Giving thanks for this life

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.
- Henry David Thoreau

To your tired eyes I bring a vision
Of a different world,
So new and clean and fresh
You will forget the pain and sorrow
that you saw before.
Yet this a vision is
Which you must share
With everyone you see,
For otherwise you will behold it not.
To give this gift is how you make it yours.
- A Course in Miracles

I don't know about you, but some days the world can just break my heart.

Yesterday was one of those days when I was reminded of how ridiculously blessed I am, and stunned again by what people endure, how much suffering there is in this world. Where do you find meaning, where do you find love, when life feels bleak, when you are on the streets, when nothing in life has mapped out as you planned? How do you keep going? How do you find grace?

Yesterday I met Joseph, in his 80s, white beard, red face, a jack-o-lantern smile with a handful of crooked teeth and open spaces in-between. Fashionably dressed in a white plastic apron, white paper hat, and clear plastic gloves, I poured red Kool-Aid into Joseph's paper cup at Glide (www.glide.org), where my friend Reema and her mom Nora and I were serving meals Thanksgiving day. Joseph was cheerful and a flirt and promised me that if I liked older men, he'd take good care of me.

As the crowd filed in and filled the long tables, Reema, Nora and I poured Kool-Aid and cleared away empty trays with the remnants of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, ice cream. We shared Thanksgiving greetings and flirted with the cute kitchen volunteers who were scraping the trays. And we flirted with the men and women at the tables, because who doesn't want to be noticed, appreciated?

Young and old, black, white, Latino, Asian, they poured in, an endless stream of men and women, some weathered and beaten by the street life, some dressed like any professional you might walk by on a busy city street. I am often surprised by just how many look like you and me, or our friends, or our parents. A man in a San Francisco Giants hat and black sweatshirt, salt and pepper hair and mustache, a broad smile, could have been my dad.

Why I am the one privileged to serve, rather than wait in line to eat, why I get to put on a name-tag and a paper hat and plastic gloves and hand out meals, why I am blessed to live in a spacious apartment with hillside views in San Francisco, enjoy a full day of meals and good times with friends versus lining up outside Glide, is a question for which there is no simple answer. Life is a complex equation.

I come from a loving middle class family, have been blessed with an outstanding education and have so many resources and friends - I am SO blessed! - that this need never be a reality for me. I have never truly known need, hunger, desperation. I have cried of course, had my heart broken, had my own moments of darkness when I didn't know what to do or where to turn next. But they always pass.

My refrigerator is full, my apartment is warm, my Blackberry is programmed with names of friends and family who love me. I know I am not alone in the world. Glide provides that sense of family, shelter, community for those who have none, and it is for this reason that I keep returning. Glide brings joy and hope into the lives of those who have lost hope, helps them hold on, rebuild their lives, start again.

Yesterday I met Donnie at the church service at Glide. Tall, handsome despite missing some teeth, wearing his bluetooth headset, and just about bursting with energy, Donnie whispered Glide gossip to me in between dancing to the rousing numbers of the gospel choir and jazz band.

An ex-convict who'd turned his life around, he'd worked at Glide for seven years, rescued from the streets by Reverend Cecil Williams and the Glide family. He knew the inside scoop on everyone and was happy to share the stories with me. Donnie called out to the speakers and the singers on stage: "Preach it! Sing it! Amen!" We got up and danced together, held hands during the prayers. "I was saved by grace," he told me. "I was saved by grace."

Later that day, I handed out meals with my friend Andoni as part of "Operation Turkey Day," organized by a caterer in Marin who prepares 500 turkey meals in biodegradable paper boxes with the help of 40 or so friends, and passes them out on the streets of downtown SF. Every box was hand-decorated in colorful marker with a Thanksgiving message, holiday greeting or positive words: Joy. Yes. A simple red heart. We passed out boxed lunches, juice boxes and clean white socks. In less than 20 minutes, 500 meals had been distributed. So many hungry people.

As an experiment yesterday, I skipped breakfast and lunch just to see what it felt like to be hungry. My stomach churned and I felt a little nauseous, but I knew I had Thanksgiving dinner coming up with friends at 4:30. No real hardship here.

At 2:30 I broke down and ducked into Sears Restaurant on Powell Street to order up a steaming plate of fish and chips, just because I could. I was craving fish, and had my wallet in my pocket, and there was nothing stopping me from ordering a big plate, pouring vinegar on my fried cod, dipping french fries into tartar sauce or ketchup.

The restaurant was about half-full on Thanksgiving day, with couples scattered around eating plates of turkey and all the fixings, most of them in silence. Companionable silence? or lonely silence? I find it striking sometimes how many of us seem alone or lonely even in a room full of people. At most of the tables, with a few happy exceptions, there seemed to be an absence of laughter, of joy. Even with so much, people are lonely.

And here I sat alone dipping my french fries in ketchup and taking in the scene. Perhaps to stave off my own loneliness, I called my family who were gathered for a meal in New Jersey, across the country. I talked to those I love who are far away, as the phone got passed from my mom and dad to brother and sister, Grandmom, aunts and uncles, cousins. They missed me. They love me. They can't wait to see me at Christmastime.

I ate half my meal, boxed the rest, and offered it to the first man I saw sitting on the street. His face and hands were raw from the sun and street living. He was probably younger than me, but missing most of his teeth, ragged, looking bereft. He nearly broke down when I offered him the meal, red eyes shining. "But I'm not allowed to ask women for nothing!" he protested.

I felt the heartache of a man holding onto a promise he had made to someone, words that still held meaning for him, even when he had nothing else left. "But I gave it you," I said. "You didn't ask."

"Thank you ma'am, thank you ma'am, thank you ma'am!" he shouted.

Two hours later I headed to the home of Betty and Ernie, friends of mine in their 80s who are my "adopted grandparents" in SF. I wrote an article about Ernie, a retired sign-maker who hand-crafts carnival games, for a local paper and we became fast friends. They told me to consider them "like family." When I decided to stay in SF for Thanksgiving this year, versus flying home to be with family as I usually do, they invited me to their home to share the holiday meal.

I poured miniature marshmallows on top of the bubbling sweet potatoes for Betty before she popped them and the wheat rolls in the oven. I whisked instant mashed potato mix into a boiling pot of water, milk and butter until it was thick and creamy. Ernie set the table and poured us glasses of white wine.

Four of us ate dinner together - Ernie, Betty, me and their son Bob, who is an alcoholic in his 40s who still lives at home. "I'm an isolationist," he told me. He holes up in a little cluttered room in the back of the house. During dinner, he got up often to refill his beer glass.

"This is the first time I've had dinner with my parents in about two years," he told me, when Ernie and Betty got up to get the pie and clear the plates. "I have nothing to say."

Yet he kept up a steady stream of conversation, as we sat and talked for four and half hours, the whole family, about politics and spiritual practice and the general state of the world. Bob is widely read, but lives in his own world. His body has been ravaged by the alcohol abuse, nose red and pocked, teeth brown, legs skinny in ragged jeans.

He still has dreams. Don't we all have dreams? After dinner, he offered me a shot of tequila from a bottle that he said he'd found on the streets of Mexico years ago. He told me about his dream - to be a war correspondent in Iraq. He'd served in the army years ago and traveled, and felt he'd have a unique perspective to offer. "How do you think I could get there?" he asked.

I told him my journalistic work was much more local, stateside, and that I didn't know the path to get there. What can you say? He drank himself silly, taking a slug directly from the bottle. "I shouldn't be drinking this," he said.

"I guess you don't know much about my profession now," he said. "I work in commodities." He recycles bottles, scavenges on the streets, picks up an occasional odd job - gardening or painting - to buy his bottles of beer. This is his "career."

We all have dreams. We all have stories about ourselves and our lives and how we've ended up where we are, and when it's too hard to face the reality, some turn to booze, or sex, or money, or food, to try to fill the hole inside. We all feel lost sometimes and we all have our own ways of coping.

Some of us are blessed with better coping mechanisms, intact family structures, good work that pays the bills and then some. We have so much, some of us, that we can afford to take fancy vacations to far-off places, buy gifts for our friends and family, take a day at the spa, sit at home and make art.

I am one of these. I go away on yoga retreats. I’m going to Argentina to visit my sister for Christmas. I am privileged beyond belief to be able to sit here in a warm home, keys clicking as I type this, hot cup of tea beside me, a closet full of clothes, shelves full of books, walls hung with art collected from my travels around the world. I do not take any of this for granted.

I have been blessed with joy and abundance in my life, with peace of mind, and I do my best to give that back. Some days I feel like there is so little I can do to make an impact, with so much suffering in the world.

But I do what I can, where I am, with what I have. I shine my light because I feel that it is my duty and responsibility in this world to give back, and it is my joy. I give because it replenishes me. I shine, because I can.

And I choose to focus in my own life on all the JOY - my family, my friends, my writing, my dancing, the beautiful city where I live, all the blessings of every day. What we focus on increases. The Buddha teaches that in this life there will be pain - sickness, old age (if we are lucky enough to live a long life!), death. We can't escape from the reality of life in this body.

And yet, he also teaches that suffering is optional. It is possible to find freedom in our own lives from the suffering created by our own thoughts, and to share that sense of freedom with others. That is my practice and my path, and I do my best to walk it every day.

I send my love to all of you today, who are the true blessings in my life, and ask that we all just remember on this holiday how very blessed we are, and that we reach out with compassion to others in the world who are suffering and broken, when we can. That we shine our light and share our joy, those of us who have so much.

That we do what we can to make others feel less alone in this world.

May you have a blessed holiday season, and always know that you are loved.

Lisa Powell Graham, November 2007

Journey inward: six days of silence in the Santa Barbara mountains!

"Life unfolds chaotically and magically."
~ Dina Amsterdam, yogini and spiritual teacher

"All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt."
~ Charles M. Schulz

I spear a piece of fruit, and lift it to my mouth. Papaya. Another bite. I name it: Blackberry. Slowly I chew and swallow. The California sunshine warms the air and my bare skin. I am up above the cloudline, and I gaze out over the Pacific Ocean at the foot of the cliffs below me. More slow, delicious bites.

I name them: Pineapple. Nectarine. Green apple. Raspberry. I have drizzled whole milk yogurt and coconut on top of the fruit. I have sprinkled California raisins on top. How can there be so much sweetness and flavor in one bowl? Each bite is a small burst of pure pleasure in my mouth.
What could be more sensuous ~ and sensual ~ than a silent yoga and meditation retreat?

Six days of silence, yoga and meditation has a way of awakening the senses that have been dulled by busy-ness, the buzz of too much thinking, too much living in the mind. Re-immersion, my friend Will called it. Re-immersing yourself in the true life, the world beyond the confines of our thinking mind.

There is something about practicing zazen (sitting meditation) and yoga for six hours a day that shakes you out of your thinking mind so that you re-arrive, expectant and overly sensitized, in your physical body. Everything tastes better. Your nerve endings come alive. Frankly, being on retreat is sexy. At least, this is how it works for me.

It seems paradoxical because the Buddhist path also teaches that overindulging in sensory pleasures is one of the ways we can distract ourselves from our true purpose, one of the ways we bury our feelings and "escape."

Yet feeling truly present in the body and the moment makes every moment beautiful, the pleasures of simply being alive intensified. I truly feel and experience the world around me. I am not anasthetized to its pleasures. Hallelujah, Amen!

Of course, it doesn't hurt that the grounds where we are practicing on this retreat are rolling, green, flourishing. We are perched on the cliffs above Santa Barbara, California, with panoramic views over the city and the Pacific Ocean.

Jane Fonda once owned this land, years ago, and the current owner graciously makes the land available for retreats like this one, providing the opportunity for people to reconnect with silence, peace, themselves - their own sense of inner stillness and expansiveness.

We are practicing on sprawling acres of green land, laced with flowers, trees, breathtaking cliffside sunset views. There is a pool near the edge of the cliffs, and a hot tub perched right on the edge where you can contemplate the cosmos at night while soaking in bubbles, muscles massaged by firm hot jets of water.

There is a pond on the edge of the grounds where you can lie on a raft (clothing optional!), letting the sun warm and dry your bare skin, and where you can swim right up to a patch of lotus flowers and drink in their sweet fragrance. I plucked one to decorate the altar in the meditation room, adding my own perfumed offering symbolizing the Buddha, to the collection of flowers, rocks, and scraps of papers scrawled with handwritten notes that were already there.

Here on this lush land, 30 of us circle each other in silence every day, on the same grounds, sharing the same yoga practice room and teacher, but each locked in our own inner world. Some happily, some not so much so! We all ride waves of bliss and a spectrum of other emotions here, from sadness to numbness to anxiety to fear. Our teacher, Dina, talks us through the periods of daily yoga and meditation to guide us, but we remain in silence for a full four of the six days we are here, dipping into it again briefly on the last day.

Incidentally, many, many people who have known me over the years, who know that I am a Myers-Briggs ENFP (a big extrovert!) might wonder, and justly so, how I could possibly remain totally silent for four full days. Amazingly, to me as well, it is much simpler than I ever imagined, and more replenishing. It is peaceful and calming to be in such a quiet space, and to work on continually quieting the mind. It is wonderful to see what arises in such a space.

Sometimes I step outside myself briefly to watch all of us here, and imagine how odd we would look to someone just visiting - we walk around in silence, eat meals at round tables without making eye contact, circle around each other as we make our way to hike the trails or lie in the hammock, never greeting one another. No waves, no hellos, barely even the faintest of smiles dancing on someone's lips. We exchange no signals to indicate that we are in communication with one another.

Because we're not - for these six days, our job is not to relate to the world, as we incessantly do on the outside, but to relate to ourselves. To journey inward. I wish everyone could have the chance to experience this at least once in a lifetime.

It is not all fun and games here. When entering deeply into silence, we are often forced to force whatever unwelcome companions we've been locking away inside. What fear don't you want to face? What part of you feels most unloved? Chances are, it'll float right to the surface while you're sitting cross-legged on your meditation cushion, or upside-down in Downward Dog.

On this retreat, for me, that meant facing the fact that I tend to avoid emotional confrontations. Perhaps from some deep-seated desire to make everyone happy around me, to be liked, to have everything be "okay" all the time, I have had a tendency to procrastinate sometimes on dealing with issues that instead percolate underneath the surface, until they reach their eventual boiling point and spill out into the world.

Of course, when I avoid dealing with troublesome situations or emotions, I instead have to live with fear and anxiety in the interim of how things *could* turn out. Often, these "meantime emotions" are much worse than whatever happens once I actually face my fears, as I have seen borne out time and time again, when I confront things and what was a source of anxiety resolves itself, melts away.

Suddenly, facing myself in silence here at the retreat, avoidance just doesn't feel like any kind of solution anymore.

I also face the fact that I have not always been great at loving myself no matter what. I profess to want to practice unconditional love in this world, and the truth is that if I am to do that - it has to start with me. I have to love myself even when I'm tired, down, sad, angry, blue, worn out. I have to love myself when I'm performing at the top of my game, when everything is going my way, AND when it's not.

This means changing patterns of aspiring toward impossible standards of perfection, and then beating myself up when I (of course!) can't reach them, which has been a long-standing pattern of mine. Retreat brings me face-to-face with myself again and I see what I need to do. Love myself first. Love myself completely, no matter what.

It is clear that this is what I am to learn right now, what life needs me to learn in order to take the next steps in my life, and be transformed... Who knew it could be so hard to be truly tender and kind to yourself, when it comes so easily for many of us to love others?

It is like I am developing real intimacy with myself for perhaps the first time ever by being brutally honest with myself, but at the same time doing so with gentleness and kindness. I am looking at myself in the mirror with love, but am also able to say - this is how it is, this is who you are, accept yourself, love yourself!

I find myself wondering why it can be such a challenge for women in particular to love ourselves completely. Of course, we are bombarded with voices in society that would have us believe that we are not enough, we need to be skinnier, prettier, we don't look like this or that model or have the thighs of a sixteen year old anymore, and therefore are not truly beautiful, not enough.

The truth is the opposite -it is our unique qualities that truly make each of us beautiful. Why can't we all learn that sooner? Why so many years of suffering?

Retreat becomes a place where we are tested, where we learn to sit with our own uncomfortable edges, face our own fears. It can be difficult to sit with unpleasant emotions.

We are so accustomed, as a society, to fleeing from them by turning to television, alcohol, food, sex, or anything else that will numb us from truly feeling deeply whatever most hurts, whatever feels shameful. There is a sudden liberation in learning to accept the wide range of human emotions we all experience, and not only to accept, but to embrace this range.

First, we have to learn to sit still. "No fidgeting," says Dina, her voice floating disembodied from somewhere in the front of the room. "I am the fidgeting police."

I am still. My eyes are closed. My hands are resting gently, palms face down, one on each knee. I am sitting cross-legged on the edge of zafu, or meditation cushion, my coccyx bone raised about three inches off the ground to give my spine more length and elegance. My left ankle is positioned snugly in front of my right ankle, knees wide, in a sort of modified lotus position.

There is a small gnat buzzing around my head and I resist the urge to swat at it. This time is all about stillness. Turning inward. Not giving in to the sometimes intense desire to move, shift position, itch. The body sometimes sends out tiny red flags of urgency. Move now! Scratch me now! Here, our job is to not move. Not to fidget.

Of all the perils of meditation, perhaps the most treacherous is the foot-falling-asleep. When you sit for 45 minutes in cross-legged position, the foot can become a numb lump, something that feels heavily attached to the body, but not of the body. Pins and needles. A dull sort of tingling. It can overtake you so that you feel that you will not survive your foot falling asleep.

This is where you learn to conquer your mind, where you learn that sitting with discomfort actually will not kill you. We can endure discomfort. We can endure unpleasant emotions. We can face all of this with equanimity. (Who knew?) After all, it's temporary.

And we are not the emotions that surge and swell through our body, but something deeper, the container that holds them, the peace at the core. We are not even this body! It too is a vessel for the spirit that we are. That is what the great sages tell us, and it is what I believe, and it is what this practice ultimately teaches us.

Soon enough, Dina rings the bell to end the meditation session. The foot, with some shaking to restore blood flow, slowly wakes up again. And the rewards of sitting still and training the "monkey mind" to be still are so great.

For me, it is the way I return again and again to the center of peace inside me (we all have it!). It is how I train and remind myself to listen to my intuition, to feel what my body is telling me to do when making key decisions in my life, vs. just analyzing everything, turning possible solutions over and over anxiously, with my overworking, thinking mind.

In this place of spaciousness, in stillness, real love and beauty can arise. On this retreat, during our last meditation sit, just before Dina rings the bell to end our second of two 15-minute sits, this vow rises up inside me: "LIVE WITH MY HEART WIDE OPEN." It is what I take as my instructions from myself to live out in the world once I leave Laurel Springs Ranch and return to everyday life.

At the end of the meditation, I also visualize flowers blooming inside of me. It brings to mind the beautiful poem by Galway Kinnell that Dina often reads on her retreats which features the line: "Everything flowers from within of self-blessing."

I flower from within of self-blessing. I bow to honor the divine in me, and in all of us. Namaste. Shalom. Peace.

Pura Vida - back to the simple life in Costa Rica...

"Should we pick the bananas on the way home?" I ask. It is dark. We are walking the trails to the right of the catarata (waterfall) in the middle of the Monteverde Cloud Preserve in Costa Rica. We walk single file, my sister Carrie in front, her husband Pablo behind me.

Carrie and I wear the kind of headlamps that miners wear, illuminating 15 feet ahead of us on our path. We navigate carefully, slipping sometimes on large tropical leaves or patches of mud, picking our way over stone paths, holding on trees and sometimes each other.

All around us, night sounds: birds, crickets chirping, the sound of rushing water. Occasionally Pablo howls or whistles behind me in response to an animal call. "A little further to go," says Carrie, as we walk up and down muddy steps, across rocks, over more slippery yellow leaves. The canopy of trees overhead obscures the moon.

When darnkness fell, we had been sitting at the mouth of the waterfall, by the pool at the foot of a 100 foot cascade, but when the packs of bats came swooping down overhead, we scrambled back to the path and headed home.

We feel our way, the light spilling ahead of us on our path, up and down and around, across log bridges, rocky stairways and paths, forks in the road. I couldn't figure out how Carrie and Pablo knew the way home so well, but it is a path they had walked many times before. To me, it stretched on and on in the dark... until we finally reach a meadow that looks familiar to me.

We walk through it and then through the banana trees. At the end of the corridor of banana trees, Carrie picks six green bananas to fry for our dinner, passing up the plantains this time. Overhead the clouds slide across the star-pricked sky to reveal the moon.

Bananas in hand, we walk back toward the cabin, ducking underneath the barbed wire fence. "Home sweet home," Carrie says as we approach the small wooden cabin, painted aquamarine on the outside, with two travel hammocks swinging on the porch overlooking the mountain and valley views beyond.

In the mornings here, there are hummingbirds, butterflies, sometimes even a pack of white-faced monkeys flying through the trees next to the cabin. Sometimes they hang around outside long enough for us to catch a quick out-of-focus picture, but if you get too close, they vanish into the treetops. You hear the wish-wish-wish sound of leaves rustling at the tops of the trees, and suddenly the fast moving climbers are out of sight, gone.

The variety of the animal species residing here is amazing - from the resplendent quetzal to the basilisk or "Jesus lizard" that walks on water to the shimny honeycreeper (blue bird) to the famous large blue morpho butterflies, an otherworldly royal blue on one side and camouflage brown with a big fake eye on the underside (they are my favorites).

Inside the cabin there are hundreds of varieties of bugs it seems, crawling and flying around - the cabin is charming, rustic, but not airtight or bugproof. When I first arrive, my sister warns me about the scorpions. "Don't worry," she says. "They're not the lethal kind."

Once or twice a day, she takes a bucket and a kitchen spoon and scoops a scorpion off the wall or floor and carries the bucket outside to deposit it on the grass or near the compost heap.

I never thought I'd be so casual about scorpions, but somehow I don't give the bugs here a second thought, content to settle into a simplified life for a while. We spend a week together in this cabin, where there is no hot running water, and no refrigerator.

Preparing meals takes a while, and it's something Carrie and I do together to pass the time while we visit. Carrie and Pablo have greens and veggies delivered to the house twice a week, and we cook up root vegetables and rice, or curried lentils, or black beans with onion and hot sauce. The cooking supplies are limited of course since we can't have perishable items - dairy or meats - only veggies, beans, grains, dry goods.

Somehow this environment brings out the creative cook in me and I find myself making extravagantly delicious dishes with simple ingredients: spicy curried lentils with lemon rice and fried candied sweet potato slices. Pasta with fresh basil and tomatoes and garlic, salted just enough.

Somehow when we cook in the rainforest with simple ingredients on a two burner stove, and you're very hungry, the food is twice is delicious. Simple. Good. Pura vida.

This is the slogan for Costa Rica, the tourist-friendly motto - Pura vida - and it fits here. We wake up when we wake up, cook breakfast (oatmeal, or granola with powdered soy milk, or fresh fruit) then walk to the river to swim, bathe, lie on the rocks basking in the sunshine like the lizards that slither by.

We take longer walks sometimes to the EcoLodge in the center of San Luis, where we can check the Internet, interact with other visitors and the naturalists who travel here from around the world to work at the lodge, giving tours of the wildlife.

We walk up to the waterfall. We visit and talk for hours, and nap when we feel like it, and take sponge baths with hot water heated on the stove in the middle of the day sometimes. We read in the hammock. It's a leisurely, beautiful, simple life.

After a week in the cabin, we head to town to try out some of the organized rainforest activities: flying along the zipline 400+ feet up in the air, walking on suspension bridges over the canopy. I take a ride on 11 ziplines, including one on which you are zipping along at up to 40 miles per hour over the trees. It's exhilirating and not the least bit scary, as long as you don't let yourself think about the risk factor. (As with flying, which I do often, I choose to embrace as a miracle the fact that I'm shooting through the air at 600+ miles per hour in a metal tube, and landing safely, versus thinking about what could go wrong). I don't think about the risk involved, and therefore I have a blast.

By the end, Pablo and I are muddy and happy, splashed with mud and water from the trees when the rain kicked in after the first two ziplines. I recommend that everyone try flying over the rainforest, hooked into a harness, in the sun and rain.... Nothing quite like that sensation.

We then headed to Rincon de la Vieja, one of the volcanoes on the mainland, where we stayed in a picturesque cabin, surrounded by colorful gardens, the cabin walls spilling over with a luscious fuschia tumble of bougainvillea. We swam in the waterfall and soaked in hot sulfur springs.

I nearly passed out when we soaked and sniffed too close to the source of the sulfur fumes, hallucinating for a minute - strange people were talking to me in my head until I snapped out of it and entered the real world again after about 30 lost seconds. Be quite sure you're not allergic to sulfur (apparently, I am!) before trying this trick at home.

Then, we were off to spend the remainder of the last week in the cozy little Pacific beach town of Playa Samara. We stayed in a cabin right along the beach, right next door to the surfer school where cute young Tico (short for "Costa Rican") Rasta-styled, dreadlocked, surfer boys lounged and chatted all day long, occasionally interrupting their endless conversations to teach a lesson.

We drank strawberry margharitas at bars along the beach, including my favorite place, Shake Joe's, which featured comfy bed-style couches and hammocks to lounge in with friends while eyeing the other customers in the hazy evening light and sipping drinks with tropical fruit and little paper umbrellas.

I soaked in the sun, slathered head to toe in SPF 30 or higher of course, and swam in the warm Pacific aqua blue and clear Pacific waters. I got blonder by the day, my red hair picking up golden highlights in the sunshine.

We woke up when the sun or breeze or our internal clock woke us, fell asleep to the sound of the surf crashing at night, lounged about on the beach or in the hammock during the day, ate sumpuously full plates of tropical fruits every morning, and sometimes sipped fresh coconut milk. If this is not relaxing - what is???

When caught in the whirlwind of our normal busy, buzzing lives, few things are healthier I think than slowing down, taking a break, getting back to basics. The simple and pure life in Costa Rica was the perfect way to recharge my batteries.

Perhaps you are not as fortunate as I am to have a sister living in Costa Rica, as Carrie was for a while, and granted, that helped make this a possibility for me. But if not in Costa Rica, build some pura vida into your own life wherever you are, by taking some time just to slow down, relax, unplug the computer, turn off the Treo, to just enjoy some peace and quiet, to just enjoy the company of the people around you.

Luckily, as I have learned again and again, the world keeps spinning if I step out of my work routine for a while. My work is still waiting for me when I return home. But I am calmer, happier, more peaceful, more sane.

And that is a blessing, for me and everyone around me. So, with apologies to Paris and Nicole, whose show I will never watch, here's to living the simple life...

One love

It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.
~Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It's Valentine's Day, and I'm single, and I'm a veteran of one marriage that, like most marriages, had some good in it, some sweetness and some happiness. Yet it didn't work, it fell apart, it ended. Ah, love...

The past year, when my ex- and I filed for divorce, was filled with a lot of grief and guilt, and a lot of blessings too, like my travels, the sale of my house, my friends around the world, my work. I have spent a lot of time exploring what went wrong in my marriage, and exploring concepts of love. What does it mean to me? What do I want from love? Or, the flip-side - how much love do I have to give?

A lot, a lot. Love, in its deepest form, is boundless. There is room enough in my heart for all six billion people on earth - although, of course, I can't marry all six billion, or even speed-date all six billion (or even the three billion with the y-chromosome). Now, putting this capacity for boundless love into practice is another question.

I do believe we all have an endless and divine capacity to love yet it's generally easier, and very normal and human, to constrict ourselves, to withhold the love we give, as if there wasn't enough to go around, as if we'd run out. When by giving it, it only grows...

This is hardly an original thought of course; ask the Dalai Lama, Buddha, Jesus, any old guru or prophet you meet on the street, and they will agree. It's just that this is the time in my life when I am more ready to finally live it, to at least try to put this into practice in my life...

For me, love has expanded this year well beyond the concept of romance, where it was stuck on pause and rewind for a while. Don't get me wrong: I, like most of us, still want the soul-mate, passionate lover, best friend, all rolled into one.

I want a partner on the spiritual path with whom to share the joys and lessons, with whom I can contribute to the world, make a difference and give back, and also (ahem) with whom I can enjoy a good roll in the sack. Maybe some of you have that today already and if you do, God bless! Celebrate it!

I'm still searching, but I live a life filled with love in so many ways. I'm reminded every Sunday of what it means to really put unconditional love into action when I walk into Glide Memorial Methodist Church, where the sign above the door as you enter from the meal hall reads, "To be spiritual is to love everybody."

Glide puts that into action... Everyone is welcomed at Glide, no matter your ethnicity, religion, sexual preference. As they say, transgendered, transexual, even trans-bay are all welcome (okay, non-Bay Area residents, this last one is an SF insiders' joke!).

At Glide, they serve more than one million meals a year to those in need, run recovery programs, clinics and shelters. You may have seen the movie "The Pursuit of Happyness" featuring Will Smith that tells the true story of Chris Gardner, who went from being a homeless single father on the streets of SF to a millionaire Wall Street broker. He credits Glide for getting him back on his feet again.

Glide has a million more stories of redemption and grace, and I show up every Sunday to hear the stories, to be blessed by the spirit of joy in the church, to learn again and feel in my bones how very blessed I am to be healthy, alive, happy, to have a home and good food to eat and so many friends. I have so much more than so many on this planet... We are all so abundantly blessed, and it's easy to forget that sometimes.

Yet having a home and food and money and other external blessings don't guarantee a happy heart. "Loneliness and the experience of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty," said Mother Teresa, who knew something about poverty. Rev. Fitch shared this quote with us, and I watched one member of the choir weep, her eyes rimmed red, as the woman next to her wrapped her in her arms.

He challenged us all to reach out to someone who was lonely, someone who was hurting, to stop judging, to stop thinking only of ourselves, to help someone heal. There is no greater gift than unconditional love. As Reverend Fitch said, "When we judge people, we have no time to love them."

I do an exercise sometimes, inspired by a book by Wayne Dyer, while walking down the street. I try to simply send unconditional love to everyone who passes me. I was honestly surprised to find, when I focused my attention on it, that I pass so many quick judgments about people, that I can within seconds see someone and size them up, pass a judgment about whether or not this is someone I would want to talk to...

Judging by appearances is so easy to do, and we're so trained to do it by society, marketing campaigns, flashy billboards and glitzy advertisements. I think a lot of us at one point or another have had an idea in our head of what our mate is supposed to look like, or maybe we've fallen into step with certain friends because they look or dress like us (what teenager hasn't done that at some point, wanting to belong?) but it's so often a false construct. People so often surprise us.

Yet it's still a challenge, I find, to send love to everyone I see - but it's a challenge I want to continue to take on. Who doesn't benefit from some simple kindness, loving thoughts, a little attention? We all want to be noticed, appreciated.

That is not to say that we have to like everyone, or should even try - we all have different sensibilities, we all have different tastes. And there just isn't enough time to be friends with the whole planet, or to have all the inhabitants of your continent over for dinner. But to love everyone? In spirit, and in practice, when you are face to face with a stranger? In my mind at least that's a noble goal.

Luckily, I do like all of you who are reading this - my friends. Blessings to you. I honestly don't know what I'd do without having so many incredible friends around the world, who inspire me, make me laugh, boost me up when I'm feeling down and help me to know that I'm not crazy for feeling whatever I'm feeling, whatever wave I'm riding at the moment... Who are there to make my life really worth living.

My daily meditation practice also helps me to love myself and my life more deeply by reconnecting me with my breath, my body, and by helping me to clear some of the cobwebs out of my mind. I find myself a little bit less caught in stories and drama, every day, a little more able to live in the present moment fully, and to choose my response to the moment...

Which helps of course when it comes to men. As for the other part of the love relationship equation, what all my other relationships in my life can't give me, i.e. sex, physical love, well, this is a PG-13 blog read by many of my family members so we won't delve into that too deeply.

I'll let the funny, wonderful and wise author Elizabeth Gilbert speak for me on this one - I, too, want to devote myself to God, but also want worldly pleasures... Here is what she has to say on that topic, as she discusses it with the medicine man Ketut in Indonesia:

"I want to have a lasting experience of God," I told him. "Sometimes I feel like I understand the divinity of this world, but then I lose it because I get distracted by my petty desires and fears. I want to be with God all the time. But I don't want to be a monk, or totally give up worldly pleasures. I guess what I want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God."

Ketut said he could answer my question with a picture. He showed me a sketch he'd drawn once during meditation. It was an androgynous human figure, standing up, hands clasped in prayer. But this figure had four legs, and no head. Where the head should have been, there was only a wild foliage of ferns and flowers. There was a small, smiling face drawn over the heart.

"To find the balance you want," Ketut spoke through his translator, "this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have four legs, instead of two. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God."

"You must stop looking at the world through your head." Ah, yes. Easily said, not always so easily done - but that is what my journey is now, to follow a path with heart. When I'm living in the present moment, not obsessing about my past or fantasizing about the future, when I'm being led by love in my life, when I'm following my intuition and heart (and showing up, and doing the work this life calls for too) there is no "wrong" or "right," or rather, I'm always in the right place. The challenges and what seem to be failures in any given moment become lessons.

When I look at love and dating that way, I'm more willing to take risks, put myself out there, knowing that all experiences of human connection are worthwhile, and that if I am true to myself, my path will lead me where I need to go.

I'll end with this beautiful quote from Pujya Swamiji: "Love has no conditions. When we put conditions, when we put barriers and boundaries, then we lose love. Love is condition-less. Love is barrier-less. Look at the moon, sun, stars, trees... they are just on for everyone. When our love also flows for everyone, you become very natural."

Here's to being like the sun, moon, stars, which are "on for everyone." May I be a light in this world, as the Buddha urged his followers on his deathbed. May I not be afraid to shine. Because you never know when your light will illuminate the path for someone else, as so many other shining lights have illuminated mine.

Blessings to you all, to my friends around the world, for being lights in my life.

Now, go give someone a big smooch or hug. Go spread some love! Happy Valentine's Day.

"Ever since Love heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you...."
- Hafiz

Lisa Powell Graham © 2007

The best year of my life...

....was, without a doubt, 2006 (although rumor has it 2007 will be even better...).

On the face of it, this might seem like a stretch. Certainly, 2006 was not without change, upheaval, even turmoil in my life. After all, my ex- and I initiated divorce proceedings in 2006, and this was (and is) unquestionably hard. I moved half a dozen times, stayed in three times that many homes, and have basically not stopped living out of a suitcase for the past four months.

But what a ride it's been. I've been to 20+ cities and traveled tens of thousands of miles on a few dozen airplane rides, to the Middle East and Mediterranean Europe and back and forth between the East and West Coast of the United States. I've visited with, and made, dozens of friends in countries around the globe.

I've studied five languages (Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Italian, Spanish), learned three tongue twisters in Italian, a handful of bar pick-up lines in Turkish (hey, you never know...), and got a free cab ride from a driver in Amman, Jordan after chatting with him about his family in Arabic. I've tried exotic dishes, from escargot in brown sauce at 7 a.m. at La Boqueria in Barcelona, to barbecue cooked under rocks in the sand by Bedouins in the middle of the desert in Jordan.

I've smoked hookah pipes and sipped arak, raki and campari. I've belly-danced, Greek-danced, lindy-hopped and attended a "no talent talent show" featuring smokin' hot burlesque dancing. I've ridden on the back of motorcycles and scooters up the cliffs of Greek islands, along the seacoast of Napoli, past the Colosseum in Roma.

I've been skiing in Tahoe, been on a silent yoga/meditation retreat in the Santa Barbara Mountains, and soaked in hot tubs in at least four states on both coasts. I've sipped champagne on a hillside overlooking Rome, and on a terrace overlooking Napa Valley Wine Country.

What I can I say, life is sweet...

I became the consummate California girl in many ways, shocking for a born-and-bred East Coaster. I took up yoga, meditation, became a vegetarian (in fall 2005), got a life coach and a spiritual advisor, dressed up for Halloween in the Castro, swam in my bikini in the Bay with the president of the Board of Supervisors from SF (also fall 2005, but who's counting??).

I shopped at the Ferry Building Farmers' Market, Trader Joe's and Chinatown and tried smoked tofu, tofu chocolate mousse, tofu scramble. I also incidentally became a temporary carnivore again overseas so I could try delicacies like moussaka, schwarma, and pasta carbonara at the source. (Life's too short to be too rigid and to make too many rules, either, IMHO...)

It has not been a dull year, not for one second...

The greatest part of the journey has been what I've learned about myself. I am one fun, adventurous chick, and to my own apparent surprise, pretty fearless. Or okay, let's be real, I still feel some fear sometimes ~ it's hard to cure a lifetime of neurosis overnight ~ but it doesn't stop me from doing what I want to do.

In the words of the guru of one of my favorite writers/spiritual seekers, Elizabeth Gilbert: "Fear, who cares?"

I am getting more Zen as I age, even as I get more adventurous, and I love that. You might as well remain calm while you're flying down a mountain, navigating your way around a foreign city, or landing a new contract with a government somewhere around the world.

This is not to say that I don't have my occasional petulant "moments" when the ski boots don't fit right or the backpack feels cumbersome after hopping on the second train of the day. But then I never said I was the Dalai Lama, just a more Zen me, that's all.

If you know me well enough to know my past, you know that I have always been an overachiever, and generally pretty tough on myself. This year I learned to let go of my need to be "perfect," whatever that means, and to be willing to live a little more, risk a little more, just have a helluva time in the grand adventure of life.

I've learned that there isn't one "right" way to do things, and that making mistakes is what we're here for anyway - to learn, to grow. To have some fun, for chrissakes! It has been a fun ride. It is a fun ride.

This past year, I also stripped away all the labels that I thought defined me. Adrian's wife. Troy community leader. Lindy-hop instructor. A+ perfectionist. Harvard and Princeton graduate. Try this as an exercise sometime. Who are you if you are not your job, your relationship, your pedigree/degree(s), your contributions to the community?

Maybe you're crystal-clear on who you are already without these markers - and if you are - God bless! I wasn't. I'd never stepped away from them for long enough to ask who was I underneath it all - I was always too busy frenetically doing, so rarely stopping to take a breath, so rarely just being me.

What would it mean to just travel and just be me? Who is Lisa underneath all the labels? That was my journey this year, really - figuring out who I am when I'm not defining myself by all the external factors in my life. Luckily, I really liked what I found!

I have found in myself what I thought I was looking for in someone else: Courage. A sense of adventure. Passion. A wicked sense of humor, and a real appetite for joy and fun. Abundance, in the universe, and therefore in me. Inner peace and calm - Lord knows I used to look for even that externally and have finally figured out that that, too, comes from inside me. All this, in one cute-little-redheaded package that looks good in a bikini.

Hell, I'd date me. (All this, and humility too!)

Ha! In all seriousness, though...

The good news is that my life is full and fun and exciting and abundant, full of wonderful friends around the world in amazing countries, and adventures and joy and love and peace, as it is now. I pretty much have a rockin' life. I'm one lucky woman. I am honored to know so many beautiful people!! I am beyond incredibly blessed to have all of you in my life.

Everyone should have it this good.

Next year, mind you, will be even better... In'sha Allah. I do believe there is a greater force that guides us (call it God, call it love, call it Allah, I think God responds to prayers under any name as long as they are from the heart), and that we also have the power to influence how our lives go, to create what we wish for in the world, and at the very least to always choose our attitudes about what happens in our lives.

I have a lot of work projects that I'm exploring right now that I'm excited about, homes on both coasts of the U.S. (Troy and San Francisco are both home for me, still, in various ways), a zillion friends.

I have my health, my happiness, my ability to dance. I am blessed with an amazing family - I wouldn't be half of what I am without them. I have the world's greatest life coach. I have passions and interests and skills and degrees and financial means, and the ability to give back in the world.

What more could I ask for???

I'll think of more to ask for, I'm sure, by following my heart this year where it leads me, by doing work in the world that I'm passionate about, by exploring and continuing the grand adventure.

Hope my path leads me to you this year. Be in touch. Send stories. Send love. Be happy.

Life is too short to not love and value every day. May you be blessed with joy every day of your life.

I'll close with some wise words from Gail Blanke, personal and executive coach and author ~ These words helped launch me on my journey this year. "Stop measuring yourself based on how much you get done in any given day, and start celebrating yourself based on how much you discover. Let go of being the world's greatest efficiency expert and embrace the role of lover and adventurer."

Amen!

Peace and love,
Lisa


p.s. One of my favorite songs from my childhood, "Here Comes the Sun" by the Beatles is playing right now on the stereo (my mom used to play it for me when I was a little girl):

"Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter,
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been clear...."

May you have sunshine this winter, and may light shine in all the darkest seasons of your life. I've had some dark days this year too, but I find that the sun always shines again.

If things aren't as bright in your life as you wish they were right now, I hope you'll remember the change of seasons, and reach out to me and other friends and let us buoy you up - as so many of you have done for me, too, this past year. Bless you for it!

To everyone who has sent love, given love, shared kind words, shared hugs, and boosted my spirits on the tough days, helped me remember pleasure, danced with me, showed me your city, celebrated with me, or just listened when I needed to talk, for all who hosted me and made your home mine for a few days - love you right back!

You are all welcome in my home(s), welcome in my life and in my heart, always.

"Little darling, I felt that ice is slowly melting..."

© Lisa Powell Graham 2006

Tutto il mundo e un paese...

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes,
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?
~"Seasons of Love" from the musical Rent

I know the moments I will never forget from this year ~ bellydancing to Arabic pop while glamorous women in hijab cheer me on, saying, "Hot, hot!" ~ having my Bedouin guide Mahmoud place prayer beads in my hands as I meditate in the Bedouin museum and tell me "I feel something very strong about you" ~ climbing the cliffs to survey the royal tombs carved into the red rock in the lost city of Petra ~ lounging on cushions, smoking a hookah pipe and drinking apple tea as I watch the sun turn the water golden and silhouette the minarets at the Golden Horn in Istanbul ~ watching the Martha Graham Dance Company perform their interpretation of Greek myths in an ancient ampitheatre at the Acropolis in Athens ~ zipping past the Colosseum, illuminated at night, on the back of Antonio's scooter my first night in Roma ~ eating a whole pizza, the best of my life, from Pizza Man with Giamba in Firenze ~ gazing over Mt. Vesuvius and the hillside homes of Napoli with il mio amico Mario ~ drinking Campari in Barceloneta by the sea and telling jokes with Matteo in six languages ~ Life feels dreamlike and magical when I think about all I've experienced, lived, felt, tasted, seen in the past few months of my travels ~ unforgettable.

And then there is today. The sun is streaming through the window; outside is the whir of a leaf-blower as the neighbor rounds up the fallen leaves. It is November in New England and I am home. Whatever home means... I'm back from my travels overseas, staying at my parents' house in Western Massachusetts for a few days before heading to my beloved Troy, New York, then back to my other favorite U.S. city, San Francisco, for a while. I've just returned from a few beautiful days in mile-high Denver, Colorado, and before that, Boston. And of course, before that, Barcelona...

It is a bit of a shock to the system to be stateside again. My days are no longer filled with wide-eyed wanderings through cobbled streets and side-alleys, soaking up sunlight and the spectacle of street performers and the pulsing beats of music in other languages, drinking wine and campari and tasting sweets and seafood in tasty Catalan preparations, letting it all fill me...

My days here are filled with friends and family, another kind of beauty. The days are still slow and relaxed although I'm starting to feel the impetus to be on the go again. It's pretty unavoidable here in our work-work-work-driven society, where I need my daily meditation practice to keep my sense of calm and peace.

I came home early to celebrate the life of someone I love who has passed on (Sue Williamson, the director of my graduate program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government), to see my dear sister Carrie off before she flew to Mexico for a few months, to visit with some old family friends, and to wrap up some important business in my own life before resuming my normal work-a-day life. This means of course that my immersion program in Spanish was delayed, to be pursued instead most likely in 2007.

Sometimes it's just more important to be with the people we love than to pursue our adventure plans - and there is a lifetime yet to fulfill those anyhow. I have many to fit in - how and when, we shall see - Que sera, sera.... Venga lo que venga!

It seems fitting that my return home for Sue's memorial service at the Kennedy School brought me back to the space, place and people who inspired my travels in the first place. It is the Kennedy School that brought me 216 friends from around the world in my amazing MPA class. I am still knocked out daily by who these people are and how they give back to the world; I have never known a more inspiring, giving group of people.

It was my beloved friend and classmate Salma's wedding in Jordan that gave me the inspiration to head overseas this fall, and the friends who live along the Mediterranean corridor who gave me the further inspiration to follow the map through five more countries, following my heart on a journey that ultimately inspired me, changed me, made me more completely me.... A journey that reconnected me to my passion for languages, learning, people from around the planet, that reawakened my desire to truly be a global citizen and to give back perhaps in a larger sense than I had envisioned before.

I traveled to learn about the world and ultimately learned about myself; isn't that how it always goes?

All around me at Sue's memorial, my classmates, including public servants, heads of NGOs, military leaders, of all ages, colors, persuasions, pulled out kleenex to dry their eyes; no one was left unmoved. A group of a dozen of us got up to sing a song for Sue, which was a request she made before she died. We led the packed auditorium in singing "Seasons of Love" from Rent. Sue called the song, "How Do You Measure A Year."

This song asks us all that question, gives some possible answers ("in daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee, in inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife") and ultimately answers that you measure it in love.

I'd agree with that ~ The moments I will remember on my travels were connections with other people, forming bonds of love and understanding across cultures. The moments I will remember back here at home are moments with friends as we mourn Sue's loss and celebrate her life; time with family back in Massachusetts; time with beloved friends in Colorado; visiting with the community I love in Troy and my posse in San Francisco, which I look forward to doing soon...

My travels changed me and raised new questions for me about my work and larger purpose in the world. I am thinking seriously about ways to translate the work I have done and my studies in public policy and urban affairs into the global environment. Could there be a way for me to do work with other cities internationally, and also use my language skills and learn about other cultures in the process? Absolutely, there could, it's just a matter of when and how I would like to create this ~ Many questions to answer here stateside first, too....

Our lives are what we make them, how we choose to create them, and how full they are, how technicolor, how full of love and adventure, laughter and magic, is entirely up to us. I'm so filled with energy and inspiration again, that kind of happy energy that makes you want to do cartwheels around the room, after my travels and feel ready to channel it with force into the world again.

The questions of how, where and when exactly everything will work for me are yet to be answered, but I'm not worried. If travel has taught me anything, it's that we need so little to get by (a little food, a little clothing, some sunshine, love and friendship will do!).

Charting your own path is never easy, but always worth it - Follow your heart and your path will be the right one for you. I truly believe that, and want to continue to live that in the world.

I feel brimming with the spirit of adventure that defined this particular journey through six countries for me - I know there are many other adventures ahead, and I can't wait to embark on the next leg of the journey.

Lots of love to all who made it possible for me along the way.... And to those who are reading my stories, thanks for sharing the journey with me.

p.s. Tutto il mundo e un paese! All the world is one country. I think that is my favorite expression from along my travels - The further I go, the more I learn how much we are all alike, and how the future of this world depends on us all. I am lucky to be able to just play my part and I look forward to all the coming adventures....

To be continued.....

© Lisa Powell Graham 2006

Barcelona - un gusto de Gaudi, un sabor de Miro...

"This tree next to my workshop, this is my master." So said master architect and artist Antoni Gaudi, whose Sagrada Familia has a cathedral interior based on the vaulted canopies of the forest.

Here in Barcelona, I am living only two blocks from La Sagrada Familia, that beautiful monstrosity, the most audicious and outrageous work of public art and expression of religious faith that I have ever seen...

Gaudi just makes me laugh out loud with joy and wonder at his sense of humor, deep faith, homage to nature, his sheer bravado. The top of the cathedral features stalks of corn and grapes and peaches and the word, repeated over and over, "Sanctus."

He drew inspiration from trees, leaves, honeycombs, birds, flowers, fruits, vegetables. And from light - I am amazed at the way his buildings are illuminated, the grace with which he harnesses the natural light.

He said about La Sagrada Familia, an ongoing masterwork of art and architecture started over 100 years ago and scheduled for completion in another 20 years or so, "Look at the top! Doesn't it just look as though the earth joins with the heavens? This burst of mosaics is the first thing sailors arriving in Barcelona will see. It will be a sparkling welcome!"

There is not a single straight line in La Pedrera, one of Gaudi's other masterpieces on Passeig de Gracia, which I also tour. The roof is simply splendid, mushrooming with towers and faces and spires and spirals, and who ever thought of making a roofline wavy anyway? Who ever thought to make a roof ornamental, indeed, vs. just somewhere that pigeons land or somewhere to hang the laundry?

Gaudi, that's who, his roof is necessary, not pedestrian as roofs usually are, just a building top, but instead pure art and lush design, and where else could you so admire the Barcelona skyline but from between his undulating rooflines... I'm in love with this roof... And we have not even talked about his Casa Battlo, Dio mio...

Here in Barcelona, these Catalan streets are still haunted by the spirits of Gaudi, Miro, Picasso...In a few short days, colorful, off-beat Barcelona has turned me upside down and inside out and made me laugh out loud and stand stock still in awe....

Pablo Picasso, what can I say? Who could be more playful and prolific? As his museum would testify... You can see here in this 15th century castle comme museo the evolution of the man who would later create Guernica - You can see it in his black and white study of "Las Meninas," one of 58 exhaustive studies of "La Familia de Felipe IV" executed by Picasso from December to August 1957.

You can see it in "La Joie de Vivre" also known as "La Alegria de Vivir," although the subject matter is different, the happy little goats, the pan flute, the voluptuous nymph. You can see how alive he is through his art and how the world lives here through his canvases - You can see what is to come...

I walk out of the Picasso Museum and the whole world is brighter and I see it in new frames, with new eyes - I take pictures at odd angles just for fun and am captivated by small details, a plastic flower on a balcony, trays of chocolates garnished with candied fruit in a shop window, laundry hanging on a pink pastel wall.

I feel a little crazier here, more inclined to take risks, knowing these artists did this and see what happened to the world?

I even dress myself like a work of art in Barcelona. This morning, I put on a simple black outfit with a low-cut black top, down to there, because these are the ultimate melons in nature anyway, this part of the woman - beautiful, no? Why not let the world admire sometimes... I wrap my hair in a bright red scarf and put on red lipstick and black eyeliner.

I am in the city of Miro. I am in the city of Picasso. How could I not treat my body as a work of art too, here where the figure of the woman was also admired and loved in art... I think of the joyous high round breasts of the nymph in Picasso's La Alegria de Vivir and figure I am dancing the streets in this spirit...

It's fun to do this and fun to walk around as if I am a roving piece of art. Everyone on the Ramblas does and is this anyhow... And it's comforting to be comfortable enough in my own skin now that I understand that some will love my display and exclaim, "Mama mia!" as some men do along the way, and some will ignore me because perhaps they prefer Cezanne to Miro, brunettes to strawberry blondes, whatever. I don't take it personally.

Some people love plums and some bananas and I am a pomegranate (bright and colorful, full of surprises, planting seeds of joy, better once you unwrap me!). Anyway, I revel in the beauty that God gave me as just, well, ME, pure Lisa, and have fun showcasing that here in this colorful city...

Here in Barcelona, I practice my Spanish but also check out the menus in Catalan. This is a place where your "X" Scrabble tile could actually win you big points, as this seems to be the middle letter of every word in Catalan. I don't pretend to have a handle on this language yet at all but it is seemingly a mix of Spanish and French and something more medeival.

For lunch I try "txapela" and "bikini txapela" at a Catalan tapas place; yesterday had "El Menu del Dia" at La Llesca, a mom-and-pop operation run by a family in Paseo Gaudi, which featured two plates - tostaditos con chorizo y tomate and albondigas con salsa, champinones y patatas, along with vino tinto, pan and flan - one of my alltime favorite desserts! - all for 10 Euros. Wow...
I am haunted by the city and still have not even lived it yet, i.e. haven't yet experienced "Barcelona by night" - although tonight I will treat myself to un paseo along Las Ramblas, and tomorrow to the Boqueria market I go! I will also visit Gaudi's house in Parque Guell tomorrow - have already been to several of his other houses and of course his masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia.

I can't seem to get enough of Gaudi... I just want to be consumed by his eclectic humorous sacred gorgeousness, to live in the organic-ness of his art....

Here the city really is a work of art, Modernisme, Catalan style art nouveau, and I am so grateful for it... I am reminded again how much the city is a passion of mine, the city as organism and eco-system, and I wonder as I walk how the city has evolved and is evolving now, what is its soul and nature? who are the spirits living and dead who roam the streets now? how do the people live and worship, what are the colors of the city by day and night, how does the afternoon light fall by the sea... Another city to fall in love with...

So you see, I am fickle, so quickly enamored of a city in Spain. However. You must understand though that my love for Italy is boundless and inexplicable, and I barely even saw the country - yet I felt it and tasted it and drank it in in a way that changed me in a few short weeks. What country could possibly be more sexy than Italy?

I don't think there is another place on earth sexier than this - the country is shaped like a woman's high-heeled, thigh-high boot for God's sake, kicking the island of Sicilia as if she has nothing better to do. I want to just kick some islands in my thigh-highed, high-heeled boots too when I am in Italy...

The day I leave Firenze, I am so sad to go. But all of my last moments there feel perfect, as they should be - I admire the graffiti of Jesu, spray painted in gold with "L'Uomo" on a stucco wall. I have a foccaccia dell'ouvo and a tortina della nonna, my last sweet in Italy for now.

It is the perfect sweet to end my two weeks there, symbolic for me somehow since I hope to be a nonna (Grandma!) someday and because it has a creamy sweet ricotta filling - My weakness here is for the milky, creamy sweets. The country of gelato. Heavenly. Also, in the U.S. we would not call this "the little cake of the Grandmother" - even the name of the dessert is sweet for Chrissakes!

Oh! And bow-tie pasta - here it is called farfallino which means "little butterfly." Little butterfly! Poetry in my mouth! My favorite gelato flavor is of course Bacio, which means kiss, and which is creamy chocolate with hazelnut. (Now, if you want to win my heart, sweet slow romance, perhaps a nice red wine, and anything with chocolate and hazelnut will do it....)

Italy is pure romance, where they name my favorite gelato flavor after a kiss - And with apologies to Spanish where we say "todo bien" nothing makes me happier than to hear the voices singing, "Tutto bene! Tutto bene!"

All is well - Of course it is - How could I possibly ever leave this country...

Vedi Napoli e Poi Muori - "Visit Napoli and you can die," so goes the Italian expression. I heard this from multiple Italian friends and it seems that I can't miss this place on this trip. So. I go. I see. I sigh... I meet Mario.

I don't really know what to say about Napoli, except, GO, and what to say about Mario except that I am happy to know he is alive. It was one of those days and one of those times when you just feel so grateful to be here, now, in the perfect moment.

Mario and I rode his Harley Davidson all over Napoli and watched the sunset from Parco Virgiliano and then checked out other stunning vistas of this historic and beautiful city on the sea. Napoli is perhaps better known to American tourists for its long history of organized crime or for not being the safest tourist destination in Italy today.

I can't speak for others but for me it was a friendly and beautiful place. I got to experience it through the eyes of someone who loves the city, which was such a blessing, and I understood why the Italians love this city so much.

We met at Castel Dell'Uovo as a simple stroke of fate; I had headed to a restaurant to grab some pizza and they were closing. Mario was leaving with members of his brother's wedding party (his brother was married the night before - Mario had been up all night and then spent the next day showing his brothers' friends from Milan the city - and then showed Napoli to me!).

We met, and he offered help me find another place to try Neopolitan pizza, and to show me his city. Mario's pride in his home and birthplace was obvious; he told me this was the best city in the world and he would take me to the best place in the best city in the world, that it was so beautiful that I would not be able to breathe...

It was, indeed, breathtaking. We watched the sunset from the west of the city, where the coastline curves around the Mediterranean creating a harbor and bay where the historic center of city is nestled. We are on the outer Western curve, by the industrial part of the city. Mario shares his vision for this part of Napoli, to transform the old factory buildings into art museums, build restaurants and shops by the sea. I can see it, perfectly...

Mario also is just a good soul, the youngest of eight children in a big Italian family that spans 28 years, known by the family as "the sweetest" of all the brothers. This was clear from his conversations with me. He is a spiritual and kind person who is dedicated to making a difference in the world and does everyday through his kindnesses and hard work and the sunshine he brings into others' lives, as he did into mine that day. I feel like I have more faith in the future and salvation of the world just knowing he exists!

Am grateful for experiencing his goodness... So many good people in the world and how lucky I am to meet some along the way... If you are familiar with tikkun olam, the concept from Jewish mysticism about reconnecting all the fractured bits of light scattered around the world to heal the earth - Meeting someone like Mario for me is like connecting again with one of these points of light.

If enough of us focus on healing the world together, it is possible... Anything is possible.

Other Italy stops included Pompei, Siena, Cinque Terre... I cannot extoll the virtues of Italy enough. I breathe more deeply and walk more slowly and feel more like a goddess here than anywhere on earth, apparently - I plan to trasplant this feeling, this way of being, back to the U.S...

Pompei was a marvel because here in a place of real art and culture and beauty a city was frozen in time. It is chilling and beautiful to see it, to see the plaster casts of people who were captured frozen in a moment in their everyday lives, surprised by the sudden volcanic eruption and shower of volcanic ash.

Siena is a medieval city, still intact today, and I climb the towers there for an overview of the red roofs, Tuscan hillsides, city walls. The Duomo in Siena knocks me out.

Just when you think you cannot breathe in any more beauty, there is more - the vaulted ceilings, the blue and white striped marble columns, the busts of Popes and noble figures along the ceiling vault, the frescos, the mosaic tile floors with stories of creation and resurrection - it is too much, really, it is about as much beauty as I can take in one day... I breathe it in...

And Cinque Terre - here I walk the Via Dell'Amore (Lover's Lane or the Road of Love) and marvel at the cliffside villages with the picturesque pastel houses of melon, peach, pink - I have a picnic lunch of formaggio and foccacia in a hidden cemetery which is a beautiful and quiet place with cliffside views. I hike for hours and watch the sunset over the cliffs and dine in a little place in Monterosso... I meditate on the rocks by the Mediterranean Sea. It is a quiet, lovely, replenishing time.

My last week has been so replenishing and I am grateful for this. Sometimes travel can be tiring and our bodies and souls just need to recharge, and the last few quiet, lovely days in Italy and my first few days in wondrous and wonderful Barcelona have provided just this for me. It is time to reflect on lessons of travel too, and to offer gratitude for the gifts.

I am so grateful for the kindness of strangers - it is this really that has made the world so welcoming, such a wonderland for me. Mario was a stranger who made Napoli friendly for me, and who is now a friend. By the Town Hall in Siena, a nice couple from Illinois shared their picnic lunch with me. They insisted on feeding me crackers, goat cheese, part of a pear, orange, grapes and cookies.

In Pompei Gianni befriended me and helped me to find my way to Napoli, bought me coffee and pizza and just kept me company, walking me through the square at night and showing me an archaelogical dig site off the beaten path, near where he grew up, that he insists I was the first tourist ever to see! This is probably true. I will remember this always.

It is little kindnesses like this that you remember, and hopefully pass on, in the world...

© Lisa Powell Graham 2006

Roma: non basta una vita...

"It is a night with a lovely girl and 100 flowers," Antonio says....

We are on a night tour of the city on his scooter, my arms wrapped around his waist and his lap filled with two dozen roses that I bought for my friend Francesca, who is hosting me here in the city... It is my first night in Roma. He takes me to Trevi Fountain, breathtaking by night, where I toss a coin over my shoulder and make a wish to return to Roma...

We zip by the Colloseum, Piazza Venezia, Piazza di Spagna with the famous Spanish steps where beautiful people historically gathered hoping to be spotted for work as models... onto the Piazza del Popolo with dual churches at the foot of Pincio Hill. The city is marvelous by moonlight.

Antonio wants to kiss me and I refuse; I learn "abbracciare," the Italian word for hug. He is a friend but also a hot-blooded Italian man so I have to set the boundaries. Sometimes I feel like I should hang one of the museum-style "non toccare" signs around my neck - look, don't touch.

The attention is still lovely however and it is a gift to have friends in the city as I do, mostly people I have connected with through other friends in the States. Roma is like a dream to me and the magic of these moments makes it so.

There are many more: dinner at Fortunato near the Pantheon where Bill Clinton and Prince Charles dine when they are in town, a treat from Claudio who works in PR for the Minister of Justice; we have spaghetti with frutti di mare (seafood) and it is exquisite in a red sauce with just the right touch of red pepper, then white fish in a light buttery sauce with patatas. Mmmm...

There is champagne with Gianfranco, who deals in Napa Valley wines, at the Pergola on the top floor of the Hilton with stunning views of Roma. Flavio, another friend, takes me out in Trastevere and we have liqueur shots out of dark chocolate cups in an out-of-the-way bookstore cafe that specializes in exotic drinks, like Absinthe, which they actually serve! And Alessandro and I drink amaretto and chocolate liqueur and eat fine chocolates from Brazil while discussing Buddhism, politics and friendships around the world.

Life, what can I say, is good... It is la dolce vita, indeed... I've never been wined and dined so much in my life. The men have all been gentlemen and good company; some have become good friends already and will remain so after this trip. I could get used to this...

And life is sacred here, eternal... I awake to the sound of church bells my first morning in Roma, here in the home of the Pope, the eternal city that is a living museum, streets full of monuments, sculptures, fountains, piazzas by some of history's great artists, the grandeur of the days of the Empire still present in every walk I take...

Rome is monumental. Besides being home to master works by Michaelangelo, Raphael, Bernini, Caravaggio, the city itself is a work of art. The buildings are grand, there are metro stations with marble angels perching on ledges above the curving facades, there are mythological figures spouting water in the endless fountains...

For me the feeling of the eternal city is expressed in the water fountains along the street that run eternally, water pouring from a tap into the street, where fashionably dressed cat-eyed Italian women stop for a drink, pulling back their long dark hair to drink from the flowing water, before rushing to their next destination in this buzzing modern and historic city...

Although the pace here is of a big modern city, Roma slows me down. I walk more slowly to admire everything, feeling like I have all the time in the world.

I sashay, walking like a runway model, swishing my hips, wearing heels on cobblestone streets and fitted skirts and dresses, only because this is Roma and it feels right to do this here. La moda matters here.

And I feel sexier in Roma...

If you are a 35 year old woman getting a divorce, as I am, and want to feel feminine and beautiful, even adored, again, I suggest spending some time in Roma where you feel like a W-O-M-A-N... There is something in the air here.

It doesn't hurt here that the men who sell you coffee or bus tickets often look like Calvin Klein underwear models. And you don't buy shampoo at CVS, you buy it at a profumeria. How much more sexy is that?

Even the names of my friends here all have three or four syllables, are more melodic: Giambattista, Alessandro, Gianfranco, Francesca, Claudio, Flavio... They roll off the tongue.

La lingua italiana is poetry to my ears; the national language was shaped by La Divina Commedia by Dante after all and all the words ending in "o" and "gia" make basic conversation, even swear words, which I am learning, perche non (why not?), sound like music....

I feel like I traveled 9,000 years to get here as well, having traveled back to the Paleothic and Neolithic Ages in Greece...

At the Benaki Museum in Athens, I marveled at small red clay female figurines, with full breasts and swollen bellies likely symbolizing fertility, that could fit in the palm of my hand and that date back to 6500 BC.

I experienced the Early Bronze Age, the Cypriots, the Archaic Period, the Mycenaens, through art, history coming alive for me in a way that it cannot through only reading it in books. I feel the energy of the creative spirit that has documented history and stories through art for thousands and thousands of years, predating language.

I marvel at the time and precision needed to create a Byzantine mosaic, a gold-leafed icon, a richly embroidered traditional costume... The care, the love, the artistry that went into all of these is breathtaking and such a reminder of the power of the human spirit to create things of great beauty.

You feel so much through this art, it raises so many questions and tells so many stories, about how people worshipped and lived, how they ate and worked, what their lives were like. It's awe-inspiring to absorb this much history in a few short days...

I learn too more about the Byzantine era which spanned from approximately the 4th to 15th century AD, the Greek-speaking Roman empire centered in Constantinople, i.e. my beloved Istanbul. It is one of my favorite periods in art.

I learn how priests and laypeople both fought for the right to create and display iconography, that this art was nearly lost when all religious imagery was banned from Byzantine art for over a century starting in 726, and the efforts of a dedicated few saved it. Icons were the common people's bible, the way to share the stories of Christianity with the illiterate versus reserving the religion for only the learned.

This art had a real impact in that time and I marvel now at its beauty; I love the icons with gold-leaf and rich reds, the endless depictions of Madonna and child and Christ and his apostles.

It's easy to forget in an Internet age and coming from a country where it is common to earn advanced degrees that even today an estimated 870 million adults are illiterate; art has always been a vehicle to share stories and emotions with all.

I feel the sense of great civilizations rising and falling when Xenia tours me through the Acropolis in Athens, the Parthenon which I learn means "Temple of the Virgin Athena," the Acropolis Museum, the porch of Caryatides, the Propylaea, or grand entrance leading into the sacred temple area...

I learn the Greek legend about how Athena and Poseidon battled it out for the city; she planted an olive tree as her offering and Poseidon struck a rock and water came out. The people of the city valued olive oil more and voila, the city was named for this goddess...

I learn that the owl is the national bird of Greece, symbolizing wisdom, and that the pomegranates featured in the ancient statues symbolize fertility. In small traditional villages for a housewarming guests would throw a pomegranate on the steps; it would burst open and the red seeds were supposed to bring good luck and fertility.

I was blessed to get to see a live performance that same night in the Odeon of Herodes Atticus - the Martha Graham Dance Company bringing Greek myths to life through dance. I got chills thinking about the great performances and culture that had cycled through this land centuries before, when Aeschylus and Euripides would perform comedies and tragedies in theater competitions in the nearby Theater of Dionysus, that accommodated 17,000 spectators...

Xenia encouraged me to visualize, and I did, the great minds that helped launch Western civilization walking on these grounds, talking about philosphy... It's so much more palpable when you've been in the space, seen a performance in the theater, walked the sacred grounds.

I learn, and I learn, and I learn... After a few days in sexy Roma (which, my friend Gianfranco points out, is "Amor" spelled backwards!!) I make a detour to Firenze, i.e. Florence. The city is quiet and small in comparison to Rome, magnificently beautiful, with endless cobbled alleys, green shuttered buildings, red tile roofs....

Dante lived here and Michaelangelo, and endless artists including the incomparable Caravaggio flourished under the patronage of the Medicis. The vibe here is so different from Roma, much more mellow, more art students sitting in Piazzas endlessly sketching fountains and facades, less rushing and more women in sensible shoes versus the high stilettos on the cobblestones streets of sexy Roma.

This is interesting to me, since besides gelaterias, lingerie stores are the most frequent type of shop I see in Firenze. Sneakers and lingerie, art and history, Ponte Vecchio which survived the Nazy occupation and is a timeless symbol of the city... Firenze is complex...

My first night here my friend Giambattista tours me around on his scooter by night - how did I get so lucky to experience all of Italy this way?? We go to Piazza Michaelangelo for an overview of the city and Giamba, who is a professional photographer, teaches me how to take a night-time picture of the city skyline using an open aperture and lengthy exposure. I capture the Duomo and Santa Croce by night - wow...

Then he takes me to Pizza Man in Firenze where I have, I kid you not, THE BEST PIZZA OF MY LIFE (with apologies to DeFazio's in Troy, NY, where I regularly indulge in the best pizza I've ever eaten elsewhere in the world).

I eat a whole pizza. A whole pizza! This, for me, is a record, but every bite is mouthwateringly perfect and the next bite just as good...

The pizzas are simple. I have half a pizza margharita and half of one with fresh cherry tomatoes and basil. The crust is light and thin and you fold it in half. The tomatoes are so fresh. The cheese is exquisite, sliding off the sauce, yet sparingly applied vs. the greasy mozzarella that often gets glopped onto slices in the States. Everything applied judiciously- and so fresh!

The pizza is lighter with pure ingredients that all taste farm fresh and you taste every ingredient in every bite. That said there is really no way to describe properly in words why and how this is so much better than the pizzas in the U.S. (you must go to Pizza Man and experience it for yourself!) but one pizza and a few glasses of plum grappa later, I am a very happy, satiated woman.

Luckily I walk 1,000 steps the next day to burn off that pizza. I climb to the top of the Duomo and a few hours later climb the Campanile by sunset, for both daytime and evening views over the red roofs of Florence and surrounding Tuscan hillsides.

I catch a mass at the Duomo, just to experience that in Italian, and try ribollita, the filling and tasty Florence soup with vegetables and pieces of crusty bread soaked in the soup broth. It is delicious. I finally try panna cotta, one of my favorite desserts in the U.S., here in Italy and it is creamy, smooth, so creamy, delicious, and smothered in hot chocolate sauce flavored with liqueur.

The tiramisu is divine, and I've tried at least seven flavors of gelato by now, including the famous varieties at San Crispino near Trevi Fountain, which specializes in honey flavored gelato.

What can I say? I walk the streets of Italy all day and feast at night - My body is no worse for the wear, maybe slightly curvier, who can say, but I'm still in good shape and having nice curves never hurt a woman, especially here in Italy.... The men are not complaining.

I still have many sights to see in the week I have left in this beautiful country: Cinque Terre, Pompeii, Siena, Venezia. Today I toured the Vatican Museums, and there is too much to say here about that now (more soon) but suffice it to say I cried in the Sistine Chapel and could have spent a week there. Next week I will tour the famed Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

How did I get so lucky??? Sono felice, sono contenta.

That is not to say that every moment of my travels has been perfect and glamorous, of course... I've stayed in not-so-fancy but very friendly youth hostels and crashed on the couches of some gracious friends, been ripped off by an illegitimate taxi driver when caught during an Italian local transportation strike today, had some nights of less than optimal sleep.

But I'm happy, and I've learned that I can live with less, live more simply, than I once thought... We need so little, really, to be happy. Food, a safe place to sleep, some good company, and beauty.... I am an aesthete, seeking beauty everywhere, and I find it.

Seek and ye shall find...

Beauty will save the world... At least, I am counting on this. It is everywhere, and perhaps there is a higher concentration in Italy, but that is all a matter of perspective.

I breathe in beauty and it feeds me... It is replenishing. It calms my soul.

No matter the hardships or inconveniences of travel, which are always part of the deal, the moments of beauty define my travels for me.

These are the moments I will remember, always....

© Lisa Powell Graham 2006

Endless sunshine of the spotless mind

"It is so simple, the life," Lucky said to me this morning in his famous Santorini falafel and souvlaki stand where I bought my breakfast falafel for 2.5 Euros. "You are happy, you bring many happies."

We are all called to be happy, he said, and to respect and revere a power greater than us, and to love one another, starting with our family and friends but radiating that light out even to those who we may want to distrust, the way the Greeks, Lucky said, sometimes view the Turks or the Arab world may view the U.S. The Turk, he has feelings, a heart, is respectful too, says Lucky.

Fifteen minutes with Lucky while my falafel balls fried, and I got his philosophy on life, 9/11, and why he is lucky to be famous and own this souvlaki stand in Santorini. God called him to make good souvlaki and falafel, he says, and he teaches others how to make it and shares with Greek youngsters his thoughts on how to talk to the people of the world.

One nation united under falafel, here on this island of staggering beauty, one of the top destination spots on earth...

Luckily, and Lucky would be proud, I am happy. My blue eyes bring good luck to others as well, he says, and that's fine with me - I'm happy to share my happiness, the bounty of it all.

The beauty on my travels feeds me and the light on the island feeds my soul. The light and colors, the hot clear sun of day and fiery panoramic sunsets, the light dancing on the water, this is Greece to me - sunset, sunshine, sunrise, white light and gold light, blue and red skies...

The colors of the sky at sunset are red, gold, white, the sun a ball of fire or light pouring through clouds in rays that fan out toward the water, light pouring down and signifying to me a power so much greater than us that lights up the world every day, and the surface of the sea shimmers and dances with light.

This despite the fact that it has been a rainy week! In the interlude between showers it is nothing but dazzling sunshine and endless blue skies until the highlight of every night - sunset over mountains, cliffsides, cities, seas. The best so far that I have seen were in Oia on the island of Santorini, and, unbelievably, from the terrace of Xenia's house in the Athens suburb of Papagos.

I spent the weekend on Santorini and learned more of the history of this place of myth and magic and gasp-inducing views. Along with the island of Crete, Santorini is supposed to be the location of the lost city of Atlantis, the advanced civilization that disappeared into the sea. When the volcano in the center of the once-round island erupted in ~1630 BC, the eruption was so violent that it caused a tsunami in its wake, that destroyed the island of Crete. 2/3 of the center of the island disappeared beneath the sea, leaving the crescent shape that is now Santorini, the caldera of cliffs that now draws visitors from around the world. It is thought to be one of the most violent volcanic eruptions in history.

The volcanic eruptions in Santorini had biblical implications as well, according to Xenia, who as a student of archaeology years ago excavated the lost city in Santorini. The ash blew south and covered the sun in Egypt for six months, thus leading to the seven plagues, and the force before the tsunami drew the Red Sea back, "parting the sea" and leaving a clearing for Moses to lead his people to the promised land.

There was a logical geological explanation for these Biblical miracles, Xenia says, if you piece together this time in history. I get the chills when she describes it. It is awesome, truly, to be in places that have such rich history, places that helped shape Western civilization as we know it.

As a Christian, which I consider myself to be albeit one that practices Buddhism as well and embraces all religions, I am awestruck by the power of holy lands and places, to be where the stories of the Bible originated, not to mention the epic stories of literature - the Iliad, the Odyssey.

Knowing about Santorini's history helps to elevate it as well to more than just another beautiful tourist destination, which the island also is. It is utterly packed with tourists so the island is not about the charm of the locals (although there is Lucky!) but you can't really blame us all for gathering from around the world to appreciate the beauty of this unique destination.

I loved Oia best, the tip of the island famous for its sunset views where I watched the sunset both nights. The cliffs of Oia are lined with charming white, yellow and pink houses and the famous blue-domed churches of Santorini. Here, I dined on souvlaki for 2 Euros - an island bargain! - bought two watercolor paintings of the city for only 28 Euros, and indulged in dessert decadence.

Night one, Saturday, I dined at Lotza's Terrace overlooking the cliffside homes, vegetable stew with retsina wine, then I treated myself to ekmek, which seems to be too sinful to exist. It is sheer sweet lunacy, bread and shredded wheat soaked in syrup with custard on top and whipped cream flavored with cardamom and sprinkled with chopped pistachios on top of that.

Night two I had a crepe filled with nutella and bananas and drizzled with chocolate sauce and a glass of local Santorini white wine from the barrel in what must be the most beautiful jazz bar in the world - I sat on the open air terrace surrounded by white and fuschia bougainvillea, overhead and along the terracotta walls, and took in the color of the post-sunset Oia sky while sipping wine and savoring chocolate.

If you are currently celibate, I recommend nutella loaded on anything to make you swoon. We find ecstasy where we can, no?

Oddly, perhaps from all the sweetness, perhaps from the dazzling views or couples silhouetted at every vista point, cuddling and kissing and swooning from the heights and over-the-top picture-postcard romanticism of it all, Santorini was about the only place on my travels so far where I felt alone sometimes as if only "one half" without being part of a complete couple. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to be struck by such a feeling on what is known to be one of the most romantic sites on the planet.

Hey. Whatever. I can always go back to Santorini someday if I choose with my "other half," wherever/whoever he might be, and cruise around on our scooter on the snaking mountain roads with the rush of open air and exhiliration of sheer cliff dropoffs alongside, sip coffee or wine along the cliffs, dance together to thumping beats in Fira's downtown district, etc. For now I am still happy to be alone navigating my way through the world as I wish - it's a privilege and blessing to be traveling this way, too.

Other Santorini highlights included my scooter ride to Fira along winding cliff roads, hanging on to the greasy Greek mechanic Niko whose long curly hair whipped into my face as we rode (he'd offered me a ride to Fira for free rather than letting me rent a scooter, for safety's sake, since I'm an inexperienced motorized-two-wheeler-driver and he said there are many accidents here); sunbathing and swimming topless in the Aegean at the black sand beach of Perissa, where you walk on volcanic rock underneath the surface of the water; eating my falafel this a.m., after my talk with Lucky, at a cliffside cafe with a gentle breeze and breathtaking views of Fira spread out beneath me.

Last night I danced 'til three at Fira clubs. At Murphy's, the crowd pulsed to Vanilla Ice and Sublime. At bar two, I got treated to free shots when I belly-danced to Turkish music with a Greek woman. I will freely admit that I am an exhibitionist when it comes to performing, especially belly-dancing. I do not mind at all when the crowds clap for me!

Thus I was happy when I got cheers of "Bravo!" and "Oh-pah!" when I did my first Greek dancing solo in a traditional taverna where I'd dined with my friend Iaonnis from the Kennedy School a few nights ago, before leaving for the Santorini trip. We were in Psiri where crowds of attractive Greeks throng the streets until sunrise - women in leggings and short skirts and low-slung belts, olive-complected handsome men with five o'clock shadow everywhere.

We quit at 1:30 a.m., which was early, since I had to catch the ferry to Santorini at 7:30 the next morning, which meant leaving the house at 6 a.m. I s'pose when you are traveling sleep is so overrated - but I do need some to keep my stamina up for another two months of travel.

During my night out with Iaonni I also got to try some classic Greek dishes, including dakos from Crete, which is a hard brown bread with thick layers of tomato and feta on top - Greek bruschetta essentially! The bread, which tastes of molasses, crumbles and melts in your mouth.

We had touszakakia, meatballs with red cumin sauce, which were delicious (and yes my vegetarian diet has gone to hell again in Greece - but while in Greece, one must try the delicacies, right?). I danced multiple Greek dances, coaxed and coached by the Greek women dancing to the live musicians in the back of the taverna, culminating in my solo when they beckoned me onto the dance floor late that night.

Iaonni said that night, when speaking of the relations between the Turks and the Greeks, that "the next war will be over baklava." The Turks claim it and so do the Greeks. Of course the troubles between the nations run deeper than this - they still fight today over Cyprus, where a fence divides the Turkish from the Greek side, and there has been a lot of bloodshed and bitterness between the two nations.

"When a Greek talks about Istanbul, their heart bleeds," Xenia has told me.

In Istanbul, Aya Sofia, or Hagia Sofia in Greek, which means "divine wisdom," is something of a pilgrimage site for Greeks, symbolizing the greatness of the Byzantine empire which has Hellenic roots. Aya Sofia was originally a Greek Orthodox church, Xenia said, years before it was a Muslim mosque.

Food unites, food divides, and one could say it ultimately has more power than religion because we need it to survive. As fuel, food keeps us alive, but of course is also a great source of pleasure in life, and I am happy to be eating this way during my stay but also happy to have lots of Greek ruins and cliffs to climb so I can stay in bikini shape for the beaches of Italy - coming next!

First, another few days in Athens... So far here I have toured the neighborhoods around the Acropolis by night, enjoyed a delicious mezza meal of cold salads - caviar, eggplant, tzatsiki - retsina wine and spiced cream cheese, when Xenia and Kostas kindly treated me to a meal at the traditional Plaka restaurant, Stamatopoulos Tavern, where three musicians played traditional Greek folk songs on the open air terrace, that was located right at the foot of the Acropolis which is illuminated by night....

Xenia and her husband are the perfect hosts. I have tried an Athens brew pub with my friend Konstantinos as well, where over red ale and sweet lager we discussed life, work, spirituality and camping out in medieval castles, which he has done here in Greece. Perhaps next time I can add this to my list of adventures as well.

More to report on this historic city and country soon... Oh-pah!

© Lisa Powell Graham 2006