Where wander leads

Growing up in a small midwestern college town meant child parts in the theater, sneeking around back-stage, playing in woods, riding horses bareback into rivers, building rooms with stick walls and moss floors and secret warnings of invaders in the woods. Our crude versions of bird calls alerted each other to 'hide your (mulberry painted) body & spear on the ground immediately!'

Childhood meant roaming barefoot & free -- except in school or stores where we had to wear shoes and couldn't just take things.    

Before I started training in martial arts, I spent 6 months in an Ashram in Tamil Nadu, India. After a cold, dark shower, I'd wake my body on the flat roof balcony of the guest house while the dawning sky rapidly filled with energetic little birds. At daylight, I danced gratitude to the ocean as squatting fisherman preparing nets and traps stayed busy on the beach. By 7:30, I was sitting samadhi in the heart of the ashram. Sitting has always been last on my list, something I've had to prepare for. But that concrete courtyard stayed cool in the rising heat as white haired sandaled men walked past gossamer saried women who were lacing The Mother’s tomb with tropical flowers brought in each morning from the Ashram's farm.    

As a young woman I lived in my first martial arts school. It was a loft that we tore down to the brick in NYC's east village. We were on second avenue above a Jewish Deli with gruff men in smudged white aprons. Inside the red brick walls of the dojo space we found sealed wooden doors in heavy wooden framing. I stained those alcoves deep brown then hung Sensei's lighter wood carvings inside. Those 3D pictures visually popped & yet never once got knocked in to — not even when the floor was filled with sparring.

Besides the woods & the ashram, that loft dojo was where I learned about maintaining privacy in public-private spaces. And how worth learning it was. So much happens in places centered around an art or a devotion. The people who come are lively, intriguing & connected. While you, the caretaker, get to invisibly set the stage, close the curtain and then ponder what’s left that has resonated.

Creating & being in sacred spaces has always settled my restless soul. Thus I’ve dreamed of creating an inclusive & enhancive public space. Throughout my life, making the place that I live in healthier & more beautiful has been my way of staying grounded. While this place, of everywhere I’ve been, has returned the favor to me 10-fold. How could I not want to share that with others?

Yes, I feel terribly fortunate to be the care-taker here. It's the monk life that I've always returned to. Every time that I return from my as yet unabatable wandering the clear air and tall trees light up for me as if to say "you're home".  

But what I covet most is something that I cannot keep. My hope is that people with similar yearnings will come & share this place. My hope is that they bring something with them—a broom made from natural materials, a rock that has spoken— but more to the point— let them bring a pause in time in which to become more healthy, real & beautiful.