Author: admin

I sat across from my father, an early Christmas stopover before heading West for work.

“This would never happen in Europe.  What is wrong with this country?”

He was speaking of course, of the atrocious massacre at Sandy Hook last week.  Its horror stunned the nation.  My father, having been born and spent a large portion of his life in Europe, was a man who barely watched television.  Never when we were growing up.  He adored art and culture and would have no idea who the Kardashians are, were someone to mention their name(s.)

He was right: this would never happen in Europe.  What is wrong with us?

“Let go” is probably the most annoying and inaccurate thing a person can ever say to you.  I’m equally irked when a masseuse whispers “relax” as I’m lying prone on his/her table.

Lady, if I knew how to relax, I wouldn’t need a MASSAGE.

If we knew how to let go, we wouldn’t need a spiritual practice.

Now that I am back home safe in my apartment this afternoon with heat, light, unlimited internet and a phone that works, it seems unfair that my “Sandy” experience will draw to a close when I know so many others are still suffering.

Half a dozen of my closest male friends remained downtown.  Urban cowboys riding a snapshot of what a post apocalyptic world could look like.  They texted me stories of subsisting on pancakes or whisky, growing beards and going for days without showers.  They would trek to charge their cellphones at (marginally generous) NYU and hunker back down into their forts of darkness.  As a nod to the New York-y shortening of consolidating neighborhood names (Soho, Nolita, Noho,) they began to refer to themselves as SoPo residents.  As in: South of Power.  My neighbor told me, there was a pride in toughing it out.  This was their home, their people, their connection.  They could not abandon ship.

I am in the jungle in India.  My comma key has broken on my laptop. The chances of that getting fixed before I leave are: none.  So this will be a post devoid of commas.

So- I go for intensely long walks.  Preferably beachy ones.  Alone- where I can meander for hours and not see a soul.  I have been gifted this kind of solo experience time and again- even in busy locales.  Mexico. All over the Caribbean. California. Vermont.  Fiji.  India.  A thousand times by the Hudson river.  But my favorite is when I am far far away from home and no one knows where I am. There’s no sign of life for kilometers at a time and always the thought: if something happened- no one would know.  Totes morbid.

If we’re not Facebook friends, you might not know that I am currently in India for six weeks.  And a month at a place they call a university, but for all intents and purposes is an ashram.

So, 8 people were awakened this week here.  EIGHT.  As in:  buddha.  as in: permanently free from suffering.  

W H A T ? ?
THIS WEEK.