Learning How To Receive

A few years ago, I underwent one of my most powerful inner transformations while listening to my friend Alice belt out this song.

While the full set of lyrics does best justice to the message, the title does, in fact, do a nice job of summing up the point: "All I Need is Everything." At the risk of diluting the beauty of the song with left-brained analysis, I'll just say that hearing this moved me to surrender the limited set of things I think I want to Everything, which does in fact await me.

As the song notes, part of this process entails "learning how to receive."

Fast forward to today. I was finished teaching spin class and having some quality time with the foam roller to nurse a months'-old butt injury when Darok the Rastafarian Personal Trainer playfully scared me from behind. When he saw how much this threw me out of my happy place, he proceeded to ask me if he could make it up to me. By offering me a personal butt massage.

So I took one more step in learning how to receive. Allll righty then!

Darok needs to practice his skillz, and I need to practice how to receive!

The attraction of Crazy Beasties!

In December 1995 I went camping in Baja, California with two guys. Well, really, it was with Steve, and we corralled another guy into going with us to be an official chaperone.* Anyway, one thing we had to do before embarking was procure a means of transport to get us from San Francisco allllll the way down to the tip: Cabo San Lucas.

Steve - who grew up on a farm fixing cars - settled on a 1975 Chevy Blazer, with great joy because he got to work on it a lot before we left. And a lot during our trip. This labor - and these images - will all help you grasp why it soon became lovingly known to us as The Beast: it was The Beast's very ugliness and unwieldiness that made her so attractive and beloved to us.

Lest you think I exaggerate, you should know that we nearly died in The Beast on one climactic night when Steve and our chaperone got into an altercation. When the argument subsided, we continued down the dicey Mexican "highway" in quiet tension, leading us to nearly snap when an unruly truck careened at us in the opposite direction, leaving us no recourse but to veer off the road. The drama made us appreciate our hobbling, graceless Beast (which somehow kept us whole) on an entirely new level. When I was charged with driving Her home after Steve had to fly back for a business meeting, my love grew all the more as she yawed the entire way back up the 101 (I say this now, of course...15 years later and indelibly marked by Her image every time I in fact hear or use the word "yaw").

To this day, the ugly, unwieldy and beastly still hold a crazy kind of pull for me. Is it because I so want to redeem the beauty that I insist simply *must* lie within...some sort of savior complex?

I dunno. But I still love beasts. Lord help me!

My latest Beast spotting tonight in the Mission: isn't she just *beautiful*??

* this had its own unfortunate end that requires a whole other side story...ahh, if only we blogged back then...

Self I-Don't-Care

I'm always kind of surprised when I hear people talk about how they need to "take better care" of themselves. That's never been a challenge for me, who finds it second nature to get:
* Lots of endorphins,
* Quality time with people, with deep belly laughs.
* Quality time alone.
* Gourmet dark chocolate.

...all on a regular basis.

And when the external stressors ramp up, so do I. It's during these times that I also get:
* More endorphins (plus some vitamin D on top).
* More time with people...but more selectively.
* More time alone....with deep belly tears.
* More spontaneity.*

I'd like to propose that it was this last thing - you know, that spontaneity which permits us to exercise our entitled sense of freedom - that led me to the 280 instead of the 101 to meet a friend at a restaurant located just off the...101...

After rerouting significantly, I managed to get there about 25 minutes late. You can just blame it on the inherent beauty and pull of the 280....all part of my "self care!"

'Cuz I mean really: selfishness is *so* unenlightened!

* dark chocolate remains a constant