Category Archives: Liminal Life

ramblings about massive identity shifts, modifying habitual constructs, and generally looking at life through the narrator’s eye

Wanted: Alchemy Tutor

I sit in the driver’s seat, behind the windshield, parked at the drive in, watching a movie. I drove here myself and paid to get in. No bucket of popcorn sits on the seat beside me, just a roll of toilet paper eponymically doubling as Kleenex. Must be a drama. A beautiful woman with soulful eyes takes up the screen. She faces the audience and asks questions. When the questions are of interest or I know the answers, even I holler out responses, from behind my windshield at this movie. Curious entertainment—like interactive dinner theater with tempered anonymity.

“What do you have to contribute?” comes the next question. The woman had summarized the responses she’d received from the other audience participants and made an observation. “It strikes me that you look at work as a way to get to free time instead of looking at work as a way to contribute.” Apparently a segment of the audience is wrapped up in figuring out what it is going to do that is both financially sustainable and soulfully call-worthy in the longterm. This group probably gets that it will have to earn some tenure as a Starbucks barrista–or the equivalent thereof–before finding a way to integrate all levels in Maslow’s hierarchy.

“What do you have to contribute?” comes the question again. Wow, I am NOT going to participate in this question, I decide from behind my windshield and a new growing haze. Inside my ‘head’ I feel the equivalent of scores of hands pasting playbills all over the inside of the windshield as quickly as we can peel off duct-tape to affix them. My eyes grow foggy. My head tilts to the left and I start to drool. Just a little. From multiple layers of mental shunting deep, my higher bits try to remember the question… They come up with nothing. Who drove me here?

“I don’t understand your words,” I whisper with my eyes closed. Did someone slip me a rufie? I open the window just a sliver, so that the flow of oxygen to my brain will continue in the event that I lose consciousness.

“We therapists call this pay dirt,” my paid for friend (may she live forever!) says with a gentle smile. I look up at her tentatively with only one eye—still hiding behind the other one. Maybe she’ll forget I’m here if I don’t open both eyes? I am sitting in the chair I have been sitting in weekly. I don’t like it here right now. The room is muggy. My cheeks are damp. My chest constricts. I feel clammy. Did I pay for this stupid movie? And what was the question again?

“’Pay dirt’ as in ‘vein of gold’,” she offers peaceably. “I am throwing you this lifeline so that you do not abandon all hope. We are getting really close to some dynamic understanding here.”

“Um, I can write. I can make people laugh. I can make people think?” Sounded like that came from a little girl place, tentative. Must. Fight. Back. Torrential. Tears. What the hell is going on?!!! Breathe. Reinhabit my body. What is going on with my body? Well, what’s going on is that a simple question just sent me into shock. I feel like my core is empty. I have fear. What if there is nothing inside me? I see a circular storage area in my soul where an identity ought to be found and it appears to have not been installed. Not nihilistic as in there is no God and I have no purpose; more of a realization that God exists and purpose exists; I just don’t know if or how I fit in.

This makes me sad; it SCARES me. That must be why my cheeks are damp. I have signed up to be parts in other people’s plays, to meet expectations that other people find acceptable, to follow codes defined by others, even to find safety and order myself. To align with the family code that seeped into my bones when I wasn’t paying attention. I escaped overseas to look for ‘it’ there. All this to find a place to belong and be okay. But all that effort didn’t build the reflection of the Creator, my style. On the ground before me now I see a flag indicating that I claim this place, and LIGHT BULB: I don’t know what that means. This empty space is kind of daunting.

What if it isn’t empty? Maybe what I’m looking at is the characters of a foreign alphabet that would make effortless sense to me if I had grown up using vocabulary from and been educated in the symbology of that tongue. Maybe I just lack the skills to discern this site before me, this foreign soul of mine. How have I survived this long without nailing these very elemental pieces in me? Worth, purpose, identity, and belonging, most notably. Where is the box of tools that will help me spin these strings into gold? How will I learn to weave these spells?

Maybe my soul’s storage berth isn’t empty–but seeing the contents of my dreams and desires in base relief threatens my limbic survival regimen. Mr. Monkey Mind. The family code that states, “We will never have that kind of luck (resource, skill, dynamic creative outlet, rich sense of belonging and contributing),”–the subtext of which cannot help but be translated as “if you pull it off, you’re not one of us anymore.” Seriously, I’m 44, and ridiculous spoken and inarticulated family codes have that much power over me? I need some freaking vodka.

Today I have a little bit of envy for the folks that have the resources to do mid-life crisis the theatrical way: lipo, sports-cars, boy toys, featherlifts. But I’m smart enough to know that in the long run, my plan is more authentically sustainable even though I don’t have an inkling how it’s going to work out. Or to at least it comforts me to frame it thusly!

(Pulled the LIGHT BULB clip off youtube. It comes from the movie Despicable Me. More shameless pilfering of copyrighted material. Please don’t send me any money)

Not Quite Ready for the Apocalypse

A post in which she crushes your mellow by taking on black and white straight up

I don’t have a degree in anything financial, and truth be told, I don’t balance my checkbook (yes, I know how much money I have, give or take), but I’m pretty good at math and if I’m not mistaken, the fundamentals of our economy are fucked. Sorry—that’s not a very nice word, but they are fucked. And no matter which float in the puppet parade you receive your candy from, none of the people on the float can fix it, no matter how lovely their smiles. The float makers have all of our resources pledged to foreign nations to secure our debt. Be sure to vote.

Sorry to be the harbinger of doom, but any whiff of financial intelligence would have led you to this before it finally hit the talk shows.

Been watching this coming for a decade or so and this knowledge was a huge piece of our decision to roll real estate profits into a cash flow business. Thought we could ride it out with a recession-friendly business. Pay off the business with our last few pieces of platted properties, own it free and clear and start investing in properties again, this time funded by a cash-flow business. Wonderful plan until the real estate market tanked about nine months ahead of our prediction and the local land-lending bank got seized by the FDIC, forcing all of our properties into receivership. We aren’t the only people that got taken down by that. (You’re welcome, all the other banks who received federal money for which you haven’t accounted.)

Had reasonably defensible property with a pond (for water, stocked with fish) that could provide shelter for scores of people, I really wanted a hydro generator and battery panels. We had / have buckets of food, oxygen protectors, non-hybrid seeds, go bags, water purification, an ex-marine neighbor with a garage full of reloaded ammo, chickens (until the raccoons feasted on them), fruit orchard (until the beavers demolished it–night vision motion-detector camera caught them in the act, courtesy of ex-marine neighbor), a tofu maker, a hand crank clothes washer, books about trapping game, growing grains, and making moonshine, wool blankets, non-slime vegetable fermenter for pro-biotics, books on preserving food without refrigeration, salt licks, awl for sewing through skins (not kidding), freeze-dried ice cream (also not kidding), medicinal herbs and books on how to use them, a community of like-minded folks who were / are investing in their real world skills for the event of a massive meltdown. Home schooling curriculum from pre-school through college. Canned butter. The list is but a sampling. I figured my role would be strategic recruiter of Team Remnant, librarian, comic relief, and newsletter writer for the gig. How I will miss my iPod when all the batteries are dead. Some other things that require batteries too.

My point is that when I say I have walked away from apocalyptic preparation, I am not blowing smoke up your ass. I have a ham radio license. I make my own soap.  I can sprout grains and make them tasty enough to eat. And I have enough spices stored to prevent appetite fatigue. No, I am not a Mormon. I just read. I’m strategic. I’m a survivor, and I steeped in prophetic writings from early adulthood.

Politically I am too cynical to be a Republican or a Democrat or a Tea Partier. I think the Occupy movement is a lovely social experiment but if those folks were the ones that could catalyze a movement of effective social transformation, they already would have been hired by corporate and would be making mojitos for their friends while taking vacation on the public dime. I think there is wisdom in social assistance because some people need it and the others need to be mollified so they don’t begin violent riots. If only we had money to provide it sustainably.

Slit your wrists yet? Me neither. I can see political realities in which biblical prophecies could become plausible realities in short order. I see that people would throw silver and gold in streets for just a loaf of bread. (What tastes better when you’re hungry?) I can see Israel leveling Damascus pre-emptively to stop an attack, the whole world putting them in a huge time out, Assad magnanimously stepping onto the world stage, the great mediator with a humble little office right on top of the Temple Mount. If you aren’t familiar with the prophecies, that’s when the trailer becomes the feature. If you aren’t, it makes for interesting reading. Makes one really want to vote for the Mayan scheme and go out in a blazing orgy sometime in December of 2012.

This angst is behind much of my angst. So when I am worrying about money and resource and job skills, it isn’t just that I am wanting income. It is the added pressure of wanting to figure out a way to build up enough resource to be able to…. What? To hide? To hole up in a compound and sneak though unscathed. And I can’t anyway because I am vulnerable everywhere. And my compound is in foreclosure. I live in town now as a partial renter. I have no storage space. I have no rescuer who hunts and fishes and gardens and wants to take me and three school-aged kids on, who has figured out how to transform his diesel truck into something that runs on sunshine and sparkles.

I would lie if I said I could let go of the preceding paragraphs. But I can’t. I choose not to think about it by which I mean I do my best not to fixate on it. I do my other emotional work to try to get to the place of being a whole me, grounded, clear, and ready for a partner or a dream life. Just in case life keeps rolling. But in the background is this pending expectation, and the awareness that I am not ready for it. Honestly, this is one of the pieces that kept me anchored so long. I had to ask myself, if we have only a few short years, is it worth it to try to reclaim me? But if we have more than a few short years, can I afford to not reclaim me? I walked away from my structure despite this. This fear. This fear of facing death and being alone, overwhelmed and unprepared, side-swiped by the end of the world as we know it (TEOTWAWKI). I am not sure how to make peace with this and/or if I must.

This is the Black of the black and white. I notice it today. This grand over-arching theme of pending doom which drives me to get perfect (white) and thus able to respond successfully in the face of the adversest of adversities.

I wish I were worrying about retirement. Retirement sounds easy compared to feeling negligent for not being committed to mastering field surgery. Back to the cocoon with this mellow crusher… I need my cape back.

 

 

 

 

Cape for Sale

“I would like to crawl into bed and watch Nip/Tuck. Then you tell me how long it will take for me to stay there until I can wake up and have it all fixed. In fact, that would be a great iPad app!” She laughs again, My Paid for Friend (may she live forever!).

“If I were to talk to my fellow clinicians, I would describe you like this: a 44 year old woman, with three school-aged children. Then I would start in on all of the clinical stressors. Divorce, loss of status, loss of identity, loss of financial stability, radically shifting community, dramatic change in spiritual structure (not relationship, but certainly the structure), health issues that have been unpredictable and rendered you for weeks at a time unable to even move. The only fixed piece you have right now is your staying connected with your kids emotionally. My peers would ask how much medication you are on.”

I felt great because in her professional opinion, I am doing well with my kids and that I’m not on medication (other than Nip/Tuck). She was trying to make the point that it is reasonable for me to feel overwhelmed, exhausted, cornered and scared right now. All I got was that she recognized I was maintaining pretty well with my kids. Gawd, I love my delusional survival skills and emotional shunting expertise!

I don’t think I know who I am. I don’t know what I want.

Bottom line: I am trying to figure out what I have to do to do the least amount of work to get back to the place where I can coast. I think coasting looks like going to the gym and watching Nip/Tuck, maybe add in sitting in bookstores sipping lattes and blogging.

I miss being able to say, “I’m the owner of ________,” and having that statement buy me purchase in the social structure, replete with the perks of awe and favor-currying. If I ever gave you the impression I actually have moral character, I apologize for defrauding you. The narrator who lives in my head and manages most of my internal dialogue appreciates the experience I had there as the owner of a business, as an employer, as a bright shiny person in a land of plenty. It desperately hopes we can be back there someday, it and I.

There is a strange tension. My soul is full, generous, welcoming and unfamiliar with judgment, largely because of the choices I have made to wake back up and the toll that transition is taking. But in the physical, all the things that allowed me to feel full and generous, welcoming (money, resource, property) no longer exist. Guess we’ll see if the soul of the woman is what she thinks it is, hopes it is, really wants it to be. Though the moral landscape feels murky, the lessening of judgment is a relief. There’s something!

So today’s assignment is to become aware of Black & White thinking which, apparently, is not grounded in reality. I have skills but they are not honed. I have intelligence but so do other people. I am the youngest and I am used to being taken care of and now I have to grow up, and that pisses me off. I am mourning my dying dream of being able to live the superhero fantasy life without commiserate work. Such sad disappointment that we (ex and I) were so close to having it all. That our combined character and lack of skill, baggage and communication got us to this place. And how to rebuild from here.

She points out that there is a possibility that I might at some point meet some rich guy who is charmed by my stunning personality and can take the financial piece of this away. “Certainly that is a possibility,” I say, “but if I do that now and don’t do this hard work to push through this self-doubt, then I will be right back where I started, and I have gone too far now to let all this upset be for nothing. The power dynamic there is too unbalanced until I know I can do life well by myself.”

I say structure and known’s are for pansy asses, weak people. She applauds my ability to cope with tremendous uncertainty (spectacular, she said) but insists that that belief needs to crawl into a hole and die (my words, not hers). I burst into tears thinking about giving up freedom. She says giving up freedom in small doses for a larger good can be a healthy thing to do–that I won’t feel trapped forever and that I won’t have to give up the essence of who I am if I incorporate elements of normal, of good enough into my life. I hear her words through a dense fog and discern only tendrils of light that feel vaguely trustable. I want to vomit. She is encouraged that I am feeling. Youngest child is not all it’s cracked up to be.

I don’t know if I will ever get to a place of peace with my life. I feel more clarity than ever but because of that clarity, I feel more unsettled than ever. I feel like I have taken on the mantle of test case for people that are unhappy and want to do something different in their lives but don’t know if they have the courage to make the changes. My life as an object lesson.

An acquaintance who has been watching my process unbeknownst to me for the last two years asked me yesterday if I was happier, what led me to finally take the bold step to blow up my life, was it worth it. It’s made him ask himself tough questions about his own life. That validates my quest in a small part. Not that there’s another family about to implode, but that those of us out there aren’t alone as we are looking for breath and life and hope. It just doesn’t come without cost. Without pain.

So it’s back to the cocoon with me. I’ll take forays out, fling some interaction around, come back inside and chat with my narrator. Black = I live in a vortex of doom and will have seriously compromised freedom systemically for the rest of my existence. White = I must have everything I want at the same time with no pain or struggle. I am to be on the lookout for how our conversations (narrator and I) frame things in these blacks and whites. I am encouraged to introduce quiet little suggestions of a life that’s okay in the very mundane and normal, without real need of superhero, though it makes me vomit in my mouth to entertain the notion. These are delusions I have known and called comfort.

 

Bedding

Writing from the cocoon today which I find to be quite challenging with these little stubs for wings. Yet I quest.

Yet I attempt to quest.

Helluva week. A wonderful woman who was becoming a dear friend was killed tragically in an accident this last week. I am angry at her for dying because I wasn’t done with her yet–I didn’t get enough time to know her. One of my roommates was among her best friends; as a result of the surreal experience of being with my roommate as she has been working through the loss of the friend she knew very deeply, I have become to know them both better. What an honor to watch my roommate be present and protect and honor and question her friend–her life, her struggles and her victories… It has been an exercise in seeing what being–BEING–looks like. Watching someone mourn and guard a life that will be greatly missed and is now finished.

Took my kids over to Central Oregon for the memorial. We ended up staying a couple extra days, playing hooky, burying horseshoes in piles of volcanic dirt, eating Cheetos and swimming. Despite the fact that I had no where I needed to be, I found it nearly impossible to just BE with them. Granted part of this is that the little critters wake up at Dawn’s Crack ready to rumble while I stroll into cognition somewhere around 11 AM, long after I’ve somehow stumbled through the requisite production of a morning meal and clothing ritual. But even after 11, I find that I have to fight to stay in my skin. What is that about? Why do I have to fight to show up in my own life? I don’t get this, and it may sound simplified, but it seems like maybe this is a critical piece of this answer I seem to be seeking: voluntarily, I must remind myself. Since I still have the gift of this life, how do I actually show up to participate in it? Almost a pressure to live more fully and connectedly knowing that there is one fewer live-ers left.

But not my kids. They are right there. Beautiful sunny day–afternoon, so I’m starting to habitate. We’ve eaten again (geez: I fed y’all yesterday!). I’m sitting on a picnic bench watching them become dust monkeys in the horseshoe pit, barking motherly reprimands like, “Quit aiming that at your brother’s head” and what not. Matt mosies over and lies down on the bench next to me, his head in my lap. I start stroking his hair and am just looking at him. Here’s what he says, “This is perfect, Mom. You are my pillow. The sun is my blanket. And this bench is my bed.”

Not gonna lie: I burst into tears.

How proud am I that he is comfortable in his skin?! That he can get out of the dust and recognize a moment of life and pull me back into it on a picnic bench? I am partially responsible for that–the X chromosome and all–and that is incredible! Redemptive. I want to be comfortable in my skin like that. I want to live in such a way that I recognize comfortable pillows, can make blankets out of sunshine, and find flat places that make great beds. I want to do this for him. For all my kids. For Lorri Sipe. For me.

You are my pillow, the sun is my blanket, and this bench is my bed.

 

The Many Faces of Eve

Weird dream last night. Integration of this week’s internal rumblings?

Crumbling building. Old educational facility, research, campus building. I’m one of the last there, and I have been its caretaker. There is a threat to this building, and we need to vacate. I’ve assigned other characters to get out, get others out, get stuff we’ll need out. I am trying to make sure everyone is cared for. Progressively more risky inside the building; there are three of us left. One character, Master Processor, Thinker is in a research room toward the back. There is a ladder leaned against the front door, so I’ll have to slide out under it when the time to leave comes. I know Master Processor needs to stay with the building—can’t come with the rest of us. I’m pulling off a stealth move, timing-wise. Need to keep him in that building but I need to get out too.

There is a third person with me, not sure who it is. Mixed feelings about this person. (Intimacy?) I’m trying to maneuver it so he stays behind too. Not connected with this person’s thoughts, but he has been helping a little bit with logistics. More concerned with Master Processor—feel really close to him and grieving that he has to stay behind. It’s keeping me in the building. I feel sad / guilty to leave him.

I’m ready to leave though—need to leave, getting ready to step under the ladder to get out the door. I look back one last time through a small hallway to see the Master Processor in the back room. A small room with heaps of specimen drawers and gobs of light provided by the exterior ceiling high windows. He’s been struck by something in the head and I see under the wound that he is an artificial intelligence.  A feeling-less robot. I know in an instant that he is both about to face ‘death’ and that he is beginning to process death. I have been worried about him and what will happen to him, but he feels enlivened to have such a worthy challenge. Like the coolest opportunity to process ever: what gets bigger than analyzing death? I feel deep peace that he is completely in his element with no regrets. He’s served me well, and I appreciate him, but I have to go now. Deep respect for this emotionless part of me that cannot come forward.

I get into a car to drive away. The third person has walked out onto the steps of the building. I am trying to get away in a way that he can’t see me. I feel ambiguous about him. There is a girl in the passenger seat. She is happy to see that (feels like) a kid – someone she is fond of–made it in with us. This kid jumped into a trailer being towed behind the car in front of us. It just feels risky to me. Awareness that I am wanting to run this operation really lean and other pieces feel like more responsibility while I am trying to escape a pending threat. Seems that by stopping to let the kid in, by following the passenger’s desires, that the third person from the building might see us. He does and begins heading our way–I know he’ll catch up with us. I feel really conflicted about bringing him along. Secretly pleased, which surprises me, because I realize I didn’t think he’d want to come along. It doesn’t feel quite right–not entirely at peace with this new turn. Lots of moving parts right now.

I realize I don’t respect my passenger very much: she feels weak, but she’s part of my convoy.

 

 

 

 

 

Take a Seat–We’re Going In

Today, I am going to save you thousands of dollars in counseling fees. If you can bear to dwell here for a moment, you may benefit greatly. And be disquieted greatly. My hope is that you ARE disquieted and that that challenges you to think hard thoughts and that those bring you great catharsis and, thereby, benefit. Sit down and take off your shoes. We are about to enter set apart ground…

The anatomy of our real Achilles-heal problems stem from stories we tell ourselves. These stories are  stealth mysteries. Their formation is unconscious; it goes undiagnosed, unrecorded, uncelebrated, and generally unchallenged. Their existence is neither good, nor bad: it simply provides the structure from which we make sense out of our worlds. The stories themselves, though, have almost magical power for all of us. They are the paradigms which provide the architecture for our thoughts.We form them really young–before we could possibly be aware of them, and our beliefs, decisions, integration of our experiences, and thus destinies can be traced back to them. A logical conclusion for someone willing to live intentionally and authentically, then, would be to examine one’s story/ies.

Imagine how a kid would grow up whose story went something like this: “My needs are met. When I suffer pain, someone helps me put it in perspective and is there to comfort me. The people who love me enjoy being around me. Sometimes I go sideways and my people love me enough to help me get back in line. I have something to offer. I matter. And belong.” Or imagine that kid’s neighbor, “My people are so involved in their stuff that they scarcely know I exist. I don’t know where my next meal is coming from. I don’t have the skills to cope with life yet, and I might die if I can’t figure this out. If I ask for help, I may be ignored or ridiculed. I am in the way.”

One story makes us feel solid and healthy, proud of that kid’s people. The other story makes us feel like vomiting and calling child services. Both of those kids will grow up. The kids will develop beliefs, make decisions, integrate their experiences, and create destinies. They will choose mates and be parents and citizens. I imagine the shapes of those purely hypothetical stories will have an impact on each kids’ entire sphere of influence. What kinds of mates will they choose? What will be the plot-worthy conflicts in their grandkids’ stories?

Two points on a big bell curve to be sure. We are all on the bell curve.

My story is closer to the second kid. There was an undeniable sense of belonging, but it was overshadowed by two emotionally vacuous parents. I love my mom and we get along really well now. She is available like she wasn’t when I was little. We have had tremendous healing. My dad and I made peace a long time ago. Did they do the best they could have? No. Did they do what they did? Yes. Did they love us? Yes. Were they effective parents adept at raising healthy, emotionally mature kids? God, no. But this is not a pity party: this is a hard and honest look at my story, and I hope that by me examining my uncomfortable bits in the public square, you will feel encouraged to take a peek at your own in a way that provides an opportunity to maybe rewrite those stories whose plots aren’t working so well anymore. If you haven’t noticed, that’s what I am doing. I am not going to be a hapless circumstance of my own story. The buck stops here because I am not going to pass unexamined toxicity on to my kids. I will do my level best to let them know their worth.

Stick with me. Changing gears to get to the destination–that was the backstory…

I made a deal with YHVH when I was very young. I just figured this out in the last couple weeks, but here is the deal I made. “I know that I have a message to share. I recognize that I have been gifted with the ability to cipher this painful soul stuff. I suspect that this gift of awareness and creativity comes at a high cost. I believe that it will require me to be alone, without a soul mate. I accept the circumstance that I am in because I essentially have no choice, but here is the deal. You will give me long life because I have suffered enough already, I will not have to die.”

Selah.

How about that?!! What a sophisticated little kid I must have been. Probably before I could write the alphabet (HATED not being able to write yet–should have been an indication!) I was negotiating my immortality and my measurement of suffering with the Creator. I internalized the belief that I would be required to do ‘it’ ‘right’. And in exchange for doing ‘it’ ‘right’, He would grant me freedom from further suffering and death. Just haven’t been able to figure out what ‘right’ looks like or what ‘it’ actually is…

Gotta admit it takes balls!

But there has been a growing disquiet in my soul. It is the gut-wrenching truth that we all face. It is the stuff that makes grown men buy sports cars and take mistresses. It is the stuff that makes married women leave unfulfilled marriages and return to their creative source. It is why addicts use. It is made up of more than one thing. It is the fact that we are all going to die, no matter what deals we have made. It is the fact that no amount of perfection in the future can make up for stains on the past. It is the heavy realization that in both eternity past and earthly future we are mixed bags. It is the recognition that we cannot strive our way into perfection and if we could, that perfection would not ensure immortality. It is knowing that no amount of understanding can lessen the impact of life’s sufferings.

It is being told that the normal progression of emotional maturity is being able to experience and integrate growing numbers and severities of blows and still maintain until we eventually die. And the devastation THAT leaves: you mean I am just finally willing to admit my escape-from-suffering-deal was a ruse and the numb I have used to prop up the delusion will give way to growing numbers and severities of blows until I eventually die? All the while my little-kid belief still thinks suffering, all by itself, will bring immediate death? That is a lot of death to take on in one day!

These lessons hurt me. I am grieving deeply. My spiritual rubric certainly helps intellectually but at the deep soul kind-of-emotionally-retarded part of me, it hasn’t ameliorated that fear. Nevertheless, I have not given up on making deals. And here is the deal I am making–or at least the determinations I am making. I am going to be a Samurai–maybe a ninja. If death is really the biggest fear that we can face, then I am going to stare him square in the eye. And I will neither show fear nor blink. Not being afraid of death requires living fully. Participating in our days. Loving our people and letting them know they matter to us and that we are richer for knowing them. Reaching out to new friends. Taking risks. Dreaming. Creating. Daring to hope–skepticism takes no courage. Either / Or doesn’t flip death the bird–it just takes the joy and discovery out of life, so down with either / or and up with both / and.

These are the thoughts of a spirit wrapped in a human as it grapples with the tension between the two.

I really appreciate you reading this one, whomsoever you may be. I hope you feel gutted and yet encouraged. Well, at least NOT alone 😉

 

 

 

 

 

Celibacy = Improved Dental Health, A Professional Opinion

I wore my camo jacket symbolically today.

  1. I am hiding and you can’t see me.
  2. I do not particularly feel like presenting in the feminine.
  3. While I may not be ready for battle, I am certainly on stealth recon.

I also have no cavities which is great news because as of 10 days ago, I also have no dental insurance.

So like chicks are wont to do, I made best friends with my hygienist. What else ya gonna do when a skilled person with sharp tools approaches your mouth? Before the festivities began, I may have uttered something snotty and remotely cynical about a particular non-female gender. Not that I am a man hater, but I am cynical today. Cynical to the point that I am wearing camo and being snotty about the non-female gender.

I have a dear friend who is a retired policeman. He introduced me to glocks. This is not going postal, and there is a chance it could sum up tidily, but for the moment, allow me some James Joyce. I contacted him and asked him if there were any gun shows that I could help him with this weekend. You see, he is kind and gentle and very very grandfatherly. Protective, supportive, entirely safe, and he has taught me how to clean and dissemble and reassemble a glock. There is an undeniably awesome feeling about being at a gun show as a woman and being able to do this. Also, there are reasons that I am turning to my conservative roots this week.

So Earl is a rockstar, but the show is in southern Oregon, so this weekend is a no go. Wow, totally didn’t mean to go off on Earl. Think the connection was the camo… Where was I? Oh, yes, my new hygienist friend. I explained briefly, the symbolism of the camo. Deconstructing the pieces of midlife to its rock core and rebuilding. Since her pokey tools were in my mouth and it didn’t appear possible I would be doing much of the talking, I asked her to explain how it came to be that she had found herself married three times and now dating her third ex-husband. She explained that he was kind of controlling and she was kind of independent and they worked better when they were NOT living together. This made sense to me in a far off way–not like dating my ex but like the concept of being kind of intimate with someone but not exactly living with them. Down the road. Far, far away.

And where was I going with that? Oh, yes, so the dentist comes in as we are giggling conspiratorially about what not–a young woman in her maybe mid-thirties. Small children. First husband. She suggested (since I am a certified member of the lifetime achievement society in ardent somnolent teeth grinding) that perhaps I jump back on the night-time tooth guard wearing wagon. I mentioned that mine was a bit tight. Hadn’t been wearing it lately. We all then brought her over to the camo and not-quite-man-bashing cynical mid-age women topics which had previously ensued.

“That is terrific. Goodness even. With men out of your life, you may now avoid root canals and embrace excessive drooling because you will be wearing your bite guard.” It was kinda bossy, but that is a power-reframer right there, that lady. Learned a lot today…. She suggested I nearly boil my bite guard and put it in my mouth really gooey so that it will reform to my current bite. Sometimes things need to get boiled to the point of really gooey before they fit and function well in new circumstances.

If that didn’t work, I had an appointment on Thursday to get a new bite guard made–I was going to ask if they came in camo. It did work, as it turns out, and I wear it now. I am not drooling. Neither do I feel fetching. I have no cavities; but you still can’t see me.

Red Pill: Really?

Good Lord, what was I thinking?

Remember that moment when I was lying in bed, exhausted, having woken up to my ex checking my homework to see if I had completed some task of minutia which he knew I hadn’t and having just been told to Fuck Off after midnight that same day after watching a documentary about our bastardized food supply? He had kindly suggested that it was my unilateral responsibility to change our family’s diet. If memory serves he was looking for a raw, alkalarian version of our at the time standard American fare. I may have spoken up and  suggested perhaps he take some responsibility for our lives and quit blaming me for everything and that the allegation that our very healthy children were always sick was a bit of hyperbole. Not met with agreement. That was the night I rolled over, knowing I had quit my marriage. It doesn’t sound so intense in the retelling but it was a big day.

My decision has been recontextualized into a new age desire to find myself, a story in which my ex gets to play the part of hapless, heartbroken victim. The faithful of the fold think they encourage when they mention that it is not theirs to judge, YHVH hates divorce, afterall… I suspect He doesn’t feel too fondly about a whole lot of things that go on in marriages either though. The power plays, the coldness of heart. Hopefully He’ll forgive me if the devoted groom metaphors don’t pack a real punch for me in this chapter.

Have I been bitter? I don’t think I have, and yet today I am feeling a little pissed off. I am the primary target of my angst as I got myself into the situation that I did, and I’ve always been pretty effective at taking the load: if I take the load, then somehow I serve humanity in a greater sense? Dear Society, you are welcome. Mortality figures prominently, and the grand family arranger in the sky who decided that I belonged with this particular set of neglectful dysfunction can’t help but make an appearance.

Mortality: let’s pretend that I make it to the place of peace and healing where I am able or willing to consider the possibility of letting someone else in–someone emotionally available, someone say, not married… I will be, well, saggy with nipples. My good bits will be even droopier. Kevin Bacon made a sage observance about the grace we have as humans where our looks give out about the time our eyesight begins to decline. Makes me chuckle, but doesn’t help a lick! We’ll circle back to this little gem of insight eventually.

My family of origin. The upside is that we laugh–there is bonding in surviving hell together. I have gone kayaking with my sisters and we marvel that two run of the mill people (parents) could, without evil intention, spread so much crap down the behavioral gene pool. Mom says she is proud because all of us kids turned out so well–clear sign of her hands-off brilliance. What Mom can’t put together is that we were all so busy raising ourselves and trying to figure out life with no adult supervision or emotional context that we were terrified to do anything wrong. Survival started early for us; numb was our tool.

So I’m mad at YHVH for putting me in a family where I didn’t learn how to be and make healthy choices; I’m mad at myself for not having been able to rise above that, and I’m mad at mortality that by the time I figure it out, my youth will be gone and I’ll have bowel obstructions to wrap my concerns around. Where do I go from here?

And guess what? I don’t know. I am cornered, trapped, and plundered. I have nothing to offer and no strength to give it from. I am done. I am alone. I am weak. I. Am. Exhausted. The contents of my life consist of four jigsaw puzzles spilled on the ground and jumbled into a mess. My job is to sort them out. My deep and intense desire–every fiber in my BEING SCREAMS to sweep them all up into a pile and throw them into the trash and go buy a new puzzle. But for the first time in my life, I am not going to do that.

Guess what else? This is not from my marriage. This is from the bullshit I brought to MY side of the street of my marriage. Leaving my marriage was a healthy choice for me, but it did not solve this mess that came with me when I joined it and when I left it. It got rid of auxiliary mess that I was able to cloak my mess with for quite some time, and I do have great kids as a result… I have reached that point in the Matrix where I kinda wish I’d chosen the blue pill though I’ve already swallowed the red pill. It is the brave choice, this red pill; it was the right choice. But the thought of organizing a rebellion, ferreting out the traitors, and sourcing goods for the mission from a place of plundered and cornered, at times, does not appeal.

Today is one of those times.

Exploring the Palace One Room at a Time or Maybe Not Needing a Palace at All…

“The adjacent possible is as much about limits as it is about openings. At every moment in the timeline of an expanding biosphere, there are doors that cannot be unlocked yet. In human culture, we like to think of breakthrough ideas as sudden accelerations on the timeline, where a genius jumps ahead fifty years and invents something that normal minds, trapped in the present moment, couldn’t possibly have come up with. But the truth is that technological (and scientific) advances rarely break out of the adjacent possible. The history of cultural progress is, almost without exception, a story of one door leading to another door, exploring the palace one room at a time.” Steven Johnson in Where Good Ideas Come From p. 36.

Learning to live with the tension of the unknown and making friends with it is now equal parts peaceful and catalytic.

I am on the other side of the door, in DWL (Dragon Whisperer Land). I got a little side-tracked from building the house; when I first stepped into this land, I thought the house was important (at first the house was important–I was traumatized and I needed shelter). Building a house seemed like a great place to start, but something has changed in me. It isn’t the house itself I need. It is the refuge of rest which it represents. The quiet place to consider. The wall to lean up against when the load is too big for me.

Now that I am past the trauma, I find that the physical structure is not all that is required for this intentional land; thriving here requires a quiet mind, a seeking of expansive thoughts, and surely at least a rudimentary shelter. As my constitution gets stronger and I have more faith in myself, I have less dependence on the conventions that held me hostage with handcuffs of known quantity and routine in that other place. I don’t need a monster fortress. I need ideas and time and only a modest space. And meaningful people that get this about me.

This new-found fluidity is something that has been such a part of me that I didn’t recognize it as a distinguishable quality. Like: before the awareness of distinct gases and advanced scales able to measure oxidation, the nuances of oxygen remained undiscoverable. Now that I am unencumbered by structure, debt load, daily tasklistery, and expectation, I have pieces in place that allow me to investigate further this creative fluidity that has not known how to manifest plainly. I don’t know if it can be measured, but it’s effect upon the system is suddenly able to be observed. Such exploration is a definitive piece of who the real me has always been.

I don’t know what shape this will take, this design of life of which I am architect, but I am beginning to lay the tools upon my workbench and here is what I have found. I have a high freedom need and accompanying room for the important people in my life to roam–a respect for that and an expectation that that is how we do things over here in Dragon Whisperer Land. A come-along-sidedness as technique on the climb. The ability to metacognate my way through the messy, undefined path–words to translate it. A broad array of skills in search of some expertise to wrap around. And a newer realization that this lack of expertise might just be the real gift here. I say those words like they mean something from far down the path which I am just beginning to traverse. Like some wiser part of me already knows this and is waiting for the rest of me to catch up to make sense out of it. I feel the weight of the truth behind this utterance, though I am certainly too early in this process to recognize or commit to an outcome. I am left then with a realization that I can begin to tinker.

For now that must be enough to comfort me. I have a pile of raw materials and have begun to define the tools I can use to morph them. Becoming ever more comfortable with my lessening need for the trappings might just be one of the first Dragons I am on my way to taming.

 

Toe Nails, Ducks, Genetic Epiphanies

Thank God I dye my hair. The end.

Kidding.

Because I dye my hair, I occasionally have roots that need to be touched up. Also because I, like many other middle-aged women who are still AWESOME and HAWT, have hair that grows, and toe nails that need to be painted (thank you for the fungus, Grandma Downey), and chin hairs that go rogue (thank you Grandma Downey), I periodically go in to spend wayyyy too much money in a beautification process which involves the address of the above maladies. During my most recent stint I had a grandiose epiphany.

The hair dresser and I were talking about her ethnic background. Why not? That’s what chicks do: become best friends with whomsoever seems interesting and chatty. She was sharing about her five kids, none of whom resemble each other, and we were bonding over stories of how we’ve screwed up our kids and are in our mid years rebuilding our lives intentionally, trying to atone for whatever it is we do that for. Whatnot. Her explanation for the physical difference of her kids derives, she believes, from the genetic mix of native American, Welsh, German and Moor. Certainly plausible. But then I had a streak of brilliance that struck me, with brilliance.

Major aha moment–like the time I looked out in the pond and saw a duck go underwater and realized that might just be how the bird got its name.

Boys like girls.

All of history–genetic history at least (not the nasty war bits)–owes its vast diversity to the simple fact that boys like girls. Boys move for better provision and take girls with them. Boys go to war and take other boys’ girls. Boys go on adventure and find new girls. Some boys do all of the above at various levels of simultaneousity (look it up–I dare you), and they have been known to have their own TV shows. Boys write stories about this, lament about this, and pour out their life energy in pursuit of girls (marriage and responsible provision on one side and boy-dog trophy-procurement on the other). Simple fact. Yes, salt was important, and the plague had far-reaching impact. Water rights will inevitably show up as a feature, but meanwhile, in the scope of genetic history, each one of us can attest to the fundamental truth that boys like girls.

(Corollary: girls probably like boys too, or we wouldn’t spend so much money covering up the toenail fungus.)