Beauty and the Beast
18 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
I am in a really intense initiation process.
I seem to have a backlog of things, from this life or another one I don’t know, that are bubbling up to the surface right now because I am actually in a stable, secure place where I can handle it. I think. In my journey to become enlightened, I’ve been asking to integrate and love every single part of my human experience.
Wow, that was a bell that can’t be un-rung.
I want to say, I am ready for this to be over yesterday. Over the past few months, and most intensely lately I’ve been experiencing a lot of uncomfortable emotions like fear, anger, and depression. Sometimes I know what it’s about, but most of the time I don’t. Most of the time it just feels like emotional or physical pain. I also feel like over the past several months I’ve become disconnected from a lot of friends that used to be very close because I can’t afford the energy that I used to spend on them, and because I am so freaking sensitive that I can’t deal with anyone else’s stuff right now.
It’s hard for me, because I have studied a lot of Abraham Hicks and I really do believe in trying to find the best feeling thought and trying to move up the emotional scale. I don’t want to wallow in my misery. I want to break the negative-feeling patterns. A big part of me wants to be like ok, what is this drama about, I am ready to just be ok now. Get over it!
That isn’t working out so well for me, though. The more I try to push it away, the worse it gets. It’s like a chinese finger trap.
So, this morning when I woke up, and there it was, I just said “hi.” No scolding it, no saying “why me” “why now” or “go away”. I am experiencing pain right now, and that is ok. I think it’s great that I am in a place in my life where I can go through this healing process. I love it that I can feel many things at once, and that pain is not the only thing I am feeling right now. I am grateful for this opportunity to cultivate compassion for myself. It’s not the entirety of me, but it isn’t not-me either. I am done with the battle, and the kicking and screaming — I am going to try to learn how to dance with it.
Reminding myself of simple things
20 Aug 2010 1 Comment
I hereby propose that the people who get the most done, go the farthest, last the longest, are the ones who really know how to take care of themselves. Because, anyone can get exhausted about anything, and you can spend as much energy on something as you want.
Abraham would say, ‘overwhelm’ is when you’re summoning more life force to flow through you than you’re allowing.
The overarching theme of August, for me, has been exhaustion. So! I have come to a point where I want to consciously make an effort to baby myself, to see if I can coax my body into allowing greater and greater amounts of life force energy to flow through it.
I’m going to focus on making use of things that are easily and immediately available in my current environment. Here is what I am going to do:
- push the water. At least 8 glasses a day.
- push the fluids — non-caffeinated tea, juice, soup
- breathe deeply. It’s amazing that two of the most relaxing and healing ingredients to life, air and water, are available to most of us in unlimited supply and we don’t take full advantage of them. This is perhaps the hardest for me of all of them, because most of my breathing isn’t conscious.
- no caffeine. I have been working on this project all month and think I’m finally past the cravings and headaches. Yay!
- stretch, every morning
- meditate, every morning
- go to the sauna. I keep forgetting that I bought a bunch of passes a while back that I have hardly used.
- if I need to and have the time, if it feels good, I am going to permit myself an afternoon nap
- be on the lookout for more simple things to incorporate
Additionally, I am eyeing this 8-week program for beginning runners.
Piano Teachers and Biscuits
23 Jul 2010 1 Comment
This morning I woke up and I thought to myself, “what time is it? I’m hungry! I had better get over to the Westside before they run out of my favorite ham and cheese biscuits.” Silly Westside, not even keeping enough biscuits to last until lunch time. Can’t go for lunch, have to go for breakfast. Sometimes I even call before I go just to make sure they have them so that I don’t waste a trip if they don’t. In fact, I called twice this week and missed the biscuits both times, which increased my determination to get one today. But I didn’t have to call this morning, because I made sure to go first thing.
On the walk to the Westside, I thought about the intimacy that I have with my cafes. For example: I know what they have at the Westside and I know what I like. I know how much it costs, and that they serve it only on the weekdays and not on the weekends, and I know that they are likely to run out by 11. And at the Cafe Trieste, I know the baristas by name, and they know me, and I know what they have and how much it costs, and what I like, and when they’re likely to run out of it. I love that kind of familiarity — I love that the baristas smile when they see me again — I feel like they have an interest in my life, even if they don’t know the exact details of it as well as I know the price of coffee. They notice when I don’t come, and they notice when I am well or preoccupied or sleepy. And yeah, I know, they’re just doing their job, and I am just buying my breakfast, but there are layers and layers of buttery sweetness to our little ritual that go beyond my handing them the money and them giving me the biscuit.
At this point, I could make this post about cafes, but I think that I am going to veer off in the direction of repetition. The intimacy of familiarity.
Because this morning, as I was waking up, drifting in and out of sleep, my childhood piano teacher, Mrs. Van Norman, who passed out of her body maybe eight years ago decided to say hello to me. I, in my hypnogogia, was stricken with the power and beauty of the love and connection that extends beyond the grave.
Our relationship was full of the intimacy of repetition and ritual. I saw her once a week for almost 14 years. She taught me to practice practice practice! Every day, no matter what. The first thing she would ask, when we started our lesson, was “did you practice?” And of course we knew we’d better say yes! And if there was a tricky part, we’d just have to do it again. And again, and again. And if we did it well, we should do it again, because doing it again when it’s good is so beautiful.
But, believe it or not, there is such a thing as too much practice. I was astonished once, when she told me to stop practicing the piece that I was going to play for a piano competition. She said that I was starting to get tired of it, and putting it away for a little while would help.
My two brothers and I were her only students at that late period in her life. She had said she wasn’t taking any more students, but when she met us she couldn’t help herself because we were so cute and sweet! We were the apples of her eye, and I believe she stuck around longer in her physical body because there was such pleasure for her in that transaction. She had a job: to guide us on the straight and narrow path of the classical piano tradition, and our job was to be taught.
But she didn’t only teach us about music. She loved music, and she loved us, and so every lesson was mainly about love. Loving Mrs. Van Norman, and showing it to her by being faithful to the practice of the piano. Loving Beethoven, who is so very easy to love, and loving Bach, whose intricate mathematical inventions I connected with very easily. But sometimes it was harder — Chopin was not so easy for me, for instance. I remember her saying once, when I was blasting through a nocturne, “Marian, a nocturne is not an invention! I think you need to go fall in love with someone, and then come back and fall in love with the spirit of Chopin.”
And so anyway, there was Mrs. Van Norman this morning, who went away from this physical plane, but resurfaced in my consciousness for a moment, to remind me of the wisdom and virtue in ritual, in practice. All relationship is practice, and all practice is relationship, and all relationship is about the dance of going away and coming back.
You see, when you meet something once, like a cafe or a person or a piece, there is an exciting kind of unfamiliarity about it. New things to discover! But in the newness, you can miss a lot. You don’t have a chance to notice the nuances of the different kinds of ways that it can be. You don’t know whether you’ll be $3.50 worth of satisfied with that biscuit, or whether it’s likely to be stale. You don’t notice that there are new pictures on the wall, as opposed to the old ones, or if that man likes to sit outside in the front on the weekends around 5pm. You don’t know if the new person is having a good day or a bad one, based on their demeanor, because you don’t know the way they usually are. You don’t know what parts to anticipate, which ones will be tricky, and what you’ll really like, with music, until you’ve played through it a few times.
A lot of books are the best when reading them for the first time, which is why I mostly don’t read a book more than once. A favorite book would have to be one that I want to get into over and over again, admiring it from every angle, soaking up new details every time I read it, remembering what I was thinking or what I was doing the last time I read it. The limitations of my time/space reality do not permit me to have this kind of familiarity with every book that I own or come across, for there are far too many books in the world, and too many words that have been written. But the ones that really do it for me like that — there is something special about that, even because I must choose them over others.
There are many ways of coming back to something. Every time I come back to write, I am nurturing my relationship with writing. Every time I come back to a specific piece of writing, I am having my relationship with writing and my relationship with that piece of writing. And even, when I read something else that was written, I engage with my relationship with writing. And while I realize that it’s best to put in the time every day, there are times when it really is better to put something away for a rest before coming back to it.
This is the essence of true romance, I believe — the putting away, and coming back, and the feeling excited by the newness created by the absence and loving the oldness and the newness all at the same time. Each new time adding a layer. Layers and layers, I muse, as I take a bite of my biscuit.
Pushing
22 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment
in musings, spirituality
I have a problem with problems. It’s so annoying! If there weren’t any problems, I would just be happy, but I can’t be happy because there are and if they would just go away, if all the external circumstances would just change, if everyone else would just be the way that I want them to be… then I would feel better, and then I could be happy. But they won’t, so I can’t. Sad!
I unfollowed a woman on Twitter today because she is an Atheist who keeps tweeting about how annoying the Christians are, how annoying their music is, how they all hate her because she’s an Atheist, how she hates Jesus (what did he ever do to her I wonder?) Her state of annoyance is annoying. I am not a Christian, nor do I have a particular fondness for them, but I wonder if she really hates Christians so much, why she pays so much attention to them? Does she like being annoyed? Or does she think that by pushing against them she’s going to make them go away? Or does she think that by pushing against them she’s defining herself? Or does she think that she’s winning anyone over to her side? I don’t know.
A wise and beautiful man, a friend of mine, holds his Atheism in such a sweet way. He doesn’t believe in God, but he doesn’t have an emotional charge about anyone else’s opinion on the subject. He doesn’t feel threatened or annoyed or turned off when I talk about my woo-woo stuff, because he knows it’s just me being me, and I don’t feel separated from him that he doesn’t always use the same language that I do to describe that creative life force energy that flows like rivers through his fingertips. And actually I don’t want everyone else to be like me — I don’t feel like that would make the world a better place. I like it that I have my ways and other people have their ways. There would be no conversation, otherwise.
It’s really strange to me to pick sides and define your enemy. As if the world were full of only Christians and Atheists, or if all Christians or all Atheists thought the same way. I bet you, Atheist woman, that there are a lot of annoying Atheists out there too. *cough*
Feminists vs Patriarchy, Republicans vs. Democrats, Lesbians vs. Everyone Else. Having spent a lot of time around lesbians, straight people, republicans, democrats, christians and atheists, I seem to perceive a pattern that often the most marginalized of people are also the ones who push the hardest. That makes a lot of sense, because if you are marginalized you’d have a heckova clear idea what doesn’t work for you. And that is great, actually except that it’s a sucky place to get stuck. This is what I do not want. This is really, really what I do not want. Let me spend a whole conversation, a whole Twitter feed, a whole dissertation or a whole life telling you how much I don’t want it and why. And when after all that, is a time when it would be appropriate to let yourself feel happy in spite of it all?
It’s interesting to me to see people harp on Obama now. He gets so much stuff heaped on him, from everyone. He’s the catch-all of all external circumstances. If we can’t control ‘em, he should, and if he doesn’t, fail! It sounds like a canned replication of every other thing they’ve had about President X or political party X. It’s like madlibs. It’s like, I have this habit of thought and this is the way I think and I am just going to keep reacting to my environment in the way that I remember. How weird would it be to live in a society where we predominately appreciated the service that our president performs? It would be like living on a different planet! Or at least in a different country. What would that look like? I don’t even know.
Controlling external circumstances, man, it sucks and it is a pain in the ass and just thinking about it makes me tired. And here I am pushing against the pushing against. I’m no better than that Atheist woman. I’m saying “hey, look at her, she’s doing something that I don’t want to do.” Of course I do it too. I am a relatively normal human being (ha ha). Let’s see… what are some of the external circumstances I use as an excuse to feel bad.
Well, there’s street violence/street harassment. I can get all worked up in a froth about that, being angry that it’s like I have less of a right to use the street as anyone else. Rape. Not a fan. I get mad at jokes about killing hookers that seem to be all the rage on South Park and Family Guy. Aaaaand… the tricky thing is that almost anyone would agree with me that I am right to not like these things. I am perfectly justified in my moral outrage. But at the same time, these things have existed before I was born. They exist in a lot of instances at any given moment, all over the world. If I wanted to spend a lot of time making it my business to be mad about these things, I could make a career out of being an angry, angry person.
But, I don’t need nor want to carry that torch. I am not going to pretend it doesn’t exist… because that would be pushing in a different way. But I am not going to go out and try to find it and complain about it and complain about it and talk to more people who are mad about it and start a club and become the president of the club and make a committee and have a protest. I am going to be aware that stuff that I don’t want exists — how can I not be aware of stuff that has come into my life experience? But then, I am going to think about what I do want, and what I like, and what makes me happy. I am going to dream of the world the way I want to be, and then I am going to create it. I am going to fervently follow the love of my own guiding star — no pushing required.
Airplane of Love
22 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment
in LOA
My friend and I were riding in my car the other day, and she asked me how I am. Like, existentially, “how are you Marian?” And to my surprise, the story that popped out of my mouth was, “well, I’ve just gotten a bunch of things that I have been asking for for a long time, and I am feeling a little bit overwhelmed, but happy.” I had never really said it to myself that way before, although it felt true and good — I can think of all kinds of ways that is true. Before I said it that way, though, I hadn’t really owned it, and the part that I was mostly feeling was “I’m overwhelmed.” But yeah, the other side of that is that a lot of my wishes are coming true, and I am bedazzled and I am happy and I am thankful!
That story feels better to me than overwhelm. I want to tweak it a little more. How about — all kinds of things are lining up for me. I can see them right now. I am not used to allowing so much creative life force energy to flow through me, but it is the most wonderful thing that I have ever experienced. When I feel overwhelmed, I will remind myself that I don’t have to ‘do’ anything for it to be good — it already is good. My job, primarily, is to vibrate with love. That’s where all the clarity, good ideas, the beautiful music, the uplifting stories, the prosperity and peace and people I love, and me, my higher self, and everything that I want — that is where it all is. That is the airplane! It’s much more work, and much more overwhelming/insecure/dangerous to be dangling by your fingernails just outside the airplane than to be sitting inside the airplane, even though in both cases you’d be going the same speed.
I am on a mission. A mission to be squarely in love. No two ways about it, just love love love.
On Saying Goodbye
21 Jul 2010 2 Comments
When I was a chipper chipe, which is what my dad calls small kidlets, I remember crying when it was time for him to leave for work. It was so tragic! Mornings with dad were the best thing ever. I would wake up to the sound his rambling whistle tunes, full of trills — he could even whistle two notes at once! I do not know how. I would stand at the top of what seemed to me at the time to be a very large and daunting staircase with my wispy hair sticking up in patches, and call for him to carry me down even though I did know how to come down myself by crawling backwards. He would usually humor me, as he liked to do, and sing “good morning merry sunshine, how do you do today? You chase away the little stars and drive away the rain!” But I didn’t know what “merry” meant and I thought he meant Mary, like Marian reduced to the number of syllables that would fit into the tune. We would eat cornflakes and listen to NPR, and he would twist his hair — a fidgety thing that he did, which made it stand out in a horn which he would then comb down with water and spray with hair spray. I was fidgety too — I liked to do repetitive things like snap a spring pen open and closed over and over again, or tear post-it pads apart one by one, which he let me do because, as my mother said, I was spoiled.
But then inevitably came the time when it was over, our happy breakfast and singing song time. His hair was combed and his tie was tied, and I would not see him for like, forever, or all day which was the same thing to me.
Then mom and I would play peekaboo.
Today I said goodbye for the I-don’t-know-how-many’th time to my lover, who is moving to the East Coast for an internship. I have said goodbye and goodbye and goodbye and goodbye! I said goodbye to him every time he went home to his soon-to-be-ex-apartment in San Jose, and I also said goodbye to him in a pretty big way at the end of January when I decided to call off the girlfriend/boyfriend thing we had going on for eight months. Then, since he decided to start talking to me again last month I wished him well on his trip and said goodbye to him again, and then again on Friday night and again this morning. And that had better be enough, because now I am done. Finished!
I posted the death card (from the Deviant Moon Tarot) to illustrate this post because I think it’s morbidly funny — the smiling pregnant death mother stepping on the head of her pleading child. Maybe she is performing an act of kindness – maybe her child is asking to be killed. Maybe for these skeletezoid deathling creatures, death is just a big game of peekaboo. Hello, goodbye, it’s all the same. Say hello so that you can say goodbye, and say goodbye so that you can say hello. And that is really the thing, I think. The narrator of me doesn’t believe in the permanence/reality of death, goodbye, or separation. It’s just my character that gets all wrapped up in the drama of it. Realistically, though, it would be tiresome if we never said goodbye. I can’t imagine wanting to keep everyone all up in my face all the time. Bleh! Saying goodbye is great because it makes room for more and new stuff, just like killing babies makes room for new babies. Er…
So I wonder then, what is this, this flutter of the heart, this catch in my throat when I say goodbye sometimes? Is my inner three-year-old really stuck on this part of peekaboo, and not trusting that it’s all temporary? Is it a habit of thought, to go into the loss and separation thing? Or maybe I should just think of it as a reminder that I care, and leave it at that. Can’t be all daisies and chipmunks all the time, and what fun would life be if you can’t appreciate a little drama now and then.
And on that note, I will leave you with Barbra Streisand.
The World
19 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment
in tarot
I drew a card for writing today, and this is the one that I came up with. I love it so much. It really does summarize what I am doing. The image is of the globe pouring her tears into a bowl that I am holding. And here it is: the integration of my life into something that I can relate, something that I can tell, something, an essence, the water, that is life-giving to me and the whole world around me. All against the beauty of the stars in the sky and the barren crater landscape, and something that looks like it could be the northern lights.
So here is to you my lovely world, my lovely universe. I am offering my bowl to hold your tears.
Click
17 Jul 2010 1 Comment
in what?
She walked down the blue-lit wet concrete, each step of her heels echoing off the shadowy concrete buildings with their click-click click-click. Even as a little girl she had loved the sound of heels. To her, they were the quintessential soundbyte of a femme fatale. During the day they said “I’m here!” At night…
As she passed the shadow of an alley she caught a movement in the corner of her left eye. Following her with his eyes was a man in a black leather jacket. She pretended that she didn’t see him, but walked a little faster. Click-click click-click click-click
She glanced back, and saw that he was walking in the same direction. She crossed to her right-hand side of the street, and began to walk in the direction from which she had come. Now behind her, the man stopped walking. He crossed to her side of the street. She turned left around the corner, pressed her back against the wet brick wall, removing one of her shoes. How could he not know that she had stopped walking; her shoes were no longer announcing the fact. In the sound gaps left by the silence of her shoes, she could hear the man’s insidious leather soles. As his steps slowed. As he stopped at the corner. Click.
Time hung mockingly in the air as the mist condensed on the nape of her neck.
BANG shot the gun as she knocked it out of his hand with her shoe, cutting his wrist with the sharp heel. She grabbed the pistol from his dazed grip and with it delivered a swift blow to his head.
Appreciate the wanting
25 Apr 2010 Leave a Comment
in LOA
A couple of days ago I made a list of “everything that I want”. It is only two pages long. One of the things I wrote on it is “I want to never take anyone or anything for granted.”
I realized today that one of the things that I sometimes take for granted is WANTING. I want. My dad used to say in a finger-shakey way that there is no “enough”, that no matter how much people have they will always want more. But why is that a bad thing? Sometimes I tell myself I should just be happy with what I have, why do I have to want so much? But the thing is, I am happy with what I have AND I want. Wanting is something that I can appreciate, too. I mean, what would happen if one didn’t want anything? That would be pretty boring! And it is so much sweeter to get something if you have wanted it first. If you never wanted it to begin with, then it wouldn’t seem particularly special. If you were born and had everything just perfect so you could sit around and enjoy it…? *yawn* No one does that! Everyone wants something. I think it is great to want. It is a sign of vitality and enthusiasm and eagerness to live life.
I am a want-er, and I am proud of it! And let it never be said that I don’t know what I want. I might not know EVERYTHING I want but I do know quite a few things that I definitely want. And I have learned about who I am not, as well as who I am, and who I am becoming. My inner being just says “more and more and more and more and more and more and more.”
