Fire & Earth

From the moment I saw you, really saw you, sitting on the picnic table outside lighting hand rolled cigarettes with a zippo lighter and hair as smooth as silk, you intrigued me. You always had a interesting presence about you, a sincere curiosity, a provocative imagination always thriving in conversation.You believed in your admirable love for your mother and grandmother and honored the intelligent caretakers around you. You were a God fearing man. I walked up and asked your sign, and you said Capricorn but you can't remember your age, with a smile.

You had strong qualities that were attractive, and when I got to know you deeper, your ideals, your understanding of things and your blind intuition, your love of family, your obsession with the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit... I couldn't predict how deeply I could fall in love with a whole other person, who is a completely counterpart to me. Then, we got lost in the canyons, deep in snow, climbing the side of cliffs to overlooking contoured earth, moonlit sky, and soaking pools to our own exploration's delight. We've come so far. I've known you with so many adventures and our bliss, stupid-in-love moments shared.

And along the way, when I turned to share my deepest truths with you, I looked into blank eyes. When I held your hand and asked you what you were feeling, I noticed your words and your palm, ice cold. When I called upon you for your service, no longer were you home.

In my heart, that fire still burns, slowly, but the flames were no longer dancing. The flames were not hissing with the wind, nor changing color with cold air. The energy diminished, there was no man there to maintain a steady loving breath on the coals. And, he hadn't been there for quite some time.

In the middle of our honest moments, I rested upon knowing the constant fire cycling between us. It was true, whether we were honest and vulnerable to ourselves, or not. It burned and cooled. But, this time, I burned and you cooled.

The ground beneath your feet is the same ground I walk upon. I share this earth with you, I am here to reflect the vast universe around you and within you. I will not drift lightly into the abyss. The fire, now darkness, is here for our teaching. How we choose to transmute the archetypes, the elements, the signs, is up to you, and me.

Set Sail

I find myself now

 at the end of the day,

Exhausted, depleted, longing, desiring affection.

Someone to call,

that person to anchor in with 

for the night
while the tide goes out.

I hope for the day

 that I can roll up my sail, 

And rock rhythmically alongside the riverfront,

Instead of being the seafaring captain

in ambitious pursuit.

I feel tired.

I long for solitude and the holding.

I haven't had it.

I don't know what it's like. 

I've been taunted and teased with the ideal of leaning into someone. 

I fell like I've seen this man in my dreams.

And, then as we looked deeper and peered in together,

we found that this just could not happen

in real life.

And, why not.

Well, maybe next time.

For now, I pulled my anchors up and
Set Sail.

Yoga Soup for The Soul

When I was eighteen years old, yoga was an attractive physical practice to me for many reasons. It appeared to be the perfect balance between my two favorite things in the world; throwing my body around the stage during rehearsals, and would also wake up early in the morning to get my heart rate up by jogging through the neighborhood right before the sun rose that by the end of my school day my body was so worked my limbs felt like Jello. I needed something strengthening, toning, integrative, and creative.

I loved dance but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do it forever, and running was my current voyager, until I landed in my first Bikram class in 2004. The practice was invigorating and relentless, a true challenge for me and my genetic stamina. I showed up to yoga class, and cranked on my limbs so they would stretch and bend like putty, reshaped into the deepest postures where I could feel my heartbeat pulsing, and feel my sweat dripping in places that I never thought possible. When I laid down intosavasana at the end of the class, there was nothing but me and my breath because I was so damn tired, and hungry for more.

After my first year of training, I began to notice beautiful thing happens underneath the surface. My concentration, sweat, will power, and flexibility began to come together. My body began to communicate with me. At first, it was through pain and exhaustion. Then, other things began to happen. My sleeping and eating cycle began to revolve around my yoga schedule. It became easier to listen to what my body needed instead of wanted. When I knew I was going to be doing hot yoga later on that day, I began to make healthy decisions about how I wanted my body to feel during the practice.

After attending my yoga practice regularly, I recognized these little considerations began to infiltrate every day and every moment. I spent a few minutes before each class centering myself because I knew I was in for an hour of excruciating hell. I was engaging muscles I didn’t even know I had, and tuned into some of the muscles that needed attention. Afterwards, I nourished myself with necessary foods and took care of my muscle soreness with conscious thoughts and healing care.

It was an effortless process to begin considering myself. And, as I continued, I practiced more and more, and dove deeper to find more sources of practice that I could add to more areas of my life. I wanted it to continue to grow outside of me, bigger than me. It was the encouragement I needed to begin really looking at myself, without judgment.

In this journey, I am reminded of that everyday, just by the way my body moves, and my thoughts speak to me. Yoga practice is the time I take to fully listen. Classes give me the opportunity and the practice weaves itself more into the threads of each day. My mat has become the nurturer, my breath is the teacher, my body is the vessel, and yoga is soup for my soul.

Art in Undying Form

This blog might as well be titled "Visions, Experiences, & Practice." That's basically what I aim to share through these writings. My account of information through the first person, and sometimes in the past, but I will try not to.

I guess you could expect this to be a memoir. The last time I wrote in a live journal, I wrote about travel escapades in Hong Kong. Each post was a delicately described adventure, sharpening my writing skills, as well as painting a high defined picture of my silly thoughts and experiences. I was 19 at the time of that blog. When I go back and read it, I want to change it. Isn't that crazy? Our mind evolves as our knowledge and exposure does. Sometimes I want to erase some very silly lines in the blog, because I know better now. Even more so, I don't. Because that's what this is all about.
www.ericabelfiore.blogspot.com

This time, I will be pulling stories, truths, recipes, sequences, techniques to share about my journey here at home. I am running a yoga studio business in Portland, OR and my days are very short of being boring. So before I begin sharing my tales from the last 6 months to current, I will open the intention of this Live Writing Journal with this:

This journal is dedicated to every thought, dream, word, and reflection that I have to share with myself and possibly others. Each line and page, I vow to fill with truth of that moment, and no other to change it. I vow to preserve that creativity by writing whatever, whenever and never by judging myself through words.

There is nothing that cannot be spoken to be freed to that which is silenced to the murmurs of the eternal heart. I practice transparency in ways I weave words together.

I realize I set a standard for the 'good' stories that can make it into this journal.

I often play the role of deciding what goes into the story of my life or not.

It's not my place to decide, however it is my will to write, to spill thoughts onto a page and out of my head. A space to say whatever? Nonsense is a perfect storm that rolls in and can be disturbing and beautiful. First, rumbling and chaotic, then cooling and liberating. The smell of the earth after lighting and rain, with scribbling on one page, sincere script on another. And the sharp edges of guilt and shame racing down the sides of the margins.

The words through penned fingers are intoxicating yet purifying. 

To surrender the desire for proper writing is to lend out the soul,
A stream of consciousness art, in undying form.

The one that sings to me

Hold my deep dark secrets, and let this be the place where I can dump some of the thoughts that aren't ready to be unveiled yet.

So, I'm slowly embracing the business world, but I'm also slightly holding back. I seem to find apprehension as an apparent quality of my universe, where I'm often telling myself that I'm just not prepared enough. I'm a noob. I'm on the fence. "I've never done this before!" therefore, I'm only allowed to observe and don't have the guts yet to liberate. Constantly, I proclaim my ineptitude due to sheltered experiences. But, the verb here is opening me wide, and I'm on the verge of a complete eruption. I can feel it brewing deep inside me. I just hope I'm not one of the many statistically visionaries that gets stuck on chasing a better ecstacy, never satisfied with just one kind of work. The ones that lose their minds from too many mind expansion parties, to truly decipher which one resonated to their purposeful soul. I want to be the one that finds the deep connection to the one that pulls the most on my heart strings. The one that sings to me. So here I am. I'm on the cliff and haven't taken the plunge. 

I suppose, I'm reaching out until something grabs a hold. But alas, don't wait too long. I'm reminded once again, that as soon as I jump off the shore and reach for the rope my hand slips and instead of swinging across the lagoon, I fall hard... into the murky waters, scathed and blasted by protruding rocks hammered by erosion and oxygen. And, I stop and I listen. The earth tells me she is fragile and naive, as I am just the same. That it is important to take the plunge, but also be patient for the experience to be natural rather than forced. There is a difference between punctuality and hastiness as well as laziness and ineptitude. To stop and take a breath amidst the many paths to cross, it is easier to see how they all will end up at the same end. That I will ultimately end up in the water and that maybe taken the low road will be better than assuming that splashing in with a rope swing, maybe a feat to tackle when I'm certain that my focus is intentional to accomplishing that goal, and nothing else.

Detoxification

Start again
Start again
With a calm and quiet mind this time
Be alert, witnessing each breath,
Be tranquil, feeling every sensation
with equanimity

When a sensation feels it's way in,
Let it pass,
When a crazing of bliss bubbles,
Let it be,
When an aversion to discomfort grips,
Deeply exhale and move focus away from the pain.

Vices

It won't be forever that I run on passion, fire, and desire. But for now, it's the smoldering embers of experimentation that have ignited me, by my own curiosity.

"This self is such an intriguing character.

 I never order the same cocktail twice,  can’t figure out whether I’m a coffee drinker (or not) and viscerally recognize my travels as each point towards growth, not Luxury. 

And, even though some nights seem to feel more in the way of decadence, desire, and vice, I take home the memories like simple souvenirs, when lightly observed.  I wonder if it ever will come to a point in life, that something will track me down and out, and blow up my defense system leaving me irrevocably submissive to the lush lands and exotic men.  But, for now, I am happy to say I lack promiscuity, in the proverbial sense. 

~*Gambling, sex, potato chips, cocaine, cigarettes, shoes, alcohol… all compiled and categorized into a little treasure box I call, “UNEXPLORED TERRITORY.”*~

 On the flip side of materialism, I have encountered potential suitors, and recreational drug use practices that stirred little sparks. Shiny new toys aren't as attractive to me, as agreeing to outlandish practices that develop the badass adventurer stories in my mind.

I’ll never forget the first time he walked into the room and I looked into his eyes. Those "fuck me" eyes. And, I thought to myself, “Oh, fuck....” 
It’s not about the rush you get from betting $10,000, or snorting a line of cocaine and jumping off the roof. These are passé fits of addiction, that are wimpy and short lived. I’m talking about the burning feeling when you feel it all over and inside, and it takes over like a predator of sensationalism, swallowing up all other emotions, as the keyholder to the body as a vessel of watery depths that can only be tamed by the idea of lover,  of the high or the escape, of the rush or the run, of the ritual or the routine…whatever keeps you coming back for more. Writing about this makes it feel like it’s more obtainable, even though I know the addiction I have and what I’m seeking to fill has been an impossible journey for just about my whole life now.

My literary rant on this subject brings me to the question, Am I addicted to experiences? Can you be forever swayed by the insatiable desire for more life?!
Are these silly questions?