I will not winge!

I didn't mean to complain yesterday. I love my work, I do. My clients are interesting, complicated and all different from each other. I feel completely myself when I'm in the treatment room.

My job is a very technical kind of anatomical sculpture, combined with dance and prayer. I don't ever have to sit at a desk in a cubicle, pushing paper around, answering endless emails. I never have to sit in boring meetings. Of course there are tedious moments, but not very many of them.

Every session provides me with the opportunity to be creative. Every session requires me to pay attention, focus, and be present. In truth I wish I had greater stamina, more mental and physical energy so I could do more of it. Didn't mean to sound whiny yesterday. Sheesh.

That said, I'm off to work. Have a wonderful Monday.

Going Against the Flow

I suppose it's best that my work schedule is in exact opposition to the schedules of most folks because in my heart of hearts I am such a contrarian. Sometimes, though, like over holiday weekends, it feels like I have to gather twice as much energy to go do my work.

Labor Day weekend, which includes the first Monday in September here in the U.S., is sacrosanct. Everyone in the business world and government has the day off. For me it's a great time to hunker down and work my ass off - make hay while the sun shines. People are far more likely to take the time for a massage when they have a long weekend, so I book my days solid, a very good thing for my bank account.

Funny, then, that I find myself this morning wanting to be lazy, to sit around the barbecue with my neighbors and friends, hang out. For heaven's sake, I give myself So Much Time to hang out; I should be happy to put my nose to the grindstone. Maybe because the prevailing energy on a holiday weekend is that of relaxation, as a shaman I must push upstream against it in order to rally the will to go to work. Or perhaps I'm just lazy, who knows?

I guess I can figure it out later. Right now? Must gather my willpower and get to work. To everyone else enjoying a long weekend, hope you have a great one!

That Old Devil Moon

It was a strange night last night on Tennessee Avenue. Somehow or another I had a big blowout fight with one of my roommates - I have no idea why. Right afterwards I heard my next door neighbor shouting at someone in a car on the street. This morning I saw friends at the market who told me someone broke into their car, but took nothing. Someone robbed another neighbor's daughter at gunpoint.

Really bizarre energy around here. I still feel uneasy. Anyone else experiencing a strangeness? Maybe it was the full moon. You think?

Growing into Myself

One of the great things about seeing my friends in California after such a long break was that it gave me the opportunity to understand how much I've changed over the last twenty years, inside and out. It helped me remember all the reasons I really love being middle aged. Really, I do!

As a young adult I was hot. I'm not saying I was the most beautiful woman you've ever seen, and certainly never a "ten." I'm Russian peasant stock, mostly, with the requisite short legs and long torso, squarish shaped body that would never make it to the cover of Sports Illustrated, no matter what. But I was hot, I was! I radiated pheromones like nobody's business. Wherever I went, men looked me up and down as if they were very hungry. My curiosity about the human condition, in combination with the pheromones, created an atmosphere in which men assumed I wanted to have sex with all of them. Yikes.

For many years I believed the only thing I had going for me was the hottie factor. Isn't that sad? Of course I was interested in sex, but in an ideal situation, I would have been a lot more discerning about who I slept with, when, and why. Sometimes I just did it so as to not cause energetic turbulence, sometimes because I wanted to, sometimes I just thought "Why not?" I dissipated so much energy during those years, energy I could possibly have used for many other projects and endeavors.

After menopause, the hottie factor recedes in all women. For me, that is such a blessing. Now I can do whatever I want to, since I've become (as many 50-something women) kind of invisible. I've been saying to myself that I'm much better suited to "life after juice," a statement to which my friend Kurt (one of my California friends) strenuously disagreed. He insisted I think of it differently; gave me a new mantra: I have learned to live with my juice. Nice, huh?

Middle age suits my personality really well. I'm so relieved to no longer be a hottie. Seriously. Life is better and better as time goes on, and I am grateful.


Yeah that's me, circa 1984, hiding my hottie thirty-something face against the cheek of my Tahoe boyfriend, Dave. He's the guy who drove me around the lake last weekend. Wasn't he handsome?

Literally

The angle of the sun is perfect at this moment in early fall. All the tiny late summer flowers stretch up towards the fading days.

You know that phrase, cross stitched on a million pillows, or framed and hung in the kitchen, made famous forever when Dorothy clicked her heels together three times, right? There's no place like home. Of course you know it. That phrase is literally true for me.

I've lived in all four time zones of the continental United States, in cities, suburbs and rural areas (I think Lake Tahoe is rural, yes?) None of these locations (at least yet) has felt 100% like home, not ever.

I've done a decent job making myself comfortable everywhere I've lived - except Portland, Oregon, that is. I never felt at ease the whole time I lived there though admittedly I hadn't had a lot of practice and at the time I was one holy mess of unresolved issues. Can't blame Portland for the miseries, train wreck and nervous breakdown I suffered when I lived there. No wonder I began to call Portland "My City of Spiritual Lacerations" as soon as I moved away. Other than the non-stop rain, it wasn't Portland's fault.

Yesterday I made a lengthy list of qualities that would create the perfect home for me, ranging from specifics such as lettuce as good as can be had in San Francisco, air as sweet as in Lake Tahoe, and four defined and dramatic seasons like in DC, as well as more general attributes like "stars" and "proximity to a big body of water - river, lake or ocean." After I finished the list I tallied up the results. San Francisco, DC, Lake Tahoe and "Other city" scored exactly the same number of desirable qualities.

Had to laugh. I'm at home everywhere and nowhere. That's OK, isn't it? I say it is. So be it.


Driving tour of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Little Cat Feet My Ass

On the campus of San Francisco University.

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

--Carl Sandburg

Hmmm. Well sometimes it does, though other times, the fog blasts into San Francisco with gale force winds. I can remember standing on Bernal Hill, close to where I lived most of my years in the city, almost knocked down by the force of incoming fog. At those times, the temperature plunges by ten degrees within a matter of five minutes, while the landscape is transformed from sparkling and shiny, like yesterday's pics, to gray and moody - all at once. Fierce fogs like that are powered by the Pacific Ocean, so its no wonder they can be so extreme.

When I lived in San Francisco, getting out of the fog was my prime directive, particularly because I moved there from Lake Tahoe which is always sunny unless there's a storm brewing. Because I always turned tail and ran when the fog came in, (if possible) I missed out on its magic, failed to notice that every fog has its own personality and plotline (the way that every thunderstorm is a different creature.)

Also true is that fogs shifted gear as they moved east across the city. By the time the fog reached Noe Valley, Bernal Hill and the Mission (where I spent most of my time) it mostly consisted of a low and dreary overcast, unremarkable (and unwelcome) to my eye, though maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention.

The friends I stayed with last week live in Cole Valley, a juncture between the part of the city that exists inside the fog and the neighborhoods that are mostly underneath it. Misty, swirling, mezmerizing, and right in your face, the fog in Cole Valley fools the eye as well as the mind.

It's no wonder San Franciscans understand magic so well. Clouds in most places are remote, but in San Francisco, it's an everyday experience to be enveloped by clouds. The weather gods wave their silky veils right in front of our eyes, sometimes completely obliterating the visual details of the land, sometimes putting just enough fog in a location to make it seem mysterious, other times yanking the fog away to reveal the aquamarine sky and brilliant sunlight. It's not uncommon to experience all three environments on the same day. I always loved the idea of fog being "burned away" or "burned off." It's conceptually so interesting.

Never before would I have imagined I could enjoy fog, but last week I was enchanted - even seduced - by its charms. Who knew that even the fog would contribute to my perfect vacation? Isn't that cool?


That house is not actually on fire. Its windows are reflecting the late afternoon sun. Between the house and the camera lens, a beautiful, thin, gauzy sort of fog created the dramatic vision.

Onwards & Upwards Indeed

Tahoe from its northeast corner.

I had high hopes for my vacation. I had secret agendas centered around some kind of miraculous and spontaneous regeneration of heart and soul. I prayed for some kind of shift away from all the sadness I've experienced since my dog died earlier this summer.

Having been around the block a few times, though, I assumed that perhaps my hopes were a bit too ambitious. I assumed (when I was being rational) that it would be a fun nice refreshing break from the usual, and I was of course very much looking forward to reconnecting with old friends I haven't seen in ages.

If that's all it had been, it would have been more than enough.


Sacramento Street, close to Montgomery (reversed and distorted, reflected from the hood of a black Prius).

San Francisco was in a good mood the day I was there, a really good mood. I was given the opportunity to experience the magic of the swirling fog. (It really is magic and deserves a whole post to itself.) At the perfect moment, however, the fog cleared away completely, revealing the city in sparkling technicolor. Wow. When San Francisco shines, it really shines.

As is my practice when I'm there, I ate as much lettuce as I could, marveled at the soft, clean tap water, and stared dumbfounded out of windows that are not obscured by screens. There are no bugs in San Francisco. Can you imagine?


The Ferry Building, at the foot of Market Street.

I spent most of my holiday above 6,000 feet at Lake Tahoe, gasping for air (I am a swamp thing, after all, so the altitude was a shock), gathering with friends I haven't seen in more than 15 years, feasting, toasting, bellowing, laughing, cooking together, drinking and making up for lost time.

There is so much love and commitment among those people. The core group have known each other since high school where they immediately bonded and started doing theater together. As the years passed they collected spouses and friends as people do, all of whom were immediately adopted by everyone in the core group. It's a family of spirit that I am honored to be a part of.

Reconnecting with this family was a miracle, it really was. The confluence of fifty-somethings in the deep blue light and sweet smelling air of Tahoe was an elixir the likes of which I've never experienced. The effect on me was spectacular, a soul retrieval of the highest magnitude you can imagine. I don't have the language to describe it. It was bliss.


The island in the center of Emerald Bay.

Each night after the sun set, we turned off all the lights, went out on the deck and gazed at the stars. STARS!! I saw So Many Stars! I saw the Milky Way three nights in a row. I wept with happiness three nights in a row, seriously I did.

Saturday I had lunch with Nancy of the blog Life in the Second Half who is as beautiful, lovely, smart and compassionate as she is on the blog. After our lunch, my old friend Dave drove me all the way around the lake. Tahoe is 29 miles long and 15 miles wide. It's BIG. Dave has a jeep, the top was down, my hair was flying around, the weather was absolute perfection. I was in ecstacy. He didn't wince, frown or stare at me as I shouted I LOVE YOU at the lake over and over again. He knows me really well, and understood exactly what was going on. Wow.


Nancy and her husband, studying the lunch menu.

Yes I am still flying high, yes I am. My vacation was everything I hoped it would be. And more - how could that happen? Someone up there really likes me, obviously.

My heart is full of love, splendor and more gratitude than I knew I could experience. All I can say is: wow.


Heavenly Valley, a ski resort, seen from the west side of the lake.