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.

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.

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.

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.

:)

Showing Up

Can you believe I'm still deciding whether or not to go to my 20 year high school reunion? It requires a two-day drive there and a two-day drive back. Which requires I decide by Tuesday, as my departure day would be Wed.

My reservation? All that. Plus the cash it would take to do it all and the time away from work.
My compulsion? To show up. I was so shy and isolated for so long in my life, I think that I am missing everyone in every place I've ever been because I am coming into myself in a way that is closer to whole, not so eclipsed by fear or embarrassment or harsh judgment on myself. So I want to go back and see the people I knew before, with the fuller parts of me showing, and with the expanded capacity of taking them in without my self-consciousness getting in the way.

I was visible in high school because I was the girl whose brother died the summer between sophomore and junior years. Then I was that girl, plus the one that cut her hair short, fell in love with the best friend she idolized, and became a lesbian. (Not that I had any idea what that meant at the time.) So when I looked at kids looking at me, who knows what they were thinking, but I was seeing them see me as THAT girl, and that's it. They still were nice. Still said hello and included me. But I was so incredibly withdrawn. My best friend is the only person who got much from me after all that. And when others would try, I wouldn't notice, or I would think it wasn't for real. I would wonder why they were talking to me. Not wondering in a snotty, I'm-too-good-for-you kind of way, but a why-are-you-talking-to-ME kind of way. I just didn't get it.

I think this is related to the emotional hangovers I had when I was in my 20s. I'd go out, have a great time. Wake up the next morning feeling like a terrible dork for how expressive I was the night before. Like I was several people, and the one that wakes up in the morning is a Catholic nun shaming me for dancing and laughing and sitting on a party couch interacting with peers.

In any case, I have this idea that showing up for the reunion would be a great exercise in showing up. All of me, which is so much more than I brought to the party before. Seems like it would be a nice way to mend the past to the present, and make friends with the friends that may have been back then. I'm romanticizing. Who knows such a thing. It just feels like showing up would be a good idea.

To go, or not to go.

Hoops and Rewards

Speaking of money and getting personal (weren't we?), I made a big breakthrough in therapy today. I'm so happy to be in therapy again. It's been a lot of years since the last bout, and sanity is worth the investment. The absolutely glorious thing, is that therapy is not just sanity-inducing, it's personal growth. Big fat life lessons learned, with the perspective of somebody outside my head, equipped with brainaical skills, willing to push me through my fortress doors out into the bright of day, the bright of life. Yes, I write for Hallmark, dammit.

Today's breakthrough...I walked in and told my therapist it was over. I ran out of money for therapy. I have to come back when I've got a stronger foundation and extra money for such a thing.

The parenthetical to this is that all week long I've been pining over the school program I left in New York eight years ago. EIGHT YEARS AGO. Holy Jeez. I thought I was over the regret, but New York keeps coming up in the hot weather, in my city walks, in conversation, photos on Facebook. I miss the people I left. I miss the dream I stepped off of, thinking I was stepping further into it by leaving. I am jealous of the success my peers are achieving in their faraway states and camaraderie. I want to be achieving it with them. Practicality states that survival is success and the pace of both for me is just a little slower than the others I'm comparing myself to. But the fact is, I don't have any babies or marriages or award-winning plays under my belt, no fancy grants or creative foundations tripping over themselves to give me development money. Not yet anyway.

I love it when thoughts that seem just along for the ride in life and its circumstances tie right into a day's therapy session. So I tell Ken-the-therapist that it's over and he tells me based on the six or so sessions we've had and the voluminous heat of each of them, that it'd be an apropos time for me to bolt. Ah, yes. I agreed. If only I WANTED to bolt. But I wanted to stay, I just didn't have the means. Then all of a sudden those New York thoughts came breezing in, remembering I left in part because I thought I was going to lose it, and I needed to be in a familiar place if my mind was going to go...so that I could survive the fall. I didn't have the means to survive it. NYC was new, as were my friends and my circumstances. Who would take me in if I crashed? Who could I ask for help if I didn't have a fight in me left?

It's all very melodramatic isn't it? I was in a dramatic arts program, if that redeems me at all. But it's true. I felt a niggling sense of doom, and a faraway call to find a nest, find it fast, and prepare to lose my head.

The parallel of needing help, and not having the means to acquire it, came clearly into view. Even the time span that I've been here in Portland, following another dream, is the same time I was in NYC following that dream before I felt the foundation begin to shake.

Ken-the-therapist nodded as I pulled this all together. Threw in sage words. And offered me a deal I couldn't refuse. Breakthrough: I'm staying in therapy. I'm getting the help that's supporting my creative brain and my business success...and lest we forget, healthy relationships with men, boyfriend in particular. It feels, I feel, relieved. I feel really good. And I feel like I made a different choice than the sad, regretful one I made to leave New York.

As for missing places in general, I've been doing that a lot lately.

I miss the rosewater ice cream in Hollywood, and my old mob of cohorts at 415 in San Francisco, and the Fritz Blitz festival selection committee in San Diego, and my friends and the the foothills and ocean running path and the ocean itself in Santa Barbara. Melissa Lion wrote a cool book called Upstream. In it a teenage girl comes to grips with a devastating loss, and in her healing progress realizes that what she misses is who she was. I miss that sometimes, in the gap between what I am and what I'm becoming. Thing is, I've been becoming for a lot of months now, and I forget who I am in the meantime...making me remember who I've been and miss myself.

Curious, if I didn't think so much of myself, I'd think I were a narcissist. ;-)

Thanks for hearing my breakthrough today. It's a big one and I am happy. I feel older. By two days. At least.

The Little Line Was Blue

The month of July has potentially seen the most transformative days in a row of my whole adult life. I could be wrong. I have had some swerves and misses. Some direct hits. My friend/boss died in a plane wreck. I moved to another state. I left 15 years of day-jobbing to leap into doing bizness for myself.

But two weeks ago I peed on a stick and turned it the faintest shade of blue. It was so light blue, the little line predicting the rest of my life, that the digital readout read, "Not Pregnant." My girlfriends, however, are all sorts of savvy. Peeing on sticks is a national sport in some households. Every last symptom under their belts, they know when the jig is up. And these pros in the field suggested I pee on another one, then bust that thing open with a hammer to read it the good old fashioned way: White strip. Thin blue line. You can only have the hormone in your system that turns sticks blue if you are pregnant, they said. Even if it's a tiny bit blue, you're 100% knocked up.

So I got out the hammer. Opened a fresh test. Peed. And waited. Three minutes later, it read, "Not pregnant." I got down on the floor and bashed that digital thing open. What did I pull out? White strip. Thin blue line.

Here's the calendar of events.
Wednesday - My boyfriend and I break up.
Friday - I'm four days late. I pee on a stick. It's negative.
Saturday Night - Pregnancy jock girlfriend instills doubt about my negative.
Sunday Morning - Pee on the stick. Doubtable shade of blue. But blue. No. Can't be. Yet.
Sunday - Six days late.
Sunday Night - Undeniable symptoms. Come to Jesus. My very molecules changing everything I know. Pema Teeter, This Is Your Life! I'm telling you, everything changed. I woke up the next morning recommitted to my core values, my spirituality, my purpose in life.
Monday Morning - Can't eat breakfast. Tastes funny. Nauseated. Make appointment for doctor.
Monday Mid-morning - Period comes. Seven days late, and one transformation later.

Now that we have the calendar down, I'll go back and tell you about the boyfriend. We broke up because of my complaint. I felt like I didn't exist for him, that I was a convenience, and that he was wholly self-absorbed. I tried hard to be a good girlfriend, being open and understanding, slow to judge, slow to anger. Simply put, he was in a better relationship than I was. And based on weeks prior, each of us battling to be satisfied in our worlds, he seemed happy to head for the door once I opened it.

Then I asked him to come over to help me with something. He brought flowers. Truce, he said. I told him I was four days late. His eyes got gentle and settled into me. He watched me a while with a slight upturn in his mouth. He said quietly without ever looking away, "Okay." He went out and came back with a bottle of wine, a box of pregnancy tests, and a bag of donuts. We clinked glasses. Hugged. Then I peed on the stick. We hugged again when it read negative, and amid all the relief, I felt sad.

That was day four. As the days progressed, we talked and talked. Not about being late or pregnant, but about what had us break up. I was traumatized by the event that kicked it off for us, and so I called him each night my head was spinning, to ask him to help me through it. Every night he would. So by night-six and morning-seven of my thin blue line journey, he was right there with me, offering whatever he had, to let me know he was with me all the way. Want me to go to the doctor with you? I will. Want to marry me for my insurance? We could have a courthouse wedding. He showed up in ways I had doubted he ever could. Just days after I had doubted him so completely as to call it off.

Sometime in that week, he asked if I was sure about wanting to break up. The afternoon of day-seven, leaving the doctor's office with him and a negative pregnancy test, I couldn't help but ask myself, "What's important?" We broke up because he wouldn't show up, in my estimation. And then, at a time like this, he shows up like a house afire.

A few days later we had a conversation about what we want in a partner and a relationship. It turned out we want each other. We were two single people living in a relationship a couple of weeks ago. Then we saw what was possible from what seemed inevitable. And we like each other a whole lot better. I for one like myself a little better, too. My therapist (good time for one of those right about now, wouldn't you say?) suggested that I had shown up in ways I never had, asking my (ex-)boyfriend for his help, being angry at him out loud, pulling him into my process to make it our process. So for all my complaint about his not being there in the relationship, apparently, neither was I. We need each other, people do. I guess if we don't offer, we don't get.

It must have been a big week for transformation in the cosmos. Because that weekend, I went to a Fire Starter group session with Danielle LaPorte. She said, “Go farther on your blog. Keep it personal. Take it a little crazy.” She said a good many things to all of us entrepreneurs awaiting enlightenment. And can I say, my world wasn’t just rocked. It was cracked, wide open like that damned pregnancy test, splintered and exposing what matters: White strip. Thin blue line. Me. Positively on. Being what’s possible. Seeing who I am. What I am. What I bring into the world. Pregnant with possibility. So just do it already. It’s time to give birth to it all.

iParts

A: Hey I think I can select my iPhone apps with my nipple. I'm gonna try it.
B: What? It should work. It's warm. Maybe I can take a picture with my Johnson.
A: Oh, it's working!
B: I just took a picture of my leg. I'm going to send it to you.
(beat)
B: Oh my God, I'm scrolling through my pictures with my Johnson. Wait. Check your email.

"Penis Poems"
K sZ
G blog
Doug
Stle

Typed by my Tip

*

Law School vs. Baby Uncertainty Principle

My brother has three nearly grown kids and some variation of a constant question whenever I see him:
"When are you gonna have kids?"
Or, "Why don't you go get some seeds?"
Or, "Isn't your clock gonna explode soon? Get all rusty and freeze up on you?"

Eloquence runs in my family.

Kids don't. Out of 5 adult siblings, only 2 of us have procreated. I'm not one of them.

My mantras: I *think* I want kids. I don't want to ruin them. I don't want them to ruin me, which will ruin them.

Snake eats its tail.

Yesterday, after the course of some high pressure darktime hours with God, I get it. Yes. Kids. Babies. Offspring. I'd be a good mom. And maybe a nutter of one, okay. But yeah. Kids and me would go very well together.

Then I saw this post today on THE HAPPINESS PROJECT and it made me snicker while giving me perspective in all of 20 seconds. It's in the video linked here.

Tools To Live By

My friend and colleague, Jillian, was over yesterday, giving me counsel on my life architecture.

We were talkin story and she told me about how, after a big change in her life, she got rid of almost everything she owned...appliances, furniture. She wanted to keep it simple. So she didn't buy a TV. She made her coffee on the stove.

I was totally vibing on her story, drawn in like, yeah, I get it. Cathartic. Get rid of that stuff. And then I remembered my own moving story--story of moving, that is.

I am in New York to be a student, from San Francisco where I had a job. To get here, I have sold or trashed 75% of the possessions I laboriously accumulated between the ages of 19 and 30. Rent and tuition paid in the big city, I am so broke I am manufacturing air. I eat a lot of canned beans at this point in my life. You can buy 'em cheap and season them well, toss in an egg (yep an egg) and have a super high protein meal that lasts till lunch time.

That is, if you can open the can. Simplified and broke, I don't have a can opener. (Does this sound like a theme to anyone?) But I have a tool box.

I spend a week opening my nightly can of beans with a screwdriver and hammer. When I finally receive the student loan check and go to the store to buy a can opener, it is the best $1.27 I ever spend.

In the Name of Research

I ate grasshoppers last night.

Served sun dried in a bowl with chili flakes and lime. Garnished with salsas, cilantro, and corn tortillas.

I resisted temptation to wash it down with a shot of tequila. I was on a date, after all.

The bigger story is that I'm doing research for a story that involves entomophagy. The grasshoppers were listed on the menu as appetizers, under "pre-hispanic" food. With the opportunity right there in front of me, I didn't know how I could rightly refuse it. Granted, I wouldn't kill anyone if I were writing about murder. But...I felt a little guilty thinking I would pass up such accessible research. I felt the draw of exotic adventure. And I felt curious enough, both, to say I tried them, and have an excuse to be so bold as to order grasshoppers on a date.

They were less crunchy than I thought they would be. Not a lot of taste. They felt scratchy in my mouth. They were indeed little carcasses. I couldn't bring myself to pick one up and eat it by itself, or any part of it that had fallen off in the bowl. Actually, there was a moment there, as I sat and chatted with my date, grasshopper-stuffed tortilla rolled in my hand, that I glimpsed in my peripheral vision a bug sticking out of my food!! I jumped. Then realized I just hadn't taken that bite yet. I tucked it back in the taco and took a deep breath, allowing myself only a half second to wonder what the HELL I was doing.

As we left the restaurant, my date joked, "Ah, grasshoppa-eater, you have come so far."