i am grateful for:
1) the cozy café in which i am now ensconced.
2) bhakti bazaar, the fab kirtan album by ben leinbach and jai uttal. happily drowning out the emo music at said cute café. born too early to appreciate the moany/whiney/screeching of most hip café music, sadly. my ear just won’t bend that way.
3) getting a nice new writing/interview assignment
4) my latest article on emotional health, in february’s natural health magazine. the “my name in print” rush really never gets old. also, i think it’s a helpful piece. so check it out. thanks 🙂
5) seeing a shaft of light in all this boring winter depression. it’s there and if i breathe and stretch and talk and eat well and sleep well and generally behave myself emotionally (steer away from frustrated angry blaming and into happy or neutral thinking) i can see it. health. and to add to the cheeze factor, cesar millan is helping. to paraphrase: “dogs are in the moment! they’re not worried about their traumatic past–you are and you’re messing up their present by feeling sorry for them” and “be in the now!” and “each moment is an opportunity to start fresh!” ok, these are bumperstickers, but they are helpful. it is not required that i be bummed out all winter because i usually am. it is not required that tomorrow be dark because today is. it is not required that i have to even leave this room dragging the baggage of five minutes ago with me. i can enter newly.
6) the two-fingered macbook track pad scroll. i resisted at first, but what a hand-saver. thanks, love.
7) mulligatawny soup
8) the sufficient political outrage about tuscon. not just emotional outrage but maybe some mobilizing rage to change things, like the right to stroll around arizona with a glock in your pocket. though i’m against rage propagating rage too. i dunno. it’s hard to return to the spiritual home of “rage begets rage” (even if it’s rage i agree with, emphatically) and peace begets peace when i just want to disempower/transform the bad guys (a.k.a. the people who disagree with me on virtually everything). so where’s the balance? between getting things changed for the better (as i define it) and breathing in anger and breathing out peace and blessing the whole mess with love?
9) love
10) having a partner who is able/willing to talk about the depression. i hate that this shit is a little contagious. i hate that it’s a bull in the china shop of love. so i am at the café, typing words. breathing my five breaths per minute exercises, doing yoga, looking up at the sky (i read somewhere that this helps the brain), faking smiles (because i read somewhere that this begets actual smiles, and also helps the brain), doing my happy light, reaching out. but/and the blue monster wants what it wants: inertia. and so it is a battle. i need a sword, maybe, and a torch, and a great big bubble of love, which, actually, i have. so just the sword and the torch.
11) the guilty pleasure indulging the sadness brings. that’s a secret. it actually feels ickily good to glop around in it for a while.
12) brightly painted doors on darkly painted buildings
13) the men who seem to actually be fixing our elevator, which has been down since the blizzard.
14) delicious miso soup with straw mushrooms
15) home cookin’
