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."

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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.

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.

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.

A Bench & So Much More

Tonight's Gem

On the toilet, on the phone, head in hand, trying to express in words how long the day has been. It's apparent I'm finding better success peeing than talking:

"My eyes are so...dry they're like...sandkittens in my...forehead."


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Chicken Sex

Leave it to my lesbian friends to raise a rooster named Mathilda, and a hen that crows.

Mathilda the boy chicken is not such an uncommon development. It's hard to tell what sex those fuzzy little chicks are when they pop out of the eggs. When you get them home and growing in their little box, and then coop, you just gotta keep your eye, and ear, open for tell tale signs that your hen is becoming a man-bird. Like noticing the red crop growing on his head and the adolescent crackling that's trying to be a crow.

They had to get rid of Mathilda--dubbed Clark soon after puberty--because roosters aren't allowed in suburban backyards.

Rooster gone, this morning they woke to Daisy, the bossy hen of the brood, gurgling out a half-cocked screechy croon. In the absence of a rooster, she's taking on job. How very butch of her.

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A General Ick

What can be attributed to this ICK? I woke up and before I even opened my eyes, I hated my apartment. I loathed where it is located, isolated at the end of my block. I regretted the home improvements I made last weekend, and couldn't believe I bought that ugly little table and chairs. It disrupts everything with its wicker cuteness and caramel-colored brightness infecting my apartment's darker tones.

Ick.

In my late 20s I used to wake up with an emotional hangover. I'd have a fun night out the night before, no alcohol (special diet), nobody in my bed (no reason but shyness), and before I even opened my eyes, I'd be regretting all that laughing and joking and general self-expression of the night before...usually it involved meeting new people and having a really great time. And it wasn't just regretting, I was doing. It was a physical sensation. My insides churned in a kitchen mixer, getting folded into a batter headed for the flame and skillet.

What the hell is that about? Does everyone feel this way when they wake up? Is this why people drink coffee? Mood enhancer of happy prancers once static dancers. Stop me.

I'm still in bed. I wrote some morning pages then made a list of all there is to do today in lieu of hating myself. When I have stuff to do there is less time for that. In between lines, I considered when I have felt like this and remembered high school. Precious days of hormonal Jekyll and Hyde. Girlhood sucks sometimes.

Today is a girl day. In all the literature of all time, all those pagan fertility rites recorded and allusions to the power of women during their "moon time," why does none of it, not one speck say one thing about PMS?

If you know of an ancient reference to lady dragons, please post. I'd love some redemption in history.

Specs Addict

One dark and stormy night, I lost my glasses.

I was traveling, and was headed for another airport in the morning. So, I made arrangements to cab it directly from the Portland airport to Sears Optical to get new specs. And you know, sometimes life has more adventures than time.

So I met a blind date there. At Sears Optical. He helped me choose new glasses. He helped a lot, actually. It had been a sad, heavy winter and along came a perfect stranger to help me lift it.

A few months later, back in Santa Barbara, I met another stranger. It was windy on the night of our first date. Really windy. We went to the movies. Watched. Then ducked back into the wind. He walked me to my car. Whereupon I discovered I had lost my glasses.

I began to wonder if my glasses are connected somehow to the people I date, and what, if any, metaphysical meddling might be manifesting in my losing them. For, once, on a first date, I lost my wrist watch. And lemme tell you, I still haven't stopped mourning the time that went missing from the year that followed that night.

For the record, I lost my glasses *again* shortly after I met my current boyfriend. But I figured the metaphiz got balanced or redeemed or something because the glasses were found and returned by a cross-dressing furniture dealer named Woody. ...something about "if it comes back to you it's yours. If it doesn't, it was never meant to be" rings a bell. And the cross-dressing. That's a representation of balance, right? Male and female in one?

:-)


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