Visions during a rainy season...

Having just survived my first belly dancing class and feeling that creeping feeling of smug self satisfaction...that is hard to resist. I pushed that feeling aside, and embraced the one feeling I wanted to get in touch with, what it feels like to see something come to life that you have secretly carried around inside. I stared at myself moving, as if I was outside of myself. Embracing not just the sensuality of the dance, or what it meant to me, but to actually see something else. An acceptance of my form. There was no measurement or comparison, just the woman who could have been anyone, but it was me.

This led me to the task I had set aside. My habit of cutting into pictures and words that I find along the way out of Korean magazines had grown into a stack big enough to expand my vision wall. No, not a board, but a wall to put up things that I see myself doing. I had always done this before with my writing, but now there seemed to be something more external, by actually seeing it before me...that seems to make it more tangible.

What I have seen this evolve into are places that somehow I feel I need to see with my own eyes. Some are places I have been to and others I feel like I am going to. It seems irrational, perhaps to others when you simply ask the question of what is possible within the time frame of your existence. To others, it could seem to be overwhelmingly narcissistic, arrogant, or even to the point of being lectured to. A 'good for you' attitude that can be stuffed with feelings of resentment.

There was something my mother had said about letting go of dreams that made me resist the idea with every fiber of my being, "You wake up one day and you say to yourself...that is all there is." I argued (which I am still known for), that was true for her, but it didn't have to be true for me. In a lot of ways I see how society does that to people. It tells them they can go no further and to accept their station in life. You go to work, you pay your bills and raise a family...just so they can do the same thing...contribute to the machinery of society.

So many have quested for things that will make them free. For many, freedom equates to money. When money is not enough, they quest for power over others. When that is not enough, well, perhaps they may turn to seeking other means of self actualization. That is, a huge if. If they stop worrying about themselves and their position in the world. We are a people of the more is not enough. However, I view the world as coming to terms with its consuming ways.

Do I regret the life I left behind? Do I miss it? Do I miss the people? Was this truly a quest to find myself?

Is it really just an extraordinary thing just to be happy? In these times, it might be considered to be a revolutionary art.

Whatever my reasons are...I am in love...with being alive.