First time: Bike To Work Day

Yes, please, it's time...

I find it hard to believe, but it's really true: tomorrow will be the first time ever that I participate in Bike To Work Day.  I'm stoked!

Long time ago, way back in the mid-90s, I was much more of a bike-person.  I commuted to work from my house in San Rafael to my job in San Rafael by way of San Geronimo, taking the long way after dropping The Kid at school by trailer.  We went everywhere by bike, all three of us.  We were regulars at Critical Mass.  We perfected tricks on the tandem, Joe clowning (no surprise), me pedaling.  But things changed: I took on a different kind of work that required a lot of travel, and my bike time dwindled.

To Zero.

And then came job after job, more travel, suits, then a bad four years of driving to work in San Francisco.

What on earth was I thinking?

Now that I'm back to working in San Rafael and things have settled, and it's not raining every single day, I've started riding my bike to work in earnest.  Well, the "in earnest" part might be a bit of an exaggeration.  This week I've been riding with Joe, who's back on his bike again and taking it easy, so I have the comfort of a mechanic riding alongside me in case anything goes wrong.  And we have a fantastic new bike path which is great, but still many hairy portions of road, squeezed between zooming cars and really shitty roadway.

But I am loving it.

I've been missing being active since Jas died, no one to walk or hike with in the mornings, and too sad to go alone and walk with his ghost for company (and tears and tissues and more tears).  But this, this riding to work thing, is perfect. I can do it without his ghost as it's a place he never could have come with me, so it's fresh, stripped of the emotion and just plain fun.

It's exactly one of the things I wanted from the job change I made at the beginning of this year, this simplicity and ease of being able to get to my job on my own steam, a little sweaty (but nothing Yogini Cleanies Lavender Body Wipes can't take care of).  I'm still working out the system, figuring out how to pack, what to pack, how to plan, but you can probably imagine I totally love that part.

So it'll be with delight tomorrow that I am part of the pack, hitting the Energizer Stations along my route to work (two of 'em!), picking up the swag, participating in the rolling party.

Yay!

XX

Philistine at the Seed Barn

  BB: Ivan is fine but he's not a serious guy, he's a philistine.
  FB: What's a philistine?
  BB: It's a guy who doesn't care about books and interesting films and things. Your mother's brother Ned is  also a philistine.
  FB: Then I'm a philistine.
  BB: No, you're interested in books and things.
           - beloved scene in Noah Baumbauch's The Squid and The Whale (2005)

Standing in the Baker Creek Seed Bank in Petaluma on Mother's Day afternoon, I was definitely feeling the philistine. The Bank is just that, occupying a former historic bank with 30-foot high ceilings. For gardening fanatics, it's a bit mecca, especially if you're all heirloom seeds and shit. Truly it's a lovely, lovely place. You pick up a little metal pail painted with flowers to gather your seed packets in, and off you go.

If only we'd visited a couple of months ago, before we started most of our garden from seed and bought the rest from Indian Valley Organic Farm and Garden plant sale. We were interested in just a few things and finding them was a challenge when you're dealing with such scale.

We started at the beginning, at A, and worked our way methodically down the long banks of cubbies, through vegetables, to herbs, to flowers.  Wow, there are a lot of dang seeds.

And because it's mecca and people are worshipping at the altar of the non-GMO, naturally my inner philistine couldn't resist making an appearance.  I think it happened at the precise moment I was facing the melon selection at left.  

A few years ago we raised some delicious canteloupes from seeds we brought back from France, tucked in a corner of a suitcase.  The melons were small, sweet, bursting with flavor.  We have space this year to accomodate their sprawl, so why not start some canteloupes.

And so we stood in front of these rows and rows of seeds.  Let's see: should we choose the Charentais, the Noir de Carmes, the Petit Gris de Rennes, or maybe go American and choose Edisto 47 or Kansas or Hearts of Gold.  Or any one of about 30 other options. 

And I turned to Joe and said, "Can we just get a god damn canteloupe?"

Momentary bitch aside, we did wind up with the Petit Gris de Rennes in our pail, coaxed by the enthusiastic staff at the counter.  And zucchini and butter lettuce, but naturally they are not called by those names.   

It's wonderful, truly, to have access to all of this variety, but after a lifetime of reduced nomenclature, it's challenging to integrate this vast diversity, not to throw up the hands at the 100 types of tomato seeds and storm out in search of an Early Girl.  I am learning to love it, to the extent that I can ever love anything that has that hushed atmosphere when you walk in, that has that tremendous potential for pretension (pretential?) built into it.

They're plants, people.  Yes, it's lovely  to be restoring a natural diversity that has been lost as we've been eating generic food.  But let's go easy on the seriousness.

Love,
The Philistine
XX

Dogs smiling, dogs laughing

Oh my, this is such a HUGE source of joy for me, this collage of pit bulls smiling. Thank you so much to The Positive Canine and their iloveyourfurryface blog!

I honestly can't decide which is my favorite, I love them all so much.  Almost as much as this half-pit laughing triumphantly about the bunny he found.

Savoring the pages

Darling MT, thanks for sending.
You're right: it cries out for seal skin.

Since March, I've been re-reading His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. This re-reading has been a lifesaver throughout my deep grief over the loss of my beloved Jasper, long may he run. Because truly, truly he was my daemon, and our separation from each other has been a deep, deep wound, one from which I wonder if I will ever truly heal.  It's still a pain unlike any other I've ever felt.  I still look for him, my little prancing ghost.  Sometimes I wonder how it is I can continue to exist, in this place now bereft of him.

With that in mind, I am so very grateful to Philip Pullman for opening a window for me into this parallel universe, for distracting me with heroic children, talking bears, and witches, and even the fine, fine character of Lee Scoresby and his rabbit daemon Hester. Such a marvelous world in which I have been so happy to lose myself completely for hours at a time, healing with each page a little bit more, in joy chapter after chapter.

But now I've come to the part in the third book, The Amber Spyglass, that I know so well, so well that I've stopped reading.  It's that crazy point in the whole arc of the story where I want to slow it all down, make it last, and also where I am just dreading what I know comes next, the very crux of the story.  The first time I read it, many years ago, I cried out, "NO!," set the book aside and sobbed.  Really, I mean it: shoulders shaking, box of tissues at the ready, the full treatment.  The second time, reading it aloud, it hit me just as hard.  Right now, still in the depths of my grief, I am hanging back a bit at the threshold, preparing to take these next steps with Lyra and Will, but also sick with what I know is coming.

It's just a story, you say.

It's not real.

Oh, but you're wrong.  Like any good book, while you're reading it, it's all that is real.  That's the point, especially for me right now, as I slip myself away from this lonely daemon-less reality into a place where the daemon is always present.  While I'm in any of the many worlds of these books, I am completely there.  When I'm not reading, I yearn to go back, to imagine each place, to learn everything it reveals about the actual world I live in when I'm not nose in a book.

Story is everything.

This is the essence of what books have always offered me: solace, company, delight in a different truth, and sometimes escape.  As a child I was criticized for reading, accused of caring more about the characters in books than the people in front of me.  That was true then and I don't deny it still happens now.  I will shush flesh-and-blood people in order to hear the words on the page.  I will leave a room filled with people talking and having fun to find a quiet spot for reading.  Because it's worth it.  How often do our words to each other advance the plot, reveal something essential to whatever quest we're on.  So often it's just chatter, complaints, inessential, edit-able.

I'm stalling right now.  The Amber Skyglass is next to me on the table and I am not allowed to pick it up until I can devote a solid, uninterrupted hour to diving back into its pages.  I know where it will take me and I need to be ready to give it the attention it deserves and the time it will take.

I'm savoring all of the pages I've read til now, every word that's built the story to this point. Even though I know exactly how it will turn out, it's still a fine, fine pursuit, to be carried along in this way, more conscious this time of how it's constructed, and all the more grateful for the illusion.


XX

Hey insomnia, where ya been?

Because it's (finally) after 4am, I'm up and drinking coffee, eating toasted naan with a smidge of delicious butter. I say Finally, since I've been awake for hours, since 2:30, the wheels in my head turning non-stop, deep rhythmic breathing notwithstanding...

The irony for me, of course, is that this was actually a day on which I was planning on sleeping in a bit -- til 7:30-ish -- planning to go to a later yoga class to allow me some precious morning hours at home, writing or in the garden, without having to rush off either to work or somewhere else. Generally it pains me to leave here during the morning glory, right now especially, in this early early part of summer. And it's 7 days a week, honestly, that I do a fast-paced morning garden walk-about, say good morning to Jasper, look at what's sprouted, then quick, in the car and go.

So I'm getting my early morning hours at home wish, I guess, although it's still night out. For the next hour and a half! I'm tucked away with coffee and laptop in the office so as not to annoy the sleeping. This is my first insomniac experience since losing Jas, so it's novel to be in here alone, without him and his sighing over how early it is and when are we going for a walk.

Provided I don't completely fry by noon, I should have a good long day ahead of me to get a ton of shit done, maybe even a stretch of time with my nose in a book -- now THAT would be lovely.

It's true that I have some mixed feelings about insomnia. Once in a while, like now, it's OK. The problem is that if I need to guard against its becoming habitual, which makes it then less useful. Because it eats away at my sunny-ness and clarity. And puts me on the path to migraine.

And what's it all about this sleeplessness? What's spinning the wheels? A stupid-long list.

I've tried really hard so far this year to be more discerning about my time and not take on so much, and that's working (although it feels a little lame sometimes).  Still, with a business, a building, a job, a house, a personal retirement to plan for, a yoga practice, a micro-farm, two hives of bees, a social life, two blogs, a kid, a dog (deceased), a sister with inoperable brain cancer and a passion for Jesus, parents, in-laws, Mother's Day, relations, oh a third blog now, and an insatiable curiosity to know and see and touch and read everything -- yeah, I've got a fair amount competing for my attention during the day, enough to overflow into the nighttime quiet and remove me from a deep sleep.

For a person like me, with a stupid-long list, when applied sparingly, insomnia is so helpful! Assuming it's just for today, then I welcome it with open arms. Thank you for the chance to get this list out of my head and on paper, and maybe with three extra hours of up-and-at-'em, I can actually make enough headway to sleep easier tonight.

Tom Shadyac needs to come to class

Yesterday was a pretty amazing day all around.  First of all, it was hot, really hot. When I left work at 5, it was 90 degrees out, not too shabby for the fourth day of May. I love that kind of heat so it was a pretty fantastic feeling to eat dinner outside at Taqueria San Jose with my sweetheart, no sweater.  From there we ambled up the street, hand in hand, and saw the documentary I Am at the exquisite Rafael Theater.

But early in the morning, before all that heat happened, when it was still dawning, the bees just beginning their busy, I was reading this email by Martha Beck about waves and already feeling that spooky feeling of It's All Happening, Oh Shit I am swept up in something huge.  I'm always in this Huge Something, but it's those moments when I become aware that it's happening that are spooky, because once I get a glimpse, it keeps happening over and over.  Martha wrote:

The wave of energy that we've all felt - many of us for years - is coming ashore.  It is building height and power, and if you expect to hide out in any concrete structure, you are making a big mistake.  All the rules are changing.  The old institutions and patterns of life that our social selves have been trained to believe in are being uprooted and will soon float away.  This is only a crisis if we cling to them.
 
The way to be safe - more than safe, joyful and delighted - is to climb on board the smallest, lightest, most nimble platform you can find.  For some of us, that's an entrepreneurial business.  For others it's knowing a trade - like horse whispering or life coaching - that will make sense of the wild new world for the people we hope to serve. 

I don't know what your surf board looks like, but I know you own one.  It's built into your soul, and that is the only place you'll ever find it.

Martha gave me chills of recognition the first time I heard her speak, when I didn't know who she was at all and was generally haughty and suspicious about the very notion of life coaching.  She opened her mouth and undid me completely.  Freaking spooky.  And so yesterday started out with this feeling of It's All Happening thanks to Martha, which was only compounded by Abby Tucker an hour or so later with her recommendation of the book, "Making Waves: Irving Dardick and the Superwave Principle," which takes as its premise that all matter moves in interconnected waves.

Spooky.  It's All Happening!

So as the capstone to that day, I Am was pretty perfect.  Everything kept sweeping (waving) around full circle for me as I sat in the dark theater, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing, a lot of time wishing I could hit Pause and scribble notes.  OK, and a lot of time falling in love with Desmond Tutu over and over, such a delightful creature.  But honestly a lot of the time thinking DUH, of course, that's what we're doing every yoga class, silly Tom, I'm sorry you had to have a head injury to arrive here, in KansOz with the rest of us.

Come to class, Tom Shadyac!

It was delightful to see up on the screen, in different forms, what we hear every time we sit on our mats together: these constant reminders that we're all one, connected seamlessly in one fabric.  Delightful to hear it again, from different, much more famous teachers.  That only Love can heal us all, only Love for self and others is the way out of the global crisis of greed and destruction we're in right now.

It was super-spooky and super-right, and naturally, exactly what I needed.  And so today I feel a little raw but also really ready, cracked open and ready to bring it.

See the movie if you haven't, but mostly get to class, sit in community, revel in this super-connection of which we are a part.

Because if yesterday taught me anything, it's that this wave we're in, it's us.  What's the best thing that could happen to the world?  We Are.

XX

It's basic hygiene, people: clean your mat!

I'm going to fess up: I have never been super-fastidious about cleaning my mat.  I think in the time I've owned my current mat, a Prana Revolution, magic carpet that I love, love love -- probably a year and a half if I think about it -- I have probably cleaned it only a dozen times MAX, and probably mostly just in the beginning when I was trying to wear down its innate and oh-so-distressing slipperiness.  Yeah, hug the midline, but I felt like I was going to surf clear on out of Warrior 2, thanks so much and not very comfortable.

I use the mat a LOT and it's been a lot of places, so it's revolting, really, that I'm such a mat hygiene slacker.  That mat gets walked on all over by my sweaty little feet, by everyone else's sweaty bigger feet; I place my hands and entire sweaty body on it; I and others demo on it; it rides around in my car and hits the ground in studios and on carpets (super-gross) all over the Bay Area.  And there are many times I watch beads of sweat drip off me onto it.  And then after class, I roll it up and off I go.

Super-gross.

But I'm mending my ways.

Thanks to an ad in the sidebar of Facebook for Yogini Cleanies, botanically based wipes made of 100% sustainable renewable bamboo.  I clicked through, intrigued, and liked what I saw.  A little company started by a mom and daughter, yoginis and environmentalists.  Sweet!

Inspired, I ordered up a box of Yogini Cleanies and just tested them out recently. They smell great, which is necessary, given the above-mentioned accumulation of funk.  Since my mat is enormous, I could've used two of the wipes to really clean it.  Fortunately, I've since heard from Sunday, the mom in the mother-daughter team, that they've come out with a larger size.  Perfect!

The wipes come in little packets, like Handiwipes, making them easy to tuck into a mat bag or purse or pocket, for immediate after-class wipe-down.  That's what I'll be doing tonight after class, before I even roll that bad-boy up again.

And they work.  I am not sure it comes out quite clearly in the photo, but yeah, the wipe was no longer white when I was done.  That's quite a few foot- and hand-prints in my palm below, ewwwww.  And it's nice to get that snootfull of lemongrass scent, too,  a welcome change from feet.

As an added bonus, at least for me, Yogini Cleanies are compostable.  I have shredded up used wipes post-cleaning and thrown them into the compost, delighted to watch them break down with everything else, the yard trimmings and mown grass and coffee from the neighborhood Peet's.

So if you haven't guessed, I'm a fan.  Yogini Cleanies are easy and green, so I have no excuse to be a mat-slob.  From here out, I'll be packing these, hygiene slacker no more.

XX