Daily Gifts

Juggling more books books and DVD's than I can read or watch before
the due dates, someone calls out, "Are you interested in yoga?"

I turn, not sure if he is addressing me, to an old man, slightly
stooped, standing by his open car door in the handicap spot. "Uh,
yes," I respond. I am wearing my yoga pants, so perhaps the
question is not so far fectched.

"Then maybe you would like these," he takes from the top of a large
pile of books an aniquated plastic box housing a cassette set of yoga
lessons and a brown boxed Yoga Deck II. "These were my wife's. She
died a few years ago."

"I'm so sorry."

"I'm just trying to clean stuff out. She liked yoga. Here take both."

I explain I don't have a cassette player anymore to use the tapes,
but am glad to take the yoga deck. "I teach high school and so this
could be fun to have for us to pick a pose of the day." I wanted him
to feel his wife's things are going to touch the lives of many, to be
well used.

As I once again balance the library books with the yoga deck on top,
fiddling to open my mailbox, I think how I should have asked her
name. I pull out an enevelope from England. Mysterious since I
know no one in England.

I open it first. Out spills a handfull of postcards with the
beautifully sad, funny poems of Rachel Fox, whose offer to send me
some of her postcards I had forgotten.

These were tangible gifts, but really, I think, each day we are given
beauty and inspiration in ways that we cannot touch or name, but
because they come from people we already know, somehow, we take that
for granted: a phone call, a cup of coffee, a ride to/from the
airport, a shared hike. . .

How my Christian Mother unknowingly taught me the detachment of Buddha

I found this today cleaning up my email folders (much as I would
chide her for spending so much time cleaning through her files and
notes and coupons -- it is all the the same, paper or electronic).
This was her response when I asked her what she wanted to for
Christmas on what we expected, but never knew for sure, would be her
final Christmas.

> Gift Cert. to Olive Garden so maybe someone can pick my up a soup/
> slad some day on their way
> here.
>
>
> black pens with soft thick holder - I
> think it is BIC
>
> spiral calendar that shows by the
> month - days about 2x2 with bold dates.
>
> Crest spin toothbrush/
>
> Nice blank cards in a box or all
> occasion will do too. (arttistic - book store has some)
>
> candles - but no strong or floral
> scent - cinnamon - or earth scents - peppermint - I
> do not need holders
> just candles.
>
> PS: you know all the money to get here is
> more than needed

I don't know if this sort of response taught me the art of
selflessness and of keeping the materialism of our world at bay just
a bit, or did it teach me to never really ask for what I need or
want. Not to make her out to be some saint. She could play the
martyr a bit too well, at times. Yet, I also know this list was
sincere and genuine. Her hands hurt and the thick pens made her life
a bit easier to keep her notes of appointments and medicines in her
calendar, much needed to assist her failing memory. I am sure her
real request would have been health, but no fortune could by that, so
why ask for more than you need?

I will go with the first lesson.

Now, let me go add more things to my amazon wishlist, which few will
ever bother looking at except for me. Gifts are wonderful, but in
the end, as the saying goes, it really is the thought that matters.

Looking at my heart

It is good to be home, yet, once again, I feel as if I am still
stagnating. I blamed it on jet-lag, my inability to get out of my
apartment my first night home to check out some new salsa venues. I
left New York feeling rejuvenated and eager to do so much, happy to
be single, to have total control over my life and time, yet, a few
days back . . . and . . . things feel out of sync. Changes occurred
in my absence, in me or in LA. It is home and there is no where else
I want to be at the moment, but I feel something brewing and I am not
sure I am ready. Maybe it is just life. Maybe it is PMSing. Maybe
it is unexpectedly running into someone who challenged, though he did
not know it at all, all the progress I thought I made internally on
this little trip. Some would say that it is my own fault, that I can
control my reactions to everything around me, it is my choice to be
hurt or disappointed or angry or just plain frustrated in the face of
life's little games. I agree to an extent. Sometimes you just feel
how you feel and you want to be allowed to feel that without
roadblocks or interference. Maybe the question is what do you do
the next day. Lay in bed until noon? Well, almost. But then I
dragged myself out to Griffith Park for a hike on razorback trail,
now smoothed and evened, perhaps from crews who went in to the
fires. It is spring and wildflowers bloom yellow and purple, some
strangling with orange witches' hair (natures has her own logic, i
guess) between the blackened stubs that dot the barren
mountainsides. It was like looking at my own heart.