emerging

I awoke this morning in the midst of one of the most extraordinary dreams of my life, and it involved a mammoth butterfly. I saw it as separate from me, and also saw it as me. I ventured upon a site just now that gave me some insight into the symbolism.

It’s connection with the soul is rather fitting. We are all on a long journey of the soul. On this journey we encounter endless turns, shifts, and conditions that cause us to morph into ever-finer beings. At our soul-journey’s end we are inevitably changed – not at all the same as when we started on the path.


To take this analogy a step further, we can look again to the grace and eloquence of the butterfly and realize that our journey is our only guarantee. Our responsibility to make our way in faith, accept the change that comes, and emerge from our transitions as brilliantly as the butterfly.

Avia Venefica, the author of this site also talks about how the butterfly's metamorphosis is only one month long, and if we humans changed that drastically in one month where we are no longer recognizable to what we once were, what an amazing transition. Yet, this is just what I feel I've gone through. Yeah, there's still some remnants of the old Jill hanging around, but mostly it's this new being that I don't even recognize. I asked for this, I tell myself daily. I asked for this. I wanted to show up in this world as I really am, so here it is. My only responsibility is to make my way in faith, accept the change that comes, and emerge from my transitions as brilliantly as the butterfly.

Well now, Avia sure wrote those words simply and beautifuly enough, and now to live it. Now to live in total faith without questioning, without the mental chatter, to be able to awake in the morning with total peace knowing that whatever happens is exactly as it should be without any of the fretting and stress.

Acceptance and emergence... hm, I watched that butterfly in my dreams fly effortlessly, landing on tree limbs and watching me. And then I became the butterfly that was able to fly just as effortlessly. It was as if my vision shifted from the spectator to the participant. Just like that. Poof! I went from the one watching the transformation to the one being transformed. I emerged as the butterfly, and was tethered to nothing. I flew freely with no cares in the world. Acceptance and emergence...

What if that's all there is to do? Become the butterfly? Transform from the observer to the participant and back to the observer whenever I want? What if that's the only transition there really is? Being able to watch myself in a movie and then being able to play that actor, and then presto! back to the viewer...

When I was going through past-life regression sessions, and it would get too difficult for me to be in those past lives, my shaman would whisk me into the watching of the movie instead of being in the movie. I was able to see what happened to me without any emotion. I was able to see what had happened and learn from it instead of getting caught up in it. It had no charge for me. It just was an incident, and I could look at it. I could study it as I would have a history book for an exam. What did I learn from this? Who was the one speaking? Where was this taking me? All these questions could be answered easily without any triggers to my emotions. I was calm as I watched myself being murdered because I was not dying. I learned I couldn't die. I was transformed. I could fly above it all and watch the men sweating while they chopped at me with their weapons. I could only laugh. I was fine. I had no pain. They were the ones struggling. They were the ones in pain. They were the ones who were blinded by their beliefs. I flew above them and laughed at their silliness.

I feel I've been led to believe so much in this life that is false. It seems to me that just about everything has been an illusion. Every day more and more gets stripped, and what is real is exposed. As Tom Crum taught me, I'm dancing on shifting carpet. What is real? What is really behind that curtain?

It seems senseless to me to get caught up in anything right now. What other people think, what they want from me... it's all just noise in my head. I obliterate it and emerge.

mirrors...

Two years ago this month I was in Peaceful Valley with Tom Crum for a workshop called Journey to Center. I was in the dining hall one night with his daughter, Ali, and she asked me a question that has stayed with me ever since.

Does a place make you happy, or can you live anywhere and be happy? I have always thought that happiness is an inside job, and I also wonder how much place has to do with affecting that feeling within.

After recently moving to Santa Fe I've come to realize that place really does affect how I feel because here I've been feeling so much more energetically. Energies are heightened for me here. I feel them so much more intensely, and I feel so many different ones. Last night, however, was the strangest experience for me yet.

I had been texting a friend of mine who apparently had fallen asleep in between texting. (Yes, it was that exciting...) When I rolled over to go to sleep, I felt his energy wash over me, and then I saw him in his life at his home over the past weekend as if I were watching a movie. Now, what was even more interesting about it is that I wasn't watching what he had done or said; I was watching how he felt. Now, I've had some very out there experiences. I used to work with a shaman in Steamboat Springs where strange happenings were normal. However, this "movie" was the wildest ride of my life yet. I was able to watch it totally detached which was really something because his feelings were discordant with his words and actions. That would've bothered me before. Last night it was just an observance.

I learned that I could see how he really felt and notice how different it was from his words, and love him anyway. None of the dissonance took away from how much he means to me. It was a pure unconditional loving experience. I didn't care how unauthentic the movie portrayed him to be. I could see his feelings and understand why his words didn't match.

Playing human is not the easiest thing to do. We're given roles to play from the git-go. We're told how to act and what to say to be polite. Appearances are so much more important in this society than being real. Money matters more than happiness. We're taught to work hard and play less, and in the meantime, we lose ourselves. We lose what's really important to us. And, what's the most important to me is being authentic. I still find myself hiding out. I still find myself not as open as I'd like to be. I still find myself grasping at how to show up in the world. I still see my own struggles, my own lies I tell myself, and my own inability to be completely vulnerable.

I just give myself another opportunity to be authentic, to be vulnerable, to be open. I just keep giving myself chance after chance after chance. Maybe one day I'll do it better,or maybe I won't, but for right now I know that I'm being given a vision to see how it plays out in another's life, and it's such a gift to see how he's mirroring parts of me in my direction, and I can love me anyway.

McKinney Creative Community

John Denver has a song with the lyrics: "It's five o'clock this morning and the sun is on the rise." Well, I now know for a fact that at three in the morning, the sun is nowhere to be seen.

I decided to stay up all night to get a lot of work done that's been needing to be completed, so what better way than to get it done when everyone else is sleeping?

Well, just about everyone else was sleeping. Here it was still dark out and COOL, and I was just moseying around the square, checking out the new places and window shopping at the old ones when I turned the corner at Square Burger and saw the owner, Brandon, still working. WTF? Who is awake on the square at three in the morning??? (Okay, besides me...) He wanted to know what I was doing up. Trying to stay awake.

So today, Brandon let me know that when he left the square (sometime after we discovered we were probably the only two people awake at that time in the morning), he saw me standing in my daughter's office in front of the computer typing on the keyboard. "Do you know what time that was?" he asked me when I was in his restaurant at lunch.

Frankly, I didn't know. I was on a mission. I had work to complete, and, baby, I was getting it done. It felt good, and I love feeling good. I promised a man that I would send him 300 words a day on my next novel, and I was cranking those words out. I had an ecourse to catch up on, and I finished all the lessons. And today, I designed the commissioned work that was due and got it to my client. Sweet jesus! It has been a phenomenal day and night.

And right now I'm bursting with happiness. The girls here are laughing at my craziness because I can't stop talking and typing. Caffeine late in the day probably has something to do with that, as does lack of sleep.

So now, it's time to head home and shower. Way too many people have noticed I'm in the same clothes from yesterday. I'm getting dressed and even putting on makeup. (Yes, miracles do happen!) And then it's off to Cadillac's to snag musicians for the McKinney Creative Community. My friends, Tom and Silky Michero, told me today that our community needs to have more men, and musicians would be fabulous, and since I've been known to have a few of them in my life (male musicians), I'm talking to them about this new adventure.

There's a Facebook page called McKinney Creative Community, and anyone can join. We're beginning monthly potlucks in September so we can all come together and create a community of creative people. Right now there's all kinds of artists -- musicians, writers, painters, and we want to include anyone in the healing arts also. Who's not an artist? Who doesn't create a work of art with their own lives? Get creative, have fun, and join us for the time of your life.

Tom and Silky Michero working on plans for our McKinney Creative Community in Square Burger today at lunch

A well-traveled road

As soon as it was time to go to college, I left the state I'd spent most of my life in -- Texas. I fled to Colorado. It was a place I had thought about and dreamed about for years. My every waking moment was spent fantasizing about living there. I imagined everything I'd do, how I'd live, and who I'd love. Ask anyone who knew me during high school. John Denver and Colorado were all I ever talked about.

Looking back on those 14-year-old's memories, I realize how few of those fantasies came true. So, what's up with all this hype about the law of attraction -- we attract to us that which we think and feel about? I thought it; I felt it; and I still didn't move to Aspen and become friends with John Denver. That was probably my biggest fantasy. I wanted to travel with him, to help run his show in some way. I didn't know what that would be. I didn't care. I just knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could work and travel with this man.

After moving to Gunnison, Colorado for college, I took guitar lessons and learned how to play John Denver songs. I probably still have the music somewhere for "The Eagle and The Hawk." I was a music major playing the piano, and John Denver was not allowed in those classical music halls. Confined in my small room with a captive piano I would play for hours -- Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin, but never John Denver.

I was sitting in a room alone with a piano instead of outside in the Rocky Mountains that John would sing about. I was running my hands up and down a keyboard playing a long-dead musician's piece instead of picking "Rocky Mountain High" beside a river. I would spend hours and hours in a confined room playing the same arpeggios instead of traveling with a band that introduced John Denver to an audience so many nights on the road.

It didn't matter. I knew so strongly that this would come true that I didn't waiver. I kept playing until I was asked to leave the program for lack of a tolerable singing voice and for being tone deaf. I picked up my pen instead and became a writer. I ended up with a degree in English. I use it every day.

One of the first guys I met in Gunnison was from the Aspen area. I even hitchhiked to his mother's house my freshman year and spent the weekend with him there. He was a friend that I never forgot over the years. When I ran away from home with a six-year old daughter, I ran to him, and then again 18 years later when I struggled with a failing marriage and a buried identity.

Just a few short years ago in 2004, I left Boulder county where I was living to go to a symposium in Snowmass near Aspen. The symposium was put on by a John Denver foundation called Windstar. I never made it to the symposium, but I got reacquainted with my college friend. He flew me back to Gunnison where we'd met. We walked the main street where we'd been all those years ago. We talked about all the places we'd gone to there, the people we'd befriended, and what happened in those buildings. But most importantly, while walking down the street we remembered who we once were and who we thought we'd be. It was painful to see the incongruency in it all. It was a turning point, a defining moment for me like none other. It was my 48th birthday, and I was so disappointed with who I'd become.

The dichotomy of who I dreamed I could be and who I had become was such a chasm, I couldn't fathom a way to make it to the side I wanted to be on. The distinction between the two were so evident, so in my face, that it was too painful to not do something about it.

The drive back to Boulder county that day took me two extra hours and I don't remember it at all. I never stopped thinking about how I had to make changes. I didn't know how; I just knew I had to, and one of the first things I wanted to do was learn to fly. My Aspen friend flew me over the Maroon Bells and Pyramid Peak to Gunnison, and it seemed the world opened up to me. There was something inside that blossomed and turned me into someone who could no longer be that simple wife that did what it took to keep peace (in an angry sort of way).

Taking flying lessons was out of the question, according to my then husband. To me the only thing out of the question was to continue being his wife. So, after 27 1/2 years I became single again. After living near Denver and Boulder for all those years, I went back to the mountains in search of me. I went back to the mountains to hibernate for a couple of years and grow into someone I could be proud of.

One of the first people I met was a shaman that I worked with for months before finding out that he and John Denver had been good friends. We worked together in Aspen for a while, driving from Steamboat every week. I met many John Denver friends that way. I still get calls from them. And then last September I took a 5-day workshop with one of John's dearest friends, Tom Crum, on the Journey to Center. It was a John Denver lovefest. There were many participants that had been good friends of John's. I heard so many stories about him. We listened to his music, and his energy was so prevalent that it was palpable.

Within weeks of that workshop, I had moved back to Texas.

So, did all that visualizing/fantasizing mean nothing? Did I really not have my dreams come true? Did I not travel with John?

In the past when I've declared something as mine -- visualizing it and claiming it with affirmations, vision boards, etc. -- it has always shown up, but just not how I think. I've traveled all my adulthood with John Denver. I moved to Colorado in 1974 because of him. I spent many nights in the Aspen area because of him, and I moved back to Texas because of him. Every major event in my life has had a John Denver connection. Every trip back to Aspen has been a defining moment for me. Every experience there and every experience with his friends have helped shape my life into what it is today.

I thought I'd be lugging around guitars with a backstage pass around my neck. I thought I'd be hearing his music live from behind the stage. Instead, I heard him within. I followed the tiny nudges that kept leading me to the next step, and those steps led me to McKinney, Texas in 2008, 34 years after leaving Texas the first time.

I've learned to make my wishes known to the universe. To voice them in the ways I know how and then allow the events to unfold as beautifully and perfectly as they always have. I've learned to wake up to the possibilities in every moment and see the finer connection to all that there is. It's a lovely way to live. I am so grateful. Thank you, John. It's been a well-traveled road back.

I am so grateful

I awoke this morning to a phone call from a dear, sweet friend telling me about her nephew's accident. She asked if my chiropractor daughter, Dr. Alyssa Summey, could phone her sister, the mother, and give her information about what her son's doctors were suggesting.

After telling my daughter about this request, she told me about her friend/patient that was broadsided by an SUV while driving his motorcycle after leaving her office on Monday. He was airlifted to a hospital in Dallas where he still is.

These two events helped me remember how grateful I am for every single person in my life, how very precious they are to me, and for all the greatness that is showered on me every moment.

I am so grateful.

I got a beautiful email from a man who has altered my life significantly. When I opened up yahoo and saw his name there, tears came to my eyes. He's Tom Crum, an amazing being who taught me so much last September at his Journey to Center workshop. I feel the effects of his teachings daily. Thank you, Tom, from the bottom of my heart for blessing my life with your gracious teachings.

I am so grateful.

And then I met a friend, Michelle Barr, I'd lost touch with for coffee this morning. We poured our hearts out over coffee and tea, and suddenly the day was brighter and lighter. We took a tour back to my daughter's office on the square so she could look at the potential use of the office space for herself. We ran into another piece of the puzzle, Molly Jones of Molly J & Co. and ended up having lunch together and discussing the vibrant connection and possible joint ventures of business on the square.

I am so grateful.

I received a phone call from an Aspen friend who was a close friend of John Denver's, as was Tom Crum. After that conversation, I turned on my computer to see John Denver on my FB page. I am blessed with serendipity and miracles. John Denver always has shown up in my life during a major change. I look forward to seeing what's next.

I am so grateful.

I opened my email and read a long one from a beau, and it hurt to read his pain, but also felt good knowing that what he's suffering through cleanses him in the end. It'll bring him into such beautiful light. One day.

I am so grateful.

Tonight I fixed a delicious chicken dinner for my wonderful daughter before we leave to check out another office space. We're planning on going to Lone Star Winery for glasses of red wine, before heading over to Cadillac's to hear our favorite local musicians.

I am so grateful.

Joy and peace are not just words spread at Christmastime

So what do I know? The one thing I'm discovering about life is that just when I think I know what I'm to do, where I'm to live, and who I'm to be with, oops, there goes the rug out from under my feet again. My friend Tom Crum from Aiki Works calls this learning to dance on shifting carpet. I think the best thing I can do for myself is to stop trying to figure it out. Just when I think I've grown tired of the maze I put myself through, there I go again.

Case in point. Speaking of Tom, I went to his Journey to Center workshop in Peaceful Valley, CO last September. Tom is a magnificent teacher, and I highly recommend him for anything he teaches even if you don't play golf or ski, it'd be well worth your while to take his workshops on those anyway!

One day during the workshop I was talking to Tom about having a man in my life. He told me to hold off for at least six months after taking his workshop because my heart was so wide open now. He said that this was now a time for me to absorb what I learned in the week with him and let it integrate without involving someone else.

A couple of weeks later dear, dear friends of mine gave me a gift certificate for a massage/intuitive reading by two wonderful women in Steamboat Springs, CO, so I jumped at it. Right away I was told that there was a man right here for me. He was right here and I just needed to be open to the experience. Hm...

The next day I went to the library in between appointments, sat at a table all by myself when a man sits at the table next to mine. And voila! we began dating and enjoying each other tremendously. I told him from the start that I was leaving Steamboat. At first he said, "No, you're not." Then he said he was going with me, and when it got down to the real possibility of me leaving, he told me to give him two years. Stay in Steamboat for two more years while he did what he wanted to get done and then we'd go wherever I wanted. I couldn't stay in Steamboat any longer. He helped me pack up, and we spent some wonderful time together the nights before I left, and then I was gone.

The last I heard from him was Christmas day until he called last Sunday.

Saturday night I had a too-long conversation with "Sam from Seattle" and all I could feel was that it was so over. In my world anymore, what doesn't fit for me gets chewed up and spit out, and sure enough that's what happened Sunday morning. I got sick immediately, purged my guts out, and went to bed again. When I awoke three hours later after a clear resolve to not have Sam from Seattle in my life at all anymore, feeling clean and fresh and renewed, I get a call from this guy in Steamboat.

Now, you may not believe in many things that I do, but you just can't deny the timing of that call. Right when I was cleared out and cleaned up, in comes a phone call from someone who lit up my life with pure joy and sweetness. There was never anything crazy about our short time together. We enjoyed each other's company tremendously, and then I moved.

Just before moving here, I had a reading from a psychic at a party last October. I asked whether or not I'd be meeting a man. He told me straight out that I already had a man. I looked at him puzzled. He told me that there was a really great man in my life already. My thoughts were so focused on moving to my next adventure that I didn't even see what was right there in front of me.

Looking back on all of it now and seeing how blind I was to what was going on, I realize how important it was for me to do all that I did in the way I did them. I needed the experiences I've had here, especially the craziness with Sam because it gave me a great view of what I don't want in my life. I had been on a search for the holy grail of the perfect mate. You know, the one who has all the right features. For me that was someone who was on the same spiritual path as me where we could speak the same language and understand each other so clearly. Oh dear god, what was I thinking? What showed up was a man who I met at a workshop I had attended. Even though we didn't meet until the workshop was over, I was so sure that it was meant to be. What I did was make him fit the mold I was looking for, come hell or high water. It was some of the most painful experiences of my life. Thank God it was only a few short weeks. Thank you, sweet Jesus! And thank you so much for the great lessons. He was a perfect mirror of what I was going through, and I was able to exponentially grow. I am so grateful.

I want peace. I want tranquility. I want to be able to move through my days calmly, enjoying my moments as I do the things I love. I've closed the door on crazy and opened another one to peace and joy and calm.

So, now this man from Steamboat has resurfaced and after experiencing crazy, I look at this man that I left behind in a whole different light. I appreciate him. I remember our times together and the memories fill me with such joy. I smile easier, more calmly. I'm just happy in a serene way.

Wow, what a concept. Oh, and it's been well over six months since my workshop with Tom.

A whole new world...OMG!

My life erupts, catapults, excalates. It doesn't just gradually transform. I do massive movement. I enjoy speed. I intend ease and grace. Really, I do. I learned that from my shaman, Rob Wergin, but somehow or another ease and grace looks like volcanic eruptions. A dear friend of mine, Bee Herz, who I've just reconnected with (thank you, GOD!) told me that no matter what shows up, I fling the door open and usher it in. Fascinating concept. Looking back on life as a single girl, I have to agree with her.

I've said it before -- I'm a leaper. I jump without looking. I fling myself headlong because I can. I open my heart and love passionately because I know no other way now. I had lived a life of stagnation. I call it a 27-year marriage that looked like one day because every day felt the same. And now? It's as if when leaving that marriage, I left behind the cocoon I metamorphed out of and soared freely. Here's a list of some of the wild adventures I've participated in since being on my own --

1. knelt on Wall Street
2. made love in Manhattan
3. moved to the mountains
4. worked for a shaman
5. traveled to Aspen on a regular basis
6. gave blow jobs over the mountains in a private plane
7. did everything but intercourse in a restaurant in Steamboat (no, I'm not saying which one or with whom, but I'd be willing to do it again with him...)
8. ooh, this is a great one -- helped a "ghost" cross over
9. created a magnificent family
10. moved to McKinney, TX
11. discovered the internet
12. got back to writing daily
13. developed a career on my own
14. met corporate people in NYC I had been working with for years
15. co-piloted an experimental plane over the mountains
16. met many of John Denver's friends in Aspen
17. took a workshop with the magnificent Tom Crum
18. met James Arthur Ray and attended two of his events so far
19. had many experiences with men that will go down in infamy, at least in my memory
20. okay, I cannot leave this one out --I was enjoying myself in the back of my Subaru with my pilot at the Steamboat airport when a twin engine came barreling towards us since we were parked beside his hangar. With my pilot's naked butt in the air, we scrambled to locate clothing and with bare breasts flapping, I jumped into the driver's seat to zoom out of there before the plane parked right beside the car. This, my friends, is priceless. This memory stands out soooo much. We laughed our heads off after we got out of there. I could never drive by the Bob Adams Airport without thinking about it.

But, what I really want to talk about today is what happened yesterday. So, if you've read this far you'll now get the coolest juice.

I spent the day with a new friend of mine, DeDe Murcer Moffett, who showed me this virtual world that she and a team had created. I watched her move her virtual self around, flying, swimming, leaping, whatever she chose to do. This virtual world is exactly how this "real" world works. Her virtual self didn't know where she was going next or what she was getting ready to do. However, the "real" her was pushing the control keys on the keypad and made her swim, fly, walk, etc. What was interesting though was that even though DeDe was pushing certain buttons, her virtual self didn't always follow through. Hm, sound familiar? Our higher selves knows what's best for us, leads us towards the "right" path, but our conscious selves may choose a different way. And so the struggle continues...

It was just so mind-blowing that I haven't been able to get my mind on anything else. It reminded me of Dorothy on the yellow brick road thinking she was going to see the wizard, but instead, discovered the man behind the curtain. I feel like this has been my life. I grew up believing the world I lived in was one of absolutes and certainty. I was told that I could not break boards with my bare hand, or walk on hot coals without getting burnt. I was also told to get a degree, work for a good company, and then retire with a healthy pension plan. I was also led to believe that marriage was sacred and that there was no such thing as divorce. I discovered though that I could break a board like it was tissue paper. There is no security in the job market, and that a college degree doesn't guarantee you diddly squat. And truly, the biggest illusion/delusion was the marriage game. Marrying someone because I couldn't live without him was the biggest farce of them all. Not only could I live without him; I soared without him. My greatest breakthroughs have been these past 2 1/2 years on my own. I've discovered the fantastical illusory world that has been built around me, and as soon as I changed my perception, my world shifted.

And so it is with this virtual world. It exemplifies how easy it is to create everything that you want. You build your own house with ease. You want to go from one point to the next, you can teleport, fly, swim, heck you can even walk on water. When DeDe wanted something or to go somewhere she didn't wonder how she was going to do it, she just did it with full knowledge that anything was possible. She could walk through doors, which she did, when she wanted to get somewhere. No matter what she did she was okay. Whether she was under water, in the sky, or standing on the ground. She was okay. She was never in any danger. She was always provided for. Everything she needed was within her reach.

This, my friends, is the key to the kingdom. It's the knowledge that we can do, be, or have anything that we want -- ANYTHING. It's one thing to know it intellectually, but it's certainly another to embrace it emotionally. Yesterday I was able to embrace it because at one point I couldn't tell the difference between the virtual or the "real."

So, today is like a birthday for me. This is the new me at this moment. The me who recognizes for the first time the real unlimited potentialities. This is all just a hologram that we create. This is our virtual reality. No one else in the world is going to see things as you do. You have that uniqueness that no one else does. You came here to play. See the life you live as that virtual world, because that's exactly what it is. Pick the players you want to share your playground with, and enjoy them with blissful abandonment. Open your heart. Open your arms. Allow the eternal joy to flow in no matter what because you are creating everything before you. What a master you are!

Breaking open my heart -- again

I looked at pictures of Aspen and John Denver today and cried. When I was fourteen years old I knew I wanted to be in Colorado and meet John Denver. My dream of moving to Colorado occurred three years later. I saw John quite a few times, spoke with him once, and last September worked with a dear friend of his and co-founder of the Windstar Foundation, Tom Crum. It was easy to fall in love with Tom, his wife, and his daughter, not to mention all those on his team.

Two years ago I moved to Steamboat Springs, Colorado and one of the very first people I met, if not the first one, was a shaman who worked on me and then I worked with him. It was months into our relationship that I found out that he and John had been really good friends. He had pictures of John. We even worked in Aspen together in 2008 and met many of John's friends. It was great hearing all the stories about him. People who knew him really loved him. And, of course, being with Tom Crum for five days last September was really a John Denver lovefest, among many other things.

I moved back to Texas last November after living in Colorado for 34 years. Looking at those pictures of Aspen broke open my heart. I remembered...I remembered how I fell in love with it as a young teenager and later as a woman just a few short years ago. I remembered walking the pedestrian mall, having lunch at Little Annie's with my shaman and talking over our day. I remember kissing under the street light with a lover, having a secret liaison in his condo, talking with the director at the Aspen Athletic Club to get my shaman into their facilities, setting up a TV shoot, and riding in a client's Porsche. I remember watching the lunar eclipse downtown with him and another client, freezing but not daring to leave. I remember the Aspen airport, removing chocks from the wheels of an airplane, wrapping up the bungee cords that tied the cloth around the wings and tail to keep ice from accumulating on them, and climbing up on the wing and sliding into the cockpit before takeoff. I remember the feel of the wheels on the runway as my lover pushed in the throttle. When he pulled back the yoke and raised the landing gear, we flew over the single-engines and the jets, and to this day it's still one of the most amazing memories of my life.

Aspen is my place of many secrets. My secret love life, my secrets with my shaman, my secret longings, my secret life with John Denver that very few know. It all has to be that way. Those experiences are too magical to put into words. It's all secret. And it's all so beautiful.

So, today I cried for Aspen. I longed for Aspen. I long for Aspen. Again. Will it ever stop? Maybe it's not supposed to.

It was an experience over Aspen that changed my life forever in 2004. It was John Denver that got me there and a friend's belief in me that took me to new heights. It was a starting point that led to another leap, leaving everything familiar and moving to the mountains.

It has always been Aspen that has moved me. It has always been John Denver that touched me. And today seeing pictures of both broke open my heart because it was too full to stay in one piece.