good things

-> a week at the ocean with nothing more pressing to do than to turn my face up to the sun for warmth while the seagulls, sandpipers, and crashing waves kept me company. I left some of the things I've been carrying behind with the sea and came home lighter. It was perfect. I am lucky.

-> great, big, fluffy snowflakes turning my lunchtime walk into a winter wonderland.

-> the approaching weekend with waaay more Christmas plans and gatherings than I could possibly fit in and tons of people visiting from out of town. It's going to be a fun, laughing, talking, eating, catching up, packed couple of days.

-> the plates upon plates of baked goods that provided ample distraction during today's interminable 4 hour team meeting. I was so busy happily chewing away that I was able to forget how much I hate, hate, hate work meetings. Time flies with my good friends gingerbread, shortbread, and chocolate brownies to keep me company.

->being back at the shala. Morning practices in the empty, candle lit silence of the studio are a sacred way to begin each day. Wednesday night assisting shifts are a welcome interlude marking the middle of each week.

->that this Christmas nobody wants anything as a gift, and they mean it. We are blessed.

-> the most awesome, amazing, wonderful, fascinating book ever that I'm in the middle of reading and the piles more I have to meander through over my holidays thanks to the falling american dollar and cheap publishing practices down south

what i've been up to these last few days...

can't write, veeeery busy ;)

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.

reclaiming myspace

Yesterday for the first time in what has been a busy few weeks, I had the entire day to myself. I spent it yoyo-ing from working to distract myself from thinking and thinking to distract myself from working. Clearly I didn't want to be doing either, so I took myself out for a long walk by the lake.

The afternoon sun changed quickly; at times shining bright to highlight the gorgeous red, gold and yellow fall colours and at others hiding behind heavy, dark storm clouds. My thoughts followed a similar pattern as I thought about the last few weeks and alternated between creating a mock list of how to breakup with someone (note: refusing to admit you're breaking up even as you hop on a plane to leave the continent or never saying goodbye are *not* on that list) and feeling blue about how things went down.

It's been three weeks since we last talked. Three weeks since the boy said he wanted a life together, three weeks since he talked about coming here in January, and three weeks since he took it all back, admitting that the idea scared him.

It's been three weeks since I put an end to the back and forth and left him my mobile number with the request not to call until/if he knew what he wanted. Three weeks since he refused to say goodbye and instead ended our phone call with a promise to call about January. It's been three weeks and he hasn't called.

As the days passed my sadness was accompanied by a growing realization that he wasn't even going to say goodbye, let alone call, let alone visit, and something began to shift. Maybe what hasn't been clear throughout these last few months is that I can handle a breakup, what I can't handle is this non-breakup. It took me a long time to clue in to the fact that I need to judge by action - not by words. And so after three weeks of non-action, I began to change. I began to think less about what he didn't want and more about what I wanted.

I do want that unique, wonderful person but I also want to be in love with someone who loves me back. I want to be with someone who is brave enough to speak the truth, even when it's painful. I want to be with someone who knows themself enough to take a chance and who trusts themself enough to know that they'll be just fine if they fail. I want to be with someone who includes me in their plans because they want me there, not because I remind them that I want to be there. And I want to be with someone who leaves me with no doubt that they love me. After three weeks I've begun to allow room for the possibility that those two things, wanting him and wanting the list that follows, may not be one and the same.

As I walked, I gave these thoughts space to settle in my mind and I thought about where I am right now: in Toronto, living in my old apartment, back at my old job. I began to feel anxious about whether I was moving backwards but it was less a real feeling than it was trying a feeling on for size to see if it fit. It didn't.

I'm not anxious and I haven't moved backwards. Things are a million times different than what they were at this time last year - and they're good. I think the anxiety came from knowing that they're good enough for now, but not for long. I thought about some of the things I'd been looking forward to this year: living in a different country, learning a new language, the challenge of establishing myself somewhere else, and beginning a life with my partner. With the exception of that last point, all of those are things I can control. I can still change countries, learn a new language, rise to the challenge of establishing myself somewhere else. And I will.

I began to think about my future, one that didn't include the boy, and I was sad but I also began to dream. I let my imagination get bigger than my sadness and I remembered that as different as today is from this time last year, next year will be different from this time today. I'm not anxious about where I am now, I'm enjoying it, and I'm beginning to understand this year for what it could be: a year to dream, search, explore and set the stage for future adventures. I realized that I'm exactly where I need to be, both the good and the bad, and then I turned to corner to find these words spray painted to the ground:

Yeah, I know it's an advertisement but what a perfect, wonderful, awesome moment to stumble upon an advertisement for a stupid website. I kept walking, making my way to the lake where I watched the sun set to my right


and the moon rise to my left


and for the for the first time in a long time I felt that myspace was truly not a bad space to be.

Autobiography in Five Chapters

A poem taken from 'The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying'

Autobiography in Five Chapters
I

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost ... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.

II

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place
but, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

III

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit.
my eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

IV

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

V

I walk down another street.

- Portia Nelson

if you don't have anything nice to say...

Kind of quiet around these parts lately huh? I know. But I also know that listening to someone moan about their bruised heart loses its charm fairly quickly so I promised myself I wouldn't write another word about being sad or the breakup. At the same time, I couldn't stand the thought of pretending I'm fine and writing about fluffy things so I chose not to write at all because I'm still working on the fine part of things.

I know, I KNOW it's been ages and I should get over it already. Believe me. I'm working on it. It's been slow going. I have no framework for how to handle being on the receiving end of a break up and even less of an idea on how to do it with someone who talks about love and a life together in one breath but then retreats with the next. It was so lovely to believe the first breath that it took me a few weeks to realize that there even was a second breath - that there was only talk with no action. I get it now. It sucks. I'm sad.

The boy stuff aside, life is actually really wonderful right now. It's just that in the middle of all those wonderful moments are the moments when someone asks me how I am, or asks about the boy, or when I think of something I'd like to tell him and realize that I can't. We don't talk anymore. Those moments happen a lot too. And when they come, they take my breath clean away and knock me on my ass with the force of how sad I still am about it all. They make me feel like I'm not centred and calm or grounded at all and they make me question whether this dream life I live is really so dreamy, whether I can ever get over the missing pieces.

People tell me it's better this way, that if someone really wanted to be with me they might try to be in the same country as me (heh), and friends are trying to send me off on dates with friends. Yeah. I totally get it. But I've never dated anyone just because I was single. I date because I met someone fantastic. Its hard to get over that my fantastic someone looked at the same relationship I was looking at and, instead of seeing it as something great, something to hold on to, he decided he could do without it and walked away.

I have been waiting for that phone call that takes it all back and getting sadder as each day passes without it. Still, at the same as I'm hopeful I'm not a total idiot. I know it's time to move on. We tried (or at least one of us did - ahem), it didn't work out, and I can't wish the whole situation away (tried that ;) so, it's time to really let go. I expect that I'll feel sadder for a bit longer while I release my grip on things working out but soon enough my sadness will bottom out and I'll have nowhere to go but happy.

In the meantime, no writing about fluff but no more writing about bruised hearts either. Instead, some pictures to fill the time while we wait for the bottom to fall out. Like this one from my thanksgiving hike


Or this one of the cute dog on the subway last weekend

Or this one of Mannix and his forbidden love


Or this random downtown picture

Or this self-portrait of a blurry me taken the day I bought my camera

last, perfect kayak trip of the season

chevy didn't come kayaking but she's just too cute to exclude

tuesday

First ayurvedic class tonight. 7pm - the golden hour. The sun sinks slowly behind old Victorian houses, the sky is gold and the trees glow. The Instructor talks his tales of beauty, his words turn my world on its ear. It is soul-ful to be this in love with ideas again. To fall in love with life all over again.

Behind him the window opens to the early autumn evening framing the stage for the squirrels who leap, twirl, and soar through the trees in a joyful dance. They act how I feel. Happy. Happy. Happy.

just a usual monday morning

Walking to the shala in the early morning light; stars still visible, streetlights glowing softly, I almost missed it. Almost walked right by without even noticing. But then I passed a picture so large and blatant - it was impossible to miss.

Someone had torn the pages from a porn magazine and carefully placed them, one at a time, under the windshield wiper of every single car parked along Queen Street. I walked to the shala accompanied by the sight of large, naked, juicy bottoms - and other assorted bits - greeting me every few feet.

Dozens and dozens of cars. You have to admire that kind of dedication.

Love it.

sigh

Drove downtown to meet up with friends tonight. Parked on a side street where I didn't bother buying a parking ticket since it was 8.57pm and parking is free after 9.00pm - I figured the odds on getting a parking ticket in the three minutes before parking became free were slim to nonexistent.

Yeah. I know. If you live in Toronto you're rolling your eyes and thinking I'm an idiot. You're right.

Sure enough, when I returned to my car I found a bright yellow parking ticket time stamped 8.59pm waiting for me. Someone out there can sleep at night knowing that they issued a $30.00 ticket just one minute before parking became free? That's $10.00 a minute!

I guess everyone has to earn a living somehow.

Sigh.

stuff

Today I had free time before my assisting shift so I wandered in and out of some stores trying things on. One saleslady, who had been very helpful, said something to me on my way out the door. While my first instinct was to assume I'd heard her incorrectly, the strange way she scrunched her face and waved her hands with such flourish made me think that she just might have said what I thought she said. Still, I asked her to repeat it. I was right.

"Be a DIVA" she whispered, emphasis on the "DIVA", with the same scrunched face and madly waving hands. Right. Me. A diva. Good call.

I much preferred the way the baby in the stroller, who passed by my car just as I unlocked the doors, chanted "on" "off" "on" as the lights blinked on and off. Cute.

Other sounds from this September day:
-my co-workers telling me to "have a good weekend". On a Wednesday. Hee, my first 4 day weekend :)
-my knees, hips, elbows cracking every time I moved to adjust someone in yoga tonight. Not sure that's the best promo for a committed yoga practice
-'Smokin' in the Boysroom' by Motley Crue on the radio. Just so you know, I never, not once, thought Motley Crue was cool even when they sort of were
-the song of crickets drowning out the sound of traffic as I sat by the lake tonight looking at the water. Calm. So calm.

Not heard but remembered: you used to reach over and hold my hand during savasana. That was nice.

because

Did you ever wonder why I waited until after we ended to dye my hair? It must have seemed strange. Through all of the months of your "wondering" how I would look with red hair I did nothing and yet the week after you left I emerged a redhead. Ever wonder why?

It's because I always wanted red hair. What I didn't want was the feeling that I'd be better if I were different, that I wasn't good enough as is. That's it. Simple. I wanted to be ok whether I was a styled redhead or a style-challenged blond. What do those things matter anyway? They're just part of the shell. There were things I would have changed about you, you know, you weren't perfect for me. But those small, stupid things - who cares? I wonder what I was doing committing myself to someone who wanted me to be different.

I learned a lot and it definitely bears noting that not all lessons were of the painful kind. So many wonderful things. I learned that I can share my space with someone in a way that is seamless and really like it, I learned that it's great going to bed and waking up laughing with someone, I learned that I can love, I learned that I can commit, and I learned lots of dirty words that no English speaker will ever recognize.

But I do think about that a lot, why I thought it was ok to be with someone who wanted me to change.