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Our Doctor,
Whose Art is Health Care,
Helpful be thy name.
Thy kindness felt,
Thy ill made well,
through prevention and detection.
Give us this day our daily breath,
and forgive us our constant tension,
as we forgive those fleeting and infrequent afflictions.
And lead us not into self-diagnosis,
but deliver from pharmaceutical-dependence.
For thine is the wisdom,
the practice and the guidance,
for everyone, everywhere.
Ahem.
(inspired by misreading a bumper sticker)
little birds
migrating south
for winter
I sift through ancient
tribalism and heredity
for knowledge of self
only to find trespassers
and onlookers –
purveyors of doubt.
Above is a little something I wrote in a journal in 2004 and hide away in storage since then. Rediscovering it five years later, I still find some truth in it. After all those years of looking outward for guidance, I decided to turn my gaze in. Ironic, though, to find this now, just as I’m beginning to turn my gaze again to the external.
I had the good fortune of guest writing for my friend’s Fitness magazine blog.
“A Tale of Two Soups” was my culinary follow-up to the communal bread-baking experience I wrote about a couple weeks ago. Dig in!
I’m broke. The long and short of it is that I severed a long-term relationship with my live-in boyfriend, moved in to a household with four other women, and am still waiting for the landlord of my last apartment to return my securtiy deposit.
I’m the first to admit that I’m a bit of an elitist when it comes to food. My compulsions about buying local and/or organic whenever possible translates for many into ill-allocated funds, frivolous foolishness concerning my body’s essential nutrients. On some level I can accept that mode of thinking, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to cozy up with a value meal anytime soon.
In a nutshell, I’m trying to accept, appreciate, and feel satfisfied by whatever food I’m offered, but the flipside is that I also want to support the spaces and people who leave Earth’s medicine as unadulterated as possible. Plus, good food just tastes…good! Give me something whole and complete and unpackaged and I’ll give you a meal fit for royalty but humble enough to impress the most finicky family.
But, I have one prepared food weakness. Fresh baked bakery bread. In a typical week I splurge on a loaf. Although I live with four other women, I’m the only one who feasts on that one loaf of bread. Roughly it costs me four or five dollars. For many, that one loaf of bread is an expensive loaf of bread. For me, it is an expensive loaf of bread.
But I indulge – when I can – because food it one of my few indulgences and if I’m going to buy something pre-made then I want to know it was made with as few and as quality ingredients as possible.
Mid-month, suddenly the contents of the fridge were dwindling as well as the contents of my bank account. If I was going to survive (and I use the term “survive” loosely here) I needed to start thinking creatively (read: frugally). And that’s where the good old pantry fit in.
If I played my cards right, I could make it through to the end of the month with what food I had left in the fridge, freezer, and pantry with the help of one basic staple. Bread!
I had two options: buy a loaf or make one. In the freezer I found all-puporse flour, whole wheat flour, and bread flour. Sweeteners crowded the cupboards and I even uncovered packets of yeast and a few eggs in the fridge.
In spite of eighty-plus degree weather in the blue flame of August, this impending sense of financial oppression had propelled me to actually consider baking a bread. A yeast bread no less. Simply translated, this meant at least a two hour commitment to a kitchen, and ultimately to a kitchen with the oven set to 375 for an hour.
Sure, I’ve baked bread before, but the relentless August heat and oppressive Pittsburgh humidity wasn’t the most encouraging for it. It didn’t take long for this creative solution for saving money to become a task. What kind of crazy would I be to commit myself to a 375 degree kitchen in the heat and humidity? Not to mention the amount of time a homebaked bread would need. In the back of my mind the idea lingered, but the reality of store-bought bread was looming near -
until I read my friend Fiona’s Facebook post. She was broke and owed an oxorbitant amount of moola to her bank for overdraft fees. $108 to be exact. (Thanks to yoga, a small part of me recognized the auspiciousness of this otherwise arbitrary detail.) I didn’t hesitate to suggest a communion of friends after work to bake and break bread together and enjoy it with a modest glass of red wine. For me, this union of bread and wine and friendship smacked of celebration. Blame it on the part of me who’s Italian or the part of me who’s Christian, it doesn’t matter. If it wasn’t for my family’s cultural/religious influence, that little loaf of bread never would have happened. The $9 bottle of wine was just a necessary consequence.
Conceived around 10pm, the bread wasn’t ready to eat until nearly 1 in the morning, but while we mixed and leavened and kneaded and formed and baked, we laughed and snacked and savored. Housemates came and went but not without offering their own “2 cents”; one in particular was especially excited about helping punch down the bread after its initial rise.
Kristin flipped through magazines while Fiona expounded on the lack of shadow and contour under the arms of the Marie Claire cover model (a result of air brushing). We attempted a game of Scrabble, asked the Tarot deck for direction, and listened to Fela Kuti, Eno, and Coil.
Three hours later it was time. The perfectly imperfect rectangular loaf of Oat Bread (recipe coutesy of Deborah Madison’s “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone”) slipped unprodded from the loaf pan. We scarcely had the patience to let it cool.
Initially I suggested an assortment of decadent toppings – miscellaneous condiments and fruits found scattered throughout the fridge: melted chocolate, blueberries, fig preserves, almond butter, grated cheddar, but ultimately we opted for the simplest variations. On our first slices we slathered butter and honey and our second, cream cheese and smoked salmon.
Although our little bread making excursion did not result in Swiss bank accounts or greater financial security, for the better part of four hours we were able to forget about our problems and indulge in the wealth of what we did have: decent wine, good food, and great friends. For that little wedge of time, one sixth of one day, I could want for nothing else.
The body is 60% water.
The body is water.
The body is a body of water.
The water is body.
The water is body water.
The water is water.
The water is a water body.
The body is -
The water is -
Be body.
Be water.
Be a body of water.
Be more than the body.
Be the water.
Be the waves.
Undulate.
Flow.
Be fluid.
Be contained.
Expand and contract,
like condesation and ice.
Be clouds, icicles.
Impremenance.
Be visible without being seen.
Be the sea.
Contain and be contained.
Allow bones to become coral reef,
Organs, vibrant passive fish,
Blood, the current.
Be the body.
The water, the 60% of the body.
The 40% earth, air, and fire.
Be life in water.
Shape the water.
Conduct the water.
Imbue the water
with form, texture,
Landmarks.
Return to water.
Purify the water.
Consume the water
And be consumed.
Be 60% water.
Be the body, water.
As I explore symbols and archetypes, I realize that I tend to prefer the obvious and vulgar. My two favorite types of movies are Musicals and Over-the-Top Blood and Guts Horror. But, on second thought, so much art is confrontational and obscene, not subtle, regardless of its subject matter. As a society, we do tend to eshew the pastoral. The unembellished image of reality is not art. Why, as artists, do we feel compelled to be so blatant? Is there not meaning in the basket’s weave or the ceiling paint? How many “symbols” exist in the texture of nature that go unnoticed?
Last “night” I “dreamt” I was able to levitate – in a realistic kind of way. I just floated up from the ground, slightly. As soon as I realized I was levitating and had the thought, “hey, I’m levitating,” I collapsed to my knees.
This makes me curious of at least two things – the root of “realization” and the limitations of definitions. And, on another level, how I respond to a new experience with such enthusiasm -perhaps so much so it overshadows the experience with emotions and then ego.
This Old House
June is literally right around the bend. One more sun/moon cycle and June will be upon me. Having spent 3 summers on farms, I’ve come to define the season as “hard work”, but not without its rewards reaped throughout the summer months and into the fall and, if blessed, sustaining me through the winter.
After two long months of waiting out the inevitable, it is time to move. Che and I will be going our separate ways, while trying to maintain the connection we’ve always shared and cherished. As much as I am unsettled by the unknown, I am also exhilarated. I’ll be living in a home with five other women, I’ll still have a place to garden and tend and my bike. When I returned to Pittsburgh many lifetimes ago I realized, after living on the road without many personal belongings, that I could be quite content with just my bike and laptop – and if push came to shove, just my bike (if for nothing more than to get around).
I’m looking forward to other amenities as well – a HUGE kitchen, three bathrooms, and a yoga studio on the first floor, not to mention the companionship of my housemates, none of whom I have any romantic commitment to. Since leaving my parents’ home, I have never been without the “guardianship” of a significant other – certainly, this has been a motivating factor in the decision to “separate.”
But I will also miss this place I’ve called home for the past four years. This place I’ve shared with my love companion and our brood of felines. This place where we’ve warmed our hearts with many friends over a home-cooked meal, crackling fire, and intimate stories. I fear the cleaning and the repair of the apartment the most. That’s when the realization steps in. Putting everything back to how it was before we made the place our own. Turning our backs on an empty house with no signs of our life left in it. Even the grease on the stove seems meaningful now. And the furballs. And the soap sludge in the soap dishes.
I think about these things, the things that have embraced me at the end of the day, the things I’ve surrounded myself with, the inanimate, the unconditional, because I can’t yet think of being without the other whirling sphere of uncertainty with whom I’ve lived the past five years – and now all the uncertainty our innate uncertainty will be forced to face the deluge of the coming days, together but independently. “Try to remain optimistic,” has become a common phrase around these parts lately.
Optimism is a fragile word – too much ego attached, too many muted maybes – but it is better than the alternative, which merely hisses and pings like piss in a bucket. I can fret and dread or simply forget, but I remind myself it’s still Spring and the best thing I can do is return to my source, my original home, the elements, and allow the sun and the moon and the seasons to guide me back into the cycles of things.
The coming months promise a lot of activity and as much as I want Che and me to find our way back to each other, I recognize it is critical that we first find our ways back to ourselves. It seems only fitting that our present home, the one we’ll be leaving, the one we’ve perhaps taken for granted for the past four years, is crumbling around us. Funny how once you’ve neglected something long enough, you’re ready to be done with it forever. Yet, nothing is replaceable.
In the last year my personal yoga practice has changed tremendously. I can trace it back to 3 factors: a rift with my then yoga teachers, a week-long workshop I did with Donna Farhi, and a week-long course I took in Somatic Body-Mind work related to Senses and Perceptions. Since then my home practice has become much more exploratory and playful, which even as I write it seems inaccurate to say because it has also become less physical and vigorous. Namely, my mindset has changed more than anything. And yet I still resist what I know I need: silence. While my practice has evolved to include more personal massage and Yoga Nidra and study, it has not yielded consistent meditation. This is what I know I need if my life/Practice is going to “improve.”
Perhaps this awareness is what prompted me to go into Snow Lion yesterday and buy the Mudras book that had caught my attention on a previous visit. Unlike most books I purchase with enthusiasm, I actually skimmed this book in-depth from cover to cover and explored many of the mudras.
I’m getting closer to a regular meditation practice and I’m curious about incorporating mudras into my practice. I’m concernedthat a lot of what I am exploring in my personal pracitce will not translate well into a “standard” class, but at the same time appreciate the opportunity to fold some of what I’m learning, even if indirectly, into a public class. I’m optimistic that the awareness I’m gaining in my “seated’ play-time will positively inform my ability to guide a student through a trasformative pracitice.
