Sergeant Pepe the Duality Dog, and the Tree

Today the Queen of Bohemia went up a different mountain on the other side of the Kingdom. She hadn’t been there in a while, and she wanted Sergeant Pepe to be off leash for he had been promoted to Prince Pepe. For you see, Pepe had been groomed at the Penelope’s Pet Palace outside the Kingdom. And although for the castle and the court he was fluffy and lovely like a black-and-white pom-pom on four legs, truly he has the wild side along with his master the Queen. He’s out again in nature and the mud to get dirty, but he might as well show off his new do to the other big dogs, chasing them vigorously before happily catching up with the Queen out of love, his territory claim marked as yellow snow among the big dogs.


My dog, Sergeant Pepe, is the trickster. I manifested him. The black-and-white duality dog is he. Years ago I had envisioned a set of children’s stories with characters that imparted yogic wisdom. The dog character would be the trickster, based on the black-and-white Zuni clown. So Pepe showed up at the humane society one day when I was looking for a dog. This half Papillon, half border collie cutie. We called him a “half-ion,” or a “scrap-ion.” I never made the children's book characters, but I have Pepe now, and he gets me out to walk.

We walked this time up near Devil’s Thumb. From the South Mesa Trail in Eldorado Springs the rock formation looks less like a thumb but rather a penis shape, which was obvious on all the school hikes up there, but left unspoken. Pepe is pretty well trained, however, sometimes he just won’t come. Reasons are usually when he sniffs something intense in the woods, which means it probably was bear, coyote or mountain lion. Another reason not to come when called is to eat certain types of poop (Yuck!) or chase after prairie dogs (Panic! Is there a ranger watching?) At other times he is just the trickster and times unpredictable. That’s the trickster’s role; to let you know that just when you think you’ve got everything in life under control, he comes along and pulls the rug out from under you. Such is life in duality.

So when I walk, it’s a matter of training and suspense. Pepe’s gotten good with his off leash skills in the open space. So when a dog approaches, I’m no longer chasing after Pepe who is in pursuit of the dog and its owner for a quarter of a mile back down the trail. And I don’t have to constantly carry treats. He just naturally has his fun with the big dogs, being like the rabbit at a racetrack for the dogs to chase around and show off this hilarious Papillon spin to him.

Whenever I see a dog ahead on the trail, however, I still get this feeling of, ”Oh, no. How is Pepe going to behave? Is it going to be chaos? Or calm?” For the other day he decided he didn’t want to get back on his leash and I had to chase him across several people’s yards in the snow for ten minutes before I tackled him.

I figure life is like that. I can be content in the moment, but every time I see something coming ahead, I don’t have to feel anxious. I’m just in a calm state of quiet alertness, ready to act, but available in the moment to seek options and alternatives to the problem. It’s a trust in the moment that the answer will arise and the problem solve itself. I've learned that the tiger is content because he knows he has everything he needs in the present moment. I’ve been at it so long, now I really realize the secret is not reacting to anything in the first place, which leads to suffering. When you’ve suffered enough, you are like the rat from college psychology class movies that has endured zillions of shocks for the cocaine and finally realizes this hurts and it’s not worth it! Such is evolution. I now feel am calm and confident that I will figure out what to do with the sight of each dog coming down the trail. Sometimes it is luring Pepe with a treat, or chasing him for half an hour, and most of the time he just behaves because he loves me and wants to please me so returns to me and continues walking.

I had my father over for lunch the other day. I made a fresh avocado and lime soup. We sat at my house and talked. We talked about the coming economic collapse, and he assured me not to worry because we are all going into the fifth dimension and the UFOs are going to make disclosure soon. He forwards me newsletters via email about alien disclosure, and how the disclosure date was moved because Obama still won’t reveal the truth and how disappointed everybody is. Waiting for the savior! That myth keeps popping up every millennium or so. I figure, why not UFOs? They've been in our psyche for a long time now. I think Star Trek might as well be true, I mean the I-Pad is out! Jung said that the imagination is real. It exists in energy, and in the Yoga Vasistha there are myths that echo the idea that things are created because somebody thought of it. Like in the novel Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaardner. Or like Shopenhauer, who said that the universe is being dreamed by a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream too. And then there's the Aboriginal dreamtime. Might as well make my own dream time and believe in it!

Also, we had a rare event of my kids and my younger sister and I taking my father to see the movie Avatar. I saw it for the second time, as did my son. I can’t remember ever seeing a movie with my father. I feel the movie acts on a subconscious level, drawing us toward the psyche’s need for balance. Jung said that Americans are incredibly one-sided, completely ungrounded and weren’t ready for yoga because they were not in their body. This movie pretty much sums it up, how cut off we are from nature and the feminine functions of the psyche and our body. So nature corrects itself. Mother is pissed. Durga! The machine is stopping.

Avatar is a powerful myth for our time. Man as the machine, heartless, murderous, plundering and pillaging for profit. As if we finally need to confront our past that we have been in denial of for so long. The history of Western colonialism -- murdering natives, enslaving them for capital gain and keeping us triumphant over nature by denying mother and death and to acknowledge (root meaning of the word confession) those nefarious deeds. A Reuters article recently reported a study that proved that luxury actually makes one more selfish. But if we are selfish and separate, then we are alone. So terribly alone. That terrible fear, like a story from the Upanishads. Even the divine, once aware of itself, was afraid of being alone. So it divided itself into all the creatures of the world. So that it could play and love and not be alone, yet it is also still one. That’s the beautiful paradox. We embrace the paradox. The dark stuff isn’t so scary any more. It’s just playing its part in duality. Like Bush ushering in the destruction of America. Somebody had to play that part. Maybe the devil really is the most beloved angel of God, like the Muslims believe. Or like the dogs on the trail. They just keep coming. No need to fear them, just accept them coming down the trail, and be prepared to draw upon your training and experience. Epicurus said that tempestuous storms make skillful pilots.

Avatar inspired me into the heroic life. What is it to really give yourself over to something? In The Ernest Becker’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Denial of Death, he says that the biggest problem young people face today is that they have no call to the heroic life. Death is denied in our culture, however, it is facing death that creates heroism. I remember I heard that when I worked as a stringer for the Bakersfield Californian. I had the northern Kern County beat. I regularly covered Delano, where the Cesar Chavez grape strike started. I also volunteered to do religion reporting and stumbled on a story of these three sisters. They owned a bar and restaurant on Delano’s skid row, but they had an experience with the Pentecostal movement and realized they were contributing to people’s sin and suffering. So they stopped serving alcohol and put on these parking lot revivals on Friday and Saturday night. I remember the sounds of the distorted voices through the bullhorns cutting into the darkness. I remember the Hispanic women and migrant workers standing and waving their hands near the stage, giving themselves up to something. The man I interview told me, “If you haven’t found a reason to die, you haven’t yet found a reason to live. That was Christ’s message.”

Living the heroic life. Find a good reason to die, what else is there? Haven’t we finally learned to believe in our eternal nature? What is there to lose? Just our egos. Physics tells us energy can neither be created nor destroyed. We are identical with the powers of the universe. The Mayan believed that the world tree was actually the Milky Way. This tree that connects us to the cosmos. This tree that is us. I think of my nervous system like the branches on a tree - reaching into the ethers and sensing the divine energy flow, conducted through the tinier branches. They say that on December 21, 2012 is when the center of the galaxy is lined up with the earth. Maybe we don’t space travel linearly but by consciousness itself, manifesting bodies at will, manifesting what we need across the dimensions of time and space. And we are at one again with the universe and are in accord with nature, not against it and alienated from it and only consuming in it, but participating in it. We are participating in the myth, and that makes all the difference because we give ourselves to it whole-heartedly. And besides, it's a hell of a lot of fun that way.

The Queen thinks, what does she want to do? What is this life about? She decides that it is to really follow her bliss, put on some clothing in disguise, leave the Kingdom and the castle and set out to explore the big-wide world. And do something wonderful because it makes her heart feel so good. Sergeant Pepe agrees.

The Big, Blue Sparkly Jewel

The Queen of Bohemia went up the mountain again with Sergeant Pepe to the village science complex where there was also an art gallery. It was a pleasant walk up. There was no rush, no pressure, no where to get but there when she got there. Her heart rested, as if a hand that squeezed it had finally released it from its strangling grip. Each step is slower than usual; she pays attention to it and yet also notices the spruce trees, low-growing rosehips and wild strawberries in their winter modes. The Queen now hikes further than before, or at least in a very long while. She’s a little bit tired of doing other forms of Queenly exercise, so just hiking uphill gives quite a clearing to her head. There is a peace, a quiet that is in rhythm with the step, in rhythm with the moment and the depth that is there and where she meets all of creation. Where everything sinks down and melts into one.

The Queen was delighted in all the art and felt positive that among these dark ages brought about by the Dark King Bush, there will be a renaissance of science, art and learning once again! She took up making quite a bit of art herself, as the King sent some amazing materials to play with and she passes the day until she can see him again working away. And she feels like life is just beginning.

With the King in my life things have changed for the better. My loneliness and struggle have subsided. My heart can rest. I sleep better and dream profoundly every night. I trust the universe, and I trust that the last seven years are up. The intense difficult times are up, or at least a phase of them. And I honestly believe that because of my shift in this thinking, and from the ceremony experience and vision that I received, that good things are now ahead and not disaster. That let’s my heart go. All the post-traumatic stress melts away. The present moment is a safe place to reside. There’s no explosions, terror or upset to pull you out of the moment again, fray the nervous system. There's just this amazing moment and contentment. Regular sitting meditation does wonders to reprogram your nervous system and make deep grooves that are alert, aware, pleasant, and rooted in regular daily rhythm. Time does change things. Regular ritual, that repetio materi descendi, repeatedly descending into matter. You really do create your own universe just by showing up to it. And it’s amazing how the universe just irons itself out and works out well once you get all those self-imposed obstacles out of the way.

My older sister, Narada, came over last Saturday. It was completely unexpected. Her daughter, Radhika, called and said she had some rehearsal in Boulder so she’d drop her mother by. I was hiking with Sergeant Pepe at the time and quickly called my father. Since everything was so last minute – that’s how Narada had announced she was moving to India – I had the excuse that I’d have no special Krishna food prepared! What a relief! Naturally once at home I pulled out what I had, inspecting the gourmet cheeses for evidence of Rennet, pulling out the organic blueberries and mochi.

It was wonderful to see my big sister. It had been so many years. She left when I was in the eighth grade. She was six and a half years older than me; she really was the one who mothered me. Yoga, religious, gardening and vegetarian cooking passions were passed to us early when we were young through our father. That’s what we did together growing up. And only so often would Mom interrupt us with her insanity and her blows. Nancy was her name when we were young, and she took the brunt of Mom’s blows. Small wonder she ended up a Krishna. Years later I confronted the grief of losing her. For the years following her departure were marked by growing up alone. My younger sister would be removed by social services from our home, my brother would join the Navy, and I faced high school alone with my mother ranting about my siblings. I became a bulimic, raising myself alone and becoming the family cook, prepared by Nancy’s vegetarianism and by a 6-month stint as a 16-year-old working as a cashier at the 28th Street McDonald’s.

But now Nancy’s back! As Narada, and it was just her. Not her husband, Sri Raga, whom my mother always called Sri Rag Mop. Quite frankly I don’t like him either and was actually glad he was not there. Narada seemed relaxed and free. We talked about the food issue and she said it was Sri Raga, too strict, and I nodded my head in fierce agreement and vindication, at last! She told stories of India, roaming peacocks at Mayapur, the Bengali people. How I loved arm-chair traveling that moment and would love to make a trip to India one day!

I made her raspberry tea with agave syrup. She wanted honey and I felt guilty I didn’t have honey, for it was crystallized. It made me realize how often I feel I have to feel guilty about some mistake, some issue about me or anything. I think my kids know this and manipulate me about it. I’m always trying to cover up for some perceived error, some mistake. Chogyam Trungpa talks about this in his works. I still go to my Tuesday morning meditation class, Contentment in Everyday living, and I do believe I feel more content, in the moment, accepting of all things. It’s just that the difficult parts have evened out finally. It’s more balanced.

But Trungpa says how Western Judeo-Christian mythology expounds original sin, something wrong with us. And Buddhism emphasizes natural goodness, openness and experience. The west has this feeling of guilt, and children are taught from what’s wrong with their work, using guilt to improve. Rather than what’s right.

I still wrestle with that for me and my daughter. I struggle to perform for the machine of public education and do the worksheet homework at night with my daughter teaching Colonial American geography and map skills. It’s frustrating because she doesn’t know basic things, even though she’s in the 4th grade. But I can’t show it, because it mangles her self-esteem the way it did mine when I was her age in school and didn’t understand what was going on. What's wrong with her? What's wrong with me? What crap. i just want to be happy and good!

My son has moved downstairs and is happy there. I have to be firm though, because his teachers say he’s not turning in English and math work and has an attitude about it. Gilbert took him boxing once, and I’m trying to get him to go to gun club with him. When Narada was over he had fun looking through an airplane and war book with Opa. Guys need guys!

That night my daughter snuggled with me in bed. It’s so fun to have a 9-year-old daughter. We had fun playing a spelling game in which you make up a word based on the last letter of the word just said. Elephant, tomato, octopus, Sergeant Pepe. We laughed in the darkness and we said, “I love you,” to each other. Then she said, “I remember when I was little and you’d say, “’I love you,”’ to me and then I’d say, “’I love you,”’ to you, and then I’d feel all happy inside and see this big, blue sparkly jewel.”

That was everything for me. That moment. It was a Big, Blue, Sparkly Jewel. All of life is one. The simple joys of life. It’s everything. It’s so simple and so clear and wonderful.

Before Narada had left and when Radhika came to pick her up, I heaped lots of presents left over from Christmas that I didn’t get to give them and other stuff. Clothes, books and games the kids had outgrown; we rummaged through my closet and I just pulled lots of stuff I’ve had for years and didn't use. Funky beautiful clothes that I've performed in but rarely wear. There were clothes that I didn’t fit in anymore just hanging in the back of the closet. They needed to be cleaned out. The Bohemian Bombshell is never going to be a size 4 dress again and doesn’t even want to try, so out of the closet it went into Radhika’s arms. I gave Narada some wool coats and scarves for her adjustment to Rocky Mountain winter from Bengai India, and some blueberries I had. The house and my heart and psyche felt 100 pounds lighter.

She wrote me an email thanking me.
Sydney, Thanks for the photos and thanks again for the earrings, blueberries and so on. I plan to wear the earrings on Gaura Purnima and other special days. I used the blueberries in some muffins this morning and offered them to Krishna. The family loved them! I have extra batter and will bake more so that Kamesvari can take some muffins to school in her lunch bag.

I thought about you this morning. It is true you are also a devotee of Krsna...in your own way. I am really happy thinking about that.

Love from,
Narada (priya)


Life is a miracle, an offering, a grace. When you get to the source of the background of anxiety that plagues you like a sick ghost you wear around your body, you can be free. That it’s just the mind and the habit of the mind, but when you meditate you create a new habit of a place to hang out in. To identify there and exist there, untouched, unstruck. The heart rests, the intelligence of the Buddhi mind, rather than the Manas mind, radiates through. And there’s no rush, no hurry. Truly you have arrived. You have arrived in the present moment, and all of eternity is there too.

The Queen of Bohemia now wears the Big, Blue Sparky Jewel. right in the middle of her crown.

The Conceptual Morass

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

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

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

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

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

The Queen Survives

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The Queen Sheds her skin

The Queen's oldest sister, Narada, who lives in India, sent an email asking about their father, Saint Albert the Wise. She read the Queen's interpretation of the myth Vishnu's dream and replied that their cult leader said that the demons coming out of Vishnu's ears were the first homosexuals because of their voracious sexual appetite. The Queen was offended by this interpretation, and said so. She thought that personal choice of sexuality should not be demonized and judged wrong.

Her sister immediately got upset and withdrew. "People are always offending me. Now I must retreat from such negative associations," she said. Forgive me, but I don't know why you despise Krishna so much."
"But how can you judge me?" the Queen asked her sister. "How the Queen loves the divine, but experiences it in a completely different reality than you, dear sister." Because all the Queen could feel for her sister was love, because their mother, the Witch of Kilkenny Street, hit her sister the hardest when they were growing up in the ruined castle. That's because she was the eldest, and got the most blows from the witch, who shut her down completely, and a strict cult was the only thing that would salvage her fragile psyche.

I cleaned out my father's house again today. It is as if I have peeled down a layer of stuff. The first level is about what you can deal with, what you can throw away or how to make a semblage of how to organize things. Sometimes I would take a box from the other back bedrooms and start looking through it. I'm looking for the boxes, the obvious trash. That was the first month and what filled the first dumpster run. In one box from the basement, I found an amazing thing. Two petrified garter snakes. One curled perfectly and it's head curling up, its eye hollowed out. Then there was a much smaller one. I saved the big one and gave the other to my artist friend Wendy. I remember when I lived in the basement as a 22-year-old and found dead snakes on my underwear I picked up off the floor. So I thought it was symbolic. I am shedding my skin. A layer of something very deep - energy stuck in my lawyers of body and being bubbling up and getting cleaned out. I feel it's a stage toward rebirth, as you begin to see in meditation that there really is something greater than your ego mind when you finally get some distance between it and can see things more clearly. And you get hungry for it.

This time cleaning I started tackling piles of stuff on tables and tackle its details. Like the kitchen. A particular doozy. Dad and I started in the small cabinet that has 29 years of grease stains all over it from the stove below. Julia had cleaned the stove and it remarkably looks so much better. We pulled out dozens of old herbs and spices, and Indonesian cooking ingredients. duplicate bottles of garlic powder, onion onion powder, basil that was from 1992. There were even some bottles so ld they still had on the paper my mother had covered them up with to reuse the item.
The rest of the kitchen was just filled with scattered items in complete disorder. Outdated food cans my father kept for survival but never cooked. He typically ate out or warmed up some soup from the fridge or ate something frozen. On the table and counters there were bathroom products, bug killer, car oil. I sorted them out and consolidated them into cabinets.

I realized that my father is of the depression era, born in 1931. When it comes to cleaning, I have to have him right there with me because you can't throw anything away. Weeks earlier we had gone through every piece of paper in zillions of boxes. We even had found Liberace's autograph. Now we are going through every screw, button, lock, stamp, zillions of little things and you sort through it but encourage him to just throw it away and mostly he does. It was hard to get him to part with some of the old food. When Julia was here she helped me convince him. You have to go down to every nut and screw and receipt, and pen cap and a pair of scissors parts that lost its central screw and he was going to have it repaired. There were dozens of Nescafe jars in other cabinets that were empty. I know he was thinking he could find some use for them, like fill them with lentils or rice. He held onto it and you could tell it brought some kind of sentimentality. So he couldn't part with it and I said no problem. There is a movable kitchen cart in the middle of the kitchen and I sorted through the layers of food cans that where years out of date, every kind of herb, natural supplement and health liquid you could think of. They were scattered all over the place. So I sorted cans to go into the pantry Julia and i cleaned out (of zillions of cobwebs and dust) last time. And the natural stuff to another area.

My brother, Albert, came over too. I hadn't seen him in so long. He's the workaholic senior software engineer for a big company. He helped Dad sort, which was good. To have other people help him sift it all out too. I was able to work quietly in other areas, taking sneaky liberties of throwing out obvious junk at my discretion.


Earlier I had talked to my father about my older sister Nancy. How she offended me in an email recently and made me angry, and that it seems she has a personality disorder. It brought up a lot of grief around my sister, who was a mother to me. The memory of playing with dolls and making up stories, cooking in the kitchen and growing plants. It made my childhood so happy against my mother's insanity. I remember the sorrow and the helplessness I felt that strangled my heart when my mother was screaming and cursing at Nancy, destroying her sense of self. Shredding any sense of worthiness after being so startled and confused by the violence. Because the violence was jarring. It took you out of your body. You knew your body was not a safe place to be.

Nancy was my buffer to my mother, to all of us kids. And she fought back the best she could, as my father was much of the time incapacitated with migraines and pain killers and unable to help. It's like the Japanese guards' brutal action that rendered my father helpless to act against during his childhood in the concentration camp. Dad to this day feels guilty for asking my sister to leave the house, after she and my mother's fighting was too much and my mother ordered her out. She fled to Alaska and worked for the forest service, only to leave behind the drug scene there and have the Krishnas meet her at the airport in Honolulu. That was the end of having my sister around the house and the beginning of my mother wailing about her and her "shitty religion." I was six years younger than my sister. I was in the 8th grade. That sense of loss has carried with me so long now. Now my sister is coming back from India in July and will be living in Denver again after 30 years away where her daughter and grandchildren live. I wonder if coming home brings some powerful stuff up and that's the cause of the upset. This tension between us is to be resolved and for that she would be healed as well.

I didn't allow my upset to be indulged. That typical rage that I felt when my ex-husband's ex-wife would offend me. I learned that the price you pay for that emotional burning is too steep. I have no bad feelings against my sister. I do not want to engage in an energy drain. It really messes you up. I know from experience that you get what you think about when you're in a negative state a lot. So now I can only send love. I allow her to be who she is, and I minimize the rest. Avoid it completely if needed. But always love her, and heal the pain through forgiveness so that only freedom remains.

Things have definitely cleared out on a noticeable level. I've been really happy. I broke my health kick this weekend, but it was like a ritual. I really notice the differences in my life with the shedding of the old stuff. That those negative thinking grooves are finally but ghosts in the distant sky. This regular groove is very present, and relaxed, and content. Things in our household are going so well. Like my daughter's schoolwork -she's grooving math - and the overall functioning of the household. Thank you maid! And more friends in my life! There is harmony it seems, and all because I've slowed down. I practice yoga and meditation daily and they ground me in their ritual. I think the future is going to be even more amazing, because I have no desire to know what it is at all because I am really just so in love with the present.

I will be back on track come Monday, because the magic of the yoga drives you on. Snake is pretty powerful. In mythic yoga practice, the heart is opening, chest is expanding, my wings are stretching out, and I'm firmly anchored in my snake, fish tail bottom, my reptilian hull.

Maybe it really is the return of Quetzalcoatl.

The Mythic Yoga Studio with Sydney Solis: The Wooden Sword - Jewish

The Queen of Bohemia is back in Action

The Queen had a fantastic summer, traveling to Telluride, Pine Ridge Reservation and Montana for work and pleasure. It was all wonderful and rewarding in every possible way. But every once in a while the Queen gets derailed. Call it life or the snare of fate, things can be just so overwhelming that she is not quite sure what to do. This causes great anxiety, but luckily, The Queen falls back on her yoga practice, meditation and stories to give her hope. She reconnects with God after a short lapse of egoic disconnect and bad habits that still linger from 1388 Kilkenny Street and resumes her duties.

So after talking to two bankruptcy lawyers it does seem that I cannot declare bankruptcy. I am stuck with Speer for the time being. If my ex would just sell the darn 31st street house I’d be in much better shape to deal with the screwy loans and upkeep on the properties, which I do find valuable in the long term, but a massive pain in the short run. I’m not the type to believe in hoarding and sitting on a pot of gold. Of course that puts me in a sticky position. But I feel for all the millions of Americans who have financial problems. It can definitely make you sick.

So I can’t declare bankruptcy because I can’t get rid of the income tax on the equity my ex took out to pay off his debts, in my name on the mortgage and loans! Gads! How stupid could I get! I can only say I was in love, and I believed in him, however, he didn’t come through and that’s the most painful part. I put everything I had into it and I didn’t get anything in return. Something I became conscious of from parenting my father as a child and also my choice of men in the past. I take care of them and get little in return.
Also I can’t declare bankruptcy because I could lose my copyrights to my work! Gads! Now that is scary. So I have cut off all spending to the extreme. No more coffees, no more eating out (ok, once a month for special with the kids, you HAVE TO!) Get the hair cut at Super Clips, eat all the food you have left in the house. But not out of fear but out of this is how we should have been living all along. Since the 50s, a recent Wall Street Journal article wrote, it’s all about my property, my own house, my things and stuff. We really don’t need a lot to get by on. The article said that if you own your own home it shows you are not a communist. Well, I would sure like to live with somebody right now, share meals, work in the garden together, share childcare. We should be living collectively, at least have that option if you choose. So I voluntarily now live a life of simplicity. How I wish I could ditch my car. Such an expense! I love riding my moped. I typically buy all my clothing used, and now it’s just cutting out lots of little things. But I am determined to get back on top of things, make my business work, and get financially squared away. I often think of living abroad with my kids. I’ve wanted to do it my whole life and I want my kids to have that opportunity, especially to learn another language. I can do my work from the internet. We sure could live cheaply in Mexico or even Puerto Rico, or maybe hang out in India for a few months before moving on to Thailand or something and do the home school/yoga thing. Wouldn’t that be a hoot!

But like in all the stories she has been reading and telling lately, The Queen has faith in God. Faith in the present moment, and faith in herself. All thing will work out. She gets to live deeply in the present moment when she is rooted in yoga and meditation. She gets to relish being a mother and feel great love and joy for her children – whether it is preparing an Epsom salt bath for her son’s poor flat feet that went through a grueling two-hour football practice, or prepare a nutritious breakfast or lunch, or grow cherry tomatoes just for her daughter who loves them, or she gets back down on her hands and knees and willingly scrubs the kitchen floor and the bathrooms and the whole house because that is what the Queen does, she is always faithful, always present, and always beginning again and the Queen survives and thrives. And sometimes she has to just clean again to get her faith back, because it’s the cleaning out of the fear and negativity that is key. That she is the creator of her whole universe with her heart and thoughts, so she’d better stay positive and with God, because she really doesn’t want any other outcome other than goodness and joy, so that’s all it can possibly be. Goodness and joy, even if so much is coming at you and it seems hopeless. And the house on 1388 Kilkenny Street she will never live in again, for that is the source of the anxiety and fear that occasionally creeps up. And now the Queen is aware of it, she can name it, and she can gently ask it to go away. Even though in reality there is a mouse infestation at my father’s house at 1388 Kilkenny Street. They got into his emergency survival food. There is also a lot of stagnant water in the basement. I begin to wonder if it is a health hazard. I’d love to airlift my father out of there and have him life with us – as I am contemplating getting a house mate and do have an ad on Craigs List at the moment

But now the Queen is clean and jazzed. She has something very special coming up September 2. And her websites are about to be relaunched and updated, and she will be working with middle school students to teach them Mythic Yoga and even put up more You Tube videos for the work. Ah, release. To be in union with the divine and without fear in any situation, that is the task at hand. I hope everybody can find release from their suffering. That is why we do yoga, that is why we tell stories and that is why we love deeply everything around us. It is a grand release.