Friends rafting down the Colorado

Drummers from African Dance 

Waterfalls at Diamond Fork, UT

Dancing to the beat of the drums!

Snowboarding Family (Brighton Ski Resort, UT)

The Living Room (above Red Butte)

Author Darlene Johnson

Yes, I live in Salt Lake City, Utah and I relocated here for no other reason than that I wanted to :-). I love the outdoors and try to spend as much time as I can outside! I grew up in a home directly in front of a large wooded area, so as a young girl I used to hike those woods with friends and alone. That experience paved the way for a tremendous love and appreciation for nature and being outside as I grew older. Many places in the Mid-west doesn't accommodate that love, so my boys and I moved to Salt Lake City, Utah. I can honestly say that I live within minutes of some of the most fantastic natural wonders found on earth. My boys and I participate in most outdoor recreational sports and we love the lifestyle living in the Rocky Mountain provide. I do, however, miss the water. I am a Pisces, so I need water. Some of my favorite hikes are to places where the destination is a mountain lake, hot springs, or simply follows a stream flowing down the mountain side.

When I am not hiking or camping, I dance and I LOVE to dance. I take an African dance class (yes, they have that in Salt Lake City. Imagine that!). We learn traditional dances from Mali, Congo, and other African countries and it has introduced me to a dance community that has changed and saved my life. On Sundays I try to make it to the drum circle at a local park to stomp the earth and dance with an eclectic mix of amateur and seasoned drummers and musicians. Unfortunately I do not do much club dancing anymore. Despite the exercise and the exhilaration I get from dancing, as I get older, my body grows less tolerant of secondhand smoke. I've been known to be a poetry groupie. I do not and will not ever declare myself a poet, however, I am a sucker for well written poetry. I have volunteered my time at a local youth detention center, where I get young men and women under 18, writing. This has truly been a profound experience for me.

Like most, writing is not all I do. As my son would say, "I work with computers," to earn a living that feeds my kids and keeps a roof over our heads. Some times barely ;-).

Ultimately, when I am not writing, I am not Darlene, as I have found out the most difficult of ways (by not writing). Finally finishing this third novel that took me TOO long to finish, I am free to begin the next chapter of the story I began with  Piano In The Dark, as well as pen other stories waiting on the crest of my brain to be told.

I pray for and is grateful for your continued support as I grow, first as a woman, a mother, and as a writer.

Alima!

Darlene

"ALIMA- It is a sufi name for God. It means: one who knows. Only God knows and unless we become one with God there is no knowing. All else that we think is knowledge, is just trivia, rubbish -- at the most information, but not knowledge. And the difference is great: to know means to know from the inside; information means to collect something from the outside.
If you ask a scientist about a flower, whatsoever he is going to say is information. Ask the lover or the poet or the painter. What he is going to say about the flower will be closer to knowing, will be something from inside.
They say in Japan that if you want to paint a bamboo, first you will have to become a bamboo. Otherwise how can you paint it? -- you will not know the inside story. And that's the difference between painting and photography. Photography is information, because the camera cannot go within. It remains an outsider, it is a spectator, it does not participate. A painting means that the painter entered into it, participated in its being, fell en rapport with it. There were moments when he was not, only the bamboo was there. He felt the bamboo in the morning sun, as the bamboo feels it. He felt the bamboo when the cuckoo comes and starts crying around it. He felt the bamboo on the full-moon night when a subtle breeze passes by and whispers something in the ear of the bamboo.
Sufis say that only God knows because God is the inside of all. God is not a person but just the inside of everything -- inside me, inside you, inside the rock inside the flower... inside the whole existence.
Science studies existence from the outside, hence it remains information. Religion goes into it. Religion is not a detached observation, no; it is falling in love. That is the meaning of 'Alima': to know things from the inside."

note: I learned the word, Alima, from a very beautiful and talented Congolese dance instructor, Mabiba Baegne . I found this eloquent definition from the website for baby names: http://www.algroup.co.uk/wpb/sannyas.htm