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Embarking on new adventures with The Akilah Institute and Davis College!

6/5/2019

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In 2019, we’re embarking on a new journey—with the Akilah Institute in Rwanda!
I am proud to be working exclusively on promoting and supporting the Akilah Institute—Rwanda's only all-women college, part of Davis College—Akilah's global, co-ed education brand which is soon to expand globally in Africa and Asia. I'm so thrilled to be a part of this dynamic, worldwide team by providing strategic marketing content. You are invited to follow this inspiring, world-class educational model online at www.akilahinstitute.org, follow Akilah on Medium, Twitter @AkilahInstitute, on LinkedIn or Facebook.

Graduation ceremony at the Akilah Institute, Rwanda's only all-female college and provider of world-class education

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November Gratitude Diaries Post 23: Aspic Salad

11/23/2018

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I'm thankful to my brother Curtis who continues the tradition of making aspic salad at our family holidays. If you're not familiar, this is basically Jello made with tomato juice, or "Clamato" juice ("for extra umami" so my brother says?!). Our traditional recipe suspends green peas in the opaque gelatinous dome, and is served with a nice helping of mayonnaise. Yep. Mayonnaise. This is one of those dishes that my dad would always make, no one else would touch, and we'd make gross-out noises while he delighted in it, generally by himself or with a brave (or terrified?) dinner guest. This year, my dad is gone. This year, I went ahead and had some, complete with the mayo dollop. It was sweet and savory, a bit like a jelly-gazpacho. As my brother so eloquently said, "try it. It's really not as bad as it looks." In fact, don't tell, but I thought it was, as my dad would say, "lovely."

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#NovemberGratitudeDiaries #22: A Place To Go

11/22/2018

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Thanksgiving. I'm thankful that I was up early and went for a morning-moon run, and got to witness the fat full orange moon as it was setting. (I'm thankful that dark winter mornings increase my chances of seeing a sunrise!) I'm thankful that it took me less than three hours to drive to Seattle—a trip that can take twice that on a bad day. I'm thankful that there is a warm home of relatives waiting there with delicious food waiting for me, without a doubt. I'm thankful for the great white egrets flocking and flying near the marshlands of Kalama, Washington, right at the side of the highway . (I thought they were some kind of geese but the internet tells me Great Egret. Bird experts: input welcome!) They are supernaturally white and plentiful, and made me think of the Mary Oliver poem, below. I am thankful for my "place in the family of things."

"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

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November Gratitude Diaries Post #21: Swimming

11/21/2018

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I love swimming. Today I swam laps at my local Parks & Rec: Dishman pool. I hate everything about public pools. But I love swimming—gliding through the water, poetry runs through my head, it's work and at the same time effortless. So even though current circumstances require me to face the cement, chlorine, and adults who are not always nice about sharing their lanes, let's listen to this sweet little song and pretend we are swimming in a summer lake.... "You can splash me if you want to... but not in the eye!"

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November Gratitude Diaries Post #20: Freedom to pivot

11/20/2018

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I was struggling to write #20. Not because there are not enough things to be grateful for, but because there are too, too many. Everything becomes so big sometimes that it becomes nothing, even when you want to appreciate it all. At the last minute, my day was filled with an assignment to write about the work of a global NGO that is on the ground, fighting the urgent new outbreak of Ebola that is taking lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It's so scary and overwhelming that it seems to be yet another thing that our hearts and minds can't make space for. So I am grateful anyway, for the freedom to pivot—from writing about certain kinds of gratitude to suddenly writing about Ebola and the heroes working to contain it. That there is at least enough funding from our international community that we can turn towards a new crisis and say: doing nothing is not an option. Yes, we must still help here and here and here, and there is always too much, but still we begin and do our best.

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#NovemberGratitudeDiaries #19: Sadhana

11/19/2018

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iphone photo of Mt. Hood and the half moon taken on my way to yoga workshop...

I am lucky to have friends who are full on yogis and spiritual teachers. Last night at their School of Cosmic Consciousness workshop, I learned about the word "sadhana"—or daily spiritual practice. For some, this is getting up at the crack of dawn, meditating, running, praying. For me, it's writing. My wise friend described her "sadhana" of daily meditation as both her "life jacket" and her "anchor." Sometimes the benefit is clear, but sometimes it feels like a burden, even when it offers us a kind of safety. Still we commit, and trust our own experience. If you are resisting discovering or implementing your own sadhana, try the steps from this great article I discovered, called "How To Take Action When You Just Don't Wanna."
(And thank you again, wise and wonderful Hardev Kaur and Gurucharan for an inspiring evening!)

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November Gratitude Post #18: Sunday Funky Sunday

11/18/2018

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When I was mentally creating my post with the vid of the pebble toad and thoughts about the armor of joyful exertion, I had another simple revelation. Listening to Pema Chodron while I was walking through the cemetery (yes, this is my jam), I heard her say something like, "what do you do when you're in a funk?" Seconds later, I saw a huge headstone with just the name, "FUNK," all caps. And this word keeps getting stuck in my head. FUNK. The truth of feeling low, how it happens to everyone. Sometimes because of great loss, sometimes for no damn good reason at all. And then, how very very close is the word: FUNKY. Which, in my mind anyway, is a great word. Funky is dancing, and not caring how it looks. Funky is getting DOWN—not being down. And I love the fact that at any moment, we CAN choose to change our funk to funky, if we fully accept them both as part of who we are.
Click the image above to listen to Lee Dorsey sing today's theme music by Allen Toussaint.
And dance, dammit!

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November Gratitude Diaries #17: Ginkgo.

11/17/2018

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If there were an autumn tree contest this year, I think I'd be judging the ginkgo tree as winner every time. Yes, the multi-colored stars of the sweet gum, the lacy poetic Japanese maple, or the terracotta red giant oak all keep taking my breath away. But I'm in love with the ginkgo—the chantrelle/vase-shaped finely ridged leaves, matte finished and opaque like thick butter, clinging to the black branches like a swarm of butterflies, and then piling like royal confetti at her roots... And especially *this* ginkgo, who lives many blocks away from my window, standing out, alone, from a sea of rooftops and dark cedars. As the sun rises, the tips of her branches catch fire until she is singularly illuminated. Yesterday, I decided to try and actually find this tree and see her up close. She was only about five blocks away, and did not disappoint.
(I'm grateful that this tree is placed just so for my appreciation, and I'm grateful to my cowboy poet dad for whom gushing about an extraordinary tree would be very ordinary.)

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November Gratitude Diaries Post #16: Beats Per Minute

11/16/2018

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I've discovered a couple of apps that keep me motivated as I run—they help you pace your steps to the beats per minute (BPM) of the music. It's kind of like dancing while you run and for some reason it makes me feel like a badass.

Spotify and Google Play have various free playlists that are categorized by BPM. Rock My Run is even fancier—you can set the music to change according to the pace at which you are actually running. Some runners say 180 BPM is the ideal for running, but you can be working hard anywhere between 130 and 190.

Today I took my changes on a Spotify playlist called "Fun Run 150-165 BPM." As I ran through the peaceful Rose City Cemetery, the song that fit my pace and my mood perfectly was The Flaming Lips song, Fight Test. The perfect vibe, the perfect beat for my feet, and the perfect message for my mind as I sped past the gravestones in the misty grey morning. It's all a mystery...

The Flaming Lips: Fight Test

The test begins, now

I thought I was smart, I thought I was right
I thought it better not to fight, I thought there was a
Virtue in always being cool, so when it came time to
Fight I thought I'll just step aside and that the time would
Prove you wrong and that you would be the fool

I don't know where the sun beams end and the star
Lights begins it's all a mystery

Oh to fight is to defend if it's not
Now than tell me when would be the time that you would stand up
And be a man, for to lose I could accept but to surrender
I just wept and regretted this moment, oh that I, I
Was the fool

I don't know where the sun beams end and the star
Lights begins it's all a mystery

And I don't know how a man decides what right for his
Own life, it's all a mystery

Cause I'm a man not a boy and there are things
You can't avoid you have to face them when you're not prepared
To face them,
If I could I would but you're with him now it'd do no good
I should have fought him but instead I let him, I let
Him take it

I don't know where the sun beams end and the star
Lights begins it's all a mystery
And I don't know how a man decides what right for his
Own life, it's all a mystery

The test is over, now

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November Gratitude Diaries Post #15: Pebble Toad

11/15/2018

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As I walked, I was listening to one of my favorite authors, Pema Chödrön, a buddhist teacher. The talk was called "The Joy To Do What Helps Us." This is something I think about constantly—the fine line between discipline and what she calls "joyful exertion." Too often we think that we have to strive in a painful, pushing way—tolerating the worst for a scrap of reward. But "exertion" is different. Chödrön talks about how we can create an "armor of exertion." This she describes not as a barricade, but as protection against hurting ourselves and hurting others.

I immediately thought of this video of the pebble toad. (Watch the video and look at his joyful armor of exertion!)

I want to be this toad. But yesterday I was just plain grumpy. Tired of things going wrong, feeling achey against the cold weather, just HMMMFFF about it all. Then I got curious: what might make me feel lighter? It was no mystery. I already knew and I already know. I put on my running shoes and all my "joyful outdoors armor," and despite my aching joints, I set it in my mind to run to the freeway overpass and back, and to watch the cars and pretend like I was on a bridge over a river. I have no idea where this specific idea came from, but at the same time it came from a place that I know. It's what Chödrön calles your "bodhichitta"—trust in your basic nature.

I ran in the cold as the sun set. It was dark but I could still see the brightness of piles of yellow ginkgo leaves. At the overpass, I watched the cars coming and going. I did a hiking ritual that a friend taught me: look at the water flowing away and let something go. Then look to the water flowing towards you, and ask for something. (My bodhichitta says this works with cars too, if you want.)

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November Gratitude Post #14: Coffee

11/14/2018

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You know when you're a kid and you just can't WAIT to grow up so that you can do/have/be...something? And then you do grow up, and that something is not what you thought, or has a serious down side to it? Well for me, COFFEE was something I spent my childhood fantasizing about being able to drink. And as an adult? It has NOT disappointed!

To add an extra layer of complication, I was raised in a Mormon home. Coffee was forbidden. (Side note: occasionally my dad would make a hot chicory root drink called Postum, served with lots of evaporated milk and sugar. Why evaporated milk? Can anyone tell me? And what is evaporated milk anyway?)

So coffee had an air of danger to it. When I smelled it brewing as I walked past the teachers' lounge at school, or when we'd go to this funky candy shop downtown with bags of fragrant beans everywhere, I felt a tinge of guilt—like when you catch a whiff of a good strong sharpie pen. You know you shouldn't inhale too hard, but there's just something that makes you want to fill your nostrils with it.

Fast forward to today. Coffee *literally* gives me a reason to get up in the morning most days. I love how it smells, tastes, makes me feel, and that it gives me a first-thing-to-do ritual. Once or twice I've been persuaded that I should knock off the caffeine, so I've downgraded to decaf—even stopped it altogether for a few excruciating days. But this only served to make life less wonderful. So now I just enjoy my daily addiction. Yes it's a pain when I'm traveling or staying some place where coffee is harder to get. (Oh India mornings... I am sorry but milky, sugary chai is just NOT the same.) But a little portable instant espresso and some hot water solves that problem.

Today—and every day—I am grateful for you, magical coffee.

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November Gratitude Post #13: The Space for Joyful Curiosity....and not writing.

11/13/2018

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Today, I allowed myself *not* to write a big post and publish it all over social media. I was about to do it, and instead started listening to this amazing podcast / Youtube video by Pema Chodron: The Joy to Do What Helps Us. What helped me yesterday was to joyfully exert my independence and freedom not to post, and to walk outside in the sunshine instead... However there was so much I learned from her talk—I want to explore it in more depth in a later post...

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November Gratitude Diaries Post #12: Parades!

11/12/2018

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A few seconds of today's Veteran's Day parade in Portland, Oregon on a crisp November morning....

https://www.instagram.com/ilabadilalili/

https://www.facebook.com/ila.asplund/

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November Gratitude Diaries Post #11: Veterans

11/11/2018

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Visible, and Invisible

It’s Veteran’s day, and today I feel compassion and gratitude for soldiers who served my country. I also can’t wait for tomorrow’s parade (which happens to march right past my neighborhood). The kids twirling batons and the marching bands playing “Eye of the Tiger” always get me teary-eyed.

And while I am grateful to individual veterans, when it comes to my feelings about the military—it’s complicated. I am angry and sad about our country’s military past and present. I am angry that the effects of PTSD and inadequate healthcare cause a lifetime ripple of casualties (suicides, broken lives, and the latest mass shooting) for veterans whose service has supposedly ended. I’m angry about the violence towards women, people of color, and LGBTQ people that continues to haunt our military. I am horrified that we continue to sell to Saudi Arabia the weapons that are raining down on innocent humans in Yemen, for starters.

But I am grateful that I live in a country where I’m still able to freely express this ambiguity and where in the midst of extreme partisan polarity, we are maybe also growing to accept and express nuance and conflicting feelings within ourselves. Maybe?

I recommend this article about women in the military, and the internal conflict that many experience with trying to fit in and to move past at the same time.

Women are the Most Visible Servicemembers, and the Most Invisible Veterans https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/women-are-the-most-visible-soldiers-and-the-most-invisible-veterans

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November Gratitude Post #10: My Mom

11/10/2018

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Happy Birthday, Mom!

Today my mom turns 88! Double infinity! My first memories of mom are of her getting down on the carpet or the grass and PLAYING, like really playing, with us kids. She would let us dictate which magical character she had to pretend to be, and she’d be all in. Boredom was not allowed in our home. She’d simply come up with stuff for us to do: homemade play-dough, finger-painting with Ivory Snow soap flakes, EZ Bake cakes marbleized with food color and toothpicks. Her creativity is boundless. She would never say so, but she is a skilled self-taught artist who can draw just anything if she tries, and has always practiced beautiful calligraphy lettering. These days her body doesn’t allow her to go go go, but she does what she can. She practices songs on her piano even though her hands don’t quite obey anymore. She still remembers and tries to teach me Finnish words from when she and my dad and the first sprouts of their children lived there, over 50 years ago. She still calls me her “kuopus,” (Finnish for the baby of the family). I love you, äiti, and I’l always be your kuopus.

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November Gratitude Post #9: Words

11/9/2018

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I am obsessed with these arbitrary combinations of sounds and letter-shapes that stand for things--

photo by the author

—these tools which can be used for the most basic of human survival (help!) and for the most abstract magic of life (shazam!). Words are a shadow of the thing itself—which, when we look and play with them also come to life as things.*

In autumn with all the maple leaves falling and their ghost-shadows staining the sidewalks, I cannot resist this mental mantra—two lines from a life-changing poem that play in my head:

“For all the history of grief / An empty doorway and a maple leaf.”**

As a writer, I get the special privilege to play in the realm of giving a second life to words, which is of course a second life to my own first life.***

I live a life that dwells in the world of words, and I love it.****
For this I am so, so grateful.

* “Literature, the best of it, does not aim to be literature. It wants and strives, beyond that artifact part of itself, to be a true part of the composite human record—that is, not words but a reality.”
― Mary Oliver

** Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish (poem copied in full, below). My college poetry professor (shout out to Richard Kenney!) had us read this poem—a metaphoric how-to poem within a poem.

*** attributed to good old Ms. Natalie Goldberg who famously said that “…writers live twice.”

****Except when I hate it—which I sometimes do.
(The mantra in my head when I hate it sounds like a line from Marianne Moore’s poem, “Poetry:”
“I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle…”
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/poetry

Ars Poetica
BY ARCHIBALD MACLEISH

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown--

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.
*
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind--

A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.
*
A poem should be equal to:
Not true.

For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea--

A poem should not mean
But be.

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November Gratitude Post #8: My sister, Liisa

11/8/2018

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Today is Liisa’s birthday! Not many people have both an infectious laugh AND are themselves funny as hell—but she’s one of them. Ever since I was a tiny kid and she a teenager, she always treated me like my voice mattered. She listened, laughed, and learned alongside me, even though she already knew way more and probably had better things to do. As an elementary school teacher and now a skilled educational administrator, she has made the lives of so many kids and other teachers richer, deeper, and has ignited the love of learning in hundreds if not thousands of souls. As a mom to her own kids she is a phenomenal mentor and friend. My life would not be the same—in fact it’s not an exaggeration to say the world would definitely be less wonderful—without this person.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LIISA!

P.S. Apologies to my other four sisters and two brothers who were not born in November and therefore do not get the #NovemberGratitude treatment.

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November Gratitude Diaries Post #7: Darkness

11/7/2018

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I'm grateful for the darkness.

www.nationalgeographic.org/media/happy-diwali/ - Tiny lamps called diyas are a traditional symbol of Diwali. Here, girls in eastern India decorate a beach with dozens of diyas. Photograph by Khokarahman, courtesy Wikimedia. CC-BY-SA-4.0

Today in the U.S., we inched forward with record-breaking representation of women and minorities in our midterm elections. Today is also the Hindu holiday of Diwali—a festival of lights—a symbolic victory of light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance. The evening is closing in extra-early here in the Pacific Northwest November, and tonight is the night of a new moon. Sometimes we need the darkest nights to see the stars that are already there, or the fireworks of our own making.

One day the sun admitted,
I am just a shadow.
I wish I could show you
The infinite Incandescence
That had cast my brilliant image!
I wish I could show you,
When you are lonely or in darkness,
The Astonishing Light
Of your own Being!

by ancient Persian poet, Hafiz, 1301-1390

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November Gratitude Diaries Post #6: VOTE

11/6/2018

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Today is easy. I'm grateful for my right to vote.

Artwork by Anne Bentley bentleyworks.us

I'm extra grateful to live in the state of Oregon, where we vote by mail and don't even have to use a stamp if we want to save that fifty cents (my local ballot box is literally at a McDonald's "drive-thru," which in true Portlander form, I "walked-thru").

This morning, I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that women have only "been allowed," or "had the right," or... (there is NO good way to say!) that women have been legally participating in this basic part of democracy for less than 100 years. And that it took decades of activism, being voted down, laughed at, dismissed, over and over again.

When everyone “in power” tells you your idea is ridiculous—for decades!—it can be easy to start believing that, too. But sometimes, it can fuel your fire. May we stay hungry for what we know is right—and for what can make our lives extraordinary!

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November Gratitude Diaries Post #5: Owl

11/5/2018

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“Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world.” *

As captured insufficiently by my iPhone, the Barred Owl with whom I shared a moment....

Yesterday, walking with an inspiring friend, we stopped at every other amazing tree to appreciate each one’s autumn colors (the auburn oak, the orange tie-dye flaming japanese maple, and my favorite: the butter yellow ginkgo with her chanterelle-shaped leaves). As I drove away, the fluttering of giant wings above the road caught my eye and I pulled over. It was this amazing Barred Owl. We stood and looked in each others eyes (his/hers with beautiful circular arches, a funny white mustache just like the guy on the Pringles can, and streaks of brown and cream feathers down his/her chest). The owl blinked and rotated its amazing head and showed me all its tricks. I always feel like seeing such things is important and that I should stand witness for as long as I possibly can. I tried to let the owl’s wisdom and fierceness and beauty seep into me. I guess that owls are actually common in the Pacific Northwest where I live. But today I am so grateful for such ordinary things...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*― Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

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November Gratitude Diaries Post #4: Riding My Bike

11/4/2018

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Yesterday, I rode my bicycle northbound across the I-5 bridge from Oregon into Washington, for the first time. It was terrifying. The bridge has a few hundred feet of elevation in the middle and then descends, which sounds fun except that there is barely enough width for your handle bars and you’re going maximum speed. To your right is the mighty Columbia river, to your left is the smoke and scream of traffic, and every so often the path narrows even more where the bridge buttress things stick into the trail. I had no idea what it would be like, but I followed my friend who had. By the time it was done, "terrifying" became "exhilarating."
(Below is a video clip by Portland Metro, about how to ride the bridge, which I edited for this piece.)

CLICK FOR A 42-SECOND VIRTUAL RIDE ACROSS BRIDGE, (Original vid by Portland Metro, bridge image from George Rothert.)

I am so, so grateful to ride a bike. First, thanks to my brother, whose hand-me-down late-80’s mountain bike is my current ride. Second, thanks to my friends who let me tell my dark, vulnerable secret: I’ve always been afraid to ride bikes, and I didn’t properly learn to ride one when I was a kid. I avoided it because it scared me. Somehow as the youngest of eight kids, by the time I would have been riding, a lot got assumed. It was taken for granted that some sibling or friend somewhere somehow would teach me, and that I’d be interested enough (and not terrified) to try. I remember other hand-me down bikes, and a few tries with training wheels, but I never got into it. By the time I was about 11 years old, a terror hit me when I learned we were going to move to Scotland for about a year. I got it in my mind that everyone in Scotland was always on a bike. So I secretly took someone’s bike from the garage, and practiced alone, enough that I could basically stay upright on a bike. Newsflash: I never rode a bike in Scotland. It wasn’t until I was living in Portland and about to turn thirty that the panic hit me again. I’m going to be thirty. Thirty! This seemed just altogether too old to be afraid of bikes. So again, I borrowed a bike and practiced my turns in the park.

A friend lent me an old steel root-beer colored Schwinn I started making my way around town, solo, my heart racing every minute. And now, over a decade since, I’ve become a regular Portland cyclist. I still have my secret and not-so-secret fears about riding, but mostly I can’t believe how much I love it. The feeling of freedom and speed—I could ride all day. And perhaps because it’s a gift I discovered later in life, it always feels like a secret pleasure to me—not just another way to get around.

#IWantToRideMyBicycle #AloneAndConnected #gratitude #gratitudediaries #gratitudegrows #NovemberGratitude #WhatYouAppreciateAppreciates

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November Gratitude Diaries Post #3: Water

11/3/2018

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#GettingIntoHotWater #gratitude #gratitudediaries #gratitudegrows #NovemberGratitude #WhatYouAppreciateAppreciates #WaterIsLife

top: Looking glass lake, Mt. Adams Willderness, WA, left: clovers in my neighborhood, right: looking deep into the lake

Fact: every day contains annoying things. Lately it seems extra full of heart-wrenching things. But the reality that I live in a place where I have not only clean water to drink, but HOT FLOWING WATER that comes right out of my tap whenever I want to wash dishes or take a bath? I feel like I should “laugh like I’ve got gold mines / Diggin’ in my own back yard.”* Today I’d like to think about this blessing (the ease and affordability of WATER in my life) as a counter-spell to the annoying and terrible things. Like, not only is my water situation NOT compounding the bad, it actually has the power to relieve it. It multiplies the good. I think of the oceans and lakes and rivers that I’ve been so lucky to see and jump into and surf and float on and on… water is a literally a conduit for power, and it happens to live both inside and outside of us. Water is so much more than water. Today, whenever I come into contact with water, I’m going to try and remember today’s object of gratitude.

*from the poem, "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou

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November Gratitude Diaries Post #2: Indonesia

11/2/2018

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found on a banner covering construction fence while traveling solo in Rome, Italy, 2016

Indonesia, Random Decisions, and the Art of Aloneness

#Indonesia #AloneAndConnected #BahasaIndonesia #SendiriSendirian #Sulawesi #gratitude #gratitudediaries #gratitudegrows #ThankinOfYou #NovemberGratitude #WhatYouAppreciateAppreciates

When I think of places for which I am grateful, I think of Indonesia—a country where I’ve spent at least a couple of years cumulatively, and still barely scratched the surface of its diverse array of people and islands. Like all my best life decisions, the choice to go there was made pretty much at random.

I knew I wanted to go somewhere totally beyond my imagination. I thought that would be India, and I could study (and hoard) a cache of beautiful fabrics (in college I was minoring in Fiber Arts—yes that's a thing). But the alphabetically-ordered university study abroad catalog had something called “Indonesia” instead. I saw that there was beautiful fabric made there—the birthplace of batik, and ancient weaving techniques. I earned a fellowship to go. I studied its charming, playful language, Bahasa Indonesia, which lets you roll your r’s for days if you want, and simply repeat words to make them plural.

Arriving in the East Java town of Malang, I remember one of the “culture” lessons we received, about walking alone. We were told that people will ask, “Are you alone?” and that the root word for alone, “sendiri,” essentially means the same as “lonely.” So if you tell people you are “sendiri,” they might assume you want company. You WILL be asked for tea—sugary, sugary tea or coffee with ginger—and you will not know when the social visit will end, and it will be hard to get out of politely.

Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere…*

No place has this been more literal for me than in Indonesia. At the end of the day, my face would hurt from smiling and greeting strangers. Once I ventured out to discover some caves which were filled with jewel-blue butterflies, each wing the size of a pizza slice. Some teenage girls saw me waiting for the bus home afterwards, and explained that I’d missed the right one, but there was another way back from the town near them. So they took me to their home, perched on stilts above the rushing river, where I laughed with the women and children as we bathed fully-clothed in sarongs.

The girls from the family at the butterfly caves, Sulawesi, Indonesia, circa 2000, author third from left

I’ve solo-traveled many places since then. I’m not going to say that it’s always rosy or that I haven’t been harassed or even endangered. Or that sometimes I’d really, REALLY rather not engage even with the most well-meaning of strangers. But I could not be more grateful that it was Indonesia where I was first immersed in the magic of being the cultural outsider. It is a place where friendliness to strangers is a deeply-held value. Indonesia holds the world’s largest Muslim population, and having experienced the love and sincerity of believers there, when I think of Islam, I think of the faces of my friends. It’s painful to me when others invoke to the name of this religion with fear or anger. I want everyone to have a friend of every faith, so they can picture that face when that faith is mentioned. Mark Twain famously said: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness…” I think the opposite is true as well. (If you start with prejudice, that will be fatal to your travel experience.)

I am thankful for you, Indonesia! From Java to Sulawesi to Lombok, to the special Hindu hospitality of Bali, I hope others have a chance to increase their awareness of and appreciation for this country—whose culture and industry effects each of us in ways we probably have never considered (look at where your clothes and your coffee come from, for starters!).

On a final note, the effects of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami on Sulawesi are still devastating lives and livelihoods. Consider giving to #MercyCorps, or to the #IndonesianRedCross (ifrc.org) for disaster relief. #IFRC

A smiling grandma ibu in the market, Sulawesi, Indonesia

Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;

Each condition I flee from pursues me.
Each condition I welcome transforms me

*(excerpts discovered via Rob Brezsny, poem: A Spell to Commit Pronoia, by psychotherapist Jennifer Welwood)

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November Gratitude Diaries. Post #1: My Dad

10/31/2018

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#gratitude #gratitudediaries #gratitudegrows #ThankinOfYou #NovemberGratitude #WhatYouAppreciateAppreciates #DiaDeMuertos #Daditude

I am happily jumping on this November Gratitude bandwagon. In addition to my wholehearted belief that “what you appreciate appreciates,” this whole November Gratitude Diaries movement has provided me with a path to emerge from my cocoon of the last several months—to share my thoughts with the social media world. For the rest of November, I plan to post frequently about the people, places, and things for which I am most profoundly grateful.

Although I have an almost-daily writing habit, the truth is that I compulsively draw a thick bright line between The Personal Writing (journals, poems, and copious color-coded post-its) and The Professional Writing (brand guidelines, fundraising appeals, mission statements, and most recently--cover letters!). It is a source of great anxiety for me to let that line smudge or erase. So, obviously, first quick thanks goes to Eleanor Roosevelt: “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

And here we go.

November 1st. My dad.

My dad died on the last day of February this year. He was surrounded by his children, and we watched him literally wave good-bye as he left his body behind. No matter the unfinished conversations, the unresolved conflicts, the generational or religious divides, I do know this: my dad loved me.

From Gloria Steinem to Malala Yousafzai, I’m struck by how many women leaders thank and attribute their most important values to fathers who were ahead of their time. My curiosity for learning, fascination with language, and love of adventure are all thanks to my dad as well. He shared the duties of child-rearing and chores alongside my mother. He cooked our meals and was a kind of Depression-era “foodie” (does Tang count as "food?"). He took his children for walks, pointing out the names of plants and creatures. He was a scientist. He made up bedtime stories about a little girl who lived in his childhood home on the prairie of Alberta, Canada, who was summoned by woodland creatures when the Chinook winds blew. He was a professor of agriculture. He was a cowboy poet. He always made me feel he wanted to know me, even though we were far from perfect at knowing and understanding each other. We shared the longing to know.

Both my dad and my mom created a home that was safe for people from all walks of life and all cultures. I think of this now in these times of great divisions, fear, and shutting-out of “the other.” Our home was a place where most nights dinner was hosting a mystery guest or a family of guests, from church or university, or just in the neighborhood. Our basement was often occupied by graduate students or families getting on their feet, or visitors from faraway lands—China, Thailand, Nigeria, Finland. Helping others was just a given.

From my father and my mother both, I learned the human mandate of inviting people in. I’ll end this piece with a favorite poem by Rumi which serves as a perfect reminder to me—of my father's curious spirit, and of the open courage I want to draw upon as I share my vulnerable stories of gratitude with the wider world.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
——————————--
Especially on this November 1st, Mexican holiday of Dia de Muertos, I send thanks to all my guides from beyond.

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Embarking on new adventures with The Akilah Institute and Davis College!

November Gratitude Diaries Post 23: Aspic Salad

#NovemberGratitudeDiaries #22: A Place To Go

November Gratitude Diaries Post #21: Swimming

November Gratitude Diaries Post #20: Freedom to pivot

#NovemberGratitudeDiaries #19: Sadhana

November Gratitude Post #18: Sunday Funky Sunday

November Gratitude Diaries #17: Ginkgo.

November Gratitude Diaries Post #16: Beats Per Minute

November Gratitude Diaries Post #15: Pebble Toad

November Gratitude Post #14: Coffee

November Gratitude Post #13: The Space for Joyful Curiosity....and not writing.

November Gratitude Diaries Post #12: Parades!

https://www.instagram.com/ilabadilalili/

https://www.facebook.com/ila.asplund/

November Gratitude Diaries Post #11: Veterans

Visible, and Invisible

November Gratitude Post #10: My Mom

Happy Birthday, Mom!

November Gratitude Post #9: Words

I am obsessed with these arbitrary combinations of sounds and letter-shapes that stand for things--

November Gratitude Post #8: My sister, Liisa

November Gratitude Diaries Post #7: Darkness

I'm grateful for the darkness.

One day the sun admitted,
I am just a shadow.
I wish I could show you
The infinite Incandescence
That had cast my brilliant image!
I wish I could show you,
When you are lonely or in darkness,
The Astonishing Light
Of your own Being!

November Gratitude Diaries Post #6: VOTE

Today is easy. I'm grateful for my right to vote.

November Gratitude Diaries Post #5: Owl

“Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world.” *

November Gratitude Diaries Post #4: Riding My Bike

November Gratitude Diaries Post #3: Water

November Gratitude Diaries Post #2: Indonesia

Indonesia, Random Decisions, and the Art of Aloneness

Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere…*

Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;

Each condition I flee from pursues me.
Each condition I welcome transforms me

November Gratitude Diaries. Post #1: My Dad

Ila Asplund

Categories

Archives

Half Sky Writing is a service of Half Sky Journeys.

Visible, and Invisible

Happy Birthday, Mom!

I am obsessed with these arbitrary combinations of sounds and letter-shapes that stand for things--

I'm grateful for the darkness.

One day the sun admitted,I am just a shadow.I wish I could show youThe infinite IncandescenceThat had cast my brilliant image!I wish I could show you,When you are lonely or in darkness,The Astonishing LightOf your own Being!

Today is easy. I'm grateful for my right to vote.

“Rejoicing in ordinary things is not sentimental or trite. It actually takes guts. Each time we drop our complaints and allow everyday good fortune to inspire us, we enter the warrior's world.” *

​Indonesia, Random Decisions, and the Art of Aloneness

Willing to experience aloneness,I discover connection everywhere…*

Willing to experience aloneness, I discover connection everywhere; ​Each condition I flee from pursues me. Each condition I welcome transforms me

Ila Asplund

Categories

Archives

Half Sky Writing is a service of Half Sky Journeys.

One day the sun admitted,
I am just a shadow.
I wish I could show you
The infinite Incandescence
That had cast my brilliant image!
I wish I could show you,
When you are lonely or in darkness,
The Astonishing Light
Of your own Being!

Indonesia, Random Decisions, and the Art of Aloneness

Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere…*

Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;

Each condition I flee from pursues me.
Each condition I welcome transforms me