Tag Archives: mindfulness

From Here to the Sun and Back Sixty Times

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Human knowledge grows at a phenomenal rate. Think of the world as understood in Medieval days and as we understand it today. No need to go so far back. Think of the average Western household in Ozzie and Harriet’s time and your own household.

My partner, who could be called antagonistic toward maneuvering through life via screens, came home one day not too long ago decrying how much even he relies on screen technology in the course of his day. He checked the best route into the city with Waze to avoid as much traffic as possible. He parked his car using the Pango app. He received and acknowledged orders from clients via WhatsApp. While waiting for an appointment he got caught up with local, national, and international news online. He called me from his cell phone to mine to kill time in traffic on the way home.

And traveling? How did we manage when we started traveling to out of the way places 30 years ago? No booking.com, Airbnb, TripAdvisor; no Facebook groups of like-minded people offering tips or asking for information. No Uber or Ola to find and get us to hole-in-wall locations at a reasonable price. No google to locate pure veg restaurants.

Okay, all that technology is amazing. It makes our lives so much easier and so many things more accessible. And it also, of course, has huge downsides and creates many distressing societal issues. But this isn’t about that.

Human knowledge doesn’t begin and end with technological advances like those.

The medical world has now advanced to allow for many previously terminal cancers to become chronic cancer; cancer with which, with continuous treatment, people can live a quality life for decades. Prosthetics moveable by thought. I could go on but I don’t really know even a minuscule percentage of all the incredible innovations in the world of medicine.

And what about all the new information coming from the James Webb Space Telescope? It can see what the universe looked like around a quarter of a billion years (possibly back to 100 million years) when the first stars and galaxies started to form. Astrophysicists are scratching their heads wondering how their science could’ve gotten so much so wrong now that the telescope is providing new information.

The study of the cell – that most basic of components in the biological world – has changed so much over the past few decades that today we know that if the DNA from the cells found in one human body were stretched out in one continuous line it would reach the sun and back sixty times, Sixty. Six-oh. We didn’t even know DNA existed before the 1860s. It wasn’t known to be the carrier of genetic material until 1944 and became a reliable profiling mechanism only 40 short years ago.

Amazing, exciting, miraculous advances in human knowledge.

And yet…

Yesterday I tuned into day three of The Dalai Lama Global Vision Summit. I happened to choose Dr. Joe Loizzo’s talk about ethical leadership. I got as far as his call for every person on the entire planet to commit to becoming an ethical leader. Certainly I agree that each of us can and should develop leadership skills in our lives but, seriously!?! If the prerequisite to improving the unfortunate state of a world in conflict is for every single person on earth to become an ethical leader, it just ain’t gonna happen, bubba.

I mean look at us.

In the United States you have the cancel culture, a city proposing that each household pay $600,000 to help pay reparations to people who were never enslaved by a state which never had slavery, part of another state wanting to secede from that state to join a neighboring state, and people afraid to express their opinion for fear of being fired from their jobs. And in one 45 hour period, in one state, there were three mass shootings resulting in nineteen dead.

In England there have been three heads of state in three years. In Spain the birthrate has plummeted to 1.23%. In France the divorce rate is over 50%. The crime rate continues to rise in the Baltic countries. In France a man was found not guilty of a brutal murder of an elderly Jewish woman by reason of marijuana smoking.

In India, Muslims in the state of Kashmir continue to fight for independence. A recent reactivated Sikh movement has begun demanding their independence in the state of Punjab. The Muslim minority in the southern state of Kerala is quietly taking over local political positions.

In Israel political, social, and judicial reform has provided an opportunity for those interested in strengthening social and religious divisions. Extreme and violent language has become acceptable on both sides of any given issue. Defamation of character, personal attacks, and demagoguery are representative while, unsurprisingly, compromise is less and less of an acceptable option.

Humanity seems to be like the proverbial snake swallowing its own tail

We can create, investigate, research, change, and vastly improve our physical reality. But what good is it ultimately if we tear ourselves apart as human beings inhabiting a common earth?

Contrary to what many of us have come to believe when our phones have achieved the capability of supplying so much of our needs, no (emotionally healthy) human being is an island. We do, in fact, inhabit a common earth. And one of animals’ basic instincts is, pardon the expression, not to shit in their own home.

People! We’re unloading a lot of crap in our own homes. And it will not end well for us.

How about trying this? The next time you’re faced with a person whose opinions are not your own, take a breath, think to yourself that she, too, just like you, is a human being who wants to be happy. First and foremost, a human being. Immediately afterwards, who wants to be happy. Choose to distance yourself from her if you must, but treat her with the respect and, if it’s not stretching it too much, caring, that could provide for a gentler, less threatening world.

As far as human knowledge has taken our understanding so far, we only have one world. And if there turns out to be others we would do well to practice protecting the one we know about or we’ll just destroy any others we discover.

Stories Our Parents Tell Us

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Just back from a dip in The Arabian Sea.

I’m sitting on the wooden balcony just outside our room, watching the mid-morning calm waves, really ripples, just as I’ve been contented to do most of my waking hours over the past four days.

There’s a rhythm to the sea. Several actually. And a rhythm to life here dictated by the sea.

The waves arrive from the south and break on the shore traveling northward, but oddly seem to recede back into the sea at the same time along the shore for quite a way. I’m sure there are physicists among you who can explain that phenomenon to me in language I wouldn’t understand.

In the morning the sea is so calm that the ripples have no sea froth. By mid-morning they are already small waves complete with white caps. In the afternoon the waves become quite healthy. At night they are loud and powerful and often stormy.

When they are at their calmest the fishermen in this small village of Thumboly are out in force. They employ several different techniques but none of them catches much, and the few fish they catch are tiny. We’re told there was a time when fishing was a viable industry here but that time is long over.

By mid-morning there isn’t a soul on the pristine beach other than the occasional tourist. By mid-afternoon the fisherman are out repairing their nets or playing card gambling games , sitting on the sand in groups of six to ten men.

It’s a bit of a mystery where the women are. Home, I suppose. We see the occasional woman shopkeeper and saw a little girl out playing with a little boy on their shared bicycle on one of our afternoon walks. But mostly we see men and boys. Playing soccer. Playing volleyball on the beach. Walking the village streets.

Our days are quite serene.

My partner takes a morning beach walk early every morning. He always comes home with a new adventure to tell me about. One morning it was two children out walking their crab…on a leash.

We have a breakfast of some kind of unfamiliar grain dish in various forms, a vegetable in soupy sauce to put over it, papaya or some other fruit, and tea.

Once breakfast is digested I spend an hour on my yoga mat. My practice immediately returned to its full glory with the first unfurling of my mat opposite The Arabian Sea. It had sadly stagnated for the past six months.

We read, write, and chat most of the day to the accompaniment of the sea’s music.

In the late afternoon we take a walk through the narrow byways of the residential area, where people happily greet us with a friendly “Namaste” and often ask us in to eat (which we politely decline) or into the small commercial area just past the large church.

Today, we decided, was the day we would venture into the water. We were out there at 9:45 when the waves were just starting to be more than ripples. My partner went in first to scout out the drop off and reported that it was sudden but not too steep. The water was warm and delightful.

In I went. But not far and not for long.

Sixty years ago my mother told me about her good friend, Joseph. They were childhood friends and both enrolled at Northwestern University in Chicago. He was an engineering student and she was a drama major so they didn’t share classes but they shared social circles.

In their sophomore year they went to the beach one afternoon with a group of friends. A beach on Lake Michigan they often frequented. Like Israel’s Kineret, Lake Michigan could be treacherous in the afternoon, with a strong undercurrent.

As the story went, on that fateful day Joseph decided to go back in the water long after the others deemed it unwise. As my mother and her friends watched helplessly he was rolled over and over, dragged under and drowned. No one could save him without endangering their own lives.

I love the ocean. If I have a few free hours I sometimes jump in the car and drive an hour or more to walk along the beach. On my way home from visiting grandkids I often take the slower, longer route to stop off for a half hour of breathing sea air and watching sea birds hop in the shallows.

I’m not convinced that my mother’s story about her friend, Joseph, was true or just a cautionary tale, but it accompanies me to the beach every time I go. I rarely go in the water past my ankles or, if I do, it’s only a little above my waist. I need both feet firmly planted. I have what I like to call a healthy respect for the power of the ocean, while recognizing it as anxiety that’s not always justified.

I enjoy my grandchildren’s fearless frolicking in the waves and beyond but only while keeping an eye on the lifeguard to make sure she remains alert. I’m happy that some of my children and grandchildren surf; proof that Joseph isn’t a filter through which they experience the sea.

I’d love to ask my mother if she actually had a friend named Joseph and if she actually watched him drown in Lake Michigan. But she’s been dead for twenty years and, really, does it even matter?

Beware all you parents out there. Stories our parents tell us are powerful beyond logic.

Whatever happens, I’m satisfied

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In Israel parents teach their children a saying very early on in life – Whatever happens, I’m satisfied. It rhymes in Hebrew and expresses a futile hope on the part of parents that it will nip complaining in the bud.

Pretty ironic since Israelis (and maybe Jews in general) are among the most, ahem, discerning (read critical, judgmental, complaining) people I’ve come across in my extensive travels. And I am one, so I’ve had plenty of experience.

On the positive side, perhaps that’s why we’re the start-up nation with more technological and medical innovation than any other place on earth. That squinting one-eyed gaze at everything around us and thinking…hmmm. I could do that better.

On the not-so-positive side, it’s a pain in the rear end to be so often surrounded by people who are almost never satisfied with the way things are. The food in the restaurant is never quite right even after an order reminiscent of Jack Nicolson in Five Easy Pieces (I’ll have omelette plain, with a chicken salad sandwich on wheat toast, no butter, no lettuce, no mayonnaise, hold the chicken). The room temperature is too cold or too hot. The teacher doesn’t pay enough attention to my kid or singles her out for special (not good) treatment.

I wasn’t feeling great the other day. Stuffed up, headache, scratchy throat, didn’t sleep well. Here I am in southern India. Home of Ayurvedic medicine. Decided to get an Ayurvedic massage. For the uninitiated, this involves total nudity and more oil than a Mediterranean diet calls for in a lifetime.

The very sweet young woman spoke no English – zero – and my Malayalam is pretty rusty. There was absolutely no possibility of any request whatsoever. None of the usual massage direction – harder, softer, higher, lower. Nada.

As I lay there swimming in oil I thought THIS is the opportunity of a lifetime to fulfill that Israeli saying – Whatever happens, I’m satisfied.

I found thoughts popping up about how I might prefer this, that, or the other thing she was doing but they disappeared as quickly as they arose. They were irrelevant given our mutual lack of communication skills.

Ultimately, after she wiped off a lot of oil and I pulled my shift over my head – this not being my first rodeo I knew that less is more is the rule when committing to a Ayurvedic massage – I showered and crawled back into my stuffed up, scratchy throated, headachy nest and realized my headache was gone, my throat a bit less scratchy, and that prickly low grade fever feeling had disappeared.

I woke up this morning with more energy than the past couple of days. Had a peaceful, flexible hour on my yoga mat, and sat down to ponder the potential of “Whatever happens, I’m satisfied.” She knew what she was doing and any direction from me would have just gotten in the way.

It’s a continual conundrum in my mind. This contentment with what is versus the striving for improvement.

What do you think?

PS The above photo was taken from this very balcony three years ago. The most peaceful place on earth, Thumboly Beach


What’s the Deal about Travel?

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My partner and I love to travel Have you ever had a dog who was at the door every time she heard the jangle of the car keys? That’s us.

As soon as our youngest child was old enough to be left with his brother and sisters and a caretaker we started taking at least a month of our winters to travel to far-flung places.

We’ve been to the Peruvian Amazon twice, Patagonia, the Galapagos Islands and lots of other places in South and Central America, Spain, Amsterdam, South Africa, three of the more out-of-the-way islands in the Caribbean, and to India twice for over six months altogether.

We have a friend who says he prefers to see the world from the comfort of his easy chair on his big screen tv – without the humidity, bugs, crowded trains and lack of electricity and WiFi. I get that but it makes me sigh.

Traveling by small motor boat for four hours to reach a lodge deep in the Amazon forest, feeling the weight of the heat and humidity, hearing bird calls in a night that is totally black because there’s no electricity for kilometers in every direction, coming upon thousands of ants who eat all the leaves off a huge tree in a day or two, peeling a cocoa plant to taste the bitter chocolate inside; you can’t experience any of that watching National Geographic on your tv.

But when I might answer the question of why we like to travel so much with that paragraph somehow it still leaves people puzzled.

I’m reading a book called Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan. It’s basically a sweet romance between the Scottish writer and poet, Robert Louis Stevenson, and his American wife, Fanny. A pleasant story; nothing earth-shattering. Very nicely written. And then I came across a few paragraphs written about Stevenson introducing Fanny to all the places in Paris that he remembers from trips there with his parents as a child. Many have been changed by war and the interceding years. They also explore new places together. Only a few paragraphs but the excitement of sharing the sights and memories and it all came together for me.

The bonding and beauty of travel.

Experiencing a new culture together; realizing how different cultures can be and, at the same time, how many commonalities there are between people, seeing animals in the wild, on their turf, living in freedom, moving out of our routine and, sometimes, out of our comfort zone – together – sharing the confusion, the hilarious mistakes, the unexpected.

We were once surprised by an elephant who stepped languidly out of the forested side of the narrow road and stood 15 feet from us calmly staring at us and munching on big leaves, before sauntering off to the other side of the road.

There was the exotic, elderly Sadu (spiritual street person) with whom we shared a few words every morning on our way to Hindi class. One day he told us he wouldn’t be there for a few days because he was going home to see his family. What? His family?

We traveled by train, plane, and taxi for the privilege of seeing families of some of the 3000 remaining white rhinoceroses in the world – mom, pop, and children – wandering freely in large fields.

And the bonding isn’t only between my partner or child and myself on our trips but between other travelers with whom we share a few days or a week in a place foreign and sometimes challenging for us all. Travelers tend to share intimacies their long-time friends have yet to hear. A Latvian couple, traveling with their two young children, left their kids in our care overnight while they spent a day and night with a shaman in the forest. We shared dinner with a couple from San Francisco several times over the years after becoming friends in South America.

How often is one of us reminded of something from our travels that when shared takes us both back to something amazing or funny or breathtaking or just brings a wistful smile to our lips?

The magnificent noise and sight of a glacier calving into the water in Puerto Merino, hundreds of macaws congregated on a clay lick across from the small boat where we’ve spent an hour waiting for them to arrive, the impromptu street musicians sitting by the Laxman Bridge (where, incidentally, I was bitten by a monkey on one of our trips – ouch), the friendly guide who suggested we come home with him to meet his young family in their home in the slums of Mumbai.

The memories of the things that went “wrong’ are often the best memories of all.

My daughter and I alighting from a park employee transport in NE Thailand. The people on the transport knew no English but we understood from them that we just needed to follow the narrow asphalt trail to arrive at our bamboo hut in the cloud forest. Many kilometers later, with all our possessions on our backs, the asphalt path had become a dirt path and there was still no sign of civilization, much less our bamboo hut. At some point, after hours or walking, we had to put our backpacks down because we were giggling so hard that we couldn’t see for the tears of hilarity at our situation. No worries. We came upon the bamboo hut after about 10 kilometers and had an amazing time deep in the forest.

Driving a recommended shortcut through the mountains to reach an isolated farm, we suddenly found ourselves socked in by dense fog. I, the designated driver in countries where driving is on the left, literally photographed what I could see in front of me in my mind and closed my eyes in prayer driving each 50 feet, with a steep chasm on my right and a road not wide enough for two cars to pass each other. When we arrived, safely, at the farm, and described our hair-raising drive through the mountain pass he’d recommended, the wrinkled, crotchety old farmer wasn’t impressed. “Yep, it sometimes gets like that.”

Hill?!? Can’t see a sign thrugh dense fog, guys

I think many people don’t like to travel exactly because of all the surprises, challenges, lack of home familiarity and comfort, language issues, and that beast – the unknown. But in my opinion, all those parts make up the wonder and beauty of travel.

It’s a surprising and delicious world out there.

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and jump into it all with both feet, and someone you love to share it with. Take a chance on being clueless, making the “wrong” decision, taking a turn by way of eeny meeny mayni mo and exploring whatever you find there.

One answer to Mary Oliver’s question of what you might do with your one precious life.

If you thought you knew…

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I thought I knew about aging. After all, I turned 60 a full decade ago. In kindness to my knees, I stopped teaching hip hop and aerobics. Took up yoga instead. Out of kindness to my brain, I became more selective about the books I read and the movies I see. Out of kindness to my heart, I stopped following the news. Out of awareness of the generation gap and changing society, I became more curious about how my grown children were making child-rearing and professional decisions and less opinionated about all that.

I thought my practice of acceptance of the aging process in so many areas was pretty admirable.

Aching knees, varying levels of lower back pain, a 15-year acquaintance with sleep problems, sight issues.

Check, check, check, and check – all accepted graciously.

I think of myself as an optimist but not disconnected from reality. I realize that sickness and death are inevitable. Looking around me at friends with cancer, MS, joint replacements, and a general decrease in energy, I sometimes wondered what awaited me…specifically.

But no more than the occasional and very brief thought.

And then over a period of a week my quadriceps decided to work at 25% capacity and provide unwelcome pain, my shoulders and collarbone joined the party, and my knees refused to be left out.

I went from 90% mobility to 20% mobility over that week. One morning it took me twenty minutes to get dressed. Pain moved in as a permanent body mate.

I felt and walked like a 90-year-old woman…and not a healthy one.

In the past ten days, I’ve seen my family doctor 3 times. I began a series of tests for everything imaginable. Being fortunate enough to live in a country with excellent national health insurance and health care, the bureaucracy is daunting but the availability and affordability are there.

I’ve gone through the process of learning to let go of activities I love like a ninja on steroids. I haven’t driven to visit with grandchildren or taught a yoga class in over a week. I haven’t met friends for coffee, shopping, or a museum visit, either. My walks have gone from 4 or 5 kilometers a day to 1 kilometer on a flat surface…on a good day. Cooking, which I love, has become the simplest preparation with the least standing time. And sometimes I leave the whole thing to my very supportive, caring husband.

I love to read, but when that’s pretty much the only thing I can do it gets old. I love to watch tv series, but I’ve discovered the limits of that, too. I’m super appreciative of my friends who drop by to chat, pick up a few things at the grocery store for me, or just check in to see how I’m doing.

I’m pretty careful about the meds I’m willing to use and how much. I’ve always been very stringent with things like ibuprofen and even simpler pain medications. My pain threshold is pretty high. I went from an ibuprofen or two a week, to one a day, to two a day, and then on to something stronger. Waking up to debilitating pain in so many joints and muscles every day has turned me into a junkie for the 3-7 hours of significantly decreased pain that a Naxyn 500 pill can give me.

My kids are great. They call. They listen. They’re supportive.

The hard truth of this thing, though, is that all of the wonderful people in my life give me a big morale boost and are very logistically helpful, and necessary, but ultimately pain is an individual experience.

Twenty years of meditation and learning Eastern philosophy have been helpful to me in so many areas of my life. And I’m finding that they get me through the occasional moments of deep feelings of loss – loss of mobility, loss of the activities I love, loss of comfort in my body – and allow my natural optimism to revive from occasional panic.

Exercising my deep, mindful breathing muscles and doing a lot of acceptance, living in the moment, and letting go. My ego gets in the way from time to time and the monkey chatter gets really loud, but so far I mostly can reach that sweet spot of equanimity.

Hopefully, we’ll get to the bottom of this. Find a diagnosis and management plan that works. Hopefully, I’ll be able to go back to some or all of the activities I love. Hopefully, we’ll still make that 4-month trip to India in late February.

Meanwhile, it’s been one of life’s toughest lessons yet and I’m grateful for all the many blessings in my life that are coming to my aid.

Mediating with Being Old

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I just completed a 67-hour mediation course. The moderator/lecturer, Golan, was a charismatic guy in his early 50’s with vast experience and captivating stories about mediations he facilitated over the years. I wondered at the outset if I would be able to sit for five hours straight each Monday night without fidgeting and wishing I were elsewhere. Golan made the time fly. I didn’t have to do yogic breathing even once during the 10-week course.

One of the crucial concepts in mediation is the ability to differentiate the needs of the people in conflict as opposed to their positions, or presenting issues.

Eleven neighbors have entered into the mediation process regarding the parking lot between their houses where there are seven legitimate parking spaces. There are often clashes between people parked in legitimate spaces and people who park along the side of the lot making it difficult for those parked in legitimate spaces to extricate their cars. The eleven families have, between them, fifteen cars. As it turns out, two families do not have a car, one family has a driveway in which they park one of their two cars, one family has a driveway in which they park both their cars, one family does not park their two cars in the lot, and three families park only one of their two cars in the lot. One family parks two cars in the lot. Three families park one car each in the parking lot.

Have you seen this problem on a math test?

In case math wasn’t your thing, the eleven neighbors want to park nine vehicles in seven legitimate spaces.

Looks like a pretty cut-and-dry issue. Until it becomes clear that less than 50 yards away there’s a large parking lot that is virtually unused. So what are the actual needs of the people involved that must be addressed before the group can come to an amenable resolution for all involved? After all, they’re neighbors in a small community who have a common interest – living in harmony with one another.

Here’s a tip – it has more to do with the process of solving the parking problem than who parks where.

But what does this have to do with meditating with old age? And how can one meditate with old age anyway? It is what it is…isn’t it?

About seven weeks into my ten week course I found a small hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant with a few tables outside on the cobblestone pathway. My partner and I, both Indophiles and aficionados of Indian food, were happy to find this place. The table was a bit unsteady on the cobblestones but we made do and had a great meal with lots of nostalgia. Getting up after the meal I rested my hand on the table for stability – stability from an unstable table? You can guess the results.

The cook stayed by my side until the ambulance arrived. The paramedics were extremely gentle and pleasant, in spite of the fact that they looked young enough to be in high school. My neighbor was one of the nurses in the orthopedic emergency room. The doctor was thorough and helpful. All in all, other than two weeks of being almost totally incapacitated with back pain, it was a smooth, fortuitous experience. It could’ve been so much worse.

Well-meaning friends encouraged me to sue the restaurant – never a possibility in my mind. Being in the middle of a mediation course, however, I did think about asking the restaurant owners if they would be interested into entering into the mediation process with me.

First I wanted to take myself through the mediation process of figuring out the difference between my presenting issues and my needs.

Issue #1: I was out approximately $700 for physical therapy, my deductible for the ambulance, and having missed teaching three classes. Not a huge sum but money.

Issue 2: I wanted to be reassured that the restaurant would correct for the instability of their tables on the cobblestones.

Need #1: I wanted to be seen as a person – not a fragile elderly person who lost her footing as a result of being old and unstable on my feet

Need #2: I wanted, as part of #1, for the restaurant to take partial responsibility for the objective elements of neglect which led to the injury.

Are you starting to get the point?

From the caring cook to the empathetic paramedics to the informative orthopedist in the hospital I thought I recognized that they didn’t really see me. They didn’t see a woman who teaches yoga eight times a week or drives six hours a week to visit with grandchildren, or who goes bowling, plays miniature golf, and spends months at a time in off-the-beaten-track places. For the first time in my life, I felt the invisibility that many elderly women describe. I felt small and irrelevant and “other”.

When I wrote to Golan that I’d only be coming to the simulation part of class because I’d had an accident, he had one kind of reaction. When I came to the simulation and mentioned that I was injured in a fall, his reaction was different. He thought it had been a car accident – happens to the best of us. A fall? Ah, elderly issues.

Clearly this may have all been in my head.

And that’s exactly the point. In life, as we all know, shit happens. The first arrow. Inevitable It’s our reaction to it that causes suffering…or not. The second arrow. Within our control.

In my recent revelations I realized that, yep, we can be in constant mediation with the aging process. Searching for our needs when hit in the face (or the back) with the issues. It’s an ongoing occurrence.

Not as easy as a one-time epiphany. Ah, yes, I can have a happy, peaceful old age through acceptance.

Oh yeah? What about when there’s a new challenge a few times a month? Or how about a few times a week? What about when it’s limited mobility? And how about the exasperation of the person who assumes you’re not getting his explanation of the electrical system in your home because you’re old?

The good news is that if you’re into the mediating process you’re well on your way toward living your life instead of killing time.

Or as Mary Oliver said, “What is it you plan to do with your one, wild and precious life?”

Glorious India

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The plan to spend an extended amount of time in India was conceived so long ago that trying to remember when, how and who initiated the thought leads mostly to fractured fairy tales.

I think it was my husband’s idea to change his life radically to serve the same function as cleaning your palate between courses. He was looking forward to total retirement and fantasized about a period of time to wipe the slate clean and begin to formulate a next stage in his life.

Life has a way of whisking away parts of our ideas and morphing them into other versions of themselves. Total retirement, when contemplated in the reality of the altering of lifestyle that financial change would necessitate, has been postponed for another few years and transformed into six months working and six months…not working. (Still no definition as to what that might entail.)

But that might be exactly what led us to sitting around the pool at The Fern Spazio Resort and Spa – which sounds far fancier than it is; though it’s very nice – in Arjuna, North Goa, India. It might be kismet, karma, or just one of life’s serendipitous events. It’s feeling a lot like one of those proverbial gift horses in whose mouths we’ve been forewarned not to look too carefully

Five days in bustling Mumba; a city with a population of an unbelievable 22 million people. Mumbai is a city of contrast. Extreme wealth in its commercial center and extreme poverty with literally millions living in the slums with which we became familiar in Slum Dog Millionaire (which, by the way, is quoted extensively by guides in Mumbai.)

We arrived during the Diwali Festival – five days of vacation celebrating the removal of darkness and ignorance; The Festival of Lights (not to be confused with Chanukah, though there are similarities). The fireworks were on Sunday so we missed them but we didn’t miss the crowds of Indians on holiday in Mumbai.

As we approached The Gateway of India, lovely architecture reminding us of the not-so-lovely period of British Rule when in 1911 the stone gateway was built for the king and queen’s visit, we saw a mass of humanity second only to the million people we joined at Woodstock. Dripping sweat in the hot Mumbai humidity, I could only smile at the outlandish possibility of inserting myself into that press of people. It seemed so ludicrous.

My children pointed out to me long ago that the only possibility of not having to stand in a long line for activities for kids is choosing really boring activities. I take my grandchildren into lines and crowds I never would’ve taken my children. The funny thing is that when I mentioned that recently to one of my kids she said she was happy that I take her kids to those crowded fun places because she’s not willing to.

A sweet young man was kind enough to show us the right line to be in to get onto the ferry to Elephant Island to see the caves, and seemed to be saying that the tickets would sort themselves out. The long but orderly snake line looked daunting but he assured us it would only take half an hour. Google advised getting on the 2 o’clock ferry so we were standing in the hottest sun Mumbai could serve up and it was plenty hot. At some point a man came and sold us tickets and, lo and behold, in 40 minutes we were on a ferry. The promised 45 minute ride stretched out to an hour and a half, but the breeze was welcome.

Elephant Island has no elephants and neither do the elephant caves. It seems that once upon a time there were two big statues of elephants at the entrance to the island. The British, as is their wont, stole them and took them wherever they fancied, but the name stuck.

We took a local guide, Harish, one of the 1200 inhabitants of the island, and made our way up 125 narrow stone steps, four and five abreast, with people packed in front of and behind us. Along both sides of the stairs was a market of trinkets, including wonderful Tibetan singing bowls for a tenth the price we pay for them in Israel. Carried along by the crowd, we ignored the vendors’ pleas.

The Portuguese (who also ruled here for a little more than 500 years) tried to destroy the elephant caves but the beautiful carvings of the nine images of Shiva as well as the caves themselves are made of basalt and remained mostly impervious to the attempts. The carvings are beautiful and their stories well told.

We went on a private car tour of Mumbai and a walking tour of the markets. The sights were interesting but the guides were more so. We saw the in/famous Mumbai laundry, got a peek at the slums surrounding it, and were fascinated by the Gandhi Museum.

Our driver/guide told us a tragic story that may or may not have been partially or totally true. He said his father died when he was 12 and his mother ran off. He slept on the streets or in temples and learned English from an old man who read the newspaper with him to teach him. He married and rents a tiny place in the slums for himself, his wife and their two children. We said hello to his two, very sweet, children on his phone.

There’s really no need for a guide in the Mumbai markets but our pleasant 25 year old guide gave us many tips for bargaining that have come in very handy as well as sharing his insights into Indian culture. He yearns to move out of his parents’ home and live independently, mostly to indulge his desire to have unbridled fun. He and his parents disagree about what he should be doing to prepare for his future as well as what his future should look like. (Sounds like young people here, or at least this one, have a lot in common with their age group in the States).

We both took to pure vegetarian food immediately again, as if we hadn’t been carnivores for the past 3 years since leaving India. We found our special place to eat dinner and ate there most evenings. At home I make an effort to get to 6000 steps a day; here I get to 11,000 and even 18,000 without trying. At home I’ve developed tricks to remain hydrated; here I swig liters of water constantly.

Feeling healthy and happy and relaxed after a week in Northern Goa. Met up with a wonderful yogi/teacher on the beach.

But that will wait for my next post.

Namaste

The Writing Experience is one of Muditta

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There’s a book on one of my book shelves that has my name on the cover.

Yoga_for_Detectives_Cover_for_Kindle Yep, that’s me. A.E. Prero. And that’s a book I wrote and published.

http://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Detectives-Lesson-A-E-Prero/dp/1512109371

It took me about 8 months to write it and another month to format the darn thing to turn it into a paperback book and, after my own feeble attempts, $50 to pay someone to format it for Kindle. And now, here it is, sitting on my shelf and the shelves of at least 25 other people, according to the Amazon stats.

Hand on heart, how many of you truly think you, too, have a book in you, if you could only find the time to sit down and write it? And maybe you’ll even do it someday. I’m here to tell you that it’s well worth the effort, even if that book inside you never makes it into a physical reality on your bookshelf.

Don’t get me wrong. I love having actual books in people’s hands which are the product of my imagination, time and self-discipline. Yay!

snoopy dancing

But, believe it or not, there are many other gratifying results from plowing through the entire process of writing a book.

Beginning to end.

Concept to character development to plot to consistency to description:conversation ratio to word usage to editing, proofreading and formatting….and maybe even marketing, though I haven’t begun the serious lifting where that’s concerned.

I’ve read some great books about how to write. Writing down the Bones is probably the best.Writing Down the Bones

But Natalie Goldberg has others out there, and some different authors have offered some helpful ideas, too.

reading

When I actually sat down to write, I realized that while much of what those people suggested had registered in my brain, it all became a  mutant version once the spices of my own personality and imagination were added to the soup…and that was okay, even good.

I learned what I, as a reader, liked.

I pondered what made me pull out one book from a bookstore bookshelf and not another. I asked myself what it was about one first chapter that pulled me into reading a book as opposed to putting down another. I went so far as to correspond with one author whose first paragraphs in her many books never fail to hook me and ask if I could use her formula.

NO way Wow! Now, THAT was a surprise.

After a few months, I could finally sit down to write even if I hadn’t:

  • Washed the dishes,
  • done the laundry,
  • watered the plants,
  • made dinner,
  • cleaned out the studio,
  • answered emails, phone calls and text messages,
  • updated Facebook, or
  • had coffee with every neighbor within walking distance.

mess

No, that’s not really my house but there were days when it felt like that…and I wrote anyway.

The further along I got with my book, the more I grew to appreciate the beautiful turn of a phrase or use of a word in the books I was reading. “Wow! How does she do that?”

The more I grimaced at a much over-used adjective or descriptive tool.  ouch

The more I became enchanted with how one character became someone I cared about while another was just plain irritating.

You might think that the magic of the well-written, well thought-out book  would be lost once the smoke cleared and the mirrors were revealed. But the opposite has been true for me.

Sure, there are some books I can’t look at anymore. I can’t easily fill time with just any old thing I find around the house, on my friends’ shelves or on the table at the doctor’s office. But I’ve developed a full hearted, deep, experiential response to other books.

I feel the author behind the words. And they become my friends as much as do the characters they skillfully develop. I’m happy for them for their work well done. Reading has become a double pleasure. Pleasure in the book and pleasure for the author’s success in having written a book which brings pleasure.

Natalie GoldbergRoland Merullo    Natalie Goldberg

                                                                                                                                   Roland Merullo

     Scott Pratt   Scott Pratt          Anna Quindlen     Anna Quindlen

Gay Hendricks                       Tinker Lindsay

       Gay Hendricks                    and                   Tinker Lindsay

And, isn’t that the real meaning of Muditta? Empathetic joy.

The happiness we feel when others succeed and are happy?

Writing has opened a whole new vista of Muditta in my life.

Bookmooch

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I’m one of those people who can de-clutter my house and my life every day and always have more stuff lying around. I accumulate stuff like Pigpen accumulates dust. It’s like spontaneous generation.

You know how there are some “truisms” that seem ironclad? One of them for me is that I should have less stuff. I should toss out things that I don’t love, that I haven’t used in the last year (or is it the last 6 months? yikes!) and/or that doesn’t work.

I was happy to have that truism debunked a couple of weeks ago by someone who has debunking power with me. She said that she, too, was caught up in all the fascination with de-cluttering until she looked around at the “clutter” in her house and realized that most of it was simply a reflection of a wonderfully rich life filled with people she’s blessed with loving and being loved by.

Okay, that calmed my de-cluttering guilt quite a bit. But even a reflection of all that rich life has to have limits aside from the very furthest reaches of the walls of the house and every flat surface therein.

I’ve chosen the holy of holies when it comes to collections of baby boomers – books – to assuage my de-clutter urge. Granted, this may be easier for me than for some other people in a few ways.

1. None of my children read books in English when it comes to reading for enjoyment. So that seriously limits the number of people with whom I just have to share wonderful books I’ve loved.

2. Most of my friends either don’t exactly share my taste in books or they have ebook devices.

3. I, myself, have a Kindle and do most of my reading on that device so I accumulate far fewer books than I did before an extended period of travel which encouraged me to buy an ebook device in the first place. (Yes, even a committed bookaphile like me does abandon holding a “real” book in my hands for the comfort and convenience of holding an ebook device!)

And, yet, I find myself with anywhere from 30-50 non-resource books on my shelves at any given time. The number creeps up on me. Maybe the books clone in the dark while I’m asleep. I diligently de-clutter, give away, sell to the used book store for awhile and then I guess I don’t.

Along came the solution in the form of bookmooch.com. Very simple idea really.

You register the books you are willing to part with and, when other members of the site ask for them, send them off in the mail and gain credits. Once you have credits you can browse the books listed by site members (there are many thousands) and spend your credits receiving books from others.

Sure, you have to pay for postage on the books you send out but that costs alot less than a new book and, in Israel, even less than a used book. And – here’s the point – it’s de-cluttering par excellence. Books magically appear and disappear. I’ve now happily sent off 12 books – gone – poof! – off the shelves – and received 3 with 5 more on the way.

I even listed two books on my wishlist and one of those is on its way from the US to my post office box. A book I’ve been wanting to read for almost a year, but not enough to buy a new copy. (btw, if you have My Korean Deli, please let me know – i’m wishing for it)

Several years ago, one of my daughters-in-law introduced me to an organization dedicated to not buying new things. People sign up with a commitment to buy only used items all year long. She mostly tries to follow this philosophy and succeeds admirably. Manhattan being what it is, she’s even found some gorgeous furniture for her living room down in the basement of her building awaiting incineration or on the curbside out on the streets of the Upper West Side.

I like shopping for new clothes for my granddaughters, new girlie accessories for them, new clothes for myself, new gadgets…hmmm, shopping for new stuff in general, I guess…too much to give it up altogether.

But bookmooch.com is going on my list of three things to be grateful for today and that new blender I bought to make smoothies that I’ve never eaten before in my life and apparently am in no danger or eating in the near future, is going to my son-in-law who will actually use it.