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.
New Moon Bingo, Union and Reunion
A breath for these tough times
Sending out extra wishes of Safety & Sanctuary for everyone in the path of the hard things, what a scary time we are in, inhaling and exhaling, for compassion, strength, courage, swift and steady miracles.
Announcement / last chance for Emergency Calming Down Techniques
I’ve been reeling hard lately in some cursed combination of heartache, numbness, political anxiety, winter stuff and some wild panic episodes.
Have been holding on (for dear life) to my Emergency Calm The Hell Down Techniques from a long time ago, and it’s been helping.
I am giving away a copy of these (ebook + audio recordings) to anyone who gives any sum of money to the appreciation funds / discretionary fund in the hopes that we can all keep practicing together, for each other and for the collective, and also for ourselves in these scary times. ❤️
New Moon Bingo, Union and Reunion
Wrecking ball o’clock
I was driving to yoga class to see Sasha.
Sasha who begins class with “I LOVE YOU, EACH OF YOU. I LOVE YOU. THERE, NOW WE BROKE THAT WALL!”
I love Sasha back. I love them for saying that. Mainly I love them for being an enthusiastic breaker of walls, I love their giddy, gleeful wall-breaking energy, it is delightful to be around.
A bit like a golden retriever who is also a wrecking ball. Of love.
Everything is going to break but we are really going to laugh while it’s happening.
Driving
Driving, on my way to be deliciously broken, by love. Smash me up, gently and with sweet compassion.
That’s where the reconfiguring begins.
Time for some good reconfiguring.
Adjacent to unanticipated reminders of death
A car passed me somewhat aggressively, and it was a hearse, which seemed funny. Like not funny-funny.
But also: who exactly is in a hurry in this vehicle? Yes, that is funny.
Why are any of us in such a hurry towards a final destination, or towards anything? The fact that there is still time, or might be, theoretically, is itself an astonishing gift if I pause to think about it.
If I pause for the pausing.
The hearse stopped and I was pausing, behind it.
Death
The hearse was just standing in the road, and I was feeling impatient, because I wanted to get to yoga class, the place where I practice death, and being destroyed (in a good way, lovingly) by love.
And other reconfigurations of self.
This too was funny to me. Noticing: I am in a hurry to go practice being still. Still, in corpse pose.
Keep it moving!
Meanwhile, waiting for the death carriage to keep it moving.
What a life this life is. Many funny-poignant moments hiding in plain sight, if you pause, which people quite often do not like to do.
Or: culture does not like us to pause. We might notice too much about how we feel.
Parked poetry
The hearse was right next to a parked car, next to the bumper, which had a bumper sticker:
DEATH TO FALSE PIZZA
The juxtaposition was tremendous. The poetry. So good.
So I did that
The poet Rumi said: Close your eyes, fall in love, stay there.
So I did that.
I did it for a while. That’s another way to break a wall, or to be revived.
Laughter and breaking, laughter in the breaking
I did that and thought about death vs death to false pizza, and how I myself was on my way to practice [final relaxation], and love.
Yes, I did that. Which is to say: I closed my eyes, fell in love with life, and stayed there, for a moment at least.
Like Sasha would say, but saying it to life:
I LOVE YOU. THERE, I SAID IT. WE BROKE THAT WALL.
Mmmmmm. The poetry, again.
To life. To life!
The poetry, and also the laughter
Death to false pizza!
What a thing to put on a car in this time of seemingly everything actually dying. It wasn’t funny but also it was somehow very funny.
I laughed so hard I startled myself, then called my brother to tell him about it and hear his laugh, the best laugh in the entire world. And I made it to yoga right on time.
Old school old school
In high school, in Michigan, they handed out bumper stickers that said “A lot of teenagers are dying for a drink”, which I guess was supposed to raise awareness about drunk driving?
Just looked this up online and you can buy it on ebay, where it is listed as VINTAGE. Kill me now.
To life!
Pieces
I remembered the boy I was sort of sometimes in a romance with, back in those VINTAGE DAYS, whose name is the same name as most recent ex of terrible illogical heartbreak last year, not that heartbreak ever has a logic to it.
More specifically I remembered the day they gave us those bumper stickers, and how he cut his bumper sticker up into pieces and rearranged them on his car.
A reconfiguring.
Newly rearranged, now the bumper sticker suggested: DRINK FOR A DYING TEENAGER.
Reconfigurings
I thought about this, while waiting for the hearse, on my way to have Sasha declare love for me (and everyone, and life) in a way that would make me cry, before practicing death, and re-emerging into life.
Death to false pizza could just as easily be pizza to false death.
So many things can be reconfigured.
Many of them should.
Sometimes the reconfiguring is the healing. Sometimes the reconfiguring emerges from the healing process.
Everything has components
Everything has components, and the components can be moved around.
This can be hard to remember. And yet, there it is.
Everything is a pattern, and patterns can be rearranged.
Patterns can be lovingly interrupted. Patterns can reconfigure, and bring about or invite further healing downstream.
All of this is the essence of self-fluency.
The anagram generator is reading my texts
I mean, probably not, but it feels like it.
I had a deadline, and the deadline was stressing me out, so I put the world DEADLINES into the anagram generator, and received in return:
Ideal Dens, Ideal Send, Leaded Sin, Sailed End, Leads Dine, Idle Sedan, SLAIN DEED, A Need Slid, Senile Dad…
Which all feel relevant to my many current situations.
I especially love Slain Deed. Let’s get the assassin on this!
What if / and so on
What if the dead in deadline is like death to false pizza?
Or death like shavasana, final resting pose in yoga, where you go dark, you restore to be revived, you revive to be restored, and so on.
Maybe deadlines aren’t as scary as all that. Maybe they just need to be reconfigured.
A need slid. Let’s reset and restart.
Let’s find some ideal dens. Let’s line things up, and play dead, but only for the sake of play. And so on.
Back to Rumi, always
“Don’t move the way fear makes you move. Move the way love makes you move.” – Rumi
As Sasha would say: I LOVE YOU. LET’S START THERE.
Can I say this to myself when I am afraid? Can I say this to myself when I am not afraid?
Can I move the way love makes me move? In the world, and in this moment?
Maybe. Or at least, I can try. I can drop the seed in and wait, behind the hearse, next to the bumper sticker, listening to my brother’s delightful raucous cackling at the absurdity of it all. Amazing.
Medical forms of dead lines
I had to fill out scary-to-me medical forms for a thing I am taking care of this week. Please light any and all candles for only good news and all ease.
This was not enjoyable. Though I do like forms, and changing forms. So there’s that.
The arborist put Medical Form into the anagram generator and came back with Calm Fried Om, which is a pretty accurate description of how I feel about this.
Calm. And Fried. And Om.
All of it at once.
All of it at once
All of it at once.
Death to false pizza. Death to lines (deadlines).
Symbolic death practice to be revived, reset and restart. Saying goodbye to things that are done. Or letting them beautifully reconfigure.
And so on.
Take an axe, for example
Back to Rumi, who said:
Inside this new love, die. Your way begins on the other side. Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape. Walk out like someone suddenly born into color. Do it now.
Yes.
What if we joyfully take an axe to the various prison walls — of consciousness, of culture, of perception, of old ways?
Possibly in the same way that Sasha is a wrecking ball of love.
Or in another way
In the way of a wrecking ball of love.
Or in the way of the anagram generator.
Or in the same way that my high school whatever-that-was cut up a bumper sticker to make poetry.
Or in an entirely new way. There are options.
Many ways things can change shape and reconfigure. This can seem scary, and also: what if it felt hopeful? It is, or can be, that too.
Union
I was in Astoria, Oregon, on my way to Union, Washington, and stopped by a place I used to live years ago to brush teeth and freshen up.
Also I flirted with the shy butch receptionist, because I hadn’t yet ruined anyone’s life that day — in a good way, in the wrecking ball of love way, by being an epipen of vitality & joie de vivre, which is a thing I am really good at doing, and I am not good at most things but I am good at this.
Order was restored. I love to be a flirtatious wrecking ball of aliveness. Sometimes I forget that, living out in the wilderness alone, but I have remembered and it is delightful.
I reunited with myself, en route to Union. Poetry, again.
The Bridge
The bridge that always talks to me had things to say, and I found it very funny that the Bridge keeps telling me to rejoice in being A SOLO ACT when I am headed to UNION.
My friend Laura said: Ok mystic bridge! Union with the divine whilst solitary!
Yes, that’s another delightfully paradoxical practice…
Like pretending to enter death in order to wake up and feel more alive, and that being the reason I go to yoga, and how I ended up following a hearse to a clue about death (to false pizza).
Everything can be reconfigured. Everything can be a good clue. There is room for the paradoxical, there is room for the improbably improbable, there is room for things to get zany.
Union and not-union
Union (a tiny town in Washington state) was characterized by much bickering.
I can look at people I love and see some potential future reconfigurings in their lives and in mine that could also be a form of poetry. Or not.
Who knows if people will pause to pay attention to the many clues, the possible beautiful rearrangings of words, shapes, scenarios, relationships, patterns…
I continued on my way north to see another friend and be an epipen of vitality for them, a Mary Poppins of let’s choose towards life, and then I returned, which itself was a reconfiguration.
New Moon Bingo
“I did not have finding you again on my new moon bingo card,” my long-lost beloved friend said to me.
And yet, there I was. There we were. Reconfigured, reunited. A Union and a Reunion.
And what if we were brave and put our wishes onto bingo cards? A new moon bingo card, for example.
A bingo card of Expansiveness. A bingo card of being a Beautifully Boundaried Beam of Light. A bingo card of surprise delights and delightful surprises.
Let’s play.
The Egg & I
This is a name of a road in Washington State, and I called my brother so he could look up the origin story, and here it is.
I have begun using this as sort of a code phrase to get me to do things. As in, I have an imaginary companion even as I am a solo act. We do things together.
The Egg and I are filling out medical forms. The Egg and I are making cards for New Moon Bingo. The Egg and I are headed to yoga.
What if
What if there are no deadlines or dead lines.
What if there is just flow and union and being an epicenter of vitality and Let Us Choose Life (which sometimes we do by practicing being dead, like a line, and then starting over).
What if a line can be beautifully boundaried, and the various deadlines can reconfigure themselves beautifully?
Last week The Egg and I missed a deadline and it was okay. The Egg and I also missed writing here and being here with you, and now we are back. It was a big time of reconfiguring, and that was okay too.
Reminders
I might get a [death to false pizza] sticker as a reminder of this trip and its Slain Deeds and its many clues about life and choosing life after briefly pretending to be dead, or forgetting what it is like to feel alive.
Which happens.
It happens and it is part of the ongoing process of being a human and existing, aka a process of learning about yourself and the world and how you want to cultivate a relationship with yourself and others, how we want to show up…
How do we want to show up? We forget, and we remember, and re-remember, and reconfigure, and it’s beautiful and sometimes sad, and also sometimes thrilling.
I LOVE YOU. Let’s break that wall. Let’s breathe a breath of wonder together, and remember.
May it be so, or something even better
Here’s to choosing life and aliveness, and being here, even when it is so fucking hard (and often it is), and to learning about ourselves, and finding some sparks if we can, or staying receptive to future sparks if we can.
I love you, I love that you read my thoughts here, thank you for that. It means a lot to me.
Let’s source some wild joy, some loving clarity, or whatever is needed most, let’s play.
Come play in the comments, I appreciate the company
Leave a pebble (o) to say you were here, so I know I’m not doing this alone.
Also it feels good to pick up a pebble and place it somewhere, I have noticed.
You are invited to share any related situations or musings, or name any wishes in process.
And of course you are welcome to share anything that sparked for you while reading, anything that helped, bingo card wishes, clues received, or anything on your mind or heart. Let’s support each other’s hope-sparks…
I am lighting a candle for us and our beautiful heart-wishes. What a brave thing it is to allow ourselves to want something better for us and for the world.
Or if there’s anything you’d like to explore further or toss into the wishing pot, the healing power of the collective is no small thing, companionship helps.
Housekeeping note: You can subscribe to posts by email again!
If you aren’t seeing these updates in your in your email and want to, you can can solve that here.
This will pop up a new page on Follow.It that lets you subscribe via email, newsletter, or RSS reader. They say “expect 50 stories a week”, and that’s a very imaginary number, once a week is the dream.
I am emailing copies of the Emergency Calming Techniques package!
Anyone who gives to the Discretionary this week (more info below) will get my Emergency Calming Techniques package by email as a pdf. I am only checking email twice a week because I no longer have wifi at my place, long story, so be patient with me but if it doesn’t show up within the week then let me know!
I have some ideas for the next ebook too but if you do too, shoot me an email or share in the comments.
A request!
If you received clues or perspective or want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to the Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share this with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it and you so much. ❤️
Ongoing investigations into the art of the third way
A breath for these tough times
Sending out extra wishes of Safety & Sanctuary for everyone in the path of the hard things, what a scary time we are in, inhaling and exhaling, for compassion, strength, courage, swift and steady miracles.
Announcement / last chance for Emergency Calming Down Techniques
I’ve been reeling hard lately in some cursed combination of heartache, numbness, political anxiety, winter stuff and some wild panic episodes.
Have been holding on (for dear life) to my Emergency Calm The Hell Down Techniques from a long time ago, and it’s been helping.
I am giving away a copy of these (ebook + audio recordings) to anyone who gives any sum of money to the appreciation funds / discretionary fund in the hopes that we can all keep practicing together, for each other and for the collective, and also for ourselves in these scary times. ❤️
Ongoing investigations into the art of the third way
This is one of those weeks
Sometimes, often even, I think I want to write about one thing, and then I sit down for Writing Hour(s), and it turns out I want to write about something entirely other than the theme that has been consuming me and my attention all week.
And when I say consuming, I mean that it has been consuming my mind in a good way. A delicous obsession.
But then something else feels more vital in the moment of writing hour, and so I follow that instead.
This is one of those weeks.
A breath for entry
I thought I wanted to explore more on last week’s themes related to ”how do we keep on existing and doing the mundane tasks of this world while it is on fire, and the horrors are so horrific…”
And also for us to keep thinking about surprising moments of transcendence, grace and activated presence.
Luckily, a favorite writer, Etgar Keret, touched on this, a little, and quite movingly, in a way that is more beautiful and compelling than wherever I might have been going with this theme…
So I will direct you to his just-right words, even just-right in translation, and I will mull on a different but not wholly unrelated theme that has been in play for me lately.
A breath for entry
A breath for existing in hard times, and a breath for approaching from the edges.
A breath for entry, and sometimes the entry is sideways or circuitous, but the whimsy and the unexpected are part of the magic, part of the delight.
Let’s explore something about a third way, or many ways that are not the immediate options that come to mind, not plan A and not plan B, but a secret third thing.
Something that blows all the boring, predictable options out of the water.
Not following directions
I intensely dislike being told what to do.
I mean, sure, there is a place and time for everything, and sometimes being given instructions is wildly, irresistibly, unquestionably hot.
Generally speaking though, I do not react well to being told what to do. This is an understatement. I am a rebellious cowboy at a soul level.
Not the thing, not the opposite of the thing
Some people think or assume that I just instinctively do the opposite of whatever I’m told, which is, or can be, its own beautiful practice, done intentionally, and can be fun to play with. Absolutely give it a try if you haven’t.
However, I was raised by someone who was deeply into reverse psychology…
And because of this, my tendency is to assume that everything is a trap.
What does it mean that I tend to assume everything is a trap
Okay, so not only is doing what I’m told A TRAP…
But probably doing the opposite is ALSO A TRAP!
And then I feel the familiar THIS IS A TRAP sensations in my body. Constriction.
And maybe a bit of: Where is the epi-pen for being told what to do?
What I am seeking is the freedom of going my way, unexpectedly.
This explains a lot
This is why, if someone tells me what to do, here is what happens:
I will immediately do whatever seems like the thing no one would ever expect me to do! Something they couldn’t even guess or dream up.
Tell me what to do? I will find the most unlikely scenario imaginable and do that instead.
Do I sometimes end up in a trap anyway? Sure, but at least it’s one I invented for myself, and I can also third-way maneuver my way out of it.
Moving purposefully towards the most unlikely scenario…
What’s the most unlikely way I could respond to someone telling me what they think I should be doing? Great! Let’s try that!
Sometimes this is fun, because, again, I have a rebellious spirit who loves to carve out even more freedom, and escape routes. Oh, you presented me with a trap? WATCH THIS.
Sometimes this is interesting, because the unanticipated path turns out to be full of surprises.
Sometimes this is just something I notice about myself.
I would like to be able to hold onto the art of [knowing there is always a third way, another option] without the reactiveness, where I lose my cool.
Not following direction, generally
Even more so than not following directions…
It’s not just that I do not react well to being told what to do generally, but especially to someone not receiving a no from me no matter how gently or diplomatically or clearly I try to phrase it and frame it.
My rebelliousness goes up 1000%, immediately, when I clarity my yes or my preference, and the other person is like, no you should do this other thing instead that I want you to do.
And I can get a little obnoxious, a little reactive, I am all pushback to the pushing. Or I exit entirely.
Or I go off to do the most unexpected thing I can think of in response…
That’s a challenge!
Tell me I’m not something enough, or that I’m too much of something else?
I WILL TURN IT UP 25% MORE SO THAT NOBODY CAN MISS IT.
That’s a CHALLENGE!!! 🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️
Let’s gooooo!
And this is true for pretty much everything…
Not doing the thing that was suggested, not doing the opposite, but a secret third thing, but also turning it up and then turning it up some more. Getting obnoxious on purpose. You wanna play?
Sometimes this is useful
As my beloved friend The Arborist, a fellow practitioner of finding elusive, unlikely, and unexpected third ways, likes to say:
“All of this is impossible, impractical, unrealistic, yet when I slow down enough to see where possible, practical, and realistic have gotten me… impossible, impractical and unrealistic are pretty compelling!”
Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.
They are. And this too is part of finding another way, maybe a less reactive one and a more playful one, but exploring in new directions.
Tuning into the beautiful and often-lost art of “yeah, the art of impractical, unrealistic and impossible is exactly what we are going for actually!”
The other day, at dance, someone tapped me on the back and I immediately knew, before I even turned around, that I would not wish to dance with whomever it was…
In part because anyone who knows me knows to approach from where I can see them, and in part because it was just a feeling.
Normally I do not ignore these bell-sounds of internal information or somatic clarity as they announce themselves, but I had just danced with this person’s wife who was lovely, and the wife had told me that this person really wanted to dance with me.
And so, against instinct, and in the interest of politeness in a community that it’s important to me, etc, the usual things, I said yes when I was not fully a yes…
It went pretty much how you’d expect
The dance was miserable. The song seemingly would not end, and the thing with live music is you can’t even guess when it might end!
There was a huge mismatch in energy and in approach between me and the person I was dancing with.
I dance for joy, connection, creative play, the intimacy of inventing a shared language, and so on.
They apparently dance as a way of telling other people what to do, they want to play ping pong and they want me to be their perfect ping pong ball.
This person told me they had been waiting for over an hour to dance with me, but that I am constantly being “monopolized”. I said, “Well, we are here now, let’s enjoy this.”
Was it????
They proceeded to correct me, give me verbal instructions on the dance floor, try to fix my reactions to their suggestions.
They would say things like: “That was a SPIN. You didn’t spin. Let’s try that again.”
My response: If that was a spin I would have spun.
My favorite people to dance with are much more skilled at leading a spin, I don’t even think about it, because the first rule of dance is follow the path of least resistance, and if you don’t know don’t go…
But more importantly, the people I enjoy dancing with delight in the unexpected, and so they are fun and easy to play with.
In service of play
I don’t need to be rebellious and do something unexpected intentionally when I’m dancing with my favorite dance partners, because together we are having so much fun discovering what each moment might bring.
Or maybe I’m still rebellious but it’s a different form or flavor of rebellion, a fun one that invites more connection and more play…
Rebellious and you love it
A dance friend of mine likes to tell a story about dancing, years ago, with another dance friend of ours, who is an accomplished tango dancer in addition to the forms of dance that we like to dance…
Apparently my friend indicated or suggested a certain type of turn, and Shelley turned the opposite way.
My friend said to her, warmly, delightedly, laughing: You are incorrigible!
And she said, twinkling back: Yes, and you love it!
Intention, and twinkle
I was thinking on all of this before yoga practice today.
About how I wish to sometimes be incorrigible and also Menacingly Sexy, which is something else the Arborist says about me that I love and appreciate…
But mainly I wish to find joy and sparkle in doing the unexpected and unanticipated, and not only do it as a walking middle finger to people who try to tell me what to do, which is really about them and not about me…
To stay incorrigible and rebellious, and to do with a greater amount of grace, if and when I am able, instead of getting reactive and escalating.
Arising
Here is a clue from a phrase or intention that rose up in my heart and mind spontaneously at the end of the physical practice today:
I am a highly concentrated, well-boundaries beam of love.
I AM A HIGHLY CONCENTRATED WELL-BOUNDARIED BEAM OF LOVE
Or another way to frame this: what if being a panther-jaguar and assassin and cowboy and ray of light are all the same?
What if! What is or can be possible here?!
What if I can be a rebellious beam of light? Can I beam love into the world while staying wholly self-contained and true to myself and my Known Yeses?
Can I warmly, politely if possible, be clear and firm and loving all at the same time, without taking things as a personal challenge?
Or can I have even more fun taking on these moments of OH YEAH? CHALLENGE EXCEPTED!!!
What are my wishes in this moment?
I wish to be true to my rebellious spirit.
More than that, I wish to choose love and loving-kindness and loving-clarity, and also: not at the cost of my quiet inner yeses.
As I seek various third ways in all situations, internally and in my life, and in community, and in relation to what’s going on the world, and all of that…
Graceful navigation
Looking for graceful navigation that is creative and playful, the embodiment of “what is deliciously impossible, impractical and unrealistic..”
Also I am revisiting some of what I was thinking about here ten years ago when I wrote about something I called “Oh no please don’t go…!”
Also, last week I wrote about a sanctuary of beaming, so maybe this wish is a continuation of last week’s themes after all…
Embracing incorrigible, and amplifying it, for fun, with love
How can I be incorrigible, with an enormous amount of love in my heart.
A beam of well-boundaried love, glowing inward and outward, a healing in all directions, forwards and backwards and throughout time itself…
Challenge accepted! Turn it up!
25% Even More Sexy, More Rebellious, More Delightfully Incorrigible, More Available for Good Surprises, let’s goooooo!
Turn it up! And not just a little…
And not just a little.
Let’s start with 25% just for fun.
Just so no one can miss it, even someone who thinks dance is ping pong and I am the most obedient magic ping pong ball…
When actually I am a beam of light, an assassin, a sexy cowboy, a rebellious rebel, alive.
Alive, alive, alive, alive…
May it be so, or something even better
Here’s to choosing life and aliveness, and being here, even when it is so fucking hard (and often it is), and to learning about ourselves, and finding some sparks if we can, or staying receptive to future sparks if we can.
I love you, I love that you read my thoughts here, thank you for that. It means a lot to me.
Let’s source some wild joy, some loving clarity, or whatever is needed most, let’s play.
Come play in the comments, I appreciate the company
Leave a pebble (o) to say you were here, so I know I’m not doing this alone.
Also it feels good to pick up a pebble and place it somewhere, I have noticed.
You are invited to share any related situations or musings, or name any wishes in process.
And of course you are welcome to share anything that sparked for you while reading, anything that helped, clues received, or anything on your mind or heart. Let’s support each other’s hope-sparks…
I am lighting a candle for us and our beautiful heart-wishes. What a brave thing it is to allow ourselves to want something better for us and for the world.
Or if there’s anything you’d like to explore further or toss into the wishing pot, the healing power of the collective is no small thing, companionship helps.
Housekeeping note: You can subscribe to posts by email again!
If you aren’t seeing these updates in your in your email and want to, you can can solve that here.
This will pop up a new page on Follow.It that lets you subscribe via email, newsletter, or RSS reader. They say “expect 50 stories a week”, and that’s a very imaginary number, once a week is the dream.
I am emailing copies of the Emergency Calming Techniques package!
Anyone who gives to the Discretionary this week (more info below) will get my Emergency Calming Techniques package by email as a pdf. I am only checking email twice a week because I no longer have wifi at my place, long story, so be patient with me but if it doesn’t show up within the week then let me know!
I have some ideas for the next ebook too but if you do too, shoot me an email or share in the comments.
A request!
If you received clues or perspective or want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to the Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share this with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it and you so much. ❤️
Peace within / the disharmonies / beaming
A breath for these tough times
Sending out extra wishes of Safety & Sanctuary for everyone in the path of the hard things, what a scary time we are in, inhaling and exhaling, for compassion, strength, courage, swift and steady miracles.
Announcement / last chance for Emergency Calming Down Techniques
I’ve been reeling hard lately in some cursed combination of heartache, numbness, political anxiety, winter stuff and some wild panic episodes.
Have been holding on (for dear life) to my Emergency Calm The Hell Down Techniques from a long time ago, and it’s been helping.
I am giving away a copy of these (ebook + audio recordings) to anyone who gives any sum of money to the appreciation funds / discretionary fund in the hopes that we can all keep practicing together, for each other and for the collective, and also for ourselves in these scary times. ❤️
Peace within / the disharmonies / beaming
A breath for acknowledging the many things
I know I always open these missives or essays lately with an acknowledgment that we are existing in painful, challenging times, and you may have noticed that this is also escalating. A time for fast-paced, exponential turbulent shifting, in some good ways but also in a lot of terrible ways.
A breath for how overwhelming this can be, and the tidal wave effect of the news, as well as just the experience of existing in crumbling times. My heart breaks / our hearts break.
My heart breaks / our hearts break / the collective breaks
And I am not only referring (though also yes, absolutely directly referring) to genocide in Gaza and the horrors of starvation; the ways we are directly confronted with this knowledge of the travesty as it is happening.
And I am not only referring (though also yes, absolutely directly referring) to the way the United States is in a celebratory chaotic freefall of extremely bad things, and the one-two punch of increasingly [bad things] combined with watching people celebrate them in real time is a particularly cruel cruelty. Not a new one, admittedly, and still…
What I am attempting, inelegantly, to arrive at is that a great discordance abounds in this current moment.
A Great Discordance Abounds
And that somehow, and this is an additional level of discordance, we need to get through each day of mundane [tasks, chores, errands] within this cacophony of horrors, and this is a destabilizing experience as well.
This is not what I will be writing about today, or at least not directly, because I prefer around to through…so this is just an extra pause to take a breath and acknowledge how hard things are.
Discordance, generally
Discordance; the quality of sounding harsh or jarring due to a lack of harmony.
The quality of sounding harsh or jarring due to a lack of harmony.
Harmoniousness (and grace)
I went to dance outdoors in a park again, and many harmonious things occurred. Moments of harmony and grace.
For example, I made friends with a bus driver while waiting for their bus to arrive, which was also my bus-to-be, and they did not charge me to ride the bus. No one on the bus was weird about my mask, which was also a blessing.
My falling out with a friend from a decade ago resolved itself elegantly and lovingly, and other potential drama related to this also resolved itself, so now I am able to dance with my beloved long-lost friend again.
We talked everything out over the course of five hours while sitting on a bench, beneath stars, adjacent to water.
There was a skunk who appeared but no disharmonious occurrence between us and the skunk, or between us. All was and is well.
Discordance, again, in a moment
While waltzing in the park with a different dance friend, we noticed that the song was a little challenging to improvise with, and then realized that the time signature was 6/8 instead of 3/4…
As we were adjusting ourselves into harmoniousness with ourselves and the dance, two buskers arrived at this outdoor location to play their music, separately, not together.
Neither of them seemed to care that there was a dance event going on, with a DJ playing beautiful music through speakers, and one began to play a fiddle and the other a saxophone, in different parts of the park.
A bewildering cacophony
They were not interested in harmonizing with the music coming over the speakers, they just wanted to play their music.
The result was a bewildering cacophony that made dancing even more challenging. A great discordance.
Not in the big way, like in the geopolitical, or the nightmare of all that is unfolding in the United States currently, or in the way that sometimes my heart and mind can be overwhelmed by trauma resonance.
Just too many discordant sounds, too much information to process or interpret, while trying to dance the song.
The contrast, as well
I was feeling an intense desire that bordered on murderous rage. I wanted to make the saxophone and fiddle sounds stop, so that I could hear the complex song we were improvising to at this dance event.
A big part me of was feeling pretty stabby and violent in reaction to the great discordance.
Particularly in reaction to the introduction of loud disharmony into this specific moment when I had been harmonizing so beautifully (or trying to) with the song, my partner, my body, my dancer self, the floor, the outdoors, the magical moment of connection…
So many beautiful relationships and interrelationships, moving in harmony, and then: this great discordance.
Vibrance, in a dream
The night before, I had had a dream about The Arborist.
I wrote to The Arborist about the dream:
“You took me to a cabin where you lived or had once lived, there was an older woman who was related to you in some way, maybe an aunt, she and I had met before, last time and she was not happy to see me, you and I danced in the living room and then you carried me into a bathroom and gently placed me alongside an empty tiled tub…
“The tiles were a vibrant blue that reminded me of Turkey but with a pattern that was an illustration that spread out across the tub, and I was entranced by the blue and the pattern, trying to place it because I knew it from somewhere else…”
The resonance
“You said to me, ‘Okay we are going to speak now, it’s time.’
“And the tiles in the tub were so familiar to me, like I knew this pattern intimately, maybe from childhood, but not as tiles, maybe an illustration in a book or on a blanket…”
“I felt very sleepy and tried to tell you about the familiarity of the pattern, out loud, and you said, ‘wait, I was not prepared for the RESONANCE.’
“We leaned in towards each other and you shook your head in a very small way, and I said oh right I forgot, and you repeated, ‘the RESONANCE’, and kissed me on the cheek.”
Look at all the beautiful people
The Arborist and I had never spoken, or not out loud in words, before this day, the day of the great discordance while dancing in the park, but we know each other intimately and this has been true for a long time.
And I know, for example, that when we are standing together and observing a group of people dancing, I am thinking about how I would love to give everyone a ten minute posture intervention so their dancing could look better.
And I know that The Arborist is thinking: LOOK AT ALL THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE.
This is why
This is why, over the past [well over a decade] since I first encountered The Arborist, who had been prowling the outskirts of my life for even longer before that, I have tried to channel this lovely and loving perspective of theirs.
I have tried to be or to become or to embody the person who can think LOOK AT THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE , instead of thinking about how they would all be more comfortable and their dances would look and feel so much better if they weren’t tilting their heads forward and slumping their shoulders.
There is a time and place for everything, and sometimes the time and place is a class on how to stand and move in a way that is both upright and relaxed, and maybe some day I will teach a class on that, or I am happy to recommend other people’s classes on that…
But mostly it is the time and place for beaming love, and channeling The Arborist: LOOK AT ALL THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE. So I try to do that instead of using judgment-eyes or assessment-perspective.
Just bask in the beauty of people enjoying the magic that is dance. Why not.
Back to the discordance
So in this moment in which I wanted to smash the saxophone and the fiddle and throw them in the fountain, I was aware that The Arborist was probably amused by the astounding cacophony.
Like, “listen to all the many sounds doing different things!” Amazing. Amazing that this person even exists.
I am not like this. I need the discordance to stop, I will do anything for a return to harmony.
But I love that The Arborist can beam love in so many situations and directions, because they love the resonance of life.
We are both right, and there is a time and place for everything, including for both of our ways to be right.
The high beams versus just simply beaming
Over the duration of our five hour conversation on the bench in the darkness, more disharmonious moments kept happening
Teenagers in cars honked at us or yelled at us. There were sudden bright lights or loud people on the walking path.
I am someone who is visiting a city where I once lived, but normally, in my daily life, I live in the wilderness, or wilderness-adjacent, at the edge of the forest, in the middle of nowhere.
So I am very much not accustomed to any disruptive lights and sounds at night, or at all, never mind so many of them, and in such close proximity.
It was disorienting and overwhelming for me. I kept having to pause our conversation, our first ever conversation, so that I could recalibrate after each interruption. The Arborist appreciated this, and kept beaming.
The beeping
Days later, we were at a picnic table outside a gluten-free bakery, another wonder that does not exist where I live, and The Arborist was telling me a funny story that involved many people, something about the brother of a colleague.
A delivery van was trying to parallel park in a tiny spot, and was beep-beep-beeping each time it backed up.
I had to ask The Arborist to press pause on the story, because I cannot assimilate the story and the beeping. I can’t hear anything until the beeping stops.
The Arborist was happy to wait peacefully and beam at me delightedly until the beeping stopped. We were in a state of harmoniousness within the discordance, and also we understood each other, even though we have different needs.
Then I got to hear the story, and follow all the ways everyone was connected, and it was a good story. We were both glad we waited it out.
The tidal wave
This is a similar but different story involving many of the same moving parts.
A big rippling-out effect had come to pass in The Arborist’s life, and they wanted to meet with me and discuss it with me, but I was experiencing a tidal wave of energy being directed towards me, and so I was not available to have that conversation.
I explained that I did wish to have this conversation, along with all the conversations, and that also it was going to have to wait until I moved through this energy tidal wave or it moved through me.
First I had do something with all the energy that was not mine.
They were very happy that I shared this information, and happy to wait, and happy that I wanted to move the energy first. I was very happy to have the conversation once I was ready.
There had been a discordance, but then harmoniousness returned. Yes?
Choosing love
In January, when I was deep in the pits of despair after a big heartbreak a couple months earlier, I started using a guided meditation recording each morning.
The meditation asks you, towards the end, to choose an intention for your day, and says, that if nothing comes up, to simply choose love: I choose love.
I rarely have trouble selecting an intention from whatever bubbles up during the meditation. For example, today what came up was: “I am beautifully clear, focused, motivated and intentional.”
But then I always add: [I Choose Love].
I choose to be love
At first, in my winter heartbreak, it was too painful for me to choose love, or to state that in words, and so I would say, instead: I choose to be love…
I choose to be love or in a state of love…
Or to somehow glow love into the world or towards myself, if I can.
And now I choose all of it:
I choose love, I choose to be love, I choose to be loved, I choose to be in a state of love. I choose all of it. Love.
Look at all the beautiful people
Choosing love, in my mind, is a lot like “look at all the beautiful people”.
Or waiting for the beep-beep-beep-beep backing up to subside. Or moving away from it.
Or the way I seeded [I Choose Love] over and over again over the course of months, and then suddenly now being in this situation of an abundance of love and loved and loving. Not in romantic ways, just in a state of there is lots of love in my life, and it is beautiful and I feel lucky.
Sustained mutual delight
Another dance friend saw me dancing with my long-lost dance friend, and texted the next day:
“I enjoyed seeing the two of you dancing together and your sustained mutual delight in each other.”
What a world. What a superpower. Sustained mutual delight.
How can we channel more of this, all of us. How can we find some good beaming among the horrors, or: how can we be good sources of beaming, even while things seem to be collapsing and disharmonious.
I don’t know, or I don’t know yet, and yet: I am committed to being a light source, a place for harmony and harmonizing.
Peace within
A favorite yoga teacher says, “Notice the peace you have created within”, and then invites you to contrast that with what is going on around you, so that you can echo out the peace into the disharmonies. She doesn’t say it exactly like that, but that is the essence.
There is great discordance, and there is (or can be, at times) peace within, and sometimes these can co-exist, and sometimes we need to swiftly remove ourselves from the discordant situations if we have the privilege or option of doing so.
(over-clarifying, for clarity)
I don’t wish to imply that you need (or that anyone needs) to be so internally peaceful that the disharmonies don’t matter.
And I don’t wish to imply that we should ignore the bad things or glow past the bad things, or stay in situations that are bad, or any of that. God forbid.
This is more about noticing and acknowledging that many things can happen at once, that there are harmonious options available, sometimes, and that it’s okay to crave peace and quiet, and to fight for that or not-fight but something else, a secret third thing.
A return to beaming
What is yes, for me, right now…
Protecting my sanity through prioritizing harmony. Not ignoring the scary or disruptive and disharmonious things in the world but also separating myself out enough to be able to function so that I can be a source of beaming love for the collective.
Seeding
Seeding wishes for peace within — and peace without, and peace around, and peace through, in all directions in time and space…
In much the same way that I have been seeding [I CHOOSE LOVE], and then tending to those seeds.
Maybe I can’t always say “Look at all the beautiful people”, maybe sometimes I want to stab a saxophonist, I can meet this part of me and beam love for that too.
Yes, okay, I am both a being who beams and a being who is reactive. Can I appreciate and welcome all of this? Maybe!
The resonance
A hand-on-heart breath, a humming hum, for me, and for the collective, and for things getting better, and for elegant simple solutions, and for all of us doing our harmonious part, whatever that might be.
It might start with rest and replenishing, self-tending, getting quiet, reducing some of the beep-beep-beeping. It might start with a solo dance party to the music that feels right and moving lots of energy.
Sometimes some healthy screaming is needed. Or sometimes some big yawns. Time and place for everything. We try things. We brainstorm next steps. We do whatever we can to support the good fight against the bad things.
What invites more resonance
What feels resonant, or what invites resonance? This is what I am trying to remember to ask myself these days.
Anyway, I love that you are here, reading these thoughts and musings. I love that we are in harmonious connection with each other.
I love LOVE, and I choose love and wish to keep choosing LOVE. I hope this can in some way be a beaming and a healing, or a seed for that.
A sanctuary of beaming
Here’s to more love, and a wish for miracles and action and magic and something even better, because these hard and scary times require all of that.
Beaming for us all, beaming outward and also inward.
A sanctuary of beaming.
Come play in the comments, I appreciate the company
Leave a pebble (o) to say you were here, so I know I’m not doing this alone.
Also it feels good to pick up a pebble and place it somewhere, I have noticed.
You are invited to share any related situations or musings, or name any wishes in process.
And of course you are welcome to share anything that sparked for you while reading, anything that helped, clues received, or anything on your mind or heart. Let’s support each other’s hope-sparks…
I am lighting a candle for us and our beautiful heart-wishes. What a brave thing it is to allow ourselves to want something better for us and for the world.
Or if there’s anything you’d like to explore further or toss into the wishing pot, the healing power of the collective is no small thing, companionship helps.
Housekeeping note: You can subscribe to posts by email again!
If you aren’t seeing these updates in your in your email and want to, you can can solve that here.
This will pop up a new page on Follow.It that lets you subscribe via email, newsletter, or RSS reader. They say “expect 50 stories a week”, and that’s a very imaginary number, once a week is the dream.
I am emailing copies of the Emergency Calming Techniques package!
Anyone who gives to the Discretionary this week (more info below) will get my Emergency Calming Techniques package by email as a pdf. I am only checking email twice a week because I no longer have wifi at my place, long story, so be patient with me but if it doesn’t show up within the week then let me know!
I have some ideas for the next ebook too but if you do too, shoot me an email or share in the comments.
A request!
If you received clues or perspective or want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to the Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share this with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it and you so much. ❤️
Transcendence abides
A breath for these tough times
Sending out extra wishes of Safety & Sanctuary for everyone in the path of the hard things, what a scary time we are in, inhaling and exhaling, for compassion, strength, courage, swift and steady miracles.
Announcement / last chance for Emergency Calming Down Techniques
I’ve been reeling hard lately in some cursed combination of heartache, numbness, political anxiety, winter stuff and some wild panic episodes.
Have been holding on (for dear life) to my Emergency Calm The Hell Down Techniques from a long time ago, and it’s been helping.
I am giving away a copy of these (ebook + audio recordings) to anyone who gives any sum of money to the appreciation funds / discretionary fund in the hopes that we can all keep practicing together, for each other and for the collective, and also for ourselves in these scary times. ❤️
Transcendence abides
Something about a moment
Last week I wrote about a transcendent experience I was fortunate enough to be swept away in — a wordless ninety minute dance in the arms of a former lover, and really so much more than that…
It was beautiful and otherworldly.
Somehow both grounded and dreamy, real and surreal, deeply playful and deeply serious, nostalgic and tantalizing, devastatingly sad while also simultaneously just whole-hearted joy, everything at once.
How is it possible to have an experience so pure, so exhilarating, so correct and so magical all at the same time.
There for it
I felt so alive that I wasn’t even sure it was real, if that makes sense, I know it sounds contradictory.
The whole experience was almost too thrilling to be believed and yet, it happened.
We were there for it and it was there for us; the elusive perfect coda to a long-lost love story, a heartbeat-by-heartbeat close-embrace healing for the hearts.
Impossible to describe, seemingly impossible that it happened
Again, how is any of this possible? I don’t know.
Transcendence is mysterious and fleeting by nature. And yet, there we were.
Right there in it, deliciously and perfectly in it. Held in the embrace of the dance, but also in the embrace and grace of transcendence itself.
I want to keep re-living it in my mind, replaying the magic, but the thing about magic is that it is by nature ephemeral; if it just kept hanging out then it would be something else, probably.
A sequence of monsters
Okay so I received this incredible gift of a perfect goodbye that was also a high-magic moment in time and space, charged up with presence, intention, love and something beyond all of that.
A double-rainbow arch of a moment.
And then, a few days later, I was hit by a heavy sadness, convinced that I would never experience a moment like this again.
It was absolutely, unquestionably, the work of a chorus of monsters, by which I mean: all the internal and internalized voices of doubt and sabotage that poke at us.
Only stale crackers from now on!
This train of thought said that it had, after all, been many years since I’d experienced anything like big magic, and maybe this was the last time!
Or maybe it would take another ten years, if I’m lucky, and everything in between will just be grey, boring, impossibly bland.
My whole life will just be stale crackers. And so on.
I will just be waiting for a moment that doesn’t come, and what’s the point? I got my magic, and now it’s all over.
Some laughter
Laughter is good medicine for monsters, and so I laughed.
Sometimes if I am unable to laugh at my monsters, I share their thoughts with friends who can respond with a string of laughing emojis.
But the idea of Only Stale Crackers Forever is pretty funny all by itself.
I understand why they think this is an option. We did have a long winter clawing our way out of the pits of despair. There have been some times when hope seemed lost.
Reasonable, understandable, legitimate
It is so very reasonable to fear that the memory of the delicious moments will fade, and to feel the anxiety and trepidation related to what if they don’t come back?! That’s all garden-variety scarcity stuff. Understandable.
We practice Acknowledgment & Legitimacy, and we laugh, if we can find the humor in it.
OH NO ONLY STALE CRACKERS FOR ALL TIME? Okay, first of all, I bet we can do something with stale crackers.
But also, we can put them aside and make a killer clafoutis instead if we want to. There are options!
There are options
The magic is not gone forever, and we can appreciate a beautiful reminder about what’s possible without sinking into the despair now that the reminder has passed…
What if there are more reminders to come? Can I invite in more reminders? Can I be the one who reminds myself?
Can I be the keeper of the reminders, the reminder-er?!
Moments fading into moments fading into moments
I went and did more outdoor dancing to try and lift my spirits, and it didn’t work, because even the good dances weren’t transcendent, and nothing compared to the sheer bliss of that impossible reunion.
But a few days later I went dancing again, and this time there were intense, powerful, blissful moments, and dance itself felt like a long-lost lover that had returned to me.
I wanted to share this feeling, and asked an older woman to dance who was sitting on the sidelines. We had a lovely, sweet dance, and I remembered how much I love leading, and while we were dancing, I felt someone smiling warmly from the doorway.
It was my new friend the salsa teacher, who wanted to tell me that my dance partner looked so cared for and happy, and to invite me to a beach day…
Another remarkable gift
On beach day, we hiked through the forest until we arrived at a cliff-edge overlooking the ocean.
The water was impossibly sparkly, swirling around rocks at the shore, rippling out into fractal patterns that seemed to make no sense. We sat inside little nests made from tree roots, and watched.
The air smelled delicious: trees and ocean and peacefulness. We felt high, even though no drugs were involved in this fairyland day.
Suddenly an elaborate sunset began to play out over the water and we realized that what had felt like an hour sitting up in our cliff perch had actually been closer to six or seven hours…
There, again, the magic
We traipsed along the forest trails, winding our way down towards the water, so that we could catch the tail-end of sunset from the beach.
When we reached the sand, we kicked off shoes and danced near the water, until suddenly somehow the sky was dark with a swath of stars overhead.
There it was again, the big magic.
It didn’t take ten more years
Sometimes I think people throw around words like “special” and “magical”, not even knowing what they can mean, or just how transcendent the transcendence can be.
But this was the real deal.
A lesson for my monsters and for any monster crew: they thought I could never experience magic again, or that at the very least, it would take another decade.
But it only took a week. It just so happened that we were the right people to appreciate the right place in the right moment. We were there for it, and it was there for us, whatever it is.
Elements at play
Even as I wonder at and delight in the good fortune of it all, I am also aware that there are elements at play.
RECEPTIVITY is so much of it.
Because that is the main thing, I think, the way everyone involved shows up for it, stays available to it.
Receptivity, playfulness, a willingness to channel joy or to be a channel for that joy.
What else?
Also something about getting quiet. Doing entry. Taking a moment. Taking several moments.
Interestingly, a favorite writer, Etgar Keret, just issued an invitation related to this, in his inimitable way, which made me smile.
It’s hard to make time for transcendence when it’s hard to make time just to take a breath and decompress a little. That’s a practice too.
Also sometimes we have to lower expectations in order to raise possibility.*
Maybe even lower expectations a lot.
*Pausing for an asterisk
The thing about lowering expectations to raise possibility…
My former mentor used to say this, speaking of people I would like to have relational healing with but cannot…
He would say that if you want to raise what is possible, you have to lower your expectations. I have sat with this a lot over the years.
I miss that relationship and it is gone, and the wisdom is there, and the wisdom reminds me of the person I learned it from, even though the relationship can no longer be.
Relational wishing
And this exact flavor heart-pain is partly why that healing dance of forgiveness and love with my former lover was such a big deal, because I need it to ripple out into all waters of all relationships.
Maybe my former mentor isn’t someone I can have a heart-healing with in the sense of both of us showing up for that, but I got to experience it with this other person whom I loved so intensely, and we wordlessly forgave each other for everything and delighted in our big love that was, and that was a miracle.
Do you see? Miracles rippling out in all directions.
Maybe all that was enough. Maybe all that was more than enough…
And while we are adding asterisks to things..
I said the person I had the transcendent dance with last week was a former lover and that’s not not-true, but really it’s so much bigger than that.
The transcendent dance of last week was with a former [person who was and still is important to me in all ways].
And the transcendent dance of this week beneath the stars was with a new friend.
What a beautiful surprise, to be re-surprised.
WHAT IF…
What I am taking from this is a lot of gorgeous What Ifs.
What if, for example…
There are different people (or tree friends or animal friends or majestic spots in the natural world) to share beautiful, meaningful, unlikely moments with, and different forms of these moments to be had!
What if I can stay receptive to transcendence and unattached to form…?!
What if all of this is a heart healing? What if all of this is part of the big, beautiful magic of life?
What am I learning, receiving, taking from this?
Oh right, transcendent moments can (sometimes) be generated.
Or at least, I can actively invite or put myself in the circumstances that might allow for them…
But/and/also: it does mean a lot of patience, a lot of getting quiet, a lot of entry.
And it also means accepting the stale-crackers moments and noticing the monster-choruses, and releasing judgment.
In fact
In fact, if I am taking anything from this, it is the reminder to myself that guilt, shame, self-blame and self-recrimination and other monster-stories really gunk up the machine, so to speak, and I am not going to keep adding them in.
I am going to notice, with sweetness, when I am forgetting to pause. I am going to pause, and breathe, and notice, and inhale life and aliveness.
Hello, beautiful moments and mundane moments. Hello, small miracles, and all of the in-between.
May it be so
May all this be a healing backwards and forwards in time too, echoing out into the beyond.
What completely magical and astonishing place are we going to find ourselves in next!
I can’t wait to find out, whenever it happens.
In the meantime, staying receptive, staying playful, staying with the waves of feeling…
Reaching arms up to the stars by the ocean for all of us.
Come play in the comments, I appreciate the company
Leave a pebble (o) to say you were here, so I know I’m not doing this alone.
Also it feels good to pick up a pebble and place it somewhere, I have noticed.
You are invited to share any related situations or musings, or name any wishes in process.
And of course you are welcome to share anything that sparked for you while reading, anything that helped, clues received, or anything on your mind or heart. Let’s support each other’s hope-sparks…
I am lighting a candle for us and our beautiful heart-wishes. What a brave thing it is to allow ourselves to want something better for us and for the world.
Or if there’s anything you’d like to explore further or toss into the wishing pot, the healing power of the collective is no small thing, companionship helps.
Housekeeping note: You can subscribe to posts by email again!
If you aren’t seeing these updates in your in your email and want to, you can can solve that here.
This will pop up a new page on Follow.It that lets you subscribe via email, newsletter, or RSS reader. They say “expect 50 stories a week”, and that’s a very imaginary number, once a week is the dream.
I am emailing copies of the Emergency Calming Techniques package!
Anyone who gives to the Discretionary this week (more info below) will get my Emergency Calming Techniques package by email as a pdf. I am only checking email twice a week because I no longer have wifi at my place, long story, so be patient with me but if it doesn’t show up within the week then let me know!
I have some ideas for the next ebook too but if you do too, shoot me an email or share in the comments.
A request!
If you received clues or perspective or want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to the Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share this with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it and you so much. ❤️
Thank you for the dance, and the terrible zen
A breath for these tough times
Sending out extra wishes of Safety & Sanctuary for everyone in the path of the hard things, what a scary time we are in, inhaling and exhaling, for compassion, strength, courage, swift and steady miracles.
Announcement / last chance for Emergency Calming Down Techniques
I’ve been reeling hard lately in some cursed combination of heartache, numbness, political anxiety, winter stuff and some wild panic episodes.
Have been holding on (for dear life) to my Emergency Calm The Hell Down Techniques from a long time ago, and it’s been helping.
I am giving away a copy of these (ebook + audio recordings) to anyone who gives any sum of money to the appreciation funds / discretionary fund in the hopes that we can all keep practicing together, for each other and for the collective, and also for ourselves in these scary times. ❤️
Thank you for the dance, and the terrible zen
I think a lot about goodbyes
I think a lot about goodbyes, and what makes a good goodbye. If there is such a thing, as a good goodbye.
This makes me think about something a favorite yoga teacher used to say.
He would have us bring a lot of movement and play into downward dog, and then gradually slow it down or narrow the movements, until eventually you would come to the state of a still dog. Arriving at being a still dog.
A Still Dog!
If such a thing exists, he would always add, with a laugh.
You have to laugh
You have to laugh.
Because of course any living dog is in motion even when it is still. Still!
It is still in motion in the sense of there is ongoing motion within the stillness, and also still in the sense of still being a dog, because it has not stopped being a dog and there is the rippling and twitching of dog.
Our dog friend is not ever motionless even when it holds itself in one luxuriously stretched position, or even when asleep…
So the still dog is not a still dog, because it’s still a dog. Breathing, pulsing, innately in motion.
Similarly
Similarly, I think we can say that even the elusive good goodbye (if it exists) is still at the same time quite often hard and painful by virtue of the fact that it is still a goodbye, and endings are intense.
Whatever makes the good goodbye good, it is still, after all, the end.
Endings are intense. The never-again of it all. The non-still-ness of it all.
Sometimes even when an ending is dearly needed, or an ending is a liberation, or an ending is what is indicated, there can also be sadness in the finality.
What makes a good goodbye
It’s hard to know, I have had so few of them.
I know much more about what makes a bad goodbye bad.
Whether by virtue of the fact that it doesn’t happen, the non-suchness of it all.
Or when it is cold and bitter even though it could be sweet and loving in nature, despite the ending of the sweet and loving times.
Or the agonizing not-knowing surrounding an unclear disappearance or a vague non-explanation.
Or the bafflement of being around a person you knew so intimately who once seemed to embody certain qualities, and now is seemingly an entirely different person with a new and unfamiliar personality.
Do-overs
This week I was given the gift of do-overs for a goodbye from over ten years ago.
Or, I had the chance to partake in the goodbye the way I wished we had been able to say goodbye then.
They showed up at the agreed-upon place, we melted into each others arms and danced for ninety minutes without pause, except of course there is lots of pausing in dance in the same way that there is motion in stillness, but we did not pause our embrace.
And then the moment came when it had to end and we walked in our separate directions.
I understood what was said even though it wasn’t said
Not a single word was exchanged, but what I understood from the dance was that this person has forgiven me for what they were angry about ten years ago, that we still love each other, that we both know there is no possible way we could ever be involved again, and that this was our beautiful goodbye.
Our chance to hold each other and not-say the things that should have been said then but to feel them and to express them and to adore each other, and be amazed that we found each other for that period of time that was, and that we got to do it one last time.
It was transcendent.
We smiled at each other and breathed each other in and filled up on joy and longing and more joy, and danced our way to goodbye.
What can be learned from a good goodbye
A good goodbye can still hurt like hell. It is not a get out of jail free card from the heart pain.
I can fully confirm that this hurts a lot, and also say without doubt that it is the best goodbye I have ever had, and also it was maybe one of the most beautiful moments of my life.
A good goodbye is clarifying.
We both said everything we needed to say, we just didn’t use words, because we were in a mind-meld of mellifluous motion.
We were a still dog.
In the slowest of slow motion, playing in a state of quiet.
Regrets? Wishes? Dreamy dreaminess?
Do I wish the music had continued for another twelve hours? Yes.
Do I wish we didn’t have to say goodbye? Probably also yes.
But I got a good goodbye, and I needed it.
Healing inward, outward and through
I need this good goodbye, this beautiful glowing goodbye made of nothing but love and presence.
And mainly I need this good goodbye to be a healing not only for that relationship from then, and all the What Could Have Been, but for all the relationships that did not get their good goodbyes, or just goodbyes or any goodbyes…
I need this goodbye to be a healing for every time a beloved and I could have held each other all night and hugged it out and cried, and said YES WE LOVE EACH OTHER AND NO THIS IS NOT GOING TO WORK, and just let ourselves feel sad. But instead we were cold.
And I need this good goodbye to hold the essence of a good goodbye for all the awful times that I didn’t get a last conversation or a last hug or a last glance or a last something…
A terrible zen
A wonderful friend and I were talking the other evening about how sometimes you are forced to embody A Terrible Zen, when there is a hurricane in your life, for example…
Or sometimes the hurricane takes the form of a person you love and their mental illness or addiction or the combination of these.
There is simply nothing to be done, but keep on keeping on. You batten the hatches, take it minute by minute, survey the wreckage, keep moving some way some how.
Then there is all the post hurricane recovery, and The Terrible Zen of knowing there is nothing you could have done to make things different, there is nothing you can do now to prevent it from happening again, and there is nothing to be done generally.
The hurricane just is/was/exists as potential.
A funny coincidence
Right before the ninety minute dance that I wished would never end that I also knew was my one Good Goodbye, I mysteriously got locked out of my phone.
And then for three entire days I didn’t have a working phone, until that could be solved.
It was like going back to the 1990s. When I had a two hour drive to my uncle’s place, I had to look up what exit to take and then memorize the number. There were stops to ask a kind stranger for directions.
Analog time
I said my good goodbye that was also a heart-wrenching goodbye that was also one of the most beautiful and transcendent experiences of my life.
And then I was without technology for three days, so I couldn’t call anyone to talk about what had happened, or send texts that I shouldn’t, or turn to any of the usual distraction places to distract myself.
Instead I had to do analog activities like walk in the forest, do slow yoga in a narrow hallway, make tea, drink it slowly, daydream, cry, say come on baby girl snap out of it, watch the mesmerizing back and forth of my uncle and his friend playing ping pong.
And so on. I was a still dog, which is to say, always moving, but slowly and sometimes imperceptibly. The beautiful and terrible zen of that too.
Here’s to…
Keeping on keeping on. And some good analog time.
Saying thank you for the dance (and for The Dance).
Recognizing that there is space for these transcendent moments, and that just because not everyone can have that kind of goodbye with me doesn’t mean I can’t have these kind of goodbyes in my heart. Do-overs forever!
I can apply the sustenance and magic of a beautiful good goodbye to all the shitty goodbyes, the non-goodbyes, the hurtful endings.
Just knowing that this is possible feels very hopeful, even if it is also a form of the Terrible Zen.
Thank you for the dance
Thank you for the dance is also thank you for the terrible zen, and thank you for the terrible zen is also a form of dance, of motion within stillness.
Here’s to more delicious motion, and more delicious pauses, and something even better, and to love, and which sometimes co-exists with hurricanes.
It is brave to keep trying, and to keep movement alive, to add some sway to the stillness and some stillness within the sway, some presence and breath.
A hand-on-heart sigh for all of this. I hope you can feel some hopefulness with me, draw some hopefulness from the well…
Come play in the comments, I appreciate the company
Leave a pebble (o) to say you were here, so I know I’m not doing this alone.
Also it feels good to pick up a pebble and place it somewhere, I have noticed.
You are invited to share any related situations or musings of your own if you like, or name any wishes that are in process.
And of course you are welcome to share anything that sparked for you while reading, anything that helped, clues received, or anything on your mind, wish some wishes, process what’s percolating…
I am lighting a candle for us and our beautiful heart-wishes. What a brave thing it is to allow ourselves to want something better for us and for the world.
Or if there’s anything you’d like to explore further or toss into the wishing pot, the healing power of the collective is no small thing, companionship helps.
Whatever comes to mind or heart. Let’s support each other’s hope-sparks…
Housekeeping note: You can subscribe to posts by email again!
If you aren’t seeing these updates in your in your email and want to, you can can solve that here.
This will pop up a new page on Follow.It that lets you subscribe via email, newsletter, or RSS reader. They say “expect 50 stories a week”, and that’s a very imaginary number, once a week is the dream.
I am emailing copies of the Emergency Calming Techniques package!
Anyone who gives to the Discretionary this week (more info below) will get my Emergency Calming Techniques package by email as a pdf. I am only checking email twice a week because I no longer have wifi at my place, long story, so be patient with me but if it doesn’t show up within the week then let me know!
I have some ideas for the next ebook too but if you do too, shoot me an email or share in the comments.
A request!
If you received clues or perspective or want to send appreciation for the writing and work/play we do here, I appreciate it tremendously.
I am accepting support (with joy & gratitude) in the form of Appreciation Money to the Discretionary Fund. Asking is not where my strength resides but Brave & Stalwart is the theme these days, and pattern-rewriting is the work, it all helps with fixing the many broken things.
And if those aren’t options, I get it, you can light a candle for support (or light one in your mind!), share this with someone who loves words, tell people about these techniques, approaches and themes, send them here, it all helps, it’s all welcome, and I appreciate it and you so much. ❤️