Blog o’ Gnosis

As a dreamworker, I estimate that roughly 75% of my clients have their questions answered satisfactorily using the tools of dream interpretation. Another 25% have concerns that are not completely resolved by looking at the content of their dreams. These folks are usually coping with some kind of sleep disturbance, and need to know how to get a good night’s sleep so that they can remember more of their dreams.

The field of sleep medicine is growing as more people experience insomnia, chronic nightmares, sleep apnea, and other issues that interfere with their dreaming and overall functioning. With these folks in mind, I have been reading up on ways to cultivate restorative sleep. Among the many websites I have traversed, the National Sleep Foundation has lots of informative articles and links to sleep centers across the country.

There are also some interesting books on the subject that have come out recently. Among them is one which on the surface seems completely unrelated, even frivolous, yet contains some valuable information on the ins and outs of getting good quality sleep.

I am still working on being able to say (or write) the title of this book without wincing, but here goes: Sleep Away the Pounds: Optimize Your Sleep and Reset Your Metabolism for Maximum Weight Loss. There, I almost did it. Maybe it will be easier next time…then again, maybe not.

Unfortunate title aside, the book’s main point is that one of the main side effects of not getting good sleep is that your metabolism gets out of whack and you end up at greater risk for a host of health problems, including obesity. Addressing sleep disturbances is a key but often overlooked process for losing weight or maintaining your current weight.

The most valuable contribution of this book is that it presents a well-rounded picture of how to achieve a restful night’s sleep, covering nutrition, allergy control, nighttime routines, relaxation and meditation, supplements, exercise, and more. Their section with practical tips for getting good sleep goes on for fourteen solid pages. (p. 29-43) The sleep information is followed by a thorough section on reducing stress in general, then moves on to treating insomnia and other sleep problems, before talking about diet plans. But if you’re not interested in dieting and just need information to help you sleep, there is still plenty you can get out of this book.

The authors, Cherie and John Calbom, suggest a reasonable method for determining how much sleep you actually need. They give a detailed description of the hormones that are most affected by sleep deprivation, and describe the physiology of sleep in a clear, comprehensible way. In fact, all of the information in the book is presented in a very readable manner.

I admit that I only skimmed the “21-Day Sleep Away the Pounds Menu Plan” chapter, but it looks like it’s got some practical, common-sense advice as well. I was pleasantly surprised by this book, despite some overwrought marketing copy in the first couple chapters, and would definitely recommend it to people who want a general introduction to getting better sleep. The authors have done a service for dreamworkers and sleep professionals in general by highlighting the importance of restorative sleep for our overall health and functioning, both at night and during the day.

There are other places much more suited to outdoor celebrations of May Day than the Northern California coast. Our weather is dicey at best in the spring, often accompanied by cold winds that whip in from the ocean. It would make much more sense to celebrate Beltane here in September or October, when the wind is at its lowest and the days are clear and jewel-like.

But this is where we live, so for the last three years my daughter Jojo and I have taken our chances and hosted May Day here anyway. Actually I should say both my daughters, as Lyra takes time out of her intense college schedule to hand-design a flyer for the party every year. She was with us the first year, and with luck she’ll be here again.

I posted last year about how Beltane starts at Spring Equinox. This year the preparations began soon after themebeli new year. The huge construction project of last summer and fall had destroyed garden beds, made a hash of my already sparse lawn, and created piles of rubbish that I slowly had hauled away between winter storms. I found someone to build a garden gate to protect my front yard from the deer, which ate most of the herbs I’d planted last year. As soon as that was done, I could restore the beautiful passion flower vine which over the winter the deer had torn down from the fence and ripped to shreds.

The ivy, morning glory, and Himalayan blackberry had encroached from all directions and had to be yanked out. I didn’t get it all, but I knocked it back enough for this year. Finally, I had a huge pile of mulch hauled in and set about restoring the beds that had been trampled, caring for the plants that had survived, and creating new beds where I want to expand the garden this year. All this activity took me well into the week before Beltane. But that was just the outdoor preparations.

One of the things I have learned is that rituals can be pared way down and still be very powerful, so long as the preliminaries have been done properly beforehand. In the case of Beltane, the ritual essentials are an invocation, good music, nice ribbons, the dance, and delicious food afterwards. It is not all that complicated, but like flicking a glass to hear the tone it makes when it rings, the more prepared your space is the sweeter sound the ritual will create. I wash all the windows and mirrors, clean the bathrooms, dust, vacuum, sweep, refresh my altars, and set things right in my office—one of the places I most want to benefit from the energy of the maypole dance.

The day before, I do a cleansing of the ritual site including the pole, leave offerings where we will sink it into the ground, clean off the old ribbons, and leave it to sit overnight under the stars. Then the day of our party I can focus on setting up the food and drink and answering the phone. This year Jojo helped out a lot, and I think she actually enjoyed getting swept up in the preparations. She made four batches of brownies and cleaned her bedroom and bathroom—dare I say it—happily.

As Oak wrote, there were a passel of teenagers over this year who were pleasant, amusing, and such fun to watch. They’re still in the stage where they run in packs instead of pairing up, which I will appreciate as long as it lasts. Several girls stayed the night after the party. Here are some of them, with Jojo on the bottom left.

The whole day was incredibly sweet for me. It was a wonderful group of people, probably the most beautiful weave I’ve ever seen on our maypole, and the weather was glorious: clear and warm, with a moderate wind. Because I’d started so early with the preparations I wasn’t stressed by getting ready at the last minute, so not only did I enjoy myself at my own party, but the clean-up afterward seemed like a piece of cake.

The best thing about hosting this ritual at my house is that for weeks afterward I get to gaze out my windows and see the colorful ribbons of May Day shining in the sun. So I will end this post with the view that greeted me the next morning, returning home after walking my dog Vince. It doesn’t get much sweeter than that.

Later that morning I drove off to the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, and bought a few important herbs to plant in the new beds. Then I made delicious chicken enchiladas with some of the leftover chicken, and Jojo and I settled in for an afternoon of lazing around, enjoying ourselves. Life is good. May yours be good as well.

Every so often I read a description of a mundane event which suddenly transports the observer into a mythic moment. Having just received a particularly moving account from a friend, I’ve decided to highlight these “waking dreams” in a semi-regular series of posts. I doubt I will be posting one of these each week, but “dream of the week” has a certain ring to it.

Feel free to email me waking dreams you think might be deserving of the prize—the prize being, of course, getting mentioned here. Ah, the pretensions of bloggers! My sole criteria: great moment + well-written. Is that so much to ask?

The following is from my friend Paul, who recently discovered he has cancer. This moment came during his pre-radiation scan last week.

The PET scan was in a trailer with a technician and two assistants. The technician brought a metal cylinder out of a lead lined box and opened it behind a shield of leaded glass. The assistants very gingerly moved out of the room while this was happening. The technican, a man who was obviously from India, took a smaller cylinder of it. Inside of this smaller cylinder was the dye. This he carefully put in another cylinder with a syringe fitting inside this. With this extended beyond his body, he walked towards me with the needle sticking out and injected me with the radioactive material.

I felt somewhat better when, during this process, he told me his name was Krishna and that he had done his morning worship. For a moment I slipped out of time and wondered if we were repeating the great battle scene in the “Bhagavad Gita” where Arjuna asked the Lord Krishna the great questions, “Why is this happening? Who am I here in this moment? Why do I have to do this thing?” The assistant came in and brought me back from the battlefield—she instructed me that I could have no stimulation while waiting for the dye to work, about 30 minutes. So I couldn’t listen to my iPod. Damn! The results were as they (and I) I hoped: the cancer was limited to the tumor and two lymph nodes and had not spread.

Now that more than a week has passed since my birthday, I believe I can give up my handy chocolate cake rationale. This is the rule that in the two-week period surrounding one’s birthday, any meal is best celebrated with a slice of chocolate cake. Otherwise, the terrorists have already won.

The weekend before my birthday I headed down to Santa Cruz. On the way, I had a delicious chocolate cupcake at a Peet’s in Berkeley, followed two days later by two (2!) chocolate cakes procured by my friends, who sadly couldn’t agree which bakery made the best one and so were forced to get them both.

Another two days and it was my actual birthday, which I celebrated by having my lovely niece and her boyfriend over to join Jojo and me for dinner, followed of course by a chocolate cake. Two days after that, the leftovers were finished and Jojo and I resumed our normal sugar-deprived existence. The memories of a birthday well-celebrated, we felt, would last us at least to May Day, if not Mother’s Day.

Today, though, I met my parents in San Rafael for lunch, because they like me and wanted to take me out for my birthday. Always one to oblige, I found the excellent Jason’s Restaurant, and got there just before the noontime rush. I ordered a glass of wine and the crab cake appetizers, and settled in to wait for them to arrive.

Watching my mother and father walk in the door of any establishment has become almost a comic necessity for me. First they overshoot the door, then one of them turns around and spots it. Then they do the “after you” dance, where my mother reflexively reaches to open the door only to be dislodged by my father, who insists on opening it for her. He is miffed that she won’t allow him to be gracious, and she is miffed that he chose this particular moment to do something chivalrous, which he never does at any other time. Meanwhile, all the nudging and dislodging serves another purpose, which is to insure that neither of them falls over themselves or the doorsill upon entering the room.

Today’s entrance did not disappoint, and I had a smile on my face as I rose to greet them both. They sat down and ordered their own glasses, and to my surprise my father started right in. “Have you read that book about how both Clintons should be in prison? Both of them!” Sweet Jesus, I thought, he hasn’t had a drop yet and already he’s incoherent. He continued, looking at my mother, “Where is that book, anyway? I haven’t seen it lately.”

To which I shot back, “Oh, it’s in the bullshit section of your library, right next to Rush Limbaugh.” But my rejoinder just served to get them even more heated. Next up was my mother, who said, “Do you know, Hillary lies. She lies! Did you hear what she said, about landing under sniper fire in Bosnia? She just lies!”

My mother has perfected this incredulous look, as though she still doesn’t know how she was transported from the 1950s to the present day. You’d think she was still fresh-faced from voting for Adlai Stevenson, her last foray into youthful liberalism, so convincing is her look of innocence betrayed.

By this time I was seriously worried. We hadn’t even tasted the crab cakes yet. (Where were they, anyway?) They hadn’t gotten their wine, no one had even glanced at the menu, and already this was turning out to be the longest lunch in history. I had to do something fast.

But my parents are such rabid anti-Clintonites that simply changing the subject does not deter them. They would be back, Vince Foster and Whitewater in tow, to make me regret ever agreeing to meet them for lunch. What I needed were not snappy rejoinders. I didn’t need facts, figures, or a suggested reading list. That had all been tried before. No, I needed the conversational equivalent of kryptonite. Something to render them completely mute and unable to muster a single comment about Hillary, Bill, Chelsea, New York, Arkansas, or anywhere in between.

Just then the waitress came to take our order, and I had a minute to collect my thoughts. Damn it, I had raised five teenagers. I am a master at artful re-direction, the verbal checkmate that arises in an instant to disarm any opponent. And these two, much as I loved them, were no Christopher Hitchens. Once flummoxed they wouldn’t soon recover. This shouldn’t be hard.

Suddenly, I had it. Kryptonite in hand, I waited patiently until the waitress had taken our order. “So,” I began, “what do you think of Obama?”

My father blanched, hands nervously reaching for his napkin. My mother stammered, looked into her lap, then looked at my father and closed her mouth. Checkmate.

“Do you think he would make a good president?” I asked, just for fun. Actually, I was mildly curious how they saw this strong new contender. And now I had all the time in the world to find out, because they would not be returning to the subject of the people they loved to hate for the remainder of our meal.

The food was delicious. We had a lovely conversation, me cracking jokes while we exchanged news of friends and family. After the meal we were all stuffed, but the waitress brought a dessert menu anyway. We each ordered coffee, and then I said, “and we’ll all split a piece of your flourless chocolate cake.” My parents smiled indulgently, and in spite of their full stomachs uttered not a word of protest.

It was delicious, and split three ways it was the perfect amount of chocolate cake to end a glorious run of birthday celebrations. I will be back at it next year, by which time we will blessedly have a new president and this painfully long election race will be a thing of the past. Another day, another source of kryptonite. I think I’m up for it.

On Friday I spent a few hours at the Dandelion Gathering, Reclaiming’s occasional hoe-down, business meeting and reunion of sorts. It was just a couple of hours away, and though I had a very busy weekend I couldn’t miss the opportunity to visit with friends from all over the country in a work-free environment.

The setting was gorgeous: rolling hills of meadow and oak woodland with an occasional stand of second-growth redwood. Spring in the Valley of the Moon: new leaves glistening in the vineyards and pollen floating through the air. It was deliciously warm in the sun and almost too cool beneath the big trees. Right off the bat I saw several people I hadn’t seen in a long time, and settled in on the porch to visit.

One thing I noticed in the course of the afternoon is that the things which drove me away from Reclaiming continue to rub me the wrong way. A case in point is what happened over lunch. I was at a table with some people I have known for a long time, and a few that I had just met. I was enjoying catching up with an old friend, when our lunch was interrupted with a lengthy announcement explaining that every table was now going to have a discussion about the same subject. Each table would take notes, and the results would be somehow digested at the BIRCH meeting the following day. (Don’t ask me what BIRCH is—I may say something cynical.)

The topic we were to discuss was diversity. To wit: why isn’t Reclaiming more diverse, and what can be done about it? I was already banging my forehead against the table in pain, but the intro continued, first singling out my friend Evelie, who got to stand up and wave because she is diverse, I mean Filipina. Then a woman named Rosa got to stand and say her 2¢, to the effect that people like her could be helped by people like us if we only knew how to meet more people like her.

I kid you not. I am dead serious, and by this time it was through sheer force of will that I was not 1) bolting for the door, or 2) standing up and saying something confrontational in the middle of the dining hall. The only thing that kept me from shouting out was the knowledge that if I did so, I would be in the middle of an even worse discussion than the one I was apparently now going to have.

Where to start when deconstructing our assignment? First, the assumption that we were not diverse. That diversity has nothing to do with class, gender, religious background, ethics, age, or food preferences. That in fact it has nothing to do with ethnicity unless accompanied by differences in skin tone or surnames. If it had been me singled out as though I were helpfully filling a space on some diversity Bingo card, I would have been personally offended. As it was, I was offended for all of us.

Second, the obsession with proselytizing, I mean bringing in new blood—no, I mean reaching out to others who could be helped by people like us. As several people at my table mentioned, other religions are not diverse, and they seem to have no problem with it. Wasn’t the point of a spiritual community to give aid to its members? Why were we even discussing strategies for bringing different kinds of people in, when we were gathered for a rare opportunity to meet each other face to face?

It was at this point that I had to point out the essential backwardness of our discussion topic. Reclaiming is insular. Painfully so, embarrassingly so. We really needed to be asking the opposite question: why don’t we get out more? Why aren’t more of us involved in interfaith activities? There’s plenty of diversity there, but that would involve going to meet others rather than reeling them in to us. Why don’t more folks even make the trek to San Jose for Pantheacon each year? Isn’t there anything we can learn from other Pagans?

Third, and this is where I can get a good rant going, I have had it with red herring questions like this pre-empting conversations about the real issues that Reclaiming has avoided for years. I am speaking here mostly of Bay Area Reclaiming, but frankly the patterns that have been set here get exported regularly to other areas, and I have seen more than one community plagued with the same issues that we have been mired in here for a decade or more.

The final straw for me on this was when I was still in the Bay Area teacher’s cell—I believe it was in the late nineties—and the group was essentially split in two, with neither side trusting or speaking to the other. It had been months, the group was moribund, and though we had plenty to discuss we were not even able to come up with a date for a meeting, let alone assure that some representatives from either side would attend.

It was a horrible dynamic and finally Thorn and I, who had some credibility on both sides, were able after several weeks of intensive lobbying to set a date and get people to agree to come. With assurances that there would be neutral facilitation, we were going to actually talk about the issues that mattered, and hopefully come to some resolution or at least respectfully agree to disagree.

Then literally the night before the meeting, Starhawk, who had been out of town, emailed saying that we should really discuss fundraising for scholarships so that young Pagan activists could attend witchcamp. Another person on the cell quickly wrote back and said that’s what she wanted to talk about too, and I watched in dismay as months of preparation were tossed out the window.

Disheartened, I could not even bring myself to attend the meeting. That was the turning point for me, the moment where I gave up my years of struggle to change the course on which our local community was set. Now there are virtually parallel Reclaiming communities in the Bay Area, and no encouraging signs that the two will ever be reconciled save briefly, when old friends are able to catch up over lunch or lounging on a sunny deck.

The fragile alliance which had led to that meeting was hijacked by the very mentality that hijacked my lunch table discussion at Dandelion: the insistence that Reclaiming is best served by bringing in new recruits rather than cleaning its own house. Blessedly, I found myself not a lone voice of discontent at the table, and we ended up with some meaningful feedback to offer the next day’s meeting. Then I got the hell out of there before a second discussion topic could be suggested.

The day was like that for me: lovely connections with old and new friends, interspersed with jarring reminders of the dysfunctions with which the tradition as a whole is saddled. Driving away, it was apparent that the former would continue to be scarce without attending to the latter, yet I am greatly relieved to have given up that Sisyphean effort. I love the people I love, and leave the rest. Reclaiming may have its new BIRCH structure. It may go on debating diversity for the next 20 years. Whatever. I am happily Remaining.

I was recently tagged for another blogging meme by Chas Clifton. This one I like, however. It has produced a lovely post by AD, another by Cat Chapin-Bishop, and undoubtedly more that I have yet to spot. And in spite of my crusty exterior and propensity of late to blog about cars, it has captured my imagination so here I go. The rules of the meme are thus:

• Post a picture or make/take/create your own that captures what YOU are most passionate for students to learn about.
• Give your picture a short title.
• Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt.”
• Link back to this blog entry.
• Include links to 5 (or more) educators.

After thinking about it for a few days, I realized that the assignment is harder than it looks. How do you say something that is true, and inspiring, and doesn’t end up sounding like a commencement address? My choice of subjects was also limited by my photography skills. In the end, I settled for this close-up of the part of my herb garden that is in flower now. Here is what I have to say about life, learning, and things that grow in the night:

You will often feel that you are going through the hardest years of your life. It will always be true. Accepting that life involves lots of hard work allows you the opportunity to do it anyway, and find ways to enjoy it. This will put you at a tremendous advantage over nearly everyone else. It will make the rest of us happy too, because there is nothing more inspiring than seeing someone thrive.

Somewhere along the line things will start getting easier, but you’ll be enjoying life so much you will forget to notice. Don’t take the easy times for granted, and don’t assume that a life of leisure is your birthright. Cultivate friends who can call you on the carpet if you become hubristic. There is nothing quite so unattractive as the fall of the arrogant—and they do fall.

Finally, no matter how hard things get, beauty appears. It comes unexpectedly, with breathtaking color and clarity. You don’t have to earn these moments, or deserve them, or even pray for them; they happen all on their own. The lesson here: you don’t have to do everything yourself.

Work diligently, but don’t deprive yourself of a good night’s sleep. Slow down enough to notice the blooming things. And even though you may be planting teeny little starter plants, space them far enough apart so that they have plenty of room to grow. The same goes for you.

I tag Pandora, Donald, Thorn, Katrina, and Oak.

It’s funny how the generations relate to each other. Having been born at the tail end of the baby boom, I have had a love-hate relationship with my fellow boomers since I was young enough to know what was cool. The 60’s were cool, damn it, and I had been born 10 years too late to really say I had been there.

Cutting high school to hear Daniel Ellsberg speak in Sproul Plaza in 1978 seemed just, well, derivative. Seeing Crosby Stills & Nash or Emerson Lake & Palmer around the same time was to see not a heyday but a sad, substance-laden dénouement, the dregs of a really good party a decade earlier.

Like a perpetual younger sibling, I lived in envy of the generation that had come just a little before me. And they knew it, too—walking down the street as though being the generation to march in Selma and organize a Be-In gave them some sort of lifetime coolness credential.

Over the last ten years or so that has started to shift. Gradually, for instance, it has dawned on me that I am still in my prime while they are looking kind of old. By extension, many of the things held sacred by elder boomers are getting close to being the opposite of cool—of being places where cool goes to die.

Take cars, for instance. As my car gets close to the 250,000 mile marker, I have started looking around at the new hybrids on the road—Northern California roadways are chock full of them—and many are being driven by baby boomers. By far the ride of choice for conscientious boomers is the Toyota Prius, with the almost iconic rear window that dips down below the trunk hood.

I thought they were pretty cool for the first few years, but I have noticed a disturbing trend of late. Increasingly, Prius owners are turning into the elderly drivers we usually see in Oldsmobiles and Buick sedans. They drive slowly, even in the fast lane. They brake for a stoplight a good 500 yards before it arrives. They see no need to signal before turning, as though a half-mile of crawling along the roadway were enough to alert the cars behind them of their intentions. They will become a Prius marketing problem, if this West Coast trend spreads to other regions.

I have an uneven record of prognostication. Don’t expect me to choose the shortest line at the checkout counter. I can’t predict an election to save my life. But now and again I do have a moment of clarity, where the pathway from the present to the future unfurls effortlessly and I can see the signposts as clear as day. This feels like one of those moments.

If you are looking for a great car that will also have a cachet of cool for the next decade, you might want to look beyond the Prius. It is absolutely a great car, but I believe its days as a style trendsetter are numbered.

Was this important enough to warrant a blog post? Probably not. I am even chagrined that a perfectly fine moment of clarity was somehow duped into predicting car fashion trends. But sometimes it’s this type of thing that grabs hold of my mind and demands to be written.

As long as my car holds out, I plan to keep scanning the lanes to see what new cars are likely to capture the twin crowns of greatness and coolness and hold them for a while. Because here in California, we might say we don’t care about cool, but that’s only when we’re too cool to care.

Writing is such a solitary pursuit. Or rather, it is solitary only in a sense. I need utter stillness around me, and writing within that stillness I find all the ways I am connected with everyone else.

I was at it the other day, and then my thoughts turned elsewhere. I received an email relaying the sad news that my cousin’s son had been killed in a car crash. Another 20-year-old coming to a tragic, untimely end: a handsome kid that had just met his West Coast cousins a year previously, at a family reunion.

News like that, laden with the otherworldliness of grief, takes several days to work through one’s system. After a couple days I noticed that the torrent of feelings had become manageable. Then, a post from another cousin who had gone to the memorial. Along the way he had stopped at the family cemetery in northern Pennsylvania and enclosed a couple photos from his visit. Which is why my writing ground to a halt for the afternoon after viewing this headstone.

Annie Chapman Hill was my great-grandmother, the woman I was named after. My grandfather once said I was the spitting image of his mother, except with brown eyes instead of blue. She was the latest of all my ancestors to emigrate, leaving Somerset for Susquehanna County as a young woman. Her eldest son did the typical thing for first-generation children of immigrants: left the family farm, went to college, joined the Navy, anything to divest himself of the old world and embrace the new.

That day I had been writing about dreams, so having my great-grandmother’s headstone appear in my Inbox automatically transported me to a dream I had of her years ago: she in the kitchen of her old farmhouse dressed in white, staring at me intensely, some unspoken challenge in her stance, while I became unnerved and fled through the screen door.

What do dreams convey? I think they reference the future as much as the past, and speak to us of the collective as well as the changes underway in our own psyches. Discerning which part is which is both the art and science of dream interpretation.

Coming face to face, so to speak, with one’s namesake is a dreamlike occurrence. But then my cousin helpfully provided a panorama of the scene: stern white church on a cold day in late winter, gravestones scattered like memories across a barren field. It could be Rockwell or Hitchcock, depending on your mood. Maybe a little Country of the Pointed Firs thrown in for good measure.

As a writer alone with my thoughts for the afternoon, I experienced an almost unbearable intimacy between my surroundings and the unfamiliar landscape of my family’s history. A conjunction between destination and point of departure that defied physics, as well as my attempts to brush it off and “stay focused.” I too was viewing the panorama surrounding my life as a dreamworker and writer, and it was filled with other lives both remembered and imagined. All were real, and in motion, and every so often mine and theirs would collide.

What I had felt as a disturbance in the force—the surreal news of death, the gravemarker of my namesake who I had only met in dreams staring me in the face—was the force itself, it turns out. And it is far greater, and far more ordinary, than I ever anticipated. Even through email, the medium we love to hate, the numinous appears. Even when we least expect it, what is remembered lives.

My paternal grandmother was a Naval officer’s wife, and through the years she spent travelling with her husband and sons from base to base, she always employed a housekeeper. The last of these, when she and my grandfather were in their late 70s and living in a modest apartment in Oakland, was a woman named Chrysentia.

Nana was a cipher to me growing up. The second to last child in a large Catholic family from New Jersey, her ancestors had emigrated before the Revolutionary War and were part of New England’s “blue blood” families. Haughtiness was something that came naturally to Nana, along with an effortless look of disdain, extreme neatness and a preference for well-mannered grandchildren.

My mother, with her own Protestant pretensions and East Coast pedigree (and a vehemently Masonic, anti-Catholic father, but that’s another story), often bristled at her mother-in-law’s manner. At one point my parents had borrowed a piece of furniture which for some reason Nana asked to have returned. When my mother brought it back to their apartment Nana took one look at the piece, sniffed ever so slightly, and said, “this looks like a job for Chrysentia.”

I never met Chrysentia, but undoubtedly the most difficult part of her job was coping with Nana. Other than that, being their housekeeper must have been pretty easy: two old people with plastic covers on the sofa, and no one tracking in mud. Of course, my mother’s rejoinder to Nana’s insult was to insult Chrysentia, saying all she ever did was smear Lemon Pledge on everything. Touché. Poor Chrysentia has therefore blended in my mind with the character Lupita from the great Showtime series Weeds—riding the gravy train until someone croaks or gets arrested.

Probably due to my mother’s constant re-telling of that story, the phrase “this looks like a job for Chrysentia” has become something of a standing joke among my sisters and I. So it was no surprise that this week, barely coping with the work of painting my living room with deadlines looming, I found myself muttering “where the [bleep] is Chrysentia?” more than once. Okay, a couple dozen times. But now my living room is a lovely shade of pale peach, free of dog hair, swept and mopped, dusted, no cobwebs, windows washed, artwork re-hung, curtains hemmed, baseboards cleaned, and so on.

Balancing domestic and work-related tasks is rarely easy, and I have been up against it quite a bit this month as I chip away at several maintenance projects on my property while juggling at least as many writing and business projects as well. I don’t have a Chrysentia to do the drudge work—it all falls to me. There is no real solution to this conflict other than more hard work, but putting things on Chrysentia’s to-do list does inject a little humor into the situation.

So that is my tale of striving for balance on this most serendipitous of weekends: a gorgeous full moon, Spring Equinox and Easter all rolled into one. On Sunday I am having some very good friends over for brunch, where we will feast on sweet and savory, and leaven the holiday with the best of tonics: laughter, conversation, love and trust.

Blessed Equinox, everyone.

A friend of mine lives right down by Ocean Beach in San Francisco. From the picture windows in her third floor apartment you get a panoramic view of the wild surf that animates the City’s miles-long beachfront promenade. The place is simply stunning. To sit there for an afternoon meeting and have as a backdrop the crashing waves and rip currents, sailboarders and sandcastles, while the sun makes the metal-gray water glisten like ivory, is just a sublime experience.

Every time I go there I remember and then forget to bring my camera. But this weekend I remembered and then put my camera into my bag before I forgot again. I wasn’t after a picture of the surf, because really that is too vast an expanse to translate well onto film, least of all my point-and-shoot camera. No, it was to capture this sight which greets the stray visitor who happens to tear her eyes away from the ocean and look east up the gently sloping hills of the City.

Does a sign like this fill you full of confidence, or make you feel vaguely nervous about where you are standing? For me, it evokes all the dreams I have had where I am at the ocean and suddenly there’s a huge wave coming and I barely have time to grab the children and make it to safety before it hits.

I spent years working on these dreams, until I finally was able to recognize while sleeping that the more fearful I felt, the worse the wave would be. Now I have ocean dreams where nothing bad happens. But to be confronted by the spectre of this dynamic in waking life, in broad daylight, when I still have so much to live for? Frankly, I find it ever so slightly unnerving.

If, heavens forbid, a tsunami ever does giochi casino gratis on linecasino bonus gratiscasino on line condei casino onlinecraps in lineavideo poker pccasino gioca gratisvideo poker freewarecasino pokerregole gioco rouletteroulette on line gratisdownload casinobonus enquête casino on net,enquete casino on net,casino on netvideo poker gamecasino on line con bonusgioco in lineacasino giocakeno in lineablog casino online,casino online gratis,casino onlinei casino onlinecasino on line roulettecasino sanremo onlinecasino online autorizzatistrategie roulettewww casino gratiscasino paypalcasino gamingvincere casino onlinecasino gratis senza depositoregole baccaratroulette gamesmigliore casino onlineslots onlinekeno gratiscasino online italiacasino per pcvideo poker jack or betterroulette casino,casino on line roulette,gran roulette casinogioco video poker gratisdownload giochi roulette,giochi roulette,giochi on line roulettebaccarat gratisgioco roulette gratis,roulette gratis,roulette da scaricare gratisi migliori casino onlinecasino on line italiagiochi roulette gratisonline casino gamescasino no depositcasino gratis slot machinenoleggio video pokervideo poker machine hit the San Francisco coastline, will people really search for the streets which have the helpful “Tsunami Evacuation Route” signs posted on them? Won’t any street headed uphill suffice? Or are these for the benefit of those who lack the basic instinct to head for higher ground when a wall of water approaches?

I live near the ocean, but separated from the surf by a peninsula which would bear the brunt of any freak wave that happened to hit. Choosing this location was not entirely a matter of chance, either. I suppose living right on the ocean would sharpen one’s instincts to the point that if the event were to occur you would somehow be out of town for the day. Intuition and premonition are marvelous things, not to be underestimated. Still, I am glad I don’t have to worry every day about sharpening that particular instinct.

I guess the fact that San Francisco has had the forethought to create tsunami evacuation routes is very good news. Hopefully this little sign signifies a whole shelf full of emergency response plans and procedures that have been taught to all the staff of all the relevant agencies. That alone could set the mind at ease. On the other hand, the bad news? San Francisco has a tsunami evacuation route.