1. donate hair to Wigs for Kids (32x32)

As part of the 32x32, I cut off the mermaid hair and donated it to the Wigs for Kids organization! Originally, I was going to wait until I got back to LaLa to cut it off with Gretta after the winter, but then I started thinking that there's a kid out there who needs some hair this winter way more than I do!



Sarah's agreed to do the fix after everything is cut off, but I invited a bunch of friends to come over last Saturday help.

I had seen pictures on the interwebs: you braid it up into little bits all around and then put a rubber band near the scalp and another at the end of the braid, that way it doesn't unravel when you snipsnip.

Apparently, no one else is as intrigued by cutting off hair as I am! It just seems like something we've always been told not to do ourselves and to leave to a professional; and that cutting off our own hair symbolizes some sort of grief or emotional turmoil. So, I wanted to offer everyone an opportunity to do something kind of forbidden without the emotional hangover because it's for a great cause. My sister joined me and Sarah via Skype and we did it!

15 inches to Wigs for Kids



and a work appropriate version of the aeon flux hair...



If you like this hair cut, give Sarah a shout!

making the next list: 33x33

It's that time of year when I review the last list, see what I can get done in the next few months and make my holiday/birthday gift requests. Let's review though what has been accomplished over the past three years, because holy shit, it's a lot!

(and thanks hyperbole and a half for this joke...)

(30x30) 2. go on a dog-sled trek in vermont. (Complete)
(30x30) 3. quit smoking cigarettes. (Complete)
(30x30) 4. see Mission of Burma live. (Complete)
(30x30) 5. go sky-diving. (Complete)
(30x30) 7. figure out my weight, in "stones." (Complete)
(30x30) 8. Finish ONE tom robbins book. (Complete
(30x30) 9. finish 1 quilt. (Complete)
(30x30) 10. learn to knit socks, make Mary Zwarg socks with wool from Colorado. (Complete)
(30x30) 11. read Catch 22. (Complete)
(30x30) 12. go to Barbados, snorkel. (Complete)
(30x30) 13. and drive a scooter, come home alive(Complete)
(30x30) 14. learn to hula dance (Complete)
(30x30) 16. go water-skiing (Complete)
(30x30) 18. eat sea urchin. (Complete)
(30x30) 19. ride a bike from my house to mom's and back in one day. (Complete)
(30x30) 20. try living gluten-free for a month. (Complete)
(30x30) 21. meditate/yoga at least once a week. (Complete)
(30x30) 22. drink suggested amounts of water daily. (Complete)
(30x30) 23. broaden my communist horizons, attend something inspired by a marxist. (Complete)
(30x30) 24. attend Salmagundi club function (receive token)
(30x30) 25. join a professional association. (Complete)
(30x30) 26. make a mobile. (Complete)
(30x30) 27. take a metal-welding course. (Complete)
(30x30) 28. kiss an elephant, a real live elephant. (Complete)
(30x30) 29. play an entire game of tennis, keep score. (Complete)
(30x30) 30. finally attend Halloween party as Rogue from X-Men. (Complete)
(31x31) 1. Knit all the things (Complete)
(31x31) 2. Read ONE Vonnegut novel (Complete)
(31x31) 3. Go to the opera (Complete)
(31x31) 4. Crochet a doily(Complete)
(31x31) 5. Get my palms read(Complete)
(31x31) 6. Serve home-made pierogis and golabki to someone other than family. (Complete)
(31x31) 7. Increase flexibility to do a turtle pose (Complete)
(31x31) 8. Go to a professional sport’s game (Complete)
(31x31) 9. open an etsy stall (Complete)
(31x31) 10. drive an antique car (Complete)
(31x31) 11. complete a 10K, donate $1000 to livestrong charity (Complete)
(31x31) 12. Allocate 35% of net income to personal debt (Complete)
(31x31) 13. Finish quilt #2 (Complete)
(31x31) 14. Join activity association, like a tennis club. (Complete)
(31x31) 15. play dominoes with dirty old men. (Complete)
(31x31) 16. Go bowling at the White House (complete)
(31x31) 18. Visit a state never visited before (other than Montana and North Dakota)(Complete)
(31x31) 19. go sailing (Complete)
(31x31) 20. Knit an adult size sweater or cardigan. (Complete)
(31x31) 21. Have a birthday party (Complete)
(31x31) 22. Touch a spider, a big hairy spider. (Complete)
(31x31) 23. Write and illustrate a children’s book. (Complete)
(31x31) 25. hike the Appalachian Trail (Complete)
(31x31) 27. watch top 100 AFI films (Complete)
(31x31) 28. grow mermaid hair, go to the mermaid parade on Coney Island(Complete)
(31x31) 29. International Yarn Bomb Day (Complete)
(31x31) 30. complete Nation’s Triathlon (Complete)
(31x31) 31. Move out of my mother’s house. (Complete)
(32x32) 1. donate hair to Wigs for Kids (Complete)
(32x32) 2. establish Needles to Say (Complete)
(32x32) 3. complete a century ride (Complete)
(32x32) 4. close out corporate bank account, open up checking at a credit union (Complete)
(32x32) 5. go play seal/otter/walrus (Complete)
(32x32) 8. go on 3 blind dates (complete)
(32x32) 9. re-enact a scene from the Miracle on 34th Street (Complete)
(32x32) 10. vote (complete)
(32x32) 13. Send a message in a bottle (complete)
(32x32) 16. Fold a 100 origami cranes and give them to someone special (Complete)
(32x32) 17. smell a coffee plantation (complete)
(32x32) 18. go to a silent meditation weekend retreat (Complete)
(32x32) 19. go on tour of the Capitol (Complete)
(32x32) 21. make garden needles, knit a blanket with +10 strands of yarn (Complete)
(32x32) 22. Complete a half marathon (complete)
(32x32) 23. read something by David Foster Wallace (Complete)
(32x32) 24. make an anonymous donation (complete)
(32x32) 25. improve race time on another triathlon (Complete)
(32x32) 27. eat something I can't pronounce (complete)
(32x32) 28. raise an anxiety-provoking amount of money for a good cause (complete)
(32x32) 29. knit a blanket with +10 strands of yarn (Complete)
(32x32) 30. blow kisses to all highway patrol cars (Complete)
(32x32) 31. steal a choir suit and run around singing, clapping, and praising (Complete)

Left over from previous years:
(30x30) 1. go see Kandinsky's "thirty" in Paris
(30x30) 6. take sailing lessons for a tiller boat.
(30x30) 15. learn to play the russian marche by mozart
(30x30) 17. go to one lecture per university in DC consortium.
(31x31) 17. Keep to a budget with a 10% margin of error.
(31x31) 24. Go ice-skating in Canada.
(31x31) 26. Climb a water-tower without permission.
(32x32) 6. dye & spin my own yarn
(32x32) 7. watch all the alfred hitchock movies
(32x32) 11. go to Lee's college graduation
(32x32) 12. Be a member of the audience in a TV show
(32x32) 14. Run to the top of the Statue of Liberty
(32x32) 15. Go geocatching
(32x32) 20. finish trunk projects
(32x32) 26. swim across the Long Island Sound
(32x32) 32. sit in the gallery during a Supreme Court trial

... I think the 33x33 might be a catch-up list...

3. go to the opera (31x31)

Children in the Mist: A Horror Opera


From Michael Beeman's article July 14, 2012:
Children in the Mist follows a plot-line familiar to anyone even loosely acquainted with King’s writing: the average inhabitants of Anywhere, Maine, are visited by the supernatural when an ominous mist rolls in from the sea. The townsfolk shore up at the local grocery story, the setting for much of the opera’s action, and wait for the mist to clear. It doesn’t. They panic. Soon the townsfolk find themselves fighting each other as well as the supernatural creatures that begin attacking them from the mist at night.

The crew finds inventive ways to use light, darkness, and obfuscation to create atmosphere in a spare set (But no mist! None!). The shrieks come mostly from the stage, but each is answered in turn with a hearty laugh from the audience (a note to horror opera producers: half a corpse is more terrifying than a full corpse any day). Although audiences of Children in the Mist are unlikely to leave clamoring for further operatic adaptations of King’s entire catalog, they will have to admit they had fun watching innovative Riverbend Opera Company’s clever mash-up.

... we left during the first intermission... the only reason we stayed that long was for Alexandra Friendly,


wife of my buddy from highschool, Oliver, and bff of my bff, Alley. They could give a theatrical critique which I don't have the expertise. All I know is Alex was awesome and the dude who played the shop-keeper was so amazingly over-the-top. maybe that's what opera is supposed to be?

10. vote (32 x 32)

TCB, baby.

13. send a message in a bottle (32 x 32)

Once upon a time in an arena not so far away a woman who had just recently returned to the east coast from LA, who enjoyed free yoga in Santa Monica with her besties, who returned to her old job which she had left twice already for greener grasses, who had been sailing and swimming since she was a month old, walked up to the olympic sized pool in a granny bathing suit to jump in only because she missed the water and it was frigid November so the river was out of the question. She had gained a few pounds since her return from the existential crisis that took her out west, but hadn't yet started the sugar binge that gave her hypochondriac fits of diabetes. As soon as she got in the water though, she calmed her self-consciousness; only to have it rise again when she looked a few lanes down to see an athletic man, dressed in tattoos, and oblivious to her. Immediately, she began to create stories about who he could be. The first was that he was an economics professor who would cover up his tattoos for classes on game theory. The next was that he was a post-doctoral student with the languages department. All of the possibilities teased out in her mind as she swam, pulled handstands, and turned summersaults at the end of the lane that day.

A few months later she was knitting a scarf for a friend out in California on the commuter bus when the man from the pool said hello. and her heart nearly popped out. he wasn't supposed to notice her. She had been looking for him at the pool and hadn't seen him again, so that he recognized her was entirely unexpected and terrifying. He asked what she was knitting and asked if she could make him one too, of course, she said. As it would turn out, they had some mutual friends in the city and she had excuses to see him, enjoying every time he said he would "harass" her to hang out. they would go swimming, catch a coffee break back when she was still smoking and he said camels smelled differently than any other cigarette and that he wanted to eat them.

One day, she told a friend of theirs that her hands get sweaty and her ribs felt tight whenever she would be about to see him. Her friend endorsed his handsomeness and then dropped the curtain to a wizard, he was married. still in the contemplative stages of a possible divorce, which is what the friend had in common with him and which they would commiserate together; but still married. She tried to play it off, but was honest and said that he had never mentioned it; more importantly, she had never asked. Effectively, it didn't really matter though. She was still growing up, still making decisions about her values, still reaching for healthy goals, still seeing what traits in men she liked and what she disliked. She turned to determining if she wanted to be friends with the man, turns out she did and they've been friends ever since.

He helped her establish a no-sugar diet, then a training diet, then a triathlon training schedule. She offered an ear when he began the divorce and separation process. He started dating another triathlete when he moved out of his house, a small petite woman who owned a few dogs. When she was unemployed he helped her out and let her work a contracting job at the museum where she met two ladies to whom he said he was attracted. They were lithe and shorter than she was, both athletic. These bits of information solidified her conviction that she was right not to make waves in their friendship when he was separating, he would never be attracted to her because of her stature. There's nothing she could do about her height or normal weight, for the most part she was content with her appearance. He gave her a rope sculpture, which he said was phallic. She gave him a scarf with images from his paintings woven into the pattern. He gave her a painting which spoke of nurturing and he said that that was her nature.

A few years later a few things happened: He broke up with his girlfriend and moved out onto his own for the first time in more than a decade. Her friend from California came to the east coast to join her for a race. Her friend is muscular, tattooed, still shorter but more like her physique than the others. He asked about her friend's sexual preferences which happened to lie with other women, and said that she was attractive. A few emotions happened nearly instantaneously: doubt, hope, and jealousy. She began to doubt her contentment with their friendship, she began to hope for some romance, and she began to feel jealous of the time that he spent with others which quickly turned to guilt because a friend should be happy for another friend who is working towards his goals and reaching them.

She wrote a message on a little slip of paper; she wrote that she had always been in love with him, that she was so grateful for his friendship which brought her laughter and solace and joy. Then she rolled it up and put it in a bottle. And she held on to it because it seemed a selfish thing to send. She thought that she was being thoughtful to his emotions and what he was working through, she didn't want to add more layers of roles. She imagined that he needed her to be a friend while all these other things were going on in his world.

In the fall, she meditated on the different stories she tells herself and what her life or her day would look like if she didn't believe those stories. While she has never been accused of being logical, this thought process happened: The story she believed was that there was going to be a "right time" to reveal her feelings for him. What that translated into was there was going to be a "right time in order to get what I want." That left the opportunity to reveal this aquifer because intrinsically it meant that she knew her love was worth sharing.

So she took the message in the bottle, wrapped it in a page of a map, tied it up with string from her sangha which had all the metta and all the amazingness of the vipassana retreat, and left it for him on the table in the lobby of his apartment. unconcerned with the outcome, because all we have is right now.

the end.

24. make an anonymous donation (32 x 32)

with all of the confidentiality capabilities at my command, I will try to make this as anonymous as possible. I gave something to someone when I was on retreat. I wrote a note with it, but didn't sign my name. actually, I don't even know if the gift was picked up or kept.

all this ties neatly in with one of the concepts taught on the retreat: dana.
Dāna as a formal religious act is directed specifically to a monastic or spiritually-developed person. In Buddhist thought, it has the effect of purifying and transforming the mind of the giver. Buddhists believe that giving without seeking anything in return leads to greater spiritual wealth. Moreover, it reduces the acquisitive impulses that ultimately lead to continued dukkha.

the dana talk we received was very interesting. it spoke to the differences between Eastern and Western cultures regarding generosity. In the East (i.e., India), the monks walk down the street in the morning with a bowl and people come out of their houses and give a scoop of their food to the monks. As soon as an infant learns to walk, a spoon is put in their hand so they may give to the monks. Obviously, in the West we don't really practice this in such direct terms. We do pay local taxes to pay for teachers and other civil servants, but it's the directness that maybe is the key in lessening dukkha.

Years ago, when I was in the middle of a particularly harsh moment of self-centeredness, my buddy Michael suggested that I go do something nice for someone and not to tell them and not to tell him about it either. just do something nice, be generous, and not expect any praise or promotion for it. Of course I was immediately transported into gratitude and humility, which were much more pleasant.

and as my mother says, "give and forget the gift."

18. go on a silent retreat (32 x 32)

There really aren't words to describe the peace which came from this retreat, appropriately so. I guess just the basics: Against the Stream organized a week-long retreat in NW Massachusetts, Berkshire Mountains, at a place called Earth Dance.

I heard of it through a post on the DC Dharma Punx group on facebook. I had gone to sit with the DC Dharma Punx once, but felt it was a little hokey; then earlier this year I went for a walking meditation and didn't follow any of the instructions and instead had a lovely time wandering around the National Arboretum with a good friend and conversation.

I didn't really have any expectations, except to be in an environment where there wasn't going to be any external chatter so I could focus on internal chatter. And there was a lot to listen to. noble silence means: no talking to the other yogis, only talking for clarification of work during the work meditation, no eye contact, no phone calls, no texting, no writing/journaling, no facebook, no smoke signals, no polite things like "thank you" or "excuse me"

Our days were structured thusly:
5:45 morning bell
6:15 yoga
7:00 breakfast
8:00 walking meditation/work meditation
9:00 dharma talk
10:30 walking meditation (i usually went for a run, or wrote in my journal, or took a nap during this time)
11:00 sitting meditation
11:30 walking meditation (i usually showered during this time)
12:00 lunch
12:30 my work meditation: food finisher (i put away extra food, rinsed bowls for the dishwasher)
1:00 walking meditation/work meditation
2:00 sitting meditation (i usually knit during this time)
2:45 The 5 Rhythms
4:15 sitting meditation
5:00 dinner
6:00 walking meditation/work meditations
7:00 Metta talk
8:45 sitting meditation
9:30 Pablo Das song and then bed



The way the vipassana built up over the course of six days went thusly:
Monday - breathing
Tuesday - sounds
Wednesday - feeling tones (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral)
Thursday - full vipassana of insight meditation
Friday - full vipassana
Saturday - full vipassana

some of the beautiful things from the week:
stars! a bear which I mistook for a skunk (in the middle of the night without my glasses), foxes on the compost heap, none of the books I brought with me had any blank pages in the back to tear out to write upon, iridescent blue bells, a hummingbird flew within arms length of the window I was journaling, men openly weeping, sydney and shawn laughing until they cried, the transition from chaos to lyrical in the dancing practice, the bole in the apple tree which you can pass your arm through, caterpillars:

(crimson ghost caterpillar)


(mr. t caterpillar)

i had a few key insights:
1. i love nan, that shit is delicious
2. there's residual anger for people who have physically hurt me, and
3. that anger comes up as competitiveness with others
4. there's no need to compare anyone with my old unicorn, no one will be him, and that's a good thing.
5. i need to work on being okay with being abandoned (thank you very much george haas for this sucker punch statement)
6. finally, the biggest one: letting go of barriers so that i can love unreservedly, not holding out because of long-term implications or psychodynamic mumbojumbo. this is difficult to put into practice. someone's ability to commit is a character trait to them, not to me. which means that it can change.

it has been very surreal, coming out of the noble silence. first thing I heard from back home is that a friend of ours passed due to his addiction. because the whole week had been on impermanence, it was difficult not having anything to say to comfort others. I was still wrapped up in the insights and the barrage of noise and stimulants.

i would highly recommend this type of retreat for someone who needs some balm for their soul. or needs ways to work towards forgiveness, compassion, joy, and equanimity.

namaste