Vegas

The masculine aspect of my body's methodology for providing a functional and beautiful platform for my head to perch (my shoulder) is currently experiencing pain. I am almost happy for this pain as a reason for this trip involves a desire to develop my masculine strength to support a world....or a head....I mention this to the right people every chance I get and am healing slowly, garnering many massages. Injury knocks at my door....a warning that I can take or look back on? A small ache that is nothing...?

I recently stopped believing in attributing a function or emotion to one side of the feminine/masculine dichotomy. To distinguish between the two is currently a popular endeavor: but how does one expect to change the nature of our society while indulging in such polarity...such judgment? What is left beyond this?

The thing about Vegas is that it has a tremendous foundation. Lots and lots of money, urban sprawl ghost towns just waiting to be filled with nuclear family units, skiing within an hour's drive There is even one of the largest existing underground aquifers under the city. Mandalay Bay is built on top of huge mechanized jacks because it is sinking. There is an interest in the arts, natural healing, community organization and health, but few people to supply the demand for these things--thus creating a large opportunity for angels who are willing to come to sin city.

I had planned to be in Vegas for a few days. I have an Iranian Royal Yoga star here--the Duke, and he has a new fiancee (call her Bella) who is a psychologist--she has a Persian talk show--like Opera. I wanted to visit him and to meet her. It is amazing to work with someone and then to see them a year later; the growth and changes are so obvious. The Duke has calmed and embraced a glow of health and vitality--simply through being in the presence of his magnificent love. She is the type of person who can describe a feeling so simply, so concise, that I don't realize the magnitude of the statement for minutes..or even hours. She is perfectly made up even first thing in the morning. I doubt there is ever a time when she looses control of her self. I love to be around strong women. Lately I trust women first and seek out their company, for they are so healing and they strengthen the part of me that is nurturing.

After a few days I left this place with nowhere to go and no plans. Within a few hours and a call out to www.couchsurfing.com (oh wow what a cool organization!), I landed a nook in hot girl pad, downtown just three blocks off the strip. Lana, who moved here from New Orleans after blowing through Katrina, works at an Irish pub that has a twenty foot tall beer on its roof. She's an absolute riot with a life full of awesome girlfriends and southern manly men that she imported who fix things for her and come over to give hour-long neck massages just because they enjoy it. I was at her pub a few nights ago to see a local Irish band that plays on Friday nights--noticing the inordinate amount of Rod Stewart covers being spewed out of this hot talent and who should pop in but a Rod Stewart impersonator! It was like a nightmare....



From this point, all of my dreams are coming true in Vegas. A week and change later, I'm still here, because it won't let me leave. I spent an evening in the VIP Section of a club with people from 'The Hills'-some reality TV show. There was a weedley white guy performing who sang and danced exactly like Michael Jackson. I arrived here just in time for the Art Walk in the small, but close-knit and active arts community downtown. I met a clothing designer who is coming up with clothing ideas that I had and took notes for in college and it's happening in front of my very face and being told to me--developed with me! I put my art portfolio on craigslist and was sought out and commissioned to paint murals on lamps that came from the Playboy mansion to be displayed in a hot designer vintage store in a big new mall in the Pallazo (anniecreamcheese.com). My commissioner is on my perfect wavelength and consistently gives me the ideas that I already had, or describes preferences that have already been put into action--a sign that I am in the perfect place at the perfect time to be sure. There is currently a porn convention this weekend (the AFN awards)....Vegas at its skeeziest--how to resist? Temptation knocks at my door....A warning that I can take or look back on? A small action that is nothing?



Or I could do yoga all weekend instead...I've been spending time at the Butterfly Tribe House in NW Vegas. Last night I had dinner with the Butterfly family and friends who are all artists, healers and world travelers. There are two of the most adorable children ever-a two year old and a seven year old and a man in his eighties who traveled to China when he was 65 to go to elementary school with children and study the language. We then sat up until four o'clock in the morning meditating talking and playing crystal bowls with another yoga instructor in the community who was on the ninth day of a master
cleanse fast and came to strengthen herself through nurturing us. This morning we did yoga and then the seven-year-old made us breakfast to prepare us for drum circles and a day of yoga photographs at RedRocks.

I plan to leave on Monday or Tuesday--as soon as I finish this painting project...

I recently realized that my only real responsibility in this life is to enjoy myself. With all of the misery, my joy is a matter of crucial importance.
This year....for just one year I implore you to:


Row row row your boat
Gently down the stream
merrily merrily merrily merrily
Life is but a dream.

Thank you, distant loves....May you know the meaning of love

Model Yoga

Immediately upon entering Southern California, I learned about a wonderful phenomenon called, "barbie feet". This involves simultaneously pointing one's feet and flexing them to create a sort of barbie foot out of one's own human foot. Not only does this cause prettiness, but it also properly protects a bent and slightly twisted stretching knee with it's flex, while strengthening and lengthening with a point. My toes are now spreading with a promise of sometime moving independently and according to the commands of my brain.

Since then I'm obsessed with it. One reason for my addiction to yoga is my tendency to learn some small movement that totally re conceptualizes my concept of body, just when I start to think that I have everything figured out. I have a feeling that this process will continue for the duration; with the promise of changes involved with aging and growing, I have endless entertainment ahead of me forever!

LA is always more fun than people make it out to be. Iris and I stayed with a friend of hers, Sunshine, in a beautiful little jungle flat, one block from Venice Beach. Iris and Sunshine are both ethereally beautiful women and in fact earn a portion of their income from modeling. It was interesting for me--one who bows in and out of different compositions and tends to allow whims and chaos to dominate my style--to spend full days and nights in LA with beings of such poise. Iris is very centered and this was a healing/contemplation trip for her, which led to days spent relaxing and journaling on the beach, long conversations over tea and yoga classes in places famous for pumping out gurus.

I had been intent on attending a particular New Year's Eve party at a warehouse downtown since the Summer and was excited to watch my dreams unfolding into reality. I managed to get a job at the party as a Champagne girl. I had also hunted down some Space Virgins who got me on the list at another party down the street, so I was figuring out how to clone myself in order to take in everything. I was sure that the night was fool-proof would offer astronomical realms of crazy good times.

The thing about people on Ecstasy is that they are fun and interesting if one is on it as well, but somewhat overwhelming if one is not sharing that aspect of the experience. En-masse, there is a focused and purposeful energy exchange that happens and few boundaries surrounding the taking and giving. To productively merge with a group like that without the drug requires a desire and effort towards absorbing energy from the universe and people, so that one may give without getting drained. I'm still wavering back and forth between deep contemplation of energetic vampirism vs conscious giving/taking and a pervasive knowledge that I can give with reckless abandon and always get more energy from the endless source surrounding and within me. In a situation where it is being rapidly absorbed, it is easy for me to think too much--thus causing me to run hot and cold throughout an evening.

That, combined with the LA "game"-driven need to explain everything that one has accomplished or can offer within the first five minutes of conversation, the strict competition that some residents perceive in every social situation, people's inability to elaborate on conversational subjects amidst the distraction of my oh-so-feelable body parts and the slamming music/decor made for an interesting evening to say the least. At one point I returned to my safe zone behind the DJ booth (my friend was a dj there) to breath away an alienated stint, and found my friend, Dr. Hottiekins having a drunken cow over the notion that no one was really enjoying themselves, they were all just acting. I suppose the only conclusion that one could come to in that situation is that people really are having fun, just a different definition of it because they don't know anything beyond that. Perhaps being from Seattle, the land of extreme darkness and light, makes it difficult to find consolation in this compromise.

At one point, as a friend and I stood face-to-face in conversation, a girl came up and put one hand on either of our shoulders and said "you're pretty". Her eyes were as big as saucers and her fingers dug into our sleeves lightly, as though she was keeping herself from clutching and begging us with her mind to please allow her to keep touching us; to please not make her let go. That confirmed my suspicions and validated my sometimes over-analytical imagination. Of course, we do manifest our own reality; I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed, had I just given over to the movement of the gathering without fear and trusted my ability to generate energy for these ecstatic freaks. In retrospect, I regard situations like those as opportunities to learn how to act as a source in any situation. I guess I'm just not sure whether I want to be the food or the feeding. As a vegetarian and student of ahimsa (non-violence), this is a difficult choice--for I have been both.

I spent the next day exhausted and slept it away. Iris and I made a trip to Francesca's home in happy land (the hills) to visit the donkeys and the very large Finlandian horse. We took walks on the Beach, went out to breakfast and got our nails done. Iris left a few days later and with her gone, I could think of no other reason to stay. I laid on the beach one more time to say goodbye and the mobile massage therapist came skipping by to ask me if I needed a massage. My body ached and I was getting ready to drive, so I chose to believe that he was authentically sent to heal me rather than to feel me up. It was a wonderfully effective healing session--irregardless of his motives because I deemed it so.


I got in my car with no plan and Vegas whispered that I should go....stay for a day or two...Why miss Vegas? I had certainly been primed.....

Goddess Migration Down the Coast

I arrived in San Francisco and my friend, Iris arrived from Seattle a few hours later. I had places to go and people to see ideas to fit any mood that we might have collectively had upon her arrival and of course, her adventure-hungry chose to take off down the coast immediately. She got off of the plane proclaiming, "My body is totally devoid of vitamin d; let's go find some sun now." So off the cliff we jumped--neither one of us with any idea what to expect; both of us absolutely sure that we were in the right place at the right time.

We all have cycles that perpetuate throughout our lives: mannerisms, preferences, types of people and places that we attract. I had been observing my own on the road for a few weeks and it was interesting to combine them with Iris's for a spell. She and I have long conversations that define masculine and feminine energy, seek to combine the two in our selves and then orient those selves towards creative and healing endeavors. We hunt for and identify symbols and then read them like a book to each other to decipher the underlying rhythms of our lives. We made a stop in Santa Cruz for a snack and everywhere we went was man man man masculine man cycle in the form of comments under breath emits via random pedestrians, cars and people, things on the radio, etc. Since Iris is Croatian, everything we found was Croatian.

We wandered into a Croatian gelatto shop and were immediately bombarded with a long, albeit interesting story told with no cordial preliminaries (my name is...how are you today...etc) coursing from the mouth of a vibrant and jovial-forceful beefcake behind the counter. We sat down at a table and then he came and took my seat when I left it for a moment. He interrupted us, impatiently absorbed our parts of the conversation, brought up his obsession with politics and tried to force feed us gelatto after we expressed a disinterest in eating it. Iris's national fervor switch was turned on a little bit and I saw a side of her that I rarely see as she filled me in on cultural stories that explain the current political climate. Both of us felt a sense of relief as we left that little shop and our ability to physically manifest a theme/point became quite apparent. We took off and later realized that our confrontation with that energy had been haunting us a bit, providing a great release upon our banishing it from our trip-in a pool, at night, by the Ocean, with sparkling splashes of endless waves.

We arrived in Big Sur at night and discovered that all of the little hotels were completely booked for New Year's, but we found one little campsite in the very back corner beyond some sleeping urbanites returning to nature. We cleansed our bodies with the cold clean air as we slept next to a river and it rained on us....welcome to chaos...We woke up to find that we had chosen the most beautiful campsite on earth. Turkeys in the mist welcomed us to our morning. Frozen, we went hunting for breakfast and everything available to us on Highway 1 in the Northern region of Southern California just happened to be an adorable little chunk of fairy land!


We drove for a while through thick mist. It covered the ocean and blocked the view that we had been so hungry for. A dumptruck appeared on the road in front of us and Iris realized that it was time for us to release something. She wrote on a little paper and I chose a small painting--a collaboration between myself and my brilliant friend, X-see--who is in Korea at the moment. There is such power in these collaborative pieces--a little chunk combo of myself and a dear one that I can give to a vortex of my choosing.....This one went to the Laughing Willows...
There was such a release in that. Maybe this happens for everyone--I believe that it does--I am often struck by non-sensical urdges to make little ceremonies or moondances or chants and I never regret following them--they always elicit surprising magic and fun. It is important to be able to listen closely enough to my self to be able to hear these little ideas when they arise. Iris and I found many of these as we listened together--tracing migration paths across the western Coast. This release saw that the fog lifted from the water almost immediately. Magic is changing that which already exists and has karmatic retributions, creation is bringing something new into existence. This practice is the medium between the two.

Catch up...

Leaving San Francisco...

I will never fly during the holidays again. I will either be at my destination early or be content with the offerings of whatever fabulous sunny isle or ski getaway happens to house me at the moment. San Francisco didn't want me to leave. A Russian hippie demanded an impromptu gallery show outside of the Revolutions Cafe in the Mission and bought a painting. This attracted a man from Peru who is starting a healing center there. With both of them begging for more conversation, I tore myself away only to get lost three times on the way to the airport and make it to my plane in time to find out it was delayed two hours. After one failed attempt at making a flight, another late flight and missed connection the next day and a night spent hunting birds that live at the Denver Airport and riding the elevator amidst (literally) crying families camped out on the floor, I finally made it to Houston.

I was there to visit my Stepmother's family. They're my family too, but they hadn't seen me for years and years. They are magical people, originally from Guanajuata, Mexico--they found out that they are related to a clan of Hasidic Jews who immigrated there years ago. There is a cousin who writes books on spirituality and teaches at Neuropa, there are Buddhists, there are karate teachers, there are nurses, there are Republicans...

My grandfather is loosing his memory and I was warned that he wouldn't remember me, but as I met eyes with him, I saw every observation, every conversation, every laugh we had had together and the quiet strong way that this brilliant man had borne witness to me and everyone else in that family throughout our lives. My father says that he has never seen a person sit still longer than grandpa. Though the details are fading, I felt an immense love pour out of him as he hugged me; I felt the presence of an emotional connection that we had when I was a child and the way that it would never leave him or me. What an honor to be remembered like this!

It says a lot about a person's essential being, to be stripped of their memories. Grandpa probably doesn't know where he is or who we are half of the time, but his basic element is pure joy and so he is happy to be alive and around people who love him. I asked him how he was doing when I first arrived and he said, "I'm alive here today." and started laughing--this from a man who has never read Be Here Now.

This family genuinely enjoys each other's company. They laughed and laughed and laughed--for days they sat around the table and laughed. People didn't even seem to care about the subject matter of the conversation--only to find the humor and love and to react....

This was a wonderful pit stop for me. Not only did I get to be in the presence of my father, stepmother and beautiful princess sister, but I got to be nurtured and protected by a clan of people who have experienced much deep tragedy--and have healed each other through loving and finding joy. Such a wonderful, inspiring example at the gateway of my adventures. Each person told me to be careful and I listened as hard as I could to that.

We all piled in the mini-van and went shopping in Houston on Christmas eve and on Christmas and it wasn't even scary (I hadn't set foot in a mall for about a year prior). We played contractor and explored houses that were in the process of being built in the suburban neighborhood where they lived. We got all ready to go Christmas caroling--complete with electric keyboard and then just sang to each other instead. We sat around and talked about healthy dietary habits while eating cookies. I gave everybody paintings for Christmas and they piled me with presents. My grandmother gave me a beautiful teapot so that I can drink dragon spit tea in the mornings. I didn't expect or really want any stuff.....but recieved such nurturing in every way--this is what Christmas in Houston is supposed to be about!

My cousin, sister and I sat up late at night together,, watching movies, working on our respective computers, talking on the phone and playing video games all at the same time while not speaking to each other--I suspect that this ability to be multiple places at once might me mirroring the siddhi (special power to be many places at once that we attain through a level of enlightenment) and we're all yogis here on earth to save it....we just haven't admitted it yet....

And then I flew away....For a while these last years, I haven't been able to cry. The months leading up to my recent departure definitely reminded me how to cry....I tested out my newly recovered ability as I left these beautiful people. They live in my heart always.