Reminiscing about seeing chalk drawings with you

Talking about the flash flood warning for tomorrow evening, I found myself remembering the chalk drawing of the smiling jellyfish and the heart with the two girlfriends’ names etched inside—and a third girl’s name with an arrow pointing to the duo drawn as an afterthought. I remembered when he and I had walked under the bridge by the river and discovered them on the stone wall upholding the bridge on one end. It was a sunny day, with light sparkling on the shallow river and ducks swimming around. We laughed as we analyzed them, imagining the group of girls who had drawn them.

I remembered that time one day when I was walking by myself by the river, and chanced to walk under the same bridge. I had forgotten that the chalk drawings were under that bridge, and I was delighted to find them intact. They were just as they were when we’d stopped there together several months before.

Today I thought and I wondered. Would the flood rise high enough to erase those chalk drawings if they were still there? Were they still there? I wished I’d taken a picture of them when I’d passed there for a second time that one day, but then I thought to trust the memories of that happy day with you to my pen, and hoped that you’d remember it too.

Christmas

Well, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were both satisfactory and calm. Yesterday my dad, sister and I saw Madagascar 2 and it was surprisingly good. My dad loved the fish-shaped oil flask from Spain that I bought him and my sister loved the pewter-colored necklace in the shape of a leaf that I bought her. Today I was at my mom's and all was well. She loved the star-shaped green and blue glass lantern that I got for her. I randomly watched Mar adentro on TV. It was, well, not in the slighest definition a Christmas movie, but it was reassuring to see a movie that reminded me of Spanish class in high school. I saw Marley & Me with my mom and her boyfriend, which I liked. After the movie, it was apparent to me that I'd seen two movies with euthanasia involved in a significant way in the characters' lives, and I found that a peculiar circumstance for Christmas.

I give Christmas 2008 a thumbs-up, despite the recurring euthanasia references.

Resolutions for 2009

I'm a few days early, but I couldn't help but think of a few resolutions for 2009.

• Become more fluent in Spanish--at the moment I think that what I need is an extended stay in Spain or another Spanish-speaking country. In the meantime, I can continue stretching my vocabulary by reading literature and news articles. I would also like to find an avenue to speak Spanish on a more regular basis outside a class setting.
• Continue studying Hindi--in the upcoming year, I want to complete the Living Language Hindi course and work through Rupert Snell's Beginning Hindi and MacGregor's Hindi Grammar. By 2010, regardless of whether or not I'm taking university classes in Hindi, I want to be able to read short prose, write simple narratives, express myself more or less correctly in speech and be able to understand the gist of actors' lines in Bollywood films. My Hindi teacher from COD gave me some easy readers/vocabulary builders that her children used when they were growing up, and I hope to be able to read them by the end of 2009.
• Practice yoga at least twice a week--this is isn't very difficult to explain. I want to take yoga classes again (after a hiatus of four years) and have started practicing on my own at least once a week since Thanksgiving. I think it would be neat to practice outside of class at least twice a week to establish an independent practice.
• Spend less time on facebook--so self-explanatory.
• Spend less time on the computer--so self-explanatory.
• Be less self-sacrificing--a trusted friend pointed out to me that I'm a little too self-sacrificing at times. I'm going to give myself and my interests a higher priority in 2009. This includes learning to say "no", giving myself more free time instead of extra work hours, treating myself a bit more...stuff like that.
• Read every single book that I possess and haven't read yet--this is a major resolution for me. I own at least ten books that I bought and yet haven't read due to distractions. I resolve to not buy any more books (excluding those bought with giftcards from the holidays) until I've read what I have.
• Practice gratitude--In my journal, I will write one sentence with every entry stating something that I'm grateful for that happened that day.
• Finish the water bottles that I open--We have a bad habit at my house of buying water in plastic one-use bottles. No matter how much I tell my dad to not buy them, he still does. Worse yet, I don't even finish the entire bottle of water at times. No excuses. Whenever I open a water bottle in 2009 I will drink all the water inside.

Thanks for listening to my reflections, and I hope they've inspired you to improve your habits in 2009.

And since it's 12/24...

Merry Christmas!

Ramblings

Today I went sledding for the first time in a few years with two close friends. We only went for an hour, but it was incredibly fun. It was a frigid and cloudless day, and by the time we had reached the top of the hill at Arrowhead Park my face was already frozen and Annika and Tammy were suffering from icy extremities. Annika's first descent down the hill clocked at least twenty seconds because of the fresh snow on the less steep side that she chose to go down. I was too scared to go down standing up on the sled, but once I went face-first down the steep side, which was exhilarating. On my returns up the hill, I held the foamy red sled as if it were a surfboard and I was a coastguard on Baywatch. Tammy and Annika laughed quite a bit and the three of us returned to that joke quite a few times. Annika and Tammy went down a couple times together, wiping out in the process, and once when their aim was true and they mounted the ramp, they flew and it was hilarious.

It was so much fun, and it was so simple, and it was so easily and spontaneously planned. I love it when life is like that.

Yesterday was fabulous. Shane, Sneha, Tammy and Kiaran & I spent most of the afternoon together. How delightful it was to merge both worlds! I brought my recently created world with Kiaran to unite with my classic NNHS world with Shane, Sneha and Tamstuh. I was so happy that we were all together and happy on that cold day of snowstorms. We played Apples to Apples, also known as the game that we always play at Shane's but never remember how to play. We watched and listened to Disney music videos in various languages. We watched the multilanguage version of "When You Believe". We all sighed in appreciation when the song was in Hebrew because the vocals were beautifully appropriate...and just when we agreed upon that, the song switched to the awfully random Japanese vocals and we laughed so hard. At Shane's we also danced for awhile. Tammy's been doing lots of ballroom, so she was helping us remember the steps. And we talked, and randomly went on facebook, and I ate my burrito from Chipotle...and we had a good time.

Well, I want to gush on how much I adore him and think he's amazing...but in the interest of my readers I'll just do this the following:

♥♥♥ *Adores Kiaran* ♥♥♥

I was reading a yoga book earlier while at work (currently at the five-hour mark, half an hour to go) and came across a comparison of Advaita Vedanta and Tantra philosophies. I'd considered my own take on the universe to fall under the category of Advaita Vedanta on the monist premise that all of being is united and that all division between the lives and objects of the universe are an illusion. However, to me, the computer I'm looking at exists. It is a real object. On a fundamental level, the computer and I are composed of star stuff and are only parts of the whole. According to Advaita Vedanta as proposed by Shankara, the computer is an illusion. It's not real at all.

Well, I'm looking at it.

So then I read the paragraph on Tantra, which I don't know much about. Apparently Tantra espouses an Advaita Vedanta outlook that all of reality is unified, but unlike Advaita Vedanta, it deems that both the material world and the spiritual world exist, and that the material world is an expression of the spiritual world, not just something to be avoided, discarded or abhored.

I think that's pretty cool.

I prefer to give my spiritual thoughts as few labels as possible, so this is what I think, and then you can decide what philosophy I am most similar to, or just think I'm wasting my time and promptly return to facebook.

I think that everything that exists is divine. Nothing exists except for Divinity. All of the suffering that we encounter in life is real and it sucks, but it's necessary to take a step back to realize that it's all part of a grand panorama that we don't have the capability to see clearly. I think that one can make a conscious decision when faced with bad news whether or not to suffer--to think that our little lives running around for college money and outstanding grades is all that matters, or to think that there's no reason to suffer because everything is an expression of Divinity and that if we think beyond and over ourselves, everything is actually quite alright.. Also: these chairs, bookshelves and this computer that I'm at are real objects. There is Divinity in their atoms, but while those atoms are in the shape of an HP PC, they are an HP PC.

So, I'm saying that the computer in front of me is a divine object.

Bad things happen when people ignore their unity with Divinity and confuse their minute world with the supreme reality (Paramatman). If a criminal realized that he was hurting himself by hurting another manifestation of Divinity, he wouldn't commit the crime.

I also think that you yourself are divine. That holiness in me bows to the holiness in you. Namasté.

It's 9:30 and I've got to go. Here's a mantra I like:

Loka samasta sukhino bhavantu.

May all beings know happiness.

Memories of Indigenous Music

Today I turned on a CD recording by a South American group named Atahualpa. The bouncy, joyful rhythms accented by pan pipes, drums and string instruments infused my cells with life. I forgot my self and danced about the room.

Later, while listening to the CD once more, my dad started and asked me if he could see the CD case. He looked it over, remarking that it wasn't the same band, but that the songs were familiar. He proceeded to remind of a place and time long past, when I was little and my parents and I were at a fair. I was still in a stroller. The three of us were at a sidewalk corner where four men, apparently from Colombia as the brochures read, played their celebratory compositions from their native lands.

The four musicians played on for us, without interruption save to explain to us their instruments and the names and stories of the songs. I enjoyed their music, and I remember the bright yellows of their costumes or at least I think I do. My mom purchased a cassette from them after much time had passed.

I have a terrible memory for my childhood. I remember only a handful of events before the age of 8 and I surmise that I only began to create lasting memories when I first got glasses and was able to see. However, I do remember this. My dad said I was around a year old when the episode of the Colombian musicians occurred.

It's kind of funny now. As an infant I took a keen interest in their music, probably because it was cheerful and the kind of tune that would accompany any multicultural children's program. My dad said that the four musicians enjoyed my reaction to their music, and that after the first few songs it was obvious that the group was playing for our entertainment alone.

As I said, it's kind of funny now, because over Thanksgiving I found out through genetic testing that I have indigenous Colombian ancestors, however displaced from the Magdalena river and the Guajira peninsula they must have been. I also found out that I'm of Spanish, Armenian and Tunisian descent, all of which add to my previously-known Sicilian and Italian background and my dashes of French, German and Greek. I turned out to be a lot less Greek than I thought I was, and not Polish or Irish at all.

But what matters is this: the earliest memory that I can currently pinpoint is that of a quartet from Colombia playing music for us one sunny afternoon in Chicagoland when I was a year old, it is fascinating to know that some distant family members of mine once came from their tropical homeland to Europe, and at long last I have discovered that lost connection.