Lotusland

Enough. These few words are enough.

If not these words, this breath.

If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life

we have refused

again and again

until now.

Until now.

~David Whyte

After fits and starts of planning, buckets of bad weather (another way of saying November and December), nearly total loss of my perspective and sense of humor, we went to Thailand.

There was sunshine.

There was time.

There were peaceful, quiet, smiling people.

There we were, together, far from home.

We made our wishes, and sent them off into the unknown.

What a gift to arrive in our own wholehearted presence.

What if your joy is tied up in knots?

Last week in the evenings Theo and Dora and I were sitting around the kitchen table in the warmth of the woodstove making things with wire, beads, and hemp. I was looking for a way to slow down the sense of busyness that builds up with the season. It's reliably pervasive--even though we don't watch t.v. or live in a big city somehow the intensity (I think of it as the commerciality) of the holidays seeps into our days and eats any extra minutes up for a quick snack.

I remember when Steve and I went to New Zealand years ago, um, 11 1/2 years ago, to be exact, since that is the trip on which we conceived Theo. We sold our house in Seattle and set off, first to New Zealand and then Southeast Asia, to have adventures, see some of the places I had lived growing up, and perhaps find a new place to live. For at least the first two months of the trip it felt like I had a wire pulled tight up my back and neck and through my jaw. I thought something had happened to my teeth because my bite had changed and my teeth weren't meeting in the nice point-in-the-indent way that they normally do. I believe I was internalizing so much stress from uprooting ourselves, even though it was planned, that my body couldn't relax. Almost 6 months after we left, we returned to the States and went to my parents place to pick up our car. Some providence of the universe put a book on prenatal yoga in my path on a trip to town and after Steve helped me do maybe 20 minutes of it I started to cry and cry. Pregnant! In this huge, uncontrollable world! That was the beginning of this wild ride of parenthood we've been on together.

I've had a similar knot in my shoulder and neck for the last two weeks. As before, I wouldn't have said that I was particularly stressed. But as before, I suspect my body knows better. So I've been making a special effort to say no to extra things, to focus in yoga, and to pick up hand work and slow time down. Having my children do this with me is more lovely than I can say.

This morning I did a guided meditation for pain, focusing on the crink in my shoulder. Molecules of dissolving breath were racing in the manner of ants to a picnic. 20 minutes later, instead of crying, I'm glad to say my knot of joy to the world was a smidge smaller and the day of social festivities could begin. The tightness was still there, but I could actually feel it loosening as I envisioned the edges softening. Truly, mind over matter! I've always been a sci fi fan, especially when it's a mirror for real life.

Papaya for breakfast

A bit of sun in winter is a magical thing. See the circle sort of tucked under the shoulder of the palm frond on the right? That was the sun yesterday afternoon, delivering a distillation of love and peace directly to me on my yoga mat on my lanai (that's Hawaiian for porch!). The afternoon clouds had been persuaded to allow the sunset to spill underneath of them and it rolled across the sea and snugged up to the land--magical.

Hawaii makes me feel round, filled out with fresh air and shorn of rough edges. I love the feel of the air, it makes me think of places I spent time growing up in Southeast Asia and I feel at home. I love the bougainvillea and the hibiscus, so prolific, the essence of the humble end of the tropical plant spectrum. I love that the first time I came to Hawaii as an adult (I came once to Maui as a child and my memories consist of muddled images of thatched roofs and standing at the edge of the volcano crater) I remembered the word frangipani, which is the flower that in Hawaii they call plumeria. But frangipani--what a lovely word. It is all that it sounds. I'm sure I hadn't opened that memory drawer or even been near it in 30 years.

At one point in my yoga practice I rested in child's pose. My focus was blurred, my eyes centimeters away from the mat and all I could see were perfect little bubbles of light, each miniature hill of foam in the pattern of the mat glowing--I was breathing, there was no distinction between my body and the air, I was a cocktail of sea salt and red sand, I was settling the cliche of blue sky and palm trees into a true apprehension of paradise...

except for the sore, itchy place on the sole of my foot where I had stepped on a bee earlier. It was an inch-long, fat, black, glorious bee that instead of burying itself in one of the vivid blossoms was lying in the thick grass, and while it hurt like calamity I'm sure the bee had the worst of it. Paradise with a bit of sting--just to keep me on my mindful toes.