Category Archives: Choice

In which we discuss infinite realities and thought manifestation.

Dec9

bombay to kerala… om!

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bombay to kerala… om!

hari om… so… we last left our heroine in bombay… (that sounds so strange to say–like we stashed our smack in an alley in india) she was just finishing a performance of her new comedy show “eat, pray, laugh” along with her comedian friend samson at the jewish community center. she–ok, i–was worried that the indian jews wouldn’t really enjoy or understand the racier bits of my indian travel tales… but it turns out that those were the parts they enjoy the most. i capture most of the show on my awesome canon elph camera, which i then leave in a rickshaw the next day, along with all the other photos i took in england of jasper and i. jasper is six weeks old and adorable.

letting go

i am sad for a couple of days about losing the photos. and the camera too. it served me well on my last trip to india. so now i am learning lesson number 8,341 on letting go. but like i’m actually getting it. i mourned the loss, and then i got that, hey, this shit is all temporary. and it’s a great addition to my losses. meaning, now i don’t have a laptop, a cell phone, or a camera to distract me from what’s right in front of my nose. nothing exists but here and now. and what i’m seeing in the here and now with my eyes is also marginal on the reality scale.

whispering woods

co-incidence of strange co-incidences, the method acting teacher i studied with for four years, who has never been to india, is in bombay the exact same week that i’m here. i visit him at the film school where he’s teaching and sit in on a couple of classes. the studio is called whispering woods, and it’s like the canyon in LA. lush, green, undeveloped. i even get to do a deathbed scene while a kind of famous (so i’m told) actor is in the class. talked with some of the other professors there and the head of the film school and might get to teach a class on standup the next time i’m in the hood.

anandashram

i remember sam and his sister alice dropping me off at the train station, but i don’t remember anything about the ride. all i know is that it was overnight and i arrived in khanangad as the sun was coming up. one of my kirtan heroes, krishna das, told me after a concert that there’s a place in india where they chant “om sri ram jai ram jai jai ram” continuously. an ashram called anandashram. so that’s where i’m going. i arrive and somehow i’m not in the guest book, but they let me stay anyway–give me a private room and everything. and it’s a very special time to be there because a saint from tamil nadu (a state in india) is visiting for several days named thuli baba. i’ve never heard of him until now, but it’s very exciting. after each meal, i have the opportunity to have satsang and prasad with his group of devotees. the skinniest, frailest, loudest cat i’ve ever seen curls up next to thuli baba every day. they tell me that the cat was a guru in the last life and is working out some heavy karma for the world by coming back as this cat and not eating.

sun and moon

friends of my friend haridas bring me to the ocean to see the sunset and the full moon rise on the opposite side of the earth. i climb the mountain behind the ashram and leave all my worries there hanging in a tree. letting go for the 8,342nd time. you know what they say… “8,342nd time’s a charm!” the next day (or the day before… who knows!) my german friend sandra and i are walking back from a beautiful little temple in a field and we pass the cows’ maternity ward. on the ground is a five-minute old calf being licked by its mother. they milk the mamma cow and i peer into the giant milk pail of colostrum saying, “whoa.” “you like?” the guy says. the next morning they knock on my door with some cake for me made from coconut milk, sugar, and this thick cow colostrum–let me tell you–i have never eaten anything more rich. plus, when i was trying to “om” it started coming out as “moo” that day.

i joke!

i’m getting daily two-hour massages from these two young women with medicinal hot oil. after five days, it actually gets to be kind of boring! they don’t speak much english, so i’m cracking them up with my mime humor for two hour straight. “cheery” means smile in malayalam. and “tamasha” means joke. (these words strangely come in handy later when i’m being harassed at the train station.) “ichally” means ticklish and “idally” is a kind of breakfast rice dumpling. and they kind of rhyme so i’m just saying “ichally, idally, ichally, idally…” there’s nothing funnier than jokes between people who don’t speak the same language. i’m joking with gestures about how the oil they’re using smells like cooking oil and that i’m afraid all this basting means they’re going to cook me for dinner… and on and on…… stuff that’s way funnier without words.

i know by ths time in my trip that i’ll be spending more time in india in this life. it calls.

i hope your day of giving thanks was full of grace. i have returned from my time in india and i’m back in the bay, so blessed in so many ways. have a gander at the next installment of my adventures below… more to come about Tiruvanamalai in my next note..

In the meantime, I invite you to join Suzette Hibble, Erin Brandt and I, for the next Creativity, Sexuality, and Spirituality Workshop! Please register for the December 10th workshop event with me if you’re interested–soon–it is filling up–only a few spots left!

Namaste,
Alicia

Dec9

Trapsing: Oxford, London, Bombay…

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Trapsing: Oxford, London, Bombay…

Dear Lovies: (as they say in England)

The last ten days have been a whirlwind. As I type, roosters a cockadoodledoo-ing at 1:30 am. Wild dogs, doing the same. I don’t know if their internal clock is off, or there is some weird Indian breed of rooster who crows when the sun is down instead of up… Everything else is “backwards” here, so why not add farm animals to the list.

I arrived in Oxford, via Heathrow ten days ago and stayed with my friends Christina and Brian, of new baby fame. Their six-week old bundle of joy is named Jasper, and we shot the shit (metaphorically and literally) all week. We all laughed and played and I learned that much of the external Harry Potter scenes were filmed right in Oxford. Which is why I kept expecting to see the students pull magic wands out of their matriculation robes and say something Latin-sounding, and no, not the salsa kind of Latin.

Visited Avebury, an energy center similar to Stonehenge, but way quieter and way cooler. Went to a local sustainability conference and festival. Ate amazing beef lasagna (even though I don’t do that.) Roasted a chicken for the first time.

In London, I hung out with friends I met last year at Sivananda ashram in India. I went on a date with a cute Irish guy (whom I’d met on the plane when I was coming home from Costa Rica.) Navigated the Tube, ate apple cinnamon cake with clotted cream.

Did TWO comedy shows in London–thanks to my friend Paul, who I met in India. One was at a pub in the theatre district, one was with some really good comics in East Dullich (sp?) ALso had a drink at the famous Ivy Room (though I didn’t spot any celebs) with a theatre producer before flying out to Bombay in the morning.

Last night I flew into Bombay at 12:30 am. Negotiated several hours of immigration lines, security checks, swine flu checks, and then night time in the city that’s never sleepy–my taxi driver didn’t know where Thane was–or speak English–or have a mobile phone–so every few minutes we’d stop and ask some more rickshaw drivers where Thane, Balkum, and Runwal Garden City are. I was about to give up and look for a hotel instead of trying to get to my friend Sam’s house when a guy on a motorcycle led the way and we finally arrived, sans cell.

The most amazing thing here has been not having a cell phone for the last ten days, and having sporadic email access. It’s so freaking liberating. Of course I’m aware of how much I use my iPhone. Every four minutes, I check something. What to do without all the checking? Without Googling something when it comes up and I don’t know the “answer”. Just something to chew on… I’m hoping that when I return, and set up a new place to live, I’ll create a new structure for my life, with my new home as my alter, and my iPhone as my bitch. And not the other way around. \
Oh, BTW, I just did “Eat, Pray, Laugh!” in Bombay tonight with my fellow comic Sam Koletkar at the Jewish Community Center here in India, and we rocked it! What awesome fun! All the bits I was scared they’d be offended by were the ones they laughed the hardest at! (Pics to follow–it’s hard to upload on vacation.)

Namaste,
Alicia

P. S. Want to get my updates and info by email? Send me your address… I’ll put you on my list!

Nov18

Thank God Obama Won (so I can get back to worrying about myself)

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Thank God Obama Won (so I can get back to worrying about myself)

You caught me with my morals down.  I’m another relieved armchair liberal.  Yes, I’m going to keep buying organic produce, turning off the faucet when my boyfriend leaves it on for no reason, and only recycling paper bags by putting bottles and paper in them to transfer them to the recycling bin.  And I’m breathing a sigh of relief that maybe the next four years won’t be as terrifying as the last eight have been.  Did you read the salon.com article about how the Gen-X’ers are sorry for hating on the Boomers?  It was great.  And, yes, I do feel a swell of hope–hope that Barack will lead us, unite us, bring understanding and dialogue within the country as well as around the world.

I have hope that the crumbling of financial institutions lead to the kind of dissillusionment that real truth and real care for the land and people we need.  I have hope that the rise in oil prices will finally spark the development of alternative energy sources–that someday soon, they won’t be “alternative” sources–that solar and wind power will be the plain-old, everyday way we power up (kind of like when alternative music became mainstream and everybody in tenth grade, even the jocks, were listening to the cure and pearl jam and dying their hair black and this turned high school upside down.)  I want to turn high school upside down.

Aug9

Paris Hilton for President? Now, that’s comedy!

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Paris Hilton for President? Now, that’s comedy!


So here’s what happened: John McCain launched an internet attack ad against Barack Obama suggesting Obama is not a suitable presidential candidate because he’s as empty a celebrity as Paris Hilton.  So, Adam McKay thought it would be funny if Paris Hilton ran for president, with the comedy logic that an intellectually capable Paris would nullilfy and make ridiculous McCain’s attack. (Pardon me for explaining the joke.)

So, Adam wrote a presidential candidacy announcement, got Paris on board and they shot it this week.  It’s the first time Paris really speaks publicly with any substance whatsoever, and she pulls it off pretty well.  But really, Adam McKay?  Your ghostwriting has Paris suggest an energy policy that’s a “combination of McCain’s and Obama’s” in which we do drill for offshore oil (McCain’s idea) “safely” (McKay’s idea) which will sustain us until we sufficiently develop alternative energy sources (Obama’s idea.)

First off, the idea of safe offshore drilling is dubious at best; no oil drilling is free of leaks, accidents, etc, and many of those problems are never made public.  Secondly, any offshore drilling started now won’t yield oil for another twenty to forty years–how does that sustain us or reduce gas prices now?  Thirdly, we’ve already got a host of alternative energies that are ready for development; this is the time to change.  LA Times journalist Carol Williams reported Schwarzenegger as saying, “Anyone who tells you [offshore drilling] would bring down gas prices any time soon is blowing smoke.”

If we don’t shift our energy use to alternative fuels in twenty to forty years, we’ll be much more likely to be gearing up to fight China for the oil left in the Middle East.  Our offshore oil should really be saved for the the next hudred generations of people, or sadly, saved in the case that we end up, say, waring with China for a hundred years, which would undoubtedly be directly or indirectly caused by fear and scarcity over resources.

So, thanks, Adam, for the good intentions, but it’d be funnier if Paris slammed down a hardcore energy policy instead of a hollywood one.

Handy-Dandy Energy Facts that Suggest Alternative Fuel Development is a Better Idea than Offshore Drilling:  US Vehicle turnover rate: 15 years
US Average age of vehicles: 9 years
Soonest possible time we’ll get any US offshore oil: 7 years
Number of oil spills for offshore drilling off the Texas coast: 187 spills of MORE THAN 2100 gallons between 1981 – 2005. That’s AT LEAST 392,000 gallons of crude oil, or roughly 16,000 gallons spilled every year.

With the US average vehicle age of 9.2 years, and average turnover rate of 15 years, in the time it takes to see any benefit from offshore drilling, we could be halfway to a green energy car fleet — which would drop the demand for oil and have the same price benefit for those still driving gasoline cars as increasing the supply of gasoline! (If that doesn’t make any sense to you, folks, please, PLEASE, go take an Economics 101 class at your local community college, or read Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan or Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner.)

Aug30

Timesuck Top 10

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Timesuck Top 10

10. Considering writing a blog. Write the dumb blog. It’ll only be sand-blasted into the internet forever. Your words will likely be at once un-losable and lost; probably no one will ever read them, but everyone will be able to forever.

9. Considering “becoming an expert” on something (thanks to the internet, I made my cat an expert on pet products, and she’s threatening to book more speaking engagements than me.) Read the rest of this entry →