a new era

On the 1st of February I launched a new era in my life. It was the first day of the Lunar New Year, the year of the tiger. I am that tiger, and I felt on that day an explosion of possibilities I have wished for years.

On the first of February Emerald House Publishing began, just with a piece of paper from the county clerk, but in my mind, in the space that holds dreams, I witnessed in myself a hugeness such that I have never experienced.

I am learning what it means to be a publisher. I am learning how to do this. I am learning things I never thought I could learn. expanding in myself waves of delight as I move from task to task, as I prepare for the book launch in July of this year.

Please join me in this adventure, in this coming out as a publisher, in this voyage towards making dreams happen….

A Habit of Freedom

— Dedicated to Virginia Woolf

With the transparency of the door that lets in all that she needs, she is the master of her own life, and when she ventures into that room, shutting this door, she creates all that she knows, and all that she wishes to know. In that space she sculpts, she paints, she writes, she forges new meaning with the world, as she inspires and is inspired in every breath, in every glance outside, in every particle of her brain that sees and knows.

Yet, it has not always been like this.

For she, woman, has been taking care of other's minds, other's hearts, since the beginning of time.  She has thought of herself last; after all the others have bathed in that small tub, she finally gets her turn in a barrel whose water has become dirty and cold. She has given and given, an eternal flow, an elixir of everything for anyone. Yet, she has screamed inside, wanting to run, with nowhere to go.

Ah, the cacophony of a woman's life. She must listen to cries and hurls and gasps, the constant noise of children and a husband, her role to calm these cries and soothe the savageness of the human condition.

And through it all, everything is exposed, walking naked, her breasts hang down, dragging to the earth, for they have been torn and pulled at, and the milk in them has run dry generations ago. Woman has come to expect that her body is not her own, that her thoughts are stolen away, that her desires come last, and that her privacy masks as a tiny glimmer at the end of the day when no one wants and no one needs and no one has a voice, for all are finally asleep.

  It is then that she finally lets herself enter into her own room, locking the door.

 Freedom, when unleashed, can create endless joy, an exuberance in mind and body, a loosening up of what has been tightly woven. A habit of freedom sinks into her every pore, little by little working away at the calcification that has resided for generations.  A habit of freedom is like an endless massage, freeing up the spaces that were once held together by duty, allowing for a flow of blood to circulate continuously, giving life, giving mobility, giving power. When woman is no longer a prisoner of her own society, her thoughts become her own. Her heart beats only for itself. She is hungry, and she feeds herself her own sustaining nourishment.

Creativity is the child of this freedom, for in this life where she is her own person, there is no lock to her imagination, to her windowed soul, to her passion in finding meaning just by looking out the window at a flower, blooming...

When woman can hold the pen, grab the paintbrush, push the clay, when she can think for herself, then she is truly free, expanding from this room of her own to many rooms, all adorned with tapestries that tell the stories of not just one woman, but all, of an ancient history that has been known for centuries, finally revealed.