Life

I Love this.
I love the idea of wild hearts.
They say the heart’s energy cannot be contained.
Not by flesh & bone…
not even by ribs.
LOVE IS WILD

Be wild today. xox

* Oh, bless you, The Divine Danielle LaPorte! We’ve been addressing this A LOT in my life as of late.

Take a look and then get out there and enjoy your weekend my loves,

xox

Yoga isn’t going to make you impervious to criticism — because criticism bites.

Meditation doesn’t make divorce less brutal — because divorce is rough no matter how it goes down. Green juice won’t keep the creep at work away — creeps like to creep. And prayer will not make your illness less intense to deal with — physical burdens are…burdensome.

For a lot of self-helpers, and juicers, and cosmic troopers who have been at it for a while there comes a pitfall — and you can trip into it on your first hot yoga class, or after ten years of regular meditation and fervent prayer. It goes like this: If I’m doing all this spiritual work, why does shit keep happening?

Variations include, but are not limited to: I’ve worked really hard to get my ego in check, why am I still so jealous of her?… I’ve had so much therapy, why aren’t I over this yet?… Been doing my abundance mantra for 40 days, but I’m still freaked about money… Take my supplements religiously, but I keep getting sick… I totally opened my heart chakra in that weekend workshop, but like, I still think he’s a total asshole.

Spiritual practice won’t stop shitty things from happening. Here’s the truly holistic picture: Life is full of shitty things, circumstances, feelings, emotions, and people with crazy-shitty motives.

You can still get your heart broken when you’re enlightened. Illumination doesn’t spare the body — pundit Jiddu Krishnamurti dealt with wretched migraines, the beloved Thich Nhat Hanh recently suffered a debilitating stroke. Tragedies strike. Tsunamis engulf. Life hits, heals, caresses, and batters every one of us — the saints, the do-gooder’s, in sun salutations, and in repose.

But this…

Here’s what soul practice does: It helps you handle the hard stuff when it comes. Every conscious in-breath/out-breath you take carves out space in your being for the ineffable mystery. And you really need to leave room for mystery if you want to stay sane. All of your dancing, and asanas, and sweaty finish lines are making it much easier to unfold, rather than grip and grind. The prayers, the declarations, the incantations… they’re an IV drip of grace, streaming into your nervous system.

Spiritual practice won’t make you super human. But it will help you fall in love with your humanity.

You get to choose your response to even the things you can’t prevent. When you’re down on yourself because you can’t get over it, when the Creepy Creepertons are on your very last nerve, when you’re tired of being tired, or your heart is in pieces…the best

Danielle LaPorte

http://www.daniellelaporte.com/?inf_contact_key=0c40520a67c0c00592ae82ccb6d9d8984e2ec4480c14ca5f6143d580ca3d4517

My house is a maze of contradictions so how can I blame Maria for being confused?

Maria is a our once-a-week housekeeper.
She came along with all the motorcycles, cars and dogs; in other words, the menagerie that was my husband’s dowry of sorts when we met and decided to get married. Now, after all these years of washing my unmentionables, going through my medicine cabinet and that drawer next to the bed—Maria is family.

She has to be. She is the keeper of all of our secrets.

And like any self-respecting family member, she screws up and I want to kill her and here’s why: She cannot tell the difference between trash—and a treasure.

I collect little pieces of nature which I’m lucky enough to find all around our property. Assorted nests, abandoned beehives in the eaves, fallen branches filled with hummingbird nests, heart-shaped rocks and found scraps of paper (even one-dollar bills) with cryptic messages that I’m sure are just for me. I’ve stumbled upon old skeleton keys, petrified tree pods, huge pinecones, old worm wood, even animal skulls, bones and teeth.

As if that weren’t bad enough, I go out and peruse flea markets and various other secret haunts, deliberately looking for that kinda stuff. Then, I actually pay money for it! Afterwards, I cart home my finds and carefully place them among the other seashells and rocks, beach glass, and seahorse skeletons.

It may look like a madman’s nightmare, but in reality— it’s MY carefully curated dream.

Oh yeah, I also collect cool, rusty old metal mermaids.
And don’t forget shiny. I can’t resist sparkly, shiny stuff.
Trust me when I say this: A rusty, sparkly mermaid would render me speechless with joy.

Anyhow, then I go about artistically displaying all of my found treasures around the house on tables and bookshelves—as art. I found them, I LOVE them, and I want to look at them everyday.

Saturday is the day Maria comes. It is a day of bittersweet agony.
The house smells of lemon pledge, murphy’s oil soap, and all things holy. It is spick and span’d within an inch of its life.
THAT is the sweet.
Now for the bitter.
She does not appreciate my taste in art. Better said: the woman is convinced I am batshit crazy.

For instance; I have the most realistic looking pair of ceramic fortune cookies displayed in my kitchen. One Saturday night I noticed they were missing. I wondered, did she break them? (She has broken so many things—irreplaceable, expensive things—gulp, remember, she’s family), but her habit after she breaks something into a million pieces is to lovingly arrange all of those pieces on a napkin, or, if at all possible, prop it up, where it waits to be discovered.

In other words she doesn’t dispose of any of the evidence.

Still, my instincts told me to check the trash and my suspicions proved correct. There they were, my ceramic fortune cookies, outside in the black bin, completely intact, with assorted food scraps and the contents of the vacuum cleaner at the bottom of a Gap Bag.

The following Staurday, when I asked Maria in my best broken Spanglish about it, she looked at me in complete bewilderment, as if I were wearing an Iguana as a hat, and said two words:
STALE. TRASH.

For weeks she continued to throw them away until I was finally able to convince her they were…art.

She has since, on occasion,  left me unwrapped, real stale fortune cookies on the shelf next to the…art.

But I know, in her heart of hearts, my sweet Maria is trying so hard to grasp this concept.
I get it. Nests,(even though I’ve sprayed them with clear polyurethane) are hard to dust. Animal skulls are supposed to be buried. And crumpled paper with sociopathic looking scrawl on it—well anyone can see—that’s just trash!

But not to me.

She has even put the five or six cryptic dollar bills that tell the secrets of my soul— IN MY WALLET, where I’ve inadvertanly pulled them out and almost tipped a valet—with my own treasured art!

This is a picture of a giant bird’s nest I was fortunate enough to find last spring in Santa Barbara. It is a masterpiece. A gift from God. It is stiff with shellac, yet extremely delicate.
I have it in a place of prominence—as art. Nature’s art.

She just doesn’t get it.

As many times as I’ve asked her not to, begged her to just skip over it, I know she picks it up and dusts. I can tell by the pieces of it, which I have to admit look suspiciously like dirty, random twigs—that I find in the trash.
“It’s okay” I tell her, “I’ll live with a little dust”.
But she cannot help herself—it’s not art to her, it’s a table full of dirty wood.
And so the nest, my treasure, is slowly dwindling away.

I just have to laugh. Hahahahaha!
My collectables have confused her to the point that she leaves crumpled paper (legitimate trash) right where she finds it, and asks if she can throw away an overripe peach.

I must also mention the real art. The nudes. I collect vintage and current black and white photographs and paintings of female nudes.
To Maria (Who I’ve neglected to mention is a devout Catholic) that is Not art. It is pornography.
Not only can she not bring herself to touch them, she cannot go anywhere near them which is apparent by the inch of dust they accumulate until I get around to dusting them.

And by-the-way—in case you were wondering—a mermaid is an abomination.

It is a topless fish. A dusty fish with tits!

To Maria it is clear—I’m an iguana hat wearing pervert, who likes to collect trash and stale food—and call it art. Which is only half-true…
But I’m family.

So you see, it’s easier to forgive when you realize—it’s all in a person’s perception. 

(I’m certain she owns a Jesus on black velvet.)

One man’s trash really IS another man’s treasure.

Carry on,
xox

*Below you will find my latest Huffington Post essay you guys.
A reworked post from earlier this year about aging, and mothers and feeling completely unprepared for middle age.

And believe me when I say, that I know that you’d rather watch a slide show of Aunt Tilly’s vacation pictures from Bocca; than to write a comment on a fucking blog; I’d love it if you’d gush about me over at the Huffington Post. Then once I build a following, you can all go back to the anonymity of the shadows. Thank you and I love you.
xox

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-bertolus/things-my-mother-forgot-to-tell-me-about-aging—-a-cautionary-tale_b_8155736.html

(This was taken during my five, um, 11, okay—15-year “awkward phase” — you can see she had her work cut out for her.)

I was reminded recently — as I continue my snarky, sweaty slog through my 50s — that I’ve done so without the guidance, advice or fair warning of my mother.

She was too busy; engaged in the parental heavy-lifting of delivering the three of us to adulthood, that it never occurred to her to share these pearls of wisdom.

So I’ll do you all the favor; pulling back the curtain to expose all the hidden truths (in no particular order), of life in middle age.

1.) Invest in a good bra, and for God’s sake, if you have anything over a D cup, don’t jog. It is for that reason alone that I have to tell the girl at Nordstrom that I wear a 36 long.

2.) Carry an across-the-shoulder messenger bag and keep the weight below 35 pounds. Yes, you heard me. I have a divot in my shoulder and the posture of a Sherpa from carrying around the kitchen sink everyday for over 40 years.

Oh, and ladies — after you stop menstruating, you can toss all the tampons. I’m giving you the all clear. I put them in my time capsule along with my Midol, my flat stomach, my perky tits and my happy-go-lucky disposition.

It’s okay — give up the fight.

3.) If someone says they’re sorry — forgive them. You may never talk to them again, or wish them well — but the forgiveness will set you free.

4.) Make eye contact and remember people’s names.

My trick? I repeat it back to them and use a rhyming game (in my head, not to their face).
Along those lines — Listen without interrupting, ask people questions about themselves and always introduce yourself and anyone standing with you.

These are the Golden Rules of any dinner party, staff meeting, black tie event or ladies restroom line — really, any social situation you may find yourself in.

5.) Use those dental-pick-thingies every night. I brush and floss like a maniac and yet I still manage to pull an entire steak dinner out from between my teeth with those things!

6.) Listen to advice but only from the smart people — never the stupid ones. Pay attention. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.

7.) Word to the wise. You can forget about those mustache and chin hairs.

After 40, pubic hair will lose its genetic coding and start migrating around your body.

It will crawl up your stomach and onto the back of your legs if you let it. I tried to wrangle mine, to fill in my over-tweezed eyebrows (a ’70s fad that went horribly wrong), but to no avail. I did find one on my arm last week. Consider yourselves warned.

8.) Men stay boys all their lives. This needs no explanation.

9.) Stay curious. About people, life and the planet. It will help you to appreciate and demystify every seemingly mundane thing that surrounds you.

10.) Beach hair only looks good on 23-year-old models named Tia. The same goes for a navel piercing. Trust me on this.

11.) This is a big one. A lie is someone’s imagination working against them. Remember that.

12.) Always carry matches or a lighter. And lipstick. Always carry lipstick.

13.) You will never use calculus beyond college — but good table manners, clean fingernails and comfortable shoes will carry you far in life.

14.) Carrying (and reading) an interesting book will be an amazingly effective airplane conversation starter — and the perfect companion when dining alone.

15.) Be polite and try every food that is offered to you, (which means eat a bull testicle even if you’re a vegetarian.) It will broaden your horizons in unimaginable ways and make you a sought after dinner guest.

16.) Self-tanner is a catastrophe-in-a-can waiting to happen. Make peace with your paleness. End of story.

17.) Know that your looks will fade and reconcile yourself with that. Your neck will waddle, the hair on your head will thin, and your breasts will sag. If you decide to take matters into your own hands, make sure your surgeon has a light touch.

You still want to look like you — only rested.

19.) Pay attention to your feet. They will start to fight back after 50. All the years of squeezing them into severely pointed, one size too small, five-inch heels have made them…cranky.

Can you blame them?

20.) Take the effort to make a good first impression — you may never get a second chance.

And last but not least — reinvent. Don’t rest on you laurels, don’t question your intuition, and don’t tell yourself you’re too old, too fat, or too busy to reassess your situation and reinvent yourself.

Now pay this information forward and don’t say I never gave you anything.

It’s noon on Monday the 21st and I should be on my way to the airport as I write this. Instead, I’m eating a peach (which looks and tastes suspiciously like a cookie), and pondering the fact that we postponed, (a much more accurate and less sad-sacky word than cancelled) our motorcycle trip to Italy last week.

As I think back on the last seven days, it’s hard to deny—many, many miracles have occurred.

By Wed—Thurs of last week, almost as if by magic, reports came back from various friends and family members; “I’m feeling SO much better!” they all enthused with great…enthusiasm.

Whew, that came as such a relief.

Because they had no idea how much their health and wellbeing had been weighing on me, and the fact that I was about to go off the grid for two glorious weeks (oh, did I write that? I meant to just think it), had tied me up in knots.

So of course when we canceled, postponed the trip—everyone miraculously recovered.

Emotional shitshow on Friday—postpone trip on Saturday—Wednesday—Miraculous recoveries all around! Yeah.

By golly, isn’t that just so..so..

The same was true on hubby’s job front.
Inspectors who swore on their mother’s grave that they could not possibly show up before he left—did. These same stone-hearted men who were impervious to bribes and copious amounts of tears and shameless begging; called out of the blue—all chipper and accommodating—showed up on time the next day (gasp) and passed not only the rough electrical—but the framing as well. (You have no idea what a big, hairy deal this is. I called the Vatican to have this miracle sanctioned, only to be told the Pope is really busy right now—something about Cuba).

Anyhow, refunded vacation money started to show up in our accounts.
Wait.
What?
Refunded money you say?
I know! We even got $1000 of our motorcycle deposit back. From Italians. All the way in Italy.
Miracles #2, 3 & 4.

Long suffering lumber showed up. Drywalling commenced. Lions and lambs lay down together and I lost three pounds!
Tuesday it even rained a big, sloppy, tropical rain—in California.
Well, now you’re just showing off.
More miracles?
Will it never end?

Laughter even made a brief appearance in our home over the weekend. (Don’t get excited, it was a guffaw really—we’re not out of the woods yet).

But it sure started to feel like it.
How about this unexpected side effect? So many things started to right themselves that it made it hard for disappointment to enter the picture.

Here’s the thing you guys, we made one really hard decision.
We stopped the bleeding that was killing the lead-up to our trip.

We called it. (I’m big on doing this now when something ends because I think attention must be paid)

Our Splendid Italian Vacation. Time of Death: 8 a.m. Saturday September 12, 2015.

Another miracle? Did it resurrect in three days? Nope—The vacation will have to wait—But our life did.

It turned its badass self around and starting behaving more like our wondrous, well oiled, things-always-work-out-for-us life again.

“Things are going so well, maybe we shouldn’t have cancelled”, hubby announced over lunch on Saturday.

Is he fucking kidding?

If we hadn’t called it quits I’m convinced the shitshow would still be in town.
And if we were still flying out today—I can guarantee you that the wings would fall off the plane.

Carry on,
xox

*Recently, a couple of you emailed me about this video. Yes, I did post it—over a year and a half ago—and yes it is derived from the work of the wonderful Brene Brown.

And yes, I’m so happy to do it again!

Here it is, using the voice of the brilliant Brene Brown. It’s short, sweet and insightful.
Enjoy!

Carry on,
xox

Mind your own business. She said; the voice in my head.

Who the hell are you? I replied.

Mind your own business!
Okay! I heard what you said.

Her insistence I could not deny.

Who does that voice sound like?
I want to know who?
Shit—It sounds like my mother.
Hey, Mom, is that you?

Mind your own business.
She warned, don’t look over there;
it’s not your concern;
Why do you care?

I see some disaster;
I’m compelled to assist;
like a poor choice of lipstick;
I can hardly resist.

Mind your own business.
She said, leave your thoughts to yourself;
that’s the best piece of advice;
better than any book on a shelf.

Mind your own business.
She said, and take this advice;
keep your nose outa trouble;
don’t make me ask twice.

Goddamnit you’re bossy;
Get lost! Too-da-loo!
just who do you think you are?
Darling. I’m you.

Mind your own business this weekend you guys!
xox

What in the hell was going on? I had unwittingly been given a front-row seat to a disaster that I’d known was going to happen for a year!

Why the hell was I in Hawaii again? What was my part in this tragedy?

I never wanted to be someone who predicts disasters. Seriously Universe? Give me another job. Anything.
Something else. Something not so fucking scary.

Be careful what you wish for. Now I talk to dead people. But not the scary ones. Funny ones. The bossy but kind ones.
Thank God (Scott) for small favors.

Anyway, the local anchor came back onscreen to inform us that one of the deep ocean buoys had registered a tsunami fifteen feet high and getting larger, with a velocity of over five hundred miles per hour, headed directly toward the Hawaiian Islands.

It would get to us in five hours.
3 a.m.
Of course it was coming in the middle of the night! Fucking three a.m!
The witching hour. The time when nothing good ever happens. Oh, and by-the-way, dark water is one of my biggest fears.
I was petrified.

Ginger was feeling sick and went bed. The guys opened another bottle of wine and started playing cards, remaining lighthearted, partying while waiting for the inevitable.

I went back to our room, shivering with anxiety under the blankets, glued to the TV while the disaster siren wailed in the background.

Right around midnight they got the second buoy reading. The wave was larger and picking up speed as it headed our way.

Suddenly the intercom came on inside the condo. Nobody even knew there was an intercom connected to the main resort which was run by Marriott.

A voice cleared it’s throat.

An extremely nervous young man’s voice, shaky, cracking and squeaking, blared loudly throughout the condo. Haltingly, he instructing everyone in units below the fifth floor to evacuate to the roof. “Bring blankets…pillows…water and, um, your shoes, it’s going to be a long night”. His anxiety was palpable.

Uh, okay Voice of Authority.
Didn’t they have anyone available with a more mature tone? Something deep and fatherly? A voice that could console us and instill calm.
This kid’s voice and delivery were comical to me. In my imagination he was the pimply faced nephew of the lady who fed the stray cats behind the parking garage. One minute he was doing his calculus homework, the next, he was behind a microphone, advising hundreds of tourists during an impending disaster. He was the only one that was expendable in an emergency. Everyone important had a task.
Holy crap, he was the best they had.

Thank God something was funny.

One of trembly, squeaky, scared guy’s announcements advised us all to fill our bathtubs in order to have plenty of drinking water in case the sanitation plant was wiped out.

Intermittently he’d come back on with further instructions, Anyone with a vehicle in the lower garages, please move them to higher ground behind the main hotel, he advised, sounding as if he were on the verge of tears.

Not long afterwards I heard voices, car keys, and the front door slam as the guys went to move our cars.

In the dark from our balcony, I watched the groundskeepers running around like headless chickens rushing to clear the sand and pool surround of hundreds chairs. Then they emptied the rental hut with its kayaks, snorkels and fins, inner tubes and dozens of surf and boogie boards.

If you watch the Thailand tsunami videos it is those seemingly innocuous beach toys that become deadly projectiles in fast-moving water. You may not immediately drown, but a surf board or a beach chair coming at you at hundreds of miles an hour will kill you for sure.

It was too much. The destruction in Japan was too much for me to handle.
I watched multi-story buildings get washed away like they were kids toys. We were so close to the water. Could our building withstand the rush of the initial wave? How high up would the water come?
The third floor, the fourth—or higher? What was going to happen?

I turned off the TV, the room was dark and quiet and instantly I felt a drop in my anxiety level. You can get sucked into the endless loop of death and destruction—its like a drug.

I unhooked the CNN IV, grabbed my phone, inserted my ear buds, pulled up a meditation, and started to calm my nervous system down. Slow…deep…breathing. In…and out… after a few minutes I could feel my shoulders drop and my face relax. I’d been unconsciously clenching my jaw for hours.

My mind started to unwind. The siren went way, fading into the distance, the boy’s terrified voice becoming a muffled form of white noise.
I actually relaxed into a half sleep state. Aware of my surroundings, but extremely relaxed.

The meditations came to an end. Silence. I was still okay.
No longer spinning in fear. No longer afraid.
“What’s going to happen, how bad will this be?” I asked no one in particular.
Just a question I needed answered.

Here’s where the magic happened.

A very loving, clear and calm voice answered back:
What do you want to happen? How bad do you want it to be?

What? I get a vote? This answer left me flabbergasted. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this felt extraordinary.

Somehow, instinctively I knew that I couldn’t say make the tsunami go away—there are some things we are powerless to change.
What I could change was MY experience of it. What did I want to happen to me, to us?

Script it the voice said, and that has changed my life.

Okay…I said in my head, remembering the videos from Thailand, you can come up to the palm trees that line our pool area and define the boundary between the beach and our resort. That’s it. To the palm trees only, not into the pool and not into our resort.

No further conversation was needed. No idle chit-chat, no more Q & A.

I fell asleep. A deep sleep rich with meaningful dreams that I can’t remember
Inside one, a muffled voice that felt like it was underwater warned: Stay away from the ocean, Do NOT get near the water, We are on lockdown, stay inside your rooms.

It must be happening crossed my mind, but I was too deep to care.

Only as far as the palm trees…up to the palm trees…

When I finally opened my eyes I could see daylight. Raphael was asleep next to me and I could smell coffee.
Obviously the tsunami had come and gone—and everything seemed…normal.

These are pictures of the waterline the tsunami left behind. It is still waaaaay up the beach at this point, about three hours after it came ashore. It surged forty feet UP the beach, over dry sand, and stopped right at the palm trees that line the pool, and our resort.

Script it. Imagine it. Feel it. Ask for it. Relax.

That proved to me, without a doubt, that we can script our circumstances. There are things we can’t control, but there are so many that we can.

Get calm, and set boundaries. How bad/good do you want it to be? What do you want to happen?

We have control over our immediate circumstances.
Script it.

This changed my life–I hope it changes yours.

Carry on,
xox

IMG_0914 (check it out)

https://youtu.be/Rzu6zeLSWq8

Here’s to the crazy ones.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
~Apple Ad 1997

Carry on you crazy ones,
xox

The way the energy’s been lately this felt good for a Sunday.
‘nuf said.

Carry on,
xox