So I have been job hunting now for like 3 months, trying to resurrect my yoga career after spending most of last year pursuing a retreating horizon.  (I know that's obscure, but the digression would take too long to explain).  And it's working.  I'm gradually adding more classes all the time, especially for pregnant mommies here on the westside of Los Angeles.

So n the meantime, I am on Craigslist hunting for work, and I come across this ad saying, do you have any funny stories about your dating life?  We might pay you for them and put you on TV.  Now, I could care less about TV, but it sounded like a long awaited reward to get paid for my ridiculous dating life, and all the stupid crap I have endured, so why not go for the comedic value?  I wrote in to the casting company, and they called me in.

So sure enough, they hire me on for one episode.

Now, understand that 21 minutes of television, which is a half hour show minus the commercials, is about 4 days of shooting.

So the first day, the whole crew shows up at my little townhouse here on the water and takes over.  I had warned my neighbors they would be here, but as it turns out, I really needed to tell my neighbors to be quiet for the 15 some odd people that would be spread like statuary throughout my home, each monitoring their little devices, be that visual or audio.  Because although 15 people sounds like a lot, and they did take up all the space in my whole house, they are professionals a being quiet to get the shots they need.

It was really fun!  I've never been in front of TV cameras before, and they are really, really large, weighing in at about 40 pounds each.  And each camera comes with a big strapping man to carry in around gracefully throughout the day.  Ade was the main DOP I got to know.  He was actually also close friends with my best friend Heather who was on the show with me so it was a reunion for them, which was so cool.

LA is a small town.  If you live here for a little while, you discover everyone knows everyone.  And you run into folks everywhere.  It's crazy.  6 million some odd people and you would think there was really only about 200, plus about a million extras who don't really have a part in your movie, and don't even really exist except to make the restaurant you are having lunch in look crowded.

So I'm in bed today, in bed and working on the computer, and playing with my cats, feeding the new baby squirrels, and resting my tired bones.

So while I may not be lost and confused, I highly recommend the experience of being the star of your own life, whether or not it ever ends up on TV.  Because in a way, the whole world IS watching you, and celebrating, and giving each of us the chance to grow and open and make new discoveries, before we wink back into stardust.

This is where we begin.

I mean, honestly it's a tie between him and Bill Maher.  

I LOVE these men!

It kills me I have had to let go of HBO for a little while.... I mean, thank the goddess there are some people out there speaking some sense.  I miss Bill, though.  I'm hanging with the Cooper and John Stewart, because THEIR shows are FREE, dammit.

When I lived in the cabin in the woods in Santa Cruz, I let go of TV for about six years, and then someone (my father, actually) gave me one.  I was like, oh no, not the evil brain washing device!  I had this very purist attitude about my commitment to my spiritual practices at the time, so of course, everything pissed me off.  (That's a joke).  

One day, I broke down, and took it out of the garage, plugged the thing in and caught an episode of Who's Line is it Anyway?  Which is basically, the funniest show out there in my opinion.  Of course, because it was created by the British and imported.  Lord, if it weren't for the Jews there wouldn't be any funny in America!

Anyway, I laughed till I fell over, and became a regular viewer.  Meditate, cook a gorgeous meal, and sit down to laugh till you piss.

OK, OK, so the lesson always comes back to temperance, right?

I dunno, but these extremes I am drawn to always sink my ship.  Whether it's the extreme health fad, which for me was raw food for a year a couple years ago, fasting, or excessive meditation to the point where I became a total socio-phobe for awhile in my 20s.  Dude!  It's not healthy.

My teacher Kali Ma says it's a lot harder to eat moderately than to do a big fast and clean out and start over.  True!  I tend to do the extremes.

Same with the dark side.  The indulgences of obsessions, certain people, sexuality, drugs whatever.  Strip clubs, I guess.  Ya.  Someone in me just sighed.  Easy to get over the edge on that side too, isn't it?

So..... temperance.  It  is a fancy word for balance.  An ALCHEMICAL word really.  The dictionary definition can't touch the real depth of this word, this concept.  I think it means that you subject one side of your extreme personality to the other side, and in bringing them together, each side is both honored, balanced, and even exalted.  Made more pure, more full of life.  It's tantra.  It's BOTH/AND.  Not either or.

Where was i?

Sorry, I think I got distracted there back at stripclub.  I've been on a total yoga kick lately.  I'm really into feeling strong and ecstatic.  I mean, right now when I run or get on the mat, my energy systems are so clean, this warm honey molten ecstasy flows through my whole system, and I feel like I'm on drugs!  It's amazing, vivifying.  I love being upsidedown in these new arm balances I said I'd never be able to do.  Thanks to Vinnie Marino, Hare Om, baby!!!  But I miss the clubs. I miss stripping.  Did I just say that?  Not that I ever did it professionally, because I haven't, just for partners.  Oh, except for NewYears this year.  I totally forgot!  That was for about 300 people, and I made some good cash.  That doesn't make me a professional does it?  I mean, I went on after the lumberjack for chrissakes.   One show is one show, and it was for friends in Sausilito.  But there's this POWER in taking your clothes off for women that is just outrageous.  You feel like a goddess.  And people just look at you like, stunned, like there is no other moment.

That's the best feeling there is!  So touched that there is no other moment but the one you are in.  That's the Divine Slut!  The sexy diva peach of beauty and love and magic.

Anderson Cooper.  Right.

Fuck me, it's spring.  My brain is full of flower juice.  I'm dangerous, people.  I'm a hazard.  I can't focus.

This blog was going to be about Anderson Cooper.

How flipping sexy is Anderson Cooper?

I was just going to say that he's cool, but let's face it.  He's totally sexy.  Cat out of bag.

He gives us the news, with heart, with total masculinity, and depth.  I feel in good company when I click on his show.  I like the doorway he gives us to the world, and I trust his storytelling.  And um, he's HOT people!

Speaking of which, he's on in an hour, and I want to get in the hot tub, and then I have to get some work done.  Seriously, people.  

My friend Neil says a perfect day involves some work, some social time, and some exercise.

I agree.

Add Anderson Cooper, dancing, and sex, and I'm with ya Neil!!

Geeze.  I'm a little silly today, n'est pas?

Spring is in the air.......and I feel like faffing...... 

Visit my friend Diane at www.SacredStriptease.com

She's the diva who got me on stage.  And her work is the bomb.

Because stripping is sacred.

Right, Anderson?

Xx.

There is a hummingbird over her shoulder, and she is smiling.

When I come here, I sleep so well.  The birds sing for the love of song, and I sigh to wake at the sound of a fountain trickling in the court yard. 

Her garden is always blooming, year round.  That is my mother.  Her heart is always blooming year round.  She is a nurturing force.  She is the spirit of all that is good in the world.

I too, love to garden, but where her garden is an expression, mine is a teacher.  I remember well my early attempts.  The lambs ears wilting in the sun.  The jasmine that never seemed to pick up her vines, like a southern woman too hot to be bothered to do anything except sit on the porch and complain.  And there was the gophers who that wet winter ate the roots of my roses so that I came home to see them tilting like the masts of so many sinking ships, and I fell on the driveway and cried.

But each attempt taught me something new.  And then color came, and the wysteria climbed the stairs whispering such poetry as only the moon can understand in the midnight breeze.

Why so many attempts at color, and so many failures?

The garden has also been my life.  

So many attempts, at love, and relationship, and at success in work, and then stacking the failures like wood beside the house.

I do not have a garden right now.  ME!  Of all people.  And how I love the flowers.  But the disappointments.... I have known more disappointment than any ten people I know. I hope well.  I always hope well.  But to see the blooms fade again, is more than I really want right now.  So I am content with iceplant, and a nameless hedge, and many, many happy squirrels that come for the peanuts.

But I still dream of a garden.....

I cannot put roots down where I am now.  I just intuit that I won't be there long enough.  

Would you like to know the biggest discovery?

It is that I grow trees.  That in my garden, what I grow best are the tallest plants of all, and the sturdiest, and the ones that take the longest to bloom.  Trees, and wildflowers.  The wildflowers come by invitation, like guests, and they surprise, and then they go, and they leave smiles where there was only earth.

One day.....

Dare I dream?

I will have another garden.

And I will plant fruit trees.  Fig, apple, peach, and apricot.  Orange.

And there will be roses, and I will be kneeling beside them in devotion, clipping leaves and crooning to them, so tempermental they are, and so beautiful, and so difficult and worth it.  

ANd there will be salvia for he hummingbirds to dip their beaks, and belladonna to perfume the night air, and jasmine, yes, but in a place she loves.

For we must all find our place in the garden.

The Chinese lanterns cannot abide the sun.  The hibiscus needs space.  The hollyhocks are so easily content, don't I wish I could be just like them sometimes!

I too, am finding my place in the garden.  The Gardener, for that is how I sometimes think of God, has moved me again.  I was wilting this winter, too exposed, and too wet with sadness.  But in spring, the winds came, Etesian and Kahmsin, and they lofted me up and said, we shall take you to an island.....

And I feel now that there is some new beginning before me.  

I cannot see it.  Like those moments before waking when the dream still has you, but the room is just beyond your eyelids.

I will spend the day with my family in my mother's garden.  My grandmother and grandfather, so happy.  I am so grateful they are here.  How many summers of my childhood could I not wait to see them and go running through the deep woods to the cemetary, and pick up every toad I could find to touch his cobbled skin, and see the eyes that wink from other centuries back.

Then every flower was taller than I was, and the trees were unthinkably grand and faraway.  But they too, bent over me when I imagined I was alone.......

You will see.

The time for blossoms is still coming.

Do not lose faith in the greatness you were sent here to be.

For today, there is sanctuary in the mother's garden.  Mine, and the Divine.  She showers us with so much love, if we reach, if we are still willing to reach beyond our wounds, just to reach for her...........

The Tibetans have a philosophy in the tantra tradition that I now subscribe to whole heartedly, because I have lived it.  And I do not think you can know anything unless you have lived it, and it has breathed you.

It is written that each door of consciousness, or true achievement in this life is guarded by some pretty serious demons.  This is why you always see the pictures of the Tibetan enlightened masters seated upon a lotus flower that is then in turn perched on the head of a demon.  An AWAKE demon, mind you, and hungry.  And all the while the master sits in samadhi -enlightenment.

So an aspirant, someone like you or me, comes to a door of what we want, and we are lured there by the honey.  And the honey is the promise of happiness, or of love, or recognition.  The ego is lured by what it thinks it will get.  But of course, it is being led into its own annihilation.  Because annihilation of the ego is the only way to true happiness or freedom of any kind.

But it looks like, Oh, great, I will get this boon.  Boon ,being mythical language for gift, or reward.  So we charge the gate.  Woohoo!

Not everyone does, mind you.  It takes a spirit that is willing to reach, to  s  t  r  e  t  c  h itself in the direction of the goal.  Most people are too afraid.  Or worse, so overcome with ambition that they cannot even see the true gift when it is right in front of them.

So the seeker reaches the door, and finds it locked.  Ever encountered anything in this universe worth having that came easily?  How much would it be appreciated if it was just given.  This is the whole point of The Wizard of Oz.  Dorothy needed the whole journey to appreciate the ruby slippers in the end.

Well, once the door is reached, the tests begin.

This is confusing for the ego.  The ego self is like, hey, wait a minute, I had honey right here before me, and now I am dealing with heaps of bullshit!  And so there is an opportunity to fall back, to decline the reaching for the new state of consciousness, to decline the boon.

And the tests, I have noticed, are of many kinds:

Faith

Will

Patience

Humility

Purity of Purpose

Strength of Character

There are others, of course, but these figure prominently.  For me, I get tested in the top 3 more than anything.  

So last week, I stood at the door, smelling the honey.  It was in the air.  There was a light breeze, and so many spring blossoms, and certain connections with certain people in such a positive light that could not be ignored.

So I raised my sword.  Because where there is promise of honey, there are demons.  I prepared to be tested.  Perhaps this is the first time I have gone in awake!

They come in threes.

Why is that?

But they do!

The letter from my old girlfriend came yesterday morning.  I spent all day trembling with so much emotion I could barely sort it.  Thank God for yoga, for running, and for tall trees that are strong enough to hold a human body.

Then came the letter from my agent.  His thoughts.   I cannot assume anything.  

Then came my mother's phonecall, just now, that someone in the family has cancer.  They will operate.  They think they will have success, and we are a strong force of healers, especially the women.   We are close to the Goddess.

I have drawn the blinds and rented movies at this point. It's very intentional.  When my emotions become more than I can manage, I need to feel something from another source that can disrupt my field.  Then my intuition will be more clear.  Music can shift the small stuff.  I can sing most anything --rage or grief or sadness, into its next incarnation.  But this one, this one needs more than that.  Breath and more still.

And dancing!

So this is my test of will.  To not just crumble the way I have been known to in the past.  To stay awake and strong.

And a test of faith, to believe in myself, and my book, and the path before us, regardless of the current circumstances.  Things have been worse.

And a test of character.  Will I choose to succumb to what someone else thinks of me, or am I going to set my foot down and stand by who I know myself to be in my heart.

Someone told me once you only incarnate as a scorpio if your major life lessons have to do with handling your own emotions, and the emotions of others.  We get overwhelmed.  We need tools to navigate with.

I have collected many such tools, but the real test is to use them.  To put into practice what I already know.

Writing this blog entry is my meditation right now.  This is how I am sorting my thoughts about what is happening so that I don't go sailing off the cliff into the great blue oblivion of emotional overwhelm.

Some part of me is in the place words cannot reach.  She is floating in mythical waters, trying not to drown.  In moments like these, I think how wonderful it might be to have a partner.  Someone to trust with the truth.  The truth of feeling.  Not even so many words.  Being held just solves so much, doesn't it?  Thank God for my friends.  They have gotten me through so much.  I love you Feathermu!

I must remember, this is just passing through.  It will fade.  Everything does.

And once this level of self mastery is reached.  If I can even reach it.  The door will open, and there will be a rush of blue light.  There will be an angel standing there, wings outstretched, furious with love, on fire with the truth of God, and whispering always, trust, trust, trust......

Since I was a kid, the characters in books have been as real to me as people I know.  A book is a private world you can share with everyone.  What appeal!  You get this little window into the minds of others, and share their foibles, trials, and wins, and it is a treasure, a drug even.

But maybe I just missed my calling as a spy.  Lord knows I eavesdrop everywhere.  But not in any ill-intentioned way.  I just find myself often alone, and sitting beside folks who are talking about their lives in cafes, on benches, and in the hallways.  I just listen to the world around me, because I find the world and the people in it very interesting.  And I happen to LOVE being alone, so its easy to blend in, and observe.

Writing is a lesson in Solitude 101.  You kind of have to be kind of fundamentally ok with yourself to sit alone in a room for 8 hours with a bunch of imaginary people hashing it out.  I tend to talk to myself.  I'm an only child.  We're allowed this luxury.  Shhhhh, don't tell anyone.

Anyways, I usually read fiction.  The last best novel I read was The Life of Pi.  Talk about a window into another world!  A young boy on a liferaft surviving in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for 8 months with a full grown bengal tiger.  Richard Parker.  That was the tiger's name.  

When I meet someone who has read the book, we share a long sigh, and a big smile.  And someone brings up Richard Parker, and we laugh, and say, can you believe it?  Two women who have read the same book is almost like we have both slept with the same man and we know how big his cock is.  We share the most intimate secrets about another world.  We have shared a secret feeling.

So lately I have gotten into reading biographies.  I prefer autobiographies, as hearing a person's own words really lends a lot to the read.  I really enjoy understanding the failures of successful people.  I'm still a kid in this life in a lot of ways, and I want to learn how to ride the tide that has so often been against me.  I've been ill-equipped with too much optimism early on, but I'm learning some balance.  

Last month, I discovered Sidney Poitier's "spiritual autobiography" The Measure of a Man, a treasure trove of stories and anecdotes, and struggles, many many struggles.  He is a truly great man, one of the few, and I was surprised to read how many of his struggles have been within himself as much as with the outer world.  

I live in Los Angeles.  And I always carry a book.  You never know when you have to wait in line.  I've been known to bring a book to the bar.  My friends have admonished me for this little habit.  But it sure keeps the unwanted men away!  The bigger the book the better!  Only the worthy men will approach ; )

Anyways, it is May, and all the Jacaranda trees are in bloom.  Big lilac colored blossoms exploding on every avenue, wafting across the street like lavender snow.  And I just drive around and swoon.  Everywhere I go, I take the long way just to oogle the trees.  The people behind me go crazy.  Why is this girl slowing down?  Honk honk.  Sorry.  

I'll admit it.  I'm in love. 

In love with beauty.  Flowers.  Color.  When I see a whole tree glowing like a purple candle, full of light and wind and well, my heart flutters and I know there is a God, a Goddess.  It is an ecstasy for me.  I'm too easy!

I like to picture the Jacaranda in the middle of the forest.  They come from South America, but now they are favored all over the world from Zimbabwe to South Africa to the Caribbean.   Could you imagine walking through a wet forest, green vines dangling from the trees.  Maybe a few sleepy snakes coiled in the branches.  Sunlight dappling the grass beneath you, and then you come to a meadow, and there, a tall Jacaranda tree, a giraffe nibbling the lavender blossoms.

I like the giraffe image.  I'm not sure if a giraffe has ever seen a Jacaranda tree.  Well, maybe one.  His name is Fergusson, and he would like to find his place in the world.  It's a children's story I am working on for someone.

Anyway, I was between classes yesterday, and I wandered over to a cafe with my new Sidney Poitier book, Letters to my Great-Granddaughter.  I think I qualify to sit at his feet like a child.  Why not?  And so I sat a long while beneath the purple trees, feeling the cool breeze on my skin, and eavesdropping on one of the greatest actors that has ever lived via the written word.

The following passage really spoke to me.  He was talking about mastering his difficult gambling compulsion (among others), and how he finally beat it, and went on to add:

"Nor is my life (now) altogether void of compulsions.  Here is a list of those that remain: a compulsion to read more, and better understand the world around me; to keep an eye on the dualities inside me and try to center myself at the point of balance between as many pairs of opposites as I might; to experience all that I can.  And most of all, to learn all that there is to learn that might make of me a better person --with better insights and a deeper understanding of myself and my fellow human beings."

In the Tantra tradition, there is a philosophy that easier than erasing your compulsions is to put them in service of some higher good.  I have another friend who was a serious coke addict, and rather than beat the drug, he turned his compulsion toward purchasing and collecting art books.  He has a marvelous collection, and never felt the need to return to the drug.

For myself, I tend to obsess.  On anything, on whatever.  If my brain gets hold of something, it is like a dog with a bone that just won't let go.  That's why I write stories.  Free reign.  My mind can just run wild, obsess to the ends of the earth, and it is fodder for creativity.  The brain is primarily a puzzle solving tool. If you have an active puzzle solving tool, and no puzzle, the brain will concoct a puzzle to solve.  Yikes.  Best keep it invested in fiction lest it ruin your relationships, I have found.  In service of the higher good!

Go pick up Poitier's book.  You will be inspired by a truly great man.  And if you happen to live anywhere near a blossoming Jacaranda tree, I highly recommend sitting beneath it, book in hand, and allowing the blossoms to fall upon your lap, and the pages, caressing your cheeks as they tumble like divine tears, reminding you of all that is beautiful and good in the world.