Moving Day!

I'm delighted to report we started moving into our new home this weekend. I am completely ready and on board with this and elated a new chapter has finally begun. It's sweet chaos at the moment, but it feels right. By this time next week we will be completely moved out and into our new home, and by the following week this place will be ready to rent. I have no bitter feelings, it's just time to go. I knew when I bought this place it would never be home. It was my first place and I learned a lot and I'm grateful for that. I accomplished a lot while I was here as well and many happy things happened as a few personal tragic ones. I'm at peace with my decision, it was what it was supposed to be, and I got out of it all I could. So I leave feeling good and solid with my only sadness that Cisco can not come with us, he would have loved the new house.

I went to yoga class yesterday for the first time in weeks. It was nice to be sharing time with others, and I badly needed the practice, but once again, I'm over it. I can tell I've mentally left that studio as well. My interests have expanded to include other areas of practice. I had the opportunity to learn from some dynamic teachers. The instruction and some of the practice made a permanent stamp on my own teaching and I am forever thankful but it's time to move on. I have some studios and teachers to explore once we're moved in and unpacked a bit. I'm really excited and open to all the new opportunities and discoveries just ahead. Its a great feeling.Non attachment, so hard but it can be so good!

I'll leave you with a nice poem about home and hearth and internal love and warmth and hugs, kisses and all that good stuff! Have a fabulous day everyone.

A Home Song

I read within a poet's book
A word that starred the page:
"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage!"

Yes, that is true; and something more
You'll find, where'er you roam,
That marble floors and gilded walls
Can never make a home.

But every house where Love abides,
And Friendship is a guest,
Is surely home, and home-sweet-home:
For there the heart can rest.

Henry Van Dyke

Not your typical girl

17 January 1962 – 20 October 2010

Ari Up aka Madussa (born Arianna Forster), passed away Wednesday from what her stepfather John Lyndon described as a "serous illness." I'm so sad to say after a long battle with cancer this passionate creative force of nature decided it was time to go. A natural feminist with a strong message and a belief in the validity of her work, she was instrumental in shaping an attitude that women can be strong, sexy, powerful, individual and creative. Even young girls in the post punk eighties who weren't aware of the Slits were influenced by her style. A generation came of age as many female musicians unabashedly crashed the male dominated punk scene and made their own original and unique statement. American music journalist Lester Bangs described Ari Up, “In all sorts of rags and a fishnet shawl, high footing around the dance floor like some mix of spider and strutting ostrich.”

Her initial journey started when she was 14 as a founding member of the Slits, a mainly all female punk band. This seemed a natural choice as her mother was promoting bands in the music industry. She was deeply influenced by the music around her which quite literally floated in and out of her day to day life. Ari's mother took her daughter to see the sex pistols in London . A big night for everyone as it turned out, Ari met a founding band mate there and formed a band shortly after, her mother eventually married the singer. The slits were together from 1976 to the early eighties. The music was deeply influenced by her love of reggae, a style which she would later fully explore in the dancehall scene in Jamaica, London and Flatbush New York. Her initial work with the slits can best be described as dub music. This genre consists predominantly of instrumental remixes of existing recordings and is achieved by significantly manipulating and reshaping the recordings, usually by removing the vocals from an existing music piece, emphasizing the drum and bass. The Slits had catchy tunes which were pop fun with a Jamaican feel.

After her time with the Slits, she traveled extensively living in Belize, Indonesia, and finally settled permanently in Kingston Jamaica. In 2005, Ari Up reformed The Slits, and in 2006 released the EP Revenge of the Killer Slits. “The only burden of the Slits is that we were ahead of our time, we're pretty much the same. We're not very much tamed. Nobody was able to tame us over the years. So you'd be surprised. We're just revolutionary because that's just what we are.”

Dedicated to her art, soulful and true to her vision she believed in her herself. She had a profound respect for woman everywhere and no tolerance for misogynistic men which I'm sure were in no short supply in the world she lived grew up in. She was also a naturalist and holistic. She paved the way for people like Isa Chandra Moskowitz and organizations like Food not Bombs to exist under the premise of being punk rock, healthy living, and for the greater good all at the same time. You were never a typical girl, quite the opposite, uncharacteristic and completely unique. Thank you for your honesty you were very brave in this lifetime. Peace and love to you on your journey.

Dreaming of Full Moons

Full Moon and Little Frieda
A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket –
And you listening.
A spider’s web, tense for the dew’s touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming – mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.
Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm wreaths of breath –
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.
"Moon!” you cry suddenly, “Moon! Moon!”
The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work
That points at him amazed.

Ted Hughes, from Wodwo (1967)

Boxes and Lobsters

This is where it's at these days. The goal is to be completely packed in the next five days. It has been my experience that "completely packed" usually means 85% of what you have is actually packed, when you think 98.5% is stuffed into boxes and ready to roll. Its a funny little phenomena. As I'm packing I see how much stuff has accumulated over the years and I am struck by it. I think this is in part because I do not view myself as a materialistic person and in part because I can't actually recall where a lot of it came from. As I said, I consider myself fairly free from materialistic entrapment but really that's probably just a pretty little fantasy in my head. For example; isn't it time to throw away five years of yoga journal magazines that have been stored down in the my basement for who knows how long, or how about all the books I've read that now just sit on my bookshelf collecting dust, or the purses neatly lined up in the closet that haven't been used in a decade, and why do I keep dragging my undergraduate statistics book with me wherever I go? Seriously, why am I holding on to these things? It's time to take a shaky hand and start piling stuff into a big black trash bag headed toward the recycle bin or donation to Goodwill. I think this is the week to tackle that little demon. Yeah that's right, that's me in the hoodie running up those stairs, fearless!

In the meantime tonights the annual lobster bake C and I have every year. This is a downright feel good evening where we give thanks and celebrate the harvest in our own deeply unique way associated with our environment and spiritual beliefs. Taking time to give thanks and to this beautiful planet for the abundance and love she gives us in selfless abandon. Oh yeah, rock on.....

A little fun for Friday

I hear you and I am listening!

Yep, we did it. I did not expect this to happen immediately, but it did. We found the perfect home, in the perfect place, and it all came together instantly. This is 48 hours after making an affirmative decision to shut the fuck up and let the universe take a turn. Ironically it's much closer to a yoga center I have been very interested in exploring but haven't been able to since I moved to this part of the city. So for now its all boxes, and packing tape and calls to arrange things that need to be done......... Oh yeah, I am feeling it, and it feels FINE.

Wishing everyone a happy, strong and beautiful day.

Understanding

This weekend was a series of nasty incidents which culminated at the end of the weekend with me walking out of my favorite yoga class. All were big messages and none could be ignored. When you've outgrown something its just not going to fit any longer and you can't make it, period. Each incident involved something very personal and close to home, where I walk my dogs, where I live, where take my yoga classes. No ignoring these places. OK I get it, we've outgrown it. The other piece is knowing your listening and the universe is responding when everything starts to come together instantly. OK, lets do it.

Wishing everyone a peaceful day.

October Forecast

A warm October,
A cold February.
When leaves fall early,
Fall and Winter will be mild;
When leaves fall late,
Winter will be severe.
Squirrels gathering nuts in a flurry,
Will cause snow to gather in a hurry.
Much rain in October,
Much wind in December.

Full Moon in October without frost,
No frost 'till November's Full Moon.
( weather lore for the month of October)