Back Home Again

Well, it has been an unexpectedly long absence...

My computer was down for several weeks and then, within days of its return, it was time to leave
for the Balkans once more.

For those of us who live on our computers much of the time, these events can be quite stressful.
They have been in the past whenever I was separated from my laptop and my routines.
This time around, I was surprised to find myself much calmer than usual.
I was initially told that the repair would take 2-3 days at most.  I could live with that. 
A little break is a good thing.  Little did I realize that I would still be waiting 3 weeks later. 
So much to do, yet I was stopped in my tracks at the most inconvenient time.

By now, I have lived long and hard enough to learn that the 'Universe' trumps all in these matters.
In the past, I would have fretted, pushed, gotten angry or indignant.  I would have worried myself sick.

This time around I responded more gracefully.  I slipped out of my old addiction simply and without complaint.  Everything happens for a reason and the unexpected is usually a good thing.
No point in upsetting myself or anyone else over these events.

But what to do with all that time and energy!?  
Well... I would just have to look up and around and perhaps within to see what other life beckoned.
I had half an idea that I might use this opportunity to ditch the TV for the duration, as well.
Most of my reading, too... 
Step into the void for awhile...  Lose the routines...  Create a little growing space...

When I looked up and around me, I saw a whole lot of  disconnect, 
In my comfortable old routines I had managed to not see and neglect my environment. 
There was cleaning to do and tossing of stuff that was extraneous to my life.
It felt good to de-clutter and renew my spaces. 
Then I noticed the disconnect with my body. A perennial concern...lol.
I began to consciously attend to myself...reconnect.
I danced, I communed.  I ate well and rested more.
I let down and released many of my old concerns.
I unburdened myself on every level.

I began to realize that this was all perfect preparation for the trip ahead. 
Clearing my mind and heart for what lay ahead.
Letting myself become rested and still, emptied, pliable and receptive...

I gave some thought to how fragile we humans are...
These wonderful tools...our computers, TVs, cell phones and the like can go
from being timesavers and conveniences to becoming obsessions and addictions. 
What is meant to serve us begins to master us instead.
We lose touch with our essential selves.
We even begin to think that time and energy spent this way IS real life.
If nothing else, it seems to become a satisfactory enough substitution...

That is why I have learned to appreciate these times of uncoupling and unplugging.
Our addictions are broken up periodically and we get to reconnect in a healthy way.
Awareness returns and we slip out of our little trances.
The societal trances that say that we must all be twittering and facebooking,
texting and sexting, exhausting ourselves with endless chatter and involvement.
Our family, work and personal trances that call for too much busyness,
too much self-criticism and self- improvement.
These are ideas that drum relentlessly in people's heads.
Other people's opinions that rob us of the simple peace and happiness of being here,
of being alive, of just living...without obligation, pressure and guilt.

Before you know it we are living "out there"  instead of living "in here"...in our centers.
Our lives are being orchestrated for us...rather than being directed by our own awareness
and the desires of our own true selves.

We have to wrestle ourselves out of the grip of the society we find ourselves in periodically.
In the world, but not of the world... 
Pilgrims, Gypsies, Exiles all....
Recovering, protecting and preserving our Gypsy souls...and, above all, expressing them.

so many blessings dear Gypsies...

International Romani Day

In our last post, I mentioned that I always keep a suitcase (or several) by the door...just in case.

Well...spring is stirring and the desire to traipse around a bit has risen with it!
In the next weeks, I'll be joining some of my fine Dance Gypsy friends for Spring Fest in Chicago.
It will be a long weekend of Balkan, Turkish, Macedonian and Gypsy/Roma dancing with wonderful live music.

Soon after I will travel to Sofia, Bulgaria where, as fate would have it, I will arrive on April 8,
just in time for the International Day of the Roma.   Bulgaria is home to many Roma people.
It is still possible to see horse drawn carts making their way down cobbled streets alongside cars.
I wonder what experiences await!
From Bulgaria, I will travel overland to Belgrade, Serbia.  In my recent research, I was surprised to learn that Serbia is the main exporter of Gypsies to America...and that the Midwest is home to many of them.

At the time I started this blog, I did not know that these trips were on the horizon.
It is fascinating to see how everything is weaving together.
I am eager to see what I am to learn and experience...

suitcase by the door....

I've lived in this house for several years now, but it is the hardest thing in the world for me to stay put.
So I have a suitcase by the door...and another couple of suitcases upstairs that are always half packed.
It gives me some some of peace of mind.  I haven't always understood why.
I seem to require freedom of movement or at least the promise of it.

There are settled gypsies and roaming ones and some that do a combination of the two.
It amazes me how much of this is peeking through our lives, shedding hints of our true nature.
I am speaking of our cultural gypsies...not by blood or birth....but by nature.
However it got there...it is under our skins, in our dreams or aspirations...
We evidence it in odd ways and we learn to deal with it in a modern society.

Perhaps Gypsies remind us of what we have almost lost in today's world...
In a primal way we are both attracted and repelled by what they represent .
They are redolent of what we all are deep down and in our past. They call to us...
Freedom, mystery, a life without care.  Passion, extravagance, authenticity...
They remain a mirror to help us remember our primitive and cast-off selves.
So people project onto them their admiration or disdain or wonder...or fears...

Maybe we are all just a little bit of everything...wild and tame, lawless yet virtuous,
hard-working and lazy, familial yet free of obligation, home loving yet yearning for the road.

I see my Artisan gypsies making books from scraps and peddling them at art shows,
Dance gypsies of many forms...belly dance, contra and folk dance, flamenco and world beat.
There are certainly love gypsies, who never know how to settle and those who settle briefly
and then disappear in the light of dawn.
There are Road gypsies...truck drivers, cabbies and those who travel for a living.
Despite the hardships, it is a comfort to them...
There is Gypsy-ness everywhere once you open your eyes to it....
There are those Gypsies that flood the world with color and exotic beauty just for the pleasure of it.
They remind us that we must eat more than food to live.
We must eat music and dance and color and art and laughter to thrive...

So we live out our mixed-up facets, thinking we have to struggle with the tangle of what we are.

That we should domesticate and tame and rearrange what we find inside..

We judge and are judged by our very selves in the light of whatever society we find ourselves in.
Judgment blocks life...every time.

It is past the time for such struggles, inward and outward.

We are what we are...and that is all we are and need to be...each unfolding according to our true natures.

Why not enjoy the richness and the confusion and live in accord with what we find?
Why not be amazed at all we are instead of chipping away at ourselves and others,
trying to conform to hollow and unnatural standards?
Why not be intrigued by our exotic and mundane mixtures?
After all, we are old souls coming out of centuries of experience.
We are each our own peculiar archaeology, built over all the preceding layers of culture and history.
Who knows what lies beneath?
Why not embrace and make the best use of all that we find inside?
Better to give loving expression to each aspect, sit by the fire with them and hear their refrains...

Blessed are those who learn to integrate...

running away from home

I have been running away from home for as long as I can remember....

I started practicing as soon as I was able to walk.

Stories are told in my family about my early morning forays.  

There was a small factory at the end of a cul de sac where we lived in my early childhood.. 

Before dawn each day, I was out of bed just raring to go!
I would rummage around in the closet for something to wear.  

Then I would slip out the front door and go visiting with the factory workers.  

Apparently I was quite a hit, because I returned home with all my little pockets bulging with candy. 

I was almost always back in bed pretending to sleep before anyone in our house woke up.
No one was any the wiser that I had left the house at all. 

But eventually a little trail of candy gave me away and my parents found out what I was up to. 

I’m sure I was spanked and told sternly never to leave the house like that and never to talk with strangers. 

But I found the world a friendly place…  I still do, really…  and I couldn't understand their concern.  

While they were in bed fast asleep, I continued to give them the slip. 

What followed was the great game of trying to keep me confined.  

As the story goes, they put locks on the doors (you have to remember…this was back in the day when such things were optional).   It didn’t take me long to figure out the locks, so they were forced to install
more and even better locks on the doors.
When even that didn’t work, they were nearly at wit’s end.
As they got more sophisticated with doors, I learned to climb out windows. 

Freedom was the thing !  I was having a grand time ! 

Dressing up was a big part of my act, too.  I remember wrapping my mother’s dresses around me,
bunching them up in my little hands and trying to make the skirts go over my shoulder,
in part so I wouldn't trip on them, but also so that people could admire my beautiful red high heels.  

There I staggered, in the chilly pre-dawn, to the bright lights at the end of the street, 

where activity, noise and friendly people beckoned.  Oh!  My poor parents!

But there you have it…  the first signs.  It was so ingrained in me right from the start.
Only a few years later, I talked a cousin into running away from home on some small grievance.
We planned our escape carefully.  We even  had the proverbial hobo stick and handkerchief.
We stole some food from the garden… actually it was a rhubarb patch and we made off unseen,
cursing the place that we left.
A few hours after the sun went down, we were cold and our tummies ached from the rhubarb.
It was a wretched journey and we turned home, humiliated, to warm beds and the comforts of our families.

I cooled my jets for awhile after that.
To quell my nerves, I spent the next years poring over maps of the world, encyclopedias
and stories of travel and adventure, thinking of all the places I must go...

Luckily, our family moved house fairly often and that kept things interesting....                

good gypsy....bad gypsy

One things I have noted through the years.  There are good gypsies and not so good gypsies...a few bad ones, too.

It is a mixed -up tribe, for sure...

Gypsies are karmically complex.  We are drawn to one another on deep levels. 
In modern society it may take years for us to fully realize who we are...
and a little longer still to recognize it in the others that we have drawn into our lives.

Remember here that I am using 'gypsy' in the archetypal sense, as well...

There is a natural sympathy and mutual understanding that may never
be articulated...but it is there.

We give each other license where we might not extend it to others. 
We pass over, forgive, turn a blind eye...
It is largely underground in our psyches....

One of my unrealized companions was famous for her restaurant antics.. .
She loved to dine well.  She would invite me to a restaurant that I knew she
could ill afford and once there, we would truly enjoy a great meal.  It was always
a grand experience with laughter and wine and intense conversation.

But when the check arrived, she would suddenly, and sometimes loudly,
find fault with some aspect of our meal. 
By the time she was done complaining, she had gotten us a free meal. 

I was slow to see to see it for what it was...a con...a ploy.  Her act was that good...  
I forgave her some of that, knowing that her life was generally hard. 
People need a little relief occasionally.

"Sometimes," I thought to myself, "just because you don't have money doesn't mean
that you shouldn't live well..."
and she had more capacity for enjoying life and living well than anyone I knew.
But as I got to know her better, I saw that this was a common tactic.
It had become her way of going through life for a time.

She always needed a few dollars...and then a few more dollars. 
She was always quick with a promise to pay the money back or do something
in exchange for the loan.  It never happened.
Coupled with the fact that she was pretty mercurial when it came to working,
I realized what I was dealing with....bad gypsy.

The sad thing about living a life of trickery is that it tends to build all the wrong karma.
Her life is still one of constant struggle. 
Surprisingly and painfully, she is also frequently conned by others ...
Perhaps it is true that the most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves...

As I have said... It is so much more complex...

With all that said,  you've still got your tired gypsies, your discouraged gypsies
 and some gypsies that feel entitled to anything that's not nailed down,
though it is still true that society puts too much emphasis on money and possessions. 
As well, you have those gypsies for whom life has not been fair no matter how much
they try or how hard they work or how gifted they are...and they are so very gifted.

Gypsies sometime seem to carry a cloud over themselves...of difficulty, ill repute,
defiance, 'out-of-placeness'...that makes it hard to help. 
It can seem inpenetrable, unfixable...both to themselves and others.

There is history in the blood....many times difficult history.

We inherit more than DNA.   We inherit history...
the experience of that sometimes wandering, sometimes settled tribe...
that ancient, complex tribal bloodline.  

It emerges in us in a myriad of ways and times...
It can surprise, dismay or confuse us.
No one prepares us for the deeper facts and experiences of life...
the intricacies and layers of who we are and where we've come from. 
But there is no doubt that we live from it....out of that history....like it or not. 

We would do well to learn from it...even cherish it.

Perhaps, rather than judging from our customary myopic view point,
we would do well to stand back and observe ourselves,
as well as the fellow souls with whom we share this journey through life...

It has been a long and extraordinary and, at times, difficult journey.

We are fortunate beyond words to be here...we who have sprung from those
who have survived so many centuries ...so many difficulties...so many wanderings.

It leads me to realize how precious each survivor of survivors truly is.
That is everyone walking around today...

It should not be surprising to any of us that we are a bit misshapen or a bit corrupt
or that we struggle in strange ways and that we carry deep knowing and sadness
as well as joy.

It makes easy sense that we experience difficulty in relationships... 

It takes a lifetime to discover yourself, let alone a lover or child or friend....

There is much mystery hidden in our folds of skin and bone and brain. 

We cannot be condensed to the current person of such and such date of birth,
marriage and death. 

We are the living representatives of far more than is remembered. 

The memories are in this blood and tissue...sleeping and sometimes stirring.

With this sure knowledge, we should be ever be delicate and patient
in our dealings with ourselves... and with others...

Tenderhearted, Curious, Fascinated....

Not quick to judge or correct...or corral or tame this majestic creation that is ourselves. 

so many blessings...

gypsy lunch

one day last week I was so busy...and then so famished ...that I just ran to the fridge, took a quick look around.  I grabbed a fork and speared the lone hot dog I found
and held it over the flame of my gas stove till it was lightly charred...delicious!  

I live alone.  I get to do odd things like that. 

Only later did I realize what I'd done....gypsy lunch, I thought with a smile....

energy vampires

One of our Gypsies offers the following:

“They're out there . . . masquerading as ordinary people. They may lurk in your office, your family, your circle of friends; perhaps they even share your bed. Chances are, you know all too many of them. Bright, talented, and charismatic, they win your trust, your confidence, and your affection, and then drain you of your emotional energy.” -Judith Orloff

I use to get pulled into intense conversations, both long and short, that I would leave me feeling exhausted.  I frequently described these people as “suckers”.  They saw me, pulled out their straw, and sucked all my energy out before letting me go.  I’ve since learned that this is a form of vampirism.  People do it both consciously and unconsciously to those of us who are empathetic and juicy.  The unconscious ones are just as detrimental as the conscious.  They are living life haphazardly and spill their chaos and fogginess on those around them.  I thought for sure I’d have to hide out for the rest of my life to avoid these energy zappers.  Instead, I learned about people’s energy and how we can control our own.  I realized that I tended to walk around wide open in a way that would attract anyone with a real or perceived wound.  Thankfully, I began to discover more about grounding and centering my energy within myself as well as how to contain it.  Learning how to contain it has been pivotal because my energy is then no longer accessible for just anyone to take.   I have come to call this “my invisible cloak”.  I have found that I can literally be invisible to people when I need to be.  One time in particular comes to mind.  I was at a crowded restaurant when I saw a lady walk in that I knew socially, but did not feel like engaging.  Our interactions often left me feeling tired, and I just didn’t have the extra energy in me that day.  So, I cloaked my energy and did not let my eyes wander around the room. Interestingly, this lady and her friend were seated right next to me.  I felt my eyes get big as I realized this, but I stayed focused.   I remained present in the conversation I was in and did not let my attention wander.  I breathed a sigh of relief and pleasant surprise when she and her friend finished their meal and left without ever noticing me.  Because of this experience, I recognized even more that containing my own energy actually keeps others from inappropriately engaging it.  This continues to help free me up from having my energy drained as well as from getting entangled in other people’s dramas.

Luna