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• My Life is Turning Out EXACTLY as Planned! How About YOU?

  

  I’ve always envied the type of person who knows exactly what they want out of life, and takes every logical step to achieve their goals. Say someone who wants to be a doctor. They’d study science in high school, make a conscious choice to go to a college that is acclaimed for pre med, and then spend 7+ years at medical school / a residency. After all that focused effort would then earn them a position as a doctor, and they’d maintain that career with satisfaction for the next 40+ years. You never see a doctor switching their attention mid way, and saying “I’m sick of proctology, I’m gonna do heart surgery now instead.” NO! Once a doctor commits to finger-blasting assholes for their life, that’s what they do – and they don’t question it.

  But if I’d wanted to be a doctor, this would’ve been the path I’d have taken. Study drawing in high school, go to a college that specializes in poetry, drop out of said college then attend another college that’s famous for it’s French literature program – but graduate with a degree in Confucius. I would then move to an ashram in India to write my dissertation on crowd psychology, but instead make a movie about what dirt tastes like. That would be where I would meet a contortionist who I fall madly in love with, but leave him to become a trapeze artist. After this great heartbreak of my own induction I’d get my pilot’s license, but end up driving a school bus – all the while insisting that I probably could do your brain surgery because I have been training to be a doctor after all.

  I feel like I’m one of those people that life just happens to. An opportunity arises, and I see where it takes me. If I look back at the last 20 years of my life, there have been many incarnations of the different people I have been. The model, the failed model, the sports fanatic, the philosopher, the magazine owner, the bartender, the political activist, the event planner, the businesswoman, the restaurateur, the professional skate boarder, the reality TV producer… non of which obviously took off for me.

  Why can’t I be like, “I wanna be lawyer!” and then become a lawyer? That plan is so reasonable, yet so beyond me. Or like those gymnasts in Romania who know when they are sperm that they’re going to the Olympics. When I was a kid I wanted to be a psychiatrist and I didn’t even become that. I don’t know what that says about me, but maybe it says I needed a psychiatrist!

  The best things in my life are things that I didn’t plan at all. I never wanted to be a parent, and was even told by the doctors that I could never have children because of the pituitary tumor in my brain – looks like those “doctors” should have studied Voltaire and had more affairs with circus folk am I right?! WHAT DO THEY KNOW!

  In truth I feel super corny saying Munch is the best thing in my life because I don’t mean it like you think I do. It’s not like the love I feel for her is unparalleled to anything else or she has given my life a meaning it never previously had. Of course you love your kid and they are meaningful, but I’m not hanging my relationship to my identity on her back – because she’s still pretty weak. Like she can’t even give me a shoulder ride. It’s more that every once in a while I witness her innate kindness, which is by far the most inspiring aspect of my life because her authenticity gives me hope for civilization.

  For instance the other day we were leaving my friend’s house, and I was carrying a bunch of stuff while trying to slip my socked foot into my Birkenstock. Munch observed my effort, and instead of saying “Mom, this fashion statement of socks and sandals is such a clothing crime that you might as well tattoo “I give up” on your forehead,” she instead bent down, and helped me with my shoe. I didn’t ask her to do that, but she instinctively wanted to help my struggle – not aesthetically but practically.

  I have these moments with The Munch where I am so emotionally moved by her sense of humanity. This isn’t something she was necessarily taught, but rather a natural disposition that drives her. When I am faced with these instances, I’m over come with the belief that maybe we are all going to be okay. That perhaps mankind does have a chance to evolve into beings of higher consciousness? But then I see Ted Cruz try to hold his wife’s hand, and the nihilism takes over yet again.

  The other part of my life that gives me immense joy is my dance studio. Now again, I never planned for that, it just fell into my lap and I happened to plié into it. DANCE JOKE! Amazing work their Toni. It’s not like I’m the best dancer on planet earth. Far from it! But choreographing and creating feeds my spirit body in the most profound way and I am eternally grateful for the community we have created. Without my studio there would be no reason for me to change from pajama sweatpants into my daytime dancing sweatpants – it’s my reason for getting up in the morning.

  Then there is my career – my writing / movie making ambitions. This actually is something I’m trying to plan out, but let me tell you, it’s an eternal effort with zero potential for satisfaction. Even if something good does happen, it’s only good for that brief moment until it’s not good enough anymore and I have a new goal. No matter what success I have, it is clouded by the reality that it’s such small step towards a totally insane goal. My ambitions are outlandish, and the probability is basically impossible. Yet I keep moving towards them because I can’t stop myself. Yet the insanity of this path is looming over me, and the only way to deal is by fatalistically not caring while at the same time passionately wanting.

  It’s not that my life is bad, but it also doesn’t feel within my control. Everything I desperately want I never really get, and things that I didn’t know I wanted – I do? All I know is that when I watch NOVA and see archeologists digging in dirt for 70 hours a week looking for traces of the Vikings in North America, they seem more content. Like they understood from an early age where they were heading, and went there. Or quantum physicists who talk about string theory. They just seem like there life went exactly as planned!

  Maybe I would have been better off if I’d lived my childhood dream of becoming a psychiatrist!

  What about you? Is your life turning out like you’d planned!?

  

  May 5, 2016 • Musings • Views: 3667

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• My Life is Totally Meaningless… NBD

  

  The other day I came home and went upstairs to Munch’s room to see what she wanted for dinner. I sat on her bed, and she told me she just needed a minute to finish making a bunk bed for her dolls before she could decide. I figured that seemed like a reasonable request, and decided to be patient – like a good parent. But then I realized I had left my phone downstairs, and had a mild anxiety attack.

  The Munch had taken a small stool, and turned it upside down so the four legs were facing up. She then took a wire-framed doll bed, and balanced it on top of these precarious posts. Once the top bunk was secured, she would make the bed with her little doll mattresses, blankets, and pillows.

  It was usually the last pillow that would set everything awry. The weight of the tiny materials would undoubtedly disrupt the stability of the wire bed on the stool. Rather then rebalancing the bed with the mattress, blanket, and pillows still intact – The Munch would take the entire thing apart and do it all over again.

  I watched this process for about a half an hour. Balancing the bunk bed, making the bed, accidently disrupting the bed, starting over.

  As I sat there I realized that what I was watching was a metaphor for my artistic process. The perfection of this bunk bed is totally unimportant task to everyone but Munch. She is the only person that this bed matters to, and yet she is treating said bed like it is the most vital thing in the world.

  It doesn’t matter if anyone else will see this bed. She sees it. Therefor she has to make it exactly the way she wants it, even though the result is utterly futile.

  The Munch making and re-making this bed is the physical manifestation of the insanity of my existence. At that moment I realized that my life is utterly meaningless. My artistic method only holds value to me, just like the bunk bed only has value to The Munch. It became so painfully clear that creativity exists in a vacuum – and the only way to release the pressure is admit that you are the one both sucking and blowing hot air.

  Just as I was about to weep tears of sorrow about the senselessness of life I realized “holy fuck Toni didn’t you also eat weed chocolate about an hour ago – and is that maybe contributing to your thought process?” But who knows?

  

  

  February 9, 2016 • Mommy Mind, Musings, Playing • Views: 3909

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• Can You Define Spirituality?

  

  What is spirituality?  No seriously.  What is it?  People often say they are not religious but they are spiritual.  Yet that feels really vague to me with such a broad spectrum of possibilities.  Even my own understanding seems convoluted to myself. Am I still considered spiritual if I worship the dark lord Ungoolu and believe my child is an immaculate conception from the venom of his black seed? But don’t worry it didn’t hurt.  It was only a little prick.

  When I was growing up I went to Catholic Church every Sunday until I was 15 years old.  My father’s mother was very religious, and it was important to her that my brother and I attended mass, so my dad made sure he honored her wishes.  But neither of my parents every told me what to believe.  They just brought me along and exposed me to it.

  My dad was also a professor of ancient Greece, so I was very familiar with their Gods and the stories of Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite and the rest.  So herein laid my conflict as a 6-year old trying to wrap my head around God and religion.  I couldn’t understand why the religion of the Ancient Greeks was now so commonly considered “myth” where the modern religions were said to be “truth.”  What made one a fable and the other one fact?  Why were the gods of the past relegated to fairytale?

  I didn’t like the idea that one religion was right another was wrong.

  My other issue was around the concept of eternity.  My grandmother would tell me that when I died I would go either to heaven or hell forever.  I don’t know about you, but that concept freaked me the fuck out.  Eternity.  Forever.  Still gives me the heebie-jeebies.  I didn’t want to be in either place forever.  Even being in heaven for eternity was a terrifying concept.  So I asked my dad if he ever felt this way.

  Child Toni: “Dad did the concept of forever scare you when you were a kid?”

  My dad: “Of course.  It still scares me.”

  Child Toni: “I don’t want to be dead forever.  I really don’t want it happening for that long.  Why can’t it just be over? What does the after life have to be so long?”

  My dad: “Well, the idea of eternity in the western mind is very linear.  Like a line that just extends forever in one direction.  But the Greeks thought of eternity as cyclical.  So they had this concept called Telos, which means coming full circle.  That always makes me feel better.  To think of time as a circle not a line.”

  Child Toni: “Okay.  Can I have fruity pebbles for breakfast?”

  My dad: “Maybe another time.”

  Even though I had these fundamental questions that made me feel unsettled, I would go to church every Sunday, and I would think.  I would contemplate the concepts of life and death.  I wondered about mortality constantly, but never felt like I was getting any closer to comprehending it.  And then when I actually lost someone I truly loved and cared about I finally understood.

  When I was 20 my best friend died, and it broke me.  She was an angel of a person, and the tragedy crushed my soul.  But I realized that if I still let myself love her, that we would still be connected.  There was an energetic tie that kept us together even if she was no longer living on the planet.   I allowed myself to love her just as much as I ever did and even though I missed her more than anything, I still felt close to her.  I had to let go of the expectation I would ever see her again in a way that my human mind understood, but I would forever hold on to how much she meant to me.

  And then spirituality started to make sense… even if in a very esoteric way.  Thinking in terms of love, energy, vibration, and connection.  It was around the time that my friend died that I started getting interested in Yoga. And through my physical practice came the introduction to the philosophical and spiritual elements.  Although I have never actively studied eastern religion, over the years I have had many experiences with meditation and chanting.  And it is through those practices that have helped me find a small semblance of inner peace.

  It is when I am meditating or chanting that I can turn off that voice in my head that keeps chirping.  The connection to “Godliness” or “spirituality” I think can only truly be felt when the chatter of the ego is quieted.  It’s hard to have a spiritual moment while your ego is saying in your mind’s ear “I think yellow suede boots would make my butt look tighter.”

  So I meditate and chant to help quiet my inner mind.  But I realize that I don’t really even know what I am saying half the time.  I bring The Munch to Kirtan where we chant in Sanskrit, and I could be singing how “I want a pigeon to peck my armpits” for all I know.  But I go because I believe there is healing in mediation and chanting.  That it connects you to the vibration of the universe.  Through those channels you can find moments of genuine noiselessness in your mind in heart.  It is in that silence where the truth is hidden.

  The Munch loves going to Kirtan and all the other new-agey things I drag her to.  She sings along, plays with her babies, and emulates the weird dancing of hippies swaying their bodies around while failing their limbs.  But hopefully through these experiences she will contemplate the greater mysteries of existence and one day find her own beliefs.

  (Notice that Munch is wearing her lady bug bathing suit…)

  

  May 22, 2013 • 2 years old, Adventures, Education, Mommy Mind, Musings • Views: 9134

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