Ceci n’est pas une blog

Blah Blah Blahg

I've been quiet for a while now. Since the last time I posted, I took a trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands. It was unusual circumstances. The accommodations were a gift from my good friends Joe and Paul to myself and 5 of their other friends. I met some wonderful women and had a way much needed albeit brief escape. We stayed on St. John. It is a beautiful island and largely undeveloped. I highly recommend it to anyone seeking a tropical retreat.

It seems a little insane to me that we are already finishing up the first quarter of the year. In a heartbeat it will be summer and a nanosecond later, I'll be getting the kids ready for school. And so life goes, eh? It's oddly comforting right this moment to think that time seems to pass so quickly and without incident. Surely by the Fall, the economy will be turning around. Certainly the emotional aftermath of recent challenges will have faded. Much more will have been processed. My toddler will be more negotiable — well, at least more verbal. I will be living in a larger, lighter and less expensive apartment. Maybe not by May, but definitely by September. Right?

I used to want time to creep by so I could savor every moment, stay young forever suck every bit of honey out of life. Is it me? Am I taking on a national - or even global - malaise? My own personal melancholy is compounded by stories of so many people out of work. So many people drained of their life savings. So many people in foreclosure on their homes. I just don't see many smiling faces these days. As the great Robert Plant once said, "Does anybody remember laughter?" 

One of my favorite tweeters @IntegralHack recently said, "Compassion is the only solution. Not the fuzzy, teary-eyed emotional response, but the limpid recognition of interconnection."

I'll just go with that for now while I ride out the whatever-it-is-we-are-all-experiencing-right-now and wait for it to pass.

Conscious Detachment and Kali Ma

An old and dear friend of mine, Mark Gorman, plays bass with Steve Ross at Maha Yoga for a chant. The cynical part of me was skeptical that anything like this could be done with authenticity in Brentwood. There are more than a few posers in the crowd, and several people who appear to have been hooked up to a silicone drip. It is, after all, L.A. But the vast majority of the 150 or so people seem to genuinely want to be there to connect with each other and a cosmic energy by a collective surrendering to something other than ourselves. The studio is lovely, the musicians explode the joint and I swear the building levitates a few feet off the ground. I have started to feel about these chants, I think, the way some people feel about church. It's a feeling I never seemed to achieve at temple, though I tried. When Mark said "chant", I expected something much more esoteric. Ravi Shankar or a room filled with saffron-robed monks droning in monotone. Maha chants are much more like a Hindu hootenanny, a Rama revival. Stirring, comic and cathartic.

Looking back on my life in the past year, you might think that I invoked the great mother Kali Ma. She is often misunderstood to be the Hindu goddess of death and destruction. She is a scary gal, usually depicted with the whites of her eyes staring confrontationally out of her dark blue face. She holds a sword in one hand and a freshly severed and bloody head in the other. Her impeccable fashion sense is evident in the garland of skulls she's chosen and a skirt made of dismembered arms. Trash and Vaudeville eat your heart out!  While Kali Ma's energy is strong and runs deep, she is not maliciously destructive. She lives to bring death to the ego and its deluded view of reality. She kills attachment to the physical, thus liberating intention to find truth. 

One of my yoga teachers recently used the word "grabby" when describing the feeling of the ego trying to control reality. It's a description that works for me, as I often feel that I am trying to hang on to something that is slipping away. I have had to let go of a lot this year...UH. LOT. And the natural tendency while standing in the wreckage of what used to be one's world is to grab onto what is left and hold on for dear life. Yeah, grabby fits.

I had been out of practice with yoga for several years. The business of bearing children, nurturing a career, building a life, constructing a house and deconstructing a family took me away from the mat. This January I finally found my way back. Before kids, I cut some serious teeth at Larchmont Yoga (now a Yogaworks) in Hollywood. When my daughter was an infant and toddler, I lived in Santa Monica for several years. I practiced regularly at Yogaworks on Montana Ave. I had experienced good yoga and I was spoiled. 

I have lived in the South Bay for 7 years. Beautiful beaches, fab bike path, great public schools, there's a lot to love. Yoga? Not so much. I've tried half a dozen schools in the area and hadn't clicked with any of them. That is, until an old friend moved into the neighborhood. Enter Yogaworks South Bay. It's gorgeous, it's convenenient, it's a perfect fit. The schedule is filled with good classes taught by great teachers. In January I started taking 3-4 classes a week. 

Yoga is a complex philosophy spelled out the in Bhagavad Gita, the primary Hindu scripture. As many as 18 kinds of yoga are defined, only one of which is the physical practice. Each class is a series of poses — asanas — designed to foster strength, flexibility and balance. 

So, I have finally gotten to a point in my yoga practice where I can easily slip into what I call conscious detachment. For someone who is hyperemotionally engaged at all times — no small feat. I often feel like I wish I could take a vacation from myself. Yoga finally does that for me. I have always believed that a healthy relationship requires a balance of intimacy and space. My practice gives me that same balance in my relationship with myself. And chanting has enabled me to return to that state when I am not on my mat. I chant in the car. I chant in the shower. I chant in my head at work when I am fretting about feeling unappreciated and uninspired. I chant when I feel like I am hanging on to feelings for the otherwise perfect man who is emotionally unavailable (yes, my very own Mr. Big). I chant when I worry about money. I chant when I look at the wrinkles between my eyebrows (and it's a helluva lot cheaper than Botox). 

It's time to convince you that no one has fed me Kool-Aid in a tent somewhere in the tropics. By now, my futurist friend Alex in Silicon Valley is shaking his head. He told me New York would revoke my native status if she knew I was chanting in Brentwood. I am sure he is right, but the best spiritual experience she could offer was discovering (at 5am on the way to the Kiev after having been up all night partying) that the cube at Astor Plaza rotates if you push it. Besides, the skull-adorned punks on the Lower East Side don't wear cool skirts made out of dismembered body parts. I'll take my Hindu goddess any day.

Seeya. Wouldn't want to beeya.

I have said it before:  Aden Nak rocks my world. Over and over. In my post New Years myopic emotional haze, I missed his farewell to Dubbya. It's worth acknowledging even at this late date, lest we forget what we've been through for 8 long years.

There is no need to wait for history to obscure the details in a battle fog of conflicting punditry and rosy nostalgia. George W. Bush was, is and forever will be a miserable failure, from his ape-gait lumber to his spoiled child certainty to his ghastly inability to refrain from smirking when invoking the memory of the dead. But worse than that, he was an empty-headed creature. A pseudo-folksy front man for a band of Pollyanna armchair generals who see the world as their own personal political rutting ground. Men who thought the domino theory that worked so bloody well in Vietnam was worth trying again - only this time in reverse and in a region far less stable. Not that any of them were around to see the domino theory in action. Like Dick Cheney, they all had other priorities.

Read the rest here:  Clearing Brush by Aden Nak

Pink Cloud Mojito and Other Valentine’s Day Ramblings

While having dinner at the bar at Mucho recently with my friend Hilarie, we helped the bartender and chef concoct their new drink, a Pink Cloud Mojito. These martini glasses, filled with plumes of cotton candy are about to be liquified by the pouring of a minty lime and tequila mixture. Add a little John Cage music in the background and it's almost a Happening.

I have much to be thankful for this Valentine’s Day, not the least of which are two wonderfully scrumptious kids who rock my world every single day. I find myself envying the way my friends who aren't parents can navigate through life. There is the simple matter of time. With a 2-year-old boy and a nearly 12 year-old-girl, you can imagine what kind of time is left for me at the end of the day. Hint: nil. I consistently steal time from the administrative and logistical activities of keeping a household running for a chance to read, connect with friends or catch up on the few shows I TiVo. Bills don't get paid, refrigerator is empty, beds don't get made...all so I can come back to center on a regular basis. I often feel like I live in perpetual motion; chasing or being chased. The hyper-awareness that is required of me at all times is exhausting.

For all that I am drained by the constant juggle, I am also fed by the presence of these two beings, my children. It's difficult to articulate what it means to wake at 5 am to a little voice calling me. It is easy to describe the desperation to be left alone to sleep. The dizziness of having to stand erect and be present. The dread at having to spend 3 long hours with a demanding toddler with limited communication skills before the rest of the world is even conscious. But there is more, and it goes something like this:

It is an honor to walk alongside my children as they make this journey through life. To be the person they depend on to see them through. To watch my son learn how to use his body, to learn to speak, to learn how to use a spoon, to figure out how to wield his power over his environment and the things in it (including his mother!). To watch my daughter figure out who she is, what she believes in, how to negotiate complicated friendships. To see her explore where her boundaries are, deciding how much to give and how much to demand. To begin to see and admire both her sharp wit and generous spirit. To be her mirror as she defines herself as a woman, a lover and a mother. 

I am not at all sure what it means in the larger picture. Why have children? For whose benefit is it to bring more people onto an over-populated and environmentally deteriorating planet? (These questions are even more pointed in my case because I have managed to blow apart the panacea of the traditional family model twice over.) What I do know is this. For all it's challenges and personal sacrifices, motherhood remains the single most important and fulfilling thing that I do and that I am. Perhaps this goes without saying. But in a year where I have been brutally honest with myself about all kinds of things, my feelings about motherhood have not escaped scrutiny and analysis. I love being mom. I love who that makes me. I love my children — both as a concept and as individuals. I love the way they love me. I love the way they see me. I love the way we nourish each other. It is this love that I celebrate today, on Valentine’s Day. 

Do you know how they picked the Dalai Lama?!

Am I wrong? Isn't the Dalai Lama both the spiritual leader and the head of state of the Tibetan people? He is referred to as HHDL — His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He is lauded as one of the great moral authorities on the planet. (And he sends those great emails about being centered, grounded and generally benevolent person, then threatens eternal damnation if you don't forward the message to 10 of your closest friends. Okay, okay, maybe I should check snopes.com.) 

Tenzin Gyatso is the 14th Dalai Lama. The Tibetan people believe all the Dalai Lamas are the same soul incarnate in different bodies. I was fascinated to read last week about the methodology by which they found this current HHDL.

The search for the present Dalai Lama commenced in earnest in 1935 when the embalmed head of his deceased predecessor is said to have wheeled around and pointed toward northeastern Tibet.

Then, the story goes, a giant star-shaped fungus grew overnight on the side of the tomb. An auspicious cloud bank formed and a regent saw a vision of letters floating in a mystical lake, one of which — Ah — he took to refer to the northeast province of Amdo.

High lamas set off at a gallop and found a 2-year-old boy in a distant village. This child, they determined after a series of tests, was the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.

I have to appreciate the absurdity of this information. I am as appreciative of mysticism and metaphysics as anyone, but it seems that this selection process leaves a wide margin of error. 

Read the whole article, Can You Choose Your Reincarnated Successor? and tell me what you think.

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With Strings

These are a few of my favorite things (in no particular order):

1. The New York Times

2. A Dirty Grey Goose Martini shaken hard and icy cold

3. Sundays at the Whitney

4. The Rabbi’s Daughter by Reva Mann

5. The moment in Annie Hall where Alvie has to invent a new 

    word to express how much he loves Annie

6. Virabhadrasana II

7. Being deliriously tired and crawling into bed

8. Bernini's "The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa"

9. My new Fendi shades

10. Brussels Sprouts

11. The sound of my kids laughing

12. How a dog can be at once totally base and supremely 

      elegant

13. Viggo Mortensen

14. A good pea coat

15. Lucha Vavoom

16. The Brazen Head — San Francisco

17. “Let's Get Small”

18. Sharing a Stella with my shrink

19. Bodie

20. My Dyson vacuum

21. Moments of perfect clarity

22. Summers in Mammoth

Almost Famous

I was quoted on CNN.com today in an article about the 25th anniversary of the first Macintosh computer.

For graphic designers like Zoë Korstvedt, now a Los Angeles creative director, the evolving Mac, with each added feature, was ripe with ah-ha moments.

To tinker with a piece, play with the text, "to visualize on your computer was just insane," she said. "My colleagues and I wonder how we did it [their jobs] before."

No wonder, then, that when Korstvedt, 44, married her first husband in 1989, she used half of their wedding money to buy her first home computer: a Mac SE/30, for which she forked over extra bucks for an upgrade to a whopping 8 megabytes of RAM. Nothing compared to the 12 gigs she now has. "I was styling," she said with a laugh.

Read the article at:

Apple fans mark 25 years of Mac devotion by Jessica Ravitz

Impressions of a New Day

Today is the day the countdown calendars zeroed out. Today was the day we saw George W. Bush evacuate the White House in a helicopter. Today was the day when the change we elected to instill came to fruition. Today, the citizens of this country, and of the world, witnessed the inauguration of our 44th president. It is January 20, 2009 and Barack Obama is the President of the United States of America.

My son turned 2 this past Saturday and hasn't stopped whining since. I exaggerate, but suffice to say that this was a morning I would have loved to have to myself, my television and my computer. Instead, I grabbed what I could in between waffles and sippy cups of "apple jooooo", trucks, trains, cars and high dives off the club chairs, to catch whatever fleeting glimpses I could of the coverage as over 1 million people converged on the mall to participate in history. When I left the boy at pre-school, I listened to NPR, hanging on every word. On and off through my 20 minute commute and 30 mintues in the parking lot (unable to peel myself away) I wept. An old friend of mine told me the other day that saying the Pledge of Allegiance has new meaning for her now. I know how she feels.  For the first time in 8 years, I am proud to be American.

Some impressions from today:

First glimpse of Michelle and Barack leaving their hotel. They look happy and relaxed. Michelle looks beautiful. I love the dress.

Scene at the White House where the Bushes greet the Obamas. Suddenly George and Laura look small. Literally and figuratively.

I noticed how great Teddy Kennedy looked in his fedora. Very vital. Only to hear that he later suffered a seizure at the luncheon. I feel badly that this day was marked by that for him. We all know what it meant to him.

Maybe she was suffering from frozen vocal chords, but Aretha Franklin couldn't sing. I haven't checked out her hat, but from the descriptions I've heard, she can't dress either.

The premiere of Air and Simple Gifts, composed for the occasion by John Williams, performed by Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Anthony McGill,and Gabriela Montero was breathtaking.

Dianne Feinstein's voice was quivering, I am sure not because she was nervous but because she was so damn excited that this day had finally arrived.

Bush was booed when he took the stage. Someone told me a whole lot of people were audibly singning, "Nah nah nah nah, hey, hey, hey goodbye". That's got to be a historical first and certainly a hysterical one.

Cheney turns up in a wheel chair? Brian Williams said he resembles Dr. Strangelove. If you were Dick Cheney, wouldn't you do whatever it took...steroids...morphine...to STAND UP?!

Obama's speech was more pointedly anti-Bush than I expected. He spoke effortlessly and powerfully, assuming the role of both our leader and our voice.

Tonight when the kids are asleep, I will crawl in bed and TiVo through the events, savoring a day we will not likely forget for generations. Let's hope Obama's presidency matches his inauguration in heart, soul and the spirit of an America we can be part of and proud of.

First Signs of Spring

Every once in a while, I find myself wanting to reboot. The complex and constantly moving parts of my life converge into gridlock. It's somewhat of an emotional response to challenges presented in the physical world. Or maybe parts of the conundrum are organically emotional. The close of 2008 was one of those moments. It's been a long year filled with turmoil. My M.O. has always been that in every crisis is an opportunity for growth. And though I think I might have hit new lows for a few days around New Years, a spark of hope remains. 

In the midst of one of the most devastating years in this country's history, at the end of eight of the most alienating years, we managed to pull together and elect (in a landslide), not only our first black president, but a man who embodies the spirit of hope. Both the person and the election of the person serve as a symbol of what is possible even at our lowest moment. Obama's mantra was, "Yes we can” and yes, we did.

I am reminded of something from my childhood. I grew up in the suburbs of New York City. Winters were long and some years were downright brutal. The cold and snow were charming through the holidays, but come February, one longed for birds chirping and long warm days. At one point every year, through the frozen, gray ground, new life would emerge — the first crocuses. Spring was coming. 

It never ceased to amaze me how something so warm and alive could grow from such barren, dead earth. And these crocuses would be the single living plant in the garden for weeks. Patience was still a necessity, but the brave blooms served as a beacon of what was to come. They were the promise of new life, new growth — the abundance ahead.

I am filled with the same wonder and relief at the inauguration of Barack Obama this Tuesday, as if it's the first sign of Spring at the end of a long, cold Winter. I am inspired to follow our national reboot with a personal one. If I weren't an atheist, I would say, "God bless America. God bless us every one”.

Delicious Toes