Gratitude to all my yoga and T'ai chi chih teachers/Coronaville/Day 10

My yoga and t'ai chi chih studio

These two regular practices have been part of my life for some time. This routine has never been more important to me. What's getting you through?

New pandemic paranoia: Panting joggers, runners, and bicyclists who speed by me with huffing and puffing (droplets?) as they pass. Walkers seem to be much more respectful of the 6-feet rule. I wish we could all have masks. I'm working on a less-traveled route.

New favorite pandemic amusement: Kitchen island ping-pong. Unfortunately, the net and the paddles are nowhere to be found. Yesterday a friend and I tried wooden spoons as paddles, then rubber spatulas. Ultimately we settled on the metal pancake-flipping type spatulas. Without a net. The laughing was an immune booster for sure.

I counted steps on the most circuitous route possible through my condo, including bathrooms and closets. 300-- If I go around the dining room table and the kitchen island four times. How many times a day can I do that? How many steps can you walk through your space?

I am a student of the book arts, and yesterday I worked on my first small drum-leaf bound book with content. Here are the first three pages. If I never get my full-length memoir out into the world, there's this.

And I also worked on this zine about seasonal depression. It kinda translates to a pandemic lockdown, I think. It's hard to read because of the way it needs to be laid out, but you get the idea. All the marbled paper snips were marbled by me. It's pasted up the old-fashioned way rather than designed on a computer. Because paper.

Start on the bottom left, then move to the bottom right and work your way up and around.

Orange really is the most amazing color. What's your happy color?

Gratitude once again to all health care workers, and to the groceries clerks, delivery people,   

law enforcement personnel, and everyone who is working. 

xo

What the Yoga Teacher Said

A positively beautiful sunset from a couple of nights ago

I have four different yoga teachers. They say many fine and memorable things.

Thursday's teacher always ends her class with a quote.

I've been working on forming new positive habits, so I appreciated today's quote very much.

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

What the Yoga Teacher Said, and How the Ocean Is

gratuitous photo of a heron

When you engage your strength on your mat during practice, it helps you be strong when you step off your mat. When you breathe deeply on your mat, you might remember to take a deep breath later in your day when you really need it.

Something like that, anyway. Pretty close. Sometimes I have the feeling that all we can do is paraphrase one another--even if we say the exact words. But no doubt about it, yoga has made me stronger.

And the ocean is the ocean is the ocean. And after five years of living one mile from its shore, I run (not literally) to it to see what it looks like today.

Sometimes it's nice to look the other way.

Beach etch-a-sketch? At first I saw only the straight lines. Then a dog or maybe a horse.

Yoga, T'ai Chi Chih, the Tibetan Five (which is Yoga) and Just Hoping for Good Luck

My mom aged pretty damn gracefully on her cigarettes and gin. She was a fun to be with, had lots of energy as a grandma, and powered forward after a traumatic lung surgery in 1970-something to live a regular hard working life. Her second lung surgery in 2009 didn't go nearly as well. She finally quit smoking a year or so after she moved in with me in 2012 at the insistence of her vascular surgeon, but even so, it was a slippery slope the last couple of years.

My daughter C., thinks our family might carry the Ozzy Osborne gene. I've always enjoyed drinking (nowadays I drink a lot less) and only twice in my life have I every been sick or even the least bit hung over from partying. But I feel the need for a different approach as I prepare to get on Medicare at the end of this year. After my mysterious illness a year ago I got a bit more serious about my T'ai Chi Chih practice, added more yoga to my week, and at the end of November I began practicing the Tibetan Five at home. The popular lore surrounding the Five makes some big claims about the fountain of youth and while I don't expect to wake some morning with black hair and a 125 lb. physique, I do feel stronger and think that the opening of the upper body and the strengthening of it is a definitely a good thing for me. I've tried to do various iterations of a home yoga practice for years and never was very consistent, but there are lots of videos online for the Tibetan Five. Because of that, and who knows whatever other reasons, the practice has become part of my routine and after beginning with only 5 reps of each of the 5 moves a few months ago, I've been up to the full 21 reps of all 5 moves for the past week or so. 

I also really enjoy reading about yoga and what it has to say about the physical body. Here are a few lines from  Light on Yoga by B.K. S. Iyengar:

      "The yogi feels that to neglect or deny the needs of the body and to think of it as something not divine, is to neglect and deny the universal life of which it is a part. The needs of the body are the needs of the divine spirit which lives through the body. The yogi does not look heavenward to find God for he knows that He is within, being known as the Antaratma (the Inner Self). He feels the kingdom of God within and without and finds that heaven lies in himself."

I've been aware of the divine in the natural world around me for most of my life, but my body often felt like it was only meant to get me into trouble. (Catholic school.) Nowadays, I feel in my bones (what an appropriate expression that is!) how it is the body that tethers us to all that we love in this life on Earth. I feel profoundly the loss of those loved ones who are now longer tied to this life, and I know too that someday I will let go of the tether. Until then I want to remind myself with these daily practices that there is a divine spirit that lives within this body of mine. 

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In Which I Fall Off a Ladder and Get Laryngitis

This is me.

I fell off a ladder on December 23rd while putting Christmas lights on top of the armoire in my dining room. I didn't do anything ridiculous like standing on the step inscribed with the warning, "This is not a step." The tree was already up, and there were Christmas cookies in the oven, and I had a friend over---and so I was excited to  be finished with the lights, and I simply backed up to admire my handiwork. But I was still two steps off the ground. When I fell, I collided with a dining room chair which tipped over, and I planted my ribcage onto its edge, and the ladder planted itself on top of me.

The treatment for broken ribs is the same as the treatment for bruised ribs unless you can't breathe or are coughing up blood or you have a bone poking out (so says the Internet) so I didn't go to the ER. I did the things Dr. Internet said would help. Rest. OTC painkillers. I did a ton of OTC painkillers.  My ribs got better, but the hip I'd landed on (the left one) still hurt so I took more painkillers. And it was Christmas so I ate five dozen Christmas cookies and special desserts, and I was tired from not sleeping well because of the hip and rib pain so I drank a lot of coffee. A lot of coffee. And a lot of wine. So much wine. And after I did these amusing and entertaining things, I napped (on my right side, which is the side to lie on if you want to be good to your heart, but the left is the side that is good for your stomach.) And I didn't go to yoga and got fat.

All of this led to acid reflux (all the while my stomach felt fine) which irritated my vocal chords and  little growths formed and my voice got huskier and huskier. I couldn't sing. Wait. I could never sing. The only songs I can remember the tune to are Happy Birthday and Jingle Bells.

The irritated voice was irritating. But then my knees swelled to the size of grapefruits and I was as stiffer than I'd ever seen my mom. And my fingers were swollen and stiff too. The knees and fingers are improving, but the confluence of the many symptoms led me to go to the doctor. The swelling and the stiffness is still a mystery in progress, but I am now officially on my first prescription med. And the medication can deplete your body of calcium so now I have to take an OTC med for that. It's probably temporary. But there you have it. Don't fall off a ladder. Because one  thing leads to another.  The next thing you know, you'll be taking drugs and more drugs.

And meanwhile, I've now had a total of three bad dreams about my mom. Two in which I woke up crying for help because 1) she was a zombie trying to drag me off  2) a ghost controlling things in my house 3) spending all my money.

The therapist from my bereavement group says I'm going through a kind of post-caregiving collapse. But I'm really okay as long as I'm not having a nightmare, and I'm doing more yoga (with a billion modifications) and following the lifestyle changes for acid reflux as best I can. Don't Google all the yummy things you're not supposed to eat or drink. The thought of giving them up will give you nightmares.

Read this quote by Rumi instead: This day of sunshine will not walk to you; you must go to it. And that's my rough paraphrase because I couldn't find it on the Internet. But the yoga teacher read it to us today at the end of class.

Yesterday's Beach Report/What the Yoga Teacher Said (yesterday)/and Stuff I'm Avoiding

Beach Report: 

After two days of Santa Ana winds (they blow from the east) all the sand is back where it belongs. I missed my beach walk on Tuesday and when I arrived there yesterday, there was no dune to scale in the parking lot and the beach bathrooms were on level ground. The beach itself looked like a movie set. A smattering of driftwood, some rocks, and some beach glass amidst the pebbles. Like nothing  dramatic had ever happened. It seems that's the way some things in this life are. You spend years detesting someone while turmoil swirls and then you just can't work up the interest anymore. In fact, you don't even think of them, or IT, or anything much to do with the giant mess that once was.

What the Yoga Teacher Said: 

Find love in the pose, the yoga teacher is fond of saying. It's a job sometimes, finding love. It's there but you have to look for it, work at it. And during the struggle, it's the looking for love that makes the struggle easier. Just the other day as I logged on to check my mom's bank balance online, I discovered it was time to change her password. Without thinking I changed it to il0veyoumom! 

Stuff I'm Avoiding: 

I have three stacks of things on my kitchen island. The never-ending pile of paperwork for my mom. It took me months to get her on Medicaid (hooray!--she's on it!) and now there's a barrage of mail that I can't seem to comprehend on the first read through, so I stack it up. Stack #3 is the re-fi offers and my notes on how to negotiate a re-fi. I will have to gin up a certain mood to make those phone calls. Stack #3 is the alimony mediation stuff--those ducks are pretty much in a row.

And here's how I avoid the piles of stuff:

Rearranged Patio Stuff

It was warm and not windy today so I pulled up a couple of dead plants. I moved unhappy plants to places I think will make them happier. I swept. I weeded. And I decided to bring my big glass jar of beach glass inside and find a place for it since it's always misty with condensation and no one can see the beach glass.

My Entire Collection of Beach Glass--except for what we used to tile the fireplace

So I dumped all the beach glass out and washed it and laid it out on a towel to dry. Then I took the big glass jar into the laundry room to wash it. But I broke it. I had this beach ball sized jar for 20 years, and I've moved it to three different houses. It's funny how I always go into denial first when the bad thing happens. That just a bubble of dish soap, I said. I didn't break a big round piece out of that beautiful jar. But I did. Not salvageable. 

So the beach glass is now in a bowl that my mom gave me years ago. And it's very cool because the mirror let's you see the glass in the bottom of the bowl. So there you have it. The mess cleaned up. And the next time I move, I won't have to transport that huge jar. I'm finding love in that thought.

Report from Pillville: The Balance of Opposites

Photo from this morning's walk along the beach in Ventura--a local artist stacks these stones.

My mom is more frail than ever but feels well.

I'm happier and stronger than I've been in a long long time but feel spent.

Those statements balance one another in a way I can't quite explain. And maybe there's balance too in the fact that my mom is sleeping more and more these days while I am sleeping less and less. And even when I do sleep, I awake feeling hung over. There's no gin involved in this, I swear--at least not for me. She is, of course, still having her martini. The balance of opposites right here in Pillville.

I almost had to sit during my T'ai Chi Chih practice yesterday. Today I opted out of yoga and took a walk. I need the sky over my head to feel the vastness of possibility. I need to be quiet.

I'm in the process of transitioning my mom into a nursing home after more than 3 years of caring for her in my house. I'm filling out the forms for Medi-Cal and Iowa Medicaid. I'm gathering documentation. I'm making travel plans and not making travel plans. I'm formulating a Plan A and a Plan B and wondering if they are mutually exclusive while wondering if both of them will fall away.

I'm sitting on the couch in my living room as I write this, wholly aware of the sound of her breathing in her room, while feeling that I'm barely breathing at all.

My heart is in Indiana with the man that I love and my heart is here, heavy as a stone, and so light it is a tower reaching for the sky.

This morning's walk took me past the estuary. Here it is looking inland--and looking out to the sea, just like me.

The path I was on took me under the freeway, framing a perfect view of the hills,
and it took me across the railroad tracks. Travel plans, vistas, hopes, dreams,manifested through a camera lens-- and if you look closely at the photo below you'll see a white cross in the lower left. I didn't see it when I took the photo.

Lovelovelove: The knowing and the forgetting

I can't remember how it started.

Sometime after the divorce, the refrain that explained everything was lovelovelove. I loved my children and felt their pain and we consoled each other sometimes with simply the chant of lovelovelove. We said it aloud. Texted it. Emailed it. I lay down on the floor with my dogs and whispered lovelovelove into  their ears. They scooted closer, wagged their tails, and professed to know what I was talking about. We were all  then (yes, even the dogs who were traumatized by the loss of the the person who'd walked and fed them) split open, raw to elements, stripped down and so fully present in the center of our love for one another. The thing I wanted most then was not to hurt the people who loved me. That purpose kept me alive, quite literally, kept the wish to die pushing into the background, but still the wish to self-destruct bobbed up and down in the ocean of grief that surrounded me.

Yet I survived. Because of lovelovelove. Because lovelovelove is the life raft. Children are the life raft. Friends are the life raft. Parents are the life raft. Things that you read and write are the life raft. Your practices (yoga, T'ai Chi Chih, meditation, etc.) are the life raft. Trees are the life raft. The ocean is the life raft. Birds are the life raft. Maybe even gin was the life raft for a while. Pick one. Get in it. Paddle the life raft. Now paddle faster. Or maybe just drift. Drift and say the words lovelovelove.

My day here in Pillville has been a mess. (And  a portal.) My mom spilled her coffee liberally laced with half and half about 10 minutes before I left to teach a T'ai Chi Chih class. Nothing stinks like spoiled milk. (Somewhere in my memory banks is a car totaled by an insurance company because of spilled milk.) I had to mop and clean rapidly, but the amazing thing was that neither my mom nor I dropped into the negative. Oh, you fell asleep holding your coffee cup, I said. Yes, that's what happened, she said. She moved out of the way while I mopped. We were okay.

When I came back from teaching my T'ai Chi Chih class this morning I discovered that two half drunk bottles of champagne had leaked into the bottom drawer of the fridge. What to do but mop it up and drink the rest. (Champagne is the life raft.) Working at simple physical tasks that require little thinking always transport me. Scrub, mop, throw in a load of laundry. Soak up the spilled mess. Soak up the love. While actually sipping the champagne, I found that the guys who'd "professionally" cleaned my barbecue grill had dumped their mess into the recycling bin. I cleaned that mess up too.

I was a mess when Dan Paik found me. Date the bass player, a friend said. So I did. And for much of the five and a half years we had had together, I dragged the grief of my lost marriage behind me like a tail. I wept. I moaned. I cursed. I went crazy. He told me over and over again that I didn't scare him. He loved me beyond my wildest hopes, no matter the wreckage I carried.

I'm in love again and the man I love now told me THIS STORY, which he called You Never Know.--a story that Dan told me too. Dan called it Good Luck Bad Luck.

Luck is everything sometimes. And sometimes luck feels like more than luck. It feels like the luck of the universe, not just plain ordinary luck, but some kind of cosmic Knowing. But the thing about knowing is that the glimpse of it can easily slip from our grasp. We forget what we know. Today I'm remembering that I know lovelovelove.

Monday: a Day in Pillville

Leap out of bed when the alarm sounds (new resolution.) Do the morning things. Put away the clean dishes. Tidy things. Walk. Update the caregiver when she arrives.

But I can't flip the switch in yoga. I'm breathing. I'm doing. But I'm not in the room. Or I am, but I'm not processing the instructions. Weird thing: At the end of savasana when the teacher's singing bowl makes it tone, I'm really discombobulated. The sound was coming from inside me. Maybe I fell asleep and was dreaming.

Then the anxiety. Oh my god, I have to get my car washed because I'm driving my mom to Miracle Ear this afternoon and I can barely see out the windows, and she always has to steady herself against the car and it's awful for it to be so grimy, but wait, Oh my god, I know I'm subbing for a fellow T'ai Chi Chih teacher next Sunday and Monday, but wait, she wasn't in yoga class so maybe it's this Monday, and now I probably can't take my mom to Miracle Ear and she is so tired of not hearing jack shit. So I make calls and texts while driving to the car wash. (Thanks, Siri.) And it all turns out swell, I didn't fuck up, but I lose my wallet and my phone in the carwash for a bit. Find them. Hooray! Get my car back. Clean! Hooray.

I go to CVS to use my 10 dollar coupon and buy headbands for my mom. I obsess for an hour. I buy a hot pink sharpie because I'm worried that her POLST form which the new doctor should have put on pink paper, but didn't will not be noticed by the paramedics if they come again. For months I've been keeping the old POLST in the front of the packet for visibility (remember this ) The paramedics are trained to look for pink.  And having two POLSTS confuses everyone. So the pink sharpie is super important. Which one? Which one? And the home care nurse calls me--ah I did fuck that up--I thought she was coming after I got home. Which is okay. The caregiver knows what's up.

And when I get home, the caregiver looks worried. "Your mom broke a piece off her dentures, and it's stuck in the drain." I should call the plumber--but no--who cares about the piece of pink plastic in the drain if it can't be glued back on? So I call the dentist. Email them a photo. Fixable? I wait to hear back. Still waiting.

Meanwhile I call the pharmacy about a prescription we're having trouble getting renewed. The doctor isn't responding to the faxes for a new prescription. Then I see that the name on the bottle is her old doctor. How can that be? It's been renewed soooooo many times since we changed doctors. Has the old doctor been signing off on it? Did the pharmacy enter the old info on a new label? I call the  cardiologist because it's a cardiac med. She  should be the one prescribing it anyhow. But they turn off their phones for 2 hours at lunch. And now I have to remember to call later.  Oh, and note to self, call the primary doctor for the post-hospital follow-up. But they're probably at lunch too. Note to self: follow up with dentist. Call the plumber if need be. Call the cardiologist and the primary doc after lunch.

Note to self: Your oldest California friends are coming to dinner. They're bringing a meatloaf. You've made a strawberry ice cream cake. It's going to wonderful. It's going to be fine.

The border of the POLST is now pink. That's wonderful. It's going to be fine.

Oh, and I found out recently that a rather long essay of mine is going to be published in what I think will be a very good anthology. It's going to be wonderful. It's going to be fine.


This is what's going on this Monday in Pillville. What's happening where you live?

Thank you. You have no idea. Well, Maybe you do.

I snapped this photo on Valentine's Day

Thank you, everyone, for you well wishes for my mom--and for me. Thank you for your emails. your texts, your Facebook Likes, your calls, your company, the wine, the pie, your yoga and T'ai Chi Chih classes. Thank you for your phone calls and the nice things you said or wrote to me about caregiving. Honestly, I'm tired. And I'm shitty at it some of the time, so your words give me the faith that I can turn those shitty moments around and be better. God almighty, what would I do without you? If I had a nifty little convertible like this, I'd deliver a dozen roses to each of you.

Sincerely,

Denise

Monday Morning Grief Report

Mondays. Bottom of the crater. Mondays. No salvation.

Dan always spent Sunday night at my place. Awake before dawn. The lingering. Out of bed at the last possible moment, bolting through the shower, then downstairs to the coffee pot. We took our coffee into the car, me always reminding him that the clock in the car was twelve minutes fast. Driving in the pale light. Warm coffee. Warm hands. Train station kisses. Call me, baby. Or I'll call you, doll. Sometimes he liked to say my whole name: Good-bye, Denise Emanuel Clemen. My name seemed so extravagant next to his. He signed his emails to me d--. I signed mine D--.

The dawn sky was pure drama this morning, but I could not get up. Sit up and take a picture from bed, I told myself. I did not. C'mon. No. When you argue with yourself you always win.

At 6:06 I thought about reaching for the phone. Thought about calling the caregiver and canceling. Skipping yoga. Staying in my pajamas all day. Telling my mom she could stay in hers. I thought about it a long time. At 7:30 I bolted into the shower, then downstairs to the coffee pot. Still brushing my teeth when the caregiver arrived.

Yoga is always good. Body. Mind. Spirit. I hate that we divide ourselves that way. Whatever. Afterwards I sat in the hatch of my car. Outdoor office, the yoga teacher said. Room with a view, I said.

I declined an invitation to walk with friends. Made a doctor's appointment for my mom. Ordered one of her prescriptions. All the while fighting the sadness billowing inside. Errands. Errands are the cure. Do what must be done. One does not weep while shopping for a toilet seat riser in CVS. Well, one could. I did not. Study all the slippers. One does not weep shopping for slippers. Maybe there's a pair that would be better for her. Feel all the soles. Feel all the souls. Too slippery? Too much grip? What else? What else can I buy to make her life easier?

Finally I make it to the beach. I walk with a cup of coffee, warming my cold hands. The day looks like this.

The Play's the Thing

I tried out a bereavement group yesterday. It went really well. As well as bereavement groups can go, I guess. Still, if there were a pedometer on my heart, it would have read well over 10,000 steps. I came home and did this:

Today I'm doing this:

because I feel guilty when I go up to my room and put a pillow over my head. I mean, my mom spends a lot of time in her room, and I think I should be around when she comes out. From this vantage point, I can see her immediately if she heads for the kitchen, so it's a chance to check in. I have a lap desk that makes it kind of comfortable to lie on my back and write. So yeah, here I am, flattened by I don't know what. I'm not actually sick, just...flattened.

I had an actor's nightmare last night although it's been years since I performed in a play.

I missed my entrance and heard the actors on stage making up lines and re-cuing me. I entered in my underwear instead of my costume and began improvising. It was sort of a plot to cover up my mistake  because it was my fault that I'd missed my entrance, but I wanted to make up an excuse about a stuck zipper in my costume. So we improved and got the scene back on track, all the while the three of us on stage were eyeballing one another with that actors' panic. When I exited I didn't have long backstage before my next entrance and I was so rattled that I really needed to look at a script so I could read over the next scene. I asked everyone if they had a copy and no one did. "I really need to see the scene in print before I go out there," I said. "I have to see it on paper." I said that over and over again to everyone, but all the other actors were off book and no one could help me.

At the end of yoga this morning, as I lay on the floor in savasana, it occurred to me that yeah, I would really love a glimpse of the next big scene in real life. What to say. Who'll be there. Do I stand, or sit on a pretty chair, or lie on the floor in a heap? What does my costume look like? Do I have any props? Is the play a tragedy or a comedy? Anyone? Does anyone have a copy of the script? I just need to see the words in print. I need to see it on paper. I promise I'll get up.  I won't miss my entrance.

If the man who loves me is really gone from this world, I'd like a plane ticket to somewhere fabulous.  I'd like to go out every night to some bar with colored lights and live music. I'd like a couple glasses of wine right now and a signed contract stating that I will not have to follow the ambulance to the emergency room in the dark in the rain while slightly impaired. Yeah.

Well, what I have is a fairly peaceful house tonight. I don't understand the moaning thing that my mom does. Sometimes it's frightening. Sometimes only moderately disturbing. This evening, it's been downgraded to mere mumbling. Soon she'll come out of her room and want her bedtime ice cream. Ice cream before bed is a family tradition. She and my Dad had ice cream before bed every single night of my growing up years. I'm hardly ever in the mood for ice cream these days and haven't been for ages. If I could have any dessert I wanted right now, I'm not even sure what it would be.

I started keeping a private journal of how I'm feeling. I did it one day. The next few days I felt so shitty about everything that I didn't even want to write it down. But I've been hurting less. It's like my mother's moaning, I guess.

I feel lucky to be keeping company with so many good people from T'ai Chi Chih and yoga.

Two more excellent grief links here. Did you know that grief theory has evolved in recent years? The five stages model is considered passé. Read this: Getting Grief Right

And as someone who practiced attachment parenting, why not Attachment Grieving? I'm fond of attachment in general.

Right now I'm re-attaching to Downton Abbey. I was getting tired of it,  but I'm interested in the plot line that has to do with Edith and her baby. After that, if this bout of sleeplessness I feel coming on endures, I'm going to work on a new short story.

How did you finish up your weekend?

The Hit Man Report

Where the Christmas tree used to be.

In the dark, leave a note. Leave your ancient mother behind, asleep in her bed. Go buy milk so you can make a latté. Creep out of your sleeping house. Skulk through the dawn. This is what you must do to survive. She could die in your absence. She could die any time. So could you. Whatever. Make the coffee. Leave another note. Put her cup by the coffee pot. Open the brand new carton of half and half so she doesn't have to struggle. Sneak away again. Go to yoga. When you come home, she's in her room with her coffee. The arthritis is killing her knee. Her hip. Heat the hot pack. Re-heat the coffee. Make her breakfast. Make yours. Drag the dead Christmas tree out the patio door. Spend the day cleaning away the Christmas spirit which barely materialized anyway. Relish the vacuuming. Relish the mopping. The polishing. The dusting. Breath in the Windex. Heat the hot pack, this time for you. Read between loads of laundry. Relish the story in the New Yorker that you know would have been murdered in your MFA workshop had it been written by a student. Where is the forward motion of the story. This  is all just interior monologue. Where is the fucking scene? How about some dialogue? Realize the day is nearly over without much forward motion at all. Dialogue only if you shout.  Make dinner. Hold firmly to the new regime of salad for you. Grilled cheese for the ancient mother who needs calories. Ice cream for her dessert. Then when she's asleep, attack  the cheese and crackers. Hypocrite. Make a gin and tonic in your closet and carry it downstairs in a water glass. Just in case she wakes up. Watch a movie that makes you cry. Walk through the neighborhood, mumbling to your dead lover. Why are there so many stars? Why can't you be nicer?

I took the colored Christmas lights down from the top of the armoire and put up white ones. 

What the Yoga Teacher Said And Other News

I awoke this morning convinced that I might as well begin the new year fulfilling my potential to become the mean and angry person it seemed I was meant to be. Maybe this was the year I would  yield to my destiny as a hit man or a dognapper or a baby snatcher. Maybe I could at least get a job writing parking tickets or turning down deserving people for home loans. Even if I had to settle for being a bitchy old woman who patroled the beach threatening to turn everyone in who walked an un-leashed dog, I felt I could do a damn good job at it.

Then I went to yoga. In the park. At the beach. You know. All that blue sky and glistening water. Swaying palm trees and dunes simultaneously all soft and resilient against the sea. And the yoga teacher. What she said was something about the word hatha meaning light and dark--and I think she said it meant both the light side of the mountain and the dark side of the mountain. Or maybe I was just looking at the dunes and interjected the image of a hill into the business about dark and light. In any event, I thought  Yeah, I sure as hell am on the dark side of the mountain. And I am. And I'm not sure I have what it takes to climb up and over that mountain to the other side right now, but maybe I should not pursue becoming a hit man and just stand still and wait for the light. It will probably take a while.

I like how the light here looks both like a mushroom cloud and a palm tree.

By some miracle I had the foresight to plan a full day of care for my mom today. Feeling the way I did, I stayed outside pretty much the entire day. My new iPhone (yes, that would be the iPhone without the voicemails from Dan on it) says that I walked over 5 miles. Pretty much every step of that was on the beach. I even found beach glass, so maybe the beach glass drought is over. That's something, right?

The pile on the left is what I found today. The pile on the right is what I've found in the past 6 months.

And yeah, I'm still not really returning all my phone calls right now. I start to call people back, but then I get the feeling I might burst into tears as soon as you say hello. I have to time it just right. But we'll talk. Thank you for calling.

This Place

View from my yoga mat. Really.

Here in paradise we have Yoga by the Sea. It seems that with the new Daylight Savings Time schedule, I might be able to attend and still cook dinner in a timely fashion for my mom.

There's also going to be some T'ai Chi Chih by the Sea too-and I will be one of the teachers.

Really. Seriously. This place is so gorgeous. But it's damp. And the wind blows like crazy sometimes. So don't everybody move here even though the very famous Tom Hanks set the story he wrote for a Very Famous Magazine here. And yeah, if the thing that happened in that story were to really happen, it would happen here. 

Waffles. And what the yoga teacher said.

I've gone on a bit here about how I've been cleaning my room. The other day, shredding away, I was struck with a sudden craving for a waffle. Let's be clear. A waffle chez moi is a gluten-free toaster waffle--but I fancy it up a bit by gently heating some frozen blueberries in some real maple syrup and drenching the un-fancy waffle with that concoction. Add some real butter, and it's good. Honest. I mean who would drag out a waffle iron and mix up a batch of waffles for one person? (If someone out there reading this would do that, perhaps we should talk.) Anyhow, I was busy organizing, cleaning, shredding, i.e. subjugating my desire, when what did I find?
This:

Stuffed in a pile of stuff was the un-Christmas card Dan gave me one year. A clear message that I should have that waffle. Which I did, as evidenced by the top photo. I did not get drunk. If someone responds to the parenthetical message above, that waffles and wine thing could seriously happen.

Earlier that morning, I'd gone to yoga. This particular teacher likes to read to us from the Sutras (which, I think, is a regular Ashtanga yoga thing), and what she read was something about the tongue tasting the nectar of infinity. That probably explains the craving for a waffle smothered in real maple syrup, right? And also there was something about how the invisible loves the visible.

I love that.
The invisible loves the visible.

Oh, and can someone explain how it is that I spent a week going through all my drawers and filing cabinets, pulling things out, shredding them-- and now the last couple of days as I've gone through the stacks of papers on my floor and on my credenza, what I've done with those things  is stuff them into files and put them in my filing cabinet?

Probably the only solution is to get drunk and eat waffles.

"They Say That In This Life Every Meeting Is a Reunion"

The title to this post is a quote from the movie "The Grandmaster." When the two martial artists in the above photo meet, the sparks are blinding--and not from the punches and kicks they deliver.

When I was first dating Dan, he seemed so familiar to me that I would sometimes wrack my brain over it. Who was it that he reminded me of? It was like a word on the tip of my tongue that I couldn't quite utter. At the same time, all I could think of was how different we were, and why could he possibly be interested in me when we were really into very different things. And of course there was my wreck of a life that I was dragging behind me. All we really have is right now, this moment, he would tell me. Just be right here.

I don't really watch a lot of martial arts movies, but if "The Grandmaster" is any example, there are a lot of shots of feet. Our feet let us know where we are right now. And of course, they're very important in the martial arts.

Tonight I went to a T'ai Chi Chih (not a martial art, but a moving meditation) practice in a location that is not my usual one. We had just begun when a homeless guy walked in. He was staggering and looked a bit out of it, but he joined the circle, waving his arms around, not really following our moves. "Yoga," he said. Then "Nam Myoho Renge Kyo." (A Buddhist chant)

"You're welcome to join us," the teacher said. "Or sit and watch. But we're going to do our practice." So we did. The guy stood in the circle with us, but mostly did his own thing. Not too disruptively.  I put my attention in the soles of my feet. About half-way through, he left the room and later reappeared in the lobby. I had the perfect vantage point from which to see him perusing the various pieces of literature. (We were in a church.) Pretty soon he walked out the door and staggered across the parking lot as he made the sign of the cross.

Reunion? Perhaps. We never know for sure, I guess. Every encounter holds something way more mysterious than the fortunes I keep on my kitchen windowsill.

How Poetry Saves My Life ( again) or Seratonin and Not-Seratonin

Somewhere just inside my forehead a neon sign has been blinking all week. I am lost I am lost I am lost, it says. It's hard to get much done. Hard to sleep when you have neon in your brain. It's The Grief. Hello, Grief. You have to go with it, I say. Go ahead, just Google "How to get a person to come back from the dead." It's all right. After a little reading, you settle down. You drink a little wine. Or a little tea. You splash back into reality. You watch another episode of Orange is the New Black, and you totally dig how Piper doesn't smile the way she used to. How there's someone new behind her eyes.

I listen to podcasts now instead of talking to Dan on the phone when I walk in the evening. I'm not sure how I ever survived without Curtis Fox and Poetry Off the Shelf from the Poetry Foundation. These podcasts got me through the Divorce Anxiety too. Poem by poem. No long stories. I love you, David Sedaris, and I love you Moth, and I love you Radio Lab, but sometimes I just don't have what it takes to hang on to the ledge that long. Just give me a poem. Talk to me about it. Then read it again.

Tonight there was this: (apologies re the weird formatting)

The Drama of the Gifted Hansel
				Shit are we lost? Should I tell her we’re lost? If we had some pot, we could sleep— and worry in the morning...I’m sure tomorrow my friends will find us. If I tell her, she’ll cry; women are so weak. I thought we had a plan when I lay down that bread. Fucking birds. Should’ve used stones. Wish we were stoned, because she’ll panic if we’re lost. She’ll say, “I told you so” about the crumbs. Then she’ll scream or faint or start in about witches. Shit. I mean, no one needs to live inside that kind of anxiety. It’s obsolete. Take me. Things hurt, but not really once you understand everything is chemical if you let it be what it is— a matter of seratonin and not-seratonin, control and not-in-control. At least she knows what it’s like. Man, I’m such an asshole. I’m such an asshole. I’m such an asshole. Or am I? Anxiety is just a matter of thinking for too long about yourself. I wonder if we’re lost. —Debora Lidov Also saved by this:  The Ultimate Freedom Yoga. And this: http://www.taichichih.org.

Well, this day had a fabulous beginning for someone.

Maybe this person slept in the lifeguard tower and had taken off for a swim to the islands by the time I arrived for my walk. Then again maybe a shark bolted across the sand and devoured him/her. Everything always hangs in the balance, whether we admit it or not.

I walked. Decided it was too hot. Then decided it wasn't and took a second walk. Afterwards, I went to yoga. Set my intention as simply "love."

But first, during the initial walk, I ran into a couple who asked me to take their picture. It was a re-staging of a favorite picture of them from 15 years earlier, they explained. They stood facing the ocean leaning against one another in tree pose. Okay, I said. Now take my picture.

It was hard to balance on the sand. Easier to be two trees, than a single tree.