Legitimacy

The Washington Post Sunday Magazine this week features a story about a guy who is a financial planner as well as a a shaman.

He looks so goofy in his weird outfits, playing his medicine drum, doing ambitious things like blowing fear and greed away from Wall Street. (Keep blowing, brother!)

The website video is very sweet. He admits that he travels between the worlds, but then he says, "But what's real? I mean, what is a credit default swap anyway? Is that real?" Good question!

Listening to him helped me feel slightly less embarrassed about all the shamanic work I did on Civil War battlefields a few years ago. In my own way I was doing just what he's doing. He's trying to blow fear and greed away from Wall Street. Is that less ambitious than trying to help dead soldiers move on to a place of healing and renewal?

I tend to think of my calling as completely at odds with American East Coast culture. Odd or not, though, people continually ask me to put my shamanic spin on the issues they're dealing with. During the past month, I've channeled a dead person for his family, taken two clients back in time to connect with the birth of their souls. Tuesday I'm doing a past life regression for a client. My shamanism dovetails gracefully into the bodywork. I don't talk about it much, but it's there.

Nice for me to know that this guy is banging on his drum, doing his healing in New York City. He's not embarrassed about his calling. Maybe I should stop making fun of myself. Hmmmmm.

Regrets

The window at Axis (hair salon) on Dupont Circle.

I spent a lot of time earlier this week trying to capture a picture of myself that really looks like me, the unvarnished me, as it were, to post on my Facebook page. I didn't want the obscured Reya, half hidden behind the camera, or the glamorized Reya, heavily photoshopped (like the green-Reya avatar here on the blog). I just wanted a plain old pic of the "real" me.

It was a challenge, since I hate having my picture taken, even when I'm the photographer. I snapped so many images that after awhile, I got the giggles, a condition that helped me relax enough to get the picture I wanted. It's a little blurry, but it looks like me having a laugh at myself.

All that gazing at my own face apparently brought up some stuff I thought I had laid to rest long ago, because my dreams have been vivid and - well - awful, full of images and people that remind me of the many, many, many, many mistakes I've made in my fifty five years on the planet.

I don't wallow around in guilt much anymore, thank God. Guilt never improves any situation; it just makes things worse. But I do experience regret when I think about mistakes I've made, things I've done or said that were hurtful, bad choices, and for the many times I've cut off my own nose to spite my face. Ouch.

In my dreams, though, I am so pissed off, like last night, yelling at the top of my lungs at my ex-husband about wasting the best years of my life ... etc. Yikes. I must have been thrashing like crazy because when I woke up with a start, Jake was standing right next to the bed gazing directly at me, looking alarmed.

Some self examination is important, necessary. But too much of it, as happened this week during my photo session, just gets me all riled up. From now on, I'm staying behind the camera, oh yeah!

Two memes in one month? Weird.

Adrianne asked me to do the book meme. I love books and I love Adrianne so ... why not?

First one disclaimer. The language of this meme uses the phrase "must reads." But one of my core values has to do with my belief that there's no such thing as "the best," or that everyone should do anything, or that there's such a thing as a "must read." I loved reading (and re-reading) these books, but they might not mean a thing to you.
--end disclaimer--

FICTION - This category is hard since I haven't read fiction in more than twenty years. Do myths and folktales count as fiction? I tend to see them as cultural studies, but if they count then my collection of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales could be the choice here, especially the story The Snow Queen. I've read that story literally a hundred times, maybe more. Another way cool choice would be a collection of Arctic shamanic folktales. They are so WEIRD. I love them! But if we're talking about novels, the last time I latched on to a "must read" novel, it was Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar. Like I said, that was more than 20 years ago. Does that count?

AUTOBIOGRAPHY - Didn't even have to think about this one. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama is the autobiography of autobiographies for the early 21st century, oh yeah. The book blew me away.

NON-FICTION - This category, too, was difficult because all I read is non-fiction and there are so many categories of non-fiction that I LOVE, including history, biography, philosophy and poetry, as well as all the hard sciences. I decided, finally, on Annals of the Former World by John McPhee. I'm cheating here, since Annals is a compendium of a whole bunch of his books about geology. I loved every one of the books that are a part of the collection, maybe especially The Control of Nature.

RANDOM BOOK - I turn again and again to a collection of Native American portraits, sepia-toned photos taken around the turn of the 20th century by Edward Curtis. My other favorite is Planet Earth As You've Never Seen It Before, the book version of the National Geographic TV special. WOW.

OK, that's it. I'm all memed out for awhile now. Have a great weekend, ya'll.

Zzzzzzzzzzz

The window at Groovy DC

Is there anything better than a good night's sleep? I can't imagine. Normally I toss and turn, wake up frequently. I am a hyper vigilant sleeper. Sometimes my sleep is so light, I call it "fake sleeping."

Was it the nice massage I received yesterday? Or my productive afternoon cleaning my room, running errands, or the fact that I avoided turning on the television for a change? Whatever the reason(s), last night I slept so deeply I failed to hear my roommates come home (they were out late at a party). That never happens. The window above my bed faces the front of the house so I hear everyone coming and going. At least - usually I do.

Not last night. Last night I didn't wake up the moment Jake decided to get up on the bed with me, (happens every night usually around 3:00 or 4:00 a.m.) I didn't even dream, as far as I can tell.

Can't remember the last time I slept so well. Delicious!

The Tao of Goldilocks

I've been re-reading Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez, one of my favorite nature books. The book is well worn because I've read it so many times. In fact, it looks like my favorite cookbooks, dog-eared, automatically falling open to certain pages. Well worn, but well loved is my copy of Arctic Dreams.

One of the things I love about the book is that it describes, in no uncertain terms, how EXTREME the natural world is. In the Arctic, there's no such thing as moderation. One species after another takes center stage, increasing in numbers in a fast and furious way until the environment can no longer support it, after which another species will rise.

Some species must grasp any chance for omnipotence, like mosquitoes, for instance - because the summers are so short. So they really pour it on as soon as the sun rises high enough for them to hatch. They aren't around for a long time, but during mosquito season, there are a LOT of mosquitoes. A whole lot.

The amazing Tam of the blog Fleeing Muses posted this week about how extreme the seasons are in the valley where she grew up (in the southeastern corner of Africa, so about as far away from the Arctic as you can get).

What touched me about her post is the way Tam expresses homesickness for that land of extremes. It's a revelation for me to imagine feeling homesick for such a place.

All of my adult life, I have strained to become a more moderate person, to incorporate what I call the Tao of Goldilocks. I've worked my butt off trying to find a way to live in the world that is "just right" - neither too hot nor too cold, too soft or too hard, too large or too small. I tilt towards the Tao of Goldilocks whenever I can. It is a good life strategy, I think.

At the end of the day, though, no matter how much I try to channel Goldilocks, my soul is more Arctic, more Luangwa, than gentle and moderate. I am so grateful to Barry Lopez, to Tam and all the rest of my friends who live in Africa for reminding me it's OK to own my extreme nature. It's really OK. Thanks, ya'll!

The same moon shines down on all of us.

It definitely did not look like an unhappy face to me. I'm talking about a magnificent configuration of Jupiter and Venus along with the crescent moon that adorned the early evening sky last night. The three lights formed a lovely triangle above Washington DC. Did you see it?

The shape created by the three lights was slightly different in Tanzania, proof that the southeastern sector of Africa is really far away from here!

Far away and yet so close because even in Tanzania, I have blogfellows - well - one blogfellow. Because she blogs, I am invited to have a look at the world through her eyes every time she posts. So in a way I feel like I'm sitting at her kitchen table, next to the blackboard, conversing as if we lived next door to each other. I rub shoulders with people in Botswana, S. Africa, Germany, Australia, the U.K., Canada and all over the U.S. every day.

In ways I would never have imagined just a few years ago, I have more in common with my neighbors all over the world than I thought I did. I love that!

Winter Elixirs

Saturday was gorgeous, sunny - the last day of fall in my opinion. Yesterday, winter arrived in the form of a heavy low overcast and cold rain that fell all day long. It felt like all the energy, heat, all the color in this landscape had been washed down a huge drain, emerging, perhaps, somewhere south of the equator in the form of bright green grass in Botswana, for instance.

I love the monochromatic, quiet winters in DC. The other seasons are so busy, there's so much going on that, for me, it's nice to take a break, let my ears and eyes settle down for a few months. Winter is a kindness for easily overwhelmed people such as myself.

When winter comes, the urge to close the curtains and hibernate is almost irresistible. Instead of diving under the covers, though, we humans instinctively begin to do whatever we can to generate energy and light. I think that's why we put up our Christmas/Solstice lights. It's why we Jews light candles on our menorahs, and why all of us in my culture gather in groups to eat too much, drink too much, talk too loudly, stay up too late. I think it's why we exchange gifts. Those gifts are a kind of offering to stave off the darkness and cold. All of our holiday activities are winter elixirs, at least I think so.

Just now I'm brewing up one of my favorite winter elixirs - essential oils from evergreens like Black Spruce and Balsam Fir, mixed together in proportions that seem right to my nose. I sprinkle this elixir into hand lotion, the massage cream I use at work. I like to put a drop or two into burning candles, a few drops into the bathwater, the laundry water, and so on. The smell of evergreens is so warming, comforting, protective. Yum!

Welcome December! Welcome Winter! I'm glad you're here.