2015: The Pleasures of the Flesh

i woke up this morning and, since it's the first cold sharp day of the new year, i made my bed, crisp and clean, and washed all the dishes and hung up my clothes from the night before.

as i stood in front of the white porcelain sink, my feet chilled by the wood floor, i was struck by the pleasure of the warm water on my hands and the steady balance of my legs. i picked up each tea cup one at a time and looked at how beautiful it was. it made me so happy that i stopped and took a deep breath and felt how easily and simply my lungs expanded.

all of sudden, i was filled with such overwhelming gratitude that my eyes filled with tears. not just for my body doing easily what i needed it to do, but for clean running water, for warm water, for the heat and light and space in my home, even for the softness and reliability of my ratty sweatshirt.

i felt so happy i could burst.

at our post-yoga dinner (yes! i did bikram yoga for new year's eve and it was my best new year's eve in years), i was talking with friends about the things i did to survive cancer. my friend susan avery reminded me how we met at a funeral of a friend. she had been going through her cancer at the same time that i was. at the funeral, i said to susan, "that could have been me."

i don't remember because when we think about our pasts, how we see them keeps changing depending on the present.

but this is not a post about being sick.

this morning, struck breathless and almost weeping with gratitude, i changed the water in the flowers on my dining table and i remembered one thing that saved me, that still saves me - impulse and hedonism - or the pleasures of the flesh.

one of the hardest things about a life-threatening illness is when you are in the hospital and your friends leave. because they get to walk out. they get to walk out and take a big breath of fresh air and feel the sun on the tops of their heads and go back to their everyday lives.

http://tomnewyears.tumblr.com/

in the hospital system, you're increasingly cut off from any sensual pleasure. my senses registered pain and nausea from the needles, the drugs and the smells of rubbing alcohol and cleaning fluids. my tastebuds were numbed. my hearing was jumbled and incoherent. my memory was shot. my brain craved sedation.

i couldn't take another minute of it. i felt like i'd rather die than spend one more second looking through the window at life rather than living. (i am a dervish, so i am not scared of death. in my experience, death is liberating and bright.)

if i was going to be alive, i wanted to be immersed in every second of the material world.

so i walked out.

natural medicine gave me a chance to taste, to breathe, exercise, to feel - not that my way is the only way. just that that worked for me.

like most people whose lives are compromised, i learned to be immensely grateful for every pleasure my body and mind offered me.

all those things we do without thinking - letting your tongue roll over something complex and delicious, inhaling the fragile scent of flowers, reading and comprehending rich, intoxicating prose, listening to a song that makes you float, drinking, swimming, bathing, stretching, kissing.

all those things we have but we don't appreciate - clean water, quiet nights, heat, food in the refrigerator, shoes, clothes that protect our skin and keep us warm. a place to keep the objects and, even more importantly, the people we love safe and secure. the ability to pay our bills and keep our electricity and internet and cell phones running.

so for the beginning of 2015,  if you are reading this, i wish you so much love it feels your heart might burst. i wish your eyes, lips, tongue, skin, muscles, tissues, nerves to give you pleasure. i wish you prosperity and safety and security. i wish you a year of days so crystalline and pure in their beauty that you can barely let them end.

i wish you clean air and water and food and week after week where you don't have to worry about your health, your finances, your loved ones. i wish you clean sheets and a bed. i wish you the freedom of forgiving people who have hurt you and i apologize for any way i might have hurt you or made you feel less. i wish i could erase any pain you still carry.

i wish you gratitude and awe and wonder and serenity that life will unfold in a way that supports you and embraces you. i wish you to feel powerful and graceful.

YOU ARE AMAZING.

i love you. i kiss you. i am so grateful for you.

http://tomnewyears.tumblr.com/

please click on the link and keep it open in another window. the music makes all the difference...

2 amazons @ 9 North Moore St.

the amazons have started a rock band.

it was really a matter of time. when my third daughter was born, my friend hilton als gave a me a card that said, "congratulations, you have a girl group."

zarina started singing before she could really speak. i remember her, at a year-and-a-quarter, shaking her head back and forth on the changing table and making noises.

i said, "zarina, what's that?"

she looked at me and said, as most toddlers do, something unintelligible. i asked her a few more times before i understood what she was trying to say: "elmo song!"

rara started playing music on a box with rubber bands on it, we had to record a whole series of her songs. from there, she graduated to a ukelele and eventually, a guitar. despite being forced to take piano lessons in between, she returned to the guitar.

here they are - zarina and rara on vocals, rara on guitar.

the rest is, as they say, history...

note to zach vella and foundations group, real people live here.

the stuff you hate

why is it that so often the stuff you hate doing - like getting out of bed to jump into a freezing cold pool, or eating a bowl of broccoli instead of banana bread, or dropping off the kids at school in the morning (or picking them up in the afternoon) - ends up making you feel so good? quite often, as soon as you've won the battle against inertia and gotten warmed up enough that the water starts to feel comfortable, you actually ENJOY it.

i swear i am eating broccoli right now. in my bathing suit, just about to go to the pool. see?

for years, my exhusband picked up the amazons in the morning and dropped them off at school. then, for reasons he will explain, somehow related to boundaries or something, he told them he would not.

so i took over. after i drag myself out of bed, rush them through breakfast and then grouchily get them into the minivan, i discover that i love the anticipation humming through the car. i sometimes ask them about their classes. we take stock of what was forgotten at home and how to deal with it. i hear about the plans for the afternoon. if we pick up a couple of their friends along the way, i eavesdrop on their gossip and get a sense of the temperature of the moment. there are good reasons why they should be more responsible and get there themselves - and some days i force them to.  90% of the time, i take them.

then when we get to school, if i can get a parking spot, i walk them in. mainly for one reason: so i can walk out into the stream of kids coming in.

the best thing about the united nations international school in nyc - apart from it being a vast range of cultures and races - is that it goes from kindergarten to twelfth-grade. i get to see the kindergarten's wide-open faces as they skip into school under their enormous, colorful backpacks. i love that so often, they still want to hold a parent's hand. i get to see the toddler siblings running and tripping, looking adoringly at their big brothers or sisters. the junior schoolers on their scooters or dressed in costumes for a class event. the middle-schoolers proudly balancing projects, dioramas and posters and boxes of cupcakes, as they march in with a sense of purpose. they feel so grown-up, they own the school now and they know where they are going.

and then those bleary-eyed teenagers, the girls still awkward in occasional heels and those tiny tiny shorts and skirts, dripping with make-up (they have to start somewhere!) the boys, still just boys, their faces sometimes red and smarting from the occasional shave, and in their big men's bodies that they don't know what to do with. even if it's spring, there's a bit of chill in the morning air, because the day is just beginning.

sometimes, i just start laughing to myself because i was once a kindergartener, a fourth-grader, a thirteen year-old and a high school senior. i can see myself and the amazons in every one of them.

don't you remember holding the hand of your first-grader and looking with terror at those enormous, threatening adolescents and wondering how yours would ever make it? and now, looking at those upper schoolers and realizing that they are just as vulnerable and fragile as the little kids.

because it's u.n.i.s., they are often speaking different languages and wearing vastly different clothes (until they turn into teenagers). sarah kay, the brilliant young performance poet, was a u.n.i.s. student. so was ishmael beah, the child soldier who wrote "a long way home," and sarah jones, the actor who can be 15 different nationalities consecutively in her one-woman show and john zorn, the experimental musician.

because it's u.n.i.s, the school guards and teachers have seen the kids go from bright-eyed five year-olds to defiant adolescents and they don't let them get away with anything. the authorities watch them walk in with a sense of care and discipline as well as affection. one guard i've known for 14 years said to me almost bursting with pride, "look at those kids, they are all happy to be here!" because it's u.n.i.s., the kids seem to walk in smiling - even the upper schoolers with their intense academic pressures and clear lack of sleep - and the excitement of the day to come is almost palpable.

when i get back into my car, i'm smiling too. i'm exhilarated by the optimism. i have perspective - that irritating job is just a job, the traffic and the weather will be different tomorrow.

 like finishing the broccoli and moving on to kale (i REALLY am right now), i'm energized and almost euphoric. it's a meditation in itself. how can anyone feel bad with all those smiling kids promising you a better world?

in my mind, the best way to stay healthy and happy is to stay engaged. to revel in the spirit of others and stay buoyant and purposeful.

you're here because they need you here. WE need you here. you need their energy and positivity as much as they need yours.

muslims are constantly told to be generous, that anything you give away, God will repay ten-fold. i believe that includes your energy. it's an effort but it pays off in a big way. every faith tells us that.

we're all in this together, that's what dropping the amazons off at school makes me remember. we're all on the same path.

that's why the stuff we hate to do is quite often the most crucial.

off to immerse myself in cold water! (lap swimming when i really would rather have another cup of tea, remember?)