Winter Greetings
From my winter 2020 newsletter (sign up for the newsletter at lisachun.com)
Hello and wow it's been a long while since I've been in touch! What a crazy year it has been. If this year was an emoji it would be the one with the eyes wide open and the head exploding at the top.
I've been very busy surviving more than thriving, or at least it felt like that, but recently feeling more renewed, ready to turn the corner as we head into a new year, and in the mood to create again.
For news: My website got a revamp and in the store I've added a section for short run items - handmade things I've produced continuously and indefinitely for a whole lot of years and will keep available until the stock that exists now runs out. This includes dream pillows, eye pillows and 99 reasons for living.
In the meantime I'm working on some new ideas which hopefully will see the light of day in 2021. I'm excited about that.
Additionally, here's a coupon code for 20% for any purchases from my website + $5 flat rate shipping, good until the end of the year. Just enter this code into the discount code field when you check out:
HOLIDAY2020
If you're in the mood, below is a poem from a new book I was working on all of last year. The poem is one of two poems with story lines that overlap in the same house around the same time - like two different camera angles of the same story.
I truly hope you are well and that you and your families have managed to avert danger and to thrive. Big, glittery, energetic love infusions to you who need it.
Warm, kind regards and best wishes,
Lisa
The Avocado Tree
There was a girl who always knew she was a poet.
When she got old enough to care what the world thought of her,
instead of being a poet, she went to sleep.
She had a job in an office and she worked very hard at this job
possibly too hard
and one night she had a dream that she rode on a train and said goodbye to poetry.
The air was sharp, as it rushed past her, like a breath drawn in, as she waved goodbye.
She wanted health insurance and she wanted the world to love her
for her ability to do what it asked of her and at the time this seemed like the good
and right thing to do.
To be an adult.
When she was very young she’d also had her heart broken.
Asleep, heartbroken and not a poet.
If God had a plan for her she did not care.
That is, until one day an angel came and spoke to her about the love and beauty she was meant to convey
through poetry
and beauty.
Right?
She heard the angel, it registered in some ways, it resounded deeply
for a moment, but she still resisted.
Layers of resistance
some layers so subtle she couldn’t
see it for it was.
They call this denial.
We can love her despite this.
We can forgive her.
For being human.
She knew it, but she resisted and many years passed by.
Many years of struggling.
She would ask, over and over and over:
What is my calling, what is my purpose, what is my destiny?
She even consulted an oracle, over and over and over, and she asked:
What is my calling, what is my purpose, what is my destiny?
The oracle told her the same thing the angel told her.
She described this life that was her true life and it was beautiful.
At this point, a measure of sickness.
She still resisted it.
She’d had a lot of psychotherapy. It no longer mattered where this resistance
originated from or whose fault it was. What was necessary was
a greater measure of surrender.
There was no way around it.
She prayed for what she could not do for herself.
It was written before she got here
that she would be thrown from the tower three times.
She was aware of being thrown two times.
There was a lot of sleep still in her.
It would take as long as it was necessary.
It would take as many shakes as it takes.
She lived with a man who was a carpenter.
They were not good for each other.
They perpetuated the sleep in each other.
There was a kind of earthly love between them, but it was hollow.
One day he asked her to help him on a job where
he was restoring an old, old house.
The house was near the sea port and it had many rooms and it was so old
it had a section where the servants once lived, servants’ quarters.
This is where they did the work.
They tore down the old wood lathing in many of the rooms.
In the kitchen the wood was full of bugs and it broke apart in her hands easily.
She wished to be somewhere else but she knew enough
to keep bringing herself back to the moment
to not judge it
to see everything as life speaking to her
as her friend
as a messenger.
She broke the wood and she carried bags of debris down the old stairs to the sidewalk.
She stripped the paint off many old doors. Everything was old.
She loved the old woodenness of this house.
She was covered in dust and sometimes it was hard to breathe.
She had to admit it was a little like living a chain gang experience with this man
and still, she tried not to question it.
This is what you have to do in order to persist
in the things that are not part of your right life
Try not to question it
Try not to feel the disparity
between how it is and how it feels inside
but she couldn’t help it
why was she here?
As in
HERE?
On the balcony adjacent to where she was taking the paint off these doors
there was a very large avocado tree.
It was full of fruit and it reached up past the top of the house.
Covered in dust and full of despair
on some days she could feel it speaking to her
its leaves were as large as hands and in the late afternoon the sun would shine through them.
She needed someone to talk to but there really was no one
who could feel this thing she felt at the depths that she felt it.
So she prayed to the avocado tree.
She stood on the balcony with her face toward the light filtering through the leaves
of the avocado tree and she opened her heart and she said:
Avocado Tree! What is my true purpose? What work is it that I should be doing? Why am I here?
Weeks passed, no answer came.
She finished helping the carpenter on that job and never saw
the inside of that old house again.
Later she found out they trimmed that tree almost all the way down.
That tree that was so full of life and love for her
that spoke to her in the unspeakable way that life
is constantly trying to speak to each of us.
For a time life did not change very much but she was waiting.
She was with the carpenter one night at a twelve step meeting in a bad part of town.
As they leaned on each other, they both perceived themselves as recovering.
From life.
She was so annoyed, with him and with the general, persistent state of things
and that night not that interested in the sad stories of the sad people who had gathered there.
Sorry.
But one young woman spoke exclusively about a dream she had just had.
She dreamt she was a big, big juicy avocado and she was so full of love
and, she said, she was waiting
to be made into something
some guacamole maybe
or to be served simply, with lime
but more than what she would become, it was this exquisite sense
of being so big and beautiful and juicy
and wanting to take a big bite
out of life
out of herself as this
really huge, incredible
avocado.
And that’s all the point there is to this.
This story.
And to any of it.