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clair·voy·ant: \kler-ˈvoi-en(t)\:
2 : one who sees clearly

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This, my friend, is nothing.

~Dream last night~
Walking to the elevator for lunch with co-workers.
Watching most of them step on to the most dangerous elevator I've ever seen; imagined or otherwise.
Not getting on that elevator.

Meeting up with everyone at lunch.

Heading back to the office by plane. A small plane. A small plane that I'm standing on the wing of. In a lightning storm. Knowing that we were headed towards a crash. Knowing we weren't "getting out of this one."

Blackness.

Woke up in a field after the crash. Knowing (or seeing... but not necessarily both) that my legs were gone as a result of the crash. There was leg down to the knee, and then there was bone. But not bloody, scary bone. More like Quentin Tarantino bone. Just bone - nothing gory - just fact, no adjectives. Neutral.

Picking up my legs and throwing them in a shopping cart and then slowly pushing the cart (on my knees) out of the field and to my dad's house.

Get to Dad's house. Waiting patiently for my mom to drive by so I can calmly ask her to drive me to the hospital. Preparing the way I'm going to prevent her from getting upset - because there was no need to get upset. Either they would put my legs back on, or I would get fake ones.

...

My whole morning today, I couldn't shake the anxiety factor of this dream. I'm learning a brand new role at work and I fell asleep obsessing over the nerves of being in unchartered waters in my professional career.

But as the day went on and I talked about the dream a few times, I was able to see the strength factor of this dream.

Kimm put it best during our two hour "business" lunch today.

"That did happen to you*

You did fall and you did land and
your legs didn't work.
You did pick yourself up and
You did deal with the situation and
You did overcome the challenge.

This, Sarah, is nothing."

The elephant on the wall is Ganesh, the Hindu God, the Remover of Obstacles.
The wall in this picture is in the studio at YogaTree Valencia.
The empty studio at YogaTree Valencia is where I shared myself
with my yoga teacher.
With the room.
With myself.**

Messages appear to you everywhere.
In dreams. On walls.
Are you open to receiving them?

*That story here Caution: not for the faint of heart
**And that story here

you dont want it, you just ARE it

So You Want to Be A Writer

By Charles Bukowski
via http://enothingblog.blogspot.com/

So You Want To Be A Writer
if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

...

This amazingly describes the way I feel about writing. Even saying that I "feel" a certain way about writing isn't exactly accurate.

Never "Oh, I should write something right now" or "So I told myself I would write more. Gotta work on that one."

When I sit still long enough, it's just what happens. As I wrote up there under my name, next to my flowery blogger avatar - It'd be harder for me not to write.

I write everywhere, all the time. I always have.

On a bunny shaped post-it note asking my parents to grab my blanket
if there was another earthquake.

The back of a paycheck stub I pulled out from
between the seats in my car while driving because
I had to capture the killer opening to my Persuasion Speech
that I'd just thought of.

For Christmas gifts from the ~hardest year of my life~
Christmas.

A Twitter post when I'm on the bus and have an

inspired thought surrounding the fact that crazy people
are ok, as long as they're laughing.

A receipt I found in my wallet on the rare occasion
my therapist says something worth remembering.

A post-it note when a co-worker says

something worth noting.

On the paper table cloth at a Spanish cafe when I see a man
across from me, sitting alone watching the passerbys,
hurriedly drinking his espresso, acting brave.

I don't like writing, I am writing.

Thanks for reading, me.

More Magical MUNI Moments*

I sat down on the bus (ran to catch it again thankyouverymuch) after my second 3-hour yoga session of the weekend.
Yoga mat and eco-friendly water bottle in hands.
Glance across the isle and spot the exact same eco-friendly water bottle in the hands of another girl.
Oh and what do you know, she's holding a yoga mat too.
Well aren't we just two identical San Francisco stereotypes. In the flesh. On the bus.

So we make eye contact and I first point at my water bottle, then to hers. Then to my mat, and to hers. Laughter.

Janet's class?, she asks.
No, Dina's workshop, I answer.

YogaTree junkies. Shoulda known.

We bond over our mutual love of Janet Stone's flow classes at the Castro studio, and she knew exactly which workshop I was taking because she thought of taking it too. And is going to take it later.

What's your name?, she asks.
I'm Sarah, I answer.

She just shakes her head and laughs.
I'm Sarah too, she says.

...

When Sarah got off the bus, the girl next to me confirmed what I was just thinking, "I'm sorry, but that was really cute."

*Other Magical MUNI Moments here: The boy who saved my glove
The woman in the pink boots

(un) enhanced

I'd like to state for the record that the "director's cut" or "extended edition" of a movie or TV episode should NEVER be considered a "bonus" feature. Like we're getting something enhanced??

No. Quite the opposite. We're getting the sh*t version. We're being forced to sit through about 30 minutes of scenes that the director had decided weren't good enough to include in the final version in the first place.

Then they go, "I know! We'll put all those boring, un-funny scenes that we took out of the movie for a very good reason... and put them back!! People will love the fact that the movie is longer but not any better."

It's like when you're writing a paper for school. When you do your final proof read, you come across three entire paragraphs that 1) have a bunch of typos 2) don't fit in to the rest of the story and 3) are so boring you want to poke your eyes out. So you take those paragraphs out, save the file, and print it. But then, you put all those paragraphs back in, title it "enhanced" and give it to your teacher like you're doing her a favor.

one striped glove

Little moments like that
a smile shared for a second
between strangers
warming each heart like a heater

A glove on the ground
one bare hand above
on her ipod.
her favorite song so loud
its all she can hear.
The bus comes to a stop
the boy
rushes up to get off.

The glove in his path,
he puts the glove on her lap.
A smile of joy upon him
the second he looked back.

watching the landscape

Your inner landscape.
Imagine it like an actual physical landscape.
And feelings you have.. those are just clouds... little puffs of nothing.
Small solitary objects that aren't connected to their surroundings.
They just float.

See them and name them.
Fear. Frustration. Aversion. Uncertainty.

Don't wish them away.
Let them be the small solitary unconnected floating puffs of nothing
that they can be.

Stand in alignment

I was walking down the street to Farmer's Market. Thinking of the new yoga "immersion" program I just started on Saturday.

We learned how to stand in full and complete alignment.
I did all the tweeks and adjustments while I was walking.

Dina (the instructor) had made the point that... when you're grounded and feel steady and in alignment, the world will notice. People will sense it.

...

So I'm walking down Divisadero; the tiny balloon in my chest lifting, my throat softening, my tailbone giving in to gravity, my ribs sinking back down, my shoulders driving energy down my back and my collar bone driving energy down my arms.

I start noticing the notices from people I was passing.

And then someone notices and he doesn't look away. And he starts a conversation. And we run into each other later at Faletti's. And he asks me out to coffee. And he said that with my hood on, I reminded him of the "Afghan girl" from National Geographic (add that to the narcissistic blog post). We exchanged phone numbers.

Then not 10 minutes later, I'm sitting at the bus stop and this beautiful, warm and friendly woman gives me a compliment on my gray boots. To which I returned the favor about her pink boots.

We continued talking on the bus; learning more about each other. It comes up that she's Buddhist. My ears perked. Yadda yadda yadda, she invited me to some event on the 31st of January that I'm actually really interested in. We stood on the corner after we both got off the bus finishing our conversation. We exchange phone numbers.

...

I took class with Dina tonight. One of her public classes. Yin with Flow. FUCK. Fucking CHALLENGING for me. Interestingly, it was by far the least physically involved yoga class I've ever taken.

I started crying at one point - not super out of the ordinary. But what was new for me this time, Dina ("the instructor"... ooh, intimidating) came over and asked me what was going on. And then she checked in after class as everyone was rolling their mats up and heading home.

She and I sat on the floor in the empty studio for 20 minutes talking about my experience and how I can continue on and learn and grow and release what I need to.

Before today, none of my other yoga instructors have even known I broke my back.

She said "I think your highest self... brought you to me."

...

Today I didn't shy away from anything. Especially when things got ugly and messy and confusing and uncomfortable. As soon as I made the decision to embody that, I immediately started noticing the effects; coffee date, Buddhism friend, trusted instructor.

You put it out there - you get it back.

...

Stand in alignment. Stand up straight. Look the world in the face and don't try to be someone you're not. Don't act OK if you're not. Don't turn away from things that are challenging. Don't get up and run away because you have tears streaming down your face and you don't want people to see it. Don't believe that "your story" is bigger than you. You're the size of the entire room. "Your story" is a tiny tiny part of that. See it. Experience it. Ride with it. Watch it fade.

Understand how to Be. With. It.

....

A lot going on in this post - this is more a journal entry than something I expect the public to be interested in. Whatevs.