Oh, Eight

For as long as I can remember, 8 has been my favorite number. I liked when I found out in middle school that the sideways figure eight is the symbol for infinity. Icing on the cake -- last year, I found out that my numerology number is eight. Eights strive for justice and balance. (To get your number, you just add the digits of your birthday and year until you have a one-digit number. ex: May 30, 1980 is 5+3+0+1+9+8+0 which is 26 and 2+6=8.) If you're interested in what your number means, I have a couple books on the topic, one of which is eerily right on and the other I got for $3.99 at Half-Price and haven't read yet.

So here we are, under 48 hours away from 2008. Dos mil ocho. There will be a new president elected. (Obama, I pray.) America will breathe a sigh of relief, almost no matter who ends up winning, just to be free from the resident ignoramus in charge.

I will travel to India, at last! (That's my big plan for Summer 2008 traveling.)

I will turn 28. I always thought I would get married when I was 28. It sounded like a good age for that sort of thing. Not too young or too old. Now I think it is too young, and I am perfectly content at the moment to have no prospects, really, whatsoever.

It is not as cold here in New England as I had feared. We are heading over to Haa-vaad Square in Cambridge for the afternoon. I am wearing leggings under my pants, three layers of shirts under my coat, a hat and a scarf, and that seems to suffice. I meditated briefly this morning and even though thoughts kept raining down, it still felt peaceful and good to sit with the intention of just sitting.

My affirmations for the day, and for the year ahead are as follows:
I am now cultivating self-discipline to achieve my personal goals.
I am now in the best physical shape of my life and comfortable with my body.
I am now totally dedicated to writing, practicing yoga and meditation daily.
I am now a living example of my own highest values: compassion, patience, respect, honesty and love.

yoga freedom. feel free. (c) 2007. All rights reserved worldwide.

Lord, save me from your followers

June 17, 2007

The inevitably jumpiness of what you are about to read is indicative of both the late hour of its writing and the writer's sudden feeling that all events great and small, all the moments that make up the day and your life are inevitably connected, no matter how random or insignificant they may seem.


I can attribute this feeling of equanimity mingling with synchronicity and a dash of serendipity to (1) several days spent communing with a dear friend, the desert, and my mind's inner workings in surprisingly bearable West Texas heat, and under the starry skies of Big Bend, (2) acknowledging and admitting a resurgence of deep, loving feelings, and then surrendering to letting whatever happens happen, (3) a great dinner date and conversation with the gay love of my life who will inevitably break my heart when he moves back to Boston.

Tonight, I began to face my shame at being one month into the summer and having far too willingly embraced writer's block. Or, more accurately, my writer's-unwillingness-to-sit-down-and-face-the-page-and-write-what-needs-to-be-written. I have a story to tell. It's heavily based on the reality of a relatively recent period in my life. I guess part of my resistance to the writing process is the underlying thought, "Who am I to write a book? Is my life oh-so interesting that it must be documented in print, possibly even published?"

I don't know. I just know that I write. Always have and always will. To effectively complete this manuscript, I have to write from the heart, and that can be very hard to do. Hard, but not impossible. I love writing because thoughts are so fleeting. The act of putting words on paper helps me make sense of things. The fact that I am having such difficulty putting my story together is Not Cool. But I guess if it were easy, I'd take it for granted.

I have a stack of books sitting on the floor by my bed which includes these titles: The Bhagavad Gita; That's Funny, You Don't Look Buddhist; The Lie That Tells A Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction; and Mexico. I just finished The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. I checked out War and Peace from the library but have yet to crack it.

I know a number of people personally (young and old) whose life stories would make excellent reads. But my story is the only one I can really tell. And until I get it all out with a beginning, middle and end, in a state that is readable and enjoyable for me and hopefully others, I won't be satisfied. I know the themes. Hell, everybody I know knows the themes: quarterlife crises, Catholicism, Christian Fundamentalism, falling in love, manic depression, advertising, yoga, Buddhism, sex... I know the characters' names, food allergies and zodiac signs. I have an outline of the plot. I have volumes and volumes of old material, laboriously edited over and over, and mostly headed for the recycle bin. All I really have left to do is write the fucking thing.

Have you ever had an orgasm and a splitting migrane headache at the same time?
Oh...oh...Ooooh. Ow!

My friend yesterday said something so succinct and right on that I just have to pass it on: "I love Jesus, it's the Christians I can't stand."

And now I'll bid you goodnight with my favorite verse from perhaps the most prophetic pop song I have heard in recent years, "On the Radio" by Regina Spektor.

This is how it works
You're young until you're not
You love until you don't
You try until you can't
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath

No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else's heart
Pumping someone else's blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope it don't get harmed
But even if it does
You'll just do it all again

---
p.s. (Here's to doing it all again.)

yoga freedom. feel free. (c) 2007. All rights reserved worldwide.

Bad religion

Imagine no religion. I mean, wouldn't that be nice? I am all for spirituality and God and faith and love and one-ness, but identifying oneself with a religious label that excludes the possibility of truth from "foreign" belief systems is just so counterproductive. Inclusivity is what I love about Buddhism, but even it is an –ism, therefore something that many people have strong convictions, and strong misconceptions, about.

Sure, all the major world religions have amazing teachings to impart to us. You go where you're fed… but with the awareness that there are plenty of other dishes out there to taste. Looking at the wide range of teachings available is, in a way, comforting. There's bound to be some book or teacher or practice that helps you feel more empowered and inspired.

Tonight, I went to see a sweet documentary. Ten Questions for the Dalai Lama. There were no previews, no annoying commercials before the film. Just a small, pitch black theater (it's playing at the Dobie, this week only) and a handful of mostly middle-aged viewers. His Holiness the Dalai Lama is adorable! I'd never heard him speak before, had only read books and seen his picture. The film is as much about him as the homeland from which he is exiled, Tibet, and the plight of its culture under the Chinese oppression. It gave a succinct, though simplified, history of Buddhism. It left me feeling calm, content, and very fortunate to have stumbled across the gem of the dharma (Buddhist teachings) by way of yoga.

I am at a point where I'm ready to delve further into spiritual practice, and the summer is affording me the time and energy to do so. (Being busy is not a good excuse for not practicing, but all too often, I let other activities take priority during my overwhelming first year of teaching.) Anyroad, I have signed myself up for a ten-day retreat from June 27-July 8. It's at a Buddhist meditation center 45 miles from Dallas. Oh, and it's silent. No talking. No communication of any kind, really. No books, no journals, no computers, no phones, just you, your cushion, your mind, body and spirit. Yeah, it will be intense. But I feel ready. I think I can. The hardest part, I think, will be not writing. Journal writing has been such a lifeblood for me for so many years that to not process what I'm going through on the page will be weird.

Of course, when I told my parents, my mom flipped out a little bit and started her familiar soliliquoy on the merits of Catholicism. My dad remained quiet, but I know he doesn't mind. He believes in Jesus, but to him the most important apostles are John, Paul, George and Ringo. His patron saints are Page and Plant, and of course Dylan. Mom, however, does not GET why on EARTH I would subject myself to ten days of Buddhist brainwashing. This time, I held my own though. I'm sorry, I just don't LIKE Catholicism. I don't get much out of it at this time. Maybe that will change someday. And then she tells me I'm not supposed to get anything out and if that's what I'm looking for, I am barking up the wrong tree. That's a quote. In other words [mine], It's all about praising the lord, and it is a one-way street. You don't need to feel "good" or "inspired," you just need to go, sit/stand/kneel/recite prayers like a zombie, eat the bread, drink the wine, and voila! You are doing the right thing, at the One True Church. Aaaaaaaaah.

Regardless, with a little help from Buddhism, yoga, the slow flow of the Comal River, and my friends, I am staying very present for the time being (ha!) and enjoying most of my fleeting emotions, perceptions and sensations as they pass.

yoga freedom. feel free. (c) 2007. All rights reserved worldwide.

Tax Day

April 15, 2006

"The basic question is whether or not our feelings of love are steady and consistent regardless of the various changing behaviors of those we "love". In each case where we perceive our heart closing, we need to discover what we fear in that situation. What might we believe is in danger? Most frequently we lose our love when we fear that our security, self-worth, freedom or pleasure are in danger. Only when we have realized total inner security, perhaps based on an inner spiritual awakening or on our faith in the Divine, will we be able to love without security attachments.

Only when we know that we can live without others can we really love them steadily."
- Shri Shri Thakur Anukulchanda, Radhaswami Master

Does distress and despair, melancholy, and madness come from God?
Does pleasure and prosperity, joy, and reason come from God?
Was the human form, in all its beauty, designed by God?
Does God give each person a distinct character and appearance?
Does got give men and women the ability to think?
Does God give human beings the urge to worship?
Does God plant the motions of truth and untruth in the human mind?
Does God decide when human beings should die?
Does God offer the hope of immortality?
-Atharva Veda

========
It's raining and pouring in here. Outside, the sky is blanketed with clouds, but the ground is dry.

When it pours, you have options. You can fix the leak, or collect the water in pots and bowls. Or, you can surrender to the flood. Or, you can relocate to a drier place.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do. All I can seem to do for the moment is cry, and feel the raw sadness of heartbreak. Plus confusion. Doubts, anxieties, habitual negativities. Love lost trumps job.

I wonder how different things would have been if I had meditated more. Useless train of thought though, the only thing to do now is refocus. Start where you are. Meditate! You have to. It's mandatory.

No time like the present to drop the past and create the future. I could go either way here. I teeter between sinking ever deeper (just when I thought yesterday was rock bottom) and plunging forward, overcoming obstacles, centering, living intentionally.

On this second anniversary of the dark, blurry day I was hauled off to the state hospital, I am definitely in touch with my emotions. I am identified with them too. I struggle and suffer from time to time but I know I have come a long way. I have these tools available to me which I have neglected so badly lately. It'd be crazy not to pick them up. Something as basic as sitting still, breathing and noticing thoughts is so transformative, so essential, so medicinal.

Maybe I should go to therapy.

yoga freedom. feel free. (c) 2007. All rights reserved worldwide.

Amor y libertad (Love & freedom)

Climb to the top of a cliff
Overlook the Pacific
Kinda want to jump
Swan dive
But it's rocky down there
Just say no to suicide

Take a steamy bath
No bubble
Alone
Contenta con nada
No quiero nada

Receive a letter
At one a.m.
That says I miss you
And I think I'm falling in love with you
Dot dot dot...

Go backwards through the time-space continuum
As Ani sings
'Swinging through the jungle
Of last calls and first kisses'
Back to the red womb
My bedroom, three shades of pink

Smoking stolen cigarettes
Not knowing how to inhale
Being upside down
Forever single
Stood up

Scrapbooks
Scraps of memories
Loves lost and found
Found and lost
Bridesmaids' dresses next to prom dresses
Hideous, all of them
They had their moments of beauty
In the nineties

Reaching ultimate liberation
Casting handcuffs into the bushes
Screaming
Abandon

I can have whoever I want whenever I want:
Men are simple
But how can such fullness be so empty?

It took four of them to hold me down
I was floating away
But I'm back
For now
Ahora
Aquí

I'll let you know
Cuando llegaré .
(When I arrive)

Deity

Paul Simon, the lyrically-proclaimed only living boy in New York, sang: 'the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls.' He's right!

Deity is graffiti.

Deity is yoga is zen is everywhere.

And now a poem:

DAILY DEITY
Deity is the fruit placed before Buddha.
Remembering you are not a Buddhist;
You are a buddha.
Deity is the body and blood;
We lift them up to the Lord.
The father the son the holy spirit
The mother earth
Deity is endless aching days
Moaning
Echoes of shock treatment in the bleak halls
Asylum.
Deity is walking around a parking lot
in cool afternoon drizzle.
Deity is sitting with beloved children
mis estudiantes
in a dark theater
watching animals talk.
Talking
and smiling
and laughing.
Deity, I realize, is in our veins and lungs and heart chambers.
Deity is.
El fin.

Now back to my mother tongue, prose. Prose-ac. It's fun to insert deity into phrases from signs, like appending "in bed" to the end of your fortune cookie. "Young drives Horns to first national deity since 1970." Contraband deity prohibited. All deities are subject to search. Hot grilled deities! Please enter next deity. NeWorlDeity.

Deity is the keys on my typewriter. They sit ever so patiently until inspiration comes, discipline habituates, so that they may whizz through space, landing -- splat! -- to be a sacred letter, part of a word, a sentence, a paragraph, chapter, act, scene, novel, play.

Deity is daily, like life, like the breath that keeps coming and going...
whether we like it or not.

Why I shaved my head: a retrospective

Author's note: I shaved my head rather spontaneously and somewhat arbitrarily on November 4, 2006. The aftermath was hilarious, stressful, bothersome, amusing, transformative and painful in turn. My mother ended up loving is, as did most people. I got tons of compliments on my nicely shaped head, how it brought out my eyes, how people wished they could do it but were afraid it would look bad. The problems arose at school when my boss began passive aggressively singling me out and sabotaging my already very difficult first year of teaching. But, to make a long story short, I prevailed and am still employed at the same school. My hair is now several inches long and growing. I plan to grow it out as long as I can for a few years and then shave it off all over again.

----
"Why? WHY?" "Por que?" The question already asked dozens of times and to be invoked hundreds more, to be sure.

Oh so many reasons, real and invented, realized and subconscious.

First and foremost, I was trimming my bangs on Saturday night around midnight and it got a little out of hand. They were looking bad. So I went out on the back porch with the scissors and commenced to chop. My chin length brown locks are still lying on the grass out there. I had been wanting to cut my hair for a while, but was waiting to lose weight, or whatever. My roommate drove up the gravel drive at 1:30 a.m. to see me, through the window, bounce off the couch. I was thinking, 'Shit! I am not ready for anyone to see this!' But she did and she loved it, even in the uneven, hack-job state that it was. Supercuts did the rest Sunday afternoon. $13.50 + tip. Not bad.

What else? Liberation, boldness, change, transition, femininity, masculinity, shock. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. It's fierce, beautiful, ugly, extreme, crazy, easy, cold, spiky. Spontanaeity ruled the hour.

Also, [fake reason]: my boyfriend is losing his hair and shaved his head, so I wanted to match him. Tommy, my gay boyfriend, that is.

Additionally, it's marks the beginning of my head-first (ha!) dive into kundalini yoga. It's this whole other branch of yoga, quite different from the hatha that I've been practicing for 13 years, since age 13. It involves loads more overt chanting, breathing, meditation and stuff. The teachers wear all white, and usually white turbans. I always thought it was too "out there," but suddenly, I am really drawn to it, and so I am taking a beginners' class series at Yoga Yoga which started today. It's so awesome to be a beginner again. I love it.

My students flipped out over my haircut, of course. I wore a white winter hat into the whole-school assembly this morning in the cafeteria so no one would see. Once in the portable, I dramatically removed the cap. A moment of shocked silence, followed by, "OH MY GOD, Miss Fajkus! Miss Fajkus, Oh my God!" Favorite replies: "I think you look beautiful." "How did you kill the other Miss Fajkus?" "It doesn't matter what you look like, it's what's on the inside that counts."

Most people like it, or are getting used to it, or will get over it. But the true test will come this weekend when I see the one, the only... my mother.

yoga freedom. feel free. (c) 2007. All rights reserved worldwide.