Today is my step-mom's birthday. We don't generally get along. Or rather...maybe we don't specifically get along, but do okay as long as we keep it general.
In honor of Mom's bday, here's a specific memory that keeps floating in like a recurring dream. When I was little, I liked to watch her put on her make-up. I would sit on the toilet seat lid while she stood at the vanity and put mascara on her eyelashes faster than anyone should be whipping a wand around their eyeballs. She would dab a runny, tan cream onto her fingers then disappear it into her face. And she would pop her pink Mary Kay eye shadow brush into her mouth to get it wet, and dab it into a smoky brown, a silvery white. When I got old enough to get my own Mary Kay eye shadow set, the colors were enchanting and inviting in lavenders and green. But I never got used to the cool feeling of spit on my eyelids.
Sometimes I would ask my mom not to put on makeup before we went out because she looked so much prettier to me without it. After she washed her face, you could see the tiny fractures in the skin under her eyes. I could see the set to her mouth, and hear it talking before she ever said a thing. I didn't know how or why, I just felt more at ease when I could see her face glower and glimmer this way. She looked happier when she smiled, angrier when she scowled.
I think of that often when I put on my own makeup. I was never a big fan, and still don't love standing in front of the mirror giving time to my own web of fractures increasing monthly under my eyes. But I get it, what my mom did back then, when she was the age I am now. I look better with a little cosmetic help. I look presentable. With concealer and some eyeshadow, and color on my cheeks, I direct people to the pretty, not the weary, or wary, or love worn, or ambitious, or lonely. I cover the tracks, gloss the lips, and smile into public view, knowing that if there were a little girl on the toilet seat lid watching me cover what she knows is real-er than pretty colors and subtle distractions, I might feel a little more revealed.
But there's not. So I creep, y'all. Sneak.
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Oh My Gosh
This song is arresting.
I was following the pack
all swallowed in their coats
with scarves of red tied ’round their throats
to keep their little heads
from fallin’ in the snow
And I turned ’round and there you go
And, Michael, you would fall
and turn the white snow red as strawberries
in the summertime
Original by Fleet Foxes. Any way you hear it, holy cow:"Everything is transitory. Still, every thing is."
I was following the pack
all swallowed in their coats
with scarves of red tied ’round their throats
to keep their little heads
from fallin’ in the snow
And I turned ’round and there you go
And, Michael, you would fall
and turn the white snow red as strawberries
in the summertime
Original by Fleet Foxes. Any way you hear it, holy cow:"Everything is transitory. Still, every thing is."
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Funny Thing to Forget
I'm in the business of interviews. Often, I record calls with clients, then transcribe them to work with the content.
Today's Realization: I like hearing my voice on a recording. Outside of me. Speaking at a time when my own attached mouth is no longer moving. I like to listen to myself talk. It reassures me that I exist. I guess it's like looking in a mirror to see where I stand, what I'm wearing, how I'm aging.
I exist.
Funny thing to forget, but it happens.
*
Today's Realization: I like hearing my voice on a recording. Outside of me. Speaking at a time when my own attached mouth is no longer moving. I like to listen to myself talk. It reassures me that I exist. I guess it's like looking in a mirror to see where I stand, what I'm wearing, how I'm aging.
I exist.
Funny thing to forget, but it happens.
*
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, September 14, 2009
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
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
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
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.)
*
Monday, August 31, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, August 24, 2009
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'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.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
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.
:)
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.
:)
Sunday, August 2, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Cash for Crustaceans
Money makes the mood go up, the mood go up, the mood go up.
Money makes the mood go up, the mood! go! up!
Was walking and driving around, composing today's blog post in my head. Watching my mood sway with anxiety, resolve, encouragement, anxiety, resolve, thinking it'll be one of those deep days, posting about my internal life. My bench on the inside. I started a new writing schedule today, and I guess anytime I'm in between things new and old, I get soft like a crustacean growing out of its shell. Soft and vulnerable and worrisome, wondering if the end is near, if the sky is falling, and if I'll be an unfortunate soft and squishy when it lands. On me. Squashing me dead. Hm. Maybe that's the point. To be squishy, so that you're not broken, but malleable when it hits. Maybe then I'd squish into a whole new kind of creature. A giraffe, maybe.
But the sky is not falling, or at least, the confidence of money in the mail pops a parachute on that gravity and tells it to take its time sweet time. Sometimes when confidence is lacking, money makes up for it. And caffeine. I now have introduced both into my bloodstream.
Money makes the mood go up, the mood! go! up!
Was walking and driving around, composing today's blog post in my head. Watching my mood sway with anxiety, resolve, encouragement, anxiety, resolve, thinking it'll be one of those deep days, posting about my internal life. My bench on the inside. I started a new writing schedule today, and I guess anytime I'm in between things new and old, I get soft like a crustacean growing out of its shell. Soft and vulnerable and worrisome, wondering if the end is near, if the sky is falling, and if I'll be an unfortunate soft and squishy when it lands. On me. Squashing me dead. Hm. Maybe that's the point. To be squishy, so that you're not broken, but malleable when it hits. Maybe then I'd squish into a whole new kind of creature. A giraffe, maybe.
But the sky is not falling, or at least, the confidence of money in the mail pops a parachute on that gravity and tells it to take its time sweet time. Sometimes when confidence is lacking, money makes up for it. And caffeine. I now have introduced both into my bloodstream.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Birthday Weather
My blog is doing something weird. It won't let me comment on my own posts. Sorry, friendlies, to whom I would like to comment back. I'll look into that. In the meantime, thanks for reading and commenting.
It's 40 minutes before my birthday. Late night, dark and warm, make that really warm, with a breeze that's kind of thick. Humid. The kind that opens you up and gets you all nostalgic for what once was or what is to come. Hm. Appropriate birthday weather.
It's 40 minutes before my birthday. Late night, dark and warm, make that really warm, with a breeze that's kind of thick. Humid. The kind that opens you up and gets you all nostalgic for what once was or what is to come. Hm. Appropriate birthday weather.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Dirt Where You'd Least Expect It
When I lived in New York, I had a lot of surreal experiences. Like the time I walked past a huge advert pic of a swimming pool and actually smelled chlorinated water on hot cement. And that first week I was there in that raucous loud city, seeing a homeless, deaf teenager, and imagining what NYC would be like without sound...I think it would be like being under water.
And there was the time I saw construction in the street. They had the road ripped up and I could see the dirt underneath. Dirt. Brown, sandy earth. In Manhattan. I stopped and stared before I realized I was gripped by the surprise of nature holding us all up.
Saw the Mannahatta Project today and it reminded me of that surprising earth.
*
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
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.
"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.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Facts
My boyfriend and I broke up yesterday.
My HS reunion is in a few weeks. To go or not to go.
Kittens slept on my head last night.
I just woke up from a three-hour nap.
Window washers dangled outside my 10th floor apt today, adept as spiders.
Yesterday I was angrier than I have been in a really long time.
Like maybe ever.
Anger is cumulative over years and bursts open like a storm cloud.
I am the same girl I was in high school. More talkative maybe. And as poetically morose.
I'm looking out my window at a river right now.
My friends make me feel so special I cry.
I ate halves of five different flavored cupcakes yesterday, with two of my besties, all of us in the haven of my bed.
We drank prosecco in the afternoon. Also in my bed.
I am tired.
I wonder a lot of things. Mostly about progress and reproduction and people.
I missed yesterday's blog post, busy living its content.
I miss New York sometimes.
Life is always just beginning.
*
My HS reunion is in a few weeks. To go or not to go.
Kittens slept on my head last night.
I just woke up from a three-hour nap.
Window washers dangled outside my 10th floor apt today, adept as spiders.
Yesterday I was angrier than I have been in a really long time.
Like maybe ever.
Anger is cumulative over years and bursts open like a storm cloud.
I am the same girl I was in high school. More talkative maybe. And as poetically morose.
I'm looking out my window at a river right now.
My friends make me feel so special I cry.
I ate halves of five different flavored cupcakes yesterday, with two of my besties, all of us in the haven of my bed.
We drank prosecco in the afternoon. Also in my bed.
I am tired.
I wonder a lot of things. Mostly about progress and reproduction and people.
I missed yesterday's blog post, busy living its content.
I miss New York sometimes.
Life is always just beginning.
*
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Independent
I missed yesterday's post!
I was independent of the blog while celebrating our country's independence.
Now, a lot could be debated about what our country and its individuals are independent from--or not--these days. Oil? A crazy craving to always be buying something? Debt, and the Industrial Revolution hours it makes one keep?
But systemically, ritually, we are free.
And a lotta folks work to keep us feeling that way, from red tapers to storm troopers to grocery markets that stay open till midnight.
And for that I give thanks on Independence Day.
Powerful stuff, freedom.
I was independent of the blog while celebrating our country's independence.
Now, a lot could be debated about what our country and its individuals are independent from--or not--these days. Oil? A crazy craving to always be buying something? Debt, and the Industrial Revolution hours it makes one keep?
But systemically, ritually, we are free.
And a lotta folks work to keep us feeling that way, from red tapers to storm troopers to grocery markets that stay open till midnight.
And for that I give thanks on Independence Day.
Powerful stuff, freedom.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
