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My Hands

My hand gravitates towards yours

As though you were a furnace

On the coldest day of the year

I keep my hands to myself

My body remembers you

Every cell wants to joyfully leap outside of me

My olfactory senses indulge in a familiarity

Rarely ever felt to me

I keep my body to myself

I am an energetic ball of restraint

For fear of rushing in full force

And never bouncing back

And I am terrified

I keep my energy to myself

  

A natural inclination to lay my head on your chest

Fall into an embrace like a child to a mother’s breast

Like your strong arms can hold me

I keep my head to myself

My stomach has collected more butterflies today

Than it has all year

And I like the way you look at me

I keep my heart to myself

I am laughing it off when you discuss other women

And everything in your life that doesn't include me

Using all of my will just to brush it off casually

When really I just want you to

Remember all those little things

That make up me

Like the fact that I’ll never really give up coffee

But I’ll keep trying

And my brow’s arch so slightly when I’m focusing

How I always say obscenities in Spanish

But only when I’m angry

I always laugh at my own jokes

When no one else thinks it’s funny

The way my tongue presses against my front teeth

When I’m smiling

And all I really want to do

Is lie down here with you

With my fingers caressing your face

But I keep my hands to myself

Sharing is Caring and Other Truths of a Share-able Economy

The most meaningful moments in my life spent with other people have one common thread: sharing.

I’ve been a member of the CouchSurfing community since 2007 when I started hosting strangers at my 3 bedroom apartment in Logan Square.  I opened the couch and home I shared with three roommates to these strangers and we shared moments, parties and experiences together.  I connected with people from all over the world through CouchSurfing.  We overcame language barriers together.  We shared food together, talked politics and social norms.  We cut the bullshit of every day conversation and just got to the good stuff.  We learned from each other and ultimately we changed each other slowly – each experience undid all my false perceptions of different cultures, countries or people with truth; with the expansiveness only experience can provide. 

I found out about the film: One Couch at a Time, through someone that I had the pleasure of hosting myself who is featured at some point in the film.  In the documentary, the brave Couchsurfer Extraordinaire, Alexandra, hits up 6 different continents and couchsurfs through her way through all of it.

This film was inspiring – not just to the wanderlust escape artist inside of me but also to the wide-eyed young woman full of hope in the midst of all the global and economic crises surrounding young people today. 

I remember my first job armed with so much idealism and thinking: Why are we still working this way?  Why can’t we change things?  We don’t have to do things the same way our fathers or mothers did.  We are the leaders we've been waiting for!

Then the reality of student loans and bills hits you hard – harder than it ever did for past generations and you lose hope in being able to change the status quo, but this film made me believe in possibilities again.  I don’t have to live this super sequential story board life to have everything I want.  I can have it through community, through sharing, through human connection with others.

The people are demanding transparency, environmentally friendly resources, and innovation with technology as modern-day sharing’s vehicle of choice.  Those who cannot understand this will fail.  A new age is dawning – one that will demand more from all of us.  It will demand better businesses, better neighbors, better communities, better leadership and it is now. 

“Opportunities thought impractical because of perceived trust barriers are now fair game.  The examples of Lending Club, Couchsurfing and Thredup show that people are engaging in intimate transactions with strangers driven by technology, new norms and need.  This is the trust frontier.  We have yet to discover how far we can push this frontier.  This is the decade when we answer the question: ‘How much can we share?’”

-Neal Gorenflo, Publisher, Shareable Magazine

I am hosting a screening of One Couch at a Time and discussion on the share-able economy on Thursday, May 16^th at 6 p.m. in the South Loop.  Please email me directly if you’re interested in attending.  The screening will be free so long as you bring something to share.  Seats are limited – first come first serve.  See you on the other side of this exciting frontier!

I'm Not Her

Bless the woman that makes you a man

Taking off your training wheels

I’m not her.

Thank that saintly patient teacher

Waiting for maturity to hit you over the head

Call me when you get there.

Luck to the woman who sees your potential

More than the reality in front of her

Send me a postcard.

Sympathy to the woman mistaking a mirage for a lagoon

Amidst the dusty sand dunes

I’m just not that thirsty.

Thank that sacrificial whore

Who let you take more than you can give

I don’t spread myself around.

I’ll be the one to let you struggle lovingly

Because I believe in you more than you do

I’ll be the only one strong enough to handle you

Because I’m strong enough to know that I don’t have to

No More

Oaxaca, Mexico

No more maneater

No more ice queen

The resurgence of the in between

No more ardent lover

No more violent hater

All the more serene

Maybe this is called authenticity

This is a surfboard unsinking

This is what it is to own energy

She’s keeping her silence now

Less and less apt to feel the need

To fill the space

No more tough girl act; defense machinations

No more external validation

Who’s really the one keeping track?

No more drama unnecessary

No more over controlling

Live and let live; give get and give

No more people pleasing

No more overly friendly

Oh the beauty of boundaries

She’s more careful these days

She’s more thankful these days

What’s hers is hers alone

No more clinging to definitions

No more unchallenging the latest version of me

Ode to finding simplicity within complexity

It’s much less sexy

When you’re no longer the life of the party

But how enchanting to know where you’re going

No more clinging to ideals

No more holding onto all that is fluid

Finding the light and love in uncertainty

Letting the universe hold me

Surrendering

Being

I Want to be a Hindu Cow, Dammit!

Perhaps it’s not experiencing every single type of hell to taste the heights of heaven for only a moment that makes life worth living.  Perhaps the answer lies within the in between spaces…

See that mellow look in that cow's eyes, that should be me doing yoga.

You’d think I’d be as clear and as calm as a Hindu cow with all the yoga I've been practicing lately, but instead here’s this anxiety riding, self-obliterating person who has been a complete asshole –mainly to herself.

The past few months have resulted in an over-stressed, over-committed, ambivalent being that has been focusing far too much on everything that’s wrong rather all that is perfect and right.

Then something happened.  I was in class trying to get into virasana pose (this pose is also an asshole), visibly getting frustrated as I moved props under my knees and still felt too much pressure.  I shifted back into baddha konasana and watched everyone else meditate in perfect virasanas.  Then judgment: I was yelling at my knees in my head then wondering how on earth is every goddamned person in this room in this pose?  It’s not like I see each of them in class week after week or day after day in the studio...

By the third pose my teacher took a moment to come up to me and look me in the eye.  She said, “I need you to practice compassion for yourself today.  I need you to be patient with yourself and be kind to yourself.”  She touched my solar plexus area before saying, “You’re beautiful.”

I kept my composure and kept nodding my head up until the “you’re beautiful” part, at which point I started crying and proceeded to cry throughout every subsequent pose in class.

In yoga they say that one goes through the process of self discovery that sometimes is not always smooth sailing.  This process is called Dukkha.

The only way out is through.

In the Heart of Yoga by T. K. V. Desikachar it says, “Someone who is searching for clarity always sees more suffering than someone who is not.  The awareness of suffering results from greater sensitivity.  The person who is not searching for clarity does not even know what brings him happiness or sorrow.”

Desikachar says that “through the insightful percept of problems and confusions we move toward clarity.”

When people wonder why I continue to practice yoga and want to teach it I say this: I’m not there yet, but I feel more like myself than I've felt in a really long time.  This clarity, while not always pretty – is worth it all to me.  This same clarity is what keeps propelling me further into living purposefully, fearlessly, transparently and BOLDLY.  I’m not afraid of myself anymore and perhaps I’m not sold on believing that I’m beautiful yet, but I’m getting there.  As my other teacher always says: slowly, slowly.

It just takes practice.