Letting Go of Everything but Bearded Gnomes

So I'm sitting here, it's Sunday night--two nights away from being on a plane headed over the Pacific Ocean and despite my current fog of sleepiness I felt the need to quickly encapsulate what's been going on in my life, since I fear I will have little time to do so over the next day or so.

Meet Knut


So this little fellow is Knut (pronounced Knewt)




Knut has very begrudgingly (because I imagine gnomes to be grumpy little buggers), agreed to come with me on my trip around the world. He is a bit of a homebody, so this trip will be quite a stretch for him but I think he's willing to step outside of his comfort zone a bit. ;)

In any case, you are sure to see him pop up in a few pictures. Like this one--

Can you spot him?

Two weeks ago, Knut,  Kaija--my long time friend who recently came fresh off the plane from two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cambodia and I decided to dress up as tourists and explore Seattle.

So we did a few things--







This was perhaps, the quickest and most efficient/visually distracting way to say that Kaija and I had an absolutely fabulous time when she visited. We even came home after a long day of Seattle explorations to consume a fabulous double-fisting of beer and tea.




Really, what more could you need?

What I really want to say is, despite my current packing induced exhaustion--and I do apologize if this post is a bit chaotic--I feel blessed to have reconnected with an old friend and very lucky to have a fabulous travel companion--even if he is a short bearded man with a large bulbous nose.

Letting Go

Tibetan Buddhists have this tradition of creating this unbelievably intricate and gorgeous sand paintings called mandalas. A few years ago, I had the honor of witnessing the creation of such a mandala during college. A group of monks took over a whole wing of our library and began meticulously creating a visual masterpiece which I will never forget. It looked a bit like this--

(thank you google images).

To these monks, destruction of the mandala is just as integral as the creation of it. After it has been completed and is absolutely stunning, the monks who created it, go back and sweep the sand together, demolishing the once pristine order and complexity of the painting.

When I first witnessed this in college, I had a massive emotional response. What a painful truth (at least to us Westerners) that everything that we love, hate, make, and do is ephemeral. EVERYTHING. I've realized stability is but an illusion and once that was accepted, a freedom, love and reverence for the universe began to grow in me.

That's a long introduction to describe what these past few weeks have been--letting go, and acceptance.

First it was my car. It's a rather long story and I wont bore you with the details but basically I was not able to to sell it and was forced to give it away for parts in exchange for a fraction of what I would have sold it for.

Then in an unexpected turn of events, I found out that I needed to completely move out of my apartment this weekend--resulting in the donating of 90% of my clothes and all of my furniture.

I have said my good-byes to some of the dearest people in my life in these past few days.

Of course, I expected all of this to be painful and difficult. Surprisingly, I have experienced the absolute opposite.

I'm not sure that I've ever felt this calm, centered and inside the eye of the hurricane in my entire life.


I couldn't possibly think of a better way to start out my trip.

My lesson--breath and release in the knowing that everything in this flow of life, creation and its opposite, is all perfect.

Until next time, tally-ho!