Soul Sunday

Jet lag is a real thing. It’s a really real thing. Despite sleeping soundly all night, I feel the need to creep back into bed. Welcome to poetry day on the blog. Any poem which I would try to write, right now, would be even more garbley goop than my original poems usually end up being. Below, this poem speaks to the joys and experiencing of traveling, better than any poem I could ever hope to write. “A journey can become a sacred thing”

For the Traveler

by John O’Donohue


Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.
 
New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.
 
When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:
 
How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.
 
When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.
 
A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.
 
May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.
 
May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1744. How do you feel about the statement, “Home is where the heart is”?

I’m Baaaaack!

I’ve missed you, my dear friends and readers! I am writing this in an entirely zombie-fied state (we got in at 3 a.m. last night), and I probably shouldn’t be writing this at all, and yet I must. I have been yearning to put down in words, so much of what I have experienced in the last ten days or so. And I have desperately missed writing the blog (and you) so very much! I will tell you now that my husband and I are back home, and we are safe and satiated. My husband and I just did a whirlwind “second honeymoon/damn, we raised four amazing kids and we still really dig each other/congratulations, and now, here’s a gift to us and for only us” trip to Italy. We had both been to Italy when we were small children, but never until now, had we experienced Italy as adults. So for all intents and purposes, it was our first trip to Italy. And Italy is everything that it is cracked up to be. And more. And more and more and more. It goes without saying that the Italian food and wine are unbeatable. (one of the first things we did when we got home was to throw away all of our atrocious, plastic bottled BOGO grocery store olive oil. The real thing arrived today from Pruneti in Florence!) The Italian people are kind, upbeat, gorgeously nose-up proud and defiant, and yet hilariously self-deprecating all at once, and hospitable, and charming and beyond accommodating. The Italians are lovely, intoxicating people. The antiquities of Italy are exhaustingly marvelous (Europe is easily the capital of sensory overload). The gelato is addicting (my effort to repeat my nightly gelato with last night’s 3 a.m. Drumstick out of box, with freezer burn, was sadly disappointing and pathetic). The Tuscan countryside seems too beautiful to be real, and when we were at the coastal area in Cinque Terre, I truly had become convinced that I had fallen into a gorgeous painting hanging on a museum wall. There were many times that I had to pinch myself, and I questioned whether I had somehow been hit by one of the many zippy Vespas that had buzzed around us like flies, and that I had somehow easily and quickly died, and luckily, I had skipped the morose parts, and suddenly, I had arrived in a charming, indulgent version of Heaven, full of beauty, pasta, gelato, bread, and wine. (yes, I do think that I deserve to go to Heaven . . . for the most part)

I have so much to digest. I have so much to recount. I have so much to be grateful for having experienced. But, I was also admittedly eager to get home to my precious, grown-up, stateside, busy with their own lives, babies. And home to my devoted fur babies. And home to my plant babies and to my own comfortable bed. And to free flowing water, and to free flowing boring American coffee, and to easily accessible restrooms of a generous size. And I was so eager to open up my precious blog, and to reconnect to the blog’s treasured, loyal readers. Thank you for allowing me my pause. Thank you for allowing me to recalibrate, and to disappear for a little bit into one of my life’s adventures. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for staying with me. I believe that it will be worth it.

I missed you. I’m back. I’ll see you tomorrow! Ciao!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Friday Travels of the Mind

-Jonah Lehrer

Good morning! You woke up to the best day of the week. Fridays are fabulous. On Fridays, I don’t discuss anything serious. I keep it light and fun. On Fridays, I discuss favorite things. Today’s favorite of mine might have you questioning my sanity (if you haven’t already). We were in a Japanese area of New Jersey earlier this week, and that is where I discovered the adorable Sonny Angels. (The Japanese people seem to have the market on all things “cute.” Remember Hello Kitty?) Sonny Angels are so popular that the one store was entirely sold out of them. Sonny Angels are little naked kewpie doll figurines that have funny little helmets made out of fruit, or animals, or sea creatures, etc. They also have a pair of adorable angel wings on the back of each Sonny Angel. The true fun of Sonny Angels is that you buy a box in one theme, such as “Sonny Angels Vegetable Series” and then you open the box up, to see which figurine you got. I ended up with the adorable “Bok Choy Sonny Angel.” I bought myself a few boxes for the glorious fun of opening them up and being surprised, and I offered to buy a couple for my 26-year-old son. He looked at me like I had three heads. He said, “Mom, if I had Sonny Angels lying around my apartment, people might call the police, thinking I am some kind of weird pedophile.” Luckily for me, I’m just some quirky middle-aged lady, so I can get away with the fun of purchasing silly little dolls. I know that you are curious to check these cutie kewpies out. Their official website is here:

https://sonnyangelusa.com/

We are back home from our travels. It was a wonderful trip and a lovely visit with our son. I feel refreshed (but also exhausted). I think that the quote above is spot on. I read once that we all are just an accumulation of our experiences: the people you meet, the books you read, the things you see. I love how travel wakes you up to new perspectives, ideas, questions, and joys. Travel always opens you up to new elements of yourself. Have a great weekend. See you tomorrow!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Roll With the Punches

John Lennon Quotes 3

It’s Groundhog Day. I’m sitting in the same spot where I was sitting yesterday, writing my blog post, in a café right across from my gate. It’s wonderful to be back to travel, but it’s not so wonderful to be back to the snafus and complications and mess-ups that often come with traveling. You take the good with the bad, I suppose. I promise to get a little more wordy towards the end of the week. See you tomorrow where I hope to be writing this from my cozy little writing nook at home!

Roll With Punches Quotes: top 24 famous quotes about Roll With Punches

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.