Let us rejoice as we strip off the mask of conditioning and fall, head-first and fascinated, into the gracious beauty of our own unique lives.

Update: I wrote this piece last night and decided to review it in the morning before posting. It is now four hours past the time of the tenth anniversary of my husband Jeff’s death.

This year I am to “get off my duff” and travel much more than I have in the past few years. For this double Sagittarian (Sun and Ascendant), being grounded has felt downright unnatural. I’d rather be flying into the unknown. But Taurus Moon and Jupiter in Cancer have held me firmly until I could find my feet. No flying until feet firmly planted. That was a requirement, and it took ten years. The ten years after Jeff died in early 2003.

OMG! As I write this, I realize that this night and tomorrow early morning constitute the precise tenth anniversary of Jeff’s final initiation, his departure from his body, at about 4 a.m. on January 3, 2003. Unexpectedly. Easily. He just breathed fully a few times, and slipped out. I was not in the room. I was in my bedroom next door. I do remember vaguely hearing a short bout of heavy breathing, but did not attach significance to it.

I had just turned 60 years old.

Fast forward to now, ten years later. Here’s my 70th birthday present to myself: a two month trip to India, Nepal and Thailand with my dear friend, Claudia. This will be a Buddhist pilgrimage and meditation retreat, and I will tag along, much as I do with the Sufis. Not quite Sufi, not quite Buddhist, but very much appreciating the heart and soul of both.

Not sure exactly the dates yet, but soon! And probably without computer, access to internet. So an extended break from this blog.

Then, on my return, a reader of this blog has invited me to her small western town, where I will conduct a week-long residency as a visiting philosopher and exopermaculturist. That’s the first week of May. Beyond that, all is in flux.

There’s planting season, upon my return from that second trip.

There’s all the ongoing work to coordinate with others re: this season and beyond in the GANG garden, and other aspects of the Green Acres Neighborhood Association and the Green Acres Neighborhood Ecovillage. All projects that I love to nurture, but don’t want to consider myself tied down, so am gaining partners as we go.

In any case, I do seem to be living MY life. And, as ever, it is one that allows for quick shifts, subtle mutations, continuous risk and surprise.

After seven decades, I have learned how to live (mostly) with equanimity. How? I surf, with the wind at my back and my board firmly under my feet as we tack back and forth across the rolling waves of the collective unconscious now twisting into the maelstrom of what many of us have long known was necessary: this utterly agonizing, tribunal — humanity’s extended, tortuous, painfully honest and rigorous review and self-correction of its own habitual conduct, values, and ideals.

What makes us tick as a culture?

Is it war?

I think not, and yet that is what we have allowed ourselves to be “led” into — for thousands of years!

We are waking up, together, to our unity, community.

Such a great joy, this treasuring of so many new friends.

Thanks to americankabuki for the pointer to this poster.