DatingGod

Yes, Yes, Even When It's No, It's Yes

I have this reoccurring image in my mind's eye. I see a huge ship. White, red trim, black hull. A cargo ship, probably. It is moving slowly in the water. Because it is turning. Finally turning. I know the port it left. I know what destination it abandoned. I have a general idea of where it's headed. But mostly what I see is the great shift, the resulting white water, the turning, the slowly turning in the water. Hear the creaking. Even as the predominant sound is silence, as everyone that was once on board is gone, gone, gone.

Mostly, the past couple of weeks, I think about how I want to quit my cubicle job. The raging winds of judgment come from both sides: clients and bosses. The workload is impossible. The cost of screwing up impacts folks' lives in a way that shakes the foundations that they build their okayness around, which reverberates to their mates, children, extended family and friends. The workload, the amount of anger and sorrow and rage and pathos directed at us is so insane that no staff member is able to retain a sense of balance, or at least not for long. 

So, of course, as I was getting ready to flee my cubicle last night at 5:01 pm, one of my managers sits in the client's chair across from me and smiles with genuine warmth. 

"They are looking to promote one of you temps to something with more responsibility. It's between you and <<Other Poor Muthaf*cker>>" he says.

I say the first thing that pops into my head, "Oh god, just what I need, to have nightmares about this place like you do."

He blinks hard in the way that lets me know that I've just said something Procedurally Incorrect In The Ways of The Working World.

"I don't have nightmares about this place," he says.

He's forgotten how he used to confide in me my first few weeks on the job. How he told me of how he would awake again and again at 3am, the image of starving children, people begging for his help driving him out of bed, sleepless until 5:45am came around and he got ready for yet another work day.

I don't remind of this. Only say, "okay, buddy, rock and roll, huh?"

He smiles. He's in his mid-60's. Has seen things, been through things in this world that I can't even imagine. He spends most of his day cracking jokes and finding humor in the most god-awful of situations. He is both fierce and gentle. I am most happiest for him when a good looking woman sits down in his cube for help, because his whole energy changes. He is just so happy to be in the presence of beauty that he glows, and I can hear it in his words.

I hear it because he is in the cube next to mine. Which is probably the real reason, shortly after I arrived at 7:50a.m. this morning, he said to me, "you got the <<pretend promotion>>".

I put it this way, because, of course, I am still a temporary employee. Still considered part time, even though I'm asked every week to work as many hours as I can. Still no benefits or sick days or health insurance. I could still walk in tomorrow morning to hear from management: sorry, that firm feeling is my boot on your backside. 

But instead of speaking to any of this I laugh. And smile. Because even though I get that I won't be making more cash or compensation, I understand that my manager will have his work load lessened, that maybe he'll sleep a little better. And within five minutes, the Big Cheese stops by my cube and instead of his usual Ignoring Of My Existence On This Planet, he is downright convivial. We all share a few laughs and twinkly eyes, and for a few minutes I feel so dang good, like the hell I've been in has been lifted. 

This lasts about a half hour. Then I get a memo on my desk. It lists a completely new task, unrelated to the "promotion". I am now responsible for eight separate things, all incoming at the same time, no time to collect each pile into a flow of rhythmic work. I look at a stack of paperwork on my desk, no lie, five inches tall, one sheet per hellish action needed. I look at the stack and think: whoaaaaaaaaaaa.

And the day begins.

At this point, I have to share with you how perfect it all is. Because I finally get what I'm doing. And I have flung myself into it wholeheartedly, even if my ass and mind are reluctant to follow. Because when I began to see that image of the ship turning, I began to see what was Really Going On. I am being given the opportunity to Opt Out of World aka Opt of My Misery aka Opt Out of That Which I Have Always Believed Has Made My Living A Fiery Hell. Because the secret is so very simple:

Let go of it all. The salty and the sweet. The elderly man that calls to say, "Thank you sweetheart for taking such good care of me, I have been tossed around for six weeks, and you have been the first person who has treated me like a real person with a thought in my head". And the man that screamed at me for not solving his issues, because he cut in line and slipped like a ninja into my cube, and though I recognized him as As A Frazzled Brother, I had to turn him away, or risk having the both of us torn limb from limb by the mob that had been waiting an hour for the gift of My Benevolent Presence aka my ability to decipher the f*cked, flustered, and splayed system that is Our Governmental Cash Net. Or the guy who hung up on me after I'd not been able to find a way to turn the money trough his way.

What this job is doing is burning, torching, flaying my ego off. One layer at a time. The sweet. And the sour.

I appreciate my manager, and dig his crazy energy. And sometimes he touches me in a way that radiates such love that my eyes moisten with the tenderness I feel channeling my way. And I love the guys that inhabit either side of my cube. I hear them whisper endearments to their loved ones. I hear them make appointments for health issues. I hear the jokes they make that are totally inappropriate, but that nonetheless get the desperate folks seated next to them to laugh, to let go a little. I try and emulate them a bit. Even as I get that most people just want to know: where is my frakkin money? And that mostly, the humor and levity and hilarious metaphors are really about keeping those who serve in a place where we can continue to serve.

And so yes I want to quit. And I will stay. Mostly because I don't have a directive to go somewhere else. But also because I resonate with the people I work with, in a way that is helping me uncover the tendrils of ego. I have no interaction with them other than how they fling themselves about at work. But I am witnessing so much. How they operate in the face of HELL. How they navigate their god-awful jobs. But really, truly, because, as the directive I received this afternoon said:

this is the perfect setup for you. because if you don't buy in to either UP or DOWN then you have really, truly released from any sort of buy in to either flotation of your ego, be it negative or positive. And when you are okay with people whether they say you are okay OKAY or NOT OKAY, it slides through your briar of living without so much as  snag.  

This is so huge that I can barely wrap my mind around it. But no matter. I just do my best. I take my lunch break and do my best to read Jed books and bring myself back to a place where I Remember What The F*ck is Really Going On. I hear an out-rushing of praise and say with acceptance: Thank you. With the subtext not being about ME but in YES, as in: this has been completed, I wish you well, have a lovely, well-lived life. It's more difficult when I hear: you suck, i hate you, i will do my best to have you fired. But at least I now understand that they are the same things being worded only slightly differently.

What more can I say other than I trust Life? I show up every morning, full of energywork and caffeine. Everything that happens is about beautiful Life and how it is flaying "me" away from I Am, one layer at a time. I will do my best to make it occur with a smile and a laugh. But if I can't find it, feel free to remind me that it all leads to your death and my death, and that any sort of amusement on the way to our deaths is a plus.

And so I say to you what I say everynight when I leave my cubicle job: 

Party on party people, party on.

Kill da wabbit! Kill da wabbit! (With my sword and magic helmet . . . !)

Hola from the edge of insanity and/or waking-the-f*ck-up. The games continue, with this week's selection being a showcasing of ego, in all it's sweet-sweet-love, supaharsh-demanding, put-yer-dukes-up, give-me-the-Yes, slavering covetness.

It started as yet another of those 'directives'. What else do I call these muthafrakkers? They pop into my head, my being-ness/heart/awareness, and I get an understanding of Do This Now. This time it was around a 'teacher' who'd sent me an email a couple of years ago, offering to help me sort through some of the Inferno I was going through at the tail end of grad school. We exchanged a few emails, then he sent an invite to a retreat he was having down in Florida, and I hightailed and ran screaming for the hills. Why? Because I am allergic to four things these days: wheat, soy, teachers, and retreats.

The former two things are because of some mechanism in my body that says Opt Out on a histamine level. The latter two are because, really, if another frakkin soul-love-oil salesman tries to get me to come and listen to his living room pitch I'm gonna smack him upside the head and sign him up as Shrub's Spiritual Advisor for the next two decades. 

And so though he sent me several straightforward emails, I didn't think anything of it until a couple of weeks ago when I began thinking of him. A lot. He had something to tell me. And so I ate a small serving of crow in a lovely sauvignon blanc, olive oil, portobello, and caper sauce, and sent him an email. He sent one back, the predominant energy being one of no-problem, and we've been exchanging emails back and forth. 

And please, oh, please, take me out back and flay me with the all-up-in-your-grill, aural-assault torrent words of chronic complainers before I'll take on another teacher. But I began to open up to 'advice', or at the very least, some sort of viewpoint on where I am in the waking-up map, if there is even such a thing. And I did this, even as I know that no one can tell me anything anymore, that I am now officially on a solo voyage, that folks can send postcards, but for whatever reason, input from other humans doesn't make sense anymore. I don't give advice, and I certainly don't seek it out.

But there I was, pulling up the 245-page document that he sent me two years ago, that I'd deleted off my hard drive, but which gmail had helpfully saved for me. And I was reading it. And ordering books off amazon he suggested. And reading my Jed books, which I do anyway, but rereading them with a new emphasis.

And so I'm going back and forth with the emails with this guy, and he's cute, which pulls me in to a deeper level, because in addition to no social, and no friends, I haven't done the male-female thing in almost three years. And the universe, being it's sly, hilarious, always on point total surround sound Yes that it is, has me wide open when I receive this from him, in terms if what is called 'transmission', which I do with my clients whenever they call it up, but which no one has been able to offer up to me in o lo these many years:

I am 100% not getting that 'go for it' vibe with you intuitively on my end in terms of me offering to go down that road.  I've been wrong before with this, tho.  However, it's not necessary.  If you wait this out long enough, you get through it.  You are simply trying to control things WAY too much - c'mon.  That's the first lesson out of all of this.  Finally, for chrissakes, will you just give up your illusion of control once and for all?  Anything can and will happen.  That is what is scaring the shit out of you and keeping you from proceeding.  Anything.  At all.  Especially THE thing - whatever it may be - that frightens you the most and got this whole ball of personality building/dismantleing seeking started in the first place.  You can't control anything.  You still are acting as if you can.  Let the possibility of the 'worst' coming about out of your grip and sit with the fact that YOU HAVE NO SAY IN ANY OF THIS AT ALL, and never have, and never will.

So the f*ck what.  

And as I read it, my hair, my heart, and several other necessary organs catch flame and I get it:

Ego.

That's the next step.

(Not that I haven't tangoed with it, and mud-wrassled with it, and begged it, and bartered with it, and gifted it with a one-way ticket to Kazakhstan, but that's another post . . .)

So the past couple of days have been about watching the ego. Two very frakkin hairy mach-10 days at the cubicle job, listening to people scream and yell and fling their arrogance and desperation and rage in my specific vicinity. Getting that I can't do all of the work The Bosses give me. Understanding that I can't always give The Peoples what they what. And instead choosing this middle way of looking for what it is that's really being said. Because so often the surface is: wanna fight? But what's underneath is: tell me I'm okay. And yeah, several hundred times over the past few days I laughed in ego's million-dollar-baby face, and let it all go, and watched as, miraculously, the hellacious emotion beating the crap out of both me and the other party, simply vamoosed. Apparently, ego really does need two to tango.

And all was faboo until it got personal. People I worked with demanding: More, Extra, and That Which You Will Give But Not Be Either Recognized or Compensated For. I worked through breaks and no one cared. I worked a half hour into my lunch hour several times and the only feedback I got was: why the frak are you leaving when we need MoreMoreMore from you?

The first day of this hellacious acknowledgment was in seeing how I say no, simply because my ego doesn't like an ego that says: wanna fight? How I go into battle to show that I am right, for whatever reason, because the facts are on my side, or even because I am too tired or simply unwilling, in the face of someone's rage, to do the extra step that may bring a different outcome. In this space, it all just feels like too much. It feels like someone is pummeling me, and I run for cover. But as I began to watch the ego at work, I saw that I can either hear someone, say yes and listen, or I can say: no, I can't hear you right now, I'll get back with you later.

But it was also how I say yes in so very many places where what I feel is no, how very difficult it is for me to say no when people ask me for something. I saw how over and over, I chose not to say no, and how this jammed me up inside, so that when I needed to say, there simply was no more juice left. Ego says no, to show that it's right. Ego says yes, to prove that it's liked. Same coin, different side.

Over the past few weeks I've nearly quit a dozen times. At the financial place I'm in, and because I don't get where to go next, I stay. And because I'm beginning to see why I have this job, how clearly it shines a light on ego, how impossible it is to miss in the glare of stress and overwork and screeching robots. Beyond that? Who knows?

All I know is that right now, I am very very tired. 

And that the ego? It's on notice, and more will be revealed . . . 

Definitely Dancer

Growing Pains?

There will be a span of time, sometimes a minute, othertimes a whole day, where the energy inside of me and out is a smooth humming sort of synchronized ride. The sharp dark thoughts aren't zapping through my brain casing, the suckhole emotions haven't turned my heart into a toilet. Nothing or no one is pulling at me, or if they are, it doesn't matter as I don't feel anything about it either way. 

When inside the hum of Yes, there's usually an experience of connection with the natural world - the sun is shining warm and deep, or the rain is falling in a lilting mist, the trees are moving in the crisp bird filled wind - mother earth in all her gorgeousness. A connection with clean, pure food has me eating things like homemade hummus on celery, or making a daikon, carrot, and broccoli stew with bay leaves and herbs de provence. Sometimes a glass of rich dark red is present, or a dvd like Wanted or Groundhog Day. Generally, I'm covered in fuzzy kitties, and they are purring, or love-biting my fingers with their tiny teeth. The predominant feeling of being in my body is of spaciousness and gentleness, a kind of cellular surrender.

But I never know what will bring on the Yes, or what will make it stay. Sometimes, I drink a bottle of wine the night before and I wake up with Yes singing in my veins. Yesterday, I woke up feeling my body, mind, and heart in a vise-like cramp, but after a couple of hours of self-massage, and energywork, and kitty snuggling, and watching the clouds, everything that was once tight and clenched released. The giant fist inside of me let go, and for the rest of the day, living was painless, gentle, quiet, and just plain effortless. 

But then as evening set in, the giant fist began to close, and nothing, not a movie, not even a hot bath with epsom salts and mineral salts and honey and cider vinegar and chamomile and hops, could get it to release it's grip. As I went to bed, my legs felt so weird, as if everything from the waist down were going numb. And I awoke a half dozen times last night with the knowledge that something was going on with my first chakra, the energy center that is a regulator for world/survivor energy. 

I wondered if the chakra was blocked, but it felt more like too much energy trying to push through a too small tube. My legs kept twitching in these deep, low movements, and at times it felt as if my leg muscles were going to come spasming out of my skin. A couple of times during the night, groggy with sleepiness, I got up and did exercises, stretching out the physical - legs, feet, calves, hips. In bed I did energywork on the chakra, waking up again and again to reposition my hand to do a new hookup - first with fourth, first with fifth, first with third.

By morning the intense pushing sensation in my legs was gone, replaced with intense pain at both the base of my skull, and the base of my spine. It feels as if both places were on fire, as if there were a bulb at each end of my spine, and the bulbs were filled with kerosene, set aflame. 

About twelve years ago, when I was first working with a teacher who was helping me deepen and solidify my psychic and energyworking skills and techniques, I use to get packy headaches all the time, as if my head had somehow become to small for its contents, as if my brain were swollen, red, crammed together. This feels similar to that, but instead of just brain, it's the entire spinal cord, with particular emphasis on each end.      

And I feel emotionally delicate today. Going into the holistic center to work felt like nails on a chalkboard, with the chalkboard inside of me. I did a couple of long readings for people, then cut out early to come home. 

Because it's being in these two places that keeps me away from the company of other people. Today's delicate and in pain, or yesterday's clear and awake are both places where it's incredibly unpleasant to be around other people. The former because there is a reason that the animal goes off by itself to hide when it's recuperating. The latter because no one knows what the frak I'm talking about and I lose the ability to talk to them in the language they know and are comfortable with, and frankly, I'm tired of seeing that wall-eyed look on people's faces, of sighing as I get that I need to shut up because I'm scaring the nice peoples.

And tonight is the holistic center holiday party. The idea of being around people is excruciating. But I understand that an aspect of being a part of this working environment is mingling. I wonder if I can opt out. The answer isn't clear, so I'll sit with it until the answer reveals itself, or it's too late to go, which is an answer in itself.  

I want to say to the people around me: be kind to me, i don't feel well. But I'm not ill. I'm breaking apart, and it's what needs to happen, and the sledgehammer consists of the very things that I perceive as Not Kind. 

Blah, blah, blah. My head hurts. My coccyx hurts. I'm going to go drink wine and take yet another bath. . . {{{cue millions of tiny violins to begin playing nine inch nails and crowded house tunes.}}}

Inflammation

The past week has been intensely about Seeing Seeing Seeing how I create all the chaos I experience. 

That can also be written as: 

The past week has been intensely about Seeing Seeing Seeing how "I" create(s) all the chaos experienced by this collection of stories and electrical impulses and pulses of energy called Katherine.

Or:

Life swirls around me, and I see how the collections of yesses and nos that live inside my mental and emotional programming invites and incites me to various reactions, some pleasant, some very, very unpleasant. 

What I've seen again and again and again is the choice in the matter. That an onslaught of people telling me to do things that I don't want to do doesn't mean that I have to do them. (and if the shove and push comes from inside of me to do things I don't want to do, it is a direct line from internalizing things people from my past have told me to do) And that the push to do things, even though I don't want to do them, is based out of some fear. Fear of losing the person's respect or the access they give me to money. Fear of being judged as a Bad Person, and therefor losing the person's good will and/or the access they give me to resources. Fear of losing what little foothold I've made in the world in terms of ongoing food and shelter and books on Waking The F*ck Up. 

But what I've been playing with is: what happens when I opt out of doing things that other people want me to do that I don't want to do? What happens if I trust the sense that I don't want to do something, and then simply don't do it? What if I let go of everyone that I feel an obligation to, that feel an obligation to me? 

At first it was bumpy. It was met by lots of rage, lots of angry emails filling my inbox, lots of angry voice messages left on my phone, lots of stony faces with grim-set lips telling me angry stories about my"self". Then it began to quiet down. Most folks have dropped away, some in a more peaceful state around my opting out, some still really pissed but less so than before and simply lying in wait to take another pass at me in the near future, others not really caring and simply letting go of a human that is no longer offering them free stuff.

And with this new distance I'm experiencing, I see two main paths of entanglement. The path of personal: people who I've interacted with for emotional Up. And the path of work: people I've interacted with for access to money and other resources. (Although in many cases, the two paths intermingle somewhat)

The path of the personal has been beating the sh*t out of me for several years now. (Which can also be written as: I've been using the path of the personal to ferret out the deeper wounds buried in the layers of personality) And in the flaying I've been through, what I saw was that friendship is something that we use to create an affirmation of Yes outside of ourselves so that when our connection to our inner Yes (which is true) falters, we can tap in to the outer Yes (which is a mirror and therefor, for all intensive purposes, Faux) for a boost. And I saw that the Yes can be either emotional, such as having a Bad Day, or in the physical realm, such as Can I Borrow Your Buzzsaw? And I saw that it's all sort of like emotional credit, as in borrow some of their Love today, pay it back tomorrow with some Love from your own stash. 

And there isn't anything wrong with this setup. Symbiotic relationships are the essence of the biosphere. What is 'wrong' is when the symbiotic relationship isn't so symbiotic. As in the interest rate is so high on the emotional credit that you see that you load sixteen tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go. I owe my soul to the company store . . . 

But what happens when you lay your pickax down and go wander off away from the mines? Maybe you began to suspect that the goods and services being traded about were actually smoke and mirrors, utter bullsh*t and pointlessness, not real, and just plain Faux. But you weren't sure what to do about it. Maybe you heard stories of what might happen if a person wandered away from the Bullsh*t-For-Sale*Marketplace, what could happen to them away from the herd. We've all heard variations of what other people went through as they set off across the field. But you won't know what will happen to You unless you set the ax down, pick up your left foot, put it in front of the right, pick up your right foot, put it in front of your left, and repeat, until the roar of the crowd is drowned out by the sound of sunshine and a light afternoon rain. 

My childhood planted land mines inside of me, and they keep me from ever getting too comfortable in my living, which is a gift. And I've been fortunate enough to be one of the people who didn't shut down after an upbringing like a war. I understand the murder, rape, and mayhem of the world up close and personal. And I know exactly what I'm opting out of. Living through a war opens a person's eyes very, very wide. It enables them to see the depths of the human heart, the workings of mother earth and her universal family of winds and waters and molecules and pulses of light and black holes, with things that go Yes in the night, and with things that go No. With open eyes, I'm not naive, and I can't pretend to be. To see something for what it is, is to opt out of pretending it's something it's not. 

There is great freedom is seeing the programming that is inherent in all living beings. God is in the DNA. Christ and Buddha and Muhammad and Brother Jed are just people who Woke The F*ck Up, and felt to share it with the rest of us sleepers. And we don't have to try to be like them. We don't have to wear things like Peace, or Love, or Surrender, or Oh Yes Almighty YeeHaw like Gandhi's old hand me downs. We don't have to pretend to the sensations of fullness if we have yet to eat the meal. All we have to do is see how hungry we are. And then begin to eat the things that we See are really food, acknowledging the Faux Food for what it is, and leave it to be absorbed back into mamma earth as the fertilizer it is . . .

Whatever the hell it is that I've been going through the past few years (or all of my life, depending on how inclusively nitpicky you wish to get), I understand that I've got no use for "friends" anymore, that I'll never date again, or have a "boyfriend". At least not in the way I use to, and certainly not in the way our culture and 99.9999999% of all cultures define it. People will come in and out of my world. There will be friendlinesses exchanged. I will meet folks that will make me laugh, that will delight me with their Yesness. I'll still do things for people that they'll feel grateful for and say thank you for and oh so very mean it. I'll meet men whose eyes will be like portals of dangskippy, and connecting with them will be the plugging into the cosmic socket of male-female polarity, where the Yes becomes, for the duration of connection, Yyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeessssss. 

Of course, the last paragraph is all hypothetical. I suppose this is what will happen. Because I don't really know yet, in my own experience. I'm still in the Opting Out portion of the journey, simply weaning myself off The Funk. Because whatever inflammation is in my living, be it my head or heart or body, is there because of a choosing. And so I choose to un-choose, choose to Just Say No to the Un-fun, to Opt Out of the Bummer. And when I encounter small nuggets of Yes, small currents of Yes, spaces of Yes and snacks of Yes and moments of Yes, I have room enough, after having let go of so much No, to see the Yes for what it is, and meet it for the embrace of Yes it is, and Just Say Yes to a deliciously dang fine morning . . . 

Mmmmmm, cake

Letting go means just that. Looking at the things that torture you, then seeing why you stick around for the whoopin. Then untying the bonds. Then slipping away for a walk in the woods, or a bath at 2pm, or cake for dinner, or a nap with a kitten, or a roll around for some spontaneous carpet yoga. 

It's such an easy thing not to answer the phone. It's astounding how easy it is to just say no to the things that don't feel true, to the things that feel torturous. Just say no to the bullsh*t. Who knew it was that straightforward?

It's great to just opt out. The secret to opting out? Seeing that you don't need anything, nothing, not a thing. Food, shelter, kitties, enough work to pay for them. The rest of it? Stories woven out of our culture, to bind us to various machines, for profit, for control, for easy access and storage.

And sometimes the opting out is of some action, but mostly it's about opting out of a reaction.

I feel health issues brewing. Gall bladder set for imminent explosion? Fibroid tumors weaving a snaky web? I don't care, at least not enough to put myself into the medical system without health insurance. I'll die die some day, maybe sooner than later. A health care option hasn't presented itself, there is no option to say: yes, I'll let this MD take a look-see. And so I do energy work, breathe deeply, eat well. Maybe indigent and ill is what I need next. I doubt it, but going with what my options are is where I'm at. I trust that it's all rolling out as it should, and that I'm getting more clear, not less, and that if my gall bladder is set to go Boom, then that is what's up next for me.

Wallace is meowing. He wants to play. He always wants to play. He sneezes all the time, his little pink eyes watering and swollen, and all he wants to do is play, play until he's wheezing. I run him around the house like a little orange puma, til he's pant breathing with exertion and kitty joy. I give him a breather, then toss the toys all around, giving chase again. 

I aspire to be like Baby Wallace, and his flambe of joyous ever ready Yes.

A Working Stiff in Cubicleland

I should write something. I should. But I don't care. But I feel kind of compelled. So I do.

Want to know what I spend my time doing? Deconstructing my personality. I had a very harsh, very intense realization a few weeks ago that most of my stickier, funkier, more toxic personality attachments were around other people. And so I've backed out of every single relationship that doesn't relate to pure survival. Anyone around me is now on a purely Need To basis. Folks I work with, people I need to interact with for food, shelter, personal bidness. 

I've let go of all social contact. Friends, family - I only do what I must. I don't return phone calls or emails. Although in truth, the people closest to me I said a month or so ago: I'm backing off, letting everyone go, and won't be in contact with you. I felt like a dick for simply disappearing, knowing folks would worry. So now instead of me *feeling* like a dick, the folks I was once closest to *think* I'm a dick, which in my world, is progress. 

Why am I doing this? Because I see the robot in others. I feel it in myself. I watch it run it's programming in other people. I watch it grab me by the ovaries and make me dance to it's f*cked and flustered little tune. 

I see it in the eyes of my bosses in cubilcleland, slaves to something they don't like, but powerless to refuse, unless they walk, and they are fiercely, hellaciously indoctrinated not to walk. 

I see it in the folks I've been closest to, in how they need for me to show up a certain way, how if I don't they become dang skippy enraged, how they are hanging on to their own programming by a thread, and how pissed off they are that I'm bailing. 

I see it in the eyes of folks I encounter as I go to the store, the restaurant, the movies. Half-alive, mostly checked out, miserable, f*ck you, f*ck everything, gone, gone, gone. 

I see it in the energy, the speaking of people I do holistic work with, how they come to me for the Feel Good. They don't want the Truth, they just want a different prescription for pain medication, a new label of: You Are Really Fabulous, or You Just Need To Try Harder, or You Are Very Misunderstood, or The Money Is Coming, or The Soul Mate is Coming, or He's A Butthead, or or Your Health Issue Will Be Resolved Via Miracle as None of It Is Your Responsibility Whatsoever. 

It's there when I speak to clients at work in cubicleland, how they tell one story, then another as they figure out the system, how to work it, how to play it, and how they run the grocery list of emotions to see which ones work on me: anger? tears? grief? starving kids? mortgage payments? personal self esteem?

Some days, I'm out of my mind in pain. Some days it's physical. Others it's mental or emotional. What makes my pain different than others? Nothing except for I sit with mine. I watch myself turn on the spit and ask myself: what turns the spit? who decides what the spit is? who controls the flame density? what can get this flame to cease torching my a*ss?

And again and again I get: you, you, you, you, you. And "you" is fictional. "You" is a construct that can be shrugged away. "You" is present only if you want it to be.

And without a bunch of folks I "love", who "love" me around, reasserting my "me-ness", it's actually getting clearer.

I've no idea where this is all headed. Utter freedom, or a mental ward, which because I don't have insurance, and our country no longer has mental illness facilities except for folks who wish to fillet other humans, I'll be given a water bottle, an address for the local soup kitchen, and a pocket sized bible and sent on my way. 

I had this startling realization today. I got that all I had to do to end the pain of generic cubiceland misery, and a boss who glares at me and crazily refuses to answer my questions on how to help the most recent person I have on the phone who has kids to feed and doesn't know what to do because of X, Y, and Z, and how to cope with coworkers who have learned to feng shui their facial expressions and actions that reflect Doing so much better than I was this: Just Leave.

And I thought about it for a few minutes. Just sitting there in my cubicle, listening to my phone ring and ring and ring and ring and ring and even though I've covered my own speaker with several layers of clear tape (to fool my boss) to dull the volume, I can still hear it ring and ring from the other dozen phones of the people I work with, the people at the front desk freaking the frak out as they plead for someone to answer their questions so that they can go on with their experience of living which they call kids and house and self-esteem. I listened to the co-workers do as I do, alternately pleading, being intense and firm, being helpful, being miraculous, being rough, all in the name of Getting The Job Done, which is helping folks get through this process of Give Me The Money, brought on by this current Economic Clusterf*ck courtesy of The Man Unaffectionately Known as Shrub, and Our Own Collective Greed. 

I sat there in silence. Stillness. All around me, swirling, noisy movement. And I understood: all you have to do to opt out of this is leave. Just get up and walk out. But I didn't. Why not? I asked myself. I sat with that for a while. No one seemed to notice. I looked around. The see-through plastic of my main cubicle wall meaning that anyone could see in, see me sitting there, Doing Nothing. But no one looked. Everyone so preoccupied in their own Absorbing Story. 

Why don't you leave? I asked myself. I sat with that for a bit. Is there an indication of where to go next? Is there a clear indication of Leave Now? No, I answered. None of that. Just a lot of pain inside of body and heart, and discomfort at witnessing other people's pain and discomfort. 

Okay, I realized, then it's just about acknowledging the available option, and that knowing that when, if it shows itself, that it's okay to take. And for now, I am using the income from logging hours at this place to pay my rent and bills, and until I get An Indication of something different I'll keep doing as I'm doing. 

How is this different from any other working stiff, I ask myself? Most times, I don't know how to answer that.

Sometimes I see myself just getting up and putting kitties and laptop and a change of clothes in a suitcase and driving off in my 1994 gold Saturn. Where? I don't know. What am I escaping? Me-ness. The mess of my personality, which if you've ever dealt with me in real life you know that it's gorgeous and luscious and a total pain in your ass. And yes, it's a total pain in my ass, too, as well as my heart and pancreas and liver and all major muscle groups.

So, no resolutions. Just an update. Because I feel to. Because someday this will be a map on How To Get Free. Or perhaps a cautionary tale on how not to lose your marbles, and dive off the deep end, and go all anti-social and sh*t, and be a scary loner single female over 40 with cats, and step-by-step detonate what facsimile of a life you have left.

Okay, time to finish watching the dvd biography about Abraham Lincoln, and prep my clothes and tea for tomorrow morn at 5:30am, and get to bed before 9pm. 

I'm a working stiff in a cubicle monday through thursday, a shamanic healer on fridays and saturdays. 

Intolerable, insane, painful, faux, nastynasty living . . . . 

Crazy, hilarious, beautiful life . . . 

FurBall 2008

I should have taken pics of all the glamourous people, all decked out in their ball gowns and high heels and suits and surprisingly enough, kilts on many of the menfolk. But taking pics would have meant making myself less anonymous, and I enjoyed very much staying in my little cave of a session space, and nitpicking my Jed book (for the hundredth time), when folks didn't stop by for pet readings and human readings.

A little side note: The Fur Ball was held in the lobby and anterooms and black box theater of Thalian Hall, whose main stage is one of the oldest theaters in the U.S. It's seriously gorgeous, renovated, yet still retains all the old charm and design. I grew up doing plays and musical on it's stage, and in a lull during the readings during the Fur Ball, I slipped past the barriers erected for the night, and into the main theater, where nothing was on but the worklights. I stood on the stage, looking out into the seats, like I did so many times when I was a young nubile teen. And as I stood there, memories flooding past of things I did, people I did them with, I thought: dang I was an idiot :) Seriously, I did such incredibly deluded things, believed such insanities about romantic love and fame and Things That Sparkled and Go UP. How did I ever survive??? 

So, yeah, beyond all else, some pics for you:

Crabby and Caffeinated, It's Still All Yes All The Time

I tell myself, today is going to be a good day. Because yesterday was a bad day. A really bad day. Full of people saying freakyass sh*t like your holistic room rent is going to double come January 1st, and there is a $3000 school loan that didn't get folded into your loan consolidation and it's now in default and if you don't come up with $3000 or a dang good sob story, we're going to come and pawn your kitties and your panties and all of your plastic wine glasses and haul you in and throw you in the clink where there'll be nothing to eat but gluten products and foodesque objects injected with MSG.

And then I went to the holistic center to do sessions. Three hours worth. And I made almost as much money in those three hours as I do in three days in cubicleland. And in the presence of helping folks cut through some fog, open their eyes a bit more, my own eyes opened, my own fog cleared. And afterwards, I went to the Teeter and bought taco fixins, and spent last night watching bad dvds and eating cheesy tacos and remembered that Life, it is very good.

So today, instead of sitting here and drinking coffee and getting all hopped up on anxiety and dealing with money stuff, I'm going to eat a good breakfast, and surf the net, and catch up on my global buddies. Then I'm going to go sit with a reporter for an interview/article thing on shamanics/psychic stuff for a local magazine. 

Afterwards, I'm going to spend the afternoon playing with the novel, or maybe even doing something totally unpredictable like going to the beach and watching the ocean for signs of wonder. 

Then tonight, as my holiday gift for all our wonderful fuzzy friends, I'm going to be doing psychic readings at the Wilmington Fur Ball , which is a glitzy fabulous gala to raise cash for local animal rescue shelters. All money I raise tonight goes to the shelters, in memory of the luscious feline fatboy of love, The Hoon, who has now not been on this planet in corporeal form for almost three months now. I'll be doing both human readings and pet readings, and I'll be wearing something sparkly, and friends of the fuzzy guys will be running around drinking and dancing and laughing and bidding on auction goodies. I might even have a dang good time, which would be awesome as more often than not, I've been so dang crabby in the company of others. But who knows? All I can do is show up smelling nice, and do some Clear Seeing for nice peoples. 

And keep seeing the Yes in everything . . . because all is Yes, all of it . . . how could it be otherwise??? :)

And so I leave you with the latest pics of Wallace the Pink (as he is now officially known as he still sneezes and has red rimmed little eyes and apparently has copious allergies and is most surely my fuzzy brethren), aka Wallace, Slayer of All Things Wiggley: