1) the 5 rhythms class j. and i just went to. the gabrielle roth thing. here are the five (cribbed from here). the idea is these are five ways to move, dance, play music, be in the world:
FLOWING – the fluid, continuous, grounded glide of our own movements
STACCATO – the percussive, pulsing beat that shapes us a thousand different ways
CHAOS – the rhythm of letting go, releasing into the catalytic wildness of our dance that can never be planned or repeated
LYRICAL – the rhythm of trance, where the weight of self-consciousness dissolves, where we lighten up and disappear into our own uniqueness
STILLNESS – the quiet emptiness, where gentle movements rise and fall, start and end, in a field of silence
2) moving, moving, moving
3) moving with other people
4) headbands that take all the hair out of my eyes
5) obama
6) brazil nuts
7) the feeling i had for a moment yesterday of sunshine in my heart
8) that the other j. is getting to go to india. yay for her and i can have another vicarious trip.
9) sparkliness
10) an invitation to be myself
11) water
12) health
13) la bella luna. full tonight. baroooooooooooooooooooooo
2) acupuncture, which seems to have restored me to non-vitriolic sanity
3) actually looking for a bright side with some degree of sincerity when really, i’d prefer to just kick something and walk around with a cartoon cloud over my head
4) seeing s.’s awesome travel photos
5) sweet potatoes
6) venting buddies
7) men who blush
8) yoga/beach dreams that might come true
9) reading about the drug boyz in “the harvard psychedelic club,” about ram dass, huston smith, andrew weil, and timothy leary. and how while i was waiting for my dinner at a bar (lady-time burger-time) the guy next to me started talking about mushrooms just before he noticed what i was reading and just as i was reading a paragraph about a mushroom trip. as the bartender said, “trippy.”
1) doing yoga with 200 yogis and elena brower under a giant whale skeleton at the moma. she integrated the space and art into the class, telling us to be aware of our own skeletal structures and how we can expand the space within those structures. the reminder that yoga teaches us how to create internal space when we feel bound or trapped or constricted. we can breathe into how we deal with uncomfortable poses and literally make space and time expand so that we can be more present, more compassionate and of better service by being better able to respond appropriately instead of reacting in self-defense. because when you have internal space like the kind you have when you’re in a moma gallery with 50-foot skylit ceilings and sky views everywhere, you can handle all that is hard to bear. there’s more room for grace, kindness, and presence. so damn cool.
2) marjorie nass, assisting elena, reminding our bodies with her hands to anatomically relax and open in ways that make such safe, good, intelligent sense.
3) another thing elena said–about the anusara instruction “side body long,” in which you focus on lengthening and expanding your side flanks. she said when we do this we step into our own sense of worthiness. and i could feel that. ribs expanded is hard because you are announcing yourself. “i am here, i am deserving of being here, in the world, and i will shine.” she added that when we do this, it is not necessary to feel seen, heard, acknowledged so constantly by others, that by claiming our own presence and worthiness, we claim ourselves. (i have quibbles in general with the whole–”enlightenment means not needing anyone” thing, but also agree that when we are a little more emotionally and psychically self-sufficient, we interact with each other so much more kindly and effectively; it’s so much easier to make space for others’ feelings and thoughts and ideas when we are not on a love-and-approval-seeking mission. also, we can give so much more fully and joyfully.)
4) lunch with the ladies
5) the best half-hour date ever
6) krishna das and sharon salzberg. so much chanting, meditating goodness, i don’t know where to begin. maybe with “bruce springsteen is the boddhisatva of new jersey.” (ss) or “practice is what gets us through the day without closing our hearts.” (kd) or sharon telling a story of a woman who had encountered great, tragic loss whose friends with “perfect, glowing, happy lives” kept telling her to get over it already. sharon said she said, “get some new friends.” and “my friends are all wrecks.” ha! which i love, because it’s true, right? the real people, we (if i might include myself) are all beautiful, wise wrecks. she also said something about how we don’t really see others because we’re so worried about what they think of us: “do they like me? do they really like me? do they like me better than anyone they’ve ever known?” which just about made me pee i was laughing so hard in shame-relief recognition.
7) chanting and dancing in the quaker meetinghouse where i spent my formative years sitting in silence, finding my voice, passing notes, giggling, and listening to others find their voices. not to mention playing the recorder, singing, and being in my first play (interestingly, it was called “inside a kid’s head” and my role was “mission control,” my lines being about telling the kid’s body when to digest, etc. very buddhist, actually–noticing the internal dialogue).
8) sharon’s story about being on twitter and being interested in this pbs documentary coming out in early april about the buddha, called “the buddha,” and getting a twitter alert email one day that said, “the buddha is now following you.”
9) mehndi! (see above) thank you, j. so in awe of your art.
10) my chanty yoga homegirls. omg, i am so deeply grateful to have you all in my life. you make communing with spirit feel like a divine slumber party.
11) grappling with my heart’s truth about this book: what do i truly, non-ego-ically need to say?
1) mlk’s planting of the notion that peace is not the absence of hate, but the presence of love. obvious or not, it is such a more potent question to ask–not: how can i eliminate hate? but rather: how can i cultivate love?
2) mlk jr.’s words:
- “The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”
- “At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.”
- Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you doing for others?’
- “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”
- “We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the positive affirmation of peace.”
4) this, from “a year with rilke,” for january 15 (which i thought was today, but is not): “as you unfold as an artist, just keep on, quietly and earnestly, growing through all that happens to you. you cannot disrupt this process more violently than by looking outside yourself for answers that may only be found by attending to your innermost feeling.” (”letters to a young poet,” paris, feb. 17, 1903)
5) sweetness
6) re-discovering park slope yoga
7) the idea of skiing
8) healing touch
9) raisins
10) the line in better off dead: “but it’s got raisins. you love raisins.”
heavy chest, scratchy throat over here in bk. but thrumming along, despite the sick. well, thrumming in a bathrobe-wrapped way.
i am grateful for…
1) the larry sanders show
2) clean clothes
3) the immense outpourings around haiti. it is incomprehensible, but praying that enough outpouring reaches need. somehow.
4) clean water
5) seemingly solid ground
6) when tragedy releases love
7) and now, for contrast… the great new restaurant in bk, the vanderbilt. truly wonderful vibe, food, people. really lovely.
8) sleeping till noon
9) consistent warmth
10) good knights, sunny days
11) another amazing “bug bites” chocolate bar insert on the mantis-mimic moth: “this indonesian moth is probably mimicking the raptorial legs of a praying mantis. mimicry of a predatory insect is achieved by modifying its leg and body hairs and adjusting its behavior and body stance to a very un-mothlike state. the hairs on the front two legs create the illusion of thickened muscular legs and they are held out in a position similar to those on a praying mantis.”
i think this might be the thing for those of us who have been told all our lives to grow a thicker skin. nope! just the “illusion of thickened muscular legs” posed like an “un-mothlike” lethal insect. hm. working on that. maybe.
12) citrus
13) the poetry of l.l. cool j…. “you’re the type of girl that got class and style/still in all you need the backseat of my jeep once in a while… air freshener is kickin’/drive through for chicken…” (the video does not do it its hilariously awesome justice, but still.)
2) new moons (not “new moon” but new moons like the one coming on thursday. seeds, beginnings, palate cleansings, fresh slates)
3) this, which i came across today in the open center catalog, which makes me feel better about weird days with hard things in them: “every moment of your daily life is an opportunity for practice. the whole cosmos is a meditation hall.” -thich nhat hanh. words like “weird” and “hard” become more interesting and less painful.
4) j.b.c.
5) that s. is hoooooome!
6) going to see sharon salzberg and k.d. on the 23rd–at my alma mater, no less. i’m fascinated to meditate and chant in the same room where i learned about silence.
7) rainbows
8) sleep
9) apples in winter
10) all things cozy and warm–blankets, sweaters, some people, bunnies, the slanket
1) three clear goals: more present, more kind, more open. now i want to say something like “it’s good to have goals.” but it is.
2) amtrak–traveling without queasiness or having to put my shoes in a bin
3) ganapati
4) when things get so intense that people who normally panic actually calm down
5) anais. so feeling her.
6) seeing the amazing k-b. family and being surrounded by open, soft, smiley kids who plop on your lap and play and talk and explore and ballerina dance in purple dresses and command you to read to them
7) anne lamott having a new book, even though it’s a novel
8) the poem she opens the book with. holy mama she can pick em–the last was the stunning merwin. this one, “a blessing” by james wright. the final lines literally made me gasp. aloud, complete with involuntary hand to the heart. much better with the whole gorgeous poem but alone not too shabby: “Suddenly I realize/That if I stepped out of my body I would break/Into blossom.”
9) health
10) the cover of poets & writers right now
11) gifts that are just right–recognition and heart and generosity all in one.
12) madonna
13) patience. i need so much more than i want to give myself. i am blown away when people offer me enough.
14) eye contact
15) remembering to pray when i’m nervous–it’s tenderizing
16) bhangra, baby
17) men who dance all the way
18) snow, drifting down
19) old, old friends you can just speak straight from your brain with
3) pema: “when you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it’s bottomless, that it doesn’t have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. you begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.”
5) pissed-off early feminists who trampled trails so we don’t have to quite so much. r.i.p., mary daly.
6) eggs
7) strength
8) “sita sings the blues”‘ run being extended at ifc
9) pro-action
10) lunch with a.
11) dancers who do amazing things with their bodies. what does it to your mind when you can bend and swoop and curve and curl like that with your body?
12) running into a friend just off a world music tour, with the sweet hawaii coming off of him in waves. i miss hawaii. i am grateful it exists.
13) feeling 17 a little, in a good way
14) yoga at integral. actual yoga. not bitch yoga. nice-to-yourself yoga. i like both but need more of the latter. it is the stuff of full wells. nectary.
15) magenta
16) this feeling of doing life for reals–paying bills, doing dreams, etc.
17) knowing so many water lillies are at moma right now. oh, water lillies. and how my friend’s italian described them tonight in the cold–”each one you can feel the emotion underneath it, from underneath the water.” they’re the clichest and so so beautiful. oh and also that at the ayurveda place tonight, after speaking of waterlillies, amidst the ganeshes was a monet print. of course.
