Independence Day

The Queen of Bohemia has voyaged to the Great City beyond the desert kingdom. She loved it and her hair looked great. Such a new life, such a new beginning. She was oh, so well-received, the chariot stops along the way were sublime. She was overwhelmed with the art, the culture, and good architecture and soul everywhere. She drank a magic potion, she at the super foods. She has gotten super healthy and her body is transformed and her Queenly outfits new and fresh. Her transformation is complete. Yet now, she misses her children. She misses the King. She yearns to tie up her work in the Great City and continue on the journey to the final place of complete healing – home – to the place before the wounding, and to return to the land far, far away on the other side of the world.

I have been on the east coast for nearly a month now. Having arrived in New York City on July 1, it was a whirlwind of the great city, its art, food, culture, museums, theatre and walk-ability. The King and I had an incredible time, and I slowly let go of old clothing, old pain, old things that remind me of Colorado and the past. Ounce by ounce, the new me emerged, as I shed the heavy weight of yesteryear, the dead energies. I felt it in my body, I felt it in my soul. I don’t have the low-grade anxiety that I felt in my body in Colorado. Surely it’s the change in altitude, the energy, the dry wind and brown prairie and memories that caused it. Now I am free.

New York definitely is not Buenos Aires. You can still feel the edginess, the competitiveness. The buildings have that hard edge and the people are pushy and disconnected and you can detect the corn syrup lodged in the fat cells of their puffy bodies. Everybody is into psychic readings and street portraits. I visited Connecticut and Massachusetts for the first time in my life. Visited Yale campus and saw with my very own eyes a copy of the Guttenberg Bible. New York City was a cooker for the fourth of July, immersed in a heat wave. But it was truly a symbol of independence. The kind of independence that yoga brings and when you are so unbelievably happy. When you are truly in love. When you stop identifying with the ego and firmly root yourself in the transcendent. Everything becomes magical and possible. And so very peaceful. Nothing the outside world can dish up can affect the inner realm, and you just observe the outer world going by like a river. Sat Chit Ananda.

I taught at Kripalu doing my Storytime Yoga kids camp. It was a delight and a joy. Effortless being and feeling complete and whole. Feeling valuable and content. I have arrived. I am home. No place to get, nothing to do. Just be and be with the children. Kripalu wants me back for next year. What a great thing! Currently I am in a coffee shop across from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where I am staying with my friend, Francie, before heading back to upstate New York to the Omega Institute where I will give a teacher training. Then it's back to Colorado for a short stop of tying up still lose ends and letting the kids say more goodbyes.

Above all, I miss my children. I call my kids and regularly talk to them on Skype. Such a wonderful tool that makes science fiction of childhood science fact. There’s not too much to do in San Antonio, as their cousins are older and not around. But they help out at their grandparents and uncle’s house, mow the lawn, eat a lot of barbecue. Their late father’s mother has terrible Alzheimer's and just got out of a body cast from a February car accident. Their grandfather at 82 isn’t supposed to drive but still does and I warn them not to get in the car with him! Considering that San Antonio is suburban hell with no where to walk to to be at any sort of anywhere with a there there, TV is the norm, however, they are also forced to read and play Scrabble. They are learning Spanish from the home health aide, which is a good thing. I also reminded them that their grandparents may not live much longer, so enjoy the moment. And you can always practice yoga, I told them.

I asked them to send pictures. My son sent pictures he took from around his grandparents' house. He sent me picures one by one of our wedding, of our family together when their father was alive, pictures of when they were little kids, big smiles and fat cheeks. I called him to see if he was happy. “Yes,” he said. “I’m sad that Dad died, but still good things happen because of it.” I was delighted at his intelligence and my heart melted. I congratulated him on that piece of wisdom, realizing how adolescents need guides for this part of life to answer questions. I reminded him of the Shipwrecked Sailor story, you cannot judge life. It just is. That is yoga, to see life as it is, and watch the mind and open up to the true mind between the thoughts. How exciting to teach youth at this age. How wonderful to have a child grow and learn to live in the world using yoga and story.

My ex is still trying to wiggle out of repaying his debt to me through bankruptcy. I told him I want my car back. I just let the lawyer take care of it. I have learned to navigate the difficulties, not let anything bother me, mostly. It takes a lot of mindfulness and letting go. Sometimes the demons slip in at night, or I talk it out with the King or a friend, but awareness certainly disintegrates the demons on the spot. Like Kali does to the demons. The blood from the demons don't have a chance to sink into the earth and sprout more demons. She prevents this by licking the blood up with her tongue. A daily sitting meditation and yoga practice does wonders for this. It is freedom. Salvation. An ocean of bliss.

At Kripalu, I ate organic, mostly non-dairy ayurvedic food for 11 days straight. I did at least one yoga class a day. Upon leaving, I was shocked to be in the outside world again. I stopped in a convenience store to ask directons. I was overwhlmeed and amazed at all the junk food packaged up. It was so alien. Cotton candy in a plastic container. In Buenos Aires I remember an old man still making it fresh the old fashioned way at the Sunday San Telmo fair. In the store it was a disconnect, an oddity. What is this? Food? Lots of crinkly packages, pork rinds, processed death in waiting. Francie eats gluten and dairy-free, so when we stopped in New Jersey near Bruce Springsteen’s home town, it was hard to find anything to eat on the menu besides a lot of dairy, barbecued wings or bread. We had some salmon and I ate a salad with blue cheese and bacon. The next morning we both had diarrhea! When I told the cashier at the health food store in Swarthmore about it she said, "Oh, you can't eat anything in Jersey."

At her house in Swarthmore, I returned to the healthy diet. Learned to love kale, quinoa, beets and daikon radish. It’s gotten so much easier to do and I can’t imagine eating the old crap, even if it means I can’t eat out much. Everything becomes so clear and free. My body feels great, it’s tone returning and I’m sure I’ve lost 5 pounds or something as my clothes are getting baggy. We shall see how this all holds up abroad! I did find a few vegetarian and health food stores in Buenos Aires. My daughter was thrilled about eating kale, beets and lentils, but my son less so. We shall see! I'm also excited about homeschooling the kids. To really focus on teaching them and un-schooling them by just showing up somewhere outside the US. Obama's race to the top - what a mess. That is not learning. That is competition and more neurosis disguised as education. I will also be happy to be away from the culture, where America thinks murder is funny. "Sunny with a chance of Homicide," is some show, a picture of an orange stabbed and bleeding on the side of New York buses. Angelina Jolie in Salt is the image for gun culture gone girly and unconsciously joining the ranks of the death cult our society has been in for the past 200 years. I finished reading "Bachelor Girl, the secret history of single women in the 20th century," by Betsy Israel. Required reading for all women. How men and the media try persistently to destroy women's power through the ages, yet wome prevail. I understand my mother, the war they waged against her to be anything but a stenographer or wife. And now they still try to destroy us with gun toting media whores. Yet we ignore it an move forward despite it, remarkably. Durga protects us. I had a dream of a lion chasing some people. So we are fierce! I also thought that the black women who were the sales women at Macy's were in credibly strong, to stand around all day surrounded by images of white women and culture. They still have their pride, their peace inside despite all this infantile crap.

I haven’t watched much television in seven years. I did watch the 2006 Olympics and the 2008 presidential elections. I thought I'd protect my kids from TV, but then Hulu and You Tube came along. I am aware of some things that are on TV because of reading the world’s newspapers every morning online. But I’ve never seen a reality show, don’t know what’s popular on TV or who half of the blondes in wedding gowns on the magazines at the grocery check out lanes are. But I did watch a little TV at Francie’s house last night. On the Discovery Channel we caught the end of a show called Hoarders. I was fascinated that other people live in the shame that was my childhood. Buried alive in things. I contacted the network, as they are looking for participants for the new season. I told them my father’s story. His migraine headaches, my mother, the war. I told them he wants it cleaned out before he dies. We all want the house cleaned out. The final psychic journey of the body, the heart, mind and soul. Really leave the past behind. Because it’s still in the body, still in the tissue. Getting it all out is a miracle, a healing extraordinare. We shall see if the producers call.

All in all, it’s a new life. The seven difficult years are over. The first half of my life is over. It seems like a dream the past, or a bad nightmare. I survived. I persevered, by sheer will power alone. The demons have made me strong, courageous and powerful indeed. The journey continues and I’m not afraid. The Queen of Bohemia has done a good and thorough job of cleaning her own house. And she has told her story. Now onward for the next journey.

THE RETURN AND BACK AGAIN

The Queen has left the desert kingdom forever. She boarded the chariot; she took the iron horse. Now her final ride on the great eagle awaits to whisk her off to the great city. Far, far away she is going. Leaving behind old memories, a battlefield of dead demons, and a dry climate that leaves her coif with very bad hair days.

She said good-bye to Prince Pepe, left with King Albert the Good until she can send for him. She spent her last days saying I love you to so many friends and family, before finally paying a visit her court body worker to wring the stresses of her last visit to the desert kingdom from her body.

As she watched the flat, brown prairie roll by her chariot, she remembered the golden swan that helped her make it to this point. Despite the time away from her new home in the kingdom far, far away, she made it though with the help of the golden swan and voice of the King.

For Independence Day, The Queen of Bohemia will be in New York City.

I sat at the gate waiting for my flight to NYC. I awoke this morning with anticipation, realizing it was fourth of July weekend and it would be very busy at the airport. My friend, Wendy dropped me off at us air with my luggage packed for my teaching and training at Kripalu and the Omega Institute. I was ready to leave Colorado, where I have spent 36 of my 43 years of life.

I learned from my earliest travel abroad experiences in college that you have to carry your own stuff. I had it down with one large suitcase containing my Storytime Yoga bag and clothes, and two carry ons of my business and laptop, cameras and IPad. When I arrived at the vacant counter of US Air, the airline promptly alerted me that the flight was actually with United. I had to lug my heavy bags to the other side of the airport at the east, not west terminal. I was determined to leave Colorado for the fourth time! Nothing could keep me here!

United’s counter was crazy bad with a line six lanes deep. I had missed a plane four years ago spring break getting through the process of my children set up in Texas while I go to the gathering of the Joseph Campbell Foundation at Esalen. But it was so crazy I missed my plane before I could get my kids off. And I never heard from the Foundation again.

I felt panic, seven years of panic and rush swell up in me. I remembered that I am sustained by the grace of Lord Shiva. I chanted the Maha Mritunjaya mantra. I called the King. He said he would send some sailing magic my way, and that this final obstacle would not prevent me from leaving or reaching my goal.

I asked the attendant who was directing people why it took so long. Just
heavy fourth of July traffic, she said of her automated, meaningless job clothed in her drab, uncomfortable uniform. The price you pay for independence, I thought as I waited, breathing in and breathing out and observing the present.

Just then, an announcement blared over the airwaves that curbside check in was now available. Saved! I wasted no time undoing the tethers of the cattle ropes hear they use on the public at airports and lurched my way outside again to the curb. Short line! Hallelujah! Big exhale. Squat, too. Thank you King! But, oh, no. Oh, god. The man behind the counter says that my big check bag is too heavy. 62 pounds $100 fee. “Oh I'll pay it! I don’t care! Just get me on a plane out of here!” “Sorry, can't do overweight baggage at curbside.”

I said I will never fly United again as I lugged my suitcases back to the long line. I had lost my place and it had added an extra line! Doom! I thought. Just then, I received a flash of insight. A lot of the weight is my Storytime Yoga bag filled worth my mysterious objects to entertain little children with during yoga and storytelling class. It’s a heavy leather bag that was my late husband’s. We bought it in Florence in 1996 on a trip to Europe. It was one of the best times of our relationship;

After his death, I used it. I liked the weight of it and the fact that his hands held it during business trips. I kept its little lock of which I do not know the code and I kept the United Red Carpet Club red tag with his name Frank Q. Solis III scripted on it.

I stopped in the middle of the airport, unzipped the giant bag, and took out the Florence bag. Zipped up again. Bolted for the curbside check in once again. Saved! Both under weight! And the attendant checked me in all the way to New York City. I thought I had to have another step at the self-serve kiosk from there. I was so happy I could have kissed him. I smiled and thanked him so much and proclaimed loudly,” I wish you a very wonderful day, sir!” And he looked happy that he could find meaning in his automated, meaningless job he performed from his drab, uncomfortable uniform.

I made it through security no problem. A woman and her son were ahead of me She said, cute skirt and shoes, where did you get them?"

The man behind us laughed as I proudly announced that the skirt I bought from a thrift store in Boulder, a triumph of in my Bohemianesque fashion.
I said the shoes were from my friend Wendy who I stayed with before I left Colorado. She gave them to me at the last minute because I was going to the Yale Club of New York City as the Queen of Bohemia and the dress code required closed-toe shoes and covered shoulders. “You will be watched,” the Yale Club website said. I thought I’d give them something to watch!

I did not want to leave Buenos Aires and return to Boulder. Once back, it was like I had been in a dream. My hair wilted under the dry air, leaving it flat and choppy. Oh, no! I thought. I must get back to a humid climate just to have good hair! I returned to Colorado to tie up lose ends. Primarily to finish moving but also to do the third annual Mythic Yoga Story in the Body retreat at Blue Window Arts in Rollinsville, Colorado, which Wendy owns.

This year we made staffs and wands. The prior years were masks and shields. I told the myths of ancient India and contemplated them in our bodies as we did yoga and meditation. We listened to our bodies to find a symbol or myth that it was speaking. What was coming up or needed to be heard or told or dealt with. I coached them individually in the fine art of oral storytelling against the backdrop of beautiful nature around Boulder, Colorado and Wendy’s place.

One participant's story had an old man. Something about that image of the old man stirred me. A wise old man, the father, the hermit, masculine. During yoga practice this came up, as I listened to my body and asked questions.

Wendy led us on a hike in the forest. I found several sticks. I ended up with three. A first the father - a heavy, tall one that felt good in the left hand, which I painted Aboriginal with my left. The second the mother - a tall, slender one which I wrapped with rigid rap and still remains unfinished, but I thickened up the core, symbolic of that are I need to strengthen and move from more, rather then my shoulders and upper body. The third was a small one, the child. I painted it and turned it into the magic wand, wrapped with an I-Ching coin leftover from a candle as well as two wire bands, honoring a dream I had of them recently. I sculpted a little golden swan from clay to perch on a short branch that came from the stick, a memory of the faith I felt in myself in Buenos Aires.

I realized that the masculine, the transcendent, the father, Shiva, Krishna presence was always with me. A masculine support system I had never felt that everything will be OK. I don't have to carry the whole world myself. The father will provide. The Father and I are One. Always making me feel secure and sustaining me. The fear was gone. My faith complete. Holding the big staff made me feel secure. The wand manifests my unconscious desires. A wonderful retreat indeed.

I tied up lose ends moving. I no longer have to worry about Speer. My assistant runs the business end of things and I get to create. I sold my car to Wendy’s husband and am so relieved of not owning a car. Also, my ex decided to declare bankruptcy and get out of the $30k he owed me, half of which was my pre-marital Toyota Sienna Mini van that he drives around searching for real estate business in a bow tie I bought him. I saw him twice before I left. Once while I was riding a bike. And it was such a great bike and such a beautiful day, when I saw him I just couldn’t be angry. I was so happy that I was leaving for New York City, so I just gave him a big, sloppy wave and a smile. Nothing can disrupt her peace inside. Or so I have Shiva and Krishna to remind me otherwise.

I did have to hire a bankruptcy lawyer because of it and I didn’t have the money to pay my final month’s rent so I used my big deposit, clearly outlining to the landlady what repairs it should go toward.

She flipped out, threatened to evict me while in Argentina. She posted a three-day demand for rent, telling the boy across the street who was my son’s neighbor friend that he shouldn’t come around anymore because we were being evicted. I went to Argentina. Nothing was going to keep me from there. And I didn’t want to engage in that emotional pit with her either. I wished her well. Sent her calm letters in the face of uncertainty. At some point I suggested she carefully reread my original letter and she calmed down after that. Her tone changed and I figure she misunderstood something or maybe she read my blog. I don’t know.

I didn’t clean the house, or the carpets. I was too exhausted moving. I left my late husband's heavy desk that I used as an art table. I let it all go. I locked the keys in the house, and drove down the hill. So excited to reunite with my children down the road, to find the healing before the wounding. I visited Jeff Pontillo, body-worker extraordinaire, for his amazing session and helping me understand my uddiyana bandha and open my heart. It has been a return and now I am back again.

I will be with my children and do our yoga and education while traveling the world. I visited my sister at the Denver Krishna temple. They are now running the restaurant, Govinda’s. We talked about family, children, service. How mom didn’t do anything with us. She read books, wrote poetry. But she didn’t show us any basics, like cooking or how to clean something.

We both love doing those things. She said that service of children is everything. That feminism is about family. We were told in the 70s and 80s to be the super woman, when all we really wanted was a choice. We were forced to be mothers. And our mothers didn’t want to be mothers. Our mother wanted to be a journalist, not a stenographer, and our grandfather had her taken off for shock treatments to break her of her desire. But the big mistake was embracing the market economy. Motherhood, education, health, art, science. Those things have value beyond a buck. Children, life, home, good food, music, art, making love, laughing, teaching, cooking. Life is really simple and so beautiful. You just have to stop everything else and make it a priority. You have to stop the machine. And then you will learn to live and then life is just one awe-struck moment to the next.

THE QUEEN OF BOHEMIA LIVES IN BUENOS AIRES

By
Sydney Solis


This summer, while the prince and princess are visiting with the family of their late King father in a the land of a single star, Prince Pepe is with the Queen's father, King Albert the Good, frolicking in a large yard in the country and chasing a new cat.

Meanwhile, the Queen has been on a long journey, far, far away from the desert kingdom. She has gone to a place on the other side of the world. And although she misses her dear prince and princess and Prince Pepe, this separation has allowed her to resurrect her life. Too long she has felt the pressures of the desert kingdom closing in around her, sucking her body and heart’s energies, choking off her creative flow. She has visited the Great Tree again, became the High Priestess again, dipped into the well again and removed a toad that was blocking the well and a rat that was gnawing at the roots of the tree. Life is real and joyful, flowing and peaceful and rid of the shadows past. That’s because the Queen of Bohemia has found her true home. Like an ugly duckling that sensed something terribly wrong about her prior kingdom and battling a thousand demons, she realizes there was never anything wrong with her. It’s just a matter of geography. She realizes now that The Queen of Bohemia Lives in Buenos Aires.

I can almost see Eva Peron’s grave from the balcony of my ninth floor apartment. She is dead. Long dead. But I am just beginning to live.

I have been in Buenos Aires for over two weeks, and I feel so at home. I have been staying in a little apartment with a balcony that overlooks Recoleta Cemetary where Evita is buried among the dead generals, presidents and elite of centuries past. Every day and night their elaborate-tombed metropolis of marble and concrete scattered across four blocks reminded me that they are dead, and I am alive.

I spent the first week in a whirlwind of getting used to the city and its plethora of sites – statues of winged angels and horses, stunning art deco and turn-of-the-century architecture richly engraved, curved and ornate, all exalting the human spirit. They settle in like seeds planted in the human soul to sprout great ideas and imagination. And a new future. Like something is being reborn. Like the lingering era of military and men murdering monstrously in their fringy uniforms is finaly being snipped away, like dead hair on the stylist’s floor.

There is a different fashion sense in Buenos Aires. Of course I love it, whereas before I had to shop in thrift stores in the U.S. to find anything worthy of my Bohemianesque-esh-ness. Of course it's winter, everybody is bundled up in scarves and hats and gloves. I feel it’s rather balmy, like a decent Colorado day in Spring. The people are into coffee, tango, the World Cup, psychotherapy, art, music, books and opera. It’s the city with the most psychotherapists per capita in the world. People aren’t ashamed to get mental health like Americans are. Bookstores are everywhere, and not a Barnes and Noble to be seen! Very few chains or imports are here at all, as everything from food to underwear is made within its borders. Everything is original and artisan, from handmade chocolates and pastries in the ubiquitous cafeterías and coffee shops on every corner, to hand-made shoes, hand-knit multicolored sweaters, artisan pasta. Buildings mostly were designed by French and Italian architects, and the best apartments are the old ones, crying out the many stories and songs that the stories in its rooms - with high ceilings and long windows shielded with shutters - have heard.

Surely the landscape saves my soul. Artists and colorful buildings flourish, and my soul was warmed by the Bohemian clatter in San Telmo on Sundays in the outdoor antique fair, with tango dancers, artists, musicians, performance artists, food and the incredible act of being alive.

Bohemian Me. That is my ancestory. Card-carrying of the boat. It’s not about the stuff, but what kind of music the stuff can create. That’s our motto. Give me life or give me death, and not some plastic thing. In my life I have been the ugly ducking, with a European father who survived a concentration camp on Java during the war, and nobody could share that story. It was so far away from anybody’s shore. It was shut down and silenced under the taunts of wealthy girls in shirts with alligators over their hearts. And over my heart I wore a flower embroidered over a grease stain on a dress bought for a quarter at a garage sale.

In Buenos Aires the stain is beautiful. It’s so beautiful it clicks with every step on the pavement, every flicker of conversation in the shop window. Here I am like the ugly ducking, Cinderella, finally finding out how beautiful she really is, and that she was never ugly, she was just stuck in some really ugly places with some equally ugly people don’t even uglier things to each other. I realize that I was just misplaced and separated from my tribe. There was an error in cognition, an affliction of the mind, causing delusion of the true Self.

After so many rebukes of who I am, I have found my tribe. That’s why the Queen of Bohemia Lives in Buenos Aires. Horns are honking. Argentina must have one another game in the World Cup.

I remember my late husband, Frank. He scolded me if I cut my meat and used the fork in my left hand to eat it. He bought me a book, Emily Post’s Etiquette. After dutifully reading it, I realized that I was eating the European way, the way my Dutch father modeled at the table when I was a child. The American way is to cut your meat, then pass the fork to the right hand, as opposed to saving the step and keeping it in the left hand. I remember he scolded me if a flake of instant oatmeal spilled onto the counter from out of the little paper serving bag it was enclosed in while being poured into a bowl. He criticized me if I chomped on a chip too loudly, and when a funny voice or expressive face came out he’d say, “Why can’t you just say something normal? It’s like living with Carol Burnett.”

I remember, a KOA campground, somewhere maybe in California, 1977. I am 10 years old. My older sister, younger sister and I go to brush our teeth. It’s busy with other campers in the small women’s public bathroom. We wait our turn in line to go to the sinks. We brush our teeth. I brush and brush and brush. I have a blue, plastic toothbrush shaped like a gun. Toothpaste foams all around my mouth, dripping down my chin. I brush and brush and brush. Women standing in line to use the sink look at me funny. I don’t understand what they are looking at. The foaming mess all around my mouth. I am just brushing my teeth, lady. I use my hands to wash away the foam with the running water. My hands become a cup to catch the water and rinse my mouth and spit. The funny looks get harsher. Because we didn’t have a towel. We used our pajama sleeves.

My sisters and I leave. My oldest sister whispers, “All those ladies with their neat little cups to wash their mouths out. We don’t need any of that.” Our mother never taught us to brush our teeth. She never taught us to comb our hair, or dress ourselves, or carry a towel or clean anything well or correctly. But she did teach us to travel, to go for it and explore.

Perhaps my sister said that to protect us. Us rag tag children in old garage sale clothing. The Six Straubs from Boulder, Colorado packed into a little fishing camper trekking to California for a family camping trip. Baptized Catholic but have a Jewish grandfather who died in a force labor mine outside of Tokyo, and a father who espouses reincarnation and a mother who writes poetry when she is not screaming at you in the middle of the night or embarrassing you in public. Driving the long roads across the West, we hear the news on the little AM radio in the truck cab about Elvis’s death while on the road somewhere in Nevada. We snap pictures from a little film camera at every monument. We are having fun. Even though we are different. Bohemians and smart Dutch Indonesians. Even though we don’t have much at all, we have fun anyway. Because we are survivors and surviving has taught us how to live.

Everything is a bit worn in Buenos Aires, very authentic, Bohemian. It’s not perfect. Not made yesterday and not requiring a car to drive. (The Gulf Oil spill is still gushing, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug.) There is the gentleness of antiquity here and a wearing down that softens the harshness of the world and lets you rest. It makes me feel at home, even though my childhood home was squalor and clutter, and my grown up home is funky, eclectic.

I cringe at the new strip malls and asphalt parking lots that overtake the Colorado prairie. I was horrified to stop by my assistant’s apartment near the Flatiron’s Mall to drop off materials before I left. My father called the mall, “The Last Mall of the Kali-Yug,” and I understand now why. This old model is from the Old Oil Regime and kills the human spirit. These neat little planned commercial hubs have proletariat housing units surrounding them, which I liken to Communist China housing blocks. From the highway they look rather decent. They were only built 10 years ago about. I drove around lost in the labyrinth of grey streets and beige buildings and wondered if I had taken a wrong turn and had ended up in Iraq instead this Suburbistan.

I found her apartment complex. One of three towering, enormous buildings that each look exactly the same as the other. Everybody’s home but nobody is there. You could walk for a while through nowhere, but you don’t bother to, so you drive in your car instead to beige mall or chain convenience store in the shape of a box to buy some kind of packaged, corporate food and bring it back to the cement compound to consume in front of a television.

The only other human beings I saw besides my assistant among these three massive compounds were some Indian women in pink saris near a doorway. There were some enormous courtyard areas of green grass. It begged for a community garden, park benches, street musicians or somebody selling candy, maybe even a child playing or I'll take screaming, ANYTHING remotely HUMAN or giving off life signals that was not herbacious. The hallway reminded me of movies I’ve seen of New York tenements. Ok, so she may be upset that I write this, but I’m doing my best to break her out of there! But this is what I was escaping, lest I die. Maybe many of you live in a city with great public transportation and works of art and amenities near you, but I have never had that. I’ve always had to drive and survive.

What I like about Argentina is that it’s inexpensive. I can live sustainably here and everybody pays cash and that's good because I'm on a cash basis now. The country went through an economic collapse in 2001 so they already know how to deal with life’s unexpected curvature shape. Here I can live in a great city and be able to rent an inexpensive apartment with everything included, like cable, phone and maid, what a deal! You can ride the bus for 25 cents. I got a nice haircut and color for $50, including tip, and my brows waxed for $2! Plus, food is fresh and all grown within the country. No hormones, antibiotics or factory farming!

The second week I settled down to do work, writing in coffee shops, meeting expats, connecting with community and possibilities. This afternoon I taught a meditation class to the social entrepreneurship called Programar. It trains 17-25-year-old slum residents to fill the IT jobs that abound in Argentina. I went to a fundraiser there recently and was so impressed. All I want to do is serve, so I got my chance. I did it all in Spanish! Even told a joke and they laughed! I hear everywhere that my Spanish is great. It feels good after all my obsessive years of hard work with language and sounds.

Earlier this week, I took the bus back to San Telmo. An indigenous man walked by me with the usual hippie, backpacker look. However, I wasn’t afraid when he started talking to me. He was from Peru, and going to sell his flutes and seed necklaces at the street fair. He said that when I walked by he could see my aura, “like a comet went by. I saw a trail of light and sparkles like a comet behind you.” We talked for a while. I could understand his Spanish very well, as I’ve spent time in Peru and Ecuador, and it was refreshing, since the Argentine accent is difficult for me to understand. And there were three policeman next to me by the time we reached the street corner. We talked for a long time, about the indigenous shamans, intuitive knowing, connecting with the cosmos. It was great to connect. The indigenous, like he, are so connected to the depths of the soul and the body.

I had to say goodbye temporarily, as I was expected at the Programar fundraiser. I hooked up with him again afterwards and he gave me a Mayan astrology reading. We went to an internet café and he looked the reading up with my birth date. I’m KA, the color is white, and it was pretty accurate in that I’m a writer, and to inspire people. It’s good to remember these things. Or be reminded. The Queen sometimes forgets and those little doubts and fears slip in. He wanted to do another reading about getting stuck energy out of the body, but I begged off, saying I was tired (I was, and I’m not used to humid cold so started sweating in the café.) and that I wanted to get to the Puppet Museum before it closed. I’m glad I did, as my inner child delighted in the small, dark theater filled with the pattle and murmur of children and parents voices, which massaged the heart of my neglected childhood down to a laugh in the belly.

A few days ago I went to the Finca Ecologica Nueva Vrindavana in General Rodriquez, about 60 kilometeres outside of Buenos Aires in the country. It was pouring rain and cold. I had intended to stay two nights to get a feel for the place and see if I could bring my kids later. But after a sleepless night on a hard mattress in very rustic conditions listening to roosters at all hours, and after freezing by a small wood burning stove and being reminded that I just survived one of the longest, coldest winters in Colorado history and that I had come to Argentina in the WINTER, and there was a warm, soft bed waiting for me in Buenos Aires, I left early.

But it was not before enjoying the place immensely - the calm of nature, the French, Portuguese and British young travelers working at the farm. I toured a very soggy farm the next morning with a regular staff member who was Argentine. I looked at the cool crops growing in the vegetable garden, of cilantro, broccoli, and cabbage. They grew onions not to eat but as a pest repellent. Roaming cows, geese, a cat and neighboring chickens and roosters blow any Disney theme park away. I took an interesting yoga class, listening keenly for new Spanish yoga vocabulary, watched the movie What the Bleep do we Know for the 5th time in my life, and ate some serious vegetarian fare, a respite from the heavy carbs, confections and carne in the city.

I also got to visit with Krishna. We went to the temple. It was great to see the deities, Krishna and Radha, and be reminded that Krishna – that divine presence - is with you always. He’s that transcendental reality, the supreme reality behind your dualistic thoughts that produce this illusional reality. Connect and identify in that realm, then all fear, all karma, drops away. It is moksha. Like Christ there with you, you are never alone with the divine presence. You just wake up to it one day, and never leave that house of love again because it fits you like the skin you bathe in the morning, glistening in the sunlight.

I was so grateful for my experience. I came back to a sunny Buenos Aires and a warm, soft bed and heated apartment! How poor people suffer! I don’t want to, and I feel they shouldn’t either! Now I have been writing in coffee shops and showing the street to my kids via SKYPE. I’ve been working and practicing yoga. I’m in my groove. It took all this time to decompress from the states, find myself without my children around, which is pretty much 24-7, and really connect to my creative self. It took a little time, but it was there all along.

Now I leave on tomorrow evening. I am a little sad because I already feel that this is my home. I will be sad to see the brown prairie at Denver International Airport when the plane touches down. The dry air will probably kill the body that my hair has here. I got the best haircut of my life here as a walk in! But I have my mythic self to defend me from the upcoming pressures and final details of moving and arranging things. But I am so looking forward to my Mythic Yoga retreat, Kripalu kids camp, Omega training and more. As I have been re-inspired by my own dream. I just had not been able to look at it in a while. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't have vampires draining your energy and time.

I am determined to return to Buenos Aires with my children in the fall, (their spring) so that they can experience what I have experienced and to continue what I have set in motion. In the meantime, I am ready to return to Colorado, for I know myself.

So the Queen has found herself. She touches her crown with the blue jewel in it and she's ready for transport. And although she is a bit nervous to come back to the desert kingdom and tie up loose ends, she has a secret talisman. She was given a golden swan on her journey by the townspeople of Buenos Aires. She carries it in her pocket wherever she goes. The golden swan gives her the courage to return to the desert kingdom and put the final demons to rest with the final battle. For all she sees in front of her now is a bridge. A bridge that she is crossing over. She does not look over the edge of the bridge to the perilous depths below. She just looks to the other side of the bridge. She feels her feet and heart moving steadily toward that side. She will surely arrive. She will surely arrive home.

The Queen in Bloom as She Sheds Her Stuff

The Queen is in full bloom. She hiked up to her mountain with Prince Pepe leading the way and proclaimed to the mountain, “Let freedom reign!” For all her work as the High Priestess has prepared her for now. All the trials and errors, all the struggles, indeed they have made her strong, courageous and powerful. She has listened well to her mermaid, half-fish, half-goat-with-wings guide.

The Queen is very unhappy about things that are going on in the village outside the kingdom. That little children and women and the elderly and the disabled are getting the shaft, while the Evil Vampire Empire sucks the life out of the people. The Queen has learned to rid herself of the chains that she was unaware of all her life. She cleaned out the castle of excess stuff that was planted by the Vampires. She got rid of its draining power. And even though sir-Fraud, the ex-king, still tries to rip her of her crown jewels, she doesn’t care. For those things are of the earth, all of it is. She’ s OK to let every THING go, because she is all the more powerful because of it, and she has the blue jewel from the Princess in her crown and she knows where those came from and how to get more. Prince Pepe winks in agreement.


I filled my Prius with two loads of donations and drove it to Savers down the hill. It benefits children’s and epilepsy center charities. They were so glad to have all this stuff, the so-called rewards of capitalism – books, clothing, household items, art work, things.

I had a garage sale last weekend. I think I put out two-thirds of what I owned. So much of it was still from my life with my late husband’s, believe it or not. I set it up cute, like a funky re-sale shop – an eclectic mix of antiques, funky women’s clothes, furniture and odds and ends, a lot of intellectual books – John Donne poetry, photojournalism books, plants, art books, best short stories for the decade of the 90s books. I put out my antique camera, box and doll collections. I called it La Boheme – funky, thrifty, chic.

I put out my late husband’s cuff links. About 15 sets, I had stored them at the Arvada house and picked them up last time when I was showing the rental property managers the place. I saved the silver ones, and Hondo picked out a couple to remember his father by. One that said “hot” and “cold,” like little faucets and another that had Roman coins on them.

My son is selling his air rifles, because he wants the money. I never thought he’d do that, and I definitely don’t want to export these arms! We are leaving weapons of mass destruction in America!

Friday was brisk. People picking through stuff like crows in the field. There were lots of early birds. People said I had great stuff. I saw my whole life in things spread around the garage and driveway. I knew I was letting go of heavy chains.

It was busy in the morning, and a guy almost walked off with the Romeo y Julieta Cuban cigar in a nice metal container that my son wanted to keep of his father’s and I had forgotten to put way. People who were artists really liked my art. I had it spread out like a gallery in the living room among the plants for sale. A lady liked the Polaroid transfers I did and thought about purchasing them. I told her how they don’t even make Polaroid anymore, or are trying to bring it back. And that it’s a Sydney Solis and will be very valuable one day! But she didn’t come back. People didn’t go for the antiques or the $200 bronze Buddha that I bought for $90 in a funky San Francisco shop in 1996. I’ll just keep it and store it.

A thin, tall elderly man with a slight slouch came in and asked about antiques. Something told me about “dealer,” so I thought, “goody, I may be able to get a good price on some things!” He was interested in the Curtis prints, and we talked about the stage house books that used to be on West Pearl before The Kitchen restaurant moved in. I purchased them there with my late husband. He said the owner is now dead. I showed him my mother’s dolls. Old things from Bohemia and my grandmother, and a doll from the 50s replete with silk stockings and pierced ears!

He liked the Queen Mary passenger lists and luncheon menus from 1955. When he balked at my price I said, “Well, it was my mother’s,” and that I would use them for art. I like the 1950s designs, interesting print and text and since it’s paper and I’m a publisher I wanted to keep it. He said to look at the signature on the back of the card, John G. Gould. I could barely make it out, from Rowayton, Conn. So I’ll Google it and investigate it. Somehow we got to talking that his wife had died recently, and you could see he was still cut up about it. We talked a while about death, attachment, life. I shared with him my husband’s death. I told him about the Hospice of Boulder and how important it is to get grief counseling.

In the end I kept everything because he didn’t want to give me much money, but I did sell him three Ray Charles albums that were my late husband’s for $10. They had great graphics and were probably worth a lot more on E-bay or something. But I parted with them. Practicing non-attachment and good will. (Although that gets me into trouble, a la ex-husband fraud, but I surrender and give it away anyway. And I go back to using Raja yoga to nix any negativity associated with those thoughts!)

Then there was the man from Vietnam who liked my Wyang Kulit puppet that I got from a second grade class I used to tell stories at as a Spellbinder volunteer storyteller. He didn’t want to give me much for it so I figured I’d use it professionally eventually and kept it. Ok, so I keep a few good things! We got to talking about all the stuff and the American system. He said, “Every country is corrupt. But in Vietnam, people get to live and be happy. But in the states, people are not so happy, and they have to participate in the corruption.” He said how Vietnam wasn’t stupid and get mired in debt like a lot of countries and have all this consumption and hooked up to the corporate machine. He said in Vietnam, guns are illegal, there aren’t fat kids and nobody has a lawn. “Lawns and fat kids. What is that all about?” he asked. I have no idea, I said. And dreamed of the yoga eco farm I’m visiting in Argentina soon and can't wait for my son to learn eco-building and my daughter is dying to learn to sew.

Another woman came by who said, “I heard there was a woman who was selling beautiful clothes at a garage sale.” I told her about my going to Buenos Aires. To seek out economically and environmentally sustainable living and to give my children a global education. She told me about all the loser men she had dated in life. I said I know all about that! But now she was married to a nice guy, but who was a perfectionist and didn’t like to travel and do adventurous things. I said she should just go anyways! But something seemed to hold her back and she talked about how she had these perfect parents who loved each other, and I said maybe her bad past relationships and marriage were compensatory because of that fact. We looked around at my different clothing I had for sale, including a vintage dress. We talked and looked at clothes for her for a long time. In the end she didn't buy anything. After she left, my daughter said, “She needs therapy!”

Saturday was disappointing and very slow. I just listed things on Craigslist and wrote comments online to articles in the Denver Post and Wall Street Journal. I have the Prius listed and am excited to be car-free, as I think about the British Petroleum holocaust happening in the Gulf of Mexico right now. Seeing the fragile wings of spiders and dragonflies dipped in oil, as well as the oil's blackness staining the wings of white pelicans gave me the horrible feeling that this struck at the very heart of life and the survival of Mother Earth. So I can no longer participate in this. How free money and credit and dollar reserves suck other peoples and nations dry of their resources. We are the Romans all over again, there's no doubt about it. And how the privileged classes do anything to preserve their way of life!

I realize that my humble childhood, as crazy as it was, had good intentions. My parents weren’t into status and hoarding money, but what it could bring in the ways of education, experience and artistic expression. My late husband, Frank, always made me feel shame that I shopped in second-hand stores, but he didn’t realize that’s where my style and originality came from. My mother taught me the original thrift. But he taught me to get trapped in the white man’s game, squandering the earth’s resources on things. I remember my son as a child. Frank insisted he be dressed in Tommy Hilfiger. While at Fiesta a man walked by me as I held my son in my arms, who was dressed head to toe in it. A man walked by and said, “Hello, Jr. Mint.” I remember a woman who was one of my husband’s clients who said, “You get to drive around in a Mercedes!” I looked at her fake boobs and wasn’t sure how to explain to her the embarrassment I felt when I drove up to my job as an English as a Second Language tutor at a poor school. I really just need some transportation to do my work. I don’t need an identity. But my husband needed otherwise, as a Hispanic trying to make it in the white man’s world. His mother bought him his first suit at 18 and said, “You’re my little dividend.” And somehow my husband convinced me that my way was wrong. "This is how people live!" he'd exclaim in our starter castle that he got for a good price because the builder was hurting. And I figured, "I guess it is." And that's how they do it. How they hypnotized us all into the biggest Ponzi scheme of them all. The American Way.

But what a lie our culture makes us believe, that these things give us any worth beyond our own being and divine center. Growing a tomato, working with my hands, educating my children, that is what is most valuable and worthy of time. It's all so simple, and our world is so complex. People are so stressed, pulled in so many directions. I feel it too. But it’s all coming down now. What a lie. The stock market is tanking, or artificially manipulated every evening to bounce back up. And we keep buying into the illusion. But now the gig is up. The whole outer world just falls away. You can’t hold on to anything! And the best part about it is that when you do lose everything, you do gain yourself. And that is worth it.

I had so much left over that I thought about having a sale the next Saturday too. Eventually I ruled against it, thinking, "It's not worth it!" I have so much more to get rid of and donate. What I don't get rid of, I simply will pack and store. This has been an extra deep cleaning by the Queen. Her house is cleaner by the day, and all the lighter for it. There is nothing but art work in my house and furniture now. I gave most of the plants to my father. It's bare bones. It's an incredible psychic lightness, this cleaning effect. My daughter said, "We should have lived this way all along!" So we shall. It's never to late to start!

The Dissolving of the Kingdom and Entering the Gates of Heaven

It’s time. The Queen is ready to go. She has surrendered and let go of everything. She has let go of fear and negativity. She has a strong court she cares dearly about that surrounds her and supports her. There is the mermaid, with horns of a goat and the tail of a fish to guide her on her journey.

And now that the outer world and the kingdom walls are falling away, she has more confidence in herself than ever. So much confidence, that she now radiates with gold. Her gold is heavy in her body and grounds her with its golden glow. She feels it in her body, in her breath. All the terrible and crushing trials of time past have given her the strength, the courage, the wisdom and the persistence to bring her to this moment. Because the visions as the High Priestess and the love and encouragement of the King have shown her the way and cemented her in her certainty.

The outside world is waiting, as the winds of change have come, and its time for her to come out of the darkness and shine. It’s a new era. The Queen passes dissolves the walls of the Kingdom, walks through the High Priestess’s gates of heaven and is reborn in the World.

The Queen of Bohemia is simplifying her life and getting ready to travel with the kids and Storytime Yoga abroad.

This summer is going to rock. I’m selling most of my possessions, storing the rest, sending the kids to Texas for two months to be with their late father’s family, then by August taking the kids abroad on a nomadic tour to some places around the world with Storytime Yoga.

I’m heading for Buenos Aires June 2-18, then have the fantastic annual Mythic Yoga the Story in the Body retreat here in Boulder. Then I'm working on the East Coast with the niños at the Kripalu Kids Camp July 9-18 and I’m at the Omega Institute for the Storytime Yoga Children’s Yoga Teacher and Yoga Play Therapy training July 25-30. By August I may be in Mexico City with the kids for a training I’ve been invited to do, but afterwards I’m planning to stay several months in Buenos Aires, so that we can bring our little black-and-white duality dog, the most Honorable Sergeant Pepe (Prince Pepe don't forget he was promoted). Esme the cat will stay with Opa. From there I imagine I'll come back for a little while. I’m not sure, or perhaps to Lima where I have been invited to train and of course it is my life’s dream to serve and teach the little children of Latin America and take my children abroad to learn and be a yoga family and speak Spanish and oh, my! I can’t wait! I have surrendered and have no expectations, only to be present and joyful.

I would go stark raving mad if I were around my kids 24-7 because as a widow they are around constantly,and that's the hardest part. So I will have some local help, but I’ll be schooling them with a public online school. I’ll be creating yoga home school curriculum for my kids as family yoga with stories, yoga philosophy, peace and character education, writing, reading and oral projects, asana, local geography local cooking and culture, children’s ayurveda and service. Whew! Do I love learning and teaching and yoga or what? We’ll see which ones we get done or how it all ultimately turns out. I surrender and most of all refuse to feel pressure, for I want to go back to that space before the wounding. Before my husband’s suicide, when I was a stay-at-home mother, who cooked carmel-corn from scratch and had a gorgeous raspberry patch, sewed her children’s clothing and taught them at home and told them stories and practiced yoga.

I’ll be blogging about it with You Tube. My Storytime Yoga blog, The Householder Yogini, will cover my Storytime Yoga Children’s Mission, as well as the Queen of Bohemia Cleans her Own House with Mythic Yoga, using yoga, meditation, journaling and mythology for adults to work with life’s challenges for a peaceful, present and powerful life. All this and Storytime Yoga lesson plans of the above are all available when you subscribe to the League of Yogic Storytellers. Certified Storytime yoga teachers are also keeping their own blogs about how they use story and yoga in their lives, families and communities.

Many of my friends ask, “Why on earth are you doing this?” There are many reasons. First, I’ve been expecting the meltdown of the world economy for a while now, my father has been prophesying it since I was a kid, and everybody thought he was nuts, but he did survive Ambarawa 7 and everything he’s told me has been very accurate. The only real difference is that he says we are all going into the fifth dimension and the UFOs are getting ready to reveal themselves but the evil empire keeps holding on with one last gasp and disclosure is thwarted every date that is predicted for this event and I’m never sure about that even though I wish it were true to save us all and Star Trek and Buck Rogers worlds really do exist and are not just my fantasies.

I think the US is going to be a dangerous place, more than Argentina, which was one of the IMF’s first victims and has already been through an economic collapse. The King and I have been researching it for a while now, and Buenos Aires is my kind of town - more psychotherapists per capita than any other place in the world. They love old book stores and opera and naturally the soul of the tango speaks volumes.

I believe that with all the terror threats and our heinous war on Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan there will be strikes in the US. Redneck militia are already coming out of the woods previewing a civil war and there will be more nut jobs crashing into IRS buildings and scapegoating immigrants and Muslims as citizens acquiesce to loss of Constitutional freedoms at a rapid clip with state sponsored terror and propaganda and spiral into fear and chaos and sociel disorder. Greece will look like a TV show compared to what's coming in the Greatest Depression. What’s happening in Arizona is downright nefarious and it all looks like Germany 1933 to me, as we fuel narco war in Mexico with our US arms sales over Arizona’s borders. I’ve seen it all before because of all my father’s concentration camp stories. And just watch Adrian Brodie in The Pianist. It’s heinous. This stuff happens. Americans couldn’t believe it can ever come here. My eighth grade social study teachers in 1980 didn't know what I was talking about when my mother insisted I tell my teachers that my father is a child survivor of a Japanese concentration camp during World War II. But it does happen. I know. Lives change horribly and forever when one day soldiers are knocking at your door and telling you to pack only essentials before hauling you and your little children off to a concentration camp to starve and be tortured and they murder your husband in a forced-labor, Mitzubishi tin mine outside of Tokyo. It lives on for generations. And I have children to protect.

But not to fear, my time is here. It has all fallen into place. Time to get into action and go out on a mission. I’ve never felt so confident and clear of vision and purpose. I envision myself as the Queen of Gold, as I believe gold has been suppressed like Cinderella in the dungeon for a long time, while the ugly step-sister dollar charades around as the real value. But she’s really what’s valuable. And gold and silver will be re-monetized as the economy can’t hold up as the evil empire can’t hold up the debt charade any longer and has lost its grip so our gold comes back center stage. Out the Queen comes! And she shines! I am that Golden Queen.

Another reason I’m going is that when I was a stringer for the Bakersfield Californian newspaper back in 1996, I used to volunteer for religion reporting. I reported on Cuban ministers who described life under Castro, Greek Orthodox priests and the history of the Church, Hispanic Pentecostal revivals on Delano’s skid row, and old ladies who ran Bible classes for retarded adults.

I also did a story on a Mexican priest who was traveling around California and Mexico with the tilma of Juan Diego, who was visited by the Virgin Mary on the hill of Tepeyec, (which was built on top of the obliterated shrine of the indigenous earth goddess Tenotzin.) She appeared to him and told him to build a church on the hill, and sent her image emblazed on his cloak with a whole lot of live roses in the middle of winter as proof to the priests who would not believe the indigenous peasant.

After the telling of the story, the Father asked if I wanted to be blessed with the tilma. I said, "Yes," and he draped it over me and said his prayers. I prayed to the goddess, “Oh, may I be of service to these people.” I have always loved the poor people, especially the indigenous and children. How close they are to nature and spirit still, their folk customs and rich lives, yet oppressed and persecuted with great injustices.

I always loved languages and I married a handsome Tex-Mex trying to make it in a white-man’s world and gave birth Hispanic children. (He said I was Hispanic by injection.) I had spent three months in Ecuador in 1994, and befriended a little girl. I had promised to bring her to the US, as she had been abandoned by her mother and was living with her aunt in a potato chip factory that employed retarded children to package chips in the northern border town of Tulcan, Ecuador. Her name was Carmen, and I spent a lot of time with her and other children doing things together because I hate to see little children suffering. It’s an abomination really that it is allowed at all.

But when I returned to the states, I got busy, working in journalism, making plans to get married. Later I found out that Carmen had committed suicide by eating rat poison. She was only 12 or so, or maybe even 10. I can’t remember. But my remorse and shame was so great. I have always felt the desire to serve children to redeem myself of failing to keep my promise to Carmen. And to be guided by the mother to care for those children who suffer. If we can help them to ease their suffering and educate them for health and literacy with the tools of yoga and story I think the world will be a better place. And we should end war in the name of children, for how my father suffered and how it is an abomination and must be stopped.

Another reason is that I have a minor in Spanish. I love speaking Spanish; I love language. My latest book is the Spanish version of Storytime Yoga Teaching Yoga to Children Through Story – Yoga Con Cuentos – Como Enseñar Yoga a los Niños Mediante el Uso de Cuentos. Published by The Mythic Yoga Studio, LLC. (I finally got an LLC, seven years after starting the biz.) I love traveling and cultures and have been envisioning this since at least 1991. So there is destiny involved with vision. And I want my children to have that experience abroad, outside of the Geography of Nowhere America and suburbia and mythless society trapped in consumption that strangles my lonely soul. I crave a plaza filled with people, art and life. To be in rhythm and connection with nature and the mystery. To rediscover Christianity as well as pagan, indigenous roots and live in community (I will be visiting an eco-yoga farm in Argentina.) I’ll study with my kids the Bhagavad Gita and Yoga Sutras and connect them to their Judeo-Christian roots, while understanding our Muslim, and other religions and applying Buddhist meditation and philosophy. I will not regret leaving the dry, cold, windy, brown Colorado climate I have tried so many times to leave and all its sorrow, but I will also return a lot because there are so many people that I love who still live there.

So I will be on the Storytime Yoga Children’s Mission. Wherever I find some place. I hope you donate to the Mission and support me! As I am sustained by the grace of Lord Shiva. And it is an act of faith and deep love for children and the divine.

I am getting ready to move. The Queen of Bohemia is really cleaning her own house, because I am letting go of so much. Letting go of all the antique collections, artwork and yoga knick-knacks. Selling the Prius (La Gata Negra) so I don’t have to participate in hideous oil dependency that is killing our planet in the Gulf of Mexico as I write this . I am getting rid of about two-thirds of my possessions, but keeping the books and pictures, a few sentimental objects and the yoga props and educational materials. As that is my focus. And it has become so much ever clearer.

I have discovered that the more you let go of your possessions, the less anxiety you feel. You simply stand in the present moment, free of the distracting pull of objects and attachments. To have a simple life and release from the shackles of complexity our culture requires. All you have is your body, and the sensations of the present experience. I’m not sure how I will live without my I-Phone, but I’m hoping to get an I-Pad for educational purposes to fill that gap.

It was terrifying at first. To uproot myself, stir the pot. Oh, the cycle again! Here I go again, creating chaos! I begin to second-guess myself. But I feel pulled always, toward my destiny. The invisible hands massage the heart forward. So I’ve been gentle on myself. Sitting meditation every morning to stay peaceful. Packing it up slowly. I was pissed at Gilbert for putting pressure on me to show this house I’m vacating, for he popped up with little notice of showings while I was in the midst of packing and culling and complained of my artistic temperament and decor. It’s bare bones now, and hope to move a lot this weekend to get ready for the garage sale.

Today I went to get so many art objects and antiques stored at my father’s house to sell at the sale. It was as if I symbolically were finally getting out of my father’s house. I spent the day with him today to get the stuff and also to drive him to oral surgery for a wisdom tooth, since he is 77. It took longer than usual because they couldn’t numb him because he takes so many heavy medications for headache and back pain that he’s tolerant and it took a while to desensitize it.

I will no longer be a part of that filthy house, the desperate trap of despair. I am outside of the house. I am outside of the concentration camp. I am not a prisoner. I am free. I shine for myself, not to care for somebody else and support their dreams rather than mine, which I have done all my life. All this stuff and weight of the past are ready to sell at the big garage sale Friday May 21 and Saturday May 22, 9-4. Many neighbors are having a sale too with me! It will be quite a cleaning, physical and psychic.

Things I will be selling:

Edward S. Curtis original completion prints (5) Gorgeous, turn of the century Native American photographs, but I need the money for a new shopping cart on my website.
Taos pottery and other original artwork, prints from black tie silent auctions I attended with my late husband.
Sydney Solis original artwork. Rare and very valuable.
Antique doll, book, magazine, camera and salt-and-pepper collections. (Keeping the pin, magnet and weaving collections. My Oma started me collecting as a child: rocks, shells, coins.)
A jungle full of plants of assorted sizes. To loving homes only.
My son’s air gun collection (I told him the Xbox and Halo stay in the US)
A bunch of assorted antique bronze yoga knick-knacks, Buddha statues, etc.
A ton of books, art books, literature, poetry, travel, and some library discards given to me by my librarian sister.
Zillions of picture frames.
I never want to spend another winter in Colorado so out go all the winter clothes except the Ann Taylor long black coat, the Saks Fifth avenue wool wrap my late husband bought me on our wedding and the Sorrels for when I do come back and visit periodically and walk in the fresh snow and try snowshoeing or by chance need them because I’m caught in a the cold or blizzard.
Girl’s 4-piece bedroom set of fine wood, although my daughter destroyed it with pens and paint and her one-time step-sister burned holes in it in envy, but we spray painted over it and it looks great.
My son’s bunk bed and desk.
Cute rare pink color Buddy 50 scooter with low miles. Includes basket and helmet.
2005 Black Prius 74k miles
Hammer Dulcimer (Gave up lessons shortly after its impulse purchase while vacationing in Manitou Springs with the kids.)
Kitchen stuff
Kitchen table and four chairs
Lots of CDs (I-tunes is great!)
Shelving, nice chair, kids skiis and bikes, helmets
Clothes. (Gave the vintage dress collection to my Hare Krishna niece.)
Horrifying thought. I have a bunch of stuff at my Arvada house. I will have to contact the tenants to get it out and get rid of it. I was there recently and got my late husband’s collection out, but there is much more stuff, like a 1950s module stereo. It’s really cool!
God, so much crap to get rid of! How to list it all! Just show up! It’s all going! The scary thing is that this is my third garage sale of getting rid of stuff in the past 7 years. I remember my mother, always shuffling around piles of crap from one end of the house to the next in our messy house, throwing things down the basement steps and bringing other things up again. Buying crap from garage sales and getting rid of things in her blue Subaru, most of which remained in the blue Subaru.

I’m also going to have a party, and you are invited, so stay tuned for details when I confirm the date.

Finally, I cannot tell you the weight of a ball and chain that is removed from my heart. I drove to Denver Wednesday and handed the keys, leases headache EVERYTHING over to a property management company for Speer and Arvada because I decided I cannot depend on Gilbert and I need dependable people who don't piss me off. Two upstanding young men will deal with the late night calls, the undependable handymen who don't bring back toilet seats, the deposit of rent checks and the utility billing and collecting the laundry money. They can learn some Spanish and instruct Miguel, Sr. on the exterior painting that I had him get started. I wrote four new leases this month and had Gilbert fill the 2-bedroom. One girl is getting married so that's why they are leaving. I tried raising the rent on the nursing student in the one-bedroom but she flipped out, started crying, and I felt bad and gave the increase to her as a scholarship. She was very grateful. Thank God I don’t have to be pulled in that direction any more. I saved myself from certain death by exhaustion and dread. By clearing my plate of financial management (gave it to my bookkeeper) and running my business (gave it to my assistant, she rocks,) dealing with ex-husband crap (I gave it to my lawyer who filed garnishment of wages and until he files bankruptcy, like he keeps flapping his lips about there is nothing I can do except hold onto the piece of paper judgment that says he owes me $30k at 8 percent interest.) I have plugged the drains of energy. It’s a wash financially, but I was never a capitalist. It’s all dealt with now and I get to live my bliss, the most important thing. Maybe US real estate will tank even more. I got my Arvada property assessment notice, and the value is unchanged. Speer was underwater last year and I haven’t received this year’s value, Speer’s in a hot area so maybe it will improve. But I can’t worry about that. And considering the meltdown, I think it’s pretty much time to surrender and never think about it and leave it to the pros and the combinations of planets at certain times.

So this may be one of the last times I have a free blog, as my assistant insists I give away my best stuff for free, and she wants to make money because after all, this is a capitalistic society we live in, (heavy sigh) and that’s fine as long as children are not suffering and it doesn’t appear to be working right now and that’s why we need to do something about it. (something tells me that on Monday everything is going to change with economic collapse and all these plans could very well change. Such is the lesson of non-attachment.)

OK. That’s enough for now. I'm going to do some yoga and focus on creating a stable pelvis and my uddiyaya banda. It’s a Friday, and the Queen is going to start moving stuff to the storage unit tomorrow and is getting ready for Mother’s Day weekend. Because we honor the mother, that divine energy that is bringing balance back to the earth, putting the heart into the machine, and awakening the kingdom of heaven right here in this moment in this body on this gorgeous, incredible experience of being and love. And I will rejoice in the love that I feel for my children and being their mother. Hallelujah, says the Queen. Amen.

Freedom from Things

The Queen hiked up the mountain with Prince Pepe today. She has been very tired with all her preparations for her big journey. Being out in nature is the healing salve, as is spending time with friends. And the Queen realizes, because of her High Priestess nature, that she must rest. Rest indeed. Rest a long time. Even though it’s spring, it says to rest on a different level. Resting within her own kingdom and family.

Of course my father is the original and most serious wounding. That invisible vampire hiding from the mirror. And each time I go for it, the sucker of my own self doubts- returning to the filth of the house, why is it so tempting? I was going to store some of my things at my father’s. My bookcases and bed, so I’d have a place to stay if need be. Ultimately I was thinking, I’m crazy, it’s so filthy, I’d rather sleep on a friend’s couch. He was going to take Pepe and Esme. I was going to build a fence. Then he went to his therapist, Marsha, whom I used to go to and recommended to him. He said it would kill him to empty out the ham radio room to put my bed there. All his pack rat stuff. He’s right, and that’s fine. Perhaps Marsha is this invisible hand preventing our disastrous unconscious drives of doom.

Of course that realizes my inability to have somebody to depend on. They say one thing, but ultimately back out their support, just leave you hanging mid air. You thought you were secure to take the leap; they said they would be there. But then they are not.
That is always the challenge. How do you trust anybody? What they say? Always keep a back door open, make plans on your own to fall back on. Never give yourself away again? Is there always some boundary that is necessary in order for true love to exist? Love for yourself and love for the other?

Gilbert had Lance clean out the garage and all the mouse poop. It looks great, reorganized. I’m always horrified how I just lump and throw things in the garage. Like my mother, a mess. But I just have the help now to get it cleaned up. We artists are eccentric; anyway, that’s where the genius comes from. Where Gilbert complains my upstairs is a mess and the art area in the garage is a mess, Lance says it looks great and cool. ‘You’re an artist.” And so the Queen is! (And also the High Priestess in secret.) But it is relieving to get rid of things. It’s liberating. It’s that packrat that’s been on my back, holding on to loss. I used to be so free in my youth. Then lots of adult loss builds up on your back and pulls you down. But getting rid of it frees you.

I know the cycle well. Stir things up, move, chaos, stress and worry and too many things to do. But the monotony of otherwise would kill me. The monotony of my living situation, the lack of community, the dying for a need to grow plants that I cook and eat, the intense desire to teach my own children, to practice yoga, to live as simply as possible. I am more compelled from something deep within. It’s the world, it’s the mother or the pulse or libido of the universe that makes me do it, so I just surrender. I saw the coloring book of Siddhartha that I had given my kids. I looked through the half colored pages, rummaging for some to salvage. But there was the start black-and-white picture of the Buddha EXHAUSTED, crawling up from the river bank, to sit under the Bodhi Tree. Giving up. To release and let go.
It is like a mission of mine. To go out there in faith. To know I am supported by not only the divine but my own positive and powerful thoughts. To feel in my body when I do warrior pose, that I am DURGA, I am that which is hard to access, that nothingness that is everything, and I only need to remain there. Meditation is my tool. That regular practice to get up. To sit. To reside someplace else than my terrified thoughts.

But the thought of returning to the place of healing, the place before the wounding. Like the Oklahoma City Bombing. How it was like 11:59 a.m. before the bombing struck. To get back to that place. To clean out all the stuff in the middle. To return to mothering, teaching, simplicity, the home arts. That is where my heart is. That is all I want to do. My children mean that much to me. It’s to precious to lose. It has so much meaning and love for me in it. And it will set us all free.

The house has a new feel about it. Lighter, less cluttered. There is a sense of freedom. To really narrow down all your possessions to a little bit. It is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get to heaven. Because it’s all spirit. It just lights up in front of you on a regular moment, and all you can do is enjoy its rapture and depth, blazing in the sunlight.

The Third Level of Cleaning

The Queen of Bohemia, when she doesn’t have her duties as the High Priestess, is back to cleaning her own house. This time it’s a deep clean. A purge, in fact everything must go. For the Queen is preparing to go out on a mission, and she must leave everything behind. All her castle barbecues and hoards of things. There she is cleansing deeply, from the inside out. And the more she strips away and cleans the outside, the more the inside is cleaned out, and the more powerful she becomes. Because the less material objects she has, she finds the more faithful she is.



It has been a whirlwind of activity. The spring has activated seeds long over due for germinating. I have spent the weekend tackling the dirty house, not just cleaning it but purging it. I have to get away from this complex American life, the traffic jams, the junk mail and spam, the mediocre pop culture, the stuff. Gilbert gave me a stern come to Papa talk about my packrat mentality. I defended it as an artist’s life. He said I was like my father.
Irked, but still firm in my artist self, I ruthlessly culled old books, bronze Buddha statues, my late husband’s items, corn on the cob dishes, clothing. I never want to spend another winter in Colorado again so out with the coats. I can’t believe I rearranged and reorganized completely my art space in the garage. I was aghast that mice had snuck in this unusually hard winter and gotten into the bird seed. And of coruse into the house. Hondo won’t sleep downstairs anymore.

I seriously plowed into everything, spurred on by the bird seed in the garage. The mouse poop covered a lot, and I thought, am I my mother? Is my place just as filthy as my father’s with the black mold in the basement? I had to let go of things. Just strip them down to basics. I want to live as simply as possible. Only the essentials. Not needing to upkeep furniture or dishes or things or most definitely not to upkeep a car. I want to walk to get my groceries, cook only with fresh ingredients. Live in a community. Where in the world could that be? Hardly in America. But I have filled the garage with tons of stuff for a future garage sale. I am making arrangements.
Tonight the kids and I ate out for the first time in a week since the return from the cruise. I had been getting used to eating only what was on hand in the house to use it up. All shopping will be around these food items. To actually practice some home economics and cook around staples.

I never had a mother to really show me how to eat. My mother’s cooking consisted of microwaving eggs, Doritos, boiled beef in a bag, or Banquet frozen fried chicken. For a while I was really into cooking for the whole family when I was a teen, but it was just things from a recipe book, nothing consistent and focused on a few staple dishes.

Slowly we have been eating better. As you pare everything away, if you get rid of all the stuff, there is very little to focus on: yoga, meditation, eating right, teaching the kids and being with them as family, love, travel, friends, gardening, art and music and literature and stories. How those simple things really make my soul sing, and also ache for that which has been lost in our wasteland of capitalism.

I’m exhausted. It’s truly the big purge, the big cleaning of the house. To finally be free of all the clutter, all the stuff. I’m thinking to do my Kripalu and Omega workshops on the east coast July, send the kids to their late father’s family in San Antonio for a few months, then we all go to Mexico in August where I have a training, maybe spend a month or so there, then head to an eco yoga farm in Argentina. And the winter in Montserrat.

I picked up a homeschooling book on giving your kids a classical education. I think, why not. I can be close to my kids and educate them in yoga and more, bring out the teacher in me. My sister Narada homeschooled four kids. Of course she’s a Krishna, but she’s very inspiring. I’m going to take the kids to visit them all tomorrow and go to temple and dinner.

I also have been thinking a lot about Jesus too. Like I’d like to incorporate Jesus into the yogic homeschooling. Joseph Campbell says you tend to return to the religion of your childhood, the first myth you were indoctrinated in. Usually I cringe or am afraid to say the word Jesus because it has so many horrible implications, especially with the sinister and sick Catholic church pedophile scandal. Evil! And naturally by being in Latin American countries you can get into the rhythm of the seasons with all the holidays and festivals, usually placed over indigenous traditions, so why not make them have an even bigger new-agy Jesus twist. It would be nice to focus on the life and acts of Christ, his personality traits and being a good human being, rather than the morbidity and torture of his death. Of course we teach that you are eternal and identical with Christ and ever lasting life, a sentence that could get you burned at stake years ago, but that’s the facts, Jack. Of course we’d have Buddhist meditation, Sufi poetry, and plenty of science to doubt all our mythology so that we may have the most perfect of faith.

I’m exhausted, but exhilarated. Spiritual transformation is about losing everything and gaining the soul.

I can’t wait to be rid of everything!

THE HIGH PRIESTESS

The Queen is no longer a Queen. She is a priestess. The journey has transformed her. Upon the return to her castle, the Queen had a sacred ceremony and met with the Tree. She slipped inside the door and there she was initiated. The roses overflowed and thier scent filled the garden.
Her mother was there. Giving her her crown, weapons and wand. And she gave her her charge. To move to a cottage in the country near the kingdom, but also to move out into the world. She was to find all the demons of the world that are terrorizing the villagers, tame them with her powers and might and turn them into her footmen and palace administrators. And the world will be a better place for it.

I had a fascinating dream last night. I dreamt of my late husband. It
was the first time in many years. He looked a little different, but he
was his same go-getter self. It turns out that he had faked his death.
I followed him. I thought, what does this mean? Will I have to pay
back the insurance money? There was something double-headed about my
late husband in the dream. And at one point in a car, I realized that
I had the power to influence my dream to turn out how i want.

I have had the dream of my late husband faking his death many times.
Sometimes those dreams were about something dishonest, hidden, he was
double-crossed. It makes me think of his friend who drowned in a lake recently on a golf course in New Mexico while walking his dogs who had run out on the ice. Once I had a dream about him that he came to visit, and I was happy to see him. I said, "Look, here are your
children!" and it seemed he was too ashamed of what he had done to go to them.Each time the faked death dreams were a feeling of, he's back and I'm with him again and not sure I want to be, and that of do I have to give the insurance money back.

I started reading Raja Yoga on the Kindle on the cruise. It teaches in lessons that you realize, that you are the center of the universe, your own sun, and that you are a sphere of
power and influence from that point, that axis mundi, your own world
tree. You wake up to the illusion of the maya that is the matrix of
the cosmos. You really start to see things as a dream, which is
vedantic, however, the trick is that you see yourself in the dream
state, getting better at being aware of yourself dreaming in the
dream. What you are doing in waking consciousness is having an effect
on dream consciousness. They are weaving back and forth, which is
tantric. The indigenous of Costa Rica say that a female shaman is a
butterfly, because her two wings go in and out of each state of
consciousness.

So we can really start to wake up in both dream worlds! This one and
our dream one! But which one is a dream? You may ask! That reminds me
of the Chinese story of the man and a butterfly. A man dreamt last
night that he was a butterfly, but then he thought, maybe I am a
butterfly now dreaming that I am a man.

Where is the real you if we are dreaming in both states of
consciousness? That center point, the transcendent, the depths behind
everything. You are able to step back and observe your self, and that
point from which you observe everything is everything - the totality
of consciousness and energy, which is projected outward from that point.

You can influence your environment if you practice like a magician, or a high priestess and work with dreams, and pass through those pillars of duality into the transcendent. It is your God-given power. I focused on the fact that that space I'm in is also EVERYTHING. Every evil drug lord in Colombia who horribly abuses exotic pet animals, every baby burned with a cigarette, every cherry tree blossoming in spring, every high-pitched laugh of a child. You have to accept everything. Love they enemy for the enemy is you! All the stuff you reject, that is rejected in the world. It should be reconciled in paradox, so that peace and paradise prevail rather than anxiety and neurosis over the split.

I've forced to work on snippets of dreams that I dismiss as nothing and irrelevant or useless. It's like the story of the King who every day received a piece of mud from a monkey. Every day the King dismissed it as useless and threw it behind his throne, only years later to discover that mud had fallen away from thousands of jewels inside.
If you have a hard time remembering dreams, don't ever stop trying because the whole
act of reminding yourself to dream automatically does something
regardless, self-observation and developing will. Our will is a
powerful thing. find it and use it! The Queen is! That's why she is now the High-Priestess. BUt she's aligned with Durga and Kali. There is a lot of letting go necessary. A lot of slaying of interior demons and negative aspects.

I have been meditating and focusing my will, that things work out, and creating this picture of what I want in my mind. I use some physical techniques of crossing my ankles and hands and arms while lying down, and meditate to manifest! And meeting with my assistant today, she reminded me of Robert Johnson's work Owning Your Own Shadow, to get that dark side out. I wrote down some things today that were hard to face. I'm messy, scattered, impulsive, can be a cluttered person, and can be difficult and combative. Like the landlady is really starting to piss me off. Gilbert said I could get out of my lease early and he's been showing the house and getting it ready, and I had sent a letter confirming it and she freaked out saying she didn't approve such a thing. SO!

I have been trying to settle my debts. I spent all day yesterday and much of today in an arduous process, having business credit cards excluded. And then I've been trying to set up everything online for payments, and naturally there is a problem with the site and spent hours in customer service on one account on the Speer mortgage only to not get it resolved with evil Bank of America. So things are making progress, even thought it's still difficult. Like I do have to break down and cry every so often.
But then I pull myself up pretty quickly now, practice my Raja Yoga and exert my will and I'm happy again. How I miss the King! That tends to compound the difficulty, since I miss his presence and moral support, as it's awfully difficult doing things all alone.
I have been very into Raja Yoga, perhaps all my life. those were the
first yoga books i read of my father's.
I have been reading a book on Raja Yoga on vacation, and I would cite the title and author, but it's on the Kindle and I can't find it now.
I've been de-cluttering things, getting ready to have a garage sale in May. Doing lots of busy work. Things are really starting to pop and crank wonderfully. It truly is the power of waking up to who you really are, the Divine Self, and believing in it rather than the ego.

My Hare Krishna niece and her family are going to check out Speer, which has a 2-unit is coming up vacant soon. Ideally her husband will manage it. I had visited the property on Monday when I went to visit a business lawyer. I talked with Miguel, Sr. They were maybe going to move upstairs, but it's too expensive so they will renew to stay in the basement. I will feel guilty raising the rent! We spoke in Spanish. I've typically had a hard time understanding everything in Spanish spoken from local people who are not newscasters on Univision, but it's pretty much agreed that I'm bringing by a Home Depot gift card tomorrow for him to get cement and fix the problem why their basement unit floods when there are heavy rains, and start scraping and painting the place. It's a cute place. The two apricot trees are blossoming and they are gorgeous. My will will magically transform Speer from the dump Justin left it to the most charming rental property in Highlands Square. So be it, says the Queen, (who is secretly the High Priestess.)

THE QUEEN IN LOVE AND DEATH

The Queen has been away on a long journey. She has sailed the seven seas and gone far from the Kingdom. Disguised as a commoner, she sees new sights, new worlds, new possibilities. The old Kingdom seems to disappear; things shift. Dark cobwebs do not have any power over her any more. In fact, their power has lost its grip completely and any demons have vanished. The Queen remembers the court astrologer telling her one time, “Your Karma is done here.” Although she misses Prince Pepe dearly, something calls her to keep traveling, keep moving far, far away from her old world, and venture into the other half of her life in a new Kingdom far from the maddening crowd. This power she has achieved, this trust and having survived so much difficulty with the demons, she now realized that they were doing her a favor. Her battles with the demons have made her strong, so very strong and brave and fearless. She thanks the demons. She loves the demons and tells them so. They have taken her by the hand and have led her to the doorway out. They led her to a new Kingdom, to the Kingdom of faith and everlasting life.


I am at sea on a cruise ship, heading back from Cartagena, Colombia for Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. We have been on a two-week cruise. It was a much-needed escape. The winter was indeed hard and long. I was so grateful we missed several heavy snowstorms and I danced in delight in the warm, humidity on the first day of spring when we were in Mexico. My hair has body, my skin glows, my nails grow. Such earthly paradise!

There was so much moist green in Mexico, Guatemala, Panama and Colombia. Things grow here in abundance. Such a contrast from Colorado. Truly I feel an energy shift. It’s powerful. Like a release. I am free on an inexplicable level. Could it be the haunting of the past must be left behind? My traumatic childhood, my husband’s death? My ex-husband’s looting me? To let that all go. Pack up and leave. I feel reborn, as If a second half of life is opening up. And having the King in my life makes such a difference, too. A companion, a confidant, a lover. I don’t wake up panicked and stressed. There is someone by my side. This makes me feel more confident in myself than ever, as I have been alone most of my life, and now I am not.

Strangely, I have this intense urge to rid myself of possessions and wander freely. All the loss from my ex-husband’s real estate shenanigans, even ending up with my property, it no longer bothers me. What is loss? What is gain to the sage? In my life I have seen so much come and go, it just keeps coming and going, but I’m still here above to keep coming and going and be. You really don’t need much in life at all. The American Dream is a lie, a con, a farse. The materialistic capitalistic world cuts us off from our inner dimension in which everything is provided in joy. What power a wandering ascetic has, to own nothing, but his faith. Even a man on the corner, who lost his job, his sign reads, “Lost everything except my faith.” How I have been there several times before how true. Those demons and difficulties, they make your strong, faithful and powerful. Everybody should be so lucky as I to lose everything, for your find yourself in the process.

I realize how hindering it is to have things, keep up with them and keep them up. Before I married my first husband, most of what I owned fit in the back of a car. He convinced me otherwise, that it was a mark of success to own things, have a big house. With marriage to him my possessions exploded – furniture, tools, hardware, books, gym equipment, kitchen gadgets, cars, and all the stuff you need to maintain them. When he died I had a massive estate sale, got rid of half of it, but when the movers moved me to a tiny house they still said, “Lady, you have a lot of stuff.” I was horrified. I got rid of more stuff, But the handyman I hired to remodel the place called me a “clutter fuck,” I knew there was something wrong. Then I remarried, and a lot of my possessions were stolen by Justin or his mother and sister, which whittled things down a bit.

I realize now that most of my stuff is collections. I have this fascination with artistic artifacts that decorate my house: antique salt and pepper shakers, antique cameras, antique pins and buttons, antique books, indigenous weaving collections, a collection of incense burners which I gave to my father. Stamp and coin collections, magnet collections on the side of the fridge. Antique doll collections. And then there is my artwork and books, and family photos. I’d keep those. Put them in storage. But the collections can go. The furniture I’d give to my father or Krishna sister who moved back from India. She can use them. I’d be free. All I need is my laptop. I’d home school my children, go and see the world and teach them by traveling. And really, the US feels a lot like Germany 1933, and its only a matter of time before the dollar really crashes and the nutty militias who have been loading up on bullets and homemade bombs start coming out of the woodwork. I’m dreaming of a yoga farm in Argentina. I’ve already contacted them. I’ll visit with the King and see, and naturally hang out in Buenos Aires! I’d do anything to get out of Beige-istan, Colorado. I’d do anything not to have to drive I-36 anymore and see nothing but big box, suburban hell. It strangles my soul so much. I need life!

For death can be lurking around the corner, and I no longer can bare to live in Colorado. Something compels me to leave. To see the world, my biggest remaining desire. My children are bored to death in their schools, the budgets are being cut, and after watching Bowling for Columbine again I realize the schools, and American culture period, are not safe.

I no longer can participate either in the American way of life. I want to ditch my car, not consume oil, but walk. I am tired of the endless drone of media that speaks nothing of the outside world. I am tired of my countries terrorism in other countries, its terrible foreign policy that I am apart of.

As for Speer, I have Gilbert managing the place. The hairdresser couple skipped out on me, leaving the place a mess. Gilbert got it cleaned up and filled again. The neighborhood is in high demand, thank goodness. I will have the people in the basement start painting in the spring to make it look better and slowly raise the rents over time. The King helped me catch up on the mortgages and I am so grateful. I had been living off the mortgages and paying off some medical bills with them, because since October I had to slow down and take care of myself and children rather than work because things were just Oh, too stressful with Justin letting the house go into foreclosure. I can’t collect from his realtor insurance, despite my lawyer’s best efforts. Next we will try garnishing his wages.

I will be able to hire a manager for Speer and afford it by living abroad, where things are cheaper. I stopped paying my credit cards since I couldn’t afford them any more and since Justin isn’t paying me back the $30k that was to go toward paying them. I am making deals with my creditors to pay them off, and I will save up money for that living abroad. I won’t have to declare bankruptcy. Regardless I will still be self-sufficient, make my business work. Believe in myself, for after all, I am the Queen. And by practicing yoga and meditation and by studying Raja Yoga in particular, I realize once again the power within. That the outside world is an illusion, a game for you to play. I realize the power of your will and mind. You can do anything. You just have to believe it, and amazingly by being outside of Colorado and that harsh climate, the energy has shifted and I truly believe I have that power. Something in Colorado held me back. But now, nothing is held back, especially my love.

And what is life? I have lived 43 years, done pretty much everything I’ve wanted to do, so now I will travel. And also I will teach children. How poverty and ignorance bothers me. I will make my business into a non-profit and start the Storytime Yoga Children’s Mission. I will serve children, teach them the peace I have found through yoga and story, so that they can be peaceful and end the wars, end the madness. Somehow I feel my father’s childhood war experiences will be not forgotten, but remembered as to prevent any more suffering.

Because I believe death is around the corner. I will live a long life, but death is always right there. It’s a good friend. About a month ago, all in one week the Chile earthquake hit, my in-laws were in a terrible car accident in San Antonio, I spent the day at urgent care with my father who was severely ill, and a friend of my late husband drowned in a lake. Another friend came to visit; her mother had died suddenly. It was as if death was coming to remind me of something; life is short, what are you going to do with it? Sit here in this bland culture or are you going to free yourself, go out and explore the world, teach your children about the world, and do something to serve children around the world?

I will go wherever people invite me to teach, put on a training, visit. I will wind this blog down and start on another one, penning my insights on the vast world, its stories and customs, to share with people. I will write my memoir, what to call it? Memoirs of a Yogini perhaps. Because the Queen is very happy. She has found that faith inside her, that everything has had its purpose, to bring her into complete faith, complete surrender, and to learn the power of yoga and storytelling. That she is sustained by the race of Lord Shiva, and he’s asking her to go out now. Go out into the world and journey, teach. Have a mission. And that mission is love. The great love I feel for the world. Even though it seems so horribly shrouded by evil at every turn, there is just as much love. The love I have for my children, the love I have for my King. The love I have for the divine. It’s a great sense of trust, of adventure, of fulfilling destiny. Yes, The Queen must take a risk. She will let everything go, and she will follow her heart, wherever it leads her.