Archive for September, 2009

New Orleans as a healing place

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

There is a community of yogis here in the Crescent City that are attracting other yogis from all around the globe. Michele had said that because of the healing New Orleans needed after Katrina, the yogis are responding to the call. Certainly her Swan River studio has been a big draw.

It also could be that New Orleans is a deeply spiritual place unlike its usual moniker as a place of debauchery.

Whatever it is, yoga has been very good to me.

The Age of Aquarius

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

I have been trying not to give into this sort of negative or tumultuous energy that has been in the air but I was speaking to a source of mine and she said, “I’ve never been so busy in my life, it’s exhausting.” Boy, don’t I know it. I wondered out loud if the earth was maybe spinning faster or whether it was my new found 50 years of age that was making everything seem like a merry-go-round gone mad but today my hair stylist told me sort of tongue in cheek that it is because this is a time of transition where we will see an acceleration as we head into December 2012 and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius when a more positive spin will take over.

A friend of mine said to me the other day we are in a time of transition and it sure feels like it but since we seemed to have just come out of the great transition of post Katrina, I though we were through it not entering another one.

Dreams of Joe

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

These endless nightmares are interrupting my sleep – the anxiety of my mom’s situation and days that are too busy to relax all stack up at night into weird bizarre nightmares. Last night I dreamed I married Joe, my gardener, and got pregnant and was sitting on a stoop with a bunch of alcoholics and drug addicts all smoking through their toothless grins.

I woke in a panic.

the notes a writer makes

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

I just found a note that said, “Stinky Tofu smells like a mistake.” No attribution.

The perils of not reading the local newspaper

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

I quit getting the Times Picayune even though there were a few columns I enjoyed – Carolyn Hax, the obituaries, and the Lagniappe – but all in all I found papers stacking up and me with very little time to ever even read second day news. So last night when we arrived at friends house to break the fast, we were greeted with “if you don’t care what race you are adopting maybe you could just get implanted with these mixed up eggs.” Apparently in some facility where they were freezing eggs there was some mix up and now they don’t know what eggs goes with which donor – such a typical New Orleans story – but actually, if there was a possibility, we both have a bunch of these mixed up eggs implanted and roll the dice.

Is there a psychological explanation

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

In a world where everyone is trying to blame someone else for what isn’t working, I was reading about a woman who was molested as a child and then pursued a life of hypersexuality as an adult in order to recreate the cause but have a different effect – a relationship. And then a child raised by alcoholic parents who then partnered with alcoholic spouses to recreate a familiar situation which she might be able to fix. I wonder if psychology helps us to grow and move on when there is someone and something to blame? I don’t know. I think it is always good to understand what motivates a person, I’m just not sure it fosters growth, it can’t solve the problem, it can only name it, and maybe in naming it you can moved passed it. Hard to say.

A Monday by any other name is still a Monday

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Tuesday started off with a roar and didn’t dissipate for one second until somewhere around 6PM I took a breath and let a collective one out. Today in the land of overwhelmed I wondered how people around me haven’t noticed a speeding up of the earth’s rotation and how outside for the first time it was cool and breezy as if fall was inserting itself into the Gulf South and while so much got done today, I couldn’t even begin to enumerate the check marks on the to do list – it was a day that was the polar opposite to yesterday when I was deep inside my thoughts and minutes that turned to hours were spent in contemplation and repose.

Yes today was another manic Monday, just because it didn’t happen on Monday doesn’t mean it wasn’t going to happen.

Going back to the truth

Monday, September 28th, 2009

I had my reflective meditative day undisturbed even by T who tiptoed around me so as not to break my trance. I re-read past writings I’ve done around this holiday and found one entry peculiarly disconcerting. It was way back in San Francisco, walking along the streets and running into a man name Santos, who pulled me to come have a coffee with him and I did. He told me to focus on other things that making money because there was plenty of money in the world and so few good writers.

There was also a quote from my mother, something she told me back in 1998 saying that she was in trouble in school because she had kicked the teachers. She’s still kicking people now in the hospital. Some habits die hard.

But more importantly, having read through some entries that date back now almost twenty years, I saw the girl in me always trying to improve, always trying to figure out how to keep my weight down, my savings up, and to keep my heart and mind open in the process. Every year, I wished extra hard for my brother David, my sister Sarah, and my mother to be able to overcome their obstacles and be happy.

Perhaps, I should just be content with my mother telling me she’s happy yesterday in the hospital – said out of the blue, devoid of any context.

Things ahead look messy and uncertain, things in back of me seem cogent and fated, as if connecting the dots reveals all.

Happy New Year.

The Talmudic truth

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

Tonight is the eve of Yom Kippur and just as Eudora Welty said that Southerners live their narratives, well what could be more Talmudic than my mom in the hospital and me adopting a baby. The Talmud teaches about life, which comes and goes and always centers around common themes – love and happiness. As well as grace and duty.

I begin my fast tonight with the sounds of a shofar from a congregation in the Midwest – the miracles of the Internet – and tomorrow will be meditating and reflecting on this great life. I was speaking to a friend about my mom and he said, that his mom died a slow descent into Alzheimer’s but he said, I want you to know there is life for you ahead and it is joyous life.

La Shana Tova to all my loved ones and Shalom.

William Safire – RIP

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

New York Times language maven, Safire, died today at 79 years old. Go in peace.