Author Archives: Riba

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About Riba

I'm a writer and a teacher, though I usually say it in reverse. I hope to find more of a balance between the two. ;-)

Run Toward It (55)

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For weeks now many of my horoscopes in the L.A. Times have seemed especially apt, like the one or two lines were written just for me. One of my favorite ones said, “If it makes you want to run away and hide, you should run toward it and wave your arms as the bigger-than-life force you really are.” I love this. I put it into practice right away. Now whenever I see one of the two work colleagues online who make my belly sink, I flap my arms at my laptop screen. It leaves me grinning. And speaking of things that make you want to run away and hide, it came to me the other day that some of the (endless?) fear images my mind seems determined to present to me might not be just autopilot fears but bits of precognition. Sometimes when they arise might I be getting a glimpse of possible futures? And can my prayers or my banishing of them help to manifest a different future?

Naked (54)

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statue of quan yin with fan palms behind her

I am sitting naked in Desert Hot Springs. Not sitting about in the center of town, no—in a small, modest resort with natural mineral springs. The warm wind has been whipping about me for hours, loud in the fan palms beside the pool. A statue of Quan Yin presides poolside. I’m in the shade now. I’ve been reading most of the day. I go into the hot mineral pool until I’m sated. The wind makes me cold when I emerge, and I wrap myself in my sarong until my skin is dry and the warm air heat seeps into me again. This morning I did yoga. I did qi gong in the early afternoon. I faced northeast, a potted bougainvillea beside me, the low slung hill visible over the bamboo fence. It has been one of those days that go on and on, the quiet stretching of time, summer days in childhood. I feel relaxed, lucky. I am grateful I’ve found this place. My eyes feel sore, a lingering fever. This morning before the wind began, there was a cactus wren laughing from one of these palms. There was a loose dog in the street when I walked here from the bus stop. I look forward to the day when coming here will feel familiar, like visiting someone I know well. I close the door behind me when I leave and walk away. I look back and see the waxing moon hanging above the roofline in the late afternoon sky as though it’s guarding the place. The moon follows me all the way home.

Bird Voices (53)

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At odd moments, I find myself missing bird sounds. Have I just become greedy? This time of year when I wake up they are not nearby. I hear bird voices, but they are coming from a distance. Right now, though, someone chirps from the Palo Verde, the high note coming through the open kitchen window and then gone. I miss the goldfinch who used to chatter in my neighbor’s yard. Once in a while a house finch comes to sing in our tree. I stop to savor it, as though I can pull those liquid notes through my skin, his song alive in me beside my beating heart. And sometimes when I wake up now to muted sounds of life I remember that first spring when we lived on Avenida Ortega. Early every morning a cacophony of bird sounds grew and swelled, like nothing I have ever known before or since. I want that again, that unbelievable crescendo. But I will remember to relish what we have here and to never overlook the music, to cherish each voice always. And I’ll work to help build more of a community here, too. (I have secret hopes the hedges in the new development will come alive with birds.) Here’s to feeling once again at the center of that symphony.

Early Morning Softness (52)

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I have to pee at 5:30 in the morning. When I come back to bed, I reach for my big chunks of citrine and chrysocolla. I lie there, rocks held in my fists, body sprawled and comfortable, soft from sleep. I feel excited and happy. Even work thoughts don’t change that. I hear a raven calling nearby and the sound of morning traffic. I hear the pwitter of dove wings in the courtyard. The doves are polishing off what is left of yesterdays seeds. I feel reassured by dreams I don’t remember, my body fed by sleep, fortified, my heart soothed without knowing why. I prop myself up in bed to write and end up staring out the window. There is a small bird bouncing on the tip of a Palo Verde branch, a goldfinch maybe, or a verdin, lost amid the yellow blossoms. I am not yet wearing my glasses. Between that and the lingering softness of sleep, the world has no hard edges. I continue to drift on fuzzy thoughts, content. Later, fully immersed in the busyness of the day, I am stopped by the moon over my shoulder when I am coming in the gate. I pause, reminded, and pull that early morning softness to me, a shawl across my shoulders.

After Shavasana (51)

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When I lie on my side on the yoga mat after Shavasana sometimes it’s so easy. There is a sense of rightness. I am full of trust. Other times I feel aching and vulnerable. Maybe I forget for a moment I am not alone. Or maybe it is an only child thing, or some more basic human ache, one puny human in this big big world? It doesn’t feel bad or wrong, not something needing to be fixed. I tend to close my eyes when I lie on my back in Shavasana, corpse pose. I drift off or sink in, depending on the day. Sometimes I am already moving on to the next thing I need to do. Today I surface on my mat with open eyes, the Palo Verde branches framed against the sky, tears rolling down the sides of my face.

A New Moose (50)

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Sunday afternoon the sun comes out in the middle of a hard rain. I look for a rainbow. I think of my father. “Oh,” I tell the cats. “A new moose is born.” I am excited. My father taught me this when I was three or four, an old Native American legend. The rain falls even harder. I hear it on my neighbor’s awning, watch the slanting fall of it through the sliding glass door. The sun gets brighter. “Oh,” I say, enchanted. “Maybe it’s more than one moose.” Then I grin. “Or maybe it’s a really big moose.”

Grace (49)

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I wake up at 4:30 in the morning because Sofia is having trouble. I get up to give her more for her pain. On my way back to bed I see the almost full March moon hovering above our mountains on its way to the other side of the world. I stand by the sliding glass door and watch it, grateful to be awake to see it. After, I lie in bed awake, wrestling with my ongoing trouble with a colleague. These thoughts morph into worries about my job. What will happen if our nonprofit falters? Then I remember I don’t need to be afraid. I can trust the universe. Everything will be okay. I am curled up on my right side, Sable’s warm weight a comfort against my back. For a moment, I know I am held. Safe. Loved. It is like rolling onto my side on the yoga mat after Shavasana. I always lie there for a while, letting things sift through me, before I sit up and bow. “Namaste,” I whisper. The sky is beginning to lighten when I drift back to sleep.