A-Musings

Day 1 at the Yoga Ranch.  Up since 5:30am.  We’d already walked in the woods, meditated, did 2 hours of Hatha-based yoga.  I’m a bit hungry.  It’s now 10am, ashram Brunchtime.  Which looks and smells very much like yesterday evening’s Dinnertime.  Again, the weather’s fine so we dine al fresco near the platform; again, we self-serve from a vegetarian menu that is similar but not the same as yesterday evening; again, selections are presented unadorned in large metal pots and pans; again, it features a soup, greens from the garden, and a few cooked vegetarian dishes, and I think a potato pancake of sorts.  Again, it smells exotic and different and delicious.  Again, it is.  Or, is breakfast so tasty because I haven’t eaten in 16 hours?  Not sure.  Morning also offers more breakfast-like choices such as sourdough and multigrain bread, peanut butter and jam spreads.  But ...

Summer was slipping away. Its end was beginning to exert itself, especially in the evenings when a cool snap would push through the midday sultry air … I wanted to get away. I hadn’t done much this no longer new year, no great work, no cool projects, no real summer vacation other than a few weekends out of town. I yearned for something simple, close, but  depaysant .  Something fun and physical out in nature.  Something cleansing physically and spiritually, something to help distance myself from my unhealthy habits and cravings and uninspired, automatic thoughts.  Something to create some space for something new.  And then it hit me. “Why, yoga!  Of course! In the mountains!  At one of those ‘centres’ or ‘institutes’ with the exotic names like Kripalu, Omega, Sivananda!” Unlike year’s past, when I was working fairly consistently, traveling abroad regularly, dating steadily, and engaged continuously in so...

(Authoress' Note:   You might consider reading Saturn Return - Parts 1, 2, and even 4, before reading Part 3.) First, I died. I heard about other people’s “journeys”.  So I too was sort of expecting to travel across the Universes, through far off galaxies and nebulae, past shooting stars, red giants, white dwarfs and supernovae.  Or to trip the light fantastic on a trippy Lucy-in-the-Skies-with-Diamonds sound and light show of never known before shapes and colors and sounds and sensations. Or to merge with Everything and Everyone that Ever Was and Ever Will Be, coming together in a cosmic orgy of heavenly bodies and souls and energy and essence.  Or to confront my demons, slay my dragons, free myself of my shadow self, to dissociate from and transcend my ego and limiting definition of Who I Think I Am. Or, better yet, all of the above. Instead, I think I kind of dissolved into Everything and Nothing, and kind of died. ...

Now that half of 2019 is gone and done, whizzed by in a   flash , now that my plate remains clearer than it’s ever been   in my entire life , I’m still in the same state of stasis that the new year ushered in.   Despite months of soul-searching and a morning of Special K-dropping; despite hours of yoga and meditation, remaining vigilant to opportunities, staying open to signs, inviting in the new, I’m no closer to writing the next Chapter of Life, to beginning Part 2.     And it’s a bit frustrating. (I know, I know what you're thinking:  Boo hoo, poor you.  What First World problems could a freelancing, single, childless resident of the greatest city in the history of  humanity possibly have?) It's called "overchoice."  And it's real. Spring was spent moving Mom to Florida.  It took a village and a few months.  She seems to be settling in and acclimating to her new digs, a one-bedroom apartment in an assisted livi...

I wasn’t ready. I didn’t matter that I was closer to 60 than 16, closer to the grave than the cradle.  That I had had lovers in the double-digits from multiple continents. That I had decades of dating and relationship experience under my belt, literally and figuratively. I wasn’t ready. Yes, a part of me wanted to.  It had been what seemed like ages since I felt anything below the belt for anyone. On paper he seemed like a perfect catch and a great match: Age appropriate, in his mid-50’s. Divorced 5 years.  Attorney with an on-line firm, with a flexible freelancer’s schedule like mine. Smart and interesting. Francophone and francophile.  Tall.  Not next door, but geographically accessible via public and private transportation. Yes, this felt like an auspicious coupling, full of potential.   We had met a month prior, been on several successful dates.  It was a beautiful and balmy Indian summer night. T...