Day 149 December 31, 2010

Day 149  Olivia 

David and I are spending New Year's eve at our friends Mei and Rob's home in Kentville.  We've made this New Year's Eve visit a routine for several years now.  One year we had to leave early, before midnight, because of a blizzard.  That was a bad drive home.

Blizzards don't care what your plans might be, they just dump a lot of snow with high winds and then leave you to figure it out.  David had to help me find the road that night.  Visibility was difficult, even on the highway going very, very slowly.  We both worked hard to ensure that we kept our car on the road.  We made it, but it wasn't a lot of fun.  Our normal 45 minute drive took nearly 2 hours.

Today the weather is fine though.  It will be fun to bring in the New Year with old friends.  Their daughter Olivia is lots of fun too.  She is learning how to play the piano.

I hope you have some fun tonight too, ringing in the New Year.  Even if you chose to stay at home, have fun doing that :)

Day 148 December 30, 2010

Two days in the city are enough for me.  I miss my own bed.  Taking care of two adorable cats even gets a little old when you aren't sleeping perfectly.  Cats tend to play at night when you are trying to sleep.  But things are not all rosy and perfect in the country either, you know.  Sometimes, and I especially think this is true of urban dwellers, we romanticize country life.  I live in the country and I even romanticize country life!  Perhaps we just need romance?

I get home right before dark and my driveway is a sheet of ice with precious little room to manoeuvre at the top.  I sneak in next to my husband's car and then carefully negotiate my way to the house, by sliding along on the ice, versus lifting each foot to take individual steps.

Yes, things can be dicey anywhere.  Things can be lovely and then they can be awful.  Sounds like life to me.   Best wishes on the eve of New Year's Eve.  Best wishes for a glorious new year.

Day 147 December 29, 2010

Day 147  Cleo and Moses

So perhaps your day hasn't been so wonderful.... perhaps your blog has stopped working properly and you've had six people from the IT department working on it, and still it's a no go.  The good news is, you are okay.

This reminds me of a dear friend who has had a large share of health issues over the last five years.  He is a young man who is recovering from a traumatic brain injury.  He is making miraculous progress yet there are days when it is such a slow recovery process he loses faith.  He gets distraught.

Once when I visited him he had only negative statements for me.  I pointed this out to him.  I reminded him that if he was looking for a pessimistic friend he was talking to the wrong person.  I am an eternal optimist. I am well aware that there is enough hardship in this world that I could cry 24 x 7 to express all the sadness, but I don't.  Instead, I look to the good in life. I direct my focus to the positive.

And so when my friend continued to complain about his very painful ankle that was keeping him from walking properly, to say that it was a mess, that it would never get better, that it was a write off, ....after listening to him talk for a few minutes I stopped him and said,  "Do you want to know the good news about your ankle?"  He did.  I told him, "The good news about your ankle is that you have an ankle."  This stopped him.  He was silent.  He stopped complaining.

So just when things are at their darkest, when you cry because you just have to, and you are not one to usually cry, realize that we all need to cry at times.  It is our turn.  To cry is to be human.  After you are done crying, see the good around you.  There must be something that is good.  Perhaps a cool wind is blowing, perhaps you are in a warm room, perhaps dinner is soon, perhaps you can call up a pleasing memory, perhaps you, just you, have touched your own awareness of the gift we all share.  It is called life.

Day 146 December 28, 2010

Day 146  Cleo the kitten at Jen and Nick's house

I'm in the city of Halifax tonight, taking care of my daughter and her fiance's kitties while they are away visiting family in Ontario.  Cleo has only been a part of their family for a week so she needs a bit of watching.  Cleopatra and Moses, such biblical names, but cats do possess a timeless quality, and an air of majesty and poise.

Cleo was quite excited by the foam blocks I set out for my shoulder stand practice.  She went into attack mode briefly, wrestling with them.  Once I'd settled on the floor for savasana she made friends with me.  I was on her turf.

I noticed today that winter has definitely arrived in Nova Scotia.  Driving into the city was slow going, which is a good thing.  I only spotted two cars off the road.  One was in the median ditch between the twinned highway and the other was mysteriously parked in the snow next to a grove of tall spruce trees, well past the ditch between the highway's edge and the start of the forest.  If there had been a road to that location it wouldn't have seemed odd at all.  There was no road.  The car had at some point flown over the ditch and landed safely next to the tall trunks of the spruce trees that had been limbed by the highway crew this fall.

There are times in life when we need to slow down and be more alert than usual.  Driving during a winter storm is one of those times.  Even in a yoga practice slowing down and becoming alert to the nuances of the asanas' effects on the body is a good thing.  As well, slowing down to view your recent artistic efforts is a good thing.  When you slow down you become alert to nuances of colour and details of shape and form.

Just for today, see if you can take the time to slow down at some point, even if only for a short while.  Do things appear different to you when you slow down?  What does your self awareness tell you when you slow down?  Is this unknown territory to you?

Day 145 December 27, 2010

I’m a bit embarrassed to report that today is our first snowfall here at home.  The reason I’m embarrassed is that when I read the national news it is reported that Maritimers are exhausted by four winter storms in as many weeks.  Here in my corner of the world we did experience a serious wind storm two weeks ago but the other three storms were mild in comparison.  We only had four roof shingles to replace and some flooding in the basement.  We were fortunate to find able roofers to help us out quickly.

Some Maritimers lost power, experienced serious flooding and have registered for disaster relief.  These Maritimers are exhausted by winter already.  Travellers are too, especially air travelers, in the Northeast.  Here in Falmouth, N.S. it was a calm beautiful day.  Just before sunset I snapped a photo that tried to highlight the gorgeous fog and high ceiling with blue skies.  A bit of snow shoveling was needed at home, but other than that we had a lovely first snow.

Day 145  First snow

I hope that whatever your weather conditions are today that you will manage dealing with the weather with calmness.  I do, however, remember once screaming into a winter storm many year’s ago.  I wanted to give back some of the harshness that I felt the storm was dishing out in my direction.  I was totally fed up with the raging wind, the deep snow, the extra work from shovelling, and with the winter in general.  It was probably March.  I’m usually ready for spring by then.   Let’s hope we all get through the winter this time with a bit more grace than I managed that winter.

Day 144 December 26, 2010

Great walk with the doggies today at a park where I was the only two legged guest.

At one point I could hear people talking way down at the other end of the lake, but I couldn't see them.  For that I was glad, to only hear them, but not see them.  I guess sometimes I just need a lot of private time with nature.

What do you need?

Day 143 December 25, 2010

Christmas Day.  I talked with all my siblings in the USA and my eldest daughter in Ottawa.  After many hours on the phone keeping in touch with the ones I love, Christmas can be a very emotional time.  Last night my youngest and her fiancée celebrated Christmas Eve with David and I, and the doggies. 

The magic of the holidays captured me. David and I walked the dogs, Mr. Bear and Ms. Madeleine.  David turned back for home at one point and I continued onward to the solitude of the river with the dogs.  I wanted to contact nature so instead of looking across the river at the two houses right near the bank upstream I looked instead to the other bank towards a grove of full grown hardwoods near an eddy in the river.  I looked towards the natural order, to briefly leave the world of humanity behind.  Bare nature speaks to me, it touches me deeply inside and stills my chattering mind.  The ageless quality of water and trees connects me to something bigger than my life.

Then once home I had a quiet, chest opening yoga practice that put me in contact with the fluidity of the spine.  I opened like a tree bending with the wind.  In setubundha, with feet on the wooden block at the wall, legs strapped together above the knees, and sacrum supported with a second wooden block, the arms turned outwards and the hands gripped the sides of the yoga mat.  The block offered support and I rested amicably in this arched position, such a deep rest I really felt like this was my body’s normal posture.  I rested, breathing evenly, as if in a deep sleep, with only a minimal effort used to stay in place.  Removing the blocks and coming down, the upper spine curved even more deeply as I let the hips and sacrum lead the movement, and then like a tree that finally returned to its normal posture after a brief wind storm, I returned to the mat completely.  At peace.

This is what I wish for you to find for yourself today.  A moment of peace.


Merry Christmas.

Day 142 December 24, 2010

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve.  It is wonderful to see your family during this holiday season.  Especially meaningful if last year things weren’t going so well and you and your family was under stress for any number of reasons.  Perhaps someone in your family lost their job, or someone was ill, or someone was far, far away in more ways than one.  Our lives do tend to balance themselves out though if we give ourselves half a chance.

I’d like to send out gratitude for the happiness and calmness I feel tonight.  I know that not everyone on the planet is as fortunate as I am.  I have a very full stomach and I’m inside a warm house with my loving family.  There was much laughter around the dinner table tonight. 

The photo I’m posting tonight shows you our desert. It is a small bowl of Luna and Larry’s coconut bliss frozen delight with one organic chocolate truffle on top and a few slices of a fresh organic pear.  Lovely.  Entirely lovely.  We had homemade Asian food for dinner, a Japanese soup followed by Chinese beef and broccoli and stir fried rice with green onions.  A feast indeed.

Merry Christmas and may you feel Blessed.

Day 141 December 23, 2010

Yesterday I posted a photo of my brother Jim and I on Skellig Michael, a rocky island about 25 miles off the shore of Ireland.  If an excursion requires boating my brother will hurry to sign up it, and so there we were.

Skellig Michael is an ancient monastic outpost and more recently home to lighthouse keepers and their families.  To see the remains of the monastery, you needed to climb 650 stone steps that were carefully laid by the monks.  The monastery was first sacked by the Vikings in A.D. 812 and again in A.D. 823.  Despite these sackings and the privations of this island life atop a rocky crag, the monastery remained functional until it moved ashore to the Ballinskelligs in the 12^th century.

Needless to say, climbing those steps to the ancient monastery is grueling and not for the faint of heart.  The concept of handrails is unknown and just the sea greets you if you slip and fall.  Of course some folks on the day we climbed Skellig Michael looked quite relaxed, as if they were out for a summer stroll and a picnic.  Perhaps it wasn’t their first visit.  Having been steeped in a Catholic childhood this visit held emotional overtones for my brother and I, as well as physical challenges.  Faith that we would achieve our goal to get to the top helped us.

Did I mention that the views were spectacular and well worth the uneasy moments?  Sometimes life is frightening.  Sometimes being frightened is worth it if you reach your goal.  I hope that you will not be too frightened or have to work too hard to achieve your goal.  

View of boat launch at Skellig Michael, photo by Jim

View from the monastery of Skellig Michael, photo by Jim

Day 140 December 22, 2010

Another day of rainy weather, wind and mud here in my part of the world.   Hello to you all, wherever you may be.  As one of my favourite students recently wrote as a facebook entry, saying hello to his friends here in Canada where he goes to school,  “hello, from over here on the other side of the planet.”  He’s gone home to Seoul, Korea for the holidays. Yes, hello to everyone wherever you might be on this lovely planet of ours.

Having just finished a quiet yoga practice I feel a bit humorous and light hearted.  Forgiving of humanity’s foibles.  We do try our best it seems.

Try to take pleasure in the small things today.  Those small things add up J  Get comfortable with yourself, afterall, it’s your life.