Karinaland River

  Loving to Death     Blue Heart Stone by Marya     When Emma – who is in her early thirties – tells me  she noticed how most American police TV series have the same formula of the cop being the hero and good guy, I am relieved and thrilled to hear her actively inquiring where the obsession with guns, violence, and mass shootings might partially originate from. How it is secretly embedded everywhere in our culture. The entertainment most of us are happily and innocently digesting. How we are unknowingly brainwashed. Thrilling violence titillates our senses and wakes us up from numbness. Perhaps this kind of entertainment is teaching us all along violent behavior as a normal way to be alive, she wonders.    To solve our problems with guns. For me, cop shows are a continuation of the old “Western” mentality.  Every Man for Himself with a Gun . (Notice the always gendered association.) Of course, the whiter the hero the better, the villains are ...

  light rain    tea leaves    smiles   flowering    irrepressible    the laughter from yesterday   listening    bending low    intoxicating fragrances The other day, pruning in the drizzle. With its green wetness, the garden is inviting deep breaths, and sighs. On hands and knees, I crawl into undergrowth. Musky scents, all around a subtle hum. When I emerge, the sun comes out for a brief moment, and the world alights into a sparkling magic realm. Everywhere raindrops, glittering, glistening on leaves, blossoms, branches, buds. Raindrops – hanging still – suspended in time. Waiting…  But really all is falling.    After the brief rising, flowering, lingering, comes the dripping, falling, crumbling, composting, evaporating, and then “it” is gone. Raindrops, cities, walls, life, mountains, earthly existence….     Later I go for a walk, light rain blessing all, including me…  

  A New Year – what needs to be learned? What wants to be heard and be known?   Juxtapositions     Finally, fog and clouds have lifted.    The last light of the day reveals the bay. The grey tones of clouds, ocean, island, hills, bridge, trees, and houses – a stillness, exquisitely equanimous ­– blending seamlessly the elements of water, air, earth, and wood into a muted world. A mirage.      Removed from the killing fields not far away.   They too must be known in order for new vision and paths to flourish.     A numbness grips us by the throat, we cannot speak about this much daily violence. So close by. We pretend it did not happen. What else is there to do? Our mouths and hearts are shut. Only the radio and media keep repeating endlessly the same sound bites, like an old record stuck in utter disturbance. Helpless. Numb. What have we dreamed of last night? The old bricks collected, to be used again some time. Or the spindly...

  Reflections on Teaching the Principles and Art of T’ai Chi Ch’uan   (Part 1)   For 43 years, I have been studying, practicing and teaching T’ai Chi Ch’uan (which is part of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Philosophy). In 1983 I was trained to become a teacher the traditional way, was made assistant, and then years later sent off with permission and blessing to open my own school. After the initial resistance to becoming a teacher of T’ai Chi – since my twenties I have been teaching dance, theater, movement, voice & sounding, creative expression, and more – I recognized the enormous gift, and never let it go. Teaching forces us to deeply inquire in order to transmit. T’ai Chi became my main nourishment and compass, it was life-altering, and truly life-saving in my case. My approach to teaching kept growing and deepening with me over the decades. How can we integrate the principles into our approach to life, work, art, people, to anything? When in good alignment...

  Happy Lunar New Year of the Water Rabbit All year long I follow the moon cycles of full & empty – rising and ebbing – marking and celebrating full moon & new moon. The ocean, plant world and our menstrual cycles and bodies are naturally in tune with these lunar cycles. And for children the power of the moon is undeniable. The white light of the full moon would put me under a spell hard to break. But getting older my favorite has become the New Moon – the darkness with its promise of new beginnings, visions and possibilities.   On Sunday,   January 22, the Lunar New Year (or Spring Festival) started with the new moon. Two weeks of festivities are being celebrated by many different Asian cultures & communities in America and around the world. I personally am not into fortune telling, but I enjoy exploring playfully what we are offered with the  Water Rabbit  in the coming year. In this case, twice a yin quality, soft & malleable, and yet capable ...

All Things have a Soul – Papa’s Hobel     This old hand tool – Papa’s plane – is a memento of my father, one of the very few things I took with me over the ocean after his death at age 67. It sits on the low bench of my big living room window. Very alive, ready to create, beautify, be useful. Lastingly solid and at the same time soft – its sculptural quality emanates my father’s soul.      I was 40 years old, pierced by his early leaving, my grief was immeasurable back then. The continent of my upbringing and that of my life in America so far apart. Now I am two years past his life span. It all feels like one huge gift. Life, his legacy, my heritage, the “tools” I was gifted. To invoke wood grain, I pulled out  René  Magritte’s oil painting  D é couverte  from 1928 –  meaning  discovery  – here the unseen beneath the surface is exposed…     American planes are made of metal, in old Germany these tools were made of woo...

  Awe – Wonder – Joy   For me each new year begins with the Lunar New Year, so January is a month of waiting and preparation. All beings are still in their root queendom, gestating and dreaming up new qualities to bring into the new yearly cycle. Waiting to rise from the dark imagination of earth. Waiting to come to light. I cherish this listening into winter’s silence, starkness and simplicity. All is stripped, unadorned, sparse, empty, skeletal – invoking awe, wonder, and joy – revealing essence. Even the storms allow us to touch into elemental and awe-some truths.   Of course, here in California, already buds are starting to erupt into bloom: Magnolia trees, narcissus, and my hellebore. At the same time wind, rain, snow, hail, lightning and thunder are pounding and challenging us this year. We humans are truly tiny and helpless in the face of atmospheric rivers and bomb cyclones. Water and earth assert their potent powers through flooding and mudslides. These elements ...

  May we drink and trust such beauty   Just 50 meters down the street from my home is the  Outlook  beloved by many people. From here the view goes westward out over the Bay, to the City of San Francisco, and the Golden Gate Bridge. It is perfect for a lunch stop, sunset, fireworks, or an overnighter :)     Normally I will stand there letting my eyes roam freely. The other day I take my camera to capture the slow unfolding aftermath of a sunset. The spectacle gets better and better. I am alone. Once only a younger woman stopping her car. With an excited “wow” she snaps a quick photo with her cell – and off she is. Nothing comes close to truly tasting and sensing this evolving sky painting. Time needs to stretch its limbs wide & far, with a huge slow yawn, occasionally exploding and swirling with drama, then relaxing into serene golden joy, and slowly fading with a dark crimson purple sigh… into the grey ordinariness of oncoming darkness…   Today, a...

  Winter Miracles in Red   This past Wednesday morning, stepping from my bedroom cottage, climbing on the terrace wall to get ready to swing, a miracle – in German we say  Wunder  – flashes before my eyes: the Camelia bush has unfolded one of its magnificent velvet red blossoms. How can it be? ­It is way too early. But then, a second later, I understand: here is my birthday present :)  Flooded with gratitude, I smile back and carry the red miracle into my busy day….  Since my childhood, I believe that all things weave themselves secretly and unseen. Sometimes we get a glimpse – a miracle appears. The beauty that arises brings wonder, awe and joy – I could feel the movement of ephemeral braiding in my own limbs. And I regularly invented secret movement sequences for myself to mirror this phenomenon. December, the month of darkness, was especially the time for  Wunder  to manifest. A flickering flame of candle putting me into trance. Silence of snow...