Berlin-aversary

Its my Anniversary. Me and Berlin met 2 years ago. And I remember in the few days before my flight having this scary, full feeling.  A huge anxiety was collecting and looming in my belly. I had already bought my ticket. The trip was planned and everything was ready to go, but I remember thinking about canceling. Really considering it. I had this feeling that if I went, everything was going to change.

And it did.

What is it about a new place-new experience that allows you to ask questions? Somehow, no matter how old you are, if you are somewhere new, you are entitled to discovery. That is probably my favorite part of Berlin so far, the freedom I have experienced even and especially in my own mind.

So if you are thinking about going somewhere, doing something different and you are afraid....I cant possibly recommend it enough. Sometimes fear is an excellent indicator of what's vital. Sometimes its a kind of "True North" to point in the direction you should go. It separates the fact the and fiction and boils it down to pure instinct. Because when you do it, when you come face to face with that thing you feared most, you discover who you really are.

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Shakin but not Stirred

I used to live in a black and white world. I believed in my heart that I had a clear understanding of what was right and wrong, good and evil. And while in some ways, while things seemed a bit more clear then, I was miserable because this way of explaining my world just never seemed complete.

In an effort to "meet myself" Ive been walking this line for a while now. The line of discovering and creating. The line of accepting and changing, of allowing and directing. I've been taking a hard look at perspective and the power that it holds. Its that famous question, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

I have been trying to understand whether or not any of this is really happening.

I spoke with an ex the other day. Always informative, I came to see that, even after all this time I had really hurt him. And even after never meaning to, we had always had VERY different ways of seeing what was happening between and around us. We experienced it differently, we remember it differently. And I started to feel like perhaps there are no real "facts" in relationship, or perhaps even in life, just ways of seeing and experiencing things. This realization, once experienced, can take you in many directions.

I recently told someone important to me that I couldn't see him anymore. And the odd thing was that he hadn't done anything "wrong". He had been honest and caring throughout our time together. He had been a "good" man. But somehow, I had used my experiences with him to reinforce my insecurities. Somewhere along the way I had found a way to make a lovely person into a toxic force in my life. All because of perspective.

So today, Im leaning more towards the notion of there being very few absolutes, if there are any at all. The black and white of my experiences are continuing to fade into these amazing shades of grey which contrary to what I anticipated isn't bringing lack of clarity. Actually, it is making me feel very creative:

I want to learn

to paint...

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