It's all Kismet to me

I have found so many little tricks if you will. Ways I slip out of the everyday and into the place I consider "real life." The one that coexists somewhere in space between my head and my heart. I rely on walks through the city, getting windblown across Van Ness to push me back into myself. I put my headphones on at work and tune out to some (usually) ridiculous song that I play over and over again while I enter my "personal space." Or I jump into a yoga class and push myself. Not to a place of pain (I practice ahimsa after all), but to a place of persistence, a place of focus, a place where there is a green strength that runs the lengths of my sides as if my randomly perfectly balanced (that's for you dad) tattoo extends it's meaning into the grounds like roots.

Or I sit and watch water. Or I drink a glass of wine with friends. Or I take a bath and hold my breath and let myself forget time and defined space. Or I write.

I shut down and write in the draft box of my email. I had almost forgotten over the last few years, how much these words mean to me. How much I actually *love* words. I was having a text only conversation with an adventure friend from my brief respite from reality this summer and I commented how attracted to the word Kismet I am. Kismet is a word that physically, turns me off, as far as words go. I much atheistically prefer words like message (especially in Spanish, I think the sound and look of mensaje is about as sexy as words can get). Kismet is almost scientific. Sterile. It sounds dorky. But it means something so insanely cool. Awesome (I'm bringing back some 90's terminology - embrace it with me - bros). Kismet is fate. It's akin to Serendipity. Something so perfectly destined that it was written in the stars. It seems otherworldly too me.

I think of words like Kismet when I walk through the city. Of how perfect that walk is. How much my soul needs that space, and I didn't realize how much until I was there. As if the universe knows exactly where I should be a split second before I do. And somehow the universe has found a way to give me back that voice. To write. To be unafraid of sharing that place I find magically inside myself. That I am not embarrassed to write paragraphs about my love of the word Kismet. Or that I like holding my breathe underwater or doing a totally insane leap on the sidewalk like I was in a ballet of my own. I am comfortable with how totally and completely uncool I am. And even more than that, these oddities make me happy. Happy about where I have gotten to with myself.

Today was not my friend. Today I was bummed out and in an all around "mood." But I laughed with friends, I went for a walk. I sat on a hill. I found space inside and around myself to be. I was silent, and also engaged in a very verbal conversation with myself. With feeling through myself to find what *I* needed. And I needed to write about Kismet. And, oddly, this has made me feel better. Calmer. Like a good solid yoga class, writing makes me feel complete and in touch with the part of myself I enjoy most. Like isolating and turning inward is a gift I have been given over the last few months. And I do wholeheartedly believe that a lot of that is loosing fear. Of having support and love in pure and honest ways. That I am no longer afraid of not liking who I am. That I'm even feel okay loving who I am. It may sound conceited to you, but to me, it sounds very very healthy.

Through words, through space to breathe, through people to love I have found an "essence" a spiritually perfect and in line wave length that I've been riding out the last few months. Some days are better than others. Some days I walk around in a daze of giddiness with my new love affair with life. Some days I forget to connect until right before I lay my head down. And I'm disappointed to have wasted a day not ride it out with this "wave." It's like the Spanish term, La Onda. La Onda is a wave, but it's also fate, destiny, it's a movement and a sense of pride in yourself, in your family, in life and the world. La Onda is Kismet. It's a way we, as people, express a sense of unity with time and space and others. And that is why I am grateful for my love of words. Of whatever being giving me the gift of serenity through personal expression. It's as if the right terms, the write phrases or sentences just find me, and fulfill me. It's like Kismet. It is me riding and writing La Onda of life.

To those Kismet has gifted me,

Rio