i am grateful for:

1) b.w. being borned and all and such a wonderful virtual friend

2) chai at 71 irving. plus e. at 71 irving. freewriting rulez.

3) letting go of some phantom selves i didn’t even know were still around. byyyye!

4) j.m. coming into town this weekend. yay. we’ll feast and maybe find a kirtan somewhere?

5) these, from pema: “When we commit to staying right where we are, then our experience becomes very vivid.” and “When inspiration has become hidden, when we feel ready to give up, this is the time when healing can be found in the tenderness of pain itself.”and “Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”

6) a short work week

7) pending new years. i really am a sucker for the clean slate arbitrariness of it. it does feel like a challenge, a new thing to climb to do, another opp to stick to something. also, realizing as i made my “intentions for 2010″ list, i found something new and remarkable–i don’t have that much to do. not the usual basic slog, at least, well, mostly: i’m eating well, exercising, working on my book, spending time with friends, taking care of myself in lots of ways. this leaves room for loftier goals, more fun wild tasks, and greater dimensions of everything. i love that my life feels like a high level on a video game.with many many many levels above, but at least the bottom is distanter.

8) sleep

9) wine glass presents

10) b.c. for talking and listening and being and someone laughing at my remarkably stupid jokes that i secretly often find brilliant. shhh.

i am grateful for:

1) eyes on the world yoga in providence, ri. truly awesome place. esp. shannah and tom. also getting to talk about old-school ashram days. omg, the crazy ashram kitchen days. cooking for 500. in meditative, flirty, connected, peaceful, chaotic bliss.

2) ok. this is only because i trust you, but… friends on dvd. seasons 9 & 10 from santa. i was laughing out loud on the train. totally embarrassed (plus embarrassed to be embarrassed); totally psyched for freshish chandler jokes.

3) neruda

4) remembering to dive back into myself, to touch inner home base. thank you my chicas for being reminders.

5) this feeling of expansion. it’s not entirely comfy but it is good, i think.

6) spontaneous prayers

7) grace

8) my mom’s lasagna

9) new pink gnome pajamas

10) that sweet feeling from praying, when you have begun to open to your own nectar as the desires pour out tender and real. we bless ourselves in prayer. and omg that is the antidote to so many harsh things.

11) seeing m & w today. love being able to talk to you, my sweet smart saggit sistah.

12) sustaining texts

13) “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.” — Mahatma Gandhi

14) playing farmhouse with w.

15) duets

16) under the tuscan sun. yes, really. heart, sunflowers, water metaphors, italia, italia homme, diane lane, mother mary, and a baby owl. what more could you want?

17) cleansing movie tears

18) the end-of-day phone call (fully realizing that this means i’ve now referenced friends, UTTS, and WHMS)

19) “trust yourself, mamasita” - lt

20) mary karr

21) mary

merry eve!

i am grateful for…

1) the japanese garden in boca raton

2) non-yappy papillions

3) a change of scenery

4) snow drifts up to my waist

5) spontaneous yoga at new studios in non-home cities. yoga really is so regionally variable. as in, so nice to have a kind, spiritual, adult teacher who still makes you sweat!

6) salt-and-pepper shrimp

7) ganesh

8) truth-beam eyes

9) getting to see my two longest-running homegirls this week

10) meryl streep

11) ice-skating in the park under the skyline-stars in fresh, crisp air. and not being afraid and it feeling like flying and great company and snow everywhere and warmth.

12) you all, for reading along for yet another year. thanks.

13) time’s illusion of a clean slate

14) fluffy things

15) family

i am grateful for:

1) getting to play journalist today, even though it made us late for free hooch. oral roberts, rip.

2) free hooch. or, well, brooklyn lager.

3) learning cool facts about co-workers: owning 40 book versions of “a christmas carol”?! love that.

4) being reminded of this poem. it strikes me as more selfish every time i read it, but you can taste the plums.

5) horseradish hummus from trader joe’s. ok, i’m grateful for that every day. but god. horseradish? and hummus? how can you not believe in a benevolent force?

6) sweet thoughts

7) a fresh possibility of getting some real help selling this book. and remembering that i really do want to write the thing. and publish the thing. and sell the thing. so people can know something that i know that i’m not even sure i know. you know? like a transmission of the essence of something that does not belong to me, but could flow through me and maybe somehow help something, someone, somewhere.

8) hearing that my maui tasha-kitty is doing well. oof, my sweet, alien girl who i found new year’s eve 1995, hana, maui, side of the curving, dark road. we nursed her with soy milk till morning and she fit in my hand. thanks, jz, for taking such good care of her. love.

9) baths

10) discovering that the bread you’re eating has chunks of figs in it.

11) people dressing up for parties that don’t require dressing up.

i am grateful for…

1) chavellas–that cactus is edible

2) openings

3) the thriving christmas tree. (well, thriving for a dead tree)

4) the 13 grandmothers. one of them just had a mountain in oregon named after her. one of them had a prophecy about “water wars,” another’s “passion is seeds.” oh great mother. i can feel her in them. it’s cool.

5) sage

6) women who play steel drums

7) j’s reminder to “feel the lovely”

8) connecting like waters

9) when friends have dreams about you and your psychedelic tom cat baby

10) that i’m suddenly surrounded by gorgeous baby-full women

11) when something shifts. because really, it is so incredibly rare. there is the work, the work, the work. and then, sometimes, it’s just the gentlest thing that makes a difference. sure, the work has gotten you there, but then it’s just the brush of a feather, the stroke of finger, the words of a friend. soft, friendly. and whoosh, or a gentler word for whoosh, and you’re there. somewhere you’ve never quite seen before. you know? sorry, cryptic. and tired. but, change is kinda palpably ineffable sometimes. you know?

12) eggs hardboiled just right so the shell peels perfectly

13) the quiet of the holidays. well, in the holidays, the silences between the fracas are especially silent.

14) cotton

i am grateful for:

1. yoga detox fun with sarah at om. a delicious, nurturing, stabilizing week. worth every sleep-deprived, up-at-6-am-in-the-dark-and-cold moment.

2. rob breszy’s phrase in aries this week: “a tender, lucid calm”

3. the way that phrase makes me relax

4. the 5-minute healing session free at aveda yesterday. yes, i would like a massage, thanks. and that she talked about breathing, just after i had been learning and blogging about breathing. but also not actually breathing. she placed her hands gently on my ribs and had me expand to fill them and it was hard. the knots in my shoulders hurt when i breathe in my belly. who knew? but so nice to have hands-on breathing teaching. “we don’t learn this in school,” she said. nope, we do not. we learn how to un-breathe, i think, mostly. how to go against our natural rhythms. how to go with someone else’s flow. so, helpful to really fill that belly with air. and let it go. and fill it. and let it go. somehow i think that’s like a little “i love you” we’re whispering to ourselves, a kindness to our creature. “i love you my body enough to let you really breathe.” kinda makes me want to cry–the way tenderness feels in the face of so much forcing, non-tenderness.

5. my beautiful chiquitas who send me text love and email love and remind me of my own beautifulness, which i forget next to the overflowing inboxes and things.

6. slowness. glowness.

7. my new phone, which i am almost knowing how to use. it’s the size of a small shoe, but current-day technology feels sort of reviving.

8. s’s pumpkin bread in spelt and gluten-free

9. doing my first almost peacock pose! off the ground! aloft! and then walking past the peacock in a window display and feeling oddly connected. yo, sup, peacock, i do your pose. or, well, a very rudimentary approximation of your pose that i never thought i could do.

10. aveda green science skin cream

11. the way winter snaps you to. that splash, that air that feels like water. i hate it but i love it.

12. bunnies

13. vanilla

14. cycles

15. thinking about what sounds inanimate objects would make. inspired by the german-sounding bike-lock.

16. tea

1) gold stars

2) lovely neighbors

3) yule logs

4) the detox program this week at om. i’m so not detoxing, but it’s a nice way to get myself to yoga every morning this week. and the teacher had young living essential oils. she said, “if you want some, just come over here and reach out your hand like little birds.” and then she dripped some drops into each palm.

5) friends’ friends who become friend-friends

6) excellent, truth-revealing typos, e.g., meaning to write “shutterstock” and writing “shitterstock” instead. oh, also grateful for catching them before hitting “send.”

7) that i’m having a much easier time finding myself hilarious–not joke-wise, but “wow, look at how absurdly human i am”-wise. it’s much more fun than the other options.

8) how the detox yoga teacher asked us to think of one thing we can let go of this week, something we might think we need, that we don’t. hmm. can i go five days sans chocolate? do i want to? is that wise?

9) walking through prospect park at dusk. the trees are all branchy again, and fanned out against the evening sky they look so classically gorgeous, barky, spinal, evocative of pre-snuggle-in winter. it’s weird how the death part of the cycle can feel so full of life.

10) heat