P-L-A-N-(E)-S

I have never really been let down by spontaneity/intuition and will not let the universe prove me otherwise.

The song remains the same.

I can write nothing new.
Nothing is new,
Nothing.

Our understanding of the events and words we are subjected to is what changes.
Words I have heard a hundred times before still floor me when used in the right context.
I have this epiphany all over again which I swear I knew before.
I am that very gold fish that Ani Difranco talks about in her song, with no memory for the little plastic castle. I am like sysyphus pushing that boulder up a mountain. I am have a history which repeats. I am a broken record. I am words. I am action and reaction. I am evolution. I am human. I will die just like everyone else but I am not worried because the memory of me will live on forever.
I have never learned anything new, because everything i know was inside of me already I just keep being reminded of it, rediscovering the irrelevance of direction.


Its like searching so hard for some new way to do or say something when you realize...
what you need is always with you.


so many ways to say the same things.
So many people with the same goals, only to be confused by words and stories and the illusion of linear movement.

What I have is with me.
What I know is inside of me.

What time is it?
Where am I?

Rock Climbing.

I was in denial for such a long time.

Not unlike all the other good things that have come my way.
Take vegetables, rest days, family and all the other aspects of my life I denied myself the pleasure of just enjoying for so long.

But climbing really has taken over my life.

I am lying here, looking at a blue sky and feeling the rush of warm ?march? air rush my face as a freight train cuts its path through my neighboorhood. I call it my neighborhood because i think I am there more than I am home right now.
I just finished an 8 hour day of teaching kids to climb and all i can think about is how amazing the session will be tonight. Back in I go.


It began innocently enough.
I am good at it and I realized that when I was 11 years old.
A gymnastics bred child, slightly underweight shows up at camp with no fear for heights and enthusiasm for strong, dangling, flexible moves. I did not hurt that, as a lightweight, I was easily hoisted up the wall in competitions and races. I was quickly dubbed the designated climbing member of any team.

But through the past 11 years I have still been unable to fully accept and appreciate what climbing has offered me. It is the lifestyle, the mindset, the physical power and the accomplishment and the friends that I have yet to find anywhere else, and yet I am still watching myself skirt a headfirst dive in, telling myself there is something better out there for me.

But when I think that my favorite place on earth is a mountain in Alabama.

My best job I have ever done was as a volunteer president at a climbing gym.


My post grad adventure was a road-trip to all the main climbing spots in NA.

The first time i smiled in Canmore this summer was in the Vsion.

And that quite frankly I am currently working, STAYING in toronto just to continue and progress a community I respect more than I know.



well I'll be damned.
Maybe its time i woke up and smelled the sweaty chalk balls and bad foot odour.

Excerpts from septembers Journal.

Start video-

Anna- “ So here we are, day 3 on the North Coast trail… we have been hiking for over 10 kilometers today and there is a bear in front of us… Lauren is going to light off the bear banger… do it dude, up in the air, up in the air…

( bear banger goes off)

Anna- … There it goes… and the bears gone.”…. Oh wait, it's not gone….”

(pause…)

Lauren and Anna- “ HEY BEAR, hey bear, hey bear hey bear….!”

Welcome to the next two hours of my life. Yelling at the top of my lungs, at a very large, very close and very confused animal. The same animal which less than a week ago would have caused Anna and myself to swerve across the Trans Canada Highway and join the traffic jam of tourists taking a chance at paparazzi...
Life has changed since last week.

Teacher.

YOU.

This is the most important message I can think to leave with you, Troubled Child.
You are the most interesting person you will ever meet, and the only person you will ever have such an intimate chance to get to know.
So cherish it.

Never accept anything as a rational explanation, because rationale is what you make it. Its just a silly rule, its a reason someone else gave you or you gave yourself to make things easier. Always wonder. Wonder why you act the way you do, why you choose the things you do, why you say what you do, wonder how your own mind works, why it pulls forth anger and sadness and happiness when it does.

If you are wondering why others like or don't like you, stop focusing on what they are doing and focus on what you are doing, how you are reacting to your environment. Maybe then you will find out that you are in fact so fascinating that you will forget about the rest.

It is peculiar. I believe most of the time that you can only truly love and care for another person when you have a firm grasp on yourself and your ways and thoughts.

So really, maybe you can be happy.
Maybe you can feel the love that you have.

But only when you treat yourself as the amazing creature you really are.

You were right when you told me that it is all about respect today.
It's a shame you can say words that you really don't seem to understand yet though.
It's a shame that any of us can,
I have been saying words for years and I am only now realizing how many of them I never really heard or bothered to really think about.

The only real folk in this world are the ones who embrace their actions and reactions for what they are without rationalizing them.


...Now do as I say, not as I do.

Zombies.

Yep,
Thats right.

Last night I dreamt about zombies.
I am 22 years old and I had a nightmare so bad that i woke up and lay petrified in bed for over an hour, nearly getting up the courage to go wake up my parents.
Fuckin right.

What prompts that kind of imagination?
I haven't seen a good zombie movie in years.
I suppose this dream was loosely based on "I am legend" though.

I remember a few friends met me in a parking lot of a grocery store. We tied our dog up outside and drove right up to the door of the store, knowing it would be dark soon and we would need to make a run for the car to avoid the zombies. Once we were in I realized if we were really planning on coming back out when zombies were a possibility, I should go get the dog and bike and set up the car so we could really just make a run for it.

I went out to grab the dog and thought to myself "I am glad i did!" because the dog was tied near the woods. On my way back inside I saw one zombie following us though the forest. I realized the sun was going down. I started rushing for the safety of the sliding doors of the grocery store but it was too late... The Zombie was in front of us. I kicked him and punched but it seemed useless...He laughed at me demonically and I realized me and the dog were about to die.
Then,in that desperate moment, I woke up.

Waking up terrified and helpless really doesn't get much better with age. I tried like hell to go back to sleep and continue the dream, lucidly... I tried to imagine kicking the zombies ass and making a 'light brigde' to the car so we could getting inside and being safe. Unfortunately my mind wouldn't let me....It kept reminding me that I was making it up, not following the rules... I technically never defeated the zombie outside the store and let's be serious... zombies can open car doors, by the time I got everyone inside, the undead would have broken a window.

So instead I lay there... trying to convince myself I was safe but some anti-logic function in my head kept reminding me I was laying in a dark room and zombies like the dark.



What's up with that?
I am 22.
grow up.

I can't wait

This statement no longer means that I am anxious for the future. I am here, the adventure is now. There is no limbo, there is no plateau.

March 6 2010

Lessons of the week:
1)
listo!
Si Se puede escalade mas arriba!!!!
morado!!
deje van!!!!

... Teaching Spanish/Portuguese children to climb is worth its weight in gold.

2)
Breathing and awareness will take much more time than previously anticipated.

3)
Nothing is random and nothing is ordinary.

March on!

So It has been a while since I last posted and I realized I really should type something.
But when I sat down and my pen hit the paper it stopped right there. ( yes, i still use those instruments.. pens, paper.)

It is not that i haven't been thinking, because THAT is still foreign for me. I can only sigh and be jealous of all those can meditate and consolidate their thoughts, breathe and move forward. However I am definitely working on it. Solider of peace? nono. that doesn't make any sense... but a warrior?

I am trying to write a column for the globe and mail about the world and how cold it has become. I want to talk about the human revolution and how we need to start talking to one another, we need to be reminded that we are part of this world and so much more importantly this world is part of us. I am listening and watching more than trying to break things down into words... which doesn't make for good phone interviews, believe me.

I am trying to embrace the concept of peace. Because i don't think i ever really defined that word for myself.

Where are you? Here.
What time is it? Now.

Okay continue.