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.)

*

Powers of Perception

Power animal—Chameleon

by Amy Katz, MA— www.schooloflivingdreams.com

The power animal for September is the chameleon....Subtle shifts in physiology, emotions, climate and camouflage-needs can cause the cells of this sensitive-skinned reptilian to alter pigmentation. It is both a joy and an amazement to see them turn from brown to green, yellow to blue and back again...he proves that our bodies are inextricably bound to our emotions and environment...

Chameleons are also extraordinary seers: their cone-shaped eyes glance in different directions at the same time. This gives them...the ability to know what is coming at them from all directions, and to “see out the back of their heads." As Animal Guide, Chameleons leads us to accept our own abilities to track the movements of others intuitively, and teaches us to improve our own vast but usually untapped powers of perception.

Dinner of Champions

Course 1: Chocolate pudding
Course 2: Corn chips and salsa
Course 3: Corn chips and hummus

Bachelor(ette) living.

Life is good

Homemade chicken soup.
Night music from KCRW.com.
And patience.
A whole hell of a lot of it, asking me to have perspective, because who knows what's to come?
Ever?
Healthy.
Sane.
Housed.
Employed.
Fed.
Loved.
Life is good.
And Pollyanna grew up to be my Grandma. That shit is genetic.

Quiet pulse

While u hear silence, I hear my ears ringing and traffic out my window on the 405. It doesn't stop. Nor does the ringing. Indiscretions in tact and one more thing in my ears: Your silence will not protect you. -Adrienne Rich

Grand

I'm at a bar.
After indiscretions have been made.
Not by me.
Tally ho, motherfucker.

Home. Ish.

Coming up on a year here in Portland. I arrived Sept 7 last year.

I'm finally feeling inklings of settling in, feeling like everything is not new anymore...even the ways that I think. When I've felt anxious about being new here, still unsettled, I have remembered people saying it takes a year to get used to a place. To feel at home.

A different friend said otherwise yesterday. He said, "Three-and-a-half years."

I almost fell over. "Whyyy????"

"Because cells in the body regenerate completely every seven years. So at 3 1/2, you are more of the place where you are than where you came from."

I love him.

I'm happy the year is up. I came from so many different places in the many past years, my cells may be scrambled. But I live here. Here is where I live. I'm one-seventh home.

I am (hardly) the very definition of discipline.

8:09am and so far a few distractions.
The beeping outside my window at 7am. What the? I went outside for a walk to check it out and discovered it is temporary. Two guys on an airlift, prepping the building next door for paint. In parts of my neighborhood, there are garage doors that sound off a nerve-wracking beeping every time a car goes through. Imagine living above that? I had to go scout the my hood to see if it was coming to such calamity.

8:11
Then a little peek at, email. But only a little peek. Then a peek at the Bench. Don't I have to move this over to Wordpress? I'll look into...no! Stop! Get back to the plan. Meditate. Breakfast. Write. Yeah, I'm going to, but I should just post something before I get into...oh, that's a cute entry. I'll just do something quick. Who knows how long it will take to convert/transfer all that content...the Bench might be unavailable a long time...

8:14 and coffee is getting cold because I was going to drink it after meditating. It's wiggling in its paper cup from my tapping on the table. I'm still typing text that wants to be typed but that cut into line and is now giggling and sneering at me, wiggling its tail. If text had tails.

8:17
Stop.

8:18
The whole reason I opened the damn laptop to begin with was to start the music from iTunes I like to hear while I'm meditating. Curse that shiny pretty thing. And that one. And that! Oo!...

Thursday Already?

How does that happen? Yesterday was the first day in the week I had any energy, and it was busy enough to feel like a Monday.

I have been toying with creative work hours, feeling guilty about the relaxed nature of mine, even though they usually extend into the wee hours of moon in midheaven. But guilty nonetheless about how much more productive I would be waking up at 6, rushing around to get fed and clothed, cramming my feets into heels and clacking out the door to be slave-driven till 5, or 6, or 7 or 8 depending on what drama lay behind the desk at the office. Someone else's vision.

More productive? I've been freelancing full time for a year now. No dry-cleaning. Spare heels. Equally voluminous to-do lists but less pressure to please. I'm going for fewer pats on the head and more strokes for the work. More strokes in the bank account for the pleasure of practicing what I love. Difference: it's my bum on the bottom line. Scary! And thrilling adventure.

A Bench & So Much More

If Picture Paints A Thousand Texts

Queen of Denial

PEMA: My boyfriend is a real sweetheart.

GRANDMA: You better hold onto him.

We eat a few bites and stare off into space.

GRANDMA: Good friends are good to have.

- - - - -

On nature's monthly arriving the day of my 20 year HS reunion...

GRANDMA: I'm sorry that had to happen to you today.

PEMA: I'm glad it happened at all.

GRANDMA: Well, you weren't expecting it not to, were you?

PEMA: No. But I'm always glad to see it.

GRANDMA changes subject.

Names Changed

Some of the reunion people were perplexed at my name change.

Name changes on the weird-o-meter are relative. My grandma thinks "Pema" is the strangest thing she's ever heard. Newer friends think my given name, "Heather," misses the mark. I think "Pema" is nothing compared to the judge's son I once met who changed his name to "Fire Penguin Disco Panda."

Facepaint, Fires & Footstamping

I've decided high school reunions are an important tribal ritual. Last weekend, hundreds of us walked into the reunion oo-ing and awe-ing, greeting after 20 years and laughing over how so many of us looks exactly the same.

Then, someone turned on the reunion video, which was a video that was taken our senior year, for the purpose of playing at the reunion.

Oh my God. We were 17. A bunch of those former 17 year olds now have kids that age. We were children. And we most certainly did not look the same. Or feel the same.

The reunion ritual. Gets us all together to make us see how much time has passed, how much life has accumulated, and to push the go button, the fly, be free of any regret you left back in high school button. The you were a child and now you're an adult button. You're free!

I like the reunion ritual. I got to apologize to Rick Daynes for being such a bitch on the night of our Winter Formal. Before the dance, Jennifer Strauss told me he broke it off with Laura Nero and asked me instead because he heard he could score. Don't know where he got his intel, because that night. My shoulder. Ice.

In years that followed I felt bad I didn't check with the source before putting my Jerky McSourpuss in a party dress. Two decades later, I'm apologizing in front of his wife.

He said, Really? I don't remember that. His pretty wife smiled prettily.

Ah. It's nice to not be 17 anymore.

:)