obsessed

You have no idea how happy I am with striped socks and tights right now. Too happy. So happy that I look ridiculous. So ridiculous that my look was referred to as 'pippy longstocking-meets-street-urchin' today. Which made me very, very happy indeed.

blackout

There was a blackout Tuesday night covering the eastern half of the city, where I had a class that night. It took me some time to figure out what was going on. I was caught in the usual rush hour madness but had left early (for a change) so instead of being fussed about the inch-by-agonizing-inch progression of traffic, I was caught up in hazy daydreams.

At some point, it struck me that things seemed really...nice outside. Quiet and calm and kind. Completely unlike Toronto at any time let alone during the evening rush hour, and I started to take notice. It was dark. Very, very dark. No streetlights, no store signs, no lights on in the skyscrapers towering above. It was hushed. So quiet.

Drivers shared lanes and took turns at intersections in a most generous way, pedestrians walked with flashlights - some deliberately creating light shows on the building walls around us - and when I arrived at the yoga studio for my ayurveda class I was teased inside by the sight of dozens of candles glowing in the windows. I loved it.

It was cold so class was held in the teacher's apartment downstairs, wrapped in blankets, curled up in front of the fire, and sipping apple cider while M. spun his words of beauty as he does every week and the cat, Krishna, took turns warming the laps of the students scattered about his apartment.

It was a gorgeous, gorgeous evening. Can we have a blackout every night please? Other countries get to do it...

you will be lucky in work

This has been an eventful week work-wise. My current job asked that I stay on beyond my contract conclusion in April and agreed to my proposition that I return in September. Wow. Not only do I get to work at a job I love but I get to do it part time (which I also love) and I get 4 months off to adventure (which I really, really love).

I also received a call from the manager from my most favourite job ever offering me a position. When I declined he sweetened the deal with an offer to join faculty and teach, which I would so love to do. But not this year. My most favourite job ever is still too far away. I am, however, thinking seriously about joining a friend, also a Counsellor, in private practice. She also works part time and is pretty persuasive.

Today I assisted the yoga class for a teacher I don't usually work with but who I know from Mysore. He's asked if I'd take over his classes while he's away in December. It's tempting. They're level one classes which I'd be comfortable teaching but I don't feel ready yet and I really love assisting. It's wonderful to be able to work with students one-on-one while someone else does all of the talking that's the norm in Toronto yoga studios.

After yoga I went to the cozy coffee shop with the free wifi and big couches and finished a story I've been working on that I plan to submit for publication. While I was there I remembered a day a few years ago. I'd left work early to go to the Doctor's. After my appointment I stopped for a coffee and I noticed all of the people just sitting around enjoying their afternoon - in the middle of the work day! I was perplexed by these people, how did they do it? Didn't they have to work? I wanted what they had and I was sure that one day I would work part time.

There are things I have always hoped for myself. That I would work part time. That I would have several different jobs, not one 9-5 job. That I could have 4-6 months off to travel with something secure to come home to. That my job involved helping people. That I would fall in love. That I could practice yoga every day. That I teach yoga. That I write. That I have mentors and find teachers who inspire me. These are a sample.

I mention, of course, the dreams that have come into fruition. There are others that I'm still waiting on. While I wait, I think about the fact that some of the things on that list were truly preposterous, I never dreamed they would come into being, and yet here I am, living what is quite literally my ideal life. I think about the fact that these preposterous dreams came to be while the one thing that seemed fairly simple and very possible did not. And I recognize that if every crazy dream on my list came into being over the last two years while the one 'easy' one didn't, well then, my one thing couldn't have been my one thing could it? I understand that the dream is real, and waiting to come into being, but that the person I thought was supposed to be a part of it wasn't the right person. I get that I can't move on to what is really supposed to be until I make room for it by letting go of old attachments.

It's hard to get it - but not get it. I fully see that I'm fortunate to have this life. To be doing things I love. To have room and opportunity to do things I love. And 95% of the time I'm imbued with the glowing freaking awesomeness of how lucky I am. People who haven't seen me in a while comment on how happy I look, state that I'm glowing. But then there's the other 5% where I hear a song from last summer, or I see a word with 'dot.dot's' over the 'o', or I remember the twinkling lights from this time last year. That 5% of the time I wonder what happened. How things could be so close but not close enough. How hurt I am and how cold you seem. Even though it's only 5% of the time its a powerful freaking 5% and I'm so sad to think that we're not a part of each others' lives anymore and wonder why you wanted it to be that way.

Honestly, I'm so. sick. of. being. sad. It doesn't last long, and it grows more and more infrequent as the days pass, but I'm sick of it. I'm sick of being pulled back there just when I think I'm free of the quagmire of it all. And then the 95% awesomeness takes over and I AM free from the quagmire of it all, at least until I see the letter 'o' with 'dot.dot's' above it or think about saunas. Then the see-saw of emotions tips again. It's a very schizophrenic feeling, all of this, and I really am quite sick of it. Stop the ride, I want to get off.

5 good things

-->The way the cat sits at the window waiting for me to come home - I see his little triangle head move to watch me as I travel from the car to the front door but by the time I get upstairs he's laying in the middle of my bed pretending I just woke him up. Strange. But cute.

-->First snow today. Yay.

-->Dancing for hours and hours with my girls last weekend.

-->Christmas carols are back on the radio. Love Christmas carols. Was out of the country through December last year so I missed most of the season. As much fun as it was to hear "Kulkuset" where "Jingle bells" is usually sung, it was also very fun to hear songs that I could sing along to today.

-->My family. They're good people. I wouldn't have gotten through the last few months without them and they still respond to my almost-daily "tell me everything is going to be ok" phone calls with patience. Me love you long time.

I heard a lecture about Aristotle today. Am I the very last person to realize how freaking fantastic some of his ideas are? Don't answer that, I probably am seeing as I was usually busy sleeping when I should have been sitting in philosophy class during school. Whatever. That is one cool dude. My mind is still mulling over what I learned - for example - he said it was impossible to label children as "happy" because happiness is a description of a life, not a momentary emotion, and children hadn't yet massed enough of life to categorize it one way or another. Interesting.

This has been a ridiculously busy week. Although I brought tons of work home with me, I don't have to go into the office tomorrow. Which means I don't have to wake up at 5.30am for once. Which means I might get more than my usual 4.5 hours of sleep. If I go to bed right this second.

So I'm off to do just that. Hope there are good things happening wherever you are.

i sleep...

...under 2 feather duvets, 1 wool blanket, 1 heavy blanket, and with an electric heating blanket - and the temperature hasn't even dropped below zero yet.

Can't wait to get down south.

hey look! a tree!

It might not have been the best idea to buy a new camera just as fall was arriving. Although I keep going out with the intention to practice my picture-taking skills, there's a very definite theme to where my eye is drawn. I've dozens of pictures like this...


and this...


and this...


and this...


or, for a change, like this...


I love a long, slow wander through the trees and I love autumn. It's little wonder I have hundreds of pictures of trees and leaves. I figure mother nature will provide plenty of opportunity to practice composition etc throughout the winter when her muted whites and shades of gray make things a bit more challenging.

on being an ox

Sick loved ones, discord among the same, an unkind ending, a bruised heart, crippling depression, unexpected career changes, insomnia, loss of weight, instability just about every which way I turn...nice try world. I'm still here. You didn't break me.

I read a story the other day about a woman who asked her guides why life had to be so hard at times. They answered by drawing comparison to an ox, animals known for their strength and endurance, asking her how an ox would know it possessed such strength if it weren't required to pull such heavy loads now and again.

I get it. I'm an ox.

For a while I couldn't make sense of the last few months. Why I was buried under so much...stuff...and why every time I thought I'd reached my maximum - something else was added. I have never, in all of my life, been so blackly depressed. It wasn't just about the end of a relationship, it was about me. So to all those people who kept saying "it's been a while, you should get over it", you got it wrong. It wasn't about getting over the boy.

I don't think I'll ever *not* feel that the way things ended was unkind and, of course, I miss many things but I don't miss the struggle of trying to matter. With the hindsight of the way things were ended I can see what I refused to see at the time - that I didn't ever matter the way I wanted to. I couldn't have. We didn't want the same things from life or from each other and neither of us was wrong, we were just wrong together. That difference, that I stuck around so long, and that there wasn't more straightforward communication has been a bitter pill to swallow. Still, in the end his stuff is his stuff, mine is mine. My stuff was about clarifying what I want from life, about how I want to be treated in a relationship, about having stayed where I shouldn't have because I was afraid to lose someone, about trying to resist change, about settling, about working too hard at times, about losing faith in myself, and, even more so, about losing faith that I'm going to be ok. I've never lost that faith before - no longer believing that I was going to be alright was the hardest part of all. For a while I was buried beneath the heavy, dark, suffocating impossibility of it all.

But I'm through it. There's been a shift and I feel as if I'm lit from inside again. I'm glowing. Last night I went down to the lake, lay on the rocks by the water and looked up through the crisp autumn air at the stars and I found myself whispering "I'm alive". It was delicious. A celebration of that absolute kicking, dancing, twirling joy at the very fact that I get to be alive in this body, in this reality, in this life when only a few weeks ago I wondered how I could possibly drag myself out of bed to face one more day (and on many days, I simply didn't).

It was hard having my stuff thrown in my face in such an abrupt manner and by someone I trusted not to hurt me, but would I have paid attention any other way? I'm not so sure. It it had been left up to me, I would never have ended things. But it wasn't up to me alone and so I've learned about acceptance - even for those things that I don't welcome - and I've learned things about myself that I never, ever would have opened myself up to if I hadn't been forced into it. I'm grateful. I wouldn't know what I wanted, what I was ready for, and what I'm capable of if without the last couple of months. I want to acknowledge that I was lucky to have had that relationship with that person with that terrible ending and with that broken heart. Very, very lucky. Without it I wouldn't know what I want and I wouldn't be prepared for what I get to go on to next. I wouldn't know that I'm an ox!

Now I know. Now I'm ready. Now I can say thank you.

Thank you.

5 good things

->noticing for the first time that the mirrors attached to the fabric hanging across from my bed pick up the sun and reflect it back to me. I woke up this morning immersed in disco-ball light patterns

->my electric blanket, my electric space heater, my furry white blanket - all of which have followed me on my treck from room to room since August and will continue to do so until May

->saying good morning to Louie and his pack of friends in the coffee shop each morning

->beginning each morning in the dark, empty yoga studio - slightly scented with incense, lit only by candles - and emerging from my practice 2 hours later to realize the sun has risen, the room has filled and I'm lucky, lucky, lucky to begin my day this way

->my newly booked plane tickets that will spirit me down south in a few weeks to the ocean, the beach, and 80+ delicious, hot & humid degrees of weather

dodgy yoga neigbourhoods

This morning I headed to the shala earlier than usual. Really early. Still dark. Still quite cold. Cut through the ally and, in doing so, interrupted someone in the midst of enjoying their early morning crack hit.

On my way to nightclass (also in a shala) I picked up a prostitute. Unintentionally. I'd swerved over to the curb and jammed my brakes to come to a full stop. I guess it looked like I was stopping for no apparent reason other than to perhaps begin a little business but, really, I'd missed my turn and was waiting for traffic to clear so I could pull a u-turn. Surprised the hell of me when she leaned down to peer into my window - surprised the hell out of her when she saw a young (ok, young-ish ;) girl staring back.

Almost scored the sweetest parking spot outside of class but was beaten to it by a street person who guessed my intentions and raced in to take ownership with his shopping cart full of all his worldly belongings. Truthfully, there was room for both of us but he was having a raging argument with absolutely no one that I could see so I figured I'd leave him (them?) to it.

On my way back to my car after my class I passed through another ally and interrupted another person mid crack hit. This guy had company. They were arguing. I didn't stop to figure out about what.

Other than noticing the strange symmetry of my day ended just as it began, I noticed for the first time that my yoga studios seem to be located in dodgy parts of town.
Or maybe it's just Toronto.