a few kauai pictures.

kauai sunrise.

adam, oh adam.

adam took this one of the beach where we took walked one morning to see the sunrise.

hanalei bay.

lindsey and beautiful jules.

this is a taste of our magical hawaiian adventure. although we did not see a single lei and see a hulu dance on this vacation, we did really get a feel for the hang-loose, aloha hawaiian spirit. kauai is stunningly goregeous--mountains and beach and red clay earth. some of my highlights from the trip were hiking the napali coast, seeing the spectacular waimea canyon from a few different view points, getting incredible in-house massages with pete, hiking to a little beach with adam one morning to swim and watch the sunset, having the best sushi of my life in hanalei, and spending so much time with my best friend lindsey, her husband andrew, and their adorable baby jules. they are really special people who used to live busy lives in nyc where they rarely felt healthy. then they decided to take a good look at their values and chose a different way of life for the past three years. they have decided to move back to the mainland this spring so jules can be closer to her family so it was special to be with them for their last few months in paradise.

oh and now i am so fully back in dc and pretty glad for it. i'm breathing into the cold and teaching a lot of yoga and taking breaks to go to spa world. it's good to go away so i can realize how much i have waiting for me when i get back. i'm am still writing a bigger post in my head about some ideas i've been thinking about like vulnerability, acceptance and body hair so check back in soon for that. today i am appreciating my healthy body (that has much more open hips after the really intense yoga class i took with hawah yesterday morning), local food, a good chat with my mom, houndstooth clients, fun times with adam, and living in my neighborhood. we raised $180 for the people affected by the house fire at our benefit class at yoga district on saturday and also sent so much good energy their way. that makes me happy.

also, it makes me happy that my good friend aviyah and her fiance clint just opened up a store on u street called rock it again. they have spent the past few years selling their amazing vintages coats and accessories at eastern market and now they are adding a full store to that. i went by to browse on friday and ended up with an awesome vest and hat that make me feel so fashionable. go see for yourself!

ledroit fire.

i took this photo today a half a block from my house. i had never seen anything like it and was really afraid that the whole row of house would burn. finally the firefighters exploded a fire extinguisher bomb-type thing inside the house and finally got it under control. many kudos to them!

luckily, no one was seriously injured but the house was completely destroyed. i had my yoga class dedicate their practice to the families involved and would also love it if all you guys would send some my neighbors your good energies as well.

we got back in from hawaii/phoenix last night. it was incredible! aloha aloha aloha. i am writing a post in my head right so stay tuned for that and some photos from the garden island, one of the most beautiful places i've ever been.

this photo was on the daily dish!

yuagas shaman in her traditional dress.

you can read about it here. it makes me again think about what an amazing experience ayahuasca is and how grateful i was to be able to document it all and really be in it. i still think that i am gaining so much from that plant. (and i am grateful to have an ex who blogs for andrew sullivan and thought of me when he needed a photo accompaniment for the piece :)

hope everyone is staying warm and safe. love from kauai! it is so amazing here which i will write about in more detail when i get back.

bringing in 2011.

this year has been: celebration, nourishing traditions, arm balances, falling in love with a great guy (thanks adam!), breathing into it and watching it all change, my first gallery show in almost 10 years, riding my bike everywhere for the first 11 months and now my prius (and my bike) for the last month, blue-green algae, coming home to peru and finding it so lovely and seeming like it remembered me, micheal franti at wolf trap, lots of practice for the sake of practice, produce boxes from timor and the cooking that came out of them, stability, gratitude for old friends and excitement for new ones, abraham hicks (live once in orlando and recordings) helping things make more sense, arrested development, sweating it out, writing it down each morning with a lot of consistency, pachamama, india in january full of ritual, growth, and things i still can't explain but left an opening, love-o-rama, this blog, ayahuasca's wisdom showing me again that i am just love, novels that delighted me (still life with woodpecker), confused me (the wind-up bird chronicles) and that broke my heart (a fine balance and 1000 splendid sons) finding my groove teaching yoga and photographing pets, community acupuncture, art classes at nova that left me humbled and hungry for more, jellyfish halloween costumes, the artist way, the broken bells, five weddings (two ethiopian ones i photographed, three of dear friends), unexpected cultural exchange (i.e. ethiopian weddings), 101 cookbooks, flirting with playing the piano, family beach week, still not being crazy about hosting parties, seeing wendell berry read, horse photography, getting better at saying no, restorative yoga, great conversations, bootleg kombucha and the beginnings of other experiments in fermentation, spaworld, iyengar more in the beginning of the year and now more ashtanga, a puppy in the family (welcome monk!), krishna das and mc yogi, outreach yoga in spanish, moving in lots of different worlds, acroyoga and thai massage, the joy of getting out of town, mary oliver and hafiz's poetry, my 10 year high school reunion, letting go of trying to control other people (and picking it up and letting it go and...), the march for sanity, and this crazy saturn of mine returning.

wow, that seems like a lot when i write it all down. it's been a seriously full, big, changing, fun year and it only felt right to close it out in pittsburgh with some of my favorite people in the world that make me laugh so hard it hurts (it sounds cliched but it's true with them).

and conversely, we opened up 2011 together! i'm not hugely into resolutions but here are a few things i hope to do in 2011:

--take and post a photo a day
--say no more often to the things i don't want to do so i can say yes to the things i love to do
--take a retreat for myself (maybe a meditation retreat or a trip to the beach)
--drum at the drum circle
--attend a yoga journal conference
--make my personal photography/art website
--show my photography again
--learn how to use my scanner and start posting some of my illustrated journal collages
--practice more ashtanga
--take a yin or restorative teacher training
--start giving thai massages professionally
--give a yoga workshop
--make more collaborative art
--spend more time hanging out with people i love without a motive, plan, goal
--take an artist date each week
--read something i've written publicly
--read: the satanic verses, love in the time of cholera, how to be an explorer or the world (do the activities for this one)
--start sprouting my grains and further explore the wonders of fermentation
--photograph and post more of my cooking explorations on this blog
--read great books, watch inspiring movies, take advantage of the galleries in dc
--play more, have more fun, create more, take it all less seriously

these don't feel as much like resolutions to me as much as things that are ready to start coming into my life which i am making it a point to allow. i had other ideas but if i felt a sense of stress when i started to write it down, i decided not to include it. i want this to be my year of playfulness and creation so that has to start now.

happy 2011! thank you all for supporting me throughout this past year and into the new one. i look forward to all kinds of creative explorations and revelations and surprises and that good life stuff. i am leaving for kauai with adam on thursday to visit some dear friends and i couldn't be more excited about it. i'll try to post while i'm there but for sure follow my flickr feed for photo updates of the trip.

creative recovery.

shine any way you can.

happy holidays everyone! i hope it's been a good festive time for you all and no one is stranded in airports and if you are stranded in airports that you are talking to the person next to you and finding out that your cousins are best friends and the you have the same favorite book.

it's been a good one here. it's been busy, full of family and food and a good round of trivial pursuit (my brother and i being the winners always makes it a good round). i didn't feel like i fully got the downtime that i've been craving but i figure that can wait until kauaii in just a little bit less than a week! oh my, i am so looking forward to being on that beautiful island with such good people.

so it's the end of the year, which means that i am one week away from finishing up my round #3 with the artist way. i had to answer these questions for this week's activities and i was surprised by how clear i sounded in my answers. the idea of a "creative recovery" is such a big, amorphous one but it's true that i really do see a lot of tangible results and changes and ideas.

five ways i've changed since beginning this creative recovery:
1. i have become clearer, more organized in my creative time
2. i have made self-care more of a priority and seen the massive benefits
3. i have become better at taking little steps toward a bigger goal and trusting in the power of them even when my mind is telling me its pointless (like picking up the book again yesterday when i really wanted to skip these last two weeks)
4. i now more fully recognize the value of having fun and playing
5. i see how important creativity is to my overall health as a person

five ways i'll change as i continue:
1. i'll become more disciplined in giving myself creative time
2. my artist dates will become as important of as practice as writing my morning pages
3. my creative community will become more defined and take on a greater importance in my life
4. i will say "no" more often and with less guilt
5. i will have more energy to do what excites me and to connect fully to the people in my life

five ways i'll nurture myself in these next six months:
1. i'll go to spa world at least once a month
2. i'll sign up for a class on making creative sketchbooks at the torpedo factory
3. i'll make time to practice/give thai massage once a week
4. i will use tuesdays as my time to make art/create and take my artist dates
5. i will go to poolesville, md to see the buddhist temple and to baltimore to go to the visionary art museum

writing these lists down i see that these changes are really not big glamorous things. the artist way is really just about a commitment to doing the things i know make me feel good and help me to go in the direction of my dreams. it's kind of like yoga for me. the more i study yoga, the more i see that this practice is all about learning how to see beyond the negative patterns of the mind and thus connect with the bigger whole of myself. it's all about the practice of treating myself well when my mind is telling me that i am not worth that kind of treatment.

so yeah, it's been a great 2010 and i am excited about the possibilities for 2011. i'm going to do my yearly round-up in the next few days here so check back for that. in the meantime, enjoy this ted talk which made so much sense to me:

this puppy needs a home.

ah god, how adorable! and sad because someone abandoned this bad boy out in the snow. if you know of anyone looking to adopt a dog, please let me know!

the waterfall

sauce, peru

“The Waterfall” – for May Swenson
~by Mary Oliver~

For all the said,
I could not see the waterfall
until I came and saw the water falling,
its lace legs and its womanly arms sheeting down,

while something howled like thunder,
over the rocks,
all day and all night –
unspooling

like ribbons made of snow,
or god’s white hair.
At any distance
it fell without a break or seam, and slowly, a simple

preponderance –
a fall of flowers – and truly it seemed
surprised by the unexpected kindness of the air and
light-hearted to be

flying at last.
Gravity is a fact everybody
knows about.
It is always underfoot,

like a summons,
gravel-backed and mossy,
in every beetled basin –
and imagination –

that striver,
that third eye –
can do a lot but
hardly everything. The white, scrolled

wings of the tumbling water
I never could have
imagined. And maybe there will be,
after all,

some slack and perfectly balanced
blind and rough peace, finally,
in the deep and green and utterly motionless pools after all that
falling?