the wonder of simple moments...

Today was a magical day. Nothing “special” happened, no specific source to point to. For no reason at all I just felt lighter. I noticed the little things; A flower sprouting up through a crack in the cement, the sun glinting of a woman’s hair as she jogged... her dog bounding playfully at her side. Two friends lost in peals of laughter as they walked down the street. The smile on my face was ever present and varied from a tiny lifting of one corner to a full grin ear to ear. It kinda felt like this SNL episode, though a bit more pure.. haha!

No matter where I was or what I was doing all things beautiful jumped out at me; the sunshine on the hills, thoughts of a dear man sleeping peacefully on a boat on the other side of the world, tensions lifted between co-workers, a sweet friend saying “I like you”, a man in traffic smiling broadly at me as I tapped my hands on the steering wheel and bobbed my head to the sound of my car stereo. I felt a buoyancy of heart as even driving through a “bad” neighborhood, all I noticed was two children running and laughing ahead of their parents, who also smiled and held hands.

Hard at work sorting through thousands of photos for a fun hooper project, I marveled at the joy and playfulness of a community so dear to my heart. I even came across an amazing photo shoot of my own from 4 years ago that I had forgotten about!

In full appreciation of the life I get to live and ever more GREAT-FULL for the rich and wonderful myriad of people, places, things and ineffable goodness that surrounds me.!!

On this Valentines day, 2011, most of the day I celebrated all the tremendous love in my life. Friends, family and the witnessing of the love of my many friends that are in gorgeous partnerships. It wasn't till I was driving home (from a very satisfying day in my Yoga teacher training with Christy Marsden) in thick traffic full of people heading out to celebrate with their lovers, that I began to feel a deep sadness well up in me. I am no stranger to being single, and in fact have been single more than not most of my adult life. I have grown accustomed to feeling varying degrees of alone-ness, and actually love has always been a little mixed with sadness for me. Usually, though, I tend to sink into feeling sorry for myself a bit, or conversely, burying the emotion entirely. This time, rather than talk myself out of the feeling, I let it be and breathed into it.

After only a few moments I recognized that the TONE of my emotion has changed. There is now a beauty to my sadness. Where once, I felt despair and jealousy of others romantic success (when compared to my relative romantic failures), this new percolation of emotion feels more like a soft yearning. The rooted and whole desire of a strong and capable WOMAN, ready to be utterly TAKEN by a competent man. No longer the tantrums of a child wishing to be loved, but a woman full of love and yearning to burst under the skillful touch of a powerful man.

Most of my dating life I have rejected overt romance, thinking I was a woman that didn't NEED all the "frivolous" gestures that seemed to annoy most men. Flowers, remembering birthdays, surprises and gifts. I dated only one man that was "romantic" in these ways and I rejected it. Clearly I hadn't yet learned to joys of receiving! I have come to find out that I have a VERY romantic and soft heart that does indeed desire to be cherished by a sexy and inventive man... Flowers on my pillow, candles lit and a bath drawn when I come home, ravishing me in a deserted hallway on the way back from dinner, surprise weekends away to somewhere delicious. I am ready to cherish and be cherished, to surrender and be taken, to RISE into an expansive love affair. So, even as I feel the sadness of being sans lover, I CELEBRATE. For finally.. My heart has matured and ripened into the heart of a WOMAN, ready for her MAN.

an old writing assignment I just found...

Thank the GODS that I found this.. It totally sums up the loop I'm in and kind of shocked me into action..

Here it is:

My endless desire for perfection often leads me to complete paralysis rather than brilliance. Using this writing assignment as an example, here I sit struggling with the exact perfect subject to write about, the exact perfect way to write about it, leading me inevitably to a late assignment about, essentially, nothing. I could have chosen my travels around the world, my amazing soul mate, my obsession with hula hooping, or my extensive lucid dreaming. Instead I find myself so fascinated by my own inertia and extreme dedication to perfection that I am left with nothing else on the forefront of my mind than this. Well, maybe this is square one, the first step and the elephant that needed to be shooed from the room before I can move on to the meat of what I have to say. Or maybe not. Maybe the desperation for perfection has been the central player in my world. In itself acquiring an overblown sense of importance as to eclipse all other passions. Strange isn’t it, the ephemeral and basically useless notion of perfection, superseding all of my other very real and meaningful artistic talents and pursuits? Come to think about it, this is the perfect subject to write about. It is the main thing that blocks me most of the time and my blocks (or more accurately, the attempt to abolish my blocks) are what take up a large majority of my mental time and energy. What if I was to spend more of that time actually DOING some of the things that I am so worried about being blocked in? Would there cease to be a block at all? Amazing how our habitual patterns of mind junk become so a part of the tapestry of ones existence that it seems normal, if not even necessary or unavoidable? Meanwhile it is exactly this that puts the foot in the mouth of our own desired experience of life. Well, no longer, I say! Here I go, writing about nothing just to write about SOMETHING, imperfect as it may be and pointless as it seems, at least it is a few tracks away form the effortless stream of habitual chatter and paralyzing banter between the many different voices vying for supremacy in my head. And yes, it is less than 500 words, but maybe there needs to be some quantifiable evidence of imperfection to cement the new track and one up the little neurotic voice in my head that says, “Not good enough! Wrong and inferior! Don’t show anyone!” So take that, little voice! I just wrote not enough words about NOTHING! And I’m even going to post it for everyone to see, so there.