Riding a boat on the Chao Phraya River

was almost flooded when we were there. very close. Lots of floods and Typhoons happening that side of the world last month. We skirted them all, fortunately.

Moonrise in Bangkok

Staying at the historic Oriental Hotel on the banks of the Chao Phraya River.
what a site...

Sunday in the Sky

The bright yellow leaves of fall fell from the trees, and the weather turned from warm to crisp chilling out the evening air so much that one was inclined to shiver. We decided to follow suit. We left our home in Aspen, and the namesake, nearly naked, Aspen trees, for places that promised heat and humidity and languages created from symbols we could not even recognize.
Thailand is a place that is beyond anything I have known. There are parts of a known universe – the climate feels like Hawaii, I have eaten their food and even practiced the ancient style of bodywork that bears the country’s name, but beyond that, the curly style of the Thai alphabet and the sounds that come from the curious and courteous populous are completely foreign.
There is complete chaos outside on the streets and such a relative calm within the confines of the Amanpuri Resort where we relax on the beach, searching out a cloud in the blue sky and digging our feet in the sand.



We are attended to by throngs of eager staff who greet us with a cheerful “Swadee Ka” everywhere we go bringing their hands together into a prayer position in front of their chest, bowing and lowering their eyes. I find myself doing the same; the custom comes easily to me from the “Namaste” spoken and hands together in prayer at the end of each yoga class I teach or take.
My husband and I awoke here in Thailand on Monday with our heads still full of the clouds we were flying over since Friday night.
Sunday, it seems, never happened.
We slept through it hovering over the earth at 35,000 feet and lost it completely due to the 13-hour time difference between Colorado and Thailand.




Sunday in the Sky: it was full of dreams and disasters (I always dream of dying while flying strangely), turbulence and transfers.

What would have happened on that fateful lost Sunday? Is that the day I might have stopped thinking and talking about all my big ideas and I would have started doing something about them? Was it on that lost Sunday that I was going to make the connections I have been wanting to make? Is that the day my forlorn friends would decide to let go of that imaginary space that has been keeping us apart, would the resentment and judgment that we have held for each other have disappeared on the one day that didn’t actually exist in my lifetime?
The day that was lost in the clouds?
Is it possible my family would have figured out a way to find financial security on Sunday?
Is that the day the Japanese agreed to stop slaughtering dolphins or the day that little girls in Thailand, Cambodia and India were freed from the horrors of sex slavery?
Maybe I missed the binding agreement where all the nations of the world readily agreed that climate change was real and that we would all take drastic steps to reduce this evitable warming…
Were zoo animals, journalists and other innocent creatures in captivity freed?

Or, maybe I just slept through another day when I would have been dreaming - whether I was high in the sky or sitting on the earth, awake or asleep - surrounded by my ideas and hopes and my desire to change the world for good, but with the same foggy jet-lagged feeling keeping it from happening.

Maybe.

weather

Living with Intent
not expectations
every day


Imagine an Aspen forest, full of beautiful trees
and assign a loved one to each of those trees
knowing that, as an Aspen forest,
we are separate looking from above
but completely connected underneath

we are one

As you visualize the Aspen forest
imagine snow falling

soft and thick
watch as the snowflakes land on those Aspen trees
soaking in
gathering, building up
falling
melting absorbing and
eventually
flowing towards the sea
through so many rivers and streams

our life's journeys

the snowflakes are the intent

your intent

how do you live?
why do you do what you do?

what do you want?
why?

what are you striving for?

Remember
there could be something infinitely better in store for you
that you never even though of
don't get stuck
just put it out there and allow what is to be

see it

energy moving

visualize those snowflakes, your intent,
falling down on you from above

clarity
peace
compassion
wisdom
strength
success
freedom in thought and action

Be receptive enough to take it in
and let it melt into your skin
and see it falling and falling

infinitely

if it is meant to be
it will be

don't fight it

like the weather

we can't make it snow
but we do know

eventually

those flakes will fall

Intent

I want to live a life of impact and significance

I want to inspire those around me

I want

clarity
compassion
love
respect
peace

in my life
in yours

I want an end to suffering for all beings

I want freedom

for

women
in the world

I want health and happiness for my friends and family
I want Stephanie to be free from cancer
and my brother free to live

I want all the little beings to know
life is not about stuff

not about

"I want",

Ironically.

GG to GM

I am in the Glenwood Mall and I have gotten here very early. No, it is not for a super sale at JC Penney, it’s to wait in line behind 40 people to see the squatty dark-haired woman with her bifocals behind the desk at the DMV and to ask her kindly to change GG to GM. Please, and thank you.

I have grown up with this name, Gina Michele Guarascio, so that is who I am. And now, after a ceremony in the park, I am no longer GG - as I am referred to by many - but GM. Gina Murdock, wife of Mr. Jerry Murdock.

"Hello, it’s Gina Murdock, nice to meet you." Hmm, sounds funny.

"Welcome, Mrs. Murdock," they have said ever since I started dating Jerry and he took me to these wonderfully fancy hotels and on all of his business trips. So, it’s not like I haven’t been getting used to it for a year, but then I had to wait, until he actually “popped the question” and I could decide with a simple “yes” or “no” on that stunning white beach on Necker Island if I really wanted to be Mrs. Murdock or not. Before that day late last year I just toyed with the idea, played with it, dreamed of it, actually.

I remember liking the feeling of it.

So now I am Mrs. Murdock. I think of my mom who was a "so and so" before she became a Guarascio and I wonder how long it took her to get used to it. To me, she was always a Guarascio until I got old enough to know she was actually someone before she married my dad and simply became “mom”.

To me, these days, as I stutter with my new name and have to think through how I say it and how to write it, I can’t imagine ever forgetting this Gina Guarascio, the one before Mr. Murdock and the rest of my life.

If we have kids they will only know me as Gina Michele Murdock and they will only hear about GG and not really know about this girl who was such a student of life and always wondering and kissing people and playing and dressing up. But, what is it to live in the past with these memories of something I’m not. Something that was once human and is now only a story (RIP GG.)

It was a choice, surely, to go to the Social Security office and wait in line to tell them I am no longer me, and to go to the DMV and sit in that cushioned seat warmed by someone else’s butt before me for two hours as I waited for the machine-like people to say #110. It was my choice to send off dozens of letters to all the agencies that pretend to care in very official language saying, “I am no longer that person you knew.” That girl is gone.

I am starting to get over this compulsive urge to explain, to anyone I meet, “I just became a Murdock, really I am a Guarascio. I have been for 33 years.” I realize, no one cares and it’s just a name and I have the same fingerprints and official statements about height and weight on the identification cards, but it just doesn’t look right, that GM, does it?

There are the holdouts too, the ones who write, “I’m still going to call you GG, OK?” and I say, “of course,” like these must be my “real” friends, the only ones who loved the sound of two G’s so much that they won’t let it go, won’t let me go. But, I do feel it is time to go, a little bit. Marriage is about a whole lot more than a name change. It is the melding of traditions, less time with girlfriends and family and even pets, all that all goes to the back of the line, behind that new thing called Mr. Murdock.

It's the new thing that is the most important thing.

I said it out loud and in front of 150 people and because of that, because of those moments infused with ceremony and importance, I am more Murdock now than than Guarascio even after only 30 days. I committed myself to this person and I decided to have faith in him beyond all others, except myself, of course. One must always have faith, and love, for self before others, but the rest of it is the tangle of threads and veins and cartilage and emotions and dancing and striving that makes up a relationship, and no guru’s going to tell you two - the Guarascio/Murdock combination plate special – how to do it.

There is only faith and love and Murdock, from now on.

I lived as GG for 33 years.

And. So. But.

I lived in California for 17 years and now Colorado for 16 years, and even though California’s got one year on me here, I am more Colorado than California (like totally for sure dudes.) I felt that way pretty much the first time I set foot in this state and smelled the freshness and marveled at the blue of the sky and the green of the grass and heard the people who I didn't even know say “hello” and every once in a while, “howdy.” It was a feeling of knowing I was in the right place. And what a crazy and mysterious way I got to this state, I picked a place that I had never heard of to go and live and learn for four years and that turned into 16 years and will most likely turn into forever. But, I knew, and when you know you know.

I think I can say it with a bit more clarity now,

“I am Gina Michele Murdock, good to meet you.”

Because when you know, you know.

Hello Moon

(Point and Shoot cannot even begin to capture this. It was HUGE, really)

The moon stopped by on her way out of town this morning
First thing I saw when I woke up
an enormous glowing orb outside my window
sky pink
mountains white, already bright
I could see all the craters and shadows on the moon
she was closer than ever
just stopping by
before heading out

see you later. Moon