Back in Tucson - Project: Find a Job

Greetings after a month long respite from writing. I would say that I didn't write while I was in New York and Buffalo because I was too busy but that would be an outright lie. I was lazy. However, in order to feel a sense of completion heres a recap:

New York

I went to some awesome Baghavad Gitta teachings while in New York which took up most of my nights. I helped with a bake sale that will get me to India in April ;-) I got to see the Fighter Pilot and the Monk business talks. Al of those things were great AND I got to see some of the coolest people in the whole wide world. Fun activities included...

making cookie pie.

eating smores.

and having a fire outside in very cold temperatures.

Buffalo

Most of Buffalo was spending time with my family which is probably the best thing to do. Especially with the coolest nephew on the planet. Unfotunately my Buffalo photos are not able to be shown at this time due to loosing my little hook up my camera to my computer thing. I thought in Buffalo when I didn't have it that it was in the car in Arizona. Now I am in Arizona and it is definitely not in the car. But if I did have my hook up my camera to my computer thingy you would see awesome pictures of Thanksgiving, shopping on Black Friday, a homemade Spiderman cake, and a 3 year old's birthday party. Ok, maybe those things aren't that interesting anyway... I thought they were anyway.

Now I'm back in Arizona and happy to be here. Of course, one of the things I was looking forward to getting back to was the sun and there was no sun to be found today. Thats ok though, at least there aren't freezing temperatures. I believe Buffalo is now covered under a blanket of snow so I'll be thankful for my warm-ish dreary day in Arizona. I did go to a yoga class today at a new place. It was really good if your definition of good is getting your butt kicked by trying to do things that you've never tried to do before and feeling like a pretzle.

Project Find a Job

Tomorrow starts Project Find a Job. This project is me... trying to find a job. I will stick to my previous plan of trying to work in a coffee shop. If in a few weeks (ew, thats a long time) I haven't found anything I suppose I'll have to try other places and/or wander around the streets of Tucson crying and begging people for a job, any job. My goal for tomorrow is to go to at least 4 places to job-seek.

Other than working on Project Find a Job I'll be meditating and doing yoga every day. I'll also be catching up on some meditation classes that I need to do to be able to take a class during term in February. And I'll be getting some classes with my teachers Rebecca and Grant. So, this will be a busy time - and I don't even have the job yet.

Stay tuned...

Pumpkin Pie, Outdoor Yoga, and Potential Oil Fires

I keep meaning to post pictures... really I do... I just have to get them from Stacy's camera since I don't have mine. It was borrowed by my teacher to show Geshe Michael pictures we took of fabric for the quilt that we need to get made for him. True story. Soon I shall show pictures. Hopefully.

The next matter of business is that I need to add a link to Phantasm's most recent video. Phantasm is Steve's band. You may not know who Steve is or who Phantasm is but now you will and in getting to know them you will learn how to make pumpkin pie - and you will laugh.

Day 6 - Outdoor Yoga

I did yoga outside today. Arizona is hot. Did you know? It was wonderful! Except of course when that bee was stalking me and I had to stop doing poses to run away for a minute. Oh, and I could almost smell the singe of my white skin in the sun. But other than that it was great. Seriously, it was. Mountains all around me, sun shining, ipod on a yoga playlist. And before this outdoor yoga I got a professional massage. Tahiya is one of the women staying to help the retreat. She's from California and one of the sweetest women ever. She's a massage therapist and as soon as I walked into the house in the morning and said "wow, my back really hurts" she said "well I can take care of that." An hour later I was on a massage table for like 45 minutes. It was rather blissful. Outdoor yoga and a professional massage for free. Thats how we roll at DM, yo. (of course there was also hours of chopping, several potatoes, and lots-o-crazy as well but at this point that goes without saying)

Day 7 - Oil = Dangerous

"This life, it is so short. It goes by in an instant. Tibetans say its like a bubble on the surface of the ocean. You don't have time to waste, every moment is precious." - Lama Christie McNally

Sometimes when I go yoga I feel high afterward. I may have written about this previously but its worth mentioning again. It usually happens once in a while when I have a really awesome teacher give a really awesome class. (Like when Stacy taught us a yin practice - relaxing poses held for longer than usual so the pose reaches down to the muscle) Today though I just did an improvised practice on my own again outside and for the first time doing stuff on my own I got a yoga high. I guess it means I'm learning. (Thanks to Stacy and all the other wonderful people here who've been teaching me) Its just so great. Like, I have this stupid smile I can't get off my faced and I keep giggling at everything. Its so great.

We had a lull in what we were doing today and I was sitting quietly on one of the couches resting. I hear Razia calling my name from across the room. She said "Kimmy, come here and I will tell you how to make ice cream." So I sit down, she puts paper and pen in front of me and gives me 2 recipies for making ice cream and a whole bunch of other recipies. One for a salad that somehow involves raw Ramen noodles. I'm so excited to cook when I go home for Thanksgiving.

Then came the almost oil fire... I was sitting down and all of a sudden I hear one person say calmly "we need some help..." and then another say even more calmly "ok, so, I need someone to find me a fire extinguisher as soon as they possibly can..." So I come to find out that the oil in which falafel was being cooked started to boil over and come dangerously close to the flame on the stove. But no one panicked. We all just got up and started looking around for an extinguisher. Only at Diamond Mountain... It didn't end up boiling over and it was taken care of but still, any other group of people would have probably started screaming and running around. We all did what I'd like to call "efficiently chilled."

Days 3, 4, and 5 - Potatoes, Potatoes, Potatoes

The funny thing about the whole potato thing is that they just keep showing up.  Every day there are potatoes.  It makes sense because when people are in retreat they say they need to eat heavy foods that ground them since they're doing cool things like staying silent and doing a whole bunch of crazy meditation.  I've just never seen so many potatoes in all my life.  So then to tie it all together - today Razia (who I adore) is talking to Stacy and I about different concepts in Buddhism and Stacy asked what Buddhists believe about the different realms.  I won't get into it here but within the description Razia, in her wonderful Hebrew accent, says "...and then they fall to hell like a potato."  This may or may not be funny to you since you can't picture her or hear her accent but it was hilarious on its own and then all I could think was "heh, yeah, potatoes are hell."  It just seemed so fitting to me...

Day 3 - honey gloves and learning how to cook.

I mentioned previously that I've invented a honey glove.  (photo still pending)  We have a massive tub of honey.  We need to take a small amount of that honey from the massive tub and put it into small containers so the retreatants can enjoy their honey without being up their elbows in it every time they want to enjoy some tea.  Every time people tried to pour these smaller amounts of honey they got it all over themselves, all over the containers, and all over the floor.  So Anne walks up to me and says "Kim, I need you to figure out a way to get the honey out of the tub...some sort of spout.  Maybe you could use some cardboard, or a glove.  I don't know - just figure it out."  So there I am, with a look of mild panic/confusion on my face with a rubber glove in one hand and some duct tape in the other.  Thankfully after a month in the desert having to completely rearrange my way of thinking my mind is rather pliable.    So I squat down next to the tub of honey and get to work.  After a few uses and some minor improvements we have a wonderful product.  We needed some nice, strong gentlemen to lift the massive tub of honey when it was still very full but now that its being used up I can pretend I'm strong and use the contraption myself.  However, for the first few days there was a man holding a big white tub with a rubber glove duct taped to the end and me kneeling on the ground squeezing a rubber glove  like I'm milking a cow.  And the excitement in the room when we thought of poking a hole in the lid so the honey would come out faster... kind of like when your mom would buy those big cans of juicy juice when you were a kid and would poke 2 holes so the juice could glug glug glug faster into your cup.  I really hope I'm not that weird and someone knows what I mean by that.  Lastly on this topic I'd like to say that (before our product was perfected and I was still getting some honey on my hands) I now know what Whinny the Poo feels like...

So Razia is a wonderful Israeli woman who LOVES to cook.  She's been cooking group meals all throughout the term and I loved her and her Israeli food from a distance but didn't get the chance to cook with or talk to her until the retreat started.  Now every day I'm in the kitchen before 8am chopping and listening and learning.  She's so adorable and says the funniest things and I'm learning so much from her.  Now when I'm chopping or washing or cutting or whatevering I have this Hebrew accent in my head telling me what to do with the food.  Its so wonderful.  I help her all morning and during the early afternoon to make lunch for everyone.  We've become a really great team.  While we're cooking she talks about Buddhism and tells me stories.  She gets so happy to talk about these things that I'll look up from cutting when she gets to the exciting part of her story and she's looking at me with the funniest most excited look on her face.  Ugh - I wish everyone could have a Razia in their life.  The world would be a better place.  I also think the world would be a better place if everyone had a laughing fit at least once a day.  (It happened today - Day 5 - with Stacy and Anne.  We laughed so hard it hurt.  I love that...)  It's always so easy to be in the kitchen with her.  Then we get to the end of the afternoon and we get the food out the door and she says out loud "We did it!"  Every time, "We did it!"  Like we had any doubt that we would complete our task.  I love that woman.  Also, she just had hey 29th wedding anniversary.  I'm not even surprised.  I would totally stay married to her for 100 years if I were her husband, she's so great.

Day 4 - cottage cheese is disgusting and i dont care what you say

Not only is it disgusting, it is disturbing.  I would even go as far as to say that it is foul.  If you eat it, God bless, but you know what, you're a little gross.  One of the Israeli's was eating toast with jelly and cottage cheese today and I thought to myself "I have never in my life eaten cottage cheese and I will never do it.  Ever."  And I mean that.  It is white with chunks.  Why would anyone eat something that is white with chunks?  Why would you do that?  Dan from Pizza Hut Fredonia used to eat cottage cheese every day and I felt the same way then.  I've changed a lot in the past few years but this has stayed the same.  And it will not change.  Ever. 

On a better note I came across these quotes today while reading a book called Jivamukti Yoga and decided I wanted to share them:

"Let love be your guide.  When you love what you do, the means to do it will be revealed to you."

"...you will start having your own insights.  They will come to you in magical little explosions that will feel like things you've always known but didn't know how to express."

Day 5 - Awful

I didn't sleep enough on night 4.  I came back to the house in Bowie and sang a bunch of songs with Eirenne and Zack.  Well, I sang one song - the only one I remember how to play on guitar.  Then Zack played a bunch which was awesome.  Thats when I started getting tired.  But I couldn't go to bed.  I love private concerts.  This makes me miss John.  Private concerts are awesome.  Private concerts on your balcony in Brooklyn are even better.  Then I got over tired and we moved on to Disney songs.  Theres something about me and Eirenne that when we're together we inevitably start singing either I Just Can't Wait to Be King from The Lion King or something from Aladin or The Little Mermaid.  Then there was also the one time we made up a song about walking down a hill titled "Walkin' On Down the Hill"  (By the way, if anyone wants to play us some banjo for that song it would fir perfectly...)  We then started to discuss how hilariously awful Gaston in Beauty and the Beast was which led to 1am, a plan for Zack to cover a Gaston song at open mic and a youtube adventure.  Do yourself a favor, watch this, laugh, and be happy. 

As wonderful as this night was it left me with very little sleep which makes getting up at 6am and working for about 14-16 hours very difficult.  I'm afraid this will be happening again tonight since it's 1:25 and I'm still not asleep.  Therefore I must say farewell for now.

Day 1 - Injury 1 * Day 2 - Potatoes and Pita

I got up at 6:30am on Saturday which was day one of the retreat.  I'm one of 15 people serving the silent retreat for the 140ish people doing it.  I'm lucky enough to stay at a house in Bowie instead of having to stay in a tent for the last ten days while we're serving.  However, the house I'm staying at was freezing the first night/morning.  I can't really figure out how I was more cold in a house than I was in the tent.  At least I was in a nice comfortable bed.  Tit for tat.  I went to the grounds on morning 1 and started chopping veggies for lunch prep.  The main chefs for the retreat are from Israel so if you'd like to picture what my days look like picture a small kitchen with cutting boards everywhere, pots of steaming soup and rice everywhere there isn't a cutting board and several people speaking what seems like impossibly fast Hebrew.  

The injury isn't bad - have no fear.  All I did was slice my finger.  It's not a bad cut at all - one of those annoying ones thats just bad enough to remind you every time you try to do anything during which you have to utilize your hands.  I just thought it was funny that it was the first day and I had already bled.

The feeling in the house where we're doing all the food making and everything is so great though.  There isn't one person there for any reason other than that they want to help out - just because.  How often does that happen?  It makes working together really great.   I keep thinking about how crazy it is that a group of strangers can become a family when you're all thrown together for a common purpose.  That's the beautiful.  The crazy is that we never seem to have the supplies we need so we keep having to make trips into town to buy more food and things like 5 gallon buckets and a wooden toilet seat -- Don't ask.  The only thing I know for sure is that it can only get more interesting as the next 9 days go on...

I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween.  My Halloween night consisted of washing towels and eating avocado and toast.  Well, I did have some candy corn.  Also, I had to run to the mailbox and on my way back I witnessed trick-or-treating Bowie, AZ style: A kid, in costume, riding in the back of a pick up truck.  The truck stops at one house - kid gets down, grabs some candy, jumps back into the bed of the truck, parent drives to the next house down the road.  It was very entertaining for me, a great end to the first night of retreat, and an excellent addition to the crazy that is my life.

Day 2 - Injury 2

Just kidding.  No more injuries thankfully.  Though there are 8 days to go and you never know..

Today was good.  I'm so tired I don't really know if I remember detail but I'll try..  The day started with Stacy and I doing breakfast prep.  Then came the potatoes.  I've never had to deal with so many potatoes in my entire life.  I'm not really that fond of potatoes to begin with.  I mean, sure, I like french fries, I'll eat a few kinds of potatoes - but given the choice I'd choose a different vegetable almost every time.  This morning, though, my job was to wash the potatoes.  At first I thought this was no big deal.  Rinse some taters - peel 'em - rinse 'em again - good to go.  NOPE.  These specific taters had to keep their skin.  Cool.  "Kim, can you scrub these and get all the dirt off?"  "Sure!"  Ummmm - do you know how dirty potatoes are?  Also - I learned that there is an art to scrubbing potatoes with  juuuust enough pressure so the dirt comes off but the skin doesn't.  Then they just kept bringing more potatoes.  I scrubbed one bag of potatoes and then there was another kind of potato to scrub.  Then I got done with those and they brought another bag.  And another.  And another.  I thought I would never want to see another potato in my entire life.  But then I ate the potatoes and it made the scrubbing worth it.  Hell, it made life worth it.  Razia - one of the chefs is probably one of the best cooks in the whole world.  I might move to Israel just so I can eat her food year round.  I'd inevitably get really fat but hey man, happiness is happiness.

Then I grilled pita bread for like 2 hours.  Pita after pita after pita.  But then I got to take the most heavenly nap in the whole world.  It was one of those naps where you don't know how tired you are until you lay down thinking you're going to close your eyes for 15-2o minutes and then you wake up 2 hours later wondering what happened.  Oh man, I love those.  

The rest of the day consisted of cleaning, organizing, eating, celebrating a birthday, and inventing a pouring device for honey out of duct tape and a rubber glove.  I'm not even kidding.  I'll post a picture ASAP but for now I'll let you use your imagination.

Break Your Heart

Last Wednesday I drove my friend Joel to Tucson. I decided to stay and hang out for awhile because he isn't coming back to DM at all - for this term anyway. So we're sitting in a cute coffee shop talking about various things and at one point in one of the conversations he says to me something like "I think the point is to break your heart." It made sense in the context of what we were talking about but my first reaction was that I would have preferred to punch him in the face - why would I want my heart broken? Isn't my goal, everyone's goal, to be happy? I, of course, did NOT punch him in the face because I would never, ever, punch anyone in the face, especially him... But the next day it got me to thinking about what I'm learning at Diamond Mountain. I mean - I'm learning a whole lot of wonderful stuff but I mean in general - what I'm learning in summary I guess...

What I'm learning from this time at Diamond Mountain is that I don't have to be stuck. I can go where I need to go and do what I need to do to make myself and other people happy. I'm allowed to do what makes me happy. I'm allowed to work on taking the log out of my eye so I can help get the splinters out of the eyes of the people around me. I have the power to do what will make me happy and to choose to do the thing that will help the most people. Me being stuck in a job that makes me too tired to function or doing an activity that I don't want to do is all in my head. Meaning - everything is so beautiful and blissful. Geshe Michael said in one of our classes that, if you think about it, the world is pretty perfect already. Things still suck. Of course they do - but the things that suck can be changed, they can be worked on. We may not be able to change them over night but if those are the important things we can sure as hell work on changing them. The things I don't see as perfect CAN be changed - I just have to keep learning how to change them and I think it all starts with your point of view.

My first yoga teacher in Fredonia said in one of the first classes "Everything you need you have within you." Ok, so, I dropped the class after like 2 classes because I was too busy to relax for an hour doing yoga... but I think that statement was really all I needed to take away from the class anyway. It's so true. At any given time I really have absolutely everything I need - everything I HAVE to have.

Things really do suck sometimes... a lot of the time, theres no denying that. But you also can't deny that there is so much beauty in everything around us. It's just too difficult to see when we have 1,000 things going on and when we're worrying about ourselves constantly. But even the pain is gorgeous. It makes us who we are. It shapes us. It completes us. It makes us stronger. And at the very least it breaks us down and lets us be real. The Dalai Lama's mantra (om mani padme hum) means that out of great suffering comes great beauty. The point IS to break your heart - and after that you have to work to keep it broken open and let the pieces settle in a whole new, terrifyingly beautiful way. Every single moment of life is an exciting adventure - you just have to remember to see it that way and the challange of trying to remember is part of the adventure. It all starts with your point of view.

So, in conclusion I would like to say that the Dalai Lama is probably the cutest man in the whole wide world. Seriously, Google a picture of him - it is impossible to not smile.

:-) <3

Apaches and High Winds

As far as the high winds go I'm right now sitting in the Nectar Lounge (pictured to the right) and the wind is so freaking crazy that its making me feel like I'm crazy.  It's non-stop high wind that all but knocks you over when you're walking through it.  I'm currently semi-protected by the heavy duty tent around me because there's a class in the temple which is the only actual building on the camp ground.  It's pretty good in here but every now and then there will be a gust so intense that it stops all thought process in my brain and makes my eyes bulge out of my head for fear that the tent will come crumbling down on top of me.  The wind started at about mid morning and hasn't stopped since.  

The interesting part of this whole thing is that last night, before the wind started, I had a dream that I was looking out of a window and saw a Tornado form right before my eyes.  Dream-Me then braced myself in a door frame while the building came crumbling down around me.  This is just another example to add the list of dreams I've had that have been psychic.  I'm not saying I dream about exactly what's going to happen - but I have a dream the night before something happens that comes partially true.  ie. Last night - Tornado dream; Today - Craziest wind I've ever experienced in my entire life.  Someone just said the gusts are getting up to 40 mph.  I may or may not still have a tent.

Another example of Psychic Dream Kim:  

Picture it - December 2006 - Fredonia, NY - 35 Barker Street

I had a dream that I was pregnant.  Not only was I pregnant so was Chrystal Mook.  Now, in real life Chrystal Mook WAS about 8.5 months pregnant. (This wasn't the psychic part - I already knew that in real life because I'm not stupid or blind - her prego tummy was HUGE.) The point is that she still had a little more time before the bun was to be ejected from the oven.  Back to the dream...  Pregnant Dream-Chrystal Mook was wheeling pregnant Dream-Me into the Emergeny Room because pregnant Dream-Me was about to pop out my Dream-Baby. End of dream... Real Life-ME woke up and thought "haha, how funny!"  A few hours later I get a call from a family member (I can't remember which one...) telling me that pregnant Real Life-Chrystal Mook went in for her regularly scheduled check-up and was told by the doctor that the bun would soon be ejecting from the oven that is her womb and that she should go to the hospital straight away.  (I'm sure I'm improvising on the language because the doctor wasn't British and probably wouldn't refer to an unborn child as a type of bread or pastry)

I've also had semi-psychics dreams involving relationships and other various things.  I have them more now that I've gotten deeper into my meditation.  Needless to say I was a little scared when I had a dream last week that my hand was being chewed off by a wild Pig.  

Moving on...

On Saturday the Apaches came to Diamond Mountain.  This used to be their land until the British stole it.  Sadface.  They come every now and then to bless the land.  They sing like 32 tribal songs and stay all day.  People can come and go as they please and watch them, dance, and sing along.  I didn't go up the the hill they were singing on for the first part of the morning because I was meditating and taking a yoga class.  But then I went up the mountain to where there ceremony was being held and listened to a few songs.  They were in the middle of a song so I sat down and closed my eyes to listen.  And all of a sudden tears were falling down my cheeks.  I don't know what it was but it was just so powerful and beautiful.  They sang another song after that and then had us line up so they could do a blessing for us.  They went around and blessed us all and then had us bless them like they did for us.  It was a really nice thing.  I felt emotional during that part too but I'm a big sap so I didn't really think that much of it.  Then I got to the old Apache ladies that were here.  (There were 3 generations who came)  They were saying prayers for us.  The oldest woman grabbed my hands and started saying a prayer and it was very nice and I got all choked up.  Then another one of the woman hugged me, started rubbing my back, and saying a prayer and I immediately started SOBBING.  I was hugging a woman I had never before met in my life who was saying a prayer in another language so I had no idea what she was saying - and I was crying like a baby.  Hugging a stranger and crying.  Either it's true that yoga and meditation open your heart or I'm so starved for affection that hugging a stranger opened flood gates of emotion that I didn't know were there.  Or both.  Or something else entirely.  However, it was intense and beautiful and ridiculously weird.   

Things are good. Only a week to go in the term. I can't believe its gone so quickly. It was slow at first but then it flew by. I think thats how things go a lot of the time though. The last day of classes is on the 29th. Then on the 30th there is a retreat happening that begins that day. I'm not doing the retreat but I'm going to serve it. So that means I'll be helping make food and take care of the people who are doing the retreat. It's a nice thing to do since I'm sure some day I'll be doing a retreat and there will be people taking care of me. That will last about ten days. Then I'll be heading to New York for a few weeks. So I get to see all my wonderful NYC friends :-) Then I'd like to make it home to Buffalo for Thanksgiving.

But then... after that... I still have NO idea what I'll be doing. It's kind of scary but oh well. I'll figure it out. I have options - I just don't know yet what the best one will be. The options are these:

1. Stay in Buffalo with my family and get a job. I'd like to work in a coffee shop. I like coffee and I'm happy in coffee shops so why not work in one right?

2. Go to Florida and stay with Jay for a while. Again, I'd try to work in a coffee shop.

3. Come back to Tucson and get a job. In a coffee shop.

Now, it may be weird that I want to work in a coffee shop. Are there really people who go around saying "I want to work in a coffee shop when I grow up." I don't think they do. I mean, I've never heard of anyone saying that. But its one of those weird things that for some reason I've always wanted to do it. So I shall. Its nice that I can really do anything or go anywhere right now. That probably wont always be a possibility for me. But right now it is so I think I should take advatage of it -- right?

No matter what I do I'm still going to come back to Diamond Mountain in February. The living in a tent thing may not work during the winter but I can always get a cheap place in town with some other people. But I've been learning a lot here. About myself and how my mind works. Its a crazy, frightening place, my mind. I think I already knew that but its even more apparent when I have time to listen to it. This is a crazy crazy adventure I seem to be on.

And now - Radiohead lyrics... Because it just came on my ipod and because I feel like it...

"The Bends"
Where do we go from here?
The words are coming out all weird
Where are you now,
when I need you

Alone on an aeroplane
Fall asleep on against the window pane
My blood will thicken
I need to wash myself again to hide all the dirt and pain
'Cause I'd be scared that there's nothing underneath

But who are my real friends?
Have they all got the bends?
Am I really sinking this low?
My baby's got the bends, oh no
We don't have any real friends, no, no, no

Just lying in the bar with my drip feed on
Talking to my girlfriend,
waiting for something to happen
I wish it was the sixties,
I wish I could be happy
I wish, I wish, I wish that something would happen

Where do we go from here?
The planet is a gunboat in a sea of fear
And where are you?
They brought in the CIA,
the tanks and the whole marines
To blow me away, to blow me sky high

My baby's got the bends
We don't have any real friends
Just lying in the bar with my drip feed on
Talking to my girlfriend, waiting for something to happen

I wish it was the sixties,
I wish I could be happy
I wish, I wish, I wish that something would happen

I wanna live, breathe
I wanna be part of the human race
I wanna live, breathe
I wanna be part of the human race, race, race, race

Where do we go from here?
The words are coming out all weird
Where are you now when I need you?

That is all.