Future Shock and Island Hopping

The Queen of Bohemia decided that nine years was long enough to be outside the dream that the rest of the world was dreaming. At the behest of her prince and princess, she allowed the little box to penetrate the castle. She allowed the magical gadgets of the mechanical Gods to occupy their little hands. Actually the real reason was that she was curious. What is it really like? What do the people outside believe? What story is the Squid spinning a web of delusion and sorrow? Maybe there is some art out there amidst it all. Certainly she received the news -o-the-world via her magic box the Jin related to her each morning, but sometimes the quiet was too much. Maybe there was something missing. She was curious, and so she decided to do a little sociological study and observe the situation outside the kingdom and see if it had changed since the first King died so long ago.

 I’ve never seen a reality television show. I’ve never seen Friends or The Sopranos or Dancing with Stars or Survivor or Who Wants to be a Millionaire. OK, I did see a glimpse of the latter, but I thought the questions were too stupid, the drama and boring interludes unworthy of my precious time that is usually spent working or with children or ten thousand other more interesting things I can come up to do with my time. I cannot imagine voluntarily sitting through a commercial. Zombies. Zombies I think are the only ones who could do that, in my opinion. In actuality I have watched very little television in the nine years since my husband died. We sold the four TVs that dotted the house. I welcomed the quiet from the scattering noise of the television he would turn on after work. The quiet in the evening that used to be penetrated by reruns of Law and Order. We had this game of seeing actors reappear in different episodes and remembered which ones they were. I thought Sex in the City was trite and stupid. No wonder those whiny American women dind’t have a man. What self-absorbed skeletons, I thought. So out the televisions went. I loved the quiet, and only went over to my father’s house to view the Olympics or see the presidential debates or catch a glimpse of the Japanese tsunami and earthquake footage. I did get Netflix some time ago and watched a few episodes of Weeds when I was sick a month ago and was tired of reading. I identified with the main character who was widowed and would collapse a lot in the face of obstacles. But I lasted six episodes before I felt the plot line was a bit silly and the characters unbelievable even though I did agree that all that Suburbistan is the source of America's malaise and lack of imagination and the biggest reason of why I had to escape it. But since the anniversary of my husband’s death is March 23, I thought I’d check it out again.

Plus Tonio really needs it, to watch baseball or the news in Spanish or know what time it is. Just looking at the remote makes me anxious. I can’t channel flip because it seems to be a thousand channels and one hundred of them seems to all be shopping networks. Twiggy London fashion showing me her elastic waistband pants. I do stop at Montel and his juicing infommercial channel. He has the psychic Sylvia Browne on as a guest. She seems so odd-voiced and looking, and I can’t believe the panel of people who want their future read. “Will I be successful?” Browne’s answer is unintelligible and I don’t know how to turn up the television volume. Who sits through this? I decide to read Pablo Neruda's Cien Sonetos de Amor instead and my kids take over with full finesse to figure out the remote. I also broke down and got I-Phone, since my son was crying for it. I needed a phone for Tonio and my daughter needed one as well, so the price was right for its safety and technological educational functions as well as better service at the house. I was shocked at the I-Phone’s abilities. An Alvin Toffler Future Shock moment for sure. “Does it take soil samples?” I asked the sales woman, waving it over the counter like I remember from the Star Trek episodes I watched a child. “No.” “How about diagnose illness?” I waved it over her body.

My 14-year-old son was hanging out in the corner, pretending he didn’t know me. I drop things a lot, so we got a military-style ultra protective case with a clip on so that I could wear it on my belt and alleviate about ten hours a week from my schedule that is devoted to searching for my cell phone around the house or digging for it at the bottom of my bag while driving. It's positively Borg. Am I am in danger of being sucked into conformity? I spent the afternoon researching mild endocervical dysplasia on the web with the I-Phone, since that was my result of the biopsy. No worries, the doctor said. We’ll see you back in six months. I’m to rest, boost my immunity system, start juicing and be proactive. I had been going crazy eating from the garden, but as usual, I got bored of that. My body craved cheese and I went bizerk eating it for a while, even broke down and got some gourmet salami. Then my face broke out.

Back to the garden of eating. I pruned the tops of my basil this morning, the first day of spring, and made some great pesto. All other plants are too small, so I will venture out and load up on vegetables at the farmer’s market this evening. I’ll start juicing, blending and remain low key, in retreat in my garden paradise, content to write, do art and hang out with the kids on the beach this spring break. Sun drunk, my friend said it was, that lethargy after an hour of so on the beach. I am sun drunk indeed, relaxed and ever healing in my own way and time. I was able to get off island for 36-hours and fly to St. Thomas to meet the King for a lovely escape. A 20-minute flight on the little sea plane over turquoise water flown by pilots in khaki shorts. I never liked St. Thomas for it's hit you over the head tourism and zombie shopping American style. But the water from our hotel room was calm and gorgeous with boats bobbing on the water as the lighted jewels of Charlotte Amalie twinkered on the hills across the bay.

Sex is such a rejuvenating experience. I laughed and cried through half of my 124 orgasms. Tantric training was the best investment. It had been two months since I'd seen him after all. Love heals all. Really I think sex is the best medicine, wringing out every stale piece of toxic energy stuck in the koshas and body cells, bringing in fresh prana to penetrate the cells. What a world we would live in if we all just had more sex, all the soldiers trapped in America's wars would come home, rip off their rusty blood-stained armor and fall into the arms of the goddess every time, making the world anew again instead of destroying it. And now I sit and write and hang out with the kids for spring break, making plans for our trip back to the mainland this summer. I reborn and healing in every way.

Bohemian Breadfruit

There is a boatload of breadfruit coming in. I can sit on the couch out on the balcony that I got free from the Christiansted freecycle and stare for an hour at the breadfruit tree's amazing, enormous leaves, like huge green fans, so identifiable by their jagged edges. So very healing, for the sight of the tree arrests all thinking, stops it in its track. Breadfruit is healing to eat too, loaded with fiber and protein. It was a super food for slaves, brought over to the Caribbean from the East. In Tahiti it propelled the Bounty into mutiny because of the preference to care for the plants and provide it water over the crew. Tonio peeled a breadfruit and boiled it for me. I mashed it up like a potato, threw in what other herbs were growing in the garden - oregano brujo, rosemary and bay leaf. While cooking and tasting it I had a sudden overpowering impulse to add gorgonzola cheese to the mix. I have tried to be vegan since age 19, however, at 45 the passion and powerful urge for cheese that my body and Dutch DNA have overtakes any prolonged vegan attempts. I decided to honor my Bohemian mother who obsessed over gorgonzola,

and named the dish Bohemian Breadfruit. Perhaps it was her spirit nearby, eager for retroactive healing of the ancestors and a craving to taste gorgonzola one more time. Now it is a clear comfort food, cooked in her memory, and mashed potato substitute, a healing food that grows smack out o the backyard. I'm eating as much from the garden as possible. Going to heal myself with whole foods and juices, yoga and stories. I had my biopsies on my cervix last Tuesday and will hear the results in another week. A friend said any lesions will have to be zapped off with freezing. “Don’t be a fool," he admonished me on the phone. "You have to get this taken care of. Natural stuff won’t cure it. You know how Bob Marley died right?” I didn’t know, but my friend related the story of Bob Marley's spot on his toe that expanded despite his prayers and that the cancer spread and killed him. “He died of stupidity,” my friend said. My female doctor, however, said she had proactive patients who forewent the typical treatment, focused on whole foods and less stress, and the tests came back clear. So by doing nothing but meditating, practicing yoga, growing and cooking my own food, hanging the laundry out on the line in the Caribbean sun, hanging out on the beach and floating in the sea's soft salt water, making art and supporting my kids in their school and life, by returning to motherhood, to the home life, stopping too much work, that is the key. And I believe I will be healed. I believe the yoga and the stories and the garden all heal. I'm becoming a good cook, too. What my kids rejected repeatedly for years as "too healthy," get gobbled up by my adult friends and Tonio. My goal is to grow most of what I eat, so the recipes include lots of gazpacho and pesto. I had a dream a few months ago in which a voice in a dream said, "Spanish vegetables will heal you." You really can't go wrong with gazpacho. Not just that it's such a great word to speak and weave into nursery rhymes, but it's a colon cleanser and infusion of vitamins for sure. Chopping up the celery, green bell peppers, green onions, cucumbers and hot peppers is a meditation in itself. Blending it down to a puree then slicing avocado for a garnish an act of worship, an offering to Krishna and the gods (can't wait for the yellow flowers on the trees to start bulging with fruit.)

Of course my body is not the only thing to heal, but my heart as well, for my little sister's December 29 suicide hangs over me like a dull drug, a ghost knocking at my practice door that wants to be heard, its story told so that we can all cross over to the other side, so that we can all be at peace and rest. The healing stories we tell are for all of us so that we can continue living, lest the grief and loss and sorrow swallow us up completely and dump us out on the other edge of a river of death. I found a coconut in the garden that reminds me that she is still alive somewhere. She is reborn somewhere out of the soupy depths of our psyche. There is the agricultural society's myth of one thing dying; returning to the fecund, dark depths of the earth; and then it is recreated as something else. Usually it's somebody who dies, the head is buried and a coconut tree grows from it. The evidence is in the face in a coconut. I believe. That is all that is required. To believe. I feel her, too, in my yoga practice, her face arises, comes out of my body, urging me to tell our story. So I work in the garden, cook up a few recipes and write. It's amazing how much progress Tonio made in the garden, all by sitting on the edge of an old paint bucket and digging it up with his machete. I stopped by the Virgin Islands Department of Agriculture and picked up some seedlings from Wayne, who has a marijuana leaf symbol on the side of his black sunglasses and dreadlocks down to his thighs. For $2.60 I got four watermelon plants, five swiss chard, five mustard greens and five celery. I wasn’t sure if any of this was going to mix with me according to ayurveda but I figured it was the most healing to grow things and cook with them, walk in the garden and show my kids the lemon grass shoots, the smell of the bay leaf and the touch of the dirt than anything else. Of course it's all good survival food in case things collapsed tomorrow in one economic meltdown. “Come down here!” Tonio waved to me down at the garden this morning. He had driven the car down to the garden and opened up the back hatch. There fidgeted four wiry chickens, struggling over each other and pecking inside a black mesh bag. The dogs gathered around as if they all knew a new baby had arrived and there is now more competition for attention. Sergeant Pepe nipped at Jupe. “See, he jealous,” Tonio said. So my dream came true. To have a yoga farm and to have chickens. Of course I said, ”You can teach Paloma and Hondo how to care for them.” Now we just need a goat, to mow the lawn of course, like Google. That will have to wait until later.

"Cholo gave to us,” Tonio said. Tonio's Puerto Rican friend Cholo stops by occasionally. A walk with him in the garden and he identified all the trees in the garden: soursop, custard apple, lime, coconut, banana, mango, bay leaf (put in rubbing alcohol and good to massage into the scalp for headaches.) My daughter and I visited Cholo's house in Glynn once, when he had a tree full of carambola fruit to give away and we were still looking for a place to move to. Tonio said, “There a good place next to Cholo. Cheap and lots of land to grow!” My daughter loved looking at houses on the internet, so wanted to come see the house. Of course we ended up in one of the worst neighborhoods in St. Croix. Run down, lots of garbage around. Paloma was afraid to get out of the car. "Lock the doors," she said. But I coaxed her out, locked the car door even when Tonio said it was fine, and waded through Cholo’s outdoor mess of metal, car parts, an overturned boat and cages of chickens. Turns out he raised his chickens for cockfighting, which is legal on St. Croix. He reached in to touch one of the chickens through the cage and it gave a good swipe and there was blood on his hand. Another chicken was blind and a pet to Cholo now. It is my secret plan to convert him from cockfighting, and I figured my dream to have chickens came true, and it’s mystically tied up with being a rescue mission. Getting juvenile chicks out of there before they have enslaved and savaged.

Regardless Cholo is a great guy, a simple fisherman who gives away more food than he sells. I made gallons of carambola juice with what he gave me. He gave Tonio a bed of sweet peppers along with the chickens. “We grow all these peppers and, like gold, you watch, people buy." I wonder if my penchant for gardening will turn into anything professional rather than merely survival. Around here you can throw anything in the back of your car and sell it on the side or the road or in the K-Mart parking lot. We shall see. Because I'm writing the memoir AND I created seven new collage art pieces this full moon weekend. Didn't I just say I was slowing down? Yes, I'll just stick to cooking and yoga and storytelling for now. Which reminds me. Today there was an article I read about 150-year-old newly discovered fairytales have been published. Never before seen. There's a wonderful new Turnip Princess to read about, a prince, an old woman, a young woman, a bear, a curse, a magic nail in the cave wall. Such excitement to find new fairy tales! Those images bump around in my body's flesh like a pinball machine, bounce off of the skin and muscles, leave a little bit of psychic residue behind for me to absorb into the heart and cough out as a dream, a word, a thread of imagination and insight into this world and existence.

Eternal Thoughts from the Garden Divine

It rained hard last night and was actually cold. The sound of rain pounding on the roof woke me up and so did the breeze. The early mornings after a rain are the best. Everything is so fresh in the air and I wake up to the sounds of the earth calling. Rising out of the earth, the sounds of animals and birds flood the bush with their voices. I remember that sound from the yoga farm I stayed at with the kids in Argentina. How the sounds of twinkering animal voices pulled me from the twilight of dream sleep and into the outer world. My son said while on the yoga farm, "Hey, we don't fight so much here." True. How can one be upset when one is in the garden divine?

I pushed my freshly made bran muffins made with garden bananas onto the kids to some success before Tonio drove them to school. Then I sat down to meditation on the balcony over looking the garden. My alter is a wooden vegetable crate I brought back from Argentina. Some people bring back souvenirs from their travels; I bring back vegetable crates. It makes a nice little table. I have a bell, some candles and a picture of the shri yantra. I typically practice Buddhist style with no particular thing to gaze at, but I felt the desire to meditate on a yantra and that was the one that popped up to me. In meditation, just to sit is the work. To watch my busy mind take pauses and begin to grasp some strength and clarity that comes from the practice is enormous. I start to carve away a lot of clutter, a lot of chatter and weight of ideas. The fear has disappeared. The purity of the moment comes through and it permeates my being and prepares it for peace to enter. Yoga practice moves the energy of the morning, and it is all a sacred act to set the day straight with a foundation of deep anchoring in the body. And at 45, a regular yoga practice keeps me well, pain free in the body, and looking pretty darn good. And that is joyful. Things have been so joyful and peaceful since moving here. It is a shift of energy 1000 degrees. The bizarre drama of the past two months, even the whole transitional year in St. Croix, disappear as a closed book. Now I begin again. I will sit down to create an outline of my memoir after I warm up writing here my journal of the Queen of Bohemia in her St. Croix kingdom. With Tonio the shaman man/gardener providing food and wisdom. “This is my entertainment,” he says of gardening. It is my peace and healing. Tonio farms armed with a machete, digging up the soil and planting seedlings for a vegetable garden he cleared from the oregano brujo. He made a special area for my kitchen and medicinal herbs around the plantains he planted. He planted the shoots of lemon grass in a row, and parsley and lemon balm will follow. I'd like to plant tumeric and ginger eventually. We transplanted the racau, which is like cilantro, and it seems to be hanging in there. Tonio saved seeds from a passionfruit we got at a friend’s farm, and we now have passion fruit seedlings growing in pots too. He even saved the seeds from tomatoes I planted from seed that I got from a hardware store. They were so plump Tonio liked the variety and saved the seed. So that new generation growing in the garden now. The rain was good to bless and drench the newly planted tomatoes, eggplant, peppers and basil. “Gracias a dios,” Tonio will say, kissing his hands and lifting them to the sky. The unemployed should find such solace in doing such simple things aligned with nature. Why are we “employed” at all? Why can’t we all just hang out, do yoga, meditate, garden and eat well, dance under the stars, tell stories, make love, and worship the earth and spirit with each other? I don’t really need much else. When you are living on these types of places the whole world just drops away. It is profound. It really is a little piece of paradise, as eternity rests here in this moment in the garden. I really am creating a little yoga farm here. Starting with some herbs and kitchen vegetables. Transplanting fallen avocado pits that are sprouting into pots, doing a lot of yoga in between. Add it’s all yoga. On Sunday I brought the kids down to the garden and we prayed by the plantains. Prayed as a family for the first Sunday in our new home. We prayed for new beginnings and chanted Om Gum Ganapatayea Namaha, as I’ve been chanting that ceaselessly for days now. It is my refuge and now it is my reality. Amazing how mantra can transform your reality as it transforms your consciousness. Oh, the things you create. Watch out! I’ve been cooking with the eggplant and cabbage from the garden we picked before leaving the other house. Made a great quinoa Asian dish by stir-frying them all up. Tonio and I sat in the garden eating leftovers for lunch. He had never eaten quinoa before. I told him quinoa comes from South America and that the Quechua people ate it. It came down from the goddess, legend has it, and it’s a complete protein. Natives didn’t have any malnutrition problems until the Spaniards took over and destroyed their culture and forbade the worship of the plant. Now we worship her all over again. Worship the goddess, the earth, plants and food. We worship our bodies, our families and the deep love that springs from all of it. It’s hard for me to do anything else. My heart only wants to be in the garden, do some cooking and care for the kids. I teach an adult yoga class now for the teachers at the school. It keeps us all sane and fit. There is a science fair at school My son’s entry involves behavioral psychology. My daughter’s is about making slime with borax and glue. These types of simplicities heal me the most. They go straight to the heart - the heart of the family. All the home arts give me great peace and security. That bond and knowing that everything is going to be ok. Everything is perfect as it is and we are all here together, bonded in family, the garden and home in unity and in love.

Little Piece of Paradise

The Queen of Bohemia is in the garden. She is in her little piece of paradise. It took a very, very long time to get there. There were many terrible earthquakes, dragons and fierce fires to deal with. They nearly killed her. But she prevailed.
The difficulty was necessary. Because the difficulty nearly killed her, she was able to find the key. The long-lost key. The key that unlocked the door. For it is death that opens up the doors of life. And in between those two slips eternity, rooting up from the crack like a world tree, embracing everything in its branches.

It is time to return to writing. To telling the story. It has been a long time since I've written. Buenos Aires was a pause of personal reflection and adventure for my own eyes only. And since moving to St. Croix I have gone through extraordinary transformations. So much has happened to me in the last five months that it is a show-stopper. A hesitation to inquire into eternity and a personal testament of faith and perseverance. I survived. I stepped through the threshold. Now I thrive. What remains is for my story to be told. The whole story. The true story. And it's a good one.

I sit on the porch on the new house I moved into March 1 here in St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. I overlook an acre of fruit trees, aloe flowers, a pavilion, and the basil garden that my Puerto Rican farmer friend, Tonio, has started. Just over the bush I can see aqua peeps of the Caribbean Sea. It is here that I will do my healing. My healing with story and yoga. For the garden is so healing. Truly it is paradise to witness the hours beneath the palm trees and night sky. To be surrounded by nature, four dogs and my beloved children. To do nothing but slow down, harmonize and balance with nature all around, and tell the story.

I return to meditation each morning on the porch. To just sit and rest in the peace that slips in between the thoughts. I return to yoga practice on the porch as well, where a cool breeze caresses my skin and reminds me how lucky I am to be here in the body, alive, in such a beautiful place. Truly my heart has journeyed arduous and with much despair to finally reach such a place. It is as if after so many years of obstacles and struggle I have busted through to the other side. The transformation is complete. The past is gone and only remains as a wing of a story on a shelf. For I am reborn anew. A radiant bird rising out of its own fire and ashes. Phoenix of the world recreated as me in a new setting, theme and body.

So I begin. In addition to my daily gardening on my little Herb Farm in St. Croix, I will reflect in memoir on my life. How did I get here? What is the truth of my life? What needs to be told? What story remains in my body to be witnessed and expressed. It all comes out in the garden, on the yoga mat, in meditation and in the story. For God likes stories and I like to give a good show.


Tonio has started the garden. Tonio is my 71-year-old Puerto Rican farmer neighbor who used to care for the first house I rented. My absentee cop landlord abandoned him and his dog. I fed them all and we bonded over gardening and sustainable living. Ultimately the creepy cop landlord evicted him when he would not do repairs he was not licensed to do, and then when I protested, made a list of problems with the house that had not been solved and took Tonio to Legal Aid, I was evicted too. So we fled and now he helps me drive my kids to school, takes care of my car, cleans and gardens in exchange for room and board. There are four bedrooms in the main house for me and my kids and my art/writing studio and a separate cottage for Tonio. The landlady, a woman from Granada, lives down below and gives us different things, tables, waffle irons, even use of her Jeep. Turns out we can have goats and chickens after all! Tonio knows how to care for everything. He's been on his own since age 10, doing every kind of job from taxi driver in New York City to truck driver in New Jersey, to working at a local cement plant for $5 an hour. He speaks in limited English, yet is highly intelligent and skillful, especially in the ways of gardening by the moon,(you cut wood from the bush after a full moon so that it does not rot) what it smells like if it's going to rain, and what plant is good for what medicine. He knows all the names of the trees and how to care for them and cook them. He brings me fresh passionfruit from the garden when they're ripe and teaches me to make tostones with plantains. He is the shaman that I should have studied with years ago when I was in the Ecuadorian Amazonian jungle. He is so valuable to know the earth. To be directly involved with your food, from its seed to the table, is so profoundly satisfying. It is at the heart of all yoga, this sadana of practice to connect to nature and its powers and wisdom. The simple act of life and home and family all roll out from my Householder Yogini heart. I am so grateful.

In my slow poke way, I'd love to create a perfectly sustainable place in preparation for economic downturn. At least it's already started here in St. Croix with the closing of the Hovensa Oil Refinery. The Virgin Islands is in a state of economic collapse. But that's what brought me here. I knew it was all coming. This was a perfect place to weather the storm that is happening all over the world. How to survive. Here, lots of food; everything grows. Warm weather, drop-dead gorgeous landscape and ocean. Good people. Lots of challenges but I could never deal with the mainland again to live, even though I like to visit for intellectual and artistic stimulation. Gas prices are going up, but avocados, breadfruit, passionfruit, mango, bananas, limes, coconut, carambola, guava, all are within reach of my eager backyard hands. What an adventure, to live back on the land, back with nature. The peace I feel. The joy and happiness. My little family is finally healed.

Tonio got started right away. First by transplanting two plantains from his old garden back in Estate Enfield Green where we lived, to also transplanting my basil. I want to grow lots of basil for pesto. And lots of green peppers and tomatoes and cucumbers and onions for gazpacho. And of course I write about and photograph the garden. I will be writing my memoir from the garden, and I will have a show of my photographs at some point. Happy storytelling, yoga and gardening. His friends Cholo and Max stopped by to see the garden. They knew everything about the plants too and identified a few chicken sheds from behind Tonio's cottage. I'm looking forward to learning how to make breadfruit punch and juices from the other fruit trees, some so exotic I cannot pronounce their names. I want to know the stories and medicinal values of the plants, and I want to use them. Like take a bath in bay leaves from the bay leaf tree, learn how to make shampoo from avocados and aloe and make bush tree from lemongrass and peppermint.

And so the story continues. From the garden, here in my little piece of paradise.