La Sirena Diosa

All that I Have is Everything that I Take with Me
I am a Goddess, no doubt. 

Today was the first day which I have ever taught Yoga in a grassy patch by the side of a highway, with cars speeding past and a basketball court a lado de un cancha de basketball- very beautiful, obviously, if not a little dirty.

Attendees-

-Yo

-Compañero de classe de Danza Hindu y estudiante de Danza Tribal.

-Amigo he encontrado en la calle.

Yes, obviously making friends with everyone from all walks of life, true to form, from La 80+ year old Senora volunteer rom the university hospital who I helped cross the road today and then walked her home to keep her company, to hung over Venezuelans who appear Aussie with their pyjamas and thongs. 

 So, obviously, everything that you needs come to you: but here is a story of exactly that here in Colombia. a true story! Like the story of how I can travel to Cali on the night of my birthday on an overnight bus (unadvised on travel books) with nothing but the clothes I had on, $4.00 AUD, sunglasses and a bikini in my handbag and be sweeeeeeeet for a trip. How I can live overseas and not TOUCH the currency once because never needed to spend a dime (NZ 2009, 2012 and Thailand 2012) and crash the nights in a stable in the south of France. 

Or how I hit the red centre with my woman Chilli Peppers haven't hardly acquired tents and sleeping bags in the freezing dessert nights.
Or how we could write a novel about this oil.
Or how I saw my teacher and he fell in love me.

The Mermaid with Vocation

I'd like to talk about something seriously now. Tengo mucho ganas escribir sobre esto. A welcome change from the triviality of boys. Instead, about the real direction of your LIFE. Obviosuly, as this is my self indulgent ego centric blog, sobretodo I do mean the direction of MY life.

I don't apologise that my blog IS about men and women ;
Always it will be about the young and the old, about bravery and weakness, about the lessons and the teachers, about the enormous planet and the our tiny worlds, about the future, the past and the present moment.

What I like in life, is who I meet and what we talk about.

Here I am in Narino, the south of Colombia and staying in the beautiful home of a beautiful family. We joke and laugh and share and frolic. A family I had never met before :)

The head of the family the mother, is another nurse; the director of healthcare in this department of Colombia and charged with 150 employees, 7 medical centres and oversees the functioning of all. We talked about primary healthcare, the social determinants of health, preventative medicine, lifestyle and infrastructure, access and policy in our respective countries. We talk about things that always will matter in this world.

And these things, are why we are alive. It is why I am alive, on his planet at this time: to help things, make them better than without me. Ademas, this I know I have accomplished. At 23 years of age I have not lived in vain: if for nothing more than holding ONE patient's hand during a procedure; if for nothing more than explaining a condition to someone coming through the emergency room scared and anxious; f for nothing more than these very conversations with all sorts of people from all over the world.

I do not think I have yet done my whole part, but again I recognise that me being here, being alive, being myself is worthwhile, makes a difference, and is profoundly important and irreplaceable.

"Be yourself, no one can say you're doing it wrong."

This time we talked at length about the staggering incidence of teenage motherhood in Colombia. There is quite a bit of literature on the subject, as the rates are considerable above average here.

As I have already mentioned previously, I have taken part in a program for teenage mums from disadvantaged backgrounds  which gave me more honour and humility than anything I brought to the program. Basically, Australia is a country without the poverty that exists here, without the limits of corruption and a government which steals from its own people. There is a dichotomy here like I have never seen, of the rich being richest and the poor being poorest.

One of my friends had put it to me like this,

"wow... que profundo... aprendisite muy bien del mundo... espero que de nosotros aprendas cosas tambien, y te enamores de Colombia

me gusta que pienses asi... obviamente y si animo de asustarte, debes tener mucho cuidado cuando salgas de Bogotá... lastimosamente nuestro pais (es tuyo y mio) ha sufrido mucho durante mucho tiempo por culpa de la guerra interna causada por los Estado Unidos que quieren nuestra riqueza natural... a medida que vayamos siendo mas amigos te mostrare las maravillas de este pais

See you, you are a wonderful person... i hope that you can learn many good thinks here in Colombia... and you fall in love more"

The statistics on teenage motherhood here are startling. Why? Young women come from families who have nothing, and as an escape they may look for someone who many times is from an eqal sociao-strata and have a baby with him transferring the responsibility to his shoulders to provide for his new instant family. Of course, this fails to provide as neither have anything to their names apart from a newly required biggest possible responsibility of a new life. There is quite extensive literature on the subject, I have had conversation with my mentor about it and there is still so much left to learn and realize. Community development is not about imposing a way on a group which to whom you outreach- it is about sustainability, self sufficiency and self empowerment. This project, this issue is one I feel compelled to work with in my vacation break. Now that I know where I want togo, the universe and I can get to work in building the path to get there. I want to work with babies and teenage mums. Will keep y'all posted. 

Coming across this absolute CHAMPION and having mad yarns about Colombia, the Grande Colombia, the guerilla history and the future security.

He tells me he used to work in the government of his municipality. 10-12 years ago he was kidnapped by the guerila, in the same area that we were inthat day. They waked in, armed, and took him and two co workers from different municipalities. With them, the three of them were trapped, for one month. Released after one month of captivation as a threath or a warning- no harm had come to them, none physically. The two co workers returned in awful shape, he told me, with delabidated faces and sunken eyes, bearded and baring the toll. He returned having put on weight- after one month of “vacation” he called it. He told me of this experience with the joy of recounting a holiday. The guerilla made them walk through the forests and hike the hills and mountains. While there were rivers they permitted their captives to swim and bathe with very clear boundaries which if they stepped outside of the limits, their captives were very aware they “would respond”. So as such, Don Oskar passed one month, hiking in his forest and bathing in his rivers and he did not have a care in the world. Being in nature and the outdoor lifestyle is what he adores so being kidnapped by the guerilla mallitia enabled him to live the dream.

‘Weren’t you afraid?’ I ask gingerly

‘Nooooo’ he laughs confidently, ‘nothing happened. We don’t try and escape and nothing was going to happen’

‘But you’re family?’

‘THEY were afraid. They didn’t know what happened to me, because they didn’t know what was going on they were afraid. I knew what was happening, I knew I was safe so because I knew I didn’t have anything to be afraid of. And, I even stole some minutes of a cell phone while we passed a town, to tell them I was safe. Quickly I told them-

“Don’t worry, I’m safe, don’t worry”

“Where are you??” They asked me

“Can’t tell you where I am but don’t worry. Don’t worry, I’m safe. Adios”

That was two weeks in to being kidnapped. That was in the middle,” he recounts with a seasoned nonchalance.

The history, the government, the security is a world apart from Australia and sleepy old Perth. In my home I leave my purple Ford Festiva, Lolita parked in the front yatrd with keys in the ignition, unlocked. The Colombians have an expression,’no das papaya’

Lolita and her keys are the biggest juiciest papaya you could freely give!

It means don’t invite opportunities and license reason for something bad to transpire.

Here everyone walks with their handbas secured adelante, close to their body.

I had a necklace snatched off my throat, my classmate had her sunglasses stolen off her head while on a bus. There is no personal boundary, and everybody knows and is used to it. You always must be alert and suspicious. At the same time, the Colombians are the most open and inviting querida carinoso gente 

I might have met.

When I grow up I want to have a big home to invite guests to stay and help them feel comfortable and welcome as I have felt with the loving families here. For now, I don’t have a house but my heart is my home; and all of Colombia is welcome in my heart. 

Lessons Learnt from Other People's Homes

I am a gypsy. I suck at packing. I just cannot get all my sh*t together for a future destination: possibly coming back to my inability to anticipate mere minutes in to the future
-Will I need pants? I take my toothbrush- Which bikini should I take?
And yet I have so many plans (which never transpire).

Maybe I'm going to live in Brazil, maybe I'm travelling to Cuba, maybe I'm going to work in Jamaica, Maybe I'll move to Spain, maybe I will be a construction worker and drive a crane.

My dreams whether they come to pass or not, are still a part of my personality. The only moment that is real is the present moment and all you can do, is to take one breath at a time.

So I have lived in many places and in many scenarios including: in student residence; with 8-10 other people in a sharehouse of students and young professionals; in a house which only appeal was being close to my Yoga studio and numerous disadvantages being populated with un house trained innumerable poodles and their dirty puppies, smelling of  un house trained innumerable poodles and their dirty puppies, landlord having either an mental illness OR mental retardation and he and someone similarly simple living there; to houses in the leafy lower north shore with my soul sister her partner and their baby; living as an au pair with a religious Jewish family featuring home clinic of Acupuncture and Naturpathy in the trendy Eastern Suburbs Bondi while completing my final semester of university studies in the jungle of Kuring Gai; to living out of a backpack and sleeping in hammocks; to living in a Thai Buddhist monastery, to living in a villa in Thailand with a Russian family; to living in Art Gallery/Cafe on an Island in the Torres Strait; to living with my then boyfriend always love of my life after having known each other a month.

I am my home. They say that Home is Where The Heart Is, but for me
My heart is my home.

Here in Colombia I have been so beautifully received by so many. The Colombians have their hearts open and their hearts are in their homes. It is so much more family related here, so very different, but I feel at home.

When I left Sydney and made my way up the East Coast of Australia to Byron, and stayed in the house of a dear soul sister I met in the ocean years earlier, and then Brisbane and Cairns- I had everything with me I was going to take to South America. Everything on my back. I arrived at Cairns on a Thursday after 30 hours on a bus, without any means of getting to the top Cape of Queensland (through 4WD territory
and in Wet Season, nor with any money to pay a ticket) Of course, as everything works out as it is supposed to, I did get to start work on that Monday in Thursday Island (Blessed be) thanks to an interview I made it to, rushing my goodbyes with my family, to arrive on time to ask for $500 as I was taking a rural and remote student placement- literally before I caught a train out of Sydney and off on my way. The news came by email when I arrived in Cairns that they granted me $1,000. :D
I met a group of travelling circus artists and fire twirlers (as you do) in the pool in the esplanade. They were talking to a French Carribean friend who I met in a park in Byron Bay. They were daring each other to talk to strangers and Suki had dared Matt to talk to Jamal about meditation.
"It's good for you too," she defends the dare game, "because it breaks down our judgments and preconceptions of people. Like you think that the platinum blonde won't want to hear about meditation because she's walking in the pool, not getting her hair wet..."
But this blonde hair sheltering co patriot listened to Matt and they sat in meditation. She said she liked it!
So it was Matt and Suki who I met and who told me that I had a peaceful energy to be in. Matt said,
"it's like, you know when you've been travelling for a really long time, and you arrive in somebody's house. You are like being in a living room of a real house"

The below is a beautiful letter from a dear friend, what warranted this response was a letter I handwrote and personally delivered for this amiga to read on the plane on her way back home. First, I explain what I said to her.
I said she is like walking in to somebody's living room after you've been travelling for a long time. It is beautiful to have an energy that draws people in and comforts them. There is something so reassuring about the feeling of being in a place lived in and cared for, and something comforting about being with someone who cares and lives. My friend is that to me. She gives me rest to be myself, support and assurance, guidance and care. She is warm and inviting, welcoming and familiar. She is my friend forever.

 Kiki!!

So, this is for you: You know that I really like you and that I'm glad we met and that I'll always be there for you. You're a wonderful person who fills the atmosphere around her with joy. You said I was the first one to invite you. I can't imagine our group without you and I doubt that it would have been that much fun. With your crazy, caring and loving way of being, you connect all the people around you.

I know you know that you're special and you told me that some people think you're arrogant for that. I know you are not and I know it's better to like oneself than to only see the bad side.

I love reading your blog and you taught me some worthy stuff. I'm also a person who's always thinking a lot and I'm trying to understand the world and it's a pleasure to read your thoughts.
Once, you were asking if we really fall in love with some people or if we're just looking for an excuse to love someone. That really touched me because I think I know what you mean and I think that is absolutely what I am doing sometimes. It's nice to have someone you can be attracted to but sometimes it's just because there's no one else and because you have so much love to give.
I guess that sometimes we just want to feel that way and we project all our wishes on one person even though this person might not be the right one. It's just really hard sometimes to figure out what I want and what I don't want. All the circumstances and situations that affect our behaviour and feelings change and so do our own ideas of our life. 

Just for you to know: You're a special one and you have the gift to connect people, the gift to spread joy and laughter. Keep that and never give it away. I'm glad you added all that to our group and I hope you will add more of that to my life.

Thanks for being you and not anyone else!

Besos y abrazos a Bogotá

The Mermaid Nun- keeping the promise

So the man I like, it turns out, likes me back :)

We can talk and share and debate and chat and discuss and express ourselves and listen and teach and learn and challenge and perplex and encourage and motivate and inspire and TONIGHT I just turned him away.

heartbreaking: at my door, "Kiki, why are you doing this?"

After one month of knowing each other and spending time together and discussing and cooking and eating and watching and reading and viewing amazing feats of human effort it is open now that he likes me back as much as I like him.

He doesn't want to stop seeing me- I don't want to stop seeing him.

Why Am I Doing This?

It is precisely because I want to see him, that I can't. It is because I feel so good with him that I shouldn't/ It is because I could spend so much time with him, that I won't.

I want to.
I would like to.

I won't.

It is one thing to start your celibate journey with no contenders insight. It is quite another have an object of affection and to not be affectionate.

Did I actually just call him an object? Maybe he is an figure of my imagination but I like him. I like his company. I like how I feel around him. I know he is a good man.

  It's a challenge but what I undertook at the start of this year here is to challenge myself. Already I have felt better for all the loneliness I have felt.

If we have more to teach each other, we will not be able to be kept apart, no matter time or space.
What's scarier than any crazy meaningless fling with someone who doesn't even like you is giving your faith and trust that a person who likes you and values you is going to be able to live up to what you know you deserve.

Just because someone is not bad to you doesn't mean they are good to you.
Just because someone is good to you doesn't mean they deserve you.
This is a MINIMUM that should be EXPECTED and you can not accept anything less. Understand?
Just because you could be with someone doesn't mean that you should be.

I'm not broken or damaged, I am whole and complete and powerful. I don't need saving, no one is going to save you but yourself. I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.



I used to just accept I was broken and trouble: for my past, my childhood, my experiences. De hecho, none of those things matter and have completely NO power to manifest anything in your life unless you so chose- so I guess I had just been choosing so. Falling for the SAME person over and over again, looking for people to reject me and giving them all my unrequited love.

Nothing is complicated, there's no drama. Stop thriving on drama. Stop needing it to be/stay interested

If you love two people at the same time you don't love either one enough.

I will stop talking about it. I have stopped thinking about it. I am just being cool with it.

I think there is truth in the fact that women are crazy. I don't know what conditioning it is, but when a good boy walks in to their life they just can't accept it. They just can't be treated how they deserve to be treated. Women are not complicated but it is true we are crazy. We claim to want one thing, but reject every opportunity to have it and instead what we really want is not JUST an equal partner to share our lives and care for us and cuddle us; we want this in the form of a fiercely protective jealous hunter gatherer protecter provider masculine archetypal sexy brave strong defender to be a kind sensitive caring equal partner to share our lives and care for us and cuddle us.

La Sirena... & every other woman.

"Everything I say means show me how much you want me"

The other night I was making mistakes; avoidable, repetitive, self harming and degrading mistakes. Stupid and disrespectful to myself and my company.

I really do believe there is something to be said for being kind to yourself, as you would be to a best friend. However, one must be able to look critically at their behaviors and rectify those that damage themselves or bring harm to others- I think I did both. In the stage of life be both the actor and the audience.

Of course, from all ‘bad’ things comes lessons learnt and something positive to take away and better yourself. Guilt has no place to hold you back, just like shame.

bitches be craaaaazy

If you start to worry about your personality, don’t. You never even really had one. No acts you have done define you, it is easy for humans to identify with a more concrete sense of self than the infinite beings we are- so they lab things you have done, or thoughts you have thought and limit us to what we might amount to. I have made mistakes, but I am not a bad person. I have let myself down, but that doesn’t mean I should punish myself. Continuing to make mistakes you know don’t serve you is a form of punishing yourself. Continuing to run away from something that could actually influence your life in a positive way and grow you, tambien, is a form of punishment.

I can’t continue to punish myself.

For me that compensation after my errors came in the form of an impromptu girls sleepover!

Laughs, secrets, stories, sharing.

My now near and dear true friend who I really understand well passed the night next to me in my bed. Despite being women soooo far apart in so many ways, obviously, we are the same within. Todas somos iguales. Todas quieren lo mismo.

Everyone wants to love and be loved.

However, like Audrey Hepburn,

I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it.

 My darling amiga, ma poule, shares sentiments with me. We laugh and laugh and laugh with each other. She starts a sentence and within one word I relate exactly to what she is going to say. We speak in Spanish: neither of our first languages. We speak and instantly we completely understand the point of view of the other, what they are going to say and why they feel that way.

A language is through the heart.

Both of us “suffer” from an overflow of love.

“I really need to have someone to love, even if I just love them in my head,” she was just o wise and so honest and so on point with so much.

“If it may be something, it will be something and lets see, it’s not the man of my dreams just someone I can spend some good time- its just because I feel the need of being in the arms of a cute boy…

Actually I can fall in love with anybody who is a little bit nice to me and more or less physically how I like”

This makes me call to mind how we invent people. Aesthetic crushes, and with the power of our imagination we pour in to them all our hopes and wishes even if they themselves are far from fulfilling them.

These thoughts come from extensive discussions with more close friends who are strong women. It’s fun to have someone to think over, something to mentally chew. To sleep over with your friends and pick apart, dissecting every undertone or overtone of what was said or not, what was done or not. But this is just a pastime and as much as it is innocently fun once in a while, it is no why to live your own life.

At a Tantra workshop in a festival I did an exercise of looking in to the eyes, intently for 3 minutes of a stranger I had just met. The teachers preached about how much is it that when you love someone, or even just to see someone- you see them how YOU feel when you’re around them, or whatever you perceive them to be, and not for who they are in that moment. For example, a mother with her child- how natural is it for parents to never lose sight of the infant they birthed even through adolescence, and in to adulthood. Or a married couple together for 50 years? Still see each other as how they first met, or even relationships much shorter, and especially relationships that start in high school and each of the partnership undergo so many changes and growth. We don’t see people for everything they are in every moment of every day.  We invent people how we want them and we get mad at them for not turning out how we had hoped, but not how they are.

We invent people and we want to give them our love.

The way we love them is whole and draining. It occupies our lives and we pour ourselves in to the invention so much so that when it ceases to be, we aren’t ourselves, we are empty. We don’t exist without this person to mirror us, and to exist for! 
Do we fall in love easily or are we looking for an excuse to express our love. Do we want to love somebody and feel happier when we are, so we start working on telling ourselves that it is him. Something about him, everything about him- when really it is something about us and all about us. 
It is basically the way we feel better about ourselves, comforted, insultated to have somebody to think of, to hold you and to be around.

This is how I too was, but it is not how I am.

 It is fortifying to be alone. 
Just because someone might not return your feelings, "not like you like that"  

• doesn´t mean they are a bad person
• doesn´t mean you are a bad person
• doesn´t mean they want to hurt you
• doesn´t mean you should feel hurt

Plush tiger ears insitu, russian gypsy shall, jacket urchased that day for $2 because it was windy, starfish earrings, unicorn in lap, chocolate in mouth, tea at hand and classic hippy dress been all round the earth with me.

Also when you want to have some kind of control over how someone else perceives you, this is a sure sign of aesthetic crush. I remember with some disasters just wanting it to dawn on them how cool I am, how special I am. Of course, it doesn’t matter! Just live your life and the right people will be attracted to you when you are doing what you love and being yourself. Naturally we are gorgeous, radiant Goddesses in our own rites, and yet, when we feel a crush and want them to like us OBVIOUSLY we fumble and fall in embarrassment. You’re never as cool as a cucumber when you like somebody and you realize it.

OBVIOUSLY coolness speaks for itself: Pomelo. 

So, about my aesthetic crush and how I went about nearly ruining our friendship. I feel like we are friends, and now I have let go of the want to kiss his face. Maybe just in time for us to be nothing at all
 :(

He left my house quite surly with the most minimalist of goodbyes then I stayed, crawled in to bed with my amiga and for the first time in a long time, talked to another girl about liking a boy. Except this character, this gentleman, this is a man. I told her I liked him. I told her that we went to meet each other the other day and as I approached I saw him waiting there first and it made me ask myself, what is this DREAMBOAT doing standing there waiting to meet MEEE?

This babe?

 It had yet to dawn on me when I came across him in the calle the first time and made his acquaintance that he is actually handsome stone cold fox. Luckily it hadn’t dawned on me or maybe I would be too shy to say anything and just keep wishing he would talk to me.

I told her how no women want a man NO other women want, no woman want a man who wants ALL other women. When we were dancing the first time I charged my fabulous friend with not permitting me to kiss him ‘because I could if I wanted to’ (but a being a nun) and she said,

‘Yeah it seems like it would be easy- NOT that you could only be with somebody who was easy, uh- noo,’ aside from the backhanded insult which she did not mean at all but it did sound quite offensive- the assertation that he would be indiscriminate instantly made me unattracted. I don’t ant to be liked, remember- I want to be preferred. I am quality. I don’t think he is like that though, and now she doesn’t think so either.

Still, I continued talking with Emilie about it. She told me she thought that he felt something for me. I assured her she had misinterpreted because I had not noticed any such inclinations on his part. Aside from the kiss on the doorstep- does he kiss all his friends? On the mouth? What is this?? Eastern Europe?

We talked at length about aesthetic crushes in general, ourselves, and her love interest.

Here I write about her sage advice over the friend I found who I had started to like.

Despite not understanding me at first encounters she now knows very well typical ‘Kiki’ behaviours, which consist of a lot of ‘my love’ ‘mi amor’ ‘ma bichette’ and other terms of affection to strangers and friends alike; completely inappropriate physical contact and a more than usual amount of animation in recounting stories heavily laden with superfluous detail. The error that I made in that night was the unrepresentative amount of physical contact.

I have already stated, that my friend whom I like dearly more and more never touches me or looks at me like he wants to. (Let’s not rule out the possibility of being gay? mentiiiiira) So it’s safe to say that he’s just not that in to me. Fair enough no crime there.

However, from someone who I just want to lay my head on his chest, this unrequited sentiment is not the easiest. Of course I accept it, am not offended and hoy en dia todo bien. Meanwhile, while I am not my coolest self because I partially am secretly hoping that he realizes how cool I am I fumble and struggle to be at ease (not that much because I am after all, easy going by nature).

One time in Perth I saw a boy who broke my heart, and I was so taken aback and in shock without conscious control, all I did was take off my shoes and put them in my bag. I just felt like wearing barefoot. Weird stream of consciousness.

Meanwhile, during this night and amongst this group there was a friend of mine, a good friend of the ‘family’ (mi casa) who came ad stayed and talked and gave me attention I didn’t want from him. And yet, it was attention I wanted- from ANOTHER person. So stupidly and disrespectfully, I didn’t pull my hand away when el payaso touched my hand; stupidly and disrespectfully I didn’t decline when he brought my to sit on his leg instead of on the floor, stupidly and disrespectfully I engaged in his pointless conversations which never go anywhere because it’s constantly circling Mamasita, eres Linda, eres Hermosa, me gustas and other unfounded bullshit because he doesn’t know me in the slightest.

Emilie saw all this transpre. EVERYone saw all this transpire. If you didn’t know me, you could think I want the payaso! Yet Emilie knows me and she was just worried for me. Worried that I send signals I don’t mean, for people I don’t want. All the while, in front of someone who I COULD want and sadly left in a cold, upset manner :(

Now I deal with the consequences.

BE STRONG ENOUGH TO LET GO AND BE PATIENT ENOUGH TO WAIT FOR THE WONDERS YOU DESERVE