Hairdressing out of the box

My hairdresser got pregnant and left town. Major catastrophe. I shoud be delighted for her and all that, but I can't help feeling just a bit deserted and let down. How inconsiderate of her- my ego is sulking.

 I laugh at myself writing that, because for most of my life I have really not been too bothered. I have had long brown hair which I have been happy with. Full stop. Once in the eighties I permed it and wore huge glasses. I hide those photos very safely away from everyone! Then in the nineties after a 10-day silent meditation course in Jaipur, I went to an Indian barber and had myself liberated of most of my hair as a symbol of that watershed experience. Oh, and in the previous decade it was the day my ex-husband left; the first thing I did was go to the local Lebanese barber. I had never believed the story of girls changing their hair after a break-up, but there I was, the stereo-type broken-hearted, bawling my eyes out in this really shady looking dive in the local Arab mall.

Well, this time it is far simpler. I am going grey- my friend calls it stress-highlights- at an alarming rate and am determined to look young and luscious for as long as is possible. As a matter of fact, I am determined to look desirable and luscious at 80! But that is another story. One would think that getting someone to do a simple cut and slap a bit of color on your head is simple, but, nooooo....far from it....... I have been recommended this salon, and that stylist, and every time I come away just not quite satisfied.

So I made it a matter of prayer. You would not usually think about bothering the Almighty with a matter of this miniscule caliber, but I was desperate! I was talking to Claire last week saying, "A girl just can't go around with manky hair!" It is impossible to feel good with shitty hair, no matter how much yoga or meditation you do. Claire has fantastic hair, and she told me about her lovely hairdresser, South African. Three days later one of my colleagues recommended the same girl. Clearly a sign!

Needless to say, it all worked out well, and I am sitting in front of my computer tonight with a decent hairstyle. Huge sigh and huge gratitude! The hairdresser is a girl is her late twenties, who left SA a couple of years ago. She reminded me much of myself when I got on an airplane to Taipei with a one-way ticket, 50 dollars and no job. Her opening line today was, "So, Stefani, what's your story?'' How astute of her to introduce my favourite topic in the first 5 seconds :) We did no beating around the bush; she told me about how much she had changed and how challenging it was to leave everything behind. She also said that she was not very good at planning her life, and that she was trying to do that.

It suddenly occurred to me to tell her that I have never planned my life. Life generally doesn't work too well when one plans things out too much. I am thinking of the old saying, ''you make your plans and the devil laughs''. I would have missed a lot of life's magic and surprises had I been following a plan. The key to living a good life is allowing for a good dollop of spontaneity. I said that from my experience planning is not recommended, but dreaming is. Dreaming BIG and vivid.
Planning creates expectations, and one easily sets yourself up for disappointment. Dreaming opens your eyes to all possibly doors, and inspires you to do extraordinary things, leaping out of the box. There are, after all, myriads more possibilities that we can ever imagine.

When I was at university in Stellenbosch, there was a song we used to dance to, "One night in Bangkok". I used to dance and dream about visiting that place, it was the most exotic place I could imagine, and it really was a crazy dream at the time. I was a poor student, sitting on the tip of Africa, with no means of bringing that wish to fruition. My mother never left South Africa in her life time. Yet, ten years later, I was touching down in Bangkok, realising that the world is my oyster and that without my crazy dreams, I would never have had a dream come true.

So, as we know thoughts become things. I can recommend breaking a few of your usual thought patterns and letting your imagintion soar. Amen.

The way home

My students wrote exams today and what I should be doing is some serious power-marking, but I would like to share some thoughts first. I am really proud of these young people, they have made marked progress this semester, and I am happy to send them on to foundation year.

Yesterday I visited one of my favourite places in Oman with my dearest one. It is a sweet mountain village near Al Hamra called Misfat Abreen. We had slept badly the night before and then we almost missed the turn off and on our way up the mountain he asked, 'So what is the story of this place?'' I was a bit stumped at first, doubting myself a little and wondering if this was good timing for us to visit.
Why do I like this place so much? I know quite a few of you have visited there with me. It is beautiful, tranquil, lush and it clings to the side of a steep hill. The friendly locals allow the tourists to come into their village,yet the atmosphere is peaceful and calm. We were fortunate yesterday morning, there was nobody there. We walked around admiring the fruit trees- tall papaya trees, hardy tiny fig trees growing out of cracks in the rock, towering gnarled trees filled with mangoes, banana trees with fruit like giants' fingers; but for me the most  irresistable and majestic will always be the towering palms laden with dates- green, yellow and red.

We followed a lovely little path around the village and walked on a small wall by the side of a falaj, a narrow irrigation channel. I was walking along there enjoying myself looking at the sights and looking closely at the variety of trees with the loved one, when I had a sudden memory flash back. The previous time I was there, I had been nervous to walk on that wall beside the falaj and remember being unsure, a bit wobbly on my feet and constantly vigilant.

It feels to me as though in the last year, my stability has improved, the roots that tie me to this earth, and draw energy from it, have grown stronger; my feet have learnt to trust the trail more, to cherish it.  Isn't the journey about the path in any case, and not about the destination?

It was a good realisation, that on every level I am feeling more balanced. It has been a slow and gradual process, and my patience has paid off. I have been catching myself in my reactions, thinking more before I speak and living a deep state of feeling blessed. I am truly a lucky girl!

Tonight I pray dear friends, that the mysteries of the path reveal themselves kindly, and that your sturdy lamp lights your way home, always home.

Detours to the rainbow's end

You may remember me writing about doing some haiku with my students a while ago. Sometimes it is good to break away from report writing and academic reading and coax them in a different direction. I am a person that has come to appreciate the detours in life, and there is often much to be discovered on those unexpected turnings down the side roads. I am sorting through my papers at the moment and yesterday I came across a few of these poems that my students wrote, and my colleague suggested I posted this one here.

When I hear the opera sound
and see the bag of rainbow color
at the end I know it's Stefani :)

So, fellow traveller, allow yourself the time to take a few detours, you might find they lead you to the magic at the rainbow's end!

If it be your will

As most of you know, Leonard Cohen has been an inspiration, comfort and joy to me most of my life. I have had this beautiful song of his in my mind the last couple of days and would like to share it with you. I am permeated with a deep gratitude for all the miracles and love in my life and the music is so much part of it. Deep bow to Leonard. My mantra today is: Beauty beauty beauty!
What is yours?

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will
If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.

Night swimming

 The temperature here is Muscat has hit mid-forties Celsius but the humidity is still bearable and the die-hards( including me of course!) at the university are still having lunch outside. I came home from my German class tonight, and sat outside having a glass of bubbly and pondering the last few days. The rose moon of June is magnificent and I look forward to doing some nightswimming with the loved one under the full moon tomorrow. How romantic can one get :)

The sea is just amazing at the moment. On both the evenings of the weekend, we went down at sunset time and just luxuriated in the water. It is the perfect temperature.
 There were some families on the beach and also a couple of little pockets of children in the water, who soon disappeared at the call to prayer and the promise of food. After that it was just us, the shadows of the fishing boats on the sand, the watchful moon and the winking street lamps coming on, casting their rippling lights over the gently moving water. Oh, I mustn't forget the surprise of  little schools of fish jumping, and the odd turtle bobbing up for air.

There is a time when the sky and the sea are both almost white and ethereal, and we feel like the only people in the world.

As I lay drifting in the water losing myself in the sky, I remembered the story of Jesus healing the lame man at the pool of Bethesda.
It was the sermon preached on the day I described in my entry, 'a trick of light'. I have been thinking of it a lot since then. That paralysed man had been unable to walk for 38 years, and anyone would have thought it was obvious that he would want to get better; yet Jesus asks him,' Do you want to be well?'

Why does Jesus ask him this? This is how I see it. Because for anyone of us to change, heal and move towards our highest and best selves, we have to be seriously willing. Or as my healer mother used to say,'Willing and desperate!'. Many of us are addicted to our own destructive ways, negative though patterns, the thinking  that lead us to fall into the same hole again and again eventhough we know better. We don't want to let go of the physical ailments that earn us sympathy and time and care from our colleagues, friends and family.

We have to give ourselves permission to evolve and let go and break the moulds we have set through years of habit and conditioning. I often ask myself why we hold onto these things that do not serve us. Fear of the unknown I guess, just part of our challenge of being human.

I lay floating in the sea, which held me like a safe hammock, and whispered to the sky, yes, yes, yes. I want to be well. I want all to be well. And I realised that in saying those words, it was already a reality.

Unzipping my skinsuit

I have been enjoying experiencing my body getting stronger little by little, step by step. I have only rarely experienced myself acutely as a physical being before, and these yoga classes are working very powerfully for me. I keep making progress, recently managing to do my first proper press-up!
 It is a great special thing to share with my loved one, and I love watching the transformation in him too.

After my experiences in Beirut, I have really been thinking a lot of the challenges of being on the earth. Out of the blue, as we were taking a long walk along the corniche the other day- admiring the azure sky and sea-the loved one commented that one of his favourite quotes was that we are not physical beings that have souls, but spiritual beings that have bodies.
As spiritual beings, time and space do not exist for us. It is a mighty challenge to be confined to this earthly existence. I love jumping out of my body now and then, shooting straight up above the clouds and floating there. As a good friend says, 'unzipping my skinsuit'. Sometimes at night before I fall asleep, I imagine myself drifting up above the earth's atmosphere and playing there, tumbling and turning and somersaulting free.

Tonight after the exercises, we were resting in the dark quiet on our mats, Shilpa led us through a short meditation, asking us to choose a point on our bodies and imagine the breath radiating from there like a pebble thrown into a still lake. I became aware of the steady pulse of my heart and felt a lemony light radiating softly out of me, through every cell of my dearest on my left, filling the class and the house and the street and the neighbourhood and the city, and finding all of you and sweeping over and into you like a kind of gentle tsunami of joy.

I was filled with such a sense of celebration when I left that place. I got into the car and we spoke about food and contracts and Excel sheets and mundane normal topics. However, they all seemed so unusually beautiful.

Dear friend, may the everyday routine things in your world have the ability to remind you that you are liberated child of the stars.

On the joy of mixed spice and mist lifting

A good happy busy day. The semester is winding down and one of my classes finishes at the end of the week. I have been teaching most of these fourteen students since last September, and I feel like a mother bird who know her chicks are ready to fly and who needs to throw them out of the nest. This afternoon my last class ended at 5.15pm and I decided to go the supermarket before my German class, instead of rushing home. I usually run in and out of the shop, and it was fun having time to browse through the aisles for a change just looking at all the different things on the shelves.

The loved one and I are lusting after a decent fruit cake, and are determined to bake one. I recently posted on FB asking for good recipes with ingredients that would be available in Muscat. Well, I found THREE essential ingredients this evening that I have never seen before. I honestly can't believe my luck, and that finding 3 small things on the supermarket shelf could give me so much pleasure. Mixed spice, glace cherries and candied peel! It felt as though they had been there all along, just as though a kind of mist has lifted. Sometimes life feels like that, just open your eyes and you'll see that what you wanted was right there in front of you all along.

The cake is one large step on its way to fruition. Yeeah!

I was carrying with me today a little image from my trip to Lebanon I wanted to tell you about. As you drive from Beirut down ( or is it up?) to Byblos, there is the deep blue Mediterranean on the left and the green lush mountain on the right. It is pretty built up all the way, but as you look up at one point there is an imposing dove-white figure of the Virgin Mary benevolently gazing out over the city. This is Our Lady of Lebanon at Harissa. I was very happy on my last day to visit there with Junaline and Lara. There is a little peaceful altar to light blessing candles and a sweet chapel with bright stained glass angels, beautiful trees and also many interesting people to see. We were peckish and ordered fresh thin based pizza bread with zatar ( thyme and sesame) and I had a nourishing beautifully colored orange and carrot juice.

As we were waiting, there was the gentlest of tugs on my shirt. It was a little boy, no older than five,with black curly hair and huge brown eyes looking up at me. He enquired politely in Arabic about the wherabouts of the bathroom, and I instintively put my hand on his shoulder and we walked together there.

This interaction was no more that a few seconds, but it left an impression on me. This child so innocently being drawn to me, asking for help and trusting me to lead him to the right place. Is this not how we should be with God? Laying our needs and concerns before him, asking Him to take care of us and trusting that he will lay his hand on our shoulder and gently steer us to where we need to be?
Again, a mist evaporated before me.
It dawned on me that it  really is that simple.