Hmm.  So this is the first whole summer I have been a) without my family around and b) not in Portland.  Instead, I am in Appleton, living out of bounds of my school campus, and experiencing the town itself without the taint of seeing it through my town-that-my-school-is-in perspective.  I work a bunch at a cafe, and have pretty much come to the conclusion that working full-time in the food/customer service industry is something I never want to do with my life down the road...inspired to be onto bigger things forever.

What else?  Its a weird summer.  There is no doubt I have learned a lot, met a lot of new fabulous people, and done a great job of having new experiences.  One friend in particular is definitely giving me a new experience, to me I think he is on the road to prophethood; I think through his words and his intensity and his fiery inner beauty he is going to make a world a better place.  I think we teach each other a lot of things too, which I especially love. 

I also have gotten very into my crafting---carving blocks and printing them, making wire rings, collecting test tiles and can tabs and washers and junk I find on the ground, sewing, crocheting weird things, altogether creating things inspired by my imagination.  Its my destressor.  Mmmmm.

Finally, in a few days I am going back to Portland, namely to see my sister and my best friend--- and the boy who is still the love of my life from last summer.  I am amazed by this boy's wiseness, by the ease of this commitment (meaning, it just feels sooo natural), by the fact that we have stuck together and even with the distance fallen even harder in love, and in even more mature ways than the young love that was the seed of all this true true true true love that we share...ohh life.

Perhaps I will fill you in after all has played itself out, although I've found that I cant guarantee that.

Freedom is honestly the most important thing in life for me, my underlying hidden tenet to approaching reality and everyday life.  In my understanding of the word, that is.

Freedom to me is freedom to be oneself, freedom to yell, freedom to burn, freedom to look at the constructs of society and be able to pull oneself away from it all while still living functionally within it, freedom to speak one's mind, freedom to fall in love, freedom to feel the raw pain of something lost; freedom to do what you want, freedom in not being attached to what you want.

Freedom to laugh and love without negativity conflicting, freedom to cry and bawl when it is necessary...freedom to not care what others think of you, freedom to respect all life, most especially my own.  Freedom to live my life, with ease and peace, no matter what I am doing (freedom to know that it doesnt matter what I do, because I am alive for it all, which is a gift beyond itself), and when I feel like it, with ecstatic explosions of energy and groove-time.

Mostly freedom to me though, is the ability to lay against a tree with the sun setting in front of me, and feel that this is all I need, all that life is, and all that I am.  Freedom to me is just the essence of truly be-ing.  Living simply, living easily, slipping in and out of this flow of life.  Freedom.

I believe that people want to feel love more than anything else.  Some try to find it through money, or physical attractiveness, or through relationships, or through religion, or...anything else.

But I really believe that underneath that umbrella of wanting to feel love, it means one also wants to feel: respected, heard, appreciated, special, and HAPPY.  This can mean searching for it outside of oneself or within oneself, it does not necessarily have to involve others for justification, although it often does.

So the summer is gone and over, to recap.  I danced, I smiled, I laughed tears out of my eyes, and, I fell so very very very in love in the freest way, in the best way. 

I have been back at school for three months now.  I am living in the environmentally aware house on my campus, full of beautiful people with beautiful minds and hearts. 

What has reminded to start this blog up again is that I have started a new term at school and created my own classes, one where I am learning satipatthana (vipassana meditation) and one where my teacher and I are both learning mindfulness-based cognitive therapy together.

 It had been so long since I had meditated that I did not realize what I had lost.  I have started it up again and I feel this crazy clarity, this simple contentment in the core of my being, and this appreciation for being alive, and especially an appreciation for being young.  I have so much life ahead of me!  Absolutely crazy.  Things are coming back into focus.  And it is really, really beautiful.

I promise I will keep you filled in.

Also, anyone interested in the satipatthana sutta, I recommend going to dharmaseed.org and listening to one of Joseph Goldstein's talks on it.  Or any of his talks.  Or any of the talks on the site.

Have a beautiful beauuutiful day!

I layed in the grass last night at the park by my house with K, we were laughing so hard that my eyes were spilling out tears and I couldnt sit upright,
trying to figure out how to kiss properly when you cant get yourself to stop smiling,
mutual compliments, sharing stories,
being told I am the funniest person you've ever met (probably because I say weird shit and point out weird things),
that I am easily your fave person (and he's up there in my top 5 too),
whispering to each other "you're so beautiful" and meaning it inside your bones,
whispering "I love you" and meaning it with all the benevolence contained in me,
me telling you why I like your sensual nature (not to mention, he's become a realllly good kisser!),
and us staring each other in the eyes in the most comfortable and smiley silence I've ever known.


Love, love, tender raw silly silly sillllllly love.  Life is a beautiful blessing.

So Im going to be honest.  I have a huge crush on a 16 year old boy right now (Im 20), and I think he is easily one of the most amazing people I have ever met--a very special and rare human being.  But obviously, let me reiterate, he is 16, and I am 20.  He and I, I would say, share a similar sort of maturity and take on the world--he is laidback and nonjudgemental and loving, but he also is free and crazy in his own way.  I dont think the age difference matters all that much when you weigh out quality of the person vs age of the person, although I would like some thoughts on the matter.  My friends, when I told them, just laughed and said, "That sounds like something you would do Angie,"  which means I know they dont care.  But does it really matter or not?  So unsure. 

But yet, so happy and I have butterflies, and I haven't gotten legitimate ones of those in awhile.

These last two weekends have been incredible.  Beyond incredible--so beautiful they could make my heart stop with a smile on my face, they could take everything I've ever learned in a classroom and push it out of my head, replacing it with bliss and laughter (idiot savant?). 

I went to the OCF last weekend, a place with the sky packed with every star in the sky, strangers who are no longer strangers after 15 seconds because everyone is so friendly, glow sticks, drum circles, firewalkers, painted breasts, and literally EVERYTHING else.  The first night I danced in the epicenter of a small drum circle, feeling like it was my world and my heartbeat (caused by all the individual heart/beats of all the drummers), feeling connected, feeling glowing and enmeshed in some kind of fluid fabric of life.  The second night I sang to a group of strangers for over an hour on a little stage, mind you it was kind of broken, I would have to fumble for a while thinking of songs, but everyone listened, everyone sang along, it was about entertaining all of us, not showing off (and mind you, I am VERY shy about singing so this was a big deal for me to be able to let go and do this). 
Why do I love this place?  Because it made me feel free.  There were no taboos here, no room for social embarassment--there was only room for mutual respect and smiles. 

And what's funny is, the week before I tried to cultivate in my head what my greatest desire was.  And I thought awhile and figured out that it was freedom--freedom to not care to the utmost degree what people think (while still being a benevolent force), freedom to take my own path and not care if it is a very unpaved one, freedom to love people and trust people to the highest degree, freedom to scream OUT LOUD.  And without realizing it, I've been working on it for years.  But these past two weekends it has started to unravel even more, the core--the reaching of my desire.

And zoobombing?  Exhilarating.  Riding down steep streets in the dark, encompassed by trees and moonlight, topping 30-40 miles per hour, feeling the wind on your face, feeling this incredible mixture of both fear and excitement, the world flying by you, the world flowing through you--AMAZING.


I LOVE LIFE.

I stumbled on this.  A neurologist with a brain tumor explains her pretty spiritual experience of having a stroke and watching her brain break down from within.  It really makes you think about how our brain works, the sense of wonder, the sense of present moment, our rationalizing/compartmentalizing faculties...how it all ties in, and the intriguing component of boundless ENERGY--which is my favorite thing, and a secret key to my own personal spiritual beliefs.



http://www. ted. com/index. php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight. html

*To have an education
*To have the plethora of best friends that I have, friends that get me, that I get, and that get life; friends that I can be myself with, friends that I have a mutual relationship with in terms of inspiring one another and making each other laugh.
*To be able to laugh at just about anything.
*That everyone has their own unique laugh.  (okay, I'll get off the laughing kick now)
*To have a sister who is my best friend and who is genuine and true to herself at such a young age, to a sister who listens to what I have to say, to a beautiful sister who looks up to me as a role model and to whom I do the same.
*To have a mother (my post-foster care guardian, technically) who cares about me to an inexplicable degree (although she manifests it in overly protective and concerned ways sometimes).
*To be able to have people in my life that are willing to listen to the truth, and speak some of their own truth with a lyrically logical essence to it.
*That my three best friends at college (including the one who graduated over a year ago) are coming to visit me in Portland, and are wanting to stay for at least two weeks.
*That this town is full of beautiful strangers that I get to talk to everyday.
*My slow growing collection of gemstones, just cause I dig their energy and I'm into that sort of thing...and I think they are pretty.
*That my father grows medical marijuana.
*That I like his fiancee, and she likes me.
*That the child I nanny for can't get enough of me, which makes our time spent together beautiful instead of trying.
*To be a niece of a beautiful girl!
*That I am still close with my best friend from 4th grade, who was there for all the hard times.
*That I am going up to Washington to see her this weekend!
*That I have crocheting hooks, books, and sewing needles.
*That my sister and I share a room, because its straight up fun.
*That I have found a beautiful park to spend my "me time" in that is close to both home and work, and that I can still have some alone time, even if it doesn't total very much it is sufficient.
*That we humans are able to be both rational and imaginative creatures. 
*That human language even exists!  (seriously, just think about how absurd it is and complex language is even though it is all based on different variations of sound and mouth movements; though some would say it was inevitable, it is still regardless some sort of a miracle.

And that is all I have for today.  Im pretty thankful for Gaia too, actually.

I hope everyone has a beautiful day, that the sun bursts through your window in the morning and gently shakes you into wakefulness with a smile on your lips and the word "love" itching to escape your throat a million times.

Today I went to the beach with family I havent seen since I was maybe 12 years old.  I marveled at their absurd beauty, at the knowledge that they embody what my judging sense would call "hick" and the dual knowledge that they are bright beautiful beings who I love so much--for their humor, their warmth, for the way they speak.  I smoked with my cousin and laid in the hot sand looking at the water and the blue mountains, feeling the hot yet cooling wind touch me in both a sensual and comforting manner, and in that moment, I felt blessed.  Blessed for family, blessed for the smell of the earth and even the density of blood borrowing mosquitos.  Thank you life for loving me the way that you do.