What Have You Been Learning Lately?

With a love that's raw She will say, "Sabrina, your love must not depend on sad-eyed boys. You can be in love with sunflower dresses and vegan lasagna and Rice Krispie Treats and rain and skateboarding and Martha Graham and angel fountains. Then the sad-eyed boys will come. Eventually their fear will fade and they will come." -Francesca Lia Block in "Safe Love" In October 1999, I was 15 years old and a devout reader of Seventeen magazine. Most months delivered content that wasn't particularly enlightening for a young woman (HOT nail polish colors for summer!! Does he like you? How to get him to like you!!). However, in October 1999 Seventeen published a short story by Francesca Lia Block, lines of which are quoted above and still resonate with me. Every time I would get my feelings crushed, I would return to that quote like a salve for the wound, reminding myself of the importance of continuing to love even in the midst of the experience of great...

He lifted the tome out of my bag and asked what he was holding. I explained that it was my notebook, but that over the years it became a catchall for anything precious I wanted to keep- recipes, photographs, journal entries, lists of pros and cons, boarding passes and train tickets, poetry, letters I never sent and some I did. It was a beautiful handmade Christmas gift from a dear former love and has been a silent witness to the steady cycle of  destruction and recreation in my life over the last five years. Only five years? Is that really possible? Can it really only have been five years when so much has happened since? This time five years ago I was in love, living in San Francisco in the Tenderloin, working for the culinary school and attending my first Kundalini yoga classes. I had had my first Reiki atunement the previous fall and this introduction to alternative healing, plus taking sliding scale classes at Yoga to the People in Berkeley, planted the seed in my mind for a ...

My mind is like a colander with holes of various sizes and there's no way of knowing what will roll out and what will remain. That is to say, I forget a lot. I forget what I was doing last Saturday. I forget where I put the combo to the locked lock I have in my junk drawer. I forget when I last washed my hair. There are large periods of my life that are completely hazy but for flashes of memory that stand out clearly, some of which seem so inconsequential. Forgetting can be extremely useful...for healing, for forgiving, for grace, for innocence, for daily functioning. There is actually a chemical that our brain produces called Anadamide which helps memories to fade so that we don't recall everything we've ever seen and smelled and said and heard and done. Apparently the human brain doesn't have the capacity to contain so much memory, so it helps us to forget. In many ways this is a blessing. There are things we cannot afford to forget, though. We must remember to...

Amster-damn! There are a lot of bikes! He rested his head on my chest, ear positioned over my heartbeat slowing. I closed my eyes, wrapping my arms around his shoulders for a long, quiet embrace, drawing in a deep breath. "I remember this. I think I remember this. Do I remember this? What do I remember about this? How does this work, again? What happens now?" People talk with great flippancy about how picking some skills back up is "just like riding a bike." This simile doesn't work for me. When I was growing up, I had roller skates. At some point someone taught me how to ride a bike, but I only remember my skates. As a result of this, I reached adulthood being a less-than-adept bicyclist. It took an exhilarating, very late night, vodka-dampened ride through Vienna a few years ago to help me understand why anyone would want to ride a bike at all: it's incredibly fun. You also get places faster than walking and it's great cardio. Win win win! Ev...

"At which point, at long last, there was the actual doing it, quickly followed by the grim realization of what it meant to do it, followed by the decision to quit doing it because doing it was absurd and pointless and ridiculously difficult and far more than I expected doing it would be and I was profoundly unprepared to do it. And then there was the real live truly doing it. The staying and doing it, in spite of everything." -Cheryl Strayed from Wild She coached me patiently, explaining many different ways to approach the pose. When I gave up, she responded by telling me that I would struggle and practice and struggle and maybe fall over but keep practicing. She promised that one day, seemingly out of no where, I would arrive in the pose as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Later I would see that the moment could only be reached after a journey of an undetermined length that would involve a lot of work, learning though failure, celebration of small successe...

Wednesday. There are moments when something truly divine reaches down and gracefully intercedes in our lives. Like earlier this week when my front passenger side tire exploded going over a wild stretch of California highway. That car shook like the big one, like the whole damn thing was about to come apart. Graceful, divine intercession got me safely off the road, into a McDonald's parking lot and then another kind of magic took over. I was sitting on the curb in shock, all rattled up, and no less than four people stopped to see if I was okay and offer their help. One kind man stepped in and threw the spare tire on for me, going so far as to take me over to the nearby gas station to put air in it. He even gave me a hug. God makes miracles in all kinds of ways. Sometimes they are extraordinary, awe inspiring occurrences that ignite or reinforce faith. But far more often, they are subtle, quiet and quite ordinary, the result of the kindness and generosity of the people we enc...

When the going gets tough, how do you know? Is it time to fight or time to let go? This was the question of the week, as I sloughed through my days as thick as post-deluge mud. It's a fierce storm with no eye and no end in sight. These in between places are the moment right before morning, when night is at its deepest darkest and the matches have run out. Faith tells us to leave the house without a light. Maybe you'll try to bring along a map but you can't see it in the dark and even if you could it would be leading you someplace you aren't even going. You thought you were going there, that was your carefully laid plan, but you know what they say about wanting to make God laugh...tickle Her behind the knees. In this place of struggle, where nearly every task requires far more strength than normal, one begins to wonder: Is this really what I ought to be doing? Am I being taught perseverance? Am I meant to be shown how hungry I really am to achieve this goal? Or! Ar...