on being right

Sometimes I feel like I’m not enough.

Not smart enough.

Not fun enough.

Not cute enough.

Not worthy of anything better.

And so, sometimes, during those times when I feel I’m not enough, I sabotage myself from ever doing any better. The subconscious rationale is this: If I don’t amount to what I could amount to, then I am right about not being enough.  And being right somehow feels better to my silly head than being enough. I guess it’s a guarantee at being something.

everyone could see her if they wanted

The thing about it is: when she's left alone for too long, she only gets bigger. She gets louder and brighter and imagines more. It is as if she has no boundaries, for there is nothing but nothing to push out against and nothing pushes against her. So she expands and expands. Building songs, writing worlds, and visioning the impossibles as possible.

Although there are many who can't hear her footsteps, they gain volume as her gentle sway absorbs the shock of being ignored. The brightness of her reflections and imperfections add light to even the most hidden corners and bust through the least transparent surfaces.

from the lungs

I have no idea why sometimes I tighten and only slightly release when she breathes. It's a stuck feeling that moves into her eyebrows when I try to figure it out. I think she's scared. I think the world feels too big and she things that she can fit it in her arms. When will she ever figure it out?

You'd think breathing would make it easier. But sometimes it only gets harder, tighter, more complex.
Is it that I hold it all for her? That instead of releasing and letting go, I pull in?

She ate steak wheels last night. They were wrappings of hammered, flattened meat stuffed with spinach and garlicky butter. Some things are better all wrapped up in flattened, hammered meat, but spinach is not one of those things.  It gets soggy and grainy. Slimy even. The garlic and sodium infusions only mask the ickiness. The flavor infusions do not enhance the overall taste and instead become associated with slimy, icky spinach.

I wonder if that's how the fear works inside her heart?
It gets rolled and pummeled into the red flesh only to become a slimy mess.
The flavor-mocking achievement and keep-it-all-togetherness, like the garlic and sodium of the beef wrapped spinach,  are only associated with the terror.

benign vigilance

“When I was learning to drive,” says Gay Hendricks in his book The Big Leap, “I remember my instructor telling me that driving was more an art than a science. The key to the art, he said, was what he called ‘benign vigilance,’ or paying keen but relaxed attention to what your car and the other cars were doing in every moment.”

He uses this to describe the process of paying attention to one’s own personal process.  He is speaking specifically of attention to the ways we sabotage our own success, but I think we could use this “keen but relaxed attention” in all areas of our personal growth.  It sure is more fun than fixating, obsessing, and inflating the process. Or ignoring anything true about ourselves altogether.

what IS luck exactly?

Is it something really good that happens to us for no reason whatsoever?

Or, is it our ability to connect to the larger picture and find the opportunity - to engage with the universal super-highway and jump on board?

Or perhaps it is simply that we do the work to realize our goals?

It's out there.

There's enough to go around for all of us.

complete [moving]

Acrylic on 10x13 canvas.

An excerpt about being a human:

So, I had to make some agreements with myself in order to always be in agreement with myself. Meaning, in order to be the complete me all the time, I had to start talking about it and making it really clear to others what I am about so that I get to be me all the time. If they are the ones who can’t ‘come to terms’ with it or ‘question’ it, then that’s their process to deal with, not mine. I’m already complete. They are going to have to catch up whether they like it or not.

the new discrimination

 She said, “I think you are simply getting better at discrimination.”

Who would have thought that I would need to narrow my viewpoint?

I am the one who teaches others to widen theirs.

And yet, it makes perfect sense. I have been and still am in some sense, attached in a very unhealthy way to the world. I have heard about it my whole life.

My mother used to say things to me like, “Why are you always helping everyone else?” or, “Why don’t you focus on your self more?”

And she was onto something. I have always been a people pleaser. A helper. A Hero. 

I have traditionally been the go-to person for those in need – or I made myself the go-there person to those who I thought were in need.

exercise 14

You can't see my face because although I am calmly sitting on a rock at the shore of the lake,

             I am going full speed ahead.

I am looking over the times past and the times to come, you see?

I see the space above the water and over the hills.

I see the murk beneath the surface and the light shining through.

I fly over the mountains ahead and across the entire continent.

Then over the seas and over the wars

             above all the happenings, good or bad

Right back to where I am, where you see the back of my head.

So, you see - I'm right here looking at you too.

It's just that I see so much before you.

un-random haiku

i do recommend

to give yourself most freely

and just enjoy it

the first wed in october

The supervolcano of Fort Collins is inside my chest this morning, working its way up to the top of my head, into my fingertips and toes, wandering through my veins and out my pores. I am thinking too hard and am unable to feel for I am reeling in distractions of logic and problem solving, my two favorite diversions. I can’t wrap my head around my emotions, nor can I wrap my emotions around my head. I am simply restless.

I want to build some metal things, to walk into my garage and turn on a blowtorch as an alchemist of decorative wares. I want to pull out a notebook and write to the future, where the notes I’ve scribbled will be found by my kin when they are cleaning out the attic some springtime years from now. I want to put paint to canvas with the whirl of a brush and have it hung on someone’s bathroom wall.

discreetly whispering "Come and Get It" [very loudly from across the country, atop a mountain while disregarding work for 2 weeks]

In his amazingly hilarious and acutely accurate weekly horoscopes, Rob Brezsny speaks to a part of me that no other human has yet to influence. This week, he had this to say:

*Allure* magazine sought out Luca Turin and
Tania Sanchez, the women who wrote the book *Perfumes: The A to Z
Guide.* "What are the sexiest-smelling perfumes of all time?" they asked.
Turin and Sanchez said Chinatown was at the top of their list. Their
explanation: "If wearing Opium is like walking around with a bullhorn
shouting, 'Come and get it!', Chinatown is like discreetly whispering the
same thing." The Chinatown approach is what I recommend for you in the
coming weeks, Pisces.

Well, Rob - I am all for this.  And although my words may be in a discreet whisper of sweet somethings into the ear of someone who really matters, my actions will not be discreet at all.

I'd rather be here now

I saw it on an SUV turning the corner to go to the library. There was a luggage rack AND a bike rack with 3 bikes on the hitch, a boat rack on the top and the insides was brimming with luggage and grocery bags. I thought to myself, "yeah, you've got everything you need to be exactly where you are whenever you are there," before I really got the message.

Most bumper stickers say "I'd rather be fishing" or some other sort of thing, truly showing how victimized the driver is for HAVING to be wherever s/he is at the moment that they are not doing that thing they'd rather be doing  - but this one says "I'd rather be here now." 

I'd rather be HERE than anywhere else, and NOW over any other time, is really taking responsibility for one's actions [and being completely prepared for anything while there, like a ride in the park].

It is saying, "I have all the tools I need to be right here right now. For WHEREVER i go, THERE I am and whatever happens is whatever I need to experience in this moment [plus, I've got all the power to be somewhere else if I REALLY wanted to be, but i am still choosing here]."

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