Arizona, Anahata wide open...

My eyes are about to close on my 3rd day in Arizona, and I can't help but think about the phenomenon of chance, timing, encounters, and if coincidence is just that or a co-conspirator with the great divine that bestows its 'coincidental' magic on us with what we need. Right now, the latter is pertinent.  I desperately needed to get out of the city. After nearly a year of staying in one place my nomadic tendencies were playing advocate in my mind " pack a bag girl your suitcase has gotten dusty, this aint like you." And here I am, enriched by my new surroundings. Amanda shares a house in Sedona with her mother and her mother's friend, Suzy. Their house is a sanctuary. In the morning hummingbirds appear in the window outside the room Amanda and I share. There's a lemon, grapefruit, and apple tree in the backyard surrounded by roses and jasmine. The Jasmine reminds me of my early days of first arriving in Perth, Australia. When my heart was still in Asia and Perth's artifice and being acquainted back to western life sheathed me. But the Jasmine growing along fenced line streets perked me up and always beckoned me from the confines. Now, years later I'm invigorated by their scent in Arizona. 

It's a full house here, back to the aforementioned topic of coincidence. Suzy's sister Anne is visiting form Michigan with her daughter Kelly and her fiance. Anne is 64 yrs. old and embodies all the badassery and grace I wish to emulate at her age. This morning I watched her play a 12 string guitar as she sang angelically in front of the lemon tree.  At lunch the group of us drove out to a pristine lake and I took in Arizona's mystical landscape. I can't get over the cactus and couldn't help but laugh and imagine them all wearing cowboy hats - it just seems fitting. Such peculiar trees, so pronounced and somehow patriarchal. I imagine a giant hand meticulously placing the cactus along the rugged/hilly landscape with how perfect they appear. Amanda's friend told us it takes 100 years for them to reach their fullest height. Imagine, being rooted, bound, and consecrated to the same soil in which you will only evolve from. The beauty of it is that their grand purpose in life is to continually grow upwards. I imagine the most wild love and intimacy being birthed from the same soil, embodied by the lessons of the cactus.  Cactus also have the ability to grow arms- such god damn warriors.

Anne ( the future me at 64) and I really connected and shared pieces of our past. And Amanda and I are the epitome of soul sistas, get each other's vibe, coincide peacefully in the present sort of deal. 

The sun on my bare skin, the scent of jasmine, running my fingers over the lemons still swaying at the umbilical of their branches. The cactus in their regal extravagance of continuing upward despite the threat of brush fire, of man. And their thorns that intend no harm but to protect...humble, wise, and a great mystery. 

I can choose to dwell on the mystery but instead I'm gonna toss a few more jasmine in my water bottle, sip, and fall asleep to the dry Arizona winds and anticipate the hummingbirds...

 

Podcast with Nicolle and Noah

It's 11:45 pm, January 21st.  I just arrived back in Philly after spending all day at the Womens March in Washington D.C.  Both my brain and body are beyond the point of exhaustion,  so I will come back to that with a whole lot of depth later. Oh yes, lots to be said...

For now friends, I want to share a podcast I recorded with a dear new friend of mine Noah Julian, (http://www.noahmoves.com/#bio ) yoga teacher and co-owner of the Yoga and Movement Sanctuary in Philadelphia. We discussed openly how I got started with yoga as well as a bit of my journey traveling abroad and beyond. This was the first time I've ever recorded a podcast, but Noah held the flow of the conversation as elegantly as his handstands.  Please excuse all my "yea's and uh huh's and ums."  I'm a work in progress;)  Also, peep some of the photos Noah and I collaborated on, photographed by the amazing Joe Longo http://joelongophotography.photoshelter.com/
 

Hope you enjoy!

http://taoistman.hipcast.com/deluge/taoistman-20170118221115-4339.mp3

Mama Atlas, Mama Marrakech

I ran my fingers over the smooth surface of the Medina, like rose petals caressing a tombstone. I felt the filth and coveted the beauty, inheriting all within the walls. I was lost, still carrying a sweaty fistful of wilting mint in my left hand that had been handed to me to mask the putrid smelling labyrinth of the tanneries I was previously lost in. Animal skins of all sort, being shape-shifted into decadence... even luxury has its hell.

I wanted the real Marrakech,  and it took me by a beggars hand, furled and wove me into the tapestry of a harem pant pocket. I saw how privilege breeds ignorance, and lack of privilege breeds deceit. Hunger and greed everywhere among the locals and tourists, embellished by the intricacies of sublime Moroccan design.

I sit at a picnic bench in the food stalls of Jemaa El Fna . The face of a baby boy, no more than 2 with a face punctuated with bruises and scabs, still imprinted in my memory.  His little hand outstretched towards me holding a small packet of Kleenex,  his eyes dazed in the distance as his mother towers over him waiting for the 4 Dirham exchange for guilt ridden Kleenex.  The poor baby, can barely keep his eyes open from exhaustion, and his face the obvious result of being pulled around negligently as a money maker. Empathy for his mother who was clearly mentally ill, but rage for his innocence succumbed to it all.  Monkeys, pulling at the chain held by its tyrant ,  and the sight of snake charmers mythicized by the sounds of the bansuri.  Perhaps I should have let this wash over me as any tourist, however I realized that never again, can I merely be a visitor in our world,  and not take my surroundings in its entirety to heart. A sentiment birthed after the experiences I've had in the past 2 years.


And then Mama Atlas, in all her swelling dignity. I spent 5 days in the Atlas Mountains, coddling baby goats and lonesome donkeys, and processing more than just the past few days in Marrakech.  She gave me this through meditation;

Mother Atlas, 

give me the energy to grow, to thaw and let go. 

To reign in prowess with humility among humanity. 

To nurture, protect, to forgive and relinquish. 

To observe and not judge, in high humbleness, 

and to remain pronounced through all the changes.

To bloom and flow, and gracefully heed our existence like you,

 Mother Atlas.