by Ayesha Siddiqui

January
We take a walk in the Medina
Once mighty
Now a bed of exposed stone
Her sun bleached backbone
Snaking the path ahead
Does she dream anymore
Her stripped banks rise twenty feet
A songbird startles in a rare puddle
The trees, pebbles quiet
Too tired for even a sad song.
by Ayesha Siddiqui

January, in the Northern Hemisphere, is a time that no one escapes. Despite sunshine or snowfall, we all are contained within the glumness of short days, the weight of having to take down our holiday decorations, with no merriment in sight for months. It’s a time of perhaps too much contemplation, wondering if no rain yet this season means weeks of cloud cover and storms, if the land we walk on will remain recognizable even a decade from now.

All around us it feels empty. Branches, bushes, banks of rivers, it is all without. Perhaps this is why humans created time this way. Emptiness is the beginning. What else could it be? That is what January provides.

Resolutions and any sort of push towards accomplishment feel antithetical to what the season asks from us. Writers absorb the world around them. The jade bush outside your door is not flowering, yet you expect yourself to somehow have a thousand blooms overnight.

For those getting ready to start another year again on the page, here is an offering:

1) There will be emptiness
2) Then contemplation
3) Then words
4) Then the beginning of something, again.

This is my last blog for 2024.  As the Thanksgiving weekend closes and we enter the December holidays, there’s a lingering nostalgia for the end of many things.  The hardest part is letting go.  

I have to say it, as it’s the elephant in the room.  Yes, there will be a new president, and a lot of changes will rock my world and your world.  The day after the election, I was teaching a Yin Yoga and Meditation class.  In the first asana, “Sukasana” (Easy Pose), I asked the participants to unfold their legs and do the opposite fold of what they normally do.  It’s uncomfortable in the beginning, but it’s also healthy to balance the body by doing the opposite of our habits.  First we become aware of our habits, and secondly, we can grow and be more resilient as we work through our discomfort in the asana.  Letting go is a powerful tool. 

Our mode of thinking is also a habit.  I noticed this afternoon, as I struggled to put a latch lock on the door of a chicken coop, my mind was looking to blame others for my “suffering”.  I didn’t have an electric drill, so I had to hammer the nails into the pressed plywood, which was ungiving.  I pounded and pounded with mighty effort and I wasn’t making any effect. I blamed my friend who put the “wrong” lock on the door.  I blamed the Home Depot employee who sold me the wrong kind of nails.  I blamed Bruno for dying.  I noticed my thought pattern of blame and the resulting resentment and frustration.

There was about an hour and half left of natural light, and I had to fix this problem.  I needed to install the latch to protect my chickens from the two humungous and fearless raccoons I saw last night.  I need a man to do this work, or someone with strong shoulders and arms.  My neighbor Alvin and his wife Dora helped me.  He brought over his power drill and the job was done in less than ten minutes.  

Incidentally, I met Alvin the summer of 2018, the year Bruno died.  Alvin saw me walking a white German Shepherd, Batman.  He recognized the dog.  He asked if it was the same dog of the Frenchman, and why hadn’t he seen him for a while.  I told him about the fatal accident, and his face was in shock.  Since that day he and his wife have been wonderful neighbors and friends to me.

January 15th, 2024 will be seven years since Bruno died. I have an inkling there’s some truth to the cycle of 7 years. In Kundalini yoga, the belief is the consciousness shifts every 7 years (https://serpentine.yoga/the-7-year-cycle-of-consciousness-explained/.) Rudolf Steiner also had a theory for the 7 year cycle (https://beduwen.com/2015/01/29/seven-year-cycles/.) Noting also about the cycle of 7 in the natural world as in:

• 7 days in the week
• 7 notes on the musical scale
• 7 directions (left, right, up, down, forward, backward, center)

In the past, nearly 7 years, I have been learning about surrender and letting go in a profound way in my body and consciousness.  I’ve been weathering some health issues and a shift in my consciousness has been helping me heal.

There’s also something about this clip from the 2003 documentary, “Born Rich”, by Jamie Johnson that fits into the puzzle of making connections between juxtapositions of different realities and surrender. Jamie Johnson is an heir of the Johnson & Johnson wealth.

Rich kids do not choose to be born into that privilege. Some of them, interviewees in the film, have accepted their “occupation” without thinking too deeply about their circumstances. But Jamie Johnson was different. He interviewed his family, friends and acquaintances about being born rich. What they all thought and felt were taboo for polite conversation or any intimate dialogue. I am far removed from that society, but what he revealed about that world and what resonated with me, in his words below, are the humanness of hiding and wanting to fit in whilst breaking from the mold to be your own self.

Here’s a transcript starting at: 1:04:33

Replace the words “rich” and “privilege” with finding love, living love, losing love, and redefining love.  I’ve inherited some hard stuff and some good stuff too. What I’m earning is experience and learning to cope with change by letting go and knowing the wisdom of surrendering without resistance so that I am able to move towards positive changes.

Soon a “milestone” birthday will be upon me.  My longtime Danish friend, Michael, made me laugh when he asked in a supposed tactful way, “Isn’t December when you upgrade to version X.0?”  (I’ll let you guess what X represents.)  Michael and I are both from the tech world, so I responded, “I need a rollout plan.”

It’s true.  I don’t have a rollout plan.  It was only today that I started to think about what to do for my birthday.  What is a milestone birthday?  Isn’t every birthday a milestone, anyway?  Isn’t everyday a milestone?  I know some people who are grateful for every morning they awaken.  The ones I remember who talk like this are enthusiastic and humble people.   

It may sound arrogant of me to say that I don’t feel old, because I haven’t yet matured.

What is maturity?  If I were to identify as a bottle of red wine (of the bolder variety), then I am not yet ready to be uncorked.  I need a few more knocks on my head and turned upside down before I “grow up”.  

I’m not seeking adventure, but seeking a transcendence in consciousness.  When the upgrade to version X.0 happens then I want to be able to have plasticity in attitude that I can still be open to seeing life through a different pair of lenses.  

It would be a little like the movie “Groundhog Day”.  Each morning, I wake up and relive the day until I “get it right”.

I don’t feel the need to go to a destination place to find myself.  I can do that work right where I am, day in and day out.  Where I go, there I am, always.  

On Thanksgiving I had a chance to try an excellent bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon from the Stag’s Leap District.  I would be deeply satisfied to share this wine, some flavorful cheeses, butter and honest bread (i.e. simple ingredients and handmade) on my birthday.  It would be special to share it meaningfully with other people who wouldn’t know it was my birthday, while my dog is lazing around; the kittens making mischief; and the roosters crowing while the hens scratch for worms and bugs.

It would be better that the others didn’t know.  It would just be a gathering to enjoy the moment with good food, good wine and conversation.  Another day of chop wood, fetch water.  It’ll be another day to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Countdown to the next hype
Overflowing the senses
Never satiated enough
To pause for 
A breath
Digestion & absorption
Rest
Turkey bones simmering
While creating holiday gift list
Lucky enough to be broke enough
Walking the dog in the park
Pine cones gnawed to the core
Kids on bikes, skateboards and razors 
Pumping on the track
Laying down the tracks 
to inhabit Mars
Dog rolls on the grass
Burying wet nose into dark earthly smells
I, sinking sitz bones down 
Closing eyes
Letting go
Bob is reminded of people past 
Every Thanksgiving
Later, Laura, his wife, texts
We look forward to reading your blog
Hey, I thought about you two
While I sat on the grass
With my dog
At the park
Emptying my mind
Escaping that empty feeling.

Before I start, I’ve already said too much.

Finally, I was able to quiet my mind and center myself to apply myself to this task – write. Last night, a friend asked “Are you still writing?” Yes, I still write, but mostly journaling. To write something outside of journaling has been hard for me. I still write, because it fills my well. I started journaling at age 9 and have not stopped since.   

I had a writing mentor, a memoirist, who said, “Writing is a muscle, and like any muscle needs to be exercised.” 

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is a part of the brain associated with writing. “This region of the brain is responsible for orchestrating thoughts and actions in accordance with internal goals. Many authors have indicated an integral link between a person’s will to live, personality, and the functions of the prefrontal cortex.” (Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefrontal_cortex)

Writing this blog is more effortful than journaling, because I make more conscious effort to construct sentences and a flow that is recognizable, understandable, and meaningful, unlike stream of consciousness writing. 

After losing Bruno very unexpectedly, almost seven years ago this coming January 2025, I was in a state of waking coma for roughly 18 months.  When I began to be functional, I noticed that something was off in my mental and emotional reactions to situations.  The trauma had affected my brain, and the effects I noticed were the inability to find words and make associations between things as easily as I use to do.  My speech pattern was slow as I tried to find the words to formulate them into a sequence to communicate effectively.

I found meditation effective to regulate my trauma. Like journaling, I started meditating at a young age of 14. Among the many gifts of meditating is being an observer of my thoughts and emotions.  In meditation, I enter in a state of non-duality as an observer without judgement. 

When I write, I enter the world of duality, because words are distinct.  Words are intended to categorize and organize and make concrete what our mind conceptualizes, hence “words live in duality”.  It has both the proclivity to divide and to unite as words can define and identify.

The words make a statement, but are symbols and imagery perhaps more powerful than words in the human psyche? A name is an elevated form of word.  In the bible, Moses speaks to God.

Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name? ‘ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.

Exodus 3:13-15 New International Version (NIV)

In 1993, Prince announced that he would no longer go by the name Prince, but rather by a “Love Symbol” which was a mash-up of the gender symbols for man and woman. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36107590

It is an unpronounceable symbol whose meaning has not been identified. It’s all about thinking in new ways, tuning in 2 a new free-quency. – Prince

There is a backstory to the reason he changed his name, but for the purpose of this blog, his reason was he wanted to encourage new ways of thinking and vibrate to a higher frequency.  Tibetan Buddhism uses images to promote healing.  For example, meditating upon the Green Tara (aka Dolma which means “to free something,” “to be free,” “the method of freeing”.)

There are different methods to engage in this meditation.  One is to focus the awareness on the image of Dolma, as in the thangka below. Another would be a guided meditation with spoken words. The meditator creates the stage with her imagination.  This method allows for spaciousness as the images evoked by the meditator is unique to their creation, for example, variances in the shades of green and the forms of Dolma.

“Goldilocks and the Three Bears” tells of Goldilocks’ experience of discovering the “Middle Way”. She eats from a big bowl of porridge “too hot”, then a medium bowl of “too cold” and a smaller bowl of “just right”. The story continues to the chair and the bed that were too hard and too soft, until she finds comfort in the one that was just right. The author, Robert Southey, had known of some translations and read Shakuntala (from the Mahabharata) and the Bhagavad Gita.   In Mahāyāna Buddhism, the “Middle Way” refers to the insight into śūnyatā (“emptiness“) that transcends the extremes of existence and non-existence.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Way) 

One of the main reasons the Gita is so cherished is it promotes and discusses the middle path of yoga.  Krishna advocates to Arjuna that the ascetic life is both a difficult and unnecessary practice. “Krishna recommends the path of Karma Yoga or selfless service as the superior and quickest path to realizing the Divine.” ref: https://www.yogabasics.com/learn/bhagavad-gita/

Reaching the Divine is a state of enlightenment.  There is a method of yoga known as Jnana Yoga, the path of knowledge.  This is what Ramana Maharishi taught.  He spoke rarely.  Whenever a new devotee sought his teachings in person, he communicated in silence.  His message is that we are all already enlightened.  We are already divine. Our ignorance (or maya) blocks the awakening to our natural state of enlightenment. 

We can practice being precise with our words, but it could still create miscommunication because the listener or reader of the words absorbs the meaning through the filters of the mind.  A controversy surfaced in the news about Miss Universe representing Denmark, Victoria Kjaer Theilvig, because she was lip synching a Jay Z rap song “Empire State of Mind”⁣ with the n-word. I don’t know the intent of the TikTok video, so I wouldn’t venture on an opinion.

There is the conceptual mind and the “dream mind” according to Tibetan dream master, Tarah Tulku. “Dream mind” is always active. To experience the “dream mind” requires working with dreams so as to be aware of it during the waking state. If not aware that the “dream mind” is active, we can mistake a waking perception as actuality, when in actuality, the “perception” is a waking dream. Ref: “The History of Last Night’s Dream” by Rodger Kamenetz.

The impulse to write came from recognizing the power of words. There was a period when I couldn’t write what I felt, so I withdrew into journaling. Images and symbols are universal and emotes deeper meanings that are beyond words. Lately, I’ve been doing more sketching and drawing. It’s also become popular to “color”. Coloring books for adults have become popular. There are also mandala coloring books. The Mayo Clinic in 2022 stated “Coloring is a healthy way to relieve stress. It calms the brain and helps your body relax.”

1. Colette Madame Collette is an Algerian-born mystic of the Kabbalah tradition, with whom Rodger Kamenetz studied with to research his book “The History of Last Night’s Dream” ↩︎

To me, there is something primal about Thanksgiving. It is primal to nourish the body with food. The tribe gathers together to eat. There is a humility in this ritual. The ritual can be daily or like today, seasonal.

Elevating the ritual is acknowledging the blessings of a good harvest from the fruits of our labor and gathering with family and friends and to be thankful for it.

Food. Family & Friends. Gratitude.

Simple is good for the soul.

Happy Thanksgiving.

by Kitty Felde

I’ve done a lot of different kinds of writing in my life. Playwriting, of course. Fan fiction back when I was in 8th grade, a stab at a romance novel in high school, essays, letters to the editor, grant writing, a historical romance, a middle grade mystery series, an adaptation of Nikolai Gogol short stories, blogs, newsletters, and thirty years of journalism.

This month, I was asked to write an obituary for my father.

My father was a quiet man, sanguine, supportive of my theatre career even if he was the audience member snoring through the second act when I was onstage. He ditched my mother in the middle of his mid-life crisis, but I get along with his second wife. He could fix anything.

But how to sum all of that up in an obituary that would offend no one?

There were so many holes to fill. Did I have to write about him starting out his career selling insurance for ships? Did I have to mention that he flunked statistics in college? Were any of his contemporaries still alive to enjoy tales from his younger days?

I started to compile family stories from my six younger siblings. It turned into a therapeutic group text, with old pictures and hilarious stories I’d never heard. Could I include them all?

I didn’t want it to be dry and formulaic. I’d read some really wonderfully funny obituaries of late, but outright belly laughs was not what I had in mind. Yet I couldn’t help the humor that kept popping up on my computer screen.

I realize now that this is the reason we write plays: to tell our family stories in a form that won’t bore the audience. We suss out the drama in our personal history, with complete permission to rewrite it the way we want it.

Perhaps someday, my father will show up in one of my plays or books. For now, he’s memorialized in the form he requested: a simple obituary in the Los Angeles Times.

(If you’d like to read the obit, see below.)

Tom Felde
1929-2024

Tom Felde was born third in a family of seven children – six boys and a girl. His parents drove from Chicago to California on their honeymoon in a Model T Ford. (A journey his daughter and niece are recreating in a 2025 podcast.)

Tom was a gifted athlete – a gift none of his children inherited – and attended Loyola University on an athletic scholarship, playing football and baseball. College was interrupted by two years in the Army, where he was posted in Cold War Germany, writing letters home requesting extra funds and more Sees candy.

He married a girl from Immaculate Heart College named Patricia Jaeger in 1952 and they started their own family of seven, again 6 boys and 1 girl, with a little help from the LA County adoption services.

Tom was active in his church, singing in the choir while clipping his kids’ fingernails, cooking spagetti for the 50/50 raffle nights. He and Pat were social activists and refused to follow the white flight out of Compton.

He could fix anything. Especially bicycles. Not one of his seven children ever had a store bought bike. Instead, they rode refurbished models, fashioned from the bits and pieces from old cycles. He was forever remodeling the house. A table saw sat in the middle of the family room for thirteen years.

He acquired the nickname “Pops” along the way, named after the patriarch in the Speed Racer cartoon series. Pops was notoriously frugal. He refused to hand out quarters for hot showers at the Grand Canyon. When the family VW bus broke down on the way to an annual camping trip, instead of hiring a tow truck, he used coat hanger wire to attach the bumper to the back of a VW bug and towed it down the hill himself, the entire seatbelt-less family riding in the van behind him.

There’s a Billy Joel song that has the lyric: “Tom was a real estate novelist.” Except instead of fiction, Tom wrote the text book which for decades most Californians used to pass the state’s real estate exam. He was a self published author long before it was popular and continued to ship books from his garage until he was well into his 90’s.

After a divorce, Tom lived on a boat for a time, and in 1992, married Manhattan Beach native Cindy Hill. Despite public protestations that he didn’t like cats, they acquired a series of felines. Tom even named one after himself. They remained a happy couple the rest of his life.

Eventually, Tom ran out of gas and at age 95, two days before Election Day, he died. But not before casting his vote by mail.

He is survived by his wife Cindy, brothers John and Peter, children Kitty, Mitch, Matt, Danny, Jerry, Alex, and Dominic, grandchildren Lynnette, Shane, Trevor, Logun, Hunter, Drake, and Rena, and great-grandchildren Olivia, Noah, Amelia, and Lauren. A funeral mass will be held at St. Martha Catholic Church in Murrietta on December 3rd.

Grief, healing, white female violence
shattered mirrors, tainted vows.
She’s reminded hard questions require slow answers. 

The woman sits with herself.
Grief lingers, she lets it live, lets it transform.

To sit with herself demands time, stillness, silence.
She studies old relationships—
professional, personal—
and releases what no longer serves her.
The heavy bricks that once drowned her every step,
now lay buried.

Instead of stuffing her face with food, she cannot name —she fuels herself with knowledge. Research, rest, reading,
recovering from the seen and unseen.
It becomes easier, lighter,
to release what does not sustain.

She allows grief to become a friendly foe.
She laments—– wails until her body crumples and warps– until she can no longer move, until stillness takes hold.

The storm passes,
Now able to breathe she welcomes the new season. 

The aromatic smell of fall florets frees her mind from any fears.
The air of a new season greets her, filling her lungs with courage.

She inhales the fresh air.

She lets grief live and shift.
She turned generations of white female violence into art.
She freed herself from the weight of desperate, toxic ties.

To recoup, to sit with, to examine eleven years in the work

To perform in various mediums that feed the work. 

She remembers she can fly.

She reclaims her time.
She remembers her power.
She reclaims her voice.

Time. A welcoming friend no longer feared.

She now welcomes him with open arms—-

an open portal that freezes and flows.