Removing the Ties that Blinded

I know about grief. I know about ways to run from it, flying over oceans to see if the grayness will blossom into color again...

 ...or taking up new passions...I know about running. I can see when other people are doing it. And all I want to do most of all is say: "Here, try on my rose-colored sunglasses that I bought from the Versace store in Venice, Italy for $200 bucks back in 2003 when I was running from the gray skies." They might not have been the most prudent purchase, but I still wear them, and love how they make gray days rosy!

I have found the color in my world again!!!

Drenched in Rose

I was wearing my sample of By Kilian's Rose Oud today...I was rolling around on a bed of roses...have been all weekend. Tsk. Tsk. I should feel shameless, and I do! I have no shame!!! I have let that shame go...

Candace asked how long I thought it took to strategically place all those rose petals? She said that she used to love love love roses. That her first tattoo was a rose. And that Victoria's Secret made this lotion that she lived in years ago...

I wish that all one would have to do is be wet from the shower and roll around in them...that no one in this sexually repressed country would care if a nipple showed!!! Living in roses sounds lovely! Or being covered in Ayurvedic rose petal jam! 

Kakao Chocolate here in St. Louis has a wonderful Rose Petal Lemon Pepper bark that I love...

My dear friend in Norway, Tone said to me: "Madly in love with this picture, my dear Phoenix!! This is me every morning...in my dreams...for once I really wish the picture were in colors...I imagine the rose petals are soft pink. :) THANK YOU, divine sister XOXOXOO.

Tone has inpsired me immensely with her albums and pictures...and the way she tags people in them to help them heal...

Painting Mandalas with Friends

Christy's newest Sacred Feminine Mandala...

I have been invited to become part of a group of WONDER WOMEN who gaze at bindi points in mandalas as they color them through divine inspiration.

How did this come about? Because on the 10th of February I started a new Kundalini Yoga class at D's, and it follows Christy's class. At first she was stressed by not having been informed about the change to the schedule, because she had to end 15 minutes earlier with no warning...then she sent me a lovely e-mail apologizing for being stressed when she owed me no apology at all.  The a few days later she invited me to be a part of this group of women.

Interestingly, when they met tonight at her house in Creve Coeur, it turns out to be just down the street from my old friend Dan's house...the Dan who will only communicate through text now, because I scolded him about his father's hands grabbing my ass...but I still love my friend Dan.

And I love these mandalas! Healing imagery! Beautiful process...

I didn't go to this first meeting. I was afraid. Scared of all the new people. And it was lightly snowing too, so that figured into my excuse. When Christy told me that everyone had been looking forward to meeting me, I almost cried. I assured her that I would be back for the next session, which is on the 18th of March. Once a month. Girl time. Ladies in my age group. Mommas and daughters. Creating these fabulous mandalas...

The minute I saw this one, I knew it was a Kali Yantra! I knew it! I love Kali, part of Vaishnodevi and the shrine to Vaishnodevi on the border of India and Pakistan, where Yogi Bhajan's father made a pilgrimage with him to thank the goddess for his birth...where Yogi Bhajan himself has visited, and the very same shrine that represents an aspect of the Divine Feminine which Ammachi, Sri Amritanandamayi Devi, my namesake, is supposed to be a divine manifestation of. The Kali of the puja for Vaishnodevi that I did 3 times for Sola Shukravar...a practice that my old friend Jyoti told me about. A practice that young women in India do...a practice involving the sadhana of celibacy, that ends with an incredible accumulation of vast amounts of energy!!!!!

The above mandala was done by Eileen.

She said: "This is Mandala 16, Kali Yantra. Kali is the supreme goddess of time, presiding over the present moment that gives life its vitality and its transitory nature as well. I colored this design in three stages. In the center, I was concerned about grounding, grounding, grounding - and Christy I practiced the mudra you shared with us while creating. When I returned a few days ago, my gaze kept staying in the middle and going outward, rather stuck at where the petals were leading..." the rest is very private.

When I saw this I immediately went: KALI!!!?! Then I saw that it IS Kali. I love Kali! Some even say that Ammachi, the Hugging Saint, is an earthly manifestation of Kali. At her ashram in Kerala, India there is a lovely shrine to Kali.

Springing Up

I had the privilege tonight of walking into the room at  Washington University where I teach on Tuesdays, and hearing a cellist & pianist practicing Camille Saint-Saens' "The Swan" all the way to the end. I recorded it. The students thought I'd arranged for live music!

After class...I passed a male cardinal who looked sick. I got down next to him and just gazed and gazed. We were almost eye to eye. When I finally took off my glove thinking to lift him to safety out of the cold, he flew away. I took it as a sign that some people I know and love are tough old birds. Tougher and hardier and healthier than I was thinking! What a blessing...the whole day was a precious gift. A switch from yesterday. What a blessed relief!

In posting this again on Facebook, Cindy said to me: "Poetry! Phoenix, YOU are a spectacular little bird aren't you? At home among swans and cardinals, always rising up out of the ashes, up up and away!"

Cindy, Elmari, Lisa I am just blown away by what a sweet respite this day has been. Cindy the other day I was watching the movie about Edith Piaf, and did not realize that 'piaf' means sparrow. I love birds. Mythical and otherwise. And I love mending broken wings. Hard work. But rewarding. Gosh, I'm sleepy...

I forgot to add that I asked the guy if I could study piano with him before I realized what I was saying...my hands don't even reach an octave! He proceeded to show some fancy piano chord progressions a la Franz Liszt. Then he was off to Tai Chi. A Tai Chi practicing pianist...that was cool.

WaFfLes! WAFFLES!!! Waaaaaahfles!!!!! I'VE BEEN FLOCKED!

I AM SO LOVED.

Tears.

Blessings.

Infinite gifts beyond all logical comprehension.

Cindy, Amber, and Lisa...the trio who came to my Yin/Yang Flow class weeks ago and held hands across the floor in shavasana...along with their friend and mine Kristen........

have officially inducted me into their flock. They call themselves FLOCKERS.

Ha.

LOVE.

LIGHT.

Cindy's words: "YOU'VE BEEN FLOCKED. You are part of our flock, darling...always have been...we just had to find you on the journey.

I am very happy to be a part of the family! Are we like a murmuration of starlings? Swooping around...and dipping...into StL...into the IL-side...

I just have to add that I think this is the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.

And then Lisa sends me a picture of these fabulous chocolate waffles with strawberries and white chocolate curls. Heaven. A girl after my own heart!

I'm Addicted to LOVE!

'Beyond Love' (prohibited) to be exact...

My name is Phoenix. I have a new addiction. Or rather, an old one. Perfume is a drug. To paraphrase Katie Puckrick...a spritz is a hit, an afternoon spent at the perfume counter is an overdose. Tuberose. That sweet muse who feeds you cake then bends you over her knee and spanks you... So inconsistent & insistent. I had a one-night stand with Ms. Tuberose last night. Best Valentine's date I've EVER had.

I'm enjoying fragrance and essential oils again for myself. For most of my 30s, I wore them for other people. Now it's for me. I'm in a love affair with myself, and Tuberose and Jasmine are my girlfriends who encourage me to cut loose!

I tagged Kate, Linda, Dianna, Cindy, Casey, Candace, Amber, Tone, Stacy, Sail, Susan, Adi Shakti, Lisa, Pamela, Courtney, Kristen, Ellen, Balprem and Elmari... women I LOVE!!!

Susan said she loves wearing Tuberose & Jasmine together...

I have a small bottle of Alchemy Works "Bone Flower Oil". The Aztecs called tuberose a name which means: bone flower. And the Victorians associated it with aphrodisiac properties and making peace with death. This one has some cool mossiness, earthy with Japanese Hinoki wood, but green & citrusy at first. It smells surprisingly light.

My little sample of By Kilian's "Beyond Love" is like wearing red lace undergarments underneath a nice white dress. Like feeling so full of joy, but having to sit still in church at the age of 5 or 6, when you are just so irrepressible that the adults around you are visibly annoyed. There is a certain feeling of the satisfaction of annoying them.

I have not tried Frédéric Malle's "Carnal Flower", nor Nasamotto's "Narcotic Venus"...but I am as curious as Alice.

Not so curious about "Fracas". I hear tell it is more for the mature palate, and I am most definitely not mature.

That "Beyond Love" has jasmine in it as well. Bliss. Pure bliss.

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Well, I certainly like this review on Profumum's "Tuberosa":

"We would call this a straightforward tuberose if it weren't for the fact that there is nothing straightforward about tuberose. Ever. It flirts, it teases, it beckons, it distracts, it wraps you around its little finger and whispers sweet nothings in your ear. It keeps you from concentrating on anything practical and tries to convince you to run off for the weekend. This is tuberose at her most bewitching - heady and creamy and fresh, with a flourish of white jasmine and a tantalizing whisper of something warm and spicy that gives this a playfulness that many big florals lack. And make no mistake, this is a big floral. A big, flirtatious, impossible-to-resist floral that will make heads swivel. Outrageously feminine."

I wonder if Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab has any tuberose-infused concoctions?

"The Caterpillar" at www.blackphoenixalchemylab.com/alice.html has jasmine...but no tuberose. A student recently let me smell her "Queen Alice". The whole Charles Dodgson collection sounds yummy! Tweedledee & Tweedledum, Drink Me... her, hee!

Elmari thinks I'm entertaining.

She said: "Now I am wondering...I loved Opium my absolute fav perfume for years. I have not looked at it for a long time... 2 weeks ago I started using it again just a tiny amount because it can be overpowering. But loving it. (Hubby noticed and brought me a big bottle from England as a little surprise gift.) But be it as it may... THE meditation we are doing...? I have also been mixing up different oils focusing on jasmine, rose, bergamot, sandalwood!"

My response: "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. .....YES! I said YES! The rose, bergamot, sandalwood...and our, iris, violet, vetiver, oak moss, daffodil, gardenia, orange blossom, myrrh, opoponax, um, um, um...

"I think it IS THIS MEDITATION!

"I LOVE a good perfume that misbehaves and does not do what it is told. <snicker>"

Fragrance is a healthier stress release & vacation from the ordinary than... oh, say... heroin? Perfume is my drug.

Balprem said: "Jasmine scent sounds lovely! I haven't worn perfume in quite some time. Heavenly from Victoria's Secret was a favorite and Chanel #5. Tuberose is a beautiful scent. Right now essential oils are what I've been using."

I said: Balprem I 've fallen in love with the By Kilian perfumes, because they are made the old-fashioned way, by enfleurage...not chemical extraction. They have concretes and absolutes in them as well, so more of the flower...but I'm loving my own blend of jasmine, rose, immortelle, lavender and bergamot that I made up several years ago...I put it in apricot oil. Yum. And I love the essential blends others have made too!

Balprem summed it up: "So Kilina perfumes are made in the purest way which would provide a much less irritating scent but perhaps a more expensive way because it is a natural process, possibly taking longer to produce, using more flowers but less waste as more of the flower is used?"

Sail wants some!

Yes! By Kilian. Is. Very. Expensive. A full bottle: $250. It's the real deal Lucille. I have a few samples. You can go to www.luckyscent.com and buy the samples for between $7-14 a piece.

Look up Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab too...they have a whole series of essential oil blends for $17 per bottle that smell exquisite!!! I'm curious about "The Cheshire Cat" and "The Caterpillar" and "The White Rabbit". I've smelled "Queen Alice" and love it!

I'll bet Tone Rini would love By Kilian's "Liaisons Dangereuses".

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Just found a passage in Gurucharan Singh Khalsa's book "21 Stages of Meditation", on the Stage of Delight (which we are working on in class), where he talks about savoring, tasting the rasa, the sweetness in life... he talks about a chef tasting his food slowly, deeply, observing every subtle nuance; this is what is happening for me with perfume!

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UPDATE!!~

Erin Vehige contacted me through Facebook to become friends, based upon this post. I want to remember what she wrote, since it isn't always so easily accessible later through Facebook.

"Thank you for accepting my friend request. I almost never reach out like that to someone I barely know, but you tagged Stacy in your post about fragrances and I happened to see it on my news feed and thought it was so beautify a description! I am inspired to try this scent and to explore fragrances with that kind of passion! I'm sorry if this seems strange!"

It is a beautiful niche line of fragrances. My friend Chela sells it at Saks Fifth Avenue in Saint Louis.

Then.... I met Erin in class! She was curious about the gong too...and I was unfortunately a scattered mess, but, ah, well...

I told her that I was sorry for being a bit flighty, and that I had just burned a pot of soup! I think all this new vibration is making me a bit dizzy! Lol!

She replied back: "Oh it was so lovely meeting! And glad I could smell the scent you wrote about! I teach freshman writing and its rare for me to read something so eloquently written. I was so moved; I think it started to stir my own (lost) love of writing. Thank you for helping that! I do hope we have many more moments to chat, too! I will be making snow Angels tomorrow before the snow goes away for sure. It's a promise I've made to my grandma to enjoy her spirit with every snow fall! I'm excited."

Oh! That is lovely! How snowily lovely! Here's to writing and repeated readings of Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones" & Clark Strand's "Seeds from a Birch Tree". Writing is bliss! Snow angels are bliss! Yoga is bliss! Bliss! Bliss! Bliss! AND WAFFLES!!!

~

ONE LAST UPDATE FOR TODAY!!!!

Floating on a cloud of tuberose, like the little girl gypsy I was... I feel the way you do after a rainstorm that slaps the fragrance out of all the rhododendron bushes outside, the hyacinth in the garden. Like a little flower with big dreams...

Listening to Fleetwood Mac's "Gypsy", and found this quote about Stevie Nicks lyrics...

"This song actually has a definite meaning, and it's beautiful. The first meaning is about Stevie herself, and the second, more emotional part, is about the death of someone, particularly her best friend Robin, who died of leukemia before it was released. That's what the line "I still see your bright eyes" is about. And "Lightning strikes, maybe once, maybe twice" - you'll only find a friend like that once, maybe twice in a lifetime. She's explained this in several interviews. Here's her explanation of the rest of it: "Oh boy, I've never really spoken about this, so I get verklempt, and then I've got the story and I start to screw it up. Okay: In the old days, before Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey [Buckingham] and I had no money, so we had a king-size mattress, but we just had it on the floor. I had old vintage coverlets on it, and even though we had no money it was still really pretty... Just that and a lamp on the floor, and that was it. There was a certain calmness about it. To this day, when I'm feeling cluttered, I will take my mattress off of my beautiful bed, wherever that may be, and put it outside my bedroom, with a table and a little lamp." On March 25, 2009 during a show in Montreal on Fleetwood Mac's Unleashed Tour, Stevie Nicks gave a short history of the inspiration behind Gypsy. She explained it was written sometime in 1978-79, when the band had become "very famous, very fast", and it was a song that brought her back to an earlier time, to an apartment in San Francisco where she had taken the mattress off her bed and put it on the floor. To contextualize, she voiced the lyrics: "So I'm back, to the velvet underground. Back to the floor, that I love. To a room with some lace and paper flowers. Back to the gypsy that I was." Those are the words: 'So I'm back to the velvet underground, which is a clothing store in downtown San Francisco, where Janis Joplin got her clothes, and Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane, it was this little hole in the wall, amazing, beautiful stuff, 'back to the floor that I love, to a room with some lace and paper flowers, back to the gypsy that I was.' I love this song."...

MY NOTE: For anyone who has ever lost someone, some part of themselves, or is leaving behind a way of life... with nothing but a "backpack", may you sleep in bliss on a mattress on the floor covered with flower petals.

~Love to you Kristen Coyle.

My very, very first album ever bought, on the day that my sister bought Alice Cooper's album with that boa constrictor around his neck... was Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours".

Balprem said that her husband Rich bought her tickets to see Fleetwood Mac as a Valentine's Day gift, and that "Gypsy" is one of her favorite songs! Mine too! And I keep thinning of "Thunder" as well...in relation to a certain someone, being a little bit of a player... but we all learn our lessons with time and in time.

Valentines's Day Practice: HEALING THE WOUNDS OF LOVE!!!

"At that time, I was no longer what I always had been, but I was not yet what I had become." ~Sadhana Singh

"The invigorating effect secreted by my courage and grit had faded, and gradually I felt more and more like those 'words' [sic] in Gurdass Khalsa's poem:

"Those who wait to be reborn
In the glory of the name
They're like flowers in the rain
Waiting for the Sun
'Til their soul shall be reborn
In the body of a saint
Who shall live forever
In the hearts of those who love God."

~p. 78, "Everyday Excellence: The Art of Success"

Yesterday, I had posted what follows below for my father, but it links with today!

"To get a big head
Is easy.

Food on the table,
Cash in the pocket,
And you walk with a swagger.
Be street-smart

And you can rake in
Twice as much.
But money's like the leaves
Of a forest's trees.

You didn't bring it with you when you were born,
It won't go with you when you die;
Greater kings than Ravana
Have vanished in the blink of an eye.

Parents, children, wife,
You'll leave them all behind.
You must be mad, says Kabir,
Not to sing of Rama,

And to screw up your life."

~translation of Kabir by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

From "Songs of Kabir" my baptismal anniversary present (November 19th) from my father... a wonderful Congregationalist minister with a deeply ecumenical spirit. Thank you Dad!

"Ravana, the demon king of Lanka (Sri Lanka? ~my note) and the primary antagonist character of the Ramayana, abducts Rama's wife Sita from the forest. To rescue her, Rama, helped by an army of  monkeys, fights a great battle in which Ravana is killed."

The leader of that army of monkeys, as the story was told, was Hanuman. The Hanuman Chaleesa, dear to my heart, is sung about Hanuman's bravery for the Lord. For Rama. Ra. Ma. Sun. Moon. Masculine + Feminine. Divine.

The bridge built from the mainland to Sri Lanka which the epic Ramayana told of...is actually visible from space through NASA's photography. Hindu friends of mine once showed this to me. It exists. Who knows if Hanuman was really a monkey...or metaphor for a strong warrior of the Lord?

Hanuman is who told Rama, the symbol of the Lord, that the demon king Ravana was lying...and that Rama's wife Sita was not dead...she was in Lanka. Ram gave Hanuman his ring to drop from the tree above Sita. She picked it up and said, in amazement: "Hanuman, where did you get that ring?" This was a sign to her that God, that Ram is ever-present."

It's all good. Wahe Guru. Namaste. Peace be with you...

The Hanuman Chaleesa is the song which I first heard, dropping like a 'ring' from the trees above me...to tell my soul that the Lord was there. I heard it back in 1998. The demon Ravana, whose clutches I was in, could not stop the Lord's servant, Hanuman, from singing to me. The Hanuman Chaleesa is dear to my heart. I think I still know it by heart. I played it for shavasana yesterday...to all y'all wit yo sneaky excuses ta get outta shavasana: Come to my class suckas...and it's the 1st dang thing on the menu. Sleep. Blissful sleep if you need it, and are weary... soul searching, chakra clearing if you wanta hop on board the yoga wagon!

........

Additionally...Found these words I wrote for a friend. They are a perfect description of what we are doing today in the meditation:

May your radiance expand beyond your wildest dreams and may you find the juiciness of the sweetest fruit in the core of your soul, in the garden of your heart. You are just pulling weeds. We all have to prune every once in a while. Then you can take all the birdpoop and compost it as well! Fertilize your dreams with the crap you are getting rid of!!! LOVE! LOVE! LOVE! Open hearts with your words, let your words open your heart deeper.

I confess that I bought a ton of chocolate for tomorrow too. All Kakao. And rose quartz that I'm attuning to Reiki, Sekhem-Seichim and Karuna Reiki. And I'm wearing my jasmine perfume...cause it's just that kinda day!

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WOW!!! WOW!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WOW! ....

THE MOST INCREDIBLE DAY!!!!!!!! HEALING THE WOUNDS OF LOVE meditation with the students at Urban Breath Yoga, a lunch of pears and spinach and Kakao chocolate with Jen Potash, finding a beautiful blue apatite crystal at Mystic Valley, and giving away black tourmaline, rose quartz, sugilite, chocolate and By Kilian perfume samples to so many people!!!! ...including a stranger in the bathroom (now a friend) & the young woman who parks next to me in the parking garage...her brother is a percussionist, asked about my gong, and I told him about Memphis Drum Shop.

I am home, and so full of love I could burst!!! I'm celibate (as in no intimate partner) for 5 years & 45 days and counting...and I've never had a better Valentine's Day with a partner. NOTHING compares to today. No single man or woman outside myself has ever made me feel this beautiful, this lovely, this happy, this blessed on LOVE! Wahe Guru. All the people I love, myself & God & Guru made me feel this way...Immense gratitude to the Universe. If it got any better than this, I think I would pass out!

And Chela gave me a chocolate cake lollipop made by one of her friends + samples to take to two of my friends. We chatted for almost two hours about God & love, in a department store no less...and then I came home to see Wendy giving a spare car remote battery to a resident whose remote was broken. She always has everything! I smiled. Then some cool guy I've never met before named Scott made me blush sweetly...I am in utter bliss heaven! If I were to actually make love to someone feeling like I do right now...it would tip the balance and I would die from so much joy & go 'Straight to Heaven'!!!

And I gave money to a guy on the side of the freeway & he said: God Bless You. And God did.