(This blog was originally written on April 14, 2010.  I wasn't able to post so I'm playing catch up here. More blogs will be posted in the next day or two from my April journeys.)

This is my last trip overseas for this year as I know it.  As I'm writing, I'm high in the sky, listening to Whitney Houston's new album, "Nothing But Love" and feeling in the groove.  It's the only other album I've actual bought of hers after her first album that released when I was 14 or 15.  These are bookends to my journey at this moment.  My iTouch (thank you Sara) is filled with nearly all spiritual/yoga-related music, and then Whitney tunes.  Her music resonates on the same line for me.  Her gospel background is present in her life and songs and I can hear the love and prayer of spiritual devotion, whether it sounds like its directed to a person or to a supreme being - the words can be interpreted as you choose.  Since I first listened to her music as a teenager and as it connects my memories like guide posts to the "many places in my life and times," I feel a sense of spiritual journey simply based on reflection.  (see previous blogs: "Back From Running Away" and "Having lunch with Melissa, Whitney and Greg.")  There's so much about Whitney these days in my blogs since that's what the many hours of my days are filled with as I help coordinate Platinum Travel Experiences for guests from all over the world.  Now heading to Dublin for 2 groups, then 2 groups in London.  I've been to Dublin only one other time with this work, escorting a group of Rolling Stones fans to a soggy but amazing concert at Slane Castle.  I've been to London a small handful of times, also for Rolling Stones groups in different years.  I'm excited to return to both cities for a bit longer of a time in each.  What a cool ride this has been!

I've racked up lots of miles from flying and get excited thinking how I plan to use these for a return trip to India next year.  I'm thinking about taking an intermediate yoga teacher-training course with Integral yoga in Coimboiture next January.  Several others from Integral Yoga SF are talking about this as well.  We want to keep building on the training we started last year, keep the learning going, keep the practice strong for our own practices and as teachers.  I'm grateful to have this work that I do just for the miles alone!  - A free trip across the globe for yoga training!  Thank you Fan Asylum!  It makes it all worth the journey which I leave without hanging on with resentments and unresolved issues (I think).  I remember this is how I felt when I left Joe Goode Performance Group after an 8 year career, and when I stopped dancing.  I had a good handful of issues while dancing and in my last year I felt many resolve, including a heart-opening of only love for Joe, and only love for myself versus the harsh critic I had been. Tapping into my peace helped direct me onward,  along with the screaming signal being my physical body pain.  Becoming a yoga teacher has brought together all of my life's experience into one channel of my highest self.  It's felt like all the pieces of all I've done have been quilted together for the purpose of sharing through yoga.  Dancing, making art, struggling through addiction and recovery, happy and sad relationships, difficulties and celebrations, everything high, medium and low - all shared when I teach in my own quietly large way…or largely quiet way.  :)

Traveling.  Am I addicted to it?  I do love to imagine when my next trip will be, sometimes to the point that I'm already gone before I leave, or I'm still away even when I come home.  Generally, it's rarely more than a couple of months away that a trip will come up for work, family or even a visit to the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA for a retreat.  This has nearly been the case since my first touring experience in 1983 as a student of SCPA in Cincinnati.  Aside from my college years, I have traveled each year more than I could have imagined when I first started.  And it's been especially fun for me because these destinations have all come by surprise - not chosen like one would for vacation.  For the most part, they've been assigned by touring management, whether for theater and dance, or popular music tours of these recent years.  Granted, mostly I've been to major cities so there's much of the planet yet to be explored; however, covering every inch of the planet isn't my goal.  It's simply about GETting to travel, taking a step out of my routine and into another place, learning how to feel that sense of inner home no matter where I am, or being challenged to feel this when part of me snaps into an old childhood place of escape and rebellion.  That's the yoga of traveling - meeting that point of resistance and seeing what I do with it, breathing and acknowledging.  For work,  I go where the schedule says to go, trusting it's exactly where I need to go for my next journey, next awakening.  Or when family calls, like my many visits to LA to visit my now 99-year old great aunt, or to Cincinnati to visit my Mom and Dad, I get challenged with showing up as my adult, present-day self, versus the young, lonely child, often expressed by inner-acting out than showing signs of these emotions outwardly, verbally.  What's informative to recognize is how much of my forward motion has been directed from outside elements versus inner impulse.  But I also recognize that so much of my life has equally been guided by an inner voice that I have trusted and appreciated.  How often do I take the path of least resistance, or another way to say it could be - the path of the outside wind before checking in with my inner voice?  And vice-versa?  I'm learning to discern which current to take, but I wonder how much it's been nature versus nurture here.

Traveling became exciting and enticing as a child because I got to leave a family home that I wasn't too thrilled to be in.  I got to be taken out of classes and grew to feel special because of that.  Feeling special was so important to me, sometimes still is.  Ok, maybe I always like feeling special.  But I can truly say I like when ALL of us feel special.  I'll need to meditate on this to check-in about feeling separate versus special.  There's nothing wrong with feelings just as there's nothing wrong with traveling.  It's what happens in me, around them.  Am I using them to escape or to become expansive, truthful.  Same thing with sex or food - There's nothing wrong with either of those in and of themselves.  Where is the line where sexual connection/behavior brings true happiness and peace about oneself, happening as a natural expression, and where it causes separation of self, acting as a higher power and a distraction from pain and loneliness? When does eating become an unconscious act versus a very conscious act of what the body needs for sustenance and good health?  Often, I can find myself using food as reward, punishment or to drown feelings or even create bodily pain from over/under-eating, creating a real sensation, dulling response to other uncomfortable feelings.  Does it feel like a never-ending road of settling, or does it feel like each day is a new beginning?  Or a new beginning but with the same ending?  Or does it feel unknown and curious?  Drugs, drinking, gambling, stealing, cutting, lying, compulsive sex or denial of sex, over/under-eating, debting, being Republican (sorry, just kidding) and many others are all similar things to question like this.  Where does it all begin?  Does it end?  Are we always beginning each day anew?  Is there any meaning or purpose to finding the "right" choice for ourselves, our community?  As I learned from my Spirit of Life family and what helps me greet life with grounded innocence and devotion, is this phrase that keeps me off the loop of insanity:  "Each new sun that rises, never rose before."  

For right now, I celebrate the opportunities I've had to travel and perform and to have had that opportunity as a young person.  It helped me dive into life and dive into many emotions that have enriched my being.  Yes, traveling awakens my desire for anonymity in the world, to be disconnected from obligation and discipline, but it also opens the doorway to meet new parts of myself, to see what I gravitate towards when feeling less restrictive.  What stays strong, is my commitment to yoga, being vegan, meeting new people and having quiet time.  What gets aroused is my desire for anonymous sex, over-spending on food and consuming sugary foods, and feeling separate.  I'm learning to not judge either as good or bad, just that they are there as messengers and I do my best to greet them with honesty and openness.  I do this with the help of my tools of sharing, writing, meditating, bringing all into my practice of yoga.

I thank my parents for seeing the artistic calling in me, for allowing me to follow this part of my life's quest, this thirst for traveling away from home.  I'm sure it was my path to start this early curiosity, which did include early addictions.  Emotions can be a lot to handle, especially when young and not well equipped with life experience.  I think this can be true at any age really.  Age isn't really the factor so much as life-experience and karma (that just inspired me to blog my thoughts on karma!  another time.  For now I'll just casually throw that in there:) I definitely promote an arts education for children.  Consider keeping the arts a viable part of society by supporting either an artist, company, or organization that you know.  It pays you back more than a value can be placed on money.  But I digress.  I love to travel and see the world.  See the people of the world.  Be myself amongst this world.  It reminds me that we're all one, great, fantastic global family with the same issues, same suffering, same happiness - just wrapped up in different packages, different vibrations and different ideologies at the very least.  

This is the last trip as I know it.  So I plan to let it have it's own life balanced with my inner guides mission. This is the final packages for the Whitney tour as we know it, and my final packages with Fan Asylum as I know it!  I'm just at the starting line of these last weeks, landing in Dublin around 7am for the start of the day.  I'm Finishing the Beginning of the End of Where it Started!

(I've been traveling the month of April and wrote while away but didn't manage to post.  The following blog was written on April 7th.  I'll be adding one per day or so, which were also written during April, mostly from plane rides which provided the easiest, non-distracted time to write. If it brings you any enjoyment, I'll be doubly happy since it was a necessary practice for ME to stay somewhat grounded while far away...and high up.)

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Apr 7th

I'm about an hour away from returning to SF from a 2-plane journey from Paris.  I was supposed to just stay over in Paris until the next work trip in Dublin, but I chose to take my week off back at home to work on an upcoming project that needs my attention. I know, Paris would be more fun, but I had to be practical and frugal and open the aperture of life wide to get a sense of the whole picture.  I do love Paris and have been a handful of times.  I'll get to go back.  And besides, my sweet friend Franck is going to be out of town, so might as well wait for another time.

I just finished reading, "Three Cups of Tea" written by Greg Mortonson.  Amazing story.  I'm thinking about the question that I sometimes have played with friends: "If you could have lunch with one person in all the world, who would it be?"  Right now, it's Greg.  I feel inspired and fueled to really think through my purpose on this planet, in this lifetime.  Through what was a mis-turn of a path while on a major hiking expedition in Pakistan, Doctor Greg (as the villagers called him) manifested a dream of building schools for children, specifically to bring education to young girls.  I felt that his trust, courage and determination became so strengthened from his life-experience, that these honorably fueled him through some incredibly dark moments and burst him into some phenomenal moments of the brightest and clearest visions.  His mission is "books not bombs'' as he sees education as the key to simultaneously dissolve the structural house of terrorism while opening doors for a home of peace.  I am moved toward this type of service to others.  I feel more motivated to stay alert and clear on my path, staying close to what inspires and compels me to rise to be my highest self.  I even just feel elated having finished a book, any book!  Accomplishment!  No success is too small.  I have so many books I'm in the middle of, it's nice to have one read from cover to cover that I've been wanting to read for a while (I'm gonna take that as a message and learn from the feelings of reaching completion with something.  Something I tend to have difficulty with). Please read Greg's book.  And if you have, what did you get out of it?

I was in Paris for the start of Whitney Houston's European tour, working for Fan Asylum, the company I've been with for over 5 years as an event coordinator and travel manager in SF.  This has been a pop-up career that came my way after I stopped dancing.  I don't know that I would have ever chosen to do this type of work but it's proven to be a perfect fit for the while.  I've loved (and been frustrated at times) being a part of this unique fanclub-based music path.  I've experienced so much joy as a performer and artist, and now I see myself being able to help facilitate an experience for people who want to feel connected with something that resonates so wildly in their hearts.  I hadn't been a big concert-goer until this work, and now I love it.  I love the artists and fans that I've set these packages up for anyway.  So great how life unfolds and offers surprises.  Why would I want to try and control every turn, every rise, every fall?  It's all been here to guide my heart and my spirit to learn what I'm made of, what I'm here for.  My practice is to diligently work on what my senses download, my heart and mind interpret, and the connection made of this with spirit in order to move toward deeper and deeper compassion - for myself first so that I have a humble reference point of humanity through a first-hand lens.  Otherwise, it might feel patronizing and could lead to being judgmental.

On that note, back to Whitney.  She made a come-back album that released last September with news of a tour to follow in 2010.  I love her album, even hooked on a few of songs in particular (I Look to You, Call You Tonight, I Didn't Know My Own Strength) and the excitement of her appearing on stage and building Platinum Travel Experiences around her concert was particularly exciting for me.  I'm winding down my days of travel and work with Fan Asylum and this makes a nice parting gift.  I'm a fan who followed Whitney's early days, dropped off in the middle (mostly wasn't following any pop artists for a while.  And I knew of her Bobby Brown days but didn't give too more thought or TV-watching to that since I got it), and now I return with huge admiration.  She's working through some major trials and tribulations in this life and she has kept in tact and today holds her head up high.  I admire her.  Her song, "I Didn't Know My Own Strength" states that she tumbled, but didn't crumble.  That's right.  You tell us.  I think about Pema Chodrin's book, "When Things Fall Apart" and how that references the deepest understandings that come when we experience some of our darkest areas of ourselves, when our grasp on all that was familiar and comforting is lost, when we fall apart and our eyes begin to see things anew.  The falls exist and have value.  I wouldn't say it's necessarily good to fall apart, but to deny it would be more painful than to go through and beyond it.  It's up to each of us to recognize what extent we learn from our falls and at what duration, what depth, what intensity.  Not looking for drama, looking for reality.

Blogs back I spoke of when I ran away from home at 16.  A detail from then that I'll share (without embarrassment these days:), is how I credit Whitney as a turning point for me at that time.  After almost 2-weeks of being away, and recently letting go of most of my belongings, I spent an afternoon in a park in Savannah, GA contemplating my next hours.  It was a sunny afternoon on the morning after an attempted journey toward the ocean as I prepared for suicide.  I was out of money and emotionally ready.  But then as I listened to her album, something started to shift.  As I was sitting there with my duffle filled with a journal, a jacket, a small tube of toothpaste and a walkman with Whitney's first album - my sole possessions, I noticed across the way a baseball game being played by a bunch of kids from this all-black neighborhood.  They were laughing, enjoying their game on this sunny day in the heart of a poor area of the city.  "The Greatest Love of All" played on my cassette walk-man, and with the video of watching this happy game while sitting on the patchy grass, under the sun by a tree with nearly nothing to claim as my own, I felt a sense of clarity and peace like I hadn't known before.  Something felt perfectly right. I heard the words of someone saying they believe the children are our future.  My heart let me believe it about the kids I was seeing playing that day, but up until then, I hadn't seen it for me.  And then it happened in that moment that I could believe that that was meant for me too.  I had tears rolling down my face realizing that I wanted to live, I wanted life.  I just needed it to be different - I needed to see it differently and learn to not judge myself so harshly - to learn to accept myself for who I am, for being gay.  In that moment, I could do it.  That wasn't what ultimately brought me home, but it most definitely was the turning point where I feel like I got to choose life.  How many of us get that moment where we actually CHOOSE to be here versus just being here and taking it for granted.  When I find myself doing that these days, I take a moment and remember those 16 days back in 1987.  (See Blog:  "Back From Running Away")

So even though Whitney had to cancel her show last night because of illness, I still believe in her.  Even though there we were ready to have an awesome concert day with our group of travelers who'd traveled from Japan, Brasil, Canada, Lebanon, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, UK and the US,  everyone shared they still love her and hope the best for her.  The majority of our group bonded and I spent a fair amount of time with them than I usually do with our groups, primarily because the show didn't happen, but also because they were a great group of people.  We all bonded and at the very least we believe we'll all stay in touch.  Will we really?  Who knows.  I do know that it was a wonderful experience that wasn't at all what we had planned (another testament to life's natural flow - we're so not in control).  Whitney was to be the centerpiece, but instead, the bond of the group being together in Paris with the intention of meeting Whitney but didn't became the centerpiece.  I would love to have lunch with Whitney, though the closest I may get was a sweet dinner with our Paris travelers on that wished-for concert night of April 6th.  That's pretty darn close in the scheme of things!

Right before leaving for Paris, I was in Palm Springs for our Melissa Etheridge Palm Springs travel package.  We had our usual travel package group plus a special "Sweet 16" birthday party celebrating 16-years of the fan club, Melissa Etheridge Information Network (M.E.I.N.). It was an amazing couple of days.  All went as planned and we had a very happy group of folks.  Nearly 250 at the Sweet 16 party, and just over 40 for our travel package.  We had some travelers from the UK and Germany, but otherwise mostly from the states.  I have been coordinating and hitting the road for Melissa travel packages for almost 3 years now, all over the US.  I LOVE Melissa.  As an artist, a messenger of love, and a courageous woman unafraid to speak her mind.  I didn't start off as a big fan, and really just knew some about her through my years-ago roommate LIz who likes her.  But after seeing her in concert my first time, I was sold.  Then meeting her and watching her in action with her fans during meet & greets and Q&A's, I was completely hooked.  She is real through and through.  She's not a poster of someone else's making.  Her fans are loyal, dedicated fans and I've come to know quite a good handful of them.  It's a very loving and sweet community…filled with all the personalities of any community.  I can honestly say that I feel blessed to know all of whom I know.  I feel blessed to receive this wonderful gift of offering meaningful experience to others.  I'm being of service.  Rather than judge if this is the right thing, if I should be elsewhere, I'm focusing on what I AM doing, and letting the rest go for now.

Ok, so I haven't had lunch with Melissa either, but I sure think it would be pretty cool.  And of all the famous people I know, it's fun to know that I could nearly ask her myself.  Ok, so I wouldn't even do this, but I'm still within proxy to be able to ask.  I would want to hear more about her interest in the environment, have some dialogue about her perspective and how she takes action [I've been managing the "Green Tips" page on her website:  www.melissaetheridge.com/greentips (currently under construction)].  What if all 3 of the folks on my list sat down for lunch?  THAT would be a fun lunch to be at.  Ok.  I'm not sure if I'd REALLY want to have this lunch, or any of these lunches, but the idea of connecting with people I am inspired by is important.  That I know.  And really, they don't have to be stars or people out of reach.  They can be people we already know, like our family, friends, neighbors…even strangers next to you on a plane.  There is this myth that what we need we don't have yet and it's far out of reach.  I've talked with some of our music fanatics who wouldn't be happy until they had first row tickets.  Then they have those and they want to meet the artist.  Then they meet the artist and they want to…well, have lunch with them.  Maybe it ends at some point for many people, but I've experienced a never-ending desire for things that will never truly satisfy.  Happiness is something withIN each of us.  Peace is within us all.  We're often just so distracted that we can't find it let alone imagine what it means to create it.  So the outward journey is the long and winding road to the inner one.  At least that's what I have found.  I get distracted so easily myself.  That's why I need to keep a practice of yoga and meditation never too far away from each day.  Om Nahah Shivaya!