eating, praying, loving

Its happened a few times now that when I explain that I'm taking nearly a 9 month leave from my so-called life in order to travel back to the US, visit what was home, re-acquaint myself with America, nourish myself with the company of old and new friends, and reconnect with family before launching into a 5 month stint in India, 4 months of it to study at a yoga shala in Mysore I get this response: "So, like Eat Pray Love?" or sometimes, "Like Eat Pray Love!"

Having read the book twice already, I can only sheepishly respond, yes, like Eat Pray Love.

Its been referenced so much recently that I decided to pick up the copy of it that was sitting on my mother's shelf. It was the very first copy I ready 4 years ago, upon the recommendation of my mother. I was going through some major changes. I'd made a huge break from an emotionally abusive relationship. I was healing. And I remember getting so much out of Elizabeth Gilbert's account of that year in her life.

I read it a second time between Mysore and Manila, my tumultuous return to said so-called life after my first two and a half month trip to India. I was going through a shift then too. I had started to gain perspective on my life as it was, on what I really wanted and the disparity between the two.

I love to read. I've always had special relationships with the prose and plays that I love. For me, when a piece of literature is good, it speaks to me. I can relate to it's themes in a nearly cellular level. My body understands it and takes it in. It is like air, food, water, and sleep--which is why I can usually forgo these necessities when engrossed in a book. It feeds me. Plus, I was quite a maudlin kid and books were my escape. I lived in the novels that I read. They made life bearable.

And since, three is a magic number, I've decided to read it again. Gilbert points this out in her book, the perfect balance of a three-legged stool is a beautiful thing, the magic of fine engineering.

This time, the energetic and emotional connections have never been more clear and the parallels to my own life's events are a little uncanny. I know there are new shifts now, though I am still trying to understand it. I'm sad. I'm happy. I'm trying to be nice to myself. I'm free. And I don't quite know what to do with it. So, yes. I guess I am eat-pray-love-ing.

Don't get me wrong, I think, ultimately, anyone who is going through serious life changes will relate to this book. And I don't think I'm anymore special than anyone else. And while I am at this weird crossroad, dealing with my own breakups, heartaches, newly acquired nomadic life, and, yes, freedom I don't think any of the tumult of the last year compares the depth of Gilbert's own story. But still, the similarities are interesting. Its just each time I read this book, I feel like I relate to it deeper and deeper, which is a sign of a really good book.

Gilbert has tapped into three universal themes that will create balance in those who dare to embody them: eat, pray and love. They are like this triple threat. Together, they have serious mojo.

This trip has been touched by discord and struggle, which is really forcing me to identify and seek out what nourishes me, whether its good food, beautiful company of the genuine-hearted, support of friends and loved ones. In so many ways, I've also been more conscious of the devotional aspect of my practice too. But recently, I've really started to pray again. I pray to the sun or to god or to my guru. And, well, love...

Love is trickier than I thought. I am trying to understand my heart. I guess that's why I write about it so much. That's the reason for this blog. There's some kinds of love that are easy for me. Those are bountiful. And then there are others that I struggle with also. There's nothing that I want more. There's nothing that I am more afraid of.

So, here I am, reading about a woman on a journey, just as I am a woman on my own journey, quite possibly the most important undertaking of my life thus far. And Gilbert's tale is a lovely companion, a true friend holding up a mirror. And hopefully, I'll have the vision to see what it is that I need to see, a glimpse perhaps of the real me.

family yoga, light vs. dark

I've been sitting on a piece of writing that's been simmering ever since I came out to NY with my dad to visit my sister just this June. I was sacrificing my asana practice in order to spend time with family. (Promise, Deva, the full article is coming! My good friend Deva first encouraged me to write about the idea of family yoga).

And now, I'm back in NY. This time with my mother to visit with my sister. Just as precious. Just as crazy as the time with my dad.

Its been over 3 years since the three of us were together. I expect its going to be beautiful, mad, enlightening, troubling, insane, lovely and all sorts of crazy because that's what family does to a person. They know you better than anyone and at the same time don't know you at all! And that's going to bring up stuff.

Anyhow, we arrived last night. Its going to be...great, really, but interesting. And definitely funny.

We were hanging out on Audrey's couch. The three of us sitting there when my mother turns to me, as if she's seen me for the first time--although I've been staying with her for the last two weeks in Los Angeles.

Mom: Karen, you are so dark!

My sister Audrey and I look at her puzzled, her face is filled with something of a cross between surprise and shock. She recoils a little, perhaps with a tad of repulsion. She's got an unhealthy fear of aging and is constantly in hiding from the sun, which in fairness has worked out for her because she looks incredibly young for her age.

Its always bothered her that I like the beach, loved surfing and then chose to live on an island resort town for the last 5 years. Light skin is generally favored in the Philippines as a sign of beauty and economic prosperity (don't see any fair girls working the fields!). I feel like I've done a fair amount of work to get beyond such inane social norms and to feel confident about my own earthy complexion.

Mom: Your face is as dark as your body!

Me: I hope so!

Mom: Why did you let yourself do that?!

She walks away, her question more of a statement. My sister and I bust out laughing. My mother's hilarious, if not somewhat offensive. Most of the time she's lovely, really. Stuff like this, however, doesn't bother me. Other things, well...But this, I know is part of the package, part of the crazy stuff we have to endure, nay embrace, because we love our family, even if they press our buttons.

airport limbo

LAX, my least favorite air hub in the United States.

Airports are interesting spaces. They are like limbo. You are neither here nor there. You’re not traveling exactly. You’re waiting. That’s what people do in airports: wait.

In the departure terminal, we wait for movement. We wait for flights. We wait to get going on our business trips or holidays, reunions or great escapes. There is this undercurrent of restlessness that comes before the start of any journey.

At the arrivals, we wait for our baggage, for our rides, for our loved ones. People wait with love and anticipation, with fear and anxiety. There is always an element of excitement there.

Airports can be purgatory for travelers too. Luckily, that’s not exactly how I’m vibing it today. It may be bittersweet being at the airport again, but its not as bad as a waiting room for hell.

I can’t help but look back at the variety of different airport experiences I’ve had this year. Probably the most I’ve traveled within the span of year ever. And since early June, LAX is my 12^th airport. In New York alone, I’ve flown into or out of the three airports that service the area. And before this time, there was India and Singapore in January, Palawan in March, Madrid in April.

This is beyond unusual for me. I am neither independently wealthy nor is traveling a part of my job. I feel my blessings. I can only say that when I decided to acknowledge that I wanted to be a part of the world, that going on a journey was a part of my heart’s desire, the opportunities to do so started to unfold for me, some appearing like manna from heaven and others I myself manifested.

I’ve had a lot of intense moments of introspection during my time in these airports/indeterminate states. It’s a fitting activity in limbo, gauging where you are in your head and heart spaces as you straddle two worlds.

When I left India in January after two and a half months of intense yoga study, I felt full and energized, ready for the madness of returning home, by then I think I knew that I would be shaking up my old life, though, in ways that I could have barely imagined. I felt poetry and bliss in Madrid, the possibility of a bright and shiny new love in Telluride, awkwardness in Seattle, and emptiness in Oakland.

And now in LAX, I feel limbo itself. I am between two chapters, or perhaps between a series of books—where does the heroine go before the author pens the sequel? No man’s land? She exists in space but has no form. No story to cling to.

I feel very much between things. I’m at the end of this trip with one week to go before returning to Asia and three weeks before India for 5 months—my next big adventure. This trip itself is a break from that static island life in the Philippines, a time of transition to a different way of living, of loving, of being.

I feel the recent weight of great sadness and loss and the light potential of the unknowable future. I feel the differences between life in America and in the Asia. I feel the pull of my loved ones here in the US as well as those in the Philippines.

I can’t say this is a new sensation. I’ve always felt torn between the East and West, duty and desire, what I love and what I think I should do. Then again, aren’t we all in some way or the other confused by this world full of opposing forces?!

This time, however, I can feel its intensity as if it were both a vacuum as well as this concentrated sense of the entire universe, everything and nothing. And in this dividing line, this crossroad, I am shifting. On the other side I will be as always me and at once will never be the same again.

the heavies

Its been an intense few days, which considering the general intensity which my life has taken on recently is saying a lot.

I partly blame the moon. I get moody near moon days, as my body cycles accordingly to it.

I'm also delirious from three-days of non-stop activity, squeezing in just about as many reunions as I possibly could. My mother's taken every opportunity to mention that I should not have left everything for the last week, which is her round about way of saying that she disagrees with how--or rather with whom--I spent my first week here in LA.

Of course, stubborn to the bone, I tried my best to sweep it aside and get through the weekend, which was my one opportunity to touch base with so many of the bright lights, the real stars, of my LaLa Land. Still underneath it all, that feeling remained, quietly frustrating me.

Last Saturday, my high school girlfriends Tracy and Marissa took me to see a friend of theirs, guitarist Jinsoo, who was playing with acoustic soul singer songwriter piano-man Chris Joyner at jazzy little Hotel Café in Hollywood.

(It was great hanging with my girls! – a statement that needs to be qualified in greater length in another article altogether!)

Though the set was short, I loved the sound of the band. Joyner’s songs were soulful and performed with such heart. And one in particular, a playful tune called “Heavies” seemed to define the sensation I was grappling with.

Its a fun song, but still quite observant of life's struggles. The chorus goes: "Oh no, here come the heavies. They're going to hit hard so you better get ready. Oh no, here come the heavies again."

We all have tough times. We all get our fair share of heavy burdens. I get that. I’m not winging really, I’m just saying: “I know you (referring to "the heavies"). I know you’re here with me. I know there’s a reason that you’re hanging around, and I’m willing to learn and grow from it. But when we’re through, I mean it, we're through."

To listen to the track, you can visit Chris Joyner's myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/chrisjoyner

soul food

There are all sorts of different kinds of hunger.

There is the most basic, of course, one of physical necessity. Our stomachs are empty, we must fill it. We eat to live. Though sometimes many of us forget, we either neglect our needs or over indulge our senses. We starve ourselves or stuff ourselves to death. Then there are those that are in no position to do either.

Everywhere in the world there is hunger. I've seen it in the Philippines and in India. And it happens here too, in this fabled land of plenty. Though poverty here in the United States is nothing compared to that of the developing world, it doesn't make it any better. And the sensation of empty stomachs, living on the streets, being down and out is pretty universal.

Yesterday, I joined my Tita Evelyn at the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition, a small non-profit group that exists on donations and volunteer work. My mother also cooks for them once a week. And I was eager to see what they were doing. I know from talking to them both that they loved their volunteer work, that they had tapped into a beautiful way of expressing their love for their fellow man with the hours they spent there.

Seven days a week, on the corner of Sycamore and Romaine, the coalition food truck parks and sets up a food line, where hundreds of the area's struggling men and women get a nourishing hot meal, for many of them the only food they will eat on that day.

On Friday evening, I poured juice. Later, I washed serving trays and the giant soup pot with a garden hose at the back of their kitchen head quarters. It felt good to take part, to participate in compassion in action. We fed about 250 hundred in all.

I think its a worthy service to feed those less fortunate. But there's more to it than just food. Or rather, just as there are different kinds of hunger, there are different kinds of sustenance too. At the food line, the volunteers served more than just casserole, soup, and bread. They dished out smiles and kindness, encouragement and support.

In truth, everyone needs the nourishment of soul food. We all just need to unlock our personal storerooms and freely dispense hope, faith and love, which when given out is restored two-fold. This is the food that will change our world.

If you are in LA and would like to know more about the Coalition, please check out the following YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__HTBBA_8ec

For more info on how you can get involved: http://gwhfc.org/GWHFC_default.html

roots in city of angels

Blue skies in West Los Angeles today on the way to the Food Coalition truck.


Last week when I arrived in Los Angeles, I wrote this:

"I'm in LA. Home. Supposedly. Though it doesn't feel like it. I look around my mom's new apartment. Different. We were walking around Hollywood to dinner this evening. Different. Did I mention, we were walking, in LA? Different!"

I was feeling what I usually feel when I first touch down in LA: awkward.

But today, with only 3 days left of my time here, I feel what I also feel before each departure, this strange well of love. The city's quirks may frustrate me, having grown up here I feel justified complaining about them, but I also understand her. I've always felt an affinity to her strangeness, perhaps it reminds me of the awkwardness that I feel in my own person, this being struggling to be greater than she is, sometimes missing miserably, other times, well...

With a few days left to go, I'm running around like crazy. (Right now, I'm at Primo Cafe on Sunset Blvd stealing some moments to myself before running off to help my Tita (Auntie) Evelyn who is volunteering at a food truck feeding the homeless). And already today, I've had morning practice with Noah Williams at Silverlake, coffee with a yoga friend Sheila, brunch with my high school girlfriend Tracy, and taught my friend Marcel a mini yoga class at Equinox next door. After the food truck, I have a late dinner with my college friend Staci in Los Feliz. And there's more over the next two days!

Everything is concentrated. Its a potent mixture of nostalgia and love. And I am thinking the unthinkable: that I like LA. Its my loved ones who live here. They make the place. They also can't help but ask the question, when are you moving back? And today, between engagements, I did catch myself wanting more time, desiring to be closer.

I don't know why, but I'm always surprised when I feel all this amazing energy. This crazy place is home to so many people that I love. And because of them I will always have roots here, anchored by their oasis-like hearts in this expansive urban desert.

the weeping willow, woman warrior

My mother and I have been checking out the garden oasis of the Los Angeleno desert. Yesterday, we took ourselves to the Japanese Garden in Van Nuys, a project of the local water reclamation plant. There, we walked around, sat and meditated, and took photos. The 6 acres were filled with little gems: rock gardens, lotus ponds, shrubbery wonderland. But of all the trees, the weeping willows really caught my attention. In the brochure guide, it said that the tree was a symbol of the feminine: kind, understanding, flexible to change. Being very zen of course, the manicured pines that dotted the garden symbolized the masculine, strong (and in my opinion, stumpy in comparison to the elegant willow).

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be a woman. The roles we take up, some of it cultural, others seemingly built into our genetic code. And the willow really resonates with me. Its inherent softness. In terms of foliage, its a bountiful tree, one you can really take up shade under. Its graceful as wind sweeps its leafy tendrils hither and thither. In the Celtic tradition, it is associated with the moon, water and the goddess, with dreaming and intuition. In other cultures it symbolizes death, mourning and deep reflection.

If I were a tree right now, I would be a weeping willow. I feel so much of its strength, so much of its magic, and so much of its sadness.

I feel like I have to qualify the sadness--though I am, if I'm really honest, filled with a subtle sorrow--as one that sees the difficulties of the world, that observes it, feels the sting of it without being victimized by it because willows are strong too. Though their curtain of leaves bend to the wind, its center is steady, its roots are strong. Her branches are merely dancing.