notes from home,

i'm listening to a song by the cults called 'go outside' on satellite. i've finished my tea and chocolate and pondering another early bed, had too much fruit today and no greens... it is summer. blackberries with honey yogurt for breakfast, watermelon for lunch, pineapple for dinner, bing cherries, and yes fresh sun warmed plums in btw. i was about to say i resented the outside but now a song by bravery is playing called 'this is not the end'... it's hard to complain when song titles are drilling into the depth of your paralysis. when all the good things are there blooming in the sun, and even your lowered insurance premium of $644 is a breath of fresh air- even if you still can't afford it. even if i am still waiting for the ax to fall- for the now still continued insurance claim to say no sorry, your time has run out. but it miraculously hasn't. 2 1/2 years later. i wish i knew freedom in it, i wish it didn't suck me under in intervals. i pop back up with a renewed sense of resolve but the more time that passes, pen, the harder it gets to have courage of something else but what i know- which is interminable waiting. and yet change must come. and i think will i be ready for it. will it have beaten me after all and i'll have failed to look or see the escape hatch open. or failed to learn anything at all in the interim. i think Lord, given the state of things this is what the world will say about me- no, Lord, even, this is what I say about myself. what do you say?

the silversun pickups is playing 'the royal we'. and in the meantime what damage. is.

i'm reminded of that landscape i had from '05-'07 where i was floating in the stagnant waters of the amazon and now i'm in an overdone black victorian outfit, ok exquisite, and making my way down an endless flight of stairs with sheer cliffs and a black chasm to my right. presently, the world when i look out of my windows is a portal to heaven, but looking the other direction i just think of krietz in the jungle muttering, the horror, the horror. i know this is the common complaint of man. existing in the tension of being an immortal being on a mortal plane. of knowing hope and yet seeing despair so close.and as this old dude named dubay said, we are incarnate thirst. we grow slack and wane without beauty, companionship and light. dull-witted maybe, cavernous. i don't know what else he said about it because i haven't finished the cd yet, and yes in the meantime,

i'm too busy glossing my dry lips to scream much.

but that is what keeps occuring to me to do. but my soul as she descends is too busy with her footing and catching her hair in the breeze. my spirit maybe or is it my projected self, in the identical but gold outfit on the castle parapet- she knows, she's released doves in Gods direction. she asks from where does my help come from? she paces. she is relentless in her worry. she knows the supplies are low and she is mercilessly distracted. my actual self here and now- the last few days- is staring at the blue skies of paintings not yet completed. she is not sure how the days pass and all the flowers outside illuminate a world she is reminded, is just for her, but she won't go outside except to pick plums. there is nothing productive about her, but looking for things to throw away.

though i am trying to practice better handwriting. and maybe tomorrow i'll go for a walk. there is too much a war within to do ought else.

m.

Penolin,

Heyo.
I had an interesting slings and arrows sort of day. I went to the very last salon tea. I came close to overdoing the cream and sugar in the tea but persevered along with my quarter sized bite of scone. The frittata was so good though that next time I demand more or 2nds... Aut is close to 2ndbabyville and J is close to NY, new job, selling house self. Both on the brink of monumental change. They include us, danica and i, in the change of changes- and I think certainly D with her kiddo and her already in progress MA is plugging along in the change category, and her possibly new houseowner self speaks of ramping up into something else entirely. I don't feel quite a part of it. I feel in fact, way outside in stationaryville. Sure there's the 'rents moving out, (a year from now?) and me staying, but its not me owning or me with a job. It seems a false step. But then I end up thinking there's something about what I'm doing I don't quite see. A perspective that where I'm going must signal something more than what I see it as. They're excited about it. The ladies as usual, thought i was too quiet, that when I had gotten up to go to the bathroom they'd had a question or two already to go to ask me about my spiritual landscape. . . and were alternately so extremely supportive of my new career as mystic or at the very least degree holder of MA in SF&SC that it seemed a sure thing. A set up to my whole future self. I couldn't, while in their presence, articulate any sort of panic about it not happening, about it not going anywhere... I only managed to say, God willing and I hope so. And i'm proceeding as if its happening, that a job will come and that the end result is me doing this new thing and helping people. I walked out only with a thin thread of a question mark but the rest seemed good and sure and lovely and bolstered up and ready. I couldn't even argue it. Of course I'll get in. Of course I'll get a job so I can pay for it. The fact that bacon fat splattered all over my silk teal dress didn't phase me (much). There was a solution waiting for me at home.

Then I went to have chinese food for dinner and it didn't really satisfy. Not hearty, not quite right. And onward to M's house where I met her and B to see the grandprix of horse jumping? That was fairly cool actually. Though it was just close to my memories of the circus and feeling horribly sorry for the performing bears. But some of the horses were beautiful and spirited and looked like gazelles leaping over the bars. And others I just hoped wouldn't one day end up slaughtered glue. I wanted to see them free in some field munching on grass. I couldn't hear a word B and M said so I was mostly absorbed in hearing the pounding of the hoofs or the telltale hit of a bar signaling a point against the rider, the various ooh!, ooo, of the crowd. I had wine. If i were an instrument my strings would have showed myself taut and hitting a lower chord. Twang.Twang.Twang. All the while we sat there, the flip between having tea with the girls and having a brief conversation with B about "career" paths... and "vision" left me floundering on a hook and gasping. And all it took were two or three sentences to undo the determined work the women of tea did. B showed signs of hating her job, but still encouraging me to apply to that other job (volunteer/event coordinator) at her place, but then asking me what i did for work- when you know me, what can i answer but anything? everything? nothing at all? or what does it matter? And the way she asked it made me feel I'd already failed, and that she wasn't going to really "help me" get it, and then on the way there she said, I don't mean to discourage you but there's no jobs out there for spirtual direction- (she's a chaplain and actively looking)- and part of me already had that illuminating discovery at the schools meet and greet. It was the first chink in the armor- apprehension, "purpose", all of this for nothing? Wasn't this thing of all things suppose to lead to SOMETHING? Nothing ever has before this so why start now, I countered, I could volunteer my time to my church. What did it matter? And yet still the fabric of my courage began to tear. Pointlessness. The flaming arrow hit its intended target with accuracy. And she herself, who probably didn't "mean" to discourage me delivered the blow in such a way and in such a tone, that she meant to do exactly that. Speak death right into my hope and into my life. I am discouraging you quite deliberately she meant to say. The result of all your work will be, nothing at all.

And there I went, down,down,down, to where I had been seeing just below the fabric of friendly motivation and insight. The truth of it- I don't want to come out of this and go back to the same pointless existence as before- the same meandering job searches, the positively unmotivated days of what to do- i really did want direction. And all of it came seeping in- then why bother? But then I think- what else do I have? All I have is that to go toward. There's not even a job to encourage me to stay the course. It's just a feeling. It's just the tea girls and Lauralee. With their thumbs up saying, stay the course. And most everyone saying, that's perfect for you!

It is isn't it? And then back to B and the poison she injected right into my heart, because she's depressed and struggling and now i'm right down there with her. But then I think if God really does want me to do this it doesn't matter, if at the end of it there's still nothing, does it? It feels like all i have. What can I lose?

And for a few moments in between all this I felt complete contempt or disdain for B. Bordering hate. And maybe thats a good thing. Shows me that its important. Shows me I really want it, and that maybe I won't let anything get in my way? I don't know. I guess I'll go to bed now. Try to undo the damage up on the mountain of joy, far far up in the snow, wrapped in longfurred wraps against the cold, so warm that the snow is just a beautiful effect and the angels in synch with the snow, how they tell me to be still and quiet and rest. But to just look out into the vast white glory with the wind and all the future not quite mattering as much as what i'm doing just at the moment of being where i'm suppose to be.

m.

Glass in my Foot, by M

I spent some time meditating the other day. An hour actually. Which is a throwback to all those days in highschool i sat in the dark with candles lit, incense burning and a lethargic, melancholic posture as I contemplated existence. I had it down back then. Nowadays the most I normally do is look wistfully out my window. Or save it for yoga, or before sleep prayer. I do not these days often long for night swimming by REM or for somebody to love by Depeche Mode or even still those rainy days of Skid Row where everything is tinged with sadness and longing and awesome 80's hair. But I do a have rekindled love for Beethovens sonatas which i was in love with back then and his violin/cello suites with a dash of Grygorian chanting. Equally mysterious I think and ennui expressing but just a little bit different... but as it was those Cd's were in the car, so i chose another old throwback favorite, Enya's watermark.

And instead of pounding me down into the bottom of the sea as it used to I floated blissfully on top, dutifully lit the candles, burned the incense and wondered, how exactly does one meditate and on what exactly? I felt compelled to after my visit with the holistic chick. Wrote it down even, like an assignment. Meditate 1 hour. Which I always long to do, in the yard, with a long list of Bible verses at my side. I never do though. So to open up, and its often criticized, I flipped through the Bible and randomly landed at a passage. Normally Psalms. I am possibly hedging my bets that its going to be good but it usually is somehow shockingly theme appropriate. Here is the one from the other night:

Psalm 92
A psalm. A song. For the Sabbath day.
1 It is good to praise the LORD and make music to your name, O Most High, 2 to proclaim your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night, 3 to the music of the ten-stringed lyre and the melody of the harp. 4 For you make me glad by your deeds, O LORD; I sing for joy at the works of your hands. 5 How great are your works, O LORD, how profound your thoughts! 6 The senseless man does not know, fools do not understand, 7 that though the wicked spring up like grass and all evildoers flourish, they will be forever destroyed. 8 But you, O LORD, are exalted forever.

For one, its a song for the sabbath, classic! day of rest, what am i doing? resting... listening. And with enya i've got the lyres and the harps sort of... so anyway then i thought the bed was too comfortable and so I got on the floor, (after about 50 min in i went to scratch my right thigh and found i couldn't feel it. Which was an odd sensation to arrive at. I wonder if it meant something)So I began, took deep breaths and meandered my way to the theme of the meditation which was my health and the main things that came to me were these,

first: Not my will but His will, not my struggle but His struggle, not my success but His success. Mainly in an act of giving it over to God, my body, which is His.

middle: As the holistic chick requested I phrase the term weightloss into a positive, which is something I often point out to other people. Negative thinking. Tsk. Lets turn that around and call it, I would like to be at my optimum weight which got me thinking, I would also like an optimum job and an optimum relationship and in an optimum place I would be traveling. And all of this thematically wound around being able to help people, being able to belong, and being able to serve.

2nd middle: Ask for help, Ask for healing. I am not good at being active in asking, deliberate or intentional in this area. Mostly because i'm a little obsessive and it plays like a loop until it breaks- this hurts, that aches, this frustrates, this annoys- i'm sure there's a request in there somewhere but they're often statements that need a little more recipe to them than that.

Last: I turned, with no deliberation, to where I am on my spiritual landscape. Since Nov 2007 I've been, first near a stream in dappled light looking toward a far off mountain, then walking toward the mountain with jesus, then a little further up, then sitting and waiting on a wheat strewn side of the mountain, (never mind that i eventually found myself on a volcano tour climbing a mountain and meeting god there) but on the mountain it is always warm and always pleasant looking out into the valley, where just once i saw a black tree grow and then was cut down, and then waiting at dawn/dusk on an outcropping of the mountain intermittently windy and calm, further up so that the sky was all that i saw, then the place got a little larger and flatter, like the waiting would be longer, and intermittently, lately there's been a small cabin surrounding me, sometimes there's a broom, other times not, and the minute i realize there's a roof and walls, it gets ripped off and sails, or is flung right off and out to the right of me and disappears into a bright blue sky. I can no longer see the valley below though I remember it.

So when I went there again, this is the first time it has ever been at night, I was dancing with someone on the wood of the cabin floor, no roof to be seen, but a few walls, and i was happy and had an exalted feeling, and as I turned to look down there was a piece of glass in my right foot, and I couldn't keep turning, and in my mind I kept trying to forward the image so that the glass was gone and the dancing could continue but in my image I just sat down and the man was holding my foot and sitting on a stool. And I sitting on a bench in low firelight.

And then Enya clicked off and my right thigh was waking up from its issues and I was left with pondering if, and this actually did happen when I was 3, what stepping on glass has to do with anything and is it me that put it there or was something more sinister involved. The actual incident was that my mom warned me not to play with the glass and I did anyway and the bottle broke and i stepped on it, then i had to get stitches and the doctor pretended to be santa claus and i was angry at the man for lying and i, to this day still have a very wide 2 stich x----x scar on the pad of my right foot. So that in my mental landscape I often find when I am in a dark place or feeling attacked, it is often by glass, either flying toward or raining down upon me or coming up from the ground. So that it seems significant that there appears to be glass in my foot in the last part of my meditation. Perhaps it is warning me against willfulness, or that there will be someone there to remove it finally, whatever wound this really is. I am curious about the answer.