Gyrations... Days #6 & 7

I've had a hectic weekend and I couldn't allow myself to not complete at least a week's worth of gratitude, so this is late, but nonetheless... I am grateful for:

• Passion, of varying forms and degrees - and a life full of it. On Sunday morning, on a spur of the moment trip to San Francisco, I was privileged to see some of the most impressive French post-impressionist paintings in this hemisphere. Thanks to de Young Museum, I was able to taste a little bit of Musee d' Orsay without actually going to Paris. You could not pause and stare at Van Gogh's "Starry Night" without dropping a tear. Seriously. It was so beautifully but painfully sad. You cannot tear your eyes away from it because it takes you to that place in you where you have felt exactly just like he did then - helplessly lost. You see the brushstrokes and it just makes you want to weep in consolation. The seeking, the questions, the desolation - it's all too familiar...

• Being introduced to new things. It's amazing to find art that intersects with psychology and recognizes (and tries to capture) the mysticism of the unconscious. A few of the paintings that resonated with me relevant to Post Impressionism, Symbolism and Nabis at the exhibition touch on dreams and the seeming universality of existential crises in humanity. My two favorite self portraits were "Self Portrait with Yellow Christ" by Gaugin, and "Symbolic Self Portrait" by Emile Bernard. It seems like both portray seeking the answers to what makes this existence meaningful.
• Degas and his soft, beautiful rendering of dancers
• Spending time, albeit short, at the beach. It was nice to see you again, Pacific Ocean.
• Meeting people with astounding life experiences. Conversations with a twenty-something cyclist who has traveled to the 'Stans and practically all over the world, fluently speaks at least five languages, and passionately talks about the North-South Korea chasm with unmistakable intelligence over sangrias first, margaritas next. How many people do you know has learned to salsa in Tajikistan?
• Gorgeous sunshiny days
• Health of family of people we care about :)
• Time with people who mirror our true selves back to us. Time with people who take us out of our heads and bring us into sheer presence. Time with people who make us want to take and give in equal healthy proportions. Time with people who make us experience what so many of us seek but never find....
• Love, without distinctions of conditional versus unconditional. Just Love as a state. Love as it exists.

Namaste!