One of the perks of living in city is the occasional opportunity to be on the cutting edge….

Today (in San Francisco) I was part of a focus group, discussing and RIDING the new A2B electric bike. What a blast! I left with a feeling very similar to the one I had when I watched Who Killed the Electric Car?  These vehicles have an organic feel to them, I swear! I end up feeling a little like a kid does when it’s fallen in love with a puppy or kitten:  I want one!

Note  added July 28th:  I have good reason to believe that the problem mentioned below is being fixed at - or in the general vicinity of - this moment! So now on to the original post:

My blog entries are not showing up most-recent first, but in the order they were written in, so it looks like there is never anything new!  I haven’t been able to correct that yet…
SO: I would like to reward some people who ARE reading this nearly-invisible entry!

Three people will be given half-price sessions if they set up an appointment
this Monday - Thursday, July 21st - 24th. Call toll-free: 888-321-1981 or email shanti@shantimai.com

For information about my work, see http://www.shantimai.com/services.html

I just saw the 2001 film L.I.E.  (which stands for Long Island Expressway) last night, and today I can’t get it out of my mind. It’s haunting, moving, unpredictable. The questions is, is it addictive? It is a very, very rare thing for me to want to see any movie a second time, and I know for a fact that I’ll be watching it again someday. I am a strong fan of Paul Dano, whom I loved in Little Miss Sunshine, without knowing who he was. I’ve now corrected my mistake!  And, to say the least, I’m impressed, very impressed with the work of first-time filmmaker Michael Cuestra. Check it out:  L.I.E.

Fathers play with their children and their dogs, and talk with their neighbors’ children, all on a beautiful oval loop of large, rather grand, identical brick duplexes. Their wives share maids and baby sitters, one of whom is a lovely married neighbor, pregnant with her first child - she merely walks past one matching two-doored home to get to work.

Everything is peaceful and rather homogenous. The homes are strangely familiar to me, military brat that I am. I feel like I’m in a time warp, like I’ve gone back to the 50s and early 60s, a very disturbing and unsafe time for me.

So though it appears to be a lot like a 2008 version of Mayberry, I keep wondering about the Stepford Wives (and sons and husbands)…

It’s a good opportunity to be present with my thoughts, to watch my projections. And the environment, physically at least, is idyllic!

Sometimes I find myself being too accepting of whatever wants to come down the pike. Rather than taking the reins, I’ve recently been a little too busy listening, too busy waiting for guidance…. I guess it’s like trying to help someone who seems to be okay with everything - - it’d be easier to help them if you had a clear idea of what they did and didn’t want!

So I’ve been a little too acquiescent. There’s surrender, but there’s also a definite need for co-creation. This week I grabbed the reins and set about to make a bit more structure in my free-wheeling life. And incredible and rather instant results is what I’ve gotten in return. So now I’ll dance!

I heard an interesting herbal talk on the radio a few days ago, naming herbs it would be good to take during this time of stress for all of us here amongst the wildfires of northern California. The speaker mentioned not just the damage to our lungs, but also the emotional and mental stress involved: Our senses are receiving the message, non-stop, that danger is present.

I heard this when the sky was finally beginning to show a little blue after weeks of the odd, unhealthy grey of distant wildfires, and when the stagnation I and those close to me had been experiencing for several weeks (all during the burning) had begun to lift, to shift. The sun was again visible, and my dreams had become very strong and clear. A gentle mist arrived, and it seemed to lift with it our life-gridlock. Decisions suddenly became obvious, seemed to nearly “make” themselves.

We forget, sometimes, to consider how external influences affect our day-to-day experiences emotionally. The ancients knew that they were intimately connected to their environment. In another place, another time, we would have had no question of whether it was “just me”, or whether it was the weather, the environment; there would have been no illusion of distinction or separation between the two!

And now, care to join me in a cup? Licorice root? Mullein, anyone?

I clearly see the “Good Girl / Good Boy” complex in some clients. It’s easy, as I was so very attached to it, myself!

I often got away with things, in elementary school, that other kids were punished for. Strangely, I could chat while the teacher was talking, write letters in my desk, chew gum. I even once slapped an annoying boy placed next to me because I was seen as his antithesis: He was a Trouble Maker, I was a very Good Girl. Because of this labeling, my slap was seen as appropriate, which I found a little disturbing, but in no way did I want to threaten my GG status.

At home, we were regularly punished for things we hadn’t done, and other, frightening and dangerous things happened to us, as well. It was like I lived in two diametrically opposed realities. I held on to my school identity for Dear Life.

One day, my school reality stood my world on its ear: I was caught talking in class - - and sent out, with my two chatterbox-conspirators, into the hallway. I was appearing as a Bad Girl, and the other sixth grade class was about to witness my - our - disgrace. I may have been the one responsible for the brilliant cover we spontaneously developed, or I may have merely been the grateful recipient of a brilliant serve. Anyway, picking up the long, black stapler that still lay on the floor where we’d SO recently finished our Good Girl task of helping the teacher by putting up her bulletin board, one of us saved the day.
As Mrs. Wilson’s class rounded the corner - dangerously close to our disgrace - one of us “held” a previously-stapled poster board item, asking the others, “Does this look straight?” to which her Good Girl friends replied, “It’s a little too high on the right”. Mrs. Wilson’s kids never knew the difference. Some part of me wondered, though, a little about myself… though I would never have known to call it Indentification.