What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
Wish #238: Meeting this moment.
Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.
At the very least, useful noticings about my relationship with wanting. It all counts.
♡
Hmmm, I thought I knew what I wanted this week, and it is turning into something else, and I need to process that.
I thought I wanted to meet one thing, and it turns out I am meeting something else so that I can meet the first thing. It all needs to be met.
I am also noticing how upset and frustrated I am feeling vis a vis this situation, so let’s start with that.
What do I want?
I want to remember that Nothing Is Wrong.
All my feelings are legitimate, just by virtue of the fact that I am experiencing them.
This situation, like all situations, will turn out to have been remarkably useful, and slightly future me will glow a thank you from our thank-you-heart that it was like this.
I want to make space for ALL THIS FEELING. And to release whatever parts of the intensity are not about now. If past-me is still raging about other things, let’s make a safe room for her.
What do I want?
I want to find out who is feeling all this hurt, pain and frustration? This helplessness?
Ah, it is bartender me. No, it’s more specific than that: those two years — five nights a week — in a dive in south Tel Aviv. Omri and Oded and all the old men ordering me around so that I could be the ball in their twisted neverending psychological ping pong with each other. Endless manipulations.
Safe room, safe room.
My love. This was a long, long time ago. Omri has no power over us, and he never did, we just thought he did. Omri is dead. Actually, everyone from then is probably dead. They all smoked four packs of cigarettes a day and were deeply invested in drinking themselves to death.
We have skills now that we didn’t have then, that we didn’t even know about then. We have boundaries now that we didn’t have then. We have the beautiful healthy boundaries salve from Friday. We are held. Now is not then.
And do you know, hurting-me-from-then who is the treasure of my heart? We were held then too, we just didn’t know it. We didn’t know how to feel into it.
Like in dance when your partner has a hand lightly on your shoulder. You only really feel it once you connect, when you sink into it and relax into being held, while still maintaining control of your own balance. Then: magic.
What do I want?
I want to pause.
I want to end this cycle of burnout and creating more work for myself.
Ah, that’s it. I dislike that this need for safety is making me do more work. And yet sometimes that’s how it is. Or appears to be, at least.
Is this true? Let’s ask what is true and what is also true.
Déjà vu. I am pretty sure I have written this entire post before, word for word. And maybe I have, maybe I have been writing it for years.
What do I want?
I want my dance studio (this is a proxy) to feel deliciously safe. The dance studio is actually my fishing village which is not a fishing village.
I do not want to have to do any more work to ensure that this is the case.
What do I want?
In a dance studio, there are certain things that provide safety for everyone dancing there.
One part is basic etiquette: maintaining line of dance (everyone moves counterclockwise around the floor) so you go in the same direction as your fellow dancers instead of crashing into them.
The other part is understanding how to do a basic pattern in such a way that you aren’t yanking on people or moving them in a way that could compromise their back and shoulders. So that you are holding yourself up and allowing yourself to be held at the same time. Even while people are still working on the subtleties of this, as long as they are traveling in line of dance, everything is fine.
In my five years running this dance studio, I’ve learned everything there is to know about offering clear explanations for how to do this.
We explain it before people even sign up. And then we help them remember.
We have signs posted. We’ve taught dozens of classes on this and made the recordings available. I even designed a special orientation program for new dancers that walks them through dance safety.
And this issue is even more important than before because we are all dancing at a much higher level now. When you’re just doing basics it isn’t the end of the world if you crash into someone because you weren’t following line of dance. It isn’t ideal, but no one gets hurt. You just apologize.
At a higher level, not respecting line of dance endangers everyone. We are doing complicated maneuvers and I can’t have anyone getting injured.
What do I want?
I want the counterclockwise line of dance to be respected, without doing more explaining about it.
When I opened registration for the studio this year, I gave the world’s clearest explanation. I said: my sweet loves, do not come dance with us this year unless you are onboard with this principle.
The entire studio is set up around this principle of safety. We live by it.
What do I want?
So last week someone showed up at the studio who had made the choice to not dance or practice, which is a legitimate choice.
I don’t require anyone to dance, or even to watch. I trust in All Timing Is Right Timing, and I know that there are many different ways to receive the gifts of dance and of my magical studio without even moving. Everyone’s relationship to dance and personal process with being a dancer is different.
Anyway, he came by and sprinted across the room, ignoring line of dance and our shared principle of safe dance space. I know, it was bizarre.
There are seriously signs everywhere that say, “hey, guys, this is the direction that we dance in so people don’t get hurt”. Also you can see everyone doing it.
I’m not talking about someone spacing out and going the wrong way in a moment of “oh whoops, sorry, I forgot”, which could absolutely happen. I mean complete disregard for the dancers and the studio.
The dancers at my studio are incredibly capable dancers, and they all just gracefully moved out of the way, or were able to not react at all. Some of them even tried to make room for him. That’s lovely. I’m proud of our dance culture. And it still isn’t okay.
While all dancers share in the responsibility for safe dancing and we are all equals, I built the studio, and I need to make choices that support the safety of everyone. So I decided that for year 6, I need to invite dancers I know and trust, so we can practice dancing at a higher level without the danger of running into people.
What do I want?
I am not in the mood to make invitations.
This process of invitations creates a lot more work for me, and I have no energy for more work. I shouldn’t have to be doing this work. This work should not be necessary. I am not in the mood to do it.
I just want to throw a temper tantrum and yell NO FAIR NO FAIR NO FAIR.
Which I might. Except that doesn’t resolve the wockawock of “I can’t have a situation where there is anyone in the studio who doesn’t respect the line of dance”, so I also want a solution to that.
I guess I want a way to make doing invitations fun. Or I want to not have to do it.
What do I want?
Peacefulness.
May peacefulness prevail.
What do I want?
I want to be like Susan, one of my actual real-life dance instructors, who holds beautiful boundaries for her classes.
What do I want?
Here is an interesting or unusual thing about my studio:
I view the dancers there as my equals. I don’t believe that I am a “more gifted” dancer, I’ve just danced longer than many dancers, and devoted a lot of years to thinking about dance and studying it.
The wisdom and beauty and grace of dance are available for ALL OF US.
We are all practicing. We are all inventing new movements. There is nothing special about my movements and patterns. The specialness is in the fact that we can all invent movements and patterns. We are all creative geniuses, and we can all tune into the universal sea of dance wisdom.
I want my world to be filled with people who delight in this.
Where/how do I want to start playing with this?
Well, I guess I will dance.
Anything else coming up?
I am asking for a Perfect Simple Solution, to all of this. And the superpower of Everything Is Useful, Including Things That Appear To Be Obstacles.
What are the qualities of my wish?
Calm. Steadiness. Peacefulness. Trust. Composure. Delight. Play. Readiness.
What would help me move forward on this? How am I going to play?
Interviewing slightly-future-me who has already resolved this. Drawing a crown and a heart on my palm. Thinking: Crown. Heart.
What is my clue?
Harmony. It is in my tea.
Anything else?
When do I like invitations? When I am invited to the commissioner’s ball, where I get to be the belle (and the bell!) of the ball….
What else do I want?
Seeds planted without explanation, a mix of secret agent code and silent retreat dreams. Things I’m working on, or might be, someday…
- Everything is getting easier, and oh look, miracles everywhere.
- Regular gigs at the (non-metaphorical) ballroom.
- This doesn’t require my input!
- Ha, it’s so perfect that it turned out like this.
- Past me is a GENIUS.
- I have what I need, and I appreciate it. There are resources to do this.
- Trust and steadiness. I can see why this moment is good.
- Hawaii.
- I am fearless and confident. I do the brave things and it is not even a big deal, and I still get sparklepoints, yay.
This week’s ops?
Solving this wockawock about invitations. I’m playing with: “What is the wockawock? Whose wockawock is it? What opportunities/treasure does this wockawock provide?”
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
So. Last week, aka I was having this discussion in a taxi heading downtown…
My wish had to do with Graceland and my fishing village, finding grace and glowing love, and boundaries. Exploring this wish has been amazing, and I know it helped me uncover some of my current frustration, which will lead me to…even more grace. And it also helped me do something really important.
Thank you, writing. Thank you, me who asked. Thank you, everyone who said amazing things.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
It is my joy (very much joy) to whisper to you about Operation Sustenance (password: fredastaire). This contains everything I will be offering in 2014. Please spread the word so we can meet our Blodgett and distribute treasure!
Keep me company?
Consider this an open invitation to deposit wishes, gwishes, visions, personal ads. Small or large. In any form you like, there’s no one right way. Updates on past experiments are welcome too, as is anything sparked for you.
Commenting culture: This is safe space for creative exploration. We are on permanent vacation from care-taking and advice-giving. We are here to play.
Let’s throw some things in the pot! And, as always, Amnesty. Leave a wish any time you want.
xox
Friday Chicken #287: held
It is Friday and we are here.
{a breath for Friday}
What worked?
Ritual.
This week had lots of PTSD triggers for me, and then terrifying nightmares.
I brought back some rituals for entering sleep, and asked the spy who loves me to invent one for me too.
I have no idea what it involved, because all I remember is the thought, “I smell sage, a word that also means wise…”
The next thing I knew, nine hours had passed and it was morning. I couldn’t remember a single dream, and I felt amazing.
No screaming, no waking up at all until sleep was done.
Waiting.
I finished a mission, and didn’t feel ready to tell people about it. Finished the Hat for all the things I’m doing in 2014, and didn’t feel ready to share it. So I waited.
I did a lot of waiting this week, and waiting was the exact right move.
Next time I might…
Trust the waiting.
I had a lot of Stuff (and all the time gremlins) about waiting.
Especially since I know lots of people are waiting for the thing I am not-announcing while I am doing my own waiting.
I knew that this was the right move, and I doubted it at the same time.
And then of course it was.
A wise thing a dance teacher said this week.
Susan: “Use the floor. Don’t walk on it. Use it. Partner with it.”
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- Waking up screaming. Nightmares and more nightmares. A breath for release and remembering that now is not then. And: A breath for not taking on the pain of the world.
- The Spy Who Loves Me was super in his stuff this week, and we had two nights of painful misunderstandings. A breath for presence and love.
- This whole letting go of W is still a lot of work. A breath for process.
- The spy who loves me threw a (metaphorical) shoe while he was feeling upset. A breath for loving someone while not putting up with shoes.
- Someone at the Floop had a shoe-throwing fit too, which is completely incongruent with the culture. Pretty tired of that thing when, in reaction to my intentional avoidance of pedestals, someone tries to simultaneously put me on one and knock me off. A breath for compassionate powerful boundaries.
- Deep indecision, which turned out to be a very clear decision that I didn’t want to see. A breath for change, and for trusting that All Timing Is Right Timing…
- Sexist bullshit driving me crazy this week, and in the unlikeliest places. I was at a dance class this week where the teacher (a woman, about my age), taught a move in Foxtrot by saying, “Ladies, imagine there is a shoe sale in the far corner, now point your head that way as the lead swivels you and say oh look a shoe sale, now come back the other way and ask the man for his credit card.” SERIOUSLY, YOU GUYS. A breath for astonishment, and for hope.
- Inhale, exhale. Goodbye, mysteries and hard moments of this week.
Eight breaths of good, reassuring, delight-filled.
- Lots of healing, and then two consecutive nights of sweet deep sleep. A breath for transition.
- When the spy who loves me was in his stuff, I knew it was not about me and did not make it about me. I let him be in his stuff, and I met it with love, and I was also clear about what is not okay. A breath for advanced practice.
- When the person in the Floop was in his stuff, I knew it was not about me and did not take it personally. I was also able to observe the skills my community has gained, as well as some pieces of practice that aren’t in place yet, which helps me make changes for next year. A breath for the teaching and the learning, and for gifts that don’t look like gifts.
- Dance dance dance dance dance! I skipped a samba class I didn’t want, and took the class I wanted instead. All my classes this week (with the exception of Crazy Sexist Foxtrot) were thoroughly enjoyable. A breath for dance solving everything, just like Incoming Me said it would.
- I edited and edited and edited, and got the Hat down to 1000 words, exactly. A breath for my smile when that happened.
- A huge realization about being Held, and that I am always Held. That it doesn’t matter if I set off on the voyage before having Solved All The Problems, because I am Held, and I have companions to help solve them with me. A breath for joyful laughter.
- So much delight this week. Secret spirals at Rally, with impossible choreographies. Texting with my former Partner In Crime in California. A breath for feeling safe and loved.
- This week is Rally (Rally!), and I had so many marvelous epiphanies and huge results. A breath for fractal flowers.
WHAM BOOM! Operations completed.
My op this week was Operation Ready The Hat, and I nailed it.
Plus new events now happening at my ballroom.
WHAM! BOOM!
Superpowers!
Powers I had this week…
I had some more fire snake superpowers this week, and the superpower of Deeply Knowing That This Is Not About Me.
Superpowers I want.
Setting Boundaries Is Fun.
Salve.
The salve of clean, clear healthy boundaries.
This salve softens rules. It infuses your space with protection. It makes the edges glow in such a way that you know where they are. It sets up a force field that lets in beautiful qualities, in just the right amount, and it doesn’t let in anything that doesn’t need to be there.
It is comfortable and comforting, at the same time. You put it on, and you perceive that you have more space. You have the superpower of Distinctions: this, not that. You have the superpower of trusting your edges, of taking up as much space as you need.
It suddenly occurs to you (and everyone else) that your space should be respected. Because it should.
If you are not a salve person (today or in general), you can have this in tea form, pill form, as a bath, 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!
This week’s band is from Vanessa:
Kazoo Fueled Riot.
It’s a cello band, actually. And it is just one guy.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
I am so happy to let you know about Operation Sustenance, which holds everything I will be offering in 2014.
Password: fredastaire
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.
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.
Wish #237: “I was having this discussion in a taxi heading downtown”
Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.
At the very least, useful noticings about my relationship with wanting. It all counts.
♡
I have an image in my head.
I see a machine filled with dozens of colored bouncing balls.
It feels like a game. Is this how lottery tickets get picked? Or a game show? I’m not sure.
That is what my wishes feel like this week. There are so many of them, and they are all moving and colliding. I try to follow one and immediately bump into all the others and lose track.
I’ve been trying to track the bouncing balls for three days, and it isn’t happening, so I’m going to let all bounces of color be this week’s wishes: letting them move around in whatever ways they want.
I don’t have to know how they are interconnected, I don’t have to know what they mean. Just letting them move.
Either something will reveal itself or I will get better at allowing them to do their thing. Or both.
And maybe that is my wish, the wish behind the wishes.
What do I want?
I ran into some outrage this week.
Actually, I ran into some really intense sexism, and then a sense of frustration and helplessness, and then outrage.
I didn’t like it, any of those experiences.
One of the interesting things about being someone who doesn’t speak is that I can’t just react in the moment. I have to choose which situations deserve my time and energy. Is this worthy of a post-it note? If it isn’t, I don’t say it.
Silence requires a much more intense understanding of Not Everything Requires A Response, which is both a wonderful superpower and a guiding principle.
What I want is a way to speak up about things I care about, in a way that is clear, swift, compassionate, calm and filled with love.
What do I want?
It has to do with activism, and some things that are related to activism.
What do I want?
I want to be the Calmest Activist.
I want the superpower of Glowing Love In Response to Not-Love:
No matter how stupid, thoughtless or bigoted someone’s words are, I see that this is someone who is temporarily disconnected from themeselves and from truth/love. From truth-love.
And I respond (whether to them or inside myself) with truth-love. I fill up on love and compassion, and I glow love and compassion through my space and into the world, strengthening my own connection to life and aliveness.
I think this is called Grace. Another word that begins with G, and another form of glowing.
What do I want?
To rest into these superpowers as I move into activism. To combine activism with Living Quietly, which is also a form of activism.
My activism is internal: self-fluency, taking up space in my life, being the loving queen of my internal kingdom, bringing light to the corners. Occupying and decolonizing. Eliminating and illuminating.
And my activism is external: speaking out when it comes things I care about tremendously. Also: Creating deeply safe space/culture for play and practice. Like what we have here. The Playground (my center in Portland) and the Floop (my online community for practicing self-fluency) are spaces like this.
What do I want?
I want the superpower of working towards social justice while staying calm: Activism Without Anger. It is its own revolution.
Not that anger is a bad thing: anger can be very useful, and it is certainly full of information if we look there. This particular Revolution however has to do with making change from a starting point of deep, steady, trust-filled calm.
What do I want?
It has to do with clean, clear, healthy boundaries.
And it might also have to do with finding a way to exclude certain elements in order to be more welcoming of other ones.
Or: to exclude behaviors in order to be more welcoming of qualities. I’m not sure. Still figuring that out.
So it also has to do with insights about healthy boundaries.
What do I want?
I want to institute (my new favorite verb) some changes in my fishing village, which is also an institute (noun).
It is the weirdest thing, teaching people to fish.
You know what they say: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Sure, fine, that’s a starting point. It isn’t necessarily the answer though.
Teaching individuals how to fish is a very time-consuming way to make sure the world gets fed. It also reinforces the construct that there is something special about me, the person who already knows how to fish, and it doesn’t support an experience of us being equals who are sharing in something.
So instead of being a teacher — a “let me show you the five best ways to fish” teacher, I’m more interested in creating a community where fishing happens. Everyone in the village goes fishing together and delights in each other’s company.
People watch how I fish and they invent their own techniques that suit them. We play together. We make sure the world is fed. That’s how my fishing village works, and it’s been working great, and now it is time to institute some changes.
What do I want?
Let me pause here because I don’t actually want fishing as metaphor: it doesn’t feel sustainable, and also I don’t want to harm any fish.
So F.I.S.H. is going to stand for Forschungs Institut for Sustainable Healing.
Forschung is German for research. It’s a research institute, and the fishing lines are threads where we investigate self-fluency and sustainable healing. We work on our stuff. We play with our stuff.
We institute change. At our institute.
The secret name of my institute is Graceland. It is a place to experience Grace.
It is a place to respond through not responding, to interact with love, to fill up on my thank-you heart…
“I said hey senorita, that’s astute I said why don’t we get together and call ourselves an institute…” — Paul Simon
What do I want?
To find a loving response (whether out loud or not) for someone who is upset that he doesn’t have any fish, and sees no connection between his lack of fish and his refusal to go near the water or be involved in any aspect of the work of fishing.
That person can choose to blame the institute for their fishlessness. I can make space for that.
And, at the same time, in order for the fishing village to be a safe place to practice fishing, we can’t have people there who aren’t respectful of the culture.
The culture of fishing and of our village says:
You can learn by observing, by listening, by playing or by fishing itself. You can learn by asking, by trying, by swimming, by whispering to the fish. You can fish how I fish, and: you don’t have to. You can invent your own ways, or be inspired by someone else’s. The only thing that matters: take responsibility for your fishing.
What do I want?
I love having a fishing village. I take great pleasure in my own Forschung into Sustainable Healing. I take even more pleasure in observing other people fish. I delight in their creative solutions. I rejoice over their metaphorical fish.
Here’s another thing though: I don’t get paid to run the fishing village.
Which is my responsibility.
It is partly because the fishing village is very expensive to run, and mostly because of my habit of letting all proceeds go to the part of the river that seems to need them the most.
That is something I need to do some more fishing on, so I can do some Sustainable Healing with it. It is My Stuff, and I take responsibility for having made choices over the past few years that weren’t in support my own well-being.
Anyway, on days when it is pleasurable to have a fishing village, which is most of the days, I don’t really mind that I don’t get paid. If someone shows up and dumps on me because think they haven’t learned how to fish even though they haven’t participated in or even observed any of the thousands of fishing expeditions, I suddenly lose interest.
So I want to decide what to do about this.
Where/how do I want to start?
Putting it here. Processing at the Floop. Skipping lots of stones at Rally. Trusting that this is good. It is good that this is happening now. Whatever I choose will be useful.
Trusting as well that it is good that this week’s wishes took an extra four days to come to the surface. Trusting that All Timing Is Right Timing.
Anything else coming up?
I am asking for a Perfect Simple Solution, to all of this.
What are the qualities of my wish?
Same as last time.
Calm. Steadiness. Peacefulness. Trust. Composure. Delight. Play. Readiness.
And the superpowers of Safety First, and I Can’t Do This Wrong Because All Results Of An Experiment Are Useful.
What would help me move forward on this? How am I going to play?
Interviewing slightly-future-me who has already made progress on this.
Asking her for advice.
Drawing a crown and a heart on my palm. Thinking: Crown. Heart.
What is my clue?
Honey. It’s on my necklace.
Anything else?
H is for HAT!
What else do I want?
Seeds planted without explanation, a mix of secret agent code and silent retreat dreams. Things I’m working on, or might be, someday…
- May Peacefulness Prevail!
- Announcements.
- Everything is getting easier.
- Miracles everywhere.
- Regular gigs at the ballroom, which is also the Spiegelsaal.
- This doesn’t require my input!
- Ha, it’s so perfect that it turned out like this.
- Past me is a GENIUS.
- I have what I need, and I appreciate it.
- There is money for this.
- Trust and steadiness. I can see why this moment is good.
- Hawaii.
- I am fearless and confident, and I do the brave things and give myself sparklepoints, and it is not even a big deal that I did the brave things but I still get sparklepoints, yay.
This week’s ops?
I completed last week’s op: finishing the almost-done Last Hat. I haven’t done anything with it, and I suspect it is because I am not completely sure I want a fishing village. Having a fishing village brings me great joy, so of course I want it, and at the same time I don’t unless the boundaries change, so I need to figure that out.
I’m playing with…
“What is the wockawock? Whose wockawock is it? What opportunities/treasure does this wockawock provide?”
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
So. Last week, aka a different kind of letting go…
My wish had to do quitting W and not W-ing anymore. Of course the first thing I noticed is that I do pretty much nothing but W, and that I have been in training for W for my entire life.
I had some huge moments of success with this over the past week, and some huge moments of realization about how pervasive W is in my life.
I had a big understanding, thanks to Monsieur LeBlanc of the Other Agency, that Shame is basically backwards-W, it is W-ing towards the past. And that the antidote to W is presence and glowing.
It is getting easier for me to not-W. For example, I am not-W-ing right now about my fishing village that is an institute, even though I don’t know what my decision will be yet. Feeling hopeful and inspired. I can’t imagine how the release of W will continue to change my life, but I suspect it will be huge.
Thank you, writing. Thank you, me who asked.
Keep me company?
Consider this an open invitation to deposit wishes, gwishes, visions, personal ads. Small or large. In any form you like, there’s no one right way. Updates on past experiments are welcome too, as is anything sparked for you.
Commenting culture: This is safe space for creative exploration. We are on permanent vacation from care-taking and advice-giving. We are here to play.
Let’s throw some things in the pot! And, as always, Amnesty. Leave a wish any time you want.
xox
Glowing glowing glowing glowing.
Glowing is my favorite activity.
I love it almost as much as I love being a bell.
They are the same thing, actually.
Being a bell is just glowing sound: resonating.
Glowing is the light-based version of humming my happy hum.
Glowing is what happens when I am quiet: it is a side effect and a feeling.
It is one of the reasons I commit myself to this ongoing practice of self-fluency. So I can access my internal glow, radiate the qualities that I need, bring light to the corners.
And glow-sitting is my secret-agent code for meditating, because often I forget why I love to meditate, even though I never forget that I love to glow. Glow-state is my preferred place to be.
Things that support glow-state.
Things that support glow-state — for me, because People Vary…
- napping
- quiet
- laughter
- a secret rendezvous
- code words
- things that taste delicious
- luxuriating in slow intentional movement
- being a gazelle: dance, yoga, stretching, aliveness
- adoration, pleasure, wonder
- imagining myself inside of a compass of qualities
- ….
Glowing is a word that begins with G.
Last week was all about G because I was at Rally (Rally!), and we are winding our way through the alphabet, and there we were at Rally G. Rally!
It was also about the opposite of W, and mainly it was about G. These might be (okay, are) related.
More beautifully glowing words that begin with G.
Gestation.
Glamour.
Glistening.
Golden.
Gifts: presents and presence.
Things that are gorgeous. Glue: connecting pieces together.
Green. Green is go. Go!
Gwishes are magic.
A grove is a home for trees.
And last week was the birthday of the trees.
Gather is a beautiful word.
As is grace.
Glory. Also as a verb. To glory in.
Giggle. Guest. Goodness. Gilded. Grow. Group. Guess. Gallivant about. Gusto!
Gone. Aka the superpower of Elimination…
Give and giving. Glee and gleeful.
Gentleness. Graciousness. Gratitude.
Ground and grounding.
And all the many things that are glorrrrrrious.
I want to share two things with you from Rally G.
And yes, both of them start with G.
Often at Rally themes sort of emerge, and we end up casually playing with/around them all week…
One of these was Giddy Defiance!
This is the combination of Extreme Permission To Go Your Own Way No Matter What People Might Think, along with the superpower of Blithe Disregard (for rules/monsters), and having fun with this.
My current favorite example of Giddy Defiance is the Detroit Football Club supporters group — that’s proper football, aka soccer. Their shirts say:
Nobody likes us. Nobody likes us. Nobody likes us. And we don’t care!
Giddy defiance. I love this so much right now and am feeling inspired. A playful, lighthearted way to take a stand. You know who else I love who does this? GNR! GNR! GNR!
The other theme emerged from the word GAZING, which is a glorious word that we seeded in our Rally compass.
Agent Anna pointed out that this is related to the superpower of the Hubble Deep Field Array:
Looking Where There’s Nothing To See If There Is Something.
This ended up being a huge clue for all of us! Gazing. Gazing at stars.
Gazing and glowing.
And giggling.
Thank you, letter G.
May it be so! And come play with me.
If you want to whisper words or sound effects that start with G, go for it.
If you want to share in any of the qualities and magical words I named here, you can.
They work like the salves in the Friday Chicken: just take some, there is always more.
Whispering loving spells that begin with G, for myself, and for anyone who wants…
Friday Chicken #286: fred astaire in a helmet
It is Friday and we are here.
{a breath for Friday}
What worked?
Attentiveness to clues…
Sometimes it is ridiculous how many times something needs to hit me over the head before I pay attention to it.
I went for a walk in the park with Richard and he went on this long crazy tangent about Wappen, which are kind of like a coat of arms or a shield. He talked about it for so long that I finally thought, okay, this has to be a clue.
Then Max mentioned the word pageantry, along with an image, out of nowhere, of… more Wappen.
And then I ran into a design problem that was also an organizational problem. Solved it. With Wappen.
Lots of these moments over the course of this week. Something would come up in a number of different contexts, and then I would need that very thing, which I never would have thought of, and I’d remember it because it had just shown up.
Conducting.
Hit the ground. Close eyes. Wait ten minutes.
Things are better.
Rally is the place where I remember to do this.
Next time I might…
Remember Day 2.
It’s kind of like Day 4.
It is that point in the middle where it starts to feel like everything is going wrong.
It’s just the middle.
This is what happens in the middle. It is because things are changing.
A wise thing a dance teacher said this week.
“It is just not worth it to be afraid of people.”
That was Jon, again.
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- Extreme low energy. A breath for letting go of things that need to be let go of.
- Websites were down on and off all week. Hackers, blah. Stuff, blah. A breath for maintaining calm.
- So much W while I am trying to let go of W. A breath for how big this is, and how much support I am craving.
- Hormones taking me for a ride. A breath for everything going slower than I want it to.
- Uncovering memories. A breath for presence.
- Scary dreams and more scary dreams. A breath for release.
- Wanting a thing to be done, and it is not done yet. A breath for trusting in All Timing Is Right Timing.
- Inhale, exhale. Goodbye, mysteries and hard moments of this week.
Eight breaths of good, reassuring, delight-filled.
- The upside to exhaustion is that I napped very many naps this week. A breath for permission.
- Svevo was here! Shabbat dinner with Agents Em Dee, Mueller and White, and then Svevo and Noah showed up too. A breath for companionship, and getting time with people I adore.
- Two hour techniques workshop with Jon, my favorite dance teacher. A breath for the pleasure that is floating.
- Dance dance dance dance dance! Country two step is getting easier. Nightclub two step is starting to be fun. Oh, and my favorite dance instructor unceremoniously kicked me and my dance partner up to the intermediate level. And then that turned out to be way easier than I’d been anticipating. A breath for play, my favorite thing.
- Words, creativity and silliness came together to solve a big scary thing for me this week. I have a Blodgett and I am going to meet it! A breath for magic, and a new commitment to reversing an old pattern of self-neglect.
- The best clues! Like when I thought, “Okay, I need a clue about the Blodgett”, and then Agent White drove us right past a place I have never seen or heard of, called Blodgett Dental. Or when a dance instructor suddenly, completely out of the blue, asked me a direct question about my secret non-dance-related wish that no one knows about. A breath for joyful laughter.
- I am totally quitting W! And a bunch of other things that don’t begin with W. And I am doing this by becoming allergic to W, so that it doesn’t even occur to me to do it. Also, so much Bell Time is freed up by not W-ing. A breath for new beginnings and for possibility.
- This week is Rally (Rally!), and Rally is solving lots of things for me. Haha, solving is not even the word. Ten minutes into Rally, and I had a Big Vision about the Playground. Half an hour into Rally and I had an epiphany that made me giggle for about the rest of the evening. I love Rally. A breath for trusting the rabbit holes.
WHAM BOOM! Operations completed.
My op this week was Operation This Is The Last Hat, and I finished it! It took so much less time than I’d been expecting too. Amazing.
WHAM! BOOM!
Superpowers!
Powers I had this week…
I had some fire snake superpowers this week…
And I had the superpower of Knowing What Needs To Be Eliminated.
I am the Proprietress of a magical ballroom, and I am not worrying about that either.
Superpowers I want.
Sprprised By Focus and also: Oh I’m Actually Good At Receiving.
Salve.
The salve of good at receiving. Or, as I like to call it, Generously Receiving.
This salve eases the process of letting in good. In a way, it works like a force field strengthener. It only lets in qualities that you want, in amounts that feel safe and comfortable.
And suddenly receiving feels uncomplicated, sweet, simple. It might be my favorite salve right now.
If you are not a salve person (today or in general), you can have this in tea form, pill form, as a bath, 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!
This week’s band via dance class:
Epic Foxtrot Collisions.
It’s a klezmer band, and their new album, Put Your Helmet On, is a smashing success. You’d never guess, but it is actually just one guy…
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
No announcement today! I thought I would be able to share the announcement with you today. Soon, soon.
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.
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.