Friday chicken

Where I cover the good and the hard in my week, visiting the non-preachy side of ritual and self-reflection.

It is Friday and we are here.

{a breath for Friday, and for being here right now}

What worked this week?

Treating all obstacles like they are “Yay, fun detour!” signs.

What if an obstacle, or a perceived obstacle, since that’s what they usually are, is actually a handy note saying, “Go this other way, please!”

This is related to the superpower of “No Big Deal, That Was Not My Bus Anyway, Which Is Clear Since I’m Not On It.”

It is the superpower of not-groaning. Looking for the redirect.

This is 100% the advanced practice, it requires first having really assimilated the practice of Meeting All Pain With Legitimacy.

It’s not pushing through the disappointment. It’s having already gotten to the point where of course disappointment is legitimate, we are allowed to feel as disappointed as we want…

Next time I might…

Light more candles.

This is both metaphorical and not.

In real life, I save candles for special occasions when in fact lighting them brings me so much joy that this is stupid.

I am also thinking about this in the sense of: allowing for more light.

I wrote in the latest YEARbook that I am afraid of the healing that comes from seeing.

This week has shown me many patterns of my own that involve not wanting to see something that was clearly happening, choosing not to see it. There is a healing that comes from seeing. I am going to light more candles, as a way of reminding myself that more light will help me stop avoiding the corners.

Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.

  1. Travel takes so much out of me, for so long. Still recovering. A breath for process.
  2. I could not have been more wrong about someone I loved and trusted completely. A breath for losing my sense of the ground, and for moving through shock.
  3. Rattled and reeling. A breath for comfort.
  4. Not-knowing. Various things up in the air. Waiting for intel. It’s probably good for me and I’m not liking it. A breath and a candle.
  5. Really seeing how much I have not been letting myself see. A breath for blinking and watching things reconfigure.
  6. The dance communities I like best and the dances I like best are not the same. A breath for being wildly passionate about something and waiting for the right people to play with.
  7. Heart aches. And I still cannot believe all the signs I ignored. “We are all a little bad at seeing clearly when we have the loves.” This is what Nomi said, and she is right. A breath for passage, and for forgiveness, and for crossing over and through.
  8. Inhale, exhale. Goodbye, mysteries and hard moments of this week.

Eight breaths of good, reassuring, delight-filled.

  1. The beautiful softening I received from that sentence: “We are all a little bad at seeing clearly when we have the loves.” A breath for clarity, friends, comfort, resolution and the incredibly liberating moment when you realize you no longer need to take part in something. Next time I have the loves, it will be a different kind.
  2. The miracle of this body. I have toes that can wiggle, lungs that breathe for me, legs that take me where I need to go. A breath for deep appreciation, and being able to dance my way through all kinds of moments.
  3. Dance is healing, for me. Also crazy fun! And a worthy distraction, the good kind of distraction, where you are so deeply focused on something pleasurable that the process of releasing pain happens in the background and suddenly you have new perspective. A breath for how important that is, and joy at having discovered dance. Thank you, person who is out of my life, for being the stone in the river and helping me reunite with dance.
  4. Two beautiful intense days of studying waltz-tango fusion with Richard Powers, someone I intensely admire. I got to lead! I love leading! Going to Secret Society for the Libertine Belles show, dancing swing and lindy with Casey and Henry. My wonderful uncle Svevo and my cousin Noah coming by to play. A fantastic west coast swing class with Chris, where, in addition to learning cool stuff, for the first time ever, he didn’t have a hundred corrections for me. Progress! A breath for learning and true companionship, two of my favorite things.
  5. Danielle and I had a Fake Beach Day together (oh man, I miss real Beach Day so much) on a Monday, just like we used to, and we had our toenails painted and I chose this wild electric fluorescent orange, which was so unlike me, and so wonderful. I got to learn about twenty different ridiculous internal rules I have that I had no idea existed (“that’s a color for fun people, not for you”) and release them. It was a seemingly small thing that turned out to be a big thing because all week I have felt wild, sexy, adventurous and unpredictable, all of which were super fun and useful things to experience. A breath for how play changes things, and for expanding comfort zones so that things that previously didn’t feel safe suddenly are.
  6. The best Wednesday night dance ever. Turns out the me who is okay with fluorescent orange nails is also okay with asking everyone to dance and not sitting out at all. It also turns out that Wildly Confident me is a better dancer. Or maybe that’s just the tango-waltz fusion kicking in. Either way, I had a wonderful night of dancing. Usually at that dance I have one or two good dances, a handful of okay ones and a bunch where I didn’t dance as well as I’d like. Wednesday I had pretty much all good dances. This is new and exciting, and I am giving credit to the nail color. Well, you know what I mean. To the passage I went through by letting myself try on a new aspect of myself. A breath for unexpected delight.
  7. I am okay, and I am going to be okay, and I trust that every aspect of these hard learning is useful. A breath for glowing my way through this.
  8. Appreciation and thankfulness. Nothing is wrong. Now is not then. Strawberries in the garden. Someone I love to dance with is in town. The Blakely Chronicles continue. Friends are amazing. Every single person I shared with was even more appalled and horrified than I was about [incident], and had so much love and warmth for me. I know what I want next, and I am ready to celebrate. So many things are good. A breath for deep appreciation in my thank-you heart.

WHAM BOOM! Operations completed.

The phrase Whoosh Ha Mastodon Boom is secret agent code that means: this thing is done! It is often shortened to wham-boom. You may also shout (or whisper) other joyous words if you like.

I finished Operation Xs and Ys! 184 pages, and I’m editing like crazy. Also done: Mission San Miguel Take IV. I made a decision about Cape Egrets. I made changes in my bedroom. I closed lots of doors. Surprisingly productive for a week of jetlag and heartbreak, take that! Wham Boom.

Superpowers!

Powers I had this week…

The power of finding the good and saying thank you.

Superpowers I want.

The power of not caring what other people think about me, and letting them be as wrong about me as they want or need to be. This is also the superpower of gloriously strong boundaries.

Salve. The Salve of Triumphant Closure.

Ohmigosh I can’t even. Triumphant Closure: the concept amazes me. This is not mine, someone on the Floop (my hidden online community) came up with it, and just knowing that this could exist is a salve, in addition to the salve itself.

The salve of Triumphant Closure is both soothing and invigorating. It is related to last week’s salve of Delighting in Letting Go, which allows endings be peaceful and even joyful. This is like a stronger, more immediate version of that. It is a HELL YES THIS IS DONE.

It is the feeling of knocking out a task that has been bugging you. It is the feeling of writing the final paragraph and thinking, oh yeah this is good. It is finishing. It is waving delightedly as your ship moves away from shore, knowing that this is the perfect way and time to leave on your next adventure.

When you rub this salve into your skin, you start to grin. Everything that needs to leave is exiting. Everything that needs to come in now has room. Let’s do this.

It is a salve that reminds you of your own power. It wakes things up that need awakening. A breeze carrying passion. A secret smile, and maybe you don’t know why yet, and it doesn’t even matter…

These salves can’t be seen, but the production factory delivers enough for distribution by way of the magic of the internet, so help yourself. There is enough.

If salve does not appeal, you can have this in tea form, as a bath, cocktail, whatever works for you. Not only is there enough salve, there are also enough ways to receive it.

Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!

My brother and I make up bands, which are all just one guy. The Meme Beach House is the venue.

This band is from Richard and it’s called Kerning Catastrophe, and they are a Scottish band that plays ragtime, but with bagpipes and actually it turns out that the whole band is somehow just one guy.

Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.

I am deep in an undercover mission to get better at receiving in all forms, or as I’m calling it: Glowing Receptivity and Being Receptive to Glow. Including the skill of gracefully accepting thanks.

It is related to my mission of Coming Out Of All The Closets and sharing about my personal experiences with not-sharing-how-hard-things-are.

If you would like to take a part in this and support me on my mission by sharing sweetness and appreciation for any aspect of my work, I would love that. You can do it with the magic of words, through the comments, or add something to Barrington’s Discretionary fund. (Explanation!)

And if the way you are glowing appreciation is quietly in your heart, I like that too. ♡

Come play if you like…

Join me in the comments. Some of us share hard and good, some of us say hi, or maybe we’re on silent retreat. My ritual doesn’t have to be your ritual. Whatever works for you. Almost three hundred weeks of this and there still isn’t a right way.

Everyone belongs. We let people have their own experience. We’re supportive and welcoming. We don’t give advice.

Wishing you a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come.

Shabbat shalom.

p.s. It’s fine if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — join in whenever you like, it’s no big deal. And I am blowing kisses to the Beloved Lurkers. I love that you are here too.

The Fluent Self