My 33rd birthday sucked. I spent the night vacuum-sucked (there's that word again) into the cabin of an RV, art cars wailing by into the wee hours of the morning, tossing and turning against the heat, to open my eyes, a Burning Man Burning Virgin stranded in the middle of the Black Rock Desert without a wink.
Consequently, there I remained above the driver's seat, opening the card from my mom and dad containing two scarves from deceased Nana and Great Nana respectively, balling my virgin eyes out for most of that auspicious day praying that this would not be foretelling of the year to come. This was, after all, my 33rd year - a time of destiny and fulfillment, a year replete with fruition of dreams manifest. So the Free Masons said. So Jesus said.
By evening I had decided that this was not going to be my birthday. Bleary-eyed, dust-choked and overwhelmed I took back my birthday in the middle of the playa. In the middle of the biggest party in the world to which I had come as a gift to my boyfriend for his birthday.
I picked my girlfriend Liz's birthday as my new adopted birthday. That's today. Partly because she recently got promoted to the position of role model in my life by getting her 33-year-old shit together and pursuing her dreams, awakening out of the 1950s housewife doldrums we had spent the last six months commiserating about, watching the geriatrics wheeling by as we languished in the fog of the dearly beloved (does that connote death or what!) Carmel-by-the-Sea, perhaps the only two thirty-somethings to be found anywhere on the Monterey Peninsula.
The other reason I picked today is the one I don't want to admit because I want to seem unique and revolutionary and creative. But the truth is that I must dedicate this blog to Julie, yes, Julie of Julie and Julia because last night in a tiny theater in Pacific Grove she became my other role model. Of course there are differences. As a vegan I couldn't kill a lobster if my life depended on it (and if my boyfriend tried to help me I'd throw him in with them so that he could see what it feels like to screech to your scalding death) to say nothing of de-boning a duck (Ping, Make Way for Ducklings. Hello!) or acquiescing a calf leg...
I have, though, come through 33 years of bona fide burning. I survived my Saturn Return, wrote a book, spoke to thousands of young women, sat Sesshin in a Zen Monastery, completed a Yoga Teacher Training, graduated from McGill, and pretty much cracked the fairytale with all the boys I've known and loved. (Let's make sure we're all on the same page - the real fantasy is that word 'man'.)
Why am I left with this nagging feeling that I have not done enough to ease suffering on this precious planet? This blog marks day 1 of a 365-day commitment to be a radiant role model for women in the 21st Century. Alright I admit it - I did send it to my girlfriend Jenna to look over before posting it. But that's because with all her legal training she has an ultra-refined 'lame filter' and okay I can tend toward oversentimentality, despite all that Zen training.
So Here Goes: I vow to enjoy 108 delicious dates with myself: 108 hours of yoga, 108 hours of sweating, 108 candlelit baths, 108 satisfying sexual encounters, 108 hours mindfulness practice, 108 sustainable things worth eating, 108 random acts of kindness. Because if I do all these things in the next year, I will 'be the change' I wish to see in the world rather than lamenting about suffering. I will be my own lover, my own best friend and an exemplary experiment in self-love and self-care, even if Zen taught me that there's really nobody there. For all its follies, Burning Man did restore my hope for humanity in what was the most awe-inspiring experiment in community I have yet witnessed, even if I did crash land there on the wrong day.
It's only love,
Mlle 108
p.s. Day 1: 1-1/2 hours yoga, 1/2 hour mindfulness practice, 1/2 hour power walk, 2 chard green drinks.
