life is a miracle. ever since i moved, i have been confronted with nature and its ways head on and it has given me a new perspective, like through the eyes of a child discovering something for the very first time. it is no coincidence that i made my way to summer solstice the week before i moved. honestly, the last thing on my mind was gearing up for a full blown camping expedition in the high desert in new mexico, but naturally, the major lesson that unfolded for me there was the yoga and meditation all week long. and i'm not just talking about sitting on a sheep skin under a huge tent holding mudras and chanting mantras for several hours in a row. i am talking about the meditation of having to weather the elements, get down and dirty pitching a tent, being ok with the dirt and dust constantly blowing into every crevice and crack, carrying all of my toiletries to and from the showers via the porta-potties and keeping everything held in tact, warding off insects and creepy crawlies from the tent at night - to name a few. it literally makes you slow down and feel and experience this earth and what it means to be human.
so i get back from new mexico and the very next day, after not having packed a single thing, moved to my now so-called abode - and i have brought the roughness and toughness of camping with me and it has kept me sane and able to cope with these otherwise unsuitable conditions that i have and continue to undergo. firstly, i now live in a shoe box and my bathroom is a match box. fine. i have down-sized to a third of the space i had before. fine. sent all of my fall/winter apparel and shoes to my parents' until there is need for them. fine. let go of clothes i no longer wear or need. hmmmmmmmm. a little harder. and then came the fleas.... and the spiders. WTF. the previous tenant mentioned the spiders and since i lived in a basement and co-habitated with the daddy-long-legs, i didn't even think twice about it. but when i started seeing red spots on my ankles, then shins and calves, i knew there were critters invading my space and immediately i flashed to the previous tenant's adorable pooch and the random cats in the back of the property and realized there are fleas doing jumping jacks in my pad. not cool. now i commiserate with those little guys, those furry friends of ours that suffer, especially now in the summer heat. and then coming home to gigantic charlotte's webs every night spun across my entrance. WOW. now that is a sight. i just stand there and stare at this miraculous event. how the hell does it get clear across from the tree to the pillar, clearing at least 3 yards of free-fall? ok, i thought it was just one night when i was lucky to have a flashlight and thank god for it because otherwise, i would have walked straight into it's bull's eye. but it is every single night, at approximately 8:45pm to be precise, that these creatures come out to spin their dinner's fate-ridden tomb. who will be the sucker to get entangled next?
not me. i have learned to slow down, observe and reflect back on all of the signs the universe has given me as warnings and to listen to my inner voice telling when to watch out. little did i know that Anastasia, a book i read a few weeks prior, would be my guide book to really getting back in touch with all things natural and god-given. we are a collective breath, all interwoven out of the cosmos, and although the bites suck (pun intended) and having to embrace arachnids was something i hadn't planned on, i get to hear a sweet bird sing her song every day, see butterflies dance and prance around, and look out of my bathroom window to see glorious purple trumpets. when we learn to let go, the universe indeed takes care of us. and that is why a little discomfort at the end of the day makes life the beautiful miracle that it is.
