detox-toxify

My favorite choice is usually "all of the above" and this situation follows suit (people think this is a libra thing--I can't imagine any alternative to this desire to know everything). How does one choose between fun and fun; beauty and beauty? I am often faced with this sort of dilemma. Fortunately I can't lose in such a situation accept to possibly miss a place or event that I am meant to see. Because everything is so beautiful, I strive to be present where I am needed; to ride the crest of each wave as long as I can. Besides, is it really possible to make a wrong move? There is nothing beyond what actually happens, where one actually is at a place and time and regret is illusory denial (this makes things so much easier).

So I was choosing between San Diego, Las Vegas and Colorado; swimming/sunning, money party, and skiing. I decided on Las Vegas for Irish day--since a friend of mine bartends at an Irish Pub in Fremont with a 30ft tall pint on its roof and she's always trying to talk my zennified self into drinking towards stupor with her and her cronies. Where better to spend my drunken ancestory's favorite baseless holiday? Besides, an arguement with my Phoenix loves about freedom, unsolicited helping, people assuming they know what's good for one-another, violence (psychological), control and why I shouldn't rearrange other people's houses without asking (these are some of my favorite topics for fuming) had shot me out of there like a cannon. This doesn't happen often these days-but I was on an Irish war path with perfect timing--of course...

It couldn't have been better. What other culture has a holiday where everyone becomes a member for a day and are thus expected to wear green for fear of corporeal punishment as an alternative and drink themselves mad while hopping about wildly to bagpipes? Beyond this, the event that this day marks has nothing to do with the actual mode of celebration and talk about it is generally avoided as it dampens the party. The drunker I got, the more proud I became of my heritage. Ironically, most of the people in the mob that congealed around me that night were surfers from San Diego and some had even been there in the days prior when I was burning to go.

I drove four hours to get there, turned around, drove back to Arizona a day later (why not?) and stopped in my favorite magic heaven watering cleansing spot: the hotsprings in the desert (I will not mention the name, for it works better as a secret) to cleanse the devil from my body and press the reset button on my mind. After some conversations with various interestings, I met Dharmanatha and Parameshvari, the traveling mantra yogis. These people, once an emergency room physician and an art therapist, now travel from bliss to bliss in their hot little luxury motor home and reside until the next place draws them, making attempts to relax even further. We were all of such a similar mind and I basked in them under the full understanding that I could commune with them forever (on some level, I'm sure that I am) and be so happy--which plays perfectly into my vow to never be one place wishing I was in another. We share a common desire to find like minds, exchange knowledge and nurturing, compounding enlightenment and strengthening each other's ability to be source, as we spindle en masse ever further in to the violet stratosphere.

This day with them began with a gentleman passing away in the private sunset tub at the ripe age of 72. I believe he must have done that on purpose, for I cannot think of a better way to go. I've soaked in that water feeling that I had the option to just melt completely and this verified it. That night, after a full day of cleansing, we built a fire and had a ceremony for the soul of Eugene. We danced circles around the snake-biting light, chanting the Giatri Mantra in the ancient way handed to them from Russil Paul, whom they had just spent the last year with. I was even swallowing fear as power began to surge. We were surrounded by the large grove of bamboo which served as a condominium-like communal nest for the millions of birds that find sanctuary at this oasis and they made a running commentary of our strange but appropriate behavior--thus rising and falling in volume with opulent moments and cawing with excitement at the pinnacle, as though they could sense a sunrise in the release of this man's soul.

My tent was pitched near the site of this ceremony, so afterwards I curled up in a little cocoon charged with ethereal nurturing beyond anything my broken heart and tattered body could wish for.

I returned to Phoenix, armed with the knowledge that I would be fed and nurtured by these or kindred minds, anywhere we cross paths in exchange for yoga lessons, art lessons or the passing on of whatever I might be interested in at the moment and a working knowledge of how effective such an exchange can be; how easilly I could and should arrange this with my angels forever everywhere. I returned to Phoenix with the cold I had caught from a surfer (never again will I get drunk and make out with surfers) making its presence known and crawled right into the arms of my beloveds--anger forgotten and full of honesty, admonitions, understanding and growth--as conflict breeds intimacy. We spent some days patching up wounds and saying proper goodbyes and then I left some days later with happy sorrowful bon voyage and pieces of them to take with me. The ocean called....

Of course I stopped at the hotsprings on the way out, expecting to stay for an hour and ended up there for two days. Dharmanatha and Parameshvari had found an organic farm in the middle of the desert near the hot springs. The owner travels the world in search of seeds and grows exotic veggies: white carrots and purple broccoli et al. We soaked, did moonlight yoga in a temple cave formed by the arches within a hollowed out section in the thick grove of bamboo and went mining for crystal/fire agats in the desert. I taught them to wrap with wire and this reignited my interest in making jewelry with found objects. I have always had a facination with found object sculpture and have planned on adopting abstract art. This new medium combines these two interests into some wearable yumminess (now available, custom made!).

And onward to Encinitas (advised by the mantra yogis to bypass San Diego completely), to answer the pull of the ocean, to feed it the remnants of my experiences in exchange for cleansing and the recharge pulled out of plugging into the endless mystery of our reflecting world.