DatingGod

Dances with Dustbunnies

Mostly, my experience these days of being alive is less as a person and more as a series of actions, animated by a collection of feelings, emotional states. They seem to have substance to them, but then I play with them, talk to them out loud and identify their different aspects, and they crumble into nothing, down to one obviously false belief.

Is this what Jed meant by the ego and personality gets more insubstantial?

It seems fruity to put it that way. It still seems like a life, still seems as if this could simply be mental illness, or if that's too harsh, a single woman with cats getting older and more shut down, estrogen decreasing and consequentially simply not giving as much of a sh*t as she used to. 

But there's this aura of weirdness, of something solid in a center somewhere, that is me, but I just can't quite embody it, be it, and then there's all of these feelings and actions that seem to crumble when I look closely. What does it mean?

I get up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, watch tv, go to bed. I deal with back pain and joint pain, digestive pain. I do yoga and walk and the 5 tibetans. How is this different than most humans narrow slice of awakeness? Does everyone experience the Pointless Joy that is the backdrop for it all?

There's been so much change in the past couple of months. Huge change. I know that part of what's going on is simply the body and mind and heart adjusting to the new environments. 

I experience a tremendous amount of anxiety at work. Not panic attack level, but enough so that I walk around in a state of fear most of each day. A lot of it is simply the basics of what's actually occurring: I'm in a new job in a new area of a field that has a language of science I haven't spoken in a few years. It's a new social culture - very different from the stressful, sarcastic, social services front lines, high emotion one of Hiveworld and Cubicleland - it's cool, collected, happy faces, smart, sharp, a little arrogant though super friendly. (My natural personality default is a kind of goofy oscillating enthusiasm and blankness that I'm aware comes across as childish and simplistic and doesn't lend itself too well to a scientific work environment.) There's also the new living environment, a new home and neighbors and shopping and city/town layouts and prices and hours of operation and availability.

But the biggest aspect of the weirdness is that I'm missing some sort of social connective tissue. It's simply gone, at least in the way that other folks use it, plug into it. I can see interactions for what they really are: survival mechanisms to share resources - whether physical or emotional or emotional. That's what I see as i move through the world - the robot, the machine that people operate out of, see the directive programming underneath the program that animates face and tone of voice. And then of course there's the psychic aspect to the whole shebang which even though I keep a super low volume on, images and feelings pop into consciousness about the core programming, scenes from the life, lives, lived so far.

There's something beyond this surface feeling, a kind of love for everything and everyone regardless of what they have to offer, and that's what I feel once I get over the ego cringe of seeing the raw naked truth of quest for resources that everyone operates out of. And there's also the compassion I experience for how I see them struggling, but since the mask they wear is of happy confidence, there's no field to speak about what's really going on. 

And so the anxiety roars on. In response to where the work needs me to be, and I'm rapidly getting to. And also to the usual of what I deal with around humans: having to respond to the mask while pretending the core vibration isn't pounding out a drumbeat, filling the air around us with it's pictures and feelings and sounds.

I'm so grateful for it all. Life just moved in and lifted me to a place where everything is so much better, so much easier, gentler, comfortable. All of the survival issues taken care of. Allowing me the space, time, energy, money to heal the rifts in my physical and emotional bodies. 

Most of the time I feel as if it's an impossible task, that healing isn't going to happen, and that I'm going to descend into harsher spirals of pain and fear. But then I get that there isn't anything else left to do. The only thing left inside me that even might be considered ambition is a desire to do a good job in terms of the actions I put into the world, to use the specific tools and perspectives to assist others as they heal and build and clear and lighten.

And so what else to do but keep watching, applying the tool of awareness to the pain and fear? Keep showing up and doing what feels true? Even if that's mostly not doing much at all except what Life shows me to do: the work I was hired for, the exploration of the local food environment, watching hundreds of Stargate episodes, doing yoga two or three times a week.

Thank you Life . . . thank you for my life . . . thank you for what I don't understand . . . 

Or maybe there is no "Life" . . . maybe it's all luck and hard work and diplomacy . . . products of being a good looking person with a graduate degree . . . maybe I'm not psychic, just delusional based out of some sort of ability to deeply read facial expressions and movements . . . (look: it's the science taking root inside of me again :)

Whatever it is . . . I'm glad for it . . . even with the anxiety and fear and pain, I'm enjoying my living . . . happily exploring these new environments with their respectful people and linear interactions . . . so grateful to be where I am, with the kitties, so weaselly and buttheaded and young . . . 

I miss the Hoon, Cassidy, Jacinta . . . so much . . . I miss spending hours with clients . . . diving deep into hearts and lives and bodies . . . I miss the bright sunlight streaming in on my bed through the huge windows of my last apartment . . . and yet they're all gone . . . never to return . . . gone . . . gone . . . not even one second more to hold and love and see and experience . . . 

I really don't know what any of it means any more. I don't feel superior or spiritual or anything. Just here. I'm here. Dancing with the energies. Letting lights go out one by one. Trying not to struggle too much when I walk into a room and the lights are super bright and what's inside is hard to look at.

That's it.

Pain, fear, anxiety, willingness, pointless joy.

Bright lights shining on a monster until the monster opens its costume to reveal the dustbunny inside and then I laugh and the room fades out of view.

Key lime pie and the sound of birds, kitties sitting on the window sash, coffee in a mug, the vibration of you reading this already radiating out to me from the computer screen.

Pain, fear, anxiety, willingness, pointless joy.

No  . . . there, present . . . then fading into all Yes all the time.

Pain, fear, anxiety, willingness, pointless joy.

Doesn't seem like it'd be enough, but it is . . . 

Stored Memories / Emotional Vapor Fuel

I'm back to walking again, and I remember why I stopped. I convinced myself it was because I felt sick, and I did, I felt sick and exhausted. But mostly it was because of the emotional funk that rose up out of my subconscious when I walked. It almost always processed itself out by the time I arrived back at my house, but that first mile or two of rage, sorrow, confusion, craziness? Not much fun. Maybe something inside of me decided that I could only handle one battle at a time - food addiction or stored emotional past - not both. Or that could just be the bullsh*t talking. No way to know for sure of course.

But the back pain always keeps me motivated to exercise. I can't go too long without doing some weight lifting and cardio, even with the miracle that is Art and his whirring machine of pain relief. So I'm walking again, and last night's walk showed me something that stopped me in my tracks, literally standing still on the sidewalk in the leafy suburb I live in, the nice, comfortably upper middle class folks jogging and biking and walking around me. It was one of those epiphany moments, one of those moments where a hundred thousand Intellectual Knowings all of a sudden transforms into full body-mind-spirit consciousness. It was a direct line of something from my childhood, carried through into adulthood, that I'm in the final process of dismantling:

The belief in "boundaries".

The backstory: the extreme emotional distance my mother treated me with in my childhood shifted when I reached mid-teenage years into a relationship of listening to her, trying to help her solve her problems. For the next 15 or so years, to keep her attention, I made myself available to her anytime she needed it, usually as long phone calls, sometimes several times a week. This translated into how I lived out my other relationships, by believing my most valuable function was to listen to people's problems, to be nice to them, always flexible, never complain, never say no.

Translation: no boundaries, stunted sense of self.

What I developed to cope with this was anger and energy vampiring. The energy vampiring was what my mother was doing to me, which I only realized when I was in my early thirties, and what I turned and did to folks around me, which I only realized about seven years ago, right before I headed off for the back-to-college extravaganza when I was 38. I'd choose the strongest, kindest people I came into contact with and attach to them, usually a "teacher" of some sort - a therapist, spiritual practitioner/guru, or mentorish folks, but also with close friends. The anger was used to shove people away when the weight of their need became too overwhelming and exhausting for me. I collected lost souls, first just folks I met as my life unfolded, and then clients. It was what I did with my mother - let them call me at all hours of the day and night, spend hours and hours listening to their problems, trying to help them do a Grand Life Remodeling Project. 

I keep writing and deleting the next paragraph, writing specifics about my relationship with my mother, how it ended. But it isn't right to put it here, and it isn't helpful for me energetically to write it. Whatever demons she faces are her own, and my perspective on them is utter bullsh*t. None of this is a blaming of her or anything I believe she did or didn't do. This is the dismantling of Katherine. No one else. Period. 

The important part for me is that this energetic pattern with my mother translated all over my living, and really kicked into high gear when I began seeing clients for holistic work in the late 1990's. I allowed, and even encouraged people to become dependent on me, because I believed I could help them, but also because I believed that being of assistance to other people was my only valuable function. My sense of boundaries was so tenuous that when clients wanted to see me socially, I went along with it, even though it just meant that I no longer got paid for session work, and instead did sessions over dinner, or with cocktails, which seriously, seriously, was not fun for me, what felt like my life force being suctioned out of me via my eyes and ears and center of my chest. But I didn't believe I had a choice. I believed that if someone needed me, I had to be there, sublimate whatever issue and feelings I had, and be open, kind, generous, loving. 

The direct link between the pattern with my mother and how it played out with clients and intimate relationships was that with all of them, if I ever tried to pull away, or tried to change the dynamic into something with more balance, these folks expressed denial that anything unbalanced was happening, then judgment of me for what I felt, then pure rage unleashed at me as punishment, contempt, acts to destroy or discredit me.

Those three patterns of energy coming at me - denial, judgment, rage - kept me locked into the No Boundaries pattern for years, for decades. But when I read the Jed McKenna books, something clicked into place, and I could see the pattern for what it truly was. And most importantly, I could see my role in it, my part, how I kept it all going, and why. The why? Because I was afraid I had no other worth than my ability to be of service to other people, and that if I denied people they'd leave me, and if everyone left me I'd be alone.

But back in 2008 it began heating up, and with The Hoon's death it reached conflagration. One by one, I stopped doing things for people, and guess what? All my fears came true. I denied people, they left me, and I was alone.

But I stayed with it. To face the fear. What was this being alone? What was this no social life, no friends, no support system, no assistance? And the longer I stayed with it, the longer I saw that with only a few exceptions, all of relationship is built on fear. All of it - family, friend, work, community - all of it erected as a scaffolding around the fear inside of us. Of dying. Of being sick. Of missing out. Of being uncomfortable.

As I went through this process, I was continually offered "friendship", offered assistance from teachers/gurus/mentors, but I understood I had to reject it, reject it all, even small assists, completely, absolutely staying away from any temptation to energy vampire off of another person. And also, people from my past kept showing up, coming back around for another pass. They wanted things to be like they used to be, they wanted me to be a holistic practitioner like I used to be, or they showed up as absolute replicas of past folks, Life enticing me to pick the pattern back up. And I did. Again and again and again. I can't even begin to express how hard this last part was, how actively angry people got at me, the browbeating, the sanctioning, the punishing that came at me in person, through email, over the phone. A daily, often hourly onslaught of angry, needy, sad humans, an avalanche of emotion and demands, judgment, rage, and self-pity screaming that it was my duty to fix Their No, my fault that they felt the way they did.

When I look back, it's so clear that the onslaught was occurring to force me to build strong boundaries. It was about keeping folks out so that I could see clearly how to draw a distinct line between them and me, between what they were choosing to do with their energy and time, and what I no longer was. I wasn't responsible for anyone outside of my own skin. And more than that, I couldn't actually do anything for anyone outside of my own skin, not in and of myself.

And I did get to the place where I kept everyone out. With the exception of a small handful of folks on an extremely limited basis that Life showed me was about immediate survival, everyone was out, every single one. And what I began to notice was a sort of drip method of interacting, small bits here and there that felt clear, true. They appeared to quickly fade into funk again, and I'd back away, but I began to get better at recognizing the signals for me to move closer to someone/a situation, and to back away from them/it.

And I discovered that there is no Good Person or Bad Person, only Energy Occurring Now, In This Moment. And so rather than having Friends, Acquaintances, and Non-Friends/Enemies, everyone outside of my skin stands alone, to be moved closer to or moved away from based on the ongoing energy present in the moment of Now. It's a dance of following the Yes. A dance whose choreography is created by something way way outside of my mind, though the mind stores and runs the programming of this human life, with the heart as the instrument the energy plays on, and the spirit interpreting the seeming mundane plodding of a life into both the vast expression of Yes and the tiny grain of sand it is.

There's a decent flow going right now. Still bumpy, still pocked with blank spots and exploding mines, but there's a groove. I can have conversations with folks, go to the movies, assist clients, help someone climb their own looming mountain. I can reach out for help, get it, give something in return, leave. Someone can reach out to me, I can give assistance, they offer something, then leave. Sometimes I give then receive nothing, but only if it feels true. Sometimes they receive then give nothing, but only if it feels true. No good, no bad. No right, no wrong. No rules. Just dance.

And last night I saw the pattern and thought: That's It, the epiphany solved the pattern, it's done. But then I wrote this post, and in the process of writing I saw the next step: dissolving the boundaries.

First there was no boundary. Then there was a boundary. Now it's about removing the wall between Self and Other, not to merge and lose myself, but to allow Life to have me flow wherever it wants me to, letting the new strength inside of me keep me "safe", Life doing the attracting and rejecting for me, me just following along, content to let Life take me down the river of my living.

I have no arrogance that I'm done with this stuff. I can only taste it right now, just the merest hint of its magnificence. But I'm at that Beyond 51% Place, that point of no return, not because I can't go back, but because I see too much truth to want to go back.

Awesome.

And so apparently this is why I still write. Sure, some sort of arrogance that says: record the steps. But also because it continues to clear the path for me. Before I wrote this post, I thought the breakthrough last night was about erecting boundaries, but now, after writing the post, I see that it's about seeing that there is no need for anything as bulky and clumsy as boundaries.

This is what writing has been and still is for me: spiritual autolysis. It's not the only thing I use, but it still has strong function and utility and flexibility and groove. And that's all that matters . . . for now . . . Yes.

So party on, party peoples. May this find you deep inside the awareness of your own choreography, that dance that is yours and yours alone. 

As you sit there, wherever you are on this globe, whatever year and day and moment it is for you, a cup of coffee, tea, beer, wine, smoothie, water beside you, how you are alive inside your body, your mind in whatever state of aware, awake it is, remember:

You are gorgeous. You are full of love and light. (We all are.) You are also full of sh*t. (It's okay. We all are that too.) Hopefully, yours comes with kitties. And green growing plants. And the embracing of sun and moon and night and day and dark and light. Your soul's work is to see that your caacaa is compost. Nothing to be afraid of. Turn the sh*t into fertilizer. The directions for doing this are inside of you. The next step is whatever is lighting you up. What's harassing you via mind or experience? What reoccurring thought or pattern keeps arising in your living? Start there. I swear to you: all you need is inside of you. You don't need anyone to fix you or solve your problems. All you need is to say, to pray:

Thank you Life for my life . . . thank you for this situation, this person that I may not understand now, that may be causing me pain, suffering . . . thank you . . . I trust you . . .  thank you for making the next step so obvious via so much energy, so that my attention cannot be moved away . . . thank you for giving me courage to keep facing this . . . to hold my gaze squarely on This Moment of Now . . . so that I can't help but see the truth . . . thank you Life . . . thank you for my life. . .

Yes.

The Marketplace

I don't think about enlightenment anymore, try and head towards it, plan for it, create it. I doubt that I even knew what it was, or know now. It seems irrelevant. Even as I get rushes of Waking Up, or YES, or however I'd describe it if I'm in it. I'm not in it in this moment. Right now, I'm just a chick living a life with a kitten as a barnacle attached to my left shoulder.

Sometimes I'm not sure why I'm still blogging about this stuff. Does it matter? Does having a belief that it matters matter? I continue to experience trickles along the lines of "leaving a trail", although I still have no proof that what I'm doing is True as opposed to Freakin Bonkers.

I've got too much action going on to wallow in the rumination. I'm utterly consumed with aligning myself with the Yes, and in support of that, jettisoning as much No as I can get my hands on. Life brings stuff as each day unfolds, and then I go to it. You guys have been reading. You know how nuts things have appeared the past six or so months. And I wouldn't change a thing. It's been magic. I trust in what is occurring absolutely.

Identifying the Yes from the No looks like it would be complicated. How can you tell the No that is reisistance from the No of regular old No? How can you tell the Yes of Life from the Yes of addiction? Right now, it seems to be about wrongness and rightness, not in a moral sense, but in a gut/intuition sense. And if you're patient, pretty soon it becomes crystal clear which direction the energy is headed - toward or away. And then it just becomes about not fighting the motion, no matter what thoughts or feelings the mind or body is generating.

So much of it is also simply about walking away. When the energy is moving away, chasing after it is pointless. Not fighting the No, or trying to convince it to be Yes. But accepting people as they present themselves, and saying "excuse me", walking away, and then not coming back, no matter what the mind says. If the energy is moving away, I don't owe anyone anything, except maybe myself, in allowing my living to flow with more fun and grace and hilarious awe. Not taking the bait when folks get aggressive is also key. Or allowing their misconceptions or misunderstandings of what I'm up to bother me, or even prompt me to try and explain. Smile. Laugh. Walk away. Someone in their righteous mind won't go nuclear if you say something isn't working for you. Someone deep in the heart of their No will.

It's this clear. It boggles my brain sometimes how clear it all is when you take the time to slow down, stop taking actions, and simply watch. I feel so grateful, so glad. I don't have to solve my life anymore. Just do what I feel to do, follow the flow of energy. Until the next pocket of No opens up, navigate that, surrender into it until the Yes at it's gooey center is revealed, and then just lay back and enjoy the sun.

A couple of months ago, an enlightened guy came to NC. Someone I'd met before and felt to meet again. He invited me to come hear him speak. And then offered to even drive to Wilmington to meet with me. This is an enlightened guy. Maybe his enlightenment might rub off on me. That's the general belief these days, right? Get as close to the light as possible. But all I could hear was NoNoNoNoNoNo, a sense of dark pressure. And in the end he came and left and this sense of Yes made itself known. Why? Hell if I know. I only know that I wasn't supposed to meet with him. So I didn't.

Someone told me several months ago who Jed McKenna is. The real guy behind the pen name. And it didn't matter. I didn't try and contact him. Didn't have any questions for him. His books are the single most powerful object/thing/energy blast to have moved me in a true direction. They showed me what I'd suspected for so long - that New Age really *was* pap, and I could let it go for the delusion that it is. His books were the catalyst that broke me out of the concrete I'd walled myself inside. And because those books were so effective, I've no desire to contact him. Why would I? How could he have anything else to say to me other than "howdy" or "you give nice ash"?

I like to remind myself at least once a week how I might be profoundly mentally ill, that all this stuff I do and think and feel might be merely proof of Bonkers. The whole jist of my living right now is about fluidity, in my body, my mind, my heart, my living. Anything hard or crunchy or weighty or dense has to go. I can't hang onto it anymore. I don't want to. And so nothing is left out, everything is fair game for the pyre, and nothing is taken too seriously.

Blah, blah, blah :) I've got a love barnacle on my lap who needs a smooch, and if I've gotta choose between typing and smooching, in this moment, I choose the smooch  . . .

Yes.

Fun-Gi

On the good days, I totally get what's going on. I'm clearing my physical body of past, much as I cleared my emotional and mental bodies the past few years. But whereas clearing the mental and emotional bodies was metaphorically bloody and reeking of death, clearing the physical body actually is these things.

On the bad days I'm just dying, just sick and in pain and alone and bewildered. I do my best to follow Life's prompts, but it's so hard, because all the animal wants is to stop the pain, but what stops the pain is also what inevitably prolongs it. The road to wellness isn't paved with ibuprofin and cake and mast*rbation and PT burgers with spicy fries. Though I know I'm not alone when I shout out: yo, but it should be.

On the good days, I acknowledge how lucky I am to be alone, that the only beings I have around me are absolutely necessary to what is going on. There are the kitties of course, and their continuous heartbeat of Yes, a warm snuggle, raspy tongue and soft fur, goofy grins and squealy squeaks. And lightbeams of friendship here and there like streetlamps at foggy midnight. There's the hilarious coworker, who always keeps things light and breezy. And the one holistic practitioner who has been able to help, who uses this suspicious little Russian tech device that emits electrical waves (that I utterly don't believe in but which continues to be the only thing that in less than an hour nullifies back pain so excruciating I could barely get out of bed to get to the treatment).

On the bad days, I'm just a crazy anti-social hag who is a functional shut-in with an ever burgeoning collection of cats.

On the good days, I am in awe of how Life has turned every other single aspect of living into a an even-keeled hum of efficiency, so that all of my energy is freed to turn and apply itself to clearing my physical body of Not True.

On the bad days I'm just mentally ill and ascribing mythic curlicues to the normal falling apart of an aging human body.

On good days, I find that it continues to be curious that, much like the clearing of emotional and mental past, Life refuses to allow me to turn over control to anyone outside of me, that it continues to bend and break me into surrender to itself. Much like Jed and David and my sister were able to lend some assistance, but only some, Life brings me folks who can help for a portion of it, and then they are removed. There are sharp perimeters as to how close I can allow a healer or helper in, and if I fall, yet again, into the victim or helpless trap, or even the seemingly harmless friend or companion zone, Life whooshes the person away faster than I can say "boohoo". This continues to be a solo gig, period, end of discussion.

On bad days, when nerve torching pain is cycling through upper back and neck and low back and coccyx and knee and jaw, all I want to do is break out the remainder of the pain meds leftover from last month's surgery, drift off to lalaland and just not come back. Or when my belly is bloated to pregnancy size, my eyelids swollen and red, everything and I do mean everything hella itchy (all apparently from the massive fungal infection that has taken over my system from the copious amounts of sugar, fruit, and baked goods I've consumed the past year, not to mention the drugs and anesthesia shunted in via IV during surgery), I see that I am a caterpillar that has metamorphosed, not into a butterfly but into a giant yeast-engorged tick.

I know that whether I believe a day to be "good" or "bad", the only way through this is to face it, all of it. And that the goal is not to make the pain stop, but to see what happens when I acknowledge the fact that it isn't the pain that hurts, but my reaction to it. (At least I'm pretty sure this is the deal. I never seem to know til it's on me, and right now the only thing I know is on me is this floor to ceiling rash.)

Last winter, descending into cubicleland, pushing away from the shore of everything and everyone I knew felt as if I were finally allowing hell to take me, and the emotional and mental pain, and my screaming shrieking reaction to it eventually burned out my resistance to fighting. And instead of using all of my energy to fight my way out of hell, I turned it around and began using it to make my stay there more fun, more comfortable, to enjoy the electrifying scenery, the toasty ambiance, the frisky indigenous population.

This whole physical thing I'm going thru is probably pretty much the same deal. I'm still mostly in the shrieking and screaming stage, but little glimmers of Yes make themselves known. The whole cancer thing turned out to be a lot of fun, so the back pain and candida ride will most likely soon show their let-the-good-times-roll reality as well.

Okay. Enough. Time to go lay in the sun with kitties.

And scratch some stuff. Dang I'm itchy . . .

Tide of Yes

It's Veteran's Day, so as a state employee, I have off from work. It's raining outside. Really raining. Pouring rain. Grey sky, pale green and grey light, chilly air. Gorgeous.

And I'm free. Free to have a day to drift. Much as I've been doing the past week of the surgery and post-surgery. I did a full work day on Monday, and on Tuesday, and it was a bit of a push, and by the end of yesterday, there was bleeding happening, from the push of work but also of the healing process. But today, I'm free again to drift, and rest. And I'm free because yet again, by following the Yes, a heck of a lot of No has simply drained away.

Let's start with last week's surgery day, shall we? Because along with all of the medical bills being paid, this is when a lot of the Yes made itself known. Up until one specific moment, I still had teeth chattering fear going on. Even though I'd done my best to follow what appeared to be Yes, because I'm still getting the hang of this new land I inhabit (no, not enlightened because for freak's sake it must be obvious that I'm not enlightened :), I still had no definitive confirmation that I was doing the true thing. Having the med bills paid was huge confirmation, and got me to the place where I could walk into the surgical pavilion with my sister last Tuesday. But now it was time for the actual surgery, and I was pretty dang freaked.

The week before the surgery, they have you come in and they essentially walk you thru what you need to do, what is going to happen, and how to prepare for it. There's the driving directions to the surgical pavilion, with the route drawn in yellow highlighter. There is the directive not to eat or drink anything after midnight the night before, but since my surgery was scheduled for 3pm the next day, I could have clear liquids up until 8 am, with clear liquids including "kool-aid", "gatorade", and coffee with no cream. They take a detailed medical history, allergens, the whole deal. And they give you the phone number to call the night before to confirm that the surgery time is still the same, which in my case was 3pm, and that was to be at the surgical pavilion by 1pm for pre-op.

At 9 pm the night before, I call to confirm, go to bed, wake up the next morning, have some organic juice and black tea until 8 am, and then at 11:30 am I get a call. Where are you? they ask. Your surgery was moved up to 1 pm and you were supposed to be here by 11 am. And so I call my sister, who drops what she's doing and runs right over, and so instead of spending the next hour and a half in dread and fear as the surgery approached, I found myself with a hitch in my giddyup, cracking jokes with my sister as we did the pedal to the metal thing to get to the hospital, even though underneath the jokes I can feel the fear rolling.

Once there, they give my sister a pager and put her in the waiting room. I start to feel the horror of what is coming for me. I'm getting ready to have a body part removed, and in a very savage way, with blood and burning. And then the receptionist passes me off to the patient liaison who's to walk me to a nurse.

And as the patient liaison and I look at one another we both start smiling. It's my old friend Keith, back from high school, when we were both in the theater scene, and he dated a good friend of mine, the first Miss Gay USA, and we used to go to gay clubs together, and talk about what a big star I was going to be. We're in a hurry to get me into surgery, but he says something sweet as he passes me off to a nurse, and I say something to the nurse like: he was almost as good looking back then as he is now, and Keith just beams at me, in that sweet loving way he always did, where the beaming was about me, rather than the compliment I just gave him. And he says: everything is going to be okay, you are in good hands, all is well.

And then I'm walking down the hallway, marveling at the opulence of the surgical pavilion, how state of the art everything is, and how everything speaks to living, how even the art on the walls are photos of butterflies and flowers in bloom, and how it's almost as if I'm in nature, out in the woods, the fields on a sunny day. And then I'm in the hospital room, and changing into a gown and socks, and as I smell that hospital smell I'm filling with fear and dread.

The night before, I'd packed a bunch of things to try and make this savage thing a little less savage. I tried to picture what I might need. A Jed book for my mind. My ipod for the surgery so I don't have to hear what's going on because I've decided that I want the low key anesthetic because the recovery time is quicker with it. I also have some aromatherapy and a scarf in hopes that they'll let me drape it across my nose so that I don't have to smell the burning, though I know there's no way they are going to let me bring aromatherapy into the operating room.

And as I sat there alone in that hospital gown, waiting for what comes next, my teeth chattering, I thought: time for the Jed book. I pulled it out, said a little prayer "thank you for giving my mind what it needs right now" and opened the book and read the passage in "Notebook" where Jed sees the woman in the NYC deli with an advanced copy of his first book, and it's all dog-eared and full of post-its and he laughs because: what are the chances that this would occur? And as I read it, I remembered Keith's sweet face, and thought, what are the chances that I'd see him, this person from my past, when my past in this town is mostly filled with people who were abusive, unfriendly, unkind, or my present is filled with so very many needy or chatty clients, and in that moment, feeling Keith's sweet energy, I understood: everything is going to be okay, you are in good hands, all is well.

And in that second, I relaxed, and let go. And I sh*t thee not, everything after that turned the whole shebang into the most hilarious party.

Every person that came in was friendly, sweet, and me, anti-social me, laughed and joked and chatted with the nurses, and had a hilarious rollicking good time with the anesthesiologist as he saw me taking those pics on my camera phone and I told him about how he could be tweeting his anesthetizings, and when I asked him: what if anxiety kicks in? he laughed and said in an easygoing way: oh the cocktail I'm going to give you is going to take care of that and a lot more! And we laughed.

Then my doc showed up, and I sat in wonder on my hospital bed, because he was this huge, handsome, gallant man in green scrubs, a confident warrior of a guy, smiling his million dollar smile. And I got that if there was such a thing as a white knight, this guy was it, and he was going to rescue my HooHah, and look dang good doing it. And he and me and the anesthesiologist bantered back and forth about how "out" did I need to be for the surgery? And I was relaxed, so in a space of trust, and said, "you boys are the professionals, what's the best way to get this done, what's the way to the best outcome?" And within five minutes, I was out like a light, coming to three hours later, with no pain, no anxiety, and no fear, which is where I stayed for days.

And of course, the Yes has continued, with No showing it's face again and again and again, and me working the tool of awareness, of asking over and over and over: what does Life indicate?

The day after the surgery, when I was high as a kite on hydroc*odone, I did a phone interview, because it had to be done that day or not at all, and it was for an amazing 45K job on a project that was perfect for my skills and experience and with a top research facility. And I was supposed to drive up today for the in person interview, for the job that starts December 1st. But I don't really have the money to move, and I'm recovering from surgery, and the kitties are happy in the apartment we live in, and my current job, while paying peanuts is super chilled and hilarious and unsupervised and full of Yes. And so I got that Life was *not* indicating this job change and so I declined the interview, and as I sit here, the rain pouring down outside in dense sheets, my body still bleeding from simply the gentle push of the past couple of workdays, I am so grateful that I am not behind the wheel of my car, the one with the stick shift and the broken cruise control, driving the three hour drive to the intense interview with highly skilled researchers in a job field I'm not up to speed with anymore.

And the Yes feels so good that a couple of hours ago I called the woman who owns the holistic center I still work out of part time, the one I have a workshop booked with for this weekend, and I postponed it, because I don't want to spend my day today writing the handout and preparing the materials. And since I'd told her briefly this past weekend about the surgery, and asked for her discretion in the info, she was very kind about postponing, all I had to say was: this is all proving a bit rougher on my body than I'd anticipated.

So, I'm off the hook for all of it. All of the looming No simply vamoosed. All I had to do was say no thank you to the No. And because of so much freed energy I was able to do the Yes, to reply to emails I'd been longing to reply to, to write this post, and then to move to the couch where I plan to spend the day listening to the rain, and snuggling impossibly soft, furry weasels, and watching Leverage, my latest Side*reel obsession. And if the pain persists, my doc hooked me up with plenty of meds, though I haven't taken any in a couple of days, just massive doses of ibuprofin, but it's so nice of him to give me so many, like an insurance policy of Yes in a bottle. And also to rest with the knowledge that the pathology report came from the surgery, and the margins are clear, which means that with the deep, deep cut they did, the report shows that they got all of the cancerous cells, and that they were definitely serious cancerous cells, that definitely seriously needed to be removed and ASAP.

But really, beyond the clear margins and the good drugs and the not driving in the rain, the point is, the whole point is, which I hope you get, if nothing else from reading this blog, is that Yes is a choice. And there is so very much Yes. Right here. Right now.

Time to snuggle kitties and listen to the rain and snack and laugh . . .

 

Conversation With A Friend

 

From: Sean

Subject: Death and decisions

Date: September 27, 2009 3:56:34 AM EDT

To: Kate

 

Hi Kate-

I don't want you to die. Seems like there's a good chance that the reason you have health insurance at this very moment is exactly so you can get your Hoohah burnt and walk around in pain oozing stuff for a while. 

Sure, I realize my preference for you remaining alive is all about me and how I fear losing other people. That's something David S. recognized a long time ago - that the main fear I had to face and surrender to was the fear of the loss of other - specific people, civilization, the environment, etc. Right now that fear is manifesting as a strong negative reaction to losing Katherine.

When I told S. about your cancer, she immediately suggested I tell you about my uncle's friend R. who took the natural route to curing his prostate cancer and ended up dying this year. He was a good guy - an Australian who loved to tell stores and take apart and reassemble airplanes. I said there was no way I would ever suggest that you do anything. I'm quite aware that you have an intimate connection with life that precludes taking advice from anyone else but your own deepest understanding of what the next step is.

Still, life does involve other people, and I have no clue about how various patterns influence the decision-making that are happening within you. So this is the best attempt by the collective patterns that make me up to influence you to make a serious effort to keep Katherine alive.

While I'm aware of the powerlessness I have over your decision-making, I'm also aware of the stupidity and arrogance in suggesting anything. Thinking that I can read one blog post, understand the situation, and make a judgment about what decision is best? Ridiculous. Even if I could make all of the cold calculations with the available facts and they pointed to "burning the Hoohah" as the correct path, no one can predict the outcome. Maybe there would be a complication in surgery and you would die right there on the operating table. Maybe a granola-head treatment will work and cure some of your other issues. Maybe on you do end up dying and that process helps me wake up (now there's a fucked up, ironically selfish thought).

Anyway, deep down I know that whatever happens will be right, and whatever you action you take will be the correct one, and somehow, Katherine having cancer is exactly what is supposed to be happening right now. But that knowledge still doesn't remove the preference for wanting you to stay alive a while longer. 

-Sean

 

From: Kate

Subject: Re: Death and decisions

Date: September 27, 2009 8:45:39 AM EDT

To: Sean

 

Sean . . . It's funny because I really wanted to hear from you, because for whatever it is that you think about yourself and where you are on the map, you and I seem to be at similar places. Have been for a while. Hearing from you feels like echos and reflections and I always end up clearer. I'm glad you wrote. I'm always glad when you write - emails, posts, all of it . . .

 

Every single thing that you said in your email, all of the points you make, are the exact same ones going through my mind the past few days. The mainstream insurance, the odds of staying alive with differing treatments. I think about that woman in Jed's book, the one with the broken neck who refused treatment at the scene of her car wreck, and it changed her life, how her quest to stay alive, but on her own terms, made her a powerful healer. And Brett and her cancer and her treks around her pond. And then I think about Christian Scientists and Amish, dying of simple bacterial infections or appendicitis.

 

I think that what is happening with my body is more than just the cancer, it's the lock down with my spine, the incredible back and neck pain I've been living with every day, that keeps me from sleeping, has my days be filled with so many blocks - where I can go, what I can do, how long I can do it. It's the digestive issues, not being able to digest food any denser than whole grain rice, and not being able to face my food addiction enough to only eat fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and so having to take dozens and dozens and dozens of digestive enzymes a day just to stay out of too much systemic pain. And then dealing with the pregnant belly, the weight gain of a body trying to figure out how to cope.

 

But the digestive issues, and the back pain, are actually beginning to get better. After trying dozens of different treatments and practitioners and exercises, I've found a guy with a machine they use in Germany and Russia, that pulses differing electrical vibrations into cells, one of those things that sound like pseudo science and very well might be. But it's working. For the past two weeks, it's been steadily getting better, and for the past five or six days, I've been sleeping and waking up pain free for the first time in many months. Of course I had to go through a whole other set of garbages in my head to be able to be treated by him, and I'm sure I'll post about it at some point, but the real point is that I'm better, that up to the place where I heard the word 'cancer' I saw that there might be a path through the pain and blocks to more movement and mobility.

 

Mostly though, it gets down to how this is mostly still a mental exercise, that the debate is still going on in my mind: should I go for the 90% cure mainstream savagery or should I opt for the alternative treatment that means serious diet and supplement changes? But a beauty of what is going on is that the cancer growing in me is in situ, and can take many years to become invasive, so I have time to come to the place where it's not about thinking, but about knowing.

 

And I've suspected, but reading your email triggered it deeper:  this whole cancer thing isn't about fear of dying, but how much I desire to die, how painful I've found being alive, how much it hurts. I have been in so much pain - physical, emotional, mental - all of my life - and I've prayed, begged for death thousands of times. In the past few months, as I've wound my way through the pain I've been dealing with, I wake up again and again in varying states of mental anguish, anguish that is gone from my days. But at night, it shows itself, comes rising out of my sleep.

 

It's the physical pain that wakes me, but it's the emotional and mental pain that has been shocking to witness. I wake up afraid and alone and scared. I wake up crying. I wake up with the knowledge that I am dying and there is nothing I can do. I wake up and walk around the house, knowing that at this moment, people are being murdered, raped, people are dying in alone and in pain, animals are caged, being tortured. I can feel them. Feel their pain. Feel the hopelessness. The fear running through me in those moments is a reaction away from the world. I can literally feel my cells, my muscles, my being, pulling away from the world or horrors, into itself, to collapse inwardly, like a black hole. I don't like it here, in this world, in this placed of horrors. I want out. I see the world, I feel it, and I want out. I have for a long, long time.

 

And so now I've been given a diagnosis. I've finally been given an out. And now I have to face: do I want to take it?

 

Maybe I have no choice here. Maybe the choice itself is illusion. Maybe the cancer isn't meant to grow deeper. Maybe it's on its way on a tour through my body and there isn't anything I can do about it. But it seems to me in this moment that the real fork in the road is: do I want to live? Or maybe it's even deeper: do I want to truly open myself to Life? Because the thing I've been doing with my back and my stomach and my mind is about curling in as I prepare to die. Of course I'm going to die, but when?

 

I'm getting pretty practiced at this whole Human Torch thing, and so I'm going to do the things I've discovered reveal the next things: keep watching - Life and my mind and body and heart. Because more will be revealed. And at some point I'll know which way to go, not because I'm afraid or because I hope, but because I'll know, because the way is clear . . .

 

Your pal :)

Kate

 

 

 

 

From: Sean

Subject: Re: Death and decisions

Date: September 29, 2009 7:00:23 PM EDT

 

 

Hi Kate,

I'm glad for your clarity and grateful for these interactions. I may respond with more later after some time processing what you've written.

Wish I had something useful to offer that could make the dream better on your end. Too bad the stories of never-ending bliss aren't true.

- S

 

From: Kate

Subject: Re: Death and decisions

Date: September 30, 2009 6:49:17 AM EDT

To: Sean

 

 

. . . i read the last sentences of your email and thought: dude, all is well, no need to feel badly. the stories of never-ending bliss *are* true, and the whole point is to look at the things that we think, believe aren't blissful and keep looking until we see they are. and when it's done right, done true, with an unflinching gaze, it always turns up blissful. or maybe blissful isn't a word i'd choose to use for it . . . more like quietly, humorously joyful . . .  the dream i'm having is fine, it's perfect . . . more will be revealed . . . what better thing to do with a life than to find the joy that lies on the other side of cancer, of death? or at least our feelings and beliefs about them . . .

 

 

 

Looking

There have been many many times over the past few years that I've asked myself: is this holistic stuff I do genuinely assisting people or is it more of the shell game, just one more expression of New Age Pap? I still ask myself this question at least once a week, and I still don't have a confident answer.

Six years ago, when I swam away from apartment, boyfriend, teacher, career, friend, and life to go and live in a cabin on a mountain in Virginia, part of the wind chapping my ass was around this very issue. I was clear that in body, mind, and spirit I was f*ck ed, flustered, and far from home, and so therefor, what gave me the right to set myself up as "healer" to other people? If my "healing" skills were so awesome, and in fact awesome enough to ask people for cash in exchange for them, why was I myself so very not healed?

 

And out of those looming questions, while I was on the mountain, and then in school, I did no real healing work beyond lending out my psychic ability to people, and then only very very part time with readings, most of them by phone to old clients who would reach out to me to look at things: their daughter was missing, they had a health issue that the docs couldn't pinpoint, things I couldn't really say no to as looking into the abyss for people is pretty straightforward when it comes to simply passing on the facts.

 

Then I got out of school, moved back to the coastal NC town that I grew up in, and immediately landed a job. Within weeks of starting said job however, things went deep south as I realized that the bad feeling I'd had in the initial interview wasn't just a case of my twanging I-haven't-been-on-a-job-interview-in-years nerves, but a hardcore sign of things to come. I didn't give myself grief about it, though. Because seriously, when you're offered a job fresh out of public health grad school, for 42K plus bennies and bonuses and your own office and autonomy to add in your holistic background, how do you say no to it? I didn't, because I had no idea that it meant working 70-hour workweeks and dealing with a crazy dry drunk administrator, and two ex-drug addict, mentally ill bosses. But six weeks into the job, horrified at the ratcheting premonition-flavored nightmares and escalating anxiety and seriously bad juujuu that flowed each day from the folks I worked with, I walked into the administrator's office on a Tuesday morning and said "You know, this really isn't working out". I was released from working out a two-week notice, and suddenly, there I was, out of a job.

 

And in the wake of that huge house cleaning, within hours, it was like a bountiful idea and action filled bomb of YES went off. By Friday I had advertising, office space in a local holistic center, a brochure, a business card, a To Do list, and a three-month business plan. But even more than this, it all came out of a vision of what I could offer, what I genuinely could do for people and genuinely be of service, and the whole Integral Shamanics thing was born.

 

Now, almost two years later, I'm still asking myself: are you really assisting folks? And what I get is this: it is perfectly legitimate to go see a doctor if you are ill and don't know what's causing it, don't know how to deal with the rash or the pain in your pancreas or the ache in your head. If you get a cavity, it makes very good sense to go see a dentist. If your vision is fuzzy, seeing an optometrist and getting a new pair of glasses is probably your best bet. Why not the same for emotional and mental and spiritual confusion and angst and infection and dis-ease?

 

Last week, I was on my massage therapist's table. We've been doing some bartering - me getting massages, he getting shamanic healing sessions - and it was my turn to receive. We were in the middle of one of his mind-bending three-hour-long extravaganzas and I was, as usual, actually howling in pain. He's a six-foot-five gladiator of a guy, with a rain-manish ability to see into a body, know exactly how to unwind the tangles with his hands, and the firm boundaries to be able to go in and do what needs to be done. It's outrageously painful, but afterwards, in the car on the way home, I'm always blown away at the mobility in my neck, how I can actually move my shoulders up and down with no pain or clicking, how my back shifts and turns and glides.

 

But as I lay there, his fingers buried two inches deep in my traps, I drew enough breath to be able to ask the question: hey Erik, do people actually get their bodies back because of this? does this ever really, genuinely work? And he stopped, pulled his fingers out of my traps, and was silent for a long long minute. When he spoke it was as if he were just realizing the truth of it. I'd like to say yes, he said, but I can't actually think of anyone this is true for. No one? I asked. Well, he said, there was a woman who came once a week for a really long time, but other than that, I'd say that mostly what happens is people come and for a little while it helps them feel better but they don't change anything and so it all just goes back the way it was. And then he put his fingers back into my traps and I howled some more and after the massage he spent a half hour gently massaging ginger honey sugar into my skin and I left feeling bruised and expansive and floaty and wanting to lick my own skin for dessert.

 

And as my body slowly but surely tightened back into place, as the neck solidified to it's small range of motion, as the right knee clicked, and the spine lit up with inflammation I realized something. Really, no healer helps in the long term, that at most what we do is assist in dousing the flames of an acute flare up. A physician can prescribe a topical steroid, or a chiropractor can crack the spine back into place, or a shamanic healer can facilitate energetic flow into a rainbow of Yes. But unless, until, the person makes genuine change in how they see the world they've created, until they jettison the belief system that set the imbalance in motion in the first place, it's all just feel-good band-aids on existential bullet holes. And we're all marching towards death anyway, so perhaps all we healers do is help keep us all more calm and comfortable as death chips away at us, one tiny chunk at a time.

 

Maybe this sounds cynical or negative or hopeless, and I'd probably agree. But it's also very straightforward and as close to the truth as I can express in this moment. We're all f*cked, and in acknowledging that, that really, what we all are is compost in motion, it somehow allows me to take a deep breath, and my shoulders to release a little, and my neck feel a little less stiff.

 

Perhaps if I were having s*ex, and the healing energies of that male-female polarity and hormone-exchange cruising through my system were doing it's job, I might feel differently. Or maybe if I stopped stuffing cake into my face and gave my body the six-month fruit and vegetable cleanse it's begging, literally begging me for, I'd see it another way. Or maybe doing that 45-minute a night dance and weight lifting and yoga session I know without a doubt my body desperately needs would shift things.

 

But can I do it? Will I do it? Does it matter if I do it? Will the chiropractor and acupuncturist and gastroenterologist help? Will the godforsaken "spiritual retreat" I'm going on in October make a difference? I ask and re-ask, but what else can I do but take another dip into the maybe, the possible, the tiny stone left unturned?

 

Yesterday was the slowest day I've ever had at the holistic center that I still work out of two days a month. Not one single client from 10:30am until 3pm, when in walked a guy who wanted a half hour session. He wanted one of the "Shamanic Soul-Retrieval Half-Hour Power Sessions" I've been doing that are inexpensive and down and dirty, like shoving a person through a hole in space, catching them on the other side, and sending them on their way with a kleenex and a prayer that they open to the Almighty Yes that they just said howdy to.

 

The guy was decked out in a tie-dyed shirt and granolahead shoes, and was seriously squirrelly, had just smoked an American Spirit cigarette and sucked down a huge Port City Java coffee. He had puffy dark circles around his anguished eyes, clearly in the middle of being ripped apart, tendon by tendon, from the inside out. Of course, I can't give details, but I can give metaphor. Do you remember that scene in The Matrix, where Neo wakes up in the pod to find all of the metal cables inserted into his spine, arms, legs? And how in a hot second, they blast off of his body, his eyes roll back in horrific pain, and he's jettisoned from the pod, shooting down the waste drain into the filthy sewer water? That moment of waking up in the pod was what happened in my session space, in that holistic center at approximately 3:15 yesterday afternoon. This guy woke up and felt in excruciating detail every single tube attached, every single metal clamp on nose, mouth, vertebrae, heart and mind, how he was locked down and trapped inside of the horror that is his "self". And for an hour, as he stayed with the horror, as he refused to look away, I did the only thing that could be done in such a situation: I said over and over and over and over: There Is No Spoon.

 

And he got it. He saw it. He felt the untruth inside of himself, and in the face of that blew past it, jettisoned it to reveal the truth. And an hour and a half later, he sat on the holistic center porch in the sun, looking at a flower, smoking a cigarette, his eyes filled with Holy F*ck, Yes.

 

And as we parted ways, I wondered if he could sense how he was just beginning, how the worst was yet to come, how eventually he'd have to burn out his own eyes, and how he would most likely turn around and ask to be reinserted into The Matrix. But instead of saying anything to him, I hugged him, because if I could get as far as I've gotten, so could he, and why not? What the f*ck else is there to do? And I got in my car and went to the movies and ate an enormous bucket of popcorn and bag of peanut m/ms and came home and didn't dance or exercise and really is that bad or good or neither or both?

 

I have no answers. Except to say that it isn't about More, but Less. In that we think we just need that One Perfect Ingredient to make our life right, but in truth, it is letting it all go, piece by piece, until Nothing remains.

 

And so I'll go to the acupuncturist, the chiropractor, the massage therapist, the physician, the retreat. Until I don't go anymore. And maybe I'll dance my way out of the prison of skin and bone, the sinew of No and the fascia cemented with Past that I'm thrashing around inside of. Or maybe that's just a euphemism for death. Maybe yesterday I offered that guy a red pill, like Jed did with his books, or that crazy wild email David sent to me back last fall did, that one particular sentence that gave me the shove I needed to leap off this latest cliff.

 

Who knows? Who cares? I'm just following the breadcrumbs, like anyone else, going down path after path, on and on, until I get that there is no path, or all paths lead to No Where, or death taps me on the shoulder, or I get the soulmate and the cash and fame and laugh about how I used to have a bad case of The Sour Grapes, or I wake up in a mental institution drugged and shamed, or Bill Compton walks into my bar, or I succumb to cancer of the HooHah, or some other scenario that I haven't thought of.

 

The thing is, I don't care anymore about the how. Only about The Now. As in what is occurring right now? In this moment, what do I absolutely know for sure? And then I dive into it, and explore it, until it crumbles to dust and I move on to the next thing.

 

Yeah, I have no answers. But I do know this: everything I need, Life has given me, has placed right in front of me, inside of me. If I feel to find mirrors or hire mirrors or use mirrors to see what is inside of me, so be it. And so I do the next thing, which in this moment is stop typing and acknowledge that Baby Emmaline is licking my eyebrow and I wish to squeeze her round belly and let her play catch with my braids, or that my home is a dirty disheveled mess and I feel to clean it, and that I am more and more comfortable and curious and excited about just how deep the rabbit hole goes, and that, yes, that, is enough . . .

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

. . . and for more posts on Jed: Go Here.