A thousand masks.

“Unable to accept our brokenness, we wear a thousand masks to disguise the face of fear.”

-Manning, Brennan. “Ruthless Trust.” 

Take me to the place with no mirrors

That sacred hall in the heart of hearts.

Take me to the room that has no echo

That home I have been looking for.

Place me in the space with no cover,

But for the light that bathes the soul.

Place me down from this, my pedestal 

And let every scale fall, fall, fall.

A thousand masks I carry here with me,

To guard against the weather, the wind, it all.

A thousand masks I bare before you,

To mend my life unraveled hems recalled.

Here below is all I am, I have, I haven't,

That is, the broken, bitter, biting, damaged.

Here below is humanity, sin-soaked, mine,

That choice and chance for once-again.

These masks that blunt the day, I know, 

These burdens I cannot lay down.

These masks I make a wreck of, burned,

My weakness, my strength somehow.

Worn in.

Two things for today: 

The First.

“Having that sense of a person, that sense of a personality through their clothes, is part of what makes them desirable,” Waight Keller explains.

The Second.

"Since then I have traveled to different places in Europe four more times, twice with my wife and twice by myself. All of the trips have been fantastic, but the solo trips are special in their own way. When I travel by myself, I am making the most of my time, because I am seeing the things that are the most important to me. Sure, I don’t get to experience things with other people (aside from a few times when I hang out with people I know who live in those countries), which for me only means that I take in the experience more fully, because I, alone, am responsible for enjoying and remembering it.

People ask me a lot about traveling alone, especially as a woman. How is it for you? Are you scared? Do you get lonely? While I do occasionally get scared, I am getting used to being scared, which, over time, makes me less scared. During my latest solo trip to the South of France last month, I felt the least scared or intimated since my solo adventures began five years ago, and I don’t speak or understand a lick French beyond Bonjour! And Merci! and a few other words and phrases. I chalk that up to experience. Doing scary things over and over makes them less scary. And, no, I never get lonely.

It is not lost on me that traveling is a privilege. Travel costs money, even when you do it on the cheap. I am also very lucky to be married to someone who not only tolerates but encourages me to do the stuff I love and to pursue all of my passions, even if it means being away from home for periods of time. I think for many women, the idea of going off alone to travel is a much more complicated thing because the person they share their life with might not understand or support the idea. I also don’t have kids or a horribly expensive mortgage. Taking time away from work is the hard part for me."

"I am trying to get at something utterly heartbroken." - Van Gogh

Striving: I have been thinking a lot about climbing…

"I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all of my heart." - Van Gogh

Here is the story of my life: 

I am ten months old. I have just learned to walk. I am climbing out of my crib. My mother is sleeping outside of my bedroom door. The door is closed. There is a Christmas tree with twinkle lights on it next to my bed. 

I am two years old. I am climbing trees. I am fond of eating rocks. There are no pictures. I have two brothers I boss around the living room. 

I am five years old. I am holding a rake. I am raking leaves on a forest path. My parents find me and ask what I'm doing to which I respond: "I'm raking all the leaves in the forest."

I am seven years old. I am constructing the perfect tree-house. I am planning to make a bridge between the two olive trees and the fig tree, or at least a zip-line. 

I am nine years old. I live in a villa with a view of a volcano. Every morning I am out on this deck to feed my pet rabbit and smell the ashes that have fallen overnight. 

I am twelve years old. I have won the Naval Base Talent Show. I played and sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic. I am also first chair trumpet in my band. I have read every Nancy Drew book there ever was. 

I am thirteen years old. I am in Costa Rica with three-hundred teenage girls I have never met. A group of girls who are older than me have covered my room in toilet paper. 

I am sixteen years old. I am kissed for the first time. I go to Prom. I cry in corners so much. I get up early to do my hair every morning. 

I am twenty years old. I am in Oxford. I am sprinting through Christ Church Gardens before sunrise to the Rowing Houses on the Isis. I don't buy anything I don't need for a year. 

I am twenty-two years old. I decide that hospitals are cold and dark places. I start a gym with a friend. I make a lot of mistakes. I make a home for a lot of people. Eventually, it's just me. 

I was born to hope. I was born to claw at meaning. I was born to ambition. I was born to seek a summit state of being.

Shortly before leaving for this journey (I am now nearing the "end" of) I had a conversation with a friend. In our general community (world?!) it is unheard of that a person would not have an objective on any given day, no plan, no great imminent hope for the near future, no mountain to aim at on the horizon. 

"You always want us to be learning and improving - there is always some point we should be working toward," she said.

And I actually felt her declaration thud into the air between us. Was she right? Had I been saying this? Wanting this? Did I give this to others? 

Another time I was right in the middle of teaching a class to do pull-ups when a question was blurted out: "How is a pull-up functional for life?" I realized after thinking about this that this too was something I had never thought of as being foundational to everyday life.

As an infant my mother had to sleep outside my crib for a while because I loved to climb. I walked at ten months old, and set my sights on something higher than this thereafter. 

I was obsessed with tree-houses in grade school: making them, being in them, learning about them, and imagining how I might coddle together the scraps of that time to make something beyond my dreams. 

Things went much the same as I got older. There has always been something to win, something to better, something to feel, something to do to my utmost… before walking to something higher to achieve. I have filled my days with the sound of steps. 

To climb is human. 

To pull ourselves up is human. 

To seek higher ground is human. 

But we can also live so entrenched in our own lives and the story of our bound selves that we may ask one day, offhandedly, "How is a pull-up functional?" 

Have we forgot that we were made for higher places? 

Here is the rub though: where - exactly - is the end? What - exactly - is to be found at the heights? What - really - is it like to be in the place where we are aiming? Who - exactly - are we leaving behind? Taking with us? 

Is my ladder leaning against the right wall? 

The other day I had the pleasure of tackling one of the most mentally-challenging hikes of my life. Risk-wise, elevation-wise, time-wise, this hike was an exercise in ambition and striving. Dents-du-Midi ("teeth of noon") is a many-summited mountain located in the Chablais Alps of Switzerland. The highest peak is Le Haute Cime ("the high summit") which beckons from 10,696ft. or 3,257m.  It was first ascended in 1784 by one Jean-Maurice Clement, a man who may well have completed the climb just as I did, i.e. with little to no idea of what he was getting into at all. 

Upon reaching the view that I *thought* was the top, the rest of the crew wanted to climb to the final peak a couple 100ft. up. I wanted to take a nap - so I did. So why do I still feel that I missed out on something great even after telling myself that that first summit was more than "sufficient"? 

There is a confusing paradox at work here. In mindfulness practice there is generally this idea that anytime you are reaching or striving towards a mode of being in meditation this takes you out of the allotted time to being in the present. However the future is what pushes us to appreciate the present. We look ahead to death - to the death of anything and anytime - and we are driven to grasp at the present. We even look behind us at the past and remorsefully burden ourselves by those memories to appreciate what is "now". So - this is the interplay: we sit between two poles, trying to balance on an axis of being. 

But - as I have heard in my travels, "Balance is bull-shit. There is only integration." We are never done with the climb. The moment can never really stand alone. Our lives are less like lines and more like circles. This is the way of the world. This is a way of being. Around and around we go. The summit is only ever a stop along the way. How much of what we believe is kept high on the summit, has been with us all along? 

I live my life in widening circles

that reach out across the world

I am may not complete this one

but I give myself to it. 

I circle around God, around the ancient* tower. 

I've been circling for thousands of years

and I still don't know: 

am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song? 

-Rainier Marie Rilke

*translation here my own from Arrus, who has been reading Rilke with me in German. 

I forgot how much music can breathe life back into your days.

Just one example of this. 

"You hem me in behind and before."

"In the spirit of Judaism, our quest for God is a return to God; our thinking of Him is a recall, an attempt to draw out the depth of our suppressed attachment. The Hebrew word for repentance, teshuvah (I've been OBSESSED with this word lately...) means 'return'. Yet it also means answer. Return to God is an answer to Him. For God is not silent. 'Return, O faithless, children says the Lord.' (Jer 3:14) According to the understanding of the Rabbis, daily, at all times, 'A voice cries: in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God' (Isaiah 40:3)... The most precious gifts come to us unawares and remain un-noted. God's grace resounds in our lives like a staccato. Only by retaining the seemingly disconnected notes do we acquire the ability to grasp the theme."

-Abraham Joshua Heschel 

I definitely just ordered this photograph (my favorite of him) blown up for my office. I just love his face here. It's like he knows something... and he so freaking often DOES.