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A friend sent me an Abundance Prayer* and she told me how when she was growing up she didn’t buy into any of the religious doctrine she was introduced to but then she came to understand her own spirituality. She searched for others who believed in the God in all of us – in the oneness that connects us to each other and to all beings everywhere. She made it her life’s practice to become a spiritual teacher and help others along their rocky journeys into the light. She lives in California after all, at the epicenter of new age and spirituality.

This morning, when I woke from having stayed out too late from a night of abundance at the Spotted Cat where I danced to the Panorama Jazz Band, I too reflected on my state and wondered if I should even get out of bed. I had come home late enough to have the Sunday New York Times waiting for me by my stoop and knew I had the luxury of greeting Sunday with a groggy ease. I had already woken too late for meditation at the Zen center and so I spent a good deal of time on just trying to still my thoughts through my own meditations. I had gone to sleep reading a book about a guy in rehab and its horror had not dissipated while I slept.

Then I got my paper and made a cup of coffee and crawled back into bed under the covers and began to dive in deliciously into all the news that’s fit to print. First article I read was about sleep and why it is important in our life. Having just gotten in more than eight hours of this wonderful drug called sleep, I could easily tell you its importance in my life.

From my bedroom window, I saw the sun shining bright so I went to sit on my back stoop to feel the warmth on my bald head. It was then I noticed the abundance of weeds that had died in the latest frost. I tip toed onto the grass in my stocking feet and my pjs and began weeding the garden, which led me to dig up all the wild onions that were populating the grass, carefully extricating the thousands of tiny bulbs that were entrenched in the roots of the Bermuda grass – after carefully disposing of my handwork, I cut down the canna that had gone from green to brown in a matter of days.

Abundance – everywhere I looked, I saw abundance.

I carried big loads of weeds and canna stalks and dried vines and wild onions to the trash.

Then I fetched some seeds I had been saving – I planted sweet peas along the west side and cosmos on the east side of the yard. I’ll go out and water them tomorrow and pray they take over the page fence that outlines my yard. My gardening had to start somewhere and so it begins with a sprinkling of seeds on a warm winter’s day.

Once again, abundance. I AM indeed grateful. And I let it be so.

*Abundance Prayer

From The Light of the Universe that I Am.

From The Love of the Universe that I Am.

From The Power of the Universe that I Am.

From The Heart of the Universe that I Am.

I Decree:

I dwell in the midst of Infinite Abundance. The Abundance of the Universe is my Infinite Source.

The River of Life never stops flowing. It flows through me into lavish expression. Good comes to me through unexpected avenues and God works in a myriad of ways to bless me.

I now open my mind to receive my good. Nothing is too good to be true. Nothing is too wonderful to have happen. With the Universe as my Source, Nothing amazes me.

I am not burdened by thoughts of past or future. One is gone. The other is yet to come.

By the power of my belief, coupled with my purposeful fearless actions and my deep rapport with God, my future is created and my abundance made manifest.

I ask and accept that I am lifted in this and every moment into Higher Truth. My mind is quiet.

From this day forward I give freely and fearlessly into life and Life gives back to me with magnificent increase. Blessings come in expected and unexpected ways. The Universe provides for me in wondrous ways.

I AM indeed grateful. And I let it be so.

Today is my father’s birthday, he would have been 88 years old today. He was a bull of a man and the first man I ever loved.

I don’t speak about my dad often and perhaps that is because he died in 1985 and has morphed into many different men since then. At the moment when he died, he was the equivalent of God to me. He was the be all of my universe. Later he grew more complex, he was this great man, but he was abusive towards my mom, dictatorial towards his children, and infantile in his real world structure.

He was also a man who was a virtuoso on the piano and could pick up any instrument and make music; often, he sang so loud in the synagogue in a deep and rich baritone voice that I grew up with people staring at us; he always danced with every woman in the room and was the life of the party.

Did he cheat on my mother with his nurses? Did he really have a medical degree from Havana’s University of Medicine?

He did tell me my mother was a witch who would hurt me and my sister after she left him when I was four years old and hiding behind the bedside table scared to see her when she returned because she didn’t want to lose her children.

He did hold a gun to my mother’s head, cut her forehead with a thrown broken glass and then stitch it up; he did break my nose when he punched me so hard I flew into the fireplace, and he did beat my oldest brother with a belt till he was black and blue – this wasn’t the only beating – but one that has stayed in my mind all these years – we were on Louisiana Avenue Parkway and I can remember the stairwell and the beating and my young eyes watching in horror.

My mother and all of us said “Yes sir” to him till his dying day.

He did speak with a thick Spanish accent and mispronounce most English words.

He had gypsy in his blood even though his lineage was Sephardim – ancestors who left Spain in 1492 and went to Constantinople, left Istanbul in the 20s and went to Havana, and then in 1959 came here to the U.S. He gave me my love of travel and instilled in me a friction with my own country – America.

He loved me fiercely and stood between me and any harm like a German Shepherd who would die defending me. He called me baby elephant for most of my young life and now the elephant is my spirit animal.

After he died, I dreamed that it had been my mother who died instead. It took years to shake that dream.

I suffered my first panic attack within the first year of my father’s death and was taken off the Causeway in an emergency vehicle. I’ll never forget because I was dazed and confused in the emergency room and when my then husband came to get me, he had one of those first mobile phones that was as big as a shoe box and the doctor took one look at him, me and the phone and said, “First, there is no reason to have a phone outside of your house.” That was 1985.

When my mother suffered her second Code Blue in intensive care in 2009, she told me she saw him. “I saw your Dad!” but it wasn’t a good thing. It wasn’t all light and heaven and God and angels, it was downright fright that shook her back into this life.

After reading The Great Santini, I was convinced Pat Conroy had stolen the character who was my father to use as his own.

Do I compare my dad to a summer’s day – hell no – do I love the man who was my father – absolutely.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

I confess to the gloomiest holiday period I’ve experienced in a long time at the end of last year. The last time I had the blues like these was back in the pivotal year-end of 2005. And both times were after a serious transition year. 2005 and 2013 – while the rest of the world moves on a seven year cycle, mine must be an eight year one.

I think I’ve spent an eternity hurrying up to get to where I want to be rather than being where I am. To live like this means to measure out transitions and life changes in minutes, days, weeks and months. How long does it take for someone to transition? How long to grieve what you have left behind?

Because I move fast once I take a step or rather a leap, a lot of times the collateral damage takes a long time to confront me and for me to process it. Most people process and then step, I dive and take stock long after I’ve leapt. There is no right or wrong way to move through life, to evolve, or to move up to a new wrung of the spiral.

However, I do want to give the blues a place in my life. I had the blues and kept spiraling downward until I realized there is no bottom to the blues. I felt lonely because I missed being a part of a family and this goes all the way back to being a kid when I was the youngest of six siblings of a large and boisterous clan and it takes me through three marriages and other partnerships into my present day.

I felt overwhelmed by the work I want to do and the work I must do to take care of myself and my son financially.

I felt sad over dreams from the past that were dashed and destroyed.

I felt fear of uncertainty that the New Year would bring perhaps the same old thing all over again and there is a weariness in my bones of having to deal and to process and to act.

And then suddenly I felt light, the burden and blues were lifting, and I started coming back to what has helped me – Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, Flower’s often shared Russian wisdom, Judi Dench’s quote from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: “Everything is going to be okay in the end, and if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” And even my father’s wisdom that the darkest hour is just before dawn.

Every time we give birth to a new idea, a new way of being, ourselves, we walk through a threshold and the resistance we meet is our own – fear – and the only way to get through is to accept what is and move along. That acceptance of what is, what is now, dissolves regret and sadness and doesn’t give light to anxiety and fear – it is only living in the now.

I have noticed you since I moved in.
I wondered who fed you.
I like to watch you tip toe across my backyard.
You always dart across the street.
I’ve thought of feeding you but you look well fed.
You come from under my neighbor’s house, or mine.
I’ve seen you on both sides of our street.
Yesterday, I saw you dead.
Blood pooled underneath you in the middle of the street.
I looked for my neighbor to get you out of the street.
When I went back inside someone took your lifeless body.
I found out who fed you.
My neighbor said the man across the street put food out for you.
Maybe he took care of the burial.
I know he will be sad that you are gone.
My neighbor was sorry to hear the news.
His son was hurt when I told him you had died.
I am sad.
You gave our little neighborhood a glimpse of joy.
Black and White cat, you will be missed.

I’ve listed several revolutions that are going to occur in the new year and one of them is stillness. I’ve got plenty of lists for doing and so my revolutions list is about being and ways of being. That said, last night I went to two 12th night parties as we ushered in Carnival season in New Orleans. The first was at a friend’s new apartment in the Quarter right along Pirate’s Alley.

Walking up the wide wooden staircase I was put in mind of an earlier life when I lived on Burgundy and Governor Nichols and was a Quarter rat. The French Quarter is possibly one of the most romantic places in the world if you can manage to steer clear of Decatur and Bourbon streets. I’d say the Quarter needs more of my time in this new year.

The party was fabulous – a man singing a capella in the corner of the bedroom, young men in skivvies with dollar bills tucked in them, a drag queen with flowing blonde locks, and lots and lots of people looking very cheerful and bright given the freezing temperatures and the fact that it was Monday night, after all.

My friend is a writer – and he wrote a book that I’m a character in. The friend I went to his party with is reading another book written by another friend in which I’m also a character. 2014 will be a year where books continue to play a big role, I predict.

12th Night or Three King’s Day is a celebration of when the three kings or wise men came to visit the baby Jesus, and it begins the countdown to Fat Tuesday in New Orleans. The first king cake is eaten on this night and the little baby is tucked inside. Whoever gets the baby has to throw the next Carnival party. I predict this year will involve lots of celebrating, starting now.

Happy Carnival!