Twenty?

My monsters say that there are far too many things about elephants to be able to say anything even slightly meaningful in twenty minutes.

That may be true, and yet, here I am with twenty minutes and with words bubbling up, words about elephants, so let’s find out.

Let’s liberate the words and liberate the elephants, in twenty minutes of tiny liberations.

Twenty minutes on elephants!

I just realized that Twenty Minutes On Elephants sounds like I mean riding an elephant for twenty minutes, which is not what I mean at all.

That is a very striking image though, and it just brought up a long-forgotten and very startling memory. What I actually meant here originally was twenty minutes on the topic of elephants.

Or possibly not on the topic, or possibly on the topic of Not On The Topic…

The elephant in the room.

No one talks about it because it seems somehow awkward to mention the obvious.

Sometimes the Not-Talking-About-It becomes deafeningly loud, and then you avoid the room, and sometimes you don’t remember why you don’t visit that room anymore.

Sometimes the Not-Talking-About-It silences the elephant’s essential elephant-ness to such an extent that it goes and hides behind the curtains, and you genuinely forget that it’s there. A trick of the mind, a trick of culture.

Sometimes the issue of the elephant becomes a broken step, a missing stair. Oh, hey, don’t trip over the giant semi-invisible elephant.

The elephant in the room in my dream.

There were elephants in my room.

Not my real room, a dream room: a small elongated rectangle of a space.

Not real elephants, representations of elephants.

An absolutely humongous stuffed animal toy elephant, grey and plush, on its back. A pewter Ganesh, the size of my hand. Two colorful wooden decorated elephants that looked like India, one large and one small; I have seen them before but I can’t remember where.

What do I know about the elephants in the room in my dream.

I didn’t want them there.

They had just ended up in my space.

They had been left or forgotten, and then I had mistakenly thought it was unkind to remove them, when in fact it is unkind to my space to keep things in it that don’t belong there.

An understandable lapse in sovereignty; we want so badly to be kind, and we forget this essential truth about what Kindness really is and how it works.

I realized this in my dream.

I realized that I had neglected not just the elephants, but my space and myself and my needs and desires, due to this misguided idea that it is not nice to ask things to leave.

So I began the task of liberating elephants from this mysterious dream-room, and discovered that the elephants had…what is the word for this, the thing fruit does when it gets overripe in the fruit bowl because no one has eaten it…

I don’t know how to describe this with elephants, because you can’t say that elephants have become spoiled.

That makes it sound as if they’ve been given too many sweets at a party and have become whiny and demanding, little tantrum-ey elephants who probably need a hug and some quiet time to chill.

And you can’t say elephants have gone off, like you’d say to describe food, because that sounds as if the elephants have exited, possibly in a stampede.

Elephants aren’t rotten, that sounds wrong too. And yet.

And yet.

There was a big hole in the belly of the stuffed-animal toy elephant, so I couldn’t give it away as a gift like I’d wanted to.

I asked Richard to take it away for me, and he told me afterwards that he had found another elephant inside of it.

Me: Like a baby?!

Richard: No! Another toy elephant, but a different kind. A wooden statue elephant. But, here is sad news, there was also a dead mouse inside of your elephant. It must have burrowed in there to make a nest, but then it died.

And then Richard and I cried a little, for the mouse, and for the elephant. In the dream.

And I cried for my room, which I had neglected so deeply, out of this false sense of obligation to a false understanding of kindness, that I hadn’t even noticed that the elephant I didn’t want to hold onto to begin with was holding this mouse grave.

We moved all the elephants out.

We moved all the elephants out, and the room said thank you.

I said THANK YOU, ELEPHANTS. And: I’M SO SORRY, ELEPHANTS.

And a circle glowed in the window where Ganesh had been.

What else about elephants?

Long memory…that’s the story-myth at least.

Is that long memory like grudge-holding? Is that what needs to be liberated? Are the elephants a form of stew-stirring…

Or is that long memory like soul memory?

Like the vision I received about my mother — she was dancing with Miriam and the women, celebrating. They were all dancing in the desert, in a line-circle: singing, beating their tambourines and laughing. She looked to be maybe thirty years old with long flowing black hair, but I recognized her. It was her.

She was so happy because that was where she wanted to be, back in soul space, in her pure-Ruth form, celebrating life, moving energy.

Memory like that.

Like remembering yourself.

And that was the bell, for twenty minutes.

Do we want another bell, twenty more minutes?

Is the elephant a bell?

What else about elephants?

Something about luck, not sure, a talisman.

Something about…oh, of course, this is the month of Stand In My Strength More.

Elephants do that.

What else?

I’m not sure. Let’s ask Wikipedia for clues.

Ah, such beautiful clues.

They have pillar-like legs. That is a clue.

They are “highly recognisable”, that makes me laugh, maybe because we ignore them when they are in rooms.

Oh! They are led by matriarchs. See, I knew somehow my vision of Miriam and the women from my lineage, dancing after the parting of the Red Sea, I knew that wasn’t a departure from elephants even though it seemed to be when I wrote it. I felt that it was connected.

Elephants have a fission-fusion society in which multiple family groups come together to socialise, I like the feeling I get from reading this sentence, and the way fission-fusion tastes in my mouth.

Males and females live separately or in separate groups, that is intriguing.

A big spark about this:

They communicate by touch, sight, smell and sound; elephants use infrasound, and seismic communication over long distances.

And apparently, says wikipedia, the trunk can be used for delicate tasks, such as wiping an eye , and can crack a peanut shell without breaking the seed.

That is a lovely, gentle image. I am wiping my own eye right now.

Thank you, Wikipedia. Thank you, elephants.

Elephants have thick skin.

Literally. An inch thick.

This is something I have been wanting metaphorically. Not the thickness, but the boundaries.

Boundaries are a big part of standing in my strength more, as is liberating things that need liberating, be they words or elephants or dreams or understandings or things that don’t need to be in my space anymore.

Like misunderstandings about the truth of Kindness.

And one more story.

I forgot to tell you the elephant-story-that-I-mysteriously-forgot! How do I tell this.

When I was nineteen and living in Tel Aviv, I was intensely lonely. I didn’t know yet about my internal worlds and all the fascinating aspects of being me. I wanted people.

So whenever someone wanted to be my friend, I was like, OKAY YES BE MY FRIEND, without any discernment about whether I liked them or not, because I just craved connection so deeply.

This is how a girl I met in line at university befriended me. I thought she wanted to date me, but she wanted endless small talk. We had nothing in common and I found her unbelievably boring to converse with, but she kept inviting me places and I kept going, because it seemed better than staring out the window.

I think she was studying nursing. I literally can’t remember anything about her other than how little I enjoyed her company but couldn’t turn it down.

Fizzling.

Eventually that fizzled because it had to, and later that year I ended up seeing a guy who was basically a moderately upgraded version of the same thing.

He was kind and attractive and quiet, and he rode a scooter, which meant that I rode with him, which now seems incredibly unlike me, given the upredictable and terrifying Tel Aviv traffic, but I didn’t care.

For all that, there was just nothing there. Zero spark. His niceness was his primary characteristic, and I was always bored, but never quite bored enough to want to be alone with my awful thoughts.

He broke up with me, awkwardly, and I didn’t really care, it was just another not-fun thing in a year of not-fun things, and I had already slid so deep inside myself that there wasn’t much of me to reach.

Back to the elephants.

A couple years later, when I had crawled out from the dark places, I was at a concert. It was a Yarona Caspi concert. Yarona. She had short spiky hair then, in a leather jacket, looking gorgeous and mean and full of trouble.

And I ran into them. Together. The boring girl and the boring guy. Alon, his name was Alon. Which is so hilarious and perfect, because it means oak tree, another clue about Standing In Strength that I missed at the time. Her name I forget.

I remember being so astonished that two such incredibly dull people would be at a Yarona Caspi show of all places that it didn’t occur to me to be surprised that they knew each other, or that they were clearly a couple.

They told me how they met. It was not long after he and I split. They each were traveling in India, and they had gone to ride elephants, and they were the only people who showed up to the elephant-riding thing, and they shared an elephant.

They thought it was the best story in the world.

A thing about me at that time in my life…

I had closed myself off to many, maybe even most aspects of myself, so the only part of me that got much airtime was the Bitterness, with a side of dark sarcasm.

It’s not a bad part of me at all. I love and appreciate bitter sarcastic me, she is biting, smart and very funny. I just didn’t know about the other parts.

I said something like “oh, what a small world”.

But I meant: “How fitting that the two most boring people on earth would find each other, in the place all Israelis go on holiday, doing the most cliched touristy thing in the world, riding an elephant, and they think this constitutes an Interesting Story, something they can bore their boring grandchildren with over and over again, to be preserved for future generations of walking cliches.”

Except I was wrong.

It is the best story in the world, because I’m telling it now.

It is a perfect story, about elephants and Standing In Strength, about unlikely coincidences and liberation from the dark places, about fearless intentional choosing what we want in our lives, and about letting go of everthing that isn’t that.

It is about the passage from things that are all bitter to being someone who can see sweetness everywhere and still hasn’t lost her edges.

I know now that people aren’t boring or not-boring, they just don’t fit what I need. I know now that not every person or elephant that comes into my space needs to stay.

Do you think they spent twenty minutes on that elephant together? Because that would be even funnier.

Liberations, liberations.

There is the parable of the monk touching the elephant and trying to describe reality from one part of something vast, and there is sadness and playfulness in the Babar stories, I remember an illustration of colorful cakes. So much elephant to explore.

But this is all I need right now. I ended up setting more bells and more bells, it’s been a couple hours, which is apparently the right amount of time.

Three minutes until the next and maybe-last bell.

Peacefulness wishes.

I am wishing peacefulness for all elephants, for anyone who has loved an elephant, for all forms of [elephant], for all versions of me, dream me, soul me.

Forgiveness-peacefulness for the times I have ignored and forgotten elephants.

Joyful-peacefulness for the times I have delighted in their majestic aliveness.

Peacefulness for everyone who reads. Peacefulness for Tiny Liberations, in all forms.

And there’s the bell.

There’s the bell, just as I landed on one more clue, which is also a peacefulness-wish.

A well of sustenance and healing was given on Miriam’s behalf to travel with the Israelites through the desert.

A traveling well! Traveling well with a traveling well.

Yes, please. Sustenance and healing in travel form, a source that moves with us as we move. May it be so.

Play with me.

You are invited to share anything sparked for you here, about wells, bells, elephants, the sweet, delicious practice of giving twenty minutes to whatever needs to be liberated, or whatever comes up.

I would also happily read any clues/images/stories you might have about elephants.

In case you are wondering, I was not using elephants as an intentional proxy, but of course they are standing in (and standing in their strength as they are stand-ins) for many themes in my life.

That’s why investigating things that don’t necessarily seem to be directly related to our Big Issues is such a good healing — it’s such a safe way to play.

So if this appeals, you might enjoy asking what you know about elephants, or something that is like elephants, or something that is not like elephants.

Comment love.

Everyone is welcome, everyone belongs. We make space for each other.

We meet ourselves and each other with warmth, and we joyfully abstain from giving people advice. We play with Safety First, so of course feel free to make up a name and/or email address, and to make safety for yourself in whatever forms you need.

Love and peacefulness-wishes to everyone who visits here, and everyone who reads.

Personal ads. They’re … personal!

Here we are. 322 consecutive weeks of wishing. Welcome. ♡

Something different.

I have many wishes, bubbling up and away, red balloon wishes.

Over the past few days, I have been watching and waiting, trying to feel into which one I want to write about. And what I received is that I actually want to write about how last week’s wishes have been going.

Not a two-sentence summary of last week’s wish at the end of this week’s, like I usually do. Not a separate follow-up post.

I want — and I don’t know why I want this, but I need to trust it — I want to share with you some of what I have noticed and experienced over this past week since wishing the last wishes.

And I guess through that process the new wish will emerge?

Or maybe it won’t, and for whatever reason, this is the seed-form my wishing wants to take this week. It is planting itself through this process of Noticing the Noticings, and sharing them with you.

This feels weird and new and different, but when I turn inward and ask what I want to write about, that’s what is there.

And since we just exited the month of Trust More, I am going to do just that.

I actually wrote two wishes last week…

I posted my wish about Luscious Minimalism, and I also wrote about the thing I don’t want to let go of, which is actually a wish about ease of releasing.

This is funny and perfect, because this Shmita year is the Year of Easing & Releasing, and somehow I didn’t even make the connection.

Anyway.

Both of these wishes have been my quiet accompaniment to this week, setting off chain reactions of tiny sparks of light in all the dark corners, letting me see things I couldn’t see before, helping me release things I couldn’t release before.

And this is my review of that, and the week that was. Or, as I like to call it, my Revue!

I did very little, because I was sick.

So that was a completely unanticipated form of Luscious Minimalism right there.

I had been thinking about my wish in terms of space: the feelings and sensations I want in both my physical and emotional space. Reducing possessions, in order to revel in being surrounded by only those I absolutely cherish.

Possibly also lovingly disconnecting from other things that are not luscious: habits, patterns, people, assumptions, choices.

But I hadn’t thought in terms of doing less.

All I did this week was lounge around in bed, pet my sweet body with love and kiss it better, and write. The best.

A secret hidden meaning of Operation Luscious Minimalism was apparently “do the most minimal amount of exertion, while being luscious!” This makes me laugh.

I lounged.

I mean, I lounged in style, like I never have before.

I lit candles and wore impossibly extravagant special-occasion underthings and the fluffiest cloud of a robe — even though my lover is far away and my entire plans for this week involved sitting in bed being a Mighty Mighty Snot Machine while feeling sorry for myself.

I drank water from the fanciest wine glass, with a perfect circle slice of lemon snug against the rim, just because.

And massaged my temples with tiger balm from the prettiest jar, while listening to a playlist of songs chosen by Incoming Me for this quarter.

All in all, I did very, very little, but did it with panache. And it was sweet and beautiful and alive with meaning.

I treasured things.

Everything seemed so beautiful this week.

I picked up the pitcher from the dining room table, and marveled over it for the longest time.

The still-fragrant lavender that my friend Luke the Noir Gunslinger brought as a gift over a year ago, the luminous blue-green ceramic pitcher that I bought on New Year’s Eve from a local potter seven years ago, right after we moved into this house, not long after I wrote the wish that brought me both my beautiful home and this beautiful weekly practice of wishing.

The pitcher-lavender combination was suddenly so enthralling to me, I moved it into the kitchen where I spend more time, to enjoy it more fully.

I admired the long elegant line of a spoon. I touched the leaves of my plants, and may have even kissed them when the neighbors weren’t watching…

I glowed with love while sitting in the wooden rocking chair that my uncle went to great lengths to acquire from the other side of the country, just for me, because he wanted me to have one of his favorite things.

I let go of things.

Because anything that doesn’t give me that kind of thrill really doesn’t need to be in my space.

Marie (Kondo) says something wildly mystical that I missed in the first reading, about how the things you own want you to be happy.

More than that. They want you to feel like you are in love. So if you aren’t tingly, blissfully in love when you touch them and see them, then be kind to them and to you, and let them go make someone else that happy, or return to you with that same loving energy but in a new and better form. That’s what she says.

It’s a wondrous and terrifying thought: will I have to let go of everything? Not at all, just the things that obstruct my ability to feel the wonder of the pitcher, the magnificence of the lavender.

Marie is a greatly misunderstood Luscious Minimalist, I think. Her work isn’t actually about tidying and decluttering at all.

It is about becoming someone who glows with love, who consciously chooses to glow with love, and to let your environment support this. And it is about the deepest forms of listening.

I let go of so many things that my space transformed.

My bedroom now feels sparkly and magical, like the playground.

It hums from all the time I’ve spent luscious-ing it up in bed all week! And from all the things I let go of, with love, so that they can go love someone else.

My bedroom is purring like a happy cat right now.

And once that happened, the purr-hum spread to the hallway, and the living room, and this morning I felt it entering the kitchen too…

My uncle came to stay with me for three days.

Long-time readers of this blog know that Svevo is one of my very favorite people in the world, and the person I most admire and wish to emulate.

He is the only person I know who lives exactly how he wants, in all things, and he does this despite not having great means.

If he wants three naps between breakfast and lunch, he will do that, and be completely happy about it, and not say any of the things people usually say like “I don’t know why I’m so tired”. He just follows his body.

If you visit his home, you will not be the least surprised to find that his bed is in his living room, because he felt like that was where he would probably want to sleep.

When Svevo comes to visit, I get to study him. This time I was able to notice all the beauty — and Luscious Minimalism — in delighting in what you have.

Svevo is very into purple lately, and he was wearing a purple sweater under a dark burgundy sweater-jacket, both of which he had picked up at a thrift store and already worn holes into. And he was as happy as a small child with a new toy. The color was filling him up with joy.

Horses.

My housemate and I have been watching Wallander. The BBC series with Kenneth Branagh as the most morose detective, not the Swedish version, though I would like to see that as well.

There was a horse in the last episode, an absolutely stunning horse, and two things struck me at once:

• Horses are so majestic and powerful and present.
• Horses eat carrots, and if carrots are the stand-in for the thing I don’t want to let go of, I can let go by letting the horses have them.

And, something else about that. Horses can be very sweet, and also very strong, sovereign, imposing even. Horses stand in their strength, which was my wish from two weeks ago.

I want these horse-like superpowers! Actually, I think that is my wish.

Mirror.

Svevo and my wonderful cousin Noah and I went to a nearby bakery. It was my one Excursion out of the house, and I put on clothes and everything.

The bakery was very full and we had to sit at the bar area, which sits up right against a mirror, so you are looking right at yourself from only a few inches away.

I have been sick and not sleeping and being a Mighty Mighty Snot Machine, so whatever, grain of salt here, but I looked like death warmed over. And never in my entire life have I more wanted to transform my appearance to reflect my true glow.

What came into my head at the time was that all my wonderful edges have somehow gotten lost, as if I have settled for Boring Safe Pretty instead of allowing the chaotic mystery of me to be visible in my appearance. I wanted my edginess back.

But what I’m realizing now is that I want horse-essence: that kind of sleek, powerful, big presence that is beautiful because it is so very alive, so very there.

That slightly dangerous “don’t fuck with me” grace, that ease of movement, that ability to rear up in the moonlight and be intensely unpredictably alive. I want that.

And I want that in how I look, and I want that in my bedroom, and I want that in my dance, and I want that in my wishes.

There. That’s my wish.

It was here all along and I didn’t know it.

May it be so.

Anything else about this?

I love how surprised I am that wise-me was right, and that following my instinct on this post was right, when of course she was and of course it is.

Invitation.

You are invited to share many !!!!!! about my wishes and realizations here, to share anything sparked for you while reading, to say “oh wow, what beautiful wishes” to me and to each other, to wish your own wishes.

I will also take all forms of EXCITEMENT and GLADNESS for this particular wish, and also clues if you have any, or good wishes if you don’t!

Now.

I have a piece of embroidery that my mother made. I took it when her sister and I were going through her things after she died. My aunt kept trying to get me to take more things to remember her by, and I didn’t want anything except for this.

My mother would be delighted that I wanted it, and also she would kill me if she knew that I framed it. She would say that it’s a practice piece and not any good, and that if I want a framed piece, I should take this other one instead which is better, etc. I don’t care.

I love it.

It is gold and red and orange thread on a dark blue cloth background, and it is a very self-contained shape that is somehow mandala and sun and compass and labyrinth all at the same time.

It is minimal and it is luscious, and it feels protective and special, and I chose well.

The superpower of Fearless Intentional Choosing.

August was TRUST MORE, with the superpower of Wildly Confident, Wonderfully Tranquil.

Now I am ready to Stand In My Strength more, and September comes in with the marvelous superpower of Fearless Intentional Choosing.

And this is what I did all week as I cherished some things through releasing them, and cherished other things through keeping them and appreciating them.

Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.

So. Last week aka Luscious Minimalism…

I am getting better at trusting that my wishes go so much deeper than I could ever imagine, that they are glowing seeds of light.

My wish was about sanctuary and about glowing, and about choosing what gets to be in my environment, in all meanings of that. I feel deeply, intensely grateful right now for this wish.

Thank you, process of writing about wishes. Thank you, me who asked.

Keep me company! Or just say hi!

You can deposit wishes, gwishes, personal ads, superpowers, qualities, seeds, secret agent code, whatever you’d like, there’s no right way! Updates on past experiments are welcome too, as is sharing anything sparked for you.

Comment culture: This is safe space for creative exploration. We are on vacation from care-taking and advice-giving. We are here to play and throw things in the pot! With amnesty. Leave a wish any time you want.

Here’s how we meet each other’s wishes: Oh, wow. What beautiful wishes.

xox

Goldenrod.

Making my way through a giant box of unsorted bits and pieces from the center I closed this year, I found a piece of paper.

Well, I found what seemed like thousands of pieces of paper, but this one was more attention-getting than the others.

This page was large and goldenrod yellow, and it told me I need to write about the the thing I don’t want to let go of.

That’s literally what it said.

In my handwriting:

Write about the thing you don’t want to let go of.

And then, in smaller letters: on the blog

There’s no date.

Apparently past-me thought the instructions contained sufficient intel.

I don’t remember what particular thing-I-didn’t-want-to-let-go-of I had in mind though.

No idea. Not that it matters. It’s a good question that is always in fashion. Timeless.

Whoosh. Goodbye. Releasing.

During my five year tenure of play at The Playground, I let go of many things. In fact, that magical wonder of a space facilitated all kinds of releasing.

It even came with a secret elevator shaft which we used specifically for that purpose. Whoosh!

Energetically/symbolically, of course, not literally. The door was sealed off, though the stunning old-fashioned bell still worked on occasion.

It said BELL on it. It was perfect. I miss the Playground.

And here we are.

Here we are in the Year of Easing & Releasing, my Shmita year.

Over the past several months, I have let go of more than I ever thought possible. Sometimes beautiful and painful shedding, sometimes release like liberation.

Write about the thing you don’t want to let go of.

It’s a great sentence.

And I don’t know that I don’t know what it is I don’t want to let go.

I mean, I bet I do know. At the very least, I suspect many things, and probably more that I’m intentionally hiding from myself because it feels safer to convince myself that I don’t know.

If this year of Operation True Yes has taught me anything, it’s that I generally know a lot more about most internal mysteries than I’m comfortable admitting.

For whatever reason though, I’m not entirely ready to process this question yet. Which is okay. All hesitation is legitimate. And the way we play here — always — is Safety First.

We are here to heal pain, with acknowledgment, legitimacy, appreciation, love, creativity and play. Not to poke at it or force anything.

I’m going to try two things.

The first is that I’m going to proxy this!

I’m going to pretend that [the thing I don’t want to let go of] is carrots, since that’s the first thing that came into my head.

That way, I can ask the question like this:

What do I know about these carrots that I don’t want to let go of?

I can also ask related questions like…

• What happens when the carrots exit?
• What are some things that have helped me let go of carrots in the past?
• What changes (or in what ways do I change) when I become the person who lets go of carrots?

And the other thing?

Company. I’m inviting you to play with me here.

I’m leaving the question from past-me here for all of us to play with for ourselves.

Kind of like what some people call a writing prompt and I call skipping stones.*

You can write about a stand-in thing (like carrots, except whatever comes up for you), and you don’t even have to know what you don’t want to let go of, though you might. Assume/pretend you don’t know, and just focus on [carrots] or whatever your version of [carrots] is.

And I whisper a secret here…

The most important question here is not “What is the thing I don’t want to let go of?”, and it’s not even “What do I know about the thing I don’t want to let go of?”.

It’s this:

How can I approach this with kindness and permission, acknowledgment and legitimacy, presence and love?

Approach is everything. We come to these questions with curiosity and affection, and we also are committed to making sure we feel safe.

Play with me? And helpful notes on commenting/process.

There is a reason introspection is hard! It means looking at what is, which also involves separating from what isn’t.

This means that as we turn inward, we often encounter monsters and Ludicrous Fear Popcorn, and all our misperceptions and misinterpretations. No wonder people avoid it like the plague.

And now you also know why I put so much emphasis on playfulness, and safety, and playing at the edges.

As for releasing, well, probably nothing is more fraught than that.

For very reasonable reasons.

We remember that we all have our stuff. We meet ourselves and each other with as much love and understanding as we can muster. We lovingly refrain from giving advice! We are here to play, and whoosh sparklepoints with each other.

So feel welcome to take some breaths or play with a question or share anything sparked for you, or express appreciation/sparklepoints, or deposit a pebble of “I read this and I am here!”

My thank you heart is full of love and appreciation for everyone who reads. You are an important part of this space. ♡