The Flowering Tree of Roses in Winter

The Queen of Bohemia hiked up the mountain this morning with her trusted little dog Sergeant Pepe. For the Winter Solstice, she proclaimed, “I am the Queen of Bohemia. My kingdom is inside my heart. And my symbol is a flowering tree of roses in winter. “ And then she walked down again.

The solstice is my most sacred time of the year. I always feel its pull toward the darkness, and then the imminent rebirth. The most amazing time is that day before, when you just sit in the moment and allow the event. Everything just falls away. There is silence and presence. There is an emptying out, a sacrifice. A sacrifice of the self. Of all my desires, of all my fears. They wait silently while I contemplate the peaceful present.

A daily sitting practice does wonder to arrive at this. A mind can be trained. It can start to identify with that clarity and awe of the present moment. All the demons of my mind seem like little children begging for attention. But the present is so peaceful, so calming. I resist their cries.

I have always been attracted to the image of the Flowering Tree. The Sufi’s have it flowering in winter. The Hindu story is my favorite, one I perform frequently. And then you have Juan Diego and La Virgen, roses blooming in winter on Tepeyac. That metaphor for eternity, the spirit. It can get wounded, it can be healed again. But really it never was wounded, it never was healed. And with that every little action in the moment becomes so amazing. The touch of the keypad to type, the breath, the touch of clothing on my body. The complete surrender to reality and the ability to navigate my mind’s complexities assist in this divine amazement.

You’d think I’d be really pissed about what happened to me. But really it’s all just so beautiful. And the moment too precious to waste any more time or sorrow with it. It just is, the winter. You can flower in it any time. Everything gets revealed in it with the illumination of the heart. All questions and problems are answered in complete truth. All you have to do is wait and have faith.

The Flowering Tree. A tree pose, the pelvis and legs rooted in the earth and stable, the rib cage and heart, yearning for the heaven. That expansion of the Shri Yantra, energy moving toward the earth in one triangle, energy moving away from the earth in expansion. That’s how the planets stay in orbit, amazingly. This perfect balance of tension pulling and pushing. Are we all mini cosmoses? Only to realize this perfect replica in our bodies and the complete harmonizing with the rhythms of nature? What perfect flow, what perfect balance. To recognize that your power is identical with that energy of the universe. All fear drops away. All desires melt into dharma. The serpentine power. The tree, as below so above. And the serpent, energy, winding its way up to the top, and then back down again.

The flowers, the roses. The faith and the blooming of the heart. The throat must be open, the speech and the truth must flow. The breath moves through the body, pumps the heart. Camel pose, cactus pose. Opening the heart, surrendering.

Staying with the center. Listening and alert. Balanced and in tune with the body.
The answer to everything just comes at the right time, at the right moment.

And so the light has returned. The eternal life goes on. It crawls toward daylight of longer and longer intensities. An energy shifts, something new is born. I can feel it, it’s emerging like a bulb in winter. A blooming rose in winter on a tree. Where its branches were broken and leaves torn, they are mended. And the flowers bloom, gorgeous radiant, divine.

The Conceptual Morass

The Queen once again is happy in her castle. The sun has come out, she was able to be with her community in meditation. The morass of conceptual thinking that plagued her happiness has lifted, the demons have passed. And she’s glad that the demons didn’t get too deep this time. She is finding that the more she practices, the more it bolsters her. The more liberation awaits.

I love my Shambhala meditation class. Meditation really is the cure for what ails you! As my mind can spin me into what the teacher called the “conceptual morass” I can easily liberate it by simply stop thinking about it. To show up in the breath and the body and reality cuts the thinking. To be in the awe and wonder of the now, that is what keeps you safe. The fears and thoughts that plague me disappear. And it’s done by the bolstering of the community. Alone I become fearful, but with others I become stronger and fearless.

I have great compassion for myself. I can beat myself up for some choices I’ve made, but that is life. I accept that I did my best I can accept that I made some choices out of fear, and from now on I refuse to make choices out of fear. Because the present gives you so much clarity, so much safety, that the right choice becomes available and you can choose it with confidence, without remorse or regret. I’m not afraid of things to come. I can just take them as they arise. I will make a choice I can live with on Speer on my finances and on what is healthy for me and my family And that is all I can do. For there is no certainty, no control – those things I crave. But when you just sit with the fears with mindfulness, they disappear. Like the story of the monk in the cave. The demons used to disturb him while he sat and meditated. He swat at them continually, but the more he swat at them, the nastier they bothered him. Until one day he just stopped swatting at them, and the demons got bored and went away.

The teacher said that fear is what sunk us in some grooves, some samskaras that create habitual ways of dealing with fear. But to jump out of those grooves means we must confront the fear. So you just face the fear. You don’t run from it. You allow it to be, until it just disappears.

So there we have it. Liberation from the demons of the minds through the simple act of cutting the thoughts. Forgetting them, and living in the bliss and joy of eternity right now.

The Queen Survives

It has been warming up outside so I walked in the foothills with Pepe. This is where I usually work out my morning fears that pop up on me from the moment I wake up. These worries made me so upset this summer I would wake up vomiting.
What to do about the creditors who are calling, what’s up with my lawyer and the complaint against my ex Justin Chipman and Keller Willliams about him foreclosing on my house and not getting me my money causing severe financial hardship! And how to keep myself and children healthy and happy while making a living. How to stay healthy and sane while Speer has continual problems that cause enormous stress.


So I walk to forget about them. There was a guy with a dog a little ways ahead of me, and I saw him leave his dog’s poop, neatly wrapped up in a green newspaper bag.

I can’t believe it! I thought. How could he do that? I mean what kind of a person thinks that leaving dog poop behind wrapped in a green newspaper plastic bag is less unsightly than just leaving it there! There are newspaper columns written about this unsightly problem. I thought I can’t just say nothing! I mean, I have walked around with poop on my gloves as not to leave it behind according to the law too! I called ahead and said, “Are you just going to leave it there?” but his dog barked at that moment and I don’t think he heard me.

As I later caught up and passed him I decided to take the nice approach and said, “I usually carry a butt pouch with me to carry my poop. Those things are really handy for this sort of thing so that it’s not unsightly for everybody else.” I’m quite proud of that butt pack. It is black leather, circa 1980. It was my late husband’s and it carries my Pepe supplies of snack, poop bags, and leash. Today since it’s still pretty cold and windy I had my parka on, which has lots of big pockets.

It was meant to be helpful, educational, with a touch of scolding. As I passed by I thought, but what if he decides to rage at me, kill me out here in the open space? Would they find his fingerprints on the poop bag? I really worked on focusing on the out breaths and getting beyond that thought and just enjoyed my walk.

Then Pepe decided to chase the prairie dogs and run a hundred yards off the path. Oh, no! I thought. Now he’s going to say something about my non-compliance with the dog rules! Then I realized that I was obsessing on this thought and got present again. Pepe finally came back and some time later I came to the front of the mountain. That’s where I stop on my hikes – my peak. I proclaim myself as The Queen of Bohemia. At that pause point, that ritual, I usually affirm something. Like, wow, you’re not afraid of anything! It’s a total attitude shift. Just always hang out in the transcendent rather than identify with the duality that is playing before me. I am very aware of the negative sides of life, and accept them. I don’t focus on them, but I know they are there. I create a more positive attitude. A hopeful one. One that is very present and can feel the shift. It’s a complete shift in awareness. To be aware of the eternal now and that you are participating in it. What story do I view it with? Negative, trauma induced that life is not safe? Or once that is safe, life affirming, because one is grounded in being. The radix ipsius, root of itself. That certainly of which you dwell. A matter of confidence due to empiricism and wisdom with age.

Walking back our dogs inevitably mingled. Pepe pounced on his dog, and the man struck up conversation about the dogs. The man was cute! I thought, oh god, you missed your chance at meeting somebody over poop! And I mentioned it. “Sorry about the poop comment. They should have more trash cans out.” And I’m not sure what he said because I was so nervous and couldn’t believe I said that and there goes my chance of dating him. But ultimately I just walked on. And The Queen was proud of herself for just speaking up. She spoke up for what she believed in. And that made her feel good, like everything is going to be all right. Something wonderful is going to happen out of all this. I remembered that the Chinese symbol for crisis is opportunity. Look at the opportunities that all this tragedy and hell of life brings. That’s the big change in myth that I can feel in my body. A positive attitude and feeling coupled with expectation and joy. A certain trust. And my image in my body cements it. My half fish, half bird , mermaid self. Made from dreams, insights, coincidences.

On the way back to the car I saw a dead bird. It had died very recently. It’s left eye still open and shiny, it’s feathers soft and ruffled, as if some animal’s claws or teach, perhaps a hawk, had pierced its heart. I picked it up and held it.

I had held many birds. Many that I rescued from my late cat Chloe who preyed on them. Chloe got her retribution because a mountain lion took her out. This bird I just held. I held it’s little spirit and my connection with birds. I honored its little life and body. I will set it in the garage somewhere to decompose and shrink down. I often do that with natural things around me. My son thinks they are disgusting, but I just think of it as natural science. In my car I have a little diorama in the side of my Prius window with wasps next pieces (I am amazed at the shapes nature makes) and a rabbit skull. My daughter is like me and thinks these things are cool. She found the rabbit skull on a camping trip.

I have had a hard few days, with the weather so cold and a problem again at Speer. The electricity shorted because one tenant girl uses a space heater so much. The wiring is old, Tom has said to me. God, I need to declare bankruptcy just to get rid of this thing. It’s underwater, it needs so many repairs, it takes so much of my time and resources and creates terrible stress. Like have all of this period of trauma from my husband’s death and all of its property and physical memory completely gone. I will start over from there. Something completely new and wonderful and beautiful.

But there is still a fear in me that what if I had no place to live with my children. If I can’t afford rent and were homeless. I was horrified to find out that there is no homeless shelter for women with children in Boulder. You’d be refused especially if you had an adolescent boy, because they can at least take in mothers with young children at the women’s shelter. This was a fear of my husband’s I remember. I asked him what his fears were once, and he said, “going broke and being homeless.” So while he skipped out on us I still survive. In fact, it’s funny, filling up with gas yesterday I was the 2012 movie ad at the pump. The whole city sliding into the ocean, and they you, could get your “survivor” drink. So chief Seattle was right, we are all just in survival mode now with our society at the brink of collapse.

My children are at a friend’s house this weekend. Actually it’s like their second home. Friend’s and their son who were there for me ever since my husband died. It’s great for the kids to be with them. I have enjoyed building my community. It really is the most important thing.

So instead of giving into fear and my endless rambling thoughts, the Queen has to just get back to work. So I’d better do that now.

THE LONG WINTER

The Queen’s castle is cold, bitter cold, for the raging winds howl outside and she sits in isolation. The prince didn’t do something right that she ordered, and she flew out her magic spell of rage. So now the Queen is in a funk. The winter is all about that. One long funk.

It has been dreadful cold here in Colorado for the past few days and currently it is two below zero. This kind of weather makes me irritable, makes me moody. I had bad dreams last night, frustrated, carrying too many things around, frustrated endeavors, children. I awoke and found the Butternut Squash Chipotle Bisque and steamed asparagus not put away in the refrigerator as required but thrown in the sink, left out overnight in a disgusting heap. I was so hurt. They didn’t like it anyway. I try and cook from scratch, and it all ends up disrespected and thrown in the garbage.

So this morning I got up and did not do my yoga and sitting practice. But I got up to the mess in the kitchen and I blew up. Frustrated that my son didn’t follow my instructions. I was also furious at my late husband for abandoning us and damaging us so deeply.

It was icy out with all the crunchy sounds of cars and snow when I dropped him and his sister off at school. I told him I loved him, that it’s his behavior I don’t like. His last words were, “No you don’t.”

Later he texted me that he felt really bad. I said I was sorry and I love him. That I shouldn’t blow up like that and say those words. There is nothing wrong with you, We have to break the cycle because those are the terrorizing blow ups and screaming that my mother used on me that damaged me so much. It’s horrific to realize that trait in yourself, just when you vowed you would never be like that, that I would never be as violent as my mother. When I was younger, I vowed that I would have vegetarian children, and after Frank’s death I found them eating meat, frozen foods and junk half the time. Again, everything I ever wanted is the exact opposite. That because of the impact of his death and my stress and the trauma from childhood. But that is changing.


In Montessori, I remember the toddler teacher saying that there is doing something with a child and then there is abandonment. You need to do things with a child. Show them the complete step. You can’t just set them up and then take off and do something else on your own. But I have demonstrated things to them over and over again. They don’t seem to get it. Besides, he’s almost 12. I thought he understood me to put the food away and clear off the stove.

Mostly I need help. And I can’t stand living in Colorado anymore. I can’t bear the thought of another long winter. The climate here is not good for my health. Vata is always out of balance and I just feel better in warmer, more humid climates. So I am determined to find a way to either live in Mexico or India. Or maybe both. Maybe we’ll just come back and visit my father’s house on occasion. I need a change. A major change. To declare bankruptcy of everything and move there to just take care of my kids and raise them and live cheaply and simply and in community. I”ll teach yoga on the side. Do some writing and internet courses. Even do retreats down here ultimately. Get ready for the big economic collapse. With the no public option plan in insurance, what happened to our democracy? Since when does democracy not have a public option? Is there anything for the public anymore? Is there any scrap of a free country anymore with motivations for its people? Or is freedom the greatest myth of the 21st century?

I’m here at a University coffee shop surrounded by students as I wait for my daughter to get her massage. It’s her Christmas gift. I’m giving little things here and there for the whole months, and then they get one big thing at Christmas besides a few little things. I swear giving my kids all that consumer crap has bankrupted me. I’m sure I bought it out of sheer stress release in dealing with my life and grief, and also to give them whatever they wanted to protect them from any pain or suffering. I could not bear the suffering of my childhood and I didn’t want them to ever feel suffering. But that of course leads to dependent, whiny, disrespectful children who don’t pick up after themselves or put away your homemade soup.

I had a dream last night of a restaurant. I was with my children and father. It was a steak house of sorts and they seated us several floors down, rather isolated in the basement. I asked for a different seat. I saw Anusara founder John Friend. He was going to start doing children's yoga. He was going to use a Holly the Hamster character and he asked me if it were going to be a real money maker. I said I guess you have to see where your motivation is. I realize my motivation for my business was two-fold I didn't know what else to do and I can't do anything else or I would die so I might as well do what I love, and the fact that I was traumatized after my husband's death. I started running when he died and I never stopped. I never stopped to feel or grieve until later. Until now.

I had a good massage today, but it was more like rolfing. I’ve been very tight, perhaps since I haven’t been able to get to hot yoga class since Sunday because of sick children and other important interruptions. It was intense, working that stuck psoas and my shoulders. Imagining something is melting in there slowly as I let go and just relax. went today to the Boulder Mental Health Center and set up therapy sessions for my son. She is a Hispanic woman, although I think a man would be better. We talked about his anger, his loss of his father. All the influences in his life. His school grades slipping, his gun fascination and x-box playing. But that he’s a really good boy, gifted, was a subject once for a behavior genetics study at the University of Colorado that reported that he was very advanced. So I’m happy for him. Of course it reminds me that for the children I should be stable, despite the cold and desire to move to a warm climate. Where would they go to school? I just need to get ready for the long winter.

I need to go to the hot springs or something. That does the trick. Soak in the river, go to the Taos Pueblo Turtle Dance on New Years Day. Where they just dance near naked with turtles strapped to their calves under the hoar frost at dawn. It does wonders for you. You hardly notice the cold.

The Birth of the Bohemian Bombshell

The Queen is born from the waters. Her bottom matsya self. Reptilian, earthy and watery. Her body is remade from the fires of the earth, the sweat of the rhythms and pulsation of life. Her heart opens, and her wings spread and her breath releases a beautiful new poem. A song, a mantra and it mixes with the air and sky until it waters down and fertilizes the earth she walks on.

I am the Bohemian Bombshell. I’m re-sculpting my body. I’m re-storying my Self. No longer do I carry the stories from childhood that were stuck in my body. I am re-patterning that groove in the record. I’m a hot yoga junkie now that I’ve tried out the Yoga Pod. I don’t get the headaches; it’s a shorter class and we do a downward dog!

Slowly the heat and the alignment and movement along with a new guiding myth in my life are re-shaping me. A rebirth. Just like after shavasana, there is something new out of that death period of rest. I have forgotten the terrible worthlessness, the shame. The shame of my house, myself, my body. This terrified little girl, so afraid and ashamed of her house that she could not call the police when she came home one day her senior year in high school and found that her little sister had attempted suicide. So ashamed that she had only herself to comfort her and she did it with bulimia, building more shame, more self-hatred. More hatred of her body, her self.

I will be 43 in 20 days. I have a new guiding myth. The Queen. I love my body. I love myself and I have value. I’m cleaning my house out swell. My body is full, 145 pounds typically. Up 15 pounds from three years ago. It's OK. It's right. Because I feel so good in my body. It’s strong and healthy. It's sensuous, sexy and beautiful. All my flesh, all my wrinkles and peeping gray hair. What a difference. My little girl of the past is OK with it too. She’s healed too. She doesn’t have to be 115 pounds like in her youth. She just gets to be healthy. She gets to be happy, trusting and safe. She gets to be herself. So everybody gets healed. Even my mother and father, sisters and brothers. It’s heaven on earth. And it’s in the body. It’s in the Bohemian Bombshell.

I am the Queen, the feather-plumed serpent, or the mermaid, half goat, half fish. The alchemical toad and bird chained together. I’m finally rooted, my energy balanced and back down toward the lower half of the body instead of rising in fear upward. I have a stable pelvis, that lizardly area, grounded and solid, and flowing freely with the energies of life. The hot yoga gets more deeply into my chest. For now my upper body lifts toward heaven. My heart, no longer a heavy stone, collapsing, pulling me forward and protected by rock-tight shoulders paralyzed by fear, but a bird, light, open and liberated. Free in the breath, present and powerful. And everything ceases. This is where Durga comes in. It’s that presence, unmistakable mother in her death and life. She’s in the heart, that amazing organ that has arteries running from it and to it, giving and receiving. It’s a Shiva consciousness. I can see more clearly my ego self because of the distance that mediation has gotten between me and my ego story. I like to reside in the Shiva spot more. It's an addiction. It’s protection, safety. It’s a silence that is yet so loud with the roar of the cosmos.

In hot yoga, I slow down to the heat and real rhythm of my body, notice every toxin in it. With my deep breathes I can feel every nook and cranny, any mis-alignment. It’s a slow melt, a smeltering, a crafting, as the new mythology kicks in. That I am of value and worthy. For I am the Queen of royal, cosmic blood. And my value does not fit in with the passing economic age of imaginary money, or even precious metals, but my value goes beyond, into something that cannot be measured by any earthly means. The value of my self and my work is not able to be assigned a measurable value, but it is rather unspoken, and connects to every living being on the planet. It connects and communicates with the herbs and the plants and the seas and water and the moon and the stars and the sun. It connects in faith, as it is confirmed and knows that an upheaval is necessary. To rebalance things. The classic Star Wars myth goes agrarian with kings and their peasants revolting. Politicians and proletariat. Corporations and taxyapers. So I’m not too worried any more. I’m excited. It’s time for some good action. We are all assigned our roles and so now it’s show time.

So is Birthed the Bohemian Bombshell.

The Second Layer

After a rather intoxicating Thanksgiving break, I am back to doing hot yoga. I went to a new studio in Boulder to try it out. Not the straight Bikram stuff, but hot with a variety of poses. The toxins I ingested over the break, not to mention food, really got the best of me. I dripped sweat, but was incredibly tired and stiff. And this was only an hour class! Out of practice. How I crave stability. I felt fantastic, as usual, after class. I’d love to come every day for thirty days, or at least 3-4 times a week. It really does reshape your body, mind and soul. I can fee the muscles in my shoulders begging to let my heart free, my hips and back yearning to really open.

Nonetheless, I realized that you really do have to find the discipline to stay focused on not intoxicating yourself nor getting out of practice. I’ve always been the take two steps forward, one step back, or sometimes two back. Not quite getting anywhere, but nonetheless getting somewhere. So I am back there. I call this my second layer of cleaning house.

The first layer was just getting beneath the surface of things to see clearly. This layer we really see it and how it’s been going on as a major story in my life. As the cleaning in my father’s house has come to a halt. I knew it would happen. I had a dream about it while in Jamaica. That I went to my father’s house and things had been rearranged, headed by this one person who runs a magazine but never acknowledges me. I was very upset in the dream. I’ve had many portending dreams, yet never the courage, nor the desire to heed them much. It seems I can’t resist my desires, even though they head down the wrong direction.

So it was cleaning my father’s house. As I knew that despite my troubles and upset I shouldn’t go there. Shouldn’t change directions. Because my pattern is that when fear and upset arise, I change gears. The trick is to keep going. Work through the fear, stay stable. But I thought I must go home. I can’t afford my debts, I can’t make a living as an artist, blah, blah, doom doom blah.

As a child, I always cared for my father, tried to heal him, protect him from my raging mother. We intellectualized and spiritualized together, but there was no complete intimacy. As he was my father. And our relationship was buffered by the narcotic haze of his painkillers. So I was still very lonely as a child, only books to comfort me, a few siblings to play with for a while. But no visitors to the house, no dinners or get togethers. No extended family or neighbors. Just me. I was intimate with myself. I became a community of one.

That’s how it’s been most of my life. Relationships with men who used me and let me down, and although I wanted intimacy, I was not able to give it. I was loyal to my father.

And so it’s natural the cycle repeats itself. That my dad over Thanksgiving talked with my siblings, and doesn’t think it’s a good idea for me to move home. So that is that. I pull myself up by my bootstraps, rework my business plan, stay the course, stay put, and look for stability in myself.

Which brings me to the person I am in love with. He is married. I knew that. We both had our needs. We could help each other. I don’t have much time for a relationship, besides, my kids don’t like somebody else competing for attention with me. I am in love with him, but I can’t tell him that. For what is there to do beyond that claim? He is married, he has his wife to return to, and I have no one. Each time he leaves, the hole in my heart is more painful, more devastated, awash in sorrow. The loneliness and the loss. And I wait for a period of time, sometimes months, to see him again.

How I do crave intimacy, just when we are getting going on talking about interesting subjects and making love, he is gone. I can’t call him, text him, mail him. He is like a father, older than me, it provides wonderful togetherness and tenderness, but our relationship is limited. I cannot get what I need on my heart’s level. I am empty and sad. I can have my dreams, but I must stay rooted in reality. I will stay the course. I will practice my yoga, meditate, work, be a mother. Take up the time with the daily life. until I see him again.

I love him. But I am sad because I need reassurance for the future. I do want somebody in my life. I do crave deep intimacy. Somebody there for me at all times. And he lives out of state. Somebody who is not there for me all the time. And I am into taking very good care of myself. Not my father, not my ex and his kids and other needy people. I just take care of me and my children. My son’s grief and rage, my daughter’s learning disability. Learning to do home cooking again, gardening more, living simply and beautifully. That makes all the difference in the confidence in myself to succeed and not have to return to my father’s house, to it’s destruction and fear. That is no longer an option. And I feel so much better.

This is what the second layer is all about.