Full like a Plate

     Remember that it is all perfect. Every tiny detail of your life. Every splinter in your hand. Every kiss on your eyelid is a step towards where you're getting to go. Remember every trip you go on that you may choose to enter laughing. You get to go somewhere and you are on your way even now. It doesn't matter that you think you are somebody. You are the lack of fear when a bug crawls onto your palms. You are cells. A monkey. God. Remember how hard it can be to juggle divinity and humanity. In no way can this be easy but it is perfect. Open your heart wider despite the sting. Know that it can be excruciating. Know that it is utterly part of it. 

Knowing is Different than Being

    My heart is stretching out like a fat guy on his lazy boy chair and yet I can still find myself being unkind. I see myself mostly as a vessel through which love can be transported from there to here and yet the fact remains: I am tempted to be a human twenty-three year old girl all of the time. 

    Today I was rude to a customer. I suppose it is never a good look for me to be anything other than loving and it shows each time I act out of accordance. That goes for everyone. What about those greedy shits who wipe their wealthy butts with the money that their monkeys broke their backs to make? Am I to be kind to them, too? In addition to the kindness that is easy to give out? The answer is yes. I do not believe that it is my karma to put grumpy people in their place, if not gracefully. This is something I can read loud and clear about myself. There is work to do. 

    I am much too gentle (when I am at my most spacious) to stoop down and get into the mud where kindness can not breathe. So I can sympathize for the ache and the mindlessness of this world but there exists an inner awareness that I did not choose to be a human all over again to get stuck another round. I've arrived again to sit in the lotus. Having knowledge of wisdom is one thing and being the embodiment of wisdom is another. It is an entirely alternative dance. 

    What I'd like to be is a mirage of love. It is not in my heart to want people to perceive that I am lovely but that they know love is real because I'm alive with it. As if there are ribbons of it twirled around my flesh. I can not say how deeply reverent I am that I have gotten to be a barista for so many years. It sounds playful when I say this but this experience has granted me so much spiritual practice. And also many years of spiritual warfare, as my friend Bee and I called it when we worked together in our hometown coffeeshop. A sour customer may alchemize your tender heart, molecule by molecule, if you aren't living too much in your spirit that day. 

    What am I trying to do at the end of all of these interactions? What do I want? After steaming gallons upon gallons of milk, what's the work really about here? I think you know. I'm trying to get free, man!!

Another Café Miracle

     Ribbons are curling and waves are kissing cliffs of moss-riddled rock when I choose to be sweeter than I want to be. A casual temptation to make people feel small or dumb as a result of them stretching out your patience exists in customer service land. A temptation that I have submitted to before in poor moments. I enjoy watching people exit the interaction with more joy than they arrived with. This takes a dance of consideration. This takes presence and attention. Six years into making people coffee and it is a dance that becomes fluid or starkly more difficult depending on where I am at in my heart. 

    Today I felt an exorbitant amount of spaciousness within myself. It could've been the weekend of rest, reading, and movies. Or the hours spent with the person I love laughing in each other's arms and over dinner. It could've been God visiting me in every dream I've had recently. There are a million reasons for me to beam right now but the point is that I am somewhere so, so high in the middle of all of it and I was on fire today. 

    There's an older couple who spend their Sunday mornings in my café every weekend. The woman is very gentle in the way she speaks. She wears a gray pixie cut and always has a gorgeous scarf wrapped around her neck. The man is clever and has something very child-like about his demeanor. He always orders a hot chocolate. I then ask him if he'd like whip cream to which he replies in that "whip cream is not for adults." This is the dance we do every weekend. Today I finished his sentence for him when I asked him if he'd like whip cream. I told him that that would just be too gluttonous, something like that. He winked at me. 

    When ringing up their order I asked both him and his wife their names because I can never remember, despite them both being such a beautiful pair and people who always make me feel lighter after our interaction. We chatted for a bit and they gave me their names. I promised I would remember them by next weekend. I stopped the woman and asked her if I had spelled her name correctly. She looked at me with water brimming in her eyes and said, "Yes, thank you." 

    Later into the morning, she strolled back into the line of people and waited for maybe ten minutes to reach me at the front. 

    "Would you like something else? More matcha?", I asked. She said to me,

    I just wanted to tell you that I really appreciated you asking for both me and my husband's names. Even you checking to make sure that you spelled mine right. That meant a lot to me. I really appreciate people who take their time in interactions that are casual and have the tendency to progress rapidly. That takes presence. You always take your time when we're here. I wanted to thank you."

    Her standing in line just to tell me that she was touched brought so much clarity and softness to my heart. I told her that I feel it is important to ask both names of people in a couple when taking their order. Often we address the man and the woman gets lumped into the order forgotten. It isn't a big deal-it's a coffee order after all, but I like doing this so that women feel seen. Even if it's small, it would make a difference to me. I'm always looking out for the tender, observant types. 

    The woman nodded in agreement and replied, 

    "I think it's intention like that that actually does something to change the world. If everyone just took a little extra time, a little extra care...our interactions with each other would feel so much lighter. I lived in Germany for a long time and I felt like such an outsider. Really alone. It's stuff like this now that means more to me than it ever did. I see you."

    The graceful woman blew me a kiss and went back to her booth, flipping through her book with a look of serenity all over her. Sometimes I encounter older women who in their fluidity, in their humility, in their lovingness-take me to my deepest and wisest parts of myself and something in me says, "fucking TAKE NOTES, girl." Believe me I do. 

Get into Heaven Free

    There's a river. A big river. An infinite stream of living exhale. Unbound by thought. There's an emptiness in the direction that calms the lethargic heart. An absence of worry. Lukewarm, not of this world. You arrive on horseback. They made you shave your head on the way. You can't take anything with you. Not your nana's picture frame of her father. Not your shame. Not your favorite drinking glass; the one with the slender rim. There's no cheating the game or bending the rules. Rules are no good to the water when the water is the law. You'd be ruining your own dessert. You always liked reading the last page of the book first. 

    Empty-handed and bare-necked, you come to the edge of the bank. Imagine the feeling of a slow fall inward. Oncoming weightlessness. Being rocked into a dream as an infant. The face of every person you have ever loved shining in your eyes. Reaching for your arms and finding seafoam instead. A sadness in this experience creates a need to hold yourself. Grab all that you can. The nothingness comes. 

    The river takes you down, the day is new. You do not wonder what comes next because something in you knows. Down the river, kissed by every drop. Gazing directly above you, you see a lightshow of stars and a milky rain falling down. You were beautiful on Earth because you were kind. Remembering all the moments of deep recognition that love is so real that it is mortifying when you can't find it. Shouldn't it always be found left lingering on pillows from the night before? Or on the check at the restaurant? On the eyelids of resting children? In a well-loved fireplace? 

    Do you wish you could journey backwards? Do you think you'd be still this time? We look our end in the face every day, but it hardly changes us. You see misery go unchanged. Hopelessness tended to, pet like a lap dog, even. All of your life, all your embraces, every filthy thought, every smile to a stranger going by. 

    Now there's only you and the river. You, the river. It was all very touching. You might even do it again. 

    

Closer Everyday

     The large, west facing windows on the top floor of my gym display a serene view of three large pine trees. They tower over the highway like monk triplets and sway with the changing of the seasons. I sit with my yoga mat towards them and take in the beauty in front of me. For a moment, I find myself envying the trees. No agenda. No expectations. No reservations. They grow closer to heaven everyday and have no idea. Even if they were aware, they wouldn't feel any particular way. That's just their dharma. 

    I biked home in the dark, wet night. The sun sets early now and the rain is a lengthy visitor. In my gym clothing and my skateboarding helmet, I ride through thick and sporadic rain drops, squinting with blurred vision. The roads are quiet on Sunday nights so I feel the bandwidth to channel the three trees until I reach home. Sopping wet, with quietness in my heart, I say to the air, "I am so glad I get to be me."

    Aliveness is flying through the downpour, your sweater heavy with sweat, water, coffee grounds from the work day. Aliveness is knowing that the trees and you are far from separate forces. Aliveness is oneness. I don't like driving anymore. I don't miss it for a moment. I like showing up places smothered in rain. I went through something before this. It's implied that way. 

    I've been back home for a week and I feel more in tune than ever. Every instant feels like a divine flow. My friend told me yesterday, "If I died today, I would be happy with the way I was. I was good to people. I was content with how I spent my time." What a feeling to have at twenty-five. To have that thought when meeting death is something we dream of the whole time we're awake. And right now, I'm thanking each tree that I'm awake. Something in the spinning of my bike wheels confesses to me that the trees aren't the only ones growing closer to heaven everyday. 

Steak

    Sentimentality is the way I drive my spiritual car. That's the road I'm always dancing down. The path I can't shake with a heart so fat. I like being that way. Everything counts and, yea, that's probably better than everything being nothing. Although that's a simple way to go on and be. You probably wouldn't cry much. Nothing would rattle you like the roadside attractions rattle me and my welling eyes. So I'll take this way over simplicity. 

    I'm feeling clear these days. Maybe it's traveling solely by bike again. In a car I screamed and that's sure good for me but on a bike I'm one with the elements. If the rain wants to eat me, it'll feast. If the sun wants to burn me, I'll roast. If I want to scream rolling down a steep street, the autonomy is there. 

    Maybe it's the women around me. Just the other day, I worked out with my girlfriend, we laughed until our faces were beets, and then she took me home, put mousse in my hair, and fed me steak. I killed a spider for her. That I can scream about. That's the feminine activity I always begged Buddha for. 

    It's funny getting what you want and thinking, "why?"

    

Public Transport Miracle

    I like to think people on the bus wearing earphones are listening to the same song as me. I like to pray for innate connection like this. A human tie so deep, we don't even have to know of its existence. I enjoy imagining a world where our hearts are beating in identical rhythm. It could be the same song.