Last night and this morning

Yesterday, Grace's mom wrote if I could care for the wonder child while she went to yoga. Had not she requested me, i would also have attended a class. I love Grace as deeply as ever I have loved, and give thanks for the opportunity to encourage another to attend yoga.

side note: on the walk downstairs through the sunlit atrium to check the mail i thought i ought just to give up on everything, even on yoga, even on the path. what else calls me with greater transcendental perfect beauty than yoga? naught. yet do i resist its full embrace and cause such suffering through it i want just to let it all go...

continued: I go to grace's and she comes and sits on the porch swing. her hair is down, undone, she wears a white t-shirt and long pink skirt which often shows her big white cotton underwear. I plop down next to her on the porch swing and she groans. I laugh. Porch swings are one of my favorite things in life, I say. She tells me that Panda is doing very well here, and also that she would like to be in my wedding. She says if she is under 10 years of age, she will be the flower girl. If over ten, a bridesmaid. I go along with her laughing, fantasizing what a fabulous affair it would be. She says her grandfather is a retired priest, would I accept a priest who is 72 years old? and he wears a hearing aid, is that ok with me? without a question, of course. She says the ceremony shouldn't be long, and I say well, there will be a consecration, and all the rest, ok, how about 40 minutes? she says. 30 minutes will do. I imagine the beautiful women in my life who i would invite, and wonder how they would come together, and know it may never be. and that it is best in that way. our dream was enough for me.

We play inside taking care of bunny. she tells me she teaches panda so many things, such as reading, how to take a poo and a pee in the bathroom, she says he lives on opposite schedule (sleeps through the day) and she makes him sauteed bamboo. She cracks me up in surprise many many times.

She is not hungry but wants to eat before bed or else she will wake up hungry. finally we go the kitchen and she eats a few cherries and carrot sticks before declaring she is full.

we go to her bedroom and she is excited for the back massage i will give her. laying down, i will sing to her. but not twinkle twinkle little star, she says. so i sing an aladdin song and she laughs at me (a whole new world) and after more giggles and rolling around she gets on her tummy. she asks me if i meditate every morning and I say no but i bring my awareness into my heart. she says it's nice to do something quiet every day first thing in the morning.

I sing her hush little baby making up the words and it becomes a constant meditation and refrain sung without thought from my heart, anytime you need me, i will always be here/anytime you want love/i will always be here. over and over with the back of my fingers caressing her soft back skin and actually i think she fell asleep. (before she said she ALMOST fell asleep last time with the back rub.)

I went out and was chewing on gummy bear vitamins when her mama got home with friend from class. mama said once she told grace i was coming she asked all for me. i said she missed her dad and then her mama while they were gone. she was glad to hear it. she said she was so spoiled with how much me (and parris) loved grace, and with the Friends school approach as well. I said filling a child's heart with love is hardly spoiling them.

at home i sat down with mom and dad and commenced another philosophical discussion initiated by dad this time, actually, which continued through astral travel and mom's seeming cynicism towards Monroe into self-hatred complexes and all the rest.

I had decided that I don't want any more 'issues' as with a talk with Joe at work I said Oh I love issues. and then reflected, what? I love issues? No wonder I have so many!

i read for awhile on erica jong before going to sleep around midnight, it was so lovely as always reading late at night in my bed there, so comfortable. but the morning I am loathe to rise as each morning meets me and i sleep until 8:26, realizing if I do not catch the 8:40 bus...so I am up and grouchy immediately and boil tea and dad says me and mom walked out of the rooms at the same time and mom has to know what I am making with my water and i am irritated that she cannot wait five minutes until i leave the house to attend to her own coffee drinking needs.

tea, i say through the bathroom door. dad says two can boil water and when i return she has added another pot of water to the same burner. hil-fucking-arious.

i want bread, rethink, no time, toast and butter it and put it in a plastic bag. a cop is passing our house and i run down the hill. the bus arrives immediately and i am on my way.

Joe makes a joke about it being my friday and he should "make" me come in on friday. I want to punch his idiotic pretentious bullshit face in and say, it is too early for me to talk. thank god for restraint sometimes.

but it comes before long i am walking to the global cup cafe and spending 8 freaking dollars on vegan spring rolls, vegan cookies, and coffee. i want to feel sick, obviously, and i soon do.

the day is passing by and I am in the email and reading all through the blog of a pretty 25 year old in tucson who is extremely happily married with a daughter and the question of PhD now or later on her mind. she is a socialite extrovert writing her days on the computer and bring love and light into the world no doubt. her friends comment with crazy heady god talk about following His path and it may be different than you imagined and all the rest. I realize I really do have a strong-ish still prejudice against christian-judeo god bible talk. though Sufi god talk which I read yesterday made me swoon in love. how far am i from the embrace of god? this fucking far.

I can't stand this job, I want to run so far from my life it's hilarious considering that I have the easiest life. and who wants ease? i want a challenge and yet when challenged I don't know how to stand up. go ahead and cry, elijah, go on and sing, elijah. i swear to god if you will find happiness all in life is served to its utmost. anytime i remember this truth all the rest of this bullshit falls away.

Do i think thinking it through will eventually help? Mom tells me her deep spiritual insight when she was on acid along in shoulder stand many years ago about the self-hatred coming from her mother.

In the article, the woman reasserts that God wants everything, especially the things we think are un-spiritual. god i want you! what do i say when you apparently turn your back on me? know that to be an illusion? believe it to be the best thing you can do for me? for yourself? i guess we tried hard enough, i guess your knowledge is the true knowledge? join myself to a fanatic? oh god, in the Sufi article it speaks that the path to god is to give up all thoughts of success, and I thought that 's what it is to imagine life with you and yet that's all I would want. How can I say that? How could I desire it? maybe you won't allow it, so far that seems the case. god will not allow me to suffer too much on His behalf. How I wish that he would! For does he not test those that he loves? Ha. Ha. Ha. How do I know the truth?

If I think about you I want you in the same way I in a frenzy in meditation feel the painful longing in my heart for God. In the article she urges we do not cut ourselves off from this longing. if allow it to overcome then what will come to pass? I become so disillusioned by the mundanity of this life i want simply to wander and roam, stay outdoors, and leave the land of my father in order to seek my own realization of truth. but there is duty, bound, the woman is in her way so much more stuck.

i want to be stuck with you and you won't allow it. not so far. or i won't allow myself. not the right match.

oh but every time i return to embracing life i desire you so deeply. how many have been loved and lost?