1) a quiet weekend writing, sleeping, and gilmore-ing
2) hot pink fingernails
3) cool little brooklyn cafes with wifi
4) friends with yards
5) roasted beet salad
6) oxygen-based bleach powder. side-by-side comparison with clorox, and it wins, completely, no contest. i will spare you photos, but oxy-whatev = so good.
7) finding a newish yoga studio in my hood, with a teacher i’ve been wanting to take class with for ages.
8) feeling a surge of love and support just under my scratchy, needy surface.
9) om
10) this tuesday: yoga on the great lawn! they’re aiming for 10K to set a U.S. record. i’m guessing 1K. but excited to find out. and excited for elena to teach it. and all the awesome anusaris assisting!
11) that the suspense will be over soon. until there’s more, of course. that’s the thing about suspense. “hate, hate, hate!” “more, more, more please!”
12) finding little eddies within the fear. in showers and lavender oil and clean sheets.
13) reclaiming the mini-tramp! rebounding, as it were.
2) how just one extra day makes it possible to recuperate
3) that there is a man in my living room watching the celtics while i am listening to my ipod’s “yog-a-rama” playlist. when the music gets soft between songs i can hear that weird crowd rush noise that is sports events that i have such an ingrained allergy to. but i’m grateful because it feels sweet. like, “what’s the nicest thing i can do for someone?” “offer them televised sporting events in my presence.” really makes me feel vaguely boddhisatvic. all that talk about generosity doesn’t mean anything unless it’s a sacrifice? i can actually feel that in my heart. giving something that i have resistance to giving actually makes my heart stretch a little. in an achy good way. which is a lot. and actually it’s so nice. shared together-separateness.
4) new york superfudge chunk. i gave in. i am glad.
5) the two nice grocers who dug through their bodega freezers looking for said superfudge. and then feeling sincerely badly that they couldn’t find it. it’s really a bummer i ended up giving my business to key foods.
6) rolling around on a tennis ball. holy massage, massageman.
7) all the blue toenails. right? new yorkers, look around. everyone has some sort of cloud, turquoise, cerulean, powder, royal, navy thing going on. where am i when they make these decisions? like the ray-bans. i totally missed the meeting. but no one else did. i swear it’s like a visual virus. but i do like the blue nails.
8) sheryl crow
9) martha beck, who writes for “o.” she’s self-helpy but really quite smart and thoughtful and i always get something i can use.
1) the way my windows are now completely re-filled with green. a most luscious, dense foresty green that takes over the sky.
2) the movie “please give” with catherine keener. sad, smart, funny, poignant, if financially inaccurate/confusing. an apartment on lower fifth avenue + small business = no money concerns? hm. but incredible performances and one of the best opening sequences ever.
3) big juicy blueberries in pancakes
4) lots of heart chakra activity
5) that i’ll very likely have more time soon to see and talk to you all
6) sage
7) how breathing feels easier on weekends
8) j’s hot pink toes
9) b’s faint freckles
10) being taught by a yoga teacher the other night with a double hip replacement
11) getting out for weekends, soon
12) my odd, yet-unmet craving for new york superfudge chunk, inspired by subway ads
13) keeping up a british accent for an hour
14) incremental trust, like a micro-jenga
15) the goodness of the boy
16) the hope that the spill will change something for the good, somehow, eventually
1) an assignment on gratitude. and interviewing people on gratitude–why it’s healthy and essential and good. reminds me to be grateful in a time when i feel like i have plenty to complain and worry about. but look! abundance. blessings. love. food. shelter. water. sky. coffee. clothes. watermelon popsicles.
2) being lovingly told how incredibly full of shit i am
3) lily of the valley drinking glasses from fish’s eddie
4) weekends
5) when people acknowledge reality. then i can relax. denial stresses me out. especially my own.
6) this computer
7) avocado for breakfast
8) eggplant parm made by a native italian
9) healthy, saucy pregnant women
10) tasks like: gratitude practice. loving my own heart. validating my own soul. freewriting. meditation.
11) sharing food
12) showering right before sleep
13) the birds i can hear in the tree that’s now green and bushy outside my window.
14) slow-coming summer. you coquette, summer. showing us some foot, ankle, leg, a little thigh…. and then–back to all covered up and cold. but you will reveal yourself in your full warmth soon enough, trickster. we see you.
15) the bottom of wanting (i like just wondering what’s there)
16) chocolate ganache sauce made by a city bakery baker
1) a manfriend who reminds me of pema’s teachings in essential moments, like when i am clamoring for validation. she says that the things we see as our worst traits can actually be jumping off points for our meditation. “oh, look at that! i have that panicky validate-me, tell-me-i’m-ok-right-now-or-i-will-crink-into-a-tight-wad-of-dust feeling. hi, feeling. let’s feel you. let’s sit with you and see what happens. later we can ask him ‘am i annoying you?’ but for this minute, let’s just sit on the porch swing together, ok?”
2) my chiropractor who is enabling me to turn my head again after yesterday’s migraine puke-fest
3) how lying in the grass for even 10 minutes makes everything greener and fresher and better
4) the new michael franti & spearhead single, shake it. on itunes. download now, please. you will dance around your living room in your undies so happily, i swear.
2) a clean apartment, largely purged of ex-boyfriend paraphernalia, lurking junk, and dust creatures
3) quiet
4) tank top weather
5) friends who remind me to do gratitude lists
6) lying on tennis balls (laying?)
7) that change is good. right? it’s all about flow or the essence of a supple, growing, living life or something. like this: “Everything in our experience — our bodies, our minds, our thoughts, our wants and needs, our relationships — is fleeting. Changing. Subject to death. We die in each moment and again, in each moment, we are born. The process of birth and death goes on endlessly, moment after moment, right before our eyes. Everything we look at, including ourselves and every aspect of our lives, is nothing but change. Vitality consists of this very birth and death. This impermanence, this constant arising and fading away, are the very things that make our lives vibrant, wonderful, and alive. Yet we usually want to keep things from changing. We want to preserve things, to hold onto them. This desire to hold on, to somehow stop change in its tracks, is the greatest source of woe and horror and trouble in our lives.” From Buddhism Plain and Simple by Steve Hagan
8) homemade watermelon popsicles
9) the brooklyn scavengers–i keep setting things outside my building and they keep going, fast. except a little black makeup bag and the amma books and the single stone drawer pull
10) noticing my passive-aggressive tendencies. ok, having them pointed out. i like that. because that’s not how i wanna roll. so, hi, passive-aggressive comment, how are you? i keep thinking that pema would want me to be friendly to it and me.
11) the smell of pizza coming into my apartment. it makes me want pizza. but after a 12-hour headache and much vomiting, seems like not a great idea. i will feast on the scent.
12) a fun book i’m reading: “the secret (of happiness)” a cheesy, page-turning thriller about an unhappy billionaire.
13) purple haze goat cheese–lavender and fennel chevre
14) the angels who i’m pretty sure love me even when i’m feeling pathetic and sad and totally uncertain.
15) spearhead on governor’s island. such a gorgeous place for a concert. omg.
16) leaf shadows that make the sidewalk look like dappled water
1) several days with 50 young contemplatives (myself being a youngish contemplativish) talking and being about actvism that starts from minding our own shadow hearts before and while addressing others’
2) getting to lead some freewriting
3) food, inc. it’s rough but worth sticking out. i thought i knew it all, but it’s in much sharper relief now.
4) mary oliver
5) j. crew’s tank top with shelf bra. really, now like the best thing i own outside of my laptop.
6) being able to talk about hard stuff with an open heart
7) coming home to warm arms
8) trees, stars, water, moss, turtles, birds
9) yesterday’s scan going smoothly as it could
10) the nurse asking me “are you cold? you got goosebumps the second i raised your sleeve. want a warm blanket?” and me thinking a warm blanket just meant the warmth of a blanket and then discovering that it was a warmed blanket. heated. i was like, “how have i been coming here for five years and never known about the warm blankets?” she did not know how that could have been missed. and i said, “so fancy!” and she said, “well, you know, we’re memorial sloan kettering, we’re fancy here,” with perfect comic delivery.
11) running into the owner of a local yoga studio last night while i was waiting for b. to meet me to leave for my scan. and him saying, “that’s so weird, i was just sifting through a ton of krishna das video footage (he helps out kd) the other day and came across three minutes of you dancing at a kirtan on the upper west side.” already weird. but when he walked away i realized that footage was shot the same night i had my last oncologist appointment six months ago. i don’t know what exactly to do with those kinds of perfect parallels and coincidences. but i do believe they are significiant. but like this quote from a physicist in this article on a new anti-matter discovery: “I would not say that this announcement is the equivalent of seeing the face of God, but it might turn out to be the toe of God.”
12) pema coming!
13) that mskcc is now offering “breast shields” for ct scans to protect soft tissue from excess radiation. brand new. and they come in sizes, they said. it’s a thin layer of lead that the scanner can see through. cool, right? it’s really just a piece of what feels like a heavy piece of paper. blue.
14) drinking post-scan chlorophyll in the form of a candle cafe green goddess juice (see above–photo courtesy bc’s iphone)
