Grow, Baby Bird, Grow

I wanted to add more wedding photos, but this darn thing wont let me. Oh well.

We're married now! I feel like I have post-wedding depression, though. Now that the excitement has come and gone I miss it terribly.... how beautiful everything was, how fun, joyous, scarey and exciting. A once-in-a-lifetime moment! And it's over. Just like that.

Actually, it's not really over just like that. The beautiful thing about being married is that it *does* feel different. You know how friends always ask you if you feel older on your birthday, and you don't ever really because it's just another birthday. Not that we don't feel older eventually, it's just that the birthday doesn't necessarily present us with that strong of a feeling of change. It's sort of, anti-climatic.

Anyway, when people ask me if it feels different being married.... the answer is a most definite "yes!" I wouldn't have told you a few weeks ago that this is how I expected to feel, but it really is different. It's special. The love really does grow, and deepen. I feel the butterflies in my tummy when he introduces me as his wife. I'm still getting use to the name change. But most of all, I love how I look at him now, when he doesn't know I'm watching... it's a thought, a realization, that catches me a little by surprise every time. 'Oh, this is my husband' I think. And suddenly I feel a rush of love and affection, a giggle too -- as if it's secretly amusing to my self.

We've been talking about saving up to buy a house. But where? Where oh were do we want to live? Atlanta is actually extremely appealing. I've thought about out west, but I'm not that drawn to the architecture. There's just something about these east coast craftsman style homes built in the 1920's that are so, so charming. I want to have a child. Yes, already. There's so much we want to do... it's hard to imagine how we're going to get all of our ducks arranged in the proper rows. I know that I don't want to rush it too much, though, because I want to be here now, soaking every moment in. I'm anxious to grow a family, but at the same time, scared of it because once that world beings it means we are slowly marching towards our own death, as our children begin to grow and eclipse us. Wow! What a thought. And it only seemed like yesterday that we were skipping class and riding around town with the freedom of adolesence at our feet.

Your Inner Contours

Some places we're not allowed to go. Some places have big, heavy, imposing gaurds with suits of steel armor and long, sharp blades standing at attention by their sides. They are the dark hallways. The places no one is permitted. It's where the No Trespassing signs get painted in bright red paint, strung up on wooden planks and bolted to the door.

Sometimes there are dogs on the other side of the walls. Ferocious dogs. Barking and sniffing, growling and scratching. I imagine them pacing back and forth. On the other side of your wall. Where the child who was hurt still lives. Where the angry oger squats in a corner, by a picture of himself. Or is it a picture of his mother?

There are moments like tonight, when I get just a little too close to one of these walls or one of these doors. And something leaps out from some small hole in the wall I hadn't known about, a hole a part of me brushed up against. I feel the sharp sting of a bite, a wound quick and deep into my unsuspecting thigh. Soft flesh. The vulnerable teeth of your fearful dogs.

I leap at the nip. Right out of bed. Right off my seat. Right out of the room, with you. Then we are both alone, and I wonder... if it is only suddenly that we are alone, or if it is again. Or maybe, we are always alone, and I only know it when I get too close to being near you.

What I Like About You

The engagement shoot was a roaring success. They came out more perfect than I ever could have imagined. My husband-to-be is such a handsom fella.

With two weeks left I've been crafting up a storm trying to get everything ready in time. I have old glass milk jugs for flower arrangements. We have bundles of twigs tied with twine. Last night Jenn and I nursed a bottle of wine together while we hand-made little nests with tiny birdies in them. And Jason cooked us a delicious dinner of creamy shrimp and grits with scallops.

Time to write my vows. Something so close to the heart should be so easy to write, but you'd be surprised. It's harder than you'd imagine. Perhaps it is because I aim for perfection, and to gather the right words to express how deeply I love this man and how beautiful he has made my life, is nearly impossible.

On another, less related note, a dear good friend of mine, Ken, performed Breema on me this Wednesday. Breema is an Indian-style type of energy work that looks, on the outside, a great deal like Tai Massage. I'd been feeling lately as though I have an energy blockage right around the area of my solar plexus, with all of th energy being pushed down towards my feet and little to no energy in the upper half of my body. About 45 minutes into the session with Ken, he placed one hand on my solar plexus and one hand on my forehead. Then quite suddenly, I was overwhelmed with feeling of greif and pain. I began to weep. Not that quiet, sweet kind of crying... but the quivering, gasping for air kind of crying. It was full-on. The energy blockage was definitely released! I was surprised that I'd been holding that all right there in my body. And the forehead is alternately where I'd press my hand roughly to try and hold back my greif. I noticed this when I first started to cry, I tried to hold my breath right at the solar plexus and my hand immediately went to my head as I pressed down on the forehead with my eyebrows furrowed. Wow! What a realization to have... this is how I shut pain down.

So, lying there on his living room floor, he let me weep it out. All of the things I'd been holding in over time: the loss of my old relationship, the death of my Grandmother, even the little kitten I'd lost a few months ago was in there too.

Afterwards, Ken's wife Siroja made us a wonderful lunch of Biryani with Rait and rice, and fresh warm chai. I felt so blessed! Even Siroja, who had been out shopping while Ken was performing Breema with me, noticed the energy change in me the moment she came home. "You look totally melted!" she said. "I am so proud of you!"

Carrying a Gun

Engagement shoot: success.

I love the awkward pose of this one. And the awkward faces. Husband. Wife. It's going to be a fun life...

Thursday evening: 10:20 pm. Grandma finally passes over into the afterlife. I felt her move through. Post-Grandma-less life is strange. I cried a great deal the night of her death. And then, nothing. Life continues. Though I do feel a little stuck. I wish I'd had the discipline to do the Tibetan practice where one meditates for 49 days after the death of a loved one. This is suppose to help with their passage through the afterlife and Bardo stage. My meditation practice has actually haulted completely. I have no idea why. Is it laziness? Is it subconscious depression? I don't know. I just want to lay around. And drink wine.

Grandma -- a week before her death. Still beautiful.

Stillness and Clarity

A perfect fall day. Visiting the favorite place of my childhood. Sitting on a rock in the middle of the creek, I meditate.

Everything moves in concert. Every particle of my being is in constant flow with every particle of the world's being.

I did something I haven't done in a very long time. I spoke with God.

I cried out for the Great Embrace, and felt immediately the beautiful warmth of everything holding me.

Night Timing

Autumn is here in all her glory. I plan to take a walk down Sweetwater and capture some of it on film later today. For now, this is what I have.

Life has been rocky lately. Good days marked by dark days. Yesterday saw a full spectrum from me. I began with the heavy but nearly unspoken disappointment of my professor for whom I work. I'd been promising to produce youtube clips for him for two weeks. It's not that I didn't have time. It's that I've been lacking the motivation. I've written the task down on dry erase boards, notebooks, calendars... as if stating the task made it complete. This is what they call depression, I believe.

There's a cute little picture that I have that says "I'm not okay. You're not okay. And that's okay."

Mom has been gracious enough to send texts every day updating Grandma's condition. She's reached the stage of refusing food and liquids, organs are beginning to shut down. The shop doors are closing, as by the end of the day yesterday she'd slipped into a light coma. I broke down and cried, sitting out on the porch painting mandalas.

It feels a little silly to cry, as if the world wont expect me to. As if my professor is wondering, 'why can't you get your work done on time? It's just your Grandmother." It's just a part of life. She's old. This happens. The world doesn't care about Grandmother's anymore.

She's precious to me. Oh so precious.

And I spent the entire night folded up in uncomfortable dreams about the ex. You know the kind I'm talking about... you try to figure out why you can't be together but you keep coming across the other. His other. And it's as if the rest of your reality were suddenly gone. Me getting married. My wonderful husband-to-be. Where is he in this picture? He wasn't. And I wake cranky, with a strange feeling of being mired in the mud of my own deep unconscious processes.

"Life may not be the party we expected, but while we're here we might as well dance." - grandma

Welcome to our Life

Warm feet sleeping quietly beneath the blanket cuff
A scuffed heel left uncovered
Laundered blouses draping the couch arm
A school book, dog-eared and torn
That jagged chicken-scratch of your writing, scribbled on the back of yesterday's junk mail
Emtpy drinking jars scattered in careless trails
Your complete attention, when I crumpled myself in a heap on the bed
The laughter your wide, chiding eyes erupt in me
A simple brown coffee mug
The incredible size of your hands
Last night's discarded movie,
The half-popped kernals on the floor beneath the coffee table
Soiled socks crawling out of shoes smattered with restaurant smells

These are these things that make up our lives.

Blame it on the Tetons

When we think of autumn we instantly recall a few of our favorite scents: cinnamon, clove, allspice, bonfires, dying leaves, roasted gourds like pumpkin and butternut squash. Autumn is the royal carpet for sister Winter. He spreads his leaves among the earth, flashes the richest of colors -- blazing flags of burnt orange, golden yellow, and deep red. It is my favorite time of year.

It's also a time of dying. It's inherent in the season. Things begin to fade like watercolors running down a page. Though the colors are bursting with flame, they will slowly darken into hues of caramel, as their spines grow brittle and eventually, break.

Is it a breaking free? Is it a blowing out, like a candle into the night? I thinka lot about these deeper, more subtle questions as the season turns. There is the death of a young kitten behind me now, and the death of my grandmother not far ahead. One can't help but contemplate this remarkable, tragic, and eternal mystery. Death. What is it? There is so much fear, so many hushed breaths, hovering around the word. And yet, I recall the moment I witnessed my other grandmother die. I remember how I smiled as her last breath moved through me. It was terribly beautiful, just at the same moment as it rips your heart out. The Great Mother devours her children, one by one.

The many Buddhas of the world call this the Impermanence. It's an innate, natural truth of existence. Everything is impermanent. I long to know, what IS permanent? Is there anything lasting? Isn't there anything that leaves a stain, that remains stable, that exists in the infinite? The Buddhas would say this is emptiness, and space. These are the only permanent, infinite things. Yet emptiness and space contain all things, including them all in their infinity. The rational side of me wants to deny this as contradictory, but a more subtle knowing knows the truth in it's multiplicity.

I return to the human nature in me. I sit, legs crossed, in the corner by a candle. I tuck one foot beneath me, one foot on top, resting the body in half lotus. I sit in the stillness, with the body, with the heart, with the breath. And I notice that everything sits here with me. My sorrow, my loss, my happiness, my elation, my peace, my greif, my anxiety, my gratefulness.