Where I Didn’t Go

I never went to India. I almost had the opportunity once in the early seventies. I had been dressing in a sari around the house for years, had a blue bindi on my forehead, and read the Bhagavad Gita every morning after my yoga and meditation time.

I envisioned the India of my dreams: the temples; the yogis on the banks of the Ganges, burning off my karma in their fires of sacrifice and renunciation; the incense flowing with the changes as petitions to the multi-faced gods of that system. I thought that was the truer me, and I wanted to explore those streets, that country’s people.

I never went. To this day, my sister will ask me, “Didn’t you go to India years ago?”
And I’ll reply, as I always do, “No.”

I was engrossed with two kids and a marriage that was shaky at best. I never did get on a plane, for $464. round trip, and fly across the great waters to land in a teeming city of India.

I stayed home and raised my sons, lighting the incense made in that country, wearing my imported purple sari and doing the sun salutation every morning, facing east. I knew as I looked out at the Atlantic through those sliding glass doors, that the great Motherland of my dreaming, was on the other side. But it has not been for me to visit there in this life, yet.

Jyoti

Lost

I had a very busy day; one of those days where you know starting out that you have way too many things on your list but decide to go for it anyway. And then it works! I had several assignments up in the Estes Park area of Colorado, about an hour away from my office, plus a dozen pictures to take in that surrounding vicinity. Appointment by appointment, picture by picture, my schedule was ticking down like clockwork. I love it when every thing falls into place like that. I was doing so well that I even treated myself to the Starbuck’s Mocha Frappuccino that I lust after.

I made it down the mountain in plenty of time to make a deposit at my credit union. I walked up to the cashier’s window and was chatting it up with the woman when I felt a scratch on my middle finger. Absent mindedly I reached down and swiveled the diamond ring that I wear on my right hand. It is a gorgeous ring that my former boyfriend (and dear soul) had given to me years ago for my birthday. I glanced down and all the air left my body in one whoosh. The solitaire diamond was gone and the empty prongs had scratched my middle finger. The woman across the counter shrieked, “Oh my God, you’ve lost your setting.” Instant memories of how I had felt the same irritation several times during the day, and without looking had set the face of my ring to an upright position, flashed across my brain screen. I had no idea how long it had been missing. The teller said reassuringly, “check your car, it could be right there.” My diamond was gone.

I managed to get to the car before I started crying. Driving home sobbing and moaning, I was dimly aware at one point of a man in a tall pick-up truck looking at me with a worried expression on his face. I ignored him and drove through my grief. I called my girlfriend and told her what had happened, hoping that some one else’s voice would help me wrap my mind around this situation. Once at home I got down on my hands and knees and started searching the seats and floor board of the car. My soul flipped for joy once as my fingers came up with a small piece of glass, but it was a left over remnant of the hail smashed windshield from three months ago. Deep in my heart I “knew” it wasn’t there.

I transferred the rest of my things from the car to the house. I tried to tell myself it was only a ring and thought about friends and family who were bravely facing far worse scenarios than this. I suddenly had the impulse to empty my pockets. I have been carrying around several small stones with different healing properties that I had been gifted with in Yellowstone. I pulled them all out and nothing. I almost started to cry again. I stuck my hand deep in my pocket once more and felt something tiny and hard, way too small to be what I was looking for. There it was, in my hand, a sparkling diamond. It was so much smaller than I thought it would be. I was again overwhelmed, but this time by my tremendous good fortune. I made a cup of tea to soothe my throat and nerves and lay on the couch. To the Angels of boyfriends, diamonds and birthday presents, “Thank you!”

* annette

Snow globe

without electricity and snow piling up
two feet - so far
I remember the power of heat
the potency of having light with the flip of a finger
and hot water

layers of clothing replace heat
for a little while
shoveling helps generate heat
for a little while too
neighbor kids are priceless
in their youth and available strength

candles bring light before and after the snow-muted
sun seeps through
luckily those candles bring something else
into the cold reaching through the windows and walls
they too reach out with soft illumination

reminding me of a quiet place that knows
“this too shall pass”
that sees it is okay to have your world turned upside down
like the small snow-globe glass worlds I was given
as a child from my grandmother.

You shake or turn it upside down and the snow
falls all around-a lot like my world today
maybe the spirits know something and
shook this mountain and our home upside down
and snow is falling all around

Mary

Poem- Slow Dance with an Aspen Tree

Wind is the music,
Gentian, the aphrodesiac.
Leg against leg
Leaves whisper in my Ear.
The masculine roughness of your bark against my face.
My sap rises, even though it is Fall.

-by Terra Rafael

Hugh Michael Rose’s Birth

The day was icy cold, just one week into January, and the snow was starting to grace us with a white blanket of fluff. It was a Friday and that night was the opening gathering of a weekend workshop with Alan Chadwick, a biodynamic gardener and Shakespearian actor from England. He had started a Rudolf Steiner based community in California, Covelo, that was quite well known for its teaching of this synergistic way of gardening.

We had been living at Claymont, the Gurdjieff School and community in West Virginia, for a couple of years. Our room was situated on the second floor of the large Washingtonian mansion that overlooked the rolling hills and woods of the Panhandle. There were about seven bedrooms on the same floor. Ours was the biggest, because we already had a child. Suryananda was two and a half. We even had our own bathroom. What luxury!

I was feeling a bit out of sorts when Hugh, my husband announced to me that he was going to go to a movie that night with an friend, who had arrived from out of town for a visit. I didn’t know why I wanted him to stay home, I just did. After all, our baby wasn’t due for a couple of weeks yet.

Well, off they went on that icy night to Frederick, Maryland, a good forty-five minutes away. Surya had eaten dinner with another family who lived in a side cottage of the Mansion. I ate in the main dining room and after dinner got up to wash my dishes. Then, I coughed. A warm trickle started down my leg.

“Oh no, I am peeing myself”, I thought as I ran up to my bathroom. But it didn’t stop. I knew that my water had broken. As contractions started, I went in search of someone to help me, but everyone had gone down to the Ballroom, on the main floor, to begin the lecture for the workshop. I ran from room to room, until I found a lone soul writing in his room.

“Go; get Deborah out of the lecture!” I demanded. She was a nurse. I knew that my midwife was very far away and the contractions were coming on strong. She brought another friend with her up to my room. We set up the bed. Jack went to call Hugh out of the movie to get back on the double. How like Surya’s birth in India it was, only this labor was progressing very fast.

I felt that I had to push, but Hugh hadn’t returned and I really wanted him to be there. I started to blow so that I wouldn’t bear down. Suddenly, he burst into the room and, of all things, I said, “Don’t touch me if you’re cold”. I was pissed that he had gone and that I didn’t have enough self-confidence to trust my intuition to ask him not to. I had taken a back seat to “King Kong”.

There was no need to hold back any longer and with two pushes, the baby crowned. I screamed with the intensity and it was heard in the ballroom. At that very moment, Alan Chadwick was explaining that the emergence of a seed from the ground was the same as a baby being born; that all the forces of the Universe were aligned for that unique moment. Of course, no one even knew that I was in labor.

My baby slid out, the cord was cut, and he was handed to Hugh. I was thrilled that he was a boy. I had been waiting for Hugh Michael to come into my life for several years. There he was, swaddled and held by his father over in the rocking chair. As I took him and brought him to my breast, my thought was, “At last you are here”.

Prema Rose

How the Holidays Are Different Than When I Was a Child

On Christmas Eve, my father, younger sister Kathy, and I carried our Christmas tree through the snow-covered streets of the Bronx (N.Y.). My dad carried the heavy end.

When we arrived at our apartment, he would put the string of lights on it after he had secured it into a tree stand. He would have tested the individual bulbs earlier in the day.

My mother had already unpacked our ornaments and we began to hang them on the branches.

Our method of applying tinsel was to lightly toss it on to the branches, covering as much of the tree in glittering silver light as possible. We did it the same way every year until we moved out of the city, when I was a teenager.

Now, having raised my own children, I’ve changed things a bit. On their own, they wanted to do things differently. I still insisted we set the tree up on Christmas Eve, even though they wanted to purchase it and adorn it weeks ahead of time.

Christmas Eve present-opening was a new concept for me, so we all picked one gift for that evening and the rest were left for Christmas morning.

Advertising Christmas which used to begin in December, was moved back to the day after Thanksgiving, and now I notice the glitter, bells and lights coming out as soon as the ghosts and pumpkins of Halloween have been put aside.

It was just such a simpler time.

Jyoti

The Masterpiece Monster

I’ve gotten over trying to write a masterpiece each time I sit down at my desk. For a long time I wouldn’t write at all, afraid of what might come out on a blank page. It didn’t help to have the Masterpiece Monster snoozing under my desk 24/7.

The Masterpiece Monster was hairy and uncombed with large jagged teeth that would sink into my arm preventing me from putting words to paper. I’d freeze up with fear. My good sense of self would fly out the window and I’d spend long moments believing the unhelpful hints the Monster would roar at me. “You can’t write about that! It won’t be good enough! You are not a writer!”

She was difficult and wild. Untamable. She had all sorts of tricks up her sleeve like insisting that the kitchen needed cleaning, or reciting all the undone chores, and necessary errands. I didn’t like her but knew of no way to get rid of her. We’d been together for so long it was hard to say good-bye.

One day I fooled her. I took my writing outside under a tree. I began going to coffee shops to write, I'd write in bed before going to sleep. I took my journal on airplanes, and, as everyone knows, monsters are afraid of flying. I didn’t actually avoid going to my desk but I found happier places to explore my new craft.

I don’t remember saying an formal farewell but I began to notice when I did sit down at my desk that the monster was not as vocal, her hair not as hairy, and her teeth not as sharp. She took up less space.

Then one day there was only a dust bunny where she had lived.

Just a little puff.

Jesse