Gratitudes

It's been a few weeks since I was grateful. Not really I've actually been very grateful I just haven't blogged about it. So were are my 5 Gratitudes for this week:


1. My amazing Mother came to help me (ok she really did all) paint the apartment I just moved into. After all that time working on the studio the thought of picking up yet another paint brush or do anything that resembles renovation gave me the shakes. So Mom swooped in from Alabama and is currently spray painting the gnarliest kitchen hardware ever!


2. THE HEAT BROKE! It actually feels like Wisconsin again.



3. Happier about the weather than I am, my dog! She is even feeling a little frisky and instigating play with other dogs, you have to kow how stoic my dog is to be grateful for this so just take my word.


4. I am reading a great book. The Four Desires by Rob Stryker. Its really helping me keep perceptive during all this transition. I highly recommend it to anyone seeking more clarity about their life's future.


5. Prayer. No, no, no don't worry I'm not going to get all weird on you! It's My sanskrit teacher's fault really, she gave us an challenge to chant everyday for 10 days. I had completely forgotten how much I love this practice. I've been reciting mantras on walks, when I'm cooking, at the studio, before I go to bed, I've prayed more in the past 4 weeks than I ever did growing up in Catholic school.


Some of the prayers I've been reciting as mantra:

 The Gayatri Mantra:
OM BHOOR BHUWAH SWAHA,
TAT SAVITUR VARENYAM
BHARGO DEVASAYA DHEEMAHI
DHIYO YO NAHA PRACHODAYAT.

This Mantra has many translations here is one:
Oh God! Thou art the Giver of Life,
Remover of pain and sorrow,
The Bestower of happiness,
Oh! Creator of the Universe,
May we receive thy supreme sin-destroying light,
May Thou guide our intellect in the right direction.

The Santi Mantra (This is the one I painted in the studio)

 

The Serenity Prayer

Dear God, 

Grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change

The Courage to change the things I can

And the Wisdom to know the difference 

Could It Be Honey

New banner, freshly painted ceiling and honey line.

I had to close my Studio, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It had repercussions that reverberated through my life and my tiny town. It hurt me, it hurt my friends but I had to do it. The stakes were too high that I could feel my old gypsy ways creeping back in telling me there are no such things as roots, just pull camp and go. But I didn’t want to, though it was (and sometimes still is) a tempting idea. So I did what I had to do to survive, I close the doors to Second Star Studio and I hermited up for a while, trying to figure out what the hell was going on in my life, what I could change, what I had to walk away from and more importantly really look at the places where I had made mistakes and figure out what there was to be learned.

It took two weeks before I was even able to walk back into the studio, to sit in silence there and beg the universe from some guiding light. And you know what, it never came. It never became because asking for answers isn’t practice, it isn’t yoga. Doing the work is yoga! So I decided while I figured all this out I might as well move forward on some much needed renovations to the space. And with a small army of volunteers that’s just what we did.

As it turns out I have some really deep roots in this community and more importantly some people have developed deep roots in their own yoga practice, they needed their yoga studio back and they needed their teacher. They needed me. So they and I got to work.

The biggest project we tackled was removing the drop ceiling that was in the space (go ahead, cringe, I did). Once it was out it was like the studio had a face lift, but instead of younger more inviting face we found a tired, smoke damaged, pealing face. We also found a line of holes drilled into the wall that were once used to blast insulation into the walls (though I doubt its lasting effectiveness) and were left with the question if to patch or not to patch until one of the volunteers said, “why don’t you just make a banner to cover it all and paint some sanskrit on it?” Brilliant! And I instantly knew what prayer should be there! 

This is my very first teaching notebook, this prayer has been inside the front cover for years and is the template for the sanksrit banner now in the studio.

And so it began the scraping, cleaning, and painting of 1,000 square feet of sooty ceiling and the cutting, priming, transferring, and painting of 50 feet of sanskrit. It was a long haul, amid other projects those 2 things took nearly 2 weeks on their own but they really do change the space entirely and create a warm and openness to the studio that there wasn’t before. Towards the end of the 2 weeks precisely as we were hanging the banner, piece by piece, something started oozing from the walls. An amber goo trickled down from the ceiling just as we were mounting a piece of the banner right on that spot. Me and the 2 volunteers who were in command of hanging the banner investigated the mystery goo. They touched it, smeared it between their fingers and smelled it but it had no distinguishing scent, so I took a finger tip full said a quick prayer that it wasn’t pesticide and tasted it. It was honey. It was weak and full of debris but it was honey and my next thought was, “please dear god don’t let me have a bee hive in the wall.” So out I went and on to the roof of the adjoining building to search for an entrance to a hive. Nothing. The mystery continued. Until the building owner stopped in.    

 

Like most of the country Wisconsin has been suffering a heat wave. Well it turns out that a few years back the building did in fact have a bee infestation. The bees had found a hole in the brick exterior and decided between the walls was a great place for a hive. The owner was unclear as to whether he poisoned the bees or just blocked up the hive entrance or what really, but what he didn’t do was tear the brick wall open and remove them. So after a week of over 100 degree weather what probably happened was that the wax combs holding the honey started to melt and the honey seeped out, finding a tiny hole in the studio ceiling where it meets the wall and started flowing. 

I’ve cleaned the honey line up a few times now but it’s still flowing. I guess like some things it just needs to run its course. Then I’ll wash up the line, touch up the paint and get back to running mine. Whatever course that is… of course. 

Venus

Venus is out tonight, well Venus is out every night, but from my desk in the cabin I can see her perfectly as I work at the computer. When I was little I had this same view out my bedroom window. Had my alter under that window but I don’t really know it was an alter then, just like I didn’t know that when I was staring up at Venus and asking questions and sending out my wishes that I was praying. So often when I look back on my childhood and growing up I did a lot of things that were sacred before I knew they were sacred. I think maybe I’ve always had a natural pull towards the…well maybe you could call it the divine, but before I had a language for it I just knew it was bigger. Bigger than me and bigger than the religion they taught me about in Catholic School. 

If I was my younger self staring out of my old bedroom window right now what would I be praying to Venus for? Probably the things a young girl does; love, understanding, confidence. Not to dissimilar than how I am feeling now. I pray for my love, my sad little heart, that it will heal and be able to love again and to acknowledge and appreciate all the love I have surrounding me. I pray for understanding because we all want to be understood but we can’t walk around with a running commentary we just have to have faith that our actions speak to our good nature and know that the people that really matter will understand us and that those that do not, well, it’s not that they don’t matter it that we can’t hold people in the wrong for their interpretation of events. And I’d pray for confidence but really it think this is just me praying for love again. If I love myself for who I am with all my attributes than I will have confidence. A deep peaceful assurance that I am living the best version of me I can. 

My mind right now is not much different than a swirling atmosphere. Like a nebulous just waiting to burst and form stars. It’s really just chaos and in that chaos you can get distracted by all the flying matter and you can also step away, light years away, and see the pattern, see the beauty of stars being born, maybe even a universe, maybe a planet. Maybe that’s how Venus was born.