What if we can

What if We Can

Communication, Compassion, Oceans, Writing By August 29, 2021 No Comments

I took myself to Yachats on a little writing retreat last weekend, intent on spending some dedicated time with the page. The retreat would be short—a night at the beach in what turned out to be a very loud room, the Captain’s Quarters, with a very deep clawfoot bathtub that would not hold water no matter how passionately I argued with the plug. It would be a full blue moon that night and I had two whole days to myself, all ingredients for the perfect productive storm.

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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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kites

Brother

Change By January 17, 2021 No Comments

I noticed him as soon as we parked. Short and bent, his lank mane of greying hair and months-old beard spilled over a loose black rain jacket that appeared to be fashioned out of a can liner. I remember noting that he carried nothing.

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photo stories :: the thinker

Outloudish By October 17, 2020 No Comments

the thinker

I couldn’t wait to see him when I found out he rested outside San Francisco’s Legion of Honor fine arts museum. A famous work of history! I would photograph him and take him away with me as a piece of a masterpiece. Like visiting Michaelangelo’s David of Florence, which I also aimed to do one day.

Rodin’s Thinker sat magnificent against the clear California sky. I framed the figure, pressed the button on my camera to release the shutter. Click, click, click in HD. It wasn’t until I walked away that I read this Thinker was a replica. One of multiple castings. Even if he had been commissioned during Rodin’s lifetime, he remained a copy of a copy, born of a mold.

I wish this didn’t make him different. Wish I’d kept seeing him as a marvel, an original, the way he’d been to me at first glance.

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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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