look at the blue

To sit with myself, has been.....hmmm. Well, not really happening for years perhaps. And the last remembrance of it being delightful may be sometime in childhood. But the memory cannot be trusted. In it's dark moments, no joy can be remembered or believed and in it's joyful moments, nothing but delight has ever existed.

Lying about myself has allowed me entrance and invitations to places I could not have been.
And perhaps should not have been.
Clever girl, just not wise.

But, at some point...like this one, I might be a seal swimming in an ocean of sharks, and my costume is getting very hot and itchy.


I have no idea.
This thing people talk about.... being clear and mindful and whatever. I have been close to people speaking these words and they are full. of. shit. And so we are all.....just mucking around in our own excrement looking to the bright sky, imagining we are as blue as that.

It is the doubters that I can groove with. Anyone out there?

Has anyone really really questioned their own beliefs? Has anyone really dared to see the reality of what they are wading in? The voices shout and coo....it is ok, it is alright, look at the blue, look at the blue, look at the blue.

Now, if I am honest...MORE HONEST.....if I really tell it like it is and sometimes forget to make it funny....well, will it scare away, send running everyone around me? And then will there be a different group that will gather round?


Or, let's forget all that. It is a bit self centered.

Maybe it's just me that needs to find acceptance.....inside myself and for those around me.

I watched a doco about the freedom riders last night. I was smiling throughout it. Generations of oppression, and oppression and still, life comes back with more force....
And it is pushed back down.

And it comes back more wiley, more determined.

And finally it cannot be suffocated. And it is just the way. The earth does not hover above the seedlings so they may rise, they must push through. Same as the newborn baby. Same as everything.

Just like the warm knowing that eventually the earth reclaims even our bones, I find this comforting.
I left a sacred basil plant to die on my balcony....no water, little soil, sideways...nothing nourishing.
But she did not die. And months later I replanted her in proper soil and watered her well and she is big and pretty and thriving out there today, blossoming and smelling as beautiful as she was meant to.

From the ocean of confusion, and the land of uncertainty....from the city of doubt......until next time....

unshaven witch

It isn't something I thought I would ever consider. I don't think. But there I was, naked from the waist down, and painstakingly freshly shaven...and cold.


I sang on the walk home "I'm an unshaven witch....dirty and smelly....and I've got wild hair on my head, wild hair on my belly...."


She, the heavily make-uped and hairless beauty, was being kind and just warm enough...but polite I am tired of...and never respected much anyway. I'd rather people just really felt kindness and compassion. I wish they could just be honest and apologize when they cause hurt....ect ect ect...
This young woman zapped me with the laser again and again. The real pain was deeper. Symbolic.


We cannot stand to believe that we are animals. We have forgotten the plants' names, we have cut down the forests and murdered the people who lived there.
Life here lacks natural beauty. In it's place is concrete. And expensive real estate. How can we bear to look at anything that reminds us of what we have destroyed? So we all abide by strict social norms and we silently torture those who walk outside them. And we cut away any parts of ourselves that could resemble something untamed.

It was all over in minutes. She squirted cream into my palm and left the room for me to apply it to my traumatized puss. And I was done. I came into the lobby where all is so copacetic.

And because I am a little slow to register feelings, most especially traumatic ones, I found myself crying about something else hours later. The deepest pain is not being loved and accepted for who I am. It is familiar and terrible and has been caused by those whom I trusted and loved the most, the deepest.
And now, I do it to myself.

What happens to the puss when she can no longer grow a bush? When she is forever vulnerable and exposed? What happens when the earth has been scorched so hard that nothing can ever grow again? Does it forget that it ever grew anything? Does it become something else?

I know most people would never consider this, but I am the carrier for these things, these feelings. I was born, and there are a few of us out there, as the conduit for what most people cannot know, cannot feel, cannot experience. I act it out for them and they laugh or scoff or run away or throw stones. But I MUST act it out.
I am not my own. It is not my choice.

Nevermind if it is not safe. Nevermind if it holds me back from a certain success or certain love.

pros and cons

Ahhhhhhh.....

Sydney.

Sometimes she seems like my greatest opportunity. Sometimes she seems like my smallest cage. Perhaps she is both.

Why am I here? I get asked this question politely often, at least once a week.
The reasons I give are varied, but the truth, the truth might be something else.

I don't love it here. The climate is pretty good, it's almost never too hot, and never too cold, it rains a bit, shines a lot, and there aren't many biting insects to worry about. Crime is pretty low, jobs are relatively easy to come by and people are generally polite and friendly. There are beaches all over, nice ones. And wilderness is about an hour's drive from the city center in most directions.
The opportunities to study and experience here are great. Yoga, for one, and languages and healing arts and dance.....
And there's the coffee. It's really good and everywhere. So is decent food. I have become accustomed to being within walking distance of Indian, Thai, Lebanese, Italian, Organic, Nepalese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese ect. ect. ect......

But.

The people are kind of flaky, self-absorbed and superficial. They are angry drivers and possess no loyalty. They complain about things like the perfect weather, the amazing economy and the low crime. They complain that they complain too much.
The noise of the city is often heart wrecking to me. So is the lack of people who understand nature. The lack of nature is something I find suffocating at times.
Not having a car here, and not being able to have a car here results in a low level constant stress for me, subtly reminding me that I have no freedom. My rate of pay reinforces this.
My work is often demanding and my workplace hostile, sometimes overtly, often more quietly....
I often try to think of how to escape being in a place that feels so foreign and stressful and I am brought back to 2 things.
One....where would I escape to? The answer is of course my heart's home : New Zealand. And, upon remembering this, I know that leaving OZ reduces my chances of living there to nearly nil.
Two....yoga. I am studying an art that feeds me, and that fuels me on, and which I could not study in most other places. Maybe any other place.
So it is that I find that two things that I love so deeply hold me captive and separated from every other beloved and nourishing thing.

Like children. Really errant children who take every bit of my time and energy to keep alive, making me abandon all else.
Huh.

If only I were smarter, I may figure this conundrum out.