Categories
family VanLife

Blooming Where Planted – musings from vanlife

I’m on a journey. Back in the van, which I love by the way, and I’m driving en route to the midwest primarily to check in on my brothers who both have been struggling health-wise. I love them both and would miss them dearly if either of them should check out of this world before […]

Categories
belarus family Jewish

Train Travel Through Time and the Search for Belonging

They left Belarus in 1923 and the good life that they had created. Times had changed and the place of their home was no longer one in which they could remain. Just as I am departing now on this train to Minsk, my ancestors too left Vitebsk, six of them including my grandmother crammed into […]

Categories
belarus family

Returning to Belarus – A Journey of Discovery

I’m on an airplane to Belarus and I find myself a bit teary. Not quite sure why, but it just feels like I’m feeling the sadness of my family for having been such a long time away. A return to this place is assuredly bittersweet in the hearts of my people. My grandmother Sonia Breinin […]

Categories
family nepal

Nepal Trek – Upper Mustang – Part I

Jomsom to Kagbeni I Love spaciousness. My soul loves being in the middle of vastness. Something in me very simply relaxes. This feels like the most amazing place in the world. It may well be, or perhaps it’s that my mind simply confuses perfection, which I find here, with penultimacy. I’ve just begun my trek […]

Categories
family life

Dust in the Wind – The Impermanence of Memories

Places don’t have memories. Memories of places belong to the people who hold those memories. When they forget, or die, the memories which they hold die along with them. This doesn’t have to be a glum realization, but there is something about it which feels a little disappointing. A story. After the visit, my uncle […]

Categories
family life poems & stories

Fighting the Flow

A couple of poems I wrote while my nephews are visiting: fighting the flow we tried to change the flow of a river yesterday we three boys moving logs, mortaring with sand changing its course before it empties to the ocean doing that what we all do everyday fighting against the flow of our lives […]

Categories
family favorites speaking the truth spirituality

You Never Know

Strange how time flies.  Today would have been my mother’s 90th birthday, were she still alive today. I’ve been listening to Michael Franti music when I run along the ocean lately.  Actually, since I listen to his music as I run, it usually turns into more of a dance in a general direction than a […]

Categories
family growth

Space and the Avoidance of Specific Discomforts

Space is a funny word for me as it’s a bit of a two-edged sword. On one hand, spaciousness is one of the more delicious feelings that occurs for us in our human experience. There is such an ease and acceptance to be found in spaciousness. On the other hand, I seem to have a […]