The Sound of Music

I didn't watch the Oscars, but I did hear that Lady Gaga performed songs from my favorite musical, The Sound of Music:

The hills are alive with the sound of music
With songs they have sung for a thousand years
The hills fill my heart with the sound of music
My heart wants to sing every song it hears

My heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds
That rise from the lake to the trees
My heart wants to sigh like a chime
That flies from a church on a breeze

To laugh like a brook when it trips
And falls over stones on its way
To sing through the night
Like a lark who is learning to pray

It's starting to get to that point in the winter when I'd do just about anything to be galavanting like Julie Andrews in warm weather when everything is green again. Alas, this morning when I got up it was -8, and by the time I went out for my run I think it was up to 4 degrees above zero. I hadn't run in a while, and I have to say that there were parts of it that were absolutely miserable: wind ripping right through my clothes, making me wonder what I was doing out there.

But there were also times when, protected from the wind and bathed in sunshine, it felt amazing to be out there, and at that moment I felt not unlike Julie Andrews sings about feeling in Austria:

I go to the hills when my heart is lonely
I know I will hear what I've heard before
My heart will be blessed with the sound of music
And I'll sing once more

I noted after I was done, too, that I felt measurably happier. It feels like it is going to take some time to fully recover from what I've been living with for the past several weeks, but I'm going to get there...

If You Love Somebody Set Them Free

Dang this was a long day. I knew it was gonna be, but it was longer and harder than I thought.

It seems I'm coming to the end of a line I've been walking for quite some time now. Transitions are always hard for me, but I have to think it's a good sign that the song that came to me tonight as I headed for bed was this one:

If you need somebody, call my name
If you want someone, you can do the same
If you want to keep something precious
You got to lock it up and throw away the key
If you want to hold onto your possession
Don't even think about me

If you love somebody, set them free

If it's a mirror you want, just look into my eyes
Or a whipping boy, someone to despise
Or a prisoner in the dark
Tied up in chains you just can't see
Or a beast in a gilded cage
That's all some people ever want to be

If you love somebody, set them free

You can't control an independent heart
Can't tear the one you love apart
Forever conditioned to believe that we can't live
We can't live here and be happy with less
So many riches, so many souls
Everything we see we want to possess

If you need somebody, call my name
If you want someone, you can do the same
If you want to keep something precious
You got to lock it up and throw away the key
If you want to hold onto your possession
Don't even think about me

If you love somebody, set them free

Free. That's exactly what I'm ready to be...

Baby Love

My five month old baby love...

Yesterday I got to see not one but two of my baby loves:

Ooh baby love, my baby love

I need you, oh how I need you

But all you do is treat me bad

Break my heart and leave me sad

Tell me, what did I do wrong

To make you stay away so long

'Cause baby love, my baby love

Been missing ya, miss kissing ya

Instead of breaking up

Let's do some kissing and making up

Don't throw our love away

In my arms, why don't you stay?

Need ya, need ya

Baby love, ooh, baby love

Baby love, my baby love

Why must we seperate, my love

All of my whole life through

I never loved no one but you

Why you do me like you do?

I get this need

Ooh, ooh, need to hold you

And my just turned one year old baby love!

Once again, my love

Feel your warm embrace, my love

Don't throw our love away

Please don't do me this way

Not happy like I used to be

Loneliness has got the best of me

My love, my baby love

I need you, oh how I need you

Why you do me like you do

After I've been true to you

So deep in love with you

Baby, baby, ooh till it's hurtin' me

Till it's hurtin' me

Ooh, baby love

Don't throw our love away

Don't throw our love away

And of course, as if all that baby love wasn't enough to fill my heart to the brim, I got to hang out with each baby love's Mom, both of whom are wonderful friends.

Plus I got to talk to my babies on the phone from their Dad's house.

So, this Valentine's weekend, it may be cold outside, but my heart is warm and toasty, even without a man...

Vision of Love

Vday starts off right: Ashtanga practice @my pad

Well Valentines, here we are: Nearly six years out from my divorce and nearly two years out from the departure of my beloved New Englander, I've finally fallen in love with myself.

Sing it, Mariah!

Treated me kind
Sweet destiny
Carried me through desperation
To the one that was waiting for me
It took so long
Still I believed
Somehow the one that I needed
Would find me eventually

I had a vision of love
And it was all that you've given to me

Prayed through the nights
Felt so alone
Suffered from alienation
Carried the weight on my own
Had to be strong
So I believed
And now I know I've succeeded
In finding the place I conceived

I had a vision of love
And it was all that you've given to me
I had a vision of love
And it was all that you've given me

I've realized a dream
And I visualized
The love that came to be
Feel so alive
I'm so thankful that I've received
The answer that heaven
Has sent down to me

Me.

That's right, I am the one that I've been waiting for. I'm the only one who will never leave me, so it's a good thing I've managed to become my own friend and lover!

Sure, all the things that come with a real, live, flesh and blood lover outside of you are great, and I am looking forward to fulfilling that vision of love too. But I now understand that I just wasn't fully capable of doing that until I managed to fully embrace myself...

Let It Go

My Note from the Universe today was so spot on, I just have to share it:

When a thing hurts your eyes, Sarah, stop looking at it.

When it hurts your ears, Sarah, stop listening to it.

And when it hurts your heart, Sarah, stop justifying it.

This is some damn good advice, some advice that I just wasn't ready to take for a long time, but that I can now hear loud and clear.

When I heard this beautiful song in the car today, I knew that he was singing about the exact same thing the Universe was telling me:

From walking home and talking loads
To seeing shows in evening clothes with you
From nervous touch to getting drunk
To staying up and waking up with you

But now we're sleeping at the edge
Holding something we don't need
All this delusion in our heads
Is gonna bring us to our knees

So come on let it go
Just let it be
Why don't you be you
And I'll be me

Everything's that's broke
Leave it to the breeze
Why don't you be you
And I'll be me

And I'll be me

From throwing clothes across the floor
To teeth and claws and slamming doors at you
If this is all we're living for
Why are we doing it, doing it, doing it anymore

I used to recognize myself
It's funny how reflections change
When we're becoming something else
I think it's time to walk away

So come on let it go
Just let it be
Why don't you be you
And I'll be me

Everything's that's broke
Leave it to the breeze
Why don't you be you
And I'll be me

And I'll be me

Trying to fit your hand inside of mine
When we know it just don't belong
There's no force on earth
Could make me feel right, no

Whoa

Trying to push this problem up the hill
When it's just too heavy to hold
Think now's the time to let it slide

So come on let it go
Just let it be
Why don't you be you
And I'll be me

And I'll be me

What a brilliant idea! I'm so glad to be able to finally take that suggestion...

What a Beautiful Wreck You Are

I'm reading a book that my son picked up at the library called This is Where I Leave You (it's also a movie). I am really enjoying it, and can relate to a lot of it.

There's a particular line from the book that I texted to the New Englander because it reminded me of us:

"She would be pretty and vulnerable and we would know each other instantly, would love each other fiercely, the way only two damaged people can."

Yes we did.

When I heard this song for the first time today on the radio, it made me think of that line, and of the
beautiful wrecks we both were (in some respects) when we met. But since he was much more freshly divorced, and had much less therapy, he even more so.

We didn't make it as far as I thought we would together, partly because of his beautiful wreck of a self, but I am profoundly grateful for the love we shared:

I've lost count of the times I given up on you
But you make such a beautiful wreck, you do
There's a tavern on the corner called the 'Milky Way'
And you look so at home there it makes me afraid

And at the dark end of this bar
What a beautiful wreck you are
When you go too far
Beautiful wreck you are

Well, all the plans that you had from seven years ago
Like all the promises you made, I watched them come and go
You put your keys in the car but it wouldn't drive
With your hands on the wheel, lookin' barely alive

I'm still sitting here
Waiting on the passenger side
For you to make up your mind
For you to make up your mind

I'm happy to report that I'm not still sitting on the passenger side waiting for him to make up his mind. I've climbed back into the driver's seat of my own life, and damn, it feels good!

Oh Love

The merging of my policy & yoga selves

This past weekend was the pre-launch for an organization I'm helping found to train teachers to teach yoga in schools.

It's the confluence of my education policy self and my yoga self and I am so excited about it!

Tonight I attended my first of the weekly group meetings held by the organization, and before the meeting I went with one of the other founding members to a yoga class near her apartment.

It wasn't my style of yoga -- heated room, powerflow -- but the instructor was awesome. At one point, I stopped to rest in child's pose and he came over and pressed down on my low back and then ran his hands up my spine to my neck.

It felt incredible, and after class I thanked him for that gift and told him I knew I loved him from that moment. And I'm kinda serious. He may not actually be my next love -- he has a girlfriend, for starters, and there are many things I don't know about him -- but if he isn't, he is a beacon for the kind of man I want to be with. Super present. That's at the top of my list.

Here to help me mark my return to love are my pals from Green Day:

Oh Love, oh love
Won't you rain on me tonight?
Oh life, oh life
Please don't pass me by
Don't stop, don't stop
Don't stop when the red lights flash
Oh ride, free ride
Won't you take me close to you

Far away, far away
Waste away tonight
I'm wearing my heart on a noose

Far away, far away
Waste away tonight
Tonight my heart's on the loose

Oh lights and action
I just can't be satisfied
Oh losers and choosers
Won't you please hold on my life
Oh hours and hours
Like the dog years of the day
Old story, same old story
Won't you see the light of day

Far away, far away
Waste away tonight
I'm wearing my heart on a noose

Far away, far away
Waste away tonight
Tonight my heart's on the loose

Talk myself out of feeling
Talk my way out of control
Talk myself out of falling in love
Falling in love with you

Oh love, oh Love
Won't you rain on me tonight
Oh ride, free ride
Won't you take me close to you

Tonight my heart's on the loose...
Tonight my heart's on the loose...

Yes it is, and the freedom feels so delicious after so much time in a noose!

I Want the One I Can't Have

For a while now I've been asking for something that I wasn't sure I'd ever get -- more clarity around why The New Englander is in New England instead of here with us.

Today I received what I've been asking for in the form of a letter from him. I'm not sure he said anything new, but I was able to hear him and accept what he said in a way I've never been able to do before.

Part of that shift came this week while listening to Hardwiring Happiness in the car. The author said something that really changed the game for me, which was all about the difference between wanting and liking, and how they are two totally different neural circuits, and how the wanting is associated with craving, clinging and compulsivity in a way that liking never is.

And suddenly I knew that what I have been struggling with for so long -- the intensity of the want that I have felt for the New Englander that makes me believe we must be right for each other and we should be together -- is actually just incredibly intense wanting. It isn't all the things that I need or want in a loving partnership. I've known that it wasn't, but I kept coming back to the want as evidence. Turns out, the want isn't evidence of anything healthy, so now I can just notice it, be with it, but not choose to get carried away by it as I have in the past.

Phew! What a relief! And to mark this day I leave you with The Smiths' treatise on wanting:

On the day that your mentality
catches up with your biology

I want the one I can't have
and it's driving me mad
it's written all over my face

A double-bed
and a stalwart lover, for sure
these are the riches of the poor

A double-bed
and a stalwart lover, for sure
these are the riches of the poor

A tough kid who sometimes swallows nails
raised on Prisoner's Aid
he killed a policeman when he was
thirteen
and someone that really impressed
me
it's written all over my face

On the day that your mentality
catches up with your biology

And if you ever need self-validation
just meet me in the alley by the
railway-station
it's written all over my face

Where The Streets Have No Name

I love it when the streets disappear under snow

I was cooped up inside all day today, so close to dusk, when I finally did strap on my cross country skis, I was feeling this U2 classic big time:

I want to run
I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls
That hold me inside
I wanna reach out
And touch the flame
Where the streets have no name

I want to feel, sunlight on my face
I see that dust cloud disappear without a trace
I wanna take shelter from the poison rain

Where the streets have no name
Where the streets have no name
Where the streets have no name

We're still building
Then burning down love, burning down love
And when I go there
I go there with you
It's all I can do

The cities a flood
And our love turns to rust
We're beaten and blown by the wind
Trampled into dust

I'll show you a place
High on the desert plain

Where the streets have no name
Where the streets have no name
Where the streets have no name

Still building
Then burning down love
Burning down love

And when I go there
I go there with you
It's all I can do

Our love turns to rust
We're beaten and blown by the wind
Blown by the wind
Oh and I see love
See our love turn to rust
We're beaten and blown by the wind
Blown by the wind
Oh when I go there
I go there with you
It's all I can do

I love U2. I love snow. And I love that all I can do is exactly enough...