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.  This is nice sometimes, but it obviously 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 even more wonderfully, comments begin to appear.  I smile and sit up on the edge of my seat when these come in.  I am assuredly guilty of seeking validation for my little ego, but far more than this, I deeply value hearing and understanding 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.  Sometimes English can be so dumb.)

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? The one that always knows what’s best for you?)

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? Tell me what you’re cookin.

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.

Eye On the Big Ball

Time is doing funny things.  I look at the calendar, at my last post, and notice it’s been exactly one month since I wrote here.  How could so many days have happened since we had that conversation? And at the same time, how could I have been that girl only 30 days ago? I am learning time is in us, and not absolute.

I feel like I’m at my therapist’s office after a long time away and there are a huge backlog of topics for potential discussion.  Should I talk about the gleeful nesting I’ve been doing in my new house? Or how I have failed to finish my novel (yet)?  The marvelous New Years acid trip?  The old wounds of shame I’ve been licking? How I feel my capacity for joy expanding? The Lovers tarot card I pulled for 2009? Boys? Music? Money?

I guess I go through phases of interest in processing things through writing and talking and creating.  Lately I’ve been not so interested in the processing part, and more into the experiencing.  The “but what does it all mean?” has quieted and I’ve gone into “what’s this?” mode.  In this place my attention span is about four seconds. My communication skills take an abrupt nose dive and I hop through my thoughts and days, not accomplishing much of anything, trying everything, being flaky and unreliable, riding emotional rollercoasters, catching up on my sleep, staring out the window and daydreaming.

To all my friends and family,  I am sorry for largely boycotting the holidays as I go through this resurgence of toddler-dom. I have made promises and not kept them.  I’ve started writing notes to you and wrapping your presents and not finished.  I really did try to blog last weekend – I wrote the first paragraph of nine different posts before sighing and staring at the fire instead.  It’s like trying to fight the weather.

My friend Tuaca once said I’m like a dolphin.  I leap from the water then go down, deep, away.  It’s what Lisa’s do.  Please know that I have been receiving your holiday gifts and letters, reading your blogs and facebook updates, thinking of you, appreciating and loving you all wordlessly.

With an actual, normal work week here on the horizon I’m reluctantly coaxing the words and adultness back. I’m grateful for my Taurusness.  I harness this part of me who loves loves loves to set intentions, categorize things and make lists.  The big landmine to watch for here is the ambitiousness.  The part that wants to do EVERYTHING and do it PERFECTLY and thinks everything takes about 25% as long as it actually does.  (Oh, Lisa.)  The ambitiousness itself is not a problem actually, it’s the judgement and standards and compulsion and fear of disappointing or of not being enough that ickifies everything. (Ickifies is now my new favorite word I just made up.)

I’m keeping my eye on the big ball tonight as I make my little lists.  Life is too short for jobs and budgets and phone calls to be a source of misery. I am clear in my vision.  I have the Big List. I have all the tools I need to ride the ride.  (Hero, I’m smiling, remembering you saying “We are easily seduced, but our intentions are powerful.” Yes.)

I want to go slower this year.  I want the middle way – between these extremes of doing everything and doing nothing. I want to practice, to move toward mastery in relationship with everyone – real, sincere, in-time connecting – and to choose to spend my time with people who want that too.  I want to experience and express sincerely and simply and proudly without performing.  I want to go after what I want and banish old fears with absolution.  I want to open my body and mind and spirit as a channel to life and let it live and dance and sing me.  I want to treat myself and everyone with highest respect and recognition of our majesty.  I want to let go, let go, let go of everything in the way.  I want to know how much joy I can handle.

Do you want these things too?

Yes?

I vote we do it together. There are big distractions and egos and wounds out there and we need each other. We are powerful, and even more deliciously, magnificently so when we’re together.  And if the Mayan calendar is right we only have three years.  We had better get cracking.

If you’re in, and this is an experiement, I’ll post occasional assignments here for us. I will do them too. I hope you’ll play.

Assignment #1: Share your magnificence.

Right now, post something in the comments section (click on the “comments” link below) that displays your wonderfulness for the whole world to see.  Something you are proud of.  Something that is of you and and beyond you.  There is no room for modesty or apology here. Or for not-good-enough.  Or for waiting to finish the thing that isn’t finished.  Share something you have now.  A poem, a picture, a YouTube link, a recounting of the impossible accomplishment, a link to your very most favorite blog post… anything that when you did it made you go “wow – look at how big I am.”  This is a magnificence show and tell.  A chance for all of us to be equally fantastic – to ooh and ahh at all our gifts and recognize our own selves in them.

Whatcha got?

spoons of intent

the space between us
is measured in spoons of intent
present
and hidden to both of us

spaces make room for life and quicksand
and our talking paints the door
for surrender to enter

I show you polaroids,
you tell stories
that rumble low in your chest
and till my soil

I’m chewing your hope in my mouth
moving it around with my tongue
keeping it supple
and ready for travel

Our lights are coming in.
They won’t leave hope any room here.

Destination Perfection

It is 3:22am on a Saturday night/ Sunday morning and I am certain I am the luckiest girl alive.  Because luck does not look as one expects, I am learning. I did not win the lotto, or the cake walk at the the local fair today (thank heavens), but I am remembering, at this quiet, precious moment between days that the whole wide world has conspired in my favor. I cannot do any wrong thing.

My friend Paula Shaw’s raspy, dramatic, and always convincing voice often rings in my head, saying things like “Just go! All roads lead to Rome!” or “It’s hopeless. But not serious.” Today I’m reminded of her missile metaphor.  She explained that launched missiles, with all their technology and precision are almost never moving on target.  The only way a missile knows how to reach its destination is to move in that general direction, and when it’s far enough off course, it recognizes this and corrects.  So in fact, it is always moving in an ongoing zig zag, rather than some imagined perfect arc.

I am reassured by this. I can follow all my human little longings and mind trips and insecurities and hiccups down a river of sad or shame or give up… but even these rivers belong to life.  And life always takes its course in the direction of perfection.

Example A.

There are, let me check, 20 hours and 31 minutes left in National Novel Writing Month.  The official goal of this is to write 50,000 words in 30 days.  An absurd and absolutely doable task, that more than 100,000 people in the world will accomplish this year.  I will not be one of them.  I am at just over 15,000 words, for a variety of reasons.  Namely, 1) my life is fuller than full, and 2) I cannot turn off my inner editor.

Fuller than full is pretty self-explanatory.  I have four jobs, have moved three times this month, had friends visit and competing priorities. The editor piece is interesting. With the exception of a few moments, I have successfully wrestled my inner critic into submission. (Woo!) However my internal editor (there is a big difference) and I have something of a love affair.  I love, love, love polishing as quickly as I create.  I have not yet found faith enough to follow the rough edges of the story unknown far into oblivion.  My editor chimes in at every turn and pulls me back into a course that feels “more inspiring” to follow and then my inner Taurus must go back and fix the story accordingly.  I knew this whole novel-writing business would be one big giant personal process.  I was right.

The great success here is that I am not beating myself up terribly for my un-winning. I have, in fact, altered the rules to fit suit my needs and am extending my personal deadline to the 1st of the year.  50,000 words in two months is fine with me.  And no, the slick little progress bar on the right there will not accommodate, so I will post my own word count updates there instead.  (And I do invite you to hold me to it.  Peer pressure can be used for good, you know.)

In sum: I aimed high and decided to do this thing.  I am missing the goal, and still the whole thing has plopped me exactly in the middle of myself with great success.

Example B.

It was 11:15pm this evening, now yesterday, and I was at a choicepoint.  Do I spend my whole Saturday night alone at home with the novel writing or take a break and see some live music/ have some actual human interaction?  Such choicepoints, as mundane as they seem, always feel at the time as though the fate of my whole existence is at stake.  But what will I MISS if I choose this?  Which choice is really coming from CENTER? Blah blah blah.

I hemmed and hawed.

I’m in a groove with the writing again, so the kindest thing would be to stay here and do this for myself.

I wrote 2,000 words today and deserve a break. Live music! Go enjoy yourself.

I have a sore throat. I should sleep.

I have a sore throat. I should drink whiskey.

I went with the live music and the whiskey.

And now I’m here.

This “here” is not exactly the same as the “here” I would be experiencing if I hadn’t made that decision.  The learnings would look different. (And my lips wouldn’t be tingly.) But I am absolutely, beyond a doubt certain of the fact that I would have gleaned exactly what I needed to know to steer myself on the course I am choosing for my life, no matter what I did.  Whether “less drinking, more sleeping” is my renewed intention or “less hiding, more contact” – my course is correcting itself in the direction of my perfect evolution.

The world is conspiring in favor of my growing up.

I cannot do anything wrong.

Choices and events that bring me pain and suffering are powerful motivators.

Choices and events that bring me joy and fulfillment are powerful indicators.

In this season of thanks and gratitude, I am feeling mighty grateful for this knowing.  What a relief(!) to relax into this grand paradox – this faith – that I am always on the path, despite myself.  I won’t remember this most of the time, and it doesn’t even matter.  Is this not the most wonderfulest thing ever?  Call it god, call it life, call it fate, call it what you will… I just know I have this great gift of choice, and no matter what I do, I am being lived.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Procrastination Station

I don’t need NaNoWriMo’s procrastination station.  I have an infinite supply of my own. Like this blog.  I should be writing many, many words right now. In my novel, that is.  Instead I’m writing words here.  Because my brain is working like these sentences. Small and random and not well put together.

So here’s my random collection of things to share this evening.

1. 

   Nano halo with ice cream horns

   This is a picture of what I look like right now. I’ve decided this is my Nano halo, complete with ice cream horns.

2. I am weary. I moved houses, again, today. This is a house I will move out of on Dec. 1st, so I can move back into it on Dec. 15th. And I will live there until at least April.  April!  Oh god! If you want to know how I feel about this, go look at the cover of the latest New Yorker Magazine.  You should seek it out anyway. (Thanks Dale.)
3. It is ridiculously beautiful in Big Sur right now.  I feel bad for all of you who live in places that are cold and rainy.  It is sunny (not now, because it’s nighttime) and 80 degrees and I did yoga on a deck this morning next to a hot tub, overlooking 180 degree blue blue ocean view. (Thanks Nadine!)  I say this to inspire you all to come visit. Since I will soon have a house. And to say “Thank you god for not making me move in the cold rainyness.” Because today I would have just sat down in the mud and cried.
4. My friend Mike from London is coming to visit on Monday.  Yea.
5. I’m having lunch with my friend Chris tomorrow. Yea.
6. I’m going to Mexico in February. Yea. (Thanks Mom.)
7. I’m going to San Francisco this weekend to write dangerously, at the Night of Writing Dangerously.  And I found out today I’ll get a prize, for raising all those dollars, from all of you!  Hey! Thanks!  I’m also hoping to march in the streets.  You can too! http://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com/?t=anon
8. Which brings me, aptly, to number 8, the post-Prop 8 despairdrom.  Seriously. I have been ruminating much on this. So have other people who are speaking out most eloquently. Namely, Keith Olberman and Joe Solomonese. Please take some minutes and click on both those links. And it seems I have something to say too.

The passage of Proposition 8, which takes away the right of gay couples to marry in California, right there in the Constitution, has been beyond a disappointment to me and so many people I know.

To me it feels personal and it feels mean.  What a pointy contrast to the presidential outcome and The Big O’s message of hope – appealing to the best, most heartfelt, inspired, humble and giving parts of our humanness.

I am sad, but I not at all hopeless. I know in my knowingest knowing that the passage of Prop 8 will be more inspiration for all people, in every state, to engage in a dialog.  And dialog will save the day. Dialog with those who are directly impacted by it is important, but also those that aren’t. Those who think this has nothing to do with them.  Those who think that the rights of someone they haven’t met are not inextricably linked with their own. And it is my fervent hope that this inspires dialog with ourselves.  What an opportunity to discover what our own beliefs and (often subconscious) intentions are bringing to the world!

They say a “value” only changes when two held beliefs come in conflict.  It can be a painful and sometimes lengthy process, but it happens all the time.

Example: I believe the gay lifestyle is wrong.  My son just told me he is gay and I love him.

Whether or not it seems so, I promise, these two statements are fully incompatible.  These incompatibilities force something to shift.

My invitation to you is this. Take an opportunity, right this very minute, to shine a kind and honest light on your most deeply embedded beliefs about love and relationships in general.  All your parts.  Write them down. Your parts will disagree and you may not like some. But in so seeing, we have a chance to more consciously choose which part we want to lead our lives.

Cheri Huber says something to the effect of “You can have a wounded little whiny person in you who just wants to get whatever she wants all the time.  You can love her and listen to her and accept her as a part of you.  But you don’t give her the credit card and keys to the car.”  (I have a part of me who wants to pop other people’s zits.  But I do not let her go to parties.)

Ok then. Remember to check out Joe and Keith’s links.

Back to writing.