their exits and their entrances

Moliere once compared writing to prostitution. Bizarre comparison, possibly. But not unfounded. Those who are so literarily lured to write do so initially for love, because they enjoy it. Then they write for a few close friends, and eventually for money. I myself have stumbled upon the realization that when you put a time limit and price tag on what you write, when you write, and whom you write it for, you simultaneously remove the passion and love about the whole thing.

This is not intended to act as an excuse of any kind for my absence from and neglect of my lovely little canyon. It’s just that my recent writing-world whorishness seems to be getting the best of me. It’s soulless and exhausting, as I’m sure you can imagine. So I’ve decided to return to the garden and write once again for me, for my friends, for love, for free.



A couple weeks ago I made my yearly Pacific sabbatical. I went for a holiday in Sunny CA. My only sister happens to reside there.





She’s the kind of girl you want to visit.





I envy Cybil’s Southern California lifestyle. She breathes a different air, a familiar air—the salty restless ocean air. She falls asleep listening to it and it welcomes her in the foggy morning. She teaches surf lessons in the day and bartends in the evenings. She lives on Manhattan Beach’s quirky Strand. Her place is dotted in shark eggs, shells, sand dollars, starfish and a barrage of tokens from various island endeavors. She lives with a sweet Samoan surfer named DJ. There’s not enough wall space for surfboards, but there’s coffee and beer and a ‘sick’ porch view. Nothing but a single-row community parking lot separates her from the powerful Pacific, and when the sun warms off the fog, it offers a blinding reflection off the cold boundless Blue.

When I say “yearly sabbatical,” I mean this in the most simple and nontraditional sense. Every trip offers completely unique surprises from the piñata of this summer sojourn. One year I saw The Who at the Hollywood Bowl. One year Willie, Ryan Adams and Neko Case. One summer I went to State Street’s Fiesta Parade of Flowers. One summer I ate a fig from the Santa Barbara Farmer’s Market that I still haven’t been able to forget. There have been art shows in LA, reggae shows in Malibu, costume parties in Santa Monica, mechanical bull riding on the Sunset Strip. One year I went to the Emergency Room after an unruly bicycle pier pub-crawl. One year I found myself in an innocent affair. This year I had the enviable privilege of going to the Festival of the Arts’ Pageant of the Masters moving pictures performance.



This year the celebration was especially memorable, as it was the 75th birthday of the very first presentation of ‘living pictures,’ which began in 1933. The theme for this year’s Pageant was “All the World’s a Stage.” For those who aren’t familiar with Bill’s infamous prose …

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,

All of this tableaux vivant got me thinking about the fleeting nature of beauty, unquestioned adoration, and the blinding/crippling/clouding effect this has on our judgment. The ability that our minds have to play tricks on us in terms of what is real and truly exists vs. what we assume to be so. The skill we possess to train ourselves to cherish small, but significant moments and value them for the way they make our hearts soar.



I find that in today’s world there exists an underlying theme of instant gratification. We ourselves have created this expectation of availability and implemented the means to achieve it. Name your desire …

Coffee? Drive to the corner, get in line and leave the car running. Your favorite song? The voice behind the speaker will place a warm cup of joe in your hand while your opposing thumb wheels through Blonde on Blonde tracks on your pocket-sized, hand-held, car stereo-adapted appendage. Talk to someone? Call their cellular device. They might be in a meeting, at the gym, or in the loo, but thanks to iphones, blackberries and text messaging, they can let you know in real time.

We as a society seem to live under the umbrella of thought that fast equals functional. But have any of us stopped to think of what we might be passing up with all this pace-making productivity?





What if you took a mid-morning stroll to the corner for you coffee? Gave yourself time to observe, think, dream. Walk into the café and admire the artwork on the walls. Smell the warm aroma of dark roasted espresso. Banter genuinely with the counter girl about her morning, your walk, her accent. It is in the hastiness of these encounters with one another that this instantaneous lifestyle is robbing us.





A questionable memory can pose constant challenges for a writer, learner and avid thinker. This is one area that the age of instant information is an incredible resource and benefit. For example, if I want to liken the sweetness of a sunny day to the sound of one of those old European music box organs that were used to teach canaries to sing, the fact that I do not speak French and cannot remember the name of this particular obscurity are not boulders. With google on my side, a sunny day can sound like a serinette. Unfortunately a vast majority of our world is more interested in Lindsay Lohan’s lesbian liaisons than music boxes that sound like canaries, but whatever you need or want to know, you almost always immediately can.





With all gives and takes considered, the burning question I’m left with is “When did life’s tasks replace the actual ‘living’ that should fill our days?” Are any of us satisfied with a customer service smile that is so ultimately unfulfilling? The only difference between a familiar face and one that is unfamiliar lies in our own ability to engage ourselves and live nakedly, honestly and openly.

Lou Diollon once described this gratification of living outside of momentary, self-fulfilling, one-sidedness in her personal style credo, of all things.

“What attracts me is something broken, something a bit off. I never comb my hair or make anything pretty. When people look too beautiful, it's too easy. I know I'm dressed wrong if the businessman turns his head. But I like to think that after an hour of sitting next to me on the train, he'd look. I'd have grown on him.”



I believe that when you live in defiance of life’s apparent disconnectedness, therein lies a natural selfishness, but not of a timely nature. When you live life as who you are, you take an obvious gamble of risk and fear. By unapologetically wearing that cloak of brokenness, the possibility exists that you may give too much of yourself. You may weep into the counter girl’s tip jar. You may laugh until coffee comes out your nose. You may have an unforgettably spontaneous afternoon. You may open yourself to someone cruel or ruthless. You may fall in love too hard.

But at the end of the day, you can honorably admit that you’ve lived. Really lived. In the only way that you know how. You’ve been you. You for everyone to judge, to watch. To laugh at and with. To kiss, too hold, if even for a moment’s time.

A Fruitful Journey of Self-Realization

Last week I stayed in California, dividing my time between my chosen family in Santa Barbara and my beautiful sister, Cybil, in South Bay’s El Porto. The afternoon I arrived in South Bay, Cybil had plans to drive to Laguna for a concert. I had already ridden on a bus along PCH for several hours that day, and now she wanted to hop on the 405 in Friday afternoon traffic. Laguna isn’t necessarily ‘close’ to El Porto, and if you aren’t familiar with Los Angeles traffic, consider yourself lucky. I didn’t realize that hours later I would be thanking my sister for her patient persistence.

When we finally arrived in Laguna, we pulled up to a neighborhood church and walked across the street to grab a tostada from a local joint. I could already tell the night was going to be interesting. The news channel was predicting rain, and we rollercoastered through depressive states until we finally realized it was a Chicago news station. It was the only U.S. establishment I’ve been to that served Imperial (the cerveza of Costa Rica). I was having a hard time remembering where I was.



We walked across the street to the church and two men were praying in meditative yoga positions on a bench outside. Inside, about 25 people ordered chai tea and found a seat. As the two men entered the church and approached the stage, I realized that it was singer/songwriter Trevor Hall and his Grandfather Guru.



In January the two traveled to India together and stayed at the Yoga Vedanta Kutir ashram. We were all there for a concert benefiting the orphan children that Trevor had stayed with on his trip. The “ashram boys" between the ages of 5 and 14 were orphans at one time or another, and the head of the ashram took them in, cleaned them up, taught them yoga, and sent them to school. While Trevor stayed in India, he fell in love with the boys who showed him their yoga postures and sang chants with him, and he decided he wanted to help them in return for how they helped him.


The Ashram Boys

Trevor stood alone in a white tunic on a simple church platform surrounded by candles and pictures of Indian children, and he shared humble and very personal experiences of his struggles and spiritual realizations. Between songs, he told stories of his journeys in India … of the holy union of Rama and Sita … of bathing in the holy rivers of India … of lane lines in India as ‘merely suggestions’ … of beautiful temples and ashrams … of wonderful yogis and saints … of the beauty, grace and joy of the children he stayed with and the holy places he visited.





I was particularly amused by one particular story about a banana. When traveling in India, he and his grandfather guru visited a holy ancient meditation temple to visit a saint. He was given a banana in the temple, which, given the holiness of the circumstances, is considered prasada. Prasada literally means ‘a gracious gift’ and is believed to be karmically beneficial to its recipient.

As Trevor traveled down the dirt road from the temple, he saw a man on his knees with his hands extended begging for nourishment. The man had uncommonly beautiful crystal blue eyes, and he decided to offer the man his banana. He bowed his head to the beggar and extended his banana in front of the kneeling man, but the man did not take the banana. He did not smile, and did not reach for the blessed fruit, but his hands and eyes remained open.

Trevor shook his head and admitted that he began to grow angry. “Negative thoughts started coming to my mind, like ‘Why won’t this man take my banana?’ and like a domino effect, within 20 seconds my mind was filled with terrible thoughts. ‘Is my banana not good enough?’ ‘Is it because I’m white?’” Trevor lowered his head at this point of the story and softly laughed in humility.

The gurus and other men watching from further down the road finally yelled to Trevor that the man was blind.

Trevor said that an overwhelming sense of emotion took over, and uncontrollable tears poured from his face. He grasped the weathered hands of the kneeling man and placed his banana in them, clasping them around the holy prasada.

In contemporary Hindu religious practice in India, two major aspects of pilgrimage and temple visits are the desire to get prasada and to have darshan. Darshan means vision or "to see with reverence and devotion" and translates to epiphany. I believe this experience granted both for Trevor. A blind man had given him vision.

No one in my memory has told such a story about what life can teach you if you only seek the knowledge and listen with your heart.



The benefit concert raised about $5,000 for the ashram boys. All proceeds will benefit their education, clothing, food, etc. If you would like to make a donation to the orphan children at Yoga Vedanta Kutir, you can send Trevor a message by visiting his Myspace.


You can find Trevor’s single Other Ways on the Shrek 3 soundtrack.