sky where we live

i had a moment earlier this afternoon of nearly weeping with joy for no reason except feeling overwhelmed by the beauty and wonder of life. i was walking in the sunshine, noticing the patterns of tree branches against the midday sky, smiling at how life unfolds, and i was suddenly just filled with grace. i very nearly burst into tears from the beauty of everything. it was a moment of something like rapture, touched with gratitude. this moment was all the more moving because yesterday i was simply weeping. my gratitude was directed towards knowing that i will be fine. better than that. i recall hafiz: "this sky where we live is no place to lose your wings so love, love, love." yesterday i almost lost my wings.

well, maybe 'i almost lost my wings' is a bit dramatic. i don't think i can ever really lose my wings. i did unravel though. which was rather alarming. for some reason, i had my worst post-fire dreams ever on wednesday night. they did not involve actual flames, but rather my visiting a series of former homes - from both my childhood and adult life. the interiors had all been completely changed, often in fantastical ways (think precarious floating platforms creating a very high staircase attached to nothing in the middle of a large, cavernous room with a stage and sound equipment and secret garden below), and were thus unfamiliar. the occupants in the homes were quite strange and sometimes hostile. and in each place i was being put in challenging situations or had some impossible task to complete. in the midst of these challenges, i would somehow unintentionally cause a commotion by, for example, accidentally dropping very large, heavy objects from very high (while ascending aforementioned fantastical floating staircase), and very nearly injuring people below, especially close friends and family members. it was awful. and i felt helpless. (and, curiously, hungover. not sure what that was about.) so there you have it, friends, straight up fire trauma. just when i thought i was through the worst of it, this is what my subconscious shows me.

when i woke up, i felt haunted. i somehow couldn't escape the images of the dreams, and i still felt as unsafe and terrified and helpless as i did on those precarious stairs-that-weren't-really-stars or when i was trying to see what was once one of my childhood bedrooms through the curious reconstruction obscuring what i knew. and i couldn't seem to climb out of it or access any of the aspects of myself or shores i can usually wash onto when in such depths. the infrastructure of the me-within-me seemed as out of sorts as the interiors of my former homes. i was ceaselessly on the verge of tears and unable to focus. i tried to work, but was just unraveling. after i actually did burst into tears, my work wife* suggested that i take the afternoon off. truth was, i don't think i had much of a choice. you can't really come undone and continue to share an office. this was all quite unsettling. but rather than try to contain it, i decided to let myself fall apart a little. something i haven't really done since the fire. i've been so focused on being strong and keeping it together, that i've generally had zero tolerance for my hurt and trauma from all of this. this uncompromising position has been disappointing and problematic. primarily because i have been surprisingly hard on myself. especially by judging my response(s) to this. my mind will tell me that i've been through worse trauma and so beat up on my hummingbird heart for beating so fast over this. it's also been problematic because i think it has prevented me from letting go. so much easier to simply observe and acknowledge these emotions and then release them! rather than intellectualise and judge them and in so doing deny their existence or suppress them. and then they surface in the middle of the night to terrify you and make your morning bus ride to work feel like something out of dante's inferno. the former strategy is ever so much more effective. much better to greet or even embrace the emotions. hello, fear of hurting someone you love. kiss-kiss, helplessness. ahh, loneliness, let me give you a hug. then i can send you all on down the river and pull myself ashore and get on with living. so that's what i did yesterday afternoon.

rather than lose my wings or drown in something-like-sorrow [feel free to insert your own image], i decided to let myself fall apart in order to get it together. a beloved sister-friend suggested this to me. she calls it getting out of your own way. and really that's what it was. i came home, crawled into bed, listened to sad songs and just sobbed and let it all wash over me.** and then i stopped. went for a walk in the sunshine. smiled at life. got ready and hosted a lovely party for about 40 friends in our hutong that night. it was a glorious evening and a very successful gathering. but i don't think i could have carried it off without getting out of my own way that afternoon.

truth is, i ought to have known i was in trouble when i was roasting red peppers before 8:00 am that morning. for some reason, when i am really emotionally distraught and feeling bereft, i always want to cook. when i was deep in the pain of breaking up with little trouble last year, i obsessively baked. yesterday morning i ended up creating what i called 'dump truck roasted red pepper dip' because i just kind of made it up as i went along. it ended up being edible in the end, yummy even, but there were some close calls along the way. (i mean, at one point i microwaved a very small bit of fancy mozzarella to throw in. seriously. SJ, sometimes my catharsis is strange.) when i was up to my elbows in red pepper skins, i should have known i was in too deep. but i pushed on through my regularly scheduled day as best i could. and then did what was needed to recentre and resurface. and i've accepted that this is all progress. it is necessarily a gyre. and so we beat on.

i am now sitting in the courtyard, which has thankfully been tidied and no longer covered in wine bottles, glasses, pizza crusts, dump truck dip, cigarette butts and all the other messy glory of last night's leftovers. the opera singers are practicing in the park next door. and a neighbour is practicing the erhu.*** the skies are blue and streaked with clouds and evening will soon begin to gather herself together to get glam for her hot date with night. i will do the same. and nothing or no one, not even myself, can stand in my way anymore. next stop, wonderland.



*my partner in crime at work. she doesn't like it when i call her my boss. she's country director. i'm deputy country director. she's a wonderful colleague and friend. and we manage a small family. i once called her my work wife, and it just sort of stuck.

**for some reason, the song 'chasing cars' by snow patrol always, always makes me cry. absolutely no idea why.

***ok, so i'm painting a romantic picture, but really i hate the erhu. or strongly dislike anyway. not sure i hate anything. and this neighbour plays poorly. so it's actually really annoying. if he doesn't stop soon, i'll need to go inside or put on some jazz to combat the noise pollution. it's a jazzy kind of evening.

in dreams begin responsibilities

i recently read that line - in dreams begin responsibilities - in a murakami book. he attributes it to yeats. nothing makes me happier than reading murakami making sense of yeats. so i immediately wrote it down in my little black book for collecting the words and ways of the world that inspire me. i loved that line not only for the authors, but also for how much thinking it provoked. (this may just once again confirm my capacity for over-thinking, mind, but nonetheless.) my final assessment, unsurprisingly, is that we must dream boldly and find ways to live up to our dreams - that we have an obligation to our most uncensored, subconscious, true and sacred selves to pay attention and to do so.

i was dreaming earlier tonight, but am now sleepless at 4:00 am. thankfully i am no longer awake with heartache, merely jetlag. but if in dreams begin responsibilities, in jetlagged early morning hours begins a return to blogging. i am just back from a glorious three weeks in the land of the free and the home of the brave. while there, i did yoga again for the first time this year. i went to a class in nyc frequented by a few friends. the class was ansura - a style of yoga that i had not done before. it was an intense experience. the teacher's approach was very much focused on alignment and she spoke of relating to one's body in ways i had never imagined. instructing us, for example, to hug our muscles up our legs from our feet to our hips, open space behind our collarbones, and all manner of other gorgeously vivid anatomical ideas i cannot even recall now. she was obsessed with the tailbone and even had us find ours at some point as we were standing on our mats. her purpose was to open us up - to create space in the vessels that we are so that our grace and confidence could have sufficient space. i struggled with some of her instructions. i did not know how to actualize her command to make our blood less alkaline. or fully grasp her discussion of the challenges of being too acidic. (my internal dialogue was full of curious questions about that - ooh, i hate being too acidic, yes. good point. but when exactly am i too acidic? am i too acidic now? what causes it? and how can i make my blood less alkaline? deeper breathing? more focus? hmmm....) overall, it was a positive experience and it felt very good to be moving back towards yoga. and even if i haven't done it since, i have sincere intentions to resume my practice now that i am back in beijing. hopefully even find a teacher.

lying awake in my bed this not-quite-yet-morning, i reasoned that if i have returned to yoga, i can return to blogging. in fact, i have been having impulses to write since that saturday morning class. so here i am. one of the most interesting aspects of the ansura class was the way the teacher gravitated towards me. she has quite a following and the class was absolutely packed (people line up 30 minutes before class even after pre-registering). how much we all crave transformation! or is that it exactly? inspiration? calm? some glimpse into our own connection with the divine? a tight bum? maybe all of the above. she spoke during class about the relationship between precision and spaciousness - with more precision, we can create more space. an idea not unlike my sometimes love affair with discipline as freedom. of course, there are times when it is necessary and glorious to be imprecise. but i appreciated the more precision, more space mantra that morning and left feeling secure in my need to be more precise in my thoughts, words, deeds and enjoying the lightness that could bring. i am not sure why this teacher was drawn to me. after class, my friends were astonished, saying that we had a real spiritual connection. one commented almost jealously that she's been coming to her for years and never received any adjustments. i laughed it off saying she was only drawn to me because she could tell how needy and hurting i was, so it wasn't exactly a compliment. whether that's the case, i don't know.

i do know that early in the class, she came over to me while i was in downward-facing dog, used her hands to open my shoulders, placed her forehead in the centre of my back, nudging me a few times, and whispered "oh love, let it go." i almost burst into tears. instead i tried to allow myself to open further, to breath deeper, to process. (i have a document on my laptop called 'processing' these days. i have been writing there to avoid writing here. but i think i did more processing in that moment of letting my shoulders melt and twirl away from each other than i did in all my pages of cliched pondering.) she came back to adjust me one or two more times during the class. as the class was drawing to a close, she became concerned about a draft from the large studio windows that she felt was blowing on my mat. so as i was settling into shavasana, she constructed a small fort around me at my head using foam blocks and meditation blankets. she was protecting me from the draft, but it somehow felt to me as though it was about so much more than the wind. my friend on the mat next to mine turned and smiled, saying "you have a fort!" i smiled back, repeating, "i have a fort!" what i didn't say was, "i am fortified." i will get through this. i knew that before i set foot in the yoga studio. somewhere in that precise, deep, sacred space within. the wall of blankets this teacher created only confirmed it. but it was a safe, glorious feeling nonetheless.

when i was little, i used to call my little sister, the cat, and myself "glorious kings". i'm not sure where i got the term or why it comes to me now. but i felt like a glorious king in that moment in the fort. it was a sweet, precise calm after a few whirlwinded storms of emotions - unfathomable deep love for a small child, joy at reuniting with old friends, sadness to see a kindred spirit in terrible pain, overwhelming confusion and hurt after a difficult conversation with a love, gratitude for a full life and an open heart - and there was so much space there i could have swum in it forever.

instead, the class ended. we stretched, shrugged on our coats, and contemplated where to go for brunch. i almost went up to the teacher to thank her for her guidance, but i wasn't sure what to say. and i was worried i would cry. so i thanked her with my heart. when i tried to pay the $2 for my borrowed yoga mat, i was told to take my $2 and give it to someone who needed it to buy a cup of coffee. so i did.

and now i am back in beijing. trying to remain more precise, more spacious. paying attention to my dreams, noting their attendant responsibilities. and dreaming boldly.