Work + Whidbey Island = Novel Feeling

What the Body Knows

Ye olde break-up and ye olde therapist have had me circled by events past, so much so that I don't know which way to turn to transform them. Ye olde writing teacher says that you have to create chaos in your story so that it can then be ordered. In recent weeks, when I turn to what I know to order chaos in my current life story, I see a shadow or a skeleton looming at me, saying, "wanna fix that? Use me." I see a whole circle of them around me. By shadow or skeleton, I mean certain events from life and youth that have taken up residence in my habits, and lurk there like they were bonafide me. 

And the thing about that is they are. Till they are not. Those habits we pick up to handle our lives in weird moments stick with us and we forget that they still look and feel exactly like the workaround they were when we first used them...forget they are just tape on the glasses to keep them on your face, but dern, you look like a nerd that way. 

So there're all these shadows and skeletons around me every time I reach back to pick a tool out of my resource bag to "fix" something emotional. Something that is usually blocking something else really flipping cool in my life, like happiness or success at work, or a lovely lover happy to play fair and fun.  

Last weekend, I could see this circle in my mind. It was agony. How do I freaking evolve, goddamnit, if I can't see past these creaky bones? How do I make different choices when Bones and HooHoo are chattering at me like chickens on speed? Running in circles.

Today I went to ye olde chiropractor. I was there a long time. He worked on one hip. Then another. He unwound one creak in the neck. And then another on the other side, half way down. When we were done, he said, "It's like you're unwinding in a circle. Your body is moving through these places it got stopped, resetting and then moving on to the next one in a circular motion."

He just raised his eyebrow and patted me on the back when I mumbled, "HooHoo and Bones."

*

Liberated

My first trip to San Francisco, I was 19 and found a 1st ed. The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand. I was blissed out at a coffee bar, belly-up and as far from suburbia as I had ever been. A guy asked me what I got. I held the book in its thin paper bag like it was my dead mother's last possession, recently unearthed.

I was embarrassed to tell him it was Ayn Rand, San Francisco being such a liberal city, and told him so. He was older than me by 20 years and suggested that because SF was such a liberal city, it would be just the place to share that kind of thing.

My bliss increased. My fingers felt the hard cover under the brown paper. Liberation.

Hm. Liberated. Liberty. Library. Libreria. Libro. Libre. Book. Freedom. You could mix them up without knowing it. Knowledge = freedom. There's a topic for another day.