i was alone in my house for the 4th night in a row, last night
i won’t go into detail about how this came to be; that this is so rare and unexpected is enough to say.
for 20 years i was a wife and mom in a chaotic situation, in which i was left with only one seeming way to truth – I had to find the still point in the activity.
now out of the blue I have a glimpse of wider plains of space and silence.
I can see the mind – not understanding – sets about the task to fill up any gap.
it took a while for the reverberating sounds in my head to die down.
but man oh man when they did – i realized i was floating in a watery world of silence
that so gently took my form within it.
even as more activity is creeping back in, I’ve been carrying my own pool with me, in the car, to a meeting with a student, sitting in the bookstore waiting for eden; m in a movable tank. I may be leaving puddles of this delicious substance in my wake, ya think?
This silence is So far beyond the short visits to the cushion –
i’ve been stealing bits and moments of it for years, dreaming of a silent retreat one day
and though this is no vipassana 10 day-er – I’ll take this dive into the clear water of days as a start.
i am giving my introversion my introspection while exploring my curiosity with a wide berth.
the navel gazing aspect of this blog is indulgent – it seems – until I remember, it is just a mirror for me, and thus, for all of us that resonate together and walk along with the same wind and rain and sunny days.
here is the puzzle for marga today.
i am saying no to improv – the formal kind and focusing on the real life moment to moment kind and it feels so wonderful.
some voice asked isn’t quitting failing?
But I can choose a different question.
what is it i want to create? does that occur on stage?
Our world is so full of distraction from the main game. Nothing wrong with any thing i choose to experience at all, but how do i choose? no one can answer but me. Which me do i listen to?
Filling the cup with activity, entertainment, indulgence has been a common pattern for most for a long time in this particular, still-comfortable corner of the world.
The thing is this…i know what the number 1 thing is. I know. and it comes before everything, everyone.
knowing this –
what shall i do, what shall I do, do , do?
What is it we are to do?
walk in nature. nourish our bodies. care for each other. open our hearts. be present. When you talk, i listen. when i talk, i listen. who is talking?
listen. do the next thing. here, that is grade some papers. make some juice. pet some cats that I invited to guard my front door. laundry, sweep. make things, learn, get messy, cook, shop at the grocery and vegetable bin, hold others. love. experience all that crosses my threshold of awareness.
now to make the telephone call. what shall i say? ooooh, the dreaded task for the flow of an introvert. the telephone call, the choice of words, how to convey my appreciation and respect from my heart as I decline, step back, honor the inner signal.
help me here heart, help me send my being through the wireless waves and find words still out of reach.
I am hovering here. why the delay? Okay, now I switched to an email. Easier, more my style – i can group the words together the way I want.
watching marga turn and turn again to embrace the moment – this unknowable, out-of-loop uncertainty, always unconstructing – and appearing again.
I do love something so about my now. I am not alone, as I have the constant awareness of those who need me daily. But in the deep soul way – of loving the soul and body of another, it is not manifest in my now – and I do not long in a desperation, I do not ache or imagine. The skin on my wounds is smooth and comfortable to the touch. My stance is not defensive or retreating – I do not shoulder what comes with the worry of what might happen. I stand adult and child at once, still able to sing lullabies to the black bear, pacing in his captivity. We never found the puma cage, eden and I, in the downpour at the animal section. We saw the Bison rocking and had a nice talk about the buffalo woman. Do you remember how large a buffalo is? Is it even a sacrifice to be given to the herd? Today it doesn’t seem so. Can you remember the feeling when you see that head so enormous and audacious, even from a distance? Do you remember how it feels to not care how others view you, to not care what you are wearing? Do you remember not having ears for what others may overhear in your conversation? The sea otters have had enough of humans and they hide in the back until the people are gone. It is better that way. Animals are becoming self aware and so disgusted with the humans who got here just a tiny step ahead of them. Perhaps they will call the authorities on the frat party assholes who trashed the place and made the cages. I will loan them my cell phone. Have a turn gorilla, elk, and cat. Your rhythm matches the thunder, the waves, the wind. We no longer carry the salty sea in our veins. We are velveeta cheese on cardboard crackers. We are a toxic cloud. How did I end up here, Hafiz? I was writing to let you know I embrace my aloneness. It is delicious; I love sleeping in the middle of my bed. I love no phone calls anticipated. I love marching where I will. There is no need of anything right now – I only feel the turbulence of those who have entered here through my womb – I welcome their expressions. I watch their show daily – and little else. Alone is a nice spell on the ride – a raft on the river alone flows on natural currents – no need to discuss the way. my muscles relax into the stream.
Lyrics – LovesLaughter
Breathe on me my buffalo
Your eye warms to a warning of a death without words
I am here
Laughter
Swallowing
Cups of pride
Inside it paints me
With the visions I love
For the future tributes
A tome
Sunny green
Repeat
The buffalo from buffalo who are buffaloed by the buffalo from buffalo
Buffalo are the buffalo from buffalo
And all’s above lay
Pay tribute to the death of our tome
Sunny green.
My small fractal self is a real thing. I am here in the flesh, learning how to walk the path of marga. and even if she is infinitely small in one sense, she is also infinitely large experiencing itself the only way it can through her – as she learns to say yes to her very own journey.
Ophanic Eyelash
more and more I find my choices are more in line with true self love rather than the version i had been employing for most of my life. moving in the direction of joy or what feels good is so antithetical to the mistaken idea of goodness that many of us carry around. corners of a square of dark chocolate with sea salt, a gentle nuzzling with the kitty who sits at our front door, grass and sand under my soft feet, watching a movie with chloe, napping when needed, tasting the irish breakfast tea in my cup, switching midstream from a plan to a more open flow. it isn’t very complicated.
i love my daughters as naturally and openly as anything i’ve experienced thus far – my dividing cells that helped create them still ache deep inside me while inside them. it aches in a spot I cannot touch to be a parent. Yet i can see how their own lack of self love causes their suffering. the tenderness i extend so naturally to them has been such a great teacher for the tenderness i so naturally can chose to extend to myself.
there are many places that i haven’t gone this summer so far that not long ago i would have made myself go. the shoulds again, I repeat myself. there are places we go for all sorts of reasons. religious ceremonies that we do not wish to attend. reunions, parties, visits to relatives. each time these invites or offers came up, i sensed my knee-jerk impulse of should. I should go. I should be there. I should allow my ex mother-in-law to stay at my house. Something made me stop and check in with myself. do i feel like it? i have a long history of pleasing – and finally – it is clear – i please myself.
i please myself.
this is good.
pleasing myself is good.
Slowing down to kindergarten language…why? Because at first, stepping away from pleasing others feels wrong to some of us. The things I have stepped away from in the past few years triggered my conditioning – my living a life in part, a big part, as an expression of the expectation of others.
I don’t mind saying this – this newbie admission – because it is so powerfully true – and can crop up over and over.
There are polar reactions to the statement I please myself. Either, right on sister – pleasing you is what is good for you and the world. Or a thought that I am on a path of pure selfishness. The thought that thinks I am selfish thinks selflessness is virtuous.
What is selflessness? Not doing what pleases me, reducing my joy. My state of loss makes me feel small and cut off from the flow of all life. Selflessness is me refusing to be here and live a life of my choosing where I am lost in a dream of my smallness. The state of confusion and loss is infectious – the virus of resistance!
What is the wrongly perceived selfishness? If I do what pleases me, I am in a state of joy. My state of joy is larger and more open to the flow of all life. I am here, as i chose to be, living a life of my choosing, and that is big beyond the self. That state of joy is infectious – the virus of YES!
saying no to the long drive and awkward gathering with others with whom I am out of sync felt delicious. Saying no to the house guest was generous. Generous to me! the outfall that came toward me from other people didn’t phase me a bit. the guilt trip language of others has become so transparent. without any guilt in me for doing my divinely given mission – pleasing myself – no guilt can stick. hallelujah.
there is a dreamed up schism in the human being – until there is not.
In the illusion it seems to me, there are an infinite number of doors behind which hidden aspects of personality wait, knocking all the while, years upon years, wanting their day in the sun of day to day life. One of mine escaped recently, actually, I’m sure I let her out willingly. She hasn’t seen the world in 25 years – you can imagine the unsettling feel of having her arrive at the party in my head. Can take a while to lead her down off of the table, back into her shoes, and sitting still for a good heart to heart.
healing.
no actually, first, awareness. Oh, hello there, you closeted self. I see you. I see your beauty and your pain. Won’t you come down and let me give you a long and deep look into your eyes? let me see your lovely reflection coming back at me. Let me love you whole and proper, the way you wanted all those years ago. Let me see your talents and gifts, let me hold you without judgement and allow you to be here – accepted, embraced. Even in writing these words, I feel her calming down, I feel her relaxing back into her skin. She came with a message that she was not allowed to deliver and then she was squashed down among all the cast offs. She needed a bit of release – so understandable.
No wonder we don’t like the quiet and wide open spaces. We come to haunt ourselves in these times. I give myself Courage to walk through the haunting with love – for all ghosts are just looking to the light of agape – knowing they do not have to settle for less. This ghost house opens all its doors and the wisps of selves and secrets swirl in the corners in spirals leading up – until the roof blows off and the vortex pulls all to the light – We are part of the ultimate recycling of energy and matter – nothing is ever wasted – refuse is a misnomer – compost is divine.
this is the Red Bastard. he was in charleston for a couple of nights.
seems like an obnoxious sort of fellow. some laughs.
what happened there blew me away
This clip does not reveal where the show goes, this is only his opening. It is hard to describe, but coming from a long history of buffon, based on the medieval traveling shows in which the lame, the grotesque, and disabled who had been shunned from their villages, came on wagons during the pagan holidays to perform. Those outside the norms of society could reflect back the absurdity within humanity. red bastard is the trickster – pushing buttons and boundaries of individuals in the audience, often without tact or care, yet showing us, in humor, we get to choose, in every moment who we are, closed or open, weak or strong. We actually got up as an audience and followed a woman to the bathroom. Crazy. He does what occurs to him to do in the moment based on what people do in response – An in-the-moment flow.
inside a black room, people can be pulled out of comfort, complacency, decency, respectability – the performer who asks this of his audience does not stand behind the shield of humor or sarcasm only; the nakedness and honesty he demands of his audience is returned in spades.
we were not allowed to stay in our seats. we were not allowed to not participate. we were not allowed to bullshit. we were not allowed to get angry for in the face of the whipper, our torturer was also charm, love, vulnerability, honesty. He demanded people interact with him with honesty.
Extreme nudity can be found ironically behind a mask and a costume 0 ooooooo which eventually strips away to bare naked – and what is beyond the naked – well, I won’t give away his secrets, but i never imagined one would reveal upon a stage in this way. comfort in the skin you are in, when does this come? how does this come? – for surely we are only a body, not only just this – but a created material thing here to occupy this atmosphere – bones sinew blood and skin – with lungs heart spleen parts pumping within- and gumby wired movable parts without, penis breasts elbows grins
we crave public stripping
we crave bullshit bombs going off in all our venues
we crave long languid silences with the roaming humans on the range
some words I scribbled the afternoon before i unexpectedly found myself at this clown show:
chloe and I are driving downtown under overcast skies.
melancholy has descended on my mood.
i long for something – and i want to be past longing. i desire. i ache. i know not how to be.
a drop of a melancholia inherited in a dreary rainy drip.
where is the balance between flowing as you feel and escape. where does copping out begin o…
Then the tickets and time are afforded to me and I find myself forcing myself out of the house at 9:45pm…sleepy; I go to the show by myself…
and I am transformed. Suddenly all the world is a stripping and standing naked alone job for all of us! every moment can be anything. I can meditate on my couch for 30 minutes, visit another planet, I can rise up to the ceiling and look down at all the clutter.
Why do dark grey moods settle in at all? When they do, why is it so hard to remember that they pass? I think I also want to say that melancholia is a delicious treat – it is – like a cloudy day full of dripping clouds or heavy down pours – this grey can be absorbed into the experiences just as beautifully as sun.
Why do we seek approval connection validation to be heard? what misery! i read Jane Eyre every so often, I don’t know why, but in part to remember how so many people in human bodies have experienced isolation hour by hour and weeks upon weeks looking out windows walking across moors putting up with making do surviving the only way they can eating boring food only speaking expected words dying young without experiences. I am wondering to myself if my brother died a virgin at 17. dear soul, what pleasure did he know by that age? matters not. he may be walking the clouds, he may be back in another body and fairly old by now. i know nothing – and feel nothing but a fuzzy memory like a movie I once saw – i wouldn’t know him in his own old body let alone another. not a story clung to…now I must go do chores and duties – perhaps without clothes on – because all are gone from this house until late – I am alone and I am the master of this house and my bones!
This sort of gaze is unusual in our world. This picture arrests me. Not because of who this is. Mooji is a good teacher for me, but it is his eyes that I am drawn to. I see a clear mirror in this picture; perhaps no more words are needed.
i seek this, hunger for this lack of pretense. This blog helps me to see my words reflecting layers of story clouding just how close this clarity is.
I, too, am getting sick of words.
i lack nothing. I have never lacked for anything.
But I do Ask, Why are the pictures above and below unusual?
Patti Smith and William S. Burroughs
There is a certain nakedness here that arrests me, in this shot, as well.
Why do we not all see each other for real, young or old, pretty or plain; why do we not look each other in the eyes and see ourselves and grab hold like it means something?
i aim to accept all that is – as it is – all the time, but intigrating such a basic truth to the deepest flow is a seeping in process. One such truth of acceptance is that I am never late – ever. I never again have to have that internal feeling of running late. It just doesn’t exist. Wherever I am, I am always right where I am supposed to be – and even if it looks to an outside observer that I am not on time, I actually am right on time.
When I believe my lateness to be true, my stomach churns, my heart rate increases, I am shaky. Worse than the body is the mental constructing – imagining the reactions of those who are waiting, writing stories of excuses, or indulging the worst case scenarios of the judgement from others.
That is helpful – body stress, mental stress, wigged out emotions!
I often have found myself with these physical symptoms of stress to varying degrees. But gradually I began to see that the messages of the physical and mental body are showing me my thoughts about being late are incorrect. I can release that stress immediately – there is no late.
This stress drop-kick is a bit like when one wakes up sick and clears her schedule – everything can be released just that easily.
Now, I do not think that, universally, I know anything. What about thoughtless people who leave others hanging, slackers who clear the decks to watch tv, what about societal expectations, jobs, commitments? There is no late here either. To me it seems that the natural consequences of the slackers’ untimeliness creates the perfect conditions for their experiences in their lives. If they get fired, broken-up-with, dismissed, left out because of perceived inconsiderate use of time, they will get what is best for their learning – or perhaps they are giving lessons to others suffering with fixed and hurtful rigidity as well.
The new flow – as it comes in more and more – is playing with us in connection to the clock and flow of time. Have you noticed? I hit a time crunch vortex a few days ago where 11 am compressed in a tesseract wrinkle to 4 pm – making the 5 hours feel like 20 minutes. I know the linear minded will say this is just the perception within me – and that is true – but perhaps these experiences creep in showing us about our believed entrapment within an imperceivably flexible force.
The clock is not a measuring tool for my worth, my perfection, my adherence to the rules; the clock is a guide to help me move from one thing to another, or to recognize and release things that do not flow with my natural rhythms and desire for the life I wish to create. The clock actually helps me to recognize a crunch or discordancy with who I am flowing to be.
I’m trying to figure out just what part of this journey is ours. I am participating, but I don’t know what is mine. I let go – I slip into the raft and ride – what part is me? who knows the way? who knows what is coming? who knows what was behind?
Chloe (and presumably me too) thought her bike needed to come back to our place from downtown. But it truly was not meant to fit into my little car. We heaved and hoed, yanked lifted spun stretched twisted grunted thrusted, rode 10 miles with her in the fetal position under a wheel – while I tried to shift and steer with parts in the way. I cannot even explain how this was arranged – in fact I think I dreamed it – I may just tromp over to the utility room to see if there is a bike in there at all.
I epiphanize in the grunt work – I realize I am alive when I push my body, my muscles, the constraints of physics to make something happen. I would have been a good girl if someone where had been there making me labor hard every day of my life.
Life is about squeezing something in. heavy lifting. Life is thrusting and groaning and moaning beneath the weight of it all. While also true: Life is drinking to the spinning point. a jolly fall off of a barstool. a phone call answered. a rescue mission. Answer the phone and go pick up the crying girl. Steal a laugh when someone thinks they have no hope. Wink at a angry young punk. Life is slap, scrape, smug swipe at a tall man in a plaid shirt. averted eyes of disgust. a penthouse with a phone for calling up whores. a tourist map held by black socks and tennis shoes. life is a sequins. cilantro teeth. longing that takes a flight out of town. life is a disappeared friend. a windfall of truffles. a raw and slimy oyster in horseradish and vodka slurped up and swallowed. life is a runaway dog on a hell jaunt. life is a sleep interupted by words on the brain. life is wet paint and fumes. life is face down in the sand after a wave has knocked you over and pushed you as far under as there is. life is the desperate breath you take if you make it back up to the surface and the air. life is salt water in your lungs. life is sour apple sour breath soured milk before the expiration date.
here we are – ain’t it just so arctic blown brain under the skull. ain’t it just so lobster.
Life as Improv 