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]."

...

practicing for eligible

"There's so much more to who you are than you know right now. You are, indeed, something mysterious and someone magnificent. You hold within you - secreted for safekeeping in your heart - a great gift for this world. Although you might sometimes feel like a cog in a huge machine, that you don't really matter in the great scheme of things, the truth is that you are fully eligible for a meaningful life, a mystical life, a life of the greatest fulfillment and service."

- Bill Plotkin in Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche

Read more about Bill Plotkin here 

The part that strikes me is the "you are fully eligible." I'm not sure what LIFE feels is like for other people (gosh, I'll never know that), but I have certainly not seen how eligible I am to the world of experience for most of my life. I have been locked in a state of fear and was therefore ineligible for much of life's true experiences. There were all sorts of wants and don't wants lying within me, plus emotions, ideas, and creative sparks. 

galoshes not necessary

The moon, I remembered, existed. How had I lost sight of it for so long? It struck me somewhere earnest and I had to stop on the side of the road and just watch it. The sliver of it that was showing almost danced into the crevasse of the joining mountaintops to rest ever so slightly in the hammock of the valley, showing itself off for it knew that I was watching.

I continued on my climb up the canyon feeling more relaxed and more in touch with something bigger than my little self.  That black cloud of illusion, mystery, and struggle that had been bugging me all week started to clear.

And yet, there was a tugging at my consciousness. My body was trying to simultaneously go numb and jolt into gyrations. I kept driving, windows down to hear the rushing river alongside the highway. A discomfort and a longing were looming somewhere above the open sunroof. They must have caught wave of my emotional instability and were tagging along. I tried to ignore all of it - the wrestling of bodily sensations inside of me, and the ominous dead weight around me. And then it happened. I got a lightening bolt of clarity shutting everything else out. With so much surprise, I made a screaming noise and started laughing. The dog, who was sitting next to me in the passenger seat, turned his head and propped up his ears as if to say, "You're crazy, lady."

I had discovered a want. A desire that I didn't understand before that very moment. It was absolutely ecstatic - a great piece of humanity and the most electrified I have ever felt. That black cloud of illusion, mystery, and struggle that I had been feeling all week (the one that was only slightly calmed by the presence of the moon) was cleared. And my life before me was so explicitly unambiguous that I didn't understand how I could not have seen this thing that I wanted before that very moment. 

W.W.I.D.

Today's work is based on a Blog posting by Julia Colwell, author of A Guide to the Wild Ride: Navigating the Open Sea of Relationship (among other titles!) and facilitator extraordinaire, therapist and co-founder of Boulder Center for Conscious Living in Boulder, CO. The questions I am answering here are questions she asked in a recent posting on her blog:
http://juliacolwell.com/appreciation/if-this-were-a-perfect-world/

She is absolutely wonderful in person - and now she has put that wonderful stuff into writing and post it for all of us to see! I have taken workshops from both Julie and her partner, Kathy Kucsan, and have even bumped into her at Michigan Womyn's Music Festival.  I thought it would be worthwhile to actually ANSWER these questions rather than ponder them, for when Julie asks a question, it usually has an answer I need to hear myself say.



I'm committing to answering each one with the first thing(s) that pops into my head and not rereading again and again to change them.  Let's see what happens: 

what a good ole' blowtorch will do

So, my up close photography skills are lacking, but my new found metal-smithing skills are kicking butt. Check out this new creation!


_

while you walk around, jangling the keys to yourself

There are days, weeks even - that are just plain hard to get through.

This being one of them [day and week both].

I can't wake up in the morning, I can't fall asleep at night.  

My head hurts, my back hurts, my heart hurts.

I have ideas upon ideas - moments of stark clarity and moments of fuzz.

Longer moments of fuzz and then pure static.

I watch everything, try to figure it out. 

Work towards the answers, but don't know the questions.

Think thoughtfully and weigh my options.

I am second guessing every move and scheming a way to just chuck it all and become an anthropologist or a Jedi knight or maybe write a book and call myself an author.  I could live on nothing but the zucchini from our garden and the food stuffed in our cabinets for awhile. Perhaps I could sustain on the houseplants?

But then, I fear.

I fret.

And I cry out sobs of impatience and insecurity.

The tarot reader says, "Imagine what your life would be like if you had been empowered with your strengths from the day you were born. Imagine that you are the same age as you are now and that you had all the tools and all the encouragement you ever needed. Where would you be, what would you be doing?" 

Do I even know the answer to that?

_

you already know why not

I am getting a bit of that MichFest consciousness today. I have that “I can do anything” feeling in my body. I walk taller, smile brighter and have a whole gamut of ideas brewing about how my life will change, what I will do and how I will grow. This year is the 35th anniversary and I missed it – not because I didn’t want to be there – but because I just didn’t have that All Systems Go feeling about it, which usually means something bigger is happening. It’s strange how it happens: it’s not a weigh all the options & make a thoughtful decision about what will happen next. It’s more like I go through the motions of something my mind and soul have been communicating about for months, years even. As if I have already practiced all the moves and rehearsed all the lines until they are just what is now. So, although I wanted to go to Michigan again this year for another growth experience that’s out of this world, my everything insides said to me to stay put and play out the part I chose long before I was born. And, while here – I will be using that Michigan dirt under my nails to empower the next steps to come.

_

a simple vision

I was just in that half-way place between sleep and awake – where things are real and not real at the same time. The dreams I get from this in-between place are memories and futures all in one. They are the way things are and the way things were, the way things ought to be and the way things have never been before. They make the most sense of nearly anything in the world.

Just now, I saw only a picture of a place. Nothing happened and nothing didn’t happen. The scene a little unfamiliar, but completely known. The place I saw was my childhood home. I see this a lot in my dreams and in my daydreams. You know how you picture a place with the same view almost every time? It’s as if a snapshot of a certain moment stays glued to the screen in our minds. And although it makes no sense to see things from above, as if we are outside ourselves and looking down - that’s how we see a certain place or remember an event.

this is what it feels like

This is what it feels like.

It’s like being in the house where I grew up and listening to the cars come up the hill.

We lived at the end of a steep dead end street. There was no real turnaround, so when cars came up the street, it was a hugely noticeable event. They had to figure out how to turn around or had to back out to get back down.

For much of my school age life, I came home alone to an empty house. My mom was working full time and finishing college – and then a Master’s degree, so I was home alone a lot. And the two of us were the only two in the house. I was an only child and she was a single mom.

“Latch-key” kid is the term they used for me in the 80s. I got home from school and raided the refrigerator while dialing the number to my grandparents. Muscle memory led me through the same set of motions every weekday afternoon.

Sometimes I ventured outside to walk up the hill or watch nature. But usually I turned on the TV and waited. Each time a car came up the road, I listened. Is that her?

Even when I knew better, I listened - Just in case she came home early. Sometimes it sounded like her car and I got excited. It’s hard to tell and I got faked out a lot. I thought my way into believing it was her quite often, but until it was actually her car coming up the road, it didn’t feel quite right.

When I did finally hear her car and knew it was her, it was so obvious and I knew it was finally the right car. I felt silly for ever believing that any of the other cars could have ever been her. But then I would do the same thing over again the very next day. Each day a new experience in really knowing for sure.

It feels like that.

_

almost like magic

So then she calls today.

Like magic. Manifestation.

I put energy into it and then it came back.

Or perhaps, she is reading this very page (that would make things interesting) - or perhaps, she saw my car parked at the grocery store where she drives by everyday.

Either way, she leaves no message.

But still I hear: You are the one who left

[I am the VICTIM]

what happens on the day after

On most mornings I wake up thinking thank God. Thank Goddess, Thank Spirit. Thank Source. Thank you – whoever/whatever you are – for giving me this life. Thank you, thank you.

Thank you for the strength, for serendipity, for freckles.

Thank you for sunshine and living plants, for love.

For awareness, for sensations, for time. I thank you.

Thank you for the awful thing that happened. For the insight into my own will to survive. For my own dogged persistence to kick in. Thank you for the moment when her hand was covering my mouth so that I too could not breath. Thank you for that moment when she almost took her last breath while slowly saying, “You’re coming with me.” He arm tighter around me and her hand pushing in. “You must suffer too.” She squeezes and her breathing slows and so does mine.

My face hurts. “You will watch this,” she says again.

willingly

It's not, "Like I didn’t see it coming, like I didn’t walk in willingly."

I didn’t do it all on purpose - but I didn’t do it blindly either.

I just knew the road I was supposed to follow.

I knew the things I did were the things I was supposed to do.

So, I walked it willingly – I did. But, I didn’t entirely see it coming. I navigated a lot of life without the language of things the way we consciously think of them – rather, with some indigenous knowledge of how things were supposed to be. I knew where to turn and where to pause. I knew where not to turn or when to keep going. I just knew.

the black hole

I arrived there in a state of indecision and observation.  I was standing outside myself and looking in with a confusion so deeply rooted I had a hard time differentiating my likes from my dislikes, my wants from my unwants. The confidence that used to be so innate in me was diminishing before my very eyes.

It was an experience the palm reader called “a black hole.”  She said it was a scary place to be. That it would happen to me several times over the course of my life.  To mediate it, she said, I should spend time with cows.  To just sit with them and have them look at me.  

“Can you go to India when you leave here?” she said in a most direct and assuming way, “There are many cows in India. They are sacred there.”  She said it in a way that made me wonder if she had already booked me a ticket. Or maybe as if I had already planned it all out and she was just checking in to get the details on my itinerary.