It Ends at the Beginning

I am so sick of my own process that I could just about puke. I place enormous value on self-reflexive methods of growth and evolution, but seriously. All things in moderation, right?

I’m doing the least I can—check. Moving through fearwads as they arise—check. Dealing with my shit the best way I know how--check. Remaining engaged and present, open to what is—check.

Great. Could we do something else now, please?

I crochet. It started when my chiro suggested that a handcraft might help me move more energy into my creativity. I figured, okay, what can I do that’s cheap? I had two old crochet hooks and one knitting needle in the bottom of an old sewing kit. I had some interesting leftover yarns from making hairfalls for Burning Man. Seemed ideal. I got a book targeted at 9 year olds or so and taught myself basic stitches.



Then I got another book and learned more. Then I went out on the net and learned how to read patterns (they’re written in glyphs, not words, so some learning curve there).



I started by following directions, learning the “rules.” Then I kinda went off on my own, making simple things according to what I’d learned about the rules. Then I got bored.

I got tired of doing the same thing repetitively. Then I found freeform (also called scrumbling which the urban dictionary defines as "blowing a raspberry on someone’s testicles" (go figure I'd have a hobby that has a connection to doing odd things to people's naughty bits, huh?). I started to paint with yarn.





I’m only a beginner. I’m still learning about how different weights of yarn and different stitches can dance with each other harmoniously. I’m still learning how to make it lay flat, how to get it to do what I want. I’m still using the rules and stitches I learned early on, but now I’m having my way with them.

















I’ve been working on my learning piece for 2 months. Not every day, but steadily, and some days for hours and hours. Creating beauty calms me. Struggling with creation centers me. Watching a something emerge form a not-bloody-much fascinates me. And I now have concrete proof that I can start a long-term project and finish it, even knowing for a fact that it’s utterly imperfect in more ways than I can count.

And now it is complete. I finished it last night—wove the loose ends in, tidied up, that sort of thing. Imperfect as it may be, I did it and it’s mine. I learned a lot from it. Each time I look at it-even though I made it-I see something new. That seems improbable to me, but there you have it. I journalled and photographed its becoming; I’ve never done that with art before. It was interesting, and a definite exercise in discipline for me.

So my first try ends here. Completion achieved. The work even inspired me to write a poem (which also helped when I was facilitating the writer’s group for the Emma Center, because my cowriters got to watch a piece get written, worked on, change, and be finished--it's down at the bottom of this post). And I got to go through the process of writing as a process. This is good for me because I have a nasty, sabotagy tendency to quit if something doesn’t come out perfect and finished on the first try (a lethal habit I am striving to unlearn).

My fingers itch already for something new to work on. I’m lying on the grass of my brain, looking up at the moving cloudforms of my thoughts, becoming willing to let an inspiration find me and light me up. I have no doubt it will, and I have no doubt that the more practice I get in doing that the better off I’ll be as I walk off into my own new sunrise.
approx size = 2.5x2.5 feet.

Crocheting a Poem

I pick up my pointy stick and begin to inscribe patterns:
loops, lines, stringy language;

each row builds on the last and becomes the next.
I hope the one before makes sense
or the followers are lost.

Tension is critical. If I make the next word too tight
or too loose
the other words will have a hard time figuring out where they belong
and the work won’t lay flat on the page when it’s done.

If I don’t balance creation with control,
it will curl around the edges:
that makes a poem harder to wear.

If I can craft this poem,
allow it to become,
witness the tango of colors,
pace my hands and feet,
weave a rhythm,

I will have made something that might
clothe a naked form,
or offer nice, warm beauty
on a cold, blocked night.

I cut the working strands
and weave in the ends.
Good finishing is invisible.

Changing the Story

Stuff happens. As it turns out, the stuff that’s happening is very seldom the cause of any pleasure or distress I may experience. Pleasure and distress come from the stories I instantaneously (and far too often unconsciously) tell myself about the stuff that’s happening.

Take moving from my 20 year home to a whole new place, for example. Not such a big thing, really, especially when I look at people like my friend Inge (see previous blog post), and when I observe the different ways things like this are handled in other places in the world. Were I Bedouin, I’d nut up about staying on one place!

I’ve been telling myself some hella sketchy stories. I think I’ve moved through a lot of the tangly threads in the fearwad an am now hopefully moving on to dealing with less fearsome, paralyzing things.

I’ve been using Dave Berman’s Manifest Positivity motto: What’s the least you can do? It’s really been helping; some of these fearwads and their constituent chunks have been so seemingly gimonstornormous that I haven’t been able to work with them as wholes. In pieces, though, I can manage to chop wood and carry water.

We took a big step yesterday.L & I sat down and crafted an ad to go out on Craigstlist and some other places where, hopefully, the person(s) who need us will see our beacon shining against the clouds (evokes Batman, dunnit?). It took us a couple hours, and we had to get past the stories behind some the of the kneejerk reactions that can make it difficult for us to co-craft, but we did it.
It’s here:

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/hou/1724596027.html.

We think it turned out pretty good. Hopefully, you’ll go take a look at it, offer us comments, maybe put it on your Facebook where more people can get at it, etc.It really is rather lovely.

To find the stuff that went into that note, I had to change some story. While the details in story vary for me, many of the little ones share a common theme: This is HARD. Moving is hard. Moving to the Bay is hard (oh, yeah, and don’t forget expensive). Packing is hard. Letting go of what I know is hard. Finding a place is hard.

What if I told myself a different story? Like, moving is challenging, but doable. This is a chance to learn even more about managing my personal resources. Packing is a bitch, but it gives me a chance to sort out the detritus I’ve kept that isn’t me anymore. Finding a place to live might be tough using conventional methods, but I live in a place of boundless hope with almost infinite other ways to try and do things. Being me isn’t a detriment to doing what I desire—it’s exactly what’s required.

Just one different story can alter my perceptions; a combination of other stories can alter my perceptions significantly enough to allow me to become aware of other, previously invisible, options.

So today, this Note from the Universe comes in: "Never compromise a dream, Deborah. Always compromise on how it will come true." The story I was telling resulted in a worldview that I would need to alter my dream to make this happen. Bullshit. It’s the story that needs altering, and that part is way easier than, say, packing.

Tying Up My Camel

The more I wrestle with this, the more I find it to be a complex, Gordian set of fears, not just one or two that I can deal with quickly, detangle and move on. I keep finding the smaller fears that make up the big, scary looking fearwad and am dealing with them as I find them.

Somehow, I expected this to go faster. Silly me.

In the midst of my wrestling, I got to do a couple neat things this weekend. I had the pleasure of attending a lovely wedding and help a friend with moving stuff. All I really wanted to do was stay home in a corner sucking my metaphoric thumb and twitching, but I’ve learned that the best way to get out of my own crap is to do something for others. So I got up, dressed up and showed up.

After the lovely wedding, we headed for Inge’s. That’s the friend we were helping with moving. She’s amazing. She’s got more time in volunteering, community activism and social justice than I’ve been alive. She has health challenges, and this really neat wandering eye. She’s leaving her home of 18 years to move to the east coast, to live closer to her other kids and grandkids

She’s 75.

Seventy-five.

Isn't she delightful? So curious! So mischievous! So vibrant! She’s built a life here, and is giving it all up to do something else. Can you imagine? At that age? Packing it all in to go do something totally new and different? Hell, I’m having a hard time imagining it for myself and I’m only 45!

But she’s doing it. Her house sold at a good price (for this market) before it ever even got listed and she had 2 buyers standing by. Once she made the decision, she says, things just started falling into place. She’s very sad—grieving, even—for the life here that is ending. But she’s all sparkly and excited about the new life that’s about to begin. There was a book about love and dying on one of the boxes in the living room, which she enthusiastically recommended to me, saying, “Grieving comes from love, you know. We must risk the pain of loss to really love all the way down.”

I have at least two choices, here. I can look at her as a model, a way of helping me to comport myself in a similar fashion. Or, I can discount her entirely by drawing on specifics, like our lives are different, she doesn’t have the same issues I do, it’s easy for her, blah blah blah. That kinda crap. I have decided that, like her, I am not a victim of my chaotic existence but that I am an adventurer off to see what this next bit of my life is going to look like. I can make either option come true, depending on which one I choose to believe.

If Inge can do it, then I bloody well can, too.

This fine model may not help me find and detangle another fear; that’s my work in progress. But it does something equally valuable: it shows me that theses fearwads can be dealt with, and that there’s hope. Vast, boundless amounts of hope and the deep, fervent faith that if this is really what I’m supposed to be doing, doors I can’t even see yet will open to me right when I need them. That’s not to say that I’m operating under the assumption that I can sit on my ass and if the Universe wants me to go somewhere or do something that a magic carpet will arrive to whisk me off to my fate or destiny; it's up to me to take the steps that move me in my desired direction. It means that I’m abiding by a Muslim truth: Trust God and tie up your camel.

Suck By Association?

Emotional weather forecast for today: anxious and uncertain with patches of peace and tranquility. Internal squalls of debate and doubt with breakthroughs of clarity. When in motion today, be wary of high turbulence in areas of low ceilings.

I’m making headway.

Last night, while moving through some more of this very interesting internal weather, I ran across something. It’s thirty years old and subtly influential. I found myself saying, “…and the last time I gave up everything I knew and moved, it sucked.”

Well, of course it sucked. I got married and left home young. Really young. Fifteen. Shortly after I got myself into some wedlock, I moved. At first, it was only halfway across the country, to Colorado where children in Halloween costumes were making snowmen. I was horrified, and cold. A year later, it was the rest of the way across, to Virginia. I was horrified for different reasons, and I was hot and overhumidified. I didn’t know anyone, I’d never lived anywhere but California, all my family and my familiar stuff was gone, gone gone. That hellish phase lasted for two years. I’d never had to move in the world as an adult before, and I had not one iota of a thought about a clue about anything in life. I was miserable.

I didn’t realize I was still operating within that vintage misery, until I heard myself say the thing about last time and the suckage.

Sure, it sucked. I was basically a smartass teenager, using marriage in order to run away from what I didn’t like at home. I had no idea how to be in the world. I learned a lot about how I didn’t want to be in the world.

The similarity this situation bears to “the first time I did this” is actually minimal. I’m moving. That’s about it. I’m thirty years away from being a smartass teen. I’m not running from anything; I’m moving myself steadily, consciously towards something that matters a great deal to me. I have something of a feel for how the world moves, now, and a much better idea about how I desire to move through it. I’m not the same person I was then. The situation’s not the same. I’m leaving my home base to go somewhere else: that’s really where the resemblance between then and now ends.

And yet, I still have it in my head that “the last time I did this, it sucked.” That doesn’t make a lot of sense, really, considering that what I’m about to do (make conscious changes in order to pursue my dreams) is not what I did thirty years ago. There is no “last time I did this” because I’ve not previously done it. But damned if my saboteur isn’t trying to tell me it’s the same.

It isn’t. There’s a big difference between escape and adventure. Last time: escape. This time: adventure. It is not going to be all suck. There will be some suck, as it is moving, and moving, in general, sucks. But default suckage by association? Nah. That, I can leave behind.

Just Say Thank You

Yesterday was a mite sketchy up in the ol’ brain tower of doom. Managed—and right properly—to think myself into a tizz. This morning promised more of the same; the hamsters in my head woke up scant moments before I did and already had a ruckus going before I even got my coffee.

And then one of my angels stopped by (this loving spirit happens to have chosen a particularly splendid skinsuit and along with the grace she brings I get a hottie to look at. The Universe is indeed kind).

We chat; an impeding visit, perhaps? Timing’s the thing. Whenever a visit might occur, she says, I must be accompanied by some sort of speech-prohibiting device. Ball gag was the specific she mentioned, but I rather prefer good old fashioned panties and duct tape. She whips off her pants and transforms, by their removal, the panties she’s wearing into a future gag for me.

They’re blue, like an early summer sky. They have a satin bow.

Ever obliging, I put the panties in my mouth (after a hearty inhale, of course). Nice, that they smell like her. Not as nice that they also smell like laundry soap of the variety that makes me choke. I decide a token of the panties, as a reminder to silence, will do. I grab my nearby thread snips and go to remove the bow only to realize that I can’t really see it (and they are cute little panties that I’d hate to damage accidentally). I then reach for my glasses. I can’t find them. I begin to freak just the teensiest bit, starting to tell stories like, “Oh no! Without my glasses, I can’t read a thing and I have work to do today! I must have my glasses! What if I can’t find them?!? Oh no! Ack!” And so on.

Sparklingly perky, she says, “Just say, ‘Thank you!’”

I did. I said, “Thank you for the nice, soft fuzzy experience I’ll have without my glasses. I dunno why I get to have this experience, but thanks!”

I felt lighter instantly. I figured if it worked for missing glasses, it’d work for other things. So I said thank you for the fear I had yesterday that led me inward. Thank you for the haze of not knowing that surrounds our moving adventure. Thank you for the anxiety I get whenever I think about moving. Thank you for the sorrow I feel at being far from tribe and friends. Thank you for the lessons I haven’t even seen yet. Thank you.

This isn’t over yet. Move Day is a only month away and nothing on the surface, in the Maya, has changed. I still don’t know where we’ll be living or how we’re going to get there. But I am now firmly reminded (I put the satin panty bow above my desk) that I can say thank you to anything, thereby initiating transformation like my angel, who can transform panties to a gag at the drop of a pants. Thank you.

Writing Adventures in Terror

I’m scared shitless and the only thing I know to do is to write my way through it. I’m facing one of the biggest adventures of my adult life: I’m leaving my home of twenty years to move to the Bay Area and start grad school.

Last year I got accepted to the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley to work on my MDiv; after those three years, I’ll do another two for the PhD. I couldn’t go; funding fell through 2 weeks before we were slated to move. Had a house lined up and everything, and the Universe said, “No. I need you to stay in Humboldt a while longer.”

Okay, I can live with that. I applied for and got a deferral. I started a Coaching practice, which has been one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever done. It deepened my service and my skills. I believe I have helped some people with their goals. And now it’s time to move.

And I’m terrified.

Our moving budget is skinny, but we have one. No known place to stay while we look for a place or an actual place to live yet. Hard to househunt from a distance, but doable.

Lolo & I had a meeting today. We talked about dates, a Plan, and how to go about this Big Adventure. That part was good, but it scared me more. See, I have no idea how any of this is going to play out. All I know is that we need to be living down there, preferably in the Easy Bay and preferably as close to Holy Hill as possible. We can’t afford a lot of rent, and neither of us have jobs in the Bay lined up. Fortunately, I do have some steady, passive income; we should be able to get by until we find work.

By all conventional rules, this looks to be a very challenging adventure. On the other hand, according to my beliefs, sometimes we get called to act without knowing for sure what the outcome will be (which is really true of life in general, but humans are excellent at creating & getting attached to the illusions of comfort and security). I also choose to believe that the Universe is constantly conspiring on my behalf and that I am held in ways I cannot even begin to imagine. That’s generally a place of joy for me, but right now, I’m frightened.

I’ve said all along that I’ll do whatever needs doing to manifest my dream of grad school. I mean that. Right now, though, I’m scared of what that might mean. Will I be called on to do things that physically hurt? That make me seriously uncomfortable? That would make one of those really heart-wrenching tales of personal sacrifice and overcoming obstacles to reach a dream? I can’t know. What I do know is that I said I’d do anything, and I fucking mean it. I’ll sleep in the back of our truck with the dog and cat if I have to. Funny, but right now all of my solutions to my adventure dilemma are even scarier than the dilemma itself. I suspect my saboteur is working overtime just now.

My training tells me to sit with my fear, to be fully in it. Mustn’t fight it; must go all the way in, see what I’m really afraid of, use my tools, move forward. Right now, that’s daunting. I asked myself what was the least I could do, and writing my way through it came to mind. So here I am.

We like to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race. We both love drag, drag queens, fabulosity, spirit and courage. It comes down to the last round with the last 2 contestants. They have to lip synch for their lives. One of them gets down off the stage and does her thing right in front of the judges’ table. The judges are looking at here, while the poor girl up on stage muddles through. Our theory was that the one who got offstage wanted it more. She was willing to go that extra bit because she really, REALLY wanted to win her dream.

And she won.

I wanna be like that. I wanna be someone who figures out how to go that extra step for my dream—works those extra hours, makes that extra sacrifice, whatever. I shout loudly in the silence of my head to the Universe: THIS IS MY DREAM! I AM DOING THIS!

…and I hear crickets. No specific guidance at this time. “If you are calling from a rotary brain, please stay on the line and the next available representative of the Divine will be….” >*click*<.

Okay. To me, this means that I have what I need in order to do the next thing I need to do while staying fully present in this moment. Apparently, I need to clarify for myself what it is we’re after so that we can create it. That’s progress, anyway—having something to do that moves me closer to my goals helps ameliorate the fear that paralyzes me.

Stay tuned: more tomorrow as the story unfolds. I’m on an adventure and I invite you to join me as I write my way through it.

What We Should See

There's a big stink at the moment, about the AP's decision to publish a photo of a Marine in his last moments of life. I saw it come up as an aritcle about the stink, not the stink-causing article itself. So I went looking for the image, to see what all the stink was about, and I found this:



I thought, "Ah, that must be it. Then I read the caption: it said "dying Marine on the road to Seoul." That whapped me hard. I was looking for an image of a young man dying in one senseless, "modern" war, and as if one senseless war isn't enough, I get dragged all the way back to Korea. Amazing.








Stunned but unstaisfied, I kept hunting. Here's the Big AP Stink image:



The young lad, one Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard, may he rest in peace, was hit by rocket shrapnel and died.

He died, some other soldiers died, and other people have died too. Women, children, civilians--ours and theirs, as if there's really any difference between one dead human and another, in terms of cost. Is an American life inherently worth more than an Iranian one, or an Afghani one? (hint: the answer is NO). All dead. Dead dead dead. Death is the price of war.

One of the things I remember about the Viet Nam 'conflict' was seeing images that disturbed my child's mind. It really made me wonder why all this was going on, why people had to die for what seemed to me then very silly reasons. The images were there, though, all over the six o'clock news.

Small wonder I grew up hating the news, and newspapers, and talk radio. They all stank like death.

Nowadays, I listen to talk radio and watch news--mostly online. I get the NY Times tweets, and a few other sources, too. I like to vet information. So this AP story about the big stink around the picture caught me for one primary reason: The dearth of images of our current war. It's been made terribly easy for us, as Americans, to not even notice we're *at* war. Well, we are. And not to beat a dead soldier, but death is the price of war.

Should we see the cost of war? Will that help us become so disgusted and appalled at our collective choices that we begin to make different choices, choices that don't result in corpses--or near corpses--that need to be photographed? Is that why some people are trying to say that publishing this stinky photo of a Marine in his death throes is a horrible thing, because there's some sense in our administrators that if us plain old regular people see these images we might get just a little bit miffed and want to do something about it?

At the very least, we should make sure that what we're purchasing with this abundance of death is worth the price we pay for it. I don't know about you, but I prefer to see what I'm buying before I pay.