25 random things about meeeee...

(This is a trend going around Facebook, and it was so fun, I thought would be worth publishing my words here...)

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Not sure I followed the "rules" exactly - "random" things don't usually occur in chronologic and thematic arrangement. Always the rebel, heh heh ;-)

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

(( 1 )) I was born at home in Berkeley, California. The midwife was there all night long. The doctor was late, and forgot the silver nitrate - but he remembered the hashish... (not for me, for my parents!!)

(( 2 )) At about 6 months, we moved to a rustic cabin up in Oregon, and because of the woodstove that heated it (and that I was always warned about), my first word was hot, which I pronounced "hotta" - which is similar to the correct pronunciation of "Hatha" (as in hatha yoga)


(( 3 )) I moved to Boulder when I was 7, with my dad and godfather. After sleeping in the van for the first week - in the April snows - we rented an epic mansion outside of Gold Hill with the money they earned on a pot-deal.

(( 4 )) From the time I started preschool in Oregon, and all the way thru junior high, I was teased, picked-on, and basically "the outcast." My nickname for several years was "Airhead."

(( 5 )) In about 9th grade was the first time I realized maybe since I didn't "fit in," it would be okay to be different. So I started hanging out with the stoners & goths, dancing at afterhours clubs, and reading spiritual books.

(( 6 )) From aged 14-20 sum'tin, my greatest medicine was dance. At night, on the dancefloor, was the only time I felt beautiful and at home. Otherwise, I always felt awkward and out-of-place in this world.

(( 7 )) In the mid 90's, after many years of dance medicine - including clubs, raves, trance-dances, and healing forms such as Authentic Movement, I was certain I was going to be a dancer. Through following the Spirit of Dance, I found the source of "being-moved" from within - and all my awkwardness dissolved in the riverflow of God-light dancing from within me. I was certain my path in life was to be a dancer!

(( 8 )) In 1996, unannounced, a song suddenly flew from my lips - and in that very moment, I knew I was also to be a singer.

(( 9 )) Although I knew my voice and the dance were a gift from the divine, my ego latched onto the idea of being a "star" - and for many years, as I studied, wrote songs, and developed myself as a singer, a battle raged between my ego-desires and the deeper fact that music is my healing medicine.

(( 10 )) The first song I taught myself to play on the guitar was "Shiva Shambho" - and that was loooonnnngg before I ever went to a kirtan!

(( 11 )) In the late 90's, I got invited to sing with the stellar middle-eastern band, Sherefe. It was this music - Arabic, Turkish, Balkan, Greek... - that felt most like home for me. My gypsy-spirit was soothed... ...and my musicianship [thankfully!] was irrevocably elevated and inspired!

(( 12 )) I've done things so "out-there" that many of my friends don't even know about (and no, I won't post them here :-) I'm not ashamed of any of it, but until maybe I'm 50, they won't be made public knowledge :-)

(( 13 )) I've been to a whole heckofalot of Rainbow Gatherings (including when I was a kid, and my parents used to bring me - until I wanted to be more "normal" and asked to stop going - I started going again when I was 18).

(( 14 )) From about age 14 on, I began searching for the "meaning of life." At age 19 I started seeking in deep earnest. My first mystical experiences happened when I was 21. The first one happened at a rave - when my 'boyfriend' asked me to get down from the podium I was dancing on I got so enraged that it triggered a kundalini-awakening. Mystic grace and healing moved through me - I cried, danced ecstatically, and shed years of inhibitions. (And I was sober, by the way!!).

(( 15 )) Later that week, after coming back down to the grey mundanity of life, I was blessed with the 2nd opening - this time, while laying down in the dark to sleep, I tingling started in my heart, which suddenly burst into the radiance of a golden white star that flooded all the darkness of the room (and my life). I felt all the Love and completion I could imagine, and I sent all this Love to my friends and family. That winter I hand-drew some 100 "happy Solstice" cards with the same sunshine symbol that now is tattooed on my left arm...

(( 16 )) Some years later, I got the internal guidance that I should chant the Gayatri Mantra every day. I still do, and still evoke that same heartlight radiance that I experienced that one night...

(( 17 )) My second set of mystical experiences were much "darker," though no less joyful. Ever since I was a kid, I would have these terrifying experiences wherein I felt heavier than a shipfull of lead, yet paradoxically as empty as a balloon that could pop and disappear into the infinite in an instant. That's the closest I could come to describe it, except maybe to say it felt like death, or dying. Well, sometime in my adulthood I got a deep fever, and these deathly feelings started arising in my body again. After days of resisting them (trying to embrace them, but it was too terrifying!!!), I finally gave in and let it consume me - at which point I fell over to the other side and into ecstatic bliss...

(( 18 )) After surrendering to terror/ecstacy, I had a weeklong series of mystic experiences. Two of my favorites: First, a dream, in which I am in a black box of a room with no door. Suddenly a woman appears out of nowhere in a long dark cloak and shows me that one of the walls has an opening that was simply disguised by the darkness. We step out, and into the infinite void - terrifying and empty, yet full of everything - the birthplace of all creation. In the second vision, I awake with my hands dancing in dna-spiral mudras above my head - and then I see/feel the entire ocean of the night sky wash through me - black, sparkling, pulsating... To this day I still love the darkness as much as the light.

(( 19 )) Not very many years ago, I left a lucrative profession that didn't serve my heart. Rather than jumping into another job I didn't like, I became a "gypsy" for a year and a half - jumping from one housesitting to couch-surfing to camping gig after another. I lived in Boulder this whole time, and though it eventually wore me down quite a bit (and brought on my first wrinkles!!), it also gave me the creative time and space to develop my teaching skills and web design arts that I still subsist on to this day.

(( 20 )) I like singing more than sex. (!! that doesn't mean i don't like sex also, but if i had to choose...)

(( 21 )) I study Classical Indian music, which I adore. I've written a hip-hop piece with raga interlude... I'd like to study Indian rhythms too, but don't ever expect me to pick up tabla...

(( 22 )) My favorite instruments are tanpura, cello, drum kit, baglama saz, oud, sitar, tabla, cajon, etc etc... Perhaps in that order, perhaps not...

(( 23 )) I'd like to tour the world performing live music.

(( 24 )) I loooooooove gardening - I'm absolutely devoted to the Earth Mother.

(( 25 )) I'd like to live on a sustainable arts & healing retreat center founded with my favorite friends :-)

(( rulebreaker, #26 )) I like to write (a lot!!), can you tell? :-)