Expect the Unexpected

Hi, Boomers,

I'm excited today. In fact, I've been excited all week. I feel like I'm high all the time because adrenalin has been surging through my body with more than its usual speed. It was a good work week, teaching yoga every day - getting back to what I love doing. After experiencing the spiritual connection to Bali, it was a great feeling to connect my mind and body and breath in movement and intention. I also worked daily on marketing plans for my book, which was like another full time job. I even made time to dance tango on Wednesday night at one of my favorite venues - El Floridita on Vine and Fountain.

I was only away about 9 days but it felt like I was away a month. I guess that's a good sign that my vacation was terrific. And I'm still carrying Bali around in my heart, in my head, and in my future.

Okay, I won't beat around the bush. I'm having my first book signing tonight at my Saturday night milonga - the place where I regularly dance tango. It's actually called The Tango Room and we just celebrated our ninth anniversary at that particular studio.

I don't know what to expect from a book signing. But I'm just going with the flow and having a good time. Invitations were sent out and plans have been made to celebrate all 60 year old women in our tango community. It's free to all of us who have reached the 60th decade. A milestone for sure, and yet, we are all really very young at 60 it seems to me.

My book, Sixty, Sex, & Tango, Confessions of a Beatnik Boomer (still shamlessly plugging, aren't I), deals with turning 60. One day, right in the middle of being 60, I startled myself by consciously recognizing that I had turned 64. It was just a number to me. Nothing more than a number. I felt like I was 19; I acted like I was 19, and I moved like I was 19. In fact, I didn't move as good at 19. I like to think that living with joy, with yoga, with dancing tango has lead me into surrender and acceptance of living gracefully in my 60's. I'm now two years older than when I started writing the book and I feel younger. I feel like Benjamin Button decreasing in age. Maybe I'll die looking like a baby.

So tonight I celebrate many gifts I have been given: my family - sons and daughters in law and brother and sister in law and adorable nephew, my grandchildren - all five of them - my wonderful, loving friends, the tango and the pleasure and happiness that the dance has brought into my life, the ability to actually write a memoir about living joyously with gratitude and love.

I reflected today that I never had a vision about a book signing in my future. I just wrote daily for a year and a half joyfully. Sometimes I got so high on life that I wanted to scream. And sometimes I did just that. I screamed. Strange to me that I didn't have a vision of an outcome sometime in the future. It was just about the process, the journey that was a kick. So today I am surprised and I am grateful. And I wanted to share that with you.

Namaste

Joan

Notes From the Hindu Underground

Hi, Boomers,

I'm home and the emersion back to reality has not taken place yet. Hey, the day is almost over and maybe I won't be jarred back into the daily news. A weariness is beginning to creep into my bones and my mind is fuzzier than at noon when I wandered through Ralph's trying to come up with a week's worth of food. Not Whole Foods? Okay, so I had a bunch of Ralph's coupons that needed to be used up.

While my body is shopping and organizing bills and juggling next week's marketing activity and classes, my mind is still back in Bali. I'm still flush with the warmth and generosity of spirit and daily offerings of gratitude that encompasses this most unique Hindu society. Despite the hundreds of motorbikes and taxis flooding the streets at all hours, the rhythm of Bali resides in the beats of one's heart. Care, kindness, and gratitude is the mantra chain. Karma determines your way into life and your way out of life.

One of the most unique experiences I had was attending a cremation ceremony. The funeral was held in a small village about 10 miles outside of Ubud - the city where I stayed - and it began in the home of the deceased. We were served water and cake before the ceremony began. There were relatives and villagers milling around or sitting. Music was playing; children were happily wandering around; the ladies were gossiping and the men were organizing and erecting the very tall edifice where the deceased body was to be placed.

When it was time to gather on the center road in the village, we all moved into the street and watched the finishing preparations. On the very top of the funeral edifice, a beautiful young woman, dressed in Balinese ceremonial clothes, sat perfectly still. She was a member of the deceased family. Below her was a life-size black cow made out of wood; upon that cow road an important person from the village. He looked like a cowboy in a western movie. He was happily showing off to the villagers how much fun he was having atop that cow.

In this particular funeral ceremony, only one man was going to be cremated. The deceased was considered to have some wealth in the village and so he was allowed to have his own separate cremation. Sometimes many people are cremated at the same time if they do not have the means for an individual funeral. This was an unusual event.

My friends and I hung out with two adorable Italian men who spoke English very well and so we all walked together down the pothole filled street, wind blowing dust around our bodies as the oppressive heat made our throats dry. I thought we should be sad at this moment, but no one around us was sad. Everyone was joyfully talking and laughing and it all seemed so, well, perplexingly not like a funeral.

We walked into a large field and the villagers stood back as those who prepared for the cremation did their work.. The black cow was situation on its own platform and was separated from the edifice where the body was held. Actually, the body was wrapped much like a mummy in ancient Egypt and placed in what looked like a casket. Then men lifted the casket and carried it to the cow where it slowly slide into the body into a carved out cavity inside the cow. Evidently, the cow had movable parts and functioned somewhat like a crematorium. In the ensuing half hour, piles of wood and straw were placed around the cow. Still, the crowd talked and continued to carry on as if they were standing around at a market place.

The family approached the funeral pyre to pay their last respects. The wood and straw were beginning to burn. When the cow was sufficiently burning, I walked up to the sacred cow which housed the burning body and paid my last respects. I knew from my yoga and study of Buddhism that this was a moment of transition for the deceased. His soul was moving on into the spiritual world and he would, of course, come back into another form. If he had lived life with good karma, he would return a happy man. If not, his life would be full of struggle.

I asked our driver, Wayan, why there were no tears. Why there was no sadness. Why were the villagers were totally relaxed and peaceful. The sense of balance in the crowd was pervasive. There were no high or lows; the energy of the villagers was uniquely tranquil for just having seen their beloved relative die.

Wayan told us about the Hindu philosophy of death and dying; it is much like the Tibetan philosophy of living and dying. For Hindus and Buddhists, death is a transition after life. That transition has meaning because the energy of the soul does not evaporate. The soul lives, it resonates in the universe at the moment of death. Death is a happy time in these unique cultures. It is a time to assess karma and give gratitude for life on earth. For those who are close relatives of the deceased, a wife or a daughter or son, then there may be tears shed but not in public. No one mourns or long.

I am still feeling the vibe of peace and non-violence at the core of the Balinese society. I sensed no anger; I sensed no impatience; I sensed no judgment. There is little crime and not much drug use. There seems to be a lack of coveting of things or fighting over the spoils of events or situation. The island of Bali and its people are embracing and loving and the the richness and textures of this most magnificent and lush environment and its spiritual people will have a long lasting influence on my soul.

I didn't do any yoga while I was away. My friends asked me if I missed the practice. But I told them that my practice was more meditative and not so physical because we were hiking most of the days and the physical exertion was vigorous. So my thoughts turned inward many times a day as I let my mind wander and absorb the purity of the air and the stillness in my environment. Can you imagine meditating in a rice field? It's heaven. And Bali is surely as close to paradise on earth as it gets.

Namaste

Joan

Up in the Air

Hi, Boomers,

A few thoughts on travel before I leave for Bali. Bali. It sounds romantic and so "eat, pray, lovish." Let's set the record straight. I'm not going to Bali because of Ms Gilbert's book. While I found her journey somewhat interesting and a bit whiney, I truly believe there are more interesting anecdotes about sappy transformation. She ain't Carl Jung. To those of you who worship her journey, you can all throw rotten tomatoes at me when you meet me.

And while I am on the subject of eat, pray, love, Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem? Please. The guy Ms. Gilbert fell in love with on Bali was much older than she and fully Brazilian. Even though the movie comes out on Friday the thirteenth, it will be a great hit because most females between the ages of 20 and 75 have read her book - except two of my friends and my step-daugher, Camille, and these are ladies whose taste in literature would put book critics out of business. I hope Bali isn't over-run with over-wrought females looking for redemption with that shaman she chased and a Brazilian hunk she fell in love with. I understand from my traveling companion's friend - who just came back from Bali - that her shaman is not a celebrity who says the same thing to everyone who pays him gobs of money to release the evil spirits from their souls. "You will always find happiness." He should work for Hallmark.

I'm laying in bed and beginning to grasp the amount of time I am spending in the air to get to Bali. Probably around 22 hours with a layover in Taipei. My legs are already buckling under me. I lose a whole day crossing the international time line. And I'm leaving at the hideous time of 2 am Thursday morning. I'll sleepwalk into the cabin of the plane, try to get settled in my seat, realize that I have never been so uncomfortable in my life and ask myself why, oh why, I decided to vacation halfway around the world. Answer; it seemed like a good idea at the time - when my friend, Carol, told me on the stairwell of the Math and Engineering building on the UCLA campus after my yoga class that she and Adrienne were thinking about going to Bali for their vacation. I just jumped right in and invited myself. I wasn't even going to take a vacation this year. I was going to wait out 2010 without leaving the U.S

Impulse can be a good thing sometimes. It can be creative and engaging and even exciting. I've been impulsive many times in my life. But as I look around my bedroom with piles of clothes spread out everywhere and a bathroom that looks like tweens have been playing movie star with all my cosmetics and makeup, I'm having more than second doubts about leaving beautiful Santa Monica and the Pacific Ocean. Of course, one cannot swim in the Pacific, so what good is it except to gaze lovingly at its tepid shores.

The energy it took to prepare for this trip, the work I had to finish on marketing my book, getting substitutes for class and giving them detailed instructions about where I teach on campus (min-boggling), engaging my neighbor to water my plants and pick up my mail, excessing about all the details have thrown a damper on my travel excitement. Will it be worth it in the end? All will be revealed when I step off the plane at Denpasar in Bali. Wayan, our driver (almost everyone in Bali is named Wayan), will meet us inside the airport with our names on a sign and I hope I will begin to feel that I am ready for my adventure. After all, my traveling companions and I have outlined in detail all the places we want to go, all the restaurants we want to eat in, all the events we want to attend.

So this once in a lifetime trip is going to be great, right? I am hoping that tonight as I fall asleep, I will begin to surrender to the inevitable.

One more thing. I'm leaving my computer behind. I have not been without my computer for over a year. It has literally become my brain and that's pretty sad. It's time that my MacBook and I separate. It's not a divorce, mind you; it's just a 10 day separation and I can handle that. I'll blog when I return. I'll tell you all about my wanderings. And I swear I will not fall in love with a Brazilian.

PS My new granddaughter, Penelope Sweet, is doing very well. She is eating well and is even gaining back some of her weight. I will miss my daily updates on her progress.

Namaste

Joan

My Tech Guy

Hi, Boomers,

I have had the best intentions to write all week. The best laid plans.....gone awry.

We all have our nemesis in life. Mine is Verizon. Verizon has plagued me for years. I began to suspect that there was a plot to bump me off the internet when I first signed up with them years ago. I have been bumped many times for no apparent reason. And it only happens in my apartment, not my next door neighbor or the person who lives below me. What else could I think? For this position, I have been referred to as a drama queen and that may be a true but I am the one who lives in the third rung of computer hell. Nevertheless, when the accidental moment that I am kicked off the internet by the "main office," I am set upon by demons for days. I live with continual anxiety and frustration This time my internet phone was part of this insidious plot to deprive me of my major source of communication, except for my cell phone, which still worked. Thank you T-Mobile.

That being said, I usually call the most dependable man I know in the world to rescue me, (the exception is my best friend, John, my tango student and loyal supporter of my drama queen existence). John knows nothing about anything electrical. He can't even work a DVD player. He just adores that I wig out and act like a female King Lear and rail against the electronic universe.

The week began well after my extended stay in Las Vegas. I was tired last Monday but taught my classes with assurance. On Tuesday, I awoke to no internet and no internet phone. Now, I love my internet phone, courtesy of my son, Jonathan, who owns the company that supplies broadband to rural areas around the country. His internet services also provides VOIP (voice over internet provider;, i.e., phone service that is connected to the internet). It's most efficient and very inexpensive. It's like Vonnage but it's call Keyon.

The week previous, I was kicked off my internet for no reason and Verizon reconfigured my moden. It worked but my phone was dead. Verizon insisted on sending me a new modem because mine was old. When it arrived, I called Verizon to reconfigure it. For two days, the minutes ticking off on my cell phone, no one at that company could reconfigure the new modem. Finally, on Wednesday, I asked for a manager. Over an hour later, he told me it was my internet phone that was at fault! "No," I said with over the top hostility, "the phone isn't the problem. You can't put the blame on an internet phone with its own router. You are the problem because you don't know what you are doing! Next call is to the Better Business Bureau." It went on and on and I finally had to give it up to the universe because I had to teach a class.

By Wednesday evening, after having spent hours under my desk plugging in cable to one box and then another, I was in tears and dripping with sweat. LA is experiencing a heat wave and I have no air conditioning. Drama queen time. I left to go dancing because what is a girl to do? Dancing tango was the only option. I limped out the door, clothes sticking everywhere on my body wondering where was my white night when I needed him?

I called my white night, my tech guy, to tell him of my problem. Now, he's a very busy guy in LA. He's the go-to Mac guy. He's the one we all depend on to solve our problems. He's the mensch among mensches. Gasping for air because I was in at a stand still in traffic on Santa Monica Blvd, in the middle of West Los Angeles, I poured out my story on my almost dead cell phone. "I'll be there in the morning," Joel said.

What guy do you know that leaps to help a woman in distress without asking questions? I felt like the Medieval lady in the tower waiting to be rescued by my white knight. No censuring. No admonishing. No questions asked. "I'll be there in the morning."

And he came at nine in the morning and it took him less than seven minutes to fix the problem and my internet phone was working.

But it got me thinking not just about the men I have known who make unkind comments about a woman's lack of tech knowledge (although I'm pretty good at understanding what needs to be done and I wasn't far off solving the problem - another day would have done it as I plugged one cable wire into another input into another input). But I what was most terrifying was that I began to understand that my brain had irrevocably attached itself to my computer. I couldn't bloody think without it. It thought for me. My computer ran my life. It was my life. OMG!

I'm ashamed to cop to the state of my mind. I had been writing on my Mac for two years straight on my book, and I couldn't survive without it for one day, one night, one minute, one second. Has my computer truly become me and I, in turn, have become my computer. Yes, damnit!

I vowed then and there that I would try, really try let it go, to find my brain again, the brain without the computer, the brain that could actually create without a keyboard.

First vow: I'm not taking my computer to my yoga retreat at the end of the month.

Second vow: I'm not taking my computer to Bali in August.

Third vow: I'm only going to only use my computer to set up the marketing of my book, Sixty, Sex, & Tango, to set up a book signing, to interface with others only when is necessary (except for a few people). I mean really a few people like my publisher, my marketing counselor, the person who will shoot another tango video for me in August, the subs who will teach my classes when I'm gone, and, oh, yes, my other computer addicted friend whose brain is also attached to his computer. What would he do without me?

My name is Joan and I am an addict. I think I need to review the 12 steps.

Namaste

Joan

You Can Go Home Again

Hi, Boomers,

Okay, I'm on the yoga kick this evening. And, hey, right now I have too much time on my hands. I just sent my publisher the final, final corrections to my book, Sixty, Sex & Tango and I feel like I have just given birth. I am excited and elated and let down because my baby has slid into the planet to fly on its own. I am no longer able to stare at the most tiny font ever invented and put my corrections into the smallest boxes ever created. It took weeks to get this done, but finally after I verified a quote from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, I was able to click the send button. My tango friend/organizer leapt for joy and wanted to do a book signing. All I could think about was that I need a very long vacation in Bali. No can do. I'm still a working girl. However, I'm taking a long week's vacation in Bali in August and that has to be sufficient.

So it was Sunday afternoon and I knew there was going to be a yin yoga class at my home studio in Brentwood. I needed down time. By home studio I mean the space that inspired my yoga practice for years in the 1990's and early 2000 - the place where my sons and their then girlfriends also practiced yoga every Sunday morning - and we all packed into the Brentwood studio to have Steve Ross lead us in the most unconventional yoga practice you could imagine, complete with the coolest non-yoga music. It was a sweat box and we really got a workout.

But Steve has a passion for yin yoga - stretching and meditating for two hours accompanied by traditional yoga music. He doesn't really believe in all that yang energy (very energetic, flowing movements); he thinks its actually unnecessary except for the people who want several weekly doses for their workouts. I actually agree with Steve's concept that yin is the yoga to practice. Today, I teach six to seven classes a day and my style is flow, energetic movement with pauses for breath in between.

But when I take a class of late, I want to stretch and meditate. Stretching opens up the resistant areas in the body and releases negative feelings and emotions we carry with us for our so-called protection. Yin yoga is a meditative cleansing ritual by which the body fills with prana - breath, life force - and removes the toxicity in and around our mind and body. Yin is not for the faint of heart: we hold the these stretching positions for quite awhile - probably five minutes or more. Anything less cannot affect our mind/ body resistance.

It's amazing how resistant we are in mind and body. Years of teaching have given me the eyes to see resistance in yoga students. I can even be talking to someone and spot resistance in others. People manifest resistance in rigid bodies and judging minds. It's more comfortable to keep the old tapes lodged in our minds; it cleverly prevents us from engaging in a new situation or an idea. "I like what I like because I like it."

Yoga helps us into a more enlightening circumstance. It's the old Plato's cave again. Seeing half light; never really engaging in the full light; side-stepping the conscious mind. Happy in the unconscious state. It's not a happy place to live - in the cave, in the shadows.

At the end of class, after a beautiful resting pose where we let our minds drift and our bodies surrender with acceptance, Steve, who had just spent a week with Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now) began to speak briefly about desire and want and how the concept of wanting keeps us attached to things or people. The more we want, the more we desire, the more we grow attached to that which we think we must have. This causes unhappiness and unhappiness causes struggle and creates conflict - then it's back to the unhappiness quotient.

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.

Simon Weil, French philosopher.

The Buddhists say that our life is simply a transition on the way to dying. Everything we think we possess in our life is really only borrowed. I say that I'm just renting everything I have because I really possess nothing. I'm given great gifts but only temporarily: my parents, my sons, my grandchildren, my friends, my yoga practice, my abilities. Although they are transitory, I can love them with great passion and exuberance and for that I am grateful.

Steve was an influence in my life and he continues to be so on a spiritual level. We approached each other after class. I told him that you can come home, that Maha Yoga is my home and that it will always be my spiritual center for I learned and was trained as a yoga teacher in that space, a sacred space of light and love.

As Steve would say: "It's all good, Joan."

Namaste

Joan

The Single Life and Bali Here I Come

Hi, Boomers,

I was musing today about being single. After years of fighting the odds to mate with man, I have succumbed to the freedom, the joy, the bliss of being single. Don't get me wrong, I haven't given up sex. Being single and sex are not antithetical to one another. I love sex now as much as I loved it at 19 when some hunk took my virginity at UCLA on New Year's Eve. Funny, we never forget who took our virginity. Oh, well, sorry, "took" is not appropriate since I was the other half of the consenting situation. I can still remember that small, dark motel room in Manhattan Beach, past midnight, January 1st, with a little light coming through the faded white, shabby venetian blinds. His name was John and I was madly in lust. But I digress.

So being single is being able to come and go as I please without checking in with anyone. It's being able to be in Las Vegas with my family and not worrying about whether I have called my significant other today to let him know that I miss him and I promise to be home on Saturday afternoon. It's fully planning my day without questions, planning my trips without censure, planning my meals without a thought for anyone else. I can go to bed when I want and get up when I want and take my computer to bed and read at 3 am if I want and listen to the silence. I can get up to feed Baby Jude Love at 4 am and gaze into his little face with love.

I'm going to Bali in August with two single female friends. I am visiting my tango friend, Brenda, who, with her husband, built Desa Sanctuary in Ubud. Check out the website. It's so very beautiful and special.

The way this trip camd about was that Brenda emailed me on Linkedin to connect with me and to say she was reading my blog. Bali had been in my head for a long time and I felt I needed to get there before the Eat, Pray, Love movie came out this summer and the followers of Ms. Gilbert began to pay homage in Ubud to her personal journey. A few days before, my friend, Carol, a yoga student of mine at UCLA, was talking about going to Bali with her friend and I immediately invited myself. I showed Carol and Adrienne Desa Sanctuary and everyone was hooked. It took us 3 days to make the plane reservations and reserve a sanctuary for a week. Women are so smart and efficient with organizational execution because we know what we want and communicate efficiently. Bali, here we come.

Last year I went to southern Spain and Morocco with GAP Adventure Tours and I was the oldest of the seven women. It was a fabulous journey and one that I will remember always. The year before I went to Costa Rica for a yoga retreat and then an eco tour with my guide friend. Another great adventure. Being single allows me to plan my travels intuitively and take fully advantage of my curiosity. I used to think that I could never, ever travel without a man beside me. Life sure plays funny tricks on us.

So while I think that I may be falling in love as indicated in my last post, I am not rushing to fall in love. This is probably the first time I have been reserved in a relationship process. I have some things at stake this time around. I'm older and maybe a little wiser and maybe, just maybe, happier with who I am, my family relationships and my dearest friends.

Life is beginning to work out very well for a change.

Namaste

Joan