EverydayBliss: Showing Your True Colors

The back of my head visiting my niece.

Listening to right now: The Ting Tings

Today's Bliss Formula: A lot of green on my iCal today -- which is the color of writing projects. And then tonight -- an outing! Dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant, which happens to be in our neighborhood only 4 blocks away. Yum!

One of the big differences that I notice between Gen X'ers and Baby Boomers has to do with self-decoration. Yes, perhaps we tattoo (though I have not) and perhaps we are known to pierce a bit more (again, not me), I think we bother less with make-up and perfume than the Baby Boomers.

At least, that has been my observation. I know of no one my age who wears perfume on a daily basis, if at all. And if my friends wear make-up, it's that "invisible" approach -- no blatantly obvious red lips, fake lashes, penciled eyebrows. And rarely a painted nail -- except on their toes. And, to be clear here, the only lesbians I know are my partner and me. All our female friends are of the straight variety.

And yet, my generation does color their hair. Think about it, they were raised pretty much by the first generation of women ever to decide that their natural hair color was unacceptable and it was way cooler to put chemicals on your scalp.

Fifty is the new forty pretty much because of hair color.

So the fact that I don't color my hair -- unless it's been a dreary winter and I'm feeling a bit pale -- tends to annoy these women. They tell me. As if it's any of their business.

Men are another story. And perhaps this will be a shock to most women, but I get stopped on the street -- literally -- by men who want to tell me how much they love my hair. How much they love that I let it be.

Standing in a line at Starbucks, gentlemen in suits shyly tell me how pretty it is and how much they appreciate the natural approach in a woman.

And I probably don't need to point out that men with the same hair color are told they look distinguished.

Of course, I've been lucky. My white -- not dingy gray -- hair has come in in these weirdly perfect stripes.

And I have had more time to think about this than most women. I got my first white hair when I was fourteen. This has been happening to me for a long time. My age -- 39 -- is only beginning to catch up with my hair.

Which brings me to a larger point: our hair is not, for two days in a row, the same color, so when you color it, you are telling a story. I was born, for instance, with pitch black hair and then for the first few years of school, my hair was definitely auburn, and by college, it was back to being almost black -- but with those whites starting to pop up more and more regularly.

Our hair is really a lot like us -- ever changing and ever evolving and why would we want it any other way?

Though, lately, I have to admit, I have been tempted by the idea of pink!

I think, too, this is important: why are you coloring your hair? Is it for fun? For a little pick me up? Or do you do it because you can't stand the thought of aging?

Like anything, it's about being conscious -- even when it comes to something as "silly" as hair color.

EverydayBliss: Look Up for a Lift

The Watson-Curtze Mansion in Downtown Erie.

Listening to right now: MIDival PunditZ, Ali

Today's Bliss Formula: The new relationships I am developing -- especially in the yoga community -- thanks to this site. Today's reading: The Anti 9 to 5 Guide, a book about which I have long been excited.

On a trip to Paris too many years ago (what a sad little phrase that is -- must get back to Paris!), I noticed something about Cathedrals.

At the time, I was in one of my anti-religion phases, but I still couldn't stay away from the Cathedrals. And when I went in, regardless of my then-cynicism, I felt something. I didn't want to, but I did. I found myself lighting candles -- completely embarrassed but still doing it.

And I wanted to stay inside those cathedrals, just sit, for hours, but I couldn't -- I was with some people who had lists of things to accomplish and just sitting would mean wasted time.

My memory may be wrong, but at the time (around 1994) they were in the middle of a major restoration and there was no seating inside. I could be making this up; memory is tricky. But I do clearly remember having this unbearable urge to sit on the floor, to lie on the floor, and just look up.

Coming back, I forgot all about this, until a few years later when I started attending Mass sporadically and realized why I preferred the Cathedral downtown to any of the smaller, neighborhood churches -- it was the height.

Something about looking up into that vast expanse of space, made me feel good. And the architecture just added to the sensation. Outlining the space with beautiful, well thought out lines and curves seemed to make the space more apparent -- rather than limited.

Looking up into the sky, of course, can give you the same lift. And living on a lake, with no mountains, no forests, is, to me, the ultimate. I am a flat-lander for that very reason -- my love of big sky.

Reach up for the sunrise.
Put your hands into the big sky.
You can touch the sunrise.
Feel the new day enter your life.
--Duran Duran

So what about out own bodies? If the body is the temple, is there a way to access these feelings internally, no matter where you are?

Of course. Think about someone with really poor posture. They are hunched; their head is aimed toward the ground. The vibe they send out into the world can vary from "I don't care" to "The world doesn't care." And their posture helps fulfill that prophecy, does it not? They literally drag themselves down.

Standing up straight, with your pelvis positioned in line with your spine, activating your core, can make you feel better. Every time your mother or father yelled at you to stand up straight, they were giving you emotional and spiritual advice as well as physical, whether they were aware of this or not.

And in Kundalini yoga, this principle of looking up is taken to anther level: the third eye is key in Kundalini yoga.

For most of a session of this distinct type of yoga, you have your eyes closed and are instructed to look up and through your third eye.

Traditionally, people say that your destiny is written on your forehead. A good enough reason to look in this direction! But Ravi Singh asserts in Journey through the Chakras, that the point of opening your third eye is really so "you can see clearly where your destiny lies and you can go there and live it."

So it might sound silly but stand up straight, raise your eyes to the sky many times a day, lay down on the grass and just gaze, start taking pictures from underneath things, and feel the lift.

And to paraphrase Ravi Singh yet again (or to quote him exactly -- I couldn't find the quote in my many, many DVD's),

Your feet are roots and your skull a skylight; let heaven and earth conspire within you.

We are spirit and flesh, not any less of one than the other. And when you look up, you remember that your mind and your life are as big as any sky, as beautiful as any sunset, and as promising as any sunrise.

EverydayBliss: Robin Hood meets Siddhartha

Last night, thanks to iTunes, we downloaded three episodes of BBC America's Robin Hood, Series One.

That sentence is full of geek happiness, is it not?

About a third of the way through the first episode, I turned to my partner and said "oh, they have totally Siddhartha'd this." She agreed.

In the earliest versions of his story, Robin Hood was a farmer or an archer, not a nobleman. He was just as violent as the culture around him, and he had yet to steal from the rich to give to the poor.

In this BBC version, Robin is a nobleman who goes off to fight what he thinks is the good fight. When he returns from the Crusades, he is a changed man. A man of nonviolence.

He gives up his riches, leaves his castle, so to speak, to go on a quest to find himself only to return to show others his way. He's not doing this consciously, but the story is there.

And it's familiar.

But it's also well done. And being Xena and Buffy fans, we are excited to find another ass-kicking show that doesn't have blood and is all about the Greater Good. Oh! and there are over-pronounced sound effects and crazy, unnatural feats. Like a Hong Kong style martial arts film.

We are happy.

EverydayBliss: Wherever You Go, There You Are

A stately, old tree downtown at our planetarium.

Listening to right now: The Silk String Quartet

Today's Happiness Formula: A bit of a lie in (obviously, since I am posting so late!). New music transferred to the iMac.

Following My Bliss By: Working on an essay that has been too long in the making. Getting back to daily yoga; I've been off my schedule, and being a schedule cat, I must be more faithful.

By the time I was 18 years old, my family had moved 19 times.

Yes, you read that right -- 19 times in 18 years.

The longest I ever lived in one place, consecutively, was 5 years. And so you can calculate that there were years when we moved more than once in a twelve month span.

I learned to fit in and make friends quickly. But I also learned to let them go just as quickly. I learned that friends and places and experiences were all impermanent, interchangeable, short term blips to be moved on from and forgotten.

Forgotten was best; it didn't hurt as much if you could compartmentalize it.

My partner had the exact opposite experience, being raised in one house and moving for the first time to go to college.

We have lived in this house -- a house named "lilypad" -- for over 9 years. At about year 3 and 4, I experienced a major itch. It was time to move, my internal clock almost screamed. How better to clean through your stuff? I would research places; we would visit them.

Then I would cry at the thought of leaving all that we have planted here -- the trees, the tulips, the lilac, the friendships. Finally, by about year 6, I got over having this periodic moving itch and settled in for the long haul. I can't imagine moving. Leaving this small plot of land upon which we have experienced so much, into which we have grown deep, fat roots.

Tap roots.

Trees have one or another type of root system. Tap roots are the roots that go straight down, dig deep, don't sprawl toward the surface. These trees can be placed close to structures, so they make excellent city trees. If you try to move them, most likely you will kill them.

The other type of roots stay close to the surface, sprawl. They are shallow rooted and will easily fall over in a strong storm. They don't have the staying power of a tap rooted tree.

I'm a tap-rooted tree now and proud of it.

I am recovering from a disease that seems rampantly communicable in this culture: Movingitis.

This disease is actually attached to many other diseases.

Sprawl. We are eating up our countryside in the name of finding greener pastures, which may be greener...until we get there and dig them up and throw down McMansions with poison-lawns, on which we allow our pets and children to play.

Disconnect. People are so busy moving, looking, hoping for something better -- like changing channels on the TV in case there is a better program on -- that they miss out on what is around them. They miss out on long-term, deep relationships with people, with places, with trees.

Unhappiness. I fear that Movingitis is not a disease but rather a symptom that plays out like an individuated virus -- hiding the underlying cause, which is a soul-sickness. We are convinced that there is something wrong with us and that the right car, the right house, the right town will fix it.

Think about it. In all of human history, we are the first to move for moving's sake. And like art for art's sake, this is a purely masturbatory impulse. It's all about temporarily feeling good or feeling startled into feeling something.

People used to move because there was a real, outside threat: another clan attacking them or bad weather depleting food sources.

But we move to run. We run from ourselves. And for a while it feels good. We have a new place to learn so we feel stimulated. We have to get settled so we feel productively occupied. We have new people to meet -- people for whom we can be a brand new person if we so choose.

But after a year or two or five, we are still the same, unsatisfied person, and we are angry that this move didn't do it, didn't make us feel complete...and so we move again.

I have lived many places. They are all essentially the same; all towns have good and bad. But mostly they are the same, because we are the same person, no matter where we are.

Remember: tap-rooted trees don't fall down in storms.

What kind of tree are you?

A poem for this topic, by moi:

No Matter Where You Are

Stop saying that you are
from some place else.
Pay attention to the ground that is
under your feet.
Take off your shoes, and
go barefoot in the grasses,
in the sands, in
the waters, in the here,
in the now, in this
right place.

Stop saying that you are
from some place else.
Claim the land
of your birth.
Get on your knees and
put your hands in
the dirt, pull out
weeds by their roots,
plant seeds.
Stay and watch
them sprout and
grow. Care
for them, know
them all.

Stop saying that you are
from some place else.
Lift your face to this
sky, breathe in
deep, feel the air
on your skin.
Open your eyes to
the clouds, open your
ears to the birds.

Be the native
that you
are.

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?

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.

EverydayBliss: Beauty Defeats Fear

The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani

Listening to right now: Marchio Bossa

Today's Happiness Formula: The first cluster on flowers on our dwarf apple tree since we planted it two summers ago!

When I planned this post, I didn't realize that I would be writing part of the answer to the fear issues of yesterday's post. I just thought I would be writing a little something about a book I loved. Synchronicity, I guess.

The Blood of Flowers (website for the book which includes readers' guides) is set in 17th century Persia. The unnamed female protagonist is an artist, a talented rug maker and designer in a time when women's lives were restricted and ... oh, right, it's still that way in much of that part of the world.

But Persia! An amazing culture. And the author captures it.

When we went to see Niyaz, Azam Ali was in tears talking about the beauty of her culture and how politics and power has all but killed it -- or is at least trying to.

But then that is what fundamentalists do, isn't it? Whether they be Islamic or Christian, of the Middle East or the U.S. They fear that which does not fit into their narrow idea of life and then they set out to destroy it.

Interestingly, there is a European in the book and he is depicted as a beast of sorts. And when you think about it, you realize that Persians were living lives of abundance and creativity while Europeans were just surviving. Persia had great cities and poetry and art while Europe was still nomadic and tribal and barely scratching a life out of the dirt.

In that context, you realize that those of us who are of European descent are mere toddlers. (And we certainly often act like children of two, wanting and grabbing and throwing tantrums when things don't go our way.)

Out of this entire book of amazing and meaningful words, though, there was one paragraph in particular that I had to copy out:

"...Even after that calamity, do you think the rug makers knotted death, destruction, and chaos into their rugs? ... Never, not once! ... If anything, the designers created images of even more perfect beauty. This is how we, the rug makers, protest all that is evil. Our response to cruelty, suffering, and sorrow is to remind the world of the face of beauty, which can best restore a man's tranquility, cleanse his heart of evil, and lead him to the path of truth."

I once had a woman tell me that people shouldn't be wasting their time making art but should be growing their own food (why they were mutually exclusive in her mind, I'll never know).

That is fear. That is gripping. That is saying "Life is scary and I don't trust anything."

What makes us human? I asked. She didn't respond, realizing she was with two artists.

But certainly, that is the point, is it not? What makes us human? What separates us from the chaos, from the people who destroy, from the people who live in fear?

It is our love of and respect for the beautiful. And I do not mean beauty in mass media terms.

Beauty is simplicity taken to the extreme. Who said that?

Those first flowers on our apple tree. The whisper of a loved one. Time taken to make bread without a machine.

Beauty is anything that uplifts us, grows us, and it is nothing that destroys or breaks down or makes us small.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
--William Butler Yeats, Irish, 1865-1939

Yes, indeed.

What is beautiful in your life? How could you increase your experience of the beautiful?

Cultivate the beauty and protest the fear.

EverydayBliss: Saying No to Fear-Mongering Media

Bird Goddess by Marcy Hall
(to remind us of our own wings)

Listening to right now: the wind chimes out our front door.

Today's Happiness Formula: A reading and walking and tree and bird watching and yoga day.

It has been about two years since we've owned a television. Don't get me wrong -- I adore movies and science fiction television shows, and thanks to iTunes and our new widescreen iMac, we watch our share. But we don't have to put up with commercials and we don't have to be subjected to regular news breaks.

We also don't get a newspaper or any news magazines delivered to our home.

And yet, I am not an ignorant person; I know what is going on in the world -- or at least, what the media has decided I should know is going on in the world.

Even without TV, newspapers, or magazines, I know. Information of this sort seems to float through the air. Why do I need to invite it into my home, my sanctuary?

Especially when all it seems to do is invite in fear. The people I know who "keep up" with all the bad news appear more paralyzed than those who do not. They can spout off all sorts of awful facts but those facts don't change their lives.

So what is the point?

To be fearful. That seems to be the point, doesn't it?

Fear keeps us immobile. It keeps us turning to things like "retail therapy," just to feel better for an hour or so. We act indignant; we can argue and debate at parties; we appropriately sigh at the injustices. But all out of fear -- which we so rarely turn into courage through action.

Fear makes for small minds and small lives. Every dictator knows that fear is how you control the masses.

Great minds think through and beyond fear.

Yes, there is plenty to fear in this life -- plenty without going out and looking for more.

Too much information can be as dangerous as too little.

Knowing that there is a small village in some far off country suffering from an outbreak of some (now) rare communicable disease -- does this make you pull out your checkbook? Go there and help?

No. Because knowing there are people who are hungry in our own communities doesn't make most of us do a single thing differently.

And why? Because knowing too much makes it all feel like too much. Makes us feel powerless.

This is where "you can only change you" comes in.

But we don't even do that much. We just go along.

We have become so attached to our comfort that we have become complacent to the smallest of problems and cynical about the largest. We have lost or given away a large part of our own sense of power.

What happened to the genetic inclinations that led our ancestors to climb aboard boats having no clue where they would end up or if they would even survive?

It has been scared out of us. That's what.

Everywhere you turn there is a new enemy, gladly supplied by the perfectly coiffed TV announcer.

Cancer and other illnesses keep us afraid of our own bodies. Suddenly women's breasts are their enemies. Any little symptom is a reason for twenty expensive tests. We work jobs that we detest, that kill our very souls, so that we can have health insurance that will drop us if we do become very ill.

The idea of terrorism keeps us afraid of the other. We go around the world acting like bullies and then wonder why people don't like us and so we just hate them back.

A global food and fuel crisis keeps us afraid of the very planet that sustains us. And so we look for new ways to rape her, new ways to offend the very cycles of life.

But there have always been people who have risen above such opportunities for fear.

Anne Frank wrote in her diary, wrote of hope and love and beauty, regardless of the threat of death, literally outside her door.

Beethoven wrote some of his best music after becoming deaf -- he did not retreat into self-pity.

Federico Garcia Lorca wrote poetry and plays and prose in spite of the terror that was Franco. He wrote up until the very day he was driven out to a field and shot in the head. He may have been murdered, but he was never silenced.

Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Christ, the Dalai Lama -- all of them continued to spread their messages of love and tolerance and peace regardless of the possible consequences to themselves.

In my own home town, John Kanzius did not succumb to fear after being diagnosed with lymphoma -- no, instead, he set about to find a cure for cancer, and right now, he is raising money for human trials.

There is plenty to fear, yes, but why partake of it?

Say no. If you think you need to be "informed," why not go meet your neighbors and find out what they need? Or start right in your own home.

Get brave. Be courageous.

Turn off the TV, throw away the crap newspapers, burn the news magazines.

Opt out of the collective of fear.

EverydayBliss: Red & Blue & Stories about Who We Are

A jumble of colors for this week that seemed to be about color.

Listening to right now: Club des Belugas with Dean Martin

Today's Happiness Formula: Breakfast made outside on the grill with our neighbor -- well, brunch, really.

This poem by Ted Hughes is from his collection Birthday Letters -- a collection, it turns out, that he had been writing since Sylvia Plath's death, when people had assumed he had chosen to never write about her.

One day he walked into his publisher's office and threw a manuscript on the desk, told him to go ahead with it, and walked out the door. The publisher was shocked at the content, to say the least.

Ted died shortly after. That story gives me chills every time.

This particular poem is about story and how sometimes we tell ourselves stories about who we are that are not only untrue but also destructive of our essence.

Red

Red was your colour.
If not red, then white. But red
Was what wrapped around you.
Blood-red. Was it blood?
Was it red-ochre, for warming the dead?
Haematite to make immortal
The precious heirloom bones, the family bones.

When you had your way finally
Our room was red. A judgement chamber.
Shut casket for gems. The carpet of blood
Patterned with darkenings, congealments.
The curtains -- ruby corduroy blood,
Sheer blood-falls from ceiling to floor.
The cushions the same. The same
Raw carmine along the window-seat.
A throbbing cell. Aztec altar -- temple.

Only the bookshelves escaped into whiteness.

And outside the window
Poppies thin and wrinkle-frail
As the skin on blood,
Salvias, that your father named you after,
Like blood lobbing from a gash,
And roses, the heart's last gouts,
Catastrophic, arterial, doomed.

Your velvet long full skirt, a swathe of blood,
A lavish burgundy.
Your lips a dipped, deep crimson.
You revelled in red.
I felt it raw -- like the crisp gauze edges
Of a stiffening wound. I could touch
The open vein in it, the crusted gleam.

Everything you painted you painted white
Then splashed it with roses, defeated it.
Leaned over it, dripping roses,
Weeping roses, and more roses,
Then sometimes, among them, a little blue
bird.

Blue was better for you. Blue was wings.
Kingfisher blue silks from San Francisco
Folded your pregnancy
In crucible caresses.
Blue was your kindly spirit -- not a ghoul
But electrified, a guardian, thoughtful.

In the pit of red
You hid from the bone-clinic whiteness.

But the jewel you lost was blue.