Vacation?

I just got off the phone from a long-distance session for a shamanic healing session. A session for someone who comes here to DG. Someone who has invited me several times to come for an all expenses (sans air fair) paid week vacation at a spa in Mexico.

And as I sit here, drinking a vast goblet of red wine, I think to myself: what sort of idiot turns down an all expenses paid vacation to an holistic spa for a whole freakin week? Oh yes, the same sort of idiot who turned down the invitation to France a while back. Because, really, what is my problem?

My problem, kind folks, is that in spite of all of my hard work the past decade, my boundaries grow thinner, not thicker. I feel the world even more, and people even more so. And there is a deep pain that comes with it, as if I'm losing skin by layers. So, yes, I see things so much more clearly. But no one told me how badly it would hurt to hold the truth so close, how it would burn off the separation between I and Other, and that I would feel it.

I spend as much time as possible here in the hacienda with the kitties. I write. I watch dvds. I read. But life is such that I do have to go out amongst other humans. (Please, can we not speak of how I am job hunting?) And the fan, it invites the caacaa to step ever forward.

My time with other humans has gotten so odd. My capacity and willingness to listen has grown so intense, my desire and need to talk has shrunk so tightly, that almost all of my interactions with other people consist of 97% them, 3% me. And it isn't that I'm not talking. I am. I'm talking about them. Asking questions, clarifying the tendrils of truths rising up out of them like smoke signals, following them down the rabbit hole where future and present meet head on with the mirror of their past. I obviously love it, this deep listening, this ocean of receiving another. But here's the problem: people eat that sh*t up.

Seriously, when's the last time you had someone sit in front of you for hours at a time, enraptured as you spilled forth your tale of Everlasting Me? I know that sh*t is heady. I know it. But I can't do it any other way. And folks end up chugging it like a spiritual beer bong on nickel beer night down at the Cosmic Cafe and Organic Lapdance Palace.

And it exhausts me in a way that you can't even imagine, in a way that makes me want to turn myself inside out and bathe myself in cabernet, make love to twenty-four year old tantric love gods, peel off all my clothes, walk off into the ocean and then keep walking.

This is what I can't figure out: if when I spend time with people I don't really want to talk about myself, and listening for hours on end to them talk about themselves exhausts me and loses it's joy about an hour and a half in, and holing up in my home for weeks on end makes me feel cranky, then what, pray tell, am I to do? Because nobody seems to like silence. Silence seems to be the thing folks run from screaming, the path behind their pounding feet dense with the flying gravel of words and words and words and more words.

And so, a lovely chica invites me to France. And a sweet sister invites me to Mexico. And I'm horrified at what a nightmare it could turn into. Because, really, what alternative do I give people? (And no, we shall not speak of that trip to Britain, oh no, we shall not.)

And so I sit here, clacking away at my iBook to you lovely folks, your shadowy faces moving back and forth in my mind's eye. I feel you. I write to you. But you're not really here, are you?

Tim Finn sings:

"Are you loveless on this cold day
You feel like you're walking on your own grave
But somehow you know it's not for always"

Gone is the intense day to day knowing of how close my own death is, the death of life as we know it. Instead I sit with not quite knowing what to do next. Waiting for a job to appear that says Yes to what I can offer in exchange for cash to help me apply dents in the great financial mountain of debt I've slowly built the past four years. Waiting for the editor to read the latest draft of my book and give me notes. Waiting for the next updraft of What's Next.

I can feel it. I can feel it coming. Have been for a while. I spend hours applying for jobs I'm only marginally qualified for, knowing they'll never even call me in for an interview.

"It's coming," I keep hearing. "It's coming. No need to flail around making motion for the sake of movement. It's coming. Have faith. It's coming."

"Yeah, f*ck you," I reply to the soft, firm vibration. "How do I know you aren't the voice of procrastination? Of anger made manifest inside of inaction? Of arrogance built inside of I'm Better Than That? Of the supreme annihilation of What's Left of Me via F*ck It All?"

(In lieu of speaking to other humans, I speak to the energies that cruise my head)

"It's coming," it says. Like it always does.

And the sexual undertones aren't lost on me. A few months ago, the switch on my Hello I'm a Woman programming got flipped to the On Position. No space to dance it, at least no space that makes sense, other than inside of me, which is fine.

Yet, all sorts of weirdness occurred within utterly inappropriate channels. Have lost my relationship with the Bee Master. (But really, what else do you do with a married man who says that he can't get within a foot of you without feeling the overwhelming desire to bend you over and Give It To You? Which is a quote, btw). And my amazing, body-saving massage therapist is about to be jettisoned. (What else to do when you get that he's setting things up for a blowj*b?)

And so, here I sit. Drinking red wine. Wondering, please, Life, isn't there a way that you can swing giving me a vacation in Mexico with the cool chick who is basically my soul sister?

No answer.

So I pour another tankard of grape and listen to kt tunstall and admit that oh lordy, I so don't run this show.

Whatever you want, Life. Expansion for Yes, contraction for No. Yes, I know the drill. Thanks for the connection, the languaging. Thanks for the ride. Thanks for the new credit card. Thanks for the new found freedom from the crazy landlords. Thanks for the energy of Anger you provide me with each day to supercharge my living, even though I don't understand it and it gives me ajada.

Thanks for the freedom of Now. This freedom from ties and strings and requests and needs and demands. But could you please put a hitch in your giddyup? Please be a little clearer in what you want me to do next? (and could you please suck 30 lbs off me by next Thursday as I am so incredibly sick of looking pregnant?)

Life is good. It surely is. And really, who the frak knows what's going on? And even that is good . . .

Comments

[Will]

Good Friday to you Ms Kate. Sitting here watching Lost on tape, surfing during commercials. Glad you are here even though we aren't there. Hope a friendly hello helps some.

Good wishes to you.

[Mouse]

Jeez but some of this resonates!
Some of us are born to serve but that lays us upon to being dumped on because most of Them are born to use. I sat back and listened, really listened to people at a dinner recently, it was enlightening and saddening to hear the Me so often and so loud. And The Someone was The Master until there was only Him and I had shrunk to smaller-than-a-mouse. Tant pis. Back to the mousehole
PS Come to France. This place is large enough to get lost in and you can have all the space, peace, freedom you desire. Heck I could stick you in the gite if that would please you! You could be The Crazy American that became an Urban Myth

[Kimberly Elia]

I highly suggest France. There is nothing more cleansing (and wonderfully lonely) about going to a foreign country where you and everyone else alround you is constrained to a modified 3-year-olds vocabulary --- though it's usually best if you go alone. It's more entertaining than staying in the house -- and just as isolating. Europe has always given that to me. Which is why I can't bring myself to leave Rome. If Britain didn't go well, don't fret. That's because they speak English, too. :-)

[Kimberly Elia]

I forgot to mention -- and you are probably going to find this very strange but I felt the need to tell you -- I had a dream the other night and you were in it. I gave you a green necklace of mine made of precious stones and as soon as you put it on it started changing colors -- all of these bright, glowing, not-primary-at-all colors... and I was a bit shocked because I had never seen the necklace do that and said something stupid along the lines of "I guess its a mood necklace". When I woke up I remembered the dream rathar vividly and felt the need to tell you about it. Every once in awhile i'll have one of 'those' dreams and immediately upon waking feel the need to tell a certain person, or ask a certain question -- or be filled with the certainty that something is about to happen (which, scarily, it has). So I don't know what resonance that will have with you, but there you are. And just so you don't find this too strange, we're not quite perfect strangers -- we've been in contact (and i've been reading DG) since you gave your monologue at the studio theatre at UAlbany. I was in the audience. I also took Farrells class after you. Hope you remember me! :-)

[mm]

I know those two voices.

[Kathryn]

I read you, Kate. Regularly. You've got my attention, though I may not comment often. I think about writing a comment but am stopped when I realize I've nothing of merit or consequence to add. So I'm writing to remind you that I'm here, my brain and heart register your existence. I'm silent, and I hear.

[krista]

Kate- I totally hear you in this post. As a professional listener myself, everything you wrote is oh so familiar to me, and it was nice to read. Like reading unformed thoughts in my own head, gently being shaped by yours.

[lindsay lynx]

Come and take a silent walk in andalucia... if anyone comes along we can reduce ourselves to 3 year old vocab, unless they're english, then we can pretend we're spanish. Hearing you here too, through the golden silence.

[Gunk]

Would you like me to wisper a vacation into your future.