deep, deep green leadership.  green energy technology.

clean, breathable air
clean, fresh, clear, refreshing water
abundant, nourishing, healthy food
energy efficient, comfortable, beautiful homes
welcoming, sustainable, wholistic communities
environmentally friendly and efficient, fun modes of travel
fulfilling work
deep play
peace
love
understanding
joy

for all. 

I wish that the extinction of another species every 20 minutes (the current state of affairs on our planet - REALLY!!)  would slow way, way, way down. 

I wish all humans will come to have a relationship with nature that is, not balanced, but reverent and gloriously fulfilling, worshipful even, like falling in love. 

OH!!!  What if every human being fell head over heels, irrationally in love with mother nature in all her wild, dangerous and yet generous and nuturing glory???   And what if mother nature and each and every human being on earth cherished that relationship and it grew into something so deep and they healed one another and became interdependent on one another and honored each others' needs and desires and cried with gratitude over the joy of being together?   What would life be like? 

That's my wish.  And I don't want to whisper it.  I want to sing it out LOUD. 

What do I love most about my life right now? 

I love that I don't have to choose just one thing or just one person to love. 

I love breathing.  breathing in and breathing out. 





I love loving.  I love being loved. 

I love how the other night, in the middle of the night, after some loving' playtime, when I asked adam, "what's the best thing about being married?"  he said, having you for my best friend.  and I love how that made me cry with gratitude and joy that our lives are intertwined, interdependent, quantumly entangled, that we work together, live together, sleep together and play together with mutual respect and lovingkindness and that when relating asks us to grow we both do our best to do so. 

I love where I live -- in the high mountains of colorado, near a town where people really care about mother earth, where I am surrounded by the most amazing people that I call friends. 

I love being able to blog on gaia, to post the words and images and songs that give me joy and to sometimes share my sorrows and feel uplifted and supported by a community that makes up for in enthusiasm what it lacks in physical proximity.

I love that I got to spend an entire week with my sister, brother, mom, son, niece, nephew, brother-in-law and some of his family too, playing games and just being together, sometimes quietly, sometimes noisily, but always lovingly. 

I love that someone is constantly sharing music and art, poetry and motion with me. 

I love that I don't have to choose just one thing or one most thing or just one friend or just one activity. 

I love this life.  I love this planet.  I love my family, my friends. 

This post started with a list, but it became endless and unweildy.... here's just a part of it...

adam
sarah
kiley
farland
jordan
mom
kaysha
kalon
laurie
lance
sonny
tammy
raine
louie
adventure
quiet
music
art
walking
yoga
a zillion fellow yoga practitioners
books
birds
sky
clouds
mountains
trees
streams
snow
ice
warm blankets
earth in springtime, and summer, and autumn and winter.  :-) 
tink
lil
tsuya
my grandmother, ruby
laura
albert
otter
lil
willowinthewind
praveer
another jordan
so many more it's impossible to name them all -- I subscribe to over 100 blogs from gaia -- and none of them are boring -- I know because I tried to cut back on my subscriptions yesterday and couldn't find any to delete.  :-)

thank you all for being my friends, near and far.  daily or weekly or yearly.  :-) 

I think anyone who has seen my blog has seen all the things I could put on this list before.  so I'll stop now, because I don't want to risk getting boring.  haha!

oh -- and if you didn't listen up above, you simply must listen before quitting this blog post.....   (how does the song change for you if you imagine you are singing it to the earth?)



this video is just gorgeous!!  and the Asylum Street Spankers is one of my many favorite bands and Breathin' is just one of my all time favorite songs!! 

oh -- and I just saw this post by C4Chaos!  -  one of my all time favorite photos and just discovered today! 

and last night this post by Doug was saying something that I just couldn't put into words for myself. 

"How come I can feel you here
where I can barely breath
and I love you so much more
on that day
I think it might
all end?"

OH!!  Thank you life!!  I love you!

I've been on a detour this week.  I went somewhere that I didn't know I needed to go until the day before I went.  It was a journey of love and discovery, an adventure of sorts.  There were tears, laughter, music and quiet.  I love that song with the lyrics about every day being a winding road.  I love journeys.  I posted an album on my facebook page with several photographs from the journey.  Now I'll just post one of these favorites here. 

I value this place.  how can I value a place that has no exact address.  how can we all meet, at different times, on a server, a chip and a whir??  an impulse. 

I....

love....

you.....    and you. 

Monday at lunch time I went to the Thrift Shop.  I felt drawn there.  I didn't go to look for anything specific except maybe a Scrabble board game so I would stop playing Lexulous email version with people who were actually in the same room with me.  I found some great books.   Books that have already been read by someone else are absolutely allowed, but I have very much been trying only to get books that I REALLY will read in the near future since all the bookshelves in this house are more than full already.  I was so happy with the books I found that i giggled gleefullly to myself all the way back to work.

"La bruja de Portobello" by Paulo Coelho (The Witch of Portobello)

"Lipstick Jihad, A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran"  by Azadeh Moaveni

"A Blue Hand, The Beats in India" by Deborah Baker

"The Treehouse, Eccentric Wisdom From My Father on How to Live, Love and See" by Naomi Wolf

"Black Elk Speaks, Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux" as told through John G Neihardt (Flaming Rainbow)

"Ocean of Wisdom, Embodiment of Compassion, Glimpses of Tibetan Buddhist Art" A Selection from the Pritzker Collection

Each one a treasure and found all in one day, in the space of 10 minutes and costing me less than $8 for the whole of them.  It's like I found the end of the rainbow.  :-)

Tuesday I spent all day glued to CNN.com/live and Facebook and conversing with friends.

Wednesday morning I awakened to Ozzy barking his head off about apparently nothing.  Rather than go back to sleep, I climbed onto the couch and under the comforter that had been left there the evening before and opened the book that seemed most intriguing to me -- Lipstick Jihad and began reading without glasses or contacts or coffee.  The cat curled up beside me.  I stayed in my pajamas until I'd finished the book, now and then grabbing a handful of almonds or chocolate covered raisins from the kitchen, a glass of water, a cup of tea.  Rather than review the book, I'd like to share here the words and phrases I underlined whilst reading it.  I am deliberately taking them out of context and leaving them here without explanation, to stand, each, on it's own, perhaps to entice you into reading the book yourself.

"Maman was devoutly into meditation, yoga, and all the other spiritual hobbies in California that teach a person , even a displaced Iranian, how to sound far more open-minded, sensitive, and tolerant htan they actually are."

"Being Iranian amounted to psychological torture."

"As though to make up for this image's awfulness we had to be ever more exceptional, achieve more, acquire more degrees, more wealth, make more discoveries---to become indispensable."

"I taught him grammar, and he taught me how to put my life into perspective."

"As I discovered contemporary Iranian poetry, some of which I could read on my own, I began to feel, for the first time in my life, that Iranianness was not an obstacle to my independence."

"Arabs dance with their hips, Iranians with their arms and shoulders, concluded Huda,"

"Do Afghans dance Baba Karam? I asked her."

"It was exactly one month into my year in Egypt."

"The path to Iran led through Egypt, spiraling through the region with confusing twists and detours.  It wasn't until I was nearly right up against Iran that I realized it had been my destination all along."

"I saw that the expatriate view--Iran as a static, failed state in unchanging decline--had little to do with the country itself, and everything to do with the psychology of exile."

"filling pages with notes, trying to understand."

"Had the reformists been able to agree on priority and strategy, their diversity could have been a source of strength rather than a weakness."

"news stories rarely had room for the historical context required to explain the nuances of these misleading labels."

"the protests signaled that Iran's nearly 70 million people wanted a different set of rules, a different kind of country."

"Every morning, getting dressed had involved a me vs the regime calculus."

"One's relationship to the veil had been a truly existential question: How important is it to be myself, to have my outside reflect my identity?"

"it's just a prettier cage."

"once the costs of disobeying the regime were reduced, people began steadily pushing the limits."

"or a hundred other feelings that are sincerely experienced as something else."

"He warned me, in the early weeks of our acquaintance, of the difference between nostalgic and realistic love." 

"there were enough moments of delicious poignancy"

"In truth, the language I was speaking directed my reference points, invoking a set of experiences and accompanying beliefs"

"Depending on what I did on a given evening, the company I kept and what I ate for dinner, I could spend the night dreaming in either language."

"so it felt that in Tehran, even the sky shrank, the streets twined in mazes, and the whole of existence retreated under imposing barriers."

"I was too busy pretending to be cool and brave, like the urban Tehrani girls who sailed through the tensions with poise, managing to look fantastic the whole time."

"Norouz originates from ancient Zoroastrian rites, and falls each year on the vernal equinox, celebrating the arrival of spring."

"In origin and ritual, the holiday is delightful.  Ancient Zoroastrians worshipped fire, for its purifying properties.  To symbolize the regeneration of new life after a long winter, they lit a small row of bonfires, and skipped over them, singing a poem about fire.  Traditionally they also set out special ajeel, a colorful mixture of pistachios, dried mulberries, walnuts and green raisins, in large bowls with delicately painted wooden scoopers."

"It was only in not being able to transport them into another language that I saw how much they mattered."

"One, you laugh whenever you want.  And two, you smile too much.  This is very American of you.  It doesn't occur to you, to alter yourself in public."

"my guide to delightful public places,"

"the fashion spring was likened to a silent coup."

"But the catalog of restrictions--on dress, behavior, speech--meant to instill a solemn decency instead inflamed people's carnal instincts."

"So you see, we are conditioned to be base with one another, she continued.  There are cues to show you are not receptive:  You must be cold, arrogant, and extremely formal at all times.  Keep your greetings curt and short, and stop smiling so much."

"furious with myself for being so naive, with him for the hypocrisy of his beard and Islamist television network, and with my Farsi for being deficient, so that I could not sear his ego with a devastating retort."

"You have to decide what bothers you most---lying all the time, or the consequences of openness."

"What if your conscience and your spirit dictated the latter, but you didn't have the energy to live each day as a struggle?  What did you do then?"

"If the reformists had a wish list, at the top would have been to abolish the system of rule by supreme religious leader altogether."

"Most of the reformers sought a systemm characterized by democracy, with an executive as leader, accountable to his constituency."

"the elected branches of government--like the presidency and the parliament--had no meaningful authority in practical terms."

"wanted much more---a free, lawful, and efficiently run country, and an end to corruption and Islamic white noise that were the system's trademarks."

"The clerics were bad planners for the same reason they were sexists."

"Many of the reformists came from an ultra-traditional class that held more conservative social values than the majority of Iranians.  Because they were enamored with Western philosophy and borrowed all their ideas about freedom from thinkers such as Kant and Habermas, they were starting to see that their vision of an open society was incompatible with individual rights.  But they were as yet too narrow to include women in the category of the individual.
This was the Achilles heel of their movement, this foolish idea that they could take a Western concept, like democracy, alter it with Islamic attitudes toward women, and expect it to function properly."

"What do you do first? Uphold modesty or prevent an accident?  I had meant to pose this conundrum to an authoritative ayatollah, after one day, while attempting to do a U-turn across four lanes of oncoming traffic, I found my head scarf down around my shoulders."

"Ally McBeal night."

"I dislike myself in Farsi.  I couldn't debate philosophy, flirt with any originality, recount jokes properly, or spar in a formal interview.  Unable to paint my personality with words, I came across blank, an empty white canvas."

"Unintentionally, the Islamic Republic had redirected the spirituality of a wide swath of Iranians toward the esoteric and the mystical."

"for many Iranians, contempt for the system tainted their traditional esteem for Islam."

"Clerical robes had come to symbolize one thing: corruption."

"And that is the story of how Iranian housewives, unadventurous by nature, began turning East, rather than toward Mecca, to nurture their belief in a higher power."

"Most societies that have flirted with Islamic politics, where religious parties win in elections, have not had the chance to watch their Islamist crush play itself out."

"So often, my days off didn't measure up to the lofty, soul-enriching life I had expected to live in Iran, and this was depressing enough that it made me stop taking days off altogether."

"In Qom the clerics were busy fighting about the soul of the religion, and the future of the Islamic Republic."

"Convinced their worst sin was sloth, I had not assumed they were equally lecherous."

"It was only over time, after repeated exposure to womanizing clerics, clerics who stole from the state and built financial empires, who ordered assassinations like gangsters, who gave Friday sermons attacking poodles, that I came to understand the virulence of my father and my uncle's hate for the Iranian clergy.  Perhaps their flaws were no greater than those of ordinary mortals, but ordinary mortals did not claim divine right to rule, ineptly, over seventy million people."

"The Iran I had found was spiritually and psychologically wrecked, and it was appalling."

"Several key reformist intellectuals had been dragged before the court on similarly empty charges and sentenced to lengthy prison terms for their ideas."

"the Islamic Republic had actually served to make a huge segment of Iranian society more tolerant.  Before the revolution, millions of newly urbanized Iranians, still traditional in their provincial mindset, had been offended by the modern mores of the city-dwelling, secular classes.  By taking rigid moralism to such a bloated, extreme level, the regime had shown definitively that minding thy neighbor's religiosity was an ugly way to live.  During a month like Ramadan this remarkable tendency for broad-mindedness was evident.  It was one of those many ways in which Iranian society was evolving from the bottom up, becoming more sophisticated and progressive, while the mullahs on top remained exactly the same."

"I thought of my family in California and superimposed the question onto them.  What if they woke up one day, and decided they were really American?  Even if they felt it with all the force of their being, did that mean Americans would suddenly stop considering them foreigners?  Maybe identity, to an extent, was an interior condition.  But wasn't it also in the eye of the beholder?  It seemed delusional to go about convinced you were a peacock, when everyone treated you like a bear.  The contradiction bounced around my head.  What percentage off identity was exterior, what percentage self-defined?  Was it sixty-forty, like a game of backgammon, sixty percent luck, forty percent skill?"



I'll stop there.  I guess I underlined more words and phrases than I realized at the outset.  That's about halfway through the book and I absolutelly must get to bed now because of the need to be at work very early tomorrow morning. 

I love a memoir, a self reflective thing.  I love an autobiography.  I love a first person account.  I feel as if reading a memoir is like seeing through the lens of someone else's camera.  It's a perspective I might never have myself.  It is impossible for me to know what life is like as the child of Iranian parents growing up in California unless I listen or read (which to me is a form of listening, learning.) 

I think I need less and less specific identity as I grow and learn.  More and more it feels enough to be simply a sentient being and to see and hear and touch and smell and taste and share experiences with other sentient beings. 

I love a story, but I love a true story told by a thoughtful, introspective person even more.  I love to experience a world that I have not walked through, through someone else's eyes / words / feelings / thoughts / reflections and to see / feel / understand some universal truth through so doing. 

There is something larger than what I can put into words brewing inside of me -- something I have to dream of more and reflect upon more, in order to find words for it. 

I am playing in a deep place inside of me lately.  Please forgive me for not coming to the surface often enough to keep up with all your blogs and emails.  :-)

Buenas noches mi amigos y amigas. 

she is wilder than the geese who fly south in the winter
she has an easy smile, a hearty laugh, a witty way
she is always ready for an adventure
near or far, night or day
she invites me, she inspires me
she knows well the paths to deep play

her heart is strong, her mind is agile
together they are as wide and as open as the sky
her imagination is epic
she tells those stories of mythical creatures
& hero's journeys under the moon

she is the muse & the art
she is the music & the artist
she is the morning & the evening
she is the midnight and also the sun at noon

who can she be who is all these things?  you ask me
you know her too.  oh yes, you do. 
she is there in you.  she is here in me, too. 
 
she is us.  she is we.  she is she.  & possibly, maybe, even, she is he.  ;-)

On Monday, the day before the Inauguration of President Barack Obama, I went to the Thirft Store at lunchtime.  I just meandered in, I was drawn there.  I was tugged by an unseen force (posiblemente ella?) to the book section.  I didn't have anything particular in mind.  Here is what I found. 



On Tuesday, the day of the Inauguration of President Barack Obama, I spent the day glued to the computer / tv.  I was overjoyed that millions of millions of people, around the world heard a poem with these words within it: 

"......What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national.  Love that casts a widening pool of light, love with no need to pre-empt  grievance. 

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun......"  (from Praise Song for the Day by Elizabeth Alexander)

I listened and watched all day.  There were many delights.  It was a delightful day.



On Wednesday I read "Lipstick Jihad" in which Azadeh Moaveni says,

"As I discovered contemporary Iranian poetry, some of which I could read on my own, I began to feel, for the first time in my life, that Iranianness was not an obstacle to my independence."



On Thursday I wrote a blog about how much I love books.

On Friday I began to read The Treehouse, in which Naomi Wolf shares the parts of her father's collected wisdom that she has come to deeply value.  Her father is a poet. 

On Saturday I went to the library.  -----------

please excuse the interuption.  this blog will be continued later this evening........................   must leave computer immediately.....  no time to explain.

Claro que si!

but of course!
I want to be a poet;
a pied-piper
who sings love songs
to the moon
in many tongues
and plays
a haunting melody
of universal truths
upon my wooden flute
so beautifully
than I am always
and ever
free.


--dawn dexter, january 2009
(inspired by the book, "The Poet Slave of Cuba" and the strength of the human spirit.)

oh yes and....
the image/colorful writing is a page that I typed up after reading Rob Brezsny's free will astrology column one day, many years ago.  I always read all the advice for all signs, because I think I am too...  what does tinkonthebrink/jeannie say?...  non-baseline... to be just one boring old sunsign, so I have to read them all and there was some fabulous good advice.  so I put it in a word document at work, gave the letters and words pretty colors and printed it.  I put one copy on my day planner (before I had a phone to do such magic as plan days for me) and one in my bathroom.  I found this the other day in a box of papers and it made me smile so much when I realized that you all are my tribe of kind hearted tricksters and you are also my wildly responsive dieties.  :-)  wishes do come true.  :-)