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!


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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?

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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.

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