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Self-discovery

see and be seen

To See and Be Seen

Power, Self-discovery By October 9, 2023 No Comments

I wonder if you have ever had this thought while doing something you love: When will I be good enough to be seen in this?

It’s an odd thought, the idea that there are standards for being visible. And that I have to hide until I’ve met them. I’ve asked the question of so many pursuits for so long that I’ve grown accustomed to an unending list and no ready answers.

Maybe, like me, you grew up like this…

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Expanding

Why I’m Not Getting Any Better

Play, Self-discovery By May 7, 2023 No Comments

So I’ve been practicing the violin again this week and it feels like I’m starting from scratch. Scratch means scales and finger exercises and bowing maneuvers and striving. Striving to improve.

The idea of striving to get better didn’t just come up for me in the practice room this week. When I went to my local violin shop and tried out a few more instruments better rose up to smack me fresh across the face. A mother and her daughter were in line ahead of me also shopping for violins. The young violinist couldn’t have been any older than fifteen, and her mother proudly informed their sales person that she had been playing for eleven years. They took a handful of fine instruments into one of the rooms off the main lobby where we all heard the daughter begin to rip through Mendelssohn at tremendous speed.

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Violin

Once, Twice, and Again

Play, Self-discovery By April 21, 2023 No Comments

Once, in a fit of teenaged passion, I sold the possession most dear to me to buy my first car.

That’s right, some lucky person paid pennies on the pegboard for my precious fiddle and bow, and I, being eighteen and desperate for freedom, hardly thought twice about it.

What I did think about was this: I didn’t want to be the well-behaved repressed violinist anymore. I didn’t want to push anymore toward some unattainable standard of musical excellence, and I really didn’t want to keep falling short. I wanted road trips and nights out with friends that bled into endless dawns. Gas pumps and freeways and gear shifts. I wanted my great wild beyond.

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Bath-anna-kaehler

I Am (in the bath)

Change, Self-discovery By January 25, 2023 2 Comments

This person I thought up

This person I am

is becoming something else

entirely

The bath she fills

drop by drop

and the crumbs on the table,

new foundlings

Patterns assemble

but less fixed

more space in

the kaleidoscope’s eye,

grounding

Days are songs

their verses come hither

and loving,

alone in the bath

is ecstatic drowning

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Knowing

Knowing

Change, Self-discovery, Writing By August 7, 2021 Tags: No Comments

Summer in Portland—those longed for, beatific days promising dry weather for play—is as much a darling as dominatrix.

There’s the constant pressure to get outside, and then there’s the still, hot air when you do. We run for shade and we bathe our delicate Pacific Northwest skins in sunscreen from hairline to pinkie toes. Ahhh, we sweat at each other, glorious. And won’t it be an even more glorious fall?

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Inward-facing-dog

Inward Facing Dog

Self-discovery By May 23, 2021 No Comments

10 plus years after my first yoga class, I’ve started a solo practice. It happened sort of organically (okay, with a small tech fail assist). One morning my Wi-Fi gave out just as I was queuing up YouTube. I really wanted to practice, and so I did. Alone. Free form.

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ahimsa anna kaehler

Ahimsa and the Tale of the Trees

An Authentic Life, Self-discovery By September 29, 2020 No Comments

The first time I heard the word Ahimsa—the yogic principle that translates to absence of injury or non-violence—my body was torqued into a position of considerable pain.

I stood on one leg, the other bent with foot placed on my supporting inner thigh. Arms aloft, standing ankle in a chronic wobble, whole body alternately swaying and clenching to hold the position. Sweat bled from my hairline. I hung on each second, begging it to end.

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holding

A Habit of Holding

Change, Power, Self-discovery By August 28, 2020 No Comments

I finished a nine day cleanse yesterday, and to celebrate I walked myself around the park (naturally). This was the only movement I had any real energy for, and even then I could only manage one loop.

The temperature was perfect on my arms. I let myself feel it. The sun was as soft as warm cotton, the grass smelling of seed. The soccer kids were all practicing their artful crosses, balls sliding into goals. Perfect.

Most of the cleanse felt nothing like this.

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Light-walker 2

Illumination

Change, Self-discovery, Uncategorized By June 21, 2020 No Comments

I believe that as humans we are built for all things. All feelings. All experiences. I believe this with the fervor of someone who has swung the pendulum of experience pretty wildly for most of my 40 or so years.

Joy. Passion. Victimhood. Oppressive control. Hilarity. Co-dependency. Murderous rage. Apathy. Profound, spine-tickling inspiration. The range of experience here on earth is enormous, and we are wired for all of it.

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Fed 2

Fed

Change, Self-discovery By May 26, 2020 No Comments

I first heard this poem about the cow that eats all day, only to starve at night on her fear, when I was in my mid-twenties and searching.

A man read it aloud on a CD in that lilting, irregular way Rumi is often performed. I hated the poem when I first heard it. The stanzas made me ache with self-recrimination. How often had I been this cow? Safe when I trusted, but oh when I fed on doubt…

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