wrote my first song in a looong time the other day. and my first in spanish! a kind of ode to our mother earth. my host family has a guitar and i am sooo greatful for it, a long lost love rekindling slowly, tenderly.
returned at 5 am this morning from a weekend on the coast! we left thursday evening for a 11 hour bus ride, winding across the country that feels like all the worlds time in one space. sat next to the other laura (she is laura and i am laurita) the whole way. she showed me the music she loves and i sat in awe as she signed them all. ASL is an incredible language, much more expressive in a way that auditory/verbal language can never be. this might very well be my next endeavor.
we stumbled into the humid beach town of puerto lopez before it awoke and went straight for the beach. all we wanted to do was rest but for some reason we couldnt help but attract packs of wild mating dogs and drunken leftovers from last nights party. i wasnt too keen on this place and was glad when we decided to take the short trip southerly to the town of montañita--known for being a laid-back surfer town with vegetarian food and barefeet. i spent the weekend wandering around the small town, reading the only book i brought with me on this whole trip, the essential rumi, and contemplating the self-conscious nature of my existence. no answers just more questions and longings, will fill you in promptly after my discoveries. some part of all my thoughts/actions/words seem framed within a greater self-aware context. i wonder if most other people experience life this way. i long to liberate myself from this structure but the only way i can think of is to hide out in a monastery for awhile (maybe the easy way out, maybe the only way). i often find myself wondering how our world might be healed if we focused on loving ourselves more.
i have so many questions i would like to ask rumi. would like to share one of my recent favorites with you. this one is titled buoyancy. this one needs to be echoed in your mouth.
love has taken away my practices
and filled me with poetry.
i tried to keep quietly repeating,
no strength but yours,
but i couldnt.
i had to clap and sing.
i used to be respectable and chaste and stable,
but who can stand in this strong wind
and remember those things?
a mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.
that´s how i hold your voice.
i am scrap wood thrown in your fire,
and quickly reduced to smoke.
i saw you and became empty.
this emptiness, more beautiful than existence,
it obliterates existence, and yet when it comes,
existence thrives and creates more existence!
the sky is blue. the world is a blind man
squatting on the road.
but whoever sees your emptiness
sees beyond blue and beyond the blind man.
a great soul hides like muhammad , or jesus,
moving through a crowd in a city
where no one knows him.
to praise is to praise
how one surrenders
to the emptiness.
to praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.
praise, the ocean. what we say, a little ship.
so the sea-journey goes on, and who knows where!
just to be held by the ocean is the best luck
we could have. it´s a total waking up!
why should we grieve that we´ve been sleeping?
it doesn´t matter how long we´ve been unconscious.
we´re groggy, but let the guilt go.
feel the motions of tenderness
around you, the buoyancy.
signing off for now ;)
lala oatmeal
p.s. i would love nothing more than to send you a piece of my soul via snailmail, but i didnt bring any addresses! send me yours at lkoneill@gmail.com
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