The Queen of Bohemia in Placa de Joan Miró - Barcelona, Spain
Sept. 29, 2011
Sept. 29, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
NOW ON WITH THE STORY....
HERE ENDS BOOK I: THE QUEEN OF BOHEMIA CLEANS HER OWN HOUSE AND BEGINS BOOK II: THE QUEEN OF BOHEMIA LIVES IN ST. CROIX.
TO BE CONTINUED.......
TUNE IN!
TO BE CONTINUED.......
TUNE IN!
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Independence Day
The Queen of Bohemia has voyaged to the Great City beyond the desert kingdom. She loved it and her hair looked great. Such a new life, such a new beginning. She was oh, so well-received, the chariot stops along the way were sublime. She was overwhelmed with the art, the culture, and good architecture and soul everywhere. She drank a magic potion, she at the super foods. She has gotten super healthy and her body is transformed and her Queenly outfits new and fresh. Her transformation is complete. Yet now, she misses her children. She misses the King. She yearns to tie up her work in the Great City and continue on the journey to the final place of complete healing – home – to the place before the wounding, and to return to the land far, far away on the other side of the world.
I have been on the east coast for nearly a month now. Having arrived in New York City on July 1, it was a whirlwind of the great city, its art, food, culture, museums, theatre and walk-ability. The King and I had an incredible time, and I slowly let go of old clothing, old pain, old things that remind me of Colorado and the past. Ounce by ounce, the new me emerged, as I shed the heavy weight of yesteryear, the dead energies. I felt it in my body, I felt it in my soul. I don’t have the low-grade anxiety that I felt in my body in Colorado. Surely it’s the change in altitude, the energy, the dry wind and brown prairie and memories that caused it. Now I am free.
New York definitely is not Buenos Aires. You can still feel the edginess, the competitiveness. The buildings have that hard edge and the people are pushy and disconnected and you can detect the corn syrup lodged in the fat cells of their puffy bodies. Everybody is into psychic readings and street portraits. I visited Connecticut and Massachusetts for the first time in my life. Visited Yale campus and saw with my very own eyes a copy of the Guttenberg Bible. New York City was a cooker for the fourth of July, immersed in a heat wave. But it was truly a symbol of independence. The kind of independence that yoga brings and when you are so unbelievably happy. When you are truly in love. When you stop identifying with the ego and firmly root yourself in the transcendent. Everything becomes magical and possible. And so very peaceful. Nothing the outside world can dish up can affect the inner realm, and you just observe the outer world going by like a river. Sat Chit Ananda.
I taught at Kripalu doing my Storytime Yoga kids camp. It was a delight and a joy. Effortless being and feeling complete and whole. Feeling valuable and content. I have arrived. I am home. No place to get, nothing to do. Just be and be with the children. Kripalu wants me back for next year. What a great thing! Currently I am in a coffee shop across from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where I am staying with my friend, Francie, before heading back to upstate New York to the Omega Institute where I will give a teacher training. Then it's back to Colorado for a short stop of tying up still lose ends and letting the kids say more goodbyes.
Above all, I miss my children. I call my kids and regularly talk to them on Skype. Such a wonderful tool that makes science fiction of childhood science fact. There’s not too much to do in San Antonio, as their cousins are older and not around. But they help out at their grandparents and uncle’s house, mow the lawn, eat a lot of barbecue. Their late father’s mother has terrible Alzheimer's and just got out of a body cast from a February car accident. Their grandfather at 82 isn’t supposed to drive but still does and I warn them not to get in the car with him! Considering that San Antonio is suburban hell with no where to walk to to be at any sort of anywhere with a there there, TV is the norm, however, they are also forced to read and play Scrabble. They are learning Spanish from the home health aide, which is a good thing. I also reminded them that their grandparents may not live much longer, so enjoy the moment. And you can always practice yoga, I told them.
I asked them to send pictures. My son sent pictures he took from around his grandparents' house. He sent me picures one by one of our wedding, of our family together when their father was alive, pictures of when they were little kids, big smiles and fat cheeks. I called him to see if he was happy. “Yes,” he said. “I’m sad that Dad died, but still good things happen because of it.” I was delighted at his intelligence and my heart melted. I congratulated him on that piece of wisdom, realizing how adolescents need guides for this part of life to answer questions. I reminded him of the Shipwrecked Sailor story, you cannot judge life. It just is. That is yoga, to see life as it is, and watch the mind and open up to the true mind between the thoughts. How exciting to teach youth at this age. How wonderful to have a child grow and learn to live in the world using yoga and story.
My ex is still trying to wiggle out of repaying his debt to me through bankruptcy. I told him I want my car back. I just let the lawyer take care of it. I have learned to navigate the difficulties, not let anything bother me, mostly. It takes a lot of mindfulness and letting go. Sometimes the demons slip in at night, or I talk it out with the King or a friend, but awareness certainly disintegrates the demons on the spot. Like Kali does to the demons. The blood from the demons don't have a chance to sink into the earth and sprout more demons. She prevents this by licking the blood up with her tongue. A daily sitting meditation and yoga practice does wonders for this. It is freedom. Salvation. An ocean of bliss.
At Kripalu, I ate organic, mostly non-dairy ayurvedic food for 11 days straight. I did at least one yoga class a day. Upon leaving, I was shocked to be in the outside world again. I stopped in a convenience store to ask directons. I was overwhlmeed and amazed at all the junk food packaged up. It was so alien. Cotton candy in a plastic container. In Buenos Aires I remember an old man still making it fresh the old fashioned way at the Sunday San Telmo fair. In the store it was a disconnect, an oddity. What is this? Food? Lots of crinkly packages, pork rinds, processed death in waiting. Francie eats gluten and dairy-free, so when we stopped in New Jersey near Bruce Springsteen’s home town, it was hard to find anything to eat on the menu besides a lot of dairy, barbecued wings or bread. We had some salmon and I ate a salad with blue cheese and bacon. The next morning we both had diarrhea! When I told the cashier at the health food store in Swarthmore about it she said, "Oh, you can't eat anything in Jersey."
At her house in Swarthmore, I returned to the healthy diet. Learned to love kale, quinoa, beets and daikon radish. It’s gotten so much easier to do and I can’t imagine eating the old crap, even if it means I can’t eat out much. Everything becomes so clear and free. My body feels great, it’s tone returning and I’m sure I’ve lost 5 pounds or something as my clothes are getting baggy. We shall see how this all holds up abroad! I did find a few vegetarian and health food stores in Buenos Aires. My daughter was thrilled about eating kale, beets and lentils, but my son less so. We shall see! I'm also excited about homeschooling the kids. To really focus on teaching them and un-schooling them by just showing up somewhere outside the US. Obama's race to the top - what a mess. That is not learning. That is competition and more neurosis disguised as education. I will also be happy to be away from the culture, where America thinks murder is funny. "Sunny with a chance of Homicide," is some show, a picture of an orange stabbed and bleeding on the side of New York buses. Angelina Jolie in Salt is the image for gun culture gone girly and unconsciously joining the ranks of the death cult our society has been in for the past 200 years. I finished reading "Bachelor Girl, the secret history of single women in the 20th century," by Betsy Israel. Required reading for all women. How men and the media try persistently to destroy women's power through the ages, yet wome prevail. I understand my mother, the war they waged against her to be anything but a stenographer or wife. And now they still try to destroy us with gun toting media whores. Yet we ignore it an move forward despite it, remarkably. Durga protects us. I had a dream of a lion chasing some people. So we are fierce! I also thought that the black women who were the sales women at Macy's were in credibly strong, to stand around all day surrounded by images of white women and culture. They still have their pride, their peace inside despite all this infantile crap.
I haven’t watched much television in seven years. I did watch the 2006 Olympics and the 2008 presidential elections. I thought I'd protect my kids from TV, but then Hulu and You Tube came along. I am aware of some things that are on TV because of reading the world’s newspapers every morning online. But I’ve never seen a reality show, don’t know what’s popular on TV or who half of the blondes in wedding gowns on the magazines at the grocery check out lanes are. But I did watch a little TV at Francie’s house last night. On the Discovery Channel we caught the end of a show called Hoarders. I was fascinated that other people live in the shame that was my childhood. Buried alive in things. I contacted the network, as they are looking for participants for the new season. I told them my father’s story. His migraine headaches, my mother, the war. I told them he wants it cleaned out before he dies. We all want the house cleaned out. The final psychic journey of the body, the heart, mind and soul. Really leave the past behind. Because it’s still in the body, still in the tissue. Getting it all out is a miracle, a healing extraordinare. We shall see if the producers call.
All in all, it’s a new life. The seven difficult years are over. The first half of my life is over. It seems like a dream the past, or a bad nightmare. I survived. I persevered, by sheer will power alone. The demons have made me strong, courageous and powerful indeed. The journey continues and I’m not afraid. The Queen of Bohemia has done a good and thorough job of cleaning her own house. And she has told her story. Now onward for the next journey.
I have been on the east coast for nearly a month now. Having arrived in New York City on July 1, it was a whirlwind of the great city, its art, food, culture, museums, theatre and walk-ability. The King and I had an incredible time, and I slowly let go of old clothing, old pain, old things that remind me of Colorado and the past. Ounce by ounce, the new me emerged, as I shed the heavy weight of yesteryear, the dead energies. I felt it in my body, I felt it in my soul. I don’t have the low-grade anxiety that I felt in my body in Colorado. Surely it’s the change in altitude, the energy, the dry wind and brown prairie and memories that caused it. Now I am free.
New York definitely is not Buenos Aires. You can still feel the edginess, the competitiveness. The buildings have that hard edge and the people are pushy and disconnected and you can detect the corn syrup lodged in the fat cells of their puffy bodies. Everybody is into psychic readings and street portraits. I visited Connecticut and Massachusetts for the first time in my life. Visited Yale campus and saw with my very own eyes a copy of the Guttenberg Bible. New York City was a cooker for the fourth of July, immersed in a heat wave. But it was truly a symbol of independence. The kind of independence that yoga brings and when you are so unbelievably happy. When you are truly in love. When you stop identifying with the ego and firmly root yourself in the transcendent. Everything becomes magical and possible. And so very peaceful. Nothing the outside world can dish up can affect the inner realm, and you just observe the outer world going by like a river. Sat Chit Ananda.
I taught at Kripalu doing my Storytime Yoga kids camp. It was a delight and a joy. Effortless being and feeling complete and whole. Feeling valuable and content. I have arrived. I am home. No place to get, nothing to do. Just be and be with the children. Kripalu wants me back for next year. What a great thing! Currently I am in a coffee shop across from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where I am staying with my friend, Francie, before heading back to upstate New York to the Omega Institute where I will give a teacher training. Then it's back to Colorado for a short stop of tying up still lose ends and letting the kids say more goodbyes.
Above all, I miss my children. I call my kids and regularly talk to them on Skype. Such a wonderful tool that makes science fiction of childhood science fact. There’s not too much to do in San Antonio, as their cousins are older and not around. But they help out at their grandparents and uncle’s house, mow the lawn, eat a lot of barbecue. Their late father’s mother has terrible Alzheimer's and just got out of a body cast from a February car accident. Their grandfather at 82 isn’t supposed to drive but still does and I warn them not to get in the car with him! Considering that San Antonio is suburban hell with no where to walk to to be at any sort of anywhere with a there there, TV is the norm, however, they are also forced to read and play Scrabble. They are learning Spanish from the home health aide, which is a good thing. I also reminded them that their grandparents may not live much longer, so enjoy the moment. And you can always practice yoga, I told them.
I asked them to send pictures. My son sent pictures he took from around his grandparents' house. He sent me picures one by one of our wedding, of our family together when their father was alive, pictures of when they were little kids, big smiles and fat cheeks. I called him to see if he was happy. “Yes,” he said. “I’m sad that Dad died, but still good things happen because of it.” I was delighted at his intelligence and my heart melted. I congratulated him on that piece of wisdom, realizing how adolescents need guides for this part of life to answer questions. I reminded him of the Shipwrecked Sailor story, you cannot judge life. It just is. That is yoga, to see life as it is, and watch the mind and open up to the true mind between the thoughts. How exciting to teach youth at this age. How wonderful to have a child grow and learn to live in the world using yoga and story.
My ex is still trying to wiggle out of repaying his debt to me through bankruptcy. I told him I want my car back. I just let the lawyer take care of it. I have learned to navigate the difficulties, not let anything bother me, mostly. It takes a lot of mindfulness and letting go. Sometimes the demons slip in at night, or I talk it out with the King or a friend, but awareness certainly disintegrates the demons on the spot. Like Kali does to the demons. The blood from the demons don't have a chance to sink into the earth and sprout more demons. She prevents this by licking the blood up with her tongue. A daily sitting meditation and yoga practice does wonders for this. It is freedom. Salvation. An ocean of bliss.
At Kripalu, I ate organic, mostly non-dairy ayurvedic food for 11 days straight. I did at least one yoga class a day. Upon leaving, I was shocked to be in the outside world again. I stopped in a convenience store to ask directons. I was overwhlmeed and amazed at all the junk food packaged up. It was so alien. Cotton candy in a plastic container. In Buenos Aires I remember an old man still making it fresh the old fashioned way at the Sunday San Telmo fair. In the store it was a disconnect, an oddity. What is this? Food? Lots of crinkly packages, pork rinds, processed death in waiting. Francie eats gluten and dairy-free, so when we stopped in New Jersey near Bruce Springsteen’s home town, it was hard to find anything to eat on the menu besides a lot of dairy, barbecued wings or bread. We had some salmon and I ate a salad with blue cheese and bacon. The next morning we both had diarrhea! When I told the cashier at the health food store in Swarthmore about it she said, "Oh, you can't eat anything in Jersey."
At her house in Swarthmore, I returned to the healthy diet. Learned to love kale, quinoa, beets and daikon radish. It’s gotten so much easier to do and I can’t imagine eating the old crap, even if it means I can’t eat out much. Everything becomes so clear and free. My body feels great, it’s tone returning and I’m sure I’ve lost 5 pounds or something as my clothes are getting baggy. We shall see how this all holds up abroad! I did find a few vegetarian and health food stores in Buenos Aires. My daughter was thrilled about eating kale, beets and lentils, but my son less so. We shall see! I'm also excited about homeschooling the kids. To really focus on teaching them and un-schooling them by just showing up somewhere outside the US. Obama's race to the top - what a mess. That is not learning. That is competition and more neurosis disguised as education. I will also be happy to be away from the culture, where America thinks murder is funny. "Sunny with a chance of Homicide," is some show, a picture of an orange stabbed and bleeding on the side of New York buses. Angelina Jolie in Salt is the image for gun culture gone girly and unconsciously joining the ranks of the death cult our society has been in for the past 200 years. I finished reading "Bachelor Girl, the secret history of single women in the 20th century," by Betsy Israel. Required reading for all women. How men and the media try persistently to destroy women's power through the ages, yet wome prevail. I understand my mother, the war they waged against her to be anything but a stenographer or wife. And now they still try to destroy us with gun toting media whores. Yet we ignore it an move forward despite it, remarkably. Durga protects us. I had a dream of a lion chasing some people. So we are fierce! I also thought that the black women who were the sales women at Macy's were in credibly strong, to stand around all day surrounded by images of white women and culture. They still have their pride, their peace inside despite all this infantile crap.
I haven’t watched much television in seven years. I did watch the 2006 Olympics and the 2008 presidential elections. I thought I'd protect my kids from TV, but then Hulu and You Tube came along. I am aware of some things that are on TV because of reading the world’s newspapers every morning online. But I’ve never seen a reality show, don’t know what’s popular on TV or who half of the blondes in wedding gowns on the magazines at the grocery check out lanes are. But I did watch a little TV at Francie’s house last night. On the Discovery Channel we caught the end of a show called Hoarders. I was fascinated that other people live in the shame that was my childhood. Buried alive in things. I contacted the network, as they are looking for participants for the new season. I told them my father’s story. His migraine headaches, my mother, the war. I told them he wants it cleaned out before he dies. We all want the house cleaned out. The final psychic journey of the body, the heart, mind and soul. Really leave the past behind. Because it’s still in the body, still in the tissue. Getting it all out is a miracle, a healing extraordinare. We shall see if the producers call.
All in all, it’s a new life. The seven difficult years are over. The first half of my life is over. It seems like a dream the past, or a bad nightmare. I survived. I persevered, by sheer will power alone. The demons have made me strong, courageous and powerful indeed. The journey continues and I’m not afraid. The Queen of Bohemia has done a good and thorough job of cleaning her own house. And she has told her story. Now onward for the next journey.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
THE RETURN AND BACK AGAIN
The Queen has left the desert kingdom forever. She boarded the chariot; she took the iron horse. Now her final ride on the great eagle awaits to whisk her off to the great city. Far, far away she is going. Leaving behind old memories, a battlefield of dead demons, and a dry climate that leaves her coif with very bad hair days.
She said good-bye to Prince Pepe, left with King Albert the Good until she can send for him. She spent her last days saying I love you to so many friends and family, before finally paying a visit her court body worker to wring the stresses of her last visit to the desert kingdom from her body.
As she watched the flat, brown prairie roll by her chariot, she remembered the golden swan that helped her make it to this point. Despite the time away from her new home in the kingdom far, far away, she made it though with the help of the golden swan and voice of the King.
For Independence Day, The Queen of Bohemia will be in New York City.
I sat at the gate waiting for my flight to NYC. I awoke this morning with anticipation, realizing it was fourth of July weekend and it would be very busy at the airport. My friend, Wendy dropped me off at us air with my luggage packed for my teaching and training at Kripalu and the Omega Institute. I was ready to leave Colorado, where I have spent 36 of my 43 years of life.
I learned from my earliest travel abroad experiences in college that you have to carry your own stuff. I had it down with one large suitcase containing my Storytime Yoga bag and clothes, and two carry ons of my business and laptop, cameras and IPad. When I arrived at the vacant counter of US Air, the airline promptly alerted me that the flight was actually with United. I had to lug my heavy bags to the other side of the airport at the east, not west terminal. I was determined to leave Colorado for the fourth time! Nothing could keep me here!
United’s counter was crazy bad with a line six lanes deep. I had missed a plane four years ago spring break getting through the process of my children set up in Texas while I go to the gathering of the Joseph Campbell Foundation at Esalen. But it was so crazy I missed my plane before I could get my kids off. And I never heard from the Foundation again.
I felt panic, seven years of panic and rush swell up in me. I remembered that I am sustained by the grace of Lord Shiva. I chanted the Maha Mritunjaya mantra. I called the King. He said he would send some sailing magic my way, and that this final obstacle would not prevent me from leaving or reaching my goal.
I asked the attendant who was directing people why it took so long. Just
heavy fourth of July traffic, she said of her automated, meaningless job clothed in her drab, uncomfortable uniform. The price you pay for independence, I thought as I waited, breathing in and breathing out and observing the present.
Just then, an announcement blared over the airwaves that curbside check in was now available. Saved! I wasted no time undoing the tethers of the cattle ropes hear they use on the public at airports and lurched my way outside again to the curb. Short line! Hallelujah! Big exhale. Squat, too. Thank you King! But, oh, no. Oh, god. The man behind the counter says that my big check bag is too heavy. 62 pounds $100 fee. “Oh I'll pay it! I don’t care! Just get me on a plane out of here!” “Sorry, can't do overweight baggage at curbside.”
I said I will never fly United again as I lugged my suitcases back to the long line. I had lost my place and it had added an extra line! Doom! I thought. Just then, I received a flash of insight. A lot of the weight is my Storytime Yoga bag filled worth my mysterious objects to entertain little children with during yoga and storytelling class. It’s a heavy leather bag that was my late husband’s. We bought it in Florence in 1996 on a trip to Europe. It was one of the best times of our relationship;
After his death, I used it. I liked the weight of it and the fact that his hands held it during business trips. I kept its little lock of which I do not know the code and I kept the United Red Carpet Club red tag with his name Frank Q. Solis III scripted on it.
I stopped in the middle of the airport, unzipped the giant bag, and took out the Florence bag. Zipped up again. Bolted for the curbside check in once again. Saved! Both under weight! And the attendant checked me in all the way to New York City. I thought I had to have another step at the self-serve kiosk from there. I was so happy I could have kissed him. I smiled and thanked him so much and proclaimed loudly,” I wish you a very wonderful day, sir!” And he looked happy that he could find meaning in his automated, meaningless job he performed from his drab, uncomfortable uniform.
I made it through security no problem. A woman and her son were ahead of me She said, cute skirt and shoes, where did you get them?"
The man behind us laughed as I proudly announced that the skirt I bought from a thrift store in Boulder, a triumph of in my Bohemianesque fashion.
I said the shoes were from my friend Wendy who I stayed with before I left Colorado. She gave them to me at the last minute because I was going to the Yale Club of New York City as the Queen of Bohemia and the dress code required closed-toe shoes and covered shoulders. “You will be watched,” the Yale Club website said. I thought I’d give them something to watch!
I did not want to leave Buenos Aires and return to Boulder. Once back, it was like I had been in a dream. My hair wilted under the dry air, leaving it flat and choppy. Oh, no! I thought. I must get back to a humid climate just to have good hair! I returned to Colorado to tie up lose ends. Primarily to finish moving but also to do the third annual Mythic Yoga Story in the Body retreat at Blue Window Arts in Rollinsville, Colorado, which Wendy owns.
This year we made staffs and wands. The prior years were masks and shields. I told the myths of ancient India and contemplated them in our bodies as we did yoga and meditation. We listened to our bodies to find a symbol or myth that it was speaking. What was coming up or needed to be heard or told or dealt with. I coached them individually in the fine art of oral storytelling against the backdrop of beautiful nature around Boulder, Colorado and Wendy’s place.
One participant's story had an old man. Something about that image of the old man stirred me. A wise old man, the father, the hermit, masculine. During yoga practice this came up, as I listened to my body and asked questions.
Wendy led us on a hike in the forest. I found several sticks. I ended up with three. A first the father - a heavy, tall one that felt good in the left hand, which I painted Aboriginal with my left. The second the mother - a tall, slender one which I wrapped with rigid rap and still remains unfinished, but I thickened up the core, symbolic of that are I need to strengthen and move from more, rather then my shoulders and upper body. The third was a small one, the child. I painted it and turned it into the magic wand, wrapped with an I-Ching coin leftover from a candle as well as two wire bands, honoring a dream I had of them recently. I sculpted a little golden swan from clay to perch on a short branch that came from the stick, a memory of the faith I felt in myself in Buenos Aires.
I realized that the masculine, the transcendent, the father, Shiva, Krishna presence was always with me. A masculine support system I had never felt that everything will be OK. I don't have to carry the whole world myself. The father will provide. The Father and I are One. Always making me feel secure and sustaining me. The fear was gone. My faith complete. Holding the big staff made me feel secure. The wand manifests my unconscious desires. A wonderful retreat indeed.
I tied up lose ends moving. I no longer have to worry about Speer. My assistant runs the business end of things and I get to create. I sold my car to Wendy’s husband and am so relieved of not owning a car. Also, my ex decided to declare bankruptcy and get out of the $30k he owed me, half of which was my pre-marital Toyota Sienna Mini van that he drives around searching for real estate business in a bow tie I bought him. I saw him twice before I left. Once while I was riding a bike. And it was such a great bike and such a beautiful day, when I saw him I just couldn’t be angry. I was so happy that I was leaving for New York City, so I just gave him a big, sloppy wave and a smile. Nothing can disrupt her peace inside. Or so I have Shiva and Krishna to remind me otherwise.
I did have to hire a bankruptcy lawyer because of it and I didn’t have the money to pay my final month’s rent so I used my big deposit, clearly outlining to the landlady what repairs it should go toward.
She flipped out, threatened to evict me while in Argentina. She posted a three-day demand for rent, telling the boy across the street who was my son’s neighbor friend that he shouldn’t come around anymore because we were being evicted. I went to Argentina. Nothing was going to keep me from there. And I didn’t want to engage in that emotional pit with her either. I wished her well. Sent her calm letters in the face of uncertainty. At some point I suggested she carefully reread my original letter and she calmed down after that. Her tone changed and I figure she misunderstood something or maybe she read my blog. I don’t know.
I didn’t clean the house, or the carpets. I was too exhausted moving. I left my late husband's heavy desk that I used as an art table. I let it all go. I locked the keys in the house, and drove down the hill. So excited to reunite with my children down the road, to find the healing before the wounding. I visited Jeff Pontillo, body-worker extraordinaire, for his amazing session and helping me understand my uddiyana bandha and open my heart. It has been a return and now I am back again.
I will be with my children and do our yoga and education while traveling the world. I visited my sister at the Denver Krishna temple. They are now running the restaurant, Govinda’s. We talked about family, children, service. How mom didn’t do anything with us. She read books, wrote poetry. But she didn’t show us any basics, like cooking or how to clean something.
We both love doing those things. She said that service of children is everything. That feminism is about family. We were told in the 70s and 80s to be the super woman, when all we really wanted was a choice. We were forced to be mothers. And our mothers didn’t want to be mothers. Our mother wanted to be a journalist, not a stenographer, and our grandfather had her taken off for shock treatments to break her of her desire. But the big mistake was embracing the market economy. Motherhood, education, health, art, science. Those things have value beyond a buck. Children, life, home, good food, music, art, making love, laughing, teaching, cooking. Life is really simple and so beautiful. You just have to stop everything else and make it a priority. You have to stop the machine. And then you will learn to live and then life is just one awe-struck moment to the next.
She said good-bye to Prince Pepe, left with King Albert the Good until she can send for him. She spent her last days saying I love you to so many friends and family, before finally paying a visit her court body worker to wring the stresses of her last visit to the desert kingdom from her body.
As she watched the flat, brown prairie roll by her chariot, she remembered the golden swan that helped her make it to this point. Despite the time away from her new home in the kingdom far, far away, she made it though with the help of the golden swan and voice of the King.
For Independence Day, The Queen of Bohemia will be in New York City.
I sat at the gate waiting for my flight to NYC. I awoke this morning with anticipation, realizing it was fourth of July weekend and it would be very busy at the airport. My friend, Wendy dropped me off at us air with my luggage packed for my teaching and training at Kripalu and the Omega Institute. I was ready to leave Colorado, where I have spent 36 of my 43 years of life.
I learned from my earliest travel abroad experiences in college that you have to carry your own stuff. I had it down with one large suitcase containing my Storytime Yoga bag and clothes, and two carry ons of my business and laptop, cameras and IPad. When I arrived at the vacant counter of US Air, the airline promptly alerted me that the flight was actually with United. I had to lug my heavy bags to the other side of the airport at the east, not west terminal. I was determined to leave Colorado for the fourth time! Nothing could keep me here!
United’s counter was crazy bad with a line six lanes deep. I had missed a plane four years ago spring break getting through the process of my children set up in Texas while I go to the gathering of the Joseph Campbell Foundation at Esalen. But it was so crazy I missed my plane before I could get my kids off. And I never heard from the Foundation again.
I felt panic, seven years of panic and rush swell up in me. I remembered that I am sustained by the grace of Lord Shiva. I chanted the Maha Mritunjaya mantra. I called the King. He said he would send some sailing magic my way, and that this final obstacle would not prevent me from leaving or reaching my goal.
I asked the attendant who was directing people why it took so long. Just
heavy fourth of July traffic, she said of her automated, meaningless job clothed in her drab, uncomfortable uniform. The price you pay for independence, I thought as I waited, breathing in and breathing out and observing the present.
Just then, an announcement blared over the airwaves that curbside check in was now available. Saved! I wasted no time undoing the tethers of the cattle ropes hear they use on the public at airports and lurched my way outside again to the curb. Short line! Hallelujah! Big exhale. Squat, too. Thank you King! But, oh, no. Oh, god. The man behind the counter says that my big check bag is too heavy. 62 pounds $100 fee. “Oh I'll pay it! I don’t care! Just get me on a plane out of here!” “Sorry, can't do overweight baggage at curbside.”
I said I will never fly United again as I lugged my suitcases back to the long line. I had lost my place and it had added an extra line! Doom! I thought. Just then, I received a flash of insight. A lot of the weight is my Storytime Yoga bag filled worth my mysterious objects to entertain little children with during yoga and storytelling class. It’s a heavy leather bag that was my late husband’s. We bought it in Florence in 1996 on a trip to Europe. It was one of the best times of our relationship;
After his death, I used it. I liked the weight of it and the fact that his hands held it during business trips. I kept its little lock of which I do not know the code and I kept the United Red Carpet Club red tag with his name Frank Q. Solis III scripted on it.
I stopped in the middle of the airport, unzipped the giant bag, and took out the Florence bag. Zipped up again. Bolted for the curbside check in once again. Saved! Both under weight! And the attendant checked me in all the way to New York City. I thought I had to have another step at the self-serve kiosk from there. I was so happy I could have kissed him. I smiled and thanked him so much and proclaimed loudly,” I wish you a very wonderful day, sir!” And he looked happy that he could find meaning in his automated, meaningless job he performed from his drab, uncomfortable uniform.
I made it through security no problem. A woman and her son were ahead of me She said, cute skirt and shoes, where did you get them?"
The man behind us laughed as I proudly announced that the skirt I bought from a thrift store in Boulder, a triumph of in my Bohemianesque fashion.
I said the shoes were from my friend Wendy who I stayed with before I left Colorado. She gave them to me at the last minute because I was going to the Yale Club of New York City as the Queen of Bohemia and the dress code required closed-toe shoes and covered shoulders. “You will be watched,” the Yale Club website said. I thought I’d give them something to watch!
I did not want to leave Buenos Aires and return to Boulder. Once back, it was like I had been in a dream. My hair wilted under the dry air, leaving it flat and choppy. Oh, no! I thought. I must get back to a humid climate just to have good hair! I returned to Colorado to tie up lose ends. Primarily to finish moving but also to do the third annual Mythic Yoga Story in the Body retreat at Blue Window Arts in Rollinsville, Colorado, which Wendy owns.
This year we made staffs and wands. The prior years were masks and shields. I told the myths of ancient India and contemplated them in our bodies as we did yoga and meditation. We listened to our bodies to find a symbol or myth that it was speaking. What was coming up or needed to be heard or told or dealt with. I coached them individually in the fine art of oral storytelling against the backdrop of beautiful nature around Boulder, Colorado and Wendy’s place.
One participant's story had an old man. Something about that image of the old man stirred me. A wise old man, the father, the hermit, masculine. During yoga practice this came up, as I listened to my body and asked questions.
Wendy led us on a hike in the forest. I found several sticks. I ended up with three. A first the father - a heavy, tall one that felt good in the left hand, which I painted Aboriginal with my left. The second the mother - a tall, slender one which I wrapped with rigid rap and still remains unfinished, but I thickened up the core, symbolic of that are I need to strengthen and move from more, rather then my shoulders and upper body. The third was a small one, the child. I painted it and turned it into the magic wand, wrapped with an I-Ching coin leftover from a candle as well as two wire bands, honoring a dream I had of them recently. I sculpted a little golden swan from clay to perch on a short branch that came from the stick, a memory of the faith I felt in myself in Buenos Aires.
I realized that the masculine, the transcendent, the father, Shiva, Krishna presence was always with me. A masculine support system I had never felt that everything will be OK. I don't have to carry the whole world myself. The father will provide. The Father and I are One. Always making me feel secure and sustaining me. The fear was gone. My faith complete. Holding the big staff made me feel secure. The wand manifests my unconscious desires. A wonderful retreat indeed.
I tied up lose ends moving. I no longer have to worry about Speer. My assistant runs the business end of things and I get to create. I sold my car to Wendy’s husband and am so relieved of not owning a car. Also, my ex decided to declare bankruptcy and get out of the $30k he owed me, half of which was my pre-marital Toyota Sienna Mini van that he drives around searching for real estate business in a bow tie I bought him. I saw him twice before I left. Once while I was riding a bike. And it was such a great bike and such a beautiful day, when I saw him I just couldn’t be angry. I was so happy that I was leaving for New York City, so I just gave him a big, sloppy wave and a smile. Nothing can disrupt her peace inside. Or so I have Shiva and Krishna to remind me otherwise.
I did have to hire a bankruptcy lawyer because of it and I didn’t have the money to pay my final month’s rent so I used my big deposit, clearly outlining to the landlady what repairs it should go toward.
She flipped out, threatened to evict me while in Argentina. She posted a three-day demand for rent, telling the boy across the street who was my son’s neighbor friend that he shouldn’t come around anymore because we were being evicted. I went to Argentina. Nothing was going to keep me from there. And I didn’t want to engage in that emotional pit with her either. I wished her well. Sent her calm letters in the face of uncertainty. At some point I suggested she carefully reread my original letter and she calmed down after that. Her tone changed and I figure she misunderstood something or maybe she read my blog. I don’t know.
I didn’t clean the house, or the carpets. I was too exhausted moving. I left my late husband's heavy desk that I used as an art table. I let it all go. I locked the keys in the house, and drove down the hill. So excited to reunite with my children down the road, to find the healing before the wounding. I visited Jeff Pontillo, body-worker extraordinaire, for his amazing session and helping me understand my uddiyana bandha and open my heart. It has been a return and now I am back again.
I will be with my children and do our yoga and education while traveling the world. I visited my sister at the Denver Krishna temple. They are now running the restaurant, Govinda’s. We talked about family, children, service. How mom didn’t do anything with us. She read books, wrote poetry. But she didn’t show us any basics, like cooking or how to clean something.
We both love doing those things. She said that service of children is everything. That feminism is about family. We were told in the 70s and 80s to be the super woman, when all we really wanted was a choice. We were forced to be mothers. And our mothers didn’t want to be mothers. Our mother wanted to be a journalist, not a stenographer, and our grandfather had her taken off for shock treatments to break her of her desire. But the big mistake was embracing the market economy. Motherhood, education, health, art, science. Those things have value beyond a buck. Children, life, home, good food, music, art, making love, laughing, teaching, cooking. Life is really simple and so beautiful. You just have to stop everything else and make it a priority. You have to stop the machine. And then you will learn to live and then life is just one awe-struck moment to the next.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
THE QUEEN OF BOHEMIA LIVES IN BUENOS AIRES
By
Sydney Solis
This summer, while the prince and princess are visiting with the family of their late King father in a the land of a single star, Prince Pepe is with the Queen's father, King Albert the Good, frolicking in a large yard in the country and chasing a new cat.
Meanwhile, the Queen has been on a long journey, far, far away from the desert kingdom. She has gone to a place on the other side of the world. And although she misses her dear prince and princess and Prince Pepe, this separation has allowed her to resurrect her life. Too long she has felt the pressures of the desert kingdom closing in around her, sucking her body and heart’s energies, choking off her creative flow. She has visited the Great Tree again, became the High Priestess again, dipped into the well again and removed a toad that was blocking the well and a rat that was gnawing at the roots of the tree. Life is real and joyful, flowing and peaceful and rid of the shadows past. That’s because the Queen of Bohemia has found her true home. Like an ugly duckling that sensed something terribly wrong about her prior kingdom and battling a thousand demons, she realizes there was never anything wrong with her. It’s just a matter of geography. She realizes now that The Queen of Bohemia Lives in Buenos Aires.
I can almost see Eva Peron’s grave from the balcony of my ninth floor apartment. She is dead. Long dead. But I am just beginning to live.
I have been in Buenos Aires for over two weeks, and I feel so at home. I have been staying in a little apartment with a balcony that overlooks Recoleta Cemetary where Evita is buried among the dead generals, presidents and elite of centuries past. Every day and night their elaborate-tombed metropolis of marble and concrete scattered across four blocks reminded me that they are dead, and I am alive.
I spent the first week in a whirlwind of getting used to the city and its plethora of sites – statues of winged angels and horses, stunning art deco and turn-of-the-century architecture richly engraved, curved and ornate, all exalting the human spirit. They settle in like seeds planted in the human soul to sprout great ideas and imagination. And a new future. Like something is being reborn. Like the lingering era of military and men murdering monstrously in their fringy uniforms is finaly being snipped away, like dead hair on the stylist’s floor.
There is a different fashion sense in Buenos Aires. Of course I love it, whereas before I had to shop in thrift stores in the U.S. to find anything worthy of my Bohemianesque-esh-ness. Of course it's winter, everybody is bundled up in scarves and hats and gloves. I feel it’s rather balmy, like a decent Colorado day in Spring. The people are into coffee, tango, the World Cup, psychotherapy, art, music, books and opera. It’s the city with the most psychotherapists per capita in the world. People aren’t ashamed to get mental health like Americans are. Bookstores are everywhere, and not a Barnes and Noble to be seen! Very few chains or imports are here at all, as everything from food to underwear is made within its borders. Everything is original and artisan, from handmade chocolates and pastries in the ubiquitous cafeterías and coffee shops on every corner, to hand-made shoes, hand-knit multicolored sweaters, artisan pasta. Buildings mostly were designed by French and Italian architects, and the best apartments are the old ones, crying out the many stories and songs that the stories in its rooms - with high ceilings and long windows shielded with shutters - have heard.
Surely the landscape saves my soul. Artists and colorful buildings flourish, and my soul was warmed by the Bohemian clatter in San Telmo on Sundays in the outdoor antique fair, with tango dancers, artists, musicians, performance artists, food and the incredible act of being alive.
Bohemian Me. That is my ancestory. Card-carrying of the boat. It’s not about the stuff, but what kind of music the stuff can create. That’s our motto. Give me life or give me death, and not some plastic thing. In my life I have been the ugly ducking, with a European father who survived a concentration camp on Java during the war, and nobody could share that story. It was so far away from anybody’s shore. It was shut down and silenced under the taunts of wealthy girls in shirts with alligators over their hearts. And over my heart I wore a flower embroidered over a grease stain on a dress bought for a quarter at a garage sale.
In Buenos Aires the stain is beautiful. It’s so beautiful it clicks with every step on the pavement, every flicker of conversation in the shop window. Here I am like the ugly ducking, Cinderella, finally finding out how beautiful she really is, and that she was never ugly, she was just stuck in some really ugly places with some equally ugly people don’t even uglier things to each other. I realize that I was just misplaced and separated from my tribe. There was an error in cognition, an affliction of the mind, causing delusion of the true Self.
After so many rebukes of who I am, I have found my tribe. That’s why the Queen of Bohemia Lives in Buenos Aires. Horns are honking. Argentina must have one another game in the World Cup.
I remember my late husband, Frank. He scolded me if I cut my meat and used the fork in my left hand to eat it. He bought me a book, Emily Post’s Etiquette. After dutifully reading it, I realized that I was eating the European way, the way my Dutch father modeled at the table when I was a child. The American way is to cut your meat, then pass the fork to the right hand, as opposed to saving the step and keeping it in the left hand. I remember he scolded me if a flake of instant oatmeal spilled onto the counter from out of the little paper serving bag it was enclosed in while being poured into a bowl. He criticized me if I chomped on a chip too loudly, and when a funny voice or expressive face came out he’d say, “Why can’t you just say something normal? It’s like living with Carol Burnett.”
I remember, a KOA campground, somewhere maybe in California, 1977. I am 10 years old. My older sister, younger sister and I go to brush our teeth. It’s busy with other campers in the small women’s public bathroom. We wait our turn in line to go to the sinks. We brush our teeth. I brush and brush and brush. I have a blue, plastic toothbrush shaped like a gun. Toothpaste foams all around my mouth, dripping down my chin. I brush and brush and brush. Women standing in line to use the sink look at me funny. I don’t understand what they are looking at. The foaming mess all around my mouth. I am just brushing my teeth, lady. I use my hands to wash away the foam with the running water. My hands become a cup to catch the water and rinse my mouth and spit. The funny looks get harsher. Because we didn’t have a towel. We used our pajama sleeves.
My sisters and I leave. My oldest sister whispers, “All those ladies with their neat little cups to wash their mouths out. We don’t need any of that.” Our mother never taught us to brush our teeth. She never taught us to comb our hair, or dress ourselves, or carry a towel or clean anything well or correctly. But she did teach us to travel, to go for it and explore.
Perhaps my sister said that to protect us. Us rag tag children in old garage sale clothing. The Six Straubs from Boulder, Colorado packed into a little fishing camper trekking to California for a family camping trip. Baptized Catholic but have a Jewish grandfather who died in a force labor mine outside of Tokyo, and a father who espouses reincarnation and a mother who writes poetry when she is not screaming at you in the middle of the night or embarrassing you in public. Driving the long roads across the West, we hear the news on the little AM radio in the truck cab about Elvis’s death while on the road somewhere in Nevada. We snap pictures from a little film camera at every monument. We are having fun. Even though we are different. Bohemians and smart Dutch Indonesians. Even though we don’t have much at all, we have fun anyway. Because we are survivors and surviving has taught us how to live.
Everything is a bit worn in Buenos Aires, very authentic, Bohemian. It’s not perfect. Not made yesterday and not requiring a car to drive. (The Gulf Oil spill is still gushing, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug.) There is the gentleness of antiquity here and a wearing down that softens the harshness of the world and lets you rest. It makes me feel at home, even though my childhood home was squalor and clutter, and my grown up home is funky, eclectic.
I cringe at the new strip malls and asphalt parking lots that overtake the Colorado prairie. I was horrified to stop by my assistant’s apartment near the Flatiron’s Mall to drop off materials before I left. My father called the mall, “The Last Mall of the Kali-Yug,” and I understand now why. This old model is from the Old Oil Regime and kills the human spirit. These neat little planned commercial hubs have proletariat housing units surrounding them, which I liken to Communist China housing blocks. From the highway they look rather decent. They were only built 10 years ago about. I drove around lost in the labyrinth of grey streets and beige buildings and wondered if I had taken a wrong turn and had ended up in Iraq instead this Suburbistan.
I found her apartment complex. One of three towering, enormous buildings that each look exactly the same as the other. Everybody’s home but nobody is there. You could walk for a while through nowhere, but you don’t bother to, so you drive in your car instead to beige mall or chain convenience store in the shape of a box to buy some kind of packaged, corporate food and bring it back to the cement compound to consume in front of a television.
The only other human beings I saw besides my assistant among these three massive compounds were some Indian women in pink saris near a doorway. There were some enormous courtyard areas of green grass. It begged for a community garden, park benches, street musicians or somebody selling candy, maybe even a child playing or I'll take screaming, ANYTHING remotely HUMAN or giving off life signals that was not herbacious. The hallway reminded me of movies I’ve seen of New York tenements. Ok, so she may be upset that I write this, but I’m doing my best to break her out of there! But this is what I was escaping, lest I die. Maybe many of you live in a city with great public transportation and works of art and amenities near you, but I have never had that. I’ve always had to drive and survive.
What I like about Argentina is that it’s inexpensive. I can live sustainably here and everybody pays cash and that's good because I'm on a cash basis now. The country went through an economic collapse in 2001 so they already know how to deal with life’s unexpected curvature shape. Here I can live in a great city and be able to rent an inexpensive apartment with everything included, like cable, phone and maid, what a deal! You can ride the bus for 25 cents. I got a nice haircut and color for $50, including tip, and my brows waxed for $2! Plus, food is fresh and all grown within the country. No hormones, antibiotics or factory farming!
The second week I settled down to do work, writing in coffee shops, meeting expats, connecting with community and possibilities. This afternoon I taught a meditation class to the social entrepreneurship called Programar. It trains 17-25-year-old slum residents to fill the IT jobs that abound in Argentina. I went to a fundraiser there recently and was so impressed. All I want to do is serve, so I got my chance. I did it all in Spanish! Even told a joke and they laughed! I hear everywhere that my Spanish is great. It feels good after all my obsessive years of hard work with language and sounds.
Earlier this week, I took the bus back to San Telmo. An indigenous man walked by me with the usual hippie, backpacker look. However, I wasn’t afraid when he started talking to me. He was from Peru, and going to sell his flutes and seed necklaces at the street fair. He said that when I walked by he could see my aura, “like a comet went by. I saw a trail of light and sparkles like a comet behind you.” We talked for a while. I could understand his Spanish very well, as I’ve spent time in Peru and Ecuador, and it was refreshing, since the Argentine accent is difficult for me to understand. And there were three policeman next to me by the time we reached the street corner. We talked for a long time, about the indigenous shamans, intuitive knowing, connecting with the cosmos. It was great to connect. The indigenous, like he, are so connected to the depths of the soul and the body.
I had to say goodbye temporarily, as I was expected at the Programar fundraiser. I hooked up with him again afterwards and he gave me a Mayan astrology reading. We went to an internet café and he looked the reading up with my birth date. I’m KA, the color is white, and it was pretty accurate in that I’m a writer, and to inspire people. It’s good to remember these things. Or be reminded. The Queen sometimes forgets and those little doubts and fears slip in. He wanted to do another reading about getting stuck energy out of the body, but I begged off, saying I was tired (I was, and I’m not used to humid cold so started sweating in the café.) and that I wanted to get to the Puppet Museum before it closed. I’m glad I did, as my inner child delighted in the small, dark theater filled with the pattle and murmur of children and parents voices, which massaged the heart of my neglected childhood down to a laugh in the belly.
A few days ago I went to the Finca Ecologica Nueva Vrindavana in General Rodriquez, about 60 kilometeres outside of Buenos Aires in the country. It was pouring rain and cold. I had intended to stay two nights to get a feel for the place and see if I could bring my kids later. But after a sleepless night on a hard mattress in very rustic conditions listening to roosters at all hours, and after freezing by a small wood burning stove and being reminded that I just survived one of the longest, coldest winters in Colorado history and that I had come to Argentina in the WINTER, and there was a warm, soft bed waiting for me in Buenos Aires, I left early.
But it was not before enjoying the place immensely - the calm of nature, the French, Portuguese and British young travelers working at the farm. I toured a very soggy farm the next morning with a regular staff member who was Argentine. I looked at the cool crops growing in the vegetable garden, of cilantro, broccoli, and cabbage. They grew onions not to eat but as a pest repellent. Roaming cows, geese, a cat and neighboring chickens and roosters blow any Disney theme park away. I took an interesting yoga class, listening keenly for new Spanish yoga vocabulary, watched the movie What the Bleep do we Know for the 5th time in my life, and ate some serious vegetarian fare, a respite from the heavy carbs, confections and carne in the city.
I also got to visit with Krishna. We went to the temple. It was great to see the deities, Krishna and Radha, and be reminded that Krishna – that divine presence - is with you always. He’s that transcendental reality, the supreme reality behind your dualistic thoughts that produce this illusional reality. Connect and identify in that realm, then all fear, all karma, drops away. It is moksha. Like Christ there with you, you are never alone with the divine presence. You just wake up to it one day, and never leave that house of love again because it fits you like the skin you bathe in the morning, glistening in the sunlight.
I was so grateful for my experience. I came back to a sunny Buenos Aires and a warm, soft bed and heated apartment! How poor people suffer! I don’t want to, and I feel they shouldn’t either! Now I have been writing in coffee shops and showing the street to my kids via SKYPE. I’ve been working and practicing yoga. I’m in my groove. It took all this time to decompress from the states, find myself without my children around, which is pretty much 24-7, and really connect to my creative self. It took a little time, but it was there all along.
Now I leave on tomorrow evening. I am a little sad because I already feel that this is my home. I will be sad to see the brown prairie at Denver International Airport when the plane touches down. The dry air will probably kill the body that my hair has here. I got the best haircut of my life here as a walk in! But I have my mythic self to defend me from the upcoming pressures and final details of moving and arranging things. But I am so looking forward to my Mythic Yoga retreat, Kripalu kids camp, Omega training and more. As I have been re-inspired by my own dream. I just had not been able to look at it in a while. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't have vampires draining your energy and time.
I am determined to return to Buenos Aires with my children in the fall, (their spring) so that they can experience what I have experienced and to continue what I have set in motion. In the meantime, I am ready to return to Colorado, for I know myself.
So the Queen has found herself. She touches her crown with the blue jewel in it and she's ready for transport. And although she is a bit nervous to come back to the desert kingdom and tie up loose ends, she has a secret talisman. She was given a golden swan on her journey by the townspeople of Buenos Aires. She carries it in her pocket wherever she goes. The golden swan gives her the courage to return to the desert kingdom and put the final demons to rest with the final battle. For all she sees in front of her now is a bridge. A bridge that she is crossing over. She does not look over the edge of the bridge to the perilous depths below. She just looks to the other side of the bridge. She feels her feet and heart moving steadily toward that side. She will surely arrive. She will surely arrive home.
Sydney Solis
This summer, while the prince and princess are visiting with the family of their late King father in a the land of a single star, Prince Pepe is with the Queen's father, King Albert the Good, frolicking in a large yard in the country and chasing a new cat.
Meanwhile, the Queen has been on a long journey, far, far away from the desert kingdom. She has gone to a place on the other side of the world. And although she misses her dear prince and princess and Prince Pepe, this separation has allowed her to resurrect her life. Too long she has felt the pressures of the desert kingdom closing in around her, sucking her body and heart’s energies, choking off her creative flow. She has visited the Great Tree again, became the High Priestess again, dipped into the well again and removed a toad that was blocking the well and a rat that was gnawing at the roots of the tree. Life is real and joyful, flowing and peaceful and rid of the shadows past. That’s because the Queen of Bohemia has found her true home. Like an ugly duckling that sensed something terribly wrong about her prior kingdom and battling a thousand demons, she realizes there was never anything wrong with her. It’s just a matter of geography. She realizes now that The Queen of Bohemia Lives in Buenos Aires.
I can almost see Eva Peron’s grave from the balcony of my ninth floor apartment. She is dead. Long dead. But I am just beginning to live.
I have been in Buenos Aires for over two weeks, and I feel so at home. I have been staying in a little apartment with a balcony that overlooks Recoleta Cemetary where Evita is buried among the dead generals, presidents and elite of centuries past. Every day and night their elaborate-tombed metropolis of marble and concrete scattered across four blocks reminded me that they are dead, and I am alive.
I spent the first week in a whirlwind of getting used to the city and its plethora of sites – statues of winged angels and horses, stunning art deco and turn-of-the-century architecture richly engraved, curved and ornate, all exalting the human spirit. They settle in like seeds planted in the human soul to sprout great ideas and imagination. And a new future. Like something is being reborn. Like the lingering era of military and men murdering monstrously in their fringy uniforms is finaly being snipped away, like dead hair on the stylist’s floor.
There is a different fashion sense in Buenos Aires. Of course I love it, whereas before I had to shop in thrift stores in the U.S. to find anything worthy of my Bohemianesque-esh-ness. Of course it's winter, everybody is bundled up in scarves and hats and gloves. I feel it’s rather balmy, like a decent Colorado day in Spring. The people are into coffee, tango, the World Cup, psychotherapy, art, music, books and opera. It’s the city with the most psychotherapists per capita in the world. People aren’t ashamed to get mental health like Americans are. Bookstores are everywhere, and not a Barnes and Noble to be seen! Very few chains or imports are here at all, as everything from food to underwear is made within its borders. Everything is original and artisan, from handmade chocolates and pastries in the ubiquitous cafeterías and coffee shops on every corner, to hand-made shoes, hand-knit multicolored sweaters, artisan pasta. Buildings mostly were designed by French and Italian architects, and the best apartments are the old ones, crying out the many stories and songs that the stories in its rooms - with high ceilings and long windows shielded with shutters - have heard.
Surely the landscape saves my soul. Artists and colorful buildings flourish, and my soul was warmed by the Bohemian clatter in San Telmo on Sundays in the outdoor antique fair, with tango dancers, artists, musicians, performance artists, food and the incredible act of being alive.
Bohemian Me. That is my ancestory. Card-carrying of the boat. It’s not about the stuff, but what kind of music the stuff can create. That’s our motto. Give me life or give me death, and not some plastic thing. In my life I have been the ugly ducking, with a European father who survived a concentration camp on Java during the war, and nobody could share that story. It was so far away from anybody’s shore. It was shut down and silenced under the taunts of wealthy girls in shirts with alligators over their hearts. And over my heart I wore a flower embroidered over a grease stain on a dress bought for a quarter at a garage sale.
In Buenos Aires the stain is beautiful. It’s so beautiful it clicks with every step on the pavement, every flicker of conversation in the shop window. Here I am like the ugly ducking, Cinderella, finally finding out how beautiful she really is, and that she was never ugly, she was just stuck in some really ugly places with some equally ugly people don’t even uglier things to each other. I realize that I was just misplaced and separated from my tribe. There was an error in cognition, an affliction of the mind, causing delusion of the true Self.
After so many rebukes of who I am, I have found my tribe. That’s why the Queen of Bohemia Lives in Buenos Aires. Horns are honking. Argentina must have one another game in the World Cup.
I remember my late husband, Frank. He scolded me if I cut my meat and used the fork in my left hand to eat it. He bought me a book, Emily Post’s Etiquette. After dutifully reading it, I realized that I was eating the European way, the way my Dutch father modeled at the table when I was a child. The American way is to cut your meat, then pass the fork to the right hand, as opposed to saving the step and keeping it in the left hand. I remember he scolded me if a flake of instant oatmeal spilled onto the counter from out of the little paper serving bag it was enclosed in while being poured into a bowl. He criticized me if I chomped on a chip too loudly, and when a funny voice or expressive face came out he’d say, “Why can’t you just say something normal? It’s like living with Carol Burnett.”
I remember, a KOA campground, somewhere maybe in California, 1977. I am 10 years old. My older sister, younger sister and I go to brush our teeth. It’s busy with other campers in the small women’s public bathroom. We wait our turn in line to go to the sinks. We brush our teeth. I brush and brush and brush. I have a blue, plastic toothbrush shaped like a gun. Toothpaste foams all around my mouth, dripping down my chin. I brush and brush and brush. Women standing in line to use the sink look at me funny. I don’t understand what they are looking at. The foaming mess all around my mouth. I am just brushing my teeth, lady. I use my hands to wash away the foam with the running water. My hands become a cup to catch the water and rinse my mouth and spit. The funny looks get harsher. Because we didn’t have a towel. We used our pajama sleeves.
My sisters and I leave. My oldest sister whispers, “All those ladies with their neat little cups to wash their mouths out. We don’t need any of that.” Our mother never taught us to brush our teeth. She never taught us to comb our hair, or dress ourselves, or carry a towel or clean anything well or correctly. But she did teach us to travel, to go for it and explore.
Perhaps my sister said that to protect us. Us rag tag children in old garage sale clothing. The Six Straubs from Boulder, Colorado packed into a little fishing camper trekking to California for a family camping trip. Baptized Catholic but have a Jewish grandfather who died in a force labor mine outside of Tokyo, and a father who espouses reincarnation and a mother who writes poetry when she is not screaming at you in the middle of the night or embarrassing you in public. Driving the long roads across the West, we hear the news on the little AM radio in the truck cab about Elvis’s death while on the road somewhere in Nevada. We snap pictures from a little film camera at every monument. We are having fun. Even though we are different. Bohemians and smart Dutch Indonesians. Even though we don’t have much at all, we have fun anyway. Because we are survivors and surviving has taught us how to live.
Everything is a bit worn in Buenos Aires, very authentic, Bohemian. It’s not perfect. Not made yesterday and not requiring a car to drive. (The Gulf Oil spill is still gushing, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug.) There is the gentleness of antiquity here and a wearing down that softens the harshness of the world and lets you rest. It makes me feel at home, even though my childhood home was squalor and clutter, and my grown up home is funky, eclectic.
I cringe at the new strip malls and asphalt parking lots that overtake the Colorado prairie. I was horrified to stop by my assistant’s apartment near the Flatiron’s Mall to drop off materials before I left. My father called the mall, “The Last Mall of the Kali-Yug,” and I understand now why. This old model is from the Old Oil Regime and kills the human spirit. These neat little planned commercial hubs have proletariat housing units surrounding them, which I liken to Communist China housing blocks. From the highway they look rather decent. They were only built 10 years ago about. I drove around lost in the labyrinth of grey streets and beige buildings and wondered if I had taken a wrong turn and had ended up in Iraq instead this Suburbistan.
I found her apartment complex. One of three towering, enormous buildings that each look exactly the same as the other. Everybody’s home but nobody is there. You could walk for a while through nowhere, but you don’t bother to, so you drive in your car instead to beige mall or chain convenience store in the shape of a box to buy some kind of packaged, corporate food and bring it back to the cement compound to consume in front of a television.
The only other human beings I saw besides my assistant among these three massive compounds were some Indian women in pink saris near a doorway. There were some enormous courtyard areas of green grass. It begged for a community garden, park benches, street musicians or somebody selling candy, maybe even a child playing or I'll take screaming, ANYTHING remotely HUMAN or giving off life signals that was not herbacious. The hallway reminded me of movies I’ve seen of New York tenements. Ok, so she may be upset that I write this, but I’m doing my best to break her out of there! But this is what I was escaping, lest I die. Maybe many of you live in a city with great public transportation and works of art and amenities near you, but I have never had that. I’ve always had to drive and survive.
What I like about Argentina is that it’s inexpensive. I can live sustainably here and everybody pays cash and that's good because I'm on a cash basis now. The country went through an economic collapse in 2001 so they already know how to deal with life’s unexpected curvature shape. Here I can live in a great city and be able to rent an inexpensive apartment with everything included, like cable, phone and maid, what a deal! You can ride the bus for 25 cents. I got a nice haircut and color for $50, including tip, and my brows waxed for $2! Plus, food is fresh and all grown within the country. No hormones, antibiotics or factory farming!
The second week I settled down to do work, writing in coffee shops, meeting expats, connecting with community and possibilities. This afternoon I taught a meditation class to the social entrepreneurship called Programar. It trains 17-25-year-old slum residents to fill the IT jobs that abound in Argentina. I went to a fundraiser there recently and was so impressed. All I want to do is serve, so I got my chance. I did it all in Spanish! Even told a joke and they laughed! I hear everywhere that my Spanish is great. It feels good after all my obsessive years of hard work with language and sounds.
Earlier this week, I took the bus back to San Telmo. An indigenous man walked by me with the usual hippie, backpacker look. However, I wasn’t afraid when he started talking to me. He was from Peru, and going to sell his flutes and seed necklaces at the street fair. He said that when I walked by he could see my aura, “like a comet went by. I saw a trail of light and sparkles like a comet behind you.” We talked for a while. I could understand his Spanish very well, as I’ve spent time in Peru and Ecuador, and it was refreshing, since the Argentine accent is difficult for me to understand. And there were three policeman next to me by the time we reached the street corner. We talked for a long time, about the indigenous shamans, intuitive knowing, connecting with the cosmos. It was great to connect. The indigenous, like he, are so connected to the depths of the soul and the body.
I had to say goodbye temporarily, as I was expected at the Programar fundraiser. I hooked up with him again afterwards and he gave me a Mayan astrology reading. We went to an internet café and he looked the reading up with my birth date. I’m KA, the color is white, and it was pretty accurate in that I’m a writer, and to inspire people. It’s good to remember these things. Or be reminded. The Queen sometimes forgets and those little doubts and fears slip in. He wanted to do another reading about getting stuck energy out of the body, but I begged off, saying I was tired (I was, and I’m not used to humid cold so started sweating in the café.) and that I wanted to get to the Puppet Museum before it closed. I’m glad I did, as my inner child delighted in the small, dark theater filled with the pattle and murmur of children and parents voices, which massaged the heart of my neglected childhood down to a laugh in the belly.
A few days ago I went to the Finca Ecologica Nueva Vrindavana in General Rodriquez, about 60 kilometeres outside of Buenos Aires in the country. It was pouring rain and cold. I had intended to stay two nights to get a feel for the place and see if I could bring my kids later. But after a sleepless night on a hard mattress in very rustic conditions listening to roosters at all hours, and after freezing by a small wood burning stove and being reminded that I just survived one of the longest, coldest winters in Colorado history and that I had come to Argentina in the WINTER, and there was a warm, soft bed waiting for me in Buenos Aires, I left early.
But it was not before enjoying the place immensely - the calm of nature, the French, Portuguese and British young travelers working at the farm. I toured a very soggy farm the next morning with a regular staff member who was Argentine. I looked at the cool crops growing in the vegetable garden, of cilantro, broccoli, and cabbage. They grew onions not to eat but as a pest repellent. Roaming cows, geese, a cat and neighboring chickens and roosters blow any Disney theme park away. I took an interesting yoga class, listening keenly for new Spanish yoga vocabulary, watched the movie What the Bleep do we Know for the 5th time in my life, and ate some serious vegetarian fare, a respite from the heavy carbs, confections and carne in the city.
I also got to visit with Krishna. We went to the temple. It was great to see the deities, Krishna and Radha, and be reminded that Krishna – that divine presence - is with you always. He’s that transcendental reality, the supreme reality behind your dualistic thoughts that produce this illusional reality. Connect and identify in that realm, then all fear, all karma, drops away. It is moksha. Like Christ there with you, you are never alone with the divine presence. You just wake up to it one day, and never leave that house of love again because it fits you like the skin you bathe in the morning, glistening in the sunlight.
I was so grateful for my experience. I came back to a sunny Buenos Aires and a warm, soft bed and heated apartment! How poor people suffer! I don’t want to, and I feel they shouldn’t either! Now I have been writing in coffee shops and showing the street to my kids via SKYPE. I’ve been working and practicing yoga. I’m in my groove. It took all this time to decompress from the states, find myself without my children around, which is pretty much 24-7, and really connect to my creative self. It took a little time, but it was there all along.
Now I leave on tomorrow evening. I am a little sad because I already feel that this is my home. I will be sad to see the brown prairie at Denver International Airport when the plane touches down. The dry air will probably kill the body that my hair has here. I got the best haircut of my life here as a walk in! But I have my mythic self to defend me from the upcoming pressures and final details of moving and arranging things. But I am so looking forward to my Mythic Yoga retreat, Kripalu kids camp, Omega training and more. As I have been re-inspired by my own dream. I just had not been able to look at it in a while. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't have vampires draining your energy and time.
I am determined to return to Buenos Aires with my children in the fall, (their spring) so that they can experience what I have experienced and to continue what I have set in motion. In the meantime, I am ready to return to Colorado, for I know myself.
So the Queen has found herself. She touches her crown with the blue jewel in it and she's ready for transport. And although she is a bit nervous to come back to the desert kingdom and tie up loose ends, she has a secret talisman. She was given a golden swan on her journey by the townspeople of Buenos Aires. She carries it in her pocket wherever she goes. The golden swan gives her the courage to return to the desert kingdom and put the final demons to rest with the final battle. For all she sees in front of her now is a bridge. A bridge that she is crossing over. She does not look over the edge of the bridge to the perilous depths below. She just looks to the other side of the bridge. She feels her feet and heart moving steadily toward that side. She will surely arrive. She will surely arrive home.
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