snow falling gently gratitude

i am grateful for:

1) virgin snow sidewalks under streetlights

2) the fluffy white drifting by my window

3) the amazing green soup recipe from yoga journal–thanks, ladeez!

4) candlelit yoga

5) the teacher coming up to me tonight while i was in a low lunge, arms raised, one knee on the floor, and saying, “can you untuck your toes?” and me saying “when i do it makes my knee unhappy” and her saying, “then you should do exactly what you’re doing. i love when people figure it out for themselves.” and then gently adjusting the rest of me.

6) sage

7) doppleganger week on facebook. i know, stupid, but kinda cool.

8) making veggie chili and actually taking my lunch to work. twice.

9) hanging out with someone and having time unspool so it feels like you’re in a time-free bubble where it’s just you, them, the immediate space around you, and the connection between you. i love that.

10) bright red toenails

11) that l. is keeping me informed with “the week”

12) the word lucidity

13) the amazing passage in “the psychedelic experiment” when the word “psychedelic” is invented:

“[Aldous] Huxley’s 1953 mescaline trip revealed many things, including the limitations of using the word psychomimetic to describe this experience. Yes, these drugs could mimic the psychotic state. They could give the user feelings of paranoia. But they could also promote positive inslight. They could reveal mystical realms. ‘Aldous and I decided that the words we were using for these strange chemical instruments were idiotic,’ [Humphrey] Osmond later recalled. ‘We wanted to encourage people to use them intelligently.'”

… “Huxley suggested phanerothyme, which meant “to make the soul visible,” along with the poem: “To make this trivial world sublime/Take half a gramme of phanerothyme.” Not bad, Osmond thought, but not quite right. It sounded a bit too botanical…. [Osmond] decided that psyche was more neutral than psycho, and then he came across the word delos, “to reveal.” There it was. Psychedelic would be the word, and Osmond’s little poem sealed the deal: “To fathom hell or soar angelic/Just take a pinch of psychedelic.”