Karinakah Day 4: Enjoyment

 I frequently treat myself to things I want, the simple and the exquisite.  Recently I've found a drink of water just as refreshing as holding the attention and gaze of a talented band of musicians while I dance to their rhythms.  I love this.  I feel like most of the highs and the lows of my younger days have been replaced with a steady enjoyment of everything life has to offer.  This makes my days even more magical because it makes the extraordinary more commonplace but no less enjoyable.

I also enjoy feeling my feelings these days, even allowing myself to publicly *gasp* be a real jerk to those I feel deserve it.  In the end it doesn't really feel that good but now I know.

I usually enjoy something extravagant during Karinakah, like $200 boots or giving gifts to every person I meet during the 11 days.  This year I'm enjoying the luxury of patience and savings.  I'm putting that money towards my debts and experimenting again with how little I need to be happy.  Better yet, I'm learning how to come up with things or experiences by thinking outside the box and less inside my wallet.

I went to see the Diana Vreeland movie again tonight.  It was marvelous and I do adore her.  She mentioned a quote she loves.  Here is my paraphrase:


"I'm going to die young."

"How young?"

"I might be 70.  I might be 80.  I might be 90.  But I'm going to die very, very young."



For the longest time, I was sure of dying young myself.  The suffering of my youth made it clear that I'd never make it past 25.  The world was so awful, such a dangerous and unjust place, I was sure I wouldn't be able to stand it.  But then I turned 26, 27...and on Saturday I'll turn 33.  I understood my life after 25 to be a sort of extra credit.  God said, "Karina, you're getting an A in life so just chill the eff out.  Everything from here on out is extra credit.  For my sake, enjoy it."

Now I see my dying young more as the quote that Ms Vreeland loves.  I might be 70.  I might be 80.  I might be 90.  But I'm going to die very, very young.

Turkish olive oil wrestling is a beautiful thing.  (Not my pic)

Karinakah Day 3: Creation

I saw a wonderful documentary last night about 21st century fashion editor, Diana Vreeland. 

"The Eye Has To Travel"

She reminds me of a more ambitious Auntie Mame: one outlandishly creative and in love with life, and in this sense, fashion.  As I sat in the theater, learning about a woman I had no clue of until I stumble across this trailer, I felt joy like she was a much more ambitious kindred spirit.  I hope that some day I will have that kind of confidence and ability to create new forms of beauty. 

Creation, jumping in to something with nothing but your own initiative, harvesting the fruits of the moment, demanding a beautiful life and then discovering it where it once was hidden.  I love it and am eager for more.

The night I saw "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel". My faith in beauty and fantasy was renewed.

Karinakah Day 2: Action

I invented Karinakah in October of 2008.  My birthday from the previous year had been a miserable one.  I had recently moved to Vermont and was feeling quite lonely.  My wonderful friend Molly had invited me to a party at her house that night and said she'd even make me a cake.  Unfortunately when the actual day came I was suffering miserably from allergies and had to stay home.  It was a cold, rainy night and I remember looking out of my window at "downtown" Jeffersonville, VT feeling silly and sad.

The next year I decided that that would never happen again, that in fact I would celebrate my birthday for 11 days total:  the 5 days before, the actual day and the 5 days after.  Then the pressure was lifted from the actual day and I could entertain my extroverted vanity a bit longer.  While sometimes I shy away from being brazen because of how others might judge me, usually I don't mind.  Creating Karinikah is a perfect example and one that exemplifies the word of the day:  Action. 

So in celebration of today's word I marched over to the beautiful catholic church next to one of my south side schools and asked if I could see it.  A maintenance man named Apolinar, with tufts of grey hair peeking out of his CFD hat, let me in and settled himself in one of the pews while I wandered around. It was beautiful and the orbital stained glass windows reminded me instantly of visiting Sainte-Chapelle in Paris when I was fifteen.  The colors were mesmerizing and the marble pillars humbling.  In the middle of the pews was a baptismal tub whirring away like an abandoned honeymoon suite jacuzzi.  But the most beautiful thing was the silence...then the echo of my feet, of Apolinar occasionally shifting in his pew.  Suddenly I wanted to sing.

I haven't sung in a while.  I simply haven't wanted to.  I was even a little shy about it because I knew my voice was rusty but the acoustics...I had to have these acoustics.  After asking permission from Apolinar I sang the Lord's Prayer.  The last time I sang it was in a catholic church in Charleston, South Carolina a long time ago.  But instead of singing under my breath and seated in a pew like I did then, I sang full out and standing in the middle of the church.  My voice bounced off the walls forcefully and a little off key but I didn't mind.  With the swelling of the finale, notes I'd just sung would swing back to me with an insistence, cocooning me for the next note.  And I smiled and I cried and I shook Apolinar's hand with a "muchas gracias" and went home.

There are times of acceptance and surrender.  There are times of action and courage.  I like both very much and am learning more and more to not confuse the two.

Karinakah Day 1: Acceptance

I have a reminder on my phone that goes off every day at noon. It simply says, "Music, writing, athletics and Ireland".  It's there to remind me of the things that make me happy and the next non-Chilean place I'd like to visit.

I think of it today for two reasons: 1) I have made no steps towards any of them in a while and 2) It's the first day of Karinaka, my 11 day birthday celebration and the word of the day is "Acceptance".

Acceptance that I am not as ambitious, tidy, fit, rich, well mannered and time efficient as I should be. Acceptance that I haven't forced myself to do the things I enjoy because...I don't feel like doing them. I don't feel like doing a lot of the things I used too.

One of those is judging myself and others. I'm tired of it. Tired of there being a right way to live and of having to wait for everything to be perfect (every dish clean, every email sent, every facade polished) for me to be ok. And I'm tired of judging other people as not being ok because of...whatever. I mean, really, who cares?

This place of non-judging doesn't feel good but it doesn't feel bad.

And here I am doing one of the things I love without even trying.

It's been too long since I've written.

Lately there is a thick, quiet comfort in the doings of my life. Complaints and praise mix like paint and I am equally colored by both. Occasionally one hue wins over the other. Still I am what I am. It is what it is. And I sing some song, dance to some everlasting mental dance party, completely oblivious to opinion's colors and rejoice in my reality.