Checking In...

I've been feeling a bit guilty about not writing here too often recently, but to be honest, life is full and staying engaged moment by moment amidst a lot of activity has seemed more in line with my intention to be a more present mama than forcing myself to reflect out of a sense of (imagined) obligation. Our Australian family is visiting for a few weeks and it's made for a full house and a lot of wonderful adventures and excursions- some highlights:

*Glow in Santa Monica: An all-night art installation extravaganza, we made it til about 10pm with Little One and her two year old cousin in tow! All loved riding bikes down the boardwalk, seeing the incredible lights of the pier and beach installations, and being out late with thousands of others. My favorite bit of surrealism was an orchestra of accordionists playing on the carousel:

A swirly dream...

*Abbot Kinney Fest: Our neighborhood has been as busy as us recently! The yearly street fair did not disappoint and provided plenty of great people watching, delicious street food, and giant bounce-houses for the toddler contingent. Little One slept through most of it, even my favorite part, watching the sisters (one is 14!) of Puro Instinct rock out on the DubLab stage.

Coffee break from the AKFest crowds- Little One is really into trying to drink from a cup!

*El Matador: My favorite beach in the area, tucked into the cliffs and rarely crowded. We had a beautiful day and Little One loved sitting in the sand and dipping her toes in the ocean for the first time! Of course, this is LA, so the Australian faction got a kick out of the fact that there were two separate fashion photo shoots happening while we played in the sand (one for kids' clothing and one for thong bikinis apparently).

*Disneyland: Had to take our Aussie family to the Happiest Place on Earth of course! It's funny that even my anti-corporate, hippie feminist streak is subdued by the sight of children experiencing the unabashed ecstasy of the Mouse. Even Little One was enthralled by the lights and sights (when she wasn't sound asleep on my chest in the Ergo) and we all slept quite deeply after a long day.

Sword in one hand + Buzz Lightyear in the other= one happy boy!

Of course there have been the more mundane pleasures of time with family-- meals together, walks on the beach, the two young cousins getting to know each other-- and there's yet more fun to come. I'll be back here with more regular posts (maybe) when the time suits and the inspiration strikes! Until then, don't forget to make your monthly wish tomorrow morning before you get out of bed!

Manic Monday

The last few days have a been a bit of a jumble. Little One is (I think) starting to teethe, or at least going through an especially tumultuous growth spurt. She continues to be a delight during the day (albeit a very drool-y, finger-gnawing one!) but during the night she thrashes around, escapes her swaddling (or baby straight-jacket as we've taken to calling it) and cries or whimpers at least every hour. For the most part she sleeps right through all of this activity, but I, unfortunately, cannot say the same. All this is to say that my brain is not cooperating with coming up with a cohesive post for this evening, so I thought I'd go with a little list of things I'm thinking about in my sleep-deprived state...

I borrowed this image from the recipe's site- my batch did not last long enough to take a picture

Cupcakes: I made a batch of these coconut heath bar bits of divinity yesterday for our group meditation. They were quite possibly the most delicious things I've ever made (if I do say so myself). I recommend trying them out next time you have a sweet craving (I topped them with this super easy chocolate buttercream just to really go overboard).

I loved Jan Brett's books when I was a child- does that excuse stealing this image?

Town vs. Country: I've been feeling torn recently between the vibrant activity and diverse possibility of city life (where we're at now) and the slowed down pace and connection to the natural world of more rural environs (where I'm from). I'm constantly weighing the benefits and drawbacks of both for our family and what I want Little One to be exposed to. No decisions are being made just yet, but the questions are definitely brewing...

Women in the Veda: This has been a longstanding area of interest for me (really the role of women in all spiritual and religious traditions), but my upcoming retreat has me fully enmeshed in research of this particular vein. My Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy by the brilliant Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore arrived recently and has occupied every spare moment I have to sit down with a book. I'm discovering an interesting mix of (seemingly conflicting at times) ideals and ideologies that have got my mind spinning (though a bit slower than usual!).

Art-making with children: Before dedicating myself to teaching meditation I worked in an arts enrichment program teaching visual art, drama, and yoga to elementary school students. I loved it and look forward to creating art with Little One and her friends as soon as possible. I've been especially inspired since discovering The Artful Parent (I think I've read nearly every post while nursing recently! Such a beautiful process-oriented approach and projects for even the very young have me so excited to introduce Little One to the world of creating that I so love (and starting a toddler art group!).

Of course, for me this also brings up the many (many many many) projects I have begun personally... Rather than feeling frustration or regret though (as has been the norm at times) I'm actually feeling inspiration more than anything. I know I can't take on or finish everything, but that that little spark of creative energy is still there in this somewhat exhausted state is quite reassuring. That spark is what I'll be relying on to get me to the next post here!

There's No Place Like Home

I never expected to be raising a child in Los Angeles. Actually, I never really expected to live here at all, but life is funny and I've made more than a few big leaps into the unknown in my time. For me, this city has been an ever-changing panorama of fortuitous, almost cosmic-seeming connections against the vast and sprawling chaotic backdrop of civilization on the end of the earth.

I'm sure I will write more about the complex love I have for this city, but for tonight one beautiful facet shines particularly bright. Los Angeles is a land of transplants, wanderers, dreamers and orphans drawn here seeking fame, fortune, escape, and other ephemeral and intangible pleasures. The sense of hovering on the edge of something-- the continent, the big break, a breakdown-- is always palpable. Some are driven crazy by it, but for others a fierce and fast bond is forged. I fall into the latter camp and am blessed to be a part of an ever-growing tribe of creative, conscious individuals. We have friends here from around the world, each building something-- a theatre company, a business, a school, a family-- and it is this unity in diversity that comforts me, that brings joy to this unexpected home. A favorite quote, one I wrote inside a journal that I carried with me through perhaps my most uncertain and volatile times, seems particularly apt:

 So Oz finally became home; the imagined world became the actual world, as it does for us all, because the truth is that once we have left our childhood places and started out to make our own lives, armed only with what we have and are, we understand that the real secret of the ruby slippers is not that "there's no place like home," but rather that there is no longer such a place as home: except, of course, for the homes we make, or the homes that are made for us, in Oz, which is anywhere and everywhere, except the place from which we began. (Salman Rushdie)

Magic Number

Little One is 108 days old today! I'm not typically one to go in for numerology and the like (or counting days for that matter), but the number 108 and its significance to so many traditions and belief systems has always fascinated me. I was familiar with a few of the allusions to the number in Vedic traditions-- for example: there is a belief that each individual has a spiritual family of 108 other individuals; the Upanishads, Sanskrit stories and philosophical texts on the nature of existence and consciousness, are often numbered at 108; there are 108 beads on the mala, or prayer beads, used in various eastern faiths. Also, 108 figured often in the wild puzzle and madness that was Lost. I did a bit more research for this post and discovered that:

*The distance between the Earth and moon is 108 times the diameter of the moon and the distance between Earth and the sun is 108 times the diameter of the sun.

*In Hinduism each deity is believed to have 108 names.

Map of Ayurvedic marmas

*In Tibetan Buddhism there are believed to be 108 obstacles, or impurities, to be overcome on the path to nirvana.

*In Ayurvedic medicine there are 108 marmas, or vital points, on the body.

*108 suitors covet the wife of Odysseus, Penelope, in Homer's Odyssey.

*A baseball has 108 stitches.

 *In 1961, Yuri Gagarin, the first man is space, completed an orbit of the earth in 108 minutes.

*108 is a Harshad number- a number that is divisible by the sum of its digits. Harshad comes from the Sanskrit word for "great joy."

So I don't know exactly what all of this means, but the nerd in me loves finding patterns and coincidences. Also, in spending far too much time thinking about this one number I realized that at 108 days out in the world, Little One is almost exactly one year from the date she would have been conceived! Harshad indeed!