Everything that happens is for the best.  After another three hours at the doctor’s, I am home with a brace on my wrist which is joint arthritis, physical therapy sessions to be arranged and a litany of exercises for my shoulder which after an ultrasound with three interns watching seems to just be bursitis.

Ah, the joys of your body as we age.  But that’s ok because it feels worse than I guess it really is and also it is rather common.  Yipee!

I got to see my x-rays and chat with the orthopedic doctor about Deepak Chopra.  He is into Aruyevedic medicine and told me to add turmeric to everything, to eat my biggest meal midday and to prepare mostly warm food, not cold.  Sounded like some advice I got not too long ago when I was heavily invested in yoga and energy medicine.

Although my doctors are traditional medics, they seem to believe personally in Acupuncture, deep breathing and alternative methods.  I don’t remember this openness before.  Is it possible we are finally meeting East with West and Ancient with Modern healing?  Could this be our brave new world?

“Imagine contemporary thought allowing all ideas to coexist, inviting all possibilities and perspectives to flourish for each individual in his or her own way, aiding all of humanity as a whole.” – me

 “The healthy social life is found 
when in the mirror of each human soul
 the whole community is shaped, 
and when in the community 
lives the strength of each human soul.” – Rudolf Steiner

Give me food, France,  Indian colors and music and you have me pretty much covered.

I didn’t know much about this movie but I will be sure to read the book in the coming weeks.  How refreshing to see a “feel good” movie without sex, skin, violence or comic book heroes.  How satisfying to hear French, foreign accents, sitars and Edith Piaf singing La Vie en Rose without having to endure any cussing.  How enjoyable to feel tension, love, loss and watch transformative moments sans a word.

This is my kind of movie.  Call me old fashioned, innocent or naive, but I prefer leaving the house to watch cinematic beauty coupled with fine dialog or a redeeming story than wasting my time watching buildings being stomped by computer generated monsters or car chases or shoot’em’ups or blood, gratuitous sex and betrayal in every corner kinda flick.

And Helen Mirren is surely England’s answer to Meryl Streep.

Years ago and now again, I am studying the Tao and Zen thoughts but with the added pleasure of contemplating, sharing and discussing it with others.  I have always been intrigued with prana, chi, yoga, meridians, crystals, vibrational energy, the metaphysical healing arts and great philosophers.  This is a broad field of study.

Here and there I have focused on let’s say the Sutras, the Yamas and the Niyamas when I was training for my 200 hour yoga teacher training. Tibetan bowls, gongs, the ocean drum and timshas are items I have used during my yoga classes.  Aromatherapy, color psychology and subtle energy are areas of expertise I could never learn enough about.  Intrigued, I learned and still explore the chakras, sound healing, chanting, Sanskrit, mala beads and pendulums.   I have researched and delved into crystals, chakra balancing, vibrational color theory and practices.

I now seem to be drawn back into the study of ancient texts and their interpretations.  When I walked into my new class, I knew all would be well when I smelled the incense in the dimly lit room and noticed the tea candle lit in the lap of a Buddha statuette.  The Tao Te Ching and Zen and the Art of Happiness are studied here, every other week.

In our third and last meditation of the evening, a woman played the Peruvian flute, notes floated and minds imagined as we were guided inside our inner sanctum.

My good buddy L, who shared the screen with me on Wayne Dyer’s PBS show, will be joining the fun as we return together to ponder the wisdom of Lao Tzu.  This week we reflected on the 17th and 42nd verses.  Verse 42 observes the principles of transformation:  this is how it begins –

The Great Integrity expresses one.  One manifests as two.  Two is transformed into three.  And three generates all the myriad entities of the universe.

And this is how it ends –

As you sow, so shall you reap.  Such is the heart of my teaching in a world forced to live heartlessly.

The metaphor of one, dividing into two – the yin and the yang, the female and the male and that from that One, divided, comes everything else in the world.  After reading Hegel and how he describes every transformation as a process involving conflict of opposites which resolves into a third entity, we understand this verse and its meaning in a novel way. Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis he explains.  So we read the ancient text and bring modern vocabulary to it.  But the philosophy and the axioms or truths are the same.

AND

The reminder of how humans violate and disturb natural harmony but that returning back to the memory of One and how we are all from One, we end the cruelty.  The One is the Way of all things.

Scholars have been studying and interpreting the Tao Te Ching for over 2500 years. In our modest dozen or so seekers on Wednesday nights, in a small but hallowed chamber,  we discuss the views we all have and exchange our internal findings and conclusions.

 Essential to book studies, is having an open mind and a willingness to take part in free discourse or the courage to ask questions.  Listening to each other with respect and acknowledging everyone’s point of view can be challenging, but also, life changing.

Next week, Zen study and happiness.

Should is a bad word.  Could, Would like to or Want to or Will is better.

Instead of I should do this or that, substitute, I could do this or that.  It is a choice this way, not a must have.

Have to is also one of those phrases that implies stress or outside pressure.

Instead of I have to hand this deadline in by noon, I could say, I get to hand this deadline in by noon.

In either example, replacing should or have to with I choose to…supports the notion that the person doing the action is responsible for the action and an outer force is not making that person do it.

So, instead of – I should stop eating fried foods or I have to stop eating fried foods – I tell myself –  I get to stop eating fried foods 0R I choose to stop eating fried foods OR turn it completely around and say what I really mean  – I get to/choose to eat healthily prepared foods.

If we created the problem, then we are the solution.  If my ego gets in my way, it’s the knowing of the Higher Self and the Oneness that brings me back to spiritual answers that untangles the webs.  We ourselves are our liberators, freeing ourselves from the self-centered fear that disables all thoughts, relationships and attitudes.  The ego says, “Kill or be killed.”  We awaken and we see, accept and know ourselves with gratitude and forgiveness.  As you persecute yourself with guilt, suffering and dislike, you keep yourself in the dark.  Forgiveness is a source of healing and the messenger of Love.  Beyond forgiveness, peace awaits you.  Be the vessel for miracles to happen.  You can be used as a communication device with a purpose.  Shift from defensiveness and separation to Love  And, Love doesn’t have to be taught, it is who you are.

One day I feel strong and intimidating, ready to take on the world and you and all the other animals who dare to come near me or disturb my nap, like Samson with my long, enviable, gloriously patterned and striped with black on tan colored thick hair.  Matted and gnarled as it was, it didn’t bother me none.

And then the next day, I am stripped of my dignity, my shining, crowning achievement of fur, feeling a little less like the alluring Delilah and more like a fat rat with a misshapen tummy.

I should have known something was up when I wasn’t fed my usual before daybreak meal.  But then again, no one was given breakfast yet so I thought maybe it was just the weekend.

Eventually, I was lured into the pantry, the door closed so it was just me in there and some strange, muddy, rubbery, brown speck (learned later it was a pill pocket)  as the only thing placed on a dish before me.  That had me suspicious and seeing red flags!  I acted like I wasn’t interested to see if I could get a better meal.  No gummy, chewy and foreign dot for me, no thank you.  I meowed and asked for better.

I heard a can pop, my favorite chicken feast aroma wafted from the source right by my nose and I felt like everything is going to be okay now.

But the smelly, dirt colored pebble was placed under my tasty food and I spit it out from the side of my mouth, some hot pink blob (the pill, I now know) fell out and it was shoved back into my mouth.  And this went on three more times or so until I had no other choice to finally swallow it when my head and throat were held back and I had to take another breath because I was meowing and complaining and desperate to avoid it at all costs.  I washed it down with my delicious regular breakfast and just forgot about it.  What a way to start the day, but hey, after that, I just wandered over to a light blue blanket placed strategically by a window, curled up and sank into the day’s business of napping.  About an hour and a half later, I tried to get up to stretch and follow the sun and move to another spot but I couldn’t really move very well.  I was weak and I felt a little buzzed or lightheaded.

Before me was the dreaded pet carrier with the door opened.  I tried to run up the stairs but I was slow and a bath towel was thrown over me.  I was wrapped in terry cloth as I clenched and dug my nails into the carpet.  I held on but my paws were being lifted one by one and I fought some more, inserting my claws in deeper, again being forced to retreat.  My displeasure grew and I tried to scramble, only I got tangled up in the towel, everything went dark as it became a hooded nightmare.  I tried to resist.  I screamed and I grabbed and lashed out but I was helplessly drugged and I ended up in the kitty jail with one huge last powerful push.  The iron barred door shut and clanged in my pretty striped face.

From there, my cries were met with unwanted and an unlimited amount of petty reassurances I didn’t believe in.

I was whisked away, finally landing at the vile dungeon they call the Cat Care Clinic.  I hate being toyed with.

I was left there for hours where I was treated abominably by strangers that had the audacity to speak to me sweetly, all the while investigating my every body part and crevice.  They gave me something else to sedate me, insisting I was nervous.  Then, they shaved me like a stupid lion.  Is there anything else more disrespectful or impertinent than getting a style cut you hated?  I would have scratched their eyes out if I could have lifted my heavy paws. I was afraid, yes, but even more so, I was insulted by the vulgar and offensive feline fashion slur as if all of the species were the same or it was cute on me somehow.  How dare they?

How was I going to terrorize the male cats in the house hold now?  How could I get away with growling under my breath and acting mean now?  I looked ridiculous.

I awoke in my jail cell with shorter nails, hardly any hair left except a pouf at the end of my long gray tail, some tufts by my feet like boots and thankfully, they left my gorgeous face alone.  What an ordeal!

Miraculously I ended back at home and was released.  When the prison door was unlocked, I slumped out, cautiously stepping one paw at a time, as I was still loopy and dizzy.  The two male cats basically ignored me.  I had no hold on them now.  That new canine arrival they call Cindi who they treat like a princess sniffed me immediately and kept coming back to make sure it was still me.

I wasn’t hungry till much later and after the indignities I suffered, I am finally settling back into the “new normal” until my hair grows back out and I can growl, snarl and intimidate everyone around me again like old times and show them who is really the ‘queen’ of this jungle.

While spending hours at the doctor’s office today, waiting, then waiting some more, chatting with my primary doctor about my blood test results, making two orthopedic future appointments for two different parts of my body, getting more x-rays than should be allowed probably in a lifetime and then waiting on line for rash medication – I wondered if I was falling apart or just having “one of those days” ?

If I am degenerating at a quickened pace, I better get at least one book together and maybe published, I pondered.  Good thing I have been looking into using Feng Shui for my writing areas.  That will surely get me to sit down to write, making writing with a focus a priority. Everyone I know, will finally take my need for quiet and hours of reclusiveness as an earned right because writing will be my job. The declutterd and auspicious spaces on my desk will invite the “chi” to flow.  I will only put down the pen, cease tip tapping my painted nails on my laptop keyboard…for a doctor’s appointment.

Seriously though, I just need to take care of myself and maintain what I do have that is working or needs repairs.  I need to be grateful, “snap out of it!”, I chided myself.

And then I thought about Grief and how whether it is a positive change, a transformation, or sorrow, you name it – you still go through a bit of grief.  If you are at all melodramatic or emotionally pensive, you will have, however brief – blue, cloudy, ‘say farewell to your previous mood’, moments.

I remembered a quote on the local Lumberyard marquee as we whizzed by it on Saturday.  “The past is a guidepost, not a hitching post.” – L. Thomas Holcroft  – and I thought about how I held on to things, way too long, way too deep, way too analyzed, way too much power given to ‘what ifs’, words said, meanings of words and a constant, fatal guilt I carry around, about all that is wrong in the world, how it’s my fault somehow.  How can I fix it?  Do I believe I am the only responsible adult around here or am I under the false assumption I am ‘the almighty and powerful Oz’?  Where does my ego take me?  Right here.

My husband, in passing, said ” It makes no sense and it is a waste of time to try to reason with a crazy person.” – and I thought does he mean me?  Am I not a bit insane?  “Honey, do you think I am a little Nutty?”  Well, I do love my peanut butter, don’t I?  I describe something in full detail with my own added commentaries and he says I should do stand-up.  Meanwhile, I was being righteous or defensive not comical.  Do you remember Erma Bombeck?  I loved her written, running memoir of her daily life.  She was a clever girl who thought a lot.  Funny, too.

In Eva Luna, Allende writes in Elvira’s voice, “You have to fight back.  No one tries anything with mad dogs, but tame dogs they kick.  Life’s a dogfight.”  – and I thought, while thinking strange stuff and talking to myself as I walked to my car, I’m not good with confrontation, I have been tamed long enough and it is time to show you my real self.  Yea.  You go girl. And then I called some trustworthy people to make sure I was ok and what did they think?

Walter Anderson, the editor of Parade magazine (now defunct), entrepreneur, motivational speaker and inspirational author of tons of books on how to achieve what you really want in life, wrote, “Our lives improve only when we take chances … and the first
 and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.”  Truth be told, sometimes, my head is a big, bad neighborhood to be walking in, gangs of youths spray painting messages in my head and gratefully we are not all insane at the same time.

One of my favorite, strong, contemporary and wise women in the world was quoted as saying, “Our past is a story existing only in our minds.  Look, analyze, understand, and forgive.  Then, as quickly as possible, chuck it.”  Thank you, M. Williamson for reminding me to be just a little more light-hearted and take myself a tad less seriously.  I just know she has had times of doubt, grief, worry and insanity because I met and hugged her and she is as human as you and me, albeit an angel.

Hopefully, no one will read this and know how truly strange I am or next time they see me, forget that they know me.

I will know, because clever girls know you are thinking, “She’s out of her mind!”

Last night, we went out to eat at Prime Cut Steakhouse.  You might say, “What were you doing there – aren’t you vegan?” Yes. But not everyone is, so we have to accommodate.  We sat outside with our precious Cindi, under an umbrella and tree shade.  There was a breeze and we had the entire patio to ourselves.  A sculptural and large fountain nearby afforded us relief from noise.

For starters, we enjoyed an avocado, jicama, onion, cilantro, roasted corn and poblano pepper chopped salad, served with crispy, salty, perfect corn chips.

Later, I delved into their tomato basil soup and mixed greens salad.  Sorbets without dairy are served as a dessert option.  This is a great place to buy your movie theatre ticket at a discount too as it is prominently located by Century on Katella in Orange.