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Our nanny has been out this week and will be for the next two weeks, so it’s been a juggle to work and mind Tin and alternate between the two of us. But one thing that has been consistent since the nanny left and spent the weekend at the beach and then back home is that we have been digging having him to ourselves. The nanny gets the best time with him – the time when he is playing and exploring and growing – and we seem to be merely bookending that with morning and evening schedules. A friend of hers is coming to help us out next week because nothing is getting done while we watch Tin – no exercise, no nothing – but I can tell you watching Tin has been a pure joy. I envy those stay-at-home mothers who have the opportunity to experience the first few years of their child growing – it’s an incredible and worthwhile experience.

Today we went to the Washington Square Park in the Marigny then walked down to friends’ house in the Quarter, who are moving sadly to California to try to grow their band. They were having a moving and stop by and say goodbye sale and we ended up buying a couple of great items – two cowboys shirts for T, and a bedside table, and a rocket night lite for Tin. On the way to get the car, we stepped into the Latin Festival at the Mint and saw Cafe con Leche singing a Cheo Feliciano tune, Un Raton, it was a gorgeous day and everyone was in a great mood, even the firemen at the fire station on Esplanade.

I was reading an article about a friend’s architectural project in Zagreb and the writer quoted Wittgenstein saying “unhappiness in life is directly related to frustration, fear and pointlessness.” I would have to agree with that statement hands down. One of the theories that Shirky talks about in his book on Cognitive Surplus is that people in their lives are motivated by autonomy and competence and I’d have to say he summed it up for me too.

But sometimes I think humor transcends all of these feelings. Last night I had a work dream with a funny twist – we had all been called on the table for shipping hairbrushes through the company’s name and that was bad, but what was worse was one of my European cohorts had insured the brushes and put Tin as the beneficiary! I laughed even in my dream.

I love that. Laughing in your dreams. Levity, at last.

William Blake said the fool who persists in his folly will become wise and last night I was speaking to someone who is funding his passion through his job – in other words, your job doesn’t have to be your passion or your do good or feel good work. Last night, we had friends over for a wine and small bite round table – everyone’s mandate was to bring their favorite wine and the reason why. We had some good stories, from a guy in Sicily who grows his grapes au natural, to a Tempranillo that skipped like a rock from one lifetime to the next to the next and two wine stories centered around family.

We cooked some yummy food too – a goat cheese with ginger, granny smith apple and pistachio appetizer care of Paula La Duc in San Francisco, tuna with truffles over caramelized onions all the way from Zahara de los Atunes, mushroom toast from Fog City Diner, crabcakes a la Martha Stewart, vodka tomatoes from James Beard, asparagus prosciutto bundles, Pakistani beef over polenta from Mahdur Jaffrey, and last but not least, miniature pineapple upside down cakes from Cake Bakery here in New Orleans. Yum!

Today I was speaking to a friend who said that he shut down his old business because it forced him into a lifestyle of stress and anxiety that he didn’t want to shoulder and he had a lot of ideas of what he would do next but one of them was nagging him and it is what he ended up doing. Similarly, I’ve had a nagging feeling that has turned out to be accurate recently and now I’m opening up to a life filled with possibilities. One of my dinner companions last night said he knew I would land on my feet and I believe that – now.

Hintegedanka is the German word – the Germans have words for everything – that means the thought concealed way back behind your intellect that has a gnawing persistence. Those things that clamor to be expressed either through writing, or work, or what have you, have a way of giving birth to themselves. But meanwhile, while you are trying to answer big life questions, it’s nice to sit around a table with a bunch of friends and share wine and food and stories.

My advice though is when you get a dose of Hintegedanka – heed it! Don’t fear it.

Years ago while traveling in Italy I was robbed by a mob of gypsy kids. The Italians in the square just turned a blind eye to the whole fiasco and later I learned from Italian friends that people do not stop the gypsies from robbing tourists because it is almost like welfare and no harm is done except the tourists are relieved of their pocket money that day.

I was thinking about this when I was trying to leave the Green Market yesterday late afternoon and someone had blocked me in and I recalled having had a fender bender with this woman, barely a bender, more like a fender rub, and she proclaimed that she was incapacitated and couldn’t work – what? – I was shocked, but my insurance company rather than fight this claim, settled it. Years ago when I was working as a paralegal and carrying a huge caseload when Champion Insurance went under in Louisiana we did the same thing – assign an amount to it, settled and pay. Wala. Insurance companies don’t fight these bogus claims because it is more costly to do that then to just pay the settlement. Bizarre huh?

But it makes you realize how these sorts of mutual dependencies flourish. I mean look at our political system, it’s so sick at its core, it makes you just want to throw your hands up and agree with PJ ORourke when he says, “Don’t Vote, It Only Encourages The Bastards.”

Yesterday a car was in front of me that was plastered with bumperstickers. My fav was this one:

NO ONE DROWNED WHEN BILL WAS AROUND

Last night Aaron said the life of a yogi is devoted to sweetness, intoxication and beauty. Not a bad lifestyle.

November 11, 2010

1. Taurus (4/20-5/20)

   You’re always interested in questions of how what you’re doing fits into a larger context. You might wonder about your work’s impact on the environment, your work’s impact on your community, or your work’s impact on society at large. Right now, you’ll be particularly interested in these sorts of questions, and you could well get some very interesting — and perhaps even spiritually satisfying — answers. So how do you fit into the grand scheme of things?

A zillion years ago when I was married for the first time, my husband at the time told me that I was dangerous because I would go all the way into something headlong without caution. He likened me to a Jim Jones groupie and frankly, it gave me pause.

Well not really. Nothing gave me pause, I plunged headlong into everything after that and here I am.

But I digress, here is why yoga saved my life because I had blown out my back in Pilates – and I needed to get my innards twisted and though I had been to countless yoga classes in California, nothing compared to Anusara practice here in New Orleans with Michele from Swan River and her cohorts and disciples – Libby, Aaron, etc. The minute I took one class I was hooked.

So when my mom was spiraling down into the land of no return, I walked into yoga at NOAC and Michelle began our practice by talking about addiction. And when my sibling was acting out and I was trying to take the high road, I walked into class and Michelle was talking about neutralizing negative people in your life. And when my mother was in the hospital and dying, I walked into yoga and Michelle was talking about the life cycle, about holding on and letting go. And when I was having a lot of difficulty comprehending the motives of a person who had entered my life, Michelle made me see that I could play a part in helping that person evolve. So Michelle saved my life.

Then more recently, I realized I had come smack up against a wall of my own making, I woke one morning and realized that all the growth I was going to have in my current position was rapidly ending or perhaps had ended a while ago and I was standing at the crossroads trying to figure out what next, because I wasn’t letting go of what had been really a great ride and I was like the woman on the flying trapeze, where the other handlebar was nowhere in sight so I wasn’t about to let go of the one I was holding and I was simply ignoring what a woman told me many years ago in New York at a conference – the best place to be is letting go and right before you grab hold of the next thing – here is where most of your growth will come from.

But good gracious alive why is it that I, an aggregator of all these great swaths of wisdom, am unable to even heed my own knowledge and insight repeatedly told to me through the ages? I told T at the beach this weekend that I am disconnected – I can’t get to what my brain knows, it’s like I’m stuck on a Fear Factor reality program where yes, I know what this is all about but NO I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH IT.

Then I walked into my acrobatic yoga and a bunch of 20 year olds were my partners, and I didn’t know them and I didn’t trust them and Aaron wasn’t there who I do trust and so I was ready to turn around and walk out and they convinced me to stay and not only stay but to trust them by being there and supporting me through some pretty gnarly places that I had to go to do the routines and I realized when I left that I needed to be in a position of learning, that I needed to learn to trust that other people could help me and teach me and I realized how energized I was and it was superb.

So today when I finally made it to Wednesday’s meditation – part of my new commitment to find places to center myself, and Aaron began the practice by talking about Ganesha and how in using Ganesha as a meditative mantra we were looking to him as the remover of obstacles to help us find levity and humor in the obstacles that he possibly even put in our way but we are now asking him to remove. But more importantly that we are asking our heart and our mind to connect because the obstacle is usually a disconnect. Can I get a witness?

I wonder about my life sometimes, where I step into the profound and yet spend most of my waking time running around like a plebeian who doesn’t know how to move forward with grace, instead I’m a comic figure able to meet with my friend today who is in job duress and offer up all this pithy advice that she thanks me profusely for later on while inside I’m this bundle of contradictions about my own work and vision.

I have not been upside down in yoga since last week and that is a problem (even Tin has been in downward dog more than me in the last week). Meditation tonight helped me have a moment (as we grapple with no nanny and therefore no exercise this week). But more importantly, call me a nutball, a groupie, a whatever, but you know what when you find your guru why can’t you celebrate her/him with adulation and gratitude? And then realize that we are also the guru, so we are celebrating ourselves too.

G u r u – gee you are you!

This is why yoga saved my life and today Ganesha helped as he channeled through Aaron to remind me to get my heart and head connected again.

Tin is becoming a music maniac – he gets up and wants to play his boombox and I credit my friend in Boston for sending him Blue Moo that took the kid out of kid music and got him grooving on some pretty cool stuff. So now with his drumsticks and drum from Jazz Fest, and his flute, recorder and trumpet, he is like a one act show. T took him over to Marc’s house because she was having him scan some images for her upcoming book and we forgot Marc also has a killer set of drums – so Tin was hooked from the getgo:

Our nanny is out sick so we’ve been having a lot more Tin time than usual and I must admit it’s great. I told a colleague that if I had another life to live I’d be a stay at home mom for the first few years. Last night while T was teaching, Tin and I were having dinner and he was taking his time working through his green beans and saying yum every step of the way (!?) and then I started reading the Sunday Times and an article on Courtney Love and read a few passages to him, he would roll his eyes to the side and smile real big and say, “Haaaaa.” It was hysterical. When I wasn’t paying direct attention to him he would coo me over to him by saying, “Humm, ummm, ommm.” As if he too were reading the paper.

Mama don’t let your child grow up to be Courtney Love.