What is it about these grey skies, deep chills & weary mountains that makes it so damn awkward to sit in stillness with a sense of contentment? This constant, rampaging uneasiness, in which the origin is unknown, leaves me left with wonders. Wonder of why alone is so logically okay & so emotionally disheartening. And what ‘alone’ could ever possibly mean. But knowing in my bones, in my soul, that it’s what I need. More than the void together has filled. Starting to see this karmic pattern, this karmic lesson with curious eyes. Letting this uneasiness, this simple sorrow to move me to be, to feel deeper, with more truth. During this time where the ‘business’ has settled just enough to feel slightly scattered & stoked, I get to learn.  

It’s this time when my mind feels so clear that it’s hard to be with myself, only to escape to the most vivant lucid dreams that send me manifesting, ranting and saving all through the night. It’s this time that feels like I’m starting to create something for myself, in which I feel proud of the energy I’ve spent. It’s this time where the endless options feel heavily daunting, but oh-so graspable. It’s this time when I feel I might just manifest magically. It’s this time where I feel so thankful for the karmic lessons that have blinded my narrow mind, giving me the strength to communicate the shit out of my sorrows and wonders. It’s this time when magical ladies come into my life and bring me back to the raw awe of our breath. It’s this time when I’m so thankful to call home a beautiful yoga studio, but I can’t wait to leave here for the sake of big mountains and snow. It’s this time when I know exactly what I want, but I get to battle with patience until it’s what I need. It’s this time that I finally write again. 

This which compels us, this simple hand that heavily hurls us, fiercely forces us. It's not much more than our fears, worries or doubts. It lives, resides, moves closer than these words could ever explain. It's there with every inhale, every ache, every judgment. It doesn't condemn the things we call faults, or discriminate against turmoil. If anything it needs tumultuous souls, over-thinkers and pitiers. It feeds of our moments of magic, merriment and movement. It comes and goes as it pleases, leaving just enough space to return. This place which it once lived, it once cultivated, if left for the soul to search, scour, suffer only to find simple space. It moves through us, if we're lucky we get to write it down, sing it, become defined by it's wonders. It shakes us to a depth past our bones. It gives us just enough hope to continue searching, continue craving, continue longing. It comes with the magic of Nevada sunsets, of the high Sierra peaks, of the connection of souls' material, of sharing it with others who never knew, of melodic picking patterns, of long bike ride filled with aches, of deep, slow breath, of feeling so small that you somehow become big. This is meaning, this is gifted, this is god, this is magic, this is home, this is that.


Then it's gone. Leaving only a ramble of words on a computer screen meant for things easily understood.

What is it about my childhood, my education, my experience that makes me wince? When I really think about it, it’s not what I expected myself to say. It’s that I didn’t realize how incredibly helpful and healthy anger can be. However, the education system doesn’t factor that in. You either can or you cannot, they forget the process by which people learn, and grow, and blossom is sometimes not enjoyable or easy. They tell people you are gifted, thus you do this, or you simply aren’t, thus you are that. I’ve been in what they call the “high end of the scale or gifted.” And I still haven’t decided if that’s a blessing or a curse.

Gifted: “A special ability or capacity; natural endowment; talent; something bestowed without any particular effort by the recipient or without its being earned”

I don’t like being called that one bit. I’m not sure whose idea it was to tell children that they have something more than others do, and that not only are better but that they don’t have to work to be “better.” Not only did I not have to work for it, but others just have a natural disposition of being less “gifted.” When you really break down what that word implies, I can’t help but wonder, who the fuck is giving out the gifts? Is it the man in the sky? Is it my parents? Is it the amount of money I’ve had spent on me? It is the amount of time I was forced to do busy work? Is it how many books I’ve read? Is it how many places or languages I’ve been exposed to?

I attend a school that not only believes being “gifted” is a real thing, but they are privately funded by two people who made it their lives work to help “the extraordinarily gifted children.” Is this weird to anyone else? Because what they actually did is created a school full of well disciplined children whose parents are of higher class. They have taken the good students out of public schools, and told them they are “gifted” and segregated them. Don’t get my wrong, its incredible being at a school that is at least attempting to be better. The idea is refreshing. However, I think being labeled gifted has stunted my ability to cognitively learn and experience the world around me.

Learning curves. I think when they talk about being gifted, they are talking about children whose don’t have learning curves, they just get the specific things they are testing them on not real learning involved.

For me, as you might expect, my learning curve has never existed in an academia setting. It was always easy.

I never understood how to actually learn, until I started learning from the world and not from a book. Whenever you start a new thing, that you’re learning because it draws you, inspires you, there’s a learning curve. You have to put in the time and the practice to get better. Logical, right? Well I never knew that. I felt some incredible anger when I started playing guitar and I wasn’t just good at it. I felt like less of a person somehow, like I wasn’t good enough. Ah! This anger, deep anger, was the best gift I could have ever goten. This is because I got frustrated enough to actually learn. I sat down, and practiced for hours. My “better” ness than others that played music had nothing to do with how gifted we were, but was directly correlated to the amount of time spent practicing.

I don’t want to be “gifted” at anything. I don’t want the compliments I get to imply that other people are in some way any less than I am. Does it seem backwards to anyone else that the kids that have to work less at school are rewarded more? And the kids that actually have to go through a learning process, which is full of anger and frustration and wonderment, are constantly being insulted by others rewards. For example I was always told I’m smarted than my older sister, who is an athlete. This seems logical, she was ski racing and I was getting A’s. Well, the thing about that is that she actually has study habits. If I don’t get something right away, I have absolutely no idea how to approach it, because “I’m gifted” and never had to put any particular effort into it. This means that while I did better on paper, school actually made her a better person, someone who had to create a better relationship to herself to learn. Where as I just half ass school and do fine, even at a school specifically designed for gifted children. Therefore, I’m getting less out.

So, this leads me to two conclusions for my own life. One, the reason I don’t whole-heartedly commit myself to my school work is because I’m deathly afraid of failing. Because if I fail, then who I am if I’m not gifted? If I have to try, does that mean I’m less gifted, less awesome? This seems to be why I’m writing this blog, instead of writing a paper on Shakepear (who doesn’t make a damb bit of sense and I’m scared to admit it). Two, I no longer want to be judged on how well I can play the game of academia. I want to work, work hard, for skills and talents and hobbies and knowledge. I want to change the way children are educated, and the way I educate myself. Eradicating the notions we have that learning stops when school stops and that it’s easy to be better. I want to give people good tools to do cool shit and feel empowered. Stopping the game of making others succeed, only in comparison to the “less gifted.” I want to empower people to struggle to find what they love, to battle to master it, to get angry enough to be better only in comparison to themselves, to do what makes them happy, actually happy.

If we are going to use the word gifted at all, I think the only way that is ethically acceptable is to talk about how gifted we all are to have life. We have a breath moving through us that keeps us alive, we are aware of ourselves and of eachother, we get to share community and love and trust and stoke, we get to be better today than we were yesterday, we get to have bodies that are made of atoms that aren’t suppose to stay together, we get to find being that have souls made of the same stuff as ours, we get to move, we get to live, wouldn’t you say thats gift enough? That our gifts should connect us, not isolate us.

Constantly balancing my reality of expectation and “giftedness” with the desire I have to share my experiences and listen, deeply listen to others meaning, to be in the mountains, to move my body through space, to see the magical depths of this life, to connect to the similarities I have to everyone and everything around me, to be completely complete with that.

http://www.gofundme.com/73yheo


This is my manifestation in process, Donations optional. It's just about sharing a stoke & letting the universe provide. mhhm

This thought has been peaking and searching around in my skull for quite some time. There’s something about writing, that makes those ideas makes sense. When I’ve taken too many months off from typing out my thoughts, I thank myself for the space to explain out my most recent discovery.

If you guys haven’t noticed, nostalgia is a word that comes up an incredible amount when I’m explaining my unexplainable depths. It feels like a remembrance, a deep remembrance for who I am in this world and in my own fictional one. It feels like a yearning for something, something that might make me just a little bit happier. It feels like I’m craving some state that I’m not convince I’ve ever actually experienced. It feels like I know something that I may be hiding from myself. I find myself getting lost in this nostalgia not only for the things that have left, but for the things that have yet to arrive. Its an overwhelming word for me. These thoughts around the word always bewildered me. “How is it that with so little years I can feel so connected to a past I’ve never had?”

Nostalgia comes from the Greek word: νόστος, meaning homecoming and I’m pretty sure there was a literal “click” in my awareness when I discovered this. I realized, this craving that I’ve only ever been able to explain through a simple word, “nostalgic,” is a craving for the home within myself. Although the home I reside in is filled with trinkets from my past, and although I have a deep craving to be back in big mountains, and although I wish for nights long past, nostalgia isn’t referring to anything in my reality. It’s referring to the intimacy that exists when I create a healthy relationship to myself. It’s referring to that place of home that exists just under the breath, exists somewhere between your inhalation and your exhalation, exists somewhere where with nothing but peace for the manner in which your world is shown to you.

I’m nostalgic for the place in which I was derived, the place in which our brains fail to contemplate, the place in which yoga gives us a sense of connectivity to, the place in which we are free from earthly sufferings. I’m nostalgic for a deep sense of peace that only comes with space. I’m nostalgic for whatever it was that was inexistence before my bones and what will be inexistence long after.  I’m nostalgic for that overwhelming connectivity that we came from.

Is this god I’m talking about? Maybe. Is this the super natural I’m talking about? Yes. Is this complete and utter happiness I’m talking about? Absolutely. Is this that unexplainable part of yourself I’m talking about? Fuck yes.

I’m nostalgic for us all, for our inner homes, for our own joy, for our own peace. I’m nostalgic because I feel something beyond the cyclical rising & setting of the sun, beyond the waxing & the waning, beyond the words & whispers & whimpers, beyond the yoga mats & the meditations, beyond the suffering & the sadness & the sorrow.  Because I feel that home may not be what we have convinced ourselves it is.

And that makes me feel overwhelmingly free. 

I’ve been waiting a long time for the time to write this. My hours have been filled with editing essay, studying special relativity, nursing a hurt wrist, celebrating winter and craving superficial gifts.

This idea has been hauntly lingering in my head in the midst of the holiday celebration. It’s something I’m not sure if I’ll be able to convey through written word, but something I can no longer fail to try.

How is it that we attach to our relationship to the world around us? What is it, other than the external coordinates that make us who we are? Why is it that we crave for exactly what we do not have, and we are incredibly good at doing the unhealthy? Why is it that instead of creating a productive supportive society, we’ve created a community that focuses on wealth, objects, selfishness and ignorance? And why is it that we are not constantly begging this question?

This lengthy question started with a wonderment of maiden names. I’m fully aware it’s for simplest sakes. But I can’t help feeling as though it promotes a disconnection from our ancestors, and therefore a disconnection to ourselves. (When I say ourselves, I don’t mean the superficial idea of our selves, but really where we came from.) I was lucky enough to have a mother that gave me her last name as well as my dads. And I think this affected me more than she knows. Instead of only in relation, I get to feel connected to my mom’s side of the family through pronunciation, arrangement of letters and the culture that came with “Hoog.” But for most people, and for the much more extraneous parts of my family, the origins of existence are so easily forgotten. Why is it that we feel the need to completely disconnect ourselves from the struggles of the past? Making our a heritage full of strangers instead of loved ones. My mom once said to me, “Daughters want to be the opposite of their mothers. So in two generations you have a similar person derived from wanting to be the opposite, therefore the same, of what came before them.” I never want to forget how much I don’t want to be like my mother, but how much that may make me like my grandma. And I’m so thankful I get to share my name with that wonderful women at the end of her life. And it make me wonder, why is it a societal norm to only keep the father’s name? Because men are more important of course! But what about your mothers father? And his bother? And their dad? Aren’t they men? I think we are loosing the essence of linage. Does this mean we should all have ten last names? Maybe. But this also means that we get to have a sense of connectivity to the world around us for the world before us. We get to love the people that gave us our life the way it is. Everyday I thank for all the things that had to be exactly perfect for my to exist in this moment in time. Let’s pray and honor and cherish that.

I think when we come to terms with the understanding that we are merely a dot on a huge family tree we get to finally wake up. Letting go the things around us that we’ve decided define us. To connect to something bigger. This something bigger is a human community, in which we are constantly striving to make the world a better place. I think if everyone was humbled, truly humbled, by where they came from the world around us would be full of altruism and empathy. Connecting to where we came from and understanding that includes more than family lineage, but the earth. We would be thinking about fracking instead of twerking. We would be communicating instead of starting wars. We would grow our meals instead of poising them. We would find a practice to simplify the thoughts, instead of watching the news to disguise them. We would be humbled by the humus around us, the earth. We would  love al other humans for we would realize what is within ourselves is within them. We would find our truth our happiness in the midst of taking care of the people around us. We would find the answer to my question.

Depression:

I wonder if anyone of us could think ourselves into this state. Consumed by the peaceful, annoyance that makes no sense to our logical minds. I keep, purposely, forgetting to write. I can’t quite seem to pull myself out of the depths of habitual delusion enough to want to see my own words, on a perfectly white screen. It seems as though my thoughts can taint a screen, instead of inspire it like I might have hoped. All I can do is to pull myself into other people’s words, stories of explorations, to numb me from my own. This isn’t something I think I’ll post, for nothing good to come of such harsh words. Or is it that we sometimes forget to speak the truth?

I have forgotten what to do with myself today. Reno is literally barfing leaves. This windy city is ripping the colors from their places, leaving us with nothing short of a whimsical day. I find myself drinking too much coffee, for something called company. Wondering where my place is today. Today is Sunday. And with Sunday comes this lingering, eerie, haunting idea that tomorrow is class. That with the breaking to tomorrow comes business, homework, and florescent lighting.

So instead, of doing what I know cures my sunken mind, I moped, so joyfully, around this whimsical day. With so much wonderment, I was bordering depression. I played my guitar all afternoon, and read about mental illness in the midst of intellect and art. I felt myself get hungry, only to eat yet another squash. I made a gross cup of tea, but kept it between my hands for hope of warming my cold extremities. I tried to find a practice, only to clean the leaves off my floor. I realized how much I miss my sister. I realized how heavy, and dazed, and seduced my heart seems. Utterly bewildered by my lack of maturity.

So, what is it that I do? I let my words taint this perfect page. I sang until my throat aches. I don’t dare to move until dark. I hope for yoga in a yurt to come sooner than later, but for class to come later than sooner. I hope for the future, that maybe, just maybe this lovely misery I grasped for today, will make me better for tomorrow. That maybe its okay to sit with delusion and optimism. That there’s a chance, a chance that someday my bank account will be full. That my heart will weigh a little less. That when the snow comes I will have a heater in a car, instead of a scarf and a bike.

Tomorrow, and today. Are yet the same, without the logic of sentence structure I get to write. Without the mess of hope will I get to live. Without the fear of delusion, with nothing but joyful depression.