A Chimpanzee Asks for Help

At Spirit Rock last Monday, Jack Kornfield shared this story–it’s one of my favorite anecdotes…

{Activist Fran Peavey writes:] One day I was walking through the Stanford University campus with a friend when I saw a crowd of people with cameras and video equipment on a little hillside. They were clustered around a pair of chimpanzees – a male running loose and a female on a chain about twenty-five feet long. It turned out the male was from Marine World and the female was being studied for something or other at Stanford. The spectators were scientists and publicity people trying to get them to mate.

The male was eager. He grunted and grabbed the female’s chain and tugged. She whimpered and backed away. He pulled again. She pulled back. Watching the chimps’ faces, I [a woman] began to feel sympathy for the female.

Suddenly the female chimp yanked her chain out of the male’s grasp. To my amazement, she walked through the crowd, straight over to me, and took my hand. Then she led me across the circle to the only other two women in the crowd, and she joined hands with one of them. The three of us stood together in a circle. I remember the feeling of that rough palm against mine. The little chimp had recognized us and reached out across all the years of evolution to form her own support group.
Quoted from Fran Peavey
Heart Politics (New Society Publishers, 1986), p. 176

Warning: Hair Levitation is Dangerous

When I sent out my e-newsletter, I got back this very funny reply from my high school friend Jamie Winslow (he’s part of a very cool nonprofit–The Salute Military Golf Association–they offer golf as a therapeutic outlet for soldiers undergoing prolonged treatment at Walter Reed Hospital).

Lisa,

Be very careful…back in the old daze, when I used to go to my happy place and contort my body in a myriad of similar pretzel-like manifestations, I too experienced hair levitation. I got so adept at the practice, particularly during stressful times–the first tee at major golf tournaments; public speaking engagements before short, Japanese businessmen; and even at the birth of my first-born son–that my hair literally left my head, sometimes hanging in mid-air for the splittest of seconds before falling to the ground never to return to its once proud follicle. Well, you’ve seen the result, there’s precious little hair left to levitate.

Now, I know what you’re saying. And I agree. It’s true, it’s true…few have, few will ever reach the sheer heights that unabashed hair levitation requires…Still, as Swami Muktananda teaches, hair levitation is serious bizness. You know this; I don’t have to tell you. But I learned my lesson too late. Please, I implore you to remember the teachings of power yoga as taught by the masters in Himachal Pradesh, India, to channel this energy more evenly throughout the body. I too once thought that hair levitation was the path to true Nirvana, what I found is that it’s only the path to a cheaper haircut.

My Prom Date

My prom date (twice) Chris Steed, now known as Chris Cannon, is a DJ for a Classic Rock station in Crossville, Tennessee.

I needed a prom date because I blew it with my boyfriend, and so I asked Chris, who was a good friend of mine and my brother’s. The next year when he needed a prom date, he asked me. We’re still friends.

He’s not able to make it to the reunion (bummer) and when he emailed me yesterday and asked me to call him right away, I thought maybe he changed his mind.

So I called him.

Since he’s turned Southern on us and become a DJ, he’s got this really stylized, raspy, sexy voice that he knows how to work. And he is a charmer…so he starts in on me “Hey babe, how you DOin’? I just need to know why a woman as cool as you has never gotten married?”

Silence.

Not the question I wanted to hear. Especially since I have no idea why I have never gotten married either. That fact surprises me, too.

He goes on to say, “You battin’ for the other team?”

I shake my head, cracking up. “No, not batting for the other team…” I’m still scrambling to think of a good reason why I haven’t walked down the aisle.

I mean, I’m already sure that I’m the only one who’s going to show up at the reunion in a bad outfit, now I get to be the loser who never got married.

That’s how my mind thinks.

I guess I could’ve gotten married a few times, but it just wasn’t right. And for sure if I had gotten married, I wouldn’t be married now. Maybe I just like being single? I date, I have male friends, I have great girlfriends, I have a great social life. I suppose I just never made marriage a goal. But then, I haven’t felt ready to be that committed. I’m still sorting out who I am in relationships. I have a lot to learn.

I have a lot to unlearn.

And I still haven’t gotten used to the idea that I’m 43. I still think like I’m in my 20’s, like I have forever to get the pieces into place. I’m not even sure what the pieces are.

A Croc of…?

When I want to discipline my daughter, I tell her I’m going to make her wear Crocs…she cries out in fear and falls right into line…

Can someone please tell me what is so great about Crocs? They are made of plastic, ugly as sin and must make your feet smell like hell…and they’re coming out with new styles and colors so everyone in your family can look like Minnie Mouse…

More trash, anyone? Or are they made of recycled something? Help?

???

I forgive Ann Coulter

This morning I was laying in savasana (corpse pose, like as if you were dead on your back with eyes closed), thinking about someone that really pissed me off, one of those people in your life who just won’t stop being annoying or manipulative no matter how much time passes and I have to say it took everything I had not to scream at said person with skill and self-righteous vigor.

Deep breath.

So I’m laying there, trying to feel peaceful and spiritual but of course I can’t because as soon as one thing gets under my skin then it’s caged veal calves and people dying in Iraq and MRSA and damn that Mark Morford for writing about that huge plastic “continent” in the Pacific Ocean and Ann Coulter is just so, so unbelievably unbelievable (sorry, I just can’t waste brain power on an adjective for her). So I am very far from breathing peacefully and connecting with my angels and guides and my stomach is churning and…and…and…

A quote from Jack Kornfield flickers in my consciousness like a feeble candle All thoughtless actions are the result of ignorance and blindness (I’m probably quoting it wrong, but it’s something like that). He tells a story about a man that got really upset that a woman knocked into him and spilled his groceries everywhere; as he was about to yell at her, she turned and he saw that she was blind. His heart melted.

So as I’m laying there, breathing in corpse pose with one hand on my chest and another on my belly, I think of all of those instigators with black Stevie Wonder sunglasses on and my heart melts.

Writers can too get callouses…

It is way too late and I have been googling and bookmarking and copying and pasting and screengrabbing and typing for, mmmm, 6 (?) hours now. Was it Pete Townsend who screamed I’ve got blisters on my fingers no, no…John Lennon!

you get the point.

(and yes, I’m alternating fingers on the touch pad so they’re all throbbing. I’ve even brought in my pinkie as a last resort)

Remedies?