Really, life? Really?

I just learned yesterday that a former student of mine passed away. This follows the recent news that the daughter of a childhood friend also passed away this week… 21 and 5 years old. How is this OK? Answer: It’s not. I’m trying not to think about that “bad luck comes in 3s” expression. I guess from every experience, every beautiful or harsh reality, the important thing is to glean some sort of lesson from it. As my friend whose daughter died said to me, it’s a reminder that you should live your life the way you want to. Sounds cliché, I guess, but it’s true. You never know what’s gonna happen in life, good or bad, so why not take chances? Dream a little dream. And try to make that dream a reality. Maybe we do actually get more than one life, but that’s not really an excuse to take the path of least resistance in any one of them. If you subscribe to the philosophy of reincarnation at all, to that idea of birth and rebirth, it’s about learning, perfecting in a way… but I don’t think that “perfection” actually exists. Maybe we need to find perfection in imperfection. Works for me. Who isn’t flawed? What situation isn’t flawed? I think maybe the key is how you accept or work with that imperfection.

Since my recent departure from Facebook, I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship and connection. With every passing year I feel like I understand more and more how important it is to surround yourself with people who lift you up, and try to limit or eliminate the time you spend with people who bring you down. It’s funny how you can spend oodles of time with someone and still feel completely disconnected from them, as if life has just thrown you together against your will, whereas you can spend very little time with others and yet feel a genuine connection. What is that? Is it a past life thing? I will never know. I only know that's it's pretty cool when it happens.

I have no new photos, sadly. An upcoming trip to the Big Apple should take of this, but for now, an older photo. The thought of this experience always makes me smile. It was my first day out in New Delhi and was an introduction to the way things were going to be for me in India, and to some extent other parts of Asia as well. When this huge group of Indian tourists noticed me taking pictures they all started waving wildly and smiling and laughing... and then I ended up in their family photos. It was so confusing, but so amusing at the same time. Random connections with strangers, gotta love it.

Portland or busk

Now that I'm no longer a teacher I don't have the usual holidays off, but I happened to have yesterday, Columbus Day, a.k.a. Indigenous Peoples Day. This is one counter-holiday that I think might actually take hold as most people aren't really down with the whole wiping out an entire culture thing. One of my yogi friends came up from New Hampshire and we kicked around Portland for the day. The weather was amazing, as it has been for several days now. We had Indian food for lunch and talked about all things India as she is going there in December for another yoga teacher training. I'm so excited for her. I'm sure it will be a mind blowing experience.

Here and there you'll come across somebody playing guitar and singing on the streets of Portland. This guy was really good. He had a beautiful voice and was singing his original tunes. He also looked like he was doing pretty well with tips, so that's awesome. I talked to him for about 30 seconds and you could immediately tell he was a really good soul. I love nice people.

One of the stops on our walking tour was Standard Bakery, a must-eat on any given day. I would put bakeries on my top ten list of the best things in life. These guys have the best baguettes this side of the Seine and pretty much everything they do is delicious.

Weddings, love, and really bad song lyrics

So this weekend I went back to my roots, at least as far as my love for my fancy camera is concerned. I helped my friend Nicole shoot part of a wedding, the same friend I worked with almost two years ago when I started this blog. The wedding took place in this tiny chapel... located in a cemetery. Strange place for a wedding, I thought. But the chapel was cute and the ceremony was over in record time, which is good because I'm not a big fans of weddings.

I wasn't involved in the reception part of the ceremony, but I bet we can all put together the play list of songs, because there seems to be a limited rotation of wedding tunes. My friend who's currently working in catering can attest to this. Speaking of songs, I've been listening a little more closely to some of the music on the radio these days, especially the snippets I hear when I go into stores. And I've noticed that there are a lot of really bad lyrics out there. Tonight in Staples it was the Backstreet Boys, "I don't care who you are, where you're from, what you did, as long as you love me." Hmm... those seem like pretty low standards. And the other day in the car the catchy tune by Crosby, Stills and Nash, "If you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with." This strikes me as really bad advice. But of course the underlying theme of nearly every song is love - finding it, losing it, reveling in it, reckoning with it.

A-MAZING

On Tuesday I went to see Ani Difranco in what felt like somebody’s living room. Okay, it was a little bigger than that, but still astonishingly small for such a huge presence. It was just Ani and her guitar, and that’s really all you need. She is a one-woman powerhouse of musical and lyrical prowess. I’ve been getting more into her more recent stuff and she played a bunch of new songs. She writes songs the way most people breathe - effortlessly - although she did say she’s been putting more effort into writing her more political tunes. She’s still very much a feminist and an activist, but somehow not quite as aggressive as she was in her early days. I was thinking how strange it must be to have on record, literally, the things you went through when you were a teenager and in your 20s. How much we change. It’s amazing some people can stay together through all of it. That was another interesting point she made, in a joking way of course, but I think she made a good point, that monogamy should be illegal until about age 35 or so. Because you probably don’t really know anything until then… and maybe not even then in some cases! Anyway, I adore Ani, as do many, many other women. I think for so many of her fans she voices so eloquently the things we cannot or do not say.

So in addition to this amazing gift of a show, I also got to spend time with my dog and a great friend at my sister’s in-laws’ camp. It was this freakishly beautiful day the day after the show so we went for a nice hike in the morning, which Paris thoroughly enjoyed (see picture below), and then took our time getting back home. Lucky days.

Slip slidin' away

Yet another kiddo birthday party has come and gone. Unbelievable. How is it that time seems to go by slowly at times and faster at other times? It's all in the perception, I guess. Like everything!

This guy is a mini version of me. Here he is playing party photographer.

I'm a sea without a shore

Last night was the last concert of the L.L. Bean outdoor concert series. Joshua Radin played and it was awesome!! As I said to my friend, I cannot believe that I've spent seven out of the last eight summers in Maine and never gone to one of these free shows. Great music for free... what was I thinking?? His lyrics and melodies are simple, clean, and beautiful. He has such a sweet voice. The weather yesterday was perfect as well, hot during the day and cool at night. Fall is definitely on the way.

Fake Plastic Trees

I've been listening to a lot of Radiohead lately. I have a lot of their music, but have only delved into a little bit of it, but that is changing. One thing I'm not delving more into these days is Facebook. Not at all, in fact. I should have quit it a long time ago, and in fact almost did once, but couldn't quite pull the trigger at the time. When you do finally make the move, they pull out all the cheesy stops and show you pictures of your Facebook "friends" with the message "So-and-so is going to miss you!" Oh really? Well, maybe we can communicate in another way, like e-mail, phone, or - imagine! - in person. And if we can't, honestly, are we really even friends? I'm sorry, but I don't have over 200 friends, even though my Facebook page says I do. Before I logged off I made sure I had the contact info of the people I really wanted to stay in touch with. A lot of them were people I met on my travels. Why? Because it's that whole kindred spirit thing, people who, like me, have wanderlust in their DNA.

So what to do now that I don't have Facebook to waste my time on? Well, two things: play more guitar and work on my Hindi. I really don't know if or when I will get back to India, but I think the language is really cool. And if I do make it back, it would probably help out a lot. I kind of feel like India defeated me the first time. The tough parts overwhelmed the beauty. But there's still so much to see and learn.

Random cloud photo from the other day.