Upside Down Kris

Thanksgiving Thanksgiving. To give thanks. To be thankful. To be full of thanks, to let it infuse you until it becomes your fuse and lights up the day. That's what today is all about.  It's so simple yet so profound. Am I thankful? Truly thankful? Yes. For the fact that I'm here, that I'm alive. That I have been given this chance to experience life, whether my recollections are positive or negative. That I have been given the opportunity to travel through three lives: one in the US, another in Italy, and the latest in Spain. How many people have had this fortuity? Or who choose to take it? I am grateful to be on this trip called life. To have traveled much and to continue to travel. To have experienced many cultures and adventures, weaving them into the tales I tell.  I am thankful that I have created the stories of my life, and that I am conscious of it. That I will go on generating chapters, molding them and then letting go when the happening is out of my description....

Balance I've been weighing balance for years but it never truly made sense until I took yoga. It's the center of yoga, really–not just in the poses, but in the things you do (and don't do), the way you think...all intertwined and interwoven into an intricate stability. Maybe you have been there, tried standing on one leg, the other pressed in a triangle to your thigh or at a 90° angle in the air, hands poised above like a dancer's or floating by your side...It all works magically, and there you are in perfect balance. Or, are you? How long does the "stableness" last? A second, a minute? For some longer, for others shorter. That's not the point. The point is, there comes a moment in which the imbalance enters in: you wobble and try to find your center of gravity again. You could say it depends on your sense of balance. I would add that it depends on your support points–how you decide to distribute your balance. But even if it's all perfect–you've pr...

New Slate   Bam–t here it was: the decision to break my face right. Bone shattering teeth chattering my head in splinters. Yes, there it was: my second 20 years  on a clean plate/slate. Before, it had always been draped with some tantalizing tidbit. The slate was steely clear like surgical knife to jaw. A medical cut was needed  in my second life to graft a third one. God, it was freeing_ God, it was ghastly_ no jaw, no country, no limits. The rawness was real: I was moving on. I smelled alcohol  antiseptic, dust from cleaning... the exhaustion of healing, packing, giving away, and the sweetness  of anticipation. I relive the stickiness  of duck tape on my fingers while watching the reflection of lopsided lips in the mirror. But I am here, whole. The change is made and the plate is slatey like the sea. Foto: <a href="https://pixabay.com/it/users/flyupmike-5768/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=516...

  The Art of Living The art of living is painting your words and actions the right color before your brush touches someone else. It's so hard to get the shade right: the one that the other person will like or at least understand. The truth is that everyone sees the world in different colors–some in gray tones, some in florescent lights, some with an impressionistic blending or muting, and others in loud, vivid scenes. Just like we don't agree on what is beautiful or what we want to look at, we also don't see (accept) the color of words in the same way. Art has as many nuances as our perception of it.  The same is true of our perception of other people, which are tainted by our own experiences, words, as well as other people's words. So, getting down to the nitty gritty of it, what is the Art of Living? I define it as learning how to slip slide through human interactions so they go as smoothly as possible. This doesn't mean avoiding confrontations or conversations. I...