What did you say?

I told you I was an inconsistent blogger. Here it's been a timespan again since last writing - and so much has happened, too. I could have blogged about the day that Luca and Raquel came home from Brazil, about putting Luca to bed after not being home for three weeks, about how cute she looked nestled into her bunk, and how startled we both were when Raquel, following her nose, came in to Luca's room to see what smelled funky, picked up the duvet covering Luca's innocent little body, and then gasped as a cascade of dried cat shit flew through the air, bouncing off our heads, the bed, and the walls. I could have written about that and asserted that my nose was stuffed and smelling no wrong, that I hadn't been in Luca's room since they left for Brazil, but I did not.

I could have blogged on Monday about how lovely the snow was this past weekend, how we spent Sunday morning as a pod of kids and parents, breaking the new snow with our sleds on the hill in front of our house. I could have told you how funny it was to see the kids, tired from climbing up and down the hill, all sitting at the bottom and playing in the snow while their aging parents whooped and hollered on the sleds.

But none of that got me to blog. Instead, I'll write about what happened this morning - with a preface first.

Raquel and I will have been together for 12 years this September. That qualifies as a "long time." Over many of those 12 years, Raquel has frustratingly asked me to get my hearing checked. This, of course, in response to my vacant looks, my request that she repeat herself (usually expressed as "huh?" or "what?"), and my lack of response to her repeated questions.

Because I love my girlfriend, I went this morning at 7:30am for a hearing test. First, those booths are kind of cool. I mean, you're in this little gray womb, all hushed and dead air, and then you put on little headphones. The sounds that come through each earpiece - one ear at a time - is specific and sent straight into your head. There is something strangely intimate about the whole thing.

So we did the bup-bup-bup sounds and the high pitched squeals and the low heartbeat throbs. Sometimes the sound was so quiet that it felt like a slight vibration, like the ghost of sound itching just on the precipice of your hearing. After the assorted timbres and tones, we went into word repetition: "Say the word: throat." "Throat." And so on.

Having told the hearing technician that I was getting a hearing test to see if I was losing my hearing or losing my mind, and then having explained that this was a gift for my girlfriend, the technician, named Mike, came in at the end, took off my earpieces and whispered, "You have freakishly excellent hearing."

"Freakishly excellent." Shit.

Time to pay better attention.

Internet magic

It's Valentine's Day and my love is far from me. (Guitar music picks up, something "olde english," like Greensleeves only different.) She is gone to lands across the sea. With her silvered hair and shotput wit, she carries my heart with a catcher's mitt. Oh my lo-o-o-o-ve, on Valentine's Day, I sit here at home, alone and gay. (Music slowly winds down into something evoking longing, ocean storms, dykes wandering alone atop widow's walks on old Cape Cod houses, the sound of seagulls....)

Yeah, well, I sent the olde luv and the young daughter some roses via the internet. Funky that it's cheaper to send a dozen roses to Rio from Minneapolis than it is to send them to Minneapolis from Minneapolis.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I'm baaack part two

Here's the other thing that happened upon getting back: I had four different phone and email messages from friends telling me they missed me, were glad that I was home, and would like to see me. I hadn't checked messages when I last wrote.

I feel very loved.

I'm baaack

Thanks to the wonders of the red eye flight, I am back in Minneapolis, staring blearily at my first television in two and a half weeks: the Today Show. My partner, Raquel, and daughter, Luca, are still in Brazil. I called them right after I arrived home to let them know I was safely here. Luca was in the process of throwing her first snit fit since being in Rio. She cried and grieved, Rocki was impatient with her while trying to stay connected to her poor lonely lover on the other end of the phone line.

I miss them.

So now I have to take all of this stuff from the last two weeks - that hands on the skin kind of quiet - and find a way to build it into my life here. I'm sure the Today Show is not part of the strategy.

I talked on the phone with my mother a few days ago and she reflected on how scary it is to face a total life change - meaning I am currently "career" successful and have plenty of work as a fundraiser/nonprofit organizational type. I now want to shift this, move the focus away from this work as my primary and build my craniosacral therapy training to eventually move into the lead. It isn't scary to imagine that outcome, it's more overwhelming to think about how to build a daily practice, the new lifestyle that supports craniosacral therapy.

I don't think this makes for terribly interesting blogging - nothing pithy about navel gazing and life change.

Let me get my hands on ya.

It's a great big planet

I'm here in Berkeley, California and it's raining. Not thunderstorm-raining but that all day damp drizzle that reminds me of England. It's also warm enough to walk around with a light jacket that remains unbottoned.

At home in Minneapolis, people that I love have not ventured outdoors for more than ten minutes at a time. It's dangerous-cold where the sky is so frozen and absent of water than your skin slow cracks along every joint.

My daughter, Luca, and partner, Rocki, are in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This is what life looks like for Luca:

Islamic University opens in Minneapolis

I find this awesome and fascinating. The first traditional Islamic University has opened in Minneapolis - traditional meaning how Islam is taught but not conservative traditional in that women make up 35% of the student body.

I found the news in an article in the Twin Cities Daily Planet, an online compilation of mainstream and alternative media related to, appropriately enough, the Twin Cities.

Apparently, the Twin Cities are twelfth in the nation in terms of the size of the Muslim population. The university is set up to both teach Muslim students multiple subjects but with an academic Islamic approach and to provide community education on Islam to the non-Islamic world.

I love that this is here and I will visit it when I'm home. One of the professors interviewed described the focus of the university as "radical-averse", meaning they are academic and humanistic-political rather than fundamentalists.

Very seriously, I send out all kinds of light and good energy that no assholes decide to firebomb the university out of some warped idea of patriotism.

And how do you say, "dog"?

Yesterday morning, en route to my class, I stopped at the Whole Foods to stock up on goodies. As I left the building, I noticed this man standing on the sidewalk with a very interesting dog. Now, as is not surprising to many, I am not a dog person. Wait, let me say that more directly, for the most part, I don't like dogs. They're too eager to be my friend, take up too much space, have too many needs. It's a quality I often find attractive in people but on dogs, well, I wish they were more cat-like.

This dog, however, sat there on the street with his ears perked up and this great big smile on his face. There was something about that dog. So I walked over to say hello, first making eye contact with the man holding his leash. "What kind of dog is that?" I asked. The man started and looked at me, frightened and wary. (Forgive my bad phonetics here): "Eh um Frensh not spik Inglish." I smiled and racked my brain for any French words I might have (croissant? cafe late? voulez vou couchez avec moi cest sois or some spelling). I thought I might try Portuguese with that silly American idea that since he speaks a Latin language, maybe he would better understand my Latin language. Instead, I smiled and said, "ciao" and he looked happy.

As I walked away, not more than a minute passed and I turned back because I heard something. "What a lovely dog! What's his name?" asked the big burly white man with arms full of grocery bags. At the same time, a woman came up from a different direction, dropped to her feet next to the dog and began to pet him, looking up at the French man and saying, "oh, my aunt has a dog like this, I can't remember what kind it is, what is it called?"

I turned away and got into my car as I saw this man's face grow redder. I sure hope whoever was in the Whole Foods came back soon.

Sitting on the floor on a Sunday morning

The alarm went off at 7am and I reached for it, bleary and still asleep but also realizing that if I were home with Luca, I'd be up already.

This is the last day of the first proper craniosacral training. I feel compelled to write but I'm not sure what to say. I have moved between being so very happy and clear and then being scared. I already know that this is different from anything I've ever done. Sometimes when I'm in the room, seeing someone winding their body off the massage table, feeling the strange mystical clarity of a cranial wave, hearing a voice inside me telling me things about the person I'm touching and then acting from that voice and finding it is right, during these times I can hear a whole realm of my friends popping their fingers up in the evil eye symbol and hissing, "oohh, witchy-whoo-whoo." I can hear it because sometimes I get overly conscious and nervous and want to put my fingers in the protective horn as well.

But mostly as a defense against my own changes. It isn't that I don't believe. I actually believe very deeply. This feels like some of the truest deepest learning I have done for quite some time. My defense is over how much I have to change to do this well. And the changes are changes I hunger for - stillness, deep listening, privileging time for meditation and connection - but they frighten me. It's like a whole lifetime of defenses and identities and preferences and shortcuts is sitting there and many of them have to unwind and drift away.

And a lot of the time I don't even know what I'm afraid of. But I am. Afraid.

And also very certain that this is the direction where I want to move.