the swash zone

"I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace.   ~Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha It has been a long time since I've posted here, and a lot has gone on since my last posting. Today is day 204 in my new life as a teetotaler. I still feel so raw and new and unsure of where I'm going. Part of me wishes I'd been writing here for the past 200+ days. I was writing elsewhere. It was a good place to be. I suppose that's stating the obvious. If it hadn't been, I wouldn't be 200+ days sober. The support of friends that I love wholeheartedly has been wonderful, but I feel in need of a different kind of support now. My lovely friends are not sober and while they will always be a part of my tribe, they are not the who...

Always in the big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the Unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into.   ~ Wendell Berry The outer weather is blustery, cold, an announcement of winter. Inside, it's a little calmer and warmer. Yoga and meditation have been keeping me on a relatively even keel. That's not to say that I don't tip, sway, wobble, and practically do an Eskimo roll* at times. Shit happens, and so do mood swings. Happily, I bounce back fairly quickly, and from my point of view, I haven't been too difficult to live with. I could be mistaken about that. My husband, the Prof, will have to weigh in. I'll ask him later. The fact that he is still talking to me is a good sign. Day 10. The double digits. That's been a high hurdle in the past. My drinking self is afrai...

The nature of mind is like empty space, like the sky, which at present is filled with clouds and fog and mist and periodically has all kinds of activity such as hailstorms, snowstorms, rainstorms and thunder and lightning. ~ Kalu Rinpoche I have a terrible time dreaming up post titles. I start with a weather report (for instance, today's post title, as you can see, is "Overcast"), and hope that by the time I finish writing, I'll have come up with something more suitable. Then I wonder to myself, What's wrong with a weather report?  It might even describe my internal state of being. Day 2. It is, as stated, an overcast day here in the Middle of Nowhere. My inner state is not feeling too cloudy or stormy so far. I began my day with yoga and meditation. I'm exploring kundalini yoga, and bought a DVD ("Gurmukh's Kundalini Yoga" from Gaiam).  It is different from the yoga I am used to practicing.  I was interrupted about halfway through, and ...