DatingGod

We Is Family

Wallace needed a brother. Jacinta isn't much fun for him and his pink punk ways. And me, I eventually grow weary of tossing toys for him to chase. Yep, he needed a brother. 

And so began the process. That took three months. And culminated yesterday with this:

I meant to only get one. Really. I even had a few dreams about him: black with white spots, goes by the name of Beauregard. But alas, Beauregard was not to be found lo these three months. But Thor and Emmaline? They have joined the party.

Yep, we're all diving right in to the love fiesta here at the Hacienda of Kcats. While napping just a few minutes ago, Thor rode my head like a horse. And his sister Emmaline? Emmaline loves to lick, especially my face, and may I share with you how much it tickles to have your nostrils washed out by a tiny little 11 week old kitten tongue? That little tongue was all up in my stuffs, with Emmaline just purring and purring like she was humming while brushing my long luxurious hair . . . 

And Wallace? He is passed out in the bed right now, plum tuckered out. But happy. Sleeping the sleep of the deeply, contentedly, exhaustedly happy.

Even Jacinta appears to be okay with it all. Hanging out mostly in her closet, her little hideaway, but she's in good spirits, and I can tell that a tongue bath from sweet Emmaline lies in her imminent future. 

If you don't have kittens in your world, I highly recommend them. Jed and kittens. What more does a gal need on a Sunday afternoon?

Jed McKenna's Notebook

Jed has a new book out. Not exactly new maybe, but new to hard copy. It's a collection of the bonus material from the ebook version of his trilogy. Of course, I have multiple copies of the print books, as well as copies of the ebooks, so of course I just ordered the hard copy of Notebook, though I won't order the ebook as that would be just silly, wouldn't it? 

If you're happy in your life, and prosperity is cradled in your hands, a soulmate sings from your bed, and God is your close, personal friend, or these are things you both want and feel are really, for you, just up the road a bit, there is no need to order this book. If however you are attempting to chew your own head off to escape the trap, if the humans around you all look like agents or aliens or screeching robots, and you've become a real pill at social gatherings, here's where to go:

Jed McKenna's Notebook

Sentence

The Big Boss pointed his finger at me. "You," he said, "my office," and turned, walking down the cubicle row to the back of the facility. 

I followed him, walking in his wake, both of us in silence. I'd applied for a full time position within the office back in May. This was most likely the verdict. Hired. Not hired. Or perhaps I was being fired. It was definitely one of the three.

"This could be my execution," I said out loud. He didn't laugh. Neither did I. I meant it. 

He pointed to a chair across from his desk. "Sit," he said. I sat. 

"Looks like you're going to be working for me for two more years," he said and smiled.

Yep. Definitely my execution.

I quickly searched my brain for the correct response. I'd practiced this for weeks now, just in case they gave me the job. I'd gotten that expansive Yes feeling after the interview, so knew they'd hire me, but the pesky mind had added it's two cents in several hundred times since. But now the job offer was floating in the air between the boss and me, and an adequate response was expected.

I clapped my hands together and said, "Yay, what a relief, thank you, that's good news."

We exchanged a few more meaningless words, there was nothing important to discuss. It was a state job and the salary was fixed - $31K - as were the benefits, vacation, health, etc. And so I went back to my cubicle and back to work. Just because we had the following day off didn't mean the work load had lessened. It was why they hired me: I work like a machine, perpetual motion, on and on and on, sick, tired, crabby, work, work, motion, motion. They probably think it's work ethic, but it's really surrender, about saying Yes to every moment, stepping up to the plate again and again and again, climbing the steps to the gallows over and over and over so that Life can continue it's destruction of me.

A global office email was sent out announcing the new hire. Folks stopped by my cubicle to congratulate me, the very people that I've avoided the eight months I've worked there. I found a standard response and performed the motion over and over: thank you, yes, it's a relief. In the insanity that is the current economy, one hundred and thirty-two people had applied for the three jobs available. It was a big deal in their world - who got hired, who didn't. But mostly they stopped by my cubicle to talk about themselves, and so they did, and my required further input was reduced to simply sitting there until they ran out of egoic steam and walked away. 

My immediate boss is in the cube next to me. He's the really intense guy in his late sixties that is just as likely to blast me as be kind. He brings me garlic and tomatoes from his garden, ignores my questions on how to solve the computer glitch problem for the man sitting in my cubicle who hasn't gotten any state cash for two months and who has four kids and a pregnant wife and is losing his trailer and car. 

"Hey, big guy," I call over the cubicle wall, "looks like you're stuck with me for another couple of years."

He comes to my my side of the beige fabric wall and hugs me, tickles my back in that gentle way that always surprises me with how full of love it is. He reminds me that he's retiring in 18 months, that I'm most likely being groomed to take over his job. The very thought is horrifying. I hug him back.

At 5:02 pm I'm in my car, driving home, crying, just a little. I knew this was coming but still it feels shocking. My physical and energetic bodies fill with the sort of anguish that feels really, really big. 

Another piece of me is dying. Another piece is being sliced off so that I can see that what I think is me isn't really me. I am not the job I do, not the money I make. The purpose of the job is to continue to dynamite the ego. There will be enough money to take care of what needs to be taken care of. I'm not the bachelor's or the master's degree I spent three non-stop excruciating years and 85K in debt to acquire, whose information and skill set and language are leaving me rapidly, day by day from lack of use. 

Over the past six or so months, I performed a lot of actions, in order to give Life a wide selection of choices. And Life responded with all sorts of immediate support and assistance. A chance remark with a client provided me with a public health contact, a man high up in the PH world in the Raleigh-Durham area, a chance to talk with him several times on the phone, go to his office to meet with him, have him introduce me via email to several more PH folks, for informational interviews, contacts. While I was visiting him, he mentions that there is a conference taking place, and would I like to stop by and hear the lecture going on? Yes, I say, and as we sit down in the lecture hall, I see it's one of my old profs from SUNY Albany, and I spend a half hour talking with him after his lecture. From all parties I hear the same thing: the world of public health jobs is frozen solid right now, state government budgets slashed, grant funding shriveled, huge crops of new graduates all clamoring for the same few jobs. 

For six months, I stayed in motion, sending out resumes, taking days off from cubicleland to drive three, four, five hours to interviews, each interview costing me ~$175 in lost wages and travel expenses. I had no real feelings either way about any of it, nothing that stuck longer than a half hour or so anyway. These were all the next steps, so I took them, whatever they cost is whatever they cost.

I got that Life would ultimately do as it would, but I also got that my job was to do as I felt. Some of it was simply to get the actions out of my system, to play all the notes, so that when the hammer came down the peanut gallery that lives in my mind could say: I tried everything. And I did. But in the end, I was turning down job interviews, four of them in the last two weeks, knowing what was coming, and completely surrendered to it, or at least mostly.

Staying here in Wilmington and accepting this job means that I expend no extra energy. Not in moving to a new a city, or starting a new job, getting to know new people, acclimating them to my rather unfriendly personality. I save the money it would take to move, money that I don't have. I can continue to do the holistic work that comes my way because of the rep I've established the past couple of years, and earn enough money to close the gap between my ridiculous bills and my paltry state wage. Because the important thing is that I have a white hot burning laser turned on my ego, my self. The perimeters have been identified. And although I slip every day, blow it in a hundred different ways, fail and fail and fail, sometimes I succeed, and another piece of dead, grey self falls into the dirt, and that Yes thing inside of me, whatever it is, gets a little bit easier to recognize as Who I Am.

That's the whole point. Surrender. Trusting Life. Going with what is occurring. 

As I write this, Baby Wallace sleeps in the barcalounger, the sun turning him into the tiny sweet fierce fire puma he is. Birds make wild music outside the open window. Jacinta is safe and snug in the laundry closet, her belly full from the breakfast I just served her "in bed". My head is clear from the massive amounts of digestive enzymes I've been taking. The three day holiday weekend stretches before me, no work scheduled beyond errands, and even they feel more like dance moves than Must Do. The decaf coffee in my mug is full of both sweetness and umami, from the stevia and the vanilla almond milk. Hoochie, the backyard dog, just pounced on a squirrel, killed it with a shake of her head, then walked away to do the next thing. 

And all is well, exactly as it should be.

Life is so very good. Right now. Right here. I could die anytime today, or tomorrow, and that's good too. 

Something happens when you begin to release the tiller on your own life. The situations don't really change. Prosperity and soulmates and permanent never ending flows of comfort and happiness don't appear and set down roots. But the need for prosperity and soulmates and happiness begins to leave you, because they aren't real, like letting go of the easter bunny or santa or god. And it's good. The horrors you spent your whole life avoiding surround you, but instead of ghouls they are simply old acquaintances. They're kinda irritating at times, but on the whole, fine, just part of the background, the background that is fading. 

In the next few weeks I'll get new glasses, go to the chiropractor, the gynecologist, an endocrinologist. I'll settle in to having a regular paycheck, map out a new scenario for bill paying. Waking up doesn't mean the action stops, the flow of motion ceases. It just means it becomes clearer what to do, what can be let go of, what needs to be attended to. As I began this latest deepening of tiller-releasing I set a broad intention: to free up as much energy as possible for awakening, how it happens is of no consequence, just free up energy for the burning, the letting go, the surrendering. And this job, because of it's health and time off benefits, because of the fact that I don't care about it in that attached way one does to A Career, how I in fact hate it, would fling it from me like a flea-infested coat if the opportunity presented it, is perfect.

I'm curious as to what Life has next for the chopping block. I search around for what I still care about, what I still believe in. Then I shrug. I'll know soon enough by the screaming and the Nooooooooo and the wailing and the gnashing of the teeth in my head. Or maybe not. Maybe the next phase is a little quieter. I doubt it. But who knows?

Life knows. And that's a beautiful thing . . . 

Gorgeously Lost, Always Home

During the work week, I wake at 5:45 every morning, in order to be at work by 7:50. On the weekends I sleep in til the grand hour of 7 am, which means that I loll around snuggling kitties, drinking decaf coffee, surfing the net, eating breakfast, and then it's still just 9 am. 

On Sundays, what that means is that I pack up a water bottle, some aromatherapy bug spray, some SPF30, and Burt's Bees honey lip balm and head out for a hike somewhere. Today, I went to a state park on one of the local islands. I hiked around in the marshes and alongside the sound, tromping through sand for a while, then forest for a lot longer. Five or six miles worth. Spiderwebs rigged between bushes and trees and sturdy grasses, boobytraps for getting webs wrapped all up in my hair, my mouth, until I wised up and swished a stick back and forth in front of me as I walked. Little crabs scurried, creating a wide path for my passage.

I've been to this park before, walked on all the trails that said OPEN. And so today I let myself loose onto the CLOSED trails, and happily got lost for an hour or so, winding back onto the regular trails, then skipping back offroad for another clandestine romp. I found a broken footbridge that I shimmied up and over. I walked around a pond that was ringed with thousands and thousands of broken glass bottles, most of them from the sixties, seventies. I saw two deer dash away from me, elongated shadows gently crashing through the underbrush. Butterflies, so very many butterflies, bright blue and black and yellow, pale white. A brief flash of bright red, a cardinal with a long white string in its beak.

I start out the hikes a little crabby, a little argumentative in my own head. I know better than to fight it, or to try and force it to be gone. With about an hour's worth of patience, the sea breeze and smell of forest and sense of excited adventure that yes, I just might indeed be Really Lost, the crabby turns to sweet, the landscape of my head widens out and releases the tumbleweeds from the week, and all is well in lungs and heart and head.

By noon, I come back to the apartment. I've discovered that going back to the computer quickly drains the bank account that the forest and the sea just shored up. So instead I clean my house, do laundry and hang the sheets out in the brilliant Carolina sun to dry, make ridiculously healthy food for the coming week's lunches, run errands to the co-op, the gas station, come back to the loll about in the barcalounger and read (today's offering was Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter). 

And I snuggle kitties. Oh, how the kitties get snuggled. Friday night I went back to the local pet-megastore, where the local cat rescue had a new passle of kitties for sale. The goal was to bring Baby Wallace home a brother. But the brother wasn't there. Lots of cute fuzzballs, but none that I looked at, who looked at me, with recognition, revealed that I'd found Beauregard, the next member of out family whose black and white face I've begun dreaming about. 

I smooch Baby Wallace's sweet face (even though he is big and not a baby any more) and tell him: next week, my little fire puma, next week we'll bring you home a brother. And he licks my fingers, much like The Hoon used to do, and sighs, and does that heavy breathing purr of his, and curls up in my arms, and passes out, small snot snores in my ear. And Jacinta says, yes . . . yes . . . yessssssss . . .  

Volume Down

So much noise in our world. So very much gol-dang frakkin cacophonous vibration in heart and mind and body and spirit. 

What I'm probably doing is turning down the volume knob on everything in my living. Meat and sugar and alcohol and baked goods cause noise in the body. Spiritual seeking and god-chasing causes noise in the spirit. Human love causes noise in the heart. And listening to people's opinions and beliefs and perspectives and judgments and details on just how fantabulous they are is very very noisy inside the mind. 

And so I let them all go. All the things and people and situations that resonate as noise in me. 

Because what would happen in the absence of all that noise? What would I begin to hear? What sound is behind the noise? What lies underneath the wailing and happiness and depression and rage and boredom, the minute by minute rising and crashing waves of what it is to be human in 2009?

Maybe on the other side of this lies the knowledge that these things and people and situations were never noise causers, only outside reflections of the noise present inside of me. There's probably some truth in that. But it's most likely that I've just grown the huevos to name noise as what it is. But maybe on the other side of this, the noise won't hurt so much. Maybe I too will find joy in the Mart of Wal.

Who knows? 

All I know is that the more I turn down the volume, the larger the Yes grows. And that's all that matters anymore. 

Learned Passivity

I need to live with animals, can't imagine living without furry weasels roaming about. But I understand a little of what it costs them. 

All of the animals I bring in are rescues. If I hadn't have taken them in, they likely wouldn't have found homes. Jacinta was rescued from behind a dumpster, where her alcoholic human caretaker had thrown her when he'd broken her leg when she was four months old. The Hoon and Grandma were found in a strange, dark "pet store" in Brooklyn NY that also housed rescued animals. And Wallace, with his many dings and snots and goo would have most likely been a hard sell for anyone other than me and my dreams of him.

But when they come and live with me, they give up the outdoors, the catching and biting the heads off birds, of stalking the wild salamander, the grass rolling and fence climbing and sun lolling. Because of my choice of suburban or urban living, their experience of nature is through a window. Kitty tv I call it, like most people do, but I've stopped laughing when I say it now.

When Wallace first got here, he practically hurled himself against the screens to get at the birds and bugs and wiggly things. But over the months, he's learned that the things outside can't be gotten to. And so he watches. He sits at the window, body draped on a table or a chair, or propped up on a pillow in bed. His paws rest on the window sill. And he watches, eyes darting wildly as the bird flies not ten inches from where he salivates. But he's learned not to move. Only his eyes reveal how excited he is, how engaged. Except for his twitchy tail of course. 

I bet this is how I look at night, curled up on the barcalounger, watching my latest hulu or sidereel obsession: The Mentalist, John Doe, Century City. During the day, I listen to other people's stories, at night I watch other people's stories. 

Wallace is kept from the world for his own safety, kept in a box because of the horrors of speeding cars and virulent fleas and illnesses. I'm in my box because of choice, because of a belief that the world of human interactions holds little interest for me. But is this true? This watching? This safety?

Chimps and the Mute Button

A few days ago a friend sent out an email saying that he'd closed his blog down. I wrote back asking why. He wrote back that he felt that his posts were too negative, that he didn't have anything to offer folks. I wrote something back - something about my own blog and how part of the reason I'd stopped blogging was along the same lines. And he wrote back with the url for a secret password protected blog with a single post. I read it and the first thought was: wow, what a great post. So full of truth and life, really upfront about the struggle of waking up, casting off the self, the tricky foxes that live in the mind. The second thought was: wow, if he had posted that for the internet masses they would have savaged him. Because over the past six years I've posted oh so very many similar pieces, and if I had a dime for every negative, mean-spirited, passive aggressive, gum-flappy or simply flat out nasty comment or email I've received I'd be buying a 1000-acre compound deep in the woods and hiring a personal gourmet vegetarian chef.

Does this itself sound mean? Judgmental? Harshly unspiritual? It isn't. It's simply honest, which is what this blog has always been about. Always. But the internet is the great clearinghouse for the screaming chimps. Behind the electronic screen and the anonymity it brings, the chimp is unleashed, and the bile, it flows. On one level, you feel sorry for them. But after a while, it's just annoying, then finally, boring. 

It's like walking down the street, and a stranger comes up to you. Their face is a little familiar, but you don't really know them. You say hi, smile. And they say: 

You know, those shoes you're wearing are really ugly. I would never wear such shoes. The heels on them are going to give you corns and bunions and hammer toes and a hunch back and halitosis. So take them off! Take them off right now! Because I ended up with halitosis from wearing heels like that and I really wish I hadn't worn them, even if it did mean that I felt that they made my calves look pretty on that date with Horace Van Pelt. You know it's really stupid to wear heels like that. And besides, I saw the same pair on someone on the "worst dressed list" so you really laid an egg when you whipped out your wallet, huh? And by the way, your hair looked way better when I saw you at the grocery store last week . . . Hey, would you like to go get a cup of coffee? I'd love to tell you about my colon problems and the sadness from my failed marriages and the betrayal from my so-called friends and how I'm a writer though I never actually sit down and write anything. No? You don't want to go have coffee with me? Are you kidding me? You mean, horrible, nasty person! You suck! You suck! You suck! {reaches into purse and hurls wads of used kleenex at you, then stalks off, cell phone clicked open, calling everyone they know to tell them what a mean, horrible, nasty person you are}.

Of course, most of the emails and comments are lovely or supportive or gentle or warmly shared or contain invites to tropical sanctuaries or are full of insight or provide proof that someone out there really really Gets It. Which is why it's taken me this long to get to the place where I take the action I'm now taking. It's not about shutting the blog down. That wouldn't feel true. It's about closing the comments. And stating that at the first whiff of negative and/or mean-spiritedness and/or passive aggressiveness, I'm going to delete without reading the emails that come in. I've been doing the latter for a couple of years now, but to state it right out here on the old blog makes it all clear and upfront and makes plain to the bullet-headed, wackadoo screaming chimps, the mute button on their sad howls has been pressed. 

The internet is an awesome place, and I believe in it, believe in the freedom of speech it provides, the global access folks have to one another because of it. Look at what's happening in China, in Iran because of the net. But at this stage of evolution, most folks can't handle free speech, don't know what to do with it, can't handle the responsibility of it. And so they use it to celebrate the damage of their ego, to punch as many folks as they can access in hopes it'll make them not feel so weak and powerless in their lives, to try and suppress anyone who dares to step away from the pack that they hate and yet will defend to the death, to validate their own life choices no matter that those choices have led them to a place that feels neither free nor awake.  

There is a screaming, bullet-headed, wackadoo chimp that lives inside of me, too. And I've been fortunate enough, have worked so dang hard to shut it down, keep it from poisoning the folks around me. Sometimes this means that I stay away from folks these days, because if that's what it takes in this space of my living, I'll dang skippy do it. And the chimp may still scream, but I don't unleash it on others. I don't leave f*cked up comments on people's websites, don't send hateful, arrogant emails. 

With one exception. Ever so often, someone will catch me in a vulnerable space. I'll have been up half the night dreaming about The Hoon, waking up repeatedly, crying. Or I'll come home from a savage day in cubicleland where folks have told me that they have lost their homes and are living in their car and are totally broke and haven't eaten in two days, and they call me from the emergency room because they've committed themselves and I'm the only person in their world who they can think of will listen to them, and all I can feel is how f*cked up the world is, how hateful and sad and mean and unfair. Or I'll have eaten something with fat in it and the digestive enzymes won't help and I spend an hour yakking my brains out. And I'll turn on my computer and there it will be: that goddang chimp screaming about how ugly they think my shoes are. And in the moment, the screaming chimp that still lives inside of me feels justified, and I shoot off a f*ck you. And I instantly regret it, because all it means is that the screaming chimp on the other end will fire off an even more hateful collection of words, and the screaming chimps, they will still be screaming. And once again I'll turn away from the screamer inside of me, refuse to let it take action, but the pattern has been set in motion. The screaming chimp that initiated the contact will continue to send screams for many many weeks, which because of the delete button, are more like tiny squeaks, but I have to face the fact that I let the screamer in me out, and that means that the self scored another few minutes of life, and that, yes that, is unacceptable.

Somewhere down the line, when the screaming chimp inside of me is only an echo, I'll open the comments back up. Maybe. I'll answer more emails. Maybe. Or maybe not. Who knows? If we're lucky and aware and willing, we know the next step and have the courage and spine and huevos to take it. This is my next step. And I salute you, fellow oak, compadre in the boat next to me, human being on their own trek in the deep dark woods, if you feel to keep swaying in the wind or paddling or crawling alongside me for a bit.

And so this blog morphs again. But without the input of the folks who still come here, the salty and the sweet, the screamers and the singers, the folks who have surrendered to the Almighty Yes and the folks who still think that really, their screaming chimp is actually kinda cute and smart and funny and helpful. I keep writing to this blog because I somehow feel that it's important to leave breadcrumbs. Maybe it's just for me, to empty the knowledge of where this step is, or that one. Or maybe it's the last vestiges of self, spasming on the floor. Or maybe it's something I haven't thought of, don't know about, won't get til later. But I do know this: I'll keep writing, and it will shift to reflect the new changes inside, because for now, it's what's true for for this being that goes by the name of Katherine and Kate and Kathy and Kat and DatingGod.

And so I say:

Death to the screaming chimps! Long live the Nothing! All hail the Great Laughing Whatever! 

May this post find you deep inside your own awakening, and may surrender rule this great land . . . 

Pulsing

Sundays I clean, do laundry, go for a hike at the nature preserve down by the ocean. Starting in the afternoon, I cook my meals for the week's lunches: kale and collards, quinoa and lentils, brown rice and black beans, salads with avocado and toasted pumpkin seeds and olives and slivers of red onion. Today I'm cooking a special late lunch for myself: lasagna made with rice noodles and organic mozzarella. It's the first time I've had cheese in a couple of months. This is the sound of me taking many extra enzyme capsules, while also salivating, oh good lord, yes.

Wallace grows big and strong. Still with dings here and there, signs that the virus is still not fully vanquished, but he is fluffy and sweet and full of the punk lusciousness of a pink skinned, red-furred adolescent. Jacinta snuggles and growls and smiles and naps and snacks and has many siestas in her cave up in the laundry closet. We are family. I got all my fuzzies with me. even the ashes of The Hoon and Grandma Booty are parked next to the bed so that we still do family sleeps every night.

My novel came in third in the novel contest's paranormal genre. Sure, there were only three entries, but the editor that did the judging passed on a note to me that said she found the writing fresh, the heroine strong, the novel partial very readable, and that would like to read the whole novel, to please send it to her. I never thought for a second that I'd win any aspect of the contest. But I knew that I should enter. Now I know why. Or at least a part of the why. More shall be revealed. 

I've been on four public health job interviews in the last two months. None as horrible as the first, but still, not a single one of them what I'd call wonderful. And of course no job offer. Except for my cubicleland social work job. It looks like they are going to offer me a full time job with benefits. And I will most likely accept it. Because the whole deal these days is to do what is in front of me, to stay out of my head, out of fantasy and conjecture and thought and do the next practical thing. It doesn't matter what I "prefer" or "don't prefer". It's about doing the next thing. And then finding the ways that it fits, playing the notes it demands. Wax on, wax off. Just do it and the mouth, keep it shut.

I got asked out a couple of weeks ago by a ridiculously hot guy. After a few hours of fluttering stomach and peachfish contractions I got: not this. And so after he'd called me a couple of times, left me a couple of notes at my cubicleland job, I turned him down. He keeps calling, but I don't answer my phone anymore. It isn't about whether he's cute or interesting. It's about whether his energy fits with what I'm doing, if being around him feels like a Yes. It doesn't, and so I spend gentle evenings snuggled with kitties. 

I'm happier than I've been in a long time. A rhythm is pulsing strongly. I'm grateful. And I plan on continuing to show it respect by only engaging in actions that contribute to it's lovely luscious basso thumpthump, thumpthump, thumpthump.

Life is good . . . 

Wax On, Wax Off

What happens when a life doesn't get talked about? What happens when life's stories don't get told? Is it enough to simply witness our own life? What if we stop looking to others for a mirror reflection of our living? What if we stop explaining, editorializing, rehashing, reframing our past? What happens if we live, and then let it go?

All of my life I've been a storyteller, as an actress, a writer, a talker, a speaker, a watcher and collector of other people's stories. But now I feel my way through Holding, not suppressing, not expressing, simply Holding, letting my story unfold with as little input from me as possible. I watch for clear indications to take an action, then make it. I watch things "fall through", feel gratitude to Life for taking care of something that I can't see right now, and then see the thing that seemed negative, a failing, turn into positive, a lifting up, a freeing. 

Astounding.

It really is All Yes.

And I've noticed that not just talking, but my writing can muck up the clear, clean process. If I try and interpret things before full understanding, it creates some sort of funk, another aspect of trying to put a hot little hand of my graspy self back onto the tiller, and that just feels so dang crappy. 

So until writing again is indicated, I won't be doing much. I'll just be over here in this little corner of Life, running the scales that are the song of a life lived closer to that Yes that lives at the center . . . 

 

Doing

Utterly consumed with practical things . . . 

Clutter cleaning every single drawer, closet, shelf, cupboard, surface in the apartment. Boxes and boxes of former belongings, things I've been carting around for years, get thrown out with the trash, or passed on to someone else, or donated to a shelter.

Thanks to my "digestive illness" I'm down 13 pounds. For the past decade I simply haven't had the willpower to stop using my food lust as a way to cope with emotional distress, and so Life helpfully gave me two choices: utter agony or eat simply and cleanly. Of course it took me three weeks to settle in to choosing the latter . . .

I live on grains, beans/legumes, vegetables, and fruit. Twice a week or so I have some sort of animal protein, like an egg or some plain whole milk yogurt, but other than that, no animal fat of any kind (except for about a half tablespoon of butter I sometimes put in my morning hot cereal). I no longer eat dinner, but instead, depending on what my body tells me it wants, I make miso soup with seaweed and kale and gomasio, or I drink a quart of fresh juiced apples. 

I eat a lot of digestive enzymes, hydrochloric acid, niacin, ground flax seed, colon cleansing herbs. I drink a gallon of water a day. 

Sundays find me cleaning my home, making food for the upcoming week's lunches. I saute an enormous bunch of greens in water, add some balsamic vinegar, gomasio, sometimes a little hot sauce. I roast broccoli, beets, yams. I make brown rice with curry and raisins and almonds. Or quinoa, fluffy, simple, plain. I simmer a pot full of onions for three hours and make "onion butter", which gives lunches an extra hit of umami. I make daikon pickles with umeboshi plum paste and rice vinegar that I eat like candy through the week. 

I'm lifting weights again. When Calhoon got sick, I simply didn't have the fight in me any longer to keep pushing myself to exercise. All violence in the form of force, as in using my willpower like a sledgehammer to shove me through a bike ride, a weightlifting session, is gone. What's left is a desire to get my body moving again, squeeze out the kinks. I'm dancing again too, but now without any wine or self-consciousness or belief that someone is watching, or that it means anything other than the moment.  

I send out resumes, go on interviews. Another one five hours away. One two hours away. Several more set up over the next few weeks. I've put my landlords on notice that I'll be moving out in the next month or two. 

I work five days in cubicleland, or work four days in cubicleland and spend the fifth going on an interview. I work one day a week doing holistic work. On Sunday, I rest, and cook, and snuggle kitties, and dance, and feel the sun on my face. Evenings are spent with hulu.com, and The Dollhouse, and Fringe, and Lie To Me, and Kings, and 24, and Southland, and Rescue Me. Baby Wallace passes out in my arms, doing that purr of his that is really just heavy breathing, with the tiniest of sounds. Jacinta comes around to park her sweet self on my legs, or in my lap wedged up by Wallace, or on the window sill by the barcalounger where she can watch the birds as Baby Wallace and I watch tv.  

Slowly, slowly, I do another edit of the novel. I entered a writing contest on a whim, two days before the deadline for it, and sent in the first 20 or so pages. It made it to the finals in the "paranormal" category. The judge for the paranormal category is a big deal editor at one of the big publishing houses. The winners will be announced sometime at the end of this month. 

I don't care about "enlightenment" or "waking up". There is only the next thing to do, then the next. I'm not lonely or in pain or in drama or fighting my circumstances. If any of it arises, it passes, and then it's back into the practical. 

What I can say, without doubt, is that the seeds of whatever liberation I'm in right now are a direct result of turning, finally turning, and facing the things I was most afraid of. Then embracing them, bringing them close. All the while letting go of the old, the dead, and looking inside for where the energy wanted next to move. 

It's a tricky thing to distinguish between what is really going on and what the mind thinks is going on, what it's convincing you of. But to see the difference between the two, and to go with what is genuinely occurring, changes everything.

Who knows what tomorrow brings? Right now, some rice, a dvd, and perhaps some kitty snuggles.

Onward . . . 

Flight and Heavy Baggage

After over twenty years of doing this waking up thing, I finally get the hang of how it works. 

First there is enormous pressure- emotional, physical, mental, spiritual. I feel as if I'm dying. That my skin is being peeled off. And that I've been abandoned. The chasm between where I am and where I wish I were, where I need to be next, seems to be impossible to cross. It's as if I'm being digested in the belly of some horrific, dispassionate beast, utterly without empathy, perfectly fine with my destruction. I spend a lot of time lying on the couch, or the floor, or in bed, crying, wailing, sobbing, scared out of my wits, lost in some hideous emotional slide. 

For so many years I thought these spans of awful time were about depression, proof of terrible mental illness like a pox on my soul, something dire that I needed to be saved from by beings much more perfect than myself. And when in those crushing spaces, I'd seek out help, from professionals - in the psychology or spiritual fields, and I'd do what they told me to do, diet changes and thought changes and spiritual practices, and I'd feel better after a while. Or I'd talk myself half to death with friends, for hours and hours and hours, and that too would make me feel better. 

This ongoing digestion of "me" is what drove me to do theater, then on to acting conservatories. It led me to work in a naturopathic physician's office, to live in an ashram, to spend a decade in NYC, to read everything I could get my hands on about things spiritual, psychological, out of the mainstream flow of normalcy. It led me to study feng shui, meditation, yoga, qi gong, shamanism, reflexology, herbs, diet, weight lifting, tarot, kinesiology, pranayama, and a dozen different kinds of energywork. It prompted me to sign up for a BA in Holisitic Health and got halfway to an ND before switching over to a BA in Psych and a masters in Public Health. It inspired me to write two books, a half dozen booklets. And to become an holisitic practitioner myself, teaching hundreds and hundreds of classes, giving lectures, doing sessions with thousands of people over the past fifteen years. 

For so incredibly long, I thought that there was something wrong with me, that each time I'd move forward a little bit, then fall back into the slide, the awful belly of the beast, meant that I'd failed, yet again. Now I understand what's happening. It's so clear I can even describe the mechanics of it.

First comes the pressure, then the slide into the beast's belly, the awful swamp surrounding heart and mind. Then a span of time passes where something is wrestled with - some concept or feeling or belief. Things change, shift in heart or mind, as some belief is carefully, meticulously shown to be utterly bullshitty, totally without merit or worth a poot in a whirlwind's hope of longevity. Or a memory is revealed to be an overlay for a deeper truth. Or a feeling is shown to be a passing vapor, a veil rent with time, something that rises and burns off like morning fog. 

After that comes the blessed release, where I literally feel as if I have lost weight, the dense baggage pitched overboard after being revealed as ballast, the ballast that is no longer needed. I feel myself float thru life effortlessly, understand that I am completely safe, taken care of. There is a sense that I'm glowing, radiant, and people and animals are drawn to hang out around me.  

Then, I feel the slowdown. As if I were an airplane, a dozen feet above the runway, but now gently, slowly, coming back to land. A period of integration follows where I then learn to live with the changes, operate without the belief or thought or whatever it was that just got purged. 

After which, after another span of time, it all happens again, but about something new, or a new layer of an old issue, or a test drive to see if the last go around really, genuinely took.

What I've understood this last go around, is how quickly I forget what just happened. What caused me excruciating pain just a few weeks, months ago, is no longer even an issue. Which is the point: the lesson comes, is learned, is incorporated in, and becomes the new normal. 

This last go around had a few different components, but all related to the same quality of energy. It's been building strength and mass for several years, but culminated with Calhoon's death. At that point, the last mainstays of emotional and mental connections with beings outside of myself were sliced away. At that point, I could begin to finally fully realize that God/Love/Source lived only inside of me, even though his/her reflection might be everywhere around me. At that point, I began to stop talking about myself, expressing myself, telling my story (except for the purposes of this blog, which is for another post, oh yeah). I let go of connections, which in fact had been straining to be released for years now, but which I only recently had the courage to let go of. 

And then that phase began to slow down. A month or so ago, I felt the airplane slowly, slowly begin to touch down again, a couple of weeks of incorporation, and the next "faux" began to be revealed. This one is about practical matters like how large my ass has gotten, and how it is finally time for me to have a job with health insurance and enough money so that I can begin to pay off the truly awe inspiring debt I took on to put myself through school. And a few other components that I'm just sussing out.

I also can't help but see that what I've gone through, what I'm going through, isn't special or unique, though maybe I go about it in a way that is perhaps a little louder, with more neon, than how others may choose to do it. I'm pretty sure this is what evolution is, how the circuitry in our heads, our bodies turns on, gets its groove on, sets the stage for the next unfolding of Life's Further that lives on through all organic beings in this place called Earth and World. 

I do know one thing for sure. The hidden must be brought into the light. And no amount of whining, crying, blaming, or kvetching can alter that fact (although with enough cupcakes it can be held at bay for many, many years). 

So it goes. On and on. Expand, contract. Up, down. In, out. Yes, then no, then yes again. 

Mostly, in this moment, what I get is how glad I am for kitties and computers and the bright coastal sunshine, for rice cakes with almond butter, for this body that feels lighter and cleaner with each passing day. And the reason I feel so glad, so grateful, is that I know that everything passes, that things change, beings die, meals are eaten, the sun goes behind the clouds, the body will continue to age and then finally die. But that here, in this moment, the sun shines, the kitties squeak, the almond butter is creamy and delicious, and that, yes that, is just so dang lovely . . . 

Savage Mirror

I wonder how much of what I'm going through is real and how much is imagination, an attempt to create some sort of meaning or usefulness out of a hellish time in my living. But when I'm in that place that is neither hell nor heaven, when I'm just me sitting in my suburban apartment, I always think that way. 

It seems impossible to look back to see how far I've come, and it's very difficult to feel the progress, but I know it's there, simply from the lack of hell that was once there. 

Cubicleland is still incredibly unpleasant. It's such a savage place, peopled by savage beings, only savage because they don't know a better way, most likely because they've never known one. It brings out the savage in me, the savagery that still lingers inside of me, originally set into motion from the savagery of my childhood, my young adulthood, and of course all those many lives that have come before.  

I could blame cubicleland, and the lack of evolved souls that populate it, for how savage I often feel. I could talk about the rage and ugliness, the men who wave their fists in my face, the women who spit bile and spleen. Or I could tell you about how the bosses set things up for chaos, who have so little interest or training in the way of organization management or group dynamics that they believe in browbeating and threats, cracking the whip more fiercely, and then come back with outrage and blame for the chaos that reigns supreme.  

But what's really happening inside of me is that all of the savagery and chaos and ugliness that is still left inside of me, still needs to be burned off, is rising to the surface, so that I can see it, so that I can stop denying that it's not there, so that finally, finally, I can let it go, poof, and walk on to a place free of those ugly, aggressive, mean-spirited chains. 

The amazing thing though is how I continue to not be able to do it. How difficult it is to let something go when it keeps rising up in my face, and the defenses inside rise to meet it. And how Life refuses, absolutely refuses, to give me even one small warm hole to hide in from it. 

If I find a gentle flow of Yes at work, Life will change the rules so that the flow is disrupted: the bosses will say that we have to answer phones even if we have a client that we're sitting with, even though this ticks the person off that we're sitting with, and ticks off the person on the phone because we have to tell them that we'll call them back. So then, instead of having a pointed focused ten minutes where I can work on breathing and releasing, and therefor find the best, most clear way to genuinely be of assistance, even if the person in my cubicle is raging at their life situation by raging at me, there is now rage from the person in the cubicle, rage from the person on the phone, and neither one of them really gets what they need, which is for just a few minutes, someone to walk them through the thicket of bureaucracy while simultaneously not reacting to their self-pity and chronically impotent rage.

But time after time, I fail. Instead of staying grounded and clear, in the face of rage coming from all angles, I defend myself . . .  with rage of my own. I do it in the form of arrogance, or quiet, steely power-tripping to try and gain control of the situation, or the worst of all, blankness, shut down, impenetrable, closed-heartedness. 

I'd say it was all impossible, that I was doomed to fail, if I hadn't had a dozen or so moments in the past six months where it all came together and I got, really got, where I'm heading to with all of this. 

In these moments, it always goes the same way: a client or a coworker or a boss is standing in front of me, behaving very, very badly, speaking and acting from some reptilian place deep within their brain stem, the place that says kill or be killed, the energy radiating out from them that says it's either you or me and it ain't gonna be me, you f*cker. 

And in the face of all of that rage, that pointed aggression, I feel . . . nothing. Without effort, without trying, without thinking, there is simply . . . no reaction. 

I keep speaking normally, neither excited nor upset, answering their questions, even if it means telling them no when what they really, really want is to hear yes. 

And in the face of my own lack of movement, they simply . . . relax. The tension in their bodies, their face, their voice, releases, and a sort of astonishment takes over, like a sweet little bomb of Yes, of light, went off in their brains, rained down into their heart, and all of the poison they'd been feeling just a second ago was now just . . .  gone. 

So maybe it is imagination, maybe I am just trying to make up meaningful stories so that I can make it through the hell that is rising in my living. But those moments of Yes, they can't be denied. Those moments of sweetness, even in the full on burn of hell, are just so dang sweet. And I get that I will spend the rest of my life letting go into that, working and working and working so that particular flavor of surrender becomes the default, and I can walk thru hell without so much as a tailfeather getting singed, because in the absence of anything to burn, there is no fire. 

So thank you Life . . . thank you for such an excellent lesson in the nature of hell . . . thank you for such an intense crash course . . . because among so many other things, it is making me truly turn my face to the light, not the one outside of me, but the one inside of me, the one that is quiet and without movement and wants nothing. 

Cubicleland is my boot camp for the next war on my agenda, the one where I finally, finally turn and fight the war that needs to be fought . . . the one against the only true enemy there is . . . the one against myself . . . 

Feng Shui-ing My Life, One Digestive Organ at a Time

Turns out it wasn't food poisoning that had me so sick. How do I know this? Because of the last three weeks. Of throwing up a dozen times. Of waking up in the middle of the night in agony, night after night. Of feeling sicker and sicker. Of searching the internet for what might be going on, because without health insurance and without money, the internet and a curious mind are about as good a medicine as a gal can get.

It seems that my pancreas is no longer producing much in the way of digestive enzymes, which is why I've been unable to keep food down. Apparently I'd eat, and then ten hours later, there I'd be attempting to make wine or at least a rigorous ale in the cask of my stomach. And my body would rebel against being enslaved as a human still, and so up its contents would come. 

After that first night, when I thought it was food poisoning, I ceased putting anything in my mouth except for water, and then finally at the end of the day, a little brown rice. And in the wake of that I quit caffeine (3-5 cups a day), benadryl (every night), and ibuprofen (3-5 times a week). I also quit taking any herbs or multi-vitamins, any supplements whatsoever, including the things I took for my colon, my girl plumbing, and my energy levels. 

I spent entire days eating nothing but a cup of brown rice, or some sliced fruit with plain yogurt. Then I discovered digestive enzymes. And glory be! The pain released, and I began to eat again. But a few days later, the agony was back.

And so I am now on a total cleansing diet. A small bowl of grains in the morning, grain/beans with steamed vegetables and daikon pickles for lunch, fruit or chickpea miso for dinner. Lots of baths and vinegar/honey hot drinks and niacin flushes.

I still feel like hell on a biscuit, and am in a lot of discomfort, but it ain't pain, I ain't yakkin, and I'm deeply grateful.

And I'm not upset about this latest layer of ass-whoppin. Because it's the next layer of ass that needs to be vamoosed. As I've dealt with the chaotic energy inside of my body, I've found relief in deep clutter cleaning. I've moved most of the furniture out of the apartment, either back to the family member who lent it to me, or to the city dump. I've tossed dozens of boxes of things - books and clothes. I even tossed out a whole box full of things from my childhood that my mother left at my door, most of it I didn't even look at, just got a whiff of the nostalgic, empty decay of Gone, and put it in the trashcan. 

And so I'm now clutter-cleaning my body. For years I've been trying to get myself to a place where food stopped being a source of emotional comfort to me, where I stopped using my mouth as way to avoid my heart. No choice now. The gig is up.

And Wallace and Jacinta. They are very healthy. Both of them: radiant and sweet and hilarious and joyful and fierce and luscious and so dang snuggly. 

All is well . . .

Deity Freak

My favorite rock god, Stuart Davis, launched a new site: Sex, God, Rock'nRoll

And perhaps in celebration of the launch, a new video of Deity Freak, which incidentally, or Life being what it is, not so incidentally, is the song on constant replay (along with Wand) in my magic 1994 Saturn SL2 as I drive to and from cubicleland:

Deity Freak from Sex, God, Rock 'n Roll on Vimeo.

There Is No No

About a year ago, I wanted to change my rental agreement at the holistic center. Instead of renting my room as a half share with 3.5 days a week, I wanted to move to a 1/3 share because I only used the room for one day a week with a second every couple/few weeks. I was told no. And so for a year, I've paid for three and a half days a week, and only used one. 

Then a few weeks ago, the holistic center owner received an offer from a practitioner who wanted to rent my room, but full-time, and without me in it. I was given as ultimatum: either rent the room for the full week, or you have to be out. So of course I had to say no, not just because of the principle of the thing, but because it just made no financial sense. And so I lost the room. And it felt horrible. I felt betrayed and sad. The beautiful room that I'd filled with rocks and plants and candles and strong clear energy for the past year and a half was dismantled piece by piece and packed into my car. 

And the woman who rented the room after me was a no show on the day she was supposed to bring the holistic center owner a check, and hasn't returned her phone calls, and now the room is empty. As for me, I'm now renting another room in the center for two days a month, paying half the rent I used to, and laughing and laughing. I'm no longer a member of the holistic center regular crew, and somehow out of that I've been freed from the politics of the place, which have gotten more and more awful over the past few months. There aren't any bad feelings, just a gratefulness that I can now walk in, do my work, and leave. 

There are two fellow readers there that I enjoy being around. I've never seen either one of them outside the center, but when we are there, we always make time to sit and talk. It's never simply chat, but rather something that always feels clear and deep and true. They are both women who, like me, See and Know things, and it sets us apart from most people, if for nothing else but by the simple virtue that other folks pretend not to know what's going on, and we no longer have that option. None of us is really engaged in the world anymore, don't really have friends or socialize, although one of them is married with grown kids, one serving in Iraq, and the other is a single mom of a young girl, and they are both very involved in keeping clear energy with their families. 

They are both powerful readers, clear seers, and hilariously funny. Mostly we just sit around and laugh about stuff. Or cry as we tell the other about the latest layer of visceral tissue we're peeling off. And I can read for both of them, and can give them info about different things that are going on with them, but neither can read for me, though they have both tried many times. But they listen to me, in that clear-eyed, unsentimental way that gets a current of connection humming inside of me. It feels like healing work, and I'm grateful for it, for both of them. 

And so now, without the regular Saturdays at the holistic center, I'll see them once or twice a month. And instead of a healing space in someone else's business, I'm transforming my living room into a class and session space. Life moves on. Change happens. It's always Yes . . .

Quiet Blah Blah Yes

Mostly I'm not writing because mostly I'm going thru funk, then layers of joy, then more funk, then more joy. 

When I'm in the funk, it's so full of bile that there is no way I'm writing about it. It's just plain hateful. Possessions of such negativity, such rage and self-pity and doom and pointlessness that I'm no longer me, just some stain of hell left in a skin bag. I'm mean and withholding to clients, I want to pitch myself off a bridge, I grip the kitties so much they squeal, I eat bad food.

When I'm in the joy, it's such a quiet, gentle thing that I barely move, knowing that one false ripple sets the hateful jello jiggling again. I sit in the barcalounger for hours, watching the clouds, Wallace purring so gently it's like heavy breathing with sound as he snuggles around my neck like a living feline scarf, Jacinta curled up in my arms purring like the tiny love trucker she is. Or I clean my apartment like a benevolent tsunami, tossing out bags and boxes of clutter, of detritus from a life that is no longer mine.

What stuns me so much about my living these days is the lack of loneliness. I've spent my entire life lonely, longing for a best friend, a soul mate, a teacher. Working so hard to find them. Then working so hard to get them to stay. Then working so hard to stay alive after they left. Then the cycle starting again. I've spent my life searching for someone to tell me what the hell is going on, to show me how to save myself, to just give me The Dang Recipe once and for all, for happiness, and enlightenment, and how to have a really good time and not pay for it on the flip side. 

But now? Not searching for anyone, looking for answers from anyone, yearning for someone to be with. It's just gone. And it astounds me. I finally understand that no one has any answers. Get that there isn't anyone out there that "completes me". It's like I shed a really, really heavy coat, and now I'm just walking along a path, getting used to the feeling of so much weightlessness, like the law of gravity wasn't really a law but more like a choice. 

It's not that it doesn't come up. It does. It comes around in cycles. And each time I try and return to the world of chat, of talk, of sharing, of stories, of relationship. And it goes boom like a sad little bomb. And I feel sick. And I fail at it miserably. Or not so miserably. More just awkward, weird, simply not one of them anymore, so obvious, so clear. I go silent again, things lift, go gentle and quiet and clear again, until it cycles back again. 

But the real beauty is that Wallace is incandescently radiant with good health. No rashes. No snot. No lacerations. No funky eye or hindquarters or abscesses. Even his breath is tangy sweet. Jacinta is snuggly luscious, purring and purring, growling only when Baby W licks her head, then her ears, then her neck, and then bites her, or I grab her a little too quickly, a little too love-grippy.  

And even as huge change goes on. Lost my room at the holistic center a few weeks back. Politics of the New Age in the new economy and how I'm simply not the hottest game in town. Nowhere to do sessions anymore. (Not that it matters as the phone doesn't ring anymore. Which in spite of the repercussions of cash is actually awesome. Oh how I love it that the phone never rings anymore.) I'll rent a room here or there at different places probably as the need arises for sessions, though, as folks are bound to call sooner or later, though I cancelled my ad in the local holistic rag. I consider clearing out my living room, doing sessions there, maybe a weekly class, get together, healing circle. But I haven't done it yet. Why fight change? Things dying? So much death in my living the past few years that I simply open my fist and let the sand fall away . . . 

So that's it. Friday at 8:32pm. The neighbors are having a party. They laugh and howl and talk loudly. I was invited, they always invite me, but I don't go. I apparently don't do social anymore. Maybe I'm the scary loner chick with cats who is all fat and angry and stuff, or maybe I'm on to something. Maybe I'd do social if there were someone who wasn't utterly full of shit to talk to, but we're all so full of shit, myself included of course. And so I sit here with the kitties, writing, and later on I'll watch Slumdog Millionaire, eat some Quorn.

Blah blah, right? Blah, blah . . . 

But see:

Broken Beautiful

You'd think that cracking my tooth last month would have been a bummer, what with the initial pain and the $1000 price tag and having to take off from work four times to get it all completed and concreted into my head. But it wasn't. It was a blessing. Twenty years of excruciating pain from TMJ  (which is the nervous system equivalent of having a cattle prod going off in your head, off and on, 24/7, for days, weeks, months on end) evaporated overnight. 

The dentist was dubious when I told him, said it's possible, yeah, maybe, that the root canal I had done when I was in my twenties wasn't done properly and the cracked tooth and the removal of the shard somehow released some contact point, and viola, no more swollen gum, aching ear, and shooting pains all over my head and left arm. 

But whatever.

Cracked tooth: good.

And you'd also think that getting some howling form of food poisoning Monday night would be a bad thing, what with the howling and all. But it wasn't. I haven't been able to eat anything but fruit and a little plain yogurt since then, and it's made me high and shaky and headachy and out of it, and more than a little crabby at work. But it's forcing me to look at the inflammation that is wreaking havoc on my body, give it a rest with soothing foods, a few mouthfuls at a time.

One of the managers asked me at work how I was feeling and I said, "really good, actually, because I think it's god's way of telling me I'm too fat." And she laughed. And I did too. But I was serious. 

I've let go of sex, booze, excitement, "love", and chat. Food is the last stronghold of comfort for me. (Except for kitty snuggles of course, and yeah, sure, maybe Life will make me give that one up but I doubt it as the weasels are Jesus with fur.) 

So yeah.

Salmonella colonization: good.

Organic Farming

Haven't been writing much, obviously. Haven't wanted to write. Haven't felt to write. Except when I can't write. When I'm in cubicleland or like yesterday, when I was in my car for eleven hours. Then I want to write.

I was in my car for so long because I had a job interview on the other side of the state. Way up in a little town in the NC mountains. A job for a public health educator. A great job with lots of autonomy, lots of interesting things to do. Not enough pay to pay my bills, but with a little holistic work on the side, doable. And health insurance and vacation days and comp time for those weeks that I put in overtime. And all in a town small enough that I could walk to work, walk home for lunch to smooch the fuzzy guys. 

But it doesn't really matter. Because I blew the interview.

I could blame it on the fact that I drove several hundred miles in rain and traffic with no cruise control to get to the interview. Or that I haven't interviewed for a public health job in a long time. Or that for some reason I was extra puffy yesterday and so my stretchy, button-down girl-shirt was too tight and I alternated between sucking in my gut and not being able to breathe, and exhaling and watching the belly-fat roll pooch out into the gap. Or that I jinxed it the day before by telling folks in cubicleland that I had a job interview. Or that I simply didn't feel The Love with the folks I interviewed with, although we all expressed seemingly genuine mutual appreciation for one another's experience and talents.

After the hour and a half interview, as I walked in the rain back to my car, feeling rather f*cked and sad, I heard inside my head: This Is The Part Where You Trust. And in that hot second, all doubt was simply gone, and I got into my car, switched back into my casual clothes for the drive back right there in the parking lot, and headed out of town with a light heart. 

And although the drive back was hellish, with driving rain and buttheaded drivers cutting me off, and my tailbone for some reason feeling as if it were hot molten lead, and a very stoopid stop-off for dinner at a chinese buffet which means that I ingested both wheat and soy in copious amounts, I got that whatever is going on in my living, I did my part, and the rest is up to Life.

This isn't rosy glasses or magical thinking or trying to make myself feel better with new age platitudes. This is the truth. I did everything right, everything true, everything I could think of and feel and sense and intuit. I did my best. I showed Life my hand. I stopped trying to bluff or bluster, dropped my poker face and just played the cards I was dealt, at the table I sought out, with the folks I felt to play with.

I found a job with a deadline for application two days away, a job that caused my mouth to fall open, and a sound to come out that  resembled "whoaaaaaaa". I crafted my resume to fit the job. I wrote a solid cover letter. I did follow up. I was spot on with the phone interview. I spoke to my managers at work, because I needed a couple of hours off the night before to prepare, and also so that they would know where I was going, so that they could give me a reference if I needed a current one. I colored my hair to erase the grey roots, clipped my nails, shaved my underarms and legs for the first time in many many many months. I spent days researching the town's health programs, their demographics and prominent health issues and local industry. Pre-interview, I ate a sensible dinner, a power breakfast, and a light lunch. I drank just enough caffeine to be on the top part of the bell curve. I showed up at the in person interview with hard copies of writing samples of public health initiatives I'd done: a brochure distributed throughout NY to physicians and patients and policy-makers; an evaluation that had been used to justify grant funding for a state-wide initiative; a grad school paper that a prof had tried to get me to seek publishing for in one the environmental health journals he contributed to. I had my reference list, and three really great reference letters. I wore casual clothes for the drive, and changed into interview garb in a fast food restaurant the hour before, where I could also brush my hair and teeth, so that I could arrive at their office looking fresh and uncreased.  

But from the moment I sat down in the health department office, it didn't matter. It was utterly Off and nothing I tried could get it to switch back to On. I would watch as things came out of my mouth and were received with a wince or silence or seeming indifference. It was as if I simply couldn't speak their language, and the more I tried to hone in, the more clear it became that I wasn't on their wavelength, and that the disharmony wasn't going to go away. At the point where my nose started running, and I reached into my purse and pulled out a maxipad instead of a tissue, I knew the gig was totally up. And so I relaxed a bit around the funky energy, and just allowed the weirdness to flow without fighting it. And in the relaxing, more of the real me came out, and I said things like "with a template for previous grants you've written, I could create an awesome one for the current project" and "if you need me to start sooner than May 1st, it would be okay, I started packing a few weeks ago as I felt this coming" and chatted them up about the cats and dogs and horses in their lives and spoke to them about my feline "tribe". Of course, all of which only made them look at me more strangely, though they kept saying things like how impressed they were that someone with my credentials and experience would enthusiastically make the long drive to their rural town to come meet with them. 

On the long drive back, as my mind clicked and clacked its way down winding pathways, it kept coming back to this: I did my part, and that's all that was required of me. Life takes care of the rest. I felt strongly to do something. And I proceeded with heart and passion and purpose and attention to detail. I did my best. And that's enough. That's all that is required of any of us. 

And the point isn't and never was to land the job. It was about the process I went through, how I got out of the way and showed Life my true intention. It's that this series of steps that I just undertook, that I saw through to the end, was about doing as I felt to do, and then releasing the result, not being invested in the outcome. 

And I'm not. I'm not invested either way. Get the job, don't get the job, either is fine. I may even get offered the job and not take it, which is also okay, even though by all outward appearances, I am financially f*cked eight ways from Monday.

Because in that moment, walking to my car in the rain, when I heard it, heard "now is the part where you trust", and I did, I immediately, effortlessly surrendered into it, I felt something else reverberate, something Morpheus said about Neo, after Trinity asked: what is he doing? and Morpheus said "he's starting to believe". I took my hand off the tiller, let go of the wheel, knowing without a doubt that something else was driving this bus, this thing I call a life, this personality that goes by various names including Kate and Kat and Kathy and Katherine. 

And sure, since that moment of utter clarity, my mind has been tripping, scrambling around looking for things to f*ck with, but it's too late. I let go, and my mind can go suck it. Not in an angry way, or a challenging way, or even a I Am Free Woman Hear Me Roar way. Just a very quiet desire, a pointed choice between me continuing to try and run the show or stepping back to let the highly skilled professional take over. And my mind can whine and screech and cajole and demand and cry all it wants, but its days as the boss of me are over. I'm just going to keep going back to that quiet place, the place that is on to the next thing, that has let go of the last thing, that Does because this is the next thing to Do. Life may bring me cancer or poverty or leave me for the rest of my days in that beige cubicle. Or maybe Life wants me to use the skills I've acquired, the energy I bring into the world, for other things. 

As I lay in bed this morning, watching the sun slowly wake up birds and breeze and Baby Wallace, I heard: What Do You Want?

I've been hearing this same phrase for about five years now, ever since I lived on that mountain in Virginia, when I had found a cave made of greenery, in the middle of a stand of trees and bushes and flowers and vines, when I was lying on my back, looking up at the blue sky peeking in amongst the green, and I heard a clear voice ask: What Do You Want? And the question was startling, deeply so, because for so long my stock answer has been: Life, whatever you want, I want, too. 

But now, five or so years later, I understand that I'm at some sort of crossroads, where I line up my intentions with Life's intentions, that they have never been separated, except in my mind, and that now is the time to realize their alignment. And even as I've gotten better at stating to Life what I want, at this time, in my living, the rubber and the road must seriously get their sh*t in tandem.

And so I lay in bed this morning, welcoming the day's offerings, the scent of Wallace's fur, the caws and tweets and warbles of the bird community, the feel of the cool breeze on the arm that reached outside the blanket to hold on to Wallace's twitchy tail as he watched the birds and sniffed the breeze. 

I rummaged around inside my heart for: what do I want? And I saw a picture of a farm, and all the tools were rusting, the fences falling apart, the gardens in disarray, holes in the roof. And I got that I was the farmer, and I've been sick for a really long time, sick in body, mind, spirit, too sick to tend to the farm. And that these afflictions aren't my fault, no one is to blame, they are just part of Life waking me up. And that if Life wants me to die sooner rather than later, I'm okay with that. But if Life wants me to live, I'm at the turning point where continued neglect of the farm means that it'll be past the point of no return, will be too far gone to be anything but razed, and I'd like to get the farm going again, love to see it full of happy animals and luscious sunshine and fat tomatoes on the vine. 

So, yeah, I want the farm. If Life brings me cancer and ruin and continued arid winds, I'll surrender into each and every one of them. I won't choose them, set my intention toward them, but I trust Life enough to embrace them with humor and a supple spine. 

But my choice is definitely the farm. I want the vibrant farm. Definitely, definitely the farm . . .

Hanging Here In Space

Pure Luscious Awesomeness

. . . if he were any more smart, radiant, full of Yes, i just might splode . . . 

Part 1

  Part 2 Part 3

Love/Hate/Love/Hate/Love/Hate/Love . . .Ummm, Where Was I?

I know most of you guys think I hate my cubicleland job. But I don't. I don't hate it. I'm deeply grateful for it. It torches my netherparts, and my mind, and that dang human heart of mine. But I'm glad for the burning. Burn muthaf*cka, burn, I say. 

The beauty is that it is so awful, so unpleasant, so devoid of kindred, so very very smelly and beige that I could never be seduced to stay, to envision that it is indeed a warm, safe hole to snuggle in for a bit. Although sometimes, when the manager is kind to me, or the flowers I bring in to my cubicle stirs feelings of Yes in me, or I find a particularly deep yes of workflow, for a moment I feel that I might be able to stay and be of use, and be okay with it. Then my manager comes in and busts a harsh move on my groove, catching me reading a personal email on state time and giving me the Steely Eye of Boss-hood, cracking that emotional whip, even though I've walked in on him or all managers doing personal email and playing solitaire or chatting for a half hour about the new flooring they just put in. Or I pick up the phone and a client begins screaming how they are coming into the office so that they can scream at me in my earthly face, because I am an as*hole, and have been disrespectful to them for not giving them money. 

I wonder sometimes if what is burning isn't something I'll need later on. Brothers Jed and David and Frank and Sister Bernadette holla: let it burn! But I also get that their burning was something that simply grabbed hold of their lives and began smoking things one facet at a time. For me it seems like I am slowly being eaten by a swamp. Should I save myself? Or should I let the bog take me under?

I'm so dang mum in my living that no one around me even really knows what's going on. Maybe they think I've gone a bit nuts and incommunicado, or maybe they just think I'm mean, but no one really gets what I'm doing. 

Most of you don't get what I'm doing either. I have a collection of emails from folks who insist I go on mood drugs posthaste. Who feel so deeply deeply sorry that I am in such a bad way. Or suggest that I promptly relocate my head from my ass to somewhere more pleasant for other people as they feel it is very unpleasant to watch a human pile drive themselves into their own waste byproducts. 

Do you guys get that I'm losing everything here? Do you understand that I am not fighting it's passing? Do you understand that I am betting it all? That I am placing it all on the fact that I'm not real and that something else lies beneath this seething briar patch of emotion and memory and desire and only-needs-to-be-fixed-to-be-happy? The objective is no longer the incessant Trying, to be nice, or be liked, or to succeed, or to win. It's to see what lies underneath the nice, the desire to be liked or successful or a winner. What happens when all the I Wanna is gone? What is left when all of the trying ceases and I simply look at who is left?

At 12 noon today: It's lunchtime from cubicleland. I can't go to the park anymore because a guy, looks kinda homeless as he's really unwashed and drinks tallboys, who really wants to talk to me, keeps staring at me, walking past me and smiling and making chitchat, for weeks now, has rendered my peaceful sun drenched splay impossible. I move over to the backyard of a law office. Maybe they'll toss me out. Maybe not. In the meantime, the tree I spread my towel out under is tall and full of dry leaves that shower down on me as I eat my tomato, pickel, strawberries, rye cracker with butter. 

The sex energy is still running and I wonder at it's source. Am I ovulating? Is the mind kicking off more steam? Is connection tendrilling it's way into my consciousness? Who knows . . .

The leaves land on my belly, cheek, in my hair. I feel the pulse of Life, of Yes, thrum through my body. Watch the thoughts move to fantasy, take me away from the tree and the leaves and the sunlight. I come back, leave again. What's better? What's worse? Does it matter? Brother Jed, I wish you could tell me where on the map I am. I'm wandering around eating crazy berries, fending off the wolves. Yes, inward, not outward. But the inward I can access is a seething pit. 

Then it's time to go back to cubicleland. To the employees who spend their breaks in the beige breakroom, watching tv, chatting about their opinions and thoughts and feelings.

My sister keeps trying to make contact with me. Drops off bags and bags of designer clothes, the tags still on them, from the wealthy women she works for. I think about her again and again over the week, feel myself getting pulled back into the family drama. I love her. I love them. But the mere idea of going back into their fiction makes me want to rip my heart out and offer it up for the crows. But my sister. She doesn't understand what I'm doing. But she sort of does. And she loves me. And I know I need to find a way to let her more gently off the hook. I want to say: you really really don't want to stay connected to me, where I'm going you won't understand, and it will make you upset. But she is tenacious, and I owe her more tangible kindness, at least until she begins to let go on her own. 

I feel The Hoon around me constantly. He left his body over six months ago. But he is still everywhere. I talk to Wallace about him. Try to engage Jacinta in conversation about him. But they both ignore me mostly. Except when they climb on top of me and collapse into deep snuggles of surrender and what else can I do but shut up and surrender back?

Perfect Broken Heart

This is my teapot:

It feels good in my hand when I pour the morning caffeine, and makes the perfect amount, exactly two big mugs of steaming hot black tea.

These are my glasses, the ones that are so light that I can't even feel them, that I love to wear while watching tv:

This is my awesome, dependable 163,000 mile, 15-year old car, or at least the inside of it. I've tried various kinds of glue and found that the stuff that comes in the neon blue stick works the best:

This is my couch. With enough old feather blankets and covers and pillows, it makes the broken frame in the middle seem like a big soft cocoon:

This is my bed. It's a loner from my brother, and way too fancy and tall for me. Yes, that's the head and foot boards propped up against the back wall. And yes, that's the box spring propped up against the other wall:

The box spring is much better served as Baby Wallace's majestic, manly Perch of Solitude than it's originally intended purpose:

And of course, this is another of Baby Wallace, his little weaselly cheeks puffed out from his latest dance with kitty herpes, this one entitled The Canker Sores Have Colonized.

And this of course, is Sweet Momma J, our official, reigning CrabbyPants, who loves to be lifted into this laundry closet/pantry, so that she is far, far away from the love bites and head locks of Baby Wallace, whose kittenish love she just ain't in the mood to grok:

And this is me, deep in the heart of boring down to the emotional and mental bedrock, while still making time for a photo op:

Life is good . . . 

Real Tantra

I haven't been on a date, or been part of a couple, in almost three years. 

I just lost interest. And apparently, so have the menfolk. 

I hear that this happens to women over 40. Especially with women who don't really do the makeup and hair and cute clothing thing, and whose hindquarters, like the universe, have continued to spread outward. 

The pickings are slimmer than 10 years ago. There don't seem to be many guys I'd even want to be with, if I wanted to be with someone.

But I don't. Once every couple of months I'll get a flutter, you know the kind, but it fizzles out as I realize: what in the world would I do with him? Charm him with my knowledge that he isn't real? Seduce him with my nihilistic chatter and refusal to tell any of my stories or show any interest in his?

But the pulse of the universe, of male and female polarity continue to push their way through. At night, when I'm asleep. And I wake up the morning and go: whoa . . . dang . . . 

They are so real, these men who visit me in the land behind my eyelids. It's the same feelings of love, of nervousness, of energy coursing through nerve endings, lighting up heart and mind and several reproductive organs. There are long conversations, the ones that go right to the heart of the main issues that drive us to link bodies and chakras with another human being. And then morning comes, and they dissolve in the crackling vibration that is the world.

The only other place the energy arises is during massage. Because of the shamanic work I do, I get offers for barters pretty regularly, a lot of them for massages, which if the person has a Yes vibration, I agree to. And if it's a male massage therapist, something always happens about ten minutes in: the energy starts running.  

Sex was always about surrender for me. My surrender. Their surrender. To something bigger, deeper, sweeter, fiercer than both of us. Something that was only created in the presence of Us. Something that mind, thought, and technique rendered impassable. But something, that if surrendered to, healed all of the wounds the world caused in us, filled bodies and hearts, cells and consciousness with a luscious liquidity that was like energetic honey flowing in me, and him, and the being that was us.

Massage, or any healing work really, is the same thing. One being opening their heart, their energies, making love to another being, participating, facilitating their healing, hooking up all the nodes along the circuitry so that the universe can sing Yes . . . Yes . . . Yes. . .  in the manner it would really like to 24-7, if only we'd just let it do It's Thing.

During massage, it's never anything I plan, or consciously summon. There isn't ever sexual contact, nothing to do with the regular actions we associate with sex. Just the energy. Running. The energy that simply kicks in when male and female polarity connects, and we get out of the current's way. 

It's nothing that gets spoken about. Sometimes I notice that a few moments after the current kicks in, the therapist will hesitate, not sure what to do, or maybe not sure what is happening. The really good therapists let go, simply surrender to the deepening. Technique shifts into something more organic. Repetitious gives way to rhythm. And when the massage is over, we're both smiling, laughing, and I know that he feels a lot better, too, in his heart, and in his own skin. 

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that all of the evils in this world can be traced back to a lack of good nookie. When it's done right, in the spirit of the energy that created it in the first place, it takes all of the fight out of a person, replaces it with the desire to buy the world a chai, reminds us that everything is okay, everything is exactly as it needs to be, everything is absolutely perfect, just like it is, all is well in the dance of life . . . 

And it is. Life takes care of us, despite what our minds tell us. Life takes care of us, and we can't help but see it, if we only open to how Life wants us to live, which is how we are living, which is what Life is bringing to us daily, hourly, in every single moment. Because there really is only Yes in the universe . . . and oh Yes is so very sweet . . .