Glimpses of Light in a Dark Well

My fear feels overwhelming to me now. I've been recommended to say, to affirm to myself, that instead of repeating that sort of thing (as if I am chanting it into construct), to say I am strong - I am able - I am wise -- asserting and affirming my own power that is within. To not give it that power away. I have given so much power away for so much of my life to those who are willing to take it. To those not even of the awareness that they are. I have been that person, too. I have stolen others' power -- those whose power felt stronger than my own.

I have been coming to the realization more and more of the depth of my family members' societal programming. This is not their fault. I feel anger towards society for weaving this thick web in the minds of the people I love in this world. Of weaving it into so many people's minds. It is so thick that there isn't even space for new information to enter. The thing that pervades this, that feels like this growing web of darkness that I can physically feel within my mind is the darkness of my deepest fears coming up, and the sense-making of all of it in terms of the karmic scheme of things. Even that this is my 29th post and I am 29 (almost exactly 29 1/2 -- it is said that Saturn returns at just about 29 1/2 years) is a trip to me. I feeling hesitant to write much here because of my deep distrust in the "powers that be" in terms of our society and knowing that this account is linked to my email. I would like to start a new blog soon under an anonymous name. I see so clearly the dysfunction of our society, how sick everything and everyone (especially here, in this culture) is. The way that our society perpetuates the "rat race" so as to keep everyone from being disconnected from truth and their own personal power. For those "powers that be" have no power if its citizens come into their own strength, their own personal power.

It feels close to impossible -- as close to something as another thing can get -- to recreate my experience, even just today, via words. Perhaps I can say it is impossible to fully describe it, because it is a comfort. We can never fully describe our experience because language simply falls short. But the language of experience speaks volumes, and I know that when others know deep pain or abundant joy, that the sharing of this comes closer to allowing us to know one another than any words -- a human construct -- could ever allow us to come. I know that I outlined some key points as to my day yesterday to some so deeply cherished, supportive friends yesterday. I continue to label it "absurd" that through this experience of having what I consider to be visions, I still want to write everything down, to record it all. It is what I consider the Writer within me. And I know that it is also my inner Healer (Penelope would often describe this experience, even in those early months of this year, as "birth of a healer" -- she knew it.) Or perhaps this desire to share my experience comes from the scared, alone little girl in me -- I want to comfort her in ways that she can't find now, and she -- I -- have always been writing. (I just often did not know how.) This little girl is still within me -- she is a part of me, just as everything is -- and she is there just in the way that there is a little one within each of us in need of some form (and varying levels) of healing. See, the way I just wrote that sentence? That is my inner Teacher. I am trying to teach others what I have come to know, even throughout this. How am I doing that? It's because these figures are within me. And also, the one desiring to record all of this is the frightened Experiencing-Human I am embodying right now, the one grasping and desperately trying to control, the one I feel in such need of others to witness. To be able to more fully understand. But I know that my Healer wants others who are suffering to know that someone out here understands, has been in this dark well. I am still in it. I can say that I'm not in it, and it can feel true for a moment, but if I am being honest, my day-to-day experience exists in this well. What is underneath this well, or around it, or below it? It is held by something. If these things that would elicit the pain that I am so terrified to experience come to pass, I know the well will get even darker. I wrote two days ago about what we do to remove ourselves from pain, what we do to avoid it, even preemptively. Last night I sat and looked into the darkness of this room and found some comfort in it. Granted, I had taken some Klonopin for relief (which it did offer, especially in terms of physiological systems) and some Ambien for sleep. I felt that I needed rest, and so I gave in. I am not sleeping without Ambien, currently. And last night, I was scared to go to sleep because I was scared of what might come in dreamtime. I have heard of people who pass on visiting their loved ones in dreams. I was scared this would happen last night. I am also scared to name who that is; my current deepest fear, and perhaps one that I hadn't been able to even touch before wading through what I thought was my deepest fear (that of losing my mom) is now pervading my experience. I don't think I can name it here, explicitly, in words, but it's in losing the person who is the most dear to me in this world, the person who I know is simply pure good -- she is so wise, she is compassionate, she is understanding and she is so strong: she is coming into her power, and she gives me hope every day. Without her, I am scared to feel the feeling that I will actually have lost all hope. I'm not sure I can do this without her. She is light. She is happy, at her core. She doesn't need the antidepressants that these western professionals say she does. What she needs is to experience love, to experience herself. She does experience joy -- when she laughs, everything lights up. That's how I know that she is not depressed -- that it is simply her conditioning that has brought her to that "diagnosis". Really, I believe that we all are full of abundant joy, actually -- that we are all GOOD. I know this to be true. I recognize, though, that most of us wear our thick programming like armor without even recognizing we have it on. Hers, though, is porous -- like mine. This is the beauty of sensitivity, of porousness. It is through those holes that we can let the light in, that truth seeps in, even though other stuff gets in as well -- and that other stuff is what makes, for us, life feels far harder than it should be.

Catching glimpses of enlightenment these past few days has been terrifying for me because it's come alongside these "visions" (imaginings?) that elicit such deep and paralyzing fear. My mindset with that is that if I am waking up, seeing sacred geometry pulsating around the setting sun while sun-gazing [I will mention here that a doctor who I knew would not be able to help me who I went to see today for the second time at the behest of my mom who has claimed he has studied "vedic sciences" and then it was "vedic arts" (which is it?? Sciences feels sterile and inaccurate and Arts feels like a way to flimsily and whimsically label what is truth rooted in ancient human-as-spirit-being experience) did not know what sun gazing was when I mentioned this to him, and instead said that I should be hospitalized. Which I will say here is what another friend said to me yesterday, a friend whose advice hasn't felt appropriate in a long time. I wish things were that simple. I wish that anti anxiety and pain meds didn't suppress what is trying to come and instead simply delay it.] I also saw some other crazy patterns [what is referred to in our culture as "sacred geometry" as it makes up the blueprint of the universe -- for those who may be reading this who haven't heard of this term -- you should look this up. Across time and space these sacred geometric images have been found in humans' physical recordings of them on land masses, buried deep underground, in the very shape & construction of the pyramids] when my eyes were out of focus at night on the way back to my parents' house from my sister's apartment two nights ago. That whole day preceding was a trip of trying to bust through the fog of a sleepy society, and that night when I returned back to the house, I felt I was failing a test because I asked to go over to Hope's because all day I had found it so hard to be alone -- relying on her rather than simply myself. The reason it felt so scary is because of this "vision", this deepest fear that I have. Regardless of timing (and it may be obvious that what I fear coming to pass feels like it will exist in a much shorter timespan than what one would or could ever want or feel capable of accepting), we are all alone and for each one of us, all we have is what we do with our aloneness.

One of my dear sister-friends in Boulder said to me, amidst other words of deep and strong support, these words:
"I feel like we are sisters in arms, in our locked mortal battles. We can't fight the demons for each other, but we can buoy one another when one is faltering." I am trying to stay strong. I read about the "shaman's journey", that the first "demon" someone who is being called into shamanism meets on this journey is fear. I don't know where I read, that is was at some point in the last 6 months or so. I would imagine the second demons the would-be shaman must learn to befriend are anger and then sadness. There are no words for this. Having "almost too much water" in my astro chart, as my friend Kevin puts it, is creating a deeper well for me here. But, as I came upon many years ago when I still going to Marissa for support, pain grows along with joy. These are just words until one experiences it. The deeper pain carves, the deeper the joy can go. I have experienced this in action, but I have not yet experienced the joy coming into the canal pain is carving now (through fear). Can fear be classified into the category of pain? I think it may be the other way around -- that pain comes from fear. I do feel that I'm in pain, but I know it is nothing like the pain I will feel should any of this come to pass in physical reality.  It is currently just fear, although my body often physiologically responds like I am already experiencing the trauma of this pain. I wonder if I could meet fear and conquer it without these things coming to pass. Perhaps, yes. I do know that Dr. Charles told me that, if I am to be a healer, how would I know another's suffering (and, presumably, be equipped to truly help another through their journey) without knowing that sort of suffering myself? The greatest healers have been through the greatest struggle. I don't currently feel equipped to be thrown into the fire (though that is precisely what I did when i chose ceremony in December of this past year.) There is karma tied into this -- that I can see. How it looks in physical reality I don't yet know. Through this, I find myself deeply drawn to my strongest friends -- those who are truly grounded in their power. Most of them have lost someone close to them. My friend Eryn, when I started to move into fear around my mom, told me in April "I thought I would die without my mom. I thought I would die." I looked into her bright eyes and I knew the fact of truth within her words.

My comment about conquering fear leads me to this:

I read a quote from the Dalai Lama within the last week or so from an article that someone sent me, I believe. The part I am remembering now goes like this: "This is why we practice." So that when things come up in our lives that throw us off, when pain comes in, we have our practice, our ritual, to fall back on to hold us. My practice is faltering now. I am seeing how this society provides anti-pain medications so as to replace practice. If we continue to feed the pharm system, we continue to feed The System, as they're all, of course, intertwined. Even that dark web is connected to the web of light. Humans have built it on the surface. What holds all of it, the web of life (of light) is there underneath, and it is stronger. I have to believe that this is true.

A selfless, kind friend who fed me and offered me safe space a couple nights ago, the night I sun-gazed and watched as a pulsating geometric pattern surrounded the setting orb, witnessed these words as they came out of my mouth: "How do we learn to accept the pace of things? We often so want to speed things or slow things down." I am quoting myself because that's what I said. That thought came from noticing how quickly the sun went down behind the building next to his. I was out on the deck and sat -- and then stood as the sun continued to set so as to catch some last glimpses of it -- how quickly it went down. In our society's concept of time, it was simply a few minutes. That is how quickly the earth passes through each day, every day. But we notice the pace of it during the sunset, or at least I did. It feels metaphorical: I don't know how much time i have left, but I do know that we notice things more towards the end. This is a lesson for living, and I have done so much wasting of my time here. As my friend Alix says (yes, her name is spelled that way as well), "the blessing of your beautiful life" -- we know pain is on its way at all times. How do we hold that knowing and still live in joy? Due to the acuteness of my fear (and also a very triggering, frightening astrological forecast that was told to me of late), I am overcome with it. I have experienced moments of abundant, pervasive joy in my life. Some people don't get any. I will say I don't feel that I have experienced enough of this, simply relative to what I am able to understand in my head (though have not practiced enough, therefore do not yet consistently embody). I do know that everyone has a set of circumstances that we enter the world with (genetics, biology, physiology, etc.) but we also have a set of circumstances that we are put onto us by our setting and society in which we're raised. Waking up in Western society is harder -- and those of us who know this know why. Constant distraction, constant games set up like they're important (i.e. everything that's on TV, and therefore TV itself: it is quite literally the food being spoon-fed into our psyches), constant interference keeping us from ourselves, from our true knowing, our true essence, from truth. The rat race. The trick that we are making money for ourselves so as to live a "happy" (comfortable) life while turning away from other humans (e.g. the banks taking people's houses away, often leaving them in poverty and on the streets) in exchange for what we believe to be the value of money, and the reality that we are never actually making this money for ourselves, since all we actually do have is something we can't touch. So to distract from the pain that comes from this knowing is this: the more we have that we can touch, the more we are associated to believe we are living. Is this truly living? Touching all these things without touching our own true essence? Without connecting with others, with love? If touching love is how we truly live, and there is light behind everything, then it is only through seeing this light, that is, finding it within ourselves, where are true essence exists, that we can experience the pure joy that can be aliveness. I would like to embody this knowing. Truly. Aho.

Through writing this, the fear that I've felt surrounding me is just slightly lessened. It is slightly less.

Normal Consciousness

A friend in Boulder, before I moved back here, told me that indeed it might be "good" for me "to be around people of normal consciousness for a while". I agreed, grateful to hear support of this decision to move back here, this decision onto which I grasped so tightly in an unrelenting clutch and refused to let go, in words that made sense to me. The prevalence of beyond-my-wildest-imagination synchronicities, haunting and persistent dreams containing various messages transferred to me by what I can only describe as a faceless, dark force, experiences of glimpses of seemingly random images in my mind's eye only to come face to face with that image in waking life anywhere from hours to days later, and other sorts of visions of the sort that I'm not ready to write about here, along with the sort of heady and out-there, ethereal explanations from well-meaning friends had gotten to be way too much for me. My friend who spoke of my reintegration into the world "normal consciousness" happens to display a well-integrated balance of spirituality and earthiness that I appreciate -- but this felt rare in Boulder. I can think of maybe five or six other friends who I would describe as having solid feet in both of those worlds. My community (and the Boulder/Denver "conscious community" in general), far and away, is extremely astral-plane-bound -- and with this comes a lot of spiritual bypassing. The topic of spiritual bypassing is another topic all on its own, and one I don't feel like going into right now. But basically, all the existentialism became way too much for me.

WELL. The truth is this: things don't stop because your geographic location shifts. This shows up in myriad ways, of course. What I've learned, fully, is that once you've pulled back the veil -- and I mean, you've really pulled it back -- there's no turning away from what lies there in front of you. There's no closing your eyes to what you've seen, and there's no lessening, really, of the guilt you experience when you're awake in a world that is in such dire need of conscious action from awakened humans (in whatever form that takes) but you're choosing to not be a part of the action because of fear. Because that's just what the system wants -- fearful, complacent citizens. If we're easier to control, those in power get to continue with their harmful cycles that ultimately perpetuate greed and unearned power, add to their already high piles of dirty money, and their power grows, along with the thirst for it. I know, I know. The us/them talk sometimes contributes to the problem. But let's be honest, if you really know, you really know who is "us" and who is "them". Enough with the talk of oneness that doesn't get us, collectively, anywhere but might make you seem more enlightened in the eyes of the supposedly less enlightened (thus in some way excusing your blatant cultural misappropriation of your attire at music festivals -- attire, which, by the way, is almost definitely Made in China, India, Taiwan, or some other third world country that employs a child-labor-exploiting, lax-labor-law and horrendous-working-condition-having factory, thus perpetuating those countries' dependencies on ours for jobs -- and our own citizens' misled and highly dangerous beliefs that "we are giving people in those countries jobs" so buying these clothes must be okay, while unknowingly contributing to so many of our nation's perpetuating cycles of misuse of power. For the record, if you're buying clothes that aren't made in the country in which you live, you're part of the "them".) Everything is connected, sure. But the whole "oneness" thing began from this knowing, and it begets a certain type of complacency. Things aren't changing quickly enough, but it's not from turning away from the systems that got us here in the first place that change happens. It's by engaging consciously with these systems. For years I stepped back from the political scene because it all just seemed like too much, and I wasn't seeing a candidate who I felt actually could and would create change, or even speak to the issues that really matter (as in, a tangible plan to uproot the forces that perpetuate the unending environmental concerns plaguing our world or the myriad systemic issues contributing to social injustice and inequality), and besides, the two-party system is a complete joke anyway and no one really wins because everyone is saying the same thing in different words, but all while maintaining a snail's pace rate of change but calling it progress because it's what we're used to. We have so far to go.

You may understand why comments like, "If astrology were accurate and actually held water, why doesn't 99% of the world look to it for answers?" and "I'm the most intelligent and informed person you know; I watch the news every night," and (upon my questioning of the political leanings of the New York Times [in so much as that there are political leanings at all, thus contributing to a broken and antiquated system]), "Do you know what you're even talking about?! This is the New York Times! [Insert incredulous pause, as in, how could I not sign my soul away to the decisions made around content by the Editors-in-Chief at the New York Times?]" ... and then there's having my altar referred to as "sort of creepy" (which I actually translated as the fact that I have an altar at all being "creepy"), and also altered (pun unintended) while I'm not around (which just feels disrespectful, but those who don't understand obviously will not understand that), as well as a plethora of other micro-aggressions and insinuations, are absolutely and fully infuriating. Not to mention, eliciting a feeling of total and complete isolation. Being awake is fucking isolating. Not everywhere, but when you don't have others who see and understand these basic nuances of awakened interaction, and the larger picture of all that's actually wrong with so much human-driven choice at the detriment of all societies and the planet at large, it's isolating. As. Fuck. While I have met some within Ann Arbor's conscious community, I don't feel like I have the energy to really share myself, my story, right now. If you're a friend who knows me and is reading this, you might know what I'm referring to. So instead, for the most part, I stay in my comfort zone, which is my parents' house. Sometimes for days at a time. The definition of "comfort" is closing in -- smaller and more tightly on itself, and my conscience -- all the time. (I say my conscience because I feel an incredible weight, that guilt to which I referred earlier, heavy on my shoulders: I'm awake, and I'm doing nothing about what I see, aside from sitting here typing blog posts like these and picking up trash on the ground wherever I go.) Perhaps this is the greatest burden of all, and contributes even more to the feelings of isolation.

Contributing also is that Ann Arbor is still so far behind in so many ways in terms of higher consciousness. Note: Being a *politically liberal* city does not a conscious city make. At least not in the way I'm using the term conscious, which is in that those who relate to this word have awoken to the truth (and illusion) of separation; have recognized the need for the integration of the concepts of science/sustainability, spirituality, and social justice (and recognize that this three-legged stool upon which we all must sit will topple over without all the delicate and even balance of all three of its legs; and that man-made systems on earth have become co-dependent on one another, many of them relying on "first world" countries such as the U.S., meanwhile, the U.S. allowing this perpetuation of said relationships so as to maintain "power" while exploiting other countries' resources), rather than all parts of the world organically and co-creatively building a healthy interdependence with one another. This would look like each country producing goods unique to that land's production capabilities and its citizen's crafting (which is often based on culture/ancestral teachings) and farming abilities, and trades for (or consciously purchases) what each needs and is unable to produce; and recognizes that the poisoning of the earth and all its beings is parallel with the poisoning of the people of this earth. What we destroy around us, we are destroying within us; what is awakened around us is awakened within us: that's the interconnectivity.

While I do, definitely, feel lucky to have grown up in a town with a rich history and culture, a vibrant art and music scene, options for local and organic food when you eat out, a twice-weekly farmers' market, and a recycling plant (a rarity in the Midwest) -- I will mention, though, that I do notice a lack of the other two tiers of an effective waste-reduction system here, which are reducing and reusing, though this may be symptomatic of all areas of privilege, or perhaps the broader culture at hand, which is one of consumption. I also feel lucky that, while here, one is always in such close proximity to water :) (it's said that you're never more than something like two miles from a body of water while you're in Michigan). AND, it feels like there's still a lot missing here.

Perhaps it's because I've grown to expect a certain sort of responsibility from myself and from those around me after living in a place like Boulder (and Nederland for that first year out there), where raising your kids without a TV in the house is the norm; where you see people wearing yoga gear actually headed to yoga; where Western Disposal charges local residents for trash collection but recycling and compost collection is free (so as to encourage thoughtfulness around the latter two and reduction around the former); where getting up into the mountains is a daily practice; whether it be for contemplative practice or exercise or some combination of the two; where communities come together in the face of counties-wide destruction at the end of Mother Nature to, quite literally, rescue and bail each other out, back onto dry land. Where there are city-wide sit-ins and marches to show solidarity with the sort of atrocities being committed by those in power across the nation; where conversations are going on around things that bring us deep discomfort are not shied away from so that we might be of higher service to our sisters and brothers who have less -- less being anything that stems from less privilege. I saw restaurants that didn't have organic, local food options go out of business. I would say something to someone working behind the counter of a dine-out restaurant if it didn't have a recycling bin and I wouldn't receive a look like I was being ridiculous and high-maintenance, or like I was speaking some distant and foreign language.

I don't know how to wrap this up right now. Love. I know it's here, somewhere.

The Writer's Paradox

The ultimate paradox as a writer: the world keeps spinning, life continues to happen, synchronicities and patterns and events that must be noticed, should be documented, potentially highly meaningful connections that could have been made, symbolic interactions that MUST be made but aren't -- none of it stops. But you must, if you're going to write. If you have a "writer's mind" (or perhaps one of an artist, in general), you notice everything. You're aware. You're awake. And so this is torture, knowing that these things, this world, these connections going on outside of you that would infuse your insides are all going on without you because instead of living those connections, you're sitting somewhere putting words to page. Words that are, by now, past their expiration date due to the fact that the experience they tell of is in the past.

But maybe this is the way to turn things off. A breath. Ah.

I used to write in the middle of the night when the world was quieter and the absence of activity around me brought clarity of thought, and words felt more accessible because everything had slowed down. 2 ... 3 ... 4 in the morning. Sleep could wait. But things are different now. I trade sleep for the possible perfectly penned (and) abstract allegory, the line that brings me to laugh at the thought of how brilliant it is. Sleep feels more important.

"You can sleep when you're dead" is the dumbest fucking quote I've ever heard. Don't say that shit to me until you're a sleep-deprived asshole snapping at the people closest to you, lugging around bags under your eyes [and as a woman this matters more because somehow, still, on the physical plane people care way too goddamn much about how women look; it defines us & can be the difference between getting a job or not, getting the guy or not], severing relationships with your serpent tongue that didn't get its full night of rest, its honey reprieve, didn't get its sweet humming lullaby of bees bringing nectar to dreams. Don't say that shit to me until you're that person and you feel okay about yourself. The people spliced like sentences-that-weren't are also the people who might hold me as I cry, racking sobs, about how the world is burning and I can't do shit about it. How my world is burning and the fire won't go out. The drought is here, and it's real. I need those people. And they might need me, sans serpent tongue.

The thing is, trading sleep for my would-be-story-put-to-paper, for carefully crafted lines, for my penchant for penned perfection is what's making me that person. Maybe through writing I could do something about the whole world-is-burning thing -- and that knowing is heavy. That weighs more than the bags I'm somehow still lugging anyway, sleep or no sleep.

And it doesn't feel okay.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Sundays are for Relieving Weight, I think. All is Love (Thanks, Matt).

The moon was in Scorpio last night. Things feel even more intense for me than usual (which isn't saying much, but is saying something). I'm not quite sure how to put any of this into words, but I need to try. Even as I am sitting here typing this, things are happening. Meaningful things. Everything has meaning, I know -- at least, I have said this for years because I have felt this way, and now I really feel that way. I wish I could experience just maybe a few minutes of nihilism. How would this feel? Right now, perhaps good. If current, real-life, momentary circumstances were different, perhaps it would drive one -- me, in particular -- to complete self-destruction.

What's happening right now is that I hear my mom, from outside, saying "I'm sorryyy, Alix" (I brought attention again, to her seeming need for control at all times) -- not that I need an apology for her being the way that she is. How does an apology function, here? Also, what is happening is that Pier and I are really getting along with one another and it feels necessary because of what I feel may come. Even if it does not come, oh please let what I most fear not come, not come anytime soon, soon as in anytime in the next couple years, or ten years, or even twenty years, oh please, but this feel so necessary with Pier that it brings me to tears. Also what is happening is that Hope is outside in the backyard and she's on the phone, perhaps ending things with the person she has been dating (which is currently a "long-distance" relationship) and I am thinking about our earlier conversation about it and my response to her, all the while very much a pattern and very much bringing us ever closer, and I am worried about her in general. Also what is happening is that Scout pushed open the door of the bedroom where I was when I began this entry and saw that it was me in the room and turned and walked away and then began to resume barking, like he's been doing the last 15 minutes. My mom and Pier are outside painting the house. My dad, I believe, is at his office. I am realizing some things that are very startling yet comforting and unsettling simultaneously. (I have since moved to the couch and Scout has jumped up into his spot on the other end and then jumped down and barked three times since I've sat here, and finally jumped up, laid down, and stretched out, moving closer to me so that his face is underneath my elbow as I type, cross-legged, here. He is settling for me. I am a cat person, I've learned in the last few years, but I do love him and appreciate his company and this contact. Sidenote: My voice, on this blog, feels very cold to me right now. I don't know why -- maybe because I haven't typed a journal-feeling blog entry, and this is some moment-to-moment stuff, and it feels a little bit unnatural.) The things I am realizing have to do with qualities I've noticed in my dad, like our deep love for music, and our good taste in music, and our ability to get a bit lost in good music. I've also noticed that my parents' relationship is very much two-sided, as well as their functionality (and, at that, dys-functionality). It scares me how clearly I can see things, because I woke up today after four drinks last night (three vodka, one sangria) -- and I rarely drink that much these days -- around 8 AM, or maybe a bit earlier, took two gabapentin capsules, which eventually knocked me out again, had vivid dreams, including ones before I woke up, but also afterwards when I fell back asleep until about 11. And, as they tend to be right now, my mom was very much a part of them, and the quality of what I most fear (and can't seem to structure a story around that is different so that I can function without this specific fear in my day-to-day life) was very  much a part of the dreams. Hope also had a dream that was incredibly detailed and specific, and she shared it with me today and I interpreted a lot of it -- honestly, a lot of her dreams feel easily interpretable, though I realize this is through a specific scope [mine] -- and her story feeds into mine, and my fears.

This whole day has just been fraught with fear for me, and I'm functioning alongside it. It doesn't feel good, and I cry a lot. There has also been incredible connection with my family: we moved furniture together, we ate lunch that my dad brought home for all of us together, and no one really yelled at each other or got offended or even mildly butt-hurt over anything. It all felt (and continues to feel) very bittersweet to me, because of the large fear monster that clings to my back. I actually literally feel heavier. I did some yoga, and some twirling and dancing in the yard, the kind of stuff that I can do around my family most, just like my really loose silliness and ridiculous yet witty way of saying things, and also my stupid, in-the-flow dancing around that I don't show many people. Lauren has seen it, aside from my family, and other than her, only moments of it have I shown other people. Some of my good friends in Boulder, actually, have as well, but there's usually some substance involved to get me there. What the fuck am I so afraid of? I can peel this apart, and my mind furiously is right now, but I'm not sure I can type it all right now. It has to do, in part with this part of myself, or my way of being, that shows up in my Human Design chart: the 5-1. Anyway.

Aside from a lot of things, one of which was a Saul Williams (video of a live reading of Black Stacy) iPhone viewing with Dave between martinis that my body didn't really need, there was also something else, last night: this person whom I've texted with (we have been Facebook friends for a year or two, and whom I messaged when I got home as I've felt a desire/need to get involved with a conscious community here and make new friends -- fuck, I miss my friends in Boulder, and also Lauren, who may be one of the only people reading this) walked into where I was eating pizza with a friend (Dave) last night. I have no idea what it happening with my writing right now. But anyway, it was like the Universe saying, Alright, you haven't made the move and met this person in real life yet, so here he is. Silver platter shit. Take it or leave it. So, when he walked in, there was no not taking it actually. My visceral reaction when he walked in was a verbal Whoa and then standing up and approaching him immediately. He actually had texted me the day before this to ask how my settling in was going, and prior to that text we hadn't been in contact since maybe the first week I was back in Michigan. So, I definitely took it, though our interaction there was a bit awkward. Liz would say (and did to me once) that nothing (or no one) is really awkward, things just are the way they are. I love that, and will defer to it here, actually. So, yes, this was the way it was: Dave invited him to sit with us, and he was so sweet, and took this little moment I think to consider what Dave was to me, but it wasn't like he wasn't going to accept this invitation, and he said, yes, of course, thank you. It was all very sweet. I will mention now that this is a pizza place I've never been, and this person, whose name is Nick, told me (today on the phone; getting there) that he goes there maybe twice a year. So there you go. Or rather, there I go. I texted him last night -- I was going to wait to call this morning, but a half an ambien will make one text at 2 AM, and also sort of self-judgementally, or in protection of one's ego, name that one is "getting awkward with it"; shwing. I said in the text that I was going to wait until today to call him -- so it turns out that he actually called me today, right around 11 AM. It was sort of perfect timing, and a beautiful and easy conversation, despite some interruptions, and this is a thing: We share Beaver Island. I cried on the phone. I'm not sure about a lot, except that I feel heavy today, though some moments are lighter, and that he and I are getting lunch tomorrow.

Perhaps I will type more later. Also, to continue with the name-dropping that I apparently just can't stop doing in this entry; Hi, Sarah. <3 Loving you. And you.

Words at 12:12

Sometimes I don't write as some sort of act of defiance to the Universe -- a middle finger, if you will, to the forces that be. It's one small thing I feel like I DO have control over. You put me here to learn these lessons and write about them to better the world; well, fuck you, Universe ... watch me not do that. As if I won't learn the lessons I'm "supposed to" and by not learning these lessons I'll save myself some pain and I also thereby won't write about any of it, and in not doing so, will also lessen the probability of the reason, if there is one, that I'm here, experiencing what I am. There were a lot of commas in that sentence. Fuck it.

I also come to realize that by not writing, I'm actually only driving myself a little more mad because the would-be writings and stories and poems all just collect as loose matter in my head and then are forgotten, and that's too bad because a lot of this shit is good, or at least could be in written form (or typed, as the case may be). And so of course, by become a little more mad, I am only harming myself (and when I say "mad" here, I mean it in the actual sense, the way it's traditionally defined: crazy, looney tunes, all of the things I feel a lot of the time; not angry -- which I actually also feel a lot of the time, but is not what I am referring to here. Actually, I suppose I feel angry at myself a bit as well by not writing. Anyway.) And by not writing I am also withholding what could be some really great and necessary and helpful and even potentially healing material from those who read it ... so, thus, I'm harming others by not writing. This feels a bit arrogant, at least as I write it, but also true. So, again, fuck it.

I have this really vivid memory of lying in the hallway of my house on 33rd Street, from which I moved in early June, my head on Lena's lap. I was sobbing -- like the heaving, ugly cry type of sobbing -- and she was stroking my hair. I was so scared. Still am, just not currently sobbing in that way. (I did do some good crying today, though.) She was so comforting to me. She told me that I'm experiencing more things, the kind of things that trip me out (some of which you might know about, reader, if you know me well at all) and support my stories and fears and visions and dreams/nightmares and actual ultimate reality created within my mind because my world is expanding, so the berth of experience widens as I meet more people. Yes, this makes sense, I think as she says the words. I don't know if it's entirely true, or at least the only reason i am experiencing what I am, but it felt comforting to me right then. At the time, Lena was wearing clothes that had been mine, a top and pants I had given her as I shed so much prior to my move. She always liked that black Umba top and as I'm trying to wear less black anyway, I gave it to her, along with the brown, wide-leg flowy pants that would get caught under my feet while leaping around at festivals. Who was I then, at all those festivals? Who am I now, here on the floor in this hallway in our home of two years? Lena said to me that night, I'm dressed like you. I remember having that thought right before she said it. She was my healer, is still my healer, and I remember having this moment where I internalized the truth that I can be my own healer. That here, here is one of my best friends, my sister really, wearing my clothes, comforting me. Stroking my hair, letting me cry out of my eyes and my nose (yes, there was a lot of snot on this particular night) into her lap, her lap wearing these pants, pants I had worn on my own legs, legs that carried my body through fields of joy in so many experiences. and they're hers now and she is dressed like me, and here she is saying it because it's true, and we're in this safe, small hallway in our home, and hearing her saying these words outloud is healing to me, these words are true; they're healing me. In la'kech. I am another you.

On Writing and Right Now

What is it going to take for me to write every day? I am being really hard on myself right now. But really, it feels like now more than ever there is material that floats on through this vast, full space between my ears -- words that I listen to myself say into a voice memo of (sometimes), but then don't write down or type anywhere. I journal maybe once every 2-3 days, but it feels like it's more for recording purposes and, while cathartic, that feeling part is secondary. I'm writing things down so that someone can benefit from this. That feels important to me. Why can't I benefit from this? Why isn't that the most important to me now? Perhaps it's the oft-suppressed healer within that hopes others can benefit.

There are so many stories that have come to me that I haven't put words to. It gives them more power and makes me fear of them more real. I wonder if they would release if I gave them voice. When I do give voice to these fears that have become feelings, they feel less powerful but they don't really wane.

Science in a sort of Frankenstein's monster form feels to be taking over the world on a large scale  -- we spray poison on our crops and call what pops up food. (I read something about Portugal, a country once abundantly green and self-sustaining, alive with its people selling their goods at market, recently being essentially a GMO-farm wasteland due to U.S. importation demands and its citizens essentially completely displaced, selling their souls so that Americans can have our palettes satisfied with off-season, chemical-laden crop. This is just one anecdote. I believe it was actually a VICE episode. One of the few shows on TV worth watching, it seems.) We turn to doctors to tell us what we already intuit about our bodies, to scientists (whose answers are dependent on whomever it is they're employed by) to tell us how to exist in the world due to whatever "evidence" it is that they uncover. We listen to them or don't listen to them depending on which "side" our political allegiance falls, and the outcome is all the same -- it's all a game, but the twist is that no one wins. We turn to our iPhones for answers, for contact, for distraction, rather than to books, to the person next to us, to our innermost selves so that we can learn we don't have anything within (or without) that needs fleeing from. I walked Scout downtown today and passed a father with two young kids under 3 in the backyard engaged in an animate conversation on his cell phone. This time might have passed for a quality afternoon with his children, except for there was little genuine contact between generations shared in that backyard. Science has become a blind, ravaging monster in this culture, and anyone paying attention knows it.

Science affects art as well, and it feels detrimental to me. How much harder is it to write with the constant distraction of the internet when one logs on to blog, or goes to write but finds it much easier to record a memo to oneself and then never ends up writing down that thought or message or idea at all?

Fear of the Unknown (and How Santa Claus Might Be In On It)

Spoiler alert: Intimately personal, transparent stories told here.

How did I get to this place? I have recounted so many events in my life of late, have felt filled with regret, have wanted to apologize to so many. And then I come to: perhaps I was doing the best I could have with what I was given. I grew up so privileged; huge house in a safe, lovely college town. We had four acres and a creek running through our backyard. As kids, my sisters and I used to pick up crayfish from the creek with our neighbors next door. They had a trampoline and a tennis court and a sauna. We had a puppy and a ginormous playground with sand imported from the coast. Santa was always very, very good to my sisters and me. The house I grew up in, once it was renovated, was on the home tour in our town. My mom always outdid herself with decorating our home for the holidays. -- ornate pine trim throughout, gorgeous wreaths everywhere. I remember nights nearing Christmas tree always being such a cozy, safe experience. Leaving homemade cookies out for Santa, carrots for his reindeer. In Jamaica for Christmas this year, I asked everyone in our family to share their favorite Christmas memory. (Decidedly, that question was my gift to my family this year.) Both my mom and dad shared their memories of Christmases growing up -- of their own childhoods, long before my sisters and I were yet us. I loved the Christmas that I came downstairs to a Kirsten American Girl doll -- just what I had diligently spelled out for Santa in the letter I had sent him weeks before. Our conversation drifted into when we first found out that Santa wasn't "real" -- this is when, I think, many American childhoods start to drift away. My middle sister, with whom -- to put it mildly -- I have an extremely strained relationship, if you can even call it one at all, showed emotion for the first time, I think, in years. Her face sort of cracked as she recounted learning this truth ... that the sort of magic that brings so many children in our culture to believe in a fat man in a red suit who flies around the world in one night bringing mounds of wrapped toys to good girls and boys via reindeer transportation isn't real. The tragedy here, really, is that this isn't the only sort of magic that exists -- the kind that works for a little while in our youth. It's just the only kind that so many of us are taught to believe in. When we learn it's not real, our entire view on reality takes a sharp turn, sometimes never to right itself back on course again. Children grow into jaded adults. We were LIED TO for years. Is this our parents' fault, or society's? For keeping us "safe". Does Santa help to feed the system? To keep us oppressed? Is it the same sort of lie that is told to us about freedom -- that we're taught to believe that we're "free", thus continuing to engage in a broken structure, one that actually keeps us in fear?

I started this blog post to go into fear. I am in a lot of fear right now. This place -- it feels all-consuming at times, like it's eating me alive. It feels hard to put into words. I feel a bit out of practice in my writing, so I've been recording voice memos, but even those can hardly scrape the surface of this experience.  The artist in me tries to observe, and this is perhaps one of the few factors that is keeping me afloat. Something is happening here, and I talk to so many people about it that I continue to reactivate everything, continue to make drastic decisions, continue to create chaos in my internal world (as if enough didn't exist there as is, with how little mind-training I've done during this lifetime) and also create it around me. I often feel scared to go to sleep at night -- really, I'm scared of nighttime all together. The absence of light ... and it's because finding it within myself right now feels futile at times. Other times, the nighttime is all I find solace in; everyone is tucked in and safe for now, it seems. Another day my loved ones have lived. But what about me? Is this actually living? Looking forward only to the lovely dreams I do have rather than a lovely dream in waking life seems so dismal. I am revisiting a place I've been. It's been a toss-up as of late: I either lie awake imagining all the scenarios play out that I picture for my family, perhaps to fulfill some karma we each have, or even the score with how underprivileged so many others are or, if I do sleep, I have vivid dreams. Messages written out to me that answer questions I didn't know I had. Detailed scenarios outlining fears, desires, all through the supposed knowing of a dream subject's soul. Prophetic-feeling dreams ... though they're never completely literal. I feel terrified about the messages in many of them, and even terrified to put into words here of what could happen. Early last week, as I frantically drove back through the flatlands of the Midwest to my hometown from Boulder (a full 3-day trip with stops along the way), I recounted and created new scenario after scenario. I drove faster and time slowed down on the clock and sped up in my head. At a rest stop somewhere in the middle of the littered freeway wasteland of Illinois, I found a tea bag label on my seat that read "I don't want to not live because I fear what could happen". I don't remember reading this tag before; it emerged from wherever it had been before on this particular drive. I'd been sitting on it the whole way since Boulder. The last day of driving I entered a space of calm, finally. I consciously entered the unknown. I continued to come back to what was right in front of me: there's a red van, switching lanes. A blue car in front of me, a white truck in front of it. Here from behind me comes a white sedan, switching lanes to move around me. My mind drifted sometimes into what I might do. Move to another country -- aid work in Africa, or medicine work and jungle-trekking in South America. I picture myself seeing a lion in the wild in Africa and I began to cry -- how magical would this be. My thoughts switched to the state of the world, to the destruction created at the hands of humans. I think about Joel, about plans we've talked about for how to thwart this downward spiral so much of our culture is enduring, so much of our world is paying for without even knowing it. Radical stuff. I bring myself back to the present -- back to the blank solace of the Illinois highway. Tan-colored van switches lanes in front of me. I look at license plates. Not in the fear, here. My fear had been driving me for much of the drive, and now a phrase returned to mind that a friend had spoken to me the day prior when I was completely immersed in fear and sure something tragic was going to happen that night; it goes something like this "nature is the engine that drives the vehicle of love". Looking at the trees on that drive brought me a little bit of peace. Not looking at my phone did as well. A text message beep sounded; I continued to look ahead. I don't know, I don't know.