Category Archives: Life

Freedom.

Spiritual

What is wanted is deep inner life.

Silence the bubbling thoughts. Keep the mind cool and calm. Open yourself to higher spiritual consciousness. Feel the Divine Presence and Divine Guidance. Fix your mind at the lotus feet of the Lord. Become like a child. Speak to Him freely. Become absolutely candid, do not hide your thoughts. You cannot do so, because He is the Antaryamin (inner ruler). He watches all your thoughts. Pray for mercy, light, purity, strength, peace and knowledge. You will surely get them. You will be established in Brahmacharya.”

– Practical Lessons in Yoga by Sri Swami Sivananda

Freedom is all I want, but to hope for it I feel ashamed. I am certain that priceless wealth is in thee, and that thou art my best friend, but I have not the heart to sweep away the tinsel that fills my room. The shroud that covers me is a shroud of dust and death; I hate it, yet hug it in love. My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet when I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.”

–Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore

Slowly blossomed, slowly ripened in Siddhartha the realisation, the knowledge, what wisdom actually was, what the goal of his long search was. It was nothing but a readiness of the soul, an ability, a secret art, to think every moment, while living his life, the thought of oneness, to be able to feel and inhale the oneness.”

– Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

Crown. Tiara. Whatever.

Health

In which there’s a little sculpture of a tooth!

I had my crown installed today. It was a short and pleasant appointment. It’s just like a tooth, except it’s not a tooth. (The crown, not the appointment.)

My temp crown

This is a picture of my temporary crown, which spent two weeks in my mouf. I made them give it to me because, well, it’s basically a custom sculpture of a tooth. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Why I’m not posting.

Whining

In which your most burning question is answered in a single sentence.

Work is busy as fuck because I’m a one-person department and the general public, with whom I must deal daily, gets more and more bitchy and high maintenance every goddamned second, and I have a couple of projects I’m forever behind on so I don’t have those few minutes every here and there I used to have for crafting and editing posts, and my home machine is still down from that one time I got a parity error and shut it off because I’m too hot/lazy to fuck with it just yet especially since I can watch TV on my Fire while eating popcicles in front of the box fan and ignore working on it altogether, and I still haven’t written my annual Amma post because I’m not sure I have anything to say other than it was as ever the single-most important thing I do all year and I now know experientially that Guru is greater than God (even though we know the distinction is absurd, but still), and also seriously the California ashram sucks because there’s nowhere to sit that isn’t gravel or bark dust and everything you want is at least 500 yards away straight uphill and your hotel room is a 15-minute drive down an absurdly windey canyon, but ultimately there truly is nothing more fucking astonishingly goddamned heart-achingly gorgeous than an avatar because holy shit, fellow humans, that That deigns to come walk among us changes everything, but all that aside, quite honestly a lot of time I just decide to drink a bunch of cocktails rather than blog and honestly who the fuck can blame me because it’s not like I don’t tweet and Flickr constantly.

Jai Ma

Life

In which I’m on vacation next week.

This week, we upgraded the POP server at work and I’ve been busy as fuck. Next week I’m flying to California to see Mother and get my head on straight.

I love getting on planes.

Doing it wrong.

Admissions, Finance

In which I wonder what my old age will be like.

Yesterday, I read an opinion piece in the New York Times. It was a good man’s story: older, loyal, secure; then his company “restructured.” Now he’s been unemployed for years. He’s too old to get a job; he has a preexisting condition so he’s unable to get insurance; he “always did the right thing,” and is now facing abject destitution.

He’s not much older than I am.

I have not done the right things.

I went to college, yes, but I didn’t have any discipline. I took classes that interested me, dropped out of those that didn’t, and in six years of higher education came away with substantial and still growing debt and no marketable degrees.

I got married, yes, but I chose badly. I didn’t choose someone who would make a good helpmeet and life partner. I chose someone who, at first, rocked my socks off in bed and who, unlike anyone else, actually asked me to marry him. But that was it, there really weren’t any other important qualities there between us, not the kinds of qualities that get you through your working years and safely into your dotage with your needs modestly taken care of. So naturally we divorced, and that left me with no equity and even more debt.

Now I’m of an age where I should be investing and building my retirement. Instead, I have no savings and no insurance. For the next few months, I’m giving 30% of my monthly income to my dentist so I can keep a tooth. As soon as the root canal and crown are paid off, I’ll do the same thing for my eyes, because I really need my prescriptions updated. After that’s paid off, no doubt, something else will happen, and I’ll pay that off too.

But eventually something might happen that I can’t make payments on. What if I get hurt, or need medicine? I’m employed, so I’m not eligible for many types of relief, but I earn too little to, say, be able to spend a bunch of money on meds every month.

I’ve been insured fewer than four years since I started working.

I’m not borrowing trouble. I’m stating that it is statistically likely that I will need something I won’t be able to to afford.

Which means I have failed my end of the social covenant. I should have educated myself more carefully and made myself more employable, no? I should have chosen a decent partner1, and together we should have earned and saved enough to pay for ourselves. I should have taken steps all my life not to be a burden on anyone, right?

I mean, isn’t that the social covenant?

Continue reading Doing it wrong. →

Root canal.

Health

In which I had a dental appointment today.

Okay, so, all I wanted to do was pee the entire second hour I was in the chair. Really badly. But I couldn’t, because I was getting a fucking root canal.

1. Two and a half hours at the dentist.

2. DENTAL. Motherfucking. DAM.

3. Temporary filling: same texture as wet toilet paper.

4. My face hurts.

Moral of the story is that you should pee twice before any kind of long procedure you might embark upon after drinking coffee.

My very first filling. And my second!

Health

In which I need a fucking root canal?!

My appointment was at two o’clock. I naively expected to be out of there in about an hour, but I didn’t get back to my desk until a quarter past four.

First of all, nobody told me about the smell. The drill wasn’t that loud nor did it hurt, but that burnt smell is weird, you guys. Srsly.

Wait, wait, back up! So, this was my very first filling ever, right, and I told the nurse1 so. She was amazed because every single tooth in her head is filled, and some more than once. I was kind of excited because, hey, it’s a new experience and how many 43-year-olds get to experience their very first filling? Having survived not one but two planing & scaling experiences and four extractions, I’m no stranger to needles, so it’s not like there was anything to be nervous about.

We discussed my tooth as the topical soaked in and we waited for the doctor. The nurse showed me three tiny little discolorations on my x-ray, and read my chart to me. Lingual! Distal! Tiny cavities, all on the same tooth — tooth number 15, for those of you counting along at home.

Then my hip dentist arrived and I told him it was my first filling ever, and he smiled and said, “Ever?” and I said, “Ever!” and he sat down and picked something up and said, “Ever ever?” and I said “Ever!” and then he stuck a needle in my gum — he’s left-handed — and we sat there in the companionable silence you can only achieve with a relative stranger who has several digits in your mouth and is massaging anesthetic into your jaw.

Continue reading My very first filling. And my second! →

Aaaaaand I have my name back. Legally!

Decisions, Spiritual

In which I’m finally rid of my married name!

I decided recently to get a passport. No real reason. I don’t have any travel plans, but one never knows — and I have the money just now so what the hell. Maybe I’ll get to India before I’m 50.

passportToday I went to my second appointment with the passport lady at the post office, and I gave her a bunch of paperwork and money and she made me re-do my work about three times, which is impressive considering it’s only a two-page freakin’ application and I’d already done it twice and I have a reasonably high IQ.

Halfway through the procedure, the passport lady decided they’d probably reject my application because the name on my driver license did not match the name on my divorce papers well enough. She suggested I go update my driver licence. And could I maybe possibly do it, like, right now, since she’d already put my passport application on her transmittal and she had no idea how to remove it and the paperwork has to go today?

A driver license. Before three o’clock today? Sure. What the hell. I’ll try.

So off I went to the DMV on my bike during my lunch hour. (It’s all downhill, so the ride out there was pretty okay.) I walked in the door and I kid you not: there was no line! None! Talk about support of nature: I got help immediately, which has literally NEVER HAPPENED IN THE HISTORY OF THE DMV. The mild glitches (they had to delete an old expired license from the last time I lived in Washington, plus I very nearly flunked the vision test) were neatly handled. (Note to self: get new contacts.) Less than an hour later, with my name all changed and a new temporary driver licence in my purse, I rode back to the post office. (It was all uphill.) I stopped at Taco Bell, about halfway, for a tostada because I was hungry. (Did I mention it’s all uphill?)

Continue reading Aaaaaand I have my name back. Legally! →

Amma’s 2012 Yatra

Spiritual

In which I don’t know where to see Mother this year.

The US Tour schedule just came out, and wouldn’t you know that a friend is getting married during the Seattle dates and I’ve already committed to singing at her ceremony?

Meaning, of course, that if I see Mother in Seattle, I’ll have to leave the program early to be back in time. Lame. Might as well see Her somewhere else!

Chicago? Emailed NLW to see if she’s going; if she says yes, I’ll blow my tax return on airfare. If no, I’ll probably go to the San Ramon ashram programs since I’ve never seen Her there. The DC or New York programs are also possible, but while I do know people both places I don’t think I know any devotees.

(I haven’t even begun to plan my travel but I’m already dreading the results of being out of the office for more than six hours. Being the only person in your department is kind of stressful.)

Last year I had ‘get divorced’ and ‘obtain passport’ on my post-seeing-Amma to do list. I’ll have both handled by the time I see Mother again. We’ll just have to wait and see if I feel compelled to ask Her whether I should go to India/do ashram life for awhile or stay here and wait until G’ma actually needs me. I’m really not doing anything useful with my life, ultimately, and hello: I’m alive during the embodiment of an Incarnation. Why am I settling for seeing such a being once a year? What the hell am I doing, not fighting tooth and nail to be near Her all the time? The odds of there being an Avatar in my next life are low, low, low. Every second you give away you never get back.

Continue reading Amma’s 2012 Yatra →