Sowing the seeds of love

It might be the part of me that never grew up and still likes to play in the dirt. It might be the part of me that wants to be self-sufficient and “stick it to The Man.” It might be the part of me that reveres Mother Nature and the mystery of creation. In truth, it is probably all of those things and more that gives me my love of gardening.

When I am working in the garden I feel both the peace of solitude and the community of life abundant. Insects and microbes, worms, toads and snakes. Creepy and crawly things make the time I spend in my garden sacred to me.

It might be hard to believe while the wind still whips off the harbor and snow still covers so much of the ground, but spring is coming swiftly. Seed catalogues are being delivered, DIY home stores are bringing out their peat and pots and seeds and hand tools. I’ve paid my registration fee for the community garden and tiny seedlings are straining for the sun from their little incubators on my kitchen table. Life still sleeps but if you listen to your body and to the world around you there is a stirring. A quickening.

More and more my life is pointing me in a certain direction. Part of this change in my life is sensing and embracing my own worth and happiness. I’ve felt the quickening of my own spirit. To that end I’ve decided that my garden plot this year will be a place of beauty and of healing. Flowers, herbs, red and orange fruits and vegetables. I have never planted a themed garden before, always having focused on production. I am looking forward to dedicating this space to my spiritual and physical healing this year. What a joy to have beauty for beauty’s sake!

There will be tomatoes, of course, and pumpkins. I also plan to have scarlet runner beans – those grew abundantly in my garden last year and I saved enough seeds to create a wall of beautiful red flowers. There will be lettuces and peas early in the season. Root vegetables to remind me to stay grounded: red skinned potatoes, enough radishes to remind me where I put the carrots, sweet potatoes and beets. I absolutely adore pickled beets and did not put up nearly enough of them last year. Don’t worry, the pickle-making will be documented so stay tuned in June! Then when it is warm enough: lavender, sage, oregano, purple basil, nasturtium, poppies, and chamomile…

I feel better just imagining it. That’s the power of magical thinking. When done with intention, the things we do, the things we create, resonate with memories, familiarity and power. In the very planning I imbue my garden with healing and happiness. You are welcome to visit any time!

Picking up and dusting off...

…my blog that is. I was going to delete these half-dozen old posts from ::cough:: two years ago but I thought it might be comforting for some people to see that I have tried and failed and tried and failed and tried again to get this going. Third time’s the charm, right? So, here go. Round three of Living Life to the Nines – my thoughts, musings, and lessons about living the good life and enjoying it all the way.

By the way, I’ve also spent the last year picking myself up and dusting myself off. Although it has really been more like rolling myself out of bed and sucking out the sludge with a Shop Vac. Self improvement work is not easy, but it is oh so necessary. I’ve learned a lot in the last 18 months and have a still long way to go. I hope you’ll join me, learn some lessons and maybe leave a few as well. It seems that as much as I tried to ignore it, the truth is that we’re in this together.

The Improbable Rainbow

Although I am holding off on my “Spring is right around the corner” celebration (more on that another time), I would like to acknowledge that today does have some special significance to many.

It’s Groundhog’s Day; the day old white men in overcoats haul a hibernating rodent out of its burrow and make a bad movie about it.

It’s also Imbolc; depending on your Tradition and your translation, a festival whose name means various things including “in the belly” or “ewe’s milk.” Either way, there is a fertility aspect to be honored in deference to the pastoral cultures of the British Isles. Yesterday marked St. Brigid’s Day, dedicated to the Irish Saint/Goddess of inspiration, generosity, compassion and the eternally burning flame. Last in the list, but certainly not least is Candlemas aka The Feast of the Purification of the Virgin aka, well, aka a long list of names which could and might some day be a posting of its own.

So, what have we got here? Light, birth, inspiration, creating…. And how does this manifest in my life? I have a lot to be thankful and hopeful for. I have a job interview later this week. My friend who is struggling to overcome some infertility issues may have had some good news as her body comes back “online.” This weekend I’m hosting a kitchen-full of beautiful and inspired women for a cheese-making workshop (see ewe’s milk above). And on my way home today from visiting with my good friend/spiritual advisor I saw the most unlikely of rainbows.

Right there in front of me, looking into the glaring I saw about 10degrees of a rainbow on either side. It was like Technicolor quotation marks calling my attention to the light. I honestly thought it couldn’t be real. Rainbows aren’t visible right next to the sun. But there it was. I phoned up my friend and asked her to step out her door to tell me if she saw what I saw. She did. It was real! The rainbow followed me home – for 40 minutes while I drove it neither faded nor decreased in size.

Love, light, and the colors of upcoming Spring. Amazing. Miraculous. Improbably beautiful. A lot like life.

Yoga and the Crow: Excising that which does not serve.

I went to a yoga class today that was way out of my league. Silly me, I thought “Yoga Basics” was a beginners class! It was hard. I felt foolish. But something happened that makes me think I was supposed to be there.

The studio’s pretty big, don’t ask me the dimensions but 25 of us fit in there pretty well. Mirrors all along one wall, picture windows all along the other. I really like this studio as it is where I take Bellydance and used to take a Shake Your Soul ® class. The point is, I’m comfortable in there with my body, my skills and my self. Or so I thought.

Twenty minutes into the class we’re all hanging out in Downward Dog and the teacher comes up to me. I expect and accept corrections in my yoga practice, just as I do in my dance. How else is one to learn? But she walks up to me, wrenches my pinky finger away from the others in a way that its twisted, probably-broken-at one-point bones just don’t want to go and says, “That’s a bad habit. Spread your fingers.” What could I do? I took the note. “Have you ever done yoga before?”

*****SCREECH******

Suddenly I’m back on stage at the high school auditorium, warbling out my best rendition of Who Knows What as an audition piece for Hello, Dolly! The director (who had cast me previously in half a dozen straight plays) stops me mid-bar and asks, loudly, “Are you even in the school chorus?” I was. I had been for years.

******SCREECH******

Wow! A flashback within a flashback. This had better be good, right? About a year prior to that fateful audition I had turned up dutifully for my voice lesson with Mrs. P, the school chorus teacher. I know now that she had probably just been drunk and grumpy. But at the time her words were like a punch to the gut. “Oh, it’s you. This is a waste of time. You should go back to study hall.”

I have to confess, that I had a moment there when I nearly picked up my mat and left. I don’t know what stopped me. Instead I answered quietly, because I was still upside-down after all, “Yes, I have.”

She walked away. The class returned to standing and I saw in the mirror a reflection of a crow, sitting on a rock in the parking lot rubbing his beak against the stone. He looked calm, purposeful, and much like a chef honing his knife on a steel.

If Mrs. P’s words had been a punch to the gut, this instant was the dent she left finally popping out after 18 years. Those old feelings of inadequacy, the fear of being found out for a fraud, the idea that this teacher’s time was better spend helping someone more deserving? Gone. Don’t get me wrong - I mean, it still hurt. But more like a paper cut than a skinned knee. It was a clean cut.

I do not want to dub this bird an Otherworldly messenger. To me, this is the world that matters. But symbolism and association can be powerful magic and if a carrion-crow wants to excise something dead and rotten within me, who am I to stop it?

All in all, I left the class the way I like to leave yoga practice, feeling a little lighter, a little looser and ready to observe without criticism and simply to trust.

Getting Well: My new year's resolution to be Happy and Healthy

Being a self-described weirdo I am quite used to hearing the phrase, “I don’t know what is wrong with you,” although it usually has more to do with something like fact that I own a Klingon/English dictionary than it does my health. To make a long and boring story short, beginning last June and until October I suffered from incredible fatigue, muscle pain, brain fog and headaches, all of which are still unexplained. I’ve been tested for everything from Celiac to Lyme to Vasculitis and, surprisingly, always checked out completely normal. NEVER thought I’d hear that!

Fortunately my health has recovered but the experience left me a little shaken, and 20 pounds heavier than I wanted to be. So I resolved back in November to make this year of my life the one where I take back control of my health and happiness. It might have taken me two months to get going, but I’m okay with that. This is why I make my new year’s resolutions on my birthday and implement them on January 1. So, how’s it going so far?

Let’s do health first. I’m going to the gym. I’m dancing again…sort of. Ok, I’m back in dance class. I’ve cut out alcohol for lots of reasons but am open to its responsible reintroduction at some point. I’m encouraged by the fact that my body seems to remember what it used to be able to do and is responsive to the memories. My diet has always been pretty good – the next step is to move away from anything that comes complete in a package. More on that some other time.

Happiness. Funny word, that. I am by nature a cheerful, happy person. What I really mean is fulfillment. I am drawn to certain things that I have not allowed myself enough of: brilliant colors, good food and drink, movement, sisterhood, writing, contemplation…. None of these are unobtainable and all of which are resurfacing in my life. I’ve heard it said that believing is seeing and you know what, I believe that to be true.

So, here’s to health, happiness, and 2010 – The Year that Does not Suck.

Optimist '

I’m going to start a blog. No, I’m not. Yeah, sure, I can do this. Nah, I got bored/distracted/sabotaged along the way. Come on, really! This is going to stick this time. I have a whole list of things I want to talk about!

Yes! I’ll start today. Because of this head cold I am all but chained to a box of tissues so I can either spend the entire day playing New Super Mario Brothers Wii or I can start writing personal essays. In fact, I can probably do a little of both. So, here we go. Third time’s the charm!

Let’s start slowly with a list of things that don’t suck:

lol cats

Crock Pots

fresh sheets

a hot shower

la vida veggie

sunrise

knitting

the Red Tent Temple movement

hugs

The Empire Strikes Back

See, that wasn’t so hard. What doesn’t suck in your life?

Oh! You mean JohnSEN

This is the best way to get the attention of my husband’s cousin Nicole. I had never noticed the myriad ways people will try to correct my adopted last name until she pointed it out. And man does she have some good stories to make her point. Having given up an unpronouncable last name for an unspellable one (apparently. But I don’t really think either of those things are true.) I suppose I should not have been surprised. But somehow I am.

This is the first in an occasional series.

I’m at PetCo where they think the best greeting for a customer carrying a 30 pound bucket of kitty litter is not “Hello” but “Do you have your PALS card?” Geeze! {lug}{thump} That’s the sound of me hefting the thing up on the inconveniently high countertop. {rustle, rustle} Me digging through my purse. {zip}{zip,zip} …looking through coat pockets… “Crap, sorry, no I don’t. Can you look it up by my name?” Big mistake. I know that now. “It’s JohnSEN, with an E.”
She types: J-O-H-N-S-O-N. “No, no with an E.” She types: J-O-H-N-S-O-N-E. “No, I’m sorry that’s (I spell it, slowly)” She types: J-O-H-N-S-E-N. She looks at the screen. Comprehension dawns. She turns and says to me as if English is not my first language and I’m a little hard of hearing, “Oh, you mean JohnSEN!” 

Yeah. Yeah I do. Silly me.