Summer 2009

Summer 2009; it’s official

Can’t Stop Dancing
I wake up at 4 AM and lie in bed feeling happy, relaxed and safe. Before 5 AM I walk into the kitchen and I am so happy that I have a smile welling up from inside of me that I can't contain. I can't stop dancing and smiling while I make genmaicha tea. I don't know exactly why I am so happy, I am just so happy. Maybe I am so happy because I have a house with a comfortable bed to sleep in and a ceiling fan. Or maybe I am so happy because I have a bathroom where I can brush my teeth and take care of business without hiking into the desert. Or maybe because I have a real kitchen in a house where I can make tea, or a patio where I can sit and write about being happy in the silence before morning comes, listening to the faint sounds of cooing doves and feeling the coolness of the air.
In Tibetan Buddhism they say there are reasons for happiness. Maybe I am happy because I am with my family again, or because I have goals and am working to achieve them, or because life seems wonderful to me. Or because I may drive out to Oregon to the mouth of the Columbia River for a summer job until grad school starts, or because I have been offered a job teaching yoga at my university in the Fall. Or maybe happiness is always there inside, waiting to come out.
As I take the first sip of genmaicha tea, the warmth moves down my throat into my belly, soothing me. I feel a love, a happiness and a hopefulness that I can't suppress. This life is a gift, a blank slate, a lump of clay, a block of marble. There are no regrets in life. There is always now, and always a chance to start fresh, from scratch, and create your masterpiece any way you want it. If you can dream it, you can create it and you can live it. Life is art. Get out your palette and brushes and begin painting your canvas. Choose your favourite colours. Paint your masterpiece. Go!
Avanti!
Desktop Yoga
At work, on day two of my job, I stepped into the office of the director and told him that yoga creates happy employees, that studies have shown that employees who do yoga are more productive; a benefit to the company. He was surprised by this news; he raised his eyebrows. I told him I was a yoga teacher and used to teach corporate yoga in NYC and would volunteer to teach it here for free, as a public service. He said if my supervisor gave permission we could do it on our own time during break, not company time. My supervisor liked the idea.
Day 1, our team, 12 people, did yoga during break. They loved it and came back smiling and happy to their desks. Day 2, they asked if we could do yoga at two of our breaks. More smiling and happy, alert employees. Day 3, happier still.
Day 4: My supervisor called me aside and said that so many people in the office had been asking if they could do yoga that the director wanted to know if I could teach yoga to everyone, on company time. I said yes. She introduced me to the rest of the office and said that by popular demand I was going to start teaching yoga. I got up to teach and realized that it was nearly impossible for them to see me since there are about 80 people in cubicles just like in the matrix. So, without thinking about it, I jumped up on a desk and said "Captain my captain." and started teaching. People went gaga when I jumped up on the desk and loved the class. Afterward, in the next couple days so many people came up to tell me how much it had helped them, or that they had taken it home to share with their husbands or family, that I realized that apart from being fun, yoga really helps people. It was wonderful really and so fun. And the look on the mid-level managers' faces when I jump up on the desk is worth it all.
Avanti!
Coming to California—Today!
Friends,
I am leaving this morning to spend the rest of the Summer in California before returning to Texas for grad school on August 26th. I will drive to Encinitas and then make my way quickly to Santa Cruz where I will house-sit for the Summer. If you are on my path anywhere along the way email or call and I'll stop by and visit, and if you are in Santa Cruz I will be there for the next six weeks or so. By the way, for everyone in Santa Cruz, I am going to have to earn some money while I am there; I won't have enough otherwise, so any ideas for any kind of job at all will be highly appreciated.
See you soon,
Phoenix
The Journey to California, Summer 2009
The Breeze at Dawn
I wake up at 5 AM in the most beautiful guest cottage one could dream of and step out into the pale grey desert dawn. The east is smeared with swirling wisps of candent reds, pinks, oranges and yellow. The breeze! The breeze is so softly caressing and alive, the air so sweet with the wonderfully aromatic aromas indigenous to the desert that it is a tangible entity and that strikes me with a wave of scent and sensation triggering instant relaxation, letting go, happiness, and contentment. The variety and richness of the desert flora and fauna surrounds me like a living 3D symphony. Rumi leaps to mind: The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you, don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want, don't go back to sleep. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. Let the beauty we love be what we do.

Yesterday I awoke at 3 AM, packed the Mothership in the hot, brooding Texas darkness, had a farewell Waffle, blueberry, whipped cream breakfast with my dad and drove 14 happy hours down Interstate 10, listening to my favorite music. In the beginning of the trip sometimes I would randomly burst in to tears from the sheer emotion of all the love and happiness and relief I felt--I was driving home to Santa Cruz, to the ocean, to the Sierra Nevada, to beloved friends, yet I was leaving my dad, my brother, my family, who I had become so close to and comfortable with. The bond of love in a family is deeper than any surface differences.

Those might be the happiest 14 hours of driving I have ever had. In Tucson at 8 PM, with a sunset painting the vast sky, to the backdrop of jagged mountains in sharp relief in the clear air, I arrived at the home of my friend and she made us prickly pear margaritas and took me out for Sonoran Mexican food. We talked about nerve impulses and specific receptor sites in the brain and electro-chemical pathways being processed into the mystery of consciousness. Back home, we took a UV light into the desert to look for scorpions that glow electric green under the UV frequencies. I was happy.

Now, after a few hours of rest in one of the most comfortable beds of my life the breeze at dawn has secrets to tell me and I am not going back to sleep. I must be the beauty I love. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. The waves, the Sierra, my friends, are waiting for me, my destiny is calling. In life, it is never, never, too late to become the beauty you love, to follow any dream. If you are alive and breathing everything is possible if you believe it and if you strive for it.

May the desert breeze at dawn find you wherever you are and bring you its healing peace and kiss of infinite possibility.

Avanti! Avanti! Avanti!

Waves
There is nothing I love more than floating on my board in the Pacific ocean off the coast of California waiting for the next set of waves to roll in. Just floating and melting and at peace, alone in silence, until my mind becomes water. Riding a wave is like Zen poetry, written with a feather on silk. It is pure and perfect and then gone without a trace other than the ripples it leaves behind.
Magic in the Air
High in the mountains, silver moonlight glittering on moonscape topography, we sit and look down at the Pacific Ocean spread below us, vanishing in the dark distance, and the lights of Santa Barbara, glowing yellow line the basin far below. Full of good wine and pots of oolong tea, I pour my heart and soul out into my guitar and voice. There is magic in the air. Pure magic, and I think of the Kerouac line in On the Road:
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!”
Life is too short not to be pouring my soul into my guitar and songs, with friends on a mountain above the ocean in the middle of the night on wine.
Avanti!
Paradise Found
Within a couple hours of being back in Santa Cruz there was a classic Santa Cruz party underway in my 'new' house. Friends, food, grilling, drink, conversation, dancing, laughing, and finally at the end of the night there were a few of us left and a most avant-garde jam session took place. I was on the harmonium, Kristen on cello, Tai on tabla, Greg on guitar, Kristen, Greg and I vocal harmonizing and making absolutely original music. At one point Kristen joined on the harmonium, playing the upper register, while I played the lower so that we had three hands on the keyboards playing at once. At 4 AM things wound down. In the morning, breakfast with friends in a Hawaiian place where simultaneously my favorite surf film was playing on a big screen, and such good music was playing that half the people in the restaurant were dancing in their seats as they ate.
Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore. Or Texas. Viva Santa Cruz.
Independence Day
I woke up and brushed my teeth, made some eggs, and loaded up my board and drove north up the coast to an old road that was posted with a 'road closed' sign. Turning in here I wound my way down to a beach where I parked under a big pine tree, suited up and carried my board through a field of wild fennel to the beach, across the sand and over some rocks where I could see the waves rearing up right and left over a reef. The water was icy as I paddled out. And delicious. The smell of the open Pacific north of Santa Cruz is simply delicious. For the first hour and a half there were only about five of us on that break and it was wonderful. Around 11, after a few hours, I left, tired.
Driving along the coast back to Santa Cruz I stopped by an organic farm and walked through the strawberry fields to a little wooden gypsy caravan where a friend of mine lives. We sat on his porch and he fed me breakfast and we talked about life, looking across the blackberries to the green fields and the ocean and the vast space beyond. The sun shone down on us and the breeze was cool.
Back home I showered the salt off and rode my bike down the hill from campus through the redwoods to the beach and then made my way along the winding coast, past the boardwalk and the chaotic throngs of tourists, under the explosively rumbling old wooden rollercoaster that I love, over the railroad trestles above the river emptying out into the ocean, continuing on the winding coast road and finally to the home of my friends and on along the coast more to the a little house tucked in near the beach where we had a Santa Cruz barbecue. As night fell the explosions began and we all walked to the cliffs along the beach where everyone had gathered and people were shooting off fireworks into the sky over our heads. Because the bay curves so sharply we could also see all the fireworks from different towns along the curve of the bay at the same time we could see ours over our heads.
The moon was nearly full and glittering on the sets of waves rolling in behind Jack O’Neil’s house, the sky was full of exploding flowers of color and I was surrounded with friends and cheering Santa Cruzans. Late at night I rode my bike the long, cold way home and finally dropped into my bed cushy, cozy bed.
Welcome back to Santa Cruz.
High Hills and Hot Bubbles
Two blocks out my back door I am running in and out of bright warm sun and cool dark shade high in the Santa Cruz hills through redwood forest and golden meadows with panoramic views of the Monterrey Bay, bright blue, arcing in a semi-circle far below. Two hours later, soaking in a piping hot bubble bath with essential oils and salts, listening to Coltrane, and the crackly, raspy sound of dry leaves being blown by the wind outside along the ground as though it were Fall, and the beautiful, rich, resonating wind chimes in the backyard, my senses are alive and yet at complete rest. I read a book called Eat, Love, Pray that I found in a drawer by the bed. I melt in the heat and steam and the words sink in, the wind and jazz sink in, my relaxation sinks in, the cool air and rustling leaves sink in. I am in Santa Cruz, and the air is golden with pure light. My entire life is ahead of me and I can create anything I want with my life and I have all the experience of a lifetime fully lived to provide the wisdom to follow my gut. Everything is entirely possible. Avanti!
Black Silk Kimono
My God! My dear, sweet God. Is there anything better than Coltrane, oolong tea, and hummingbirds in the garden in the morning? A black, silk kimono.
How can I *not* thank God with every breath? You must ask for what you really want to get what you really want.
Bliss
I feel bliss! Pure bliss! Rising up out of my belly into a smile I can't contain. I can't stop dancing. Santa Cruz. Morning in the garden. On the way to a day of work at Esalen. Bliss.
The Richness of Poverty
Since I have arrived in Santa Cruz over a week ago I have spent not one cent. (including the drive from Texas other than gas and a few donuts and cups of coffee for me and Alicia in Cardiff) The ostensible reason for this is a simple imperative--I have about 200 dollars left in the world. Period. But since I have begun to 'just say no' to spending money it's become so much more than the ostensible reason. It's become a kind of Thoreauian experiment, a practice and a game. It's just fun to see how long I can go without spending money and how well I can get by with what I already have.
Anytime I want anything, a cup of coffee, a donut, a movie, anything--I just say no. And the discovery is I am exactly as happy not buying things as I was buying things. That buying is mostly an impulse to gratify the ego; it has nothing to do with actual happiness.
Other than essentials like food, gas, phone bill, car insurance that have to be met, the rest really makes no difference one way or the other to the level of my happiness. Spending money was just a habit. If I 'needed' something I would buy it, because I could. Now I can't. And it's become a fun game to not spend money; even more fun because now I'm creating a new habit to see how much I cannot spend, how much can I live without and still be just as happy. It's a wonderful way to live.
I wouldn't recommend making poverty a full-time career because there are contingencies that occur that require immediate financial action. But even if you have money, living as though you don't is a wonderful practice and experiment that I highly recommend to break up the habit patterns in life and to realize how many things we buy every day that we not only don't need, but that make absolutely NO difference to our level of happiness. That's the stunning point--the amount of money being spent and the energy that was 'spent' to earn that money, really makes no difference to being happy, therefore it equates to throwing away and wasting your time, energy and life-force for something that gets you absolutely no benefit. You could leave the money in the bank and create a massive retirement fund, or you could share it with others who may really have times of need, in ways that we don't really comprehend here in America, or you could work less and spend more time relaxing and enjoying life and actually being much happier! Above all you free up the most precious gifts--time and energy, by not buying things, and you have the same level of happiness and much more time and energy to do what you love.
So I sing the praises of the richness of poverty. Try it. you'll be happily amazed at the joy it will bring you.
Avanti!

Esalen
My God, the beauty! The beauty. I am overwhelmed and drunk with the beauty. There is no one or nothing I need. I am complete. The sun, air, temperature, grass, trees, birds, sound and sight of the undulating waves and kelp, shimmering light and rich shadow. The infinite hues and variation on the theme of the color blue. The hypnotic rhythm of ocean and wind, sight and sound. The smell and feel of the hot mineral water, like satin scented with the earth's healing balance. I melt into heaven.
This is the garden and we have been welcomed back; were never driven out in the first place. That lie was original sin. We have been here all along. We simply have to open our eyes and remove the veil.


Inundation of Happiness
I sit in the garden in the early morning, listening to the mile buoy out in the ocean, sipping oolong tea out of my delicate, cracked porcelain cup and feeling an inundation of happiness and possibility. If I ask for what I want, it comes to me. When I decide to make something happen and ask for it and do the work, it happens. There is nothing that is not possible--If I believe, ask and do the work. By believing I can create whatever I want to create that somehow mobilizes the forces in the universe, and shift happens. Life is like playing a game. It's fun, it's an experiment. The only thing that has ever held me back in life is the patterns in my own mind. As large as I can dream, so is my reality; argue for your limitations, and they're yours. Don't argue for limitations, dream large!
Avanti! Into a new day!
Joyous
To me mornings are the most joyous time of day. I am filled with such surging happiness and pure vibrant life! This precious alone time, in the garden, with Coltrane, oolong tea, the very cool air, morning sun shining on my skin, hummingbirds, my dear flowers that I water so lovingly--narcotic jasmine, bright reds, pale yellow roses, explosive pinky cream cannonballs of blossoms, deep purples, hues of green, the shade from the sweet maple tree above my table and the interplay of sunlight, shade and cool air on my skin. The delicate, perfect flavour of the oolong tea...that first sip, out of the chipped Japanese porcelain tea cup, the flavour so rich and delicate and haunting all at the same time. And all the while Coltrane riffing his mad morning birdsong riffs, trilling and climbing and soaring through the air surrounding me, intertwining me in strands of vibrant living sound, tangible, inside me and as alive and close as my own beating heart.
Avanti!
40 Hour Work Week; Rise Up Dancing
Where did we ever get it into our heads that a 40 hour work week is the norm and standard and that leisure time is 'wrong', 'unproductive', 'guilty'? Because that's bullshit. Leisure time, anything that creates relaxation in the mind in body, is healthy, creates longevity, nurtures happiness, stimulates creativity.
Let me tell you the truth about what's 'wrong'---spending your life married to work, to earning a paycheck in order to survive and to feed a system that eats human lives, that needs human sacrifices, that feeds on blood and bones and hearts and souls, mindlessly, like a voracious machine or vampire that needs to consume to survive, *that* is insanity. And collective insanity as a social convention does not make it any less insane.
I guarantee you, and you can take this to the bank, on the day you die, in that flash of ultimate awareness and clarity, you will realize the ultimate truth about life was *not* that you spend it working to feed a hungry vampire that sucked the lifeblood out of you to gorge itself on your hollow toil. That the ultimate truth is that life is meant to be lived and enjoyed and shared, moment by moment, in the moment, alive and free. *That* is the truth, however you define it. (Can anyone *not* see the madness in voluntarily giving away the vast majority of the hours of your one and only precious and brief life toiling to feed and perpetuate a system of consuming, for the sake of keeping multi-national powers in power--that is the ultimate dupe.)
And this imposed reality, that you work 40 hours a week in order to pay bills and keep the cycle going, like a hamster on a treadmill, I assure you, is *not* the truth; it's an imposed idea that does not belong to the intelligence of your naked soul.
So rise up and break away now! Rise up dancing and singing and break away from imposed oppression and embrace, by God, freedom and joy and leisure and relaxation and health. Right now! Take a Sanity Break and encourage the world to join you! Get out of the cube, get out of debt, burn the credit card, go cold turkey from the addiction of buying things you don't need at all, break the hypnotic spell that you need to spend your life consuming and buying and working in an endless cycle to feed a truly mindless, voracious vampire that only has power over your life because you *give* it power, blindly, without even realizing it.
Rise up! Rise up dancing and singing! Rise up dancing in the streets! Rise up drinking tea and listening to jazz in your garden! Rise up lying on the beach! Rise up dancing and laughing and hugging and loving! Rise up giving to strangers! Rise up being generous and giving more than you take, rise up caring, rise up believing *you* do make the difference, (because you *do*.) Rise up cooking delicious food and taking the time to cherish each bite in peace with people you love! Rise up eating dark chocolate and drinking red wine! Rise up, by God, rise up! Rise up right now! Rise up looking into the eyes of the ones you love the most, the one you love the most! And never, oh never, don't you dare, forget, how short this is, how rare this is, how blessed you are, how fleeting this is, what a supreme wonder this is, you are, to live, to love, to touch and feel and hear and see and taste and smile and laugh and by God to think, yes to think! What a wonder it is to be able to think and dream and imagine and create and paint and make music and write and to read and yes, by God, Rise Up Now, Dancing and Singing and don't look back!!!!
Go! Go! Go! And never stop!
This Perfect Moment
Right this moment I am drinking the finest long jin tea in the cool whispered misty silence of morning with my friend and the aroma, the flavour, the warmth essence of the tea is so real and alive, so with me, that I could see the spirit of the Goddess Thea, rising in the steam. As I saw her, my gaze was drawn to the single rose in a vase in front of me, and I thought 'how perfect'. In that instant, one of its petals dropped, in a yellow swirl, to the ground and I ejaculated a silent exclamation of delight and understanding.
It is all perfect.
There is only love, now. :-)


Wake Up Singing
The steam rises into the low-angle rays of sunlight through the cool air of the garden. It dances in the gentle air, swirling in the light and shadow, rising up from the cracked Japanese porcelain cup holding the pu-ehr, dark and rich like a rare liqueur or nectar, which it is. Sigur Ros spills out of the house into my secret garden and I feel the deep reverberation of the sound waves in my body, at the root of my spine, in a feeling of sublime pleasure, spreading, with the magic of the tea, like shakti, radiating out in waves through all of me.
I woke up singing and dancing, from sheer happiness. In the cool morning air, I cut roses from the garden and arrange them in a vase for my table. There is an inner smile that is warm, rich and alive and spreads through my world, reaches out to all beings, to everyone I love, and I love everyone, so that I am connected by filaments of love to all things.
This is what Santa Cruz does to me. The waves call my name and I am off to ride the breath of the ocean, carving Zen poetry that disappears even as it is born, across the face of each wave. My yoga mat awaits the warmth and pressure of my body against it, the deep well of my energy that rises and arcs across my mat, in patterns of flow that express the ebb and flow of energy releasing in my system. My harmonium awaits, with anticipation, my loving touch, and the music that she will bring forth as we open our hearts, my voice, her bellows, and sing together, chants from the heart and soul. My kitchen smiles silently to itself, knowing that later today I will return from the farmer's market, on my bicycle, laden with organic fruits and vegetables and will cook, cook, cook, delicious things, to share with my friends, that will fill my house with aromas of joy.
This world is ebb and flow, going, going, gone. And all that remains is emptiness, silence and the space it rests in, which is called love. Which is all we are and which is all we have. Love now, l love myself and all things as though I will never see them again, as though this is all so fleeting and rare, so tender, so breakable...which it is.
Avanti.
Being Present
Being present is when I let go of all the things my mind is thinking about the future or past, or the plans and ideas that run incessantly through my head, and am just *here*, now. It is a profound experience of being. It washes and purifies; it is complete relaxation. It is the simplest and at the same time maybe the hardest thing to do. It's not a place or something that anyone can give me. It's just a simple but profound shift in consciousness. Right now, in each moment, simply focus on the breath, moving in an out, let go, and I am suddenly, deeply and profoundly, *here*. And that is truly revolutionary.
Breathe.


Life’s Too Big Not To!
This morning, before awaking, in that state that is not quite sleep anymore yet not awake, but the state where the mind is aware, and open and receptive, that state where often real breakthroughs, realization, knowing, understanding, gestalt reformation occurs--in that state this morning, I had that experience, clearly, of being present, and realizing that being present means letting go of the incessant thinking about plans, past and future, and just sinking in, dropping in, deeply and simply to right now, right here, in this body, somewhere in the body, beyond physical location, that is the epicenter of being.
That's why I wrote about being present.
I wish all my friends were here now. It would be nice to sit peacefully and drink tea and smile and just talk and talk and talk, about life, dreams, creating, creating our dreams, living them, dreaming big and bold, dreaming crazy big, ridiculously big, and then doing it, just because life is short and why dream small?
Dream wild! Dream ridiculously big! Nothing to lose but boredom.
Avanti!
Tea and Electric Guitar Dreams
Electric guitar dreams in walls of sonic tapestry with the five college kids next door; three electric guitars, bass, drum kit, and all the accouterments of a college jam band strewn about the apartment like debris and rubble from a hippie blast. This day was spent making live music in flowing interwoven waves of groove, bouncing ecstatically to a morning dance party/breakfast cooking extravaganza with DJ Electric Sky and chef Aly, listening to Gilian Welch, Time (The Revelator), loud and good all morning, feeding friends for lunch in Chez Phoenix, driving the streets of Santa Cruz in search of the elusive perfect surfboard, rendering home improvements on the dear Mothership, pumping up a surf movie on the giant screen monster in the living room, and all topped with tiramisu. Ah, life is a roller coaster ride that goes up and down with long climbs and steep drop-offs that all leave me squealing with delight, riding with no hands, leaning into the turns, defying caution and thrilled by it all.
A Day
Up at dawn, my heart breaks with pure love, flood gates open, love, gratitude, comes flooding up and out, pure bliss, joy, heartbreaking tenderness, prayer, with gratitude, touching something inside me, timeless and soft and still and silent but more alive than anything else. Steam and whistle from the kettle. Green tea leaves, perfect, infused with the wet heat, release aroma in steam, release in my blood and brain, some sublime nectar, Gillian Welch sings, "I dream a highway back to you love. A winding ribbon with a band of gold. A sliver vision, come and bless my soul." Memories. San Diego. Love.
I watch a yellow rose bud, slowly opening into blossom, awakening to the promise of life, while another, in senescence, unrequited, bows its head sadly and in a moment, giving up, drops all its petals at once, in a cascade of yellow, onto the table top, resting at ease in a pattern of poetry, waiting....
Surfing, big Summer surf, fog and mist, kelp beds undulating like a desert mirage. Big Sur, big waves, hypnotic kelp, ocean every hue of blue, hills every shade of green, big white cloud burying itself on the hills, drenching everything with mist and flowing like a giant specter across the hills, down the cliffs and over the ocean, like a white, flowing waterfall of cloud. Soaking my body in hot mineral springs, watching the waves crash over rock stacks, moving the bull kelp, melting into bliss. Massaging. Dance party, ecstatic dancing, feeling the music in my gut, in my bones, in my pelvis, coming up like a fountain, pure joy--dancing, dripping sweat, dancing, smiling, surrounded by friends. Homemade pizza. Driving home in the mist and wind, car rocking in the gusts, cliffs and mountains buried in mist, fog and trees, waves, waves, waves. Home sweet home. Grilling, Gillian Welch, friends, guitars and music. Another day.
Yoga Changes Lives
From dreams I rise to the surface; the first pale of coming dawn leaks in the window. Out of bed, onto my yoga mat. Outside, the mist moves through the roses in the garden like a white, wet shroud, swirling. In the complete silence of early morning I open my body, healing, releasing, breathing, accepting, letting go--relaxing. And relaxation is health, is love, is being.
Yoga changes lives; yoga heals.
Now, in the garden, steam rising from my porcelain cup of oolong tea, a cold chill on my skin, surrounded by roses, the falling Japanese maple leaves are poetry. The mist cuts to my bone. Waves are waiting for me now and calling my name. This ball of rock, covered with layers of life, hurtles through space on its way around the sun and rotates once more into another day.
We live our lives the way we practice on the mat--fully relaxed, yet fully engaged, open and accepting, letting go. Heed the call.
Avanti.
The Perfect Gift
Want to show someone how much you care? Looking for the perfect birthday present or gift? Nothing says I love you like an Esalen massage with Phoenix for only $30! Book now and share the love with ones you love. ;-) Deep, deeply relaxing, deeply healing. You deserve it. Everyone deserves it. Come and get it.
;-)
Bouquets of Flowers
I fill my home with bouquets of fresh flowers, candles and the jazz of Coltrane. In the morning, cold outside, I sit at the table in a bathrobe, drinking imperial green tea, savoring the delicate aroma, in stillness. All the while, waiting patiently, is the excitement, I am going surfing. I am going surfing. I am going surfing!!!!!
Saturday Morning
Ornette Coleman wails. The sax wails, ascends, descends, punctuates, staccato, flowing, leaping, climbing, then collapsing into a mellow, tawny Port of a fluid river winding dreamily into a rivermouth on the north coast ocean. I sit in the garden in my black Japanese kimono, barefoot, in the gentle morning, bathed by light morning sun and subtle, cool breeze. Aroma of jasmine, (oh jasmine!) in my nostrils. With my clay yixing tea pots on the table with the tea kettle of hot water, my cracked porcelain cup that I love dearly after years of spending each morning together. Drinking Trinity pu-ehr and Jin Shuen oolong, from the Tian Xing tea farm in Fujian, China.
It is the most subtle and sublime of morning moments one could hope for. Perfect mellow, tawny jazz, gentle light and air, garden beauty, peace and calm, stillness, delectable tea. This perfect morning time when I prepare for the rest of my day.
I am sending love to all my friends, and to all my enemies, if I have any, and to all those I don't know at all. And gratitude for all these blessings, sometimes I wonder how can life be so full of endless blessings? How can there be so many friends who love me so much and give so much love and caring? Life *itself* is a gift, a precious, rare gift, to be used to the fullest. That's the lesson to be learned here--to use this precious life to the fullest for the good of others. And not to be afraid to be whoever we are, to the best of our being.
Love to all. And special love right now to Tai and Kristen. ;-)
30 dollar massage in Santa Cruz
Friends,
I only have two weeks left before I leave Santa Cruz to go to graduate school in Texas.
For those of you who haven't received a massage yet and want one, please book now because my schedule is filling up fast. I am a certified Esalen massage practitioner offering a one hour Esalen massage for only $30. At Esalen the price is $125 for an hour and fifteen minutes, so this is an wonderful value for a deeply healing, deeply relaxing massage experience from a certified Esalen body worker with years of body work experience. Like my friend Aly said when she told her friend to drive down from San Francisco to get one; "It's *that* good!" So come and treat yourself to a deeply healing, relaxing experience while there's still time.
Enjoy.
I also do many other modalities and specialize in chakra opening and energy massage as well.
Call or email now to book an appointment! We all deserve it!
Phoenix
In the Secret Garden
Morning comes. The moon bows to the sun. In the secret garden the birds sing softly, the air is cool and sweet, jasmine and roses waft their perfume into my brain and a brand new flower, anticipated for days, unfurls its long, pale pink trumpet petals, unwinding from its tight spiral into an open conduit of life attracting more life, in a chain of evolution.
The early sun kisses the tree tops whose leaves glow with back-lit halos of pure luminosity. Steam rises from my cracked porcelain tea cup and the oolong is so warm going down my mouth and throat to my belly that I shiver with bliss. With each sip I take in the rich aroma, so full-bodied and soothing to my senses.
The wine bottle, empty wine cups, pieces of dark chocolate, low-burnt candles, lavender essential oil, all smile secretly to themselves and speak of last night's delirium.
Coltrane soars, rises, climbs, spirals up up up, the sax begging to give, give, give. Ah, Jazz, Jazz, God's gift to lovers. Jazz and New York City and lovers and rain and shivering, trembling, bare skin and golden light--New York City, Jazz and lovers.
Here, now, I read Rumi and there is a warm smile inside for my heart is full of happiness, contentment, satisfaction, peace, fulfillment and simple joy and love. My skin tingles and stands up with sheer pleasure and bliss from the juxtaposition of cold air on skin and warm tea and memories inside.
There is a time for lovers and jazz and soft rain lovemaking in New York City, and there is a time for oolong, Rumi and silence in one's secret garden by the sea.
Love is all there is. Love is all there is. Repeat after me, "Love is all there is. Love is all there is. Love is all there is."
Ahead, is a long winding road that leads to Texas and graduate school and that which we choose to call the unknown, perhaps from a lack of taking responsibility. Is it not written and are we not the sole authors of our own choices?
Avanti. Into the infinite ocean of love and Mystery. Love is all there is.
Pure Bliss
In the pleasure garden, early morning, wet, cool air, chills on my skin. Breathing in the aromatic, early morning campfire smell of the Bonny Doon fires like a smoky, peaty single malt Scotch. Coltrane soaring, just soaring on his sax above the ascending bass line. Oolong and Pu-ehr. Fresh blossom opening in the garden. I shiver with cold and delight. Yesterday, waves of bliss passed through my body like electric currents in spasms of love. Pure, uncontrollable, unstoppable, open-hearted, delighted love for all my friends and for all beings. In fact just love, not even with an object, just love, a spring of love, currents of bliss, just a state of pure, outpouring love. Triggered by a friend. Love is contagious. Love is spontaneous. Love is.
Esalen
The things that move me the most are the ones I have no words to describe. The Esalen experience is one of these. It is too big and powerful to capture in words. My last experience in Esalen before I left the west coast was life-changing. A sunset that painted everything--the sky, the ocean, the land, the trees, the faces of the people watching it, a deep shade of orange-pink-red; a rainbow arced across the sky, over the mountains and cliffs, while we all stood, like a primitive tribe come to watch a cosmic event beyond our understanding, in awe, on the grass, gathered together as a body, spell-bound by the surreal, magical beauty.

That night I gave massages until 2 AM and invented menage-assage, the latest art form to come out of the Esalen baths. I made new friends, opened new doors to a path I have been calling on for the last few years, at last, and connected with my people. In the tubs, under the stars, under the skies, in the heat, my heart melted open, my body opened, the sound of waves, ever-present, the heat and steam, the warmth and smell of the mineral water, the deep blackness of the night, the oil, the feel of bodies under my hands, the pulsing of energy under my palms. The pulsing of love in my open heart. The promise of a future that beckons. Esalen is alive, Esalen is magic, Esalen is gratitude, Esalen is love, is creativity, is brilliance, is magic, is the land, the people, the ocean, is a door to the future, is heaven. Is beyond my words.
Alpha and Omega; The Left Hand Path
Two months ago I drove west 1500 miles across the desert and crashed into the western-most edge of North America at a river mouth at Cardiff reef at sunset and surfed peeling right hand waves off the reef until dark, full of joy to be back in the ocean and on the waves for the first time in nearly five months. That night I slept in a big bed and the next morning had two chocolate glazed donuts and coffee with cream and sugar at VG Donuts and then drove 400 miles up the coast to Santa Cruz.

Now, two months later, I bid farewell to my beloved Santa Cruz and Esalen, to my dear friends and all the things I love the most in life, drive 400 miles down the coast, through Big Sur, with a stop at Esalen and arrive in Cardiff at midnight, sleep in the same big bed, wake up and have two chocolate glazed donuts and coffee with cream and sugar at VG Donuts and then surf peeling left hand waves off Cardiff reef all morning, once again, full of joy at my final surf session before driving into the desert again, 1500 miles east, to Texas and grad school.

I have come full circle, alpha and omega and now I open a door on a new chapter. Avanti!

Desert Rain
At 11 PM, after 11 long, hot hours of driving through the desert a lightning storm rends the sky with white flashes and jagged bolts and rain begins to pour down. The temperature drops to 60 degrees. Dizzy with road weariness, I pull over under some trees and crawl into the back of the Mothership and sleep like a baby to the sound of rain pelting on the roof and the rocking of the wind. In the morning the sound of rain drops on the roof gradually wakes me up and I step out into a cold rain under heavy grey skies and breathe in the smell of creosote. I am alive and free. I am on the road and in the Mothership. The desert is lovely in the rain. Onward to a new destiny.