Day 35 – 2/3/16
Timer: on…
 
Well, three more days…three more days of this ritual…I guess I’ve been feeling it because lately I’ve been singing the song I learned in NACL training that is an African wedding preparation song…it always sounds sad to me, and it’s been in my head for days…I sang it to my Theater History class two days ago, I had my musical theater class sing it today, and I realized that I have some primordial need to find a ritual…it’s as though I am mad that the American culture has not figured out how to have a “ritual” song to prepare.  There’s something sad in preparation.  It is a happy accident that the yoga ritual I have designed makes the body stronger, so, in theory, it can handle the sadness in the preparation to say goodbye to one way of life and hello to another.  It’s weird, though, because I feel like my chosen and I say goodbye, a lot…it’s not like we’re saying goodbye to some bachelor life that we are going to miss…we are both, somewhat creatures of habit and like our comfortable life…but…we have mostly been a part.  The marriage is more of a hello to staying together, as opposed to forcing our parting…because the parting is so sad…  My sadness in this preparation is not a fear of getting married, but a fear that I won’t be able to be the person I hope to be…and I don’t even know what that means…
 
I keep hoping that this ritual will reveal to me an epiphany of a person ready to make this symbolic leap of infinity and legacy…
 
More importantly, I hope to love this man with the same calm and grace as I know I can, but have forgotten how to do…that’s the sadness, I suppose, the fact that I’m worried I won’t be enough…and, yet, what the hell does “enough” mean…and who really wants “enough”?  It is work…and the only thing I know how to do is keep up this practice, and work at being better for myself and, thus, better and “enough”…
 
Timer out…
 
Day 36 – 2/4/16
2 more days…
 
Timer on…
 
Well, today was a good 15-minute version day.  I’m a little stiff in my thighs and Hanumanasana (The Splits) hurt a bit on the left side and continued to hurt in the two Trikonasana (Triangle) poses, but I feel good, now, so…I guess that’s good…  My back was also acting up this evening, and I took a bath that loosened it up, and now my back is feeling really good after the yoga practice, so…I guess that’s good, too.  Lots of win/win(s) today…
 
2 more days…crazy…it seems so fast, and, yet, it is difficult to maintain the commitment to doing this every day, but…I’ve done it, albeit sometimes I’ve had to adjust the ways and means…but I stayed the course.  I do plan on starting another 38-Day practice, but I haven’t decided what to focus on.  Part of me wants to focus on things that need repairing (i.e. my neck) or focusing on poses I’ve always wanted to be able to do, but…I’m not positive, yet.  I also want to do a 38-Day practice of the Bikram series, just to memorize it.  38-Days is more than enough time to memorize a sequence, but I might wait to start that one after the show is closed because it might be too long…  So…I might choose poses I’ve always wanted to do well, and create a series from that…  There’s the noose pose, the King Pigeon (which is in this series, but I’m still not “perfect” at it, yet), the Full Crane (a rest crane pose is in this series, but I want to do the full pose, there’s the Firebird (I don’t really think that one is possible, but…maybe 38-Days can prove me wrong).  There’s a part of me that just wants to keep doing 38-Day practices to have something to keep working towards, in preparation for the wedding, but (also) to keep up the practice of that illusive word “commitment”.  Which, essentially, is what is needed for matrimony.  I don’t need the paper to let me know that I love my chosen one, but…I want to make that public commitment to him and to his family and my own family.  It’s the word commitment that matters in this situation, and continuing a practice for 38-Days, even when you’re tired, in pain, or have no time, is a good discipline to prepare for that crazy word: commitment. 
 
The timer is running out, and I am going to bed. 
 
Day 37-38: 2/6/16
Well…I have come to the end…I made the decision, as I did last Friday, to forego a shortened version to do a double-header of a full-version to end the practice.  And…it was lovely…
 
I hurt my arm earlier today, so I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to finish, but…I did, and I am proud that I’ve made it to the final day.
 
I’m going to look over the little writings I have done over 38 Days and summarize…
 
Things I have learned:

• Commitment
• To learn love, not expect it…
• Acceptance of the fact that mourning can deepen one’s understanding of love…
• My head must surrender to my heart…
• I must take pride in my accomplishments both small and great…
• ephermerality is bliss…
• boring doesn’t mean the death of a relationship…
• the road is more important than the inn…
• let you heart get turned around…see your lover’s heart when problem-solving…
• I need to draw on the power within me…
• Finding my younger body’s self, again, is inspiring and surprising…
• I need to marry my knowledge of an accepting friendship with my understanding of passionate love…
• You cannot control love, but you can prepare for it…
• I am going to be honored to have my brother pick up the mantle for me and walk me down the aisle, in my Dad’s place…
• I want to re-discover the Divine Love I am capable of, and bring it back into my life…
• That mystery is important to maintain in marriage…
• The paradox of “enough”.
• Discipline is not separate from love…

 
I suppose there are no answers in this practice, but there are open questions that I will be able to continue to reflect upon.
 
Thank you for this journey.  Namaste.

1/31/16 – Day 32
Timer on…
 
Today, I only did the half-hour version because I had a lot of preparation work to do for the first rehearsal of RAGTIME, and I’m still not done, so…I did the practice, now I’m writing, and then I’m going to get back to work.
 
It was a fine practice, and instead of focusing on the yoga and the fact that the positions have become a lot easier and enjoyable, especially, after the success of the double-header yesterday.  I thought I would type my favorite love quote:
 
“Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body like robins or bison or maybe you believe love is how forces or nature or luck is benign to you in particular not maiming or killing you but if so doing it for your own good.
 
“Love is none of that.  There is nothing in nature like it.  Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal.  Love is divine only and difficult always.  If you think it is easy, you are a fool.  If you think it is natural you are blind.  It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God.
 
“You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured.  You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong.  You do not deserve love just because you want it.  You can only earn – by practice and careful contemplation – the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it.  Which is to say you have to earn God.  You have to practice God.  You have to think God – carefully.  And if you are a good and diligent student you may secure the right to show love.  Love is not a gift.  It is a diploma.  A diploma conferring certain prvileges: the privilege of expressing love and the privilege of receiving it.
 
“How do you know you have graduated?  You don’t.  What you do know is that you are human and therefore educable, and therefore capable of learning how to learn, and therefore interesting to God, who is interested only in Himself which is to say He is interested only in love.  Do you understand me?  God is not interested in love and the bliss it brings to those who understand and share that interest.”  (Toni Morrison’s PARADISE)
 
I guess that’s where this practice comes from, and, I guess, that’s where the 69 Days of Mourning comes from: I want to practice, I want to learn, but, most importantly, I want to learn to love again, and I want to know that it’s possible to love like I did my father.  I want to practice that, again, but, I think, I have to re-learn how to do that.  I think that’s why I wanted a ritual/a practice.
 
Timer out…
 
2/1/16 – Day 33
Timer on…
 
Well, I could only do the 15-minute version today.  Which is (still) enjoyable, but…I got home very late from the first rehearsal of RAGTIME.  I am also quite satisfied by the growth I have made in these 33 Days, so far, in just my yoga practice.  I am re-learning how to find Divine Love, but, I think, I am also re-learning how to love yoga and that body that I let gain 20 lbs. after my father’s death.  I re-learning how to let it be strong and give it’s power back. 
 
Another quote journey today…this one is from Gabriel García Márquez’s LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA.  At the end of the book:
 
“The Captain looked at Fermina Daza and saw on her eyelashes the first glimmer of wintry frost.  Then he looked at Florentino Ariza, his invincible power, his intrepid love, and he was overwhelmed by the belated suspicion that is life, more than death, that has no limits.”
 
It is interesting that the Divine Love I feel is for someone who is dead, and, yet, this quote rings true…that it is life, not death that has no limits…  So, yesterday’s hope of re-learning how to do this “love” thing with a person who is alive, is difficult.  And, it’s not like I don’t love the person I’m going to marry, but I really want to have that feeling that made me feel the way I did in my father’s presence, but…that feeling makes me sad, and the moment I start to feel it again, I quash it, quickly…
 
So…the ritual, the practice, the re-learning is a process, and I hope I can find the courage, again, to allow that feeling back in…
 
I want, like Jane Eyre: “My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven.  He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun.  I could not in those days, see God for His creature: of whom I had made an idol.”
 
Timer out…
 
Day 34 – 2/2/16
Timer on…
 
Well, I guess both groundhogs did not see their shadow today, and, therefore, we will have an early spring, it seems.
 
The world smelled of mud this morning…it (almost) smelled of spring…
 
I had to do the 15-minute version, again, this evening because I returned late, and I am very tired.  I woke up very early this morning and went to bed late the night before.  It is past midnight now, and I need to be moving on…
 
The yoga practice toward re-learning Divine Love (maybe this is a new title, or I will never find one because all of them sound very cliché and I can’t fix that…yet…).  Anyway, the yoga practice went very well, and I can maintain that the 60-minute version and the 15-minute version are the best versions.  Nothing was problematic today, but I was a bit envious to be able to do the 60-minute version, at some point.
 
More quotes to explore…this one from Charles Dickens’  A TALE OF TWO CITIES:
 
“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.” 
 
Yes.  And…I think that paradox is the very thing that I love about my chosen…that he is a profound secret and mystery to me, even after 8 years…he still fascinates and challenges…I want that challenge…I don’t want boredom…
 
I guess the main journey of re-learning love is my own consciousness “allowing” me to let Divine Love back in…
 
And…I spent most of this time searching for quote