Dreams coming true..

Well folks here I am --
I am in Starbucks blogging on my new MacBook. Dreams really do come true. I think it is truly hilarious that I still insist on writing on this blog even though I know that no one (except for B) is reading it. I guess something about it helps me in some weird way. The internet (free internet that is) is not great here. Thank you, Starbucks for making me pay for something as easy to make free as ... the internet! You already need it for your credit card machines, so passing it on to the customer is pretty idiot-proof. As we say in Economics, your opportunity costs are very low. 

So some thoughts on Dreams coming true today. First off, I am fairly certain that I will fail this economics midterm. I was telling someone today--its not even the failure that is a hard pill to swallow. It is the awkward moment when they are handing back the tests, and you have to make eye contact with the Professor/TA as they show you your failure. It is a weird situation that makes me really the most awkward person EVER. I don't know, I hope that he will be able to give me some advice on how to pass this hell of a class. 

I actually did the reading for today. 

I was also thinking more specifically about articulating dreams, articulating what you want out of life. I get this email blog called a Motivation Tool Kit that emails me (once every three weeks or so,) tips for motivating yourself to go after your dreams. It is pretty cheesy, but still good. One of the most important things that they emphasize is the need to constantly be aware of what you want your end-goal to be--what you want at the end of your proverbial rainbow. I have some ideas, but am completely the typical 23 year old. I am LOST. I know that I am not the only one in my position. I know because it is a constant topic of conversation in my G-Chat instead of work universe. People are constantly complaining that college was not what they thought, that NYU leaves you out in the cold with little idea of where to go. 

They could all be right. 

They could all be wrong. 

It could completely be 100% our job to figure it out, or it could be other people's to share their wisdom and advice to help us along the way. OR it could be both. I try to list in my mind sometimes the things that I want to accomplish, but the lists always grow bigger than I am. It turns from "get a good grade on my economics exam" to "curing world hunger" I don't know what it is that does this exactly.. 

maybe I will try to work on a more realistic list. I can check one thing off of it---

BUY NEW COMPUTER--DONE!

 

Another Bit of Poetry

One thing that really helps me is to read things that I find inspirational. When B and I have a real house of our own, I think I will paint an entire wall full of quotes to read.
Here are some things from the Yoga to the People! website.

ANYWAY

People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered.
Love them anyway!
If you do good, people will accuse you
of selfish, ulterior motives.
Do good anyway!
If you are successful, you will win
false friends and enemies.
Succeed anyway!
The good you do will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway!
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway!
What you spend years building may be
destroyed overnight.
Build anyway!
People really need help
but may attack you if you help them.
Help them anyway!
Give the world the best you have
and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway!

Written by: Mother Teresa

Can we all agree that no one says it better than Mother Teresa? Yesterday, after the class was finished, the teacher read a quote that my mom introduced me to - she bought me one of those inspirational magnets that hangs on our fridge. I love the quotes they share because it ties in the experience for me as a whole.

Stretch

If no one has checked out CNN.com yet today, this picture seems a justified enough reason to do so. The picture, taken of Chinese riot police inside Lhasa, Tibet, shows me a lot about the state of our world today. Time and time again, the Associated Press finds these photographs that stop time--that place us in the situation in this world that we hope to never find ourselves. This could be at the forefront of a war, when a new government is forming, beautiful surroundings, or famous dignitaries or peace agreement signings. Each of them seems to be sharing a piece of the far-away world with us. This picture shows me something that you can't even fully grasp without staring at it for more than just a second. It is more than just innocence and corruption, violence, and peace, but also just the simple passage of time. This is a Tibetan child facing Chinese soldiers, but who knows where this child will stand politically when it comes time for him to speak out against whatever violence or problems plague his reality. The problems will always be there.

What these people need are some good stretches, some good time to release all the tension that is building within them. The picture below illustrates one of the poses I am having trouble with--Chair Pose. It stretches your back and thighs, and really hurts after only a few seconds. Its hard to imagine that such tension can bring about such peace. (As the Yogi's claim...)

I am realizing, however, that just like wars--where people think that tension brings peace, so does the body itself. You never know what it is like to feel true release in a muscle until you tighten it. You never know how to appreciate solitude if you have never been around people. The opposites and situations that create them are the things that are hardest to deal with in life. This Tibetan child knows not what his place is in the larger "Free Tibet" conflict, but does know that what makes him happy is when others are happy.

I am learning this part of the stretch also...the reaching part that forces you to know your limits, but also to reach out and share yourself and your love or happiness with someone else. This is obviously easier said than done, but I am learning and trying every day. I am beginning to realize my own power. I say beginning because I am truly at the beginning.
As I sit here waiting for lab results, I am realizing that everything has a purpose and a place... this child will hopefully find his place in a chaotic world--and I am still a child, trying to do the same.

Rain

I once heard, not even sure from where, that when it rains, God is crying. I have also heard that New York is getting wet weather from a cold front sweeping through the region. Frankly, I don't really know or care about why it's raining or cold--I know that it is. This morning I waited for the bus in the rain with my Yoga mat and my bag, thinking about the fact that people will do almost anything to remain in New York. Take the bus when it never comes, work long hours for little pay and little mental stimulation, and struggle with the fact that even though people sell umbrellas on every corner, it seems like a waste of money to buy one.

While I was waiting for the bus, and while I was riding it, I was thinking about the tension in my shoulders and neck from the fact that I insist on carrying the Library of Congress book collection with me every day to and from work. I usually don't even take a lunch break--so I am not sure why I do it. I always need to feel prepared. Call it obsession, call it compulsion, call it a source of comfort. If I am not prepared with each of my books that I am reading/going to read/one day soon will analyze, I feel lost. I also thought about the fact that maybe the tension is, aside from the weight of the books, the weight of my mind quite literally on my shoulders.
I think about a million things per minute (as most brains do, but I somehow think that I average more than the usual.) I am thinking about (in no particular order):

1. Immigration
2. Masters Degree Programs
3. South African NGO's
   
4. The Election - Go Obama!
5. Career Paths
6. Family
7. Love
8. Food
9. Money
10. Yoga
11. getting in shape
12. things to do at work on any given day
    
13. How i will coordinate my after-work plans
14. friendships or the lack thereof

Yesterday in Yoga, I did a position where you lay on the floor and tuck your body over your hip so it stretches the opposite hip. Now would be a good time to Google the position name but I simply don't feel like it. I cried almost the entire way through Yoga--or at least teared up throughout. I am not sure why. I don't know if it is release of all of this anger or tension, but my tears were like pushing themselves out of my eyeballs. It was my own version of rain. I couldn't help it. It was as if God was pushing them out of me. I think that it could take a while before I resolve all of the things inside me that come out my eyeballs at random times.

I hope the rain stops soon, both inside and out. There's always an end to the rain at one time or another. Sometimes you just get a bonus good day--or sometimes you have to create your own way to live with the rain -- like for people in Seattle where it rains all the time. They see rain differently now than when they first moved there, I bet.

Maybe I am on my way to seeing the rain differently now too.

Chakra

So yesterday I had an interesting experience. I went to Yoga at Yoga to the People--this Yoga place on St. Mark's Place in the Village that is completely donation based. When you go, you pay what you have-you aren't constricted by feeling like you have to pay the suggested $5 donation. It's like what the Metropolitan Museum of Art would be like if the docents didn't glare at you when you handed over a penny.
The picture I have posted is of the studio from their website, where people are resting in "Child's Pose."

Don't be fooled, I just learned that term yesterday. As the teacher said, people "Fake it in here all the time..." I took that to mean that there are plenty of young twenty-something's looking for enlightenment that pretend to connect with the Divine during Yoga.

In that book I keep coming back to, "Eat Pray, Love," Elizabeth Gilbert's time at the Ashram in India is full of Yoga and meditation. She is, however, the opposite of a pretender. She acknowledges the struggle that occurs when she is trying to gain control over her mind and spirit. There is a noisy voice in her head that interrupts her path to God, and she wishes she could ignore it. I had that experience yesterday. B seemed able to close his eyes and think inside himself, but I was paying attention to the strangest things--the breathing of the guy in back of me, whether it was sanitary to put your head on a rented Yoga mat, how much the teacher looked like Mel Gibson in Beverly Hills Cop. I wasn't able to find my breath, and just concentrate on that. Maybe it will get better. Maybe soon someone will see me walking down the street in leggings with a Yoga mat swung over my shoulder and be intimidated just like i was.

Speaking of enlightenment...

I feel so bad about the Dalai Lama. I know maybe I shouldn't have feelings about it one way or another because I am not Tibetan, nor have I met him, or been enlightened by his prose, but the way he is angrily pointing his finger at the invisible Chinese officials on Cnn.com is making me sad.

Perhaps this is showing me what B and I learned last night on the National Geographic Channel--the difference between man and Ape is not a matter of capability, as much as it is a matter of mind and spirit. Sure, there are differences that make these complexities possible, but deep down the Dalai Lama is just as upset as the angry Tibetans, though he is "completely committed to nonviolence." I feel bad because I used to be ignorant about so many things, and now i am struggling for enlightenment within myself, but also am struggling to make sense of this world we are in.


That's the picture that I was talking about -- you can even feel his anger through the photograph. I wish I could hug him and tell him that the Chinese will give in to International pressure because of the success or failure of the Olympics hanging in the balance, however there is no real international pressure to speak of.
Read more about Tibet: obviously, Wikipedia.

Quotable Quotes

I think i have become one of those annoying people who really like quotes. NO idea why, but sometimes its true--other people say things better than people who are thinking them deep inside their minds.

I was on Oprah.com this morning at work, perusing her "Spirit and Self" section. I know what you're thinking. Why don't you just wear an apron and live in New Jersey??

But seriously there were some really nice quotes--INCLUDING one from Elizabeth Gilbert, author of "Eat, Pray, Love!"

Here are some for the reader's pleasure (or disgust if you are really not into the quotes thing..)

"Maybe the question of 'Who am I?' is not so much a question [as] a journey. Every time I answer that question, I learn a little bit more about myself. It's not so much answering the question that is as important as the things I find out about myself on the way."

"If you have the courage to take the risks to say, 'I'm going to reinvent this part of my life,' you can be very, very happy."

Change

To change is something that is far from easy. Changing your clothes, your hair, the way you behave, act or think--it is all under the umbrella of challenges. Things that make us work hard, pull our hair out, stay awake at three in the morning trying to think of something better and more exciting to do with our time than stress--but for some reason, we just can't.

I tried to look up some clever Wikipedia definition for change, but only came up with this:

• Change is cyclical, and one expects circumstances to recur. This concept, often seen as related to Eastern world views such as Hinduism or Buddhism, nevertheless had great popularity in Europe in the Middle ages, and often appears in depictions of The Wheel of Fortune.

Change may require organisms and organizations to adapt (see also evolution).

Changes in society have been observed through slow, gradual modifications in mindsets and beliefs as well as through dramatic action (see revolutions). History is one of the tools used to document change.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, Wikipedia--you certainly are onto something. Societies change. Revolutions happen. People decide that whatever is in their current reality is NOT acceptable, fair, pleasant, etc. I feel I am on the cusp of a new revolution. A revolution of self. I haven't thought this entirely through yet--but I am pretty sure that my life is going to be pretty awesome. I have many things in my life that are pretty incredible, and I am trying to unstick the blockage that has been put in my mind about seeing those things. Since I'm pretty sure not many people will read this blog, I guess I don't have to worry or care about being too personal.

I guess I have been thinking about where our life will be -- Brunno and I. I wonder if we will live in Europe or in Africa or here in the states, and how I will feel about any and all of them. I found this website:

http://www.branchor.com/bookhafh.htm

This website, and countless others are dedicated to those that have made the choice to live abroad, to separate themselves from what is familiar and to truly Attraversiamo, cross over into a new land of living. I am blessed by whoever it is that blesses people (still answering this question as well...) with a man who will go with me wherever the wind blows, and vice versa.

The picture above, which I happen to think is an amazing photo, is from my friend Brianne's wedding. For some reason I think it really captures B and I. I love it. It's so cheesy to put pictures of oneself on a blog, but for some reason I think this picture epitomizes what my life is like when I am happy. I am focused, but content. Relaxed, but also energized. That is really what my happiness is for me.

Hola, Como Estas?

Alright, alright it is a lame title. I admit this entirely. It is in honor of my official move to the world of Spanish Harlem. Crazy, eclectic Spanish Harlem. Not entirely my move, of course--Brunno and I both slaved away to carry our entire apartment's worth of shit from the corner of Rich and Wealthy to the corner of Gentrification and Mohammed the deli man. The atmosphere is one of Attraversiamo as well--everything is sort of in the middle of changing. Our building is a mix of those that are gentrifying the place and their victims. When we were moving things on Saturday the whole place smelled like collard greens and chicken.. mmmmm..
(*Special shout out to N, L, B, & T for their major help with our move..)

B thinks this will be good for me..to experience different cultures and learn to live in diverse environments. I agree. It's a new challenge, but as i have already been discovering, that is surely what life is all about.

I want to talk for a short minute about what it means to have faith. I think i may also be in the midst of a faith transition as well. I think that a certain someone special in my life is allowing my faith to come back. I am beginning to see a connection between all of these transitions in my life and the agency that it takes to make them--that there is some higher being controlling it all. I am not even talking most about things like moving or getting married. I am more talking about the day-to-day, and feeling a connection with the people and places around you. I am saying prayers from different religions, all sort of leading me towards an understanding of what I want regarding faith, and how it will affect me.

A special thanks to my love, who is continuously helping me learn, grow, and become the woman I want to be.