At Sea

I can’t leave my house today because the road is closed. It feels like an at-sea day.  (Non-cruise-loving travelers, allow me to explain.) On cruises, the trip revolves around the places of port – the journey’s milestones where everyone on the boat files off, spends 8 hours stimulating the local economy, then clambers back on board in time to sleep and wake up somewhere else.  I’ve been on two cruises – lesbian cruises (which is a blog post for another day) – and to me the best days were the at-sea days.  The days between ports, when the boat was our unavoidable container and there was nowhere to go. (Would you hate being stuck on a boat with 2,000 lesbians?)

Knowing my options are limited is a great relief to my system. It’s getting the prix fixe dinner vs. the insurmountable 32 page book-of-a-menu at that Chinese place. No angsty deciding. No contending with constant imaginings of all the things I could be doing if I wasn’t here. So I’ve been counting down the hours today, not with “when can I leave?” but with “how many more do I get?”

I wish I could say I was rapidly spiritually evolving with this poignant reminder that accepting limitation is so freeing.  In reality, my distractions today have only downsized to the 10 million things I can/ need to do in my house.  What next?  Work?  Yoga?  Organize the scary cabinet?  Write the next great American novel?  Nap?  Make cookies?   Someone in me is hoping there’s someone else in me who’s in charge of these matters.  It’s a little disappointing then when I get the typical response: “uh….let’s check Facebook while we decide.” Irretrievable hours of my life later, I’m back at the beginning and I’m contemplating how social media has successfully replaced TV as my unconscious time-waster of choice.  (At least it’s interactive and about people I (usually) know and care about.)

What’s true is today has been exactly like most days.  I spend the bulk of it sitting and staring at a lit-up rectangle.  The sun comes and goes, and I’m alternately 1) doing the holy work of housing and feeding myself, 2) avoiding doing the holy work of housing and feeding myself or 3) thinking about the limitless array of things I’d do if only I didn’t have to house and feed myself.

At least I didn’t lose those five minutes toying with the notion of driving down to get my mail and a mocha, which is the other favorite thing I do to keep me from having to sit still.  And I’m seeing a little more clearly how often I scan for that delicious distraction that will keep me from focusing on my heart’s desire  – and ultimately, from the full measure of success and fulfillment that I know is available to me.

It’s November, and I decided at the beginning of the month to again attempt the ridiculous and totally do-able endeavor of writing 50,000 words in 30 days for NaNoWriMo. It’s November 21st, and I’m at 5,348 words.  Another day of another year, and my prize is seeing how relentlessly I avoid doing what I want to do.

My house is littered with messages to remind and encourage me.  I get wonderful pep-talk emails twice a week.  I am haunted by self-help book titles, like Mary Goldenson’s It’s Time: No One is Coming to Save You.  I made a poster and stuck it on the wall by my bed that says in big letters: There Is No Time To Waste.

And.

I have apparently not seen what I do enough yet.  I have not felt unsatisfied enough yet to turn my seeing into change.  Getting to enough is key.  And remembering enough, even more so.  I don’t believe anymore that simple laziness is to blame for keeping our dreams out of reach.  It’s habits, usually super attractive, unconscious habits that strap us in the comfy chair, and desperation that pushes us out.  We only shift when we have to.

Of course, saving ourselves is ultimately up to us. But help is useful. Friends are good. I think we should start a friends-don’t-let-friends-get-complacent campaign.  I think we should make interventions a daily practice and the ultimate sign of friendship. Not interventions of shame but of the ultimate care – the care for our soul’s wellbeing. I think we should make explicit our real goals and ask our friends to help hold us accountable  – to check in on us, call us out and shine light on our excuses, even when we kick and scream (which we will.)

I don’t know how this would work.  Phone check-in’s? A website? Written contracts? Maybe I’m the only one who wants this.  Am I the only one?  Please tell me I’m not the only one.

As of four minutes ago, the road is officially open again, so you can come on over and brainstorm.  Maybe I’ll make cookies.

Message in a bottle

It’s been 98 days since I remembered I had anything interesting to write here. I just checked. There was a meager sighting of sub-par poetry in there, done in the interest of humility and commitment-keeping, but my blog’s officially been getting short shrift since July. And what a shame, because phrases I’ve never in my earthly life written, like short shrift, have just been bopping around up there, waiting for their chance.

I’m not beating myself up about it, which I consider a great achievement. (Maybe next time I will remember in 92 days, or 88.) I am, however, afraid that if I don’t bottle the juice while I got it, it will flee as fast and as mysteriously as it landed, right here on my lap next to a purring cat at 4:54am. So it looks I’ll be plugging in my computer instead of crawling into bed, and I’ll suffer through the work day with an extra shot in my mocha.

The source of my sudden inspiration is hard to say, but suspects include:

the spontaneous Big Sur Tuesday night dance party (responsible for these wee hours), which was the most fun I’ve had in ages;

three shots and two glasses of wine at the aforementioned fête;

the idle perusing of ridiculous genius in my friends’ blogs;

the toying with a ridiculous idea to write another novel in November;

all this singing I’ve been doing;

or all the reading;

psychic healings from Laura Day and friends (see sidebar);

the extra 5-HTP I’ve been taking;

a day chock-full of gifts, in the form of super-kind words from all sorts of unexpected people.

Best, and most surprising of all, was the shot in the arm from my own self. I looked at my blog tonight for the first time in awhile, sighed (as I do), and suddenly had the ingenious notion that I could just start re-posting old posts, in an attempt to look prolific without having to actually form sentences. Brilliant! So I started kicking around the archives a bit, looking for a gem.

Who knew? These fingers at my keyboard now are the same ones that typed the message in the bottle I’ve been holding out for.

October 21st, 2008: The best laid plans

Lately my life has been full of regrets and hurts and going-wrongs. Days and days stringing together without the solace of resolution or comfort of clarity. I’ve been tending myself pretty well, with the exception maybe of four days dedicated to eating bread, and am emerging enough from my wheat-filled fog to enjoy a little perspective. Here I can wonder, again, how each time life serves up a dollop of crap, I manage to convince myself I’ve never been here before. What to do? (Followed by close cousin: Oh why am I always this way?)

And lo and behold, right here in my corner of the world wide web, I find a girl I can recognize, exactly one year younger than I am today. Struggling the same struggles and finding her way. Surely this is irrefutable proof of something more inspiring than I am a slow learner.

Lucky day... the very dawn was captured by neighbor Dave Egbert.

If 34-year-old Lisa could see 35-year-old Lisa today, I imagine she’d be equal parts relieved and dismayed, that exactly everything and nothing has changed. It seems to me right now that my life has been an exercise in nabbing new seats at the same film, waiting for a new ending.  I hope to remind myself, maybe when I read this post next year, to keep diligently pursuing an alternative to spending the rest of my days hapless and blinking in the theater, kicking the seats.

It’s dawn now.  I can’t take my eyes off the ridge across the valley. My view from here is of the road I walked last October. Scrubby, black silhouettes of evergreens stand like cutouts against an unimaginable, painted sky. The pinking wisps of cloud smoke blush so deeply, then more still. As I watch it feels like my heart is nestling down in my chest. Somehow the sun’s relentless progress feels so hopeful at dawn, while at sunset it can be wistful and at noon mundane. All the while, here we are, just turning the same as ever.

Ok, Ok, Ok…

Been promising words to myself and fellow bloggers like Miss Keely for days and days.  A half-dozen, half-written posts later, I give up. I’m grabbing my bedside poetry journal right this minute, closing my eyes, flipping through and pointing.  Perennial-editor be damned.

look at me
more to the left, please

curve me
along the convex line of an antique mirror
dusty and fragrant

periphery is key
I am best seen sideways
I am like the sun

if you stare full on
prepare to open

paint me in the way
that resolves your mother complex,
please

so we can move on
to nectar

but don’t forget to smile back
first
or we’ll never get to hello

you’ll be unknowable
and I’ll be wilting

Upside Down

This is not me. Yet.

I’ve never done this before, but I want to dedicate this post to my dear friend Tuaca, who I love, and she knows it.

I went to my first aerial dance class yesterday.  I swung around and climbed and went upside down on a big circus rope and hanging fabric like those super pretty people who fly around in Cirque de Soleil, doing super pretty and amazing things.  In my case the only pretty amazing thing is the fact that I can’t lift my arms today. Muscles I forgot I had are still vibrating, my neck aches and my feet and hands are pink with rope-burn.

Still, I swung and played and giggled with pigtails and utter school-girl glee. My mind is racing to visions of thrilling and graceful theatrics, hanging 50 feet in the air from a tree on an ocean cliff.  My nightly push-up and sit-up sessions have new purpose and I’m pouting to have to wait two weeks till the next class.

Honeymoon-phase enthusiasm is always finite, but right now I’m eleven-years-old again and remembering the lost art of infinite possibility.  I’m making room for passion to hang out in the same room with the budget and but-but-but’s and better ideas.

I think I feel all airy and sweeping and la-la right now because this infinite possibility point is feeling like the punctuation on one big, long, magical weekend.  The whole series of events that even got me swinging upside down was a perfect snowball of synchronicities.  I was talking with girlfriends on Thursday night about my love and aspirations for aerial acrobatics, bemoaning the lack of a class within 75 miles. Next morning I pick up a hitchiker on the way in to town. We get to chatting, she mentions a new aerial dance class coming to Monterey that she’s taking starting Monday. There are one or two spots left.  It meets the next three Mondays (skipping the one Monday I’ll be out of town.) We swap emails, and the rest is history.  When I’m a very, very famous star of Cirque de Soleil, you can say you read this post back when…

Over the weekend I was in a workshop at Esalen, offered to me free at the last-minute, about intuition and the power to create our worlds.  The instructor was a celebrity psychic who loathes being called a psychic and is fond of observing synchronicity as the inevitable validation of well-used intuition.  We gave each other readings, practiced mediumship and telepathy with little instruction beyond “go.”

In her groups she talks a lot, regaling us with long, unapologetic diatribes of her neuroses and successes.  She declares her adoration or disdain for us at regular intervals and upholds her Esalen reputation as a famous wine and sugar pusher.  But when it comes time for us to dive in and try our hand at reading the future or healing a stranger, she channels a drill sargeant. Not speaking is not an option. Should your stream of prophetic visions and healing energy slow to a trickle or (heaven forbid) hit a roadblock, it invites a quick and public suggestion to go try out the yoga workshop.

A few years ago, I inhabited a pretty-much permanent emotional fragility living at Esalen, busy gazing at all my deep, dark psychological woundings. This workshop and her seemingly incompassionate style would have shattered me into a thousand million little pieces then.  With a little thicker skin now, I found the gifts layered and deep (if bouyed by her pull-aside comment during a break about my incredible intuitive prowess.)

One of the most valuable take-aways for me was to hear that after 30 years of being a well-known and extremely successful intuitive and healer, she still feels like she’s making it up.  She never feels comfortable and in control of what she’s saying or doing in a reading – just comfortable in her trust of the process.  She reminds and reminds and reminds us that we just have to GO.  The train has to leave the station. You have to jump in the river in order to be carried.  “Define your target, follow your attention and report” is her only guidance, and it’s all we needed.

I love inhabiting the paradox that life is a river carrying us along to our destinies but we can tell the river where to go or crawl to shore when we choose.  I love feeling like I am tapping into the truth and connectedness of the universe when I’m just sharing whatever pops up in my consciousness.  I love believing that my being at the aerial dance class yesterday was a result of the perfect mix between happenstance and intention.

I’m suddenly thinking of my grandmother, who is probably rolling over in her grave right now as her 35-year-old, unmarried grandaughter has run off to California to swing from a trapeze and study telepathy.  I hope she knows that for me this life is just another expression of love, like for her it was making us eat third or fourth helpings of dinner.  I’m following a river that my faith and spirit and intuition tells me existed before and way beyond me, but I’m choosing and creating and directing it too.  I hope she sees how alike we are in this.  (And I know she does.)

the feathered cape

An elbow points from beneath its feathered cape
I am running to meet you
Show me the words

Are the feathers enough to hold me?
May I cross the threshold and take the sounds to share?
I am waiting, always

Beginning again, I put down my brush and pick up the fingers
Heaven smells close.

I wander in the fields of self-reproach
As if drugged
And my vision of the feathered cape
In my stupor
Lifts me up and out

I choose
Is the white light of heaven

You said.

Earlier today I thought my words were broken.  Broken, or so rigid they could not form to the smooth curves of the knowing I want to express.  Since I was little I’ve gone through phases of deep despair and frustration over the frailty and imperfection of words in the face of my experience. Today I heard the teachers I needed and remembered: words can’t break.  Only we break our own vows and commitments – so understandably – in the face of all our human perils: distraction, avoidance, stubbornness, fear.

I’m building a mountain of trust, stone by stone.  Learning to get out of my own way.  Learning to listen.

I asked for help tonight.

You said.

You can dance too.
(And I can hardly sleep for the knowing of it.)

You forgot, didn’t you?

There is no way to break me. I cannot go wrong or do badly.
When will you believe me? I cannot shake you – your vice its too tight.

This is the time. Now. Here. Be with me.
Don’t be afraid. I love you as a  nightengale slipped from its nest. You who knows no boundaries or reason.

This picture you have is imperfect. Leave me to fill it.

You have the most glorious spirit I’ve ever created. You. Yes you. There is none other.

The typing is done by the fingers not the mind-vice.
The fingers have their own agenda that can listen beyond all your thoughts.
Listen like your fingers.
There will never be another reason to doubt, though you will.  Your fear is too strong.
But only because you create it each day.

The fingers typing is the poetry you are wanting.

Welcome yourself to the seat you’ve made and thank your Self for it.  Made of sticks and bones and paper and blood.  These you discarded and are now your throne.

You are so full of magic it cannot be expressed, only experienced.

Don’t go again.
Know that you can recognize me always.
I am your teacher and lover and friend and end to your loneliness. All those tragedies of human form.

Be this knowing.  The world needs you.
Has your recognition failed you yet?

Shelters come in forms that waves punish.
Bees dive for nectar in all the wrong places, most of the time.
You are another soldier.
I trust you to do it perfectly, because you are me.
We are.

Begin again.
Show the light to itself.
Go forward in the uncanny notions and step back from the dainty or cautious step.
Will is the movement.
Action comes from within.

Again.

Blogging affords so many opportunities. To connect, to receive feedback, to edit, to obsess.  It shines a light on the writer’s process, inside and all-visible. What a gift.

(You can imagine me saying this with genuine enthusiasm or dripping with sarcasm and be right either way.)

The feedback piece is particularly significant for me a the moment.  I’m challenged with perspective right now in my writing and my life – unbalanced in the big four corners of relationship: take in, share impact, offer out, receive impact.  My rectangle is askew, swollen with the taking in.  This is a comfy, risk-free place to be.   I have been reading books, listening to you talk, reading your blogs… choosing to sit quietly in response.  It’s nice sometimes, but gets unsatisfying quickly. My own bubbles begin rising to the surface and knock on the door, you don’t know that I’ve been listening to you or reading, and the world starts feeling bigger and more alone.  Relationships and communities and creative energies are organic, living things that wilt and break down when left untended.

I forget this, then I remember.  Today, I remember.  To all of you, my friends, please consider this an apology for my neglect in the sharing feedback loop, recently and probably for most of our relationship.   (And look for a spree of blog comments from me shortly.)

Last night I made an offering – writing and posting a poem here.  When I do this, the little stats graph that charts the number of visits to my blog magically leaps up and comments start coming in.  For sure, I am guilty of seeking validation for my little ego, but far more valuable is the hearing and understanding of how my words impact you. It grows me as a writer and as a person and I am ever-so grateful for your thoughtful honesty.

One such piece of meaty feedback goodness inspired a re-write of last night’s poem.  It is new to me, this ultra-visible experimentation.  Like inviting you over to try my new soup recipe. May I be so bold as to ask you how it graces your palate and lands in your belly?  Missing nutmeg? Too much pepper?

snapshots

sit
head loll down and to side
let jaw go
chest balloon: blow in, out

drive
worry about dishes that haven’t broken yet
turn left
soundtrack: pulse, night, soft honey

make up stories
see flowers in the dark
see them
psychic message in bottle: delivered

replay dinner
obsess
drive
stop for kitten
think about work
yell
wonder if

drive
wonder if

drive
wonder if

the un-want is hot again.

say yes
hold hand
feel it.

wrapped tight, moving nothing
hands and elbows push out the skin suit
hard
from inside ribs    face     skull
more, with
each intolerance.

cooperation is a choice.

wrap it tighter.
I want to feel what I’m breaking

snapshots

head loll down and to one side
jaw slack
chest balloon: blow in, out

see flowers in the dark
see them
think about work
soundtrack: pulse, night, honey

remember what happened
obsess
whisper mantras
psychic message in bottle: delivered

drive
stop for kitten
wonder if

hands push out skin suit
hard
from inside ribs   face   skull
more with
each intolerance.

cooperation is a choice.

wrap it tighter.
I want to feel what I’m breaking

All Roads Lead to Rome (and Here)

I’m enjoying, or not, depending on the moment, a stunning lack of focus lately.  I’m feeling oh so resistant to making any choice that could limit my options.  I want it all.  And I’m discovering the irony in this… that this mentality keeps me from fully picking, doing or enjoying anything, really.

I’m reminded as I write this of a pep-talk note we got from author Janet Fitch during NaNoWriMo.  I’m going to go right now to look it up…  Here’s part of a story she shared with us about a huge writer’s block she ran into around Chapter 8 in her book White Oleander…

“I just couldn’t decide what to do next.  I’d try this, try that, but each time I’d get stuck. The character would put her toe in and pull it out again. No, not that. Should  I just bag it? Write a different book? Go to law school? Watch reruns of Hogan’s Heroes? I was absolutely blocked at the crossroads.

Luckily I was seeing an amazing therapist at the time. I explained I was afraid that if I chose route 6, then I would be eliminating all the other possible routes. What if route 15 was better? Or 3 1/2 ? So I hedged. I couldn’t commit. I was stuck. And she gave me the piece of advice which has saved my writing life over and over again, and I will give it to you, absolutely free of charge. She said, ‘I know it feels like you have all these options and when you make a decision, you lose a world of possibilities. But the reality is, until you make a decision, you have nothing at all.’”

(Sigh.)

That’s it exactly.  Forget writer’s block.  I’m having people’s block.  (For the record, the word I really wanted to use was LIVEr’s block, as in one who lives, not the internal organ.)

I see how this plays out in my day-to-day… because it does, alot. I’m a toe-dipper.  Which becomes a thin-spreader – or a spreader thinner… which leads to a bad case of overwhelm.  Or I become a masterful avoider.  Lying in bed for hours, dreamily playing out loads of reckless fantasies for my life in my head, but really I’m just lying in bed.  I’m a dreamer, avoider, procrastinator… which, by the way, also leads to a bad case of overwhelm.

IT’S TIME, Lisa. Time to step up and step out. Take the non-habitual road.  Pick something, and DO. You know creativity thrives in limitation, so create a framework.  Follow one of those lists you love making so much.  GO. Be in the world.  (This is being said by my loudspeaker voice.  Do you have this voice? The one that comes in behind your left ear and gives you the firm and clear answer to any question you really want an answer to?)

Janet Finch advises fellow blocked writers to pick something that will make trouble for their character.  She writes, “Find the thing (your character) loves most and take it away from him. Find the thing he fears  and shove him shoulder deep into it. Find the person who is absolutely worst for him and have him delivered into that character’s hands. Have him make a choice which is absolutely wrong.”

This excites me. Anyone else up for getting into a little trouble today?

Oh, and a framework.  I do love frameworks.  I found this on the blog of a friend of a friend.  Wanna play? Copy the bold and fill it in.  Twelve minutes or less.

*i am annoyed by slow drivers who won’t pull over on the highway.
*i want it all.
*i have six billion ideas.
*i miss cuddling.
*i fear I won’t be able to say no if I say yes.
*i hear the furnace clicking, the solar batteries charging and the wind.
*i search for some imagined “right way”.
*i wonder what will happen if I just say, “screw it.”
*i regret not having more skill and self-awareness in my past relationships.
*i love big.
*i forgive you, if you were that slow driver on the highway.
*i ache for no-holds-barred connection.
*i always make my bed.
*i try to eat well and do yoga every day.
*i seem unapproachable when I’m being shy.
*i know this.
*i feel like walking to the beach today.
*i dance around my house naked.
*i dream of being independently wealthy. But
*i give all my money away when I have it.
*i listen carefully to everything you’re not saying.
*i sing all the time.
*i laugh until I cry sometimes.  I love that.
*i can’t believe it’s noon already.
*i write because I have to.
*i cry at every single therapy session. It’s annoying.
*i sleep like a rock.
*i am really happy about that.
*i see the sun!
*i need to clean the house.
*i should forever banish the word should from my vocabulary.

Writing the Other Side

I have been reading Rob Brezsny for an hour.  He is a madman.

He is famous for his syndicated astrology column now, but someday he’ll be more famous for his mastery in untethering imagination in pursuit of truth.  He’s one of the seekers, choosing the reckless (but not aimless) path of uninhibited expression to the spiritual holy grail.

He spends his days devotedly seeking the purest form of connection to our true, collective spirit.  The stuff of dreams and psychadelic worlds. The glorious wonders “behind the veil” of our boring little conditioning.  The delicious music of the subconscious that breathes love and manna and play into the world.  The everything that lives beyond our doomed daily chores of footsteps. The last great grand hope.

Brezsny was buoyed by discovering William Blake’s description of this place, in a passage from A Vision of the Last Judgment:

This world of Imagination is the world of Eternity; it is the divine bosom into which we shall go after the death of the Vegetated body. This World of Imagination is Infinite and Eternal, whereas the world of Generation, or Vegetation, is Finite and Temporal. There exists in that Eternal World the Permanent Realities of Every Thing which we see reflected in this Vegetable Glass of Nature. All Things are comprehended in their Eternal Forms in the divine body of the Saviour, the True Vine of Eternity, the Human Imagination.

I wonder sometimes if the subconscious/ imagination are just an attractive highway luring us further into our super-egos under the guise of naked truth. But because I am (proud to be) easily influenced, tonight I am lapping up the contagion of Rob Brezsny’s reckless truths with glee.  Just imagine if the whole world was infected – suddenly swinging wide the doors to our collective and limitless imagination realms -  fearlessly and playfully celebrating the grown children we are. If we saw the world differently, would gravity fail to operate and the sun forget to rise?

And so, your invitation.  Contribute an expression of your connecting with whatever feels true at this moment.  Any form.  Do not let your regular brain participate. What leaps cleanly from the tendons of your sense and invites us to a world where we remember our majestic capacity for ridiculousness?  Prove we are full to the brim of stuff way more interesting than the aerobics of those woefully limited left-brain synapses.  Enjoy five minutes of relief from the way words should go. No edits or judges or rehearsals… this is easy free spontaneous loveful playtime.

Here’s my five-minute-stream-write offering, for starters. And Rob’s site offers a great deal more plentiful juice…

******

“Will there ever be a day when we don’t die?” She asked him, her voice wavering in false fear.

“Absolutely not.” He obliged in the condescension her tone so obviously craved.

“I wonder then,” she mused peevishly in an instantaneous but nearly imperceptible shift to real bravery, “if we may have a go at it?”

“What!?” He cried in exasperation. “We are 10,000 moons away from life yet.  We must die exactly 8,934,256 deaths before we can live.”

She smiled coyly and slid the secret with her tongue across her freshly whitened teeth.

“Oh don’t you smile coyly at me with your tongue and whitened teeth, just because you have the womb secret wisdom. I demand you demonstrate your fearlessness immediately,” his left eye twinkled.

The death was quick and painless. She remembered milky skin and thoughtlessness.  She jumped in to the pool laughing, yelling “It’s been here all along!”

“I’ve been trying to tell you…” he glowered, but her laughing broke his words in two.

She looked at him and he didn’t have to apologize.

“Wanna float?” She smiled.