Letters to the Universe
It was a while back when I wrote a letter I stumbled across the other day. It fell out of my copy of Autobiography of a Yogi (http://www.yogananda-srf.org). I was going through my bookshelf and a folded up piece of paper fell out to my feet. On one side it had a star, a circle with a cross through it and a heart. They were symbols drawn with my hand. What the heck was it? I picked it up and skimmed the sort of sloppy and rushed words. The night I wrote the letter came back to me. It was a full moon. Nobody had showed up for the Full Moon Meditation I held monthly at the yoga studio. It was just Mia and I sitting on the floor in the flickering candlelight. She was so small then, but I was thinking about her future and my desire to give her the world. I remember watching her scoot her little body across the yoga studio floor in her red long johns, not quite crawling, but moving just the same. I thought that the yoga studio would be a great place for a kid to grow up in. At times I felt like even though I didn’t know I was pregnant when we started building the studio, that deep down it was always for her. By this particular night in March, I had decided I was going to have to give up the studio. With Mia so small and no affordable or quality childcare with a business needing so much of my attention, I knew the best thing would be to pass the space on. I was laying on a wool blanket, watching my daughter scoot her way over to the big laughing Buddha we kept on the floor underneath the plant boxes. The room smelled like aloeswood and I had paper in pen in hand. I was going to write a letter to the Universe. And 2 years later, the letter is back in my hands.
The letter was a request. I wanted something sort of specific. I wanted to live in a city. And I wanted to live in the mountains. I wanted both and I asked the Universe to please send it my way. I asked for something simple yet creative and completely sustainable (www.greenbuilder.com/sourcebook) in the mountains. I asked for my city space to be a place of creativity and community as well. I asked that both spaces help in Bills quest as a musician and my path as a writer. I put the old letter back in the book and put the book back on the shelf. I thought about how time flies and the night that I wrote that letter seemed like decades past. I quickly forgot about the letter as diapers and potties and fingerpainting and puppet shows took me over. Bill came home from work a few days later and wanted to talk to me about something.
He suggest we buy a huge wharehouse somewhere in this city, convert into a green space and use it as a live work with as many other people as it will accomodate. At the same time we could purchase a plot of land, pitch a big tent or trailer on it, hook up a solar shower and have a mountain retreat until we have the money and time to build on it. Bill feels this is probably the only city in the West where we could still afford to have a city and mountain home.
We have had dreams (and detailed designs and plans) for a really long time to live sustainable and create community. We have so many amazing people in our lives and the list just keeps getting longer. The possibilities could be endless with cottage business and inter-active art space not to mention the resources for keeping all living in the color green…from building to growing…constantly exploring innovative and creative living endeavors. This is how I want my kids to grow up. This is how I want my kids to be ‘educated’: hands on and through interaction with others. I have imagined all so many times. Space for music, space for woodworking, space for welding, space for traditional crafts that include sewing and production of hand made goods. Space for yoga. Living spaces. Garden Spaces. Education and gallery space. Then somewhere up, up, up would be my little mountain side awaiting me for full moon weeks, and equinox fire celebrations, and quiet moments where my kids and I just walked around scrubby hillsides or through thick pines, rode horses, spoke to the tree spirits and basically detoxed. Then someday transfer completely up to that mountain space. (After I got my city-girl cravings outta me)
I think about it now and get slightly overwhelmed. How could we make something like this happen? Where could we find an empty urban space here for under 1/2 a million dollars? How long could it possibly take to create something like that to be kid-friendly and simply livable? And what about my little piece of mountain paradise? Could I live on it in a very rugged way for a week here and there, when Bill schedule allowed. He suggests spending the waxing moon time in the city and then spend the waning moon time in the mountains and trying to convert to living time on a 13 moon (www.tortuga.com) and figure out the best times to spend where. We could split our time for maybe 4-5 years and then start seriously building to live in the mountains(?) Could I have 2 homes, 2 extremes and 2 kids? Oh the possibilities are endless as well as the fears and the doubts. And all the same time feel so lucky that I have a partner who inspires and shares in common dreams with me…believes in these dreams…feels them in his core as I do. How in this world do we manifest these dreams? How do I even know what my true dreams and desires really are? Would I reallywant…..
Then K called. She is a great old friend living in another state. To put it lightly, she is bad ass with some serious tools. The woman can weld jewelry, build stonewalls, throw together huge pieces of stained glass, construct metal furniture plus bake some damn fine cookies. K told me she could get transfered to Phoenix in the next year or so and what did I think about that? I asked her what she thought of converting a wharehouse space into an extraordinary living experience. Of course she was all for it. “It’s time, ” she told me. I bet there are others out there, wanting, needing, ,envisiong…understanding that the whole works much better than just its parts and that the nuclear family is really pretty useless.
So where do we go from here? Keep looking for land? Looking for big huge old wharehouses that aren’t too disgusting and at least 7000 sq. feet and in our price range?
I guess I should just concentrate on going to the river and filling the bucket, staying in each of these moments and looking into my girls eyes. But it really does feel incredible when you see the seedling sprout of long-time visions. Maybe I should write more letters to the Universe.
