gracias a la vida

In five hours, I will be mid-air, on the way to fulfilling a travel dream that's been brewing for I can't remember how long. Tomorrow, around 8 o'clock in the evening in a faraway time zone, I'll land on the Indian subcontinent. I'm doing my best to drop expectations, but I am fully expecting to be altered by this experience.

I'm grateful for so many people and lessons that have enabled this trip. Too many to quantify. I have to go put the finishing touches on my packing.

I'm going far, far away today but I will be close by in spirit. Namaste.

new england farewell

uptown, upstate, up

Upstate, the rain is cleansing me.
I need cleansing after a day in New York,
a city with more opportunity, more filth and more people.
So many people they're crawling out of the pretty skyscrapers.

In Manhattan, I am Texan
more than anything else.

I want to get the Hudson Valley in me,
like Taos got in me with its pink sunsets and blue gravel,
even that spring when I was so in love that nothing could be better.
Like Mexico got in me last summer and I flowed with fluency.
You know, I think the air in Cuernavaca turned me into a princess.
Like Austin is in me, breakfast tacos and Lone Stars and all.

Most of all, I want India in me.
I want real yoga pulsing through my veins.
Not just in my scrapbook memories, but in my skin.
A part of me, por siempre.

bravo, boston

I am visiting my dear friend, Tommy O'Malley, (guess his heritage) and we taped this video blog yesterday about such important topics as the weather, Sex and the City, India and Michelle Obama. Today, we went to the Boston Celtics victory parade downtown which was fun. Boston sports fans are intense devotees, that much is for certain.

another step toward equality

blue like jesus

My spiritual beliefs have packed up their suitcases and moved many, many times from Catholicism to Hinduism and Buddhism, and have even made a brief but intense pit stop in an exurb called Fundamentalism (as a tourist, not a citizen). My most radical shifts in thinking have had to do with Jesus and the religion about him. Growing up in the Catholic Church, Jesus was a gory figure nailed to the cross who had risen to the right hand of the God the Father where they sat motionless like statues on their thrones in the sky. But Jesus WAS God, too, and he was also something invisible called the Holy Spirit. It didn't make sense to me then any more than it does now.

In 2004, I was living in California, immersed in West Coast raw foodism and yogic philosophy and had altogether shunned the idea of Jesus as a deity. And then I met a man who I thought truly embodied the teachings of Jesus, in word and action. He was caring, compassionate and charitable. Mysteriously, we fell in love, and for a split second it was beautiful. Overnight, I changed my views on Jesus. I began to re-believe the idea of virgin birth and bodily resurrection. I read the New Testament and visualized a life of missionary work. I could be the next Mother Teresa! (So what if I was going to be a married yogini?)

Four years, loads of meditation and dozens of Unitarian Universalist sermons later, I now see Jesus as an enlightened prophet but would be embarrassed to label myself a Christian. Long story short, my former flame has been put away for the next eighteen years in a prison cell for molesting young girls. So, God failed him. Or he failed God. Or both. It was enough to turn me away from the narrow path.

A dear friend and mentor to me at school is also the embodiment of Christ-like qualities. He goes consistently beyond the call of duty for the benefit of his students. He is considerate, trustworthy, funny and sweet. Unlike the lifelong California Christian, the Texan teacher is a relatively new Christian. He has gone from gigging musician/marijuana evangelist/non-committal guy to a married father living in suburbia and hosting Bible studies. I know that he believes in Creationism and literal Resurrection, but I choose to look the other way. His belief system is a black mark in my mind, yet his faith is also what drives him to help and care for others as Jesus would. He very thoughtfully gave me a book for airplane reading called Blue Like Jazz. Its cover touts "nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality." It's well-written and engaging, yet I find myself feeling terribly judgmental when the author writes things like, "I would die for the gospel because I think it is the only revolutionary idea known to man." That makes me bristle. It gets back to the core of what to me is despicable about Christianity: the pompous belief that they have exclusive rights to the highest truth.

On the bright side, it reminds me what I love about yoga. The absence of dogma. The truth in the breath, in the present moment, in learning to quit beating ourselves up on and off the mat -- because we are not broken, sinful, lowly beings, we are children of the universe, with divinity in our hearts, perfect in our imperfections and on the path to wholeness. Religious or not, these beliefs remain constant and sustain me.

summer travel plans

I feel like I've told everyone I know about my summer travel plans, because I'm so excited about them. The official plans involve leaving for Boston next week, on June 16. Spending time in Boston, New York City and upstate New York (at a writing and yoga retreat for five days in the Hudson River Valley) before jetting off to India at the end of June. I'll be arriving in Delhi and booking it to Rishikesh, "the yoga capital of the world," which is in North India near the Himalayas. I will stay at a yoga ashram there about a month, arriving back in Austin on August 3. Whew! And school starts up again (for teachers) on August 18, so that gives me a couple weeks to unwind and readjust to U.S. culture. I hope to find an internet cafe in Rishikesh so I can blog and email every week or so.

redesigning

It sure is fun to redesign things. I have now had yogafreedom.com as my personal website for six years! It has gone through many a facelift over the years. Currently, I am somewhat limited by blogger's technology, but it's cheaper and easier than buying web design software and totally revamping the site. So, it's a new look for summer.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures of late to share with you:


My grandma, mom, aunt and uncle at the beach in the 50s.


grandpa and mom at the pool.


one of my two kitties, sancho


happy at home! :)

hasta pronto (until soon)

literal translations are cause for great laughter and confusion
learning other languages, the queer tongues of the exotic indigenous
we begin to understand
we open, soften, warm up
we let loose
we whoop and cheer
we rest

when i was learning spanish and was first told, "hasta pronto"
i thought, "until soon?"
a more appropriate translation might be
see you soon.

until soon.
i like the juxtaposition.
until soon is where my mind always wants to go
my ego is way ahead of me.
until soon is just outside the realm of the present
hasta pronto.

what more do you need to know?

the times they are a-changin'.

summer freedom

In forty eight hours, I will be free. I will have tearily wished all my students goodbye, finished packing and moving my things into my new classroom, turned in my key and told my colleagues to have a great summer. It's hard to stay present with such a big ending looming in the near future. And beyond that, in less than two weeks, the shining cities of Boston and New York await. Beyond them, the unthinkable India. I have high expectations. I don't expect to become enlightened by my summer endeavors. I know by now that that is not a geographical but a quiet, internal pursuit. I don't expect to be entertained or for this to be an easy, totally relaxing trip. I will be alone, in a foreign country whose language I do not speak. I will be clueless and obviously a tourist. I have a sense that I will be more at home than I've ever been.