Playing the Cello...

No, seriously, I don't, but I wish I did.

Anyway, I was thinking of Jaqueline du Pre and her version of "The Swan" that I heard in the movie:"My Summer of Love" several years ago. The idea for a home movie called "My Winter Solstice of Love" just popped into my head, and I think that pretty much expresses the sad state of affairs surrounding my mental constructs. In other breaking news, I ate lots of chocolate. And marzipan. I'm squirreling away oranges, which I love too, and worried about the Frozen Floridian Iguanas.

Some guy apparently went around collecting frozen iguanas and putting them in the back of his car, until they sprung to life from the warm air, like little gremlins and crawled on his back. This amazingly did not cause a traffic accident. What do iguanas have to do with Bound Lotus? Everything! I feel like a frozen iguana today. There is no temperature outside! It's zero. I've been looking at penguin videos. They are so graceful in the water...so goofy on land.

So, I have to ask, would Bound Lotus be easier under water? I mean I am deathly afraid of water, so I'm not planning on pulling a Houdini at the Y, but...just curious. Like Alice. Speaking of Alice, I feel like 'Alice in KundaliniYogaLand'. Know what Red Queen said besides "Off with her head!?" She said: "I always like to do six impossible things before breakfast!"

Here's my list -

(1) Full Bound Lotus
(2) Stand outside in a bikini doing Tumo
(3) Lick orange marmalade off of Jimmy Page's thumb
(4) Read "The Cellist of Sarajevo" in it's entirety [this could be done if I put off breakfast until midnight]
(5) Bend spoons with my mind
(6) Forgive the man who took my name, tried to destroy me, and stalked me...

This is hard. The layers of hatred run deep. I think I've found the last, and there lies another like a gaping, festering wound

Maybe the Sikh name fits: Victory of Saints, but do I have to be a saint to forgive this man? No. I don't even have to be saintly. I just have to let it go and dwell deeply in my humanity and love of life. I think of the way he told me that art was a useless frivolity, to just focus on surviving. He's wrong. Without creativity nothing lives. I think of the way he snickered at the words engraved above the back entrance to the St. Louis Art Museum: 'Art still has meaning. Take refuge here.'

Music heals the soul. Poetry. Literature. The Ray Man soothes my grief. Jacqueline du Pre soothes my soul. "Invictus", the movie and the poem, soothe my soul. "Grave of Fireflies" soothes me. "The Cellist of Sarajevo" soothes. The young sniper, Arrow, assigned to protect the Cellist, has taken a new name to give her courage for the task at hand, and to keep her precious true identity safe from harm, or so she thinks. But in doing so, she dissasociates from herself in a way.

It is so important to not lose one's soul, one's humanity. Three passages in the book have wrenched me from complacency over the grief and unresolved rage I am reexperiencing in the wake of White Tantric, also hearing the words of Yogi Bhajan, that those who dwell in the past have no future. And yet, like Inanna in the Sumerian myth, and like Dragan in the book, I must go back to heal the lost parts of my soul. In the book about Sarajevo and the Cellist playing Albinoni's Adagio I see:

"Although she has nearly completely lost sight of the person she was, she still knows who she wants to be, and as far as she can see, the only path leading her to this person is back through her former self."

I've grown and changed and healed so much before I ever took White Tantric, and I'm tired. I want to rest. But the forces of entropy don't stop. To certain people, if I give up, I'm an example to others who struggle that it might be too hard. Too hard to learn to love those who have caused unbearable pain. And here the book's words come again, reiterating the point:

"And he suspects this is what the men on the hill want most. They would, of course, like to kill them all, but if they can't, they would like to make them forget how they used to be, how civilized people act."

The Cellist of Sarajevo played for 22 days, on the site of the spot where a mortar shell killed 22 people waiting in line for bread. One day devoted the honoring of each person's life that passed. I feel as if the following words are just like Yogi Bhajan saying that when anyone holds a posture such as Bound Lotus for any length of time, the Universe will come to help that person. I feel that one of the things this pose is accomplishing, and that White Tantric has done is removing the crippling and numbing fear of having been under someone's thumb for so long, afraid to use my name, afraid to breathe, afraid to live:

"Nermin is looking at her.
'We need you to keep this man alive,' he says.
'I don't understand.' She's barely heard what he said and struggles to bring herself back into her situation.
"Nermin removes his hat and wipes his sleeve across his brow. 'He has said that he will do this for twenty-two days. This is his eighth. People see him. The world has seen him. We cannot allow him to be killed."

Today is Day 67 of Bound Lotus. Tomorrow is Day 68. Then 22 more days before I reach the 90-day milestone to create a new habit. I've never done this before...coincidence that I pick up this book today and it inspires me? I won't allow the inspiration to die. I'll make it to 90, and then 1,000. I feel it in my bones, along with the pain.