Being on vacation

Taken down by the smallest enemy, an invisible force which invaded my body, rendering me exhausted and stuffy headed; in particular, this cold set up camp in my ear.  My right ear.  Each day my ear found a new way to torture:  making everything sound like my head was immersed in a swimming pool making all noise louder and less clear; the true sensations of vertigo, not mere dizziness, the world transformed into a ship on a stormy sea (most inconvenient when driving down Sunset Blvd.); then the constant ringing.  My sister suffered the same symptoms all they across the country in Florida, both of us snapping at each other as we discuss details for bringing my mother's remains to Florida, annoyed by the internal static on top of the usual cell phone ill-communication.  I wonder what my mother was trying to tell us in the incomprehensible whispering in our ears.   

This is how I entered my vacation.  Another two months.  The anticipation.  The dread.  

Dreaded:  sitting at home with days on end is an open invitation to the unwelcome guest of loneliness and depression.  The illness only opened that door a bit wider, I feared. 

"Two months off.  Vas a Mexico.  Ahorita!"  

This vacation is my gift to me, my time to learn to live here in joy and vitality, not run to escape that which I do not want to face. 

I know what works, it is just a matter of doing it.   It is moving out of what seems so easy -- inertia -- into newness and challenges.   I always believed timing was everything.  Or a lot.  Or at least something to make me feel better about waiting so long. 

Tuesday afternoon I walked into a newcomer's special of two weeks of unlimited yoga for the price of 3 classes.  

Unlimited yoga.  Unlimited time without a schedule.   Timing.  I could do yoga all day and would feel fabulous about wasting my time, about getting nothing else done. 

Practice:  forever learning, ongoing, growing, relearning, exploring, doing. 

I felt myself moving around that circle, looking down one level as once again I took time to explore the foundation, form, benefit of each pose, of each part of my life, much like I did two years ago in my yoga teacher training.   

Each day presented me with things I know but needed to hear again:  how to be present in this moment, how to set an intention for just this one hour (which then may flow into the next and the next), how to turn my thigh to get my hip to the right alignment ini a pose, how to give up control and just let forearm stand happen (and it did), how to lift myself into a handstand (and I did, with help), how to see my practice as perfect and beautiful as it is, how to open my heart.  

And with this open heart, I have each day slowly worked through my list of life's business:  taxes, my trip back east, finding a job closer to home.  

With an open heart, I rediscover passions in my life, like being with an old lover at a new time, my body finds new comfort and freedom as I enter back into the salsa world after my two week illness and as I make yoga a priority in my life once again, as I sit with myself in my lovely home reading, being. 

In salsa class, my teacher tells me to project my body forward, to lift up and not plant my feet so into the ground, to not stop my momentum, to trust it and trust that my body will do whatever I ask. 

In yoga, my teacher tells us to lead with the heart, to not be afraid to open the heart, to face the challenges and fears that arise as we ask our hearts to open.  I do this and suddenly my world is turned upside down.  The blood flows to my head, my heart.  I am weightless.  I am the A.R. Ammons poem, the one about loving so much the speaker is afraid of being without this love.  

This love that exists all the time, not attached to anyone or anything.  

"the thought of/ you hauls my heavy/ body up;/ floats me around/ gives my motions point, just the thought" A.R. Ammons, Autonomy

This is being on vacation.