weekend plans: ho hum & so yum

The big question at the office on Fridays, especially on the Friday before a three-day weekend, is "Any big plans this weekend?"  The receptionist in our office is generally the one who asks, of pretty much everyone who crosses his path that day.  I always wish I didn't have the TGIF going so strong, but I do, so I'm always a little giddy on Fridays, eager for the break -- when I actually get one -- and delighted to hear the question asked and answered, vicariously enjoying other people's weekend activities, especially when they're very different from my own.

The truth is that this weekend, the one I'm sitting in right now, feels like it's the first "normal" one in some time.  First Joe was gone for a weekend, then we were both gone the following weekend, then the weekend after that I worked on Sunday, and here it is NOW, this weekend, and we're both here and I don't have to work.  And it's three days long.  From the standpoint of this Saturday morning, the time is unrolled out in front of me, mostly empty, fat with potential.

Joe will be racing tomorrow, his first race of this season, his first race since that catastrophic crash last March which broke 4 ribs, the right clavicle and scapula and punctured his lung. And put a hole in his confidence on the bike.  The driver's insurance company can compensate him for the destroyed frame, the medical bills, the time off work, the pain and suffering, but that hole in his confidence -- that's a tricky thing.  So I'm so, so glad he's out there, so strong right now, ready to engage in the race with his teammates, do well, have fun, feel good.  

Me?  When I was asked yesterday if I had any Big Plans for the weekend, I think I said something like No plans.  Nothing.  Just staying home and I'm so glad.  But I realize now, now that I'm sitting here with my coffee, puppy at my feet, that I was being coy, perhaps, not speaking up about what's really on my list.  Since really, when people are answering things like "going to the movies," "going surfing," "having a romantic dinner with my fiancee at X fancy-pants restau," I realize that my REAL answer is very different and I am a little shy about saying it.  Lame!

Bookworms: stand proud!  Writers: shout it out!

The real answer to what I'm doing this weekend? The Usual: Reading and Writing.  Left to my own devices, besides hiking with the dog, tending the bees and all the other activities associated with my suburban farmlet, all I ever want to do is Read and Write.  And so this weekend's To Do list features finishing The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht, reading the last 60 pages of Martha Beck's new Finding Your Way in a Wild New World, making headway in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver so that I can produce my blog post (due Monday) for my beloved From Left to Write online blogger bookclub.  And starting on a book that my so-thoughtful sister had dedicated to me and sneakily mailed, without saying a word: Invoking Lakshmi by Constantina Rhodes.  

Oh, and last but by no means least, working on my own book.  Yes, it's time.

Around all of that, naturally, will be wound some other stuff -- taking clothes to consignment, making dinner for friends, paying bills, hanging out with Joe outside, pulling weeds or staring at the sky (likely both). Taking dozens of pictures of Mr Burns and delighting in his puppyhood, his snuggliness, his ability to get along with everybody, no matter their species.

But what I am most eager for -- the secret drive that underlies everything else -- is always the words on the page, someone else's or my own, always words and stories and books.  Always this funny thing we're able to do, making these meaningful squiggles that transmit so much, working this crazy so-human magic.  Writers are wizards, truly, dunking the readers' heads in the pensieve, immersing us in the experiences of others.  I can't really think of much else that's more satisfying or delightful.

So now, getting down to it.  Wrapping this up so that I can find a cozy spot with Burnsy, him napping, me reading, coffee and pencil within easy reach.

These are my plans for the weekend.  These are my plans for my whole life, really.  Ho hum for some, probably, but for me, so yum.

XX

by jove, i've got it: 2012 is the Year of ...

Apparently it's not enough to lay out a two-page Chart for each new year.  Maybe it used to be enough, but then it growed.  A few years ago a theme emerged when I reviewed all the items in each labeled section.  Then, thanks to Laura Christensen, the Chart grew a sutra, too, a short easily-memorized phrase that summed it all up for me, that when repeated would bring me back, in an instant, to the whole point of it all. So, last year's pithy little sutra, summing up The Year of Discernment, was Say No, Say Yes.  Easy-peasy and kept me on point.  So a two-page Chart and a theme and a sutra.

But now it seems the year has grown a goddess, too, something I was completely not expecting, something I would have resisted had I had the opportunity.

Two days ago, after days of working on this year's plans, thinking and waiting and watching it all take form, suddenly a realization bonked me frying pan-style on the head, leaving me like a cartoon, little spinny wheels in place of my eyes, stars dancing over my head. Boing-oing-oing.  I was in the woods, hiking with Mr Burns, in that place where I do my best thinking, surrounded by all that green and texture and the sounds of squirrels chattering in the trees.  Something clicked.  Oooooh, that's what that's all about?

Listen: if you think years of practicing yoga doesn't change you, you're mistaken.  It gets inside you and does its thing even when you're unaware of it, and then shows itself in unexpected and delightful ways. That's what makes it seem like magic.  For reals.

So, suddenly two days ago the lightbulb went on and I realized that I was entering Year Three of a three-year cycle.  I had absolutely no idea I was in a three-year cycle, but as soon as I knew what the theme of this year was going to be, then I remembered the Navaratri workshop with Douglas Brooks and Sianna Sherman last September, and boy oh boy, did it all fall into place.  [Navaratri is a 9-day Hindu festival dedicated, three days each, to the goddesses Kali/Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati, really one goddess fractalized into three, three ways of looking at reality, three stories that star you and me.]

Kind of spooky.  Check it out.

2010: Durga

2010 was the year of Durga for me, my self-proclaimed Year of Intention. I stuck a big image of her on my red Moleskin and carried her everywhere I went, riding her tiger, wielding her weapons to cut down obstacles and bullshit in my path, to free myself at last from a situation I had been stuck in too long.  It was a powerful and ferocious year, in which I said Yes to so much.  By the end I was exhausted, but also jubilant: I had found the courage to give up safety for something more beautiful.  And yes, I was exhausted, bone-tired and ready for the big change I'd created for myself, to a simpler, less crazy life.

2011: Lakshmi

2011 was for me, as above, the Year of Discernment.  My notebook bore the image of my favorite animal, the wolverine, symbol of wildness and innate strength, my signifier to myself that there was no more need to wield a bristling bundle of weapons 'cause I had it all built in.  All I had to do now, now that I'd cut the head off the demon, was get clear.  Where would I draw the lines?  Where would I devote my time, my energy, my passion?  Until two mornings ago, I hadn't thought of Lakshmi ever in connection to that year, because I hadn't realized yet the final piece, the theme for 2012.  But once 2012 popped into my head, I knew it.  I returned to my notes, I saw these words and breathed, "Lakshmi invites you to the greatness of your creative potential, to turn your klesas [wounds] into lakshmis [boons]." It was her all along -- the year in which I realized with a jolt that I am a creative person trapped in a barely-creative profession, the year I grew my writing, the year in which I simplified everything, eliminated everything unnecessary, washed away everything until only gleaming little nuggets were left in the pan.  And with these in hand, I step into 2012.

2012: Saraswati

In all my musings, my dreaming of the year and my constant interviewing of Joe, getting his input on our shared plans, asking him about his own goals and my own, what came up over and over again as an overarching theme for this year for me as for him is "making things nice, making things beautiful."  While it may seem like fixing up the office at the shop or upgrading the website or finally getting a cushion for the window seat at home are disparate To Do items, they all support a general theme of shri, or beauty, of making our lives more beautiful.    They share something essential with my goal of stepping more fully into my writing this year -- more self-expression this year, in short: more art.  And if it was intention and Durga in 2010, and discernment and Lakshmi in 2011, then boom, if it's shri then it's got to Saraswati in 2012-- and getting down to the business of knowing what our lives are for and making them as beautiful an expression of who we are as we can.  

2012: The Year of Shri!

With so much gratitude to all my teachers, to my sister and Yogateau, and to the countless friends who make my world shine with joy: get ready, this year is going to be SO good!  

The Sutra, you ask? 

Shri. It. Up!