DatingGod

Releasing Into the Interior

The posts here get further and further apart. There are lots of stories occurring over here, but the directive around them is clear: not for the blog.

Some get told to clients, as a way to help them see a bigger picture or to show a concept being explained in motion. Others get shared with loved ones, for whatever reason that arises in the moment. Most don't get expressed into the world, at least not to other people. They stay contained inside this body-mind-heart where they appear to be distilling down into something closer to the truth, which is an impossible statement, but again, as close to the truth as can expressed at this time, in this space, for this reason.

I don't experience the telling of a story as a bad thing, that there's anything inherently wrong with the human desire to tell stories from the unfolding of a life. It's just that it's so clear for me at this time: it's about holding the stories, watching the desire to story tell as a way to somehow capture what's flowing, pin it down, make it stay. Which is impossible. And by its very act kills the germinating seed of Yes.

There's a way to tell stories so they become empowering, for both the speaker and the listener, a way to tell a story that includes the listener in such a deep way that the story being told is actually their own story. This blog used to be that, and maybe still is if someone stumbles here and goes back through the nine years of archives. And maybe it'll be that again, maybe the stories occurring over here will request they be posted, let loose on the internet in this form.

But for now, the writing is pouring into two places: the extensive handouts created for the Integral Shamanics Training Program and a private doc and notebook where the words and concepts and stories don't have to be shaped - just flow out fingers and heart and mind and simply exist without further input, from anyone, anyone, no judgment or editing or backlash. Just flow. 

Because the current underlying awareness is around something I've known about for decades, called different names by different teachers I studied and apprenticed with. Grandfather Albert, a Mi'kmaq shaman, who led a four-day total fast in the forest - not even water - because he said at the end of the fourth day, the bad spirits would see you as dead and release you. Fiona, who showed how to disappear from the entities' sensors by repatterning emotional and mental frequencies. Laura and her many tomes about the aliens. And then the gift from The Vine a month ago, where she showed me for five hours, relentlessly, mercilessly, who we are, why we were built, who built us, why, what it all means, what we have to do to be free. Now Paul writes about it in such a straightforward way, calling it wetiko. And David Carse and Jed, who keep saying: further. 

A few months down the line, I'm going to offer up all of the Integral Shamanics training program handouts for you - some sort of free ebook I want to set loose in the world. For today, here's an exerpt from the handout for the first class in the training program:

Participant introductions: telling our Stories of Yes

Transparency is one of the core principles of Integral Shamanics, along with mastery and tribe.  We live in a culture that celebrates two extremes around this flow of energy: perfecting an opaque image and TMI (too much information). Perfecting an image is about creating a physical, emotional and mental mask that fits with cultural norms and usually allows its wearer access to more resources (money, other people’s time & energy, etc.). TMI is an energetic response some people have to the cultural norm of projecting a perfect image, and is also an attempt to clear the mind-body-heart of the tension that results from the tremendous energy it takes to project and maintain an image. Rigidity and withholding is another attempt to deal with the buildup of tension, as a way to tightly control and hide what lies underneath the mask.

Antidote. One antidote to the extremes of image, withholding and TMI is to simply hold the energy, to not release into talking or showing how either happy (positive charge) or sad (negative charge) you are. To hold energy, simply remain silent, breathe, watch the thoughts but don’t express them, let the world swirl around you, only take action you need to take, either for practicality’s sake or because you feel to move/speak. This is different from  withholding in that it’s conscious holding, so that the barrier of control can be felt, the boundary seen and moved when it feels safe and advantageous on a level behind/beyond world and it’s desire to amass resources.

Holding. In this moment, what energy  (emotional feelings, intense thoughts, physical sensation/pain) can you feel pushing at you, either from outside, or inside? Hold it – whatever it is – without trying to change it – to make it better or less or gone. Be with it. Breathe.  Say Yes and Thank you. Allow the vibration of these words, the feelings and sensations that come with them for you to move through you.

Stories of Yes are also powerful antidotes to the energy drain of keeping an image alive that is not Who You Are. They can be joyful or sad,  from this moment, from your recent or distant past, or echoing to you from the future. They can be spoken, sang, danced, drummed, presented as artwork or crafted object to pass around, as silence, or whatever else you feel tells your story.

Who You Are. Whatever story you feel to tell in the first class, let it be something true, something in its revealing that will illuminate Who You Are, how you got here, what place on the map of Aliveness you can feel yourself being drawn toward. Know that the story you share will shift the vibration of all of the folks who’ll be gathered during the first class. Let the story you tell be from your heart, mind, spirit, the organs and vibration, muscles and light, fluid and charge that is you in that moment. If you’re not sure what you want to say, sit with it between now and the first class. Right now, in this moment, be quiet and ask yourself: Who Am I? How did I get here? And when it’s your time to tell your story in the first class, ask yourself again . . .

 

John Cleese: A Lecture on Creativity

Well worth the time to watch :)

Elucidation

I woke up this morning with another one of those messages.

What the heck else do I call them? It's like having a line from a technical manual read out loud. Utterly emotionless, without any sort of judgment or inflection. Just a statement of fact. Said once. Fini. And then I lay there, watching as my brain fills in the details of how it applies to my living, this thing I'm doing called Untangling, or Waking Up, or growing up, or Whatever.

This morning's was: It's Not More Story, It's Less.

It's not about adding anything in - a new technique or endeavor or plan or frame. It's about letting go of the different storylines of Katherine, thread by thread.

And I saw that "enlightenment" is about no more personal story, as in the person isn't seeking to create a specific storyline that they think is "good". It isn't about creating more, but about opting out, over and over, to the aspects of the story of world that are about more exciting, more colorful, more amazing dreams.

And even with this letting go of self-generated story, it's about surrender to whatever the storyline is that Life has for the living. To see Life's storyline, the personal, will-asserted storyline has to be released. Two competing plot generators is simply confusing and dividing.

The tricky segment of this surrender? Moving from the wanting that self generates, to the wanting triggered by the radiating from Life. The difference: one is a grasping toward, the other is a delighted, willing following of sign posts.

Yet there is creating story and telling story. And it's the telling that has always served my Untangling.

Which leads me to what to do with this blog. This blog here that turned eight-years old in April. 

In no particular order, the issues are:

• folks I work with, as smart and sensitive and evolved as they are, seriously don't have a context for what the shamanic life is about, or what psychic ability means, or how deep transparency is simply the next wave of human evolution. i've genuinely stopped posting details based on this alone.  it isn't about fear. it's about recognizing what another being can and can't take in based on how awake they are. and acknowledging that i love my job, the work i'm allowed to do there, in the environment that these lovely folks have created and sustain on a daily basis. this isn't opinion but statement of a recognized fact: appearances count, and to hang with a certain tribe means you have to dress in a way they can accept, physically, mentally, and emotionally. i toe the line on all fronts. but the blog, and even my twitter account crosses the line. 
• i hardly read anyone else's blog anymore, so it's more of a monologue than a conversation, which doesn't lend itself to the whole bloggy spirit. i apologize - something in me just turned off - like a switch - for all but a few blogger's stories. 
• i still have a hard time with the haters and semi-haters and advice-givers and general groove-harshers that like to enter a blog home, lounge on the sofa, partake of the snacks, and then poop on the rug. it isn't just me. every single blogger i know has to deal with this, and the ones that write/talk about it don't like it or enjoy it any more than i do. it is a very present, very sucky aspect of blogging. much like having a conversation with a friend in a restaurant and the person at the next table gets up and comes over and sits down and takes over the conversation with complaints about their many health problems and how you really are such a p*ssy and a loser and your fear of the dark is so pathetic, and then they laugh in sheer enjoyment, hahahahaha! seriously, it takes a tremendous amount of energy not to lean over and poke them with your fork. you know it is. and then you realize all restaurants are filled with these folks, and you wonder if you should just stay home, stop eating out, and yet you miss out on amazing meals cooked by other folks, and the ambience of favorite places to go, and the energy that's created when you go out with friends you know and love.
• blogs as they were - these amazing, intimate dwellings in the wilderness of the internet, a place where folks could come and hang out, love and be loved - is pretty much done. there are lots of possibilities for the next wave - letter.ly, less personal posting - but none of them feel right. 
• who the heck even reads this anymore? i know there are somewhere between 10-50 people. i think. since i backed away from responding to most comments and emails a couple of years ago, and the blog content got so intense, less phun, it appears that most folks wandered off. but then i'll hear from folks i haven't heard from in a while and realize i have no idea who still comes here. (except for you hardcore dozen or so who still regularly comment or send emails)

The real issue though, in this living called Katherine, is of course why I'd want to keep writing, what purpose it serves in my living, this Untangling.

I'm very clear I don't owe anyone anything. That used to be a huge deal. It isn't anymore.

My heart still cracks open in Yes when I read an email or comment from someone and they share a connection they felt reading a post, or how a post triggered something, a light or a signpost, for them. The feeling I have that the blog serves a kind of "breadcrumb" purpose for a few folks is validated.

And yet there isn't a doubt in my mind that if this blog receives no more input - from myself or from others - Life will simply redirect us to wherever else we need.

So why write? And how to create a new environment that the writing can thrive inside of?

The former is the same thing it's always been: this is a main channel that Life uses as a guru-process for the Untangling inside of me. If I show up, and write, with the lights on in heart and mind and body, something Not Me falls away, and the process of this living is made more clear, less tangled.

I haven't figured the latter out yet. Or rather it hasn't revealed itself. And it's like a splinter in my mind. Energy is building, but no direction yet in where to direct it.

And so I do this sort of posting, feeling uneasy about it all, even with it's infrequency and lack of detail. 

So, if you feel moved to, leave any insights or feedback you have to all this in the comments section . . . maybe you have a tool I can use to help navigate this new landscape . . . and this is also helpful if you're someone who reaches out infrequently so I know you're still around and want to be included if I do some sort of disappearing act to another place or format . . .)

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.

Creativity & Depression

Sometime a week or two ago I was doing something totally unrelated - noodling around in the puter hard drive - and found a paper I'd written for a grad school class, an extra credit thing I'd done that had to based on a popular magazine article of our choosing. I didn't re-read it last week, just dumped a copy on the desktop. This morning I read it. Hilarious in how it fits with what I've been looking at around writing and Supposed Waking Up. (And oh good lord forgive the eggheady languaging!)

Creativity and Depression 

A current common belief through observation, anecdote and in recent history, scientific study, is that creative people are more prone to depression than the general population. Proof of this is given in the disproportionate number of artists who have been described as depressed, and in the statistical difference that artists are shown to be ten times more likely to be depressed than non-artists.

The article Blue Periods in the October edition of Psychology Today cited a recent study that asserts that it isn’t an artist’s creativity that leads to depression but rather their inclination for rumination that contributes to it. The study looked more closely at how depression correlates with both creativity and self-reflection and found that it is self-contemplation that leads to creativity and depression rather than creativity itself implying causation of depression.

It was shown that twin studies revealed that depression was more highly concordant in monozygotic twins than dizygotic twins, indicating that depression is at least partly genetic. It was also shown that the mania phase of bipolar disorder is comprised of euphoria divorced from reality, delusions of grandeur, and radically high energy.

The description of the bipolar mania phase, when reworded, can be used to describe the basic characteristics of the creative process itself: entering an internal visual/empathic/aural space where the art is the reality, and generating the physical and emotional energy, as well as the high self-esteem needed to sustain the connection between internal and external worlds. Some artists claim to be able to summon and execute their creative process smoothly, while others seem to experience their creativity as a series of intense highs and lows. Others state that they find all parts of the creative process agonizing, but are compelled to create anyway.

One explanation for the apparent correlation between depression and creativity is that artists often mine images and ideas from the depths of their subconscious, often operating at a level where what comes forth appears out of their conscious control. They come to believe they can only take advantage of inspiration when it appears, through “grace” or through the use of a muse, be it creature or chemical. Depression may be simply a side effect of the drug “tools” that most artists have typically used to court their muses. It is common for artists, fearing creative blocks and seeking to fuel their inspirational energy, to do so with coffee, tobacco, alcohol, absinthe, opium, excessive sugar, and other brain chemistry altering drugs, all of which have been proven to correlate with incidence of depression.

Art is, by its very nature, something that requires a certain level of self-involvement and absorption. Much like axons strengthen when connections to other neurons are made and sustained, and how dendrites flourish in a stimulation enriched environment, rumination leads to strong cognitive links to the stored data of a person’s past. Often what an artist mines for their work are powerful personal incidents, many negative, traumatic, or simply dramatic, or personal paradigm shifting. This rumination, which essentially is the strengthening of links to past negativity or deep change may very well be what leads to higher incidences of depression in the creatives of our species. It also may be that the pattern of rumination runs in families, which in our culture with its myriad taboos against the expression of negative or powerful emotion, leads to suppression of emotion, which in and of itself can lead to depression, rather than heredity asserting the depression itself.

I found the article Blue Periods to be provocative, and even with its brevity, a strong, compelling assertion that this subject needs further study. 

 

Crumbly

I wonder how much of my blog posting has been fueled by coffee. I've been off the stuff for about a month now, and I don't want to write anything, at all. Oh well. The writing here has always waxed and waned . . .

Part of it is that I still don't feel well. Still with the low grade flu symptoms that come and go, still with back pain that comes and goes. Everything is much better than a month ago, but still, low energy. Ongoingly uninspired.

Another part is that I always felt the audience, could feel you guys out there. And I wrote to you. It was like that first rush of getting to know someone where you want to tell them everything, and since I have virtually no social in my living anymore, it's been my place to come to be seen, heard.

Or wanting to explain myself, of feeling misunderstood, or in situations that felt unfair, and I could write it all out, and feel a sense of peace around whatever the issue was. 

And of course the Chronicling of The Supposed Waking Up.

And the sharing of the Holistic Stuff, the products and food and stuffs I've found that work.

And of course all of the Weaselville stuff which amused me highly though didn't seem to amuse too many of you, you apparent dog lovers you.

But now it's all just kind of Whatever. I go to write and it's just dry, crumbly. It feels pointless. Why write? who cares? Why keep posting chapters of the novel? Why keep posting these tiny tales of human?

This blog is 7 and a 1/2 years old. 1130 posts. Over 200,000 hits. 5136 comments. Whatever.

Or maybe I just need to start drinking coffee again. Have any great works of art have ever been fueled by green tea?

Dating God, The Novel

I started working on it something like 13 years ago. It began as a 125-page spew of a first draft completed in about three months while I was simultaneously working full time as a waitress in a sweatshop-ish restaurant in upstate New York, and having a kind of flailing, booze filled breakdown at the age of 31. The year before, I'd fled NYC with a mildly sociopathic boyfriend (just the latest in a long lineage), only to split up with him within months of arriving in the leafy environs of Orange County. I hadn't gotten laid properly in a really long time, so I was a bit consumed with thinking about high octane nookie. Plus, I was out of my mind with grief and angst though I couldn't pinpoint why. Rather than face any of it head on, I wrote a novel instead, about a psychic bartender and a hero cop, a tale of the beginning stages of Waking The Hell Up, complete with lots of sex, booze, NYC, psychic omens, and the Men in Blue.

For those three months in 1998, I'd come home around 9 pm after a long sweaty night of waiting tables, and I'd sit down in front of my old, used Mac SE with a bottle of wine or a tallboy or two of some sort. Pound furiously on the keyboard, hot boxing cigarettes, I was writing what felt to me at the time something vitally important to my survival.

Of course, that first draft was hideous. But 13 years and ~323 drafts later, with the help of no less than four professional writer/editor-type folk, it's in the final stages of the final draft. Really. It is. And starting this Friday, and every Friday thereafter til completion, I'll be posting another chapter.

Here's a little taste to get you in the mood:

~~~~~

I was in my usual state of mania, and Manhattan was, too. Fueled by triple cappuccinos, American Spirit cigarettes, not enough REM, and the ever-present remnants of my latest transcendental hangover, I was every inch the neurotic New Yorker, the transplanted Southern Belle, the white-hot Barwench Goddess. New York in the late 90’s was fueled by fame and success lust, the twin towers soaring sentinels over the cold-fusionish impact point where some of momma earth’s more colorful aspects of evolution met head on. On that particular Thursday evening, my bar shift was ending as NYC nightlife began. Come six p.m., as New York was getting ready to put its swerve on, I’d be heading out the door to hail a taxi towards downtown, destiny, and the latest love of my life. Glamorous to some, but for NYC and me, just business as usual.

“This place wads my panties up every freakin’ shift, ” Billie muttered as she flipped a drink check at me, pushing past the assortment of suits, bikers, and blue collars that adorned my small bar and collectively drooled in the direction of her curvaceous self.

“Freakin’?” I asked her. “Since when did your mouth clean its act up?”

“I’m attempting to train my mouth for a better life,” she said with a bodacious smirk. “And don’t be a booze scrooge,” she said as I scanned the back of the check. “Give that guava margarita a kick this time, sweetcheeks.”

I gave her the Hairy Eyeball but she was immune, as were all non-Southerners to this particular method of mine to appear surly.

“Do a sister-mama a solid, Elle, ‘cause you know he's cute,” she said with that coy half-smile of hers.

“Yeah, yeah, Bill,” I said, laughing as I threw ice, guava syrup, triple sec, sour mix, and a big slosh of tequila into the blender before hitting the On switch.  “But only looky and no touchy or I’ll tell that boyfriend of yours and he’ll pout you to death.”

She gave me The Evil Eye, which was only slightly more effective than my Hairy Eyeball. I set the guava margarita down on the service bar, tequila vapor practically rising off it like steam, and we cackled like the witches we were. Eyebrows arching, she scooted her low-cut t-shirt down a notch, giving her girls another inch to work their magic, and she was off, swishing and swaying her way back to her tables.

Pulsing

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life is good . . . 

Wax On, Wax Off

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

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

Astounding.

It really is All Yes.

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

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