I don't have the answers yet, but I have learned enough to be dangerous, and ask better questions..

This weekend's forrays into nature have accomplished what I had hoped. Walking in the bosom of the earth, wandering in the mountains - this was what I so needed. I finally feel like I am getting centered, and grounded. After months (years?) of what felt like being lost at sea, drowning in the aftermath of divorce and job loss, I no longer feel quite like I am adrift, barely tethered to this planet, hanging by a thread, with my feet planted firmly in the air.

Something is happening inside of me. Something is pulling itself together.

I think I am going to meditate for some time today and try to take this further. I feel like gathering the pieces of myself back together before I take a big next step. I return to grad school in January, and I need to have my life and my work organized because the next step is a doozie. It is time to make my documentary film on what is happening to at-risk pre-teen girls navigating the road to adulthood in the US.

There might be a funding source.

The director on my current film has gotten behind me on this, and prepared the budget. He wants to do the camera work, and as a former Dicovery Channel producer and lead camera on our current project, I have faith in him. A local school wants me to work with their kids - their principal knows they have to do something to help reduce the serious conflicts in their 6th graders. I need more, though, and I need really open-minded people who aren't afraid of where we will go. We are going to be doing some really edgy stuff using theatrical acting techniques to help adolescents find and develop their inner voice before they get pummelled by multi-billion dollar marketing machines from hip hop culture exhorting them to be ghetto whores to be worth anything.

This could be dangerous....and ultimately powerfully liberating.

I don't know that I have THE answer. I might have AN answer. But I am willing to go for it.

What seemed like a dream finally could happen.

This film is for my PhD thesis, and it could also be the real start to what I hope is a long and prosperous career in gutsy, visceral, enlightening and spiritually informed filmmaking - sorely needed in this world of consumerism run amok. I need to have all my energy and will coalesced and flowing in one direction before I attempt to go to the mat to make this film, do this thesis, and launch myself in a direction I have longed to go in for some years.

So, a day of being quiet, of pulling inwards, of ammassing the parts of myself that have scattered so that when I start this initiative, I am single-minded and powerful in my will.

Namaste to you if you stopped by.

And, a wish for you to have a day (if you want it) of contemplating what you might do to make the world slightly better than it is.

No gift is too small - especially if each one of us were to give ours.

"What you want to be, you already are." Thich Nacht Thanh