The Egg, the Dove, the Golden Dress and the Magic Key

The Queen of Bohemia delights in the garden eternal in her Little Piece of Paradise. She sits among the banana trees with her trusty animals and all the little children listen to her tell lots of stories.

She even tells them the story that happened long ago of a little peasant girl who once upon a time became a Queen. But this Queen had a hard time living in her desert kingdom. War, death and destruction had destroyed her home. Terrible demons tormented her and badly wounded her. And the biggest wound was a hole in her heart.

So she sojourned to the land to the south. A long journey that first brought her down, down to the great city near the bottom of the earth and then back up to an island near the middle of it. To her Kingdom by the Sea and the garden. There the gardener fed her fantastic feasts of the finest plants from the garden, and flowers brought her to a magic place of the other world. From out of her dreams in this other world appeared entire new worlds, because every day the Queen sat peace in the garden, quietly fishing by a well.

Until one day she fell asleep and she fell into the well. Deep down she fell. The well swallowed her up into the darkness, the terrible darkness, and she felt the terrible fear overwhelm her as she could barely see the light above her.  She worried what was awaiting her in the darkness. What beast would leap out at her? She had battled so many demons in that old kingdom, could she find the strength for yet one more battle here? She breathed in and out. She felt her feet touching the earth at the bottom of the well. Her body and mind were posed and focused for battle. Her hands reached out in the darkness. Within that darkness appeared an egg. The first thing that arose from the egg was a golden dress that radiated like the sun. The next thing to come out of the egg was a white dove, fluttering toward the light, and the third thing was a tiny, magic, golden key. The Queen put on the golden dress, the dove alighted on her left shoulder, and The Queen's hands held the key close to her heart. It fit perfectly the hole in her heart. A golden, peaceful light permeated her being. All is well. All is eternal. Water began to flow into the well, rising up until it reached the top, overflowing, delivering the Queen back to the surface once again.

All the trees and flowers in the garden started blooming.  The Queen started blooming too, like a hibiscus blooming the world into creation. The Queen bloomed into creation and eventually she expanded so much that she left for the stars, because she discovered that amidst all that creation, she was there at the center all the time. She was the jewel in the lotus. A bright star in the night sky.

She's up there now today, and is also now a book on a shelf. Her story. The story is still told to little children as the Queen lives on with them in the Little Lotus so they can all find their way to the stars one day, too.

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.

El Renacamiento de la Reina del Corazon

Vino de las estrellas
Tan Bella es Ella
Tan Bella es Ella Como sola Ella puede ser su misma
Se Coronó su misma
La Reina del corazón
Tan Bella es Ella

She came from the stars
So beautiful is she
So beautiful is she like only she can be of herself
She crowns herself
The Queen of the Heart
So beautiful is she

Song the Shaman sang to me


The Queen of Bohemia went into new territory today. She went up the mountain and then over it. She started scaling a new mountain. And finally she paused, there was a valley, and a the gate before the next spread of mountains. That was far enough of a new beginning. And it is a new beginning.

She lifted her fist to the mountain and spoke the song that the Shaman gave her, and she believed it with all her heart, all her body. “I am good, kind and beautiful Queen,” she said. “I am beautiful of heart and deserving of goodness. And may I be of service to children and to people. I am so grateful for everything” And then she walked all the way back, her body feeling wonderful, relieved, her heart aflame with joy. Her rebirth in an ocean of conviction she feels down to her core, and that is the most important thing.

Last Friday night in Boulder I had an ayahuasca ceremony with someone trained in Peru. I did the grandmother ceremony, which was done all night and in the darkness. I did not realize that I had done the grandfather ceremony of San Pedro years earlier in 1994 in Ecuador. I was with a boyfriend who was in the Peace Corp. You went into town and knocked on the door of this little shack. To the guy who answered the door you said the code, “I want to rent some horses.”

When I was in Ecuador, we ingested it at night. Daytime would have been better. My boyfriend had a bad trip. He revealed the grief of his mother dying at age 9. I baby-sat him and I don’t remember much else except the scent of jasmine that filled the night air. A woman at this current ceremony said, “The grandfather gives you exactly what you need. You’re a mother! You needed to mother him during tht trip!” So I realize I mother a lot of children.

As I prepared for the Boulder experience by fasting, I was a little nervous about the experience and having to confront yet another unknown demon of my unconscious that needed some light shed on it. I was ready for it. I’ve been battling one thing after another for most of my life. Bring it on.

The shaman asked us to to say our intentions out loud. Mine was for healing, to remove any remaining obstacles, and clarity. As well as whatever the plant consciousness wanted me to experience.

After being called by the shaman to drink the very bitter ayahuasca that was hard to get down, the first thing I noticed was the humming in my head, the music I heard. It was like the rainforest. And I remember the rainforest sounds. I remember the way the shaman sang his disconjointed notes, shook a rattle, moved his cigarette in the dark like a bird. 

I remember being in the Amazonian basin of Ecuador, four hours from Tena by motorized canoe. This semi-aculturated tribe grew coffee and we visited a Peace Corp nurse. There was a Shaman there, who said there was a medicine in a vine. I was interested, but not enough (SADLY!) to meet him back then. He kind of lurked in the background, doing his own thing. In my periferal. The nurse told me a story that there was once a really sick girl, and the visiting doctor couldn’t help her. She was dying. They said call the Shaman, and the Shaman healed her.

It is the belief and the ritual that healed her, I believe. We believe in what happens to us during a ceremony. It’s an experience. A shift in our otherwise mundane and profane worlds. And that shift and feeling in the body is so great you are not the same person you started with. Our society doesn’t offer much of a ritual. The old rites don’t give us any meaning for our modern problems.

So at the beginning of the journey my head started popping and the sounds of the birds made me think of my totem animal, the Raven. Bird is my animal. My symbol and spirit guide. My heart sprouted two wings and La Paloma Blanca said, “Sing your Heart’s Song.”

It was opening my heart, opening my chest and singing my song. Not anybody else’s, but mine. In my vision, I eventually came to a rooftop of a house, and out of the chimney appeared my mother’s face, which was immediately replaced by this witch puppet. This puppet was purchased in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1970 when we lived in Albuquerque. It’s a piece of Mexican folkart and part of a slew of characters, like La Dama a pretty girl, El Borrachero, a drunkard, and La Bruja, the Witch. My mother hung it on the front door of our house growing up. It was like a talisman, and it really looked like her, exactly like the Queen/witch in Sleeping Beauty.

Then the witch turned pretty, as if it were I. She showed up to a little girl in a suburban neighborhood and said, “This world needs some enchantment!” And explained to her how she’d take her under her wing and apprentice, they’d work invisibly, bringing kindness and magic to the world, brightening everybody’s modern, mechanical and meaningless lives with ancient rites.

In my vision, then I traveled back to early, early childhood. Albuquerque. Four years old. My toe getting stuck in a tricycle and bleeding. My mother’s abuse and the painful words she told us. The frightening screaming and hitting and pounding our self-esteem into the ground. Her bag lady clothing, used, torn and ripped. Her unkempt hair. Our worthlessness, undeservingness. The witch.

I remembered little things, like a doll named Rosebud who smelled like roses.
I remembered kindergarten at Heatherwood Elementary in Boulder, Colorado. 1971. Standing in line. A boy, Jed Maletz, just turned around and punched me in the stomach for no reason. He turned back around again. Nobody saw it. Nobody did anything. I just doubled up in pain. Why did that happen? For what reason? Did I deserve that? I suffered in silence. And the class moved on.

I remembered the third grade. Playing four square at Douglass Elementary. Some bully fifth grade girls stole our ball. Narrowed me and another girl into a corner. Saying things to us like we were ugly, stupid. I was so bold to try and punch the ball out of the girl’s hand to get it back. But it failed. She grew even more angrier. She hurt me, and when I cried she said, “You deserved it!”

What did I deserve? To suffer? Do people deserve to suffer? How I felt I was undeserving of happiness, of fulfillment, of letting my star shine. So put down by many, so feeling shameful. Did I bring on my life’s problems expecting suffering as all I deserve?

Then that all changed. My thoughts were that I was beautiful, that I am deserving, that I am good and worthy and talented. Storytime Yoga is beautiful. It has great value and merit. I deserve happiness with my King, to have all my wildest dreams come true. Why not reach for it? Why not step into it. You deserve it! You’ve worked hard for it. You are a good person with a good heart. Of course you can be fulfilled and happy! Take it!! Love and be happy! Serve as the Mother with the Storytime Yoga Children’s Mission. Stand in your glory!

The Shaman called us up one by one for individual Limpias. He sang the song above to me in Spanish, and it was profound to hear that. As the Queen, crowning herself. So beautiful is she, like only she can be. She crowns herself I took that as my need for self-love, that assertion and conviction that I was worthy, deserving, beautiful and my work great. That it was OK to let your star shine, to sing your song to the world. That you don't need the outside world to validate your self worth. It comes from within. And that I was to spend my life with the King as my partner in love and happiness, travel, do good work together. Things I have dreamed of my whole life. The shaman then also drove energy into me with his hands, for me to be a little selfish, have boundaries, put energy into me too, not only for others, taking care of others at my expense, as I have my whole life. We spoke in Spanish, and being rather rusty, I was amazingly fluent. After the singing and the personal ritual the Shaman said to me, “Now do you believe that you are not ugly, truly surely from this experience?”

“Yes,” I said. I truly believed it.

Afterwards I thought of other people, my ex, my late husband, my children, old boyfriends. My father and his tight shoulders. To let that all go. To ask forgiveness from them and healing for them. Everything happens for a reason. To be grateful for our difficulties for they bring the most profound results on the other end. You just have to hang on and show up, take the roller coster ride for its ups and down.

Then the vision subsided. It was enough. Things were normal again. My mind raced and raced, but my body was so tired. I did not sleep the whole night until the ceremony was over in the dawn.

In the morning we had garlic lemon water to re-alkalize the body. We talked and ate. I was finished and needed to get back to my children by the later afternoon, but people were going to continue with San Pedro and do the grandfather ceremony.

One thing too, is that you vomit a lot during the journey. You hear others vomiting all night long. It’s quite intense, but also very purging. I vomited so hard sometimes I peed my pants! But it was cleansing and I got all that negativity and old crap out. Whenever fear came up, it usually came up with the feeling of sickness. It made you stay present, listen to the Shaman, the singing, the present moment and release stuff.

And now a week later things have shifted so much. I’ve integrated the experience and cemented it with plans the King and I have made for the future, and with long walks in nature. I am relieved, less tense. It’s wonderful to have somebody in your life. Somebody who has your back. Somebody who you have his back for too. His heart.

I did have my obstacles removed, my demon confronted. Only I was surprised that he demon was so gentle. I was only afraid of myself. Of my own capacity for love, just for myself. To love myself. That can heal everything and shifts the whole world. It is not a terrible place where I will get pain, but a joyous one with expectation of beauty. And it’s not something that happens with just talking about it. You have to have that kind of an experience. It’s a psychological and somatic experience. It was the ritual. One ayahuasca ceremony can save you decades of therapy. A vision is that powerful.

I don’t wake up in anxiety anymore. Just love and gratitude. Excitement too, because the vision was so clear, so profound. It was guidance I never received my whole life. It’s still in my body that feeling of love and joy and happiness. Whenever I feel those old doubts that creep up, the feeling instantly replaces them.

I show up at the Everyday Contenment class at Shambhala Center on Tuesday mornings. It feels good to sit and meditate in the safety and peace of the present moment. It's good to be among friends and community. I like what the instructor said, that meditation is like putting your children on the school bus. Your thoughts will be gone for a little while so you can meditate, but they will be back! Don't worry! You'll see them again, so just make this time for quiet meditation!

I met with the therapist at the Mental Health center. I told her everything. She was happy for me, helped me to cement it in the outer world. I’m working on getting health insurance so that I can have my own therapy, and so that somebody else who is down on their luck and in need of help can receive it. I said I was so grateful for their help. Whom do you turn to if there is such despair? Thank god for Social Services. That’s what makes a society great. That we care for everybody, without judgment regardless of income or circumstances. That every human being has inherent worth and dignity and deserves help and respect. Sadly these services have been cut way back. Whole centers closing in East Boulder County.

I don’t know what’s wrong with this country. Where is its heart? It’s scary about what happened with the Supreme Court ruling today. I’m very scared for this country. The machine, the artificial body, the CORPORATION, has taken over for sure. And the people allow it! Maybe it’s the fluoride. Where is the capacity for outrage? We are not the UCA, the United Corporations of America, and it’s eating everything in sight, most of all your rights and democracy and freedom. Welcome to the Machine! Ruling with money and power to influence campaigns and candidates. The propaganda machine for the masses. For what? Alienated consumers and the machine of expansion. The movie Avatar is a perfect metaphor for this. The Father machine killed the Mother Earth and its creeping around colonizing again with its path of destruction and inhumanity. We live in this stifled matrix of society, way out of balance with nature, and it’s self destructing.

But I think there is going to be a Great Awakening. The Goddess is back. She’s showing up in green technology, medical marijuana and a return to organic gardening, compassion for people in Haiti. The Machine will Stop, and soon. Things are breaking down fast. But that’s OK. For the greatest amount of darkness means there is just as much light as its opposite. That means it’s a great time to be an artist, thinker, humanitarian activist in this age, because your number has been called. The Journey has begun. It’s Showtime! Because you can’t stop the heart. You can’t stop life and you can’t stop the soul. There’s a rebirth going on, so get ready!

So is the Renaissance of the Queen of the Heart, AKA the Queen of Bohemia, who cleans her own house and really loves the King.

Jamaican Queen

The Queen and her children went on vacation to Jamaica, courtesy of the King, who arrived later. How the Queen loves to travel, get outside her realm, experience something new and different, even though the KFCs and Pizza Huts have spread their tentacles even to the Caribbean. How courageous was the Queen so many said, to manage alone her children through airport security checks, immigration and feeding times all throughout. She loved escaping the harsh, dry climate of the mountain top and revel in the moisture abundant and tropical green scenery everywhere. How she loved having fun with her children and how she loved spending time with the King……

Although she wasn’t very happy about the speeding ticket she got when she returned to the castle.



Jamaica is a beautiful place. I like the people and culture. People are happy here, and Bob Marley’s image, music and presence seems to float over the place like a loving, happy father. I’d love to see and learn more and return. Even do give a yoga and storytelling/writing retreat!

I love the Caribbean, this being my second time here. Like the U.S. Virgin Islands, the breeze in Jamaica is sweet and the turquoise waters softened by salt that supports you as you float oblivious to the world and just stare at the blue sky and white clouds above. I love the humidity and the oxygen and the pressure here -- huge shift from the harsh vata-aggravating climate of Colorado. This is good for my health and my energy. I realize that is probably why I like Bikram yoga so much, the humidity; it holds your body; it cleanses it.

The all-inclusive resort we are at is just that. The Lady Hamilton Grand Palladium, Spanish-owned and rushed to finish. This new place is cracking at the plaster, tiles coming up, but the people are super nice, the food sumptuous. They hand you alcoholic drinks at check-in, and from the boisterous voices of Eastern-European sounding men at the swim up bar that opens at 10 a.m., the drinks don’t seem to stop. I haven’t drank alcohol in a long while, so I thought, it’s vacation! But I imbibed modestly, except for one night. I remember too well the affects of this particular poisoning. I feel so much better without it. Same thing with the food. This incredible abundance of decadence, but one has to remember one’s own power of choice. I choose not to be a pig, gorge on everything. And ultimately feel horrible afterwards! I marveled instead at the fresh fruit and steamed fish. But I have to admit there was so much to try - i loved Jamaican bammy bread and Italian gnocchi - I did start in on the heavier carb stuff and you just couldn’t resist the little desserts!

The kids sure loved it and I was happy to see them happy. Even though when my friend who treated us to all this fun was there for a few days, and I relished in talking to an adult about interesting array of subjects, he left and I was back to the empty fourth chair at meal times. That loneliness of being a single mother. I have to catch myself always with my son, not making him like a parent, talking to him about history and economics, and he tells me how Opa is always telling him about space people coming. That too! I said.

As my daughter stood up from the table at lunch one day I imagined Frank here with us at the table. How would his presence affect us? Are suicides really condemned to stay nearby invisible and assist the loved ones they abandoned and wounded so much? Are their silent presences to be felt to steady you in times of great overwhelm, loneliness and grief? What would it be like to have him here? On a family trip? What would my daugher be like to have her father in her life? Something she has never known? What would it be like for her to have a male presence in her life? A father? For my son? A man like him.

There is a Roman theme about this place, large Doric columns everywhere, if not completed beyond any further aesthetic quality rather than to keep costs low. The decadence is there, yet it seems this resort, opened not to long ago, was built at the tail end of the last gasps of capitalism. As if the credit ran out and they had to cut corners just to get the place open. But my kids love it. Just to swim, eat, do nothing, and watch a lot of TV in the room. (since we don’t have TV at home.) They’d be just as happy in a Comfort Inn in Westminster, Colorado. But we are in Jamaica, and it’s good for them to see places outside the U.S. And if anything they have had geography and history lessons hammered into them and even my daughter knows Jamaica is in the Caribbean now.

I re-read Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place on the plane and by the poolside. Such an amazing author. Such an amazing voice. Her brazen scolding of colonialism, and how she admits not much changed after emancipation. Sure, here the blacks serve the whites in a gluttonous stream. I love how Kincaid implored the rebuilding of Antigua’s library, which was destroyed in an earthquake and never rebuilt. How important education is - literary and artistic exploration and encouragement. How that is society, culture, humanity. Rather than decline or the reclining class lounging in artificial pools when the real prize of nature is but a few feet away at the beach. But then I stopped being so critical and enjoyed myself. I started thinking that this place could be converted into and make a great commune and education center and have a yoga storytelling retreat.

I went to the resort’s morning stretch class and ended up teaching it with yoga. There was a couple from Philadelphia I helped with their back pain, and even the bow-legged employee Smiley I gave exercises to help his condition. I miss teaching adult yoga. Perhaps I will return one day. Grow Medical Marijuana in the basement of my father’s house and offer other herbs and yoga therapy. It might make the right combination.

In Jamaica I could just rest and let go. Floating around in the Caribbean waters, I found that staying focused on the present and letting go of thoughts, and by gaining awareness of old patterns, stories, that no longer serve me I get some distance from the thoughts and patterns, which allows a certain energy to be released, a certain spell to be broken. The traumas and grief of the past are finally gone, a story, a house, let go. Like the house the old man hauled around in the movie UP, which we watched on the plane.

How that old attachment really makes things difficult, hold you down. They really are grooves in the koshas, your layers of being. You have to lift them out of the layers, smooth out the surface again, float around in the Caribbean water and feel your body supported, free, safe. There is a turning point, a new story all together. Like the sun gaining length again after the winter solstice. The shift. Re-patterning really takes hold. The old yearbooks of military history and authority and sorrow have faded. There is peace. You are rooted in being. Grounded in a feeling of peace and safety. You don’t have to be or feel unhappy anymore. You don’t have to be confused or upset. You don’t have to act out the rage that your mother had inside her, the frustration, the powerlessness, the grief and fear. You get to feel at rest, at peace, in balance and aware and it feels great. And happy. I was happy, floating around in the Caribbean sea in Jamaica. And although I knew the moment would pass and I'd be back home eventually facing difficulties and fears, I felt a shift in attitude. Something good and beautiful and loving is going to happen in life, regardless of everything else. Regardless of any old tragedy.

What do you do with the memory of the tragedy? You create art out of it.

I think of my grandmother, whose husband starved to death in a forced Mitzubishi tin mine outside of Tokyo during World War II. How my grandmother survived concentration camps and the soul-destroying hells of war with children. How those scars on the children and mother and family run deep. Generations deep. For I am her all over again, a widow with children.

I see this abundance of food at the resort, the people at my service. I think of my father, as a little boy separated from his mother. My Oma, not knowing whether he is dead or alive for two years. My father, eating snails from the river that was also the latrine to survive. Eating snakes and burying dead old men.

The grief is in the body. It is in the heart. Little by little you can coax them out, just like the mold in the basement, and get a good look. And then we see that it was not really anything, a story, a passage of time, in life. A book on the shelf, a memory, and we return to the present and it’s radiance and it is that radiance that makes us safe and happy.

The End of Food book I read was amazing. We really are headed for disaster. How I am returning to my healthy self again, no drinking, a regular routine. Because it really reprograms you.