The Bay Area is Amazing

What more can I say? After our long journey across America in all its splendor, California’s Bay Area hardly disappoints. Jose’s new home is in Pleasant Hill, a dense suburb with rapid transit and all the comforts of American excess. The neighborhoods are more compact, the homes smaller than I’d expect with this level of affluence, and that’s grounding. It is a pleasant and convenient place.

Last night we drove in to the Oakland hills to visit friends. The route took us through and under some of those spectacular steep grassy hills that look like golden suede, or the hide of a Sharpei. Popping out on the western side, there is The Bay, shimmering like a mirror. Said friends have a complete urban farm that runs on solar power and collected rain water. On a small lot they grow fruits, veggies, flowers and herbs. I’m enjoying one of their luscious lemons in my water.

Today I got to visit the Siddha Yoga Ashram in Oakland for a lovely lunch in their cafeteria, a browse in the bookstore. We peered into the large auditorium, dim and scented with years of devotion, then meditated in the temple, a tented garden where the flowering vines are working their way in, as if to receive blessings. What a beautiful place. Not just the surroundings but the pervasive aura, calm and loving.

After the Ashram we set sail for the Marin Headlands, which took us on a magical tour over the Bay Bridge(s), across the Embarcadero, through some neighborhoods and onto the Golden Gate Bridge. I remembered how the first time I saw it I gasped “It’s RED!” I had assumed the bridge itself was golden.

The topography of the Marin Headlands is mind boggling. Climbing up above the GGB gave me serious vertigo – the sensation that I was going to fall down, down, down.

I’ll leave the rest to pictures, and Josephine.

Friday evening, May 3rd

We’ve now been in Pleasant Hill terra firma for just a little over 48 hours. I oscillate between open-hearted wonder of being here, gratitude for sleeping in the same bed — for two nights now! –  and a certain anomie. I am not altogether rootless, and yet, it will take time to grow those roots that makes this home. So when I’m experiencing that not-here-yet, I have my free-floating fearful moments. They pass. They rerun, sometimes in dreams.

Today, open-hearted delight in taking Patrise to my beloved Siddha Yoga Ashram in Oakland for lunch, and after, a brief tour of the place. I was welcomed by Swami Siddhananda at the front desk, an old friend from years back. The very energy of the whole place welcomed me, as well as Patrise. I have arrived, I am home.

Our next destination was the Marin Headlands, where Patrise, Tango and I ritually touched the waters of the Left Coast. Connecting and grounding of another sort. After 10 days and 3,550 miles of patiently curling himself up in a small corner of the car, Tango –off leash — joyously galloped full speed up and down the beach, a bit shy of salt water, and ran and played with several other pups.

I have arrived. I am home. I will need to repeat that mantra more than once.

Tango and Patrise in the surf

We have completed our #coast2coast project. Touching the pacific, feeling its chill foam slosh around my legs, touching the salt to my lips, the mission is complete. The journey, however continues, with no less wonder.

Always Weaving a New Story

Yesterday I did a cool one-day workshop called Storyweaving, which is a unique method of working our creative subconscious to reveal and retell the stories we live by.  The workshop leader is Carol Burbank, my dear friend, and I’ve had the privelege of watching her grow as a teacher and healer (and I helped her create the web site. **iz proud of her & me**). Check out her site for upcoming workshops, classes, talks and more.

We gathered in the morning and got started with some meditation. It was a nice group of four, all of us women of a certain age who are moving bravely into life changes.We worked with group story-telling and then made ‘self portraits’ to discover images, themes, tools to help us with our current transformations.

I took this workshop before, back in December

At that time my art piece revealed a protective angel-self who held my hurt and depressed self. You can see her, held in the angels’s heart, at left, curled into a tight dark ball.

At the time, I judged the self portrait as ‘art’ and was embarrassed by the sugary fairy angel. But in time I became very grateful for her energy watching over me. It was a tough year last year, and there was much healing to do in the dark of winter.

This time I made two images.

In the first,  I wanted to get the literal idea of the body as temple (in Hawaiian: hei’au) out onto the page.

I was obviously working with feeling large and heavy, going for a sense of sacred and ancient goddess. Hawaiian is one culture that honors the fat body as beautiful. I have a pretty hard time doing that, but in working on this I began to enjoy the lumpy lava body, her serenity, and all the lush gifts that were brought to her.

 

 

 

 

Once I got that idea out, it was easier to work more dreamlike way, less cerebral control. I chose colors and drew without looking for about half of the picture. This one reveals a flowing, evolving bright rosy energy.

There’s a sense of moving hands, red with life energy, and growing embrionic and vine-like growth. It’s luminous, expansive, moving. No more hiding now, it’s all about unfurl and grow.

BIG changes in three months!

Since we are always writing our story, it’s important for me to resist the old gloomy myths that hold me back from all the good I can do.

Watching the Moon

cc 2008 by iceberg273 on Flickr

Friday night the sky was clearing as the post-Christmas heavy weather lifted. I watched the full moon rise through a veil of hazy snow. Our luminous satellite, la belle Lune, marks time for our world, counts out the days, turning the tides and illuminating our nights.

Full Moon marks an apex, a peak expansion, and a pause before contraction begins. Like the recent Solstice (literally ‘sun stands still’) there is an implied coming to rest. It is a good time for contemplation, meditation and prayer.

It’s traditional: a great deal of reflection and recounting the old year is swirling around us now, and of course it’s good to review and reflect. Then it’s time to put away that which doesn’t serve us going forward. This year we make our year-end lists and New Years vows under the light of the waning moon, gently moving forward into the dreaming dark.

Why not bundle up the disappointments and regrets of the year passed and release them into the night sky? And as you make those vows to-be-do have more in 2013, wrap them in lunar light and set them aloft as well. Make room in your heart for the tide of change to move freely.

From now until New Moon 1/11/2013 is the time to complete and clear away whatever is not needed for the fresh plantings of the New Year. Let the Moon lead you into the New Year, luminous with possibility. Feel the divine support inherent in the flow of time, as marked by the light of the Moon.

Spring Awakening

Fifteen years ago I climbed this hill, carrying only a bedroll, a sheet of plastic, some twine and a gallon jug of lemon-maple cayenne water to carry me through a three day fast. Today I am sitting on the rock that I slept on back in 1997, listening to spring awakening the mountains. Here a hawk, there a crow. Further down in a valley, an owl calls, a fox barks.

The wind comes, I hear it chasing along the ridge through bare branches, coming closer until it passes overhead like a wave. Last time I was here it was July, mountain summer sweet and green. I slept in the forest with no roof and no tent for the first time in my life. When the sky showed first light the air began to stir and the sound of birds began, like the wind is coming today, first faint from afar, then moving closer riding the edge of sunrise. Theoretically I knew about this everyday miracle: