Home of the Wanderer

I have an inch-thick folder of notes about relationships – how to conduct myself in them, how to approach and enter them so that they turn out more fun for all involved, and so on – generated from my own experiences (and often realized through a conversation with a mentor).  I’ve accumulated them for over a decade; though the oldest thing in this folder is from 2005, I’ve got other folders, books, and journals with my notes on the subject from as long ago as 1997.

Anyway, I decided I’d try sharing some of my accumulated notions.  I’d love to hear from others what they think of these, or how they’ve played out in your lives.  I think it’s going to just be a selection of quick summary notes, for now, often as tips, aphorisms, or what-have-you.

This week’s tip: if you ask for what you want, and play as if you can get it, you’re likely to get it if you can.  If you miss either of these, you’re almost guaranteed not to.

I was once in a state of perplexity
at how to resolve life’s complexity.
My stress was relieved
when I let go and breathed,
because I remembered that I don’t need to work it all out myself.

Or:

Life, an exercise:
releasing expectations;
receiving what is.

Lunch was a pair of “nutri tacos” from a stand around the corner from the Village Free School - one with shredded pork, one with shredded beef. It left me wondering how to inform a restaurant that they may be out of compliance with city code (in this case by using styrofoam for their to-go containers) without coming off as arrogant or threatening, but still conveying the importance of the issue to me.

I think I have something like an answer, in the practice I think of as “being the Truth” - spending some time reflecting on all the different things I want to convey, letting the feeling of those communications settle into my body before acting or speaking on the matter, and then acting as I’m led while trusting that my whole being will move in concert with my intent. Thanks to my teachers and mentors for training me in the essential pieces of that process, and helping me put it all together.

I’m writing from the Young Adult Friends (YAF) Conference at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. This has been (and continues to be) a powerful weekend for me. The only expectation I had when I arrived was that I would be transformed. Okay, so I also expected to see a lot of old f/Friends and make new ones, and I was hoping to spread the word about other future YAF gatherings (actually, I thought that was a key and important reason for my coming here; more on that later), but I showed up with the expectation that I would undergo thorough and dramatic change.

That expectation has been fulfilled, again and again. I look forward to writing more later, but at the moment I’m headed off to our evening program.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTaN2X_25Mg

You remember how I posted a few weeks back about “how my heart moves“? Well… if that was the deep unseen motion of an aquifer, this past week I’ve felt the sudden rushing of spring mountain streams. It’s all very interesting, and delightful, to experience. So I wrote a few poems, and a few more, and a few more, and now have recorded an extended piece, “Springwater,” that’s composed of six haiku I wrote this afternoon. You can go watch it, of course, on YouTube. Enjoy! (more…)

There’s something moving in my heart that feels familiar, moving in a way like it sometimes has in well-established long-term relationships. It’s not the sparkling brilliance of novelty, nor the inner fire of mutual admiration – though I’m getting those too, to some extent – but a deep, calm, heart-joy, the building of which has usually taken a year or more of living together. It is a feeling that I associate with connection and safety.

Valuing connection, I am in a state of wonder. I wonder how this can be, because I’m not in any relationship where I’m ready to start introducing someone around as anything other than a friend, let alone move in together – or even stop dating others. I’m not in a place where I’d bring this or that person over to meet my parents, even if we were all in the same town. (more…)

I just spent a day adding books to my account over on goodreads.com. At over 450 books, it’s a fair stack. And yet, I probably have another thousand to add, at least, just from books that I own.

But at least I’ve finally got a good way to answer those “favorite books” questions on online dating sites.

One of the things that I noticed, looking through my list, (more…)

One of my new favorite meals is leftovers.  I believe that food should be good several times over, and ideally the leftovers turn into something else entirely; they should not come out looking just like they did when they were first served.  If you try to reconstitute the original meal using leftovers, it will almost always be a disappointment.

For example, this afternoon I took some of the braised kale, apples, and cranberries from last night, and threw them in a pan with some of the roasted root veggies.  Stirring frequently over medium-high heat for three or four minutes, I brought the mixture up to temperature, emptied it onto a waiting plate, and then deglazed the pan with juice from half a lemon I had sitting in the fridge (also from last night).  It wasn’t quite enough liquid, so I added a little water from the kettle.  I scraped the pan clean, reduced the liquid to a sauce, poured it over my waiting meal, and added a little salt.  Yum!

I had thought about thickening the sauce with some flour, but decided against it – I don’t need gravy on everything.  Sometimes, a citrus reduction adds the perfect touch.

I have a flu, or flu-like symptoms – my muscles ache, the lymph nodes in my neck are swollen (big enough that I can feel them pressing into my neck when I turn my head), my head hurts… and I tried to take a bath tonight only to discover that my water heater had somehow been infiltrated with sediment. All the water from the hot tap was brown. Strangely, the cold water tap was running clear. (more…)

Robin Mohr’s recent comment brought to mind a question that has been with me in recent years: does anyone wait for the results of a clearness process before deciding that they are getting married? Given the number of happy marriages with which I am acquainted that seem not to have done so, is it necessary? Have we ever, as a Society, had this as a practice?

From what I’ve seen, such discipline would seem to be a thing of legend. And then I consider a couple who called off their wedding plans twice before finally (after ten years, I believe, and on the third attempt) getting clearness to marry. It was hard for them, but I believe they both consider it to have been appropriate to wait. (more…)