Ordinary Day

Wish

A wish masquerading as a perception of truth;
wearing its disguise as surely as faith wears righteousness,
confusing hope with faith, intuition with desire.

Each day it wakes, knowing the potential of its creation
Believing that all which can be dreamt should be had.
Relishing no more in the miracle of just enough.

By the light of the moon need gives birth to want,
crying incessantly to be held,
demanding the bed of faith, and the food of hope.
In a groggy daze I reach out and take what is mine to nurture
Sickened as I wonder if wish will ever grow to be truth.

"At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet."
Plato

fff...fff....fff...fear

I find myself sometimes scared...well...shitless.
Not because I watch too much news or because I think some terrible thing is going to happen to me. Sometimes I am afraid because I know that at the end of the day, no one is responsible for me, but me. Sometimes I am afraid becuase I feel the responsibilty for the life of my child. Sometimes I am afraid because I can't quite tell which is more terrifying....a life of happiness, or a life of struggle. In these increasingly frequent moments I long to be held.

Perhaps it is primal, like a child crying for their mother. Perhaps it is spiritual, a person crying out to their god.

Can all fear be held in a strong man's arms?
And if so, does the strong man never fear?
But if he does, who is to hold him?

I wonder....

Stand By...You

I am so thankful for all the standing my friends and family have done with and by me. Love you....

Birthing Day

Inexorably drawn to the darkness,
The tides rise and fall.
Held in the hand of the night.
Held in the heart of creation.

Mutual surrender, blissful silence,
Broken only by the moans of light beckoning
In pain without fear.
In love without doubt.

A moment held in eternity,
Released in eternity.
Destiny revealed.

All the forces of the natural world-
Conspired and delivered on their promise.
Gleaning a truth where thoughts are of the stars, and man exists without body;
Where all the love in the universe can be held in a new mother’s arms.


I love you Kyle. You are the greatest blessing in my life.
Happy 4th Birthday!

Love,
Mama

Breakfast

"It's best to try to believe at least three impossible things before breakfast."
-from Alice in Wonderland

"Rise" -Eddie Vedder

Such is the way of the world
You can never know
Just where to put all your faith
And how will it grow

Gonna rise up
Burning back holes in dark memories
Gonna rise up
Turning mistakes into gold

Such is the passage of time
Too fast to fold
And suddenly swallowed by signs
Low and behold

Gonna rise up
Find my direction magnetically
Gonna rise up
Throw down my ace in the hole

Long Road To Yourself

I'm thinking there is a melody for this, I just don't know what it is yet! It's more writing inspired by my 33 pages of contemplation. If anyone has a suggestion for a type of sound/vibe for the melody I'd love to hear.
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"Long Road to Yourself"
5-23-2009
By:Alisha Brown

Symbol of hope
Better than you
Better than me
Pure potential
Talking yourself into anything

Practical matters
Good enough for you
Good enough for me
Self-denial
Talking yourself into anything

Chorus:
Finding the long road to yourself
Everyone and no one to blame
So sure that despite yourself
You will find your way

A diet of fear
No courage for you
No courage for me
Dreams tempered
Talking yourself out of everything

(Chorus)

Meaning for you
Meaning for me
Talking yourself into anything

33 pages of contemplation..now a poem

A ship at sea
A baby in a cradle

Fooled into accepting the sanctuary
of the rocking world.

Lulled into peace amidst the uncertainty
by the dancing mobile of stars.

Nothing has meaning,
yet nothing is meaningless

Evolution of Dance

There are a few reasons I posted this:
1. 98 Million people can't be wrong when they say it's great right?
2. I confess to employing almost all of the dance moves from the 80's at one point or another
3. I love dance, and I love laughing so why not.

Enjoy!

Ahhh, life

First things first:
Happy 1st Birthday Merritt Jackson!!!! We love you

Next: Good luck with your essays Jenn- I know that you will be you and that will be just what they are looking for!

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I just feel so full of love and appreciation for all of my friends (cyber and non-cyber), my family and my community.

A Maple

I grew up marveling at the maple. I was so moved by her strength and openness. I built homes in the arms of the maple, erected castles where her massive trunk met the soft supple earth. Many a decree was uttered to the robins and box turtles from the fortified shelter that was her presence.

Thick and meandering like a snake’s body, the roots were woven in the highest layers of the earth. Her expansiveness was her way of building great foundations, forsaking the conviction required for single-minded depth. Did she wonder if the forest resented her for spreading out wide? Did she take so much earth for fear that her beauty and presence would be overwhelmed by the oak or evergreen?

In her leaves were the magic of the harvest moon, and the musty smells of a world in stillness, waiting for transition. In any moment she would set the forest ablaze in hues of red found only in birds of paradise, and oranges usually bestowed upon Southeast Asia sunsets. The Maple begged me to wait-to stay with her so that I could behold her in rapturous beauty, longing to be remembered in her most glorious moments, troubled by the inevitability of the days when the snow would fall and reveal her nakedness, imploring her to stop until she has no choice but to rebuild again.

The World I know

The World I Know lyrics

Has our conscience shown?
Has the sweet breeze blown?
Has all the kindness gone?
Hope still lingers on.
I drink myself of newfound pity
Sitting alone in New York City
And I don't know why.

Are we listening
To hymns of offering?
Have we eyes to see
That love is gathering?
All the words that I've been reading
Have now started the act of bleeding
Into one.

So I walk up on high
And I step to the edge
To see my world below.
And I laugh at myself
As the tears roll down.
'Cause it's the world I know.
It's the world I know.
know.. The world I know.......

Timorous

Fullness manifests into life
Expansion, contraction
Aching remains
Still and empty

Oh to only breathe shallow breath
Stirring only the faintest light
Eternal dusk

Last Night-13 years passed

An assault of rage shouting back from the mirror
Forgotten hope
The harshest of all truths

Beating rapidly suddenly it forgets itself
Weary from life’s broken promises
The final breath, an exhalation, a release

This life’s end ushered by a moan
Meek and powerless as the last air released from a tire
Death laughing ungratefully as if it was all a lie

4/11/2009
Alisha Brown

Zig Ziglar & Dad

Happy Birthday Liam Brody!!

"Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday Dear Liam! Happy birthday to you."

happy 1st birthday my sweet little nephew!
XOXOXOXO

Aunt Alisha

A thought I had about love

Love invokes incredible fear because it comes with the realization that there is an inevitable pain attached. The pain comes from the understanding that the nature of love is unending & permanent, but the nature of all things on earth is impermanence.

It doesn’t matter if you feel love and the relationship never comes to be or if you love and have a long and happy life with someone because in the end you will still feel the pain that comes from such an opening. This teaches me that love requires incredible courage. There is no controlling it; there is no protection from it.

Is this the nature of God's love? To always want what is the truest happiness for the object of your love? To be open to the purest expression of love by having the courage to hold on by letting go? What authenticity he must possess that he would be willing to bear that elation and loss an infinite number of times with all that has been created?

And perhaps this is why we have created these long standing human institutions like marriage to give us the illusion of security and permanence so that we can allow ourselves to love more deeply. Perhaps too this is the reason for all cycles that give the illusion on permanence and something we can attach ourselves to.

If this is true than it teaches me this. That all of our institutions and celebrations are critically important. The measure of their success isn't whether or not you never get divorced, or never miss a Sunday at church. The measure is whether or not in them you challenge yourself to really love, to attach. Maybe you do, maybe you don't but did they give you the space to have courage and try? In doing so we begin to believe that we can really love ourselves and that is the most important truth and purpose of all.

I love you all.
Alisha

What is Truth?

TRUTH: THE HIGHEST PRINCIPLE
by Paul Hourihan




“Truth is a pathless land'. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophic knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection...”

Krishnamurthi

Why my marriage ended

"You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety." - Abraham Maslow

Please read, and know that no validation is needed or expected! (that will make sense to you by the end)
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Today and more precisely this last year I have been thinking a lot about relationships, in particular my relationship of 8 years with my almost ex-husband. I couldn’t say until now that I really fully understood why it was that we couldn’t be together anymore.

When Daryll and I first met, we did what all new couples do. We talked and talked and talked. And every where we looked we found the things that we had in common. We shared our spiritual views and our life experiences and found comfort from our suffering. You can’t help but do this in the beginning; it feels so good to re-explore our true selves with the validation and support of another person. It feels even better when that person is hanging on your every word as if each were the most precious of possessions.

In the middle of all of this feel-good commonality we were, in a sense, deciding to let go of who we were as individuals and began to see the identity of us. It was such a whirlwind, spinning, blurry and yet joyous. I believed that such letting go of my identity was the whole point of relationships. I really placed value on the long espoused values of committed relationships: compromise, duty, support, and hard work. So each and every time Daryll offered to change to validate my views I allowed this in the name of compromise. And every time he asked the same of me, I did so in the name of support or duty.

One such example could be that Daryll sees the world from a pessimists point of view. So, I would open conversations about something that someone did that bothered me, knowing that in doing so I was validating his world view, and going against my general sense of positivism and faith in the good of others. I didn't want to challenge his view an make him feel uncomfortable in the relationship. (There are countless other examples but probably not worth detailing here)

One might say, well those are normal changes and that they aren't harmful. But this is not what I believe anymore. The truth (my truth) is that marriages need to create space for each person to be who they are, and to not feel obligated to validate or invalidate the other person driven by fear of feeling vulnerable by the very love that the relationship offers. We were so busy spending our first few years together compromising and validating each other that we no longer were the people we thought we were before the relationship.

Another defining moment of compromise occurred after we had been dating for a few months. Daryll shared with me that had been with a man when he was young and long before we had ever met. I decided two things when I heard this. 1. He must feel ashamed of himself, so I will not mention this ever again. 2. Holy shit are you kidding me, I am so not okay with this, what is wrong with me for not being okay with this, shouldn’t I be open-minded and understanding and committed and compromising……..

So I projected that he should be ashamed of himself, and from that moment on he was. I said that my level of discomfort would not be validated by society, so therefore I would make myself comfortable with it in the name of being seen as good and right. Well as the years went on, we never really connected on the intimate level and I kept trying to solve for Daryll’s shame by allowing further compromises. We would watch pornography, even though I didn’t feel comfortable with it. Or we wouldn’t have sex at all, believing that I did not need to have a sexual passionate connection with my husband.

Well being the determined and highly committed people that we were, we started behaving in such a way that if we were not going to accept ourselves as were are, and our ability to find things in common reached a subtle but critical mass, we decided to turn our need for validation to the outside world. We unconsciously, but simultaneously began to try and live up the ideals of society and our families. In short we changed ourselves to become the perfect couple, so that we could feel comfortable and validated by the world since we could no longer do that for each other.

Finally I decided that I deserved to have a passionate connection with my husband, but when he wouldn’t notice my efforts to get his attention, he would reinforce the notion in me that he was broken (gay), that I was bad for judging him, and that in the end the fault of this whole situation was really mine. If only I knew how to turn him on, make him notice, fix him!

I could go on and on (and probably will in a book) but this compromise was just a symptom of being willing to walk away from myself for the sake of a relationship. We decided that the perception of our partner held more value than the truth about ourselves. In the very least we thought that changing each other, was far easier than feeling like crap for not always having agreement or harmony in our relationship or worse not having a relationship at all.

Finally, after 7 years, I couldn’t deny my truth anymore. But now, I didn’t know what was my truth versus my perceived and validated truth through Daryll. So I swallowed my pride, manned up the courage and spent 6 months in meditation and contemplation confronting myself and asking who I was. I didn’t do this to end my marriage or to keep it, I did it for me. I learned so much, and in particular I re-learned my core truths. They are:

I believe that we are all entitled to the truth

I believe that with enough time all things can be understood

I believe that life is more meaningful when it can be shared

I believe that people are good

I believe that there is something bigger than all of us shepherding us

I believe that suffering is a necessary and good part of life

I believe in the balance of the natural world

I believe that beauty should be acknowledged

I believe that we should revel in the simple things

I believe that the same patterns are repeated everywhere and in everyone

I am in love with life

It was so exciting to be reminded of my fundamental assumptions and views, yet at the same time it was incredibly scary because when I began to see these things, I began to see all of the ways I had been compromising myself. Who I was with Daryll looked so different to me. In my marriage I learned that:

I felt ashamed of Daryll for his sexual needs and identitiy

I felt that the world was empty and that living for the next life probably made more sense anyway

I felt that life was so complex that it was not worth understanding

I felt that I had to go through the motions of life out of obligation and duty

I felt that I did not deserve intimacy and affection

I felt that only the world’s beauty was safe to acknowledge, and not the beauty in people

I felt that suffering was something to be avoided, that suffering is testimony we are not on the right path

In short I had compromised to the point of violating my core beliefs. I also knew that in doing so, I must have asked the same of Daryll and damaged him too.

Knowing these things did I let go? Hell no! I thought for sure that he would validate my deeply held and newly discovered beliefs, that he would appreciate my process of the last year, and that we could forgive and live happily ever after. But he couldn’t find the same truth in not placing a higher value on validation and compromise. He didn't perceive the brokenness of our pattern and begin a new one. In the end what I realized is for all that we had in common in the beginning, what we never had in common was the same world view, or core beliefs. Looking back our very foundations was build upon one core and common tenet…that we were both good people who didn’t want kids. We wanted the relationship to work so badly, that we saw only what we had in common and then compromised around the rest.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this we had a son, Kyle. He reminds me that if he is going to love himself and stand firm in his core beliefs, that he needs role models in his life who believe the same. As a parent I do want to impart my values on Kyle, if for no other reason so that he can understand me, and on what basis I choose to live my life.

Through our separation Daryll sought his own truth, but he kept getting stuck in the need to see himself in our marriage in order to see himself at all. He couldn't let go of me, to hold onto himself. It just isn't what he believes is right. His core beliefs are different. He would change, and become a shell of who he could be for the sake of being married. He doesn't want to be human, and feel human things. He wants to live this life sacrificing for the next one. He has called me and told me that he had changed, and all the while he never realized that I wasn't asking that of him. I want him to be happy and I want him to be who he is.

Perhaps I asked him to find his own happiness to validate me in my search for the same. Perhaps Daryll is not one who holds that belief that life is meant to be fulfilling and happy, and instead those are my views. Maybe he fundamentally believes that love means changing for others, and that bliss is best saved for less responsible people. Good for him, he may not have found my version of bliss, but I suspect he has found his truth.

I knew that I had to depart on a journey to live a life filled with meaning and truth. As much as Daryll wanted to join me he knew that this is not a path that is consistent with his beliefs-no amount of compromise would have made it the right choice for either of us to go on together.

And so we parted.

San Francisco Trip

Fisherman's Wharf
Autumn and I were feeling a little "crabby"

My Sister Jenn and I in Chinatown
Look, I brought my big head along for chinese! This was horrible food and yet, I could not stop eating.

Autumn and Alisha
My niece and I on the Golden Gate Bridge!
Jan 31-2009. I had so much fun with you Autumn!!!

Just another ordinary miracle

Cycles: a poem by Alisha Brown

The meteor is far away, but on a path to meet me.

I wait.

The anticipation feels mute, because I can not comprehend the time it will take or distance it must travel.

I could almost forget the waiting; forget anything is coming at all.

A light flashes.

I watch with excitement, as the promise is renewed.

What is the promise, and why am I eager to meet this calamity?

I Imagine.

The promise of destiny, collision, upheaval, and meaning mouths whispers into my ear.

It draws so close now; it is so bright I can not look directly at it.

I retreat.

Fear overwhelms me as I hear the thunderous roar of it slamming into the place where I stood.

I gasp for air and stare in amazement, seeing for the first time what I could only have imagined.

Mouth gapes.

A burning rock was all that it was, or ever promised to be.

The meteor is far away, but on a path to meet me.

I wait.

When Your Down

I don't really care about the video itself, but I love the words.
This song makes me think about how hard this last year has been. It makes me think about how many times I felt alone and scared or sad. The clarity for me is this. I no longer want to protect Kyle from necessary struggle and suffering. I want him to know that he is held by me, that I won't feel like I have to make it go away for him.

If we can get past the suffering and powerlessness that we feel when our loved ones are hurting, and are willing to just be present with them in it, I think we might find our way to the most intimate and lasting bonds that humans can forge.

My Birthday

Today I am thirty.
Yesterday the country and world welcomed a new era with open arms.
We all get fresh starts, new days and do-overs if we are willing to accept that we need them. We also get endings and time to reflect before we leave safe harbor again.
All in all the thought that fills me today is this- I am happy to be alive. Really really happy. (Thanks mom!)

I want to say "Thank You" to
Scott & Betsy
Jenn
Mom
Tiff
Matt
Mickey
Jennifer
Julie
Carly
Gretchen
Michelle
Sherri
Jonathon
Atilla
Rita
Angie
Daryll
Kyle
& the entire Golden OB office

For your birthday wishes and for teaching me to celebrate life!

Want vs. Welcome

Want-[wawnt]-to feel a need or desire --Origin: 1150–1200; ME wante < class="ital-inline">vanta to lack

Welcome-[wel kuh m]- to receive or accept with pleasure; regard as pleasant or good—Origin: bef 900. wil- welcome (see will 2 ) + cuma comer Will Come

The word Will has its root in the word wish, whose roots are in joy, which came from to be glad.

So we can either want or welcome something...can you see the difference?

I am the Moon

I am the moon, sister to the sun

I am a flashlight in the darkness

I move the waters as I grow

I am always changing

I am worth reaching for

Musings of a sick woman

I am sick today..nothing earth shattering just a plain old ordinary winter bug....and so I muse

Kyle asked me at least three times today why I was sick and more importantly if I would get better. I responded that humans are made to heal and for him that was an acceptable answer. Some of you may know that I love words. I think there is so much more to words than we can ever imagine. The sound we make as we say them, the tone of voice they invoke, the history of the word through the ages...every word carries a story or truth.

So today, I though about healing...whose roots are in the word whole. I started to think about how we need so many things in order to be whole. We need family, community, spirituality, good food, rest, and so much more. So today I set my mind away from being a victim of the invisible little buggers that have a death grip on my sinuses and turn my attention to thankfulness for all of the things and people that I know and don't know who are helping me to "heal."

*Achoo!*