OMG!!

You simply must watch this video!
This guy is doing his Happy Dance all over the world and getting paid to do it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

MATT! dude! You travel the world getting paid to do your happy dance!?
Go Matt Go!!



(Ps Devon: Matt is totally on my team. ;p)

Christmahanakwanza

Ahhh. The Winter Holidays are upon us. Whether you prefer Solstice, Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanza, or another holiday of your choice is irrelevant. The important thing is to have some kind of coming together with your family, friends or community to acknowledge the turning point of the year, to share food and resources. To check up on how our neighbors are surviving the winter. And to step outside of daily chores to pause and consider the year that is passing away and where we want to go in the coming spring.

This year I did not choose to celebrate the whole crazy Christmas scene, and I have enjoyed it immensely. Christmas Eve I sat alone in my apartment enjoying the vast silence and solitude since my busy and emotionally energetic roommate had left for the week. Tonight I am at the home of some friends who are also not having an official celebration. Instead we are doing homey things in a group with one of their visiting neighbors. I am applying myself to homework, and job hunting and using their internet. My friends are making homemade pizza, fruit cake, and puddings while entertaining the lost and lonely neighbor. This is one of my main hang outs since I don’t have to buy anything to utilize the campus internet, and often get fed since they love to feed people.

Listening to classic rock on the radio, we all just sort of relax and do our own thing. This is my kind of Christmas! It’s could be any other day except the stores are closed. But there is a certain festivity in the air that is almost tangible and I have to wonder if it’s the residual energy from everyone else’s special day, and the happiness hanging in the air, or if its because the days are already getting a bit longer. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are all taking time out from our usual day to day business to spend time with each other doing whatever we do, and not having the demands of work, or regular weekend chores upon us.

Let’s reflect a moment. What about my previous observation that we overlook important events and normalize them? I still think we should make the time and effort to create a sense of ceremony and celebration instead. I haven’t changed my mind, however I want to freely choose what I lend importance to rather than have an ego-capitalistic society decide for me. I like some things about Christmas but removing the gift giving component entirely has made for far happier holidays all the way around. Now if we could get Christmas music toned down in public places everyone would be much Jollier. I would like to revert to themes of Happy Holidays and just be glad that everyone can do something that has meaning for them, rather than demanding that it’s the same something.

Here’s wishing you peace, love, warmth, and the brilliant happiness of hearth and home. I toast you with my fruit juice and a raspberry filled butter cookie. Happy Holidays of your choice. Enjoy it however you choose. Be creative, be insightful, lend meaning to what has true meaning for you and throw dogma out the window.

The Big One

Molly’s rite of passage: Dec. 12 2010

Today my younger sister Molly got her Driver’s license. It’s a bit later than most people, but that’s ok. She was finally ready. Once my work was done, I showed up at our other sister’s house, where Molly was house-sitting. I brought a bottle of red wine and we did some happy dancing around the kitchen.

We laughed and carried on, and she felt silly, but I convinced her to suspend self criticism and judgment for a moment and let herself go for a moment of well earned celebration. Silly Virgo. It was a wonderful bonding moment for sisters that grew up over a decade apart. But more than that, it was a family recognition for what in our culture amounts to one of the most monumental landmarks on the road to adulthood and independence. For some it happens at 15, for some at 30, for most, somewhere in between. For some it changes little, and for some life is never the same.

Getting that little plastic ID card that grants permission to operate a motor vehicle brings responsibility, mobility, freedom, and an open door of possibilities. She kept downplaying the importance and monument of this achievement but I just kept pouring the wine and toasting the accomplishment. She smiled a lot. It had been a long day, and it would have been so easy to do as the rest of the family had always done, and be too tired, or too broke to make a gesture. But I could not let myself get away with that kind of unconscious callousness. My recent work, and research has made me want to reclaim and revalue these overlooked moments in our lives and culture. I think the quality of our lives depend on it.

It was crazy to see, because 10 days later Molly was driving every day, despite her claims that not much would change, and in two weeks she had a new boyfriend. Life goes on. I am sitting in the back seat these days, being an observer, astounded at how perfectly life unfolds sometimes. For one person it seems to fall apart, and for another it all comes together. We are all just boats on the great ocean, we may think we are controlling our destinies but we’re all just riding the waves. If I ever move back to southern California I am definitely learning to surf this time.

Rites of passage really are all around us, unfolding every day. It is we ourselves that lend importance and ceremony to them, or choose to overlook and down play them, but why should we? We need celebration and ritual in our lives. We need to recognize accomplishments and life changing events. It’s what gives life meaning, and it’s a choice we ourselves are making all the time. It is not something we have to wait for someone to hand us, it’s something we need to open our eyes and choose to give recognition too. It’s time to place our own habitual numbness center stage, and look not at what, but HOW we handle things. Let’s make the time and energy to focus on what actually matters to the development and journey of the individuals in our lives, so they CAN join and belong in the larger community.

All Grown Up

Devon’s Rite of Passage: Dec. 19th, 2010

I held her hand, and stroked her hair and watched as my babies eyes welled with tears. She bit her lips and the pillow to try and stifle the screams, but they escaped into the night anyway. The living room was transformed into a make shift studio as her step father diligently and carefully performed the tattoo he had been promising her for nearly 10 years, over half of her life. It was a very big tattoo of a beautiful dragon.

The specific design had a lot of meaning for my daughter and her father. It had long, thin, straight lines connecting the wings that wrapped around her leg. Long, thin, straight lines have to be completed in a single stroke and tend to push the pain tolerance of the most seasoned ink fans. My daughter looked at me, quaking with trust, and pain, and fear and anxiety and my already wounded heart melted into a puddle. Why had I talked her into this? How could this possibly be the right decision? What kind of selfish mother was I, to arrange for my Ex to do this kind of thing to my child?

My heart slid down my leg and got lost in the carpet for a while... But I kept eye contact and counted her through slow, even breathing without crying. Sometimes I think the older we get the weaker and more sentimental we become. How can I in my early forties be so mushy soft and yet so bitter and cynical compared to the cool aloofness of my youth? At the same time, I seem to get hurt easier, deeper and have more trust when perhaps I shouldn't. I feel less certainty about right and wrong and a direction in life. Silly me, I thought it would all get better with age and experience. Perhaps it was the lack of a recognized rite of passage into my own adulthood. Or becoming to responsible from to young an age. I jumped from childhood, to housekeeper, to built in babysitter, to parenthood. My wings clipped when I wanted freedom, and my earth ever gone when I wanted to land.

I sought my first tattoo, in my late twenties, after my first marriage had dissolved and I needed to recognize myself, and my independence. I knew it was a rite of passage I wanted, the pain, the process, the sense of accomplishment and belonging to myself. Something I didn't get to experience as a teenager. Earning my identity, I got a whole lot more then I bargained for. My rite of passage wasn't a solitary isolated event, but a journey that lasted a decade. I got quite a few tattoos, two new careers, and eventually a second marriage from taking that step when I did.

The change I had sought, came over me like a wave on a vast ocean, unstoppable and completely natural seeming. Much of it shaped who I was to become, but the lessons were harsh and came with a new level of responsibility. A slow, rolling tsunami, that entire experience eventually cannibalized the rest of my life. Bit by bit, as the years progressed I was absorbed, assimilated, broken apart, and re-made as someone else saw me, and wanted me to be. As my identity receded, my weight increased until I was the insecure and invisible whale of 250 pounds with a pretty face. Totally forgettable to all who met me. Meanwhile, my peacock of a husband strutted about with his own identity issues, oblivious to my needs and offending most of our tiny town. I ran around making apologies, smoothing things over, and trying to raise my daughter to be stronger and wiser then myself.

Somehow, I did succeed with that one important task, and that is a lot to be thankful for. She walks a different road, in a tougher world then most of us did; and by the grace and blessing of the magic of life, has gotten there far better prepared then most of us. My daughter is strong, brilliant, beautiful and brave. She loves deeply and fully, knows when and whom and how to trust appropriately. And how to ask for what she wants. She will always stand up for her friends, and won’t back down even in the face of her own fears. She gives wise and sage advice, even to me, and knows how to get what she wants. She is genuinely kind, but most importantly, she is nobody’s fool. I am proud and envious together. I wish I had half her grace, charm, poise and chutzpah.

Perhaps this rite of passage that I arranged for her, was just another one of my own in disguise. She already had it pretty together. I know this was just a small piece of my daughters journey, and my own. This important event was several promises kept, and one more piece of closure between me and my Ex. Certainly for Devon, it opened the door for a whole new way of approaching life and handling fear, and upholding the Bohemian ideals of truth, freedom, beauty and love -Her thoughts. (Yes. I am quoting Moulan Rouge, deal with it.) And maybe a little for me too. "The greatest thing we'll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return".

Devon survived her first tattoo just fine, and my bruised hands and heart will heal again, just like the ink. But it was rough for all of us, the artist, the client the hand holders, the mom... But while the rest of us were running for tequila and cigarettes once it was over, Devon proudly declared that she loved her dragon, and had no regrets. Her leg all red against her super pale, milk like skin, and her face puffy with tears and 2 hours of intense pain. It doesn't always hurt that bad. We moved a lot of repressed energy from her past. From our collective pasts. It really was a rite.

I watched through the window, tears in my eyes as I sucked down a stress cigarette, and allowed my own repressed sobs to escape. Devon turned her leg this way and that, taking pictures with her phone and sending them to her friends. “I’m a bad ass”. She told them. "You wouldn't have been able to handle it." Her tears were finally all gone, replaced with pride and pleasure and snark. “Now all I need is a leather jacket and nice bike. You know, Christmas is coming..."

At last I knew she was fine. The horrid mom-guilt subsided. I laughed, pulled on my game face and went inside.

An All New Year.

Here I sit on Christmas Eve, the house to myself, and the newness following the Winter Solstice unfolding before me. I am excited to explore alternatives to the expected winter holiday symbology, so keep your eyes and minds open. The pages preceding this post are from Fall Quarter. The pages to come (above this one) will be for Winter Quarter, where I hope to continue the explorations I started and refine my focus a bit.

Thanks for reading! The comments, connections and feed back you've all given me are wonderfully helpful and very appreciated! Please feel free to comment directly beneath each article as well. Hope you're all safe, happy and loved!! Happy Holiday Season.

Love Tamia

Special Thanks to:

Kevin Douglas for walks, talks, ideas, insight, technological grace under pressure, relationship savvy, Meg, an open door to me and my “kids”, lots of incredible coffee, and everything else.

Devon Martin, for suggestions, inspiration, mythology notes, and ‘off the waffle’ hand holding.

Jenny Metcalf, for listening, help editing, late night dinners just for me, and tolerating the dog.

Leslie Gray for multiple seminars, all you can eat sushi, gas money, Tuesday morning coffee, forested dog walks, film project involvement, incentives for Europe, and internet access.

Tina Tigerfly for tequila, girl talk, Mama Mia, awesome kids, and sharing your bloggable real life adventures.

Rori O’Neil for direction, Thai food, snarkyness, multiple resources, rose steamers, dressing up dolly, clothes shopping and scritches.

Donald Wickman for gentle consideration, kind words, wisdom, mystery ninja tricks, and snaps.

Penny Parsons for love, support, lending your car and washing machine, and keeping the cat.

Molly Bagshaw for flexibility, feedback, a great sense of humor, cat sitting, and help moving 3x.

Darrell Perko for big shoulders and consistent generosity, Harry Potter, and enjoying food hikes.

River Aaland for your candid kindness, and generally looking after our very dear mutual friend.

And to everyone else who has lent ideas and support in this process. Thank You.

say what!?

Extreme sports have gone too far. Just Google "Extreme Ironing" and LOOK at the photos.

If this isn't ritualistic behavior then I am really missing something here. And so, evidently, are they. Perhaps THIS is what happens to a culture or society without obvious ceremony or ritual. People struggle to fill the gap. At least this isn't too unhealthy - or is it?

As a people, we have found a lot of creative ways to mimic ritual behaviors, instead of having actual rituals. Few of us bother with clothing that has to be ironed anymore, so we’ve invented extreme sports that mimic ironing. I thought it was hilarious, but on seeing this post about Extreme Ironing, my friend Jenny Metcalf said: “This seems more humorous or sad than dangerous at first glance, but maybe it’s a manifestation of a lack. In what ways might this be dangerous?” That got me thinking again.

Perhaps the need for repetition, patterns and ritual is so ingrained in our nature, like the natural cycles and ever changing phases of the moon, and our denial and avoidance of it is so great, that it manifests in other ways when it’s not an intentional part of our secular lives. For some that mockery may look like extreme sports (even extremely absurd), while for others it may be addictions to substances, actions, or behaviors. Maybe this helps explain why we discover more and more of our friends, family and even our selves have a least some level of OCD in some area of daily activity. Locking the door 5 times or spending way to much of our lives on Face book playing virtual games about farming, rather than starting a window box, or a flower pot. The electronic age seems to have distanced all of us but the most dedicated of outdoor enthusiasts and athletes even further from the natural world than previous trends of modern society.

What does this do, to cut a people off from nature, and the natural cycles of the earth, the seasons, the sun and the moon? We’ve got artificial ocean sounds to mimic the tides, but as relaxing as the sound might be, does it actually induce the same state of relaxation in the brain as being there? It’s never worked for me. We have electric lights, and virtual farms. We have fountains in our homes and offices, to make up for the pollution in our rivers and bring us back the soothing sound and spiritual energy of falling water. We have electronic friends, some of whom we never even interact with in RL (real life), We can work by telecommuting, and choose direct deposit for our paychecks. We can have groceries and pizzas delivered to our doors and pay all our bills on-line. We never have to leave our houses!

We have Netflix, on-line ordering for everything under the sun, clothes, shoes, pets, and gifts. There is plenty of internet porn, and five hundred thousand varieties of vibrators, so really, we can just live out our lives plugged into our hard drives, with the illusion that all our needs and desires are met or non-existent. It’s so easy! We never have to become emotionally or physically intimate with another human being, or risk being known, or hurt, or really seen. We complain about feeling lonely or isolated and since we haven't risked opening the door, we don’t realize that everyone else feels it too. We’re all a part of the problem.

NO worries; it would just distract us to much from fulfilling our place in the capitalistic society that we are busy growing. We worship the almighty dollar more than the health, well being, or integrity of our planets many diverse people. Like that is what is important. Let’s all just “friend” each other on a social network and sit home in our underwear with our ice cream and wonder why “someone doesn’t do something” to solve societies problems. I would get up and do something, but it’s almost time to plow my virtual farm again, and make a snarky comment to one of my co-workers new picture posts.

OK, so that was a long rant, but you get the idea, we are not really that far off from this type of existence right now. Accidentally eavesdropping while visiting the military base recently, I got the impression from grown men, soldiers, that the worst thing we think we can do to someone in modern society is to UNFRIEND them on Face book. Wow; are we they confused, these guys are trained killers. But hey, we’re all confused; it’s just a symptom not the cause.

I suspect that we accept and condone this point of view because technology is our primary drug of choice. Yes, it is; and we unknowingly over look the exponential cost it comes with: the loss of self identity, of true connection, the capacity for intimacy, cultural diversity, authentic experience, and attunement to the natural cycles and rhythms of life and love and living. This is what we are losing. We become more and more de-sensitized to the earth, and each other, by living through the lens of technology, and teaching our children to be desensitized as well.

With cultures disappearing at an alarming rate and languages disappearing at the rate of one every two weeks, according to Wade Davis, we might feel inclined to assimilate and not open the door further; to ostrich our heads into the silicon desert. But we need to wake up and make a change. We need to become part of the solution; each of us, making just one small bit of difference, in the authenticity of our own lives.

Technology has not always been our master. When our psychic and electro-magnetic fields were not so cluttered with constant white noise and data transfers, we probably all had telepathy from the slower pace, daily ritual and meditative existence we engaged in by living in alignment with each other and the natural world. While some people might think it’s a crazy notion, there is some evidence that supports ideas of telepathy in the super conscious mind . Before the industrial revolution and the invention of the clock, where time (the fourth dimension) became represented by a measurement of space ( the third dimension), how did we make plans and know when to meet each other to make-out behind the hay stack, or launch the battle, or deliver the baby?

In a world with no text messaging, cell phones, email, or external device like a wrist watch to align us to the same schedule, how did we not only survive, but actually thrive and propagate? We could simply catch the vibe, watch the moon phases, infuse ourselves with the energy of the universe and show up where we needed to be, when we needed to be there. We've all had experiences like this however briefly, and I would venture to say it happens more frequently and longer when we leave technology behind once in a while.

So forget the ironing, extreme or otherwise, unless it really makes you happy, and let’s rebuild intention and attention back into a central part of our lives. Rituals are all around us and when we ascribe meaning to them, and notice them for what they are, we won't be as hungry or hurried to fill the void with absurdity, addictions, or technology. We will recognize what is real, and we will achieve the balance of internal alignment to our purpose and the Divine. We will feel our oneness again. It starts with little choices, little steps once in a while. We don't have to change the world, just our own way of responding to our own individual piece of it. That’s what will make the biggest difference of all.

Rituals of an Addict

In the 20’s and 30’s there were opium and absinthe dens, where the addicts could while away the hours in fantastical dreams, as their bodies and hygiene were neglected in pursuit of the poppy and the green fairy. While we are not an entire country or culture of heroin addicts, we do like our coffee and cigarettes and alcohol. And, it has been successfully argued that addiction to a person, substance or behavior is an addiction none the less, however socially acceptable. Making coffee is one of my favorite rituals and an important aspect of life for me. I love the filters, the beans and smelling the different roasts. I like to grind my own beans, and dust the grinder out with a special little coffee brush. I used to take a camp stove with me on road trips just so I could make myself a proper cup of coffee at rest areas, and scrimp in other areas of life to afford a really good blend.

I first suspected I might have a problem back in the mid 1990’s, when my then 4 year-old daughter told me about her nightmare involving her, me, a giant coffee cup, a coffee grinder and a Melita. Evidently, I was so focused on the coffee-making process that I didn’t hear her calling for help and she got smaller and smaller, as I focused more and more on mixing in the special raw sugar and just the right amount of half and half...

Fast forward 16 years. My daughter no longer remembers having this dream and is nearly as coffee obsessed as I am these days. Starbucks won’t do - it’s the ”McDonalds” of coffee - but several years of hardship and struggling, and raising a kid has made me willing to cheap-out on particular roasts and forgo a certain amount of quality for quantity. I even substitute soy milk for half and half, now that I am off the dairy drug. But please understand, I am not bragging; it’s not something I am proud of, not in this coffee obsessed culture of the Pacific Northwest; it’s more like a somewhat shame-filled confession. In fact, that was exactly how I approached the POPE of Coffee when I last saw him.

A close friend of mine, an ordained priest, jokingly considers himself the Pope of the Church of Coffee. He was undecided if I could obtain absolution for my lack of devotion to the bean, since that man can be starving to death and still insists on buying a roast that is thirteen dollars a pound. I have watched him parcel out his pennies at the end of the month for cigarettes and organic half and half instead of rice and beans - or peanut butter. I am kind of worried about the sanity of this extreme behavior, but I am also a little bit impressed to see someone with very clear priorities, and total faith in things taking care of themselves. I must admit, somehow it seems to work for him, as someone always shows up and feeds him, myself included.

So how many of us are just enabling and perpetuating the addiction in ourselves and each other with this kind of behavior? Is it an acceptable part of our larger society because we indulge it or do we indulge it because it’s acceptable? And who gets to decide the difference? Its true, I bought and cooked a lot of food for my friend The Pope the last time I saw him, and brought my own substandard coffee to keep from consuming to much of his, although I did covet its succulent flavors when I did indulge in it.

I guess you could say I rank as a novice devotee, since I chose to compromise my own coffee integrity to make ends meet and feed my other habits. Like red wine for instance...; don’t get me started on wine. The special accessories one can indulge in, the exclusive conversations, quests, and elitism... it’s like coffee all over again, and both go great with jazz, another indulgence of mine. Thus I postulate that addiction is addicting at least partly because of its ritualistic nature. Saddle up and choose your poison: smoking, coffee, wine, obsessions, cruelty, compulsions, anxiety, drama, sex, food, elitism, arrogance, self denial, cocaine, marijuana, heroin, meth, LSD, self righteousness, religion, or long winded rants at no one in particular.