heart as tent

instead of feeling fearful, noticing what it's like to have fear coursing through me. this entails being larger than the emotion, providing a vehicle for the fear (pumping heart, racing blood) but not letting that vehicle direct the course. the feeling happens through me, not to me.

brain will get thrown off, because brain will tend to want to be in charge (by brain, i'm pretty sure i mean ego). heart is this inestimable wealth of calmness, belying its depth with a hundred mona lisa smiles. sheltering emotion, culling wisdom from it.

a dry martini on a windy night

i thought i was just being lazy, then i noticed i had a fever (when a thermometer seems like a fun way to pass the time, wonder). 101.

so i took me back to bed with my roommate's herbal fever blend, and found a playlist on youtube of all the different versions of "fever". the cramps' version wins out. wow. cool. special mentions go to ann margret for most amusing dancy version, ray charles for hottest, and a live version of elvis singing and meeping for most improvement. i think i've run across elvis the way many people first run across the grateful dead: studio-recorded songs are less impressive, seek out the live albums.

or maybe it was the fever?

today i feel host to a sore throat. ahead of me, lying in wait, is the weekly farmers' market trip for household groceries and a major event to be very active ('thon-style active) and supervisory at. i have to admit, i wish i was happily anticipating more of it. i would likely feel that way if the day held only one or two of those things. i have nothing to say to the sore throat i'm not already saying in herbal format.

each of the wild moments and adventures of the past three weeks floats back through my active memory: training a new person at work to prepare for my leaving, taking a solo journey on the train, hiking up a mountain and letting go of a relationship i've held central to my life for more than half of it, roadtripping to a wedding and acting as maiden of honour, engaging in exploration i'd been fearfully ignoring for a few years, leaving my job... and curating an art show before all of that... i see why my immune system might need to reset. better now than at the wedding.

what does love look like? slowing down. focusing. touching the heart of the matter. in this case, my own heart. slowly, with focus, touching my own heart.

insert cheesy sci-fi novel name here

feeling the crash. 

knew i would, after letting go of so much. tried to gear down nearing arrival so as to soften the landing, but i'm still new at being gentle with myself. so many of the old habits are still kicking around, 'willing to help'. and now i'm in the grey and blurry here: not sure what i'm drawn to because i'm so focused on resistance. waters of the hopeful future muddied with one moment of doubt. a or b? ohshitohshitohshitAorB??

the ennui of maintenance combined with the weight of all previous efforts (which don't exist anywhere other than my list of failed attempts) is a heavy blanket to the slim flame of 'for fuck's sake, i'm smarter than this, i feel loved and i can build my way to the horizon i want to see'. 

new direction falters. but i'm already far enough away from the old shore and still have the new mantra tucked into my head. plus i'm stubborn. that works both ways, oh gaoler.  

the new moon's muted call. i speculate at the window of my tiny inflatable life raft, mixing metaphors in my wake. 

turning the corner

i've been sleeping unashamedly. last night the roommates were all out having a fire and i was crashed out in my sweet bed, dreaming of office supplies and men.

i'm letting go of my job, and jobs in general. after a long time out of school and making fun of educational "institutions" (read: businesses), i feel drawn enough to a path that i will be investing thousands into their piece of paper that says i am legitimately organic. oh, the investments we make. because i flaunted my not-for-school attitude for so long, i now have to start at the bottom of the tree. trunks are fun, oh yes. just get me up the damn thing so i can play in the branches. hunker down time.

my roommate and i are also talking of moving our prairie butts back to the mountains, where we had met. but a smaller town this time. she's tired of the snow, and i'm tired of the grey monolith of an environment. since i'm taking distance learning for the first few years, i'm open, but i am already wondering where to take my masters. it's lovely that after a roadtrip, when i'm wondering if i really want to stay here, my 'wife' is also querying the wisdom of this city for our home and family. it's gratifying to feel once again our synergy on such matters.

have checked in with my own sense of naiveté again. it's the thing about me that i have little influence over. the unending trust i supply to strangers who smile at me is kind of incredible, and if it wasn't coupled with a sense of intuition, i'm not sure how long i'd survive in this life. being on the road, meeting people out of my own context of friends and achievements has been interesting. my enthusiasm gets mistaken for something else. my tenderness can be held against me. i was let down that some folks weren't more willing to participate in co-creation. i certainly came back with more appreciation for my friend group. at first, i was disappointed that i didn't peg people's personalities right off the bat, but now i have moved to a place of just learning from it. i'm not psychic, after all. that's a different skill base. the disappointment was not my fault. take that, mean little self-blaming ego.

habits are strong, but my desire to grow is stronger yet. as i edge into the unknown, i am reminded of how tiny i am. tiny spark in the waves, nourish thy self.

merveilleuse!

happily exhausted, home from the two-legged road journey. mountains, prairies, then further into the mountains. some of the time solo, some of the time with longtime friends. meeting new people, including myself, all along the way. soul journey, celebration of love, natural wild. very, very beautifying.

renewal and bliss experienced: deer, music, silence, shared moments, expansion, lakes, smiles and laughter. adventure. hiking, driving, train-rides, gondolas, ferries.

best kind.

singing my future

sitting in a hostel, thinking about my past. what has shaped me to be the way i am: my decision-making, my behaviour under pressure, my goals, dreams and what i expect myself to achieve and bear witness to.

i am the kind of person that walks for an hour in the moonlight back up the road to the hostel at three in the morning. i am shyer than i thought i was, and i want other people to try harder to get to know me before i spill myself to anyone. i care enough to ask questions and pay attention to the answers, but i care selectively.

i hate doing the hard thing but i do it anyway, because i know it's easier than thinking about it forever (i continue to take a long time to do some things, which reinforces this truth; ten days of not cleaning the bathroom and half an hour is how long it takes). i decide to do something and then forget about why, and forget that others don't feel the same way (seriously? people think it's too expensive to eat organic but they buy a car? what kind of logic is that??).

i bail on myself on a regular basis, shortchanging myself in favour of whoever has more power than i do. i question my ability to actually care for myself, and deny my body the ability to feel well on a regular basis. what am i punishing myself for?

i live more in my daydreams than this shared reality.

i consider the factors that shaped me: the time and space i was born and raised in, my parents and schooling, my choices as i grew older about friends and lifestyles.

i think about my dad's life and death, and i sing the song i sang at his funeral: who am i?

pressure

what does love look like today? an overtired mother of three, struggling along, forgetting to have fun with as well as take care of her children. a stressed-out teenager, not knowing he has nothing to worry about. a song by fridge, mellow yet insistently present. the promise of mountains. the thought of connections, even if not the connection itself.

friends. inescapably one of life's most wondrous aspects. at times i feel as though i have none, at other times many, and the best times, like now, where i have two or three golden souls nearby, humming while they create.

it all fuses together and separates upon cooling. shapes emerge that were lost in the heat, the compression factor, space getting sucked into time. i stroll by, drooling.

that roadsign doesn't apply to me

wondering, wondering.

i feel fiercely again, but what of it? the massive emotion train, as lively as it is, can simply take me in circles. dropping me off, exhausted, at square one. where i collapse and stay in a cheap, smelly hostel.

yet the scent of something new is tempting, sexy. and i somehow feel more a part of life when i get excited about change. like i'm renewing my membership to the evolving spiral.

but yeah, i feel a distinctive nervousness: what if i fuck it up? anxiety is ever near, threatening to grab the bullhorn. too tense to calm down, of course. when else would i need to calm down... and down from where? from the high jump of spring. please god, let me land on the mat. i'll be a good kid, i promise.

tide

finally, a large deadline passes. the relief; i understand the word palpable now. i actually felt the release inside and outside of my body. inside my body it felt like endorphins. outside my body it felt like a hard bright light shining and then fading into a soft sunset.

this too shall pass.

i am changing. again. still.

jobs come and go but the elephant in the room stands quietly. "hello? will you please acknowledge me? i am your purpose. sorry, don't mean to put you in any kind of box, this is just the perfect thing for you to do. no worries, if you'd rather do something less enjoyable and less fulfilling for a while, that's cool with us here at Fate Central."

and next week crests in front of me. i can see it sparkle.