Dr. Larry Dossey. "High levels of unpleasant sounds cause blood vessels to constrict; increase blood pressure, pulse and respiratory rates; release extra fats into the bloodstream; and cause the blood's magnesium levels to fall." (From The Yoga of Sound)

The throbbing, pulsing tin can of a car sitting down the block; the screams of the angry mother across the street; the revving of the motorcycle in desperate need of a better muffler; the car alarms...

(The car alarms. I just watched a trailer for a movie called Noise with Tim Robbins.)

All of this illustrates how important it is for us to think about our own sound environment but to also keep in mind our effect on the sound environment of everyone around us.

Our health depends upon it.

Perhaps if the car alarms sounded like drums we wouldn't get so angry...

EverydayBliss: A Bit of Earth Magic

The city cemetery, about 8 blocks from our house.

Listening to right now: The Corrs & Bono

Today's Happiness Formula: Being mothers to wonderful animals!

Following My Bliss by: Today I will be brave and print out applications for passports.

Blessing of the Nine Elements for All Occasions

May you go forth under the strength of heaven,
under the light of sun,
under the radiance of moon;

may you go forth with the splendour of fire,
with the speed of lightning,
with the swiftness of wind;

may you go forth supported by the depth of sea,
by the stability of earth,
by the firmness of rocks;

may you be surrounded and encircled,
above, below, and about,
with the protection of the nine elements.

--Caitlin Matthews, Celtic Devotional

EverydayBliss: Meditation with Emily Dickinson

Our front "prairie."

Listening to right now: Jolie Holland

Today's Happiness Formula: A sunny and extremely quiet Saturday -- as if everyone is gone and it's just us.

Following My Bliss by: Spending time outside, putting in baby lettuces and sweet peas and snapdragon's. Tending to the "grounds," as we like to teasingly call them.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

--Emily Dickinson

I know many people find Emily a bit on the obscure side, but I think she comes down to some pretty simple (meaning basic, not easy) principles: mindfulness and expansiveness.

If we approach her poems like meditations -- as we should all poems, really -- eventually they reveal themselves to us.

Spend some time this weekend with this Emily. It seems particularly appropriate right now.

What prairie are you looking to create?

EcoBliss: Urban Living is Smart Living

First buds on dwarf apple tree.

Listening to right now: Paolo Conte

Today's Happiness Formula: The sound of Italian first thing in the morning! Waking with books in my head. Waking and feeling truly awake (thanks to obeying my wheat allergy).

Following My Bliss by: Today I'll ride my bike to my chiropractor and then to get wine to go with homemade corn tortillas tonight. Yum. A friend is coming this morning to pick up the incorporation papers for an adult creativity center we are in the process of opening. Later, I will finish writing a grant and doing edits on my partner's novel.

We live on one-tenth of an acre in the city. We are in a zone 6b (for you gardening nerds) that acts a lot like a zone 7. We are in a clean watershed. Our bio-region is diverse, to say the least.

And right here, in this tiny yard, there is so much going on:

We have been eating asparagus for about three weeks already.

There is edible kale -- it overwintered -- and there are baby kales, chard, dandelion, greens of all sorts coming up.

Our kiwi vines -- yes, kiwi, there is a hardy variety -- are trailing and filling out the front arbor. I can already see buds aplenty.

Our grape vines are robust.

Our dwarf apple that we planted two summers ago has its first flowers. Perhaps we will eat an apple this fall from our own yard.

Our almond tree is healthy -- for now. Almonds in California are being plagued by an unknown disease and I fear for ours.

Our strawberries are covered in flowers and we will eat strawberries into the fall -- and this is only their third summer here.

This is all in a yard that has a ton of flowers. Besides being good for bees and birds and butterflies, they are good for my eyes. And we still have too much grass -- which in my book means we have grass. I would like to not have any and someday we will accomplish that goal. For now, we mow with a reel mower.

For every vegetable or fruit we eat out of our own yard, we are decreasing our footprint on this small planet.

I won't go on and on about the evils of sprawl. Here's a place you can read about that. But from what I have observed about people who live out in the country, they spend a lot of their time driving into cities. Everything they do takes more resources. Think about how much more fuel it takes to get them their groceries alone. Add to this the fact that they most often do not work any where near their homes. They are constantly commuting.

City living can be the more relaxing option -- if you approach it intentionally and mindfully.

We don't have to have a car. Which you know by now. At the very least, could you get rid of one of your cars? (It is pretty safe to assume in this country that if you have two adults in your household, you have two cars.)

There's no public transportation out in the country. There's barely any in the suburbs.

We live within a 3 mile radius of absolutely everything we need. Think about that. It's all walkable! We don't have to drive for anything -- we can walk to our food, our entertainment, our work.

And if more people opted out of cars and into bikes, walking, and public transportation, imagine how much more wonderful and human-friendly city-living could become.

We could remove driveways and add gardens! We could make kid-dense areas car free. There are parts of London where you can't drive a car. Downtown Freiberg, Germany is car free.

Living off the grid might sound ideal, but grids work because they are efficient in that they serve many, many people. What we suck into the grid is where the change can -- and needs to -- happen. The grid itself is not the problem.

We are part of a community. Some of our best friends live within the houses right around us. That is worth something -- especially if you believe times might become increasingly difficult.

We are two people living in 900 square feet (small here, but large in most parts of the world) on one tenth of an acre. We could be two people living on 10, 20, 100 acres, and that is not justifiable unless you are a farmer.

And being a farmer is something most of us could not handle, no matter how much we like to romanticize it. Most of us can't grow a decent tomato. Let's just start where we are, shall we? Like with salad greens -- you don't even need a garden bed; a pot will do for salad greens!

Does gardening and producing your own food on a small piece of land sound like too much work? Because it's small, the gardening is dense, which means less weeding. And because we aren't driving around all the time trying to fulfill needs or get to jobs, we have a lot of free time.

Because this is about quality of life, above all else. We live cheaper and easier and so we don't need to work as much and can concentrate on our writing and our art and our friendships and having fun.

Imagine that.

EverydayBliss: Resisting What Makes Us Happy

After sitting outside to journal.

Listening to right now: The Early Music Show, BBC Radio 3

Today's Happiness Formula: A great response yesterday to the first interview! More to come...

Following My Bliss By: Working on my partner's manuscript today; I will finish those corrections! Yes, I will.

Over the past year, I have been consumed by the needs of sick animals and I felt like I had a good day if I managed to journal. First, our sweet orange tabby, Ernie (age 13), passed away -- quite suddenly April 2007 -- and then our angel black and white Jobie (age 16) became ill and passed away, at home, in my arms, this January.

We felt blessed to have so much time with them -- and at the end, we were able to focus on them in the way that most humans can only wish for.

Though we are still in mourning, we are slowly and surely making our way to our "new normal," as grief therapists seem to like to call it.

And that includes getting back to our creative endeavors, which for me is a very thick, in-need-of-serious-revision manuscript, sitting patiently in a cabinet a few feet from me.

To get back to my own writing, I am doing two things. First, I am helping my partner revise her novel. This is a good way to for me to get back to working with words and not feel so attached.

Second, I am blogging, which has been a surprisingly effective way to strengthen my very weak writing muscles -- the muscles that need to be worked every single day.

Every single day.

This is hard for me.

I am, by nature, a routine cat. But my most consistent routine is the resistance of this fact about myself.

I have talked to many people about this: why do we resist doing the very things that we know and claim are good for us?

When I am writing, the "I" in that phrase gets lost. "I" feel immersed in something larger, timeless, full.

This happens at other times: when I do yoga, when I am weeding or dead-heading in the garden, when I am reading some very excellent book, when I am bird-watching.

When I am truly present to these activities, "I" feel immense. At moments like these, I know I am experiencing empirical evidence that "I" am not "it."

But given the choice, how many of us would avoid our own small lists of self-fulfilling, self-expanding, most-loved endeavors in favor of ... cleaning the house, saying "yes" to an event we have no desire to go to, watching TV... anything to avoid the very things that make us who we are.

Obviously, someone like Kal Barteski does not have this problem. Or at least, does not have this problem to the extent that the rest of us do. She has learned how to move past the hesitation (as Sakyong Mipham would label it); she has learned not to mistake that transparent, temporary feeling for her truth.

Be courageous and discipline yourself.
Work. Keep digging your well.
Don't think about getting off from work.
Water is there somewhere.
Submit to a daily practice.
Your loyalty to that
is a ring on the door.
Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who's there.

--Rumi (Trans. Coleman Barks)

This is a Rumi that we should all read every day, every morning. It could easily be turned into a personal prayer, mantra, affirmation (whichever term floats your boat).

It is so simple yet so difficult, isn't it?

But the key is to do it anyway. That key will open the door to your bliss, your never-ending well of joy and fulfillment -- the magic elixir, if you will, that will enable you to live through anything, even your "worst" things, as I have learned over the past year.

Jobie, in particular, was the first being to teach me about unconditional love -- the giving and the receiving. I met Jobie before I met my partner, and I think he prepared me for her. (She came along two years later.) My heart felt broken before I met Jobie and he started the healing process. I thought I was an angry person and he showed me I was just sad. Sad can be mended.

So when I would imagine not having him, it seemed like the worst thing that could ever happen to me. But his teachings were deep and far and wide, and his love opened my heart which opened my life.

By the time he became ill, he'd spent 16 years teaching me -- with the eventual help of others, of course! By the time he passed in my arms, by the time I felt that last breath leave his little body, I was ready for the next level of lessons.

And so I write, every day, and I do yoga, and I weed the gardens. And I don't resist like I used to.

Because the resistance, I have learned from that wise cat, is a "no" to life.

That resistance is no hope, no trust, no belief.

And once our hearts open and the hope and trust and belief and "yes" are allowed to rush in, the resistance is washed away in the flood of who you really are, a flood of what you are truly capable of, the flood of your infinite power.

I say "yes" to it all now -- to the joy and the fun and the laughs and also to the grief and the tears -- because it is all one and the same.

Quote Bliss: Emily Carr for Kal Barteski

Look at the earth crowded with growth,
new and old bursting from their strong roots
hidden in the silent, live ground, each seed
according to its own kind... each one knowing
what to do, each one demanding its own rights
on the earth... So, artist, you too from the deeps
of your soul... let your roots creep forth,
gaining strength.

--Emily Carr, Canadian, Painter & Writer, 1871-1945

PrimeBliss: Interview with Artist Kal Barteski

A big, pink, live bouquet for the first interview!

Listening to right now: The Duhks (in honor of Winnipeg)

Today's Happiness Formula: All of the smells -- the lilacs, the cherry trees, the crabapple, the apple, the daphne, the narcissus...overwhelming.

Kal Barteski is an incredibly busy woman. To read her blog is to get a breathless sense of what it can be to be a good, involved mother and a productive, excited, invigorated artist.

She has so many projects going on...all the time...simultaneously. She creates originals and prints of "Tiny Art," volunteers her time and talents, teaches, writes books, publishes -- all on top of taking care of Pilot!

Check out her blog page and all the links to her various endeavors.

And then she even had the time to answer a few questions from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. I've heard through various sources that Winnipeg is quite an art town.

(For a definition of "PrimeBliss.")

Describe the PrimeBliss of your life, including how you came to discover it.

Creating art is my bliss - I can't say I came to discover it. It has always been deeply seeded within me. I can't remember loving anything else as much. I can't remember needing anything in a similar way. Since before I could read - I drew. I made things. I lost myself in a box of crayons.

What types of choices and sacrifices did you make to be able to craft this bliss-filled life?

I started my own business when I was 21. I opened my design studio and made it work when all my friends were getting paying jobs in big offices. For a while I felt a little bit left behind - until I realized that ultimately I was much further ahead working for myself and carving a space for my passions within my daily life. I didn't hesitate to jump in because I didn't see any other option. I didn't question failure. Without creating art - I don't feel that I am living a good life.

How does your PrimeBliss radiate out into the rest of your life?

My passion is also my career and it has allowed me to live a comfortable life and definitely allowed me to see the bigger picture in terms of what makes me wealthy. Waking up every morning to do what I love to do - makes me very, very rich inside... It also makes me a lot more pleasant to be around.

What are some of your secondary bliss activities? Things that make you lose your sense of time?

Secondary bliss? Spending time with the people I love. Helping people. If you're looking for me to say 'playing tennis' or 'salsa dancing' - that's just not me. I create art. I live art.

What is your daily or weekly spiritual practice?

I'm not much of a routine bird. But, I definitely have some requirements when I'm creating art - I block out most of all other distractions... noise - fuss - outside. I sort of need to zone in until I'm centered and in the zone to create. I've been doing this a long time now - so I can get there quickly...

What music is your bliss?

I like all forms of music. On an introspective day - when I am reaching very deeply for an emotion in a piece - I really like the Prayer Cycle by John Elias. Other days, I'm digging the Dixie Chicks... Whatever finds the mood. I mostly use music to block out the outside distractions.

Name books or authors/poets or people who are your bliss, who influenced your bliss.

Definitely. The Saint, The Surfer, and the CEO by Robin Sharma. Do by A.C. Ping. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. I read a LOT of books and these are the ones that touch me...

What advice would you give to someone who feels they have not yet discovered their PrimeBliss?

Keep doing stuff until you find what it is you love to do. I don't know what it is like to not know my bliss - so I do not know the best advice... Just keep moving. Keep thinking. Pay attention.

Do you have a favorite quote you would like to share?

I love quotes. My two favourites: "We are infinitely more than we think." I don't know who said that... but, it's magical. AND "Peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart." I don't know who said that either... but, that is the real deal. Peace.

Pay attention -- I don't think she could have given better advice!

And her comments about "real wealth" reminded me to think about my own life this way. Sometimes, even those of us who practice daily gratitude need to be gently reminded.

Did anything that Kal had to say especially resonate with you?