Om Trekker

An Auspicious Beginning

2011-12-29T12:24:00.003-05:00

and yet ...

In Chinatown I Learned to Smile

2009-06-19T08:50:00.009-04:00

It's 8 a.m. on Chrystie Street in Chinatown and I'm sitting on a bench in front of the Golden Age Center a little teary.

The intense stare from a plain clothes cop as his group roused a sleeping man from a park bench collided, I think, with memories of being a whole lot younger and living in my first New York apartment just off Canal Street. I kept walking, but the tears were coming.

I think that's what happened. Maybe that and 7 weeks of bronchitis and pneumonia which left me a tired. And some raw blistered feet. And the beautiful elderly Chinese man moving through a tai chi soft form who shared the toddler's playground with me and my coffee a moment ago.

Tears go like that, I suppose.

What I remembered as I walked, after trying to smile at the cop, hoping he'd feel a little better about a difficult job, was that twenty years ago, the great lesson I learned right here in Chinatown was to smile at people.

Back in those days, New York grated on me like a new asphalt patch: smelly, sticky, and uneven. Chinatown, in particular was fast and dirty. As epiphanies go, this one isn't going to open lilies, but it occurred to me one day that when I was out walking with my boyfriend, the merchants, no, entire sidewalks, it seemed, broadened in smiles. And when I was alone, they closed as quickly.

I resented the difference for a while, until I finally realized that for his many bad habits, he made me laugh, and the people around us smiled back. It was so simple.

I tested and proved my theory: the difference was me. In a city where *how many* languages are spoken, where the person standing next to me in line for green peanuts and bok choy may have left their childhood village in China about, say, a week ago and may be living in their first concrete jungle, a smile is everything.

It's small town and worldly at the same time; practical and the epitome of elegance, I've decided, as I've seen its different forms practiced around the planet.

That Tai Chi. The tough street kids who laughed and watched the Chinese guy's soft form, had no idea that it is the subtle strength and memory practice for a powerful street fight martial art that uses an aggressor's attack as its only weapon.

My own tai chi teacher answered the question once "So what's the difference between tai chi and yoga?" His answer "What are you going to do if someone knocks you off your yoga mat?"

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

I Ching

2009-05-25T16:44:00.001-04:00

It was more of an enormous flood than a wave really.

"Potentially disastrous filling of yang energy" is the way the I Ching desribed it. A great cleansing and renewal when the waters are back down.

I'm fine. Just sitting here in my little boat.

I have pictures:

That's me: Driving along the reservoir road. Sunroof open. Hair - big and beachy. I think I may be singing but with the engine noise I can't tell what.

And that's a feather I found in the deep shade of a pine tree. There's a hawk above me and it has dropped a long wing feather into the pachysandra. I can't see the hawk through the dense branches, but I can feel a whisper and I take the feather. That was beside the old churchhouse on the hill.

And that angel sits behind me in asana practice. I can see my shadow on the wall ahead in Sun Salutation and always wonder whether, if I raise my arms in true prayer, I will fly up like an angel and see you.

And that's you on a streetcorner. There are noisy mopeds behind you. Do you see how bright the sun is on your face?

And there am I again, ducking under the wisp of a cherry tree newly planted on my labyrinth. It is really beautiful this time of year

Here's a picture of Nicholas singing in Oslo, and one of Julie in Zurich. They are helping me triangulate to Stockholm. Maybe sometime soon. Like everything, it will depend on the winds.

Another one of me, happily collecting shells and beach glass on the little island beach.

Here's one of me in a playground in Chinatown. The little boy is the son of friends and he is very sweet but a little disconcerted at his afternoon with someone other than his mom or dad. He has the most darling smile and loves to be hugged. He also loves trucks. A lot.

And that's me on Bowery, threading my way through pedestrians to go meditate with the dharma punx. They are transcendent and I love their peacefulness.

You would enjoy these all, I know. But for the time being I am happy to send you postcards, happy to know you are following your path. And I hope to see you soon.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

a little healing

2009-05-19T23:40:00.001-04:00

In a Trauma Healing workshop with Nadine Hoover not too long ago, I learned a lovely technique for reducing stress by massaging the facial muscles where we hold so much of it. She said it stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system which is the body's internal Rx for stress. I'll combine it with a little of the centering practice from Integral Yoga.

Begin by sitting comfortably and start to deepen your breath, letting your belly relax with each inhale. Close your eyes and just let those deep relaxed belly breaths happen.

Then bring your palms together in front of your heart and say a little prayer for yourself.

Now rub your palms together until you have generated some heat in your hands. Gently cup your hands over the eye sockets, with your fingers on your forehead.

Let the heat sink into the eyes, and the prayer be absorbed into your mind.

When the heat has dissipated, bring your fingertips to the browbone between your eyes, and draw them along the browbone to the far corners of the bone. Repeat this massage a few times, nicely, slowly.

Now place the fingertips on the lower eye sockets near the nose, and again, in a slow movement draw the fingers along the lower bone to the outside edge of the eyes. Repeat this a few times.

Bring the fingers to the place on your jaw where the jaw joins the skull. With circular motion massage that joint.

Bring the fingertips back to the middle of the brow bone and this time massage upwards along the middle of the forehead to the scalp and following the center line of your skull with the fingers of both hands, massage over the crown of the head to the base of the skull.

Spend some time massaging the base of the skull, first in the center of the neck and then giving attention to the muscles that connect the back of the head to the neck.

A nice place to continue might be along the shoulders, or maybe bringing your palms back together in front of your heart with thanks to the healing power within.

Seemed like a nice thing to share. If your lower back is where you carry stress, I'd highly recommend Alexander Technique. Its not the first thing people think of for spine issues, but 2 or 3 lessons to learn how to elongate your spine - mostly by carrying the head at a natural location - are incredibly beneficial longterm. xo

Sacred Spaces

2009-03-15T20:01:00.009-04:00

I bought the first piece of furniture for my yurt today: a bright red butt board for sliding down hills in the snow. Practical, transportable. Maybe a little out of season in mid-March, but on Friday I got great news on the flashing frostbite in my fingers, and felt like celebrating.

It's actually called a Rocko Flake Sled and it's from Sweden. Cool design and I couldn't leave the Cooper Hewitt today without one of my own and some plans for felting a yurt. The yurt they have installed in the gazebo looks like a chupa. I think it's beautiful. Mongols have rules about creating harmony while they are felting: "While among others, check your tongue, while alone, check your mind."

Lots of sacred spaces this week and happenstance encounters with dear friends. The Greenman showed up at the Riverside Church event with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He made me smile: I'm having such a good time, JB. I wake up, take my Ritalin, and go spend the day playing with children with learning disabilities.

And in case you missed it, Archbishop Tutu, the father of restorative justice in a land that once held so much violence, danced, he danced down the aisle to a resounding spiritual processional that night. And then gave a benediction in his own language. It was beautiful. Violence does pass; goodness does win, in part because meanness is just too labor intensive and exhausting. This was on the full moon night of Holi - the Hindu celebration of good over evil.

On Friday Carla sang Brazilian Jazz at a local burger joint. And Saturday afternoon I spent learning about light and space with Agnes Martin at Dia:Beacon, after finding Judy pulled over with a flat on 287. Sunday - St. Pat's, the Temple of Dendur and that felted yurt. I am really so blessed.

The best part is that much of it was field study for work! Maybe not the butt board, but still.

Here's something I learned. Judy sat for an hour on the shoulder of 287. She'd left her phone at home and had a blow-out on 2-week old tires. A couple of state patrols drove by her. Didn't stop. Lots and lots of cars drove by. Nobody stopped. She told me that eventually she was really wondering what she ought to do since she didn't know how to change the tire.

So she decided to pray. That's when I drove by. Now. I'm not saying I'm the answer to anybody's prayers. That's not my point. But what I learned from this is that we do hear each other's prayers. And God does. And prayers are answered: I had my cell phone and she called AAA.

Maybe we don't recognize when our prayers are being answered. It occurred to me today, as I walked by a playground in Central Park, that I sorely miss having a husband, a home, a dog, and plans for having a family. I've prayed that he would have a son, or two or three. I've also prayed that he would not be a flash in the pants, or pan, or whatever.

And I really believe my prayers will be answered. Like the elephants of Sri Lanka, I can feel that big wave coming. Instead of running for the hills, though, I've been learning to navigate my little craft, checking the wind and adding plenty of ballast, because it's going to be a great ride. And I'm looking forward to it. Point being there's now a pretty strong little boat called me.

And the yurt, I figure, will stow nicely until landfall.

Among...

2009-02-14T11:05:00.009-05:00

the gardens of the seaside park, I'll sit in a little chair. I'll bring water-based oil paints and watch very carefully the shaking stamen of a flower. Or learn about blue in the shadows of sails. It's a nice way to be quiet.

It's too cold to sit in that park today, so to begin simply, maybe I'll study the sunlit browns of the window shades. Or the purples of silk pillows among bed linens.

I'm not sure I want to spend time examining my bed linens, though: 7 pillows, 6 blankets, 2 cats and a buckwheat neckwarmer all remind me of the long, tall, 235 pound bed warmer I'd rather have in place.

Last week a client brought me an artist's rendition of the 55th Psalm. She said it speaks to the biblical promise that we will find a path in the wilderness. That's not my reading of the Psalm, but her faith is more interesting than anyone's dogma.

I'm not always clear how to know a true path, even in the quiet. But I believe our bodies know more than our minds. I discovered this in a surprising way at the driving range: thinking about this particular man who otherwise agitated me, also caused my neck to lengthen, shoulders to drop, and golf balls to fly effortlessly and accurately off my 9-iron blade. It was statistically measurable, and I named my golf swing for him. I may end up naming a brush stroke or color for him, too.

In the meantime, there's a contra dance tonight at a nearby church. My friend, Margaret, and her beloved are going and invited me along. I'd rather not be a third wheel on Valentine's Day, and I'm not wild about dancing with strangers. But my friends are great, and I may go for the happy music.

A hot bath would also be wonderful.

Here...

2009-02-03T22:04:00.011-05:00

was something about a butterfly along the back of his neck while he slept. I worried I'd wake him.

On my last day in the little garret studio on the harbor, I walked up to Tiffany's and exchanged a birthday present. What I brought home and wore for my move, and since, was Frank Gehry's fish ring. It reminds me of the bulge and slice of a fish at the surface of water; or of a whale maybe, pressing through the deepest parts of the ocean.

I wonder if a whale is ever homesick, or if it just swims, enjoying only the shape and contour of it's skin within a current. Does it ever turn around, looking for the familiar in the depths of it's passage?

Is it my turn?

Mostly I just follow along, catching shadows here and there, someone else's voice drumming down the quiet.

I will hear the quiet again. Maybe soon. In the garden outside my kitchen door. Among trees and rocks. I'll grow carrots, beans, and rosemary. The Sound is a sweet walk away.

It will be warm and light breezes will exchange small gifts.

Every year I believe that.

The Big Purr

2008-09-07T09:45:00.026-04:00

A cat suffering mortal pain, I have read, will purr loudly. There are scientists studying this, though I'd prefer they didn't; which neural mechanism is firing doesn't matter.

It's that purr - that little piece of what? - I care about.

The context is my mother's post on These Hands of Ours. That's a photo of her pruning a bush. I asked her why she hadn't sent me a picture of her hands with a beautiful bloom, something artistic that speaks to the beautiful gardens she designs. Pruning is the most mundane activity and it seemed too humble for her creative work. What she told me is that humble and mundane is 90% of gardening, and she hopes her photo says that.

What she doesn't say is how she came to her profession. And that's the Big Purr.

When her mother started showing the painful, embarrassing signs of Alzheimer's, my mother, a homemaker who had never pursued a career, decided she would be my grandmother's primary caregiver. With my father's blessing and support, she moved my grandmother to their home in south Florida and dignified the daily care of a woman who was quickly and dramatically losing her ability to function socially.

Day or night, she changed my grandmother's sheets, and then her diapers. She learned to negotiate the quicksand of meals, shopping, car rides. And she survived the heartbreaking moments when my grandmother would look at her, and ask "What am I doing here?"

My grandmother could not be left alone for any significant amount of time. There was a nurse she tolerated well enough for my parents to enjoy Friday "Date Night." And three afternoons each week she very happily sat and ate popcorn with other Alzheimers patients in a local adult day care.

My mother refused to wall herself from her mother's pain. Her relief in a quiet moment was to put on gloves and step into the garden. She and my grandmother, herself an avid gardener, would toodle around the local nurseries. In time, my mother became an expert on tropical plants, and then, following south Florida's climate shift, on the Mediterranean plants that can withstand drought. She became known for her yard.

One day, about five years after moving to my parent's home, my grandmother called my mother from the kitchen where she was fixing lunch, and leaning into her arms, she died.

For a long time, our family talked about my mother's enormous sacrifice. Until then she had led a pretty carefree life. But in taking care of her family and nurturing a lovely home, she had never found her own creative center.

Somewhere in the essential care she gave my grandmother, my mother found the Big Purr. It was my grandmother's gift back to her.

This is meaningful to me right now. For the first time in my life, I'm panicking about my ability to make a living in a failing financial market. I'm thinking about the Buddhist concept of "Right Livelihood." And it's honestly funny to me, but last Thursday when I started reaching out to women I know and love, I wondered if something hadn't started purring.

Sheridan Crumlish - A Memorial

2008-08-20T09:42:00.054-04:00

A photo for Julie, Lyn and Ford: Sherry antique hunting in Quebec to spite his three broken ribs. Whistle, nosegay, hat... I treasure your stories, thank you. Still have his phone numbers on my phone - can't bear to delete any part of him. Jessica, Jan 8, 2012

My friend Sheridan Crumlish died.

That was his real name. I asked him once if "Sheridan" was common when he was growing up. No, he told me "Sheridan Crumlish" was a very difficult name to grow up with.

Here's my first memory of Sheridan Crumlish.

It is March 2002 and the U.S. has just started bombing Iraq. I madly Google the word "Peace" and find the Peace Testimony of the Quakers, and this quote from George Fox:

"Walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everybody."

And from my yoga practice, I reply "Namaste," and decide to go to a Quaker service.

Sheridan was the first person I heard speak in Quaker Meeting.

The group is sitting in concentric circles of chairs and I'm facing the door. I'm watching a very tall old, old man walk down the long hallway towards the room with a cane. Meeting for worship has begun and the room has shifted to the deep still of common, silent prayer. Sheridan very slowly, carefully shuffles towards us. He is wearing hunter green wide wale corduroys, a white oxford shirt, and navy blazer. He has a bright pink sweater wrapped around his shoulders and a beret. And on his feet are a pair of hand-woven rattan slippers with red pom-poms. As he walks into the room, I can't keep my eyes off the pompoms.

He looks exactly like my grandfather, only unapologetically colorful.

He sits down in an open chair in the inner circle, and settles in for about 10 minutes. He is the first to speak:

"I read in the New York Times this morning that despite U.S. bombing, the fisherman of the Tigris and Euphrates are still fishing this week, exactly as they have done for a thousand years. And somehow this gave me a great deal of comfort."

And somehow that gave me a lot of comfort, and hooked me on Sheridan and Quaker meeting.

Our friendship grew in between bursts of doting attention, and his fiery alcoholism. There was a birthday dinner party for him in his NYC brownstone; a visit to his summer home in Québec for a long Memorial Day weekend; and a winter of Sunday morning phone calls: "Sheridan, I'm going to Meeting and driving by your house. Do you want a ride?"

There were also afternoons in his home with groceries and lunch, and lots of stories about the women, but mostly men, he'd known over the years. He cheered me on even while he dismissed my romantic interests: "Sister - You're pretty, but no Palm Beach. Don't waste your time on the high flyer." I remember one day I was "Brigitte the Irish Chambermaid" while I was in his kitchen making tea for everyone. He was complex and alive, and sometimes just happily rude.

I liked trying to practice my French with him. He spoke four languages and at Northwestern University had tutored, and been engaged to, Nan Robertson, the wonderful New York Times reporter. He had also served as an diplomatic administrator in Europe after World War II. But he told me I had to stop: my accent is terrible and it made him cranky. He was also fussy about the words I used. He would mimic a particularly casual usage and make me stop and rephrase. "Say what you mean," was his abiding command.

He couldn't get to the Met or enjoy NYC the way he'd planned when he bought his brownstone and started renovating it, but one could always find him in his downstairs study on a Saturday afternoon listening to the opera on the radio and reading the New York Times. He spent the winters in NYC making plans for the houses he was renovating in Québec and always had pictures handy.

His interior design style was wabi-sabi, a term I swear I learned from him, but he swore he'd never heard of. Everything in his homes, it seemed, had received some repair and in the Zen aesthetic of wabi-sabi, the care you take to repair something adds to its value and beauty. The porcelain jewelry case that belonged to his mother had been broken and repaired once by her, again by him. It sat prominently in the entrance to his brownstone.

One memorable exception to that was "The Million Dollar Couch" on the second floor of his farmhouse - an enormous couch he'd bought at a design showcase on Long Island- in turquoise velvet. He told me the price. It didn't cost quite a million since he bought the floor model. A crane had to lift it through the picture window to get it into the room and it sat next to his easel and a wide view of neighboring mountains.

It occurs to me that my friendship with Sheridan laid some precious mortar after the end of my marriage. And surely Ashtanga, the Alternatives to Violence Project and blogging are more of that.

From Sheridan I developed a love for old kitchen utensils. His toaster was an Art Deco open-coiled monster from the 1930's that had no On-Off switch - it had to be unplugged to let the coils cool.

Here's his most romantic recipe. He taught it to me in that old farmhouse in Québec, calling directions from his chair in the living room while I executed. It was a lovely gift, and one day I hope to cook it as intended.

"Paris 1948" Take 2 Tablespoons of butter and melt over a low heat. Stir in 1 Tablespoon flour and cook the roux. Add about a teaspoon of curry powder, some tarragon leaves to taste. Then stir in some frozen shrimp that have been melted and dried thoroughly. Pour the curried shrimp over rice, or linguini, or angel hair pasta.

I grew up in an antiseptic Betty Crocker household, as did my mother, and Sheridan was the first cook I knew who left his cheeses out on the farmhouse kitchen table, happily ignoring the line of little ants streaming over the tabletop. Cheese really does taste better at room temperature. And mustard? Buy it dry and mix it as you need it. For a salad dressing - dissolve the salt into the vinegar before mixing in the oil, and make small amounts, you don't need a vat of the stuff. For Sheridan I also learned to mix a martini.

When I last spoke with him in January, a few weeks before he passed, I asked whether he should be returning to Québec in the winter. I didn't need to remind him that I'd pulled him out of his bed one winter in NYC, wet, shivering, naked and on the verge of pneumonia. He was cranky and said he'd be fine. I told him I loved him and was glad he was carrying a new cell phone.

I heard today that he returned to Québec to die - further medical tests when he got home showed that his prostate cancer had completely metastasized into his bones and he could not find a way to get warm. He had apparently been in quite a bit of pain.

His best friend, Richard, adopted his fat dirty cat and says that she actually cleans up nicely in the Québec countryside. We laughed about that today.

And the cemetery near his home granted his desire that a large round boulder be placed on his grave as the only marker, although I understand it split in two when they moved it onto the site. There is no name on it.

A Skunk on my Labyrinth

2008-08-18T18:24:00.025-04:00

And some Tantra.

I'm juggling thoughts of Elizabeth Cady Stanton right now, and comfortable shoes, and a thousand other things, but I'll start simply.

In the middle of everything, a friend has directed me to Scrum - we're discussing Agile software project management. Googling Scrum is how I begin and that leads me to Rugby 101 on Youtube.

I really had no idea. Rugby is so, obviously, superior to American football. Forgive me Uncle Fielding.

Alright, now back to that skunk.

It's sunset when I find my way up Heartbreak Hill to the labyrinth behind the church in my town. I pace the labyrinth as I often do, moving slowly, hands clasped at my heart, smiling a little. At some point I close my eyes, and step thoughtfully along the bricks.

When I open my eyes, there is a skunk in the yard about 20 feet from me.

He is happily rooting in the grass, prancing back and forth, chattering to himself, or so it seems. And a surprised part of me thinks "Cool! Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!" I don't believe I actually said that, but I have no one to ask. It's a slow moment before I realize, as he trots cheerfully towards me, that this creature has the power to make me deeply uncomfortable. In an end-of-the-road kind of flash, I think of all the places I'd be unwelcome if that should happen, and it's time to slowly back away.

What surprises me, though, is that I'm in no way resentful of Mr. Skunk. I don't mind that he disrupted my evening meditation. I understand that he is a skunk and that I lack a basic understanding of how to behave in his presence. I am happy to give him a whole lot of room, and glad I'm wearing sneakers.

If he were a human with the power to make me deeply uncomfortable, I might grapple earnestly with the best approach: kind? humorful? apologetic? stern? etc. I might discuss it with girlfriends, sisters or colleagues; shed tears; lose weight. But a skunk is what it is and it's amazingly easy to be ok with that.

It occurs to me that he is a mighty strong metaphor for some human encounters. You can't ever know what will make someone else feel threatened, or harmed, and you can't predict what their reaction will be. But if you know they're a skunk, really, just stay away because it won't matter to them that you are on your own little labyrinth of life, meditative or prayerful, kind as you may be.

I shared this in Quaker meeting yesterday, surprised to hear it coming from my lips, but several women approached me afterward and told me the message had spoken to them.

I haven't forgotten about Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or my fabulous and very comfortable shoes. I'm just pulling on some of these threads.

Of course, as women find themselves participating directly in the world economy, a platform designed and operated by men, it's hard not to notice that in many respects women are not especially well schooled for the emotional and social elements of a good scrum, or skunks at work.

And women are really pretty new to the game. I am sitting at the desk that belonged to Stanton's granddaughter. She graduated in the first class that allowed women students at Cornell's Engineering school and she built this house. And her granddaughter is my landlady.

We may not realize it, but we're at the edge of living memory on the fight for a woman's right to vote, or to own property or have rights to their children. And I don't believe we're completely whole yet.

In between raising a family of 7 and her marriage to a charismatic and very handsome man whom she adored, Stanton spent a lot of time researching the laws that restricted her. She and her devoted girlfriends tore open the Declaration of Independence and restitched it to include the basic rights of women as human beings.

But it seems to me their work isn't finished until all men are willing to let women in the game, and are ready to play by some new rules that may include fashion-forward and very happy shoes. I wonder what Stanton would think of my shoes?

That's pretty simplistic, I know. And maybe it's even more simplistic - or just blissfully simple - to understand that some of them are skunks doing their best to make you uncomfortable, and some of them may have a great pair of rugby shorts in the closet. I'm surely not the first to notice.

Now, I've promised a tantrika meditation so I will do it. I hate to keep reminding, but this is not about sex.

I was given permission to teach this but have only ever shared it with someone I adore. How does it fit in? Well, isn't it the basic care we give each other, the honest observation of another's well-being, that allows us to progress on this planet? So this is a healing meditation.

Let me warn you that personally I find it so lovely and relaxing that it puts me to sleep. Maybe you'll be sitting, or lying down when you try it.

Close your eyes and start to listen to your breath. Feel it lift your belly, your ribcage, your collar bones, and feel it release. Give yourself a few minutes to let your breath relax and soften.

On an inhale, when you feel like it, begin to say or think the word, "Sa", and as you exhale, "Om".

"Sa"... "Om"... This is a very old bij mantra.

On your next "Sa", imagine a bright, soothing light entering your body at the base of your spine, rising up through the vertebra with your breath, up to the very crown of your head.

And as you return your breath, with the word "Om", allow the light to drop back down your spine. Visualize the light slowly moving up and down your spine, and breathe.

"Sa" and "Om".

And smile.

So Here ...

2008-07-27T15:03:00.002-04:00

It would surprise him to know that not only do I remember every word he has ever spoken in my presence, I also recall the inflections and resonance of his voice, the whisper of breath between his words, the rise of his chest against his shirt. All of it. And every so often those memories shock me out of sleep, or whatever else I'm doing, into deep alertness.

It is too early for Friends Meeting when I wake up this morning, so I am catching up on email. I see that Jim Dwyer, the New York Times reporter, has written about a play that features four ex-convicts whose lives were transformed by Quaker prison ministry and the Alternatives to Violence Project that evolved from that ministry. Jim's article is being circulated among the Quaker email lists I subscribe to.

I have followed Jim's work off and on for a long time. There are many reasons to read whatever he is writing: the Pulitzer committees have thought so a couple of times. It's worth digging out the New York Newsday columns that won him that award in 1995. They are so beautiful. He was also a very good friend when I was publishing a community newspaper. I'm a big fan.

In effort to catch up with Jim and his work, I scroll through his recent articles. I see he wrote about the Yeats exhibit at the National Library of Ireland. One item on display is a notebook Jim calls the "metaphysical marriage bed" of Yeats and Maud Gonne. I'm switching between Jim's article and this page. I think I'll let you read it. I'm dumbfounded.

I'm going to clean up around here and go find Kumiko.

When I have climbed the giant rock to their home, I knock and Kumiko invites me into her kitchen. I see sushi rice that is shiny and sticky in a big bowl on the counter. She has arranged ingredients with the plan to teach me to the best way to roll tuna, an inside-out roll, and an over-stuffed roll. From Kumiko, I learn about mixing powdered wasabi, finding the freshest sushi fish, and the best way to serve sushi if you're having guests.

She and Hoshi are so lovely. And their home, because she is a photographer and he a graphic designer, is full of many beautiful images they have collected and created. As I leave she gives me her card so we can keep in touch - on it is a photograph she took of a local beach.

At home I frame her card and put it next to the jar of beach glass. I really must add a speckled rock.

The Sushi Prayer

2008-07-22T03:44:00.017-04:00

I picked up a little book of sushi recipes last week and sat with it one evening, imagining how good it would feel to invite friends over to learn to roll sushi with me. I thought of ingredients, a guest list, music, how far from the wall I'd need to move my drop-leaf dining table. Sitting still with a little piece of your imagination, I find, can be a potent form of prayer.

Now, my dear friends Jan and Kobi are the only people I know who make sushi at home - vegetarian, given the danger in handling and eating raw fish at home. It's a family tradition of theirs. But Jan and Kobi live in upstate New York and I've seen them rarely over the last 25 years. We've watched and listened as each others' lives have unfolded and refolded, but mostly from a distance.

Here's how my sushi prayer was answered: A phone call from Kobi as he sailed through the Sound to Nantucket on his Val trimaran. An invitation to come up to Tulgey Wood. An invitation: "Gillian says come right now" - Friday night.

And Saturday, as it happened, because the avocados were ripe, became sushi night in the Great Tulgey Wood of Nantucket. It was the first time since 1992 that I've spent time in one of the wonderful camps founded by Gillian Butchman or her mother, Helen "Hellcat" Lamb.

That's Jan starting the process - sushi rolls for 80 people - 60 mates and 20 buckaloos.

Sushi 101: If you've grown up in an institution because of some limitation or another, there's a very good chance you won't know what wasabi is ... That's Kobi demonstrating the "little pinch" to Jeremy, and Gillian behind them.

Rotate this 90 degrees and you'll see my view Sunday morning in Downward Facing Dog.

Motorcross Racing 101: Will giving a tutorial on Motorcross racing to a group before going out to a bar in town to watch the race.

The simple cedar shake architecture of Nantucket is a legacy of the Quaker settlers. Roof walks, for instance, were considered ostentatious.

Here's a wonderful blog on Tulgey Wood:

http://web.mac.com/pauric_ocallaghan/iWeb/TulgeyWood/Welcome.html

Yemaya's Son

2008-04-06T13:25:00.020-04:00

The oyster shells went out as planned, wrapped in strong paper, blustery kiss, all the year of embraces. A week later I'm certain Yemaya was listening, but wish I'd been a little more clear.

It's brunch at Elephant & Castle in Greenwich Village. Sitting next to me is the poet Yusef Komunyakaa, a child of the Louisiana delta and African diaspora. And as Kasha's hand brushes Yusef's, the ache for sweet touch is on both Jill and my faces. Jill and I have been friends since childhood and at this point we are again listening to the other's trouble-with-men blues.

We've mindlessly, thoughtlessly, teased Yusef that his Polish wikipedia entry is so short, since he is dating his Polish translator. But now the conversation has moved on to Faulkner's narrative structure. And Yusef, in his quiet way, mentions that Faulkner published an early book of verse called Helen and wonders if the fluidity of voice in his novels are informed by his poetry.

And the spoken nature of poetry comes up. How else to understand the golf course in The Sound and The Fury, and the haunt of the name Caddie, if you've not said it outloud?

Robert Pinsky has an elegant book called The Sounds of Poetry.

Poetry is a vocal, which is to say a bodily, art. The medium of poetry is a human body: the column of air inside the chest ... The reader's breath and hearing embody the poet's words. This makes the art physical, intimate, vocal, and individual.

Yemaya, am I wrong to miss his voice? I've got quotes, snips here and there that someone else has heard. What if I were to repeat them outloud, or put them in lines and punctuate? In private?

My voice was always unreliable around him. It took thought, mental lines and punctuation, to utter the simplest hi. And then he said hello.

In the meantime, a few cherished hours with the girls and Yemaya's son, a man of brilliance, artistic audacity and a book called Talking Dirty to the Gods that I reshelved quickly at the public library when I saw the cover.

It was beautiful, Yemaya, really, a wonderful morning, but, oh pretty please, that's not him.

Collecting Waves

2008-03-30T22:51:00.029-04:00

On this fine day I am collecting shells to send to that man. I sent one from another part of the world a while back and come to find out he went to that beach, or somewhere close to it.

Now, I can't honestly say that he got the first shell, I should really check under my desk or in a drawer. So I can't say his trip to the beach is related, but I'm refining my strategy and I will send him oyster shells from the beach under my window. I could use the blessing of Yemaya, the African delta goddess, and Yemaya loves oysters.

My neighbor David is sitting in our yard next to the water. He's watching sailors in thick weather gear race their bathtub boats. It's a warm day but I'll guess the splash of that water is not warm at all.

David says it's his wife who collects shells around the world. He tells me he collects waves and when I realize he is being poetic, I also realize he is talking about surfing.

My sister was the surfer in our family until she read somewhere that every single surfer has had at least one brush with a shark. She is vain and would not consider a sport that could leave her armless or legless. Now she keeps a picture of a shark in a huge wave as her screensaver and as a reminder to her sons that neither of them is allowed to surf, either.

David tells me he won a surfing contest 20 years ago in Nantucket for riding a few long curls in a headstand. He was in his 60's at the time. He'd consider surfing again, he goes on, but probably give up the headstand trick.

The thing in surfing, and in sailing, he tells me, is to listen to the nuances that carry your craft. So much like life, I think, heading as I am into a long week of interviews.

I could sit with him all day, but in flipflops, my enthusiasm for this early spring afternoon is giving way to a chill. I leave David and climb the steps remembering I must dry the shells before I mail them.

Travelers

2008-03-07T17:51:00.040-05:00

I would not have seen him last night had Suvisa not gotten on the elevator next to me after work. I would not have gotten to zazen before the zendo doors shut. And I would not have found myself walking down Park Avenue afterwards.

She left the elevator galloping. But instead of running all the way to the train, which I would have missed, I was lifted by this tiny Thai zephyr to a shuttle bus that set us neatly under the arriving platform. Suvisa informed me, in very short order, that we have probably been friends for a very long time: many lives and more. Maybe Thais talk like that.

A little bit about Suvisa: she's in her 20's, has finished her PhD in Tokyo on foreign exchange valuations, has visited 44 countries, 35 of the United States, is on national teams in a couple of competitive realms. And, she plays those really big Japanese drums. As she herself is not so big I think this must be quite a sight.

I learned much more though because she's a talker, and she talked all the way to Grand Central. And, to be fair, I asked her lots about herself and her dreams and her Buddhism.

And, as my friend for many lifetimes, who realized that maybe she had only 45 minutes to reconnect, to share some goodness until our next visit in some upcoming lifetime, she also gave me some things to think about. About change and love and parents and success and sadness, and her trip to Japan in April for the cherry blossoms.

And she gave me a Buddhist image that is very important to her.

She held her hand out as we sat on the rocking Express, and said "Imagine I am holding a very sharp rock in my hand. If I squeeze the rock very hard, what will happen to my hand? And if I let the rock go what happens? I am the only one who can control whether I squeeze or let go. You have to let things go. There's no point in squeezing the rock."

There was more, but not mine to say.

Taking up with someone, a stranger, sharing a conversation, a train ride, is not something commuters often do. When we travel, though, we're much better at gathering experiences, connections, thoughts - taking pictures for the family websites, and noticing the moments we'll talk about at the water cooler.

But Stamford is my Paris this year. I get strange looks when I say that, but I'm quite serious. Absent any real means to travel, I have decided to enjoy the explorer's mindset in my own neck of the woods, and in the people immediately around me.

The dharma talk after zazen was about how physics can map stuff that is of neither space nor time and while we sit zazen and focus on each immediate moment we paradoxically tap into the placeless and timeless that we are so essentially of. And how love does the same thing. I was not taking notes, but I think that's what he said.

With Suvisa's words ringing my head and zazen embracing my shoulders, I walked back to Grand Central. And I thought I saw him on Park Avenue. And somehow, without letting go of my love, which I could no more do than I could release myself from my soul, I released the strain associated with that love.

And that actually lasted deep into the next morning near my third cup of coffee. But it's not lost on me that I have no business being in love with this man. That's the crazy part. We've shared no more than an hour-and-a-half on some bar stools a couple of years ago in a foreign city. Strike that. He was 20 minutes late. We shared an hour and 10 minutes sum total.

I think we both would like to have shared more. And so this path of mine keeps curling over his. Maybe he is someone else I have known over many lifetimes. And maybe I recognize him in this lifetime by that look on his face.

Kitchen Buddhas

2008-02-07T21:01:00.003-05:00

I am on a tear tonight, baking pan after pan of brownies. I'm using Katherine Hepburn's recipe, which is quick and easy, and always a crowd-pleaser. To some I've added cherries for a friend who loves Cherry Garcia ice cream. Some have walnuts. Some will be plain. These are Thank You So Much brownies, so the intention is as important as the chocolate.

There isn't much room for baking in this little studio, but a pie pan doubles as a brownie pan and a vegetable roasting pan and it works just fine. In my last home I had a big old kitchen with a door that opened to the backyard and to a larger field beyond. I did quite a bit of baking there. I found an entry from that kitchen recently in one of my cookbooks.

Honey-Graham Muffins June 19 2005 Made in a bread pan (9x5x3) ~ 50 minutes There were children in the field tonight as I baked. Running around with flashlights I could see flicker out beyond the backyard. They said their good nights after much pleading by their mothers to come inside. As I tasted the last of my breads, they went in. Blessed apparitions. Kitchen Buddha thank you.

I didn't know the neighbors yet: I was only a few months away from my marriage, city apartment, and friends. But I was holding on to some pieces of my previous life and that day was the third anniversary of my vegetarian practice. Each year in celebration I've bought a cookbook of some vegetarian cuisine. Those I love best are part travel, part culture, part food. In 2005 I found 3 Bowls: Vegetarian Recipes from an American Zen Buddhist Monastery.

The particular monastery, the Dai Bosatsu Zendo in Livingston Manor, New York, has a second home on 67th Street and, in the lovely way that paths bend back on themselves, I was invited to spend New Year's Eve there this year, sitting zazen for the very first time.

I can't say that I recognized Zen from the cookbook - it had been a long time since I'd opened it. What actually prepared me for the string of five meditation sessions on New Year's Eve was from a different lineage, Shunryu Suzuki's book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. I happened to have it on my bookshelf and grabbed it on my way to the train, thinking it would do in a pinch.

Some people will know Suzuki as the first major Zen teacher in America. He started the Zen Center in San Francisco in the early 1960's, and Greens Restaurant a little later on.

My copy of the book has a handwritten inscription from 1976 "J.P. - Moment after moment everyone comes out from nothingness. This is the true joy of life." Happy Birthday - Love, Linda. I don't know Linda, maybe you do.

Suzuki talks about sitting like a frog. A frog sits in a state of tranquil awareness so it can be ready to grab a passing insect. A frog doesn't think "Here I am sitting zazen - I am aware; I am tranquil". The frog just sits. And that is zazen.

So I sat like a frog. No, honestly I sat thinking about sitting like a frog, but also enjoying my great fortune to be sitting in the beautiful zendo on 67th Street. And when my mind wandered from the exquisite, hand-carved floor tiles immediately in front of me, and the caring stillness of the air around me, I quietly sent love and prayers to my family and friends celebrating the New Year across this country and others.

Sitting zazen may seem like an austere way to start the year, but the practice of meditation is so appreciative and robust, so life-affirming, that I was a little sad when the last session ended. After a midnight bell ceremony there was an exuberant meal - enormous platters of vegetarian sushi rolls, Japanese stews, sake, traditional New Year's noodles, all under a gigantic brass Buddha statue. It was wonderful.

It's getting late and pans of brownies are crowding my countertop. I'd put them outside to cool except for a couple of fat raccoons wintering in my yard on the harbor. And I'm really looking forward to delivering the brownies tomorrow and saying Thank you ever so much for your kindness. You've helped in ways you cannot know.

A Prayer for Jumpin John

2007-11-10T03:06:00.004-05:00

Jumpin John was not one of the murderers in the Quaker Meetinghouse last weekend. Nor was I.

Nor did I name him Jumpin John. He named himself, reflexively, as we circled the room adding positive, alliterative adjectives to our names. We were also asked to invent gestures that pantomimed the names and to say the name and give the gesture throughout the weekend. It was the first exercise in an intense, 20-hour, Alternatives to Violence Project workshop.

Trust the Quakers to find a disarming way to begin a difficult topic. I should probably mention, since most people won't know, that the Quakers won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947 for their work against the Nazis.

Jumpin John's brief introduction didn't mention the mandate that sent him to an anger management course, but as a cab driver with an enormous chip on his shoulder, it was quickly evident that this could be a scary man to have drive you home late at night.

My conflict issues quickly paled next to John's. I was there to see if I could really address the questions advertised on the workshop poster, like "Do you find it difficult to say 'No'?" "Do you avoid people because of unresolved conflicts?" "Is it difficult for you to let go of grudges?" To which I can answer "yes, yes, and oh definitely".

I named myself Gentle Jessica. Not because I think I'm especially gentle, but because it is the quality I'd like to bear in any conflict. And because I believe that if I can't find the most gentle place in my heart regarding some recent and very difficult personal conflicts, I will be destroyed by lingering anger. It's sink or swim time for me.

The two murderers, the actual convicted killers who had both served hard time in prison, were two of the workshop facilitators.

Honestly.

But think about it, who is more intimate with the heart of violence, and with all of its outward forms, than someone who has committed the ultimate violence, and then had every opportunity to think about it for years on end while living in the most violent prisons in the country?

From these men I learned that in order to deal gently with conflict, we start with a gentle prayer. Transforming Power is at the heart of this idea, and it starts in our own hearts. We pray for someone who disagrees with us, who scares us, who violates us, and consciously turn prayer into the words we speak. It transforms us, and it can transform a potentially difficult situation.

It helps to understand that "Hurt people hurt people." So when someone is hurting us, we identify that they may be working from their own fears, anger, pain. We accept their feelings, hear their thoughts, and are careful not to meet anger with anger, fear with fear, pain with pain.

Jumpin John injected loud angry humor into any conversation he could. He posed questions to the group that reaffirmed his right to be angry at the assholes, fruitcakes, freaks of the world. He really was enjoying himself, although his fear and pain surfaced like that of a small child hoping to be soothed in his outburst.

It was really instructive how quickly anger becomes cartoonish in the lack of any real resistance.

He became a group project: A lonely old man who had drunk away most of the people who mattered to him, and who alienated and scared the people who paid him to drive them home. It was hard, finally, not to turn to Jumpin John and ask "What part of your brain do you want to live in? What part of your heart? It's totally up to you."

I haven't spoken with Jumpin John this week, but I really think he got it. And I have a little prayer for him: to befriend the people he meets, and to become the sweetest, most popular driver in his little town.

I actually believe this could happen, but it's the same for any of us, we have to actively release, actively give up our cherished right to be mad.

Ecstatic Mystic

2007-09-19T20:30:00.004-04:00

The words may have little or nothing to do with the great hawk migration I watched on Sunday afternoon. It was whispered in my ear I think as I slept last night or the night before; by a friend maybe, it had the sweet urgency of a gift that needed unwrapping. With no idea of what it meant, I rose and googled the term.

Maybe it was the echo of Quaker meeting that Sunday morning. But the word "l'inespoir" was what floated on my breath in the silence, pressing for delivery. This is a French word used by Kashmiri Shivaite Tantra teacher Daniel Odier to describe the state of having no clingy expectations of life, enjoying rather an immediate and thorough experience of what actually exists as it happens.

Another woman stood, though, and said that "emptiness" was the word she was hearing. It seemed just right to me. In the wisdom of the Quaker unprogrammed service, if words need to be spoken, someone in the room will do it, even if you feel you're not the right person or aren't hearing the words clearly enough to share.

She explained that "emptiness" came to her as a direction - that one should empty her mind, so she could discover that the love she was looking for was already sitting in her heart. Another way of hearing "l'inespoir".

There is poetry in the expectant quiet of a Quaker service. And mysticism, I suppose.

But the term ecstatic mystic to describe non-dualism is new to me even though the traditions I read seem to fall in the category. Kabbalah, Tantra, Zen, Quakers are all non-dualist: we may have some nasty habits and look like hell, but we are all godstuff with great potential.

Which seems fundamental to appreciating the astonishing joy of our lives on this planet. "We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself." That's Carl Sagan, and non-dualism. Peter Matthiessen, the nature writer, weaves these things together brilliantly. I've spent the last two months in The Snow Leopard, which may be longer than his trek to the Crystal Mountain in Nepal actually took, although I don't know because I haven't finished, circling back as I am through the chapters.

What I can tell you is that the hawk migration was breathtaking. Few were visible to the naked eye, but with a decent pair of binoculars and a still hand, you could actually watch hundreds of hawks "kettling" up in the wisps of the clouds: lifting on thermals in soaring paths.

From the ground, you couldn't hear the joy of the hawks, but the joy of the hawk watchers sounded something like this: "two dozen shorties kettling in the big gray cloud 2 o'clock from the 2nd cuppola".

I don't suppose we have the technology yet to examine those whispers we hear, feel, know so clearly, that bear us to love.

Beautiful Greetings

2007-08-27T19:14:00.002-04:00

Na Mu Myo *Ho* Ren Ge Kyo

This is the proper greeting to a monk or nun of the Nipponzan-Myōhōji Buddhist order. Three times, with deep bows, hands in prayer in front of your heart, a warm smile.

If you have trouble with that for any reason, "hi - how are your feet? have you had lunch?" works just great.

It is a relatively small sect, started in 1947 as a response to the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. They do two things - they walk very, very long distances - across continents, it can take years - and they build peace pagodas, or stupas.

On September 1st, Jun-San Yasuda, the nun who started the Grafton Peace Pagoda, will begin a walk from Grafton, New York, to the site of the World Trade Center to promote awareness of the global climate change. She will arrive on September 11th.

I spent some time with Jun-San in the summer of 1993. With little else to do - no job, no debt, no larger intentions - I showed up with a puppy and a tent, and worked: lifted rocks, cleaned potatoes, chased my puppy out of the moat.

Inspiration for the entire summer came at a Finnish sauna party at the Maine home of a dear friend. When I expressed concern about the enormous amount of time in front of me and my questionable lack of direction, people volunteered their projects. Among them was Debbie Chess, a sculptor commissioned to create the scenes of Buddha's life for the peace pagoda.

There was no grand excitement in those weeks. From Jun-San I learned many things: not to worry when my puppy ran across a freshly raked Zen rock garden; the unspoken secret of truly exceptional - and organic - flower beds; the etiquette of the outdoor Japanese bath; and to love the grace in the lilting cadence of that greeting.

I learned my first vegetarian lesson - to eat whatever a loving person cooks for you - whether it is vegetarian or not. I was not a vegetarian at the time but was concerned that well-meaning Girl Scouts were dropping off pork buns for Jun-San.

I also learned that when the group ran out of money for the scaffolding under which the giant dome of the peace pagoda was to be built, a Japanese structural engineer miraculously showed up and taught volunteers how to cut saplings from the surrounding woods and tie them into a sturdy scaffolding. And so the giant dome continued upwards.

The peace pagoda was in every respect a wonder to me. At 5:00 am volunteers sleeping in the main house walked the grounds with drums, blessing the site, each morning newly scaring me and the puppy into an awed awakening. I'd peek out the side of the tent, praying they wouldn't come over, lift the flap and invite me to join them.

I watched people carve prayers from different languages and traditions into the cement bricks we poured, like teenagers carving their love lives into fresh sidewalks. And from this vagabond group of volunteers reflecting on the passion that had erected the giant stupa, I saw that Buddhists love miracles as much as Christians do.

Jun-San's walk is being supported by many spiritual organizations along the road from Grafton to Lower Manhattan. I heard of this particular walk from some Quakers in Westchester. She will sleep at night in homes as people offer and eat as loving people feed her.

It isn't the longest walk she has taken, but I have learned that her loving-kindness will touch people's hearts and hopefully illuminate the value and art of thoughtful, low-impact living.

Here is Jun-San's most recent schedule:

Millerton 9-2-07
Ten Mile River / Dover Plains 9-3-07
Pawling 9-4-07
Brewster 9-5-07
Yorktown 9-6-07
Peekskill 9-7-07
Ossining 9-8-07
Dobbs Ferry 9-9-07
Fort Lee 9-10-07

Fuzzy Bazillapedes

2007-08-24T23:48:00.010-04:00

I wake up from a nap on my meditation cushion in the late afternoon sun of an August day. Head on the cushion, blanket below my shoulders, feet stretched out towards my bed. Yesterday I met my ex-husband to put to sleep the puppy we raised, but today I am still. The sun filters through the screen door and boat masts clank brightly outside.

I know I was humming a mantra when I fell asleep, but on waking what I recall are the long feathery bugs with a bazillion legs I've seen skimming across the floor when I've turned on a light in the middle of the night. I guess they come out of gaps in the floor boards of this old house, or chinks in the fireplace, close to where my pillow is right now.

May he be safe. May he be happy. May he be peaceful.

I suppose because it's daylight, or because my sadness has given way to exhaustion, I'm relaxed as I wonder if these are centipedes or millipedes or something altogether different. Not long ago I gave to a hospital thrift store stacks of nature guides that belonged to my grandfather. And I wonder if I gave away his guide to insects. I know I held onto books of Eastern Birds, Shells of the Atlantic Coast, Trees, and Night Skies. They keep me good company in this garret studio on the little harbor. But I gave away many that pointed to other places and times.

My grandfather is buried in a quiet town in South Carolina, his body strangely confined in a steel vault that will separate him from the natural world indefinitely. He did not live that way, so it's nice to think that each book might provide a moment in someone's life where they step outside and look at a flower or some local creature in a new way. I remember Georgia O'Keeffe's observation "Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time - like to have a friend takes time."

On the first page of each book he wrote his name in elegant, long letters. I like to think of them being scattered like seeds around this little town as people pull them from the shelves and carry them home, tucked under an arm. I wish I'd added my own inscription to each of the books: "This was my grandfather's book. I hope you enjoy it." And maybe dated them. Or maybe added the dates of his life and how he grew up hunting and fishing in the woods of Appalachia, son of a town doctor who died much too early in a car accident. Or how frustrated he was by the hernia that kept him from serving in World War II. And how incomparably gentle he was.

It is said that the karmic balls the Buddha started rolling 2600 years ago are still rolling. So it was a small, happy measure to share these books that mingle my grandfather's karma with that of this little town.

I will probably not mention the fuzzy bazillapedes to my landlady, although she is fascinated by every aspect of this house. It was built by her grandmother, who kept her writing desk in the very spot my computer now sits.

Faith, Florence and Faith

2007-06-26T14:55:00.002-04:00

I suppose cranky doesn't fall within the realms of surprising beauty. Usually cranky is what gets between us and real beauty. I believed, correctly, I think, that a daylong retreat last Sunday with Sharon Salzberg would help shake out a recent crank.

"Faith is not a commodity we either have or don't have - it is an inner quality that unfolds as we learn to trust our own deepest experience."

That's from Sharon's beautiful book, Faith, and what she's pointing us to is self-love. If you don't know her, Sharon is a American Buddhist teacher. She teaches loving kindness and mindfulness meditations, and on recent Tuesday evenings you could find her at Tibet House in Manhattan teaching free workshops.

In the Buddhist tradition, if you dig deep enough inside, clearing out all the stuff that can swipe your attention, what you find is your best self, your Buddha Nature, and this, the deep self-love, is the place Sharon would like you to know and trust.

Here's one of her loving kindness meditations:

May I be safe.
May I be happy.
May I be peaceful.

This meditation repeats and circles, expanding slowly, and finally embracing every person and all living creatures:

May all creatures be safe.
May all creatures be happy.
May all creatures be peaceful.

This includes, although not specifically mentioned, the waiter who probably spit in your lunch when you changed your order, or the person staring harshly at their neighbor on the subway. Try it - it's really quite lovely.

And while Sharon suggests these words, she allows for variations, so on Sunday I found myself adding, May I be kind, May I be loved. And I generously asked for the same for all.

Perhaps I should not have been surprised, on a karmic level, at the people I ran into from my own circular yoga path at this retreat she was teaching with Krishna Das at the Prince George Ballroom in Manhattan.

(I suppose I should post a warning: that link on Krishna Das goes to a Caribbean-style Hare Krishna mantra. I worry every time I do something like that - I promise, I haven't joined a cult, but I'm not going to go into here why I find these mantras so beautiful. Ah - per lovely GD's comment, this is South African Township style Mahamantra.)

Greeting A-G's at Will Call was Florence, an Upper Westside writer I met in 2004 at the Indian ashram of Amma, the Hugging Saint. I would not have placed Florence, since the last time I saw her she was wearing a white cotton sari, but she kindly recognized me and said hello.

Florence now has the exquisitely beautiful name Sri Lalitambika. I don't know what it means, and I don't know if she's signing checks like that, but it was given to her by Amma and it seems to me a wonderful gift, and charge, to have your essence named by a living saint.

At the far end of the spectrum, in my mind, was a yoga teacher from a gym in Greenwich whom I had found disingenuous - no, actually I found her deeply irritating - because she could not successfully pronounce "Adho Mukha Svanasana", the Down Dog pose, even though she tried again and again as she led us through the vinyasa. I remember thinking, "Girlfriend, just leave it alone." I suppose it's no accident the loving kindness meditation begins at home.

And here she was, after 6 months of yoga practice, 1 month of teacher training, and a year now teaching in Greenwich, shaking her shimmy to Krishna Das, and meditating with Sharon. And probably blowing open her heart just the way I did, maybe better. And I wonder, what, exactly, does better mean?

Rachael, my Veg Baba and dear yoga buddy, was also there, although I didn't see her. And Faith Fennessey was there, the first of Rachael and my teachers at Jivamukti.

Turns out Faith was standing on line in front of the ballroom just ahead of me. I remember noticing her shoes, but standing directly between the two of us was a Tall Hamptons Blond on her cell phone trying to find her date. It seemed to me that this was not a bleached hair kind of event and I felt genuinely infringed upon, enough so that I couldn't even see my adored yoga teacher just ahead of her.

Instead my monkey brain raced along identifying the collagen lines in the woman's cheeks and lips, noticing the stunning blues she had layered and juxtaposed in her outfit, and feeling sorry for the squeaky appeal in her voice when she finally got her date on the phone.

And my reaction was emblematic, really - judgmental, insecure, unkind - exactly the stuff that gets between us and our Buddha Natures, according to Sharon and Krishna Das. Fortunately for me, I happened to sit down next to Faith in the ballroom and we had dinner together. I wish we'd seen Rachael to bring her along. And maybe if the blond woman hadn't actually found the only cordoned seating in the house, she might have been sitting between me and Faith, and I might have thought to invite her to dinner, too.

One Fine Day

2007-06-16T12:29:00.005-04:00

One fine day, I hope, the man I love will ask me out for a cup of tea. In the meantime, at the advice of friends, I am thinking about whether I can vibrate like that which I desire, to paraphrase Esther Hicks. The Universe, according to the Hicks, will give you what you want if you know how to ask for it and correct vibration is part of the key, as I understand it.

I'm wondering though, if that which I desire is a big old rugby player, just as an example, do I really want to imitate and emit the vibrations of a big old rugby player? And what if I should manage that with any amount of accuracy? What does that say about the big old rugby players I might attract? I'm 5'7" and barely 120 pounds. See the difficulty? I should probably actually read Esther Hicks' book before I try any of that, but last Saturday I thought I'd go to St. Patrick's Cathedral in NYC and spend some time in a beautiful and heavily vibrating Gothic Cathedral. I should mention that the man I love is Catholic.

Out in front of St. Pat's, it happened that the Hare Krishnas were having a parade down Fifth Avenue and I took some photos of their bright orange floats against the stately backdrop of the Cathedral. I was reminded of just how much fun it is to jump into the middle of a parade with a camera even though I don't have a press pass anymore. A New York City cop, when he's on parade duty, really doesn't care. It's exhilarating and you should try it.

Every time I walk into St. Patrick's, I regret that I haven't asked my sister, who married into the Catholic church, whether I'd offend anybody by being there, or whether I'm actually allowed to put any of the holy water on that knot in my forehead. I hate to mention it after the fact.

There was a wedding starting inside the vast space, lots of tourists, cameras, incense and candles. To the extent anyone was worshipping, it was in the Lady Chapel on the side and that's where I sat down. And so I listened and watched and thought about the Latin American man in the pew ahead of me, and the Polish being spoken behind me, and the flash of the cameras, and the lighting on the altar, and the random chords of the organ vibrating the pipes in anticipation of the bride. It was enough to sit very still and be thankful of the beauty and love that erected this sacred building and to notice the people it nurtures on a daily basis with its wide open doors, many of whom are virtually invisible to the larger society around them.

St. Patrick's Cathedral hosted many funerals and memorial services after September 11th since so many of the City's firemen and police officers are Catholic. It served so many and became the locus of a great deal of prayer and healing. It is one of my favorite places in the City and I always pass back through it's doors grateful but aware that I need to spend more time understanding the nuances of its faith and ritual.

My sister has already told me that as divorced non-Catholic, it is highly unlikely that I would ever be allowed to marry in the Catholic church. No matter. I am aware on this fine day that at this point it is also unlikely I will marry the man I love, because it actually looks doubtful that he'll get around to asking me out for tea. Uma Saraswati, a yoga teacher at Jivamukti, once pointed out that one of the nice things about yoga is that it teaches you that if you really love blue, but one day you get green instead, you don't let it ruin the entire day. Another view to consider when the Universe seems to be ignoring you.

With that in mind, I headed up to Central Park. I took a free fly-casting lesson offered by Trout Unlimited, sat and watched the herons in the pond next to Bethesda Fountain, and then cut across the park to Lincoln Center. When I asked a security guard at New York City Ballet whether the box office was open, he pulled out a free ticket he'd been given and handed it to me with a big smile. So I sat for the rest of the afternoon, and watched Wendy Whelan dance The Nightingale feeling that any day could really turn out to be a very fine day.

A Girl Thing

2007-06-15T19:11:00.002-04:00

Dolly has been cleaning my teeth for a dozen years now. Today she wanted some flight time on the office's new power bleach machine and decided I could not go home without the pearliest white teeth. John, my dentist, agreed I was a perfect candidate.

I asked the price, was offered a generous discount, and bit.

5 hours later, with my gums shedding skin like a scalded snake, I have to say, my teeth have never been more beautiful, and I had a great time. It was a girl thing. Dolly and Marilyn, the office manager, admired my basket-of-flowers handbag, talked about how I'd have to start drinking coffee and tea through a straw, and decided they'd take care of me on their lunch break while John was at the gym, since the schedule was otherwise full.

Marilyn turned on a gentle jazz station she thought I'd like, and while Dolly was setting up the alternating bleach and pain killer applications, protective waxes, gauze, mouth pieces and vaseline, we talked about dating again at "our" age, and why you should never trust a man who brings you flowers. Someone said something about sensitivities, but I was distracting myself with one of my own recent dating horror stories.

They brought out John's camera and took a "before" shot and matched my teeth against a dummy to show just how bad they were. I was a D-3. As Dolly covered every inch of my face with one form of protection or another she told me how her aunt in the Dominican Republic had gone on-line and found her cousin, who's way too skinny, a husband from Canada.

I asked whether they'd get out the deep childhood tetracycline stain I've had for 30 years, but Dolly told me firmly that she was not going to let me leave without perfect, I mean, perfectly white teeth. Dolly is an artist and while she was thoughtfully applying various goos to my teeth I wondered whether the pink lipstick she was wearing would look good on me if I had teeth as white as hers.

When she was done, she gave me a screwdriver and directed me to rap on one of the metal surfaces near me if I needed her to come back in while the bleaching machine was on. Sensitivity is the polite word for a freezer burn that starts to register in your teeth about five minutes into this procedure and spreads with each application up into the bones of your head and neck. I considered using the screwdriver, but decided I wasn't going to be a crybaby.

Dolly didn't take any of the gauze out of my mouth after the first application, or I probably would have mentioned that I was having a little burning sensation, but she was also busy discussing the progress with Marilyn and deciding which teeth needed more attention. Women have very high pain thresholds, I thought, and figured I'd survive.

In retrospect I realize that I might have whined a little had John been doing this, but he didn't get back from lunch until all the gauze was finally coming out of my mouth and Dolly and Marilyn were congratulating me on going from a D-3 to an A-2 on the color chart. Anybody knows that's a huge step in beauty progress.

And really, they look great. I'm hoping that by tomorrow morning the bleeding will have stopped and I'll still be motivated to do the first of the three daily applications John told me I'd need to get out the deepest of the stains. He hinted that a bunch of Advil would probably be a good idea. But it was the comradery that was so nice. It's the same in the beauty salon or manicure shop. Marilyn, by the way, thinks red lipstick would be a great look for me. I may not be smiling at anybody for a few days, but as soon as I can take the paper towel out of my mouth I'm going to try a few colors.

Curling Around om

2007-06-14T00:30:00.005-04:00

I use the word "curl" gingerly anymore, because I used it, poetically, I thought, in my very first love letter and that letter was unacknowledged by the receiver. So now it belongs in the realm of heartbreaks for me if I'm not careful. That probably seems overblown to anyone who talks about curly hair, or wisteria curling around a tree trunk, but I try to find other words.

I mention this only as an example of how a word can resonate strongly in a person, although maybe it's not a great example if you've never tried to talk about your path curling around another person's. Yogis, however, recognize this to positive effect: chanting the name of god to create the hum of god in one's body, for instance.

If the hum of the universe, or god, has a human name, according to the ancient yogis it is "Om". And they believed that in saying "Om" a person not only speaks the name of god, but also starts an incredibly healthy vibration of god internally up along the spinal cord to the brain. That's onomatopoeia to the ultimate degree, it seems to me, and highly useful.

So contemporary yogis were not surprised when the Hubble telescope discovered that the universe hums, and quantum physics told us that matter is made up of energy waves. Nor were they when scientific studies showed that humming to yourself for a few minutes raises your spirits.

It seems natural that saying the name of god to yourself for a few minutes should be helpful since it directs your thoughts to god. And yoga is meant to be a very grounding way to connect the physical, mental and spiritual components of our human existence into one god-loving frame of mind housed in a carefully maintained temple.

So just as the language we know as Italian was systematically built, or let's say codified, around the poetry of Dante, Sanskrit, the language of yoga, was built for prayer. There is another word that is said to be onomatopoeic for the concept of peace: Shanthi. That's actually what peace sounds like according to yogis. As an English-speaking people, we have some reason to care about Sanskrit since words like devotion and service derive from it.

As I understand it, many Sanskrit mantras, or prayers, are constructed from particular sound vibrations and connect you with the talents of different Hindu gods. "Aum Gam Ganapataye Namaha" is the mantra of Ganesha, the god of new beginnings. I am in no position to explain how the vibration of the seed word "Gam" is meant to move you past your mental obstacles to a clear new understanding of difficulties, but millions of people in India, of all religious persuasions, pray to Ganesha in this way. If it works, I'm all for it.

I find this quite fascinating but there are less esoteric ways of understanding prayer.

In his Foreword to the 2004 The Best American Spiritual Writing, Philip Zaleksi writes:

The following, from the London "Sunday Express" of January 25, 1959, exemplifies the saving force of words. It describes the actions of three soldiers, marooned on the Greenland ice cap during World War II, who sought solace through prayer:

They knelt in the sunshine, praying continually. There was only one prayer they all knew, and they chanted it together unceasingly, as children recite a memorized lesson, uncomprehendingly. "Our Father, which art in heaven . . ." they chanted right through to the end, and then straightway back to the beginning again, hundreds of times, as though rescue depended absolutely on their maintaining an unbroken stream of prayer.

This ceaseless devotion buoyed their spirits, steeled their wills, and seemed to have played a key role in their ability to survive until help arrived. Contrast this with the avalanche of violence, hatred, and terror that assaults us daily through television, movies, newspapers, magazines, and the bestseller lists. What effect does this poisonous lectionary have upon our faculties of perception and cognition and in turn upon our ability to meet the world with faith, hope and charity? Words have consequences; writing is a moral act.

And so perhaps I blog not only to heal with words, but also to heal all the good words that have misfallen and now hurt unintentionally.

At the Lotus Feet

2007-06-12T08:50:00.007-04:00

This should have been my first post to Om Trekker:

I offer my humble prostrations to the lotus feet of Sharon Gannon and David Life.

Americans don't say stuff like that, though, do we. We say "Thank You", of course, if we think of it, or if we're especially well-raised and it rolls off our tongues as easily as "Caddy!".

To say that we bow to the lotus feet of a teacher is to say that we offer our gratitude and love in the most physical, active, engaged form. And in America, apart from our Charitable Activities, what we do is sit in hard pews and say "Amen" when it's appropriate. I'm not judging, just noticing.

Sharon and David started the Jivamukti yoga school. If you've been to a yoga or meditation class in the last fifteen years, even if it was held in a gym in Des Moines, you can thank Sharon and David. I leave it entirely up to you whether to bow to their lotus feet.

"The hottest and best yoga in town is performed at the unapologetically spiritual Jivamukti "— claimed New York magazine, and The New York Times, among others, has agreed. At http://www.jivamuktiyoga.com/, click "Classes" and then click the little pink box up top that says "What is Jivamukti Yoga anyways?" and you'll find links to many articles about the impact they have had on American culture. Anybody famous who "does" yoga most likely started at Jivamukti: Christy Turlington, Sting, Madonna, Russell Simmons, etc.

But had you told the fat woman crying into her yoga mat in October 2001 that she would one day gratefully offer her full prostrations to the lotus feet of anything, or anybody, I can tell you she would have raised an eyebrow sarcastically, decided it was not done, and fled to Starbucks with her everlasting Christian soul intact.

The lotus flower, if you're wondering, represents the expansiveness of our souls which are always perfect even in the muddiness of our daily lives. And the feet of a guru are said to be holy.

Exactly what I was crying about, though, is still hard to say. I know Jivamukti was the first place I felt safe after my city was bombed the month before. I also know that I often wept in relief when the hardest parts of the class were done: I'm deeply competitive and pushed hard in what I called the "Kick Yer Ass Yoga Class." Yoga teachers will tell you that yoga is not a competitive sport, but whether it was my ego or asana practice that hadn't evolved, I don't know. Maybe it was just seeing myself in the mirror in stretchy tights.

Typically, my mat got drenched in the forward-bending poses. These happen after bunches of sun salutations where the "relaxation" of down dog made my jelly arms shake and buckle, and after the thigh-scorching warrior poses. The forward-bending poses are counterposes to the real demons: the heart-openers.

It's not easy to remember, while you're leaning over a computer at a job you hate, or clutching your purse on a subway, or hunching your shoulders as you step through the door into a marriage that is falling apart, that hour-by-hour, Prozacked or not, you are closing your spine and ribcage down hard around your heart.

So a posture that asks you to press your chest forward, and open your heart nakedly and lovingly, is scary. And usually, in the counterposes that followed a heart-opener and allowed me to bend towards my legs and hide my face, I wept.

Now, although I make a point of thanking a teacher every time I leave a class, I've actually only thanked Sharon once. She and David were teaching a string of five daily workshops last year, each alternating teaching and taking the workshop. In 5 years of practice at Jivamukti, this was the first time I'd been in her class. I'd always heard she was a "hard" teacher and my asana practice was still what I'd call experienced beginner, at best.

After her beautiful workshop, I thanked her and effusively told her that it was my first class with her in five years at Jivamukti. And when I told her why her face fell.

The next day David taught, and as he was asking the 80 people in the room to do handstands in the middle of their mats, which probably 3 people could actually do, he started talking about hard yoga teachers. And he talked about the difficult, really impossible asana he was asking everybody to try.

"When a yoga teacher asks you to do something hard in a yoga class, they are giving you the opportunity to approach something challenging in a controlled, loving environment: on a padded mat. And when you kick up into your handstand and start to fall and you're afraid, doesn't that feel a lot like the fear you have when you start a new relationship and it starts to tip into something more? So what a hard yoga teacher does is help you learn to recognize and approach fear."

Really. All that and a great workout!

Jivamukti took me much farther though, because as I started to physically open my heart and began to deal with the things I was afraid of, I decided to crack it wide open. Quakers, vegetarianism, India, divorce, and a move out of the City all followed in breath-taking succession. So did a 60-pound weight loss and quitting Prozac.

Sharon and David have recorded some of their classes and workshops. I think these are better than any of the studio recordings because the humor and love really come through. The last one on the list is a workshop of David's that I attended on November 3rd, 2006. I haven't heard the recording, but he began by asking students to define the emotions they experience in the different poses of the sun salutation and then he renamed the poses with these emotions. I offered him the word "gratitude".

These days, as I drive over to Stan's Yoga Shala to practice asanas in the manner taught by Sharon and David's guru, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, I try to say a little prayer of thanks to the teachers at Jivamukti and the beautiful path they blazed through American culture with their courageous lotus feet.

There's a Sanskrit prayer at the end of each Jivamukti class:

Lokaha Samasta Sukhino Bhavantu

which translates:

May all beings everywhere be happy and free.

Sharon and David have added:

And may I, in some small way, contribute to that happiness and freedom for all.

Susan Palwick's June 8 Carnival of Hope

2007-06-08T12:43:00.002-04:00

Here is Susan Palwick's Carnival of Hope. Susan has always astonished me with her energy. Have you read her blog yet? She takes her enviable package of talent and wisdom and speedy intelligence and shines it onto other people with love and care.

Susan, thanks for shining your love my direction. I am really looking forward to the wisdom you've gathered in the other blogs in Carnival of Hope!

The Color of My Prayer Rug

2007-06-07T14:57:00.005-04:00

I don't technically have a prayer rug, at least not like those unrolled and pointed towards Mecca five times each day. But in replacing the yoga mat that my landlady will not let me put in the washer even though it truly needs it, I tried to consider the impact color and pattern would have on the quality of my morning practice.

This is overkill in some circles, I realize, but when you unfurl your mat in a yoga class, it seems to me you're claiming your colors.

Obviously, I could use the mats offered by the studio, but you need to consider that unless the studio washes the mat after me, the person who used it before me probably sweated as profusely as I will and then rolled it up tight and put it in a dark place. I'm really not being a snob about this.

Another option is the standard sticky mat that outlet stores dump by the dozen. My last mat was one of these. They come in beautiful colors and speak of someone who has taken the first step in a yoga practice. They're not environmentally correct, but for low-cost entry, I'm all for it: the first thing is the practice, adjust your carbon footprint elsewhere. But you do need a way to wash it.

I know a couple of designers have come out with high ticket mats. I'm not going there: handbags are my fetish and that's plenty. Rubber mats are nice, cushiony, but I'm not wild about the latex smell. There are Yogatoes towels, hemp towels, etc. - all of which I stepped over because what I really wanted was a Mysore rug.

The colorful, cotton, woven rugs are something I've seen in classes over the years used by people who have astonishing Ashtanga practices. The thing is, when someone goes and stays the 0ne-month minimum (three-months preferred) with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois in Mysore, India, chances are they will come home with a Mysore rug and it speaks to me of achievement and direction.

And while I have travelled to India, I did not go to Mysore, so I don't feel I've earned the rug. But I really wanted one because I love them, and because I think I can get one past the washing machine patrol downstairs. I'd also like to think that one day I will study in Mysore.

I went into NYC to buy my rug because not every yoga school carries them and because I really did not have time to wait for mail order - the stinky mat situation was dire. The color was the thing. And I walked between Jivamukti on Broadway and 14th Street, East West Book Store at Fifth and 14th, and Integral Yoga at 13th across 7th Avenue looking for exactly the right vibe.

The folks at Yogatoes have a chart marking the colors of the different chakras and the deep rose color I love so much is said to be very grounding. It actually felt kind of loud for a yoga mat and I wasn't sure I wanted to draw attention to a bright beautiful Mysore rug that I did not earn.

What I brought home instead felt humble and nurturing. It is a warm brown like the Connecticut soil and as soft as a puppy's ear. It has pretty sky-blue stripes on each end. This morning I rolled it out for the first time, and pointed it towards the waterfall. And I was really OK knowing that my mat will not speak of my achievement, but only my direction. As Sri K. Pattabhi Jois says "Practice, practice, practice and all is coming."

Wind Horse and Cell Phones

2007-06-06T10:09:00.005-04:00

Let's say for a moment that Tibetan Buddhists are correct and that divine energy can lift a prayer written on a piece of fabric and blow it into the wind for the benefit of all of mankind. The more the wind blows, the wider the healing. Technologically, it seems to me, on a spinning planet, the wind becomes a pretty clever delivery system for an inspired task. The scientists out there can just sit back down.

The Wind Horse is the specific divinity in the Tibetan tradition but the prayers are universal: peace, prosperity, health, for everybody, even people who don't believe in the Wind Horse. Anyone touched by the wind, and that really would be everybody.

This is prayer at the moment of incarnation, pointing out towards the infinite and I just love the idea. Really so much more thoughtful than Western flags which advertise particular acts of imperialism, are bracketed by historical wars, and are as exclusionary as passports.

Here's an experiment: Close your eyes for a moment and imagine that the little breeze blowing across your cheeks holds a sweet prayer for you from someone you've never met. Lift your head and smile, and inhale that breeze. Really. Receive the gift and let it swirl around your loving heart. As you exhale it, add your own little prayer and let it lift back out to the Wind Horse for the next person.

The Rubin Museum, which is dedicated to the art of the Himalayas, has a little side exhibit where visitors are invited to write their definitions of peace on blocks of paper of traditional blue, white, red, green and yellow, and then hang them with those of other visitors. This is lovely because it engages each of us in sharing the prayers we hold for each other. Regrettably, I did not stop to see what people had written or share a prayer of peace myself. Nice, right? I was actually trying to find someone when I walked by and never got back to it.

It seemed to me recently, though, that if the Wind Horse is really doing such a thing, imagine if we could also further bounce those prayers off satellites and move them around the planet at light speed to many places at once: beneficent text messaging as prayer practice.

I tried this once, but my carrier was not enthused and only a few people received my text message, or got it. What I sent was a quick explanation, and what seemed the most appropriate prayer to begin my practice: Om Mani Padme Hum. This mantra (prayer) is taught by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and is about compassion. The Dalai Lama is the spiritual and exiled political leader of Tibet and is said to be the incarnation of Avalokiteshwara, the buddha of infinite compassion.

I don't know the names of the satellites I was trying to use, or if they have names as wide and beautiful as Wind Horse, but maybe someone could think about that. One person called me in response and when I explained what I was aiming at, suggested that standard computer email might work better, but somehow that feels like chain mail and just not the same.

I wonder, would we feel differently about people using their cell phones around us if we knew they were whispering prayers up into the atmosphere? Om Mani Padme Hum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_prayer_flag

On Creation

2007-06-03T10:58:00.001-04:00

In the stillest moments of meditation, when my brain finally releases into the generous hush that is neither sleep nor prayer, I find I am starting to Blog. This is a concern.

Maybe it's a Quaker thing, but I think there's a difference between my inner circuitry of sensual perception that helps me feel the elements of a poem, for instance, and the larger Creative impulse. The second would be something beyond my own monkey brain who might actually one day have something important to say me if I'd just sit still enough for it, so this is no small matter.

Of course, whether she/he intends me to write about it is something else. And as a dilettante blogging on spiritual things, it's just so easy to say "Oh ho! Now that's nice! I better find a pen!" and to begin taking notes in the quiet, rather than allowing the deep listening that is so nurturing, even if nothing is Heard. And I try to remember a Chinese proverb shared by a friend at work: "Time spent sharpening the knife is never wasted."

I've consulted some experts on this.

Julia Cameron, in her introduction to her classic guide on creativity, The Artist's Way; A Spiritual Path To Higher Creativity, introduces the concept of God as "good orderly direction or flow". For her there's only one creative element.

What we are talking about is a creative energy. God is useful shorthand for many of us, but so is Goddess, Mind, Universe, Source, and Higher Power. . . . The point is not what you name it. The point is that you try using it. For many of us, thinking of it as a form of spiritual electricity has been a very useful jumping-off place.

She quotes William Blake:

"I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit accomplishes all through me."

It seems to me William Blake reached a rare place in his cosmos where he could do three things at the same time: sense his own creativity, hear The Creative, and compose, which is why he's William Blake.

So maybe I am nearing a point where I want to leg up into one of these rare seats, but am certainly nowhere near encompassing all three at once. I think I'd like to be and that's where I get into trouble.

Right now the plan is to just sit in whatever seat I can get into that will stay still for me and see what happens. A little less caffeine would probably help.

A Book of Days

2007-06-02T15:11:00.004-04:00

It's a Dixieland laundry day in this Book of Days.

The ferryboat out to one of the town's island beaches started running today. To celebrate, they've hired a charming Dixieland Band to play on the ferry. So back and forth, I hear the music gain as it nears and lessen as it heads off into the Sound.

I'm not a fan of Dixieland music per se, but it has added a layer of happy punctuation on the day reminding me to look outside of my window and notice the folks on the ferry. It's my day for laundry; their day for the ferry; someone else's day for something else.

Maybe they are in another city. London has been on my mind. So maybe they are in London and today in London, on their little street corner, something equally sweet is happening. Maybe there's a festival. I could check the Internet, but won't. It's enough to wonder.

It occurred to me while I lived in New York City, a home to people from all over the world, that I needed to celebrate a wider range of holidays than those offered by the standard U.S. banking and stock exchange calendars.

For instance, the serendipitous, swirling flutter of cherry blossoms in Kyoto causes a holiday where people jump up from their desks and picnic under the trees. Could midtown Manhattan handle such a holiday? Could Central Park possibly hold all of the revellers?

Or the holidays of the Indian calendar. There are the birthdays of the gods and seasonal observances and cultural landmarks.

I enjoy thinking, for all the anger and war happening right now, that somewhere on the planet, people are gathering to celebrate some aspect of being alive. A Book of Days, as I would write it, would include them all.

Really, Not a Potty Matter

2007-06-02T00:18:00.005-04:00

Tonight, I'm embarrassed to say, it was the paper toilet seat covers in the Rubin Museum which connected me most viscerally to the nuns from Nepal chanting hymns upstairs. This is the point at which my mother would advise me to stop and begin again. Feel forewarned.

The nuns are travelling in the US to share one of the Tantric traditions of Tibetan Buddhism called Chöd. They are performing ritual dances and chants and playing the damaru drums associated with the Hindu god, Shiva. It is the first time these practices have been performed outside of the Nagi Gompa Nunnery in Nepal.

Let me say right here to American readers that yes, I said Tantric, but no, these are not sexual practices, so please grow up.

According to the program: "Utilizing the special meditation techniques, the practitioner cuts through his or her personal demons - neurotic, self-cherishing and the accompanying painful negative emotions." I can tell you, without having first read the program since we got there after the lights were down, that the chants immediately hit the spot in my forehead just about where my eyebrows are most deeply knitted together, and it was with great effort and discomfort that I held on to my cherished, ego-driven thoughts through the rest of the program. So maybe this is why I found it so much easier to think about toilet seat covers.

Many meditation practices like these are aimed at the egotistical "I want what I want, when I want it" that brings us misery when things don't happen as planned. Without telling you specifically what has me tied up in knots, or who, I can say that the chants seemed pretty well designed and knew exactly where in my brain these things reside. And so I retreat to a much less personal topic.

It is my long-ingrained habit to notice public restrooms of any convenience in Manhattan. Most New Yorkers can direct you to McDonalds, Starbucks, train terminals, some rest stations in the larger parks. But I can tell you that the bellhops in front of the Waldorf Astoria on Park Avenue will gladly point you through the lobby to the lovely marble tiled powder rooms. If you try this, please have on clean clothes and smile when you ask.

So while I was adding the Rubin Museum restrooms to the mental list, with an asterisk for toilet seat covers, I remembered the nuns upstairs, and the public toilets I found in India. Maybe I'm treading on your own tender spots by describing the relative convenience of Western toilets, but if you've spent time on a dusty bus through local villages in India, or many, many other places, I'll bet, it's a really nice thing to find even a fairly comfortable and private, uh, privy.

In India they generally involve a porcelain basin sunk into the ground over which one hovers, or squats as best as one's Achilles Tendons will allow (a yoga practice comes in handy here). There's always a cold water faucet on the left, a bucket for rinsing the larger surfaces, and a 1/2 liter measuring cup for rinsing the smaller ones. I'm guessing Nepal is not too different. I tell you this only as background.

It was the fine, crinkliness of the paper covers that set me wondering what the nuns thought when they saw them. Someone asked the nuns what their meals are like at the nunnery and one nun, a fugitive from China who spoke English best, told sweetly about simple meals of rice and barley and vegetables. And I thought of the cost of producing such a luxury as toilet seat covers. And just how damn fancy we are. And just how much we can want what we want when we want it.

But back to the chanting. Was it the plainness of their voices? The harmonic vibration of the sound? Or was it their demeanor, which spoke of slight awkwardness in sharing, in front of an auditorium full of people, their prayer practice? Maybe it was my understanding that as nuns, they do not carry with them the intense desire for something elusive that can get lodged between the eyebrows. At any rate, these gentle sounds tugged at the knotted skin on my forehead, and I resented it.

If I were braver, perhaps I would attend the workshops they are offering this weekend because really, it wouldn't be a bad thing. I decided it was safer to just buy the book.

The Love Wars

2007-05-28T19:18:00.001-04:00

The little harbor has been something of a Love War Zone this weekend.

A fraternity of neighbors are nearly five hours into the third day of Bean Bag Toss Torture.

Initially a lovely backyard family game, the clatter of bean bags on plywood, and roars of "Whoa!", has rarely quit at all this beautiful weekend.

On earlier weekends, the soundtrack to this game was a pretty good party mix. This weekend it has crystalized into only one song, played a couple of times each day: "Love is My Religion".

And while I'm finding Other Things To Do and Other Things To Listen To, I am watching this irritate my Downstairs Neighbors significantly, since they are much fussier than me.

It seems maybe the bean bag toss has turned into something of a Discussion Among Neighbors. There were loud snippets of "The Landlord Said..." floating along the lawns and water today and I'm seeing sheepish looks in the mornings as the party messes are cleaned up.

Today, Downstairs is having a soiree of their own, and they are loudly playing their own love music - Frank Sinatra.

For a "weighty" Quaker, this might become a spiritual exercise in peace-making. But since there's actually no such thing as "friendly fire" in a war zone, even a Love War Zone among respectable neighbors, I'm reluctant to enter the discussion.

I've resisted the urge to visit the Boys with a Parchese set, for instance, or Scrabble, or even badmitton. Or perhaps a game requiring skill. Nor have I brought over a 6-pack of good beer and asked if I could play too.

I haven't hired someone to steal the bean bag game, called my landlord, called their landlord, or started a game by myself at 5:30 am when I get up for my Ashtanga class, since I am taking the High Road.

The politics that rule this roost will to have to sort it out and hopefully it won't take all summer. I may pray for rain.

Heaven with Alik

2007-05-24T20:32:00.001-04:00

Another train ride to Manhattan wearing the interview suit and heels. Into my bag, next to resumes, I have placed a little digital camera because New York is always surprising. But it's on the Greenwich platform that I receive grace.

A grandmother and granddaughter are sitting together on the platform, not on a bench, but down on the cement platform itself, under the big sign that says "Greenwich." The little girl is sitting between her grandmother's legs, wearing her large sunglasses, and holding an enormous book that spans both of their laps.

And they are reading together and tooting - I mean, pulling their hands like a train engineer pulls a train horn and saying "Toot! Toot! Toot!"

The platform is beginning to collect commuters, and these two travellers are having an exceptional time waiting for the train and tooting. I can't resist them.

I walk over, apologize for interrupting and ask the grandmother if I can take a picture and email her a copy. They are so deep in play that it takes a minute for them to notice me, but she smiles broadly and agrees, and her granddaughter leans back into her breast, lowers the glasses on her nose and tips her head for the camera.

For her 4th birthday, I learn in an email the next day, Alik has chosen a train trip from Larchmont to Greenwich, and lunch with her grandmother, Mary. They would have also gone to the Bruce Museum but it was closed, so they went to Diane's Bookstore, "and had a grand time."

I also learn that two months earlier Mary lost her husband of 43 years. They were both college professors in Duluth, MN. And while Mary is thanking me for being a "grandmother's good fairy" for taking their picture and sending her a copy, I am grateful to them for the unabandoned joy they shared with each other in the presence of strangers. She tells me she will tell the story for many years to come.

My friend Gerry sent me the end of the hell/heaven story.

The warrior, overcome with anger and hate at the monk, drew his sword and prepared to cut his head off right there and then. As the sword swung, the monk said "That is hell."

The warrior hearing this, stopped and dropped the sword at once. Overwhelmed, he began to cry tears of gratitude for his newly melted heart. The monk then said "and that... is heaven."

And thanks to Mary and Alik, I have gone to my interview with a grateful, wide open heart. A little piece of heaven.

Hell, and Heaven?

2007-05-20T15:34:00.004-04:00

Thank you Anonymous commenter [see below]. In your beautiful version of this story, the warrior riles himself with no help at all from the monk. That seems exactly right, doesn't it? -JB

I'm looking for the ending to a Buddhist story I once heard in a yoga class. I should have heard the ending but maybe there was a cramp in my leg, or the teacher spoke softly. However it happened, I missed it.

Here's the beginning.

A very rich, successful samurai warrior has conquered all of the neighboring kingdoms but finds himself deeply unfulfilled and unhappy. He decides to go to a mountaintop to ask a wise monk about the nature of heaven and hell.

He takes along an impressive entourage of his family and soldiers and advisors. After a long and arduous journey up the mountain, the warrior locates the monk and humbly asks him to please tell him the nature of heaven and hell. He explains that he has been successful in all of his worldly pursuits but is still very unhappy.

The monk ignores him, and walks away, but the warrior, not used to be being ignored or embarrassed in front of people, runs after the monk asking him again. The monk continues to walk, leaving behind the warrior, who is growing more angry by the minute.

Finally the warrior grabs the monk and spins him around and shouts his question: "I have come a very long way and demand an answer!"

The monk looks at him and says loudly "You overblown, ugly, arrogant pile of crap! What makes you think I would share the secrets of heaven and hell with such a stupid and disgusting man." And the monk continues like this while the warrior turns red in the face and begins to draw his sword.

Just as the warrior is about to cut the monk's head off, the monk says "Look how angry you are, my friend. That is the nature of hell."

Sadly, I missed the definition of heaven.

I'll suggest that heaven is to ignore the negative words that someone says to us, or that we say to ourselves, and to live in the moment. Buddhism and yoga are always reminding us that most of our internal lives are self-constructed and have little to do with what is actually going on around us at each moment in time.

But I'm sure the ending is more elegant than that. I will find out.

Muddy River and Child

2007-05-18T09:22:00.002-04:00

Searching for some beauty yesterday, I landed on Liberty Street in Manhattan, a block south of a lively Happy Hour, a block west of the hole that is the World Trade Center, and a block east of a children's playground next to a swollen, muddy Hudson River. As I arrived, the police were starting full-on hunt for a child who may have been thrown into the river strapped to his stroller.

There was a police helicopter loud and beating the water just off the Esplanade where divers were suiting up. A stretcher had been pulled close to the railing, and the police were starting to manage the deepening crowd of joggers and dogs and children from the playground. They cordoned off a staging area for emergency workers who were still arriving.

As I watched the water and the stretcher and the faces of the people around me, a boy with red hair and freckles ran up to a young cop and asked him what was going on. "Oh nothing," he said. "They're shooting a movie." And the boy ran back to his family, smiling. I am sure he went home and told his friends about the very cool movie that was made in their neighborhood tonight.

The cop turned and said "No way I'm going to tell him." But he told the man next to me. And we all looked back at the stretcher and the divers and the awful water, muddy from storms the night before.

I remembered that cops and reporters are exposed to things like this all the time. And as I stood watching the emergency workers, I could see horror flicker into the faces of the younger ones, while the older ones seemed more focused and quiet. And I wondered how many were stationed in the area back in 2001.

I went into the City specifically looking for the Camino de Paz labyrinth at the foot of West Street in Battery Park where Quakers meet on Thursday nights in warm weather. Sally has spoken lovingly of it and whenever she does, I'm sure I know exactly where she means, but each time I've tried to attend, I've gotten lost and frustrated. Tonight I ended up at a formal boxwood garden next to Liberty Street which a cop assured me was the labyrinth I was looking for.

Unable to be still, I walked the scattered edge of the crowd, looking for my Quakers, winding past dog leashes and many children in many strollers, praying someone would find that one stroller, and one mother's child, and then everyone could go home, hug their families and share a warm meal. And I wondered if people know just how much another person may wish for a child in their lives and how deeply blessed they are if they have one.

As I started to leave, a man walked up to me with a baby in a papoose on his chest; his wife stepping to my side.

He leaned in to ask me over the roar of the helicopter "Maybe a lot of people have asked you, but do you know what happened?" His baby's downy face was close to mine, smiling, and I was breathless.

And I wept for a second, caught my voice and tears, and told him, repulsed at the words, and grateful his baby was too young to understand.

And I turned again, and starting walking back south to the subway at Bowling Green, unwilling to try to cross the World Trade Center site for a closer subway uptown.

On the train out of Grand Central, I called my dear friend, Liz. She asked me if I had read the Harry Potter books and explained that down at Liberty Street tonight we were in the presence of a Dementor - an entity that completely sucks the happiness out of a place. She agreed I probably needed some prayer and a hot bath. And then she caught me up on the lives of her husband and teenage children.

Later that night I called the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner of Public Information and explained that I'm not with the media anymore, but know them because I once published a newspaper in Northern Manhattan. I know they are the only source of breaking police news in the City.

The detective told me that the reports are unconfirmed about whether a child was in the stroller or not. One witness said the stroller was open; another said the stroller was closed. The search had been called off for the evening but would resume in the morning.

So I have been sitting on this post, wondering whether I further the Dementor by telling the story, as it can now suck a little happiness out of anyone who reads it. Ben Franklin advocated a free press, but warned that a publisher has a responsibility for the welfare of his readers.

On the other hand, it is good to know that children may need extra care because people can do evil things. And maybe mothers know that is where prayer and meditation come in - to still the Dementor so that we can wisely see how to help.

Grass in my Neighbor's Toes

2007-05-17T06:12:00.001-04:00

Last evening was stormy and neighbors around the harbor tucked themselves away. Sunday was glorious, though, and I sat by the water with a book.

My elderly neighbor joined me, pulling a hat down to the top of her sunglasses, and drawing up a lounger. She smiled, commented on the evening and the water and opened her book.

I don't know my neighbor's name, although I'm sure I've heard it. In saying that I'm aware of the differences between writing a newspaper and a blog. Here, I don't need to know her name - she is very warm, has a Swiss accent and lived in Tanzania for her husband's work in the 1970's.

Like this we sat together and read.

It has been a very long time since I've sat in a back yard and read with a neighbor. In New York City, there are too many people going too many directions, so if you manage to sit still for a moment in some quiet beautiful place, chances are the person nearest is not sitting still at all, but has just flown by on some errand.

Or maybe it's a park bench and you sit next to someone, but never speak to them. Or if you speak to them, or even chat for a moment, chances are you'll never see them again. Cities have their downsides.

But there's my neighbor with her blue crush hat and big glasses. She is reading a library book about bipolar children. I think this could have something to do with a grandchild, or maybe another neighbor's child, since she does not have young children that I know of. But I do not ask. I am reading a dialogue between the Dalai Lama and western scientists about the nature of emotions.

Mostly I'm not reading, though. Mostly I'm watching some swallows dive over the juniper tree above me and I'm watching the piece of flowery grass stuck in my neighbor's toes. She has walked barefoot through the yard to the lounger on the water's edge.

By the time my grandmother was this woman's age, her mind had been emptied by Alzheimer's. It was a very scary place for her. But I remember that it brought her no end of happiness to receive a bouquet of flowers since every time she saw the flowers, they were new to her and she would ask who had sent them. If you made sure not tell her how many times she had already asked, she was delighted and really grateful all over again.

Unlike my grandmother, this woman is enjoying her advanced years fully aware, but hasn't noticed the grass in her toes. And I sit wondering if there is grass in my toes, and glance down, hoping there is. I am looking forward to the summer.

Stan's Ashtanga Yoga Shala

2007-05-14T10:20:00.001-04:00

To speak of the quiet breath practice of Ashtanga Yoga feels almost to disrupt it: a wind across the surface of still water. But why have words at all if not to share something inexplicably lovely?

Greenwich Yoga is perched over the dam of a refurbished old mill. Early this morning, before the hedge fund capital of the world springs awake, the only sounds I hear are the hum of my breath, a quiet roar of water coming over the dam, and my inelegant jump-backs to chaturanga dandasana.

Stan Woodman has just started offering Ashtanga as Sri K. Pattabhi Jois teaches it in Mysore, India. It is a rare opportunity. Last week I enrolled, and today I was the only student in the room.

Unlike so many of the wonderful yoga styles available, in Ashtanga there is no music to engage the mind, or to coax one through a particularly difficult asana sequence. There is growth through the Primary Series as one gets stronger and more flexible, but as the sequence is the same every morning, there is no drama of "What cool thing is next?" Just quiet movement, quiet breath, and a warm room.

Stan stood to the side, reminded me of the standing sequence he began teaching me last week, helped me align my slight scoliosis a few times, and told me that eventually my toes will actually glide back to chaturanga. He also agreed, when I asked, that I had miscounted my breaths.

I found myself miscounting when I remembered that my teacher was watching or when I worried whether I had counted correctly. My earliest challenge then is to drop the worry, drop the ego when I forget the sequence, and to stay present in the breath.

Mitchel Bleier is teaching Anusara yoga at Saraswati's Yoga Joint in Norwalk. He talked about the breath in a class recently. He noted that we cannot, of our own volition, simply stop breathing. It is as though the universe is breathing us, and not, in fact, the other way around. He said that we might even understand that the universe has actually chosen us to breathe into.

I love teachers like Mitchel. They help me understand the challenging Eastern ideas in yoga. But how divine to walk up to the waterfall and let it all drop away to a sea of quiet breathing.

Blessings of the Milk Baba

2007-05-13T22:12:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I was blessed by the Milk Baba.

All of us visiting the Greenwich Yoga studio had the option of being blessed by this little Hindu holy man who sits under what is said to be more than six feet of dreadlocks wrapped around his head - 52 years of hair.

In the previous hour, I'd understood little of what he said. I heard him mention Krishna and Buddha and Shiva, but his English was minimal and my Sanskrit worse. I'm pretty sure he said nothing about Jesus.

Which raised the Christian question for me - Can he be holy? Is he really in a position to bless me when he's clearly idolatrous?

I liked his smile, though, which lit whenever the yoga students sitting upright on bolsters around the room in front of him forgot to chime in with his call and response singing. I also liked his words on inner light and the love that people can share with each other, even when they're from Nepal and claim to find divine insight by drinking only milk for 17 years.

By living on only 2 litres of milk a day, I gathered, he was able to clear his mind of craving, first the craving of food, then the craving of other bodily desires, and then the larger cravings of his ego. This brought him intense happiness. And he is travelling the U.S. to share the bliss of simplicity.

So I left the studio wearing the string of red and yellow that he tied around my wrist. They are the colors he wore on his forehead to signify that he had said his morning prayers. I know the string is meant to stay on until it has absorbed as much of my bad karma, or sins, as it can bear, and then it will drop away. It was the perfect accessory to my outfit: a long pink shirt-dress I bought in India a few years ago, tan A&F capris, and silver ColeHaan flip-flops.

Driving home from the Milk Baba, smelling the rose oil he rubbed on my hand, I could also smell the lilacs in season in Greenwich. The Avenue, our Rodeo Drive of the East, was packed with shoppers. And despite the fumes rising from the cars ahead of me, I thought "Why go see the Milk Baba for blessings of happiness when Greenwich is plenty lovely? Kate Spade has great bags; and the woman who just walked by looked like a movie star."

And I rued the fact that I would probably need to make a second trip out to the grocery store as I hated to go in wearing the long shirt-dress.

So today, in Quaker Meeting, when a man stood and spoke of religious fanaticism and intolerance as the greatest root of war, what he said rang inside me for a few minutes.

I believe that to be tolerant, every person has to explore their own spiritual edges - where does my soul end and yours begin? Is holiness so deeply universal that we might each understand it even if you pray to Shiva and I pray to Christ?

I stood and shared the blessing I received from the Milk Baba and my thoughts on why he might actually be holy. Others also stood and spoke of their own exploration of other religious traditions and what they had learned and how they had grown. And this, as part of the Quaker process, is to describe and define how we bring the idea of peace into the world. For my part, it meant accepting and cherishing a little piece of love and blessing from the Milk Baba.

These seemed like fair questions and thoughts in the context of the Iraq War, where the US is fighting to claim oil that does not belong to it, and where the issues of religious intolerance are large.

The last person to speak was a plain-clothed, plain-spoken woman sitting next to me. She shared that she sincerely hoped people understood that the earth is plentiful and there is plenty to go around, that we need not be scared. That was all.

She didn't look at my shiny ColeHaans, or mention consumerism by name, but the greed of some in the face of the true need of others is the more material cause of our current war and it will be an even larger problem as the planet's population grows.

So it's her and the Milk Baba. And me and my karmic string that I'm not sure is going to match my interview suits this week.

Cob Houses

2007-05-12T19:00:00.008-04:00

"How can we separate your hands and hearts from ours in this clay of earth?"

-- Dr. Ramu Manivannan, Director, Buddha Smiles
Kurumbupallayam, Tamil Nadu, India, January 2004

Cob houses, it may interest you to know, are not made of corn cobs.

In the brick-burning village of Kurumbupallayam, Dr. Ramu Manivannan recently bought several large cow fields where he is building a school for poor and orphaned children. Kurumbupallayam is the village next to the ancestral home of his mother and a place where Mani, as Dr. Manivannan is known, has deep roots.

He prefers not to use the bricks of the local village, though, since mud, once it has been fired, does not peacefully release back to the earth. Like the International-style cement block houses going up as India prospers, brick becomes landfill material in a country with no landfills once its need has expired and the materials have failed. And even cement cannot indefinitely rebuff the monsoon that sweeps over the Eastern Ghats in June, returning in October along the same path. In fact, cement buildings in South India are most notable for their black moldy stains and walls puckered with humidity.

Cob, the material Mani has chosen for his school, has no pretensions of being as independent, as indifferent, as brick or cement. Cob is clay, sand, straw and water, mixed with bare feet on tarps or in pits, and pressed into the shape of walls. Cob walls require a good foundation, solid roof, and regular application of mud, lime or cow dung plaster. With care, a cob building can last hundreds of years.

Gandhi's ideas on care, trusteeship, and education are deeply interesting to Mani.

Mani's first cob schoolroom went up in January 2004 as part of a natural building workshop organized by Kleiwerks, Cob Works, and the natural building team from Buddhist monk Sulak Sivaraksa's ashram in Thailand. 150 banana trees were planted to filter graywater, and organic farming is envisioned as an integral part of the education of orphans and children whose parents are too poor to allow them to go to school. With Gandhian intent, just as these children will learn to read in the hours after their workday, they will continue to learn and practice the trades and crafts of their villages.

Like most of the 15 or so people who crawled across the planet to build a school in cob, and who returned home with clothing forever red-stained with the clay of South India, I discovered Mani's workshop on the World Wide Web at http://www.kleiwerks.com/.

Mani doesn't have a website, yet. But I am interested that he have one soon and I've begun to wonder, WWGD [What Would Gandhi Do] with this clay earth finely draped with the conduit for shared human intention?