Celebrate Martin Luther King's legacy by registering to vote

"If American women would increase their voting turnout by ten percent, I think we would see an end to all of the budget cuts in programs benefiting women and children."

~ Coretta Scott King

If you have recently turned 18, moved, changed your name, or changed your political party affiliation, there is still time left to register to vote today. Your signed voter registration must be postmarked by 22 January 2008 in order for you to vote in the 5 February 2008 Presidential Primary.

If you are in San Diego and don't know where to go to register, I can bring you the correct forms.

Just think: a year from now, our new president will already have been sworn into office!

More info on registration and voting here www.sos.ca.gov/elections/...ions_vr.htm

If you are already registered to vote and would like to be a part of the solution, why not be an online activist for a day? members.cox.net/bonnie_margay/

Shocking

"The best shortcut of all, Bonnie Margay, to the life of your dreams, is knowing that you've already arrived.

Because you have."

~ Mike Dooley, Notes from the Universe, www.tut.com/

Motto for 2008 = Less shitty, more shimmy!

Resolutions for 2008 = Start where I am; love myself exactly as I am; let go of should and what if and dive fully and shamelessly into now.

Please congratulate my gorgeous lungs on seven years of tobacco freedom today!

; D

Plenty of the right ingredients!

"One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star."

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Pain, pain go away

"That some good can be derived from every event is a better proposition than that everything happens for the best, which it assuredly does not."

~ James Kern Feibleman, philosopher and psychiatrist

In a world of radiant, magnificent, absolutely brilliant physical pain today.

May we all find relief from suffering.

Just in case you don't think it matters who you vote for

www.eqca.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp

Statement by EQCA Executive Director Geoff Kors:

"Today, Gov. Schwarzenegger refused to lift the cloud of discrimination that hangs over millions of Californians and their families. With the people of California increasingly in support of marriage for same-sex couples and the Legislature once again affirming fairness and equality, the governor stands alone in perpetuating discrimination against same-sex couples. With the stroke of his pen, he has denied countless loving couples the joy and validation he and the First Lady experienced when they got married. Equality California will not rest until we have achieved full equality for the entire lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community."

The value of friendship

"Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are -- chaff and grain together -- certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away."

~ George Eliot (pen name of Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880)

There is absolutely nothing like being loved so much that you can be wrong, crabby, clumsy, crazy, bitchy, bloated, irritating, distracted, selfish, needy, clingy, cheesy, stinky, sweaty, shameless, naughty, or stuck in your ways in front of someone and feel safe doing it. I cannot even explain how profoundly grateful I am to be surrounded with friends who not only put up with my worst and celebrate my best, but love me all the way through the foulest of my moods and then surprise me with loving kindnesses as if I had never been a bear in the first place.

A friend I have known since the first grade told me this week that it was time for her to reconsider our entire friendship because I wasn't there for her when she needed me this summer. She had wanted to visit for a whole week and play and have coffee and lounge and chat and catch up. But anyone who knows me at all knows that my only free time now is spent in a hot bath soaking after dance class, my social life is dance class and sometimes dinner afterwards. I work through the day and night and don't take any days off, not unless I am sick or broken. I am running a very busy company with the help of my wife, and I absolutely do not have the luxury of that kind of free time at this point in my life.

I am so used to being surrounded by people who see me for who I am, that it really made me take a good look at myself when someone told me that I wasn't who they needed me to be. I decided first of all that I am alright with that. If I am not what you need, then I know you can find that somewhere else. I can only do my best, and if that isn't good enough for you, then maybe you are the one who needs to do some thinking.

I just happen to find myself in the worst pangs of PMS at the same time that this friendship is dissolving, with my moods ranging from homicidal to blissful, from weepy to nesting. I feel grossly ugly and lumpy and smelly and clumsy and worthless, but no one else is put out by what I imagine is my worst. My friends in dance class tonight just stopped everything to hug me because I looked sad, pulled me outside to talk because I seemed down. None of them is going to tell me, even this week when I am just frantic to get out of my own skin to get away from myself, that I am just not what they need me to be. They just love me and want some of my love in return.

So, it turns out that having someone tell me I'm not good enough was the best thing that could have happened to me while I was feeling this vulnerable and exhausted. Because it just doesn't ring true in any way for me, even though it was the mantra of my whole pathetic childhood. It really made me take a look at how much blatant loving kindness I am surrounded by today. And maybe that was really the extent of our connection, just that same shared broken childhood we had in common to look back on. I'm not interested in moping around about that any more. I am much too busy living my life as richly as I possibly can. What a blessing it is to continue moving forward with my creative dreams on my healing journey.

And I thought those realizations were just as marvelous as things could get for a gal like me in a lifetime like this. But then I came home from my dance class, sore and stinky, but finally driving my beautiful car again after *seven* weeks of her getting her wicked purple paint job... and my wife had made broiled salmon with fresh herbs in a balsamic reduction, roasted potatoes with garlic and herbs, and a kale avocado feta tomato salad so good I wanted to roll around in it and moan. And then I sank into the hottest bath in the world with Kim's magic soak salts in it, and I am diving into a hot brownie with peanut butter ice cream and whipped cream on top to vanquish the worst of those PMS daemons. Now, I am off to my PMS blanket fort, with the box of French truffles my wife bought me simply because I am loved beyond measure.

Again and again, I am opening to that resounding YES! from the universe, reminding me that this is indeed the way.

Ouch!

Had great dance classes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. So completely enthralled by the brand new choreographies this week, and so exceptionally grateful for a stealth video of an impromptu solo on Friday. After all this time, I was given a chance to see how much I can relax into the bliss and flow when I get out of my own way, like I am finally becoming a real dancer. It has really changed my internal dialogue during class!

Of course I signed up for five workshops at Arabesque coming up this weekend: two by Sabrina Fox, two by Mira Betz, and one by Kirti Srivastava. Why five workshops? Because the rest weren't tribal, or I would have signed up for more.

But instead, I bent over wrong with my leg lifted to put on a pair of pants, so my pelvis went out today. Pain like a flash of lightning, so that I dropped everything on the floor, was stuck in an awful crouch of pain with my quads shaking like crazy and it was all I could do not to collapse. The pain was so intense I thought, "Oh, this is the part I am terrified of that is ever so much worse than death. This is the part where I can't even stand up or walk again, let alone dance another step..."

Chiropractor didn't make much difference. Now I am working with muscle relaxers, anti-inflammatories, massage, heat, ice, and rest. Absolutely stunned by what a blessing good health is, and especially by how fleeting it is to be able-bodied enough to push myself through all of this dancing. I cannot suddenly not be a dancer, it is so awful to consider the loss of a creative dream. I am so powerfully in love with dancing, and so profoundly attached to this dancing life. I would love to magically bottle the essence of how happy it makes me, and give it away to everyone in the world. If they could only know for a day what it feels like to invest wholeheartedly in a creative dream journey, they would never go back to sleepwalking through life again.

Nothing like my back going out to remind me how fragile and vulnerable I really am, and how little it matters that there is a mountain of work left to do. Amazing how completely pain can shift priorities for me, how everything else seems to fade until I can hardly believe just how many fast turns I whipped through this week without a second thought, how I stayed until almost midnight on Tuesday because the new choreographies just made me feel like I could burst with joy if I could only get them. My pain insists that was another person, another lifetime, just a dream.

Taking my spine to bed now, for some well-deserved rest and recovery. Please send some healing love my way and do a nice deep forward bend for me until I can do one for myself again.