shoulda put a ring on it, whoah oh oh.

So my iPod is completely full. (And I can’t stop listening to Beyonce, mostly ignoring the other 700-odd songs.) Do you know how many more songs I can fit on it? NONE MORE SONGS. I’m going to ask Santa for one of those gigantic iPods for Christmas – one of the 160G-capacity ones. The one I have is 8G, so I think 80 times as much storage space should be about enough for all the fabulous music I learned about at training. Nitin Sawhney and Adham Shaikh and Bob Holroyd and all manner of other world music artists. I also found the song on the menu of the Shiva Rea DVD that I love – it’s “Jai Hanuman” by the Shaman’s Dream Project, and you should check it out. Very nice drifting vocals and a minor-key guitar line that’s just great to get lost in.

Yoga last night was awfully interesting. I was moving slower, I was doing downward dog differently, I was moving as my body told me, I was exploring into the pain in my back and shoulder. My focus felt completely different, as if I was within and without, open to what was around me but with my inner senses trained on what was going on inside. I don’t know if this is the new norm, or what, but it was unique. It really didn’t resemble any class I’d ever taken before training.

Part of the reason for this was that the power was out, mysteriously, and we were doing yoga in a mostly dark studio by candlelight. There were only a few of us. I really wanted to talk to Jennifer about my training and also the training she went on, the same weekend that I left for California, but it was all about the class and there wasn’t any time before or after. I miss the looseness of the West Coasties – I could feel all the tightnesses around me, all the self-fear and comparison, in the very air.

Earlier in the week I could feel the world harshing my buzz, and I was able to step back, think of the wind over the canyon, and realize that none of this really matters. I remembered that what mattered were the things I always have inside me. I keep going back to how sad and useless I felt not to be able to sing during the last couple of days’ events, because I wanted to share my voice, and to participate with it. This was really challenging for me, because this was the only impression of me these people would ever have, and I missed opportunities to, you know, not be coughing all the time. This was the only chance I’d ever get to do this, and I didn’t get to sing. But I had to get over it, and be happy just to be there. In the same way, I’m trying to be happy just to be alive, to be breathing. I may not be able to share my gifts all the time, every moment, but I do have the opportunity to live in the space around me, and to share that.