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.
W
Glow West.
Each morning I make a compass.
If I don’t know which way north is (or even if I do), I set north above me or right in front of me.
I assign a quality to each direction point, and I let them cycle around me, surrounding myself with the qualities and filling my space with them.
Every few months, or when I’m starting a new op, it’s time for a new compass, but for the past couple years, I have consistently put GLOW in the west.
One of the many lovely things about walking around inside of a compass is that street signs and highway signs become actual signs: they’re clues.
Each time a sign says WEST, I understand that to mean GLOW. So then I glow.
Glow west.
So west means west, but west really means glow. Glow, resonate, reverberate, expand, express, shine. Two meanings.
Most of my favorite W-words have two meanings.
There’s Well, like well-being and wellness, and also filling the (metaphorical) wells — well, yeah, all the wells…
And wells, like water, like well-springs, like the fountain.
There is Wind. That could be, depending on how you want to read it, winding up or the winding road. But it could also be wind, like the west wind that whooshes and whisks away, wind like the trade winds, the winds that make adventures easier.
There’s Whip, which is the way you give your jammer a burst of speed and trajectory on the roller derby track, and there is whip, the impossibly sexy smooth move in west coast swing. It takes the lindy swing-out and elegantly removes the bounce, turning it into the most luscious rubber band double rotation of perfection. A dance with someone who has a sweet whip, there is nothing like that feeling in the world.
Whisk is a marvelous word. There is whisking like whisking away, and a whisk like the tool you can use to whip cream, or to make the bubbles in your bubble bath infinitely more bubbly, an excellent trick I learned from Agent Rosie. The German word for whisk is Schneebesen: a snow broom, this baffled me for hours the first time someone asked if I wanted one.
There is Wash, like washing away, and also like in watercolor when you do a wash of color.
Oh, and there is Wax. Like wax and wane, with my friend the moon. Or like the wax from the beeswax candles my uncle Svevo used to make.
And Whiskey like the drink, but also like Tango Foxtrot secret code forever!
The Week of Why
When we got to W in the Alphabet Rallies, I did not expect it to become the Week of Why.
I’d figured Y would be the Week of Y. And therefore also the Week of Why. Silly me. Though actually Y turned out to be the week of Yes, so that worked out spectacularly well.
Well. Anyway.
We asked why. Over and over again. Ten times why. The good kind of why, not the wheel-grinding kind of why.
We were curious and we investigated. With wonder.
During the week of Why, I came up with the Very Partial List Of Things That Are Not My Job, which turned out to be Wisdom.
And we did things widdershins, and played Change Your Place, Change Your Luck.
It was also the week of Wishes.
And words.
Witchy wonderful words, whispered. Wow!
I love words, and I especially love whispered words.
Whispers are my favorite way to listen, and possibly also just the most wonderful word.
Oh, and waltzing. Waltzing words into the light, which is my secret metaphor for publishing.
And waltz like Waltz Brunch, my very favorite dance event in Portland and the only thing I currently miss about Portland, other than my housemate and Back to Eden bakery.
Wish. Upon A Star
Wishing is my favorite way to mix things up.
We hit three hundred weeks of wishes this week, and many of those wishes have changed how I live.
Ws I am letting go of:
When I let go of G, I also wanted to let go of W.
Now it is time to release some more Ws. Here we go:
- Worry
- Work
- Wistfulness
- Wockawocks (secret agent code for annoying problems)
- Wells Unfilled
- Weakness (in the sense of my perception of my sensitivities)
- Weight (as a concept)
- Whines
Whoosh! All of that can be let go and whooshed away, to the magical elevator shaft at the Playground, which still exist even though the Playground is gone.
Ws I am warmly welcoming in:
Mmmm, Welcoming.
- Wings
- Wealth
- Wisdom
- Wonder
- Wander. As in Wanderlust and exploring and All Who [W] Are Not Lost.
- Wells
- Willingness
- Wholeness
- Water
- Waves
- Winning: Won-ness and Oneness.
- Witchiness and being witchy. I recently learned that when I say witch, people do not understand what I mean, and that I need to say healer instead, so: okay.
- Warmth
- When (as in: if not now, when).
Wow. Also wise-cracking, like Barrington.
Wild.
When I was away on retreat at the Vicarage, I was looking for a name. I was playing with a proxy identity, getting to know wild me who wears a leather jacket and sunglasses and doesn’t care what anybody things, and I didn’t know what to call her.
Then they accidentally gave me the wrong room, and in that room, in a corner, high up above the doorway between the bedroom and the entryway, I noticed a sticker. It said EVE WILD.
Eve Wild became the secret agent name for Incoming Me, and we have spent a lot of time together ever since.
I even brought in a version of her to help me with my Rally Project during the week of W, here’s what I have in my notes:
I’m Agent Wild. I’m here to test shades of pink to find out which are the most Unrepentantly Disruptive. I am the Pink Witch! I am the Walrus! I take baths in olive oil.
Rally is fun. I miss Rally.
All the best words are W.
I mean, come on.
Whoa. Wicked. Whirl. Winding. Wabi-sabi!
Ohmygoodness, did you know that WEAR also means “to turn a ship’s stern to windward to alter its course”?! I feel so strongly about this, and also cannot believe I forgot wear like to adorn oneself in garments and costumes (clue: everything is a costume!).
Wear! I delight in dressing up, this is one of my very favorite things.
What else do I know about W?
W is two Vs. V + V. This means that W has all the superpowers of V, doubled. And it also means that W is a diamond, unpacked. W is an open diamond.
W is waves.
W is movement, repeated.
W is Writing, which is also Righting. The word writative means characterized by an inclination to write, and I have that pretty much all the time.
W is the reminder to glow, and keep on glowing ever westward.
May it be so! And come play with me.
This has been a meditation on words that begin with W.
If you want to whisper words or sound effects that start with W, go for it.
You are invited to add more W words, or peek over here for more W words. Like waldgrave, wayzgoose, williwaw, and wyrd (the personification of a fate or destiny).
And, as always, if you want to share in any of the qualities and magical words I named here, help yourself.
They work like the salves in the Friday Chicken: there is enough and there is always more.
Whispering loving spells that begin with W, for myself, and for anyone who wants…
Wish 300: What do I know about yes
Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.
♡
Three hundred weeks of wishing, you guys!
Can you believe we’ve been doing this for three hundred Sundays?
Well, sometimes Mondays and sometimes Tuesdays, but every week for three hundred weeks now, there have been wishes.
Let’s have some candles! And balloons in all the colors!
Oh wow, what beautiful wishes.
What do I know about yes?
I was in Berlin teaching, this is maybe six years ago, having an absolutely miserable time.
The building where I was staying was being renovated: jackhammers outside the window starting at 7am. I had the worst jet lag of my life. My workshops hadn’t been adequately promoted; attendance was at record lows. It was unseasonably warm, and, thanks to some bizarre municipal screw-up, half the public transportation wasn’t working and the other half severely overcrowded.
Also everyone in the city was in a terrible mood too, it wasn’t just me.
I wasn’t sleeping, I couldn’t think or even focus, and each day became consecutively less functional than the one before.
I wanted to quit and go home a month early, but I felt bad about canceling my workshops and changing plans on people. I didn’t know very much at the time about things like Radical Sovereignty and True Yes, and I worried a lot about what other people would think.
Finally though I hit the point where I just couldn’t take it anymore. I needed to be somewhere quiet, and I needed some sleep before I lost my mind, and it was time to not be in Berlin anymore.
The first lesson about yes.
My friend and host Andreas was very upset with me, and it took us a while to sort this out.
I thought he was upset that I was leaving early, and breaking my promise to teach my workshops. Except that wasn’t the case.
His argument was, essentially, “If you want to leave, then do it because leaving is your yes. I support your yes. Just don’t say that you’re leaving because of the noise and the low workshop attendance and all the things going wrong. Leave because leaving is what you want. Follow your desire. Own your yes.”
My reaction to that was, “If all these things weren’t going horribly wrong, then I wouldn’t even be thinking about leaving, so of course my desire to leave is about these things.”
He was right. I mean, he was really in his stuff about this, so probably this particular situation was reminding him of something else. Except that doesn’t change the fact that he was right.
It took me a few years to really understand this principle.
And I’m still not very good at it.
I mean, right now I’m at a racetrack.
If you are wondering what it is like to be at a racetrack when you are a highly sensitive person with hyperaccusis and trauma, who finds many day-to-day noises to be moderately unbearable, I can tell you that it is horrible and I hate it.
The whining sound of fifty motorcycles zooming around at 150mph, fifteen feet away from my bed. The way nothing really muffles the noise. Even with earplugs and high end headspace protectors and the fan on, and the blankets over my head, it’s still just really, really loud.
There’s also an excessively loquacious man who has erroneously been given a microphone for the day and won’t shut up, and the ridiculous testosterone levels here, and the way everyone stares at you when you walk by because you’re one of the four women in the entire place.
So yes, I could have opted not to go to the track, but that would have involved a hotel in Chico, and hotels in Chico were kind of gross.
Or on the couch of someone I don’t know very well who didn’t really want to put me up to begin with. Or the one room left in some outlandishly fancy winery bed and breakfast, for the exorbitant sum of $440, no thank you.
So I said yes to something that was obviously my No, because all the escape routes I could think of were equally No, and I’d already hit the point of too tired to research, plan, pack and worry about food.
It seemed easier to do this thing I knew would be awful, and at least I’d be with my lover who would kiss me and tell me I’m beautiful, and make me soup and tuck me into bed.
Leaving Berlin Immediately.
Leaving Berlin, and particularly leaving it the way I did (immediately, and also in the most comfortable way possible, by way of a long, leisurely, quiet trip home, visiting beautiful places and getting lots of sleep) was one of the best things I’ve done in my entire life. It changed everything for me, and made everything in my life not just slightly better, but outlandishly better.
Remember about a hundred wishes ago when I had a very vivid dream about quitting grad school, and then everything was better but I woke up and wasn’t sure what grad school was, since I’ve never actually been in grad school?
And then it turned out that everything was grad school, and I had to quit all of it. Good times.
Leaving Berlin Immediately is the new quitting grad school.
But to do this, I need to figure out more about No.
Things I now know about No.
I don’t need a reason for something to be a No.
It doesn’t matter if it looks great on paper, or if I’ve been saying for the past ten years that this is exactly what I’ve wanted.
Or if there is no visible reason for why it’s a no.
It doesn’t matter if it makes sense from the outside, or if other people think my no is stupid.
If it’s my no, it’s truth. And, to be clear, I’m not talking about monster-no and fear-of-success no.
I’m talking about that calm steady knowing: I don’t want this.
The chocolate shop.
I have a chocolate shop, and my chocolate shop is a clear, ringing No.
There are a thousand reasons that could do a great job of explaining why, but these reasons are also irrelevant.
What I want is freedom, and so far the chocolate shop has only been an obstacle to freedom. If the chocolate shop could support freedom, it could possibly turn into a yes, but there is no evidence in favor of this.
Something I’ve noticed: I find it comforting to sink into the reasons, to list all the bullet points of why this is my no (for example, how incongruent it is to be someone who runs her online business based on the principles of sovereignty, and then to have this other business whose business model is constant hand-holding and picking up after people), but the truth is more simple than that…
I just don’t like having a chocolate shop, other than the fact that it provides a great cover story for what I do for a living, and a place to practice [passion] when I’m in Portland.
Clearly not worth the stress of coming up with rent each month and not making salary, and doing something that holds no meaning or pleasure for me. Actually, nothing is worth that so why did I agree to it?
What do I know about my yes?
These are all also equally true for no…
- It is vitally important that I not dismiss it, delay it, or try to talk myself out of it.
- I do not want to do that thing I so often do where I think, “oh, I could probably stick it out another few months…”
- If I don’t know why something is my yes yet, this is unimportant. The reasons will be revealed later. Trust the yes without the reasons.
- Each true yes strengthens new neural patterns. Each reluctant yes to a no strengthens the old pattern. My choice.
- It makes sense that after embarking on a six month expedition of Operation True Yes, and also Shmita (my biggest yes) that I would be dealing with the fallout from having said yes to a bunch of not-yeses in the past few years.
- Nothing is wrong. I am okay. This is all part of the video game.
What do I know about what I want?
It’s about trusting the integrity of my desire.
Now.
The evening is cool. The moon is very full. I am looking at the months ahead and making guesses/wishes about where I might want to be when. I am waiting for the yes sparks, and being very quiet so I don’t miss them.
(That might be another clue about why to avoid racetracks, it’s easy to miss sparks when I’m in sensory overhwelm!)
Me: Hey, slightly-wiser me, what do you have for me?
She: You already know so much about what you don’t want, where you don’t want to be, and what you don’t want to be doing.
Me: That doesn’t seem to narrow it down all that much.
She: It does. It’s like those multiple choice exams where you can automatically cross off three of the answers because they are preposterous. Look at your choices, don’t worry about not getting a yes, just knock off the ones that are clearly no.
Clues?
I was watching Chicago PD, and this high-ranking Argentine diplomat said to Voight, “You’re making a massive mistake.”
He shrugged as if it was the most unimportant thing in the world, and said, “I do that a lot.”
I would like the superpowers of that. Of not caring at all about the “this is a massive mistake” monsters.
The superpower of I have everything I need for this.
We flipped a page in the calendar since last time. The quality for March was RECEIVE, with the superpower of delight in plenty. Guess what. The quality for April is (hahahaha, past-me is hilarious) ADVENTURE.
Adventure comes with the marvelous superpower of I have everything I need for this. May it be so.
So let’s combine these. I am open to the adventure of receiving my yes, to crossing doorways into yes, and new, previously unseen exits out of the no.
I have everything I need when it comes to intel about yes and about no, and therefore I have everything I need for this adventure.
Moreover I now think being the person who is okay with receiving is the same as being the person who says yes to her yes and no to everything that is not-yes, and this is the same as being the bold adventuress. Perfect.
Things I find helpful for intentions and wishes…
Adventure. Rest. Horizons. Security. Passion. Sweetness. Clarity. Presence.
Ongoing wishes.
Everything is easier than I thought, and look, miracles everywhere. Ha, this doesn’t require my input! My business is thriving happily without me. I think like a dancer. It’s so perfect it turned out like this. Past me is a GENIUS. I have what I need, and appreciate it. I am fearless and confident. I state my preferences clearly, calmly and easily, no big deal. I am ready to come into my superpowers and receive.
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
So. Last week, aka around not through (the mysteries that do not need to be solved)…
Actually a couple mysteries beautifully solved themselves, so that was a lovely surprise, and I am feeling good about putting the rest on hold, processing the parts I want to process.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
If you want a Playground mug with a pack of stone skipping cards inside it: $30 + $12.65 shipping = $42.65
Just send a note and we’ll set it up. Ask Richard for international shipping.
Keep me company?
Consider this an open invitation to deposit wishes, gwishes, personal ads. In any size/form you like, there’s no right way. Updates on past experiments are welcome too, as is anything sparked for you.
Commenting culture: This is safe space for creative exploration. We are on permanent vacation from care-taking and advice-giving. We are here to play 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
Chicken 349: por moi
It is Friday and we are here.
{a breath for Friday.}
What worked this week?
Saying yes to my yes.
It sounds so easy, and — when I actually do it — often it is.
Getting there though…
Next time I might…
Notice rules about self-imposed rules, limits and restrictions.
I got a no to the place where my traveling companion wanted to stop for lunch, so I shared my no, as well as intel about what would be a yes for me, and this worked out so beautifully for both of us.
My internal scientists scribbled lots of notes about this to calm my monsters who think that the world will end if I want what I want, or worse: admit to wanting what I want.
You might think the next step would be more Yes to my Yes and No to My No.
Hahaha. Not at all. Of course I then proceeded to squash my next two moments of no, even though the whole point of Operation True Yes is to be true to my true yes.
I did this in part because I was afraid of other people thinking I’m a PLB (Pissy Little Bitch), and in part because I didn’t want to be perceived as greedy, and in part because apparently I have an internal rule about Only One Yes For You, Young Lady.
So that was interesting and useful, and I now declare this rule to be very out of date. This rule has expired!
Whoosh! Goodbye, all expired rules. I release you.
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- The boy’s climbing schedule means waking up much earlier than I like. A breath for this.
- Feeling (emotionally) dizzy and disoriented. A breath of steady peacefulness.
- My complicated relationship with dance is complicated. A breath for me.
- My learning curve gets higher while my saturation point for taking in new information gets ever lower. I was so excited for my first weekend of dance workshops since September, but I could only get through about 45 minutes of class before my brain would shut down and I’d need to go nap the rest of the day. A breath for this is the new reality right now.
- Mosquito bites everywhere! Giant red welts all over my arms. Everything itches. This is clearly not unrelated to the situation in my life which is also very itchy. A breath for easing.
- The situation in the building where the Playground lived has gone from bad to worse, it is beyond infuriating. We are losing so much money on this, and that’s not even the most frustrating part, it’s the stalling and gaslighting and not being taken seriously, and everything about this sets off my stuff so much. I don’t know what to do about this, I don’t know what to ask for help, all the people who are supposed to be allies and advocates have all checked out completely. I can’t even remember the last time I was this upset about something. A breath for the pain of this, and for Assertive Me, where is she, I want to meet her again.
- Trying to arrange a couch to sleep on this weekend and having zero success in that venture brought up a lot of memories from Operation Resilience (six months of homelessness), and I had a lot of trouble understanding that Now Is Not Then. A breath for undoing.
- Inhale, exhale. May all misunderstandings and distortions, internal and external, dissolve in love if not in laughter. Goodbye (and thank you), mysteries and hard moments of this week. May I choose to trust-more love-more release-more receive-more.
Eight breaths of good, reassuring, delight-filled.
- My knee! It is still on and off, but this week it let me do things! Three days and three nights of dancing! A two hour hike in the red hills! A breath for the wonderful spaciousness of not being in pain!
- Ohmygod it felt so good to be back dancing again. For an entire weekend and then again last night. I was able to do so much more with my body than I expected, and felt stable and grounded even when making mistakes. I had the superpower of Really Good Saves, and someone said, “You have the best eye contact of anyone I’ve ever danced with, it’s kind of amazing!”. I had fun, playful, inventive dances with creative partners who appreciated how I dance. And I took a fantastic jazz class. A breath for my excitement coming back.
- Smiling at the beautiful boy. And this intensity of FEELING, like how he squeezes my hand when I’m half asleep in the car, and there is this sweetness to it that goes so deep, and then this full-body thrill that goes along with that. Then he kisses my hand and I can’t stop smiling. A breath for not being able to stop smiling.
- Being in beautiful places. A breath for the way that beauty can be a healing.
- Many wild and mysterious things happened this week, for example the time two hundred horses lined up in a circle and surrounded our little enclosure at Jailhouse Rock and stared at us in some weird and intense horse ritual. Big wild full moon energy. Have you read Dominic by William Steig? You should. It’s one of my favorite books of all times. You know all the mad and mystical moonlit scenes? When he awakens Phineas (the somnambulist goat), or is so moved by the mice dancing after their picnic that he has to howl out his feelings, or when he stumbles onto this odd little hidden ritual where a woodchuck, a beaver, a raccoon and a porcupine are all bowing to each other? This week was kind of like that. A breath for the beautiful mysteries of life.
- I love being on Shmita. This is the smartest thing I have ever done. A breath for this grand adventure.
- Jane said, “I admire your willingness to be brave and take chances.” A breath for my desire to be able to see this in me too.
- Thankfulness. So much is good. Catching up with old friends. Making new ones. Everything is okay. Nothing is wrong. Now is not then. All Timing Is Right Timing. A full breath of deep appreciation in my thank-you heart.
Wham booms, wisdom, superpowers, salve and FBOTW!
Operations completed. Wham boom!
I wrote about a thing that happened ten years ago, something I have tried to write about so many times and not been able to. Thank you fractal flowers, thank you Shmita, thank you Switch/Swoop. Wham Boom.
Superpowers I had this week…
I had the good witchy superpowers this week, including lots of moments of knowing something before it was. Generally I find everything related to [clairaudient] to be intensely distressing, and I’ve spent years learning how to keep my radio from picking up on signals other than the station of right here right now, which is the only one I want to listen to.
This week I had many tastes of how delicious it is, or can be, to be a high-end radio.
The boy made me a smoothie, which he doesn’t usually do. I walked towards it and thought, por moi?
This is funny because 1) I don’t speak French, and 2) I don’t speak at all. And yet it kept repeating, so I was going to reach for my notebook to write this, and he came up behind me and said in my ear, por toi!
That’s how this whole week went. That, and the superpower of Looking In The Right Direction.
Oh, and I asked for the superpower of Taking Time Off From Something Actually Makes Me Way Better At It, and this happened not only with dance, but also with spirals and with [secret whatsit] and with some other things. Sweet!
Powers I want.
The superpower of All Roads Lead To Yes.
The Salve of Ready For Yes (because, ta da, All Roads Lead To Yes).
This salve delivers an exceptional steady, calm feeling of “okay, let’s do this”, which works retroactively as well, healing patterns beneath the surface.
Suddenly I am ready to recognize my yes, stand up for it, follow it, trust it, even fight for it.
And as I feel this readiness coursing through my veins, something changes in my past, with all the times in my life when I said no to a yes, or yes to a no. The readiness for my yes now — somehow it softens my history and pulses life force through these past moments as well.
As this happens, all the potential power from those moments goes kinetic, and I get all the energy of True Yes and True No.
All the false moments of yes or or no reveal themselves to have been agents in leading me towards my true Yes now.
Everything I have experienced in my life is now a road, a path, leading me towards my Yes, and instilling in me the deep, powerful knowing that of course I get to say yes to my yes, and of course I say no to whatever is no.
My life is a map of True Yes. That’s what happens when I wear this salve. It is spicy and tingly and has a kick of cinnamon, followed by a serene dose of fennel and chamomile.
I am ready for yes.
Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!
This week’s band is called Pleasure Cupcakes. Their latest album is Vaguely Disinterested, they are a metal band that only does covers of Roy Orbison songs, and it’s actually just one guy.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
I am recommending the Emergency Get Calm, Quiet And Steady techniques, aka the thing that keeps me from falling apart.
Come play if you like…
Join me in the comments. Some of us share hard and good, some of us say hi, or maybe we’re feeling quiet. My ritual doesn’t have to be your ritual. Whatever works for you. We’ve been doing this every week for years now and there still isn’t a right way. Feel free to leave pebbles (or petals!), hearts, warmth, sweetness. Those always work.
Everyone belongs. We let people have their own experience. We’re supportive and welcoming. We don’t give advice.
Wishing you a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come.
p.s. It’s fine if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — join in whenever you like. Blowing kisses to the Beloved Lurkers too!
Wish 299: Around, not through. Or: These are the mysteries that do not need to be solved.
Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.
♡
Mysteries.
My life is full of mysteries, mundane and fascinating, small and large, and everything in between.
The mystery of why my scalp starts to flake whenever [boundary issues], the mystery of what happened during the missing year that I can’t remember, the mystery of Allergic To Chapstick (total fake band!), the mystery of why there is no word for adult children when there is so obviously a need for this word, and all the mysteries of rumba, and why do I feel so passionate about it.
For starters.
Give me half a day and I could come up with a hundred or so interesting mysteries.
In daily life I don’t get to play with investigating the majority of these mysteries, because I am busy with life-stuff, and, for the past ten years I have been busy with this business.
Now I am on Shmita, my sabbatical time, letting the fields lie fallow. No input, no projects, nothing but nothing. Just less and then more less. I am on a mission of less.
Suddenly my mind has been given so much time and space to explore mysteries, and for the first nineteen days of Operation True Yes aka Six Month Road Trip, that’s all I’ve been wanting to do.
Except exploring mysteries is scary, so I turned it into a kind of noir game.
Play.
Here’s how it works.
I brought it two alter-egos to be proxies or stand-ins for actual me.
Roxy Bell is a noir detective. She’s brash and fearless. She loves adventure. She does ten kinds of martial arts and rides a motorcycle to her office. Which is in a tree house.
She has dedicated herself to healing, sorry, solving the cases and mysteries affecting her twin sister, eccentric clairaudient secret-psychic on the run, Mlle Honeybelle.
Mlle Honeybelle has mysteries. Endless mysteries. Roxy Bell solves them. I observe and listen and take notes while all my mysteries get solved.
It’s been fascinating, eye-opening and super fun!
Until suddenly we hit the rapids and it wasn’t fun anymore. Which is why this calls for permission, and not just permission, but a very specific kind of permission.
Permission.
We are invoking permission to Not Have To Solve some of these mysteries, because they do not need to be solved, or at least, they do not need to be solved right now, or they do not need to be solved in this way.
This permission slip is the beautiful permission slip of spaciousness: we don’t have to be on the case.
It is enough to say: thank you, Operation True Yes, for giving me the time/space to start looking into these mysteries, and thank you, Roxy Bell, for being so wise and so down to earth, and so thorough in the collecting of clues.
And it is also okay to not want to look at some of these mysteries right now.
Permission.
What do we know about this?
A permission slip to take some time off from mysteries is not at all the same as calling Roxy Bell off the case.
Because doing that, in true noir fashion, would just make her more determined to solve it. We don’t want to come in as the suspicious southern belle in the gigantic hat with the flowers, tell her we’ve changed our minds and there’s no case anymore.
And we are certainly not leaving these as Closed Cases, because they aren’t.
They aren’t Neglected Cases either.
These are just cases that are receiving a huge permission slip of Hey, These Do Not Need To Be Solved Right Now.
These are the cases that are will need to be solved over time, through very circuitous investigations that involve the principles of 1) Safety First, 2) Fractal Flowers, and 3) the more proxies the merrier.
These cases get the approach of non-approach. We are going around them, not through them.
Actually, this is a very noir moment.
This is the part where the detective has asked too many questions and stirred things up, and now it’s time to pause, lay low, let everything settle, see where it lands.
Now it is time to stay at the very edges, wait in the shadows, observe and re-assess.
And if nothing happens, that’s okay too. We are going to build the best safe rooms ever, and layer on delicious experiences of safety.
Here’s another clue: What if the Mystery is actually the Clue?
Like, for example, in the Case of The Missing Confidence when it turned out that it wasn’t missing because actually there is no such thing of confidence, there is just an absence of monsters (thanks to things like good internal communication and the aforementioned layering on experiences of safety and comfort).
The point is, sometimes something we think is a mystery is not a mystery at all.
Safety first.
Some of these mysteries are being put on hold because the trail is old and cold.
With some of these mysteries, we suspect it goes all the way to the top, which means we need to proceed with caution, wait for some evidence to come our way.
Some of these mysteries can wait because Shmita means less input, more letting go.
Some are in this category because we are too close to big pain, and some are in this category because it just isn’t the time.
And some of these mysteries just need time to percolate while my mind rests up and this about other things.
All of these reasons are okay and legitimate, and hence the giant permission slip to put these mysteries in the file of Do Not Need To Be Solved Right Now. To be put aside for safe-keeping.
Because ultimately that is my job and my only job, to keep myself safe.
Safety first.
I am not at all someone who believes that it is necessary or even important to remember all the traumatic shit that happens to us.
I am a firm believer in the ability we all have to heal past pain without going into it or uncovering it.
And I do not belong to that very hollywood school of people who believe that in order to let something go you have to go into the memory and re-live it. Sure, that’s one possible way. It’s just not the only way.
The mystery Roxy Bell was investigating this week was the Mystery of Tisantaphobia.
Or, if you prefer, The Mystery of Why A Girl Who Loved Tents Is Now So Afraid Of Tents That Just Hearing A Tent Zipper Close Without Even Being Inside It — Or Even Just Imagining Being Inside A Tent — Fills Her With Unease, Dread, and The Desire To Get As Far Away As Possible As Quickly As Possible.
This week we uncovered several new memories, useful ones, and slightly vertigo-inducing ones, and then there is a wall, and that’s enough. I don’t actually need Roxy Bell to find out what’s behind that wall.
She might find out, and that will be useful. Or we may never know, and that’s fine. It doesn’t mean we can’t do the necessary healing work for me-from-then and whatever she went through.
The Approach.
So it works for me to approach this mystery (and all mysteries) from the understanding of Safety First and Playing At The Edges, and Permission To Not Remember what may or may not have happened either in or related to tents.
I may work with a hypnotherapist on this, especially since my lover wants to downsize (see the Mission of Less) to a van with a tent-like sleeping area on top. And of course I will continue to use my usual techniques and do my own exploring, in my own time and at my own pace, with the help of Roxy Bell and all the allies who show up.
And either I will get to the point where tents are No Big Deal, or I will make my happy peace with the fact that hey, Havi is not a tent person, and then I will respect that and work around it the way I work around so many things in life.
Because, again, the most important part of my job as a functional human being on this planet is not solving all the things. Nope. My job is to take care of myself to the best of my abilities, and to meet myself where I am, right here, right now, with as much love, patience and understanding as I can offer.
Taking notes.
However, all that said, I am curious about this in a general way.
I mean, I went to summer camps for years and worked at camp, and slept in platform tents each summer. And most summers included a three or four day hiking or canoe trip, staying in actual small tents, something which I remember as being very fun.
So at some point that changed, clearly, because now I can make it maybe eight seconds inside a tent before fleeing in panic, and I would like to know when that shifted.
Roxy Bell was able to discount my previously held theories that this could be a holdover from Operation Resilience (homelessness) or somehow related to the weekly Saturday hikes in the Galilee that were a staple of my married life.
She also assembled a very impressive Timeline for me, and at some point when I feel more comfortable with this investigation, I will look at that some more.
I can compile notes and names of key people to interview, for this and other cases, if I feel up to it, not in the interest of solving them of course. Taking notes is not the same as investigating!
These notes are just to help the future detective, be that Roxy or some other Incoming Me, have all the current intel and memories up to date. Or I can also skip this part and trust that future me will be able to access vital intel in her own ways and her own timing.
I am taking this and my list Other Mysteries I’m Currently Not Solving, and dropping them off at the fountain, where they can be solved by love and by fractal flowers.
What do I know about what I want?
I am enough. This is enough. Nothing is wrong.
Now.
My toenails are red. The beautiful boy just blew me a kiss. I am here.
Me: Hey, slightly-wiser me, what do you have for me?
She: Isn’t it fun kicking yourself off the case?
Me: I’m not sure, actually.
She: This is the perfect time to not need to solve things. Feel into the superpower of that, because it’s a good one. This is the next piece!
Clues?
I took an improvisational jazz workshop with Kara Franzel this weekend, it was wonderful, and this was my favorite part:
She asked, What’s the opposite of Strong?
And the answer, get this, is Soft. It’s not weak, it’s soft.
The superpower of delighting in plenty
The quality for March is RECEIVE, with the superpower of delight in plenty.
I am open to receiving all the treasure of these mysteries, as well as all the treasure of not having to solve them.
I delight in the plentifulness of the mysteries, as well as the plentiful help and support that I have in Roxy Bell, Private Eye, and the kind, loving people in my life who love me just as much when I can’t go inside a tent.
Things I find helpful for intentions and wishes…
Adventure. Rest. Horizons. Security. Passion. Sweetness. Clarity. Presence.
Ongoing wishes.
Everything is easier than I thought, and look, miracles everywhere. Ha, this doesn’t require my input! My business is thriving happily without me. I think like a dancer. It’s so perfect it turned out like this. Past me is a GENIUS. I have what I need, and appreciate it. I am fearless and confident. I state my preferences clearly, calmly and easily, no big deal. I am ready to come into my superpowers and receive.
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
So. Last week, aka LESS…
I have been carrying less with me, sleeping more, smiling more, and today I chose to deal with something by intentionally not dealing with it at all because it is not mine.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
If you want a Playground mug with a pack of stone skipping cards inside it: $30 + $12.65 shipping = $42.65
Just send a note and we’ll set it up. Ask Richard for international shipping.
Keep me company?
Consider this an open invitation to deposit wishes, gwishes, personal ads. In any size/form you like, there’s no right way. Updates on past experiments are welcome too, as is anything sparked for you.
Commenting culture: This is safe space for creative exploration. We are on permanent vacation from care-taking and advice-giving. We are here to play 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
Chicken 348: Do not stay at the Sonora Inn. I do not recommend the Sonora Inn.
It is Friday and we are here.
{a breath for Friday.}
What worked this week?
Taking time off.
I’ve been hard at work on Operation PLAB. It stands for Pee Like A Boy, and you can pronounce it plab or Pee-Lab, since it is also that.
Plabbing has turned out to be much more challenging than anticipated (for me), for a variety of reasons both physical and psychological. So I’d been feeling frustrated about how long it is taking me to adjust to the training wheels, and how far away the goal seems to be.
Then I took a few days off during moon retreat, and when I went back to PLAB, suddenly I could do it.
I mean, I’m still using a device, and still don’t feel completely at home with it, but the thing I wanted to happen, it is happening, as opposed to not happening or kinda-sorta happening.
I was so sure this would be a “practice makes perfect” thing, but it turned out to be more like “forgetting about it and doing something else for a while makes perfect”. Delight!
Next time I might…
Call on Assertive Me sooner.
When I forget to bring in Assertive Me when I need her, we end up with an accidental power vacuum.
And then before I know it, scared three-year-old Havi is hijacking the front of the V because she thinks Now is Then.
Big love for sweet, tiny me who thinks that she can keep me safe. Her methods are out of date, ineffective and sometimes kind of dangerous, but her intention is to protect me, and I thank her for that.
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- The Disproportionate Day Twos. Sadly not just one guy. The Day Twos are what happens on the second day of Rally, when everything goes Horribly Wrong. On an eight day retreat this usually happens on Day Four. It’s when you hit the rapids, and the ensuing panic and meltdown is an important part of transformation but also very much not fun. My Disproportionate Day Twos included getting stranded at a shooting range and losing my keys to the truck and re-injuring my knee and getting sunburnt, all in that intense premenstrual phase of I Will Start Bawling Uncontrollably Over Nothing So Wait And See What Happens When Things Actually Go Wrong. A breath for this.
- Everyone I care about is going through a really rough time right now. A breath of love for their beautiful hearts.
- Saturday night involved zero sleep thanks to Angry Abusive Drunk Guy who stationed himself outside my hotel room to pound on the walls and scream obscenities. The hotel staff, the police and the medical team were all very nice, but not particularly helpful in dealing with this or even at acknowledging how scary and unpleasant it was. A breath for safety.
- Do not stay at the Sonora Inn, should you ever find yourself in Sonora, California or thereabouts. Repeat: The Sonora Inn is not a good hotel, and I do not recommend it. A breath for doing a better job of following my instincts next time.
- Body didn’t get to move much this week. A breath for patience.
- Feeling intensely frustrated about a work situation that should have been resolved a month ago, except the other parties have no interest in resolving it. A breath for going all Shiva on this one until they are motivated to resolve it.
- Boundary issues, boundary issues, and more boundary issues. And cramps. A breath for undoing.
- Inhale, exhale. May all misunderstandings and distortions, internal and external, dissolve in love if not in laughter. Goodbye (and thank you), mysteries and hard moments of this week. May I choose to trust-more love-more release-more receive-more.
Eight breaths of good, reassuring, delight-filled.
- My traveling companion found my glasses! And my keys came back to me! A breath for solved!
- So many lovely people in my life who adore me and shake their fists with me at the Disproportionate Day Twos, and remind me of truth. A breath for companionship.
- I solved the mystery of Why Is Everything Breaking. Another breath for SOLVED!
- The beautiful boy and I went on hikes in the sun, among the wildflowers and my life is peaceful and I am outdoors, and this is what I want. A breath for joy
- Moon Retreat included bath time and napping and delicious mexican food. A breath for taking care of myself.
- Joy. Presence. Pleasure. A breath for Shmita and this grand adventure.
- I rewrote and renamed something that has been a big source of pain in my life for years, and this made everything better. A breath for the magic of words.
- Thankfulness. So much is good. My knee is healing. Smiling my face off with the boy. Everything is okay. Nothing is wrong. Now is not then. All Timing Is Right Timing. A full breath of deep appreciation in my thank-you heart.
Wham booms, wisdom, superpowers, salve and FBOTW!
Operations completed. Wham boom!
I wrote a hard letter. I organized the secret files. And, even better, I wrote every day, out of desire and joy, and wrote the things I wanted to write, just like last week. Thank you fractal flowers, thank you Shmita, thank you Switch/Swoop. Wham Boom.
Superpowers I had this week…
I had the superpowers of Trust, Do-Overs, Looking Something Up Online At The Exact Right Time, and the amazing superpower of Impeccable Timing Of Outdoor Bathroom Breaks.
I mean, it was awe-inspiring. I’d finish up and then a couple minutes later, nine guys on dirt bikes would ride by on a path of their own invention right where I had been.
Or I’d be practicing my PLAB aim, and then just when I was done, some lovely old ladies with their dogs would turn up hiking in the previously empty mountainside, and I could act all demure and ladylike, as if I had not just been seeing how high I could plab on a rock.
Thank you, superpower I did not even know I had, you are awesome.
Powers I want.
More of all of the above please, and especially I would like an even better relationship with Taking Time Off From Something Actually Makes Me Way Better At It, Ta Da!
And all the superpowers of magic dance shoes.
The Salve of Taking Time Off From Something = Miracles.
This salve softens old patterns and sets of patterns, with such deftness and ease, dissolving rules, making new connections….
As soon as I begin to apply this salve, my steps are more steady. I feel grounded and stable.
All the magic of fractal flowers kicks in, so I suddenly understand, deep in each cell, how everything I’ve been doing while not doing the thing I thought I should be doing has actually been a powerful training sequence, delivering what I need.
This salve is the ultimate Wax On Wax Off salve. Or maybe it’s like in The Matrix when you can just download a martial art into your body-brain.
Now you’re not only better able to approach this, you are better equipped to be the person who can do this. You have skills, internal and external, that were not developed before.
Now is not then. Now is now, and in this charged-up now, you can have a better relationship with the thing that needed some time off. You are recharged, you trust in your abilities, and, more importantly, you trust in the right timing of this.
[This includes the superpower of remembering that things sometimes get worse before they get better, and sometimes getting what appears to be the opposite of what you want actually means the treatment is working, so remain hopeful, take care of yourself and rest up!]
You trust in your ability to learn, rest, recover. You remember that there is time. You remember that a rough day doesn’t mean you are broken. Nothing is broken. Everything is working.
Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!
This week’s band is called Help I’m Dating Huckleberry Finn, which, coincidentally, is also the name of my upcoming biopic. Their latest album is Fed Via Nachos, they play baltic-inspired versions of 40s swing music, and it’s actually just one guy.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
I am recommending the Emergency Get Calm, Quiet And Steady techniques, aka the thing that keeps me from falling apart.
Come play if you like…
Join me in the comments. Some of us share hard and good, some of us say hi, or maybe we’re feeling quiet. My ritual doesn’t have to be your ritual. Whatever works for you. We’ve been doing this every week for years now and there still isn’t a right way. Feel free to leave pebbles (or petals!), hearts, warmth, sweetness. Those always work.
Everyone belongs. We let people have their own experience. We’re supportive and welcoming. We don’t give advice.
Wishing you a glorrrrrrrrrrrrious day, a restful weekend and a happy week to come.
p.s. It’s fine if it’s not Friday anymore. There’s complete chicken amnesty — join in whenever you like. Blowing kisses to the Beloved Lurkers too!