body art shining

1. How do I shine? Well, someone at yoga asked me this recently—said I may have a lot of abilities I’m not showing (I don’t remember his exact words). I’ve been thinking about this and the thought wouldn’t go away. That’s how I know it’s time to write something. My early life experiences have shown me that life can be very short and taken in an instant, and that all of life is connected. I try to use Gregor’s teaching of “be well prepared” and “be open to what comes your way.” I value the model of mind, body, spirit, that the YMCA uses, and focus on my mind, body, and spirit before I help others. I feel I need to be strong and clear or I’m of no use to anybody else. I say “clean” because I try to keep all my “filters” as clean as possible, that way my actions will have the most positive impact possible with the short amount of time I have. I seek to make myself a positive ripple and build positive ripples in others. I guess I’m not so much into certification—recognition of skills and abilities—I’m not sure why. Some more concrete examples of what I do: building technology awareness at the YMCA, facilitating two discussion groups, connecting a teen with an architecture mentor, and another teen with a robotics program (still in the works). This is how I shine. How do you shine?

A poem that inspires me:
Love is the cure,
for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain
until your eyes constantly exhale love
as effortlessly as your body yields its scent.”
Rumi
http://www.poetseers.org/the_poetseers/love/7

2. Well here is another picture...some body art I did with a pen...

relax the iPod effect's common sense

1. Today's word is RELAX. I was looking over someone's shoulder on the T--reading the Metro newspaper. Bush wants to relax air quality standards. Gas standards have already been relaxed. Maybe we should all relax too--soooo much stress relax relax relaxaler...hey a new word..well sort of..Google tells me that I can get an MOD.relaxaler.gz file..I'm not even sure what that is...I think gz is some kind of compression though...the wonders of the internet never cease to amaze me!

2. I did a bit of walking this morning, and observed people and their iPods...it seems to me people with headphones in their ears seem to look sadder than those talking with one another face to face--they always seemed to be smiling. I don't own an iPod yet, but got to hold a baby nano recently. It was quite small! and look--"Baby Nano Bag - Color Yellow" is actually a product I can buy..for my baby.

3. I saw two black girls on the T today. They seemed happy to be singing, in harmony I think. I wonder how they would feel about recording their songs and making some money...you know, that starts the process of creation, not just consumption.

4. "common-sense portion"...more google...nutri-facts: "Enjoy those favorite holiday foods, but balance them out with regular physical activity and common sense portion control"...basically says don't be hungry in a place where you can buy food...yeah..

virtual GMAT's massage

1. I’m learning a lot about my body from having massage at MTI (muscular therapy institute): my IT bands are ALWAYS tight and tender to the deep touch; my hips may not be in alignment (this just discovered recently, but the students are not qualified to work with this—called cranio-sacral?); I love having my face worked on at the end of a session; I need A LOT of smoothing work done on my body before going deeper; I love lots of oil; my massage goes a lot better when the therapist knows how to breathe with me;…hmmmm what else??

2. I didn’t even know there was certification for working with people living with cancer. “Transformational breathwork”

3. I signed up for the GMAT—FINALLY. (GMAT is the business school admissions test.) Now I’m studying the sentence correction section. No wonder I got most of them wrong: I have never heard of a gerund or idiomatic verb expression. One of the example sentences: “in America you’ll get used to hearing only English all day long.” Not true, when I walk down the street in boston, I often hear other languages. Sometimes I wonder if I’m still in America….;)

4. video game::hitman: blood money..screen shot…this is part of what’s #$%^&$@ up young people…this is NOT reality—and if you play in this world enough you don’t know the difference!!

5. Well..now that I'm posting this picture...my blue roller ball pen has disappeared!..that really sucks..well so have a few other things;(

the flower that saves money speaks in tongues

1. Yea for saving money! I like to shop by the specials at Shaw’s grocery store, and look to see how much money I saved. Recently, I saved 46%..wow.!..well, I did have a coupon for $6.29 worth of hummus—yummy!

2. “release the ideal picture”…hmmm I wonder what this could mean? Curious. What do you think it means. The napkin speaks! Where do these strange messages come from?

3. Dreaming of natural color in a world of tall gray and brown…I spied this flower—a bright orange/red kind of color, with bright green stalk. I snapped picture and said adue.

my mags love easter to traveL

yea for a sunny easter!
1. There were more people than usual at arlington street church today. I wonder how many of them will come back?

2. If I had to live on an island and only have a few magazine subscriptions, here is what I would want to include: The sun magazine, the Portland magazine (for University of Portland alumni), yoga journal, men’s health, UUworld, and Orion magazine.

3. Yea for T, usually. and now new expanded service on silver line (which I have yet to take)...

the sniffly sun shines bright

…a letter to the sun magazine…

I think Suzanne Murray’s “Adrift” touched something deep inside me. I cried silently and sniffly as I rode the subway over the bridge that sunny spring morning. Having lost my own dad to cancer when I was eight, I don’t really have any memories of him. The man who laughed, who experimented, who taught, who’s spirit was evident, even behind the stern veneer—I’d never known that. I agree that our culture tries to hide from death. I’m so happy to still be able to put my toes in the bubbly foam. Please don’t take the nature away.
Matt crichton
Boston,ma

http://www.thesunmagazine.org/march2006.html

nation of iPods in blue blue and...blue

1. iPods everywhere…or is it the marketing, in three shades of blue that is getting to me. The T is exclusively advertising iPod. I see a few lost souls of “non-iPod” ads and wonder how they feel to be surrounded by blue dancing people. ah...Photoshop..gotta love it!

2. Well I still think that a foot of snow will drop before winter is REALLY over…but my doubts are chipping away at that sureness. We had a mild winter…to say the least. I think I only saw snow banks once. In past winters I’ve seen them 2 or 3 times.

3. It was harder to get out of bed today. I played Monday night Frisbee last night with the usual suspects + a few new people. It was fun. I ran hard. I didn’t do enough yoga afterwards. I pay the price this morning. I must be getting older..ha ha ha…

4. My current searching is focusing around next steps: what happens after YMCA…right now, it’s looking like peace corps or MBA, or some combination. Or maybe no combination at all. I think I got the “go far away bug” from my Zimbabwe trip…but that’s another story, which I actually just finished a week ago!…yea!...I was getting sick of writing it.

unconscious snowy Blindness

1. I woke up today and it was gray outside. That was before I really looked outside, to see it was snowing—it’s april5 today. It was not sticking…but this seems to be normal Boston—a little snow after some warmer weather…well, any moisture we can get is a good thing I guess.

2. I helped a blind man down the stairs and onto the train this morning. I sat down as we were off to the next station, and closed my eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like to not be able to open them again. I think it would be very frustrating for me…and then I opened my eyes again and started reading the Sun Magazine…

3. In the March issue of the Sun, the interview is with someone named Jeremy Taylor, who is into dreams, in more than one way. One thing he says “..we can discover more about the divine by exploring our dark side, because we are unconscious of much more than we are conscious of. So god is proportionately more present in the darkness of the unconscious than in the light of what we already know.

4. I was recently inside Harvard’s Museum of Natural History. I came upon two glassed in primate exhibits—one of bones/skeletons, and the other stuffed versions. There was no stuffed human, but there was a skeleton. I thought this was interesting. People don’t like to see themselves looking too much like themselves?