I guess the cushion was Mitchy’s way of saying, “Now you can meditate from the comfort of your own home, babe.”

Mitchy’s great at knowing exactly what i need. Less wine, more quinoa. Less writing, more revision. Less frazzle, more meditation.

I’ve been “practicing” the – um – meditative arts for about a decade now, although i have yet to levitate off the ground in a cloud of transmigrational smoke.  Not that I haven’t huffed, or puffed, or prayed, or cried, but I honestly haven’t been able to hit the top shelf of the enlightenment hierarchy, even though i own not one but two copies of Chögyam Trungpa’s 1973 classic, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism.

How can something that’s so easy and so mundane  – to follow your breath – be so complex at the same time? Much like a lot of other things, I blame TV. Child of the eighties, Micheal Jackson, Whitney Houston, growing up in noisy arcades with a lot of blings and beeps, no worry we have a hard time sitting and thinking. Then add a kid to the mix, the ever churning swirl of the mommy brain? Practically impossible.

I always seemed to start out on the right foot: positive intentions, good posture, and a clear mind.

Deep breath. There you go, Maureen. You’re doing just great. Can I make it to ten? In, out. In…out…. but then it would start. The voice.

I’m breathing too fast. I should slow down.
Ignore the voice, Maureen. Hold it, and exhale.
You call that meditating? I should be working. I’m procrastinating.
I am NOT! I’m helping myself calm down and develop self-awareness. It’s a life altering practice.
I’m hungry. I should have called that women back.
Deeeeeeeep breath. Focus.
Did I cancel that dentist’s appointment yet? Lei doesn’t even have any cavities.
I’m trying to breathe, here!
And you’re doing a marvelous job. Congratulations. You’re ALIVE.

And so it goes, year after year. For a while I tried to focus on the exact conditions that i would need to meditate – hence the cushion. Then I tried to focus on the schedule: six to ten minutes daily, with a weekly working up to half hour and hour long increments. This is when i bought a second yoga mat (in case I wore the first one out right away!) and got the kundalini yoga chants prepped on the CD player, thinking, it may be soon time for a guru!

Deep breath, there, Little Mo.

I guess now since i’m getting a little older, i may be finally realizing that I may never make it to that Tibetan Buddhist mountain retreat that I always meant to get to, and that frankly, I may be okay with that. I’ll stick with my thirty-somethings uses for my mediation cushion: laundry folding, bedtime out loud story reading, and exam correcting at my low lying, teak coffee table.

Folding tiny kid clothes? Meditation. Emptying the dishwasher for the fiftieth time this month, putting the groceries away or humming a song on a radio that you don’t even remember turning on? Meditation. Petting a purring cat and having a glorious, momentary lapse? Meditation. I bet Trungpa had cats.

Maybe I shouldn’t give up on my mountain retreat …..just yet.

Please, share your meditation successes and failures with me, favorite tricks, sites or recites. I’ll meditate on them.

ever drink yogi tea? it sends us little reminders sometimes.

Last Friday night, for a minute, i died.

When my husband cautioned me against driving in “the weather” (in P.E.I., that means snow, and in this case, 2-4 cm), i scoffed. i told him he worried too much, and that he should live a little. I rolled my eyes.

“I’ve been driving for six years, babe,” i added (i didn’t get my license until i was 28). Like in an instant on an icy road, that would have mattered. It’s you versus the elements. And the elements don’t  exactly care about your driving record.

Grammie’s house was only an hour away and Lei was pumped for her sleepover. After a cup of tea with Mum, she cautioned me to go super slowly on my way back to town. The blustering snow was coming down a little harder now and the roads were covered. It was starting to drift. No problem, i said. I laced up my boots and kissed my six year old goodbye. I didn’t even think twice.

Little did i know that only moments later and probably not four kilometres away, i would catch my tire, and spinning out of control, nosedive into the ditch, and flip my truck; seconds later i would crawl out the driver’s side window upside down and to the icy ground beneath.

I passed a school bus once, because it was foggy and I didn’t see its lights were on. That was traumatic.

This was something else. This was divine intervention.

I assessed my condition as soon as i left the x-trail, upside down,  tires spinning and the headlights still on. I didn’t have a scratch. I wasn’t broken, i wasn’t in pain, i could see; i was intact, though i looked down at my body to be sure. I was ALIVE.

When I was calling the tow truck, i saw another car go into the ditch on the opposite side of the road. I cursed.  I was ALIVE.

When the policeman invited me into his car to get my statement, he ran my plates and was kind enough to remind that that my truck was no longer registered. You’re two months overdue, he said. Yes i was; and I was ALIVE.

When Mitch’s sister and husband came to my rescue, i was in a state of shock. I just kept repeating, “I’m ALIVE! I’m ALIVE!” I kept thinking that there must have been a reason that i crashed, like to prevent an even greater catastrophe down the road, maybe one where i wouldn’t have been so lucky.

But unfortunately for my glorious x-trail (“exy” to those who knew and loved her),  she left this world a brave soldier: windshield shattered, windows blown, airbags deployed. We collected the scattered items that Exy had carried, and before i left, my brother in law handed me a crumpled up parking ticket, half frozen and covered in snow.

so long, old girl

Needless to say, the experience has left me thankful not only for my life,
but for every precious moment in it.

When Mitch and I were traveling through Vietnam, we met an elderly French-speaking gentleman who drew calligraphy on scrolls. We sat in his small shop and had tea and oranges with him for a whole afternoon, listening to his stories about the French occupation of Ho Chi Minh. Before he left, he gave us a gift: a beautiful scroll which read, “Live for this moment. This moment is your life.”

And I thought about him on the road that night, as i watched them tow my crushed truck out of the ditch.

And I thought about Mitchell waking up on a Saturday morning and not having a wife anymore, and I thought about Leila not having a mother. And I cried my eyes out. And I thought that I must not be finished here – that I must have been saved because i have work to do yet in this life. How crazy does that sound, now, only one week later.

The next day I had tea with my dear friend, and when she handed me a cup of licorice tea that said, “you are unlimited,” i burst into tears again. It reminded me of the time just after we lost our babe little t, gone to the ether. A friend asked me to select a card from her oracle deck, claiming that they were always poignant. The card I chose read, “Acceptance”. And that was the day i started to let go.

By Monday the physical manifestations of stress had set in: the pounding headache, unphased by the ibuprofen, the walloping head cold, which came out of nowhere, and not one, not two, but three cold sores, which violently attacked my upper lip and put me in the grouchiest of moods. By Tuesday, I was bed-stricken and couldn’t work. yikes.

So it’s been a week of crying thorough car promo videos (who does that?) and regrouping, in a desperate attempt to move along to the next chapter. Yesterday Mitch and I went to see the Exy one last time to “collect our personal belongings”, as instructed by the insurance company, and i admit, the experience was therapeutic. (If you can call bawling  – into a six foot tall man’s open arms beside a crashed car  – therapeutic. Thanks honey, you were great about that.)

And life goes on. The moral?

Live for this moment. This moment is your life.

the big climb to somewhere

Hey FurtherMo fans!

As the blog is officially one and a half years old, I have decided to upgrade to an actual DOMAIN! I know, it’s unheard of. I know you’re all thinking, what’s next for the blog, is she going get to get a cookbook and cook every single thing in it, posting her creations each day? Or will she learn how to knit scarves so she can report?

No, indeed I will be keeping along my writerly way, trying desperately to delve deeper and deeper into the realms of the Canadian publishing industry, sending off my query letters and following the signs of the writers who’ve gone before me, using all of the tools at my disposal to unearth the creative energies. Here’s to a productive 2012.

You can now find me here, at www.FurtherMo.com ~ a small step up but an important one. And I resolve to blog stream a little more; i promise to write meaningful and relevant posts to entertain and provoke sentiment from you, my thoughtful readers.

I kind of feel like it’s a bit of a graduation, of course, although admittedly, there are always many more steps to climb. Some will be higher than others, and most uneven. In the dark there will be some twists and turns.

This kind of reminds me of a video I watched last night, oh the places you’ll go at burning man, which is a kooky and fun rendition of the dr. seuss classic. I hope you enjoy it.

Anyway, happy birthday, FurtherMo.com.

Mitch ordered about a dozen books filled with area maps, ride revues, restaurant guides, and touring strategies (everything from  to half day honeymoon to where to watch the parade from if you have a child under six  & need to get out before the crowds, etc. ) We poured over them for months.

And on the morning of December 18th, Leila woke up to a special delivery from Santa Clause: three boxes, gorgeously ribboned and wrapped, and a letter from the jolly old man himself. One box contained a beautiful pink princess dress that Santa’s letter instructed, “must be worn for your lunch with the princesses”.

Our girl happily packed up her princess dress (and as many other dresses she could find) and prepared for the magical take-off. Whether we were ready or not, Disney was happening. Mitch and I both took deep breaths and gave each other pep talks.

We arrived in Orlando without too much of a problem, with no winter snow or delays. Our Disney plans were shaping up. We had four days, and Mitchell insisted that we must be very tactical about our arrangements – no spontaneous whims (which i am prone to). I agreed. Logic. We would plan well, execute well. Monday we were going to start at Disney’s Hollywood Studios: we planned to take in a few shows, a couple of rides, and have an easy day, as we knew Lei would be tired from traveling.

But then something happened. I started to feel nostalgic. And I got whiny.

I wanted to ride the teacups, go on the ‘it’s a small world’ boats, and basically re-create my own five year old Disney experience. I didn’t want to go to Hollywood Studios,  I wanted to go to the Magic Kingdom -  see the Cinderella castle, and be carried away by music and floats. I wanted to melt into ice cream sandwiches and blow bubbles with four year olds.

“Mitch, this is what Leila wants,” I argued, “to see the castle and the princesses.”

“Mo, she doesn’t even know about the castle,” Mitch contended. “And it’s eleven o’clock. We’ve already missed the prime time when the books say you need to arrive,” he continued, flipping through our gigantic unofficial Disney guide, wide-eyed, rubbing his temple.

“We won’t have to aim too high,” I said, “we’ll just go and check things out and see where the wind blows us.” I was completely Disney mesmerized, drunk on my own memories. Mitchell gave me one of those looks I know very well. This is a bad idea, Mo, but we’ll do it anyway.

Day One: Disney Disaster

Needless to say, our first day at the Magic Kingdom was far from perfect. The anticipation was amazing – waiting in line from the parking lot for the small ferry which would carry us to the grounds, and seeing that beautiful castle in the distance. Sidewalk chalk lay scattered through the lines of the hundreds of children who waited for the ferry, with things like,  i love you, mickey and my dream come true written by five and seven year olds. I thought i was going to cry.

But when we finally got through the gates, it was 11:45, and the crowds were already rushing around us. We walked rather aimlessly at first, but decided to wander towards Fairyland, soon realizing that Leila was getting hot and tired. She hadn’t even gone on a ride yet, and wait times in the lineups were saying things like: 45 min, 1 hour, or 1:30.We managed to get one Fastpass (Disney’s special cut the line system), and it was for 6pm. And we couldn’t get any more Fastpasses – until that one expired. We wandered into a 3D movie, enthusiastic about the prospects, only to be asked to leave when the projector broke or there was some technical problem. “Mickey’s lost his hat,” the stage manager simply said.

The queue to see Rapunzel from Tangled was also a hundred people thick, with many of the adults not even having kids with them. Leila was hot. And she wanted to go home. We tried to distract her with an ice cream cone, filing in line for over twenty minutes. And for a fleeting Disney moment she was happy. But when i walked away to get napkins, a woman bumped into her and her entire ice cream splattered all over the ground. Mitch rushed to her rescue, and for a moment she was inconsolable.

Then the music started, and all of a sudden, there was Cinderella. Disney was saved!

The days that followed we took all of the book’s recommendations,  adhering to each little instruction. After that first day, our days began at 6:30 am, and we entered the parks by 8. The mornings were cool and the traffic was light. We were impressed by Disney’s Hollywood Studios and spent a full day at Epcot (sun up to sun down!) Day Four was our Magic Kingdom redemption, where we got an early start and everything worked out absolutely perfectly, hitting all the roller coasters and boat rides that Leila could handle, and by 1:00 we  headed home for a swim, returning in the evening for Disney’s crazy electrical parade.

Highlights? Lunch with the princesses at the Norwegian Pavilion – at Akershus Royal Banquet Hall. And was it worth it? Absolutely.

I think in some ways we’re still processing the trip, but it helped that we headed over to the Gulf of Mexico for a few days after to have Christmas with the folks, drink some wine and decompress.

Happy New Year everyone!

And now i want to hear YOUR Disney stories – please share.

I teach ESL at a local university. This time of year in our program, the teachers are in a flurry reading, correcting and marking exams. This time of year, we worry for our students. We worry that they won’t beat our English proficiency test, a rigorous four hour examination which has made its way into the lifeblood of our program. It is our entrance exam; it is our exit exam.

This exam will determine the placement of our international students for their credit courses here at the university. Although we promote literacy , best writing practices, and critical thinking skills (which we deem essential before embarking on a university education), our students demand practice exams and exhaustive grammar lessons, which we, in turn, dole out. The age old mantra: we teach       to the test. But that is only part of the picture.

Every year, our careful director asks herself (and us) how we can be the best teachers we can be. For starters, she runs planning meetings for all the teachers who teach the same courses so we can share ideas, pool resources and create large binders of ‘Best Practices’. Great lessons and new concepts are always shared.

Each semester we self-evaluate. We examine the relevancy and accuracy of our program, and asses our strengths.  We also prepare for the academic challenges of our students, amidst the busy lives we lead at home – at lunchtime teachers share stories of husbands and wives, lunches, buses, babies, magazine sales, and Christmas concerts. At night I flail about in my papers, envelopes, and staplers, moving piles of marking and moving three hole punches and around house.

December is crunch time for students. It’s amazing to walk around the library this time of year,  checking out the study groups in their back corners, scarves draped over long tables, worried eyes scanning large books, hands scribbling away their notes. They’re drenched in anxiety, anticipation.

 My mind flashes to our six year old on an amazing journey of early literacy. She traces letters and tells her teacher, “mes histoires“: her stories. Every three words is a big deal for her, the teacher says. Make it a big deal. When her father and I  look through her book of stories, we smile to each other with a parent’s pride: Maman danse avec Papa.

Her struggles learning French strangely mirror the struggles of my students, who, in a foreign country, are learning English.  Her classroom is a strange new vehicle, although she may not not where she is going, a different cultural setting, an unknown expectation. Both ‘littles’ and ‘bigs’ will have a long way to go.

The student’s anxiety slowly creeps into my weekend, and even into my dreams. I dreamed that one of the other teachers gave me an exam and I FAILED it; i failed the reading section. It was hard and I panicked, had a bit of an anxiety attack and tried to cheat. It didn’t work. Another teacher caught me red-handed, and then scoffing, told me that I should try a harlequin romance. I’m not sure if she meant to read it or to write it. I think my educational life is crossing over my writing life. I woke up in a sweat, looking around my bedroom in the dark.

This semester, when my students finished writing their exam, I started to mark them immediately. They botched the midterm, so I was expecting results. As a teacher it’s my job to raise the bar; as a mother it’s my job to give shelter to those wounded from it.

And I was never so happy that they passed with flying colors.  I mean, if it were me in China, and I was taking exams in Mandarin – being asked to write about globalization and the economy, then I’d be in a fair amount of trouble. I even gave them each an exit interview, sharing with them the strengths i believe they have, and the progress i know that they’ve made in Critical Reading. I try to make each student realize how far they’ve come, how much they’ve learned in the short time that they’ve been in Canada. I’m delighted for them in their success. Congratulations, I tell them, you now move on to the next stage of the game.

This semester has been a tumultuous one for me, with the impact of Grade One weighing slightly heavy on my heart still. I’m treading on the front lines of literacy with kids aged six to twenty-six. But something’s changed. I’ve now become a Mom  ~ of one of the students on the other side of my classroom. And I’ve realized that that the whole child (however old they may be) is so much more important than that one test, or that grade, or that teacher will ever be, in isolation. We are so much more than the sum of our parts. And that’s an awesome realization to have.

The experience has also made me quite a bit more sensitive to the needs of those students around me who are thousands of miles from their families in Asia and the Middle East, and who need an advocate for them as well as a teacher. They need someone to talk to, someone to share things with, and someone to be proud of them.

And that would be me.

Anybody else seeing themselves in this experience? Share your thoughts here, I would be so glad to hear them.

Now I always knew that I would have to face grade one some day, but I never thought it would come at the cost of a good night’s sleep, or an interminable conversation with my husband and friends as to what to do with Leila. We’ve always described her as our wild little spirit, someone different, vibrant and unique. We are proud of her in countless ways: for her thoughtfulness and her gratitude; her organized creativity, her musical intelligence and her determination steering the way.

For the woman that we know she will become.

But in the meantime, we are up against something big and strong, something not moving, not curving to meet her on her own bends: the school system. A rigidity unchanged since we sat in those teeny, tiny grade one chairs.

Although we’re trying to be open minded, our Leila is not used to conformity. Even in our family, our daily routines, and the hourly operations of this house, she has struggled. She’s not used to sitting in a desk all day, answering questions on demand. She’s used to action, to imagination.

We know that to her, school life begins and ends on the playground. The only daily reports that we receive are from her music class, which her father and I carefully follow. Last year’s highlight was Kindergarten Choir, in which they danced like bumble bees and mimicked rainbows. This is her truth in life, her raison d’etre.

Meet the teacher night didn’t go well. We were greeted with an impromptu critical analysis as other parents walked into the room, her teacher pronouncing that because we had taken the last month off kindergarten, Leila was already behind. She was in Mandarin classes in Beijing, i said, an attempt at her defense. Our decision. Our choice.

Next came homework. Another hurdle. An entire lineage of teachers, parents, grandparents, and other relatives in the mix, and the child will not read. Words on a page suddenly don’t make sense to her, and when her father and i sit down to do homework, a mysterious tummy ache appear out of nowhere. Our only salvation is to sing the homework, in rhythm and in rhyme. She laughs, clapping to the beat, forgetting for a moment that she’s doing it-  she’s reading.

But still, I worry. Frustration. Panic. A breakdown in the Superstore parking lot after Parent-Teacher interviews.

A voice inside calls to me,  just love her. Wait for her. Her time will come.

The deep breath of parenthood.

I call to others, questioning parents on the whens and wheres of normalcy. Some show sympathy, painfully remembering the days when their kids didn’t or wouldn’t fit in. She’s probably the next Steve Jobs, says my boss casually, shaking her head, her eyes growing wide as she remembers back, or  a pro surfer.

A pro surfer, I muse. I could handle that. Summers in Tofino, winters in Hawaii, and I catch myself drifting away, almost late for class with a pile of unmarked midterm exams in one hand and a cold cup of coffee in the other. Am I really the teacher whose daughter won’t confine to the slow, labored breathing of the system? Do i really wonder where she gets her impassioned, mercurial tendencies?

More than just the teacher, I am the woman who resisted authority, her parents, her older brothers, even to this day (by painful times) – her husband. The very slow learner whose explorations were not always academic, they were mystical, transcendental. I was stuck in epic Wordsworthian poems of immortality, and for that, well, I don’t apologize.

“… our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!”

And so to my dear Leila, I will not give up on you. Let rainbows and choir practices be your guiding stars, and may we all catch up with you some day.

Love, Mom

P.S. As a post-script, here is a photo of what Leila would like to change her name to. I don’t know where she came up with “Ziley”, but I quite like it.

I may not be beyond a book of kids poetry yet. Enjoy. 

Taxi!

Wishy, washy, will he know?
Will he know which way to go?

I eye the streetscape, fast and slow,
grab her hand and No, No, NO!

One’s gone I missed it, time’s for sure,
next time next time, one I’ll lure

arm’s up high now, in the street,
bikes and carts and Beijing meats!

Leila clings, don’t lose me mom,
no I won’t dear, come along!

traffic wakes now its green light
buses, people fight or flight.

please please stop here, taxi please,
I wait for you in desperate need…

feeling faint now, hot and tired
stretch my hand four wheels desired

I see one coming! hold on tight!
we’ll reach it Leila, be alright!

Noodles swish I drop my lunch
there go the chopsticks off my bunch

here! we’re here, please stop for us!
he’s pulling over, Lei, enough!

And now we enter, slip inside
shī fu, we’re going for this ride.

It’s also the time when Prince Edward Island hosts the Pen and Inkling Festival, a festival of books, authors, workshops, and literary awards, which was indeed another success this year. Although I had to juggle swimming, gymnastics, a fall wedding, two babysitters, and my husband at a business conference, I managed to make it to two of the fabulous workshops offered by the P.E.I. Writer’s Guild.

In Saturday’s session, “Hearing Voices: Writing in Character ” with Brent MacLaine, we delved into the world of character.  We explored different speakers,  sensing and discussing the differences between them, and thus in turn creating our own.  And as we wrote, the poems did shape themselves.  I wrote about Minda, a Philippino woman I knew on Boracay who longed for a life in Canada, while the sweetie next to me jumped immediately into a southern momma living check to check, hauling on cigarettes.  More practice is definitely on the agenda for me.

Sunday morning another group of us came out bright and early to spend some time with performance poet, Tanya Davis, and to catch a few tricks of her trade in a workshop entitled “Page and maybe stage: writing for performance“.      Twelve of us sat around several large tables, absorbed in the technique and practice it takes for Tanya to do what she does – write for performance. Write it out loud, she suggests, say it and feel it. Practice it everywhere.

I laugh, thinking back to my time at the Beijing zoo: Leila, engrossed in pandas and water snakes, and I, book in hand, loudly pronouncing my Mandarin verbs over and over to the hopes of burning them to memory. People stared, children pointed. But I learned.

Tanya asked us to ditty a little poem about how we felt in that room, and I thought I would share this with you.

“drinking in learning”

bright eyes, watching
engaged, experience
to the table we bring
our homes, our lives

we gather in hope
of exploring together
the vulnerable places
we all go sometimes

others in from our loneliness
questions to our own voices
pens scratch on paper
lives running side by side

songwriters and artists
with each common purpose
the darks of our souls
come so eager to light

our differences make us
our experiences grace us
a group of true writers
in heaven’s delight

And so another fun writing weekend is under my belt, as I plunge hopefully into the proposal for my second book, although the first one remains gently poised in the publishing ether that is the world of the writer’s query. But as writers and artists we must continue to wonder, in Tanya’s words, “If i make it, will someone take it?”

Have a look at her video, “Art” and decide for yourselves.

<a href=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/qpunQZ4cUyI” target=”_blank”>

Oh glorious summer! You’re slipping away so quickly. Thanks for the great times, Summer, for keeping the sun worshiping, south shore ocean dipping, lobster cracking, oyster shucking soul in me forever blessed by your sandy toes and your smoky barbeques.

In August I got some news on the book front: the prolonged, mystical journey that has been my road to publication. The good news is that the marvelous, important Toronto Editorial Director that read White Butterfly both loved the memoir and gave me a lot of positive feedback on it, thus confirming that all of my hard work was worth it.

The bad news is that she could not offer me a contract to publish, as she felt like it would better served by a different, smaller press. And so I carry on, holding my head high and believing in my work. Anybody who wants to leave comments like, how many times Anne of Green Gables was rejected before its final glorious acceptance (and so forth) are please welcome to do so!

I immediately set pen back down to paper, while even writing some short fiction and resurrecting some poetry from my twenties, which now, I somehow seem chapters away from. There’s nothing like walking through your past to find the way to your future. Thank you, crazy Mo journals from the late nineties.

I also decided i should catch up with my New Years resolutions for 2011, and see how I was doing. Here was my general list.

And so where are we, you ask? Well, let’s start with a few easy ones.

Try new things. So far this year I’ve tried querying my book, writing short stories, traveling to China, and eating hemp seeds on my fruit and cottage cheese breakfast. I have yet to take up racket ball (minus one).

Subscribe to ten more interesting blogs. Thanks to the miracle of Google Reader, I’ve hit the nail on the head with this one. Here are a few of my blogs scores of 2011. Dangerously Irrelevant: Technology, Leadership, and the Future of Schools, Write for Your Life, Let’s Explore: Play everyday, and for all you techies addicted to productivity apps, The Next Web. Oh, and I couldn’t forget Love Social, which I discovered on an Al Jazeera podcast.

Learn a new language. I’m not sure if two weeks of Mandarin classes in Beijing count, but for the purposes of keeping track, let’s say that it does.

Celebrate the big 5 with Mitchy. This we did in style, which if you missed the blog post about the Great Wall / our date, you can catch up with here.

Be more of who I am. This is a bit esoteric, but I certainly don’t feel like I’ve been any less. More of myself might be too much for my poor husband to handle.

Consider alternatives. I’m not sure where I was going with this one, but for anyone who’s asking, the answer is No, I did not change my Cows Ice Cream flavor at all this year. Cow-rispy Crunch is still the only kind for me.

Join TESL Canada. This one I can shut the door on. Although I’ve been working in the field for years, after a teaching practicum in July, I officially became a “certified” ESL teacher. If anyone would like some help with their dangling modifiers, let me know.

Surrender ‘Mystic’ and write a proposal for ‘Barefoot’. These are the nicknames for the large bodies of work that I have produced, and let’s just say that these are ongoing.

Lose the Freshman 15. Don’t ask.

See my darling turn six. Looking forward to this October date. Current theme is BRIDES. FAIRIES.PRINCESSES, and transitioning daily.

Meditate and breathe. On the agenda – let’s slot this ‘inner zen’ program into, eeek, the last two weeks in November.

And when I flipped over my resolution chart, I meet this:

A Prayer for 2011.

Tell about how your year is going please! Have you met your goals? Share your accomplishments here so we can congratulate each other.

It wasn’t until I was I went to Fengdu Ghost City in China, that I asked myself,  where do they go? I guess I had always believed in ghosts – a child of the eighties reared on good old fashioned Unsolved Mysteries (Robert Stack), not to mention Demi Moore, the Ghostbusters and a whole host of other eighties paranormal flicks. I had never wavered on the fact that, well, there was something more.

According to the China Travel Tour Guide, Fengdu was considered a “grave yard” for Taoism, as Tao believes that when people die, their spirits are gathered there – at Ming Mountain. The first thing I notice is temples – and hundreds of them. Tourists and heat accompany the day; a Mandarin speaking guide shuffles me along.

I find this spiritual place fascinating, with its an energy-centric temples and detailed sculptures. First, we walk up the two hundred steps up and into the realms of the great Chinese heavens. I know I’m a romantic, and I’m swept away in the rich mythology that surrounds us. Mitch, on the other hand, fakes that Leila has to pee and tells the guide that he will meet her at the bottom, not giving her the chance to reply. I can’t go with them. I really want to see more, to go up and up the steps of this unusual place.

We come to a huge character set in stone, Yi-er-sun -se. The characters individual meant kindness, comfort, and to make peace. When you put them together, they make: “Only Kindness Makes Peace”. All of the older Chinese people on the tour looked really impressed, flashing photos and sighing, “Ahhh, ahhh.”

Directly across from it was another giant character, meaning literally, “Happy Birthday Mom, 70.” This is the character for longevity. I wish we had the same system in English  of putting words together, equaling more than the sum of their parts. Haiku definitely comes close.

The tourists gather around each one getting their photo with the stone, and insisting that I get mine taken, as well. For luck, they say. I don’t want to offend the spirits here, dead or alive, so i comply. (Later I decide that the photo diminishes the eeriness).

I walk on, through a small temple and into another, observing the intricacies of this place. I’ve reached the Ghost Torture Pass, where the ghost report to Yama, the King of Hell. His goons stand out front – a goblin for just about every sin you can name.

Enter Lushy, Lusty, and according to the kid from Hong Kong that I ask,           the Professor -whose sin as far as I can tell – is that he thinks too much.

Judgement Day, I think to myself. Sheesh. Tough crowd. It’s funny what the living depict in the dead. Personally I’m hoping to go towards butterflies and star shine in the afterlife . Judgement by the King of Hell? Sounds pretty serious.

But wait- there’s more. I meet Yama, who doesn’t seem like too bad of a guy himself. He’s big, and red, and fiery – but I’m a fiery Sagittarius – so I think we’d get along. But once I pass Yama’s tests, there are more yet levels to the afterlife. (As if I didn’t have to prove myself enough in death).

Here we come to the torture chamber – where the spirits of the dead (in living color) come to judge all the ghosts that walk through. I have flashbacks to the Cavendish Wax museum, a place that used to scare the heck out of me. I’m glad that Mitch took Leila away.

It’s dark and it smell old and musty in here. I can only imagine the number of people that have made the pilgrimage to this dark place. Were, they scared, too, to meet their maker?

A culture obsessed with death. I look around. I’ve lagged behind the group, and I’m left alone with this guy, to face my own mortality. Would I pass his test?

I poke my head out the door of the temple and back into the light. My eyes hurt briefly as they readjust. Uh-oh. A reincarnation of what happens to those who don’t make the cut into the spirits’ good books: Hell.

I take a deep breath and peer behind the old wire barrier, broken in some places. Yikes. Be warned, dear human! What follows may irk your soul.

Here’s the entrance, I’m guessing where the poor tortured souls try to get back to their living lives. Double yikes.

I gaze into the display, somewhat unsure if I should approach the guide for explanations. Part of me is taken away, to this unearthly world of mad spirits.

Talk about putting the fear of god into people. I’m suddenly really sad for all those who fear this judgement, or any judgement for that matter. Can’t we all just get along?

Who’s the blue guy and how did he get the job?

I walk through ten different torturous deaths, all resembling the horror of the first. And I smile when i get to the end, because in good old fashioned Chinese style, when you’ve completed all the tasks, the Devil gives you tea. I like that. Maybe that means they call it a truce.

The final pagoda is a tall and intricate one. I catch up with the guide and ask about what the character says above the entry way. She explains that it is a safe place for the spirits, a way to transition them into the spirit world so that they don’t miss their lives too much. It says all that? I question. There are only two characters. Well, no, she explains. The characters say “Your [home] Kitchen Table.”

That’s awesome.

Well for the 80 kuai (about ten bucks) that it cost me to get into this place,  i’d say it was really worth it. I walked through life, was given longevity and strength, passed through my own mortality, and possibly through my very own death and judgement, not to mention that i had tea with the devil. And where do i end up? My kitchen table.

Anybody got a ghost story? Leave ‘em here, and I’ll take ‘em to the campfire. In the meantime, wishing you “happy birthday Mom, 70 years.” [longevity].