Thoughts

“Let everything happen to you: beauty, terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” — Rainer Maria Rilke (exerpt from Go To The Limits of Your Longing)

With every trip around the sun, I think of all the good to come. Planting trees and helping friends, building Gaia up again.

Leaping from a bridge into the Aare River in Bern, Switzerland was transformational...it feels like a part of me from long ago woke up from hibernation. I hesitated, nervous, and then remembered: "You don't have to go alone." When two women stepped over the railing, I broke with my habit of hyperindependence and asked to jump with them. They said "Of Course!"" And off we went, into the beautiful, clear, racing water. The power of secure attachment...can't say how much I feel glad for all I have learned over these years.

Overnight train to Zurich, onto Milan...then trekking in the Italian Alps with silly friends. The mountains hold some power that exists nowhere in The Netherlands---they charge my battery with something so necessary. The lowlands have convenient bicycling and interesting international culture, among other things...but the nature ain't nature-ing. The word soul, or maybe the sense of connectedness to our Earth, tends to feel watery and diffuse in the swamp.

Art is to make and speak and act in alignment with your highest-held values—it is real freedom.

“Everything is art. Everything is politics.” — Ai Weiwei

Ideas should be shared, explored and examined with others. I see each of us as an entirely unique little sensor of the specifics our particular nook of the universe--the view from "in here". When we transmit our condition and collected data--our perspective--the collective can include it to gain an unbiased understanding of the world. When we are silent, our view of the universe is wasted.