The Life Experiment

Sadly, I did not have any blinding visions in the sweat lodge. Surprisingly, I wasn’t as hungry or thirsty as I’d feared I’d be. And naturally, I was really, really hot.

It was like a bikram yoga room, inside a tent – or a sauna the size of an igloo. It was actually pretty cool – forgive the word in this context. And the hardest part was just trying to suck some oxygen out of the steamy air at a few moments when the water was poured heavily onto the 28 heated rocks in the center of the wooden, covered structure. So, you open your mouth for a few moments, trying to gasp what you can, and then it settles. Luckily the woman running it generously allowed us some “break” time between the “prayer rounds” when the little hobbit door was opened (for more rocks to be brought in).

All in all, it was both highly satisfying, and a little anticlimactic, for all that I’d expected in my head. I loved the ritual of it – I like rituals, I find them kind of calming and grounding – there wasn’t any dancing or howling or anything. There was some singing, and a drum for that part, and then there was us, 8 of us, going around in the lodge saying some prayers outloud. And that was it. There was some tobacco burning, and some prayer ties - little bundles of tobacco we'd put our prayers in tied together with string which we later burned, and some walking around the lodge 4 times to signify the 4 days following the lodge when it’s still “working,” – so, I’m still secretly hoping for some baptism experience in the next few days, sight given to the blind. But all in all, it was generally pretty cool, interesting, fun, and I didn’t puke or cry the Ugly Cries, yet. I cried a little bit as we went around in prayer, and so maybe some things are released – maybe not. But, gosh darnit, I’m not a saint – have not been gifted the blueprints for the Kremlin – nor the answer to where atoms go in quantum physics when they disappear and reappear elsewhere.

But, I suppose that’s alright. This human experience is alright as far as it goes. And it goes pretty well, I should say. We’ll see – like my retreat in January, several things took a while to settle for months after, still marinating into my bones and shifting me slowly – so I imagine this may be the same. Who knows.

In other news.

Hm. Well, Oh! I could tell you about the Workshop I hosted on Saturday at school!

7 – SEVEN – whole people showed up! It was a great size group – a few people who’d only heard about it through the internet whom I’d never met before, and a few good friends I did know.

It went really well. There were a few scrambling minutes beforehand about a missing hot water dispenser for the tea, but it worked out just fine.

I was surprised, but not shocked, to see some things that came up and came out for me – for example, in response to the open ended journal question at the beginning, “The last time I felt creative ____” … well, I wrote about a time almost a year ago, when I was doing a painting in my kitchen for the art show last June.

I was surprised that that’s what came up – obviously, I’ve been doing hell of creative shit for the last year, with my thesis and performance poetry stuff – and of course, with the acting and singing auditions – I even took a singing class! But… that’s what came to mind.

Putzing with this painting. It took me a really long time – or longer than others had – to do, because I was experimenting. Paint, wait a day, wipe it off leaving a pigmented residue (it was oil), paint some more, wipe, mix more color, thin more color – it was marvelous: frustrating and thrilling and open. It was a total experiment, but I knew where I wanted to go with it – and I got there (or enough that no one else knew that I didn’t quite!).

I took painting a little bit earlier this year, in the beginning of the semester, but dropped because it wasn’t fun – I wasn’t having fun, I didn’t feel like I was being allowed to be explorative – that was my interpretation, and it was good for me at the time to drop – I’m still glad I didn’t have that on my plate along with everything else.

But I have a few paintings that have been in my mind’s eye for a few months now, and I know they want out.

At the end of Saturday's workshop, I asked each of us to light a little tea light candle, and make a statement of commitment to one thing we can do for our self-care, creativity, or grounding that week. … I said, “I commit to painting in the studio for at least three hours.”

I still have keys to the painting studio at school, as unofficially approved by the painting instructor, and I have about a week and a half before I have to return them. I guess I have some experimenting to do. 

Please Hold - Visions Pending.

This morning I head to a magical mystical place. Fremont.

Just kidding. I will head to Fremont, and from there, be driven by a woman I’ve never met to a place I’ve never been to do a thing I’ve never done.

A friend of a friend is driving me to the Santa Cruz mountains to participate in a sweat lodge this morning.

I’ve…never done this. I have very little knowledge of what it’s about, what to expect, what I’ll experience – except for one story reported from a friend of mine recently… that after the sweat lodge, a few hours later, maybe a day?, she cried the Ugly Cries in a way that sounded like it psychicly shattered her pelvis. She said that she bawled, and had a near mental breakdown for about 24 hours or so. … So… Uh, why am I going?

Well, I’m curious – and I think it’s good timing. The lure of a ritual, of a symbolic cleansing, or renewal, or rebirth, sounds like its just about right for where I am in a lot of aspects of my life. The end of school, surely, but also more personal ways – an upcoming anniversary of sobriety, a particular set of work that I’m on in my recovery, and the anticipation of what may be the beginnings of my departure from the Bay back to the East Coast.

To let go, to let go of things that aren’t working for me. Patterns of beliefs or motivations or behaviors. I don’t anticipate that I’ll be rendered white as snow – in fact, the only thing I really anticipate is that I’ll be engorgedly thirsty.

I am naturally a water-toting animal. I am nearly always thirsty. However, in the recent month or so, I’ve been doing a little more reading and having more consideration of the planet’s fresh water supply, and its dwindlingness, and I must admit – it’s made me thirstier than ever.

Or perhaps, I’m just more aware of how much water I do drink and need. But, there’s nothing like watching a documentary on the water shortage to make you imminently thirsty!

So, I anticipate that – though, who knows, maybe I’ll just be thinking how freaking hot it is, I won’t even remember that water exists! I’m curious, anticipatory, and open, most of all.

I’ve tried a lot of woo-woo spiritual nonsense and sense since I’ve been in the Bay Area, so what’s a sweat lodge or two? Although, I will admit that it would be grand to be rendered white as snow – or rather, to be magically and majestically relieved of the blocks and fears and judgments that I carry around with me. Maybe I’ll get movement on them. Maybe not. But, it sure would be grand to be struck full with a divine vision, like Joseph Smith, … only without all the wives.

Keep you posted. 

R-E-S-P--...oh you know the rest

Things I have the power to change:

my hair color

my perspective.

That’s the list for now. Sure, it could be really long, but that’s what occurs to me at the moment. I haven’t, in fact, changed my hair color in a few years – after the blonde debacle, and subsequent re-browning – and, it sort of feels that i haven’t changed my perspective all that much lately either.

I met up with a friend in SF yesterday, as I went about my day flyering the city (note the gazillion workshop flyers on the lampposts of Hayes Valley), and basically, she told me that although she could see that this was important to me to talk about – where I am in my life, basically, … or rather, my opinion of where I am in my life – that she just couldn’t process with me anymore. That she herself, as I well know, is in a similar position, going through similar changes in her life, and I guess she’s just fed up with the whole “Let’s figure it out” routine. And so, she told me, gently, that I’m still in the problem, and not the solution, and that until I start to do things or see things differently, of course it’s going to be painful for me.

I was both disappointed, and heartened – our friendship is that strong, that we can let one another know when we’re being crazy, basically, and that the other just can’t bear witness to crazy right now.

I have a few marching orders, work I’m doing with a woman one-on-one, that I can proceed to progress on, and that’s where the change will come. But, for now, my friend is right – as Jung said (loose paraphrase): we cannot solve the problem at the level of the problem.

So, if all I have at the moment is my ground level view, it’s better for now to stop reporting back from the (perceived) bleak front lines, and do the work I have in front of me which will help me to get a foothold up and out.

Perhaps this all sounds sort of vague, but it’s all I got.

I was reflecting this morning on respect – that something that I can change is how I respect myself or don’t. Who am I to disparage myself for not being x y or z? How would I react if a friend came to me and “should” all over me? (You should know, it should be different, you should have figured it out already, you should be better…)

I’m realizing that all the time that I spend in lamenting this situation is time I’m spending beating myself up, and treating myself unkindly – and without respect. What would it be like to respect myself – to look at myself from an outsider’s view? To congratulate myself on my accomplishments, take real stock and account of things that I have done and talents that I have. What would it be like to take a more well-rounded view of myself? Would I ever disparage myself as in the above paragraph? Discounting all that I am? No. Because here are a few reality checks – a) I’m human – guess what, I come with assets and liabilities. b) I’m hosting a workshop that I’ve dreamed up, crafted, advertised and implemented all by myself today. (with due thanks to all my helpers!) and, c) I am poised to graduate from graduate school. I didn’t make it to my college graduation. I got high as fuck after my high school one. This time, I’m showing up – period. I’m showing up entirely differently.

I’ve changed. I have become someone worthy of respect – most emphatically of my own respect. If I can begin to take ownership of feelings like that – or rather facts like that – then I can begin to move from the problem into the solution. I do not need to know anything about what “will happen.” What I do need to be very careful I count along side of the things I have “to work on,” are the things that are worthy, lovable, respectable about myself.

Because in the end, I’m the person with the power to change my perspective. Because I will inform others’ interactions with me, Fate’s interactions with me, by leading by my own example of realistic, balanced, and earned respect. 

Why Joe Cocker is My Higher Power

Besides, of course, following the line of my post earlier this week, A Little Help From My Friends, as many of us know his version from The Wonder Years (may they rest in peace and reruns), a different of his songs occurred to me this morning in my … oh, let’s just say “usual” fits of morning pages anxiety over money and work.

Can you guess which one?

Yep, Have a Little Faith in Me.

Damnit. I don’t want faith, I want answers. I want conclusions – something I can take to the bank, oh yes most very literally.

But, what do I get instead? I get indicated to keep on doing the footwork that I have planned to do for today, and to have a little faith. Both are intrinsic to moving forward.

Today, by stroke of genius Universal camaraderie, I will be using my friend’s rental car to post flyers for May 19^th’s workshop. I had no idea even 48 hours ago that would happen that way. I texted my friend to get tea on Wednesday night, and she said yes, we did, and then she said, oh, by the way, she’s rented a car for this week, and we should plan an adventure.

I was thunderstruck. I just placed a reservation on a rental car I couldn’t afford so that I could leaflet the town. And, so I asked if I could use her car today instead – she works in SF, we’re driving in together very shortly, and I’ll have her car while she’s at work, all for the price of a tank of gas – much cheaper than the rental car – and with the benefit she gets of not having to move it every two hours for street parking in San Francisco’s North Beach – a notorious place for parking nightmares.

Have faith yet? … oh, sure, that counts I guess, but…

Today, I’ll also put out a few more tendril emails to people about work I might get for May, and I also got my confirmation phone call about my modeling gig on Monday, for a drawing group in San Francisco. … ner-vous – but I “worked out” a little last night to my exercise DVD, trying to get those triceps contoured, seat lifted, and thighs capable of holding contraposstos for 20 minutes. Of course, of course, I accomplished that ALL in one 45 minute DVD session. … but, it will have to do, and I will be paid.

I got an email from my wonderful cat lady aunt last night (I’m not ready to give up her “cat lady” handle, but I’ll add “wonderful” to mitigate it – it used to be “crazy cat lady aunt,” so, that’s progress). She asked, point blank, as is her wonderfully tactless style, You’re graduating - What Now?

… this is the point in the scene where crickets chirp, and someone coughs uncomfortably and squirms a bit in their chair.

Uh … Question Mark?

Have a little faith, now?

I don’t know. It’s all ebb and flow. It’s contingent on my doing the work I have set before me. It’s contingent on eating breakfast, taking care of myself, asking for help, relying on help, being willing to accept help -- which is the hardest for me. I’ll ask you for help if I’m desperate, but then I’ll run away before you answer or most especially if you say yes – NO!!! I’m not actually ready for help! Receiving help is unfamiliar and doesn’t fit into my story that this life is solitary and aching and grueling and asking for help is for wussies. Noo!! Don’t help me. … I desperately need your help. … Don’t help me, I got it! … Wait! Don’t go!! I need f’ing help!!

Oy.

Today I’m grateful I can see it – which means I can work to change it – and today I am accepting help, and Joe Cocker, may you light my way. 

Check Me Out

they whispered. I followed the murmur through the stacks. Not knowing what was there, where it would lead me, how my world might open when I arrived.

No, it was not Jeanette Winterson. It was the rows and rows of Public Library magazines – with a placard above them, “Magazines available for Check-Out.”

I have never heard of such a thing. Like reference books, I assumed, and thought, and thought I knew that magazines stayed in the library, confined to be read in a hard, wooden, straight back chair, in a few captured minutes that aren’t enough to feed or satisfy.

Yesterday, I found out you could check magazines out from the library. I cannot tell you what alteration this caused the entire rest of my day.

This discovery came about as I stood in another set of stacks – the grocery store. In the cleaning supply aisle, comparing the truly eco friendly ways of the eco friendly disinfectant wipes. Which were sold in less plastic; which had the most wipes for the price; which stated they were the happy product of happy plastic trees and happy compost fodder?

In my mildly manic musings, I got the return phone call from a friend I’d called earlier that day. It was the timing of the gods.

I told her what I was doing; that I’d come into the grocery store to buy apples and carrots, and am now contemplating buying something I completely do not need.

I told her that with this month’s spending plan (aka budget), and knowing – or vaguely knowing – that next month’s is the same, I felt pinched. I told her I felt like if I couldn’t make the major purchase of a therapy session or a chiropractor’s visit, I’m finding myself wanting to make these tiny little purchases for shit I don’t need, just to set off some release.

I’m not a shopper. That’s not what sent me into financial recovery. But, part of my pattern of behavior is that I live on such meager means, that eventually I crack, and buy shit I only marginally need – or perhaps do need, but not everything-all-at-once-right-now -- in a fit of violent grabbing. Then I feel remorse, I constrict again, until the pattern cycles over again.

Because I have marginal income at the moment, as my student loans dwindle to their last sputtering sips, I am having to live within my means. And my means, are not generous at the moment. Though, for real, I’m glad to have what I do. I am living with electricity and shelter. And that’s what I can afford this month. Electricity, shelter, internet, cell phone, travel, food. Period, end of sentence. There is no money for anything else, if I’m to manage another month of any of those things.

So, no money for entertainment, or self care, or toiletries, or hobby supplies. No money for biodegradable, eco-friendly, let’s feel good about yourself disposable wipes.

But particularly, no money this month for the self care categories of therapy and chiropractor. Each important. Each cut this month and next.

So, I’d put out a phone call to my friend earlier in the day to ask if I could make an appointment with either next month. When she called me back in the store, she asked me, so you’re asking my permission to spend money you don’t have? Well… yes. [insert laughter…hers] And of course, I see the insanity of that, but I really needed someone else to tell me.

Because I don’t want to be at the end of May without food. And that’s what will always be cut, if I’m given my druthers. Not in an anorexic way, just in a, I can survive on less way.

But, really, as I stand ready to buy things I can’t afford – can I survive on less?

She said it sounded like I was feeling deprived. I agreed. By this point I’d put back the wipes, and grabbed the apples and carrots I’d come in for, and was on the check-out line. I said, I’m just feeling itchy to just buy something, anything – if I can’t have what I really need or want (therapy or chiro) – that now I’m staring at these magazines living the check out aisle.

She said, and here’s where it all changed, that sometimes she just goes to the library and reads the magazines there. That that feels like a luxurious activity to her. That it sounds like I needed some luxury. I fully agreed, and although I envisioned the hard straight wooden backed chairs, I agreed inwardly that it was better than purchasing shit I don’t need to ease a feeling of deprivation.

So, I went to the library. I asked where the magazine stacks were. And above them, like the Burning Bush, was the sign, “Magazines Available for Check Out.”

I. was elated. I’d never heard of such a thing. I yelped my joy at a passing library patron who edged a little farther away from me. I waddled up to the check-out counter with a stack of almost 10 magazines – current magazines. And I expressed my shock and joy to the worker – who was none too keen to join in my elation, and sent me off with a parting, dryly sarcastic, I’m glad we could be a part of that.

And I came home with my bounty. I fanned them out on my coffee table, heated some tea, settled beneath my chenille blanket on my cozy couch, and felt, honestly, for the first time in a long time, like myself.

This is a Molly activity. This is something I do to feel pampered and cared for and more than a bit indulgent. I felt like it would be alright. For two hours, I snuggled deeper into the cushions and pages, with the covers of Dwell, and Scientific American, and Vanity Fair … and Martha Stewart Living circled around me like an offering of spring blossoms.

I was being indulgent – and it didn’t cost me a dime. 

Poetic Noise.

I was all set to write a blog about 7 years. How really when someone is 6 years old, they’re beginning their 7^th year of life. How I’ve been here in the SF Bay Area 6 years to the day, and so I begin my 7^th year in the Bay. And how, further, and don’t quote me, that our cells are said to regenerate every 7 years – all of them – so that I am now beginning a set of 7. Any and all cells that I had in my body when I arrived in San Francisco have absolutely been purged and regrown, replaced.

I think about this, and intended to write about all the things that have changed in these 6 full years. About where I am not as I begin my 7^th – about how I feel it’s completely cosmically appropriate that I stand ready to graduate from a Master’s program and contemplate a return to the East Coast, and even maybe a career.

I wanted to list things like getting my teeth fixed, a several-year process that I started here, after 10 years of having a few molars pulled in high school but never replaced, which made me self conscious in photos, though few others noticed (I certainly do now, as I smile entirely with every ounce of my cheeks).

I was going to write about my return to art. About taking up the pencil after several years' neglect and the first tentative and judgmental sketches which I shoved away for another few years before warming up and into myself – culminating in selling a painting last year – me?! of all people.

The last 6 years witnessed a return to the stage, auditions, head shots, community plays. Two acting classes, and two performance poetry classes, and some modeling to further my return to being present in my skin.

They also signaled a return to writing, the scribbled in margins and the back of notebook hobby of mine. Who knew that beginning to post my poems as Facebook notes for several years would morph into what it is now – reading in public, (almost) owning my mantle of poet. 

I got a cat, for chrissake. Something I was loathe to do – my first pet-able animal I’ve ever owned, and having her hasn’t make me a crazy cat lady… so I’m told.

I put up curtains, set root in San Francisco, didn’t run away, cut and run, shrink or hide. I’ve emerged slowly, shyly, tentatively, reluctantly and painfully for sure.

I took guitar lessons and voice lessons. Which I dropped, but the piano creeps in these days, sending crescendos of joy into my marrow.

For years, while I’ve been here, whenever someone told me that they were in school full-time, I looked at them as though they were a movie star, a little starry eyed and goofy and admiring, and said (I remember so clearly), I envy people who do that – go to school fulltime. And now I’m one of them. I forget that I really asked for this. I asked for it often and deeply.

As each of the cells on this corporeal form have dived their swan song into the ether, I have changed. People sometimes use the term inwardly rearranged – how literal it is here.

Yes, I intended to write my blog about that – about the nature and surprise of continuing to beat a heart consistently for 7 years.

But I read my email before I came to write this, and there’s some poetic noise in the interwebs about some highly public class tension that occurred last night in the direction of a classmate, and I’m just sort of sad about it.

We are all human. We are all trying to be free from suffering and doing the best we can. 

How we act and react -- teacher, student, classmate ... parent, co-worker, acquaintance, dude who cut me off on the highway -- is simply and ultimately the best we can offer for that day. We may not like it or approve - we may reprove ourselves for how we acted or reacted or neglected to act - but we also get to reflect and change what isn't working for us, whether that's our perspective or action. 

So mixed with the awe and gratitude I feel for not being the sloppy, grubbing, manic splash of a young woman I was when I arrived in San Francisco 6 years ago today, I also feel a melancholy compassion for last night's wounded artist (who for all I know, may not be), and for the reality that we are all somewhere in the process of this perpetual self-renewal.

I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends

As I sit across the wide wooden table, slightly wobbly, with “world music” of some kind emitting from corner speakers, my friend holds out her hand, lays her palm up, crisp milky white against waxed mottled mahogany, and I take it. She places her other hand atop our pile of digits, cocooning them, warming them as tears make unbidden trails through the invisible down of my cheeks and under the hollow of my jaw.

Adapting Order from Chaos

Today, I get my thesis signed by the third person I need, and then uploaded to the library system for printing and binding. It’s another way of saying, today, it’ll be really done. Complete. Finit. C’est Complet. Au revior. Adios. Ciao. See you. Never to be seen again.

Well, sort of. Not, “never to be seen again,” but, I’m exhausted of it. It’s like saying the word zipper repeatedly until it loses all its meaning. That’s the word “thesis” for me at the moment, and a lot of others’ I assume as well.

On a fully unthoughtout fledgling tangent that may pan out to a hill of beans, I’m applying to a job in Philadelphia today. It’s more of a show of willingness I suppose, to move, to be employed, to take action so that I am employed.

In several books I’ve read lately on maintaining solvency and being financially self supporting, you won’t guess what the number one advice is – get a job. Ha! Yes, it’s true.

So, in and amongst the other work I’m doing here, like the workshop in SF next month, where I’ve rented a studio space, and am posting up flyers and all, I’m also looking for work… sort of in a “finally” kind of way. There feels to be a different tone emerging. I do not say fully emerged. But the tone is one that feels less desperate.

Not that I’m less desperate for income, but that I’m less desperate for “the answer,” or to “make it work,” or to “figure it out.” I guess I just am beginning to feel more calm around it. Like this, job searching, is not such a big deal anymore. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain, but it’s beginning to feel like it’s not the Herculean effort it’s been for me in the past.

Perhaps part of it is the stop-gaps I’ve created for myself with my “R+D” hours; perhaps part of it is simply grace. Who knows, maybe even part of it is more hours of sunlight, or I’m back to my morning practice, or less caffeine to feed general anxiety.

But, it’s a strange new beginning development. And, I like it. I’m not “secure” in it, I don’t feel some overwhelming sense of the order of the Universe, and a divine calm or serenity. I feel like a more logical, okay, let’s get ‘er done, sense of order. I guess I’m feeling more prepared.

That’s something that’s come up on some inventory I’ve been doing around my patterns of secretary job / quit / secretary job / quit. … school. ;) The reality is that I've had good intentions, but I didn’t have the information, research, foundation to make any kind of alternate job work. I had great intentions – hang paintings, sell art, host gallery events – but no idea who to talk to, where to start, or any real idea of the lay of the land.

I was doing what I sometimes do – take a developmentally inappropriate step toward something; fall short, of course; then point and say, see, I told you this path was closed to you.

Instead of simply recognizing that baby steps is where I am. I really am. Teeny tiny little putterings in some direction or other. Write an email, make a phone call, listen to others, reach out for help. Not, propose some grand effort at which I’m marginally qualified.

I feel better coming to recognize where I really am – to acknowledge that I want a creative arena to be my bread and butter – but I’m more willing to be open to what that looks like. I’m more willing to “get a job,” and let the rest fall into place. I don’t have to necessarily earn by making art – not “right now,” that’s one of those “too big for my britches” steps. But I can get myself, allow myself to get to a stable financial place so I can begin making the babysteps toward that. First things first as they say.

The Philly job is in a creative setting. It also includes administrative tasks. But, from the description, it could be a great fit. I am trying to hold the whole thing loosely. There’s a part of me that’s getting really excited about it – and then there’s the part of me that’s like, dude, 10% of the population is looking for work, chill out, do what’s in front of you, and be humble.

Yes, AND, it’s nice to recognize that I’m becoming willing to really understand that school is over in TWO WEEKS, and it really is time to get a job which affords me the luxury of 3 meals a day… I really like that luxury. Furthermore, on the Philly front, it’s close enough to the family, without being in NY, where I don’t want to be. I’ve visited often enough to know, that like here, there’s a variety of socio economic, cultural, political pockets; the weather is similar to how I grew up – and last time I was there about 2 or 3 years ago in an October, the leaves changing were like magic.

Who knows. What I know is that I’m willing to broaden my search, not run away, do the research, ask for mo-fo’in help, and, at the moment, eat breakfast and go see my peeps. 

The Masculine Mystique

Firstly, I would like to quote an acquaintance of mine as they responded once to my tirade on SF’s chilly weather – “Then Move.” Touche, quite right. And I will, just not today.

Secondly, my morning pages were like something out of a schizo’s notebook this morning, and I’m rather heartened than alarmed by it.

As I began to, again, write that I could paint, a sentence which was followed immediately in my head by the thought, “Yeah, right,” … my morning pages turned on me, and began a near-two page rejoinder along the lines of Stop Fucking Saying Yeah Right, and GO DO IT! I channeled the very pissed off and frustrated voice/part inside me that is exceedingly tired of the self-defeating, Eeyore-like part of me that crosses all my interests with a “Yeah, but,” or a “How will I make any money?”

I was happy to see that this activated part was so adamant, and demanded that I Just Fucking Do It, rather than what I’ve been doing for a very long time, question, debate, lolly-gag, despair. This voice is the fuck despair voice. It is the voice, one might say, of my inner masculine.

I’m a little hesitant to draw the dividing line between feminine and masculine in this way; feminine as pondering and questioning; masculine as action and fortitude. But, it sort of feels like that to me, and it’s only my interpretation. There are plenty of other ways to categorize, or not, these disparate voices and parts of ourselves. But, for the sake of the argument, I’ll call it my masculine side.

And the truth is, it’s right. Whatever it is, or I call it. Because this is the point in the job search where I get frustrated and think, well, nothing will come of it anyway, so phooey, here’s another admin job. My internal beings of all sorts are having a coup. Nuh, Uh. Time’s up. Off the pity pot, lady. Get on it.

And further more, Yes, You Can. Furthermore,

to segue,

you/I have very recent experience in NOT behaving as you would have in the past. You very recently responded to a situation MUCH differently than factual evidence had it before. This means … you’re different. You’ve changed. You can do things now that you couldn’t before, and your mental register aligns with a much healthier set of behavior and thinking now.

The case in point, is that I was asked to go to the theater by a boy…man. There is nothing wrong with this person, except that a) I accepted the extra ticket thinking he has a girlfriend, so I thought it was a friend thing (I found out later he does not), and b) he is new to the not-drinking world.

Over the last 3 days, I have felt icky – like the princess and the pea. I know from my own experience that the first few months of not drinking and trying a whole new way of life – no, not first few months, first few years (or year, AT LEAST), are so incredibly formative, that I would be damned to throw a wrench into the wheel works of someone else’s critical development. I know people who have gotten involved, and it’s worked out marvelously, but I, surprisingly, was feeling way too uncomfortable about it.

Sobriety, mine or someone else’s, was way more important to me than a fucking non-date date. No matter how long it’s been, how intriguing it is, how fun it could be. Not doing it.

So, through a series of phone calls to friends, and a confirmation that it’s the respectful thing for us both, yesterday, I texted the dude and said I’d rather stick to seeing him “around,” than go for coffee. That I felt “murky” around it.

You know what he said?

“Okay. No worries!”

???!!!

All my f’ing belly aching, and heming and hawing, and “Okay, No Worries”?? Wow, this honesty thing really f’ing works.

Through a series of circumstances, the timing was different than he thought, so I get to go see the play by myself and also get to have a clean, peer-like relationship with this dude. I don’t have to feel weird, or avoid, or future-trip about it. The play is the bonus prize – the actual prize is the relief of doing the right and honest thing for myself, and sticking to a new way of being.

I know from direct experience that I haven’t always responded that way to someone who was new to not drinking, and I experienced the fallout of that, however brief it was. I, apparently, have learned from my experience. And my internal alarm system is calibrated to this new way of being.

I say all this to say, that my masculine side has a point. All that writing this morning about Just Do It has a point. The point is that I’m not the person I used to be. I don’t have the same reactions I used to, and so I don’t have to follow the same actions I used to. This whole “new way of living” has made itself quite apparent in my life, and I can allow the boon of that to propel me forward.

I don’t have to be afraid anymore. Afraid there isn’t enough, or I’m not good enough, or I’ll never make it anyway, or that a creative life is a stupid one.

In fact, I don’t have these fears anymore, really. They’re just echoes. There’s nothing real to scare me. There’s no one stopping me, or chiding me, or making fun of me.

And if there ever is, I apparently have a massive bully to yell affirmations at them. 

"Summer Lovin'" is Putting it Mildly

So here’s how I see it: I get to REVEL in the marvelousness of this completely unseasonable warm, sunny, vibrant climate-change-induced weather. But to make up for it, I’ll practice conserving water? Deal?

I know it’s awful to feel like this shadenfreude kind of feeling about the planet – getting off on the poor withering and decimation of natural resources. However, I gotta tell you – I probably haven’t felt this open-chested in years.

I. Love. The. Heat. I know Bay Areans are of mixed minds – most of the locals love the fog and the temperate, mid-range, year-round temperatures. I, however, can’t stand that I feel like I never get the time to thaw out properly. This was especially worse for me when living in SF, and despite my claims of woe-is-me about living on this side of the bridge, the weather is better.

See, the problem that no one else seems to think is a problem is that the nice days tend to be COMPLETELY unpredictable. When I moved here, everyone claimed to high heaven about the “Indian Summer,” i.e. the warmer months of September and October. But in my tenure here in the Bay, each year, there’s maybe 3 days where it hits 80 or above, but those days are not in a row. So, really, there’s no predictability, and no sense, for me, of ease and comfort that comes with the knowledge that “it'll be hot this week.” Nope. Not my experience here. Sure, it gets warmer in those months, but, nevertheless, even so, at 7pm, as soon as the sun hits the water, the temperature drops radically, and we’re back to the whole “layering” theme that San Franciscans seem to have learned at birth.

On the east coast, which is all the other experience I have – well, in South Korea too, -- there are seasons. Say it with me people – SEASONS. There are ENTIRE MONTHS when you have the absolute knowledge that you will not need your winter coat. We call this Summer. Not qualified Summer. Not Indian Summer. Not mythic summer. Just damned Summer. We call it wearing tank tops INTO THE NIGHT. We call it warm summer evenings, sitting out with a glass of iced anything, and the slight coolness just enough to warrant jeans, maybe, but you will NEVER need a jacket in August at night.

Perhaps this is a rant. But, I’m genuinely chagrined at the unpredictable nature of weather here. I NEED time to defrost. To thaw out. I need consistent time to sleep naked with just a sheet and all the windows open. I need to feel that each and every last cell in my body has sloughed off its introverted winter layer, and has come out to bask in the glorious healing power of the sun – my very blood cells want to hoist on an inflatable duckie and high dive into the glistening pool of hot.

In Judaism, there is a law. If there are two people in a room, and one is cold, and the other is hot, the cold person gets the say on changing the temperature – this is an old law, having been written when the person who was cold was more likely to get sick and die, so it was a preservation thing. But, I dig that law. I’m ALWAYS cold – unless, of course, I’m not. Unless I really get to sink into the warmth and sun and gut-releasing, lung-expanding breaths of sun-caked air. I personally really need the heat.

Furthermore, and I’ll wrap it up, for me, there is something that feels so closed off about too much coldness. As I’m always on the colder end of the spectrum, I spend a lot of my time “out” thinking of the next warm place I’ll be, or just thinking "fuck, i'm cold." In winter anywhere, you see people huddled into their coats, marching as fast as possible to the next sanctuary of warmth – and to me, it just feels so isolating. No one to nod hello to, no one to stop and chat with; you’re inverted, huddled, hurrying, and busy getting somewhere. Summer is quite the opposite. You laze. You loll. You amble and stroll.

I know this unseasonably warm weather we’re having is just another death knell of the planet. I realize that perhaps even the very next generation will have zero concept of what seasons are, as the weather continues to play “Gotcha!” on all of the coasts. But, I will gladly take an army shower, carry as many reusable bags as I need to, and even… G-d help me – take public transit, if it means I get to go outside today wearing a dress, flip flops, and the world’s goofiest grin. 

Through the Tunnel

Well, I suppose I’m better than yesterday. A number of contributing factors. Met up with friends in the morning, got asked to go see a play this Sunday, got asked to go to that Dharma Punx meditation group tonight, made plans with a friend for tomorrow afternoon, made plans with a friend for Sunday afternoon, got my thesis paperwork signed by the folks I needed and it was confirmed that the last signature I need can be gotten on Monday without penalty, was congratulated (even without the uploading) that I will now have an MFA degree and that that’s an accomplishment even if I don’t feel it right now, ran into my professor who’s helping me with next Saturday’s workshop and got some details worked out, got my locker combination from the sports center and put on the sneakers I’d hidden in there almost 8 months ago, took a REALLY long walk through the awesome grounds at school, had a lovely little conversation with a lizard, walked through the school’s herb and healing plant tour, got some good rehearsal in for acting class, had some good convo’s with student friends of mine, came home and wrote the performance piece for May 1^st and really like how it turned out, and then had a long convo with a great friend of mine.

So…. yes, things pass. I needed ALL of that to get through the funk, and there’s still the lingering notes of Beethoven’s funeral march playing in the back of my head, but I don’t feel quite nearly as pissy or whiny as yesterday. This is good.

Plus, I’ll babysit for nearly all of today, and kids, even though I’m always nervous to babysit for that long of periods (how the f can I entertain kids that long!), they’ll help me get back into the more playful, much less self-serious frame of mind.

There was an enormo orange cat perched on the garage overhang as I was writing my morning pages this morning. I always try to get my cat to notice these things, and tap vigorously out the window, but she rarely seems to get it and thinks I’m just playing. D’ah, well.

Luckily, it feels, there’s really nothing more to report. Getting through my emotional tornado was enough news for me. Oh, I also got a few new books from the library before my scheduled phone call with this woman who used to work at galleries, and now works for a law firm or something for art and artists – i forget exactly what she does, but I wrote it down. I wrote a lot down.

We’ve been trying to schedule this call for nearly a year. I let the thread drop sometime in October, and finally picked it back up this month. And we finally got to speak. She was really helpful and informative, as I gather information about what jobs there are in the fine art world. She asked why I was more interested in the art world than the writing world, and I said, I guess I just feel so surrounded by writers, that I like the avenue of something else. Plus, I told her that personally, I love painting because it gives my brain an alternate route to process and develop things – she said to definitely use that sentiment in interviews.

Plus, she gave me info on the other worlds of fine art. The trifecta, apparently, is galleries, museums, and auction houses. She said that my writing background shouldn’t deter me (as in my lack of fine art/art history background), that as long as I “present well,” and do good work, there’s no reason that this world should be prohibited from me. Which is great news.

So, now I have more info on jobs in that field, a website for fine art jobs to check out, and a contact to run things by. She’s actually a friend of my ex, and he’d put us in touch a million years ago, so, shout out to him. I toyed with texting him my thanks, but figured the best thanks is to just go forward with this work. He doesn’t really need to know. … As my ability to let go of all outcome or response from him is limited, and it’s better that I just leave it be. But I am hugely grateful.

A lot got done yesterday. My eyeballs are quite red and dry from all the computer hours logged, so I’ll be glad to focus on kids today, the most anti-computer screen-like things of all.

It’s just sloughing off the old, I suppose. Fear is normal, but really, it’s just boogymen, and I have a massive flashlight powered by all y’all. So, thanks. 

Veysmere.

I called a friend yesterday to go over the content of the May workshop newsletter, and told her that I’d turned in my final copy of my thesis, and she asked how I felt – if I was excited. Decidedly not, I replied. There’s all the administrative rigamarole to go through before I can call this chapter of my life closed. Turns out one of the professors won’t be on campus to sign off on my thesis – literally, sign it – so I now have to see what my options are without that signature as the thing is due tomorrow. But I’ve seen some chatter about Monday being “okay,” but I have to find out.

I’m SO over it. Over it all. I don’t really give a crap. I’m tired, and broke, and exhausted, and unhappy.

Like today’s blog? 

Sorry for the Debby Downer moment, but really, I’m tired of this crap. I get that I graduate with a Master’s degree, but it doesn’t feel that cool anymore. It feels like a lot of hoops at the moment, and I have no clue what any of it will “get” me. I began lamenting in my morning pages the same, and then started to write all the awesome shit that I’ve done and learned in the last year and a half. How two years ago, I was in a job in a dysfunctional organization where my position was going to be cut, and I made the decision, finally, to go back to school.

I know that I’ve done a lot. But it doesn’t feel “worth it” at the moment. I feel tired and lonely and despairing of what the fuck I’m doing with my life. I feel … self-pitying, I suppose.

And I know some practical cures for it, and I know it’ll pass. But right now, I feel like there are too many demands on me, and my health is fucked up, and phooey.

You may know this isn’t typical for me. I do have some minor tantrums now and then, but this moroseness and lethargy is not typical. I get that it’s time limited, and “once xyz is done” then I’ll be better. But I’m fucking tired of having to do xyz and THEN being better. 

Once the thesis is handed in. 

Once the thesis is signed off. 

Once the thesis is uploaded. 

Once the school workshop is done. 

Once the May workshop is advertised. 

Once the flyers are up. 

Once graduation happens. 

Once … what? 

And then What?

It’s not delayed gratification. I’m not sure where the fucking gratification is. It’s like some carrot on a stick. One more stupid thing, and then I’ll be happy? Then I’ll know what the fuck to do with my life? One more stupid flight of fancy, and I’ll be stable and secure and loved?

What the fuck? I KNOW it’s all ridiculous, and I thank any of you who have read this far into my pity party. But, … I am tired. I don’t want any more hoops. I want to be done. I don’t want to feel so damn lost. I don’t have a fucking clue where I’m going – what I’m doing – what I want to be doing – where I want to be doing it. I feel like a toddler and a teenager, without the freedom of their understandable childishness.

No, I’m not relieved that the stupid thing is done. I don’t care a fuck about it. It’ll go on a shelf somewhere. Yes, I did it. But so the fuck what? How many fucking people have Master’s degrees and PhDs and work for f’ing starbucks. Literally. I went out yesterday, one of my two ventures off this stupid couch, to get food for my cat, and the woman who works there and I chat usually, and she said that THREE PhDs applied for her counter job the last time they were hiring. A PhD. Selling cat toys. Wtf.

Yes, today will give me plenty of opportunities to move out of or through this funk. Yes, even yesterday, I reached out to a few folks to make happy plans, get out of myself and this poopiness. I know it’ll pass. I know other people see it’ll pass, but in the moment, it’s just ass.

Thank you for coming to my pity party. I wish I’d gotten you a hat.

(*Veysmere = Vey is mir = "woe is me" in yiddish. "Oy vey" is a shorthand.)

Elephantitis.

So, I gotta admit, I’m feeling a little discombobulated this morning, and I’m not really sure what’s up. It’s like a wrong side of the bed, but not cranky, just, off. Like the films aren’t aligned properly. Not sure. Maybe as the day progresses, it’ll wear off. It’s threatening to be a gorgeous day, so I’ll hopefully spend some of it outside, or at least in a café, working.

Part of the discomfort is that I think I spent too many hours hunched over my computer yesterday, working on both my thesis and the info blast for May’s workshop. My neck muscles literally cracked when I turned to shut off my alarm – ouch. Stiff and unhappy. Computers and health may not be aligned either. Balance, I suppose.

I got the final copy of my thesis back from friends yesterday, and began my final edits. The folks I gave it to were really helpful and specific, which offset the entirely vagueness of my professors’ notes. I am marinating on a few changes that may happen – a word here, to delete one or two poems there.

The nude suit is back in. By the way. I had my performance poetry class last night, and spoke about my new idea, and that it may not warrant a nude suit, but folks encouraged me, and said, basically, why the F not. Pretty much anything that I’d get up there to say will be about getting down to the/my authentic, naked self. The professor said that it adds something visually, it doesn’t matter what the content is. So, now, the hunt for a nude-colored body suit. I have a hunch where I’ll find one, and as I just got asked to babysit this Friday, I’ll have the funds to fund it.

Although he’s a little hesitant for me to be working on a brand new piece for the performance, which is in less than two weeks, I’m pretty confident that I can bust it out – as soon as I put pen to paper. There’s SO much divided demands right now, is all. Each thing is important, none can be “dropped,” and hardly any back-burnered, but this piece has been, and I’ll do my best to crank it out in the next day or so. It won’t take long. I have it mapped out in my head. I’ll post it when it’s done.

That’s really all that’s up right now – these school demands, and the crunch time lead-up to both next Saturday’s workshop, and May’s workshop. Each are going to require some more input from me. And I just feel really thin at the moment. Only one person has actually registered for the workshop next weekend, though a few have Facebook responded. But, I’m certainly aware of the habit people have – myself included – of clicking “attend” to something they have only a vague passing notion of attending. So, I’ll have to blast that out again – if you get the email again, forgive me, but I sorta need to know how many folks will be there. Like, if there's really only one…!

Also, I have to print flyers for the May workshop, and I need to do color copy cost research for that, and then I’m going to ask a friend to help me drive around to various places in the Bay to post them up. So, I’ve got to reach out for that.

Ack. You can see, perhaps, why I feel all off. I tried to meditate some this morning, and got a few deep breaths, but not too much grounding. Maybe today is a multiple attempt at meditation day.

There’s something I heard once: a guy said that on most days he meditates a half hour, but on the days he’s really busy, he meditates an hour.

That actually makes sense to me. Now, maybe I’m not the hour-long meditator type, but I’ve sat in a few circles for 40 minutes. It’s HARD … in the beginning. Then I sort of sink into it – once my brain has had its say around what feels like 20 minutes or so of, OMIGOD are we done yet??? But, like working out, or something, once you get into it, you forget that you hated it in the beginning few minutes. The adrenaline starts to pump, or in meditation land, the serenity does. … Sometimes. Not always. Sometimes it’s 40 minutes, or in my case, 10 minutes of laundry list, punctuated by a few, oh yeah, deep breath, follow the breath, touch down, just notice – I have to get quarters for laundry – do I have any dollar bills – I love the sound the machine makes when the quarters are changed, like in Vega-- oh, right, breathe in …

So, maybe today requires a little more grounding. I’ll go meet up with some folks later today and have a bit of brain drain for an hour or so, but, this is part of my self-care. The only way I can balance all that I’ve got going on, is if I can let myself get balanced first.

I feel like that unicycle circus dude with the poles and the plates balanced on top. I’d like to feel like the elephant, rooted and pressing into the earth. 

Thru my own contributions

So, to catch you up on the caffeine reduction experiment, it’s still going, and going rather well – the one cup of regular, followed by as much decaf and black tea as necessary. Which haven’t been hugely necessary – but I’m still in the throes of the equalizing. There have been a few (like 2 or 3) days of 2 or 3 cups, which I think are prolonging the experiment, but overall, I haven’t felt like I miss it. Although, I’m still rather pooped in the mornings. I think this is more to do with my bed time than my start time though. With the experiment, I think I need to allow myself to be in bed earlier, and for a few days, I was, even a week or so, I was pretty diligent about it – but I’ve fallen off.

It’s time to get back on schedule though. Yesterday, I was up and out, semi-early, but not my normal early, to do some last minute errands with the car before I returned it – G-d bless Enterprise car rental. (They allow you to rent a car w/ a debit card, and the rates really aren’t that bad – granted, I split the whole cost with my friend from NJ.) But after my bout of exertion, I spent the rest of the day on my couch doing much of nothing – which I spent a lot of this morning’s pages lamenting about – but, I can’t drink yesterday’s orange juice today (as they say – as in, I can’t get double nutrients, or activity, etc, today, in order to make up for yesterday – each day is set new) – so there’s no use, really, in bemoaning my vegetative state!

What is wonderful to notice though, is that because I’ve been using this tool of a daily schedule, planning in the morning when I’ll do my R+D (i.e. income generating actions) and when I’ll do homework, or art, or walk, or … nap, it’ll be much easier for me to get back onto track. Especially with the end of school creeping up like a midnight stalker.

Thesis is due on Friday, signed, sealed, and delivered. I’m getting the last copy of my manuscript that’s out there to friends back this morning, and then today, spend time editing it all together. In the meantime, I’m also supposed to be writing this new script for the performance class, and I feel so far away from it – though, again, I was writing some about it this morning, and think it’s doable and interesting and fun. But, thinking about it, and doing it are two different things.

I bought this book recently called “Steal like an Artist.” My friend and I were in the millionth Bay Area bookstore this weekend – though surprisingly, not bored by them – and I saw this book on the counter. I picked it up, read the first little bit, and thought, I’d love to underline and highlight this sucker. So Many Gems. So, I bought it. As you may know, I’m not a book buyer. I am a library fanatic – as outstanding debts to several libraries have informed me over the years. (I actually didn’t receive a diploma the day I graduated and “walked” for my undergrad – inside the fancy black folder all embossed and engraved with the school emblem … was a note that said, you owe the library $45 – please submit to release your diploma. … Ha. Funny part is, I still had the books, knew precisely where they were, I just hadn’t returned them, for no particular reason. … a “quality to let go,” one may say, which I still need to let go.)

In any case, this book was not something I’d read and shelve, never to see again, this was a reference book, in many ways. I’m enjoying reading it, and getting a lot of great info from it – I recommend – go buy ;)

One thing I will say it mentioned was an economic theory that if you average your 5 best friends’ incomes, yours will be somewhere around there. So, I began to think about my 5 best friends. The one on unemployment, the one living on student loans, and the few others who are earning income, but I realized that, yeah, my income is certainly somewhere between nada and something modest. It’s not a judgment of my best friends – moreso, it tells me something about myself – and the truth that I know it’s time for me to make changes.

I am making them. Slowly. I met with a few folks on Sunday to talk about income strategies, finance stuff – and a very interesting fact of clarity came out of the conversation. As I’m working on this Creativity & Spirituality workshop – one for free at school this month, and one for fee in SF next month – we calculated that if I fill the workshop in May, as in completely full (20 people) at the rate we agreed was adequate (balancing my modest skill level with the value of my work and time), I’d earn nearly my entire expense costs for a month. This, is really good news. But also brings up fear of the future – does that mean I have to do the workshop monthly – can I? How do you garner enough interest to make it sustainable? Won’t I continually be marketing to the same people? How do I branch out?

And then, I bring it back into the day. Today, I just need to focus on what’s in front of me. I do have to focus quite a bit, I realize, on the marketing of the workshop in May, but that’s it right now. I have some great pointers, and I’m rather good at that stuff, and I know a crap load of people, and I have a crap load of resources to call on. Further, I won’t just be hitting up the people I know – as, duh, yes, that would be annoying to them, and that’s not a sustainable resource – but I will also be expanding my reach to new venues, and new networks – as people have told me they’d love to spread the word in circles I’d never have access to ordinarily.

So, it is all the more important that I recover my bit of structure with my daily schedule, as I had been, and that I get to sleep on time so that I’m present enough to sow the seeds of self-support.

Reframe.

In a stroke of inspiration, I have produced both disappointment and excitement. Disappointment, as I’m not sure I’ll wear a nude body suit for my Performance Poetry class final performance. Excitement, as I think I know what my piece will be about.

As I’d mentioned, I needed to see if the whole brazen nude body suit thing would be supported by the content of the work – why wear that if you’re going to tell lyrical poems about cherry blossoms? This morning, however, I believe I was struck with the inspiration paddle, and think I know what my piece will be about.

Originally, it was to likely be about a woman’s relationship with her body, how it waffles between ownership by self, and ownership by others, including mainstream media, etc. But, I feel that I’ve covered a lot of that for now in my thesis work, and although, sure, that’s an issue that’s present or “up” in my life, as I began fleshing some of the new idea out in my morning pages this morning, I think I’ve found something riper, funnier, more relatable, and interesting. I’ll keep you posted.

I’ve started using a different morning pages notebook, as I’d finished my last a few days ago. It’s thinner than the last, but much larger pages, which equals much longer writing in the morning. (It’s also made from post-recycled materials, so it’s not new growth trees being cut down so I can write, I wonder what the Harry Potter stars are up to now – which, yes, occurred this morning along with all the else.)

I was a bit intimidated to be writing these 3 long hand pages much longer – would I have enough to “fill” it? What more could I possibly have to say. But I actually think this new length is just right for me. It’s longer than the last, and is giving me the room to get further into stuff before I wrap it up or end. Which is partly why I think my new idea for my performance came about – there’s more room to work it out, and watch it stumble across my page.

On another note. My friend left yesterday, and my little space is my own again. Driving to the airport at 5am will a) make you appreciate a rental car, and b) cause the skipping of my morning blog yesterday, so please forgive. I was a bit pooped and outward energy depleted from the trip.

It was very good practice, though, I believe. To wake up and have a person there. To go to sleep and have a person there. Granted, on the pull out couch, but still. I’ve been a solitary bird here in my apartment for a long time, and having another human here … well, was interesting to notice how I act and react.

Part of me is enormously proud that I got in most of my morning practices, and I stayed within my spending plan for her trip, and brought lots of snacks and meals with me so I didn’t have to eat out very much at all. Part of me is very acutely aware of how other-centered I become in the presence of someone a) so close to me, and b) who's in my space almost 24/7.

But, the good news, is that I noticed it. And I began to do my best to reign back in my codependency. I don’t need to complete your sentence. I don’t need to add in my two cents about your story with my own. I don’t need to be thinking of how to respond or what I’ll say next to keep the conversation interesting and exciting.

It was hard, honestly, in the few times that I consciously thought, I can let this thread lie. I don’t need to pick it up. It wasn’t that I was being cold, or uncommunicative. But when there came moments when I certainly had my opinion, or an alternate opinion, I didn’t have to voice it. I could let my friend state her opinion or share her story without having to add in my own or contradict or augment what had already been said.

Some moments, it felt to me like there was a huge, blatant gap in the space when I was usually "supposed to" say something. And it felt awkward and uncomfortable for a moment – within me. Surely, she didn’t realize anything, and a new thread of conversation would be picked up immediately. But I noticed. I noticed, basically, that I was holding my tongue.

Which, I suppose, leads me back toward my own center. I don’t have to put out every idea or thought in my head. I can let myself rest in the calm of a conversation, or someone else’s story. This isn’t a very frequent habit of mine, usually. Although, I do tend toward the loquacious side, with my friend from New Jersey, we’ve spent so many years as the other’s half, it’s “natural” to want to just chitter chatter away. But, I realized it’s exhausting.

She, again, was not asking me to contribute in a way that was depleting. And it also comes back my former habit of accepting jobs I don’t want, when they’re not asking me to give from my dregs. If I take care of my center, notice that my focus is somewhere in between me and another person, me and a job, and can bring it back to myself, and sit, sometimes in the discomfort of not engaging in a behavior that leaves me feeling depleted, then I get the chance to give from my best, and also, to simply rest in the companionship of another person.

Tourist Center

Some of the things we’ve gotten to do: drive to Sonoma and eat cheese samples at the Cheese Factory, and a coffee from Hot Shots, the drive-through coffee joint. Walk part way across the Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin county northern side. Stop by Crissy Field and take touristy pictures of ourselves, and a few for the fellow tourists, looking out toward Angel Island and Alcatraz, and of course the copper-crimson of the bridge itself.

We ate at Green Chili, the wonderful, all grass fed, all hippie, sustainable Mexican restaurant. We ate at Fenton’s, the local ice creamery here in Oakland, in a wonderful bout of yum. And last night, at Mission Pie – my thanks to that guy I briefly dated for introducing me to it!

We’ve also been to an art opening at a gallery in Berkeley, and last night, a weird white box studio in a factory in a not so hot part of Oakland. We left before the performance began. It was a tiny room with a modge-podge assortment of chairs, and an even more motley crew of people. It was obvious that we didn’t really fit in with what was going on, and as we both agreed prior to going that we’d leave if it were “weird,” and my friend also felt a bit of Bay Area culture shock, we left. I wasn’t disappointed – but I was glad we went, if only for the experience of being a sociologist in a strange sub-culture of the Bay.

Truth is, I haven’t had much thought to much of anything, as we’ve been driving hither and thither, and also then resting some, and gossiping and catching up and laughing and eye rolling, and it’s been fun, and I’ve been doing my best to take care of myself with bringing food with me so I don’t have to buy any, and with getting up in time to do my morning pages and this blog. But, I haven’t been meditating at all, and I do feel a bit off center. I notice that my focus is pulled by the other person, and suddenly, or slowly, my center is somewhere between us, instead of within myself.

This is codependent, but also our long history. We’ve been this way for 3 decades, it won’t shift for me over night. But I’m aware of it. I’m aware that I’ve been cursing more, and interrupting more, and adding in bits of my own stories when hers aren’t complete, as if I validate myself or her experience by adding in my own two cents. When, really, I can just listen. I’m noticing that more this morning, and being attentive to letting the other person finish. What I have to say isn’t important enough to interrupt another person. And granted, it doesn’t “sound” interrupty – it sounds like a dovetail, like I’m adding to the conversation – but it’s not a conversation when one person is telling a story, and it sparks 8 thousand other thoughts you want to get out immediately.

But I recognize too, that I’m also excited and happy to be able to share all this stuff, that there is this manic sort of energy to catch up, and share stories, and give opinions, and laugh about people we knew or know, and just share about our families new events. We grew up basically living in the other person’s house. We’re more like sisters than anyone I’ve been in a relationship with – and family sometimes brings out the best, and sometimes the worst in you.

I’m not going to beat myself up for not having taken a breath in a few days, or not letting her finish her thoughts. I’m simply going to rectify the situation, as they say, as soon as I am able.

This morning, I’ll go meet with some folks and have a few minute meditation, and get recentered, and come back, I hope, with a renewed sense of camaraderie and ownership of my center. I don’t need to be anything more or less than I actually am. I don’t need to interrupt to make sure I’m heard, or valid, or liked. I don’t need to curse to show that I’m hip or cool, or get sweet dessert things to be hip or cool. I can be me, a woman who needs to meditate, not eat sugar, and pack her lunch. Who has valid things to say when the moment is appropriate, and can listen with an open ear, instead of my own running dialogue – which is exhausting.

My Morning Jacket – er, Blog.

My wireless was down this morning, so you get this near-afternoon session. How are you? Have you done something different with your hair? You look great today! It’s so wonderful to see you. How did that thing work out that you were telling me about? Is that leak all fixed from last week? Wonderful! I’m so glad to hear.

It’s nice that you and I get to have these little chats together. They’ve become something of a moment of calm and clarity – I hope you get something from them too. For any period of time when we miss each other, I think about you – do you think about me?

I was invited to go to Florence Italy yesterday, but I will turn it down I believe. Why? Because I would have to pay to be an assistant for a workshop that I’m only mildly interested in, and assist a woman for 3 weeks who I’m not sure we’d get along in that capacity too well. Basically, I’m being asked to be worse than an unpaid intern for a class I don’t want to take in a country that I’d love to see on my own terms.

After I got off the phone with the woman yesterday, I told my visiting friend what all that was about, and she said, point blank, and in a way I hadn’t considered… “So, what do you get out of it again?” … Hmm. I thought. I’d have to buy my own flight, pay for my own housing, pay for the course, and work for free in a field of mild interest … I might as well just go to Italy myself, if that’s the case.

It really hadn’t occurred to me that I might not want to do this – again, it was only a case of “could I.” That’s really my only question when it comes to jobs – can I do it, not do I want to – and then I back out, if I can, of those that I’ve taken on when I finally realize I don’t actually want the job.

So, I’ll make some phone calls around this, confirm that this isn’t at all a right thing for me, and also take note that the idea of going to Europe is still very strong – whatever comes of it, I have no idea, but, I’d like to go.

I’m also very glad that I’ll get the chance to do it sober, so it’s not like some people I hear, in their 20s at least, who pretty much do a pub crawl through the continent, and may as well be in any bar in the U.S. if that’s the case.

However, I am pretty clear that I’d like a wingman/travel buddy. I love to do solo driving trips, but something about real travel, or camping, or vacations, I want to do with someone. I really want to nudge you in the odd trinket store and show you the trinket. I want you to say – omigod, look at that and point to some local intrigue or view. I want to share those memories with you later on, and in the moment, I want to have that camaraderie of joint experience.

I travel better with people. Without them, I tend to get a little forlorn. It gets lonely to look at something so beautiful or awe-inspiring and not have someone to share that with. Or something funny and no one to really laugh with. There are some things that I don’t mind doing alone, and most of them have to do with local things – going to the movies, going to a restaurant, a gallery. That’s fine, because, it’s local, and it’s intermittent, but a real trip, well, I’d like to do that together.

So, if you’d like to go to Europe with me, travel around with someone who loves curio shops, and hiking, and tourist traps, and little known gems, and walking the course of a city in a day, let me know, because like I said, you look simply gorgeous today – and I think you’d look great in our photos. 

The climb

A friend said recently that perhaps I’m on the part of the ride where you’re going up the roller coaster. That all the work that we’re both doing, as she’s too doing A LOT, that this is the cranking up of the ride. That it’s hard because we are fighting against gravity, and we are scared because you can’t see over the crest of the ride – but even though it’s a mildly alarming metaphor, it’s nice to know that I’m at least on a track of some sort.

My brother asked me recently what I was planning to do after graduation. If I was planning on coming back to the East Coast now, or not. I told him a few sort of vague deflective-y things, and then finally, in the end, I said, I have no idea.

Likely, as graduation is in a month – holy lord, have christy mercy. It literally is a month away…! May 12^th … isn’t that the Mayan Doomsday? Maybe I won’t have to worry about any of this then in the end anyway!! HA! as in, please lord, let the universe not explode or implode on that day – I have a roller coaster ride to attend to.

But, as that is only a month away, and I’m still in the formative throes of trying to cobble together a sustainable living and habits and patterns that support that living, likely not. Not immediately at least. My brother said that others were asking him, which is normal – and I don’t have to take on their pressure, as it’s not pressure, it’s curiosity, normal and kind. But, not yet. When? I don’t know.

My brother’s girlfriend just got placed in a post-graduate internship at Johns Hopkins in Delaware – and my brother said his company has another branch he could easily transfer to in Baltimore, MD, so, they’ll likely do that sometime not too distant. (She’s wonderful, by the way – I hope and think it’s a long haul kind of relationship) :) Point being, Mom in Manhattan. Brother on the mid-seaboard. Dad in Florida. Seems like if I want to be anywhere near my family, I’ll have to go back to that coast at some point.

And the truth is, I want to. I don’t want to live with any of them(!), but, within 3 hours driving distance is what I’ve labeled as close enough, but not too close. I’d especially like to live nearby to my brother.

It took a long time for us to come to the place in our evolving relationship that we are. There were the awful, physically and emotionally violent toward each other years of our early childhood. Then there were the let’s get messed up together years. Then there have been the reparation years from the fallout of all of that as we’ve both gotten older and more sane by degrees.

We’re somewhere on that part of our journey now, and the truth is that we are closer now than ever, even though that just looks like a phone call every month or so, and random texts to each other with quotes from Bill & Ted or Back to the Future. This is our bonding. And I/we dig it.

So, I’d like to be able to be near to him, to continue forming a relationship with the people who we are today. Trauma and addiction don’t really allow for intimacy, and we’re just getting there, slowly, over these few years. Reaching out, being honest. Laughing. I care more for him than I’d ever let myself admit before, and the older we get, and the closer we are – even though we’re not butt buddies, and I don’t know if or think we need to be – well, I just get teary sometimes thinking about how much I love him. Which is something I couldn’t have predicted, and am beyond grateful for.

It’s another way in which I’m shown that I have no idea what’s over the rise of the ride. But the clinking and clunking sound as the cart hoists itself up the hill is the sound of the work we’ve each done to get to this place of commonality and connection.

So, not today, but soon perhaps, I’ll be in driving distance of my brother, his wife, and their children. 

Of indeterminate weight

I met with my thesis advisor for my last meeting with her before I hand it in to the school library to be bound and put on a shelf with all the other theses that won’t be read ;) No, but really, I see the light at the end of the tunnel finally. It sort of looks like a disco ball, or headlights – in other words, it doesn’t look normal. But I suppose none of this is normal for me.

The general feedback I got from both my advisor and my faculty reader were both rather generic. One said, This is indeed a poetry thesis (great, it’s not an aardvark). The other said, It was actually interesting (great, glad you didn’t drool sleep spittle on it). But, really, I didn’t get much constructive feedback, which is a) a little relieving, and b) not very constructive.

For all the work and mental crises, a check mark, basically. But, c’est la vie. I have a few things that are room for improvement to edit/revise before she sees it again for the final sign-off before April 20^th. Also, I have it out to two poetic friends of mine for their eagle eyes on it – for, hopefully, some specific feedback.

But, for all it is now, it’s a bit anti-climactic. Which, is better than drama I suppose.

Drama will come both literally and figuratively in the two final performances I’ll have in May. The performance poetry piece I’ll write (….???) and the acting scene. I met with the poetry teacher yesterday to talk about performance persona vs. character. Theater vs. performance art. And it was helpful. If only to confirm that the “amped up version of self” that I consider performance art is actually what he also means. He clarified that it doesn’t mean to do as he does and dress as a chicano in drag with a sombrero and a dog collar. That’s his amplified version of self – for me to do something like that would be … well, who knows, maybe one day – but for today, something else.

I’m not sure what the work will be about. But I know how I’ll dress. If you remember from the Performance Persona blog, I said that the most authentic persona I could be right now was myself – well, I intend to wear a nude body suit, only.

I’d had this thought way earlier in the semester. Something about both the vulnerability and yet boldness of it appeals to me. With so much work that I’ve been doing to get comfortable with my body, present in it, a part of it – well, why not?

The only stipulations the school has, he told me, was no full frontal nudity. And he said he’d never tell me to pull it back. So, now I need material that will warrant that. Do I need to go that far? Is it sensationalism? Does it matter?

I wrote a few poems for performance yesterday, but they don’t have quite enough meat to support the visual. But like a great pair of shoes – sometimes you build the outfit around them instead of the other way around -- and so I will just have to build a performance around this visual, costume/non-costume.

I had the strangest dream that two friends insistently brought me over to do my laundry at my ex’s, and I was reluctant, as his new girlfriend might be there. She wasn’t there, but he was on the phone with her, and I felt all awkward, but everyone else seemed to think this was fine.

Random side-note. 

BFF

My best friend from the east coast is coming in tomorrow to visit for 5 days. I’m excited and nervous – and I think I’ve written this before! I tried to write a blog this morning about real and fancied fears (that i’ll end up pushing a shopping cart: fancied; skin cancer: realish), but I couldn’t get it going, so I dug around for what’s really on my mind.

So, that’s happening, and part of my nerves are that she and I haven’t spent such significant time with one another in Years. We’d had a pretty bad falling out at the end of both our college years, almost 10 years ago, and didn’t talk for about the next 5 or so. We both had some growing and changing to do, but as Fate would have it, about 3 years after I moved to San Francisco, we began to reconnect.

Like any friendship, and especially a reconciliation, it’s been by degrees. The warming up, getting to know you again phase. And particularly with reconciliation, the “what’s it going to be like this time” friendship fear. Will it be the same? Likely not; we’ve both changed our lives & ourselves dramatically. Will it be based on nostalgia? That, is something that a few of my friendships from New Jersey have faded into, and have thence faded completely. A friendship based on nostalgia doesn’t really work. It’s great to reminisce, but that can’t be all there is – if there’s no current common ground, no interest in pursuing something forward, then there’s really nothing to bond over. The bond was made, but it’s … in the past. 

Luckily, with my friend coming out this week, we’ve been able to learn that we have more in common now and more to talk about and bond over than we had then. We have the wonderful ability and common shared history to be able to talk about that ridiculous party in the sand pit – the “pit party” – or the terrible yet funny nicknames we used to have for people in high school (Money, Teeth, Banana – because he looked like a monkey… go teenage girls…!). But we’re also finding now that our lives, despite our separate courses and coasts, have miraculously similar trajectories.

It’s been a blessing of the highest sort to have this friendship come back together. There were a few years when I didn’t know if it would, and I was viciously saddened by that, but it was not my business or my plan as to whether someone wanted to be in contact with me again. So, when I would hear a song on the radio that we’d played 10,000 times at the local diner, I got sad, but wished her well. When that movie we’d loved as children came on, I felt a twinge, but sent her the blessings for her life that I wanted for myself. I hope she’s happy.

And then, as luck would have it, we came back together. Slowly, for sure. We’re still in the slowly part. This visit is part of the solidification, but also, I have to take my expectations out of it. I want to make it a “great” time, so that we are friends again. I want it not to rain, so the weather doesn’t reflect something about myself or my life. I want us to not be awkward or have tension so that I don’t lose this again. But, none of that is anything within my control.

All I can chose to do is to be myself. If this is a person she wants to befriend, then she will. As with romantic relationships, if it’s meant to be I can’t screw it up, and if it’s not meant to be, then I can’t fix it.

I had a conversation several years ago with a girl friend of mine about the power of female friendships. The “best” friend friendships. How, really, in many ways they are – we said, then – more important and more complicated than romantic relationships. I still think some of that is true. However, part of the difference today with me is that I recognize that people are human (duh), and cannot, simply cannot, fulfill all the things a person I wish ought to. One person cannot be someone’s all. One person cannot be my only friend, or my only social connection, my only vessel of personal relations.

Like seeds, you’ve got to spread it around. Part of this is self-protection, but part of it is simply being realistic. And that is the protective part. If I am realistic about my expectations of other people, then I won’t be hurt if they don’t live up to my demands about them. It is simply unfair to anyone to expect them to fulfill my needs. Firstly and foremostly, I need to ensure that I’m taking care of them for myself to the best of my ability. Then, I can look outside myself to other people, and form relationships where my needs are met. Where my realistic needs are met.

Sorry for the tangent on what I think friendships and relationships are, but this writing is also a reminder to myself of this as my friend comes to visit. For someone who’d been labelled your best friend since the age of 3, that carries a lot of weight – and I’ve recognized, unfair weight. Part of the reason for the separation all those years ago was that we each had massive expectations and need put upon one another – or, I’ll speak for myself, I did that on her. That wasn’t fair, and the friendship burned down painfully.

So, coming to this visit in a spirit of open-mindedness. And a loose set of expectations and desires will help us both to have a better time. The weather isn’t a reflection of me. She’ll have a good time if she’s meant to or wants to. And I can take care of myself, so that I don’t put the onus on her.

However, those two hot chicks you’ll see blaring STP down the interstate? Yeah, that’s us.