Cycles

 

Space. Everything needs space to grow, and everything needs to grow. For the past week, every day when I unroll my yoga mat, I pluck a slip of paper from my jar of intentions to guide me in my practice. Even when I spill out the whole jar on the ground and scramble them about; even when I choose with my eyes closed: CYCLES. Every time.

Yes.

The ocean said the same to me last week when I sat beside her. "Rooooaaarrr!" she said. Then, "Hussssssshhhhh." Over and over, a cycle of rising and falling. Chaos, then peace. In the middle, almost imperceptible, but there if you pay really close attention: space. In that space, respect for each other, the chaos, the peace; they need each other to exist.

Mike and Jack went away this past weekend to visit Mike's grandparents in upstate NY. At first, I was devastated by Jack's absence. Overwhelmed by all the silence. Then, I fell back into the space. I owned it. Literally. I created my own private healing sanctuary in the spare bedroom where I've been crashing intermittently. I moved my armoire in from the master bedroom, moved all my clothes. I hung up mirrors and adorned the walls with symbols of protection and strength, healing and creativity. I have my own room now. Mike has his own room now.

Space.

Jack's bedroom became my project today as I awaited his return. I threw myself whole-heartedly into being his mom despite our distance. I created a sacred space for my boy. A clean, fresh room full of all his favorite things moved about and reenergized. I adorned his walls with symbols of protection and strength, healing and creativity. A special gift sat on top of his bookshelf: a lantern to shed some light and help him feel safe in the dark.

When they came home and Jack saw his room, he lit up! He could feel the love I poured into his space and he loved it back. He looked at me and said, "Mama! You got your power back!"

Presently, Jack is upstairs sleeping peacefully in the hush after all the chaos. Mike is resting in his own room. I am in the living room (still bingeing on "Orange is the New Black"). We all have space. And the pain, the ache that we are all still living with, just growing pains.

The cycle continues...

Reunion

"Everything changes," Mike reminded me in response to my complaints as we hiked down my old "road to work", the once-rocky path down the mountain to Playitas, now all tarred over with smooth blacktop. No rocks poked through the soles of my sandals, ankles steady, my feet landed flat and firmly on the ground. I pointed out the apartment where I used to live, still with its beautiful view of ocean halfway down the mountain.

We arrived at the head of my old favorite trail to the beach, the one where the monkeys like to play. Now, it's impassable; completely overgrown with jungle. Apparently, things here in Manuel Antonio have found their proper places. No more intermingling. No monkeys or sloths climbing about on roadside trees. No giant morphos butterflies dancing in the air. The animals are all safely contained within the park now, it would seem. Tourists are guided about on their smooth and manicured paths. Better for everyone, I guess. But even while I confess to the benefits of this new order, I feel blessed to have been a part of the wild rawness of life how it was here before.

Perhaps this place is magical enough to reflect exactly what one needs each time they come to it.

When we arrived at the beach and that place where the river flows down into the ocean at high tide, the place I expected would haunt me, I didn't well up. No new wave of sorrow in need of release. No grievance at all. Instead, I found a much matured grove of trees, a mostly healed path, and no trace at all, besides a mild tug on my heart, of the place of mourning it had once been for me. Everything had grown: lush and joined together in unison. A complete picture of peace.

As I took Mike's hand and continued picking our way through the growth, I realized that I have grown back together too.

75% God

Most people are mirrors, reflecting the mood and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. —Sydney J. Harris

I sat by the river with my coffee this morning. Felt my insides drawn out and superimposed upon the chops and ripples, waves, whorls and eddies, inconsistencies on the surface, reflective and responsive to even the subtlest of influence or intention, taking impressions from invisible forces like directions from a conductor. Galaxies of momentary stars glinting off the sun, pulsing brightly alongside one another, flashed for a flickering second and then were gone like shifting harmonies of light. Flowing.

A fish splashed up leaving a wake of bubbles and I imagined all the life within the depths of water. Not just this particular puddle, but all the liquid of the Earth. Aware of, affected by, every pull and stir on the surface, helpless but to absorb the effects. I wondered if they knew how much they were moving all the time. I felt water as the elemental layer between us and the universe below us and wondered what the skin of the sky must look like from above.

Water might just be the closest I’ve ever been to God, I thought to myself, absorbing the sermon being played out before and all around me. I feel we were probably once down there too, immersed in all that peace, but impudently managed to wriggle ourselves out, dry up and have spent centuries building ourselves up and away from it, trying to contain it, trying to control it, using it to suit our needs. We baptize our children in it. We bathe ourselves in it. We drink it to purify our systems, sooth ourselves with the sound of it. We use it to clean up the messes we make. Then we dump what we don’t want into it.

I watched debris float by on the current, pieces of trees mostly, voyaging downstream from where they’d lived to wherever they’d wash up or whatever they’d become. I know a guy in Costa Rica who collects driftwood from the beach near his house and shapes it into furniture. In the end, the death of one thing supports the life of another. If only we’d all paid attention to that simple truth before we disturbed the natural order: we don’t have to kill things to make use of them; every thing has its purpose, and death happens.

As I made my way home on my bike, I noticed the new Race Street Pier and decided this unexpected end-of-summer morning should be the last of it being a place I’ve wanted to go but had never been to yet. I started up the ramp and a large black man in a Security uniform yelled, “You gotta WALK your bike up there!” I stopped, looked at him and said, “Excuse me?” having heard him plain as day. “I SAID you gotta WALK that bike!” he bellowed sharply. “Oh, I didn’t know,” I told him, paused to dismount my bike and said, “and GOOD MORNING,” with a sweet smile disguising a terrier snarl.

I walked my bike to the end of the pier and took a look around.
I was watching a large bird with a long, pointy beak surf the current when the man in the uniform came walking up beside me and asked, “Did you think I was mean?”

A little bit, I told him. “You could have said good morning first.”

He apologized and extended his hand, which I shook firmly and gratefully. We stared out at the water. “You off from work today?” he asked after a pause.

“No,” I shook my head. Seeing his confusion I added, “I work a little differently than most people.”

“ What do you do?”, he asked.

I teach yoga, I told him.

“Oh, like the exercise,” he nodded in recognition.

“More or less,” I said.

He stared at me.

I explained that yoga’s more a way of life than exercise. The exercise is what we yogis call practicing, which really is studying ourselves to clear away the stuff that isn’t good.

“A lot of people don’t study themselves at all,” he said thoughtfully after a moment. “Why do you think that is?”

“Probably they’re afraid to look,” I told him.

“So, you, as a teacher, you think you a hundred percent clear?” he asked.

“Nah,” I shook my head, “I don’t think that. But I try. I think there are probably very few people who can completely clear themselves to a point that they’re one hundred percent connected to Divinity all the time.”

He thought for awhile and said, “A pastor once told me that for all the trying people do to get themselves right with God, there’s always something they hold onto keeps them from it.”

“Well, no matter how clear we get, we always have to rub up against everyone else and their stuff. Whatever extent they’re connected to God, they’re connected to us in ways that affect us and so we react and have to keep on revising.”

“You a pretty intelligent young lady,” he said with a steady, eyebrow-knitted stare and grew quiet.

“Ever notice the way water affects humans when they close to it?” he asked after a silence.

I nodded and smiled. “I think we hear its message of cause and effect. Every little intention shows up in the water.” I said, jutting my chin toward all the movements happening at once.

“I think it’s cause we made up of 75 percent water and we feel that when we get close to it,” he said gesturing to himself and his own wateriness. After a pause: “God sure knew what he was doing.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” I said.

Routes

Retrograde - adj. Moving backward; having a backward motion or direction; retiring or retreating.

I took advantage of some unexpected free time this past week and biked up to Pennypack Park and the patch of wooded trails that used to be like my backyard growing up. It was the first time I'd been there in about 4 years.

It's a strange thing, going back to visit former places of significance in one's life. They're all at once familiar and completely different, and somehow are comforting for both their familiarity and foreignness.

I used to ride my bike there as a child. Used to fish there as a teenager with my boyfriend Fred. Would drive there in my convertible to take hikes with my dog Cain as a young woman. Now, grown, older, even for my old-school mode of transport, those trails seem to have shrunk in girth and depth. I came down the same old path, but found certain places grown over as if swallowed whole, or closed up like old wounds. A small waterfall I remember from always is no longer heaving itself over the rocks in the creek. I followed a small footpath that was once an open field with a firepit I used to warm my hands in front of in the center and found an impassable wall of weeds. The firepit, a glimpse of rock obscured by all the overgrowth.

Still, even for all the changes, for better or worse is hard to say, as I climbed down onto a sandy bank, a miniature beach on the creek, I had the eerie sensation of climbing around in my own root system. I am a part of that place, a native organism so to speak, and have changed as much or more than the trails and old landmarks.

I practiced yoga on that little beach, soaking up the sunshine peeking through the splayed fingertips of the trees, gazed intently down the creek that in many ways taught me how to flow. There was the hint of a waterfall, a new one I'd never seen before, rushing over exposed rock, seeming to insist upon onward movement. Forth, it seemed to say without pause.

I took the path along the other side of the water to go back. The path through the wood narrowed to less than a footpath in places, forcing me to clear the way bike-first on foot. At one point I had to take it up a notch and pick my way across the stream rock by rock with the bike up on my shoulder. I hadn't known until taking the first step across that I'd actually be able to do it, but onward seemed the theme of the day and so onward I pushed.

When I finally exited the tangled woods of my youth, I understood that some things grow in different ratio to other things, and that some things can grow over completely and disappear if there's no use for them anymore. Other things prevail and strengthen. A good way to really see the size and scope of oneself is to retreat for a spell to old versions of home: places, people and things, and take stock of what still fits and what doesn't anymore, and how clear is the path in and out.

Roots - Part 3

Movement. It’s a fact of life. The whole of existence is alive with it. Everything we know, dancing particles forever shifting, growing, turning, dipping down low and rising back up. Some movement is so subtle we barely notice, like digestion or breath. Some movement is grand and mysterious, like the rising and setting of sun and moon, but happens so rhythmically that we take it for granted. There’s the undeniable kind of movement that grows us from small infants into clumsy toddlers and eventually into articulate adults. Then, there’s the kind of movement that requires giant machines and huge amounts of energy to happen, traveling from one continent to another or moving from one home to another, for instance.

A few weeks back, I made the long journey from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to meet the family’s new addition, a niece due to be born at the end of July. Geographically, it was quite a trek, but the shifts I’m experiencing go way beyond miles and kilometers. I left behind sweaters and scarves and the turning of autumn into winter to arrive in 90 degree (Fahrenheit) temperatures and Summer Solstice sunshine. I find myself still thinking in Spanish even when responding to my own family (who wouldn’t have a clue what I was saying if I said what I was thinking). I walk into familiar places and, in the foreignness I feel, note the changes in me I hadn’t noticed in that other kind of foreign I’ve come to know so well.

Last night, I stood on the rooftop of my brother’s house and looked out across Philadelphia. The moon, almost full, smiled to me from that old familiar face she reveals in this piece of sky. In every direction I turned, there was something to bring me home: the skyline lighting up the darkening sky to the south; the sun’s remnants brightening the horizon, with the lavender sheaf he trails in this section of the world softening the outline of factories and churches to the west; a bird’s eye view of the neighborhoods all before and below me to the north; and to the east, the roofs of Fishtown, so much sky and the river I couldn’t see but know perfectly well is there.

A twinkling in the distance caught my eye, but not a star. I watched to find other lights, some red, some white and flashing, some in a line, some moving individually and far from one another. I watched the movement in the sky until I understood the patterns of airport towers, landing strips and that swervy feeling you get when the pilot says to “fasten seatbelts, sit back and relax, we’ll be landing in just about 20 minutes”.

In an instant, I felt that small feeling I’ve chased climbing volcanoes and jumping from waterfalls in Costa Rica, the true distance between here and my home in Argentina, and the value of all the things I’ve learned in the places I’ve visited in between. I understood another dimension of what it is to travel between countries and cultures. From my up above and looking down, outside looking in perspective, I could see the big picture. The whole world is no bigger than a marble, and I am microscopic.

I’ve spent so much time in my travels thus far pondering the true definitions of things like ‘home’ and ‘roots’ and wondering about where in the world to “plant myself”, as if roots were something one would have a say in.

Roots are the first thing to sprout from any seed, they’re there before anything else. Family, town, country, language, all the things that were there waiting to receive us before we ever came to be, these are undeniably what began our growth into who and what we are. You can choose where to plant your own seeds and to where or how far to stretch your growing branches, but your roots are pretty much set long before it ever occurs to you to explore them. They’re the people and places that once defined you and, like ‘em or not, will tell you the truth about how much you’ve really grown.

Full Circle

Happy Ocean Day. An email from the Nature Conservancy asks “What is your connection to the ocean?”

My mother asked me an equally hard question recently as I planned my trip back home: Do you realize, Nicole, that you’ll have come full circle? “Yeah, Ma, I can see that,” I said. “So what then?” she asked. One day at a time, I told her. I haven’t gotten there yet. Of course, those tough questions have a way of hanging around and this one has been lingering for weeks.

When I left home nearly three years ago I had two suitcases of belongings, a dog named Cain who I loved and cared for better than myself at times, and a head full of unanswered questions. There were those questions of my own that I’d carried around all my life up til then, the questions asked of others who didn’t or couldn’t understand, and the multitude of others yet to come. I landed in Costa Rica with a heapful of faith that one step at a time would present itself, and like this I tread with great care into my new life.

Warm, early dawn tropical air greeted me as I stepped from the airport terminal. Kindness from a taxi driver who understood my fatigue carried me from San Jose to Manuel Antonio snuggled in the backseat like two spoons with my confused dog. Four hours later, sunshine and groggy eyes looked across mountains and sea, “Where to?” the driver asked. “I don’t know,” I managed to respond. “Pura vida,” he replied and continued on.

Sol y Mar Backpackers Hostel received us with a smile, an open door, a clean bed, a hot shower. Days passed much like this as we adapted to our new home.

In small town Costa Rica, atop a rainforested mountain that dwindles down into endless blue sea, a yoga instructor in love with nature and her dog, once accustomed to the humid heat, blend as easily as the foliage, as smoothly as seafoam into sand. At least at first. Tourists in a town that thrives on tourism are catered to like kings and queens. There comes a moment, however, when a gringa who hangs around too long shifts from tourist to local, but not really. It’s in that strange limbo that the real challenge begins.

For two years, I learned to surf in Costa Rica, both literally and figuratively, and every wave was a wild ride. I awoke each day with the birds and insects the size of birds singing their wake up call outside my windows. I hiked barefoot through jungle mud because even the strongest Havaianas just don’t hold up. I met new friends daily from all around the world, some who stayed days, others for months, a few are still there journeying on. Overall, I learned the hard lesson in how to not to hold on too tight to anything. I lost Cain one day to an unexpected crocodile on the beach and learned the hardest definition of all of pura vida. Every day, a new lesson stripped me raw. Every night, I offered what I learned to yogis new and well-practiced from all across the globe. I found myself, some days, for a myriad of reasons, without a penny or colón, and learned how far my feet can carry me to wherever I need to go. I learned to crack coconuts for milk and for meat. I savored mango season, sometimes out of necessity and sometimes for the pure tasty pleasure of biting in and dribbling sweetness down the front of my bikini on the long hike that eventually became a leisurely stroll down the mountain path to the beach. This, the juiciest version and true essence of pura vida.

Lost love makes the space for new. I met Fede while walking the very same beach where I lost Cain one week after burying his washed up remains after a few rainy days. I’ve spent the past year and eight months learning the joy and pain of having a partner on my journey through all its heights and valleys.

As a traveler in a foreign land, law requires a departure every 90 days. I learned the value of what I’d considered poverty in even my poorest moments while traveling in Nicaragua. I've climbed volcanoes and watched red lava spew fiery rivers inches from my feet, I've lain in Savasana upon a quaking terrace during a tremor in Guatemala. I have climbed through deep passages in the Earth and come back to the surface with new awe. I followed hope to Argentina, which some days felt like another planet altogether, learned a new take on Spanish, and wine, cheese and pastries. I learned what it’s like to forget who you are and have to start over from scratch like a newborn. I slept on white sand beaches in Uruguay when rest was what I needed more than anything else.

And so now, after all this long time traveling, I’m packing up those same tired old suitcases, now worn through, with what’s left of what I’ve got and I realized in the process that the less I carry with me, the more I’ve got to share.

I’m going home. I don’t know for how long. I don’t know my next step. But I’ve got a heapful of faith that the next step will show up in its time.

I remember during my training to become a yoga teacher, my mentors explained to us exactly why we chant Om at the beginning and end of every class. That one small syllable is pregnant with the entire cycle of life. Every person, place and thing, every movement, every breath has a beginning, a continuance, a completion and that resonance that follows that can be felt to the very core. Some beginnings and endings are not so obvious, some like birth and death are undeniable. The resonance, however, is unmistakable. Every experience, every person leaves their trace, their hum, their footprint, behind in some tangible way. And sometimes only in that absence, do we know their true significance.

The ocean encompasses the whole globe. How can one say where it begins and where it ends? It makes a great big circle, and I don’t think it asks itself why. Every day the sun and moon turn themselves full circle ‘round the Earth, and I don’t see a single thing wrong in that.

I have come full circle. And now, I wait for the resonance to feel exactly what it all means.

Raices - Roots (part 2)

A good friend who asks all the hard questions asked me recently: Where do you see yourself in a year? Five years? Ten years?

I made a huge collage at the beginning of the year, images and words torn from various places, and pasted them all together into what I hope to be the story of this year to come. It's hanging on the bedroom wall. Some key words: multi-continental, explorer, yogi, hogar, una escritora mas reconocido en las Americas. There are images from all around Argentina and Costa Rica. Buenos Aires and a vision of home are in the center. There are lots of pictures of strong women climbing mountains, enjoying views, walking beaches with surfboard under arm. They're all by themselves. Don't get me wrong, there's a guy too. He's taking fotos, looking out from balconies, surfing nice waves, but from a breathable distance. At the moment, the guy in my story doesn't comprehend that space.

In 5 years? From seed to sprout to tree. Me, like now, but stronger, more stable. The life I'm generating, more fluid for all the practice and experience between now and then. I will still be traveling, enjoying, learning, sharing...with some spicy or sweet additions to that recipe as needed.

Ten years? I can't even go there.

But before the sprout, there must be roots, and I guess this is where I get confused. I met a new friend here recently. He's 70 years-old and still teaches 2 yoga classes per day. He doesn't seem a minute over 50. The other day we were talking and he told me, you need to put down roots somewhere. If it's not where you're from, then where you want to be. But if you don't put down roots, you can't enjoy the gifts and benefits of where you are and you certainly can't grow. But what if I really don't know where I want to plant myself???

One thing I know for sure about rooting a plant, to continue with the metaphor, is that if you move it from here to there and there and here again, the rooting doesn't take and it can't develop. The important thing is to nourish it where it is and allow it to branch up and out from there.

In June, I'm going to Costa Rica to lead a week-long yoga retreat. July, time in Philadelphia with my family and our new addition (it's a girl!) and friends. I've recently been considering an opportunity to go back to Costa Rica earlier than planned, staying for the month of May and into June. La Fortuna. Nature. Space. Yoga. All good, nourishing things. Everyone says it's an amazing opportunity and I'd be a fool to pass up (even Fede). I agreed completely until I got to thinking about roots.

What I know for sure is this: No matter what we plan for ourselves, life tends to unfold in mysterious ways. Babies are conceived unexpectedly. Death happens regardless of age or even well-being. Volcanoes erupt and people can't get home. The ground shakes and houses fall down. Hail the size of baseballs fall from the sky and crash through the windows of brand new cars (This happened here last week!). The deeper down you dig you find there's really nothing to hold onto. The best we can do is to live and love from good intentions, one day at a time, keep reaching out and up and enjoy everything...even the really difficult stuff. Right now, this is what I'm doing.

The Buddha said, "There is a place that cannot be found by going anywhere." I would like to put my roots down there.