I have moved to Brooklyn, where I’m living in a beautiful, historic home in the unique neighborhood of Prospect Park South. The house was built in 1903, and in 1997 the New York Times real estate section devoted an entire article to it, though sadly the photographs are no longer up (here’s one). The owner, Gloria Fischer, is a wonderful presence; she’s in her 70s but just as on-the-go as I am, which is really saying something. I’m taking care of her labradoodle, Grover, and she also has two birds, one of whom is a talking parrot named Latke. I can’t get over how much higher the quality of food is in this neighborhood than both Astoria and the West Village, where I’ve previously lived in NY.

I busted my knee up so badly on the way up the walk when bringing in one of my suitcases on the day I moved in that it resulted in my first trip to the emergency room in my entire life. Mitsu says this is yet another reminder to be more careful when things are going well. The house is now christened in blood, and I’m healing up well.

I got a lot of great feedback on my draft Statement, namely that it’s too long and personal, which I already knew. The new draft is under way.

I have been talking with Heather Anne and Mitsu about their startup, The Lived Body, which I’m really excited to help out with in any way I can. It’s not just that I’m excited about the project, though it really is one of the most exciting projects I’ve ever heard of, and it could one day totally change the way both you and I live our lives. It’s also that I’m excited (yes, now, in 2010) about the whole idea of startups.

I feel like this should have always been obvious to me, that there are smart, motivated people out there starting their own companies, building things, making things happen, doing work not because they want to get paid but because they want to give something to the world. But it actually took me a very long time to approach work in this way. This is the same issue I was hinting at in my statement. For such a long time, I was in the lab, doing science, writing papers, having some success, etc, but I always coded it as “my job,” something I was only doing in order to finish my BA, or in order to afford to live in the Village, or in order to please my boss or my family or someone else. I almost always completely refused to admit that I actually enjoyed my work, or that it was in any way offered as a gift to others. Taking this year off and coming back, and being so very, very glad to be back, makes me realize that most of that was just a story I told myself, and under there I actually do have the intrinsic motivation I always felt that I lacked. So it is with Heather Anne and Mitsu, who are both such brilliant people. The very fact that this can even happen, that like-minded and talented folks can find each other, often from far-off places, connect, and collaborate, with real results that benefit society at large, is such a miracle. It gives me hope for us all, even in dark times.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” — Marianne Williamson

I have heard the above so many times, most often being read by a teacher while I was lying in savanasa at the end of a class at Tranquil Space in Washington, DC, where I practiced yoga and worked as Creative Director Kimberly Wilson‘s assistant from 2002 to 2003. I was moved to tears by it the first time I heard it, when I was 19, though I didn’t really understand why I was so upset.

This month, inspired by my friend Meggy Wang, I signed up for a community project called 21.5.800. The goal was to write 800 words a day and to practice yoga 5 days a week for 21 days. Since writing and yoga are both practices I’ve found fruitful but have neglected in recent years, this seemed perfect. I fell far short of 800 words a day and 5 yoga classes a week. But I filled an entire (small) notebook, rediscovered my headstand, started updating this blog again, and, thanks also to some intense conversations, I realized why that Marianne Williamson poem, general enough to almost be trite, inspired such a strong reaction in me.

I don’t know how to say this. I want very much to tell you this secret. It’s not a secret, but the secret is: whatever it is you’re most ashamed of, your deepest darkest fear, your worst flaw, your worst habit, the secret terrible thing about you that you’d rather die than see revealed, THAT thing, yes THAT, is going to save you. Look at it until your eyes bleed and you think your heart is going to combust, bring it out into the open, because the passageway is there. Dig a way out through the bottom to the ocean, Rumi says in my favorite poem.

Something lucky happened to me; someone caught me. Worst habits are not easy to mask, so of course this was not the first person to notice or to complain about mine, but this time was different. There was a suspended moment in which someone I love and respect was articulating my worst characteristic to me so clearly that there could be no mistaking the fact that he had seen it, that the full extent of my selfishness and self-absorption and hypocrisy had been uncovered and it was out there, plain as day. I was being called out, and the shock of it was so great that I was neither angry nor hurt but simply stunned. This wasn’t just some paranoid idea I had about myself. It was true. The nightmare was true. I had acted selfishly, I had hidden things about myself out of shame, I had considered only my own interests, my own feelings, and I had really hurt someone who loved me. (I had, in fact, hurt many people over the years.) I was horrified.

I know what guilt feels like, I have a lot of experience with guilt, and what I felt in this moment was something altogether different, something like a knife actually piercing my heart. Yes, I was crying, I was sorry, but true repentence isn’t an apology, or a confession, or a resolution to make it right, or anything having to do with words, or with fixing it, or with the past. It has to do with seeing.

I was sitting there, horrified, my heart out on a platter with it’s black snake writhing around in it, uncovered, being seen. But the strange thing was, as much as I was appalled, as soon as my friend, the one I had hurt, the one who called me out, was able to see my bad habit clearly enough, this bad habit I had so desperately wanted to hide, he could see not only what I had done, but the causes for what I had done. He could see that I was selfish because I thought I had nothing to give.  He could see that my harmful actions stemmed from a belief that I didn’t have enough power to cause any harm. That I withheld help because I thought I was incapable of helping. That I grasped and I begged and I pleaded and I took more than I reciprocated because I thought I was impoverished. That I conducted myself as if I were powerless, even though I already had the power. Power to help, power to hurt. I had power and I was terrified of it. And my bad habit, my selfishness, the thing that hurt him, and shamed me, was directly linked to my greatest treasure.  My worst habit stemmed from thinking that I needed to hide. My worst habit stemmed from was refusing to acknowledge my own worth, and the responsibility that comes along with it. My worst habit held its own solution within it. And, because it was seen, and I was seen, and because I saw too, I was already, in that very instant, forgiven.

In the place where I grew up, the deep South, shame and secrets are palpable, the land is saturated in them, and the land, the beautiful, blood-soaked land, is everything. In every family there are stories that everyone knows but no one is allowed to tell, and everyone longs for faded beauty and honor and dignity and glory. But that dignity, that special, unique, specific beauty is so tightly intermingled with, even sustained by, a past filled with such unspeakable abomination and cruelty, a past which is still present. We learn to take good care of the skeletons in our closets, to polish them by hand. We pay more attention to our skeletons than to other people. We become quiet and ashamed.

The structure is intricate, there are many hidden chambers, the past layered on the present layered on the future, the beauty layered on the horror. The habit layered on the cliche layered on the true insight. I don’t know how to say this, but please, please, look. Look at that snake that you think you are, the one you want to cut up into a million tiny pieces and bury so deeply no one will ever find them. You don’t have to believe the story. You just have to see it. Right there, right in that urge you have to take the sword to the snake. Everything you need to know is right there.

This morning, I was thinking about death. Death in every second, it kept repeating in my mind. I’m sure I heard that somewhere at some point, or read it. But there’s something that happens sometimes, with things I’ve heard or read or thought a million times. The million and first time, something clicks, something I already knew, but didn’t know I knew.

(This is what it means to say that a prerequisite for enlightenment is enlightenment. There’s no learning anything new, no adding anything that wasn’t already there.)

Sometimes I find things I wrote when I was very young, and am amazed at what I “understood” then. I had no idea I knew this then, I’ll think to myself, that I even *thought* about this issue then. But the truth is, I didn’t even have the same mind to read my own writing when I wrote it, however many years ago. Even the meaning of my own words is constantly changing. I don’t know what I know. I don’t know what I knew then, and I don’t know what I know now. I’m not really the one doing the knowing.

I’ve never really been afraid of dying. Maybe this is because I’m young, but it’s not because I’m fearless. There are some things I’m terrified of, particularly hurting other people. I never learned how to drive when I was teenager, not because I was afraid of getting in a wreck and dying, but because I was afraid of getting in a wreck and killing someone. I still haven’t learned, and I don’t want to. Everyone is always telling me how much fun driving is, how I would feel so free and independent. But my independence isn’t worth that much to me.

But then, this morning, I was thinking, death in every second. What if I really kept that in mind, all the time? It is true; I could die. Any second. Any breath could be the last one. I have no idea what could happen. But living in the light of this is not being afraid, it’s being awake. Death in every breath is what makes life precious and beautiful. Without death, life would have no meaning. It’s so obvious, but this is a practical thing, a practice. If I could regularly practice thinking of each breath as the last one, I’m certain I wouldn’t waste as much time.

It is true that time is an illusion, but it’s still possible to waste time, I think, and it’s a real tragedy. A paradox.

There are things that matter. Where you take that last breath matters. Who you take it with matters. I know what it is to breathe into someone else, and it is significant. We can breathe into others, we can breathe for others. Others can breathe into and for us.

I moved from NYC to Portland, Oregon, recently. Portland is a place that can’t really be explained unless its been experienced. It’s a cool city, yes, and cool people live here, but there’s more than that. There is a web the connects everything, Indra’s net, the Spirit, some sort of gossamer shimmering something. It’s always there, and sometimes we can see it. We’ll often notice some strange coincidence that makes it visible, even if only briefly. There is something about Portland that makes the web easier to see. Just walking down the street, browsing in an antique store, talking to strangers at a cafe or on the bus, you can see the connections. And everyone who has lived here for some time knows it, even though they might not know they know it. You might ask someone here what he loves about Portland, and he might say any number of things. One of the people I asked recently said, There’s a lot of grace in Portland.

I smiled at him. It’s really true. I want to stay here as long as I can, I keep telling all my friends. But it’s enough that I’m here now, possibly taking my last breath, in Portland, right now.