clues

I love the faith I have in myself
even when wildly unjustified

as evidenced by all the times
words come to me wanting to be written down
but The Game Is Rigged
and does not always allow time for the sitting-and-writing part
so I jot a note for future me,
positive it contains all she could possibly need

and then when it is the time for writing,
I puzzle over the clues in the note
— once a a poem in the form of a grocery list —
with no idea what it means
but filled with so much love towards past-me
who believed in my ability to connect the dots

ginger

cozy with ginger tea
warm orange sweater
and Patsy Cline
ready to write this week’s wishes
holding a wonderfully cryptic note from last-week me:

Cornbread vs the Iditarod

I am almost giddy in love with past me
what a magnificent title
it reads like a lost Richard Brautigan novel
or the title of an especially surreal episode
of a beloved television show I haven’t discovered yet

do I know what it means though
hmmmmmm-maybe?
these are good clues
I can work with these
so let’s explore
maybe I will arrive at the place last-week me had in mind
or somewhere even better

raising my glass to
the superpower of “and maybe even something better…”

cornbread

I had a cup and a half of buttermilk left over
from making luscious life-altering butter
and a bag of organic cornmeal appeared on the shelf
so I baked cornbread
wondering why I never bake cornbread

but then once there was cornbread
I remembered:
cornbread is not a true yes food for me
even when made with love and quality ingredients

the SCENT is joy sparks
slathering BUTTER ON THINGS is joy sparks
but the cornbread experience itself,
meh, I just don’t care about cornbread

I am wondering what else in my life
is cornbread

the yes and the not-yes

for some reason this is something we never talk about,
the combination of joy and not-joy
and how we make choices towards joy
when things are so mixed
and we are so busy

when I was involved with someone not good for me,
once upon a time,
many aspects of our connection were very, very yes:
adoration, treasuring, love, chemistry, pleasure, practice, the desire to be deeply present

and I let those hold so much value
I gave them permission to eclipse
the parts that were very not-yes
the jealousy, the suspicion and accusations, the flashes of blind anger,
the hurtful words

once that lovely enveloping intoxicating freshly baked cornbread scent cleared
and I stopped slathering butter everywhere
it was pretty clear
that you can’t actually receive nourishment or joy
from something that is not what you need

and that I was scared to say no to the no
and lose the parts that were yes

compassion

compassion for past-me who
really needed that experience of being treasured and loved
and didn’t know she could have that
without all the bullshit

compassion for havi of the big heart
who believed that if she just glowed enough love and trust
this person could work on their stuff and figure it out
that is still a very lovely thought even if it turned out not to be true
in this particular case

compassion for being someone who was raised to believe
that being loved means giving up on big parts of who you are,
how could she have known otherwise

compassion for anyone involved
in the constellations and configurations
of that connection and all connections
and for anyone caught in the crossfire
of unsovereign energy sparks

compassion given
as a given

that part is important

I was talking to a dance friend this week
he was deep in self-blame
about the realization that he’d been dating someone
because he was lonely and liked having someone to hold
and not because this person was his yes

so yeah, that’s a thing
we realize we’ve made a choice that isn’t true
to what we want
because part of it was what we wanted

but instead of being able to just say that:
x was yes
y was no
I let x have more weight than y
nothing is wrong

we make it about blame
when blame is so counterproductive and unnecessary
(which is not to say it’s not understandable)
(our culture thrives on the shame-blame game)

so here is what I want to say about that:

if insights about you aren’t kind towards you
they’re not really insights
there might be a beautiful kernel of truth in there
but it’s been seriously distorted in monster-filters

the iditarod

I had the pleasure of hearing Libby Riddles speak once
having no idea how enthralled I would be

my favorite part was not her win
though good lord what an exciting and powerful story
my favorite part was after her first disastrous attempt in 1980,
she took four years to train
like her own personal olympics

think about the faith
with no money, no sponsorship, no training,
in an entirely male-dominated sport
she didn’t have running water or electricity
her village held a bake sale to raise the funds needed for her to enter
the race she won

I find this very appealing
naming an intentional container of spaciousness
in which to move towards something that matters to you

a form

the jealous ex had a dream/plan to go on
a three year retreat
more specifically:
three years three months three weeks three days
without any contact with anyone in the outside world
just meditation in seclusion

and while that would not be my yes for me
I love the shape of that container
what a beautiful amount of time for
process

a way to be the fields
and the seeds
and the water
and the sun
all together

that is really beautiful to me

what else do I know about this

I like things like this that have a shape,
space for a process
in which to sort out
what is my yes and what is less yes
and to actively choose towards things that support
my true yes joy spark life

my peacefulness
my well-being and bell-being
my ability to glow good things into the world
and inside of my own kingdom

the ingredients (for me)

• designated time
• designated (safe) space
• spaciousness
• ritual
• pleasure
• compassion, of course
• turning inwards
• luscious minimalism

relating differently
to myself
and my wishes
deep listening

joyfully self-granted permission
to never make cornbread
to have my internal iditarod training take place
somewhere sunny and quiet
it might involve lounging in a pool
there are pretty rocks there
basically it’s a lot of resting
and learning/relearning how to be someone who
chooses towards rest, yes and less
pleasure, treasure, and even more quiet

what do I know about my wish this week

It’s a wish about creating sanctuary
for myself / my wishes / my desires
the things I need both in my connection with myself
and in connections and love stories with others

doing this with intention
and playful presence
crown on,
breathing down to the root
true to the glowing jewel in my heart

it is related to a long-ago wish about flowers everywhere
and being someone who studies lights and lightness

what is my wish?

and: what is the relationship between cornbread and the iditarod

I think cornbread is an example of a thing I think
should be yes because aspects of it are yes
but the parts that are no make all of it a no

and the iditarod is an example of a thing I think
would be a huge obvious no for me
but actually holds some appealing elements
in the form of intentionality, training and desire
and so even though the thing itself is not yes
it holds enough yes for me
to invent my own shape

and then I can take elements from each

butter = pleasure, intentionality, joy, making, sustainability, doing things my way
slathering = pleasure, lusciousness, plenty, alchemy, transformation
training = presence, play, repetition, ritual, containers, form, desire, planting, growth

let them combine
into something entirely new
entirely mine
something that is a marvelous surprise

I can drop cornbread and the iditarod
into a compass of qualities
and let their yes-elements ripple out and interact
waiting for the new beautiful something to show itself to me

now

sitting in a dark booth across from agent emdee
she and I are both working on scary projects

I want to be dancing
this is both true right now
and also maybe this is my iditarod
without anything to win
just the training

in a way dancing is an escape
it gives me something to do that is not
sitting on the couch crying because the beautiful boy is not coming back
no matter how much I want to believe he could
he can’t

but if we add compassion
because insight without compassion is not useful and not actually insight
then the truth is this:
dance connects me to my body, to my joy body
it is how I remember joy
and find my way back to being a beacon and a bell
which is how healing works
so nothing is wrong

superpower of I do not dim my spark for anyone.

november (on the fluent self calendar) is GLOW MORE, with the superpower of I do not dim my spark for anyone

how perfect that my question which
answered itself above
just answered itself again with the calendar

the answer is to glow more
nothing that dims my spark (cornbread),
and a big joyful yes to things that support glow
in whatever form that currently takes
and the form is allowed to change because all things change
and glow more is the opposite of stagnation

thank you, past-me, for choosing this for me

last week’s wishes

I wished a wish about the release papers…

this was a wonderful wish
it healed the november glums
and got me dancing again
and helped me understand some things about the
sweet bittersweet of chocolate and being a
(metaphorical) chocolate shop owner

and it reminded me about the importance of clearing things out
for clarity

and you are invited to come by our a FLASH SALE (password: sweetdoors) and you should peek while it’s still happening!

invitation: come play with me…

you are invited to share many !!!!!! about what is here,
or share anything sparked for you while reading

deposit wishes, gwishes, superpowers, qualities, ingredients, intel, possibly in code

safe space for creative exploration asks us to let go of care-taking and advice-giving

wishes are never late because whenever you wish is the right time for wishing

here’s how we meet each other’s wishes: oh, wow what beautiful wishes

♡

the release papers (i)

In eight weeks and two days
(not that I’m counting)
(I am counting so hard)
we are out of the chocolate shop for good

we get our release papers
or really, we are released from our lease papers
(we were supposed to be re-leasing)
(but instead we are releasing)

four years exactly
since the idea spark that led
to signing those papers
and everything that came after that

there is good experience and useful experience…

that’s what my former mentor used to say
imagine a russian accent for the full effect

it’s been four long years of very, very, very
useful experience
I’m talking extreme levels of useful,
previously unimagined levels of useful,
a usefulness that rattles you to your core
painfully useful in its useful
usefulness

during which I lost
not only my mentor
but pretty much everyone and everything
in my life

I know so many things I didn’t then
and no longer want anything I wanted then
and here we are

and here we are

there is some residual sadness
but mostly relief

and I didn’t know if I’d ever get here but yes
now I can breathe in my thank-you heart:
thank you for this abundance of useful experience

and hey, now I know many useful life things
and I never have to do this again
or spend my life wondering if I should have
followed that call: nope!

the release papers (ii)

I am slowly and steadily
readying myself
to move into the tiniest space

a space so contained
that there is room only for me
and those few belongings I treasure most

what do I treasure?
fascinating exercise:
life becomes haiku

forming

the process of
allowing my life to ease itself into a
more embodied
concentrated glowing shape

I have big yes for this move
and big yes for the sweet shed
and big yes for the sweet shedding

aka The Great Downsizing of 2015

and, also, oh dear lord this is a lot of work
it’s the papers, so many papers, they need to go
because there is no room for them in my new space

the release papers (iii)

each year I name the next year
and we are in the Year of Easing & Releasing

the name is always ridiculously prescient,
I can’t say how it works
but it’s as if invoking the theme sets me off on a trajectory
and the trajectory holds itself
like sailing with the trade winds

though yes, when last-year-me named the year she had no idea
just how much releasing this was going to entail

since then she and I have released:
my home,
my job,
the playground — the retreat center I [verb]-ed in Portland for five years,
the ballroom business aka the metaphorical chocolate shop,
my desire to live in this city, or any city,
my willingness to put up with The Game Is Rigged,
attachment to most things,
any agreement/acquiescence to be around plastic
(goodbye goodbye to this insidious construct of the disposable life),
the beautiful boy I love so much,
and, oh right, pretty much EVERYTHING WE OWN
to move into a tiny-tiny-tiny space

thank you, past-me

for all of this
but mostly for
adding the word EASING

easing & releasing
is such a loving combination, and a healthier, more sustainable way to let go;
a softening into, rubbing butter around the edges of the pan

I never would have been able to
handle all this releasing
without the accompanying easing

and really they are much more related than I ever knew:
releasing is a form of easing
and easing is a form of releasing
and both of these get easier with practice

pleasure

all this letting go
allowing the new forming of something more compact
more contained and more present
is not without a certain pleasure

forming
is not without a certain pleasure

I didn’t know that before

and I am letting go in order to have more pleasure
letting go of things that do not bring me pleasure
releasing into pleasure
towards pleasure

pleasure, and also treasuring myself as someone
who gets to have more pleasure in their life

everything incongruent with my pleasure

(being in charge of a chocolate shop, for example)
(being in love with someone who has forgotten how to rest, for example)
has to release or change
form itself into something better
kind of like actual chocolate-making

funny story about that

I was in the glum
(truth: knowing that everything ends doesn’t make it less hard)
and asked the spotify app
for some sort of calming/energizing meditation

and received in return a charming scotsman
who instructed me
to imagine my muscles melting
deliciously like chocolate

you have to add the accent for extra meltiness

he might in fact work for Big Chocolate
it was extremely effective
I totally wanted chocolate
though mostly I wanted to be chocolate
and also it got me out of bed
and into a remarkably productive day

what I’m taking from this

1) pleasure is healing
2) rest is healing
3) maybe having a chocolate shop was more important for me than I realized,
maybe it has things to teach me about deliciousness,
about softening and hardening, about shapes and forms and sweetness,
maybe the treasure isn’t only in releasing something that was not-yes,
but in having this reminder to devote my life to
sweetness and pleasure, form and delight in forms,
do you see?

releasing papers

a few weeks ago, I was hanging out with
incoming me
she said something like
what would your life be like without paper

I may have freaked out a little / a lot
because NO NO NO that scares me,
but also I was intrigued, and gradually this idea
has become more liberating and sometimes when I think of it
I burst into laughter, which is a good sign

what would happen if I just let all the papers go
I mean, I don’t have anywhere to put them in the new space anyway

what do I know about this mission

• it’s equal parts exhilarating and terrifying
• it seems important
• this is clearly a fractal flower: a More Than Symbolic thing I can do to help the other missions along
• did I mention that this is scary for me, very?
• and I am so very drawn to this
• it seems impossible especially given that I don’t speak, so writing IS how I speak!
• last night while asleep I somehow managed to kick a pillow at a weird angle and knock over a glass of water and soak a pile of papers
• since july, I have released the contents of 37 binders, and there are still more
• yesterday I shredded TEN YEARS of notes from client sessions, glorious sparks of genius there, let us trust that the best sparks will return
• I am not a packrat but when it comes to paper I kind of am
• I don’t even want most of these papers and yet here they are

will the November Glums sabotage this mission

I am in the November Glums and feeling
doubtful
of my ability to do anything
with this beautiful mission
so let’s talk to Incoming Me
and get some intel and reassurance

incoming me says:

a marvelous wish-mission, my love!

in an ideal november
your only mission would be
finding your way back to november

that is to say, remembering
that the combination of Time Change Fog and
sudden early darkness throws you into a sort of
bewildered hibernation state

you have three beautifully lit november paths available to you

1) have nothing going on so you can just be with that
nap, read, eat popcorn by the fire,
find your way into the quiet enjoyment of this new cozy mode,
remembering potato-rosemary soup and warm robes

2) be a bird and head south for the winter
towards warmth and freedom
like you did last year
remember? november fifth
you and the beautiful boy and the open road
six weeks of grand adventure
and wandering the desert in love

3) use this time to plan
your next adventure
this combines both of the first options:
the energy of gleeful wish-seeding and sunny-skies-to-be
with drinking tea while wrapped in blankets
listening to the rain

any of these is good
the November Glums are both real and not real;
real in the sense that this is a very real phenomenon to be aware of,
not-real in the sense that they are a distortion,
a forgetting that you are a wild creature who knows in your essence
how to nest and how to fly

last week you said something about pleasure asking for presence
choose pleasure for yourself
and let the releasing of papers
and the papers of releasing
come from that

what do I know about my wish this week

It’s yet another double meaning wish,
related to LESS
and releasing
and the subversive practice of
luscious minimalism

this is entirely new levels of red balloons
I am going to give this as much time as it needs
and trust in the beauty and rightness of wishng

now

it gets dark so early now
and I do not like these narrow cramped days
but incoming-me is right
there is treasure in this
in [tiny spaces] like haiku
as there is treasure in everything

so let’s breathe in
the scent of small winter potatoes
roasting in olive oil with rosemary and herbes de provence,
let’s fill the red hot water bottle,
snug in its knitted sweater

let’s remember that wishing the wish is enough
I am receiving my release papers
through asking

superpower of I do not dim my spark for anyone.

november (on the fluent self calendar) is GLOW MORE, with the superpower of I do not dim my spark for anyone

just when I was starting to get into the swing of october boldness, now it is time to glow more, and I am loving this, loving the joy and the defiance: I do not agree to dim my spark!

thank you, past-me, for choosing this for me

last week’s wishes

I wished a wish about 120% yes…

this was a very revealing wish
and this week I learned that
something I thought was probably 100% yes
was really only 87% yes
and that this is not enough even though I want it to be,
and now a much better plan has emerged

oh, and we are having a FLASH SALE (password: sweetdoors) and you should peek while it’s still happening!

invitation: come play with me…

you are invited to share many !!!!!! about what is here,
or share anything sparked for you while reading

deposit wishes, gwishes, superpowers, qualities, ingredients, intel, possibly in code

safe space for creative exploration asks us to let go of care-taking and advice-giving

wishes are never late because whenever you wish is the right time for wishing

here’s how we meet each other’s wishes: oh, wow what beautiful wishes

♡

Hello, Friday Saturday: we are here.

{a breath for being here when we get here}

Thank you, week!

This is the 379th week in a row we are chickening here together….

What worked this week?

Changing the names.

I changed “back to square one” to “back to square miracle”.

Then the magic of anagrams helped me transform one thing into another.

Like when I had to write an autoresponder message, aka something I will do pretty much anything to avoid. Guess what?! The word Autorespond anagrams to Around Poets, Sundae Troop, Donut Operas, and A Postured No! This made me laugh, and then I was able to just write the exact thing that needed to be written.

Next time I might…

Remember how much it helps to laugh.

The anagram generator helped, as did making up ridiculous dance moves, once I remembered that these are always options.

Upcoming biopic if it were based on this week…

If The Resting Step In An Obscure Scandinavian Dance Is The Polka, All You Can Do Is Laugh

8 breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.

1. Missing, missing, missing, and the ever-widening absence distance. The person who is so far away texted me: “running my hands gently through your hair, tracing a line with my finger across your cheek to your mouth, sweet on you”, and I cried. A breath for my sweet heart, for longing, for breathing my way through with love.
2. Panic! Got triggered at a bus stop, body freaked out, took the entire day to get my ground back. A breath for this.
3. I have the Glums. Finding myself in a glum state that is hard to describe, but I think is partly seasonal. For years, my housemate and I had a halloween ritual of watching Tim Burton’s beautiful halloween-lovestory, Nightmare Before Christmas, and eating popcorn in the dark. Now he spends halloween with his girlfriend, and I am at this odd crossroads of not wanting to go out into the world but also not wanting to be alone at home. Last year, the beautiful boy and I spent halloween in each other’s arms, in bed in the dark, marveling over this miracle of closeness and sweetness, so close and so sweet. I thought this should be the new halloween tradition and he said, “I can’t wait for next year with you to do this again”, and now it is here and he is far away, and I am so sad. Let’s have a breath for this, and for remembering there are many possible new traditions, and many possible ways to have sweetness, and that sweetness is a quality of soul, and therefore always mine and cannot be lost.
4. These short days, getting shorter. Maybe one day I will live somewhere with more light, or maybe one day I will learn to welcome the hibernating. Right now it is hard for me. A breath for this, and for the week in the sun in December-me that last-month lovingly planted for future-me and for me-now to look forward to with hope and joy.
5. The big projects are still completely overwhelming, and there is no one to help me, and I need someone there with me while I puzzle things out. A breath for remembering my deep roots.
6. Missing shmita life. A breath for trust.
7. I’m thinking a lot about the tremendous waste this business of halloween generates, and it is a business. Just in the US, we spend 8 billion dollars a year on halloween candy, costumes and decorating, most of which goes to landfill. Candy wrappers can’t be recycled because they’re made of mixed materials. And kids in my neighborhood often use plastic bags or pumpkin-shaped buckets for trick-or-treating instead of the pillow cases we used in my day, and apparently — and again, this statistic is limited to the United States, so it’s way worse than this — we throw 100 BILLION plastic bags into landfill each year, according to World Watch. 85% of textile waste here goes to landfills, and halloween costumes are cheap, flimsy, often made of plastic or with plastic accessories, and rarely get reused. And even pumpkins are worth thinking about. Of 1.1 billion pounds of pumpkins (thanks, national agricultural statistics service), most get used for decoration/carving, and then dumped. It seems pumpkins do not break down well in landfills because there isn’t oxygen, I doubt most people are composting, though I did read a hilarious suggestion to donate them to a local zoo because apparently lions are crazy for pumpkin? Anyway, the point is, we live in a culture that has conditioned us to generate waste, not question how things are done or why they are done that way, and this is a heart-breaking thing. Let’s find a better way. A breath for a better way.
8. Inhale, exhale. May all misunderstandings and distortions, internal and external, dissolve in love if not in laughter. Trust-more love-more release-more receive-more. Goodbye (and thank you), mysteries and hard moments of this week.

8 breaths for the good, reassuring, delight-filled.

1. While sweetness from far-away makes me cry, it also eases the loss and absence. A breath of gratitude for the treasure in this.
2. Many, many not-good states of both body and mind can be solved by extremely delicious Egyptian food and talking to a dear friend about life. A breath for the truth of this.
3. Finished TWO giant projects and one smaller one, all of which had been suspended in Maybe Someday, and this feels so good. A breath of relief!
4. Dance solved everything this week. I took Nomi to the portland swing dance club dance, and it was so much fun. The Wednesday dance, which is hit or miss, was full of joy and creative play and wonderfully connected dances. Thursday, I went to two dances, both of which were just breathtaking and awe-inspiring, and my whole being is filled with love for dance and for the pleasure of play. Oh, and for the first time ever in a dance workshop, I was chosen by the instructor to be in the video recap, that was new and exciting, and I’m not sure why it didn’t terrify me, but it didn’t. A breath of thank-you for everything that brought me to dance.
5. I made delicious food this week — for myself — with quality ingredients, and had the superpower of perceiving that I am Well-Provisioned. And I took pleasure in simple nourishing meals, like Forbidden Rice with sauteed onions, mushrooms and steamed sweet peas, made with love and presence, and just so much more pleasurable than I was expecting. A breath of thank-you.
6. So excited about the 2016 fluent self calendar!!!! Each year I wonder how we are going to out-do the last one, but this is just magnificent. The Year Of Doors! Doors and Double-Meanings. Delight delight delight. A breath for all this smiling and the profusion of exclamation points.
7. I am so fortunate in so many ways. Kind, supportive friends. Legs that hold me up. The treasure of having the time to think about all the things I am thinking about. A warm home. A hand-on-heart breath of wonder for the good in my life
8. Thankfulness. Everything is okay and so much is good. Nothing is wrong, even when I want to believe it is. Now is not then. All Timing Is Right Timing. Thank you for this grand adventure. A full breath of deep appreciation in my thank-you heart.

Sparklepoints, superpowers, salve, fake band of the week!

Operations completed and forward movement!

The first phase of the Fountaining op is good to go, Ruby Jewel (not actually a jewel) is happening, huge progress on Sweet Honey, Shed Shed Shed, and Panther Time. Thank you, fractal flowers.

I now bestow upon myself a quintillion sparklepoints, like a Fairground Stripper, and you are welcome to do the same for you.

Superpowers I had this week…

Last week I asked for the superpower of 120% YES, which is the superpower of warmly and lovingly clearing out all the things from my life that are only partial-yes, and this is getting easier for me.

I also had the power of asking for a ride home.

Powers I want.

I want the superpower of Not Caring What Other People Think, and the power of remembering that Now Is Not Then.

The Salve of Small But Meaningful Changes

This is a salve of shift, and it works through small movements and small miracles.

When you rub it into your skin, everything softens, and suddenly your powers of discernment are so much more palpable, in all ways.

You recognize exactly which conversations you don’t need to have, you know the right place to move the vase, you fold a blanket and it changes the entire room, you take a breath of SUSTENANCE and the field around you changes.

You know what needs your time and attention (and it might not be what you think, for example, maybe a healing regrounding pedicure is suddenly at the top of your list), and what doesn’t. You see through the rigging. You make steady choices, and let what you already know become so beautifully clear.

This is a secret gratitude salve and a secret Stand In Your Strength salve, and it has power and smells faintly of lemongrass.

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

This week’s band is from CQ:

A Momentary Vortex of Whine.

Their latest album is Services Rendered, and, of course, it’s just one guy.

ANNOUNCEMENT!

We have a Flash Sale! Come to our Flash Sale! The password: sweetdoors

As you know if you’ve hung out here for a while, we offer things pretty rarely, and they are always amazing, so come spark with us!

How was your week?

Come play in the comments. Share something from your week, take a breath, or just say hi! No rules, my format doesn’t have to be yours, we’ve been doing this every week for years now and there still isn’t a right way.

Everyone belongs. We let people have their own experience. We’re supportive and welcoming. We lovingly refrain from giving advice.

And of course it’s always okay to comment under a made-up name, whether for play and delight, or in the interest of Safety First.

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

It’s fine if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — jump in whenever you like. Blowing kisses to the Beloved Lurkers too!