listening to love

My childhood friend died last week. Jill. She had a hard life: anorexia, substance abuse, broken marriage. She had a 7-year-old boy she adores. Adored. Adores. I’ve known Jill most of her life (she’s three years younger). Our physical therapist mothers met when we were little. When Nita (her mom) took maternity leave to have…

“Update your operating system.” Hotmail, Yahoo, WordPress, Facebook – they all say the same thing: You will not receive the full scope of services until you upgrade your operating system. They’re right. My operating system is way out of date. It’s getting harder to send and receive messages, information, data, code. It affects how I…

Do you actually need that screaming voice in your head telling you to get out of bed? Is there a kinder way to treat yourself? Tania is the name of one of my screamers. She’s like a personal assistant: in charge of the mundane parts of my existence — paying bills, doing laundry, looking for…

Today I took my independent self rollerskating. Wearing clothes made by others, I drove a car made by others, fueled by petrol drilled by others in another country. I parked on a street and rolled down a path made and maintained by others. I had a bottle of city water from a tap that runs…

Last Saturday, I joined dancers in 60 cities around the world in a 24-hour performance event that rolled through the time zones from Australia to Hawaii: Global Water Dances. We all started at 5pm, local time, on June 25. In Olympia, I lead the opening ceremony at Watershed Park. The night before I still didn’t…

Rest. Why is that so hard to do? Last week I crashed. I said yes to too many projects, and became stressed to the point of intense headaches and sleeplessness. It’s almost midnight when I notice a sign in the window on Martin Way: Abrupt Edge. Metaphorical, but true. I didn’t know I’d fallen over…