this yogini gets b-b-b-busy. And most often what I need to do is make room to do and say n-n-n-nothing. This repeating of the first consonant is my attempt at rapping. You know, hip-hop. It's one of the musical genres i seem to fail miserably at. really, i wanna be a believable rapper - not just the kind you laugh at. anyhow, that's one of the reasons why I ran away from the Big Apple - ya know - not because i was a bad rapper, but because i was too busy to feel my own ecstasy. Ha ha! I do love this exercise of writing. I find myself very funny. don't you? it's okay if you don't, I won't hold ya to it. "Let them off every hook," as my buddy Harshada says. Does he say this at the end of each e-mail? Why yes, he does.
Here's what some of my friends have at the end of each of their e-mails:
Cynthia Espinal -- "Say what you mean and mean what you say for those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss.
Sunny Sims -- "Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens." - Carl Jung
Don't ya just love my friends? I just love my friends. I am oozing oozing with love for all my friends. (I just chanted for 2 hours with Zoe Mantarakis and the rockin rockin with shaktih Bhakta crew at Pure Austin Quarry Lake, so I'm just oozing with ecstasy right now. I hope you can feel it all over this blog post.
I was just getting kinda a little bit too wound up in the city of Zen yogis - Zoo Yawk. And it was time to go for a bit because I somehow booked every hour in the day with something and my mantra went something like - "I gotta run, I gotta go. I gotta run, I gotta run. I gotta go." Because I was always running somewhere. I mean really, I would sprint sometimes across Manhattan on foot because it was faster than catching a cab or train or bus. Across town. Cross-town was always harder than up and down the citay- ahay -hay. But can't you feel me missing the city? Ah I can feel me missing the city.
I kept looking around Houston yesterday and wondering where the heck everyone was. Where is everyone? Space - we have the liberty of space down here in zee Tejas. Beautiful beautiful space. Akasha in Sanskrit. I love Space. I do. I love Akasha. I mean, my mom and I watched a Coen brothers movie - A Serious Man - in downtown Houston with all of our Jewish friends and we leave the theater with my mom saying, "That poor boy didn't know Rabbi Kushner. He needed to know Rabbi Kushner." And I was like, "Mom, who the heck is Rabbi Kushner?" Leave it to my Catholic Catholic Filipino mother to know the best Rabbis. This is the same woman who taught me the word "chutzpah" back in 3rd grade and told me I needed to develop this. Okay. Let's just say, developed. But our Jewish friends in the theater numbered around 30 folks (I didn't know any of them but we were all speaking Hebrew by the end of watching this movie.) And we drove through Houston and I was like - where are all the people on the streets? "They're at home watching baseball," my mother said. "Or is it football?" We are so not from this country, and it always shows on Thanksgiving.
And on Monday, I start working again - as an Interactive Producer. I certainly hope all Producers are interactive, eh? But I am excited because I wake up every morning at 5 am. It's a blessing - sometimes it's 4 am. I love this time of the morning. In NY - I would often be at the Ashram - meditating or running around in the dark with the deer - trying to see who could scare each other first. There was a bear prowling around for a time at the Ashram and when I was up during 4 am nocturnal bear and deer hours I always made sure not to have food on me. Somehow in my mind, I figured the bear would have no desire to be near me if I didn't smell like food. I always have food near me, on my person, in my pocket, purse, backpack. My stomach's not big enough to hold much food. So I carry food around me. Ask anyone who knows me well enough. Shawn Harrison said she was amazed when I would take the tinfoil piece of nothing that I wrapped up from one restaurant and eat it a few hours later. I secretly think it grossed her out. But she was too much of a lady to tell me this.
After meditation, I would take a shower, get ready, to go to the city. I would then have breakfast - most of the time in the dining hall. Me and Dick Bruns. I love Dick Bruns. Amazing disciple of Guruji's. So much love in this man's being. And I would catch the train or the bus by 7:35 am.
I'd be on the train/bus for an hour and a half or so and got to work by 9:30-9:45 - depending on where I stopped on my way to pick up more food. The Japanese grocer at Penn Station was one place. Cipriani's breakfast - so Scrumptious - was another one.
BUT check this out! Check it out YO! I now have all this time before I have to be at work at 9 am in Austin to feel my ecstasy by myself instead of in all of NYC's public places!!!!!!!!!! That's 4 hours I just won back in each day just by moving back to Austin. I am going to paint, sing, dance, write a musical, run, jog, bike around the neighborhood, go for a swim at Barton Springs....Not to mention that it's so impossible to find work in Austin that I have been blissfully unemployed for the past few months. That's how many months off of work - that would be 3 months. Without work. And okay, I was going a little batty-cakes there in the end - especially because I have no money and spend every penny that I have. Thank God for my Faith in God to see me through all things. And I have been working a lot at teaching Yoga and creating the YOGALife curriculum at Love Yoga Co-op. These are both very very important to this beingness.
Okay Really - I'm going to try not fill up the hours - as they get filled up. Instead, I'm going to do as Rob Brezsny suggests on www.freewillastrology.com:
Leo Horoscope for week of November 26, 2009
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I believe that in the coming weeks you'll enjoy experiences that have an emotional resemblance to those referred to in this passage by French novelist Gustave Flaubert: "I want to cover you with love, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh . . . I want you to be astonished by me, to confess to yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports . . . When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours. I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them." Please note, Leo, that I'm not necessarily saying the pleasures you gather in will stem from an engagement with an actual lover. They might. But your delight may also have a more mysterious origin.
Self-discipline enough to make room for all the ecstasy. "I pray for the power to stay in love with you," - Rufus Wainwright. The power of ecstasy - it's always there - it stays - we just have to have the discipline to be with her. "Without rain, there would be no rainbows," - Sita Sings the Blues.