Song of the departure
Curve - Black Delilah
This is my own
This is my own
Limitation
It's my best friend
It's my best friend
I am about to hop on a plane to Germany. I will be with my family until March 7.
Also, for the first time in my life I am subletting my place while I am gone because I can use the cash. It is an interesting exercise in trust that I am not used to but fully ready to take on.
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.: posted by Vera 
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Review
Amy wrote the most amazing review for me on Yelp.com. My favorite part is when she says this: "i definitely recommend getting a cup of tea with her and telling her how you feel - she might help you change your life."
That's exactly who I want to be in this world, somebody to whom you can tell your feelings and who might help you change your life. Thanks for putting it that way, Amy!
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.: posted by Vera
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Mark my words
One of these years I am going to be a drummer in the Chinese New Year procession at the Raindance Chinese New Year's party. Those drums have such a powerful impact on me. They remind me of a time, probably centuries ago, when dancing to the beat of a drum was all I did all day long. Since 2004, the moment when the drums kick off the New Year's procession has been one of my favorite moments of the entire year, especially on mushrooms.
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.: posted by Vera
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I am going to see Tobi!
If you have read this blog for long enough, you might know that growing up, I had a friend named Tobi. He was a boy and lived across the street. Our friendship went through different stages. He laughed at me on my first day of Kindergarten because I was still wearing diapers. I never wore diapers after that. And his opinion continued to always be very important to me.
When I was in the mental hospital when I was 10, Tobi made me a mixtape. Thinking about that breaks my heart to this day, and I still remember most of the songs that were on it.
In 7th grade, we were both part of a group of skater kids in the neighborhood. In fact, when my parents bought me a skateboard that Christmas, Tobi came along to help pick out the right one. Did I mention that I valued his opinion?
In 8th grade, we went through a phase of riding my bike to the store every afternoon after school to get Kinder eggs. We alternated every day who was pedaling and who was riding. During that time we also fantasized about having our own fun game show on TV. We said that during commercial breaks we would play cartoons instead of commercials.
In 9th grade Tobi got really drunk once and hugged everybody, including me. That was the first time we ever hugged. Germans are stiff like that, especially when it comes to the opposite sex. I told Tobi about the hug later, and he said he didn't remember hugging me.
Our relationship was always purely platonic. It faded away around 10th grade because that's when things got difficult. That's when I entered my teen identity crisis, and I suddenly didn't know how to relate to Tobi anymore. Maybe he felt the same way.
We got reacquainted briefly in 13th grade because he was in a very serious relationship with one of my good friends, Julia P., at the time. Then I moved to America.
I have only seen him once since moving to America in 1996. It was, I believe, in 1997 or 1998, and I was walking near my parents' house. Tobi was still living across the street at the time, and we ran into each other. It was rather stiff and awkward. I felt no connection to him as we small-talked.
Since then I had been thinking "Oh well. I guess we don't have a connection anymore. It happens." But the thing is that I dream about Tobi frequently. And I think about him frequently as well, as is obvious in how many times I have mentioned him on my blog and how many things he has said to me I can remember verbatim. Also, I don't believe in coincidences anymore and I do believe in reincarnation. I don't believe that people are put in one's life by accident. I now am certain that Tobi and I have known each other for many, many lifetimes - that's why he is on my mind so much. And I want to honor this connection and not just let it go to waste this lifetime, just because we don't live in the same country anymore and just because our friendship faded away when we had become too cool to talk to each other as teens.
So I have decided that I am going to see him next week when I am in Germany. I am so excited. I can hardly think about anything else today. I have no expectations; all I want is to have a conversation with him and tell him that I appreciate his presence in my life. There might be something important he needs to hear from me or something important I need to hear from him or there might not be anything important at all. But even if it's just to say "Hey, we have a picture of us on a rubber boat with our dads when we were 2, and now we're over 30 and we're having our first conversation in almost 10 years," I am excited to see him.
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.: posted by Vera
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Leaving Hooping.org
I recently gave up my responsibilities at hooping.org. For the last year or so Philo had been doing practically all the work on the site anyway, so this is just a formality and an energetic completion. Philo and I are both relieved and believe that my resignation will improve our relationship. My laziness and lack of inspiration had been weighing heavily on my conscience and put a wedge between us. But now that's done and we are free to get together for coffee and chat about taxi driving and boyfriends because there isn't that thing anymore, that uncomfortable thing that neither of us wanted to talk about. Phew!
Because of my departure, Philo interviewed me for hooping.org. And of course I can't be interviewed without talking about my issues. Here is an excerpt:
I am outgoing and have a lot of friends and know a lot of people, but I don't have a lot of super close friends. I have come to realize that I unconsciously keep most of my friendships at a more or less superficial level. Once I recognized that, I decided I wanted to change it, and that is one of my goals this year. I want to overcome my fear of social intimacy.
Read the full interview.
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.: posted by Vera
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Crying in Public
I fell in love last night. With a girl named Monique Jenkinson who did a performance called Crying in Public. She pranced around on stage wearing a combination of a bungee jumping harness and a tutu; she kept slipping on her own tears; she admitted to having cried on Mission Street, on Valencia Street, on Guerrero Street, on Dolores Street,... (and so have I!); she said that pretty much the only place where she hasn't cried is national television; she talked about all the negative attributes we give to public criers; she was so vulnerable and adorable, and I want to have her crying babies.
This performance couldn't have come into my life at a better time. I have been getting into the crying in public lately. Just within the last week I have cried inside a Muni station and in Golden Gate Park. I don't care! Other people express their feelings by honking; I do it by crying in public. And it's not that I want people to see my crying; it's just that I have these feelings and they want to be released, and they don't really care if I'm at home or in public.
In late November you once could have seen me driving a taxi on Fillmore near Turk early in the morning when it was still dark. I didn't have a passenger and I was bawling, with tears streaming down my face, hardly able to see the street in front of me. I realized in that moment how painful yet stunningly beautiful this moment was. If there ever was a movie made about me, that scene would definitely make it into the movie.
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.: posted by Vera
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Commitment
Philo and I promised to each other today that within the next week we would both sing along to a song at the top of our lungs in the taxi while we had a passenger, preferably a stiff business man.
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.: posted by Vera
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Yogic magic
So I went to a yoga class this morning, and I really enjoyed it. I did tittibhasana aka firefly pose for the first time, and I actually got my feet to levitate off the ground for about two seconds. I experienced a totally new body sensation in that pose that I had never had before. It felt like an energetic breakthrough of sorts.
I talked to the teacher after class, which I never do. I told her how much I had enjoyed the class and gave her a Psychic Valentine. She said "Oh, so YOU're the Psychic Valentine girl!" I looked surprised, and she told me that she had seen my car before class, parked on Waller Street.
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.: posted by Vera
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Remembering that I'm only 5 minutes away from a raw meal
Christabel has been talking a lot on her blog about raw food. At first I noticed a resistance in myself to reading those blog posts in detail that were about raw food. I had negative feelings come up because I hadn't been eating much raw food at all. I was feeling bad and guilty because I hadn't been taking as good care of my body as I could be, and that's why I didn't want to read about Christabel's exciting adventures with raw food. But what I am noticing more and more lately is that whenever I have a negative feeling, it's a disguised desire. And the desire in this case, I finally had to admit, was to EAT RAW FOOD!
Last April I had done a week-long all raw food diet, and I had loved it. I had started fantasizing about opening my own raw food deli. I had started dreaming about the whole world going raw and raw food being carried by all grocery stores and restaurants. But when my week of raw food was over, I pretty much forgot about all that. And that's what I was feeling bad about now.
So I finally went back to Christabel's blog to let myself get re-inspired. I am finding lately that getting inspired once (like I did last year) is not enough. You have to keep getting re-inspired and re-inspired to keep up certain things. For instance, I got inspired to start doing yoga two years ago. But sometimes I am totally uninspired to take a yoga class. But I made a new friend recently who is a yoga teacher trainee, and she told me about this class she was teaching this morning, and that's what re-inspired me to go to a yoga class this week. And Christabel's writings about raw food re-inspired me to make raw food a part of my life!
So yesterday I went to the grocery store, bought some cauliflower, cashew nuts and lemons and made myself raw cauliflower soup, and it was so easy! Somehow I have this concept in my head that keeping up a raw diet is so complicated and time-consuming, what with all the shopping and preparing and processing and cleaning the food processor. But really, since there is no cooking involved, raw food is so FAST to make. I was literally eating my cauliflower soup within five minutes of coming home from the grocery store.
I am not planning on going completely raw, but I am planning on making raw meals a big part of my life again. I just love the way they make me feel. Thank you, Christabel, for the re-inspiration!
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.: posted by Vera
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