Asking the wrong question gets you nowhere. 

A good question is invaluable. 

Playlist Requests. 9/23/14 Gentle Yoga Playlist

Friend,  Sandy Rivers Remix by Silky Sunday
Into the Mystic by Van Morrison
I Still Believe by Mariah Carey
Ascentia by Dub Sutra
Surround You by Echosmith
Shadowland by Nitin Sawhney
Priya (Beloved) by Michael Mandrell
Hero by Mariah Carey
Waterfalls by TLC
Breathing Soul by Gustavo Santaolalia
Butterflies by Michael Jackson
The Calming Mind by Yoga Tribe
I Won't Give Up by Lennon
The Promise by Tracy Chapman

Let the Wonder Begin.

I write because I have something within me that wants to come out. Something that wants to be said. I know now that I edit the message, many of us do, sometimes altering too much. I know now that I need to just let go and let the message speak for itself.

Because that is life. I want to be pulled towards things, not push nor be pushed. I want to let my life be an extension of my art, whatever that is. I want to love fully and be loved fully and let that love rain down on everything and everyone in my life.

I am a writer in my heart, but so many other things. I want to inspire others to find all of their parts, even if they have to chase after them a bit like papers scattered in the wind. Oh yes, this is mine.. oh yes, and this as well. 

Life is funny. We all have periods of ups...of downs...of silence...of discovery. And then, we begin to know who we are. Like watching a rose opening. Ah, we say. And once we do, the love and the wonder truly begin.

I kind of love aging. 
(smile) 
I'm beginning to love it. The physical part, eh...but the knowing yourself, that's the good stuff right there. 

Sleep Envy

No sleep for the... weary, wicked, lovely and amazing?? It's all in how you look at it...

I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?

Ernest Hemingway

Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.

Mahatma Gandhi

People say, 'I'm going to sleep now,' as if it were nothing. But it's really a bizarre activity. 'For the next several hours, while the sun is gone, I'm going to become unconscious, temporarily losing command over everything I know and understand. When the sun returns, I will resume my life.'

If you didn't know what sleep was, and you had only seen it in a science fiction movie, you would think it was weird and tell all your friends about the movie you'd seen.

They had these people, you know? And they would walk around all day and be OK? And then, once a day, usually after dark, they would lie down on these special platforms and become unconscious. They would stop functioning almost completely, except deep in their minds they would have adventures and experiences that were completely impossible in real life. As they lay there, completely vulnerable to their enemies, their only movements were to occasionally shift from one position to another; or, if one of the 'mind adventures' got too real, they would sit up and scream and be glad they weren't unconscious anymore. Then they would drink a lot of coffee.'

So, next time you see someone sleeping, make believe you're in a science fiction movie. And whisper, 'The creature is regenerating itself.

George Carlin, Brain Droppings

The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets.

Poppy Z. Brite

I wonder why I don't go to bed and go to sleep. But then it would be tomorrow, so I decide that no matter how tired, no matter how incoherent I am, I can skip on hour more of sleep and live.

Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

(Bathtub diaries).

Legs strewn around 

The bathroom strangely lit

Hanging from the shower rod

Chomping at the bit

Love lost in the underground

Never fakes the fit

The warmth pervades

The warmth, it makes me sit

The drops unknown

To you or me or...quit

If only life goes on my dear

Then that would be all over it

What do I say

What do I mean 

What meaning fills

The in between.

The Courage to Make a Difference.

I have always considered the wars going on in our world. I live very far away from them but I know that they affect all of us, regardless. I watch the news shows occasionally, but to be honest, I don't always trust it. There is also the fact that I don't like constant negative spin by a lot of the media channels and thirdly, it does have a way of making me feel helpless. No one likes feeling helpless.

However, there is something about a photograph that can get into my system and never leave it. There is something true, something poignant. A moment captured, a reality revealed. When I was younger, I wanted to be a photojournalist. I had photos that I had torn out of magazines on my walls. Images that had captured me. My friend once told me as a teenager that I liked to be depressed because of the few images hanging there of children who were poverty stricken and maybe starving in Africa. It wasn't that I liked to be depressed, it was that I thought those children were beautiful and strong and deserved to be seen. It was a reminder of life and death and the human spirit.

I am and always have been a bleeding heart. I have witnessed the human condition since I was a child and wanted to help, protect and make people feel better. These are parts of me that are as real as the blood that flows through my veins. But I'm not a person who denies reality and I also have my dark side, shyness, anger and fear, to name a few of the demons that I've struggled with.

Recently, in this latest war that we are involved in, my mind was captured by James Foley, the first of the three recent beheadings by ISIS militants. And since then, Steven Sotloff and David Haines; although my attention has backed off because of a busy life and, honestly, just not wanting to be fixated on something that I can't control or know how to help. I'm guessing I'm not alone in these feelings.

My heart goes out to these men's families. These men who were only trying to help to better this world, to help the displaced citizens of that region. And when you start thinking of all of these displaced citizens and the life they are living, the heart cannot help but take a pause in it's beating for the uncertainty of how to handle so much? I saw recently some news coverage of food being dropped to people living in a camp and some of the refugees being urgently picked up by these rescuers who were accompanied by a journalist covering the story. All of them very much in danger of losing their lives by the ISIS extremists while doing so. 

Some would say, don't go there. I say, how can you tell someone not to go there when this cause is beating their very hearts? And how could it not? These images of what is going on are so much larger than any one of us. Lynsey Addario, a New York times photojournalist, recently described the importance of what she does and how she will do it again, despite having been kidnapped twice already by terrorists. "I will cover another war. I’m sure I will. It’s what I do. It’s important to show people what’s happening. We have a unique access to what unfolds on the ground that helps our policymakers decide how to treat certain issues."

Photo by Lynsey Addario for the New York Times. Click for more pictures and story. 

To quote Martin Luther King Jr., "Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality." The spiderweb of humanity, if you will.

I know why these people are there. It haunts them. And they have the courage to live what they are passionate about. I have only just begun to live this way, living my passions without fear. I have always been plagued by fears, since my childhood. But if I had not lived with fear as if it were a physical thing, at times, I may be one of these people putting my life in danger in a foreign land. And perhaps that was not my path. 

I quoted yesterday the quote by Rilke that says, “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

Wow. How to tie that into this story. Because when I posted it, I was thinking...'if only that were true' of what is going on in the middle east. And maybe it is. But even though I believe that everything can be figured out if the right people put their heads and hearts to it together, this is a problem that is quite large and difficult to maneuver. That quote resonates true for me on a smaller scale of our personal dilemmas with people in our lives. When placing those daily life images in our minds next to these images of war torn, starving and displaced individuals, one cannot help but think that we really need to step up to our non-survival problems in a bigger way. In our cases, "the only thing left to fear is fear itself." In cases where you are literally unsure of your minute to minute existence...how can fear not be touched, breathed, lived constantly? It seems like it could make a person go mad to have such a companion as constant fear.

Maybe that's how these ISIS people grew up, maybe they were violently abused or brainwashed, or something... I want to believe that these people doing these atrocious things could have been good if only it had been different. Actually, I do believe that. If they were born into a loving family, with loving belief systems, etc... etc...or exposed even at a later age to a different way. But they weren't. They are who they are now because of their experience, you are who you are because of yours, I am who I am because of mine. Yes, there is a core part of who we are, but if you grow up being treated like an animal, doesn't some of that animalistic behavior become who you are?

So now what?

I can only think to do my best and try to keep lifting myself and others up. One last quote, "to love. to be loved. to never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. to seek joy in the saddest places. to pursue beauty to its lair. to never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. to respect strength, never power. above all, to watch. to try and understand. and never, never to forget." ~ arundhati roy

Peace. 

dark mornings
alone at the keyboard
my dog snores
I'm just waiting for the word

why is this 
what i choose
at the midpoint
between night and day

QVC is on
so are all the old comedies 
i am certain
of finding something to waste time on

but it is here 
i sit and listen
and read 
and wait for grace

Imprint. (poetry by moi).

What is it 
I would say
if I could

that I loved you always?
that I never knew?
that you rolled upon me
like thunder, delicate like dew?

Inspiration comes 

and goes
To places and from 

we cannot know

However, some things
can't be removed.
images burned 

into wood.

I really feel that the writer/creator in me is dying to come out. Hopefully this is one of a million poems to come. I hope, anyway.

Tyler Knott Gregson Poetry

Okay, I can't even with this new poet that I'm reading. Just sharing the first two things that I read that make me want to read everything he's written.



What if all we have ever wanted 
isn't hiding in some 
secret and faraway dream 
but inside of us now
as we breathe one another 
and find home in the way
our arms always seem to fit 
perfectly around the space
between us?

What if we are the answer 
and love is the question?
What if all this time 
it was us you were supposed
to find?
I am filled with wonderings
questions and doubt
but of one thing I am certain:
it will always be you
that gives flight to the 
butterflies inside me.
calm to the sea I have become
and hope to the darkness
all around us.
It is you and it has always
been you
you.

You that soothes and excites 
and spreads joy like rainfall
on the already damp earth;
You that pulled me from the longest
sleep and kissed my tired eyelids 
awake.
If life is a question mark,
then you, my love, 
are the proud and bold period 
that is typed with certainty.



(I could just die. And with this next one, I'm dead).


Come here
and take off your clothes
and with them
every single worry
you have ever carried
My fingertips on your back 
will be the very last thing
you will feel
before sleeping
and the sound of my smile
will be the alarm clock 
to your morning ears.

Come here
and take off your clothes 
and with them
the weight of every yesterday 
that snuck atop your shoulders 
and declared them home.
My whispers will be the soundtrack 
to your secret dreams
and my hand
the anchor to the life
you will open your eyes to.
Come here
and take off your clothes.



Do with that what you will.

Poems by Tyler Knott Gregson