You know the jingle, “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.”

As a wildfire survivor who has suffered a total loss of property and pets, who has also been a customer of State Farm’s since I was sixteen, I’m not convinced that’s true.

Let’s play a game. Look around your room. Memorize what you can. Now close your eyes and recall every single thing in that room. Not just the furniture; every book, everything under the furniture, the details of every drawer, every closet, every storage bin. Now do that for every room. Next, imagine all of it, including…

(NOTE: this is the second of a two part series. I suggest you read PART ONE first)

“Inside the skull there is a place where the essences of creation play and mingle-

The ecstatic light of awareness and the awareness of that light.

The divine feminine and masculine sport with one another in that place.

The light of their love-play illumines all space.

Rest in that light ever present, and gradually awaken to the steady joy of that which is everywhere.”

~ The Radiance Sutras, a translation of the Vinjnana Bhairava Tantra by Lorin Roche, PhD

Life on Earth is…

“ You are trying to understand madness with logic. This is not unlike searching for darkness with a torch.” Image by from

“Inside the skull there is a place where the essences of creation play and mingle-

The ecstatic light of awareness and the awareness of that light.

The divine feminine and masculine sport with one another in that place.

The light of their love-play illumines all space.

Rest in that light ever present, and gradually awaken to the steady joy of that which is everywhere.”

~ The Radiance Sutras, a translation of the Vinjnana Bhairava Tantra by Lorin Roche…

There’s a place inside of me where words are born. Since the early hours of 8/19, this part of me has been silent. The last time I heard the words of my muse, it was to wake me from a fitful sleep at 1:30 am. It was hot, so hot, and all day the smoke had been building. When I’d gone to bed at 10 pm, the fires on the mountain were far away, but it was raining ash-small flakes, a dusting really, like the simple snows we sometimes get. It was 98 degrees in my house and the windows…

A year ago today, I was in the hospital, recovering from a fall. It was a fall from many things; from grace, from old dreams, and from habits and thoughts that were holding me back. …

“There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief.”

“All Along the Watchtower,” by Bob Dylan

At the beginning of the covid-19 crisis, I was on the phone with my 78 yo mother. We were discussing the virus as it pertained to getting my sons home from college. I was worried domestic travel would be closed and they were both away at school. I needed them home, and as soon as possible, before they were left stranded on closed college campuses. During the conversation she…

In my early thirties, I threw out my bathroom scale. I could no longer tolerate the daily measuring of my weight-up a few pounds and my mood turned dry and cracked, like an old desert father’s skin, for the rest of the day. Down a few pounds and I suddenly though I was Cindy Crawford. After twenty years of measuring my worth through the size of my body, this was a game I could no longer tolerate and gone it was. As long as I fit in my favorite pants, I’m good. …

I live in California, blessed to be sheltering-in-place while my husband works from home. Sure, the past month I’ve been stripped of many of my basic rights. Hell, today the neighborhood forest trail where I walk several times a week to keep fit and sane has closed, even though I see more people in my neighborhood walking my dogs than I ever have walking that path. Regardless, it’s a state park and it’s now off limits.

Sometimes I feel trapped, like a pretty bird in a pretty cage, but after many weeks of using this SIP time as a “personal…