my cat, the addict

I just picked up the cat from the guy who was watching him while I was away and he, the cat not the guy, reeks of pot.

I think my little guy has been corrupted, see for yourself:


BEFORE CAT SITTING




AFTER


If you have a lead on a good Narcotics Anonymous group for household pets let me know.

it's not you, it's me

Two years ago when myself, Mikko and a bunch of others went to Kovalam to practice yoga while the Mysore shala was closed we met a woman that I haven't seen since but who I've kept in touch with through the internet. We don't talk often but emailed back and forth quite a bit after Mikko and I broke up. I confided some of the gory breakup details and she made the proper sympathetic noises which I appreciated until I learned that, while she was sympathizing with me, she was making a play for Mikko at the same time. I didn't feel the same about her after that.

She's currently travelling in India and she uploaded a ton of pictures from Mysore a few days ago which I loved, it was wonderful to see pictures of familiar sights. As I was looking at the pictures I thought I saw a familiar face but figured I must be wrong until I saw another, and another, and another. It was Mikko. In Mysore. With her.

Devastating

Mysore is the city we met in, a place he always referred to as "our roots" and spoke of returning to together. The fact that he's there during the very month he'd convinced me to reconcile, that he's there at another woman's beckoning (someone I'd confided in in particular), that I found out through her pictures, and that he knew I'd find out that shitty way but clearly didn't care - oh so sucky. Sucky but it also screams 'asshole' and I cannot continue to feel sadness over an asshole so in many respects, this has been an epiphany.

It strikes me as cheap to return to 'our city' during the same month he'd asked to come to Toronto to reconcile. It strikes me as weak to run from one adoring woman to another without pausing in between to process what happened and face what comes up. And his behaviour these last few months strikes me as downright mean. None of these things are who I thought he was and it's become harder and harder to resist acknowledging that I was in love with his potential, not him.

I don't want to admit that in part because I thought he was just fantastic and I so don't want to know that he's not actually that person but also because then it's me. Then it means that I loved something that never was, that I deluded myself, that I've been creating misery over an attachment that I dreamed up. It means that all of my sadness, my depression, my anger, my sense of loss is completely unfounded and exists because I've chosen to make that my existence. Come on!! I SO don't want to admit that just as I so don't want to admit that I don't like or respect the person he's shown himself to be. But there it is. Even I can't keep fooling myself into thinking that I can love someone that I don't even like. It's time to let all of this drop.

Epiphany

My journals spanning the last two years have been full of confusion over what I’m supposed to be doing with my life and where I’m supposed to be doing it. I spent much of the last few years feeling lost - lost in purpose and lost to myself. Yesterday as the plane flew over the city I saw the CN Tower, followed Yonge Street up to North York, found the white bridge and used my finger to trace the Humber River along it’s winding path until I reached my house and I had a huge grin on my face the whole time.

I may not know where I belong but I’m not lost. I have no idea where I’m going to end up but I know that I’m here. Now that I’m thinking of myself again as opposed to a mythical ‘us’ I'm realizing how much energy I put into nurturing that relationship at the cost of nurturing myself. I see how desperately lost I got in it all and how afraid I was that I wasn't moving, learning, growing; that I was just stagnating in sadness. I wasn't. I was learning, I was growing, I was facing up to some of my demons, and I've emerged from it with a different understanding of what I can do with this life.

Finding out what someone is not has helped me remember what I am.

insomniac pictures

Maybe it's the crazy full moon eclipse or all the stuff floating around in my mind or the late night hot fudge ice cream sundae snack but I'm completely unable to sleep.

Playing with pictures from the beach today instead of sleeping. Here's a few....

leaving

Trading Canadian Geese + ice

for pelicans + sun

and snow + stockings

for sand + bare feet

Back next week...

where i work

The entry hall of one of the buildings on campus following yet another snowstorm. The campus was very quiet but the building feels empty at the best of times with its cavernous hallways. Next week I won't be there, I'm trading snow for sand and headed south for the week. Yay for me :)







 

SPC2 - blue

I've been wanting to participate in the self-portrait challenge for months. When I saw that the theme this month was 'blue' I figured that would be an easy challenge to begin with. I love blue, it's everywhere in my home, my car, my clothes, my work. I seek it out when I draw, when I write, in what I take pictures of, and in my dreams.

I was wrong, though, it hasn't been an easy challenge because blue is also a state of mind. While I haven't necessarily been feeling blue as of late, the memory of the fall when that's pretty much all I felt is close. Too close. There's a lot on my mind and I find myself walking gingerly through the minefields of memories, fears, and dreams to avoid stirring things up unnecessarily. It feels good to let things settle.

Above everything else blue, for me, is water and I love water. Sitting by it, floating in it, canoeing/kayaking through it - nothing can beat the calming, cooling, meditative effect of being near a river, lake or ocean. This picture was taken in Florida in December. I've posted it before but I chose it to post again because it's a moment where my blue state of mind met the vast blue of the ocean and it was a turning point. This moment is where things changed and I started to leave the fall behind and look forward to the spring.

See more blue-ish pictures over at SPC

wah

It's when I write the least that I'm struggling the most. There's a growing reluctance to say anything as I'm keenly aware that I've been saying the same things for months. There's an even bigger frustration that I can't pull myself out of this tailspin.

I've written of feeling like the rug was pulled out from under me taking the lovely life I'd dreamed up with it but I've written less about the aftermath, about the bewilderment of fully being present in my life and finding it lacking. Without the distraction of a relationship and without the expectation that I'd be leaving to build a new life somewhere else, taking a long, hard look at the life I have has been a rude awakening. This is a really great life I've built but it isn't necessarily the right one for me. Kind of like I built the foundations but for the wrong house.

The funny thing is, it's exactly the life I thought I wanted and even that, that I'm quite literally living a life I thought I could only dream of, makes me so very lucky. It's just that now that I'm here I'm longing for a family I don't have, people who aren't here, cityscapes that are not my own, and a different way of earning a living. I'm wondering what I want to be when I grow up, what makes me happy, and dreaming of living somewhere else. I guess that, while I was working to build this life I dreamed up whatever number of years ago, the parameters of what I wanted changed but I was too busy to notice. Now I'm not. Now I'm noticing.

I've been sifting through the vision of the life I thought I was going have, the one I've been grieving, to pull out the pieces I can achieve on my own. There's a core certainty that I'll get there with the same focus and determination that let me create this life but I struggle to retain that certainty. I'm shadowed by an all-pervasive feeling of purposelessness where, the longer I feel caught under its thumb, the less faith I have that I'll ever get out. I go on dates that bore me and serve only as reminders of how hard it's going to be to find someone again and I look at joblistings for overseas jobs that are way beyond my language skills - it's overwhelming and I'm easily buried beneath feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and wishing. Wishing things were different, or easier, or clearer.

It's not lost on me that this isn't about a life, a job, a partner, it's about me. About wondering what my purpose is, the struggle to keep the faith that I'll ever know, and that the answer lies in surrendering to the reality that I'll never know and being happy where I am. I guess I just didn't think I'd be working through all of this at this age or that I'd feel so alone while I was doing it. Even more so, I never expected that I would find it so hard to keep the faith.

I wrote this post a few days ago but didn't publish it because I'm afraid to give the wrong impression. That I'm unhappy, that I'm depressed, that I'm whining. I am those things at times but they aren't me, they're not all I feel, they just seem to be the focus of what I write about because I'm so surprised to be here and I'm working so hard, perhaps too hard, to figure out where I'm going next.

I love that I dreamed a life bigger than I thought I could ever achieve and actually got it and I love that now that I'm here I'm not content to settle. I'm glad that I'm looking, evaluating, dreaming, and even despairing because it's that constant interplay between stretching and reaching that has led me to where I am today. Still, as much as I love that that is a part of who I am, I'm definately not enjoying it at the moment and I'm definitely having trouble keeping the faith which disappoints me to no end.

It's such a strange dichotomy because I know in my heart that I'll achieve whatever dreams I set out for myself, I've never NOT gotten what I wanted/needed, but my mind is so quick to lose the plot. I could spend an entire day laughing but all it takes is one bad moment and my mind runs around like chicken little screaming that the sky is falling in. I never, ever dreamed that it would be so hard to keep that screaming voice at bay and that being in the moment, seeing beauty, laughing would take such conscious, hard effort - I remember a time when it was effortless.

Underneath all of the chicken little screaming I DO know that this too shall pass, that the ebbs will give way to flows and I work to take refuge in the present moment where my fears aren't screaming and my dreams aren't tugging. Right now the present moment means the solace of my office, the sounds of my favourite CD, and a pink-frosted valentine's cupcake. The present moment is a very good place to be.

blue

May not have been the wisest choice for my living room walls...

a whole lotta white and a splash of colour

Lots



and lots



and lots



and lots of snow today.



So I bought some of these



and returned to my nest to spend a quiet afternoon



and an even quieter evening




Not pictured is a gorgeously slow yoga practice, the watching of a very silly girl movie, the eating of cups upon cups of bright red raspberries, and a whole lot of time spent lost in daydreams.

It was a good day.

work today

Or NOT work, as the case may be. The snowstorm (I know, ANOTHER snowstorm) kept the students away and thanks to all the other snowstorms we've had I'm already caught up on casenotes, workshop prep, and my email inbox is clear for the first time in, oh, ever. It's hard to counsel when there's no one to counsel so I not-worked today.

It was a pretty good day.

Outside it continues to snow every bit as heavily as it was when I woke up this morning, tomorrow is going to be beautiful.

yog-ahhh

So. Yoga. This morning I had to talk myself out of a temper tantrum during practice; a full on hand slapping, feet kicking, huffily exhaling tantrum. Instead, I took deep, non-huffy inhale and checked in with myself. It reminded me of the calm, rational way a parent checks in with a tantruming child: hands on hips looking down and asking in that overly-calm, soothing tone "Ok. Just what is it that you want?". Turns out, my self wanted to chill the heck out. To suck at poses I can normally do and for that to be ok. So, ok, today my asana practice sucked.

I've been moving into the intermediate (second) series these last few months which involves a lot of backbends. Instead of my chest opening, as I'd assumed would be the case, making some of the primary poses easier the opposite has happened. My back has stiffened up and I quite literally can't get into (bind) some of the twisting poses in the first series. Which causes me NO END of frustration.

I get it. I get that my body is changing. The new poses are developing underused muscles and revealing weak areas that I just worked around before, the result is that I'm stiff and am forced to develop those ignored areas before entering deeply into the poses again. Kind of like my body is using the information gained from the intermediate series to self correct. It reminded me of something someone said after I adjusted them in a class this weekend, they looked up and said that practicing is like giving the body a chance to remember where it wants to be. So true, and this is a good thing, just frustrating. Soooo frustrating.

It kills me to be incompetent at anything but to work for months to learn something only to lose it again - argh. As I moved on from my narrowly averted temper tantrum I thought about what the practice reveals in the body and, beyond that, in life. Today I got something very cool. I got that not binding in my twists doesn't mean I've become incompetent period, it just means that after such a big growth spurt my body needed to pull back and integrate what it's learned before continuing to move forward. And, yes, I got that it's very much the same in life - I got it in many, many different ways loud and clear.

This, my friends, is but one of the many reasons that yoga rocks my world.

"The power needed in yoga is the power to go through effort, difficulty or trouble without getting fatigued, depressed, discouraged or impatient and without breaking off the effort or giving up on one's aim or resolution. A quiet vigilant but undistressed persistence is the best way to get the sadhana (yogaic practice) alone" Sri Aurobindo

instead

I thought today would be different.

Instead of thinking about how I thought I'd be spending the last day of January cleaning in preparation for the boy's arrival, I led my friend through two hours of yoga, pranayama and meditation which was amazing. Amazing for him and amazing for me. It reminded me of how much I wish to do that for my living - very much a new beginning in itself.

That evening, instead of thinking about how I thought I'd spend the last night of January in delicious anticipation of his arrival the next day, I spent the night snowshoeing through unplowed streets to S's house where I sat in the company of 7 others howling in laughter. It was purifying, that laughter, better than any therapy. As if the cobwebs of the last few months had been cleared to welcome a fresh start.

Instead of spending the first day of February thinking about how I thought it would begin with a trip to the airport arrivals, I spent it in a red snowsuit hiking through the forest while the snow continued to fall. Instead of thinking about how I thought the day would include the sound of our stupid, made up language I spent an hour sitting by the river listening to the sound of the water made heavy and slow by the cold. I held out hands filled with birdseed and, as the chickadees landed on my outstretched fingers to feed, I didn't once think of how I thought my hands would be holding the hand of someone else instead of birds and birdseed. Nope. Not once.

And today, instead of thinking about how I thought this would be our first full day together again, our fresh start, I woke up early to make breakfast for everyone, drew a picture that didn't suck with my new ink pens, and hiked through the still-unplowed snow to P's house to lead a group in yoga. I didn't once think of how I thought I'd be teaching yoga somewhere else, with someone else. Uh uh. Not even a little bit.

The tail end of January and the beginning of February have been packed with good things: whispered inspirations, opportunities, a knowing of where I should be, and fresh starts. Instead of spending the weekend thinking about what might have been, I spent it consciously acknowledging the new beginnings that have come my way and I didn't once think about how different these new beginnings are from the new beginning I was expecting just a few weeks ago. Definitely not. No way. Not even the tiniest little bit.

Uh. Uh.




Sigh.

dear universe, please be my friend again

A few months ago I subscribed to "Thoughts From the Universe", a listserve that delivers a daily message from, well, someone in the universe to my inbox each morning. Now, these aren't just any thoughts, they're eerily-bang-on-freak-me-out-with-their-accuracy thoughts. Thoughts that without fail address exactly what is going on on that particular day. They rock. They make me laugh. They give me pause to reflect. They inspire.

And they've stopped coming. WTF?

The universe has stopped sending me inspiring thoughts? I'm not quite sure what to make of that but it's freaking me out (remember that post below about no coincidences? ;). Maybe I offended the universe? Maybe it got tired of me ignoring it first and moaning about it later? Maybe I've been so intolerable lately that even the universe got sick of me?  Maybe it's just a computer glitch?

I'm not, actually, moany or intolerable or sad or offensive or any other things that could have turned the entire universe off so badly that they had to blacklist me from their email list. So I'm opting for the last option: computer glitch.  Assuming for a moment that it was any of the other possibilities - dear universe, please send me your lovely messages again. I could kind of (read: really) use them right now and I promise to pay closer attention.

No more ignoring good advice and whining about it later. I promise...

sacred beginnings

This is where I begin each day.

I took these pictures in the evening after one of my assisting shifts. The room was packed with new years resolution people and much hotter than usual. The bright ochre walls, warm wooden floor, post-practice humidity and strange camera settings resulted in these pictures being completely overexposed but I love it. The outcome is a gorgeous, warm, bright, cozy set of pictures which is exactly what the shala is to me. A perfect, sacred, blessed way to begin each day.

I arrive at 6am, the second to arrive after A. who opens things up. By the time I get there she has already set the energy with hushed lights, twinkling candles, a hint of incense floating, and the sound of her breath as she begins her sun salutations.




'My' spot is in the back corner away from the glare of the ceiling lights and close to the window where I can feel the day wake up as the light changes. After a moment at the top of my mat, I raise my hands above my head with a deep inhale and swandive over my thighs with a deep exhale to merge my breath with A's in what feels akin to jumping off a cliff into beauty of the practice.




My view with the dancing Shiva holding reign at the front of the room. The spot directly in front of him is usually the last spot left in a crowded Mysore class so, on the few occasions that I've had to practice there, I've kicked poor Shiva more times than I can count. He's a sturdy little guy though and the brightness of his blues, reds and yellows never seem to change so I guess he's unphased by the accidental abuse.


Each time I come to samasthihi at the front of my mat I'm met with the same view. The plants change with the season. Small pine trees through the winter, now lilacs in anticipation of spring.

Reception






Not pictured. The changeroom where I'm usually whispering "shit, shit, shit" as I jam my socks on while calculating just how late I'm going to be for work. Also not pictured is the coffee shop across the road where I head, no matter how late I am, for my morning caffeine fix and a catch up with Louie and his motley crew.

If I don't show up for a few days, Louie gets concerned and I have some explaining to do when I finally reappear. Then Louie was sick for a few days and I understood, I was worried about him. His motley crew of cranky old men just weren't the same without him, people dispersed, stopped hanging around to talk about the morning news, and there was less life to the coffeeshop. He's back now and as cranky as ever with the morning headlines dominated by American politics giving him and cronies plenty to complain about.

These mornings, beginning with darkness and solitude and ending in sunrise and hello's called across the coffee shop are sacred ways to begin my day.

signs

Last weekend a friend and I were talking about signs. Whether there really is no such thing as a coincidence or whether sometimes a song is just a song, with no great, cosmic meaning attached. I fall strictly in the first category. I don't believe in coincidence and I do believe that if you're looking to learn, there's learning in every moment, however random the event.

On the drive home following that conversation I passed a church with the question "What if God is looking for a sign?" posted outside. It's so common to hear someone say they just need a sign, it made me laugh to think of the reverse - yeah, what if God (or the universe or whatever) is looking for a sign from us? I love that reversal.

At first the sign was just a sign, I didn't attach any meaning to it beyond thinking it clever. It's stayed with me though, percolating back there in my unconscious and mixing with other seemingly random events, joining forces to elbow their way back to my consciousness with the question - what kind of sign am I giving?

This comes on the tail end of a season of other seemingly random insights all pointing to the ways that the only person holding me back is me. It also follows months of messages from teachers I respect telling me it's time to stop looking for teachers and teach and time to stop waiting to be ready to act and just act. These messages are not actually so subtle and they're not even waiting for a sign from me, they're raining down on me while I hold an umbrella over my head stating that I just need a few months more incubation time. Maybe I do, maybe I don't.

One sign that wasn't too subtle was my first thought upon waking this morning which was "Shut up, shut up, SHUT UUUUUUUP!!" directed towards my alarm clock. I listened to that sign, turned off my alarm clock, and rolled over to enjoy an extra 2.5 hours sleep with my purring kitty cat. I need more sleep, that's one message I willingly embrace.

one day you finally knew...

Round and round, this is what this fish does. For a year he's swum round this bowl which looks tiny and very boring but my uncle made a good point: this is all he's ever known and the energy coming from his direction was not at all bored or unhappy - it was gorgeous and bright.

I, however, am neither a fish. I'm bored. But, then again, I'm not bored. Which makes no sense at all and I probably shouldn't try to write about it until it does but I wanted to post the fish pictures - they make me happy with their bright orange-ness - and it didn't seem right to post them with no comment at all. So I started commenting and this is where I've ended up.

So. Yeah. Bored, uninspired and unchallenged but also not bored in the least. There are so many things swirling, whirling and twirling beneath this still, mundane, unchanging surface, never mind all that's happening in the physical world, that as much as I'm bored, I also feel like I can't quite keep up - but I can't put my finger on any of it well enough to articulate. So much happening that I don't even know that I know, which , I realize, also makes no sense.

One of my teachers met my statement that I was bored with the words "Good", adding that beneath the boredom, deep creativity is at work. Things are changing, ideas are perculating, knowledge is coming and that when the timing is right it will move to the surface. I know that to be true. I feel it to be true. So, I'm biding my time, knowing that to every winter freeze there is a spring filled with new growth and that I chose boredom this year knowing there was less obvious work to be done.

In the meantime, it makes me happy to look at the pictures of the fish. I'm willing to bet that that happy, bright, vibrant little being doesn't stop his dance around his bowl to say "Wait a minute! Haven't I BEEN here already?" he just goes where he goes. So I wanted to post the pictures as a reminder to myself that sometimes it's ok not to think, or analyze, or know where I'm going or why I'm going there - sometimes its ok to just go where I go and take refuge in the present moment while I'm doing it.

"One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began..."
Mary Oliver, The Journey

f* it

The closer February gets, the more melancholic I feel.

I'm sad today.

forks in the road

Road Less Traveled

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth

Then took the other as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet, knowing how way leads onto way
I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood
And I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference

~ Robert Frost

"forks in the road seem like choices, but really when you're lined up, choices are forkless. What's calling you is hands down where you watn to be, so there's no choice to be made. You can't withdraw your desire, or be less than what you've been coming to, so don't cloud the issue with what you should be doing".

dear 2008, i like you, please stay

So, it's 2008. Well, 2008 + 18 days which means I'm 18 days late in saying happy new year but - hey - Happy New Year.

Too late to matter? Yeah, I'm sorry. I got caught up in things. The tail end of 2007 was mired in an old story not quite resolved, early 2008 busy laying the story to it's final rest, and the days since busy spinning around the many new doors opening now that old doors are closed.

So far 2008 has been good to me, filled with new friends, inspiration, and great conversations from the most surprising of places. It's been a year of long yoga practices followed by longer coffee breaks with yogi friends, pain-free practices after struggling a chronic injury for FOUR years, suggestions of new directions in work, exciting plans for the coming months, the return of dear friends and the discovery of new ones. It's been a year where things are coming together so easily I'm constantly surprised by the fact that things are actually working out (gasp). I know, the 'year' is only 18 days old so far, but so far? Its been a good freaking year. I think I'm going to like 2008 (so please stay 2008, pretty please with cherries on top).

What makes it even better is that its begun with an ending that makes me sad, with boredom at work, with feeling personally uninspired, and not knowing what comes next or how to fix it - but that's ok. It's ok that, in addition to the wonderful things I mentioned above, I'm also very sad about the boy, bored stiff at work, and lost as to what I want to be when I grow up (or where, or with who, etc) - because I haven't BECOME those things, they don't define me. What I mean is I may still feel sad but I'M not sad.

I've remembered how to make room for happiness and sadness, boredom and inspiration, awesome plans and complete unknowns to be in the same place at the same time and know that sometimes one prevails, sometimes the other, but things will come into balance again whether I stress about it or not (so really, better not). It's the nature of things. And that? That is such a relief after the fall where I didn't feel sadness, I became it and it became me. There was no escape and I stopped even hoping there would be. A fall when I remembered there was a time when I didn't feel hopeless but I couldn't remember how to get back there, like I'd forgotten the lines of a song and they were on the tip of my tongue - but not quite present enough to be able to sing them.

I think that's the blessing of depression; when the cloud lifts you appreciate those moments of sunlight so thoroughly and you know that there will be a time when the sun will go behind the clouds again but there's no need to worry - it will come back. You don't know when or how long you'll have to wait but, have faith, it will reappear.

Just prior to the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008 I had a beginning and an ending of my own, my birthday. To celebrate, Becky and Jeff hosted a 'Becca-Mas' celebration in Ottawa complete with a ton of friendly faces, live music, lots of food and, best of all, my very own vegan chocolatey-chocolate birthday cake. Shortly after the picture below was taken we bundled up into snowsuits and took our cake outside to enjoy in the neighbour's backyard snow fort - a multi-room snow fort complete with glowing candles and benches to sit on (Ottawa has had a LOT of snow this year).

Sitting in a snow fort in my bright red snowsuit and pom pom hat eating chocolate cake was a pretty awesome way to begin my own new year. Although ridiculously late, to say so, I do hope everyone had a great beginning to 2008 and a kind 18 days so far.

hi, i'm four

Me and my little-big sister.



She, of course, looks gorgeous as always. I, of course, look all of four years old - as always.