Make believe you aren’t me, part 1

I just realized why the prospect of writing fiction doesn’t enchant me the way it used to. I’m too attached to my own character. I have an obsessive streak of self-checking, self-awareness, self-righteousness, self-justification and comparing.

Somewhere in my psychological evolution I became terrified of being forgotten. And now it springs forth in my daily doings and goings on as an internal worldview commentated endlessly by a Tourette’s-like spout of comparisons to ME. I watch TV, “Who would do that? I would never do that”. I read a book, “Why isn’t she worried about being late? I hate being late.” I talk with someone, listening, waiting for my moment… “well here’s what I think.” As if there is someone else listening to this conversation and I must convince them that I exist here as my own being, with my own legs.

I do get this is normal. Most all of us have some of this, since we are each the eyes of our own universe. And still I’m getting a mini “a-ha” today, feeling how this is a total creativity stopper. How comparing everything to who we think we already are is a super way to avoid allowing in those little changes and shifts and gifts that grow us up.

I know this ME-ness is just a thin skin layer away from something different. My night life is a rich, rich dream world, overflowing with fiction. Most of my dream characters are strangers to me, doing strange things. And they are compelling even to my self-absorbed self. They are my constant, first-thing-in-the-morning reminder that I’m full of much more than my voices say I am.

I had my birthday Tarot reading a couple weeks ago, and it called upon my “dreamer” as a guide and source of wisdom. I think I see what it’s getting at. Dreams, awake or asleep, are the salve on wounds of change. I fear hugely changing my sense of self – it rocks my world (not in the good way.) But dreaming about something different, now that’s colored with hope. It’s a brightly colored thread coming out of my chest to grab on and follow, even if it means putting all the ME-ness up on a shelf.

My world is full of change now. Earthquake change. Gotta find a place to live in the next 30 days and move. And I’ll be moving alone, away, apart from my closest, best person. Maybe it’s time for an experiment in fiction. Not as an escape, but as the antidote to all those voices who are telling me all this change outside will change who I am. As a train taking me past all the self stuff, straight on course to Source.

dreamless sleeping

I’m feeling acutely
the difference between responding to my life
and being the choreographer of it

how having no invitation or opportunity to dream
takes its subtle but steady toll
I’m writing and the words stop
start stop
(sigh)
going fuzzy and lethargic
till not even a good night’s sleep renews me

cue my will
that force who takes me swimming against the current
or at least has me grab a branch in this rushing river
rushing toward the waterfall of the familiar

cue my wisdom
who steady as the moon cycles light and pulls my tides
reminding me this morning
to do the thing I’ve been avoiding

this risk of unpleasantness
and fear of learning
(read: doing things badly)
cloaked in kindness
opalescent
stealing through the night
blocking the moon

I want my breath back.

Life and death in a small town

Big Sur has been full of death and life. Our vibrant spring blooming everywhere has been tempered with sadness. Our postman, Mike, hung himself on Thursday. Ric Masten, a local and international artist/ poet/ storyteller/ undefinable life commentator passed away peacefully at his home on Friday. My friend Ronnie killed himself last month. And there have been other deaths – people I didn’t know personally but touched many here.

It occurs to me, that the enormity of the population of this world – the sheer number of people on the earth that at one moment will have me feeling entirely insignificant – will, at another moment, nurse me out of my missing any one person too much. For every person we have contact with, we are touched uniquely and permanently. The precise constellation is irreplaceable. So is the form. But the touching, the inspiration, contact that I receive is formless and entirely replaceable. When you aren’t here, someone else is. Your space gives room for another to arrive. And whoever I come in contact with helps me better know myself, and life.

For me knowing this takes the edge off – replacing the hopelessness with freedom. I can’t criticize myself without feeling the relief of my insignificance. I can’t pull the hope out of my despair.

I miss everyone that is gone. And when I start missing too much, something knocks me on the head and reminds me that what I’m really longing for is still available. The best of us is in everyone. And everyone does their best.

Thank you for your inspiration Ric:
http://ACMCTV.blip.tv/file/555368

Feeless free writer (rider)

Per the invitation: http://talknsmack.wordpress.com/

Old Chopper, they called him. Reminded them of that heap of metal off Birch St near the Rhoades’ place.

Sat every day looking the same. Same sour face, same stubble that mysteriously never grew nor was shaven. Same unkempt shirt and hair. Growing the same age old every day, holding the same half glass of lemonade. Bottom lip jutting forward, refusing to reveal what is surely a toothless, or at least un-pretty grin, if anyone had ever seen it.

Old Chopper. Maybe they gave him the same name as that old truck (the one by the Rhoades’ place) because we have the same relationship. Our lives move but they still sit there, aging imperceptably, as if time was immaterial to those who stop moving. We don’t trust him quite enough to have a name like Bob or Paul. He has been nobody’s brother to us. Just Old Chopper, sitting on his porch, serving witness to those of us who busy about living.

Tell me

Tell me what you want
and I’ll reveal you.

this is simple.

nowhere to be, go, hide.

At the moment you believe I’ve failed you,
you’ll feel the pin prick of realization again
and come back to me.

There is no one like you.
Nothing written like this.

The call

When the call comes
I’m convinced my trust is not enough yet

And I can see yet forever

The roots defy the tide
But the tide is rooted in 100 bijillion gallons of sea

Somewhere I remember,
and I swallow

The big dig.

I dig.

Despite my best attempts to avoiddistractrunfromdisassociateresist

I dig.

Expecting karmaofmurderingsmallchildren
oratleasthideousfirebreathingdemonmonsters

I dig.

Dig deeper.

What’shidingthere’ssomthinghidingsomethingIhidsomethingbig
somethingcausingthismadnesssomething

I dig.

And one day, sore and dirty and lost, I hit a vein.

Squintingsquirmingohshitdon’tlookdon’tlookdon’tlook
don’tbreathewhosedumbideawasthis

And laughter comes.

What’sthiswho’slaughingwhyistherelaughing

Laughter and more laughter

WhyamIlaughingthismustbeoneofthoseinappropriateresponsestoterror

Laughing until I can’t breathe.

Laughing more.

Laughing tears and joy and love andohmygodhowdidIneverknowthisisinme

All this.

All this.

Growing pains

I haven’t written in some days. I’m feeling like I have nothing to say, being wrapped up in and worried about dramatic changes everywhere, obsessed with my poverty and right now I feel cranky and have a splitting headache that makes me want to stick my head in a bucket of ice water.

But my friend P goes and starts a blog about feeless free writing:

http://talknsmack.wordpress.com/

And the invitation insists I sit here in my cranky achiness and write anyway. Well I’ll show you and just sit here with nothing nice to say. Nothing good, nothing interesting. Nothing. Nya nya nya nya. And fine. I’ll just show the whole wide world what kind of a child I have to put up with all the time. (crickets)

The trouble is, writing today isn’t going to make me any money. It won’t solve my problems or get rid of my headache. It won’t get the work done that needs doing, or call my friends back. It won’t resolve the argument I just had with Y or gracefully pull the tense silence between us back into the yummy folds of connection. It won’t make bad things not happen or even help me feel better about them when they do.

So I’m trying hard to remember. I’m squeezing my eyes shut and crossing my fingers and reaching far into childhood memories for some helpful mantra “I think I can, I think I can” that will fix it all and bring me back. Back to center where I don’t hate whatever I have to say so loudly. Where all of me can just sit here writing and feel like that is a perfectly appropriate and even inspired thing to do when all those other things that need doing are just sitting there looking at me. Back to someone who has something worth saying.

And Y asks me if he can read me something – two sentences into the properties of iodine and the symptoms of iodine deficiency I start crying. And I suspect something else is going on. Maybe.

I’ve been so good lately. Really allowing myself to be angry, which is second only to sharks, or maybe the anesthesia not working, on the list of my top ten fears. I’ve been crossing the boundaries of my habitual life paradigm. I’m not even sure what that means, but I’m sure I’m doing it. Big stuff. Left and right. Whammo with a life-changing decision… practicing following my own voice. Kersplat with a gaping hole in my plans… practicing trust and hoping anyway. The whole wide world is falling down and I’m practicing breathing.

And tonight my seams are tearing a bit. The bulging belly of all that is being evoked – trying desperately to keep it from meaning I’m outgrowing my favorite jeans. I don’t have anything else to wear! I don’t WANT anything else! Well shit.

It’s going to be ok. That’s the best I can muster for myself tonight through the fog of drippy tears. You don’t have to know what to do, or even what’s wrong. It’s going to be fine.

I’m reluctantly (very reluctantly) accepting this. And for the record, $50,000 would help too.