Y E S Sleep Til Brooklyn!...

Hey folks. So, I'm going on hiatus from the post-a-day once more. Until I get settled back into the school routine, I'm making the choice to let this outflow close for a little while.

Thank you for reading, it's always a pleasure to know you're there - but, ;) you're there anyway.

So, cheers, and may the schwartz be with you,
Love and Light,
M.

Two-Way Street

The phrase I hear in certain spiritual circles, You have to give it away in order to keep it, has always bothered me. So, lately, knowing I’m coming up against this as a block, I’ve been altering it to, I have to share it in order to keep it, just to make myself feel better about it.

I made a few realizations recently about my reluctance to share. Notably, in each case when I’ve been “down on my luck” financially, and have gone into what I call “lock-down mode,” I’ve been forced to surrender, and let go of my pride, or my ideas, and let other people know what’s going on, and let them help me.

It occurs to me that lock-down mode is a closed circuit. It says, anything that I get, I must hold on to fiercely, because I don’t know if I will ever get more (this goes for love, and finances, and jobs, and creativity, and more, I’m sure).

Lock-down mode is also a closed circuit because it is like battening down the hatches of a ship, bracing for a storm. Don’t move, or you’ll be swept overboard.

In these circumstances when I’ve locked-down, it’s been like increasing the speed of a flushing toilet, I realize. It’s gotten worse, not better, faster.

Abundance, community, love, creativity, require an open channel, an open circuit, one which allows energy in, and allows energy out.

I reported on here a little while ago about a meditation where I noticed that although still reluctant to do so, I allowed energy to pass through me into those behind me, instead of, as I’d done in a previous version of this meditation, simply fill others from my own bucket, denying and absolutely refusing to take in from those sending to me.

Either ends of this constriction is a closed circuit, depleting, and ultimately self-defeating.

Whether I choose to lock-down, and absorb, reach for, demand everything I can, and horde it; or, whether I choose to close off the inflow, and simply – and resolutely – give to you from my own bucket. This, is not a channel.

When someone had mentioned to me recently that I have to close these holes in order to be able to hold abundance, that there are places where I’m letting it seep from me, and will never in fact be able to hold it, this is a place of that fissure. Seems ironic that in order to have abundance I must begin to stop holding it, but, such is the paradox of spiritual axioms.

To quote what I’ve heard, There is enough time, there is enough love, there is enough money. Therefore, if there is enough, then I don’t need to hold on to it.

And, I need to address the other side too, the part of the inflow. Like in Tuesday night’s class when I’d recognized how little I’d been letting other people “give” to me.

In the moments when I’ve been broke, looking at the price of Ramen noodles in the discount grocery store, I’ve let go. I’ve stopped folding the end of the hose, and let it open, fear or not. And, miraculously, I’ve been taken care of … abundantly ;)

So, there are two sides of this constriction that I would like to address. The part that says, I can give to you, but you can’t give to me. And the part that says, once I’ve got anything at all, I’m holding onto it for dear life.

The “dear life,” it seems, occurs only, only when I do let go of strangling it. 

Say Yes.

Oh dear reader, as quickly as they flit in, they flit out.

Remember so recently my choreographing a ballet as a part of my thesis? Well, perhaps not. Or, simply, perhaps not now.

My new thesis idea is a book of art with poems. Not novel, but novel to me.

My dad’s voice is readily in my head, “You’re paying $100,000 for THIS?!?” Yes, Dad. Yes.

But, to address first things first, yesterday’s intro to EMDR was much gentler than I’d anticipated, as my therapist had mentioned to me. And we’re starting small, gathering positive resources, grounding in safe space, assembling Team Molly, as it were. I cried only the teeniest bit, and did not get struck by a streetcar. In fact, I cried only that bit when I was recalling something really lovely actually. ~ I am grateful to have a woman as gentle as she is to guide me through this. And she’s consistently reminded me that her experience is not that patients have dramatic, radical shifts, but rather subtle changes they may not even notice till later when they realize they’re holding these things differently.

That said, the first thing I said to her yesterday when I arrived was that I was terrified, but we did the groundwork anyway. Because, yes, it is time. (insert Rafiki's voice from Lion King here – “Eet ees time.”)

To return to the thesis though. (First draft due Feb 15^th… Insert Marisa Tomei’s stamping foot from My Cousin Vinny … lol, I could do this all day...)

On Wednesday night, I had a wonderful experience. Having bought a copse of new, brilliant markers from Blick Art Supply store on Sunday, I sat down and began to experiment with these new, saturated, luscious, dripping, succulent colors. You can perhaps tell how much I enjoyed them.

I felt almost as if I were getting to finger the crevices of the greatest gemstones of all time. Basking in their glow. Delighted at how they caught the light, how they were able to instantaneously create something out of nothing.

I experimented for a while. With the different points and pressures and textures and shapes. I felt so calm and exhilarated. Like, this THIS is what it feels like to be engaged in what you want to be doing. And moreover, it feels like finally breaching the surface of the water after you’ve been under for too long. Relief in a way that makes you want to cry.

After I’d done a few of these just luxuriating in the experience of manipulating these colors and markers pages, I turned a page, and began to write a part of a story. Portions of the words fell right off the page, and the next line began somewhere a few words in, as if the others were being written … invisibly, on the other side of the page, on a bigger page that got cut, or weren’t actually written at all and there aren't any words to connect what you’ve read.

With my markers, I wrote a few more of these partial stories. Then I put them up on the wall in my kitchen. The drawing before I began writing continues to arrest me when I look at it. Something about it captures me. And it is under this one, that I’ve taped the first story piece, both are in red.

Perhaps, this is the beginning of a book. Perhaps the image and the story, or poem, relate.

And, perhaps as I thought about it this morning, perhaps there are blank pages for you, reader, to write your own story. Or perhaps blank pages for you to draw above the stories. Perhaps it's children's book-like. Perhaps the content isn't though. 

Maybe. Maybe not. But I sure like the idea. The idea of collaboration, of interaction, of experimentation, and creativity.

I’m currently reading a book by Thomas Moore called, A Life At Work: The Joy of Discovering What You Were Meant to Do. And as I also look at some of the work I’d done in response to What Color is Your Parachute, I am faced again with the notion that my work demands to be integrative, collaborative, fun.

This new idea, whatever comes of it, is part of this discovery process. It’s part of the milemarkers on my path to my path. (And, I will tell you, Thomas Moore agrees with me about not needing to "CHOOSE ONE" life path.) ;P

I’m going to play with this new idea. A little more implementable than the dance. We’ll see what happens. I may stick with all the work I’ve got and “Make it work,” or I’ll head here for now, and “Follow the fun."

Light Dispels Dark

Methinks I may need to reread the Lighten Up! blog again before I head out this morning, or at least take heart the theme.

Today, I will be beginning a process called EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) with my therapist in San Francisco. It’s a therapy that is used to reintegrate and desensitize traumatic memories by stimulating both sides of the body, either with eye moment, as the name suggests, or tapping on both knees with your hands, or little alternating vibrations in each hand in order to help store those charged memories back in a way which more resembles the way we hold non-traumatic memories. 

Perhaps you can imagine, I’m a little … freaked out, is the “lightest” word I can use at the moment.

I have resisted her suggestion to do this for several years. But, it seems, and in fact is, time to do this. I’m terrified. I terrified I’m going to hysterically cry and leave her office a mess and get struck by a street car in my haze. I’m terrified I’m going to find out things that I really don’t want to know. I’m terrified, mainly, and most likely, that I will cry, a lot, and then I’ll be walking around for two weeks til our next session with all of this “up” stuff.

To be true, though, a lot of the work I think we’ll do today is actually about grounding in some positive resources. i.e. if we’re going to talk about the most disturbing memories, we’re today supposed to talk about the most positive and joyous memories. In fact, I was supposed to write them down, but have felt like even that was too big a step toward “the final product.” So, I’ll head into the city shortly and sit at a café and write my 10 best memories.

There was the option to also write the 10 most disturbing, and when she saw my trepidation (and terror), she said there’s always the option we can do it in her office together, and so we will. I’m relieved for that.

As a blog, I feel that there’s some responsibility to care-take your feelings, reader, and let you know, don’t worry, it’s all okay, this is all “normal” trauma, and I’m just particularly invested in spelunking my inner caves and gutting them. But it’s okay, I’m okay.

But, I won’t.

I know that it will be okay. I know that in this moment it is all okay, and I am safe. I know that somewhere under my solar plexus and behind a sheet of iron walling, but outside of that? I’m … scared. And, that’s okay. Feels normal. I trust my therapist. I trust the work that I’ve done which has pointed me in this direction, in the direction of working on, and through, and ultimately OUT of this stuff.

It’s just like anything else. Light dispels the dark. This is a particular area of bogeymen who are particularly vocal and wear neon-green shark teeth as necklaces around their craggy and sagging skin. They are bogeymen. Just rattlers in the dark. And like anything else that I’ve addressed and faced and dispelled, like the soldiers in the BART blog, they’re a protection agent.

Underneath my terror and fear and hesitation and reluctance, I know there’s safety and compassion and freedom and light. I know, as my teacher says in meditations, “It’s safe to go here because of all of the work you’ve already done.” I know, as my post-it in my kitchen says, “I am able to go to scary places because I have a firm foundation of love.” And I know too, that this is a wound. My therapist is a doctor. And I can trust a doctor to help me heal. 

The Gaze.

So, despite my declaration (or desire to adhere) to a cozy, yummy 9 pm bedtime, there will of course be exceptions.

Like, every Tuesday night. My new poetry workshop ends at 9:15 on Tuesday nights, and my painting class begins at 9 am on Wednesday mornings, so these are going to be quick turn around days, and I’ll have to learn how to work within these parameters. Mainly, sleep enough within them!

Also, despite my saying yesterday, “Theater, I lay you down,” … my poetry course is mainly, almost entirely focused on performance. Not just poetry, but, performance art. I’m SO freaking excited. Like I said, this teacher is a pretty big deal (Guillermo Gomez Pena, look him up, you’ll get what I mean), and his methods are NOT your typical poetry workshop, where everyone brings in a poem, reads it, murmurs comments of assent or dissent and move on.

This, will be much different. And I can’t wait. Last night, we did all kinds of spontaneous verbal exercises, then some pretty awkward and intense physical interactions with each other, the other students. It was a series of looking into another student’s eyes for minutes on end, with different attendant variations – to explore the gaze and being fully present with another human being. It, as you can imagine, could get a little awkward. These were not the ice-breaker activities we did in summer camp! It was weird, and telling, and opening, and closing, and awkward, and just interesting to notice the experience.

Further, I had training for the artist’s modeling yesterday for about 2 hours in the city, and the facilitator said that there are two reasons that people get out of the business. 1) it’s too physically demanding. (and after actually running through some 1 minute, 5 minute, and then a 20 minute pose, I assure you, I completely agree – my muscles are going to be learning a thing or two about what works with my anatomy… and blood flow – yes, my fingers are numb if I hold them over my head for 5 minutes…!)

The 2^nd reason he said people get out of the business is because they can’t take “the gaze” anymore. That although, in reality, the artist and students drawing the model are really only seeing what they want to see, that mainly they’re interested in form and shadow and contour, the model can begin to get hyper-sensitive to the gaze, and feel too vulnerable underneath it.

He said to remember that what they’re seeing is only what you’re giving them. That still, we’re in control, even if we’re nude, and eyes open, we still, like most people walking around fully clothed all day, get the chance to allow people to see only what we want them to see.

In one of the exercises last night, the 3^rd woman I “stared” at, well, I’ll tell you, she was pretty powerful. And after so much outflow, which is my natural setting (“She’s gone from SUCK to BLOW!” … Spaceballs reference), it was interesting to feel that actually, she was going to be the one with the outflow, and I could choose whether to let her in or not. (And if you’re rolling your eyes right now, and being like, "Molly, you are sooo Woo-woo hippie shit,” meh, c’est la vie.) So, I did let her, and several minutes into the exercise, I actually began to cry. Not on purpose! But because, I could feel that as exhausted and raw as I’ve felt over the last month or so, I’ve still been outwardly focused.

Like with the 2^nd girl, I could feel her pain and loneliness, and she actually said afterward that she realized how little physical contact she gets these days (we were holding hands as well as eye contact in this one). And I was sending her all kinds of love and healing.

But with the 3^rd girl, I tried to send it out, but it was like, no buddy, This Bud’s for You. And she sent that healing, and that love, and that gaze into me. And I felt myself seen, and held by it. And just let go, into her power, and saw my own vulnerability and raw places by riding into myself through her gaze. I told her afterward, to explain why I'd cried, that my energy had been so outwardly focused and I’ve felt so raw lately, that to let someone else in, to allow the energy to go the other way ‘round was really powerful for me, and a relief to let myself sit in it.

So, yeah. Although I’m not trolling the casting call website at the moment or going on auditions, I’m pretty sure the HP is arranging for me to engage in my body, my emotions, and my performance in a variety of new ways. Even woo-woo hippie ones.

I cannot do everything all at once.

Bummer.

I can perhaps do most things, and many things, and maybe even “all” things in turn, eventually, in time, but all at once? Not so much.

I met with a beloved teacher of mine on Sunday, and she said something which my dear friend Chris had once said to me, You’re going to have to choose.

OH! How I Hate To Hear That!

To give some grounding information to this broad proclamation about the reality of physics (unless it’s quantum physics, in which case they can be in more than one place at once, but I digress). Yesterday, I had to cancel the final of my 4 scheduled auditions for this month. A) I was pooped. Too much outflow energy, not enough restorative. b) in contemplating whether to go to the audition or not (by two buses in the rain), I read the performance details, and the performance overlaps day for day, word for word with the month before my graduation. Which means rehearsal is right then too, which means I’d be doing school, writing a thesis, and rehearsing for a real play? (Assuming ofcourseofcourse I got cast.)

It was all too much. And I asked myself that if I were my own best friend at the moment, what would I tell myself about going to the audition? I would tell myself to take care of me. And so I did. I wrote and called the casting director, full of chagrin and appreciation, and then went to meet up with my fellows. Which is really what I needed to do anyway.

There, I was given the divine opportunity to hear a woman in pain, and asked her to coffee after the meeting, and now we’ll be meeting on a weekly basis. Werd. Go G-d.

In reference to Sunday, and Patsy’s comment about having to choose; she was saying this because I came to her exhausted already. I've learned there’s a lot of externally flowing energy involved in theater auditions. And until you’re working with the other folks in rehearsal, or on stage with an audience, it’s really one-sided. Once you’re with those folks, it becomes symbiotic, and you exchange and feed off and are buoyed by one another's energy, but, it’s been too much all at once for me.

I also told Patsy that I was already overwhelmed by this HALF CREDIT class I’m taking, the 2^nd half of the workshop I’m implementing on Creativity and Spirituality (um, someone ring an irony bell?). I was feeling ALL kinds of WHOA BUDDY, it’s a half a fucking credit, back off with your emails at midnight demanding information.

None of my business when other people want to send emails (though my judgey judgerson wants to be like, hmm, lady, that can’t be healthy). But hey, some people work best at midnight. I’m not one of them.

In fact, I’ve gotten into the wonderfully cozy habit over the last few weeks of going to bed around 9pm. Yep. Lame, but I really really don’t feel that way. I realized it’s about 3 hours after the sun goes down, or after it’s dark, and my body and brain are like, alright, shutting down now. It’s been nice to not force myself to stay up till some “normal” hour, which is what I usually do.

So, that’s a form of self-care. So was canceling the audition. So was not emailing my professor back a snipey email in answer to her questions.

It’s all information, I guess is my point. And however loathe, really truly so uninclined to admit it, I can’t do everything.

I can’t audition for plays, rehearse for the one I’m in, start working with a woman on my financial stuff (which I begin this morning, in fact), meet with the girls I need to meet with, go to class, prepare and facilitate a workshop, write a thesis, do my homework ….. (without a car at least, sneaks in the thought). But, with or without a car, I have to choose where my energy will be going, and choose places where it’s not just outflow, but inflow.

Like my painting class yesterday. *Joy incarnate.* We, or I, practically shoved my hands into the paint and began to finger paint with it. I was so relieved and thrilled to be back to it. I love it. We were doing some, "Don’t think too hard about it" exercises, and it was marvelous. I could spit rainbows I was so … in my element.

I know too, from having taken a similar class last year, that by the end of the semester I was done with painting, that there’s, with me, a burn-out with everything. I used to say I need crop-rotation for my brain. A few months art, few music, few cooking. Give my brain a new toy, let the land rest, refuel.

But, friends, I hate to not be able to do it all. The painting, and the acting, and the writing, and the modeling, and the running in and out of the city, and the meeting up with folks, and going to see music, and keeping my home orderly. Mostly, I can’t do all the art at once.

This does not mean I cannot do all the art – I just don’t agree – my constitution is not made that way. My friend Chris had said, choose one thing, and that’s it, you do it, and you’ll succeed at it. I don’t work that way, or maybe I don’t work that way yet. I like crop rotation. I like playing in all these pockets of my brain’s creativity. I just can’t do it all at once. In order, one season of crops at a time, perhaps. One at a time, I can.

So, theater, for now, (as I head into rehearsals and my acting class, lol), I’m going to lay you down. For now. I thank you. You’ve been thrilling and helped me be brave, and open, and walk through fear, and have fun anyway; but for now, you’re moving down my speed dial. I’ll call you when the season has turned. 

The Hero's Journey

See, perhaps it’s not that San Francisco is actually cold. Perhaps it is the proliferation of single-paned windows and inadequate heating. The wonderful high ceilings don’t do much to trap in the heat either. So, solution? Munchkin houses. Winterized. lol. See, there’s even a word, “Winterized.” I’m not sure that the Bay Area has much acquaintance with this notion, as we all sort of seem to believe that it doesn’t actually get that cold, or that we’re more like Southern California. Perhaps this is what they meant when they said “California Dreamin’.”

In any case, drafty as my home is. Grateful for it. Especially on what are Bay Area winter days.

There is a big part of me that wants to write an addendum to yesterday’s blog. To somehow mitigate and soften the “I haven’t had a great sex life” theme. Most of that is because I want you to see me “better,” some of that is that I don’t want to insult anyone I’ve slept with who might be reading this and tell them of course there are occasions when it’s been marvelous. But, that’s only wanting them to like me too, another way of “seeing me better.” So, I will leave the truth as the half-truth it is, because, for certain, there are the good experiences, and there is the truth that it’s less about them, and more about my inability to ask for what I need (in most areas of my life).

And, I will hold the truth that, still, I feel naïve and unexperienced or uneducated in this way, and am holding that with compassion, and an intention to head in that direction. There’s a fair amount on one of my collages that’s the phrase, The Joy of Kissing, and I wonder if perhaps part of that is a call to start again at the beginning, you know? To start with one of the most tender places, and just meditate there, pause there, let myself savor it, and not skip to the main course.

Also, I want to soften the “this is not an invitation” line, because although it’s not a plea for you, reader, to initiate me into the softened world of pleasure, I actually DO want to offer an invitation into the world/Universe. This IS an invitation from me to the machinations of the world to head there, to gentleness, and intimacy, and … well, whatever else I feel I’ve been missing in this area. So, Universe, this is an invitation, written in velvet, in loopy script, and something less intimidating than red for experiences of physical intimacy on a softer plane.

Speaking of physicality, I had my orientation for the art modeling guild yesterday, and 12 year old girl that I still am, it was hard to not giggle when the facilitator said, “And men? No Erections! Ever.” Lol. “Any man who tells you he can’t control it is lying. And if he really can’t, then he shouldn’t be a model.” It’s nice the systems of protection and comfort that they have set up, which is why I’m really glad to be doing it this way, rather than freelance, which can be ICKY (see former blog about older man with vagina skulls).

After the orientation, I went directly to my audition for a Shakespeare company, and guess what? Not that bad. :) THIS TIME, I didn’t blank out in the middle of the monologue. I futzed a few things, but, if you didn’t have a script in front of you, you’d never know. Point being, I actually did better than my last spoken word audition, and really, “Better than last time” is all I’m lookin’ for. I also, miraculously, ran into a girl I have just been beginning to see around lately over here in Oakland with some of the financial healing folks. She’s been doing this circuit for a long time, it seems, and knew nearly everyone who walked in and out of the building, and chatted with another girl about, "Are you working with David? No, with Bobby." and other such insider speak that I am totally novice of. But… now, we both have an ally. Someone showing up and letting go of the results, and also some who’s willing to sit with me and initiate me in some of these lingos, and people, and classes, and companies. She even suggested a company she thought I’d do well with. :) Go G-d.

Finally, for today’s blog. I had a very vivid dream last night about an older friend of mine who I found out – in the dream – had killed herself suddenly. I was shocked and devastated, and went out from where I was directly into her funeral. It was packed. And yet, even her husband, who was shocked was actually not as shaken as you’d expect.

Part of Saturday’s spirituality workshop included a story about Minos and the Minotaur, using the myth as a frame for us to see perhaps what part of the story, what part of our own hero’s journey we are in. Minos made a deal with Poseiden. Poseiden said that Minos would become king if he sacrificed this gorgeous white bull. Minos said sure. Became king. … And then decided the bull was too special and meant too much to him, and so he sacrificed 50 goats instead. (This did not go well in the end.)

I said that I feel like this is the part of the journey I’m on. In order to ascend to the next level, the next stage, the next iteration of myself and my life, I have to sacrifice my attachment to what it had been, aka my bull (dying we awaken to a new life, kind of stuff). Instead, I’ve been hemming and hawing, and saying, well, what if I give you this instead, what if I sort of dance around the issue, and lop off my foot in the process – won’t that give me the result that I ultimately need?

No dice.

I also said, that I also felt like the part of the story when they kill the Minotaur, when this beast that cannot be a part of society, but it’s really not his fault, is killed. With this spirit of sadness and also with relief do I … intend? to kill my bull.

I think that part of my dream was about that, the death of these attachments to my past. I put up a whole host of new (to the blog) poems, and as I was editing what work I had, I felt like all the family stuff, all the blamey stuff and most of the trauma stuff didn’t need to be up anymore.

Which leads me to wonder: if what I wanted my thesis to be was an excavation of old stuff, a laying to rest of it, haven’t I already done that? In the very writing of it, and even in the sharing of it with my professors and classmates, haven’t I given voice to this? Is this actually what I need to say anymore? Is this anymore where the charge is for me?

I’m not sure. Well, no. Actually, the answer is no. But I’m not sure what that will mean for this specific piece of writing I have to hand in.

But, I also said in the workshop on Saturday that despite my reluctancy to sacrifice the bull, my reluctancy to grieve for what was lost and misplaced in my youth, the fact is, I’m already in it. It’s no use saying, I don’t want to. Or I won’t. Or I can’t. Because, baby, I already am. 

All Except One (or Two)

A few years ago, I wrote a series of bitter break-up poems – everyone loves those :P – and then wrote another poem that said something like, should I now write something nice? something fluffy? and do tricks like a wind-up toy?

And at the moment, I sort of feel like that.

So much stuff is stirred up at the moment, that although alongside of it and indeed deeper than it, I have a center of joy that I’m glad to finally be exposing, the rest of the “up” material is rather dark. Old ideas, old traumas, old patterns that I’m seeing differently. And, truly, I don’t want to subject you to it, and also, it’s not necessary that I do.

You get it. We all work through stuff. Well, most of the people who are reading this are likely working through stuff. And it is like being forged in fire. Or tearing off scabs. Or, as I once wrote, like stone tumbling – the process by which a raw stone is tumbled about in this large drum and when it comes out, it’s become smooth and shiny.

Will I be smooth and shiny? I don’t know. I also said in that stone tumbling poem that it was like G-d’s savage grater going at me. (I like the double meaning of “savage” – in our slang, it’s akin to beyond awesome, as well as the definition of unfeeling carnage.)

I don’t think that G-d doesn’t have feelings about this. I just think I only have a very tiny portion of the map, and G-d’s got an atlas the size of Jupiter. Plus, I’m coming more and more over to the side of thinking, or knowing rather, that all this grating is actually intended for my highest good. That scraping away these caustic, rusted elements is actually an act of love and compassion.

Speaking of, it occurred to me last night, that there’s one aspect of Love that I didn’t address in yesterday’s “In All Its Forms” blog -- by which I meant Love In All Its Forms. And that’s romantic love, and physical love. (Insert Olivia Newton-John’s “Let’s Get Physical” music video here.)

This doesn’t surprise me, and is part of the swirling ickiness I don’t really want to talk to you about. But, let’s suffice it to say that my relationship with sexuality is actually very, very naïve. 

The truth is, for all of my midnight sweating with another person, the heart of sex is still actually very elusive to me. And I won’t go in to the whole line of “the intertwining of souls” stuff here. Cuz, truthfully, I have absolutely no idea if that’s true or not. I don’t have information about sex as tenderness. As respect and awe of … my body. I’ve had experience of treating yours with a care and sometimes speechless admiration. To me, the human body is – well, as has been said… a wonderland :P Or, further, it’s just such a novel thing to me each time I get to really see it – and that wasn’t a common thing for me in my past. It was get in, get off, get out. No, like, leave.

This does not set up a system of appreciation or intimacy with sex. To be intimate with sex. Sounds pretty novel. I haven’t sat still long enough to let you show me how you see me. (And this is not an invitation, just an observation/admission.) And on a few rare occasions when I have finally spoken up and asked for what I needed, I have experience being dismissed. How disappointing is that.

But that word brings me to another realization. Which is that I have a post-it in my kitchen which reads, “I can be disappointed and still follow my dreams.” And, it is occurring to me more and more that this whole plane of human experience has been lost to me. That I have cut off hope for it, and therefore don’t try very hard, or am “happy” with what I get.

This is another place where I’m being shown a need for change. Because on a cellular (and soul) level, my body is thirsty for something sweet. My body is thirsty for kindness. And, after years of telling it to get over it, I’m realizing this tender care is very much something I want too. 

In All Its Forms

Yesterday, I got to cross a few more “Serenity Moths” off my list, including letting my apartment get messy (kitchen, another story); no fuzzy socks (my clothing allowance this month will now be worn on my very toasty happy feet); and not using my art and craftyness.

Today is the birthday of the woman who I have known longest in my life, second only to my family. We met when we were both three-years old in a story both our mothers love to tell.

Soon after my brother was born, my family moved from Brooklyn to northern New Jersey. Maybe that same or maybe next day, our new door bell rang. The story goes, that the little blond girl who lived just next-door stood on the door-step, looked up at my mom, and asked, “Does a little girl live here?” I peeked my head out from behind my mom's legs and we have been friends for nearly 30 years. (wow, I'd initially wrote 20!, but no, it's 30!!)

Like most friendships, it’s seen its fair share of trials, but through a fair share of miracles, we have found ourselves to be strong friends again, across the sands of time and Minnesota.

So, yesterday, I made a crafty little gift for her. I took out my tools I laid down since my Christmas card puttering-out, and infused as much love as I could into it.

I also put up a handwritten sign in my apartment, just below the very tall almost 12 foot ceiling: "Love, as much as you can." And put little hearts around it. ;P This was the edict, the command, and the hope, from the workshop I did a month or more ago when we meditated to ourselves as really old people, and asked ourselves what lessons we needed to learn. Today is the final of the 4 in the series of workshops on relationships. Spiritual Contracts and Inner Archetypes.

On the note of that type of work, I did get an email back from the Sacred Stream meditation school, and they do have a scholarship, but it’s itty bitty, and I can’t afford the course right now – particularly after I pay the security deposit to the Bay Area Modeling Guild, which I found out last night that I got in to :)  But, that’s alright, I feel like I’ve got enough spiritual shenanigans happening around and in me at the moment, that I’m not quite sure now is the right time to blow the top off myself anyway. Sometimes, I just need to regroup. Ground myself again.

So, doing these sort of “of the earth” type activities has been nice, cleaning my apartment, making art, finally in-putting my numbers on what I spent in December. (which, I was probably right to fear! oh holiday spirit…) ;)

On another note completely, so, I’d been praying for an acting coach. That was the suggestion I got from my acting friend in SF, and although I’d been half-heartedly looking, I’d also been dragging my feet feeling that I didn’t have the money to really afford a coach.

Then, I went to my Thursday afternoon class. Acting Fundamentals. I had completely forgotten that I’d signed up for this course. But I had. So, maybe I don’t have an individual acting coach, but I now have an acting teacher. Included in the price of all that I’m already paying for school. She’s the casting director for Berkeley Rep, and has been teaching acting forever, and has acted forever, and although at the moment she seemed a little sharp at the edges, I think this is just what I’ve been asking for.

After class, she said that it seemed I had more experience than the other girls, and I said, I’m open to any help she can give, and she said she tries to challenge and meet people where they’re at. I also found it rather hilarious that I’m more experienced than anyone in my theater experience, as I feel like such a novice I can’t even tie my shoes straight!

But, it’s not about comparison. It’s about what I can learn, and how I can inhabit my body and my emotions more fully. It’s about WAAAAYYY tuning down the cacophony of my heartbeat in my eardrums when I stand in front of a panel at an audition. I think the audition is the hardest part – for me at least. Good thing I have two more over the next two days. ;)

So, here’s to Love, which finds it’s way back to us, over 30 years of friendship, in the form of a needed teacher, and in the self-care which buys me these awesome fuzzy socks. 

Dance Dance Revolution.

The strangest development occurred last night as I was falling asleep. Actually, I wasn’t falling asleep, having dosed myself with a trough of sugar not long before bed. As raw as I was feeling yesterday, eating for comfort seemed wonderfully acceptable, and I was permissive with myself around it.

That said, it was taking me a while to fall asleep with all the sugar running laps around my blood cells, and my thoughts began to wander. I began choreographing a ballet.

?? What? Yes. In the light of day, now, I see that perhaps this is the mode of expression for some of the more raw things that I have to “say,” – that writing actually is much too close a mode for me, and that when I’ve tried to write about some of this, it comes off so cold and distant, or so majorly personal that it doesn’t effect “good” writing. Or, maybe, dance is just the mode this particular set of events in my life wants to take.

And, I don’t think it would be that bad. In fact, I sort of story-boarded about 2/3rds of it last night; it wouldn't be long, maybe 20 minutes. I can see the lighting and the costumes, and the masks. Because there will be masks. The psyche always has masks. It will be haunting, and breakingly beautiful. And, I believe, it will be identifiable. As in, people will be able to relate to the experience, or if not directly, they will relate to the emotions of the experience. Most people have trauma. Unfortunately. And if not experienced at that level, most people can relate to heart-break, or the cycle of addiction that draws us back to recreate it again and again, attempting to change the outcome, or “make it work” this time.

Perhaps pipe-dream. Perhaps not. It was so out of left field, that it sort of feels divinely inspired – i.e. “not me.” Not my machinations. I also happen to go to one of the best liberal arts schools in the area, which has a phenomenal dance program. It’s not completely out of range or reach that this could happen, in some way or other. Perhaps even an addendum to my thesis.

My poetry thesis, I have decided, is a “tome.” When I said that word to my advisor, I didn’t actually know what the precise definition was, but it felt like the right word. I just looked it up right now, and it means a volume, one book in a set. And although that doesn’t capture entirely what I meant, it does make sense to me.

The thesis is basically a record of events and experiences from the first 25 years of my life. I don’t really expect anyone to particularly care about it. I don’t particularly care if they do. I said to my advisor that much of the writing that I was doing for it didn’t feel current. That it felt like this was old, ancient stuff, but that it was apparently wanting to come up and out, and to be recorded, acknowledged, and then set aside.

I don’t intend this book to be the thing that takes me around the world on reading tours. But that’s not its intention. Its intention is to be heard, seen, recorded. And laid to rest. This thesis (which per the requirements is to be a book of 40 – 80 poems), the process of this thesis is like a burial ritual. This is the getting ready of the body, preparing it for eternal and final rest. It will be the laying to rest of a long and sad and manic period in my life, and it will effect an acceptance and peace in me, that it will finally have been acknowledged, instead of stifled. (Acknowledged by me, that is.)

However, like I said, there is some stuff which isn’t making itself quite available to me in the written way. Which feels too big to whittle down to a few words on a stagnant page (which, ultimately is why I may never be a poet or writer by trade, I believe – or at least, strictly a “page poet.” I want my work to live, to work on you – though, of course, plenty of people and writers create the most enormous and powerful effects on the page, but it’s not my sole medium).

So, ballet. How odd. And yet, I already feel myself moved by it.

And by the purifying power of catharsis. 

Drinking the Kool-Aid

Well, folks, it occurs to me that I’m not sure what I will write about today. I just did a morning meditation – a shamanic journey, in fact – and I’m a little cock-eyed and raw at the moment.

I usually choose not to do the journeys by myself, partly because they’re really powerful, and sometimes I just want the assurance of someone more experienced in case I come out with questions or concerns. And partly, I don’t like to do them on my own because they are so powerful, and sometimes I get so thrown by them, like today. It’s hard to put the pieces of normalcy and reality back together – it’s like waking up from a very deep sleep, it takes a while to orient yourself to where you are, and mainly, who you are again.

It occurs to me that this is what I meant when I talked about being in school as giving me the time to get centered in myself and my life. Not rushing to a job at 8:30am, not being distracted by the water cooler, or exhaustion, gives me the space to do this work.

Granted, people who work 9-5 can also find time for spiritual enhancement ;)

I said yesterday that I’ve been doing work around “soul retrieval,” and I’ve heard and consider this practice as a way to re-own and integrate those parts of myself which I have dismissed or which have been sliced away through trauma. Well, this retrieval seems to be happening more often lately. It happened on the New Year’s retreat two weeks ago, and it happened this morning, both in shamanic journey meditation. (I bought the CD of the shamanic drumming about 2 years ago, and so I listen to it on my iPod when I do it on my own - otherwise, "in real life," someone actually drums.)

It’s not for everyone. Well, that’s not true. More accurate is that not everyone is into it, interested in it, really cares, or believes in it. But, that’s neither here nor there. When I began this practice about 4 years ago, I wasn’t so sure it would “work” for me either, but, consider me a believer. I’m no expert, and won’t try to explain it here, but you can look it up. Also, my teacher’s teacher runs a school that does this work called the Sacred Stream in Berkeley (laugh, scoff, roll eyes, or vomit if you must). I’m not here to convert anyone, it’s just a tool that has been offered to me, and which I’ve picked up, not “with abandon,” but with tentative, frightened, continuous longing.

I was speaking with a woman on the phone this morning before the meditation, and she was telling me a bit about one of her spiritual practices. And honestly, I think it’s marvelous that there are so many. A wrench for every nut, as they say. Or, all rivers lead to the ocean.

I actually emailed Sacred Stream the other day to ask if they had any sort of scholarship or volunteer program that I could do, so that I could participate in their upcoming Intro to Shamanic Journey 2-day course. I haven’t heard yet, but several women on the retreat with me suggested this woman.

I asked why. I mean, I get a lot of juice from my teacher/friend, why see/try someone else. I was told that it’s like the difference between two artists, it’s just another view, instead of getting it all from one (and putting the one I have on a bit of a pedestal, I admit). She also said that it’s just neat to be in this woman’s presence. That she’s got the juice, and it’s infectious. Spiritually Infectious Juice. Sounds like something you pick up in India and ties you to the toilet for 10 days.

But, for now, I’m going to keep juicing this fruit, and patch my soul back together one lost bit at a time – because maybe all the king’s horses and men couldn’t do it, but we’ve got a bit more power than that on our side. 

"And Render the Visioner Whole."

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!! Although I should also say that today’s one and only class (go grad school) is Advanced Painting (go grad school!). :) 

I’m terrifyingly thrilled to be going back to it. When, on the last day of last semester, I said to my classmate (in response to her relief at it being over) that I was looking forward to it beginning again, mainly because my break was shaping up to look nothing at all like a break or rest or refuel, and I knew that something would have to change about how I was shaping it.

However, I took work anyway, got sick, and generally felt just as soul weary yesterday as I imagined I was going to feel. Hence my gargantuan relief at being back in school.

For me, this means being back to a purpose. That I have a definition, a little name tag under my photo – “Student.” I have a label. Not, “Part-time temporary employee.” Cuz, I’ll tell you, that feels like a really crappy label. Unrooted. Directionless.

That said, I did run some numbers last night, and have worked out how much I will still need to earn each month to make my ends meet, and not be stark raving broke at the end of May, when school is done. To provide myself a mini-cushion of time to … uh, do whatever it is I’ll be doing at the end of May.

Although I now have my student loan money, sitting in my bank account since yesterday with a HUGE pulsating red warning alarm – DO NOT SPEND DO NOT SPEND. This money is spoken for. And, I will need to not blow my wad on a car. (gross, when thought of literally. sorry – but that is what car magazines are for, isn't it?) :P  A car may still be possible, but I will have to gather some help on “thinking” it through.

I did not get a call back for the musical, and I am/was pretty cool about it. I didn’t really think I would, but as I’ve said, it was my job only to show up the best I could. Now, my best will hopefully continue to improve as I do more of these, and practice in advance, but, for today, I gave it my best shot, and I’m so glad I did.

Mostly because, I auditioned for a fucking musical – i.e. I sang in front of a panel of 4 people and an accompanist. One woman at the table briefly looked up at me as I walked into the room, and then proceeded to fiddle on her mac for the remainder of the time I was in there – not looking up once. Whatever, not my business. And, nor have I sat in a small room for 8 hours, listening to hopefuls nail and fail an audition. I might fiddle too.

But, because I had had the experience of doing that audition on Saturday, on Sunday, when I auditioned for the live modeling guild, guess what? Not even NEARLY as nervous. Truly. Being stark naked in front of a panel of 5 people, coed, was not nearly as terrifying to me as singing, fully clothed in front of a panel of people. Both are forms of being naked, if you ask me. 

The audition was held in a really old building in SOMA, and the labels on the glass panes of the doors looked like the old block print you see in private eye movies of old. One of the doors said San Francisco Odd Fellows, which I found rather amusing, but also had images of secret society cloaks.

I was almost last on the roster, so I got to spend a lot of time hanging out, watching other people fold their bodies in half to stretch. It wasn’t all “model” types, as in fashion/runway models. There were large, small, old, young. A cross section of folks, but all with a certain … I wouldn’t say “ease” or “whimsy,” as certainly not everyone there was someone you’d want to be stuck in an elevator with – but for the most part, each had some strain of artisan in them. I mean, you’re auditioning to be a model for art classes and painters and sculptors. It’s a pretty cool thing.

I know from my painting class last year when we had live models in what a difference it made, rather than painting from a photo. It was also pretty weird, but it’s almost like you sort of accept that this is weird, and ignore that folks in the room are naked. Like at the end of my audition, after I’d posed in a series of postures, which was the sort of silent, observing, professional portion, they then asked me some questions about my application and why I wanted to do this, and I’m standing there, the only naked person in the room, talking to them like I’m on a normal job interview, answering about my resume. It was weird. Yes, you are naked, but yes, we are right now ignoring that fact and pretending not to notice that we’re having a normal conversation with you despite it. Lol. It was pretty weird, pretty fun. They even asked if I could do some of my performance poetry while posing, and I did. That was pretty cool.

Some of this for me is about taking ownership of my body. Not of how it looks, but how I feel in it. How connected am I to this thing that walks me around my whole life, digests whatever crazy thing I feed it, and makes my fingernails grow? How connected am I to this thing that has been abused by self and others? … is really what it comes down to.

Much like “Owning Voice,” this is another place of ownership. Of feeling like the master of my body, my fate, what happens to it, how I engage with it, and how I allow others to engage with it. To be naked in front of this panel is to claim my own body -- to take responsibility and care for all that has happened to it, and all that will happen to it. This is the vehicle I’ve been given, but it’s like a snail’s shell, it’s not just a house, it’s also part of the being. And for a while, and for intermittently, I have not been connected to this part of my being. Throwing it around hither and thither.

So, this audition for me was one of healing. The musical one was too, but in a different way. My friend talks about soul retrieval, particularly in reference to certain meditations. And for me, these actions are doing just that. I am retrieving parts of my soul which I have dismissed and shattered from myself, and I am making myself whole again.

How’s that for a Wednesday morning? 


*P.S. I realized where I was quoting the title of this blog from. It's a line from a draft of a poem I'd written last fall.

excerpt from "The Intelligence of Memory"

Like a fossil patient and low

Truth will wash up like integration

And render the visioner whole.

The Birth of Everything (for Kate)

I’m having a hard time getting this blog out today. I have written a couple of false starts, but they feel just that, false. Maybe pedantic. So, apparently, I give you this instead. With love, M.

on an ancient surface of being there was a traveler. he sat in his solitude for the time of nothing and worried that his everything was perhaps on the underside of the cushion on which he was sitting.

the traveler opened one eye, squinting through into the vastness, lit like a clown in the spotlight of a tragi-comedy. there was glitter on the lashes of his one eye and in the new light, they danced a fortuna among the lampposts of strands.

he hadn’t been able to pop his hip bone for a few millennia, and it was thrumming in a monotone bassoon voice. hum hum hum. there were other sounds too. the sharp and defiant crack of a planet being born. this made the corner of his mouth turn up in mild approval and awe. 

new-born planets have a very particular ring to them. like the variety of meditation bowls. cheepey little excited planets, proud of themselves for having been manifested into existence. the long slow toll of a heavy planet with many moon brides, undergirding what ought to be a cacophony of celestial banter, but which was also so encompassing, it was silence itself. or not silence rather, but noiseless vibration.

through his cracked eye, the traveler concluded that it was perhaps safe to open his second eye, but this one was turned inward to his soul and teaching and center and calm, and he wasn’t quite sure that two outward eyes were in fact what he wanted. but outward or inward, all of the eyes were in fact in all of the directions already and without the deliberate gaze, the inner limitlessness would remain. without his gaze on the throbbing heart of invention, it would still nonetheless be the throbbing heart of invention.

and so our traveler with his radiant vocal hip and internal oculars intact, opened his second eye.

in that instant, both immediate and eternal, having been happening all along and yet never once before, the darkness of his surroundings burst into a firework finale of swirling color. the colors were in full and ecstatic possession of themselves, and ran in spirals toward one another, creating for a moment the scene of a forest or a skyscraper or a hyperfluorescent deep sea creature with no eyes and 8 antennae.

the fluid colors tumbled about in the joy, merging, separating, one color, multicolors, sparkles, pulses, and chased themselves around the giddy and somber planets.

with his two eyes, and his trillions of bodily cells, the traveler met and observed the dancers, all of whom were encasing him and yet not existing at all. it was both void and dark stillness, and chaotic, sincere beauty.

with his two eyes, one an iris of pale blue diamond, the other a slick curve of onyx, he brought forth the invention, but also simply recognized it for the first time.

the glitter grabbed hold of the boulders of tears, careened down his face, and splattered into a thousand beads of light. 

The Last Mile.

 or "Romance & Finance."

So, I spoke with the HR woman at work, and today and tomorrow will be my last days temping here with this interior design firm. Last days for now, as school starts on Wednesday, and the reality is I'm really, really worn. The word I used to the HR person was "spare." That's how I'm feeling at the moment. In fact, I'm writing this blog at work right now, as I DID make my effort to get to work on time... then I realized that the Oakland bus system and BART are running on a Sunday schedule for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and so my reliable bus was not coming :P

But, I caught a bus, and made it in anyway. On my way in, I was reading from a book which shares the stories of people who have recovered from the insanity of financial woes, and the story I read really hit me. I realize that, with the upcoming influx of tax return and student loan disbursement, I'm right about to throw myself back into my own merry-go-round of financial problems.

All my fetishizing of having a car won't solve my problem. Taking jobs I don't want to take won't solve my problem, but not actually taking consistent and persistent action toward earning money in alternative ways won't solve my problem either. Luckily, last night, I got a call from a woman who is willing to help me walk through the steps I need to take to get clearer and freer from this roller coaster of poverty/manic spending/poverty/manic spending. Cuz that's my pattern. I am broke broke broke, in a panic, and then a miracle occurs, I have a job, money again, and then I start to live in magical thinking, and spend spend spend. And I'm back to where I was.

Now, it's usually not "all bad", so I justify it. It's been, in the past, a lot of spending large wads of money on parties for my friends, or a "gotta get away" weekend (i.e. I'm not taking enough daily care of myself, and need to blow a large wad on RAMPANT self-care. You know, TIME TO RELAX folks. It doesn't really work that way, I've discovered.).

I feel like things are going to turn. That these are the last vestiges of my best ideas about how to earn, save, and spend money. (I say "save" with only the most passing acquaintance with an ING account that's had $0.09 in it for over a year.) So, that feels good. That the sun *is* around the corner, and that I'm crawling the last mile on ragged, glass embedded knees. The last mile that I've had to crawl to see that I just can't fucking crawl anymore.

Perhaps I'll only have to turn this corner once, perhaps I'll have to turn it more than once. But I really do hope that things are going to shift for me. In the end, it's not at all about money. It's about my availability to my life. Being distracted by my money woes is a great way to stay small, and contracted, and constricted. And as I head into all these new adventures in my life, I would like to create a firmer foundation to stand on - and part of that is getting off this merry-go-round, and listening to how other people have walked from the soul-crush of financial insecurity into the hopeful, secure world of abundance and clarity.

It's also not about "making a lot of money." As, I've had wonderful salaries in the past, and still only have $25 in my ING account, which I put in last month.

Finally, it has occurred to me that my cycle of nothing then something then nothing looks a lot like my relationships with men. It's everything all at once, or it's nothing nothing at all. It's gorging on the love and intensity of a relationship, or it's like the lonely echo down a long well shaft. Remember what I said about the Italian? Burn hot, burn quick? Yeah, well my longest (also most recent) relationship *just* made it over the 7 month mark - and the one before that (about 3 years prior) was six months. (Embarrassing, but true, prior to that, my longest official "girlfriend/boyfriend" relationship was 6 weeks. ... 6 weeks with the alcoholic painter; 6 weeks with the alcoholic chef; and, oddly, firstly, 6 weeks with the non-alcoholic but tanning bed addicted jerzey guido ...)

Vicious "Everything or Nothing" wields its ugly head here too.

I truly believe that as I heal one, I heal the other. And I've begun healing both in different ways recently.

So, To letting go of my old and best ideas, which have led me to a temp job, zero "real" prospects, and exhaustion.

Bring on the corner. (gently please?) :)

BART: BY ALLAH, RISE THESPIAN!

Hahahahaha! Hahaha! Sorry, that was the acronym that occurred to me when I was trying to figure out how to express "spiritual experience on a urine-smelling trans-bay public train." And, lol, I really like it – it makes me laugh!

In any case, I will start toward the middle, and work my way back to that.

I arrived at the audition for the musical theater company, attempting to still my breathing into something less hyperventilatey. I arrived, got the information sheet, and took a seat on a plastic chair in a long white hallway with other hopefuls. If you’ve ever sat with a group of aspiring musical theater folks, or watched Rachel on Glee, then you have some idea of the kind of energy that is spit balling, pin balling, manic speed balling against the very narrow walls.

Add to this the fact that at this particular audition, the walls were very VERY thin. i.e. we, hallway hopefuls, could hear every single note of the person auditioning as we sat on our “Next!” chairs.

So, while sitting, I decided it would probably be good to get my heart rate down from 76 Tromboning through my chest. You know that really high heart-rate feeling, where you’re pretty sure everyone else can see this thing pulsating through your clavicle? So, I began to meditate. Because it was the only thing I knew that might calm me down. I’d looked at my music again, but at this point, whatever was going to happen, would happen. I knew I didn’t know the lyrics as well as I’d like, and I knew I hadn’t rehearsed as much as I’d like, but, there was no more, really, I could do at this point. I even tried to read a little from a spiritual book I brought with me, but I wasn’t absorbing a thing. It was like water slipping off oil.

So, instead, I sat. And began to breathe. “Think of your breath as a bridge between your inner world and the outer world. Notice where your breath goes as it comes in and goes out. Don’t try to change it, just notice. Is it deep, shallow, cool, warm?”

And I continually came back to this line of meditation guideposts, because it would often be interrupted with comparisons. “That person sounds really good. Why didn't I choose a better song? Oh, they didn’t hit that note right. Eesh, are they really going to hold that note out.” And this, began my heart-thumping all over again. Back to the breath.

Because that’s what a lot of the hallway energy is – am I better or worse than you? Are you better or worse than me? How to I stack up? How do I compare? How will I do?

And, believe me, a constant chatter of comparison against anyone, “better” or “worse,” was enough to bring me out of any sense of acceptance of que cera cera, whatever will be will be.

To quote what I’ve heard many times, my job is only to do the work and show up, and leave the results to G-d (Higher Power, Universe, … or Invisible Sky Fairy, as my great friend likes to call the Power and Calm and Connectedness we all have within us). So, however I do in that room is really none of my fucking business. (It is my business to prepare more, but, c’est la vie. What’s done is done.)

There comes a moment when I’m meditating – vaguely aware of the people going in and out of the room, shuffling through their sheet music, someone’s mom nervously helicoptering around her – when suddenly, and surprisingly, it all goes numb. Suddenly, my heart rate has slowed to a lull, my breathing to a calm almost still stream, and I begin to experience the tingles that I’ve come to associate with my HP. Perhaps you’ve experienced them – I had them at that camp experience I told you about, and when I hear a particularly moving piece of music, or when I hear a story of divine intervention, and sometimes even at the end of one of those sappy rom-coms when everything swells (uh, pun intended?) and joy radiates from the screen and sops right into my core. – Those tingles.

Suddenly, sitting in this hallway, I am calm.

It’s hard to express the depth of that moment, but you will perhaps identify with it, and also with the near-immediate return to the more fervent breathing and heart-rate. But for a few seconds, my tromboning heart was still. I was moved, and grateful, and surprised, and most of all, reassured.

On my way into the city for the audition, I had to get copies of my acting resume printed, and was in the copy shop. I was ahead of a woman who offered me a stapler, and I said, Sure, as soon as I stop shaking! I said I was heading to an audition and I was really nervous. She said that when she was 16 (i.e. a long time ago), she was going on a clarinet audition, and her teacher said to her, Imagine you are 74 years old, and how insignificant this will seem to you then. And though there’s a part of me that feels that auditioning for a musical for the first time since I was 17 is actually quite a significant and really awesome thing, she’s also right. It’s one audition out of many I believe I’ll have. Whether it’s this, musicals, theater as theater, or none of the above, I don’t know. And I don’t much care.

What I do know is that sitting in that plastic chair, I knew, bottomlessly, that this was a part of my path. Showing up, doing this righteously scary thing, is beyond significant for me, and is helping to shape the entire rest of my life.

Which, then, brings me to the BART moment. For those uninitiated in Bay Area public transportation, BART actually stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit, and is a train which crosses under the bay, connecting SF to the East Bay. It is also a carpeted train system, which means it hangs onto every loogie, urine, spill, and foot traffic odor and stain that marks it. It’s not the place you want to bring a hot date. Nor, in fact, is it the place you’d imagine having a spiritual experience. But, to get back to the point.

Sitting on BART, on my way into the city with my headshots, and resumes, and sheet music, and palpating heart, I began to go inward here. Where I went is somewhere I know – it is an open field, surrounded by a forest. I discovered this place the first time I said it aloud to my therapist a few years ago, “I feel like if I step out into the light, there's a sniper waiting to take me out.” I have felt, for a very long time, that if I step out into the sunlight, the stream of life, my power, my gifts, my nudges, that I will be cut down, metaphorically gunned down by the sniper(s) who stalk those trees. That as soon as I step foot out of the shade and into the field, BAM!, dead.

Although we’ve, and I’ve, been doing much work to dismantle this fear, it’s always been on my radar of “Don’t step too far into your own life, Molly. Stay small, stay hidden, stay safe.” I am mostly clear on when and how these ideas formed, and indeed, it had been important for me for a long period of my life to stay small, hidden, silent, and therefore safe and lovable. I am only lovable if I am small. If I get too big or loud, I will be quashed down.

These beliefs are very old.

So, yesterday, on BART, I found myself in that forest and field. I stood in the middle of the field, flanked by all of my teachers, guides, and supporters. A troop, or a menagerie, or a coven, of strength. From this place, I invited all of the snipers to come out of the forest. I told them that their work was done, and they were no longer needed. That, as you can see, I have an entire community of entities to help protect and guide me now, and that their job is now obsolete.

I swept my mind’s eye through the forest to the right, and invited the soldier there to come out. He came forward, and I thanked him for his service, and let him know he could now leave. And he did, through a wooden hatch door that appeared in the grassy ground before me and my team. Down he went. I scanned through the woods from right to left, and invited all the troops out, watched as they lowered their guns and slung them over their backs, in a position of neutrality and peace. I thanked each one, and at one point it felt like there were dozens, and they just all flitted down through the hatch with my general blessing.

Finally, it seemed like there were no more snipers in the forest. But, I went to take a look to ensure I’ve created an entirely peaceful and unendingly safe place for myself. And, in fact, I found one last sniper. I walked into the forest, and a ways back, he was, lying on the ground, resting against a tree, maybe with his camo hat pulled forward over his eyes. And I approached him, and told him it was time to leave. He nudged up his hat, looked up at me, and said, “Are you sure?” Are you sure you don’t need me anymore? Are you sure it’s safe to go out into the fields? Are you sure that my work at protecting you is done?

Yes.  Yes, soldier, I am sure.

And so, we both walked out, tromping through the forest into the sunlight of the field, and I held onto his arm, like an old friend, because in essence, he was. And we feel kindly toward each other – even though yes, he’s attempted to kill me, that was his only way of ensuring my safety.

We walked up to the hatch, and I saluted him, and he saluted me, and in real life on the BART train, I got a little emotional at it, at this goodbye, and down he went, through the grassy hatch, which closed, and sprouted a flower, or perhaps flowers were laid upon it, like a memorial.

But. After this? You wanna know what I did? I went CARTWHEELING through that forest!! I began to run and jump and sing and yell and cartwheel all throughout that fucking forest. It was free. It was clear. This was a safe place for me again. Or perhaps for the first time.

I was free.

Sure, perhaps it will take some getting used to, this walking out into the sunshine, this taking the reins of my own life, this “owning voice” thing. But, clearing out my psyche and my heart of obsolete warriors feels like an incredible start. And after years of toeing the line, stepping up to it and back away, don’t get too close, Perhaps now. Perhaps NOW, I get to cross it, in cartwheels.

Amen. 

Italian Hot and Sweet

First of all, thank you for the outpouring of love which you’ve sent me over the last 24 hours. I am grateful for your love and care.

I took yesterday off from work at the suggestion of the receptionist, whom I called to say I was running late and was dragging a bit as my grandmother had passed away, and she asked, Why are you coming in? Stay home. And I said, well, I have those projects I want to finish so maybe I don’t have to come in next week, and I’ll be in as soon as possible.

After about another 10 minutes of semi-aimlessness, I called back and said, you know what, I’m going to take your suggestion and not come in today – I’ll be in on Monday. And, so I will. I do have one project, not to finish, since it’s epic, but to show her how to do, to pass the torch, and once I do that, complete that task, I will be done there. I say with a finality that allows for change ;) But, I am feeling so over it. Sure, lots of people feel “over” their jobs, but I have the opportunity and the freedom to make a change, and so, I will make it. Before I get too resentful, too late, and burn a bridge I may need some day.

One of my options for alternative income will be approved or denied on Sunday. I’m auditioning for the live modeling guild in the Bay Area, and they pay well. Like I’ve said before, they also require “motorized transportation,” but I’m not all too worried about that. I have a feeling things are in the works around me and a car. First of all, because I reached out for help around finding one, and second because I have the support system of my financial folks to help me really piece together the amount I can spend – although I haven’t sat down with them yet, I let two people know that I would be reaching out to do so.

Today is my audition for a musical theater company, and true to my Serenity Moth, I haven’t practiced whatsoever. I have the music for one of the two songs I’ll sing, but am still not sure what my second one will be. And, I wish I’d practiced. Duh.

It’s “funny.” I had done my numbers in December, and had come to the conclusion that I actually didn’t need to work these few weeks before school started, but greed and anxiety came in, and I took the two weeks at the temp job. “Funny” is that last week I was stupidly sick, and worked one full day. That’s it. Then, this week, with my increasing lateness to work, and then taking off yesterday, I haven’t worked a full week anyway. It’s like the Universe saying, See, darling, sometimes things will end up the way they’re supposed to anyway – and you would have been better off not fighting it.

Yesterday, I did meet up with a friend for tea, and we spoke poetry, and school, and artistic integrity and honesty. And it was just nice to sit in the middle of the day drinking a hot beverage with a beloved friend. I wish I’d allowed myself the last two weeks to do that. But, c’est la vie. Perhaps lesson learned.

Afterward, I took a walk up over the border between Oakland and Piedmont (aka the rich section), and went up to my favorite tree swing. There are a number of swings in the streets up there, hanging from the trees closest to the sidewalk and street, and although when I first began to sit on them last year, I felt self-conscious, like these were someone else’s and I shouldn’t be on them – I’ve gotten over it ;) And I sat for a while on my favorite swing, swinging intermittently and letting myself oscillate back to center – which sort of feels like a metaphor for yesterday.

The later afternoon I spent on my couch in the dwindling sunshine reading Eat Pray Love, a book I’ve read before, and which seemed exactly the book I felt like reading. And perhaps influenced by the first section when the author is in Italy, and influenced by her self questioning (What would you, self, like to do?), in the evening, I asked myself what I wanted to eat. Nothing on the commercial strip seemed like what I wanted, so I decided to go to the grocery market, and just see what appealed and cook something. I had a vague idea about a pasta dish I've made before (also likely influenced by the “food porn” section of the book) but they didn’t have fresh basil (it’s not at all basil season at the moment), so I started to pick up random vegetables that spoke to me.

This blog perhaps is longer than I intended, but a long time ago in a galaxy far away, I was a 19 year old suburban college student in the summer between sophomore and junior year, and I was blazingly in love with an Italian-American. Blazingly – burn hot, burn quick. He, of the red growling IROC camaro, yes, really, and against-stereotype dredlocks, was a chef. (Well, at the moment, he worked at a pizza shop, but…)

One evening, he and I were in the kitchen of my house and he decided to cook up dinner. He began to do the most amazing thing. Something I had never ever seen before. He started to randomly take items, vegetables, meat, out of the refrigerator and prepare them for the pot. How do you know what to put in?? I squealed. Without a recipe??

I was shocked. I had never seen someone cook in this way before – without a recipe. He replied, I just know what I like, so I throw it in.

It was so novel. It perhaps sounds ridiculous to you, but at that moment, my entire world of cooking and food was cracked wide open – and beyond that, my ideas of rules, freedom, joy, frivolity, experimentation were cracked open as well. It was a pinnacle moment for me. And each time I just begin to “throw stuff in,” I still get a thrill of adventure.

So, when, yesterday, I was in the grocery store, and had to abandon my very specific basil recipe, I found myself creating something entirely new. Would it work? Who cares – I want to try. So, with a basket filled with locally-made pasta, sun-dried tomatoes, capers, Italian sausage – hot and sweet, a log of mozzarella, stalks of asparagus-thin broccoli, and a few sweet red peppers, I headed home to the healing power of food, creation, adventure, and self-care.

P.S. it was marvelous! – but next time, ix-nay on the capers ;)

Passing.

I found out yesterday that my grandmother died in the middle of the night before. My dad texted me after I’d gotten out of work to call him, and I knew, or expected that to be the information he’d give me. It was. And he’s alright. He’s, well, he’s not an emotional guy, but in the last few months of his mother’s sharp decline, he’s been pretty roller-coaster about it – which has been a little ungrounding for me – to see stone cry is a little … weird.

It’s been coming. She’s been in decline for a while, and has spent the last month or so in a nursing home/hospital. Which has been like a blessing. As some of you may recall from previous blogs, she and her husband and other son are sort of (no, not sort of, badly) hoarders, who live in chaos and desperate filth. So, it was a blessing that she got to spend her last month having her basic needs of food and cleanliness taken care of. She was losing her marbles, and sort of didn’t know where she was, but, I was glad for it.

Two things are sticking in my craw about yesterday, though. I called a few people after I talked to my dad – got several voicemails, and one lovely friend. And after wandering around the commercial street near where I live, sort of meandering aimlessly, I called my brother. To find out how he was, and just to tell him I was thinking about him. He feels similarly, that it was a blessing, and I told him that I wonder what will happen to the other two (her husband and son), and Ben said angrily, “I don’t really care.”

When she went into the hospital/nursing home, it was around the corner from where they lived in Queens. And yet, the reports I heard were that the other two were not visiting her at all. The reality is that they have been shut-ins for a long time (getting groceries delivered to the house), and I imagine that having the linch-pin of their family trio dying in the hospital was more than these fragile, broken people could handle. I have a shit-load of compassion for them. They are sad, doing the best they can people. And the best they could do was not to go to visit her.

This pissed my brother off, who seemed completely happy enough to write them both off. There will not be a service, my dad said, and he and his fiancé are having a shiva (sort of like a wake, without the body) at his fiance’s house on Sunday, and he’s invited his and her various social communities. But, for Ed and Randell, my grandfather and uncle, there’s nothing. A cremation, I heard.

The reality is that Ed (my dad’s step-father) and Ran (my dad’s half brother) have been in my life since I was born. We spent Christmases there; Ran set up all the small little lighted up villages; Ed wrote all the cards for the presents as riddles, giving clues to what was inside, sometimes a series of gifts with strange rhyming clues to get to the final “answer” present. For all their descent into disturbia, they loved my brother and I. And my dad, and my mom.

And that’s the other craw-sticker. After talking with my brother last night, I bought a few needed groceries, and came home. I’d spent a long time in the used bookstore before I called him, looking at titles from authors like Thich Nat Hahn, and Chodron, and Cameron, looking for comfort, I suppose. But I didn’t buy anything. In fact, I didn’t buy my way out of my feelings, climb into the movie theater, go to blockbuster, the ice cream shop, or over eat. I felt sad. That feels like a normal reaction. The “both/and”: relief for her release from suffering (one hopes), and sadness for losing the last blood related grandparent.

In any case, I bought some apples, eggs, and oatmeal, and came home. I made some of my new favorite tea, and sat down, and cried a bit.

Then I called my mom. She and I haven’t spoken on the phone for over 6 months, for reasons which again made themselves evident last night, but for which I had better tools to handle them. I left her a voicemail, as it was close to 11pm on the east coast. My dad had asked that I tell her, and I agreed before saying that actually she and I weren’t in the best of touch at the moment, and he said okay, he’d ask Ben.

My parents do not speak since their divorce over 10 years ago. At all. It’s not like they’ve erased, ignored their portion of life together; no, rather they each feel indignant and rageful and affronted toward the other. It’s awful. And I have had to spend a lot of time working up the boundaries to say, “That’s not my business,” when they each separately want to talk about the other.

My mom called me back last night. And we spoke for a little bit, and I told her about Ben’s reaction. I mean, she is my mom. It was finally who I wanted to talk to. Not to tell her, as Ben could have and would have done it (as inappropriate, perhaps, as that may have been), but because sometimes we just want our mom. My mom is not the mom I want, but she is the mom I have. And I am coming to grips with trying to not change her. (And, I won’t enumerate her assets here, but she is also one of the brightest, funniest women I know, and has shown me a great deal of love in my life to the best of her ability to do so.)

That said. When she began to say that if it weren’t for me and ben, she wouldn’t know anything that’s happening, and Dad’s stopped talking to her, that he’s been—

I cut her off. I said that I didn’t want to talk about that. And she paused, and said, well the point is that thank you for telling me. (Perhaps you can gather what a less-able-to-put-up-boundaries Molly was subject to in last year’s conversation. Narcissism is not just a river in Africa.)

So. Yeah. I’m going to call my grandfather today and offer my condolences, as that’s really all that I can do from here, and it’s what I want to do. It doesn’t matter how the other members of my immediate family are reacting to this passing, or the remaining alive members of my grandmother’s immediate family. I am able to show up with love. And so I will.

Too, I can accept that the same compassion I am able to show them, I could extend to my immediate family – because anger, indignation, narcissism – these are actually the best they are able to do. This, right here, is my family’s best, and I won’t try to ask them to be or do more than that. What I will do is allow myself to show up at my best, and leave the rest alone. 

Lighten up!

Yesterday, I bought a new comforter. The one that I had was given to me by a kind friend, but was stained and dark, and it went down on my list of Serenity Moths on Tuesday. (Something subtle that eats away at my serenity, yet doesn’t have to.) Also on my list was my apartment being dark. Part of that is due to the fact that the lamp I have on my desk does not have a lampshade, and so I taped a piece of construction paper around it like a shade, but am usually too nervous of fire to keep it on!

So, after work, I went to Ross, the discount store (i.e. Marshalls, etc -- east coasters shout out!), and found a new, white, soft, warm comforter. And now it’s on my bed. As I live in a studio, whatever color is on my bed really changes and is obvious in the whole apartment. So, I got to cross “stained comforter” off my list, and am heading in the direction of crossing off “dark apartment.”

I realize that almost all of the furniture in my apartment came to me absolutely free. I reflect on this, as I begin to think again/re-address/new-perspectivize myself toward abundance in my life. Every major piece was free. A gift of the universe. The bed came first. When I moved to California, my one friend was like, uh, is that all you brought? I had a few suitcases and a pillow. ;) She said she would have brought a u-haul with all her stuff. But, truth be told, I didn’t have that much, having just recently moved back from South Korea – all I had was in my childhood room in NJ, and no, I was not going to bring a twin sized bed to my “new life” in San Francisco.

When I got my first craigslist apartment, yay! here’s a room. … with nothing in it. Nothing at all. Not even a bed. Miraculously enough – very incredibly miraculously enough – my new roommate said his girlfriend just bought a new mattress set, and was getting rid of her old one. As I didn’t have any money, I offered that I could give her the $75 gift certificate to Victoria’s Secret that my dad’s fiancé gave to me as a parting gift in NJ. Sold.

That very day, we went and picked up a Queen-sized, good condition mattress and box spring. I have it to this day. For free. Or, as close to free/not out of my pocket as you can get.

When I moved to my own one-bedroom in SF, the next big piece was my couch. I wanted a pull-out for visitors, and lo and behold, on craigslist was a free two seater pull out couch. I don’t even know how I was able to transport it – my good friend and her boyfriend helped me, as he had a truck, and it is so damned heavy with all its metal internallings. Why was it absolutely free? Because the awful blue sofa also was entirely scratched apart on the arms of it and the back of it by a very active cat. Some of the stuffing was even coming out of the arms. No problem. I went to Bed Bath and Beyond, and found a perfect chocolate colored faux-suede sofa cover, and I have it to this day ;)

The rest of the pieces have come off the street, or several once from one of the buildings managed by the property management company I worked for. The building manager had a whole host of excess furniture in the basement. For the price of looking, asking, being organized to get transportation, and most importantly asking for help around it, I’ve acquired an entire mod-podge apartment of furniture that looks pretty cohesive.

The shade-less lamp, I paid $6 for, and it may have to go, or a lampshade will become available (believe me, I’ve been looking!), and I also paid for the omigod this couldn’t be any more perfect 2^nd bedside table which perfectly matches the off-the-street one on my side. The new one was bought at a garage sale around the time I was doing the Calling in The One exercises on creating space for a partner. It isn’t a replica of the first, it’s a partner. It matches, complements, enhances the first. Sort of what a partner should – or can – do, eh?

To abundance. And my lightening up apartment, heart, and outlook. ;)