we can never know what to want...

"We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come."
-Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

this quote came to mind after chatting with Emily for a bit. It just seems so true sometimes.

already the heart

this poem has been repeating itself in my head as of late. my dear friend Sara sent it to me several years ago along with a letter. i don't know where she came across it, but certainly i thank her for sharing it. for some reason it has stuck with me and comes unasked into my thoughts. so, now, i share with you.

Already the Heart

The spinal cord blossoms
like bright, bruised magnolia
into the brainstem.
And already the heart
in its depth - who could assail it?
Bathed in my voice, all branching
and dreaming. The flowering
and fading - said the poet -
come to us both at once.
Here is your best self,
and the least, two sparrows
alight in the one tree
of your body.

-A.V. Christie


Here is your best self,/and the least, two sparrows/alight in the one tree/of your body... indeed. this is what keeps spinning around my head.

...watching the tide roll away...

l spent the past weekend in San Francisco, where I haven't been for wayyyy too long. it was great. and while it was great, it was also superquick and not nearly enough time to visit or explore. guess i'll just have to go back. so, let's see... I stayed in Berkeley for 3 nights with the lovely Barbara and her husband Justin. They just moved into the coolest apartment built around a boulder. they have solar power and radiant floor heat. (btw, i LOVE radiant floor heat). amazing. also, totally amazing to catch up with friends and colleagues (Janie stayed with Barbara too!). We had a great time catching up, outside the seminar... we even managed to eat delicious cupcakes while sitting by the bay :)


the seminar itself. i am not even sure where to begin. i'm still processing it all. Ikeda Sensei was amazing, and Edward Sensei was a phenomenal translator. i definitely felt that my brain was trying to understand and recover the long ago Japanese studies it received. and man, do I want to learn Japanese again. The information was great, but lots, and more than anything, the whole experience was just an inspiration and made me fall in love with this medicine all over again.


briefly got to catch up with Lisa and Aunt Debbie. So so great to see them. And certainly not nearly enough time to do us all justice. Thank you both for meeting up with me :) So good to hug you!



And then spent Monday with Emily (thank you Clint for sharing your apartment) and mostly we just walked around Chinatown and caught up. (and emily got some very fabulous bok choy hair clips).



overall, exhausting. but so good. I needed it. all of it. the professional inspiration, the catching up with colleagues and friends, the getting out of my own life for a few days. it could not have come at better time. so, thank you, everyone who made it possible.

the true and the questions

Tomorrow is my 29th birthday and life is messy... All my life I thought that at 29 I would really get it together. my life pulled together. Life would be clear and right. Life isn't. Life is messy.

We are juggling our balls of grocery lists and birthday cards to send. emails to write and appointments to reschedule. keeping them moving in the air. We are all carrying so many things in our life. and inside ourselves. often it feels there is no place to put them down.

Where do you place the questions you carry? The sadness and the epiphanies? The quiet worries? Where can you put down the truth, as messy and new and raw as it sometimes feels?

- Sabrina Ward Harrison, The True and the Questions

kind of where i'm at right now. and didn't have better words than those. (it's a great journal by the way - interesting questions, beautiful art and some inspiration)