In the quietude of my prayer

It is Sunday and the first day after Christmas. The end of the second week of my last training month for Kilimanjaro. At the beginning of the week it was raining heavily, but I was still able to keep up with my routine and went hiking and running with an umbrella. On Wednesday three girl-friends from Moscow arrived for a visit and I still have been able to keep up with my training routine. There is nothing really extraordinary in what I am doing, but nonetheless I am happy I am able to keep my word to myself and continue training. Yay!

On Thursday during a hike my friend and I saw a rabbit. He didn't seem to be afraid at all, I even petted him and my friend took a picture of the rabbit sitting next to my hiking boots. He was very cute! The coming 2011 is the year of the Rabbit, it must be such a good luck to have encountered one in the wild:)




So, my climb is less than a month away, I have 2 more weeks of training and 3 girl-friends visiting for 3 weeks. My birthday is also coming up in 2 weeks, I will be turning 33. It all seems like a mathematical formula I have no clue how to use or what to make out of... My friends went to a museum this morning and now they are shopping. While I went back to sleep and woke up at 1 p.m. It is quiet and peaceful in my room, only the heater making some buzzing noise. I feel very relaxed and don't want to do anything, even this little entry in my blog seems very laborious to me!

I haven't been thinking much of my climb recently, I barely even talk about it, unless people ask me. I do feel it is one of the biggest things in my life I am going to do, but it is almost too overwhelming to think or speak about. Everything is sort of a matter of fact. I decided to do it, started training, paid for the tour, put together and packed all the gear, got vaccinations and pills. I am ready to go and that's it. I feel very calm about it. I also feel as if I do it all the time and already familiarized myself with the preparation routine. Not a big deal.

I barely gave this blog address to anybody. If people come across it and decide to read - it's fine with me. But I am not shouting about it, not putting it into people's faces, pretty much keeping it to myself...

I feel that my preparation for Kilimanjaro climb is like saying a prayer in preparation for some grand spiritual event. It is an intimate act of my soul, which doesn't need to be exposed or advertised. I can whisper it very quietly, and it will sound very loudly in my heart and will give me a lot of strength and faith. I will then be able to share it with others by just being fully present with them. I don't get stronger by receiving acknowledgement from others for what I do. I get stronger by supporting others in what they do or want to do. It feels like the most important spiritual practice to me.

Ballet and Hiking

The challenging week continues... On Wednesday I caught a cold, but went on a 1 hour 45 minute hike and then ran for 15 minutes. Today I stayed in the whole day with a sore throat. I wonder if my body sabotages me? I still have 3 days to finish my training routine for this week and I am setting my intention to do so no matter what.

Today I watched "The Black Swan" and it reminded me of how much I wanted to be a ballerina when I was 9-11 years old. My Mom brought me a pair of points and I practised dancing in them day and night. I remember I felt it in my heart that I could make it in the ballet world. I knew that my body would be able to adjust to everything it needed to in order to perform its best. I was ready to suffer, to hurt in my muscles and to live on the verge of hunger only to be able to dance on points... Obviously, my parents wanted a better fate for me and never took me to the ballet school.

For some reason I saw a parallel line between dancing ballet and hiking. Ballet is all about points, at least for me. It's a certain feeling in your feet, when you point your toes which makes you feel as if you are about to take off and fly. It's as if you are trying to eliminate your feet, get rid of them, so that you can have an illusion of a flight, manifested in ethereal and graceful body movements. Yet, feet are the most important element in this dance. They are all that supports you in this awkward toe-pointed position.

In my preparation for Kilimanjaro I realized that it's all about hiking boots. If you don't have the right ones and they fail to support your feet, your chances to get to the top are greately minimized. It is important that your toes do not touch the boot when going downhill, otherwise you might end up hurting really badly. Your heels shouldn't lift up too much, because it can cause blisters. Hiking in hiking boots feels to me like a dance, though a very grounding, earthly dance. You completely rely on your feet, you barely care how you look. You just make steps and move up and down hills along the trajectory of a chosen trail...

When I think about Kilimanjaro and imagine what music I identify it with, Chopin always comes to my mind. Particularly the Nocturne, Lento con gran espressione, Op.post. in C sharp minor. Simply because it is my favorite Nocturne and it reminds me of falling snow. The idea of climbing Kilimanjaro came to me 2 years ago when I was going through a very emotionally challenging time in my life. It was revealed through morning pages I wrote doing "The Artist's Way". That particular day I was contemplating about snow and how much I miss it here in Los Angeles. Strangely enough, instead of driving for a couple of hours to a place where there is plenty of snow or merely going to the east coast or at least to Russia, I imagined the snow of Kilimanjaro. The snow which is so hard to reach and which can be completely gone by 2030...

Points, hiking boots, Chopin, snow - I don't even know what I am talking about or what I am trying to explain to myself. I guess that if I am lucky enough to get to the summit, Uhuru Peak or the Peak of Freedom, and stand firmly on my feet in hiking boots, I will close my eyes and let the snow fall on my face. While it will be slowly melting and mixing up with my tears of happiness, I will be able to hear my favorite Nocturne. And at that ethereal moment I will feel that my feet are in points and I can take off and fly on the wings of my freedom. My emotional freedom of being self-reliant, self-supportive, self-encouraging and trusting in myself. Trusting that anything I imagine can become real. I can make it miraculously happen if I take a step at a time.

Curiosity

Yesterday started my 3rd and last month of preparation for Kilimanjaro climb during which I need to hike 5 hours and run 50 minutes weekly. I have been increasing my training routine a little bit every month, starting from 3 hours of hiking a week, then making it 4 hours and now it's 5... It's not that much really, if you look at it. I would usually hike 3 times a week, sometimes an hour at a time or an hour and a half. I also went on longer hikes of 2 hours and my record has so far been a 3- hour hike.

About 3 weeks ago I began to hike with a 15-pound backpack and last week I started breaking in my new hiking boots only to find out that they don't really work. Last week I got my vaccinations and purchased Diamox pills together with some other medicine I might need during the climb. Today my duffel bag has arrived which I bought according to the specifications of the tour company arranging the climb, but it looks too small to me. May be I bought the wrong one? Yesterday I spent 1.5 hours trying on a new pair of ASOLO hiking boots at REI and finally decided to buy them. They are now peacefully standing in the box in a shopping paper bag in the middle of my room. While I am sitting on my usual place on the floor typing in my blog. The mirror doors of my closet reflect a huge mess all around me, which includes my un-done bed, clothes, shoes, books, paper, my Christmas mug with warm tea and an empty plate waiting to be washed after my simple breakfast of an egg, Turkey bacon and tomatoes. I feel completely overwhelmed.

Now I know why I have never gone to climb Kilimanjaro before. It was not only a matter of a very expensive trip, which I am doing now without even having a regular job. It was also an immense amount of details, necessary information, a whole bunch of gear, vaccinations, exhausting training... bla bla bla Now that I've gotten so close and have already done so much, it seems like there is still so much more to be done! And, by the way, have I mentioned that I am not even an outdoorsy person or someone who exercises regularly? That the most work-out I ever did was yoga. That my everyday outfit undoubtedly includes high-heeled shoes. That I hate when it's cold. That I camped only once on a Memorial Day weekend with my friends at Lake Mead where they had showers and the weather was faboulous.

How am I going to go to Tanzania all by myself and join a group of 7 men and 20 or so more male porters, guides, etc; hike and camp out for 7 days/6 nights on a mountain where the climate zones range from Bushland to Rain forest, from Heath to Alpine Desert and Arctic? ARCTIC for God's sake! Starting at 5,380 ft (1,640 m) and walking for about 37 miles (62 km) up to 19,341 ft (5,895 m) where high altitude sickness is a normal state of being... WHAT WAS I THINKING WHEN I DECIDED THAT I CAN DO THIS???

It sounds like a joke to me right now. A joke into which I've already invested so much energy and finances only to come to a plateau of doubts in my mind. The doubts I want to cover myself with, like a shawl or a warm blanket, lay down next to my newly purchased hiking boots and fall asleep. When I wake up I want to realize that is was all another crazy dream. And that I have a wonderful job I love and don't have to worry what will happen when I go through all of my savings. That I also have an amazing life-long relationship and I feel so much joy in sharing the beauty of this adventurous world with my soul-mate...

I see the box with my boots still peacefully standing in the middle of my messy room. Warm air coming from the little heater is drying up my tears. "It's okay" - I hear my own voice - "You will be fine. Just take a step at a time. Don't think about anything, don't make any calls, don't check your email, don't think. Put on your new hiking boots and start breaking them in. It's so beautiful outside! I am sure you will LOVE your hike up to the Griffith Observatory and then further on to Dante's View. You always like it there. Let things be for a moment. And let yourself hike."

I guess this is yet another time I should listen to myself. I know in my heart that everything will be fine and I will be prepared and ready to start climbing Kilimanjaro on January 24th 2011. I've always done crazy things in my life and took myself out of my comfort zone just for the sake of... curiosity. I am very curious about our planet and all the people who came to live here. One of my deepest desires is to embrace this world by travelling and meeting people from various cultures. By doing things I've never done and exploring the unlimitedness of human nature. This is exactly what I am going to do right now by trying out my new hiking boots in Griffith Park. I am very curious if they work for me:)

Snow

I will dance with my words like snowflakes
Falling from the sky
Their cold appearance will reveal to me
The shape of my dream

I never knew my dream is cold,
Soft and white like the snow,
Innocent for the first traveller

"I will walk on my dream softly"
Like described in a well-know poem
In fear of losing it from under my feet -
I have walked so far to approach to it
A little bit closer

In the dark night of my soul
I dreamt of going to Africa
And climbing Kilimanjaro
There was no explanation,
No reason at all

I just felt the dusty smell
Of savanna and hot air melting itself
Exposing the grand mountain
With a white cap of snow
Waving it as if a white flag

It felt like home to me
Home where I wanted to return
Like a longing for an old friend
I thought I might never see again...
Myself

All the support I need

These days it is so easy for me to exersise every day in my preparation for Kilimanjaro climb, but it is still so hard to make an entry in my blog! Writing seems almost like climbing without training. What if I knew that my life depended on how ready I am to write?

Very often my friends ask me if I am excited about my Kilimanjaro climb. To be honest, I barely think about it at all:) But every morning I wake up I start reading about Kilimanjaro, then I go for a hike, for a run or for yoga. In a training plan that I designed for myself the first month I was hiking for at least 3 hours a week and running for at least 30 minutes a week. This month it is 4 hours and 40 minutes, next month - 5 hours and 50 minutes... Now I am at the end of my 2nd month and I wish I had more to say about everything in detail! On the contrary, for the first time in my life I have less to say and more to do.

I am starting to notice how much my body and overall emotional balance have already changed. My legs, belly and arms have gotten firm and slim. If I get tired, it's usually at the end of the day and it's the kind of tiredness which makes your falling asleep really sweet and desirable. I wake up in the morning earlier than usual and feel full of energy. I can get hungry very fast and eat quite a bit, but I don't gain any weight. Emotionally I feel very capable and strong. If I ever get upset, it is easy for me to pull myself together and change the mood for a better one. If there is something bothering or annoying me, it takes me no time to find an answer and take care of myself. I feel like for the first time in my life I am receiving all the support I have ever needed. This support comes from my own heart.

So, am I excited about Kilimanjaro climb? I am VERY excited! This excitement is not about a mountain in Tanzania, it's rather about every single day I wake up to. It feels as if nothing can be more marvelous than to hike up to the Observatory in Griffith Park and encounter cute little squirrels looking for food or go for a run near my house and run up and down Lilian Way, Cahuenga and Wilcox Streets, spotting cats and dogs now and then or looking at pretty houses, rose gardens and trees with falling red leaves. Or stand firmly on my yoga mat and feel that I am really standing on the Earth and how it pushes against my soles and heels with such force that I could have flown away if not for the gravity. With my eyes closed, my knees a little bit bent and legs apart at shoulder length, I breathe in and my belly expands filling my entire body with precious oxygen and then I breathe out, as if letting an imprint of my soul to join the transparent air and become one with it. One with all there is.

In that quiet eternal moment of stillness I feel very supported. It always makes me realize that this is all the support I ever needed and I had it all the way and always will. I have been practicing this knowledge since I started training, and by doing this I have been building up not only my inner strength, but also my trust. I trust myself. I trust that I can depend on myself, that I can take care of myself whenever I need, that I am always here for myself. I am safe.

I never thought it is possible to find and re-connect with oneself so simply.

Make a commitment with your feet

Once I heard from a psychologist that when you are trying to get over an addiction, you should make a commitment with your feet. I thought it sounded funny and didn't quite understand what he meant. How can you possibly make a commitment with your feet if you can only make it with your mind? Everything we do is being operated by the mind, isnt' it? If so, what can be done if a mind is addicted to a certain pattern?

Oh, God! I always want to write something clever and ask a bunch of very important questions, most of which turn out to be rhetoric... This is exactly where and why I get stuck in my writing. I stumble on my own contemplative thoughts as if they are rocks and before I am able to go anywhere further, I need to stop and take a breath. May be even put my hands on a bigger rock in my imagination and say to myself: "You don't need to think so much. Just relax, take it easy." By doing so I instantly feel how the tension in my entire body goes away and I am not out of breath anymore, nor am I out of words either. I feel like I can make another step and write another sentence.

Today I devoted a lot of my time to finding the perfect hiking boots for the climb. I spent a couple of hours last night researching on-line and in the morning I went to REI to try on a pair. They seemed really nice, but the moment I was about to start asking a Sales Associate all the specific questions I had, I realized that my car's meter had expired and I need to run before I get a ticket. I decided not to go back to the store and drove home to resume my on-line shopping. Here they are! My fabulous hiking boots purchased on www.altrec.com with the help of a very amicable and nice sales person.
My boots will arrive at the end of the week and I will start breaking them in. I am so excited!

It's so bizzare to see myself being excited about purchasing hiking boots or to enjoy hiking as much as I do and even to prepare for Kilimanjaro climb... Being outdoors and excercising is a very new activity for me. I usually wear high-healed shoes and prefer driving to walking. Yoga was the most I could get myself into, but hiking???

I started hiking with my friend a couple of months ago. It was before I made a commitment to climb Kilimanjaro. She just got back from South Africa where she spent a whole month and I couldn't wait to hear everything about her experience. It felt so natural to walk and talk. Time would fly by really fast and it didn't seem like a boring work-out. One day she said that she wants to be outdoors more, that she wants to get her hands dirty. The next moment we saw a little pile of dark sand and the two of us pressed our hands against it. It was very cool and soft. We closed our eyes and enjoyed a moment of silence. A realization hit me that we are all the same -stones and trees, dirt and flowers, squirrels and birds - everything we see and all we are in our bodies, is just stardust. Being closer to nature, breathing it in, allowing oneself to be a part of it, is a little secret to happiness.

When I started hiking my life started changing. Everyday I am getting to know my body better and better. My spirit has inhabited it for more than 32 years, but never fully felt at home, always wanted to be somewhere else. I was looking for things I wanted on the outside, and miraculously found them inside. There is a Russian saying that there is no truth in your feet. Well, probably, there isn't. I don't even know what the truth is. What feels true for me right now is that my feet are taking me where I need to be and I am trusting them. Once and for all I decided to make a commitment to co-create a life that I will enjoy. I had no idea how to fulfill it and just started walking. This is how my journey began.

I wanted a perfect ending...

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next...
Gilda Radner



I also wanted a perfect ending or at least a perfect beginning. For what? Probably for the story of my life where I find myself now, pretty much in the middle and still have no idea what to make out of it. At this point in my life I am without a real job or a relationship. I am studying Spiritual Psychology, do Spiritual/Intuitive Counseling and hike in my preparation for Kilimanjaro climb in January 2011. I have 2 months left to be fully prepared. But I don't even know what exactly it means - to be fully prepared for Kilimanjaro climb, because I have no idea what to expect...

I am joining a group of 7 people and I am going to be the only woman. Will it be okay? I guess so, I already paid for my trip, therefore I won't be different in this regard. Will I be as strong as those men? Will I be able to adjust to increasing high altitude? Will I not freeze to death in my little tent in a rented sleeping bag? How will I manage not to take a shower for 7 days? Well, at least I ordered a private bio-toilet, a little plastic box to sit on, so I won't have to use the long dropped one which didn't seem a very accomodating option for me... What else? Bugs? Merciless sun? Unavoidable blisteres? Are they going to include meat in our meals? All of these mostly silly questions don't bother me as much as this one: to better adjust to high altitude I will have to drink lots of water and I will constantly want to pee. How am I going to do this in the middle of trekking?!

Obviously, I have no clear beginning of my Kilimanjaro diary and I don't know if I will ever be able to reach the famous Uhuru Peak, which in translation means the Peak of Freedom. Nor do I know if I will be able to reach the top of my emotional mountain and climb my feeling of being excluded, not accepted, probably not fitting into a certain group of people, a family, a nation, a spiritual community. Can you even climb something which is an illusion, a completely fabricated feeling, but feels so real that you believe in it with all of your heart?

I don't know. All I know is that today I had a beautiful 2,5-hour hike with a friend of mine and now in the comfort of my home, making an entry in my diary I feel that every muscle of my body is smiling as if filled with the energy of the sun. It is so easy to feel the strength in my legs, my lean stomach, my hands eager to write and my head more present and less obsessed with thoughts than it oftentimes is. And it feels like such a perfect ending of this little entry and a perfect beginning of my Sunday.

I’ve always been a writer who doesn’t write

I’ve always been a writer who doesn’t write
Who keeps all her thoughts to herself
And doesn’t share the bits of her heart
Being unaware of the weight the words are
To her soul

They need a release, let them fly like birds
The cage of your chest is of no more service
For them or for you…

You feel as if there is a huge rock inside you
There is no more space for breathing. You are suffocating.
If you cannot walk around it, you might as well climb it...

Remember that I love you just the way you are
Even if you don’t express a single thought
Even if you never reach the peak of the mountain

Writing is your path on which you embark every day
Not knowing where it will take you. You live in the moment.
There is splendor in the freedom to be alive
There is a whole world in each cell of your body,
The tiniest reflection of your wandering soul,
The beauty of the paradise re-gained

The miracle of the unexpected comes
With a single breath you make.