Lion and Magic Boy

I’ve been thinking about change lately. Well hello, embrace me, Change! Why yes, I have, thank you. Actually, I have been enjoying a certain amount of staticness lately, and I’ve been really proud of how I have maintained all sorts of balance under various circumstances.

Which makes me think it’s all bullshit, and the whole house of cards is going to come tumbling down on me pretty soon. I can feel it, actually. I can feel an undercurrent of Things and Issues and Patterns waiting to bubble up to the surface again. I can only push them back under so long, you know? Because I really embrace change, I truly do, and I embrace self-awareness and growth and all that good stuff. So I am getting ready for the onslaught that surely will come, and why hello, you get to go on that journey with me! How nice! Because I am blogging daily regardless.

Word count NaNoWriMo: 1891. Was shooting for 2000, but this is decent. Only 29 more days of this to go.

And, oh! How about the monthly channeled message for November? You wanted to see that, right? I think I’ll just paste it in right here. And the whole year’s other messages are here; go see what a wonderful year you have been having!

Monthly Message November 2007

This indeed is a season of change for many. What began manifesting through natural events and through a sensation of transformation has grown into a much deeper experience for some. Old patterns are being unearthed and examined, laying the fields bare for new thoughts, responses and reactions to eventually emerge, leaving behind what has been discarded to be used as energetic compost to assist others in similar patterns of experience. Oh, do you feel you are the only one in the universe having this experience? Indeed you are not, and indeed there are many who share your experience, yes even THAT ONE, and it is through your undeniable connection that even allows you to acknowledge the truths of your own dark experiences, the ones you are just now coming to be able to shed light upon. It is this shared experience, this universal and human commonality, that forever links you, forever, and inextricably links you, to everyone and everything else. It can be no other way, do you see?

Think of yourself now, then, as but an atom in a field just recently cleared for harvest. One atom amid thousands, millions, trillions of others, all awaiting the sunlight, the rain, and time to bring what will eventually be much growth and then another harvest. It is an unending cycle, this cycle of clearing, waiting, growth, and harvest. It occurs over and over and over again, and no part of this cycle can occur alone, no part is any less than any other part, and each part relies upon each of the others. Do you see how it is all linked? And you are but one atom in this field of incredible transformation, one atom forever a part of every other atom, forever a part of the entire growth and transformation and eventual death cycle, one atom without which the entire system would be incomplete.

It is this unending hopefulness that we wish to bring you today, this assurance that you ARE a necessary part of a whole, that you ARE indeed a wholeness yourself, that you ARE acting out of choice in every moment. For all of these are true. There is no choice you could make at any time that would lead to disaster not chosen, no choice you could make that would lead to difficulties you are unable to move through. For you we wish to impart the thought that everything is simply a matter of perception; indeed, all change, all transformation, is only a difference in perception. And if you come to varying places in your ability to perceive, it will indeed feel as if change has taken place within your life, will it not?

In the next month, then, you will continue to perceive differences in your perception. How could you not? The act of simply breathing brings a change in your perceptions. Breathe in, breathe out. Life is no more difficult than that. In and out. Round and round. Change will occur around you even if you do nothing but breathe and stand still. For time will pass, even though time is simply a way of perceiving in itself, and your perceptions will change. And you will continue to feel transformation, sometimes wrenchingly, sometimes gently, but always present. By moving into this possibility, by accepting your every breath as an agent of change, you create additional space for the transformation yet to come.

Breathe in, then, and create your own space. Breathe out and prepare your fields. Embrace yourself, for you ARE the change you see in the world.

Remember I said I was sick yesterday? Yeah, well, I went for that walk in the forest and on the beach, took a zillion pictures (none of which I am posting now, unfortunately for you, because they are all AWESOME), and immediately felt much better. I think it was when I got the message that the sick feeling was due to all the changes that are going to occur for me and my resistance to that.

Oh.

What??

Changes?

Do tell…

So though I ostensibly came here to the beautiful Pacific Northwest to write, and would have been quite happy simply writing, it seems that instead I am doing more spiritual-type work than I anticipated. Specifically, I’ve been working with Matthew quite a bit and it would seem that things in that arena are a-changing, meaning this channeling work I have been doing for lo nine years now is changing. Changing focus, changing mechanically, and with all that come some changes within me as well.

For instance, it looks like I get to completely break down who I ever thought I was and take down the walls I built around who I really am.

THAT sounds like fun, eh?

So the whole thing has caused some, shall we say, feelings of being imbalanced, simply because what has for a long time been familiar is now (slowly) being replaced with something else. I have no complaints about this and am actually quite looking forward to it all, because, well, my life IS about creation after all. But I do find it a tad bit ironic: just when I come to a point where I actually like myself, it turns out that isn’t really me anyhow, or isn’t the totality of me or, well, something. I get a pretty good-sized glimpse of all this but there are still, understandably, more than a few holes that will fill in of their own accord eventually.

So are we cool?

On other fronts, I’ve got two new gigs lined up that I can’t quite yet tell you about, and one more gig I’m putting together as we speak that will be HUGE, and all in all?

Life is wonderful.

This post title has actually been sitting in my queue, mocking me, since August. Originally it was the title of a post that was going to tell all about my trip to Colorado, but that was eons ago, lifetimes ago, so I am repurposing it, being the thrifty little environmentally-correct blogger that I am.

But first I should tell you how the title came up, I think.

A few days before our trip to Colorado, Matthew acquired a Blackberry (you see where this is going already, don’t you?), and during those six days, still being quite enthralled with it, he couldn’t help but crow over the fact that he had cell service everywhere, even atop Pike’s Peak, when I was constantly gnashing my teeth over my useless T-Mobile Razr.

So now you know. Was it worth the wait?

This morning the clouds parted, and, lo! The sun! Behold the sky! So I was compelled to go for another run and later, a walk down the the beach. In all that rain yesterday, did that walk become steeper somehow? Why yes, I believe it did.

Wee white cords leaking out of my ears and filling my head with the sound of Ants Marching, I tramped down the steepage toward the beach, brushing aside the occasional brambly vine that snaked out to snag my sleeve. Some sort of berry vine, maybe. Look at those thorns! March, march, slide slowly down the slippery wet-leaved slope toward the beach.

I strode from one end of the beach to the other, unplugging my iPod from my head and listening to the waves instead, lapping/crashing up the rocky beach strewn with huge eroded logs, rounded smooth stones, snakelike seaweed as big around as Eric’s arms and twice as long as he is tall, and so many shells in their completeness I quickly abandoned taking home more than a few for the children. I balanced atop long smooth logs, walking their length like a tightrope, wetting my Saucony-clad shoe only a little in the cold water. You could see across the bay to the mainland, trees and amid them tall white stacks belching particulates.

I came back to where the path went back up to the foresty treeness and there sat a man, his face turned westward to the lowering sun, his eyes closed. He wasn’t there to see the water, he was there for the sun.

As I moved away from the beach and began the path up, up, and up, I glanced at the bushes lining the path. Same thorns, watch out! But…wait…these look familiar. Blackberries! With several still on the vines, mostly dried and way past their season, but…here…and here…and here. I picked some and ate them.

As I reached in through the brambly vines I remembered the first time I picked blackberries. I had elected to remain at college and just sort of hang out there for the summer, the summer after spring break. It was really quiet since most people had homes to go to, or jobs maybe. Me, I took the bus to the store once a week and bought a box of crackers and some peanut butter and took long, long walks, coming back to my empty double room in which I had pushed the two twin beds together to make one large bed where I slept, mostly alone, enjoying the silence and the fact that I didn’t have a roommate.

In one of those walks I discovered the Blackberry Bushes.

I don’t think many of the people staying over for the summer knew about these, because there were tons of berries hanging heavily from the brambly vines, huge ones, the biggest blackberries I have yet to see before or since. They were delicious, and for a few weeks I went every day until the picking became harder as people found them and the season progressed. It was the single best thing about my entire college experience, most of the rest of which was a blur of discomfort, an ill-fitting shoe quickly discarded.

I reflected a little on this as I continued walking up the hill, now noticing how obviously present the blackberry bushes were that lined the path, marveling at my chosen blindness to things that are right in front of me as I navigate this path of life. I am such a warrior sometimes, choosing a direction and then settng an unveering course, blasting over and through obstacles, blind to the tiny moments of now-ness. My most vivid picture-memory of Paris is from my first trip there, a picture of the cobblestones, the uneven stones over which it was my job to navigate Nathaniel’s stroller, and so fixed on that was I that I missed the buildings, and the people, that lined those cobblestoned streets. There is no memory of faces, only cold stones.

I picked a handful of blackberries for Matthew, who will appreciate their past-season sweetness, and clutched that handful, along with a cluster of wee pinecones from an alder tree like the one decorating the front yard of the house I grew up in, all the way up the (now much much steeper) hill.

At the top I paused and stood in the sun for awhile, still holding my tiny handful of blackberries, and reflected on the gifts the sun brings us, warming me and having once provided food for the berries I now held in my hand, and ever mindful itself of the gifts WE bring to it, the sun.

I walked back to my little cabin, taking a different path this time.

I’ve never been much of a runner: it hurts, I can’t breathe, it hurts, and did I mention that it hurts? When I was about 12 everybody in my family (except my brother, who wisely ignored the whole thing and stayed out of it) decided they were going to run. A lot. That was the year my dad was training for a marathon, and he routinely spent a couple of hours a day devoted to thinking about, preparing for, actually doing, and then recovering from running. It was great motivation, all that sweatiness.

But damn, it hurt. So that lasted only a few months and I never found a rhythm.

Later, in the army, I found I could run. Here are the secrets:

1. Go slow. Are you running or walking? If you can’t tell, it’s the right speed.
2. Stay in the back with friends who won’t let you lag.
3. Run in cadence with 50 other people.
4. Decide it doesn’t matter.

So after all that, running was fun. 5 miles? Sure!

But once I didn’t have to, I just didn’t.

About ten years ago I took it up again. Got to where I could run 3 miles a day at a not half-bad speed. But it still hurt, and I still hated it. I was trudging, not flying.

Next was the treadmill, three years ago. Maybe running indoors with air conditioning will help! Not really; I couldn’t move past that three-mile mark. But it was definitely less sweaty.

So I got a bike.

But in my dreams, I’m a runner. In my dreams, it doesn’t hurt, and I feel like I’m flying. In my dreams, I run easily and with joy. So I know what it feels like. I know it’s possible; after all, why would it feel so real in my dreams if that wasn’t attainable in reality?

Yesterday I took a walk in the forest, looking for an alternate route to the beach. The path that stretched toward the ocean did in fact exist. Problem was, it was perched a good 100 feet higher than the beach and I didn’t feel much like jumping down. So I continued on. After a bit I was compelled to run. No problem, I thought, I’m wearing jeans. This isn’t running. I can stop any time. But I didn’t want to stop. It was easy, it was like flying, it was wonderful. It must be the forest, I thought. The trees are helping. I ran all the way back.

So I dressed a little more appropriately later in the day and went out again.

This time, I found the secret.

The first time? That had been all downhill.

There’s a saying, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

I’m not sure I agree with that although a sense of it certainly is true. We craft for ourselves situations of adversity, with the sure inner knowledge that we’re up to the task of navigating these rough waters and gleaning the lessons therein.

It’s safe to say I’ve been swimming in my own rough waters lately.

But just as things end, they begin. There’s a brightness on the horizon that wasn’t visible not long ago but the mists have cleared somewhat, revealing some of what’s to come. To say that it was there all the time is a fair assumption; often we simply allow our vision to become obscured as we get lost in the mists of confusion and pain.

At any rate, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, I find myself once again feeling that shining warmth from my own inner light, the light that was of course present all the time.

Endings as we perceive them can be painful; there’s no doubt. But everything is in perpetual transformation and there are no true endings or beginnings, simply a resumption of the paths we were already on, neverending and always perfect and complete.

[tags]endings, beginnings, phoenix rising[/tags]

As of yesterday, my divorce is final. Or rather, will be in another 30 days so as to give me time to find health insurance that I won’t be able to afford. Yay for joining the ranks of the uninsured!

Two years ago, I thought I would find relief, freedom, and jubilation in those words: “my divorce is final.” But I recognize that while there was a transcript made of two people saying “I do” to various agreements and there is a piece of paper that will be signed by a judge 30 days hence that says “go on your merry ways,” it’s far more complicated than that. And it’s really not over.

And seeing your life or a good portion of it, your relationship, your love, your dreams and hopes and frustrations, all of that combined, reduced to a list of things on a piece of paper, is very strange. And feels wrong. There is nothing to acknowledge the truth of what a marriage was for two people beyond this list of property. How can mere money and possessions possibly define love or a lack of it, life and the day-to-day aspects of living it, and all the other things that transpire between people when they decide to make a life together?

I could make a rather lengthy list of the patterns that have erupted for me during the past few weeks as a result of this. Ironically, I truly thought that I was divorced from any emotional aspects of the technical ending of what has been a 14-year odyssey and that I had dealt with the emotions long ago and that what was going to transpire yesterday was simply the signing a piece of paper. But oh, I was wrong. And since one thing affects another, and everything is connected, this affected everything and everyone else in my life as well. But identifying those patterns is a step toward rethinking them and forging new ones. I suspect there is an easier and less painful way to do this, one that does not require the complete disintegration of the self, the clearing of everything off the slate to uncover the deepest and rawest aspects, the ones that feel shame and terror at being exposed, but I have yet to find another way.

Which is in itself a pattern.

I find it interesting but not surprising that there are many others going through similar painful transformations right now as well. My heart reaches toward every one of you, and you know who you are, and I feel nothing but love for each of you.

Group hug.

As for me, I’ll be here gingerly lifting up a rock here and there to peer under it, looking for aspects of myself I’ve hidden there. Frankly I thought I had done this already, so I’m more than a bit surprised to be here again. But it’s either that or bury myself completely under one ginormous rock and just call it a day, and I don’t think I want to do that, as appealing as aspects of it are.

Well! There’s nothing like a pantload of good old-fashioned emoting to really get things going and clear a room!

Or—alternate opening—that sure was cathartic!

So, uh, yeah.

So while yes, the post two down from this one was terribly cathartic, a part of me really really wants to delete it. I grew up in a family that wasn’t all that comfortable expressing emotions, and while I am filled with and gushing emotions, apparently, I’m not so good with the aftermath. It’s a little embarrassing, actually. The vulnerability. Even though I loooove the vulnerability, I am still terrified by it.

And what better way to be vulnerable than by blogging, which is this surreal semi-anonymous way of being very public?

(Have you ever stopped to think about that? I mean, I adore that aspect, the anonymity-that-isn’t, the wanting-to-be-public. But it’s not exactly like real life, is it? Or…is it?)

So while I felt I really needed to express all that, and wanted the naked vulnerability of it, a big part of me thinks I should only present a perfect face. I mean, in blogging there are warts and then there are WARTS. And you make a choice as to which ones you show. But I have various reasons for wanting to present certain aspects of myself publicly and not suppress but simply not make a big deal of others. A lot of people read this blog who know me in other venues, where I’m regarded as someone who knows or at least has access to some enlightened-type information. And are the warts really compatible with that?

I believe, though, that we all are perfect as we are (though I fully acknowledge that we’re also in a state of change). So accepting and acknowledging the aspects of me that I’m less than comfortable with, and even going so far as to LOVE them, is to me a good thing.

So I’m bringing all this up not only to talk about that elephant I left hanging here, but also to talk about how I moved from being so caught up in that dark place, a place that frankly I thought I had seen the last of so it took me by total surprise, into the state I’m in now, which is still somewhat fragile and raw but feels far more real. I’m telling you this partly because I think maybe other people can relate to it, judging from the kind comments that came in, and partly because I want to remember it myself for the next time.

There’s no one key thing, by the way, if you’re looking for that. I would be, so I’m just being up front about that.

Well, no that’s not quite true. There really is one key to it.

Allowing.

But I’ll get into that in a bit, because while it’s the key to moving out of that dark state, I’m not sure if it’s the place to start.

Rescue Remedy. If you don’t have this, check at a health store and keep it on hand. When my panic at being in that state-of-pain grew great and I thought I was going to actually jump out of my skin (it’s not just a phrase! I had NO idea!), I had the presence of mind to remember this and take some. There’s no instant effect, though I would have liked that and half-expected it even though I totally know better.

But it allowed me to hear a couple of things going on in my head: “music” “movement”. So I plugged in the iPod and cranked it up. I wasn’t ready for anything so joyous as movement (after all! this being-in-pain thing is SERIOUS BUSINESS! THERE IS NO LEVITY!), but that did come eventually. I allowed the music to take me places and to support movement, not of my body but of my emotional state.

I knew I was dealing with old old patterns of thought and reaction here, which had been a terrible concern these past several days. Would I NEVER move past them? Was I ALWAYS gong to be stuck going round and round?

By acknowledging the patterns without judging them I could see that having those patterns present was okay and in fact was but a step of moving through them into not needing them any more. Which in turn allowed me to feel grateful for them. Which is when a lightbulb went off: gratitude.

Allowing gratitude for what terrifies us.

Which allows acceptance. Which in turn defuses the pain that has taken hold. Simply by allowing it to be there.

See? So easy. [cough] No, really. Oh, and thanks, everyone.

So we’re cool.

I quietly fell apart today over the vacuum cleaner, weeping there on the unvacuumed livingroom floor with the vacuum cleaner in pieces spread out around me, mocking me. I cannot get the damned thing back together, having taken it apart to an extent I have done dozens of times before as part of its regular cleaning and maintenance. Now the thing glints at me evilly and refuses to fit back together, one important element somehow having mysteriously grown too large to fit back into its shell.

Maybe that’s my problem too.

I am tired of this, tired of having no one to turn to when I need help, of having no complementary strength to share and rely upon when needed.

I am so fucking lonely it hurts.

The other day Eric reached out and gently and affectionately touched the top of my head, and that touch was so achingly familiar yet so distant that I looked around, convinced there was someone else in the room. It hit me that save for a few days over the past several months, a few magical yet fleeting days, I haven’t felt touch like that in a very long time.

And what I thought was there, what I thought I was moving toward, may not be there at all. Some things simply vanish into illusion when you reach for them, even though you know with the reaching that they await you. I know deep down that it’s more like catching a butterfly, or better yet a hummingbird, something so ephemeral that the merest breath will send it shooting off in another direction. In the end all you can do is wrap an invitation around you and wait. But seeing what lies 2400 miles away from me through the thin but undeniably opaque glass of the screen on my laptop is nearly impossible. I feel with my heart and with every fiber of my being, and then in the reaching destroy the illusion I have built to match the feeling. Between us stretches a gossamer thread that is so incredibly fragile yet strung with the combined weight of the past and the future which threatens to pull it down altogether.

So there is nothing behind me and nothing in front of me. There is nothing but me, suspended alone in space and darkness. There is no one but me, and I feel too tiny, too weak, too ephemeral myself to buoy myself any longer. Worse, there are three incessantly needy little people depending upon me to have some semblance of put-togetherness when I just don’t have any for anyone, not for myself or for them or for anyone.

I am a shell, and my inside no longer fits what I have erected around it.

This afternoon I enticed Eric into his stroller and we went for a long walk. I was hoping to walk away some of the fear, some of the pain, to find balance there, to find my stride again. Instead, I found that more than anything, I simply wanted to just keep walking. I found myself thinking about those women who go out for a walk and keep walking, who go out for a drive and then just keep driving. The allure of simply disappearing, of walking out of one life and into another, was incredible.

I could do that, I whispered to myself. I would do that. I would have, too, maybe, under other circumstances. Not today.

Instead I found myself doing what I predicted I would, putting one foot in front of the other, taking step after step. My dad told me once that walking is really a controlled fall. So I fell, slowly, back to the house, washed off a little of the pain, then made a dinner I couldn’t eat and once again put away the pain and immersed myself in the moment.

Whit of FameCrawler and some other places has kindly consented, after listening to my pathetic begging for several weeks now, to present me with 5 interview questions. You know Whit, don’t you? He has some blog somewhere and his, er, wit over at FameCrawler is legendary. (I’m so original.)

Anyway, here we go:

1. What, and where, is the damn tattoo?

I’m so glad you asked! It’s actually a battle scene where Godzilla is biting off the head of King Kong. It’s an art piece covering most of my abdomen and chest and the coolest part is that one of Godzilla’s eyes is right over my nipple (I only have the one) and it’s shooting laser beams.

And there’s some Japanese Kabuki characters too but it’s mostly Godzilla and King Kong. Awesome.

2. Do you think that some people only waste a few minutes on your blog, while others waste nearly an hour? 20 minutes is so exact, it must be an average time.

I always figured that people were navigating to my blog by mistake and then wandering away to do something else or dropping dead or something while they were still on my page. It’s clear nobody actually reads this blog, because if they did there’d be, you know, comments and stuff.

3. You’re a big fan of reincarnation. When you thought you were going to be spandex roadside scrape, did you see a white light, or was there like a squirrel or something waiting patiently for your soul?

You know, I was totally expecting the tunnel and the white light and everything, and I did see a light for a minute, but when I looked again it was the Pennsylvania Lottery Groundhog. And he told me I had won a $43.7 million jackpot! And I was totally all excited and all (I can’t believe I forgot to mention this part!) but then he tore up the ticket right before my eyes and I figured it just wasn’t my time.

So you’re really really close with the guess about the squirrel.

4. Have you downloaded the EP made by Iron & Wine together with Calexico? If not you should, if so, discuss.

No, but I’m downloading it now, as well as Calexico’s 2007 album and 6 from Iron and Wine. I have one song from “In the Reins”, the album you’re referring to: “He Lays in the Reins.” Love that one. Eric’s dancing to it right now.

One more drink tonight as your gray stallion rests
Where he lays in the reins
For all of the speed and the strength he gave

One more kiss tonight from some tall stable girl
She’s like grace from the earth
When you’re all tuckered out and tame

One more tired thing the gray moon on the rise
When your want from the day
Makes you to curse in your sleep at night

One more gift to bring we may well find you laid
Like your steed in his reins
Tangled too tight and too long to fight

5. Do you ever get comments at Strollerderby that hurt your feelings?

Yeah, some days I want to crawl in a hole somewhere.

Bonus Question: Steelers or Eagles?

No question: Stillers. Love that Lynn Swann and Franco Harris, not to mention Kenny Stabler. Who were all still playing the last time I watched football.

So, even though I’m not a Rules Girl, not even CLOSE, I believe that without some structure there would be anarchy. And far be it from me to cause that. Therefore, as agreed, I’m posting the rules to the interview process:

If you’d like to be interviewed by! me!, this is what you need to do:
1. Leave me a comment saying “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with a post containing your the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.