Chutes & Ladders

I read this in a newsletter sent by author and energy psychologist, Gloria Arenson. Funny timing. Yesterday my therapist sang me the last sentence in the passage. I didn't even have to pay extra for the singing. I'm thinking of asking him to do some singing telegrams for a select few people on my list.

Life Is A Game

My five year-old grand-daughter likes to play Chutes and Ladders. As I was playing with her last week, she became frustrated when she was on the brink of winning and hit a downward chute that sent her almost all the way back. Did you know that this game is derived from the ancient Hindu game called Leela, which charts the ups and downs of the soul's path toward reunion with the Infinite? This is a game of self-understanding that encourages a gradual detachment from the ego's delusions. There are explanations for each step that help the player realize the patterns in his life. Each space represents an aspect of consciousness and each roll of the dice is related to the forces of Karma.

We are all playing this game. Some of us, like the five year-old, just pout or get depressed when life throws us into a slide. This game suggests that you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start [all over] again.

Character

I knew a guy who woke up and steeped six bags of Earl Grey in his first cup of tea. And then three more in his second. Daily. I wanted to give him a bottle of bergamot and some caffeine tablets so he could eat them in a paste.

Character Definition

I'm looking at my blog's cast of characters thinking it's time to change it again. I don't write about Allen, the guy I dated a minute, anymore. Grams makes the blog a fair amount, but Nico is so far away, and Suzy. I'm afraid if I move them from the cast list, I will be sad. And my cast will be really small. I don't write small cast productions. I write really really big ones, and then get asked to pare them down. "Combine some of these characters, Pema," is the feedback I've received in the past, and will likely receive again.

That'd be a weird note in real life. "Combine these characters." What if you had six people following you around all the time, chiming in to answer something on the tip of your tongue, questioning your involvement in the kiss you're about to get. And someone completely outside you and your six said, "Jeez, ya might wanna combine those, if just to get invited to dinner more often." What would you combine? How would you choose which of whom to composite? And what if these six were people were not shades of you, but actual people who added to--or took from--your life in some way? How would you combine them, and you, then?

Paper: 2D
Life: 3D

Sounds from a Town I Love

Remembering 9/11 on 9/11.
Woody Allen made a short for Concert for NY, a free show at Madison Square Garden for NY's emergency and civic workers, and families of those who died in the attacks. Love letter in a time of loss.

World Smiles With You

You know how it's all exciting when you have a new boyfriend, and you go around saying, my new boyfriend this and my new boyfriend that? Yeah. Me not so much either. I don't know if I ever said, "My new boyfriend." In any case, I do have a new ex. Today, as it stands. For the sake of conversation. I do. And that makes him all new again. My new ex this and my new ex that. Ohmigod! Y'know?

So, yesterday the new ex and I are driving somewhere, taking care of unfinished business. Theoretically I am really pissed at him. He's a big weenie. But on a practical every day level, he's just a guy. He looks over at me from the driver seat and says something funny or endearing. Something worthy of a reaction. I feel a smile on the inside but on the outside I can't decide whether to give him even that much. And then I do. Civility is important. At least I think I do. Maybe I should check.

ME: Did I just smile at you?

EX: I don't know. I couldn't tell.

ME: I felt my face move.

And then we are laughing and polar ice caps melt. Dammit. Feels better than the freeze, though.

Awake.

Geoffrey Smith, director of "The English Surgeon," says the purpose of the brain surgery patient being awake during surgery is to be the last valve of safety, to save themselves, potentially, from the doctor inadvertently slicing away "1968," in other words, slicing away whole swaths of memories.

Awake. Save your memories. Save what you know.

And others of us so willing to give them away in order to believe a story. Shaking my head in amazement right now.

(Geoffrey Smith, as interviewed by Elvis Mitchell on KCRW's "The Treatment" today.)

Tell Me Lies

Been thinking about truth. Trust. Honesty. Lies. The absolute need for some of us to have the absolute truth. I've always said I'm best with information. Just give it to me.

Wondering if my need for the truth, always the WHAT HAPPENED? is me depending on others to make decisions for me: If I can trust you completely, I can make solid moves in my life, based on what you've said. If I can't trust you to talk to me straight, I can make other choices and feel safe in them.

But what's missing when I cling urgently to the need for your honesty?

I knew my boyfriend had a capacity for the deceptive arts from the beginning. But when the lying began, to cover that other unmentionable that happened, I believed it. Well, almost believed it. I had to hear it over and over again in various ways for it to finally make sense.

What made better sense? What I observed, felt, sensed, saw--knew, really. I knew something was out of place. A lot of things were. Circumstantially. But he was resolute. I wanted so much to trust him that I didn't--hello!--trust myself. What's up with that?

There's a lot of crazy world-changing foundation-wobbling happening on the bigger, broader stage these days. What happens when you can't trust things to be how they have been...how they are supposed to be...fine and good and right? Just like you know 'em to be?

Maybe what happens is you ask a lot of questions. Trust what your spidey sense knows before you do. When you get the spidey sense, ask questions. But listen for the internal answers. Not the external ones that sound right but feel wrong. Maybe we're learning to live in a world of extra-sensory sensing, intuitive knowing rather than concrete evidence that builds a bullshit case. Forgiving bullshit cases, it seems that even the concrete things we have known--economic trends, Twin Towers, airtight mortgages--are melting before our eyes, and maybe it's time the spidey sense came to life.

The moral, Grasshoppa? Close your eyes and trust what you know.

(P.S. I'm joining you in the grasshoppa gallery here.)

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