just a little sad-irritable-angry-hurt-totally-chill-and-peaceful tonight. feel like i’m climbing up an icy mountain in slippers.
i’m grateful for:
1) a good convo with dr. g.
2) getting up for yoga this morning. and going. and doing class. and conjuring up the courage to tell the teacher after class that one woman went into headstand with a totally crinked neck. and that she might just want to know for next time. and she thanked me. whcih was nice since i had spent half the class thinking should i say something should i not? and then worked with a new-old principle for me: VOICE. use your VOICE. so i got to be self-expressed, the teacher got to feel like someone cared and maybe this student won’t need neck surgery somewhere down the line. so that was cool.
3) sleep
4) percival the bear
5) pre-sliced swiss cheese
6) red cabbage
7) an unmet craving for pickles
9) talking to c. for a while and it being really nice.
3) the way after dusk the little honey locust leaf clusters, the ones that look like feathers, seem to glow like little banana moons in the streetlights
4) getting a little sick-day visit from e. and ensuing magic and equilibrium
5) that my brain, for the moment, has stopped thrashing
6) getting reality checks and realizing that it’s not just me
7) the itunes oracle and how sometimes it delivers, big time
8) fresh, eco lamb burger and the nice butcher who asked if i was going to mix it with anything. when i said no, a little confused by the question, he made it into a pattie with a little smoosher thing. and then when i asked what i might want to mix it with, he said chopped parsley, onion, pepper, a little bit of cumin if you have it. nice, like i could imagine him making it. and how he wrapped the meat like it mattered. and i was thinking, but it’s just me and a quick little dinner at my table. but the care he took reminded me that it’s ok to take care, that it’s nice to take care. even when it’s a little solo wednesday night meal. i’m grateful for how loved i felt by the butcher. platonically, professionally, kindly. and damn if it wasn’t the best meal i’ve had in ages.
9) that i made it through the rain (thanks, barry)
10) eating early, sleeping early
11) a 2pm bath and how it felt on frigid feet. how do my legs get so damn cold?
12) this line, from sheryl crow: “was love the illness and disease the cure?”
13) zappos
14) “hold on for seeds and softness. hold on for windows and water.”
5) trading in the sigh, stupidphone, for a slightly smarterphone. with much lower radiation levels.
6) the chelsea hotel sign
7) the hated yet precious impulse to write poetry about someone i should have stopped wanting to write poetry about a long while ago. it’s that spark that writes haiku, the stupidphone, wagging tail, lit-up, i’ll-always-like you part that doesn’t go away no matter how smart or cynical or savvy or self-protective my intellect knows i should be. the smitten inner fifth grader full of hope that writes poems in all of our diaries. thanks, you, even tho i am not always so grateful-seeming, i am grateful for your blazing purity of spunk.
8) orange
9) the movie “funny people.” really very, very funny. especially, i imagine when watched without growner grownups.
10) snacking on nori
11) how a new surge of fearing death is instructing me in tenderness
12) the word smitten
13) my hot new hair
14) having party conversations about real things–organizational psychology, sustainable design, love and astrology, tango
15) the veggie bean burger at abigail’s in crown heights
16) that i’m going to see “wishful drinking” on friday
17) getting drenched in the rain. like jeans-made-shiny drenched
18) drying out
19) delicious, crisp, light, and slightly fruity white wine that the hot, married waiter in the wheelchair called “gorgeous.”
20) the notion of a break soon. because i’m guessing it’s a bad sign that when someone sneezes lately, or coughs, or hums, or breathes too loudly, or clicks their tongue, or says “um,” my first thought is “shut up!” right? deeeeeep breaths.
21) a refrigerator with no rotting food at all in it
22) how sexy fall makes me feel. all that possibility.
23) asian pears
24) thank you notes for muffins
25) good neighbors
26) really long gratitude lists
27) the bluths
28) feeling clean
29) how the train rails look like they’re being injected with light when the first subway car rounds the corner
5) the cool hatha yoga instruction book from 1985 i found on the sidewalk the other day. everyone is wearing very baggy clothes and it says to wear only loose, natural fibers. oh, lululemon must have hit hard in honesdale, p.a.
6) the tui na massage tonight and how i could actually hear my tight muscle fibers crackling as she pushed
7) only having a stupidphone
8) it being part of my job to help dig up cool quotes about breath like this: “there is one way of breathing that is shameful and constricted. then there’s another way: a breath of love that takes you all the way to infinity.” –rumi
9) finding this while looking for breath quotes: “outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.” -groucho marx
10) this, from the natalie goldberg essay i mentioned the other day (which i just found online!): “what a stunning concept! if the paper is torn, bring the enormous tree into the living room.”
11) the smell of chocolate chip cookies baking somewhere right now
12) wednesday, not to count it all away. but, well.
13) today’s brezsny: “ARIES (March 21-April 19): “The clouds are the most fertile part of the sky,” writes Guy Murchie in his book *The Seven Mysteries of Life.* Microbes with short life cycles live there in abundance, “eating, breathing, excreting, floating, swimming, competing, reproducing.” Next time you look up at a puffy cumulus, see it as a large city that hosts a teeming host of living things. Speaking of invisible fecundity, let’s turn our attention to you. According to my analysis of the astrological omens, you are largely unaware of how much creative energy has been building up within you. Your homework is to tap into it and unleash it.”
14) getting for a fleeting moment, while staring at the floor through the massage table peephole tonight, that a hard life does not necessitate having a hard life. we need not marry the hardness. we need not pet it just because it has been here for so long. we can turn toward softness, no matter what we’ve seen. “dear softness,” we can write. “you are invited to a party. there will be tea. and love. and affection. we will wear hats and read some poems and eat chocolate. we might watch grease. and go for a walk in the night. and talk about what makes us pulse. i would cherish your presence. your friends light and laughter will be there. music will be easy. the flowers will be pink. the energy rare and sweet and clear. the start time is now and it will last for the rest of my life. respondez, sil vous plait. yours always, valerie”
if i didn’t know any better i’d say there’s something in the water making me heavy, heady, mind-weighted, heart-burdened. guilty, worried, panicked about imagined unpretty futures, the works. it’s weird. is anyone else feeling this way? astrology, economy, weather?
i am grateful for…
1) “gratitude brings your whole mind into closer harmony with the creative energies of the universe.” — wallace wattles, courtesy beliefnet astrology blogger lynn hayes in her lovely new book visioncrafting.
5) carl g. jung, who in my heaviness, i have been thinking about all day. and looking up quotes like: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” and “Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.” and “Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.” and “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.” and “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
6) ‘wichcraft double-choco creamwich cookies
7) shea butter lip balm
8) the part that can see the heaviness but is not of the heaviness.
9) my first college boyfriend, who surfaced in my mind tonight while i was in the tub–he convinced his women’s studies class he was born with a prehensile tail; liked to read marquis de sade aloud; wrote poems about lusty nuns; and made me laugh hard, all the time. even when he wrote and publicly read a poem about me, as a buick, crushing the puppy of love.
1) the moon. barooooo. the moon when we can see her, when we can’t. when we wish we could. when she is too much for us. there’s a marge piercy poem called “the moon is always female.” as a po-mo former womyn’s studies student, i’m not into “essentializing” nature into genders. but really, i have a terribly hard time imagining the moon as a non-chick, however socially constructed my reasons might be. here’s a pic of me from last night in a dark side of the moon mood:
not so sunny. but moony, definitely. as my friend m. has said, photobooth is a dangerous toy for some of us. i’d say for the moon-inclined among us. the new moon moods, where we’re more inky than sunny. and looking to see: who the hell is that? who is that wandering bark? who is that lost one? “who is asking ‘who am i?’” the non-moon. not the sun, but the larger, non-judging container. it’s much easier to see the beauty in other people’s moon selves–men and women. the slippery mystery.
2) “this american life” from the past few weeks. damn, ira et al. bringin’ it.
3) npr podcasts in general
4) hair bands without metal (ha, i mean the rubber things not music)
5) homemade applesauce. made my first batch ever. so easy! so good! agave sweetened. yum.
6) things on sale at the gap for $8.99
7) this raging cold abating for monday
8) the throbbing toe healing
9) how meditating for even 10 minutes can make everything so much more sane and calm and real and grounded.
10) knowing that nature is out there, fall is unfolding, snow is falling upstate
11) the pre-cocoon cocooning for what looks like a bad-ass winter to come
12) apricot kernel oil
13) imaging that if i open the screen door something warm and sweet will come in
14) imagining what it would be like to have a screen door
1) baking banana chocolate-chip muffins, roasting pumpkin and pumpkin seeds
2) the heat finally coming on at work and in my apartment yesterday. if this had happened when it was actually cold instead of the legally mandated date i might not actually have a cold. but i am glad to feel thawed for the first time in a while. grumble grateful.
3) ugly apples from my neighbor’s parents’ farm. so ugly, so good.
4) the mary tyler moore show! i bought season 1 just before getting sick. yay! yum! “the only thing worse than being single is sitting around talking about being single.” — mary. “sometimes i don’t know whether i’m working or hallucinating.” — lou grant at their office.
5) an essay by natalie goldberg in “the best spiritual essays 2008″ book. it’s about koans. and falling apart. and being fallen apart. and being seen fallen apart. it felled me. crying-on-the-train felled me.
6) carrying on with the writing, agent or no. sellable topic or not.
7) the notion of needing to write for the purpose of psychological reimbursement for crappy shit that happens. not from any person in particular, but just in general. or not in general. against certain diseases who know who they are. it’s good to identify that sometimes we write for payback. and that’s ok.
8) m., for reminding me to do legs up the wall for my now crazy-purple, swollen toe.
9) being half-asleep when i actually slammed said toe into an errant boot. any more conscious and omg, pain.
10) quinoa, my beloved grain. you are full of protein, look like a coil, a diaphragm, a sperm, an unrolled condom, a curly little critter, and yet, and also, the wonder, the joy of you bringing light and goodness to every meal. amen.
11) wakame. so handy when lacking fresh green things. or when fresh green things are shriveled brown things or smeary black things in the alleged crisper drawer.
12) getting to sit at a quiet, sanity-inducing, work-producing desk for a little while. i thank the jackhammers for that.
14) a new moon. tho i am concerned about feeling so low during it–i should be planting happy seeds, not sneezy, sad, sleepy, self-pitying ones. so: here. plink. plink. plink. i just planted: nourishment, community, and love.
15) that i’m taking some vaycay time soonish. not sure what to do yet again. but knowing it’s there gives me a peaceful feeling.
16) the thought of maybe spending new years in the berkshires. slightly torturous but mostly lovely. to chant into a new year. to rest into a new year. to dance into a new year. to asana, to sauna, to hike, to breathe oxygenated air.
17) creamed honey
18) obama
19) kitty ears
20) actual paper books and the people who love them
21) being whole and shattered and everything all at once
