Hello out there sweet peoples!  Whether you’re just seeing Ripen Delight for the first time, or you’re one of my dear friends who kindly read the first (and ahem, only) zine issue, thanks for finding your way here.

It’s been seven years since I hung out at Gnomon’s Copy on Mass Ave, aligning margins and making double sided copies of the original zine.  Since then, its form has changed somewhat, but the spirit of Ripening Delight continues.

This blog is an exploration of the twisting, turning, often mystifying journey: the paradoxes and mysteries that rock me to my soul and challenge me to reach for my roots.  Feel the connection, let the underbrush burn, and birth the fruit:  that is ripening de-light.

When I first started this project, I wondered if the landscape of today was actually more chaotic than it’s ever been, or if, as we get older, we just become more aware of it.  I think a lot of young people today are grappling with this.  Because: shit things are crazy! Time is moving fast and a lot feels upside down and out of whack in the world.  As I wrote in the original issue: “Caught up in the flux of money and technology…It’s difficult to know what you’re buying into or selling out of, giving up or getting down with.  Difficult to let go of the tight hold on your anxious, frightened mind, trying to talk its way into survival: ‘What do I do?’ ‘Where do I go?’ ‘When am I gonna be enough?’…  [Things get to feeling] hopeless and heavy.  People are sick or starving from too much fear and terror, not enough food or nourishment for body, mind, and spirit.”

However, if there’s anything I’m learning on this journey, it is that there are many who are also on spiraling paths, trying to connect to the deeper elements and follow the signs towards a more expansive view.  Sometimes the journey looks like spiraling in towards the center, sometimes it looks like winding your way out of an abyss.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which.  It is confusing, maddening, heartbreaking at times, this business of being alive.  But here we go, keepin on keepin on, learning to let go of the inessential and picking up what’s vital along the way.  Moving towards a wiser, deeper joy.

What gives me hope in the midst of this madness, this fight for what should be, living the life and creating the environment I want–  of health, respect, beauty, magic and healing that a lot of us want– is, I have to say, other people.  Is you all, finding your path, losing it, creating it, sharing it, loving it, hating it, emerging into it– all of IT.  There is a network forming, and it is powerful.  Energy is gathering, and in clear moments, I can feel it: something new and tender and precious being born.

We are together in this, even amidst the chaos, giving each other nods and hugs and sometimes pushes along the path.  Using heart and mind and spirit together to foster a kinder, or at the very least, ha! — less jacked up world.

It’s a spiritual journey and it’s a human one too.  Because of this, I think we need to share our stories.  Stories help, in the same way that Sandra Cisneros writes about in The House on Mango Street:  “I put it down on paper and then the ghost does not ache so much.”  Writing, not only does the ghost ache less, but the subtle experiences take form, become markers along the way.

So that being said, thanks for visiting, hanging out, and reading these dispatches.  I’m happy, after so many years of hesitation, to finally be sharing them 🙂

Here’s to connecting heart’s intuitions with mind’s revolutions, or Ripening Delight!

travelin to the gatherin

Lovin you,

Jo