What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
What's in the gallery?
We dissolve stuck and rewrite patterns. We apply radical playfulness to life (when we feel like it!), embarking on internal adventures (credo of Safety First). We have a fake band called Solved By Cake. We build invisible sanctuaries, invent words and worlds, breathe awe and wonder.
We are not impressed by monsters. Except when we are. We explore the connections between internal territories and surrounding environment to learn what marvelously supportive delicious space feels like, and how to take exquisite care of ourselves. We transform things.* We glow wild.**
* For example: Desire, fear, worry, pain-and-trauma, boundaries, that problematic word which rhymes with flaweductivity.
** Fair warning: Self-fluency has been known to lead to extremely subversive behavior, including treasuring yourself unconditionally, unapologetically taking up space, experiencing outrageously improbable levels of self-acceptance, and general rejoicing in aliveness.
Wish 293: a very clear kind of clear
Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.
♡
Questions and answers.
I turned the page in my notebook, and discovered a clue that past-me had left on the inside of the back cover, a quote from Zora Neale Hurston:
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
Yes.
Answers.
Hope said that to me when I was distraught after the colossal disintegration and flailure (yes, with that’s how I spell it) of my business expansion.
Not only had I just lost my big dream, I’d gotten stuck with a chocolate shop instead, and I was so completely bewildered and shell-shocked by life.
That was definitely a year that asked. Actually there were three years that were question years, and then around September, the year turned and started answering. I am suddenly in a year that is full with answers.
Answers that I have questions about, hahahaha, because that is how answers work. They invite questions. They ask to be trusted, but they also ask to be investigated.
What do I know about these answers.
In September I knew that what I wanted was Shmita. A year of Easing and Releasing.
But I didn’t act on this intel because I didn’t think it was possible.
In November, my lover and I took off to the desert, and this little adventure turned into six very intense weeks that revealed even more answers.
It became clear that I need to stop working, and I need to let go.
I need to let go of the Playground (my unbelievably magical center that I’ve run in Portland for the last five years. To let go of my beautiful home, at least temporarily. To actively release everything that does not spark joy.
My body told me in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t stop working, it would stop working for me. And I said, okay okay got it, and then I kept working, and then about a month ago my knee stopped functioning, mysteriously, out of the blue.
It is time to listen. And it is time to receive the next set of answers that will come from that listening.
Clear.
I woke up the other day with this pairing of words in my head:
Rosh tzalul
It means clear head, clear-headed, but it is more interesting than that.
Hebrew has multiple words for clear, and tzalul is the right word for the job in a way that “clear” just doesn’t begin to come close.
Tzalul is clear like water. I flash on the week I once spent doing glorious nothing on a beach in Turkey, and how the water there is so blue, and you can see all the way to the bottom.
Tzalul is clear like when your mind is clear: lucid.
Tzalul can be related to tzlil, a sound, or a quality of sound, or tziltzul, a ringing, like a bell. Also tzlila, which is diving. Diving, into and beneath those clear waters.
Tzalul
It is not clear like light/bright, that is a different word, and it is not clear like emptied, that is something else, and it is not clear like obvious.
It is this particular water and bells and lucidity kind of clear, and that is what I want, and that is why I need to drop everything and care for myself and my body like I never have before.
That is the next indicated step, and the only question in all these answers is this:
Am I going to live by this intel, am I going to live by the clear sea that is the clear c?
What do I know about this?
It has to do with choosing the void instead of avoiding the void.
It is a mission of following the trail of joy sparks.
More than that, it’s committing to the mission of following the trail of joy sparks.
It makes sense that I feel trepidation about saying yes to my yes. That’s partly because this is a highly unconventional yes, it goes against our entire culture of Do More and Produce and Ass In Chair and Finish What You Started and Your Time Is Not Your Own and Swim With The Stream.
And it’s partly because if that was the answer that emerged from six weeks of getting quiet and turning inward, who knows what scary shit will reveal itself if I really stop keeping myself busy all the time.
So I’m allowed to feel conflicted about Shmita (letting the fields be fallow) and about rosh tzalul (my head is clear, I am a bell in a belltower), and about desiring these things. That is okay.
What else do I know about what I want?
There is big deprogramming to do here.
I need to stop measuring things in any of the old ways.
It is so easy to think about what I am “losing” each day that I don’t have a tenant for the space, each day that I don’t finish project X or fulfill goal Y. That has nothing to do with truth.
Truth is that I am okay, right now, in this moment and in all the moments, and nothing is more important than taking care of myself so I can remember this.
What’s next.
The beautiful boy and I have been trying to reschedule Operation True Yes. We were supposed to run away to Puerto Rico and that fell through, it was an initial yes that transformed into a not-yes, or a not-yet-yes.
And now we are talking about just getting in the truck and going out to the desert and staying there for a while. Like, a while. A WHILE.
And we need to just make this happen because otherwise we will get sucked into work and life, into preparing instead of going, which is a big theme for me.
I was raised by people who preferred thinking about going or talking about going, not actually going. Which is fine, if that’s what you prefer and you know that. Nothing wrong with being someone whose pleasure is dreaming and imagining.
It’s just that I grew up thinking [big huge life changes] were about to happen, because they were constantly being talked about like this was real, when it wasn’t ever going to happen, and it took me many, many years to understand that.
It’s time to go. Not out of urgency or scarcity or what if I miss it. Going because it is indicated. Going because this is my yes. Not waiting while I think about my yes. Saying yes to my yes.
An affair with yes.
This is what the beautiful boy called it. We are having an affair with yes.
I had been panicking about this knowing, these answers, and this is so funny because during the Years of Questions, I would have done a lot to have some answers, and now that I have them, they scare me.
It’s okay to feel all these feelings when you are having a wild passionate affair with yes.
What do I really want?
To be still, breathe, notice my feet on the floor, feel the floor, trust, release, love, trust some more.
Now.
I am in bed, a bolster under my knees, which right now is the only way I can sit comfortably, and even that not for very long.
Sun is streaming in through the windows we put in at the end of summer. A lot has changed since the end of summer. The window came just in time for answers.
Me: Hey, slightly-wiser me, what do you have for me?
She: It is safe to chase joy.
Me: To chase? That’s an interesting word choice, especially when right now I am hobbling, not chasing.
She: It is safe. To chase joy, walk with joy, catch up to joy, picnic with joy, dance with joy, sleep with joy. Everything you do that is a yes to joy is a good move.
Clues?
Everything with breath. Breath accompanies the action. Like shooting an arrow. Let’s choose towards that.
And the guy in front of me on the bus this morning who said, suddenly, very loudly, “I AM UPSET ALL THE TIME.” Let’s choose away from that.
The superpower of seeing beauty everywhere.
The quality for February on the 2015 Fluent Self calendar is APPRECIATE.
And the February superpower is I See Beauty Everywhere.
This has to do with rosh tzalul and my clear mind. That’s the lens. That is how I see beauty. Or, alternately, I can stop and see beauty, and this will clear my mind.
Special wishes! Recommendations please!
Some things I need/want for the upcoming trip that I don’t have, or don’t spark joy. So I am receptive to recommendations from you, dear reader, as long as they elicit real JOY SPARKS for you!
- Slip-on shoes that are comfortable and attractive. I like just socks in the truck and being able to slip something on fast to pop into the camper or a supermarket. I have very sexy clogs with gorgeous wooden three inch heels, these are not the right tool for the job, as much as I love the admiring look of the boy every time I don’t fall while balanced precariously on the metal trailer beam. And I have a pair of Danskos that are like wearing square blocks on my feet and I just do not feel even remotely attractive, and attractive is going to be extra-important since I’m not going to be showering that much. What do you like?
- Water bottle. Sturdy, attractive, glass would be nice, not Lifefactory.
- Flip flops: sturdy, attractive, comfortable.
- A really great sundress, something that travels well and not too cleavage-ey.
Ongoing wishes.
Everything is easier than I thought, and look, miracles everywhere. My business and ballroom are thriving happily. This doesn’t require my input! I think like a dancer. Ha, it’s so perfect that things turned out like this. Past me is a GENIUS. I have what I need, and I appreciate it. There are resources to do this. Trust and steadiness. I can see why this moment is good. I am fearless and confident. I do the brave things, I state my preferences clearly, calmly and easily, and it is not even a big deal. I am ready to come into my superpowers and receive the gifts that are winging their way to me. Superpower of Everything Enhances My Superpowers!
Things I find helpful when it comes to wishes…
Adventure. Rest. Horizons. Security. Passion. Sweetness. Clarity. Presence.
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
So. Last week, aka take care of yourself and you shall receive…
I got some very unexpected results from this wish, one of which is that I stopped crying about letting go of the Playground. Another unexpected result is that the boy and I decided to leave town.
And yet another result is that I am dealing with a situation I neglected for a very long time.
So this wasn’t what I had in mind at all when I made the wish, and I couldn’t be happier about this.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
I wish to whisper a whisper about the Monster Manual! It comes paired with the world’s best coloring book, which does so much monster-dissolving magic that even if you wait to try the techniques, you’ll still feel better about everything.
Self-fluency is hard enough, we need ways to to interact with the thoughts-fear-worry-criticism that shuts down creative exploring. And when people get the manual, I am able to me spend more time writing here. So if you don’t need help with monsters, get one for a friend. Or plant a wish that someone gets it for you! And bring people you like to hang out here. The more of us working on our stuff, the better for all of us. ♡
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 342: I wrote the word unitard, there is a first time for everything
It is Friday and we are here.
{a breath for Friday.}
What worked this week?
Cozy Warm Unitards!
The amazing Barbara Sher has this technique called CWUs that I use all the time. It stands for Complete Willingness Unit, and what it means is that you only do tiny things that don’t trigger resistance.
So if I’m working on a writing op, and I don’t want to start, my CWU might be just putting my notebook on the table. Or it might be asking myself what I might want to write about later if I happen to feel like writing.
I have trouble (this is just me) with the phrase Complete Willingness Unit because it sounds cold and metallic and like something that happens on a sci-fi show that takes place in space, so I make up my own words to fit the acronym.
Crimson Witchy Undergarments! Cat Whip Umbrellas! Clandestine Winding Up! Cornish Wind Utensils! Creative Whale Urbanization! Carefree Wandering Unicorns! Colorful Wombat Usurpers!
This week I took absurdly tiny steps, and it worked for me.
Next time I might…
Avoid the 6.
I already know about this, but then I forget.
The #6 bus is not a good place for me to be, and I always take it, and I always regret it.
This week I had a classic 6 moment when I chose to sit by the one person who did not seem to be (possibly-probably-potentially) dangerous, and then he immediately started yelling about the queen and staring at me while making squawking sounds.
I have a really hard time with situations of “I can’t read what’s happening”. Like, maybe you’re just going to talk about the queen, which is fine by me, except the intel you are giving me is that you are Unpredictable, and Anything Could Happen, and this is uncomfortable.
I have already had too many incidents (on the 6!) that ended in not-good. The problem with avoiding the 6 is that it means a lot of walking, something my knee does not love at the moment. But right now my main goal is feeling safe and secure in daily life, so let’s do things that support that.
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- I had high hopes for this being the week that my knee got better, and instead it was a lot of up and down. My lover whisked me away for a much-needed day off in the trees, except my knee didn’t like sitting in the car and really didn’t like climbing into and out of the camper, and squatting to pee is horrible, and yes, I know there are devices for this as well as badass and trans-boy-approved self-training methods that I could/should be working on in order to master the art of peeing standing up, but right now all I want is a lot of OH NO POOR YOU about my knee. Pain is just not fun and right now there is a lot of it. A breath for release and relief.
- And now my right hip is hurting too, in addition to the left knee, and this is just stupid. A breath for Shmita, because that is what is needed.
- Still no dancing and I want to be dancing. A breath for comfort.
- Got triggered during an interaction and went numb. And a twenty year reunion is happening for a thing that was [traumatic] for me, and all sorts of stuff is coming up around that. A breath for noticing and taking care of myself.
- Aaaaugh there is really no good way to run into an ex, but does it have to be when I haven’t showered in three days and am wearing my oldest grubbiest clothes, no makeup, hair a disaster? I mean, over the past couple years I have imagined what it would be like to run into him, and I have imagined this on many, many occasions, and in my imagination I always look way more put together. I have heard people say “and I just wanted the earth to open and cover me up”, and I think “no no no think about what you are saying you do not want that at all”, but in that moment, yes, I seriously just wanted to sink into the ground and disappear. Also he said, “I hope you know I’m not mad at you. You know that, right?” UM EXCUSE ME WHAT. If anyone should be mad at anyone, I should be mad at you, the person who Mysteriously Disappeared, which resulted in a lot of pain. I mean, I’m not mad, it was years ago and I got over it. But still. And maybe I’m not mad but maybe I still have a lot of leftover insecurity and overly-cautious-scared-to-show-that-I-like-someone from that. And now I shall disappear into a saferoom where I am always getting a facial and I look glowing and radiant and only have amazing clothes, forever, ta da! You are all welcome to say things like “WTF, dude” and “”Havi, you always look outrageously hot, this is a known fact”. A breath for sending all of that to the magical elevator shaft: whoosh!
- People I love so deep in their stuff that they are believing the stories they spin in their head. A breath for presence and for holding truth quietly in my heart.
- The Floop, my beautiful online private community for practicing self-fluency and sovereignty, now in the sixth year of my ongoing experiment with some form of this, ended this week. We are going into a couple weeks of Dry Dock as we do each year, and then it will be something new. I will miss everyone, and I already miss having a designated space to process. And endings — even the most beautiful ones, and this was an exceptionally beautiful one — are complex creatures. A breath for ease-filled transitions.
- 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.
- Knee has been giving me breaks from the pain. Whole hours of not-hurting, this is amazing. A breath of appreciation and gratitude for this.
- When I was panicking about the run-in with the ex, Max said: “Hey, listen, your radiance and unicornness does not come from a store, it is innate!“. A breath for being reminded of truth.
- Leslie Knope! A breath for the joy that is this season of Parks And Rec. And Donna and Joe’s wedding: thank you thank you thank you. Well, not their wedding so much as everything Jennifer Barkley says in that episode which is all the things I say in my head.
- Saturday night with my lover. And sitting across from him in the camper, both of us working, his hand on my ankle or foot, the way he is smiling at me every time I look up. A breath for a full heart.
- I finally got to see Adiv, my wonderful childhood friend who has been in town since AUGUST and we have both been busy and traveling and nothing ever works out. The curse is lifted! A breath for friendship.
- The ex of the Mysterious Disappearance wrote to me after our Awkward Run-In, and explained everything that happened two years ago in a way that was honest, vulnerable and kind, and there is nothing I value more than that. I will also add that it really helps to have that extra intel, which confirms that, as usual, all my insecurity monsters were completely wrong about everything, and that the best thing to do in life is always Assume Misunderstanding. A breath for an unsolved mystery suddenly solved, and all the superpowers of that.
- While I am sad about the Floop ending, I am overjoyed about how it ended with ZERO DRAMA this year, and I was so impressed watching people exit in conscious, intentional, rally-like ways, glowing-love for the space, the experience, themselves and each other, and ohmygod thank you. Plus the Secret S-Word Society is happening! Plus now I can hear the inside of my head again. I am so looking forward to the beautiful thing that is the SWOOP BOOP BADOOP! A breath for joy, for appreciation of what was and excitement for what is coming.
- Thankfulness. So much is good. Moving forward on the Playground op and on the house op and other forms of Releasing, and there is much steady Slowly But Surely, and this helps. Finally set a date for the next big op with the beautiful 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!
Even more Playground-emptying. Sent out not one but TWO Internalship ebooks. Did a bunch of writing about important stuff. Prepping the new op. Thank you fractal flowers and thank you, FLOOP! Wham Boom.
Revisiting some wise words from past-me.
Creating safety for the panicky jitters…
Superpowers I had this week…
I had the power of appreciating something I have that I didn’t know I had.
Powers I want.
I want, again, the superpower of Totally Unfazed By Any Of This. And I want the power of I Let Myself Really Know What I Want Instead Of Hiding It From Myself Out Of Fear.
The Salve of I Let Myself Really Know What I Want.
This salve reminds me a little bit of chamomile in that it is so much more soothing than it has the right to be, and it reminds me a little bit of tiger balm in that it wakes me up more than I think it will. Calming and invigorating, in equal doses.
When I wear it, I feel safe, steady and also revitalized, ready.
Suddenly is so much permission. Yes, it may be that the monsters are right and I will discover that the thing I want is not currently an option. However, it is much more likely that I can integrate aspects of what I want right now. And that knowing my desire cannot hurt me, even when I think it will tear apart my life.
When I wear this salve, I trust more and stop agonizing over details. I get out of my thinky-head and sink into quiet spaces of faith. I approach the fountain with reverence: here, fountain, let me show you my pain, instead of approaching the fountain with complaints and or not allowing myself to approach it at all.
This salve eases and releases, which is so perfect because this is the Year of Easing & Releasing. It is safe to know, it is safe to love, it is safe to desire, it is safe to turn inward and meet myself as I am in this moment, with sweetness.
This is a hell of a salve, is what I’m saying.
Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!
This week’s band is from Agent Anna, and she actually made ALBUM ART for this one, which I can’t get to right now for complicated reasons but trust me, it is awesome and I think the Fake Band of the Week should always have album art. The band is called Intimacy Sluts, their latest album is Mediocre At Routine, and it might or might not be just one guy.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
There is still time to join the Secret Sword Society, embarking at the end of February! It’s the only thing I’m doing this year, and it’s also temporarily half-off for current members of the Floop…
And I am still recommending the Emergency Get Calm, Quiet And Steady techniques, since they are keeping things good around here for me.
So I want to seed a reminder that this is a thing, and it helps, a lot. Not just with calming down in the moment but with building the kind of habits that allow you to change your relationship with whatever is scary or uncomfortable.
I hardly ever recommend these because the page is already many years old and needs rewriting. However, copywriting aside, this is still one of the best things I have ever made, by a lot. I have two boxes in my office full of the sweetest thank you notes from people, and so many of them are for this.
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!
pain au chocolat
I was stretched out on the table, slow deep breaths, and Wally was talking to my knee (and to all of me) with his hands, with warmth, steady gentleness and unfathomable kindness, as is his way, and I was talking to my knee with my heart.
My heart and I asked the question that has been the question since the pain started two weeks ago.
“Knee, what’s going on here?”
Which really means:
What are you trying to tell me? What are you trying to give me? Where would you like to draw my attention through this experience of pain? What do you need? Help me understand your message.
Usually I get silence, or one word: RELEASE.
But this time I got an image.
Buckets of paint.
White buckets.
Hundreds and hundreds of them piled up in a long banquet hall of a room. Some piled neatly and some more haphazardly, paint dripping in rivulets down the sides.
Paint buckets?
Pain buckets.
Pain buckets?
They are paint buckets filled with pain. The paint is other people’s pain.
For some reason, a long time ago, before memory, I agreed to store other people’s pain for them inside my body, and my knee has had enough of this, and it is showing me all the pain buckets.
I didn’t know they were here.
In fact, I am one of the few people I know who feels strongly about not taking on the pain of the world. I believe in giving pain to the fountain, to the mountains, to god or whatever your word is for love/source/wholeness/universe.
And yet…
I have a seemingly endless room filled with these buckets.
Some are familiar to me.
There is pain that belongs to the jealous ex, pain that belongs to my mother, pain that belongs to someone I used to be close with who isn’t speaking to me right now for reasons of her own, pain that belongs to my friend who is dead.
There is pain that belongs to people I have passed on the street and pain that belongs to people I have hugged, and pain that belongs to people whose hurt I have read about online. So many colors, so many shades of pain(t).
The rest of the buckets, I have no idea. So many of them.
Apparently I have just been unknowingly holding everyone’s pain, in buckets, for a very long time. I have allowed myself to become a storage unit for paint that will never be used.
Release, said my knee.
Release, said my knee, again.
And so I asked for helpers to remove the buckets.
Do you see, said my knee. Do you see why we move so gingerly, to not spill the paint.
Ah. Yes. I do see.
And so I asked for lids for all the buckets, and then all the buckets had lids, and the helpers were able to move faster and more efficiently.
The banquet hall began to clear out until it became apparent that what I had thought were walls with paint buckets stacked up to the ceiling were not in fact walls at all. The banquet hall is outdoors.
Then there were only a few dozen buckets of paint left, but these didn’t want to budge. They were glued to the ground, cemented somehow. These were the pain-buckets that did not want to be absolved or healed.
The rainbow.
The outdoor space suddenly looked like a graveyard, with pain bucket markers. The sky was low with grey clouds. A soft steady tiftuf of rain, how do you say that, drizzle. Like at my mother’s funeral.
We need a rainbow, I said.
And a rainbow appeared. Several rainbows, each one attaching itself to a paint bucket and letting the paint stream into the rainbow, changing its colors, until the buckets were emptied, and then they weren’t heavy anymore and they detached from the earth and were carried away.
Thank you, rainbows, I said, but they rainbows showed me that they were painbows. Painbow-rainbows for the buckets of pain.
I watched the pain stream away in sweet blended lines of color.
The outdoor space that had reminded me of a graveyard turned into a setting for a garden party: lanterns and soft music. It was evening in the garden and the moon was rising, and you could feel the anticipation of something beautiful about to happen.
Go look for the rest of the pain, said my knee.
The rest of the pain…
So I went back indoors, and where the banquet hall had been was now a very tall storage closet, stacked to the top with more pain buckets. These buckets were black, and the paint was black matte, rich liquid black, and this pain was all mine.
The buckets were labeled with dates. Sometimes a year. Sometimes a day, or even an hour.
There is the bucket of Lior doesn’t love me anymore, and there is the bucket of being falsely accused of stealing at work. The bucket of Her Name Is Kimberly. The bucket of losing my tiny apartment in Florentin. The bucket of the day the orchards were destroyed.
But most of the buckets I don’t recognize. They document things I don’t remember or maybe I just don’t know the dates.
I ask for the pain to be emptied, and this is both easier and harder than it was with the white buckets.
These buckets move faster, but some are very heavy, and some I cling to without meaning to.
It follows the same process as the releasing I have been doing in my home, letting go of clothes, art, projects. There are some things I can just say goodbye to, other things trigger a panicked moment of who will I be without this.
Who will I be without this paint/pain?
Who will I be?
The answer, of course, is that I will be a better bell, because when the belltower isn’t clogged up with paint buckets, the bells have more room to ring. The answer is more resonance, more reverberating, more aliveness, more joy.
And yet somehow I associate letting go with loss. As if letting go of the pain will be more painful than storing the pain for unknown reasons, possibly for future reference (look, here is all the pain).
I also notice fear that if I give up this pain, it will do damage somehow. As if the world can’t handle all this pain, better to keep it stored here for safekeeping.
This makes me laugh, because of course the truth is that there are endless resources to transform things that are done, and this pain is a museum of what is done.
I give my permission for the buckets to be released, and they whoosh away into a night sky where they are used for an art project. They become a black-black-black night sky, and then the artists sprinkle stars all over the paint, and the paint is happy to be used, and it is no longer made of pain, and all the artists ooh and aaah over how beautiful this night sky creation has become.
Where else is there pain, I ask my knee.
Cake.
And then suddenly I am aware of a gigantic chocolate cake located between my ovaries, and I feel like saying “Okay and here’s where it gets weird, you guys”, except, well, the whole thing is kind of weird already, so how is this weirder.
Yep, a gigantic chocolate cake.
And my knee whispers, pain au chocolat, pronouncing it completely wrong, and giggling.
I have never heard my knee laugh before. On the other hand, I have never encountered second-chakra layer cake before either, and it occurs to me that my internal system of wordplay may finally have taken things too far.
I mean, pain-buckets, whatever, fine, but this is too much.
I glower at the cake, but then my knee’s sense of humor is catching, and I laugh too, though it is sort of a laugh-sigh, and I ask the cake what it needs.
Look, sweetness.
The cake wants to be appreciated, and I am the worst person for appreciating cake because I don’t eat cake, but on the other hand I am the best person for appreciating cake because look, someone made sweetness!
It’s a chocolate pain-cake, and this is interesting since I have an imaginary chocolate shop, which has been both a source of and a result of the past few years of painful things.
Even more interesting, this pain-cake is located in my creative center, blocking my creativity, just like the chocolate shop which keeps me busy covering overhead, which makes it hard to access the time and the headspace for writing.
So the cake wants to be appreciated, and the only ways of appreciating cake that I can think of are eating it or sharing it, and I don’t want to do either of those. Cake, how can I support your mission?
Celebrate me.
The cake says, celebrate me. And so I put candles all over the cake and I say, you are a celebrated cake, and my knee is giggling again.
The cake says, you created something exquisitely beautiful and then it died and you didn’t celebrate its life because the ending was so painful.
Me: Yes.
The pain-cake: You of all people don’t believe in the bullshit cultural construct of longevity. You don’t believe that relationships are special because they last. You don’t put value on lasting. You put value on the experience, the treasure in the experience.
Me: Yes, but this particular experience was nothing but pain from start to finish, and it left me in debt, and I lost friends, and I lost my dream. What is there to celebrate?
The cake: You had a beautiful vision and brought it to beautiful fruition because you are a badass, and a wildly passionate person who is in love with life. And then that vision was not what you truly desired, and now you know what you truly desire, and you will never chase the wrong vision again, and you will never give up any aspect of you in order to create, and you are free. You are a bell of joy. This painful experience is how you got to all that knowledge and wisdom.
Me: You are right. This is true.
The cake: And the entire experience took only two years. Imagine if it had taken you thirty years to learn these things. Some people don’t even learn them in a lifetime. Celebrate! Celebrate me!
Me: You are worthy of being celebrated.
The cake: Celebrate other things that were short-lived and beautiful and special, and that was the right amount of time for them! Cake for your love affair with J! Cake for realizing in Berlin that you didn’t want to go to grad school there after all! Cake for your friend who is dead.
Worthy of celebration.
I flash on one of my favorite memories of him.
We are in his apartment in Neve Tzedek, listening to the song Comfort Eagle, by the band Cake, of course, of course, that is so funny, and he is obsessing over this album so hard and listening to it all day, I can see his joyful smile, he is beaming and smiling from ear to ear, walking around the kitchen clapping his hands above his head to the claps in the song, and he is so happy, and so alive and we loved each other so much.
Me: Yes, that is worthy of celebration.
And then the cake disappears, and I am a bell in a bell tower, and Wally says everything just softened, this is good, and I think, yes, this is good.
Keep me company.
You are invited to share things sparked for you, or you can ring a bell, or you can laugh with me at the fact that my body apparently experiences everything through puns.
As always, we all have our stuff. We make space for this, and for each other, and we don’t give people advice. We meet ourselves and each other with warmth and sweetness.
Love, as always, to the commenters, the Beloved Lurkers, and everyone who reads.
Wish 292: take care of yourself and you shall receive.
Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.
♡
Take care of yourself and you shall receive.
The other week in the Chicken, I wrote:
I am changing “ask and you shall receive” to “take care of yourself and you shall receive” because this was my magic this week, over and over again.
Every time I did something to take care of me — from smaller things like getting up from the computer to drink water when thirsty, to much bigger things like advocating for myself in difficult situations — my entire life got better.
Honestly, this is how I want to live anyway, even without the perks.
However, let it be noted: there are perks. Big wonderful perks.
The more I take care of myself and the better I get at remembering to treasure myself, the happier my body is and the smoother things go for me.
I want to remember this. To ingrain this knowing into my being. To test this hypothesis so thoroughly that no other choices exist more appealing than taking care of myself.
What if that’s true?
The other day my lover asked me if I had ever gone a period of time without working.
Me: You mean, unemployment?
Nope. Not that. Job-searching is even more work than working. Actual not-working. Letting things go Shmita.
So I thought about it. And I haven’t. I’ve been working since I was thirteen years old. The longest I’ve been away from work was two weeks, and even then I still did an hour or two of work each day.
Take care of yourself and you shall receive. What if that’s true?
I mean, at the very least I will receive the experience of having been cared for, which right now is vitally important, as my body keeps pointing out.
Do the opposite.
My friend A and I talk a lot about the practice of Doing The Opposite. Veering in a different direction when we find ourselves in an old pattern.
This doesn’t necessarily mean choosing the opposite behavior (though it can), it means finding an opposite way to meet the need behind the behavior.
For example, a tendency of mine is to shut down and be cold in interactions with people, even with people I like, when I perceive that I do not have enough space.
When it comes to Doing The Opposite, I might not want to (or even be able to) meet someone’s request for time with warmth. Because it doesn’t feel genuine in that moment, and it still doesn’t give me the space I crave, and anyway, attempted warmth can easily swerve off-track into an even older and less-helpful pattern of placating.
What I do instead is look for another way to give myself space that is not being cold and distant. It might be writing a note: Hey, I need to take a moment right now. Can I get back to you on this later?
This is what I mean by doing the opposite.
What if taking care of myself is doing the opposite of everything I’m doing now? What if taking care of myself is the opposite of pushing through? What if more gets accomplished by intentionally not pushing through? I mean, that’s basically the operating principle of Rally, and Rally always works.
What do I know about this?
This is going to require very small experiments, because the monsters are seriously up in arms about all of this.
They think it’s indulgent and selfish and cheesy and not going to work.
In fact, I think it’s going to require a proxy mission.
Hmmm. This actually works with my current mission, being a campanologist, someone who studies bells.
As a campanologist, I need to take very good care of bells. And it is worth testing the hypothesis that the happier the bells, the better the resonance.
So [take care of yourself and you shall receive] turns into [take care of bells and they will resonate].
I like this. I am going to investigate what happens to bells and their sounds when they are very well taken care of.
What do I know about what I want?
So much in here, like with most of my wishes, has to do with trust.
It also is big work. This is going against all of the cultural programming that says Do More and Work Is Valuable and Produce Produce Produce and Ass In Chair and Push Through and Sleep When You’re Dead.
It is rewriting decades of received programming, in an environment that actively pushes against my mission, with no models of how this can be done.
This is brave, hard stuff, and it is okay if it takes a long time for this to land. Permission, legitimacy, presence.
What’s next.
I am going to come up with ten things I can do to take care of bells, and will try to do one each day and see what happens.
What do I really want?
To remember that I am loved. To remember that this is my job: be love and be loved.
Now.
I am sitting in my favorite spot at the Playground, on the floor, supported by orange cushions and the red wall. The Playground is where I am best at taking care of myself, because it is built into this space, and now this needs to live inside of me.
The Playground is so peaceful, so full of love and aliveness. What if taking care of myself the way I have taken care of the Playground for the past five years means turning into a walking Playground of love and aliveness.
What if I can glow in real life the way the Playground glows when I am in it.
Me: Hey, slightly-wiser me, what do you have for me?
She: You brought this space into being, so its qualities are your qualities. You cannot lose this.
Me: I can forget it though…
She: That’s why you’re making this wish. What would a campanologist do?
Me: Ring bells and listen to them reverberate.
She: Exactly.
Clues?
I am at the Playground right now, of course, and I just looked up and saw the word SHELTER.
The superpower of seeing beauty everywhere.
The quality for February on the 2015 Fluent Self calendar is APPRECIATE.
And the February superpower is I See Beauty Everywhere.
So perfect right now. Appreciating myself is why I take care of myself. And appreciation is a form of care. And seeing beauty requires pausing and resting and presence. You can’t appreciate beauty when you are dead set on the imaginary finish line.
Seeing beauty requires getting quiet. And once you see it, you want to drink it up and bathe in it and relish in it. You take yourself to places where it lives. You go inside yourself to where it glows.
Ongoing wishes.
- Everything is easier than I thought, and look, miracles everywhere.
- I have the best time dancing in my ballroom.
- This doesn’t require my input!
- Ha, it’s so perfect that it turned out like this. Past me is a GENIUS
- I have what I need, and I appreciate it. There are resources to do this.
- Trust and steadiness. I can see why this moment is good.
- I am fearless and confident. I do the brave things, I state my preferences clearly, calmly and easily, and it is not even a big deal, yay.
- I am ready to come into my superpowers and receive gifts that are winging their way to me. Superpower of Everything Enhances My Superpowers!
Things I find helpful when it comes to wishes…
Adventure. Rest. Horizons. Security. Passion. Sweetness. Clarity. Presence.
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
So. Last week, aka whatever the garden wants…
This was a wonderful wish! And it had to do with bells, so that is perfect.
This week I was able to find my way back to my lion self. In a surprising turn of events, the door into that was JOYFUL COURAGE and drinking my favorite tea. But I got there, and it is wonderful.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
I wish to whisper a whisper about the Monster Manual! It comes paired with the world’s best coloring book, which does so much monster-dissolving magic that even if you wait to try the techniques, you’ll still feel better about everything.
Self-fluency is hard enough, we need ways to to interact with the thoughts-fear-worry-criticism that shuts down creative exploring. And when people get the manual, I am able to me spend more time writing here. So if you don’t need help with monsters, get one for a friend. Or plant a wish that someone gets it for you! And bring people you like to hang out here. The more of us working on our stuff, the better for all of us. ♡
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 341: like a mermaid
It is Friday and we are here.
{a breath for Friday.}
What worked this week?
Beautiful containers. And permission to care about this!
I was talking with a friend about lip color, and the many mysteries thereof in my love-hate-love relationship with it, and how a good color in an unattractive tube just doesn’t work.
And she said, YES THE CONTAINER IS EVERYTHING!
Anyway, that was kind of the theme of this week, in a variety of ways.
Putting things I like into beautiful containers, both literally and symbolically…that’s what worked for me this week.
That, and acknowledging that I care a lot about packaging, and this is okay. This is something I can know about myself, and it doesn’t matter that the monsters want me to think it’s shallow. The container changes the experience. For me.
I took my favorite makeup and squeezed it into an empty tiger balm jar, and now I don’t have to look at the stupid plastic case that I never liked, and I smile whenever I see it.
I emptied out all the iguanas from the nook where I used to nap, and now it is a beautiful container for me. This is important for me to remember. Beautiful containers are helpful for a Havi.
Next time I might…
Release comparison.
It causes pain.
I mean, it brings momentary ease when I use to it to artificially feel better about myself, but that isn’t real ease, and mainly it brings pain.
This week I had minimal use of my knee, and found myself focusing on people who can do things I can’t, and that was not fun, so let’s not do that.
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- Knee still very painful. A breath for relief.
- Not being able to do things is emotionally painful right now in addition to the physical discomfort. I get so depressed sitting around and not being a gazelle. Both my housemate and the beautiful boy took turns moving everything out of the Playground, and I felt frustrated and vulnerable watching them do everything, not being able to help. A breath for perspective and remembering truth.
- Some very old, forgotten memories got stirred up this week, which is useful, and also I experienced deep heart-pain while this was happening. A breath for healing in the form of easing and releasing, the themes of this year.
- Missing my lover so very much, and wishing we were on the road together. A breath for trust, and for peacefulness.
- Still letting go of everything, so much letting go. I sat on the floor of the Playground and cried my eyes out. I love it so much, and this is right, and this is how it needs to happen, and oh, letting go. A breath for goodbyes said with love.
- Big reactiveness. Deep in old patterns. I am being given a pretty obvious opportunity to look at the less-than-helpful ways I try to protect myself when I am in pain: I am cold/negative/judgmental/harsh/distant with people, and use my pain as the story or the excuse. This is not what I want. A breath for safety, for new choices, for the legitimacy of grumpiness, for meeting myself with love.
- Oh god, looked at a website I should not have looked at, instantly regretted it, kept looking, the whole thing turned into an evening of monster-distortions and I-am-not-good-enough. A breath for this, for comfort, for releasing comparison in all forms.
- 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.
- I am now almost back to full range of motion with my knee! And while it hurts all the time, it hurts less than it did before, and it doesn’t hurt more when I walk. I have also been slow-walking through aerobics classes. I can’t plié or lunge or do anything with a level change yet, trying to not give my knee too much to do, but I can walk around to music, and it feels so good to be moving my body again. A breath of appreciation and gratitude for this.
- Thank you so much to the woman who yelled from her car window about how cute my shoes are, when I was deep in distress about Life Stuff. That totally helped, and it got me back to breathing and smiling. A breath for the reset button.
- It’s software, not hardware! I find this endlessly reassuring. It’s just a pattern that past-me installed because she wanted to keep me safe, and I can replace it with something that works better. A breath for the cage not being a cage.
- Wednesday night with my lover. Curled up on the couch making plans, talking about living intentionally, and radical sovereignty. Falling asleep on his chest, feeling peaceful, at ease, blissfully content. A breath for a full heart.
- Perfect simple solutions. A breath of thank you.
- Marisa and I went for a Regrounding. (Shhh, it’s a pedicure, something my monsters think is indulgent, however they were impressed by evidence showing my life is better when I feel grounded). I care a lot about the name of the color of a nail polish, I think this is related to my love of beautiful containers, and all the colors had the worst names. Like, mysteriously terrible names. Almost as if they were reflecting my moodiness. You would not believe the names of these colors! I Accomplished Zero Today, A Rose At Dawn Broke By Noon, Cherried Away, In The Park After Dark, Skating On Thin Iceland. What?! I know. So then I found a color called Metamorphosis, a gorgeous sparkly green-blue, and now I feel amazing, like a mermaid, and I never would have even looked at that color had the reds and pinks not had these awful names. A breath for being redirected, for fun surprises, and for all the superpowers of mermaids.
- I practiced Enter As You Wish To Be In It this week, and this made everything better. A breath of love.
- Thankfulness. So much is good. 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!
Emptied the rest of the Playground! Did a bunch of writing. Took care of five interactions I’d been avoiding. Thank you fractal flowers and thank you, FLOOP! Wham Boom.
Revisiting some wise words from past-me.
This wonderful practice of noticing: my toes lift up in a little dance…
Superpowers I had this week…
I had the power of seeing the connections between seemingly unrelated memories.
Powers I want.
I want, again, the superpower of Totally Unfazed By Any Of This. And I want the power of clear seeing.
The Salve of Beautifully Redirected.
When I wear this salve, I smile at red lights and missed buses. I laugh when we get to the bridge, and then the bridge goes up to let a ship pass beneath it.
I trust in right timing, and I trust in the redirection. If I think I am supposed to go to point A, and the way to point A is full of obstacles, then hello, Point B. I can’t wait to meet Point B! I trust that there are good things being sparked for me at Not-Point-A.
This salve is so very grounded, and just a little spicy: vetiver and something that reminds me of cinnamon.
When I wear this salve, I smile more and fret less. I don’t care about sunk costs. I go when something says go. I pause when it is time to pause. I take sweet naps and I dream of faraway lands and I awaken feeling invigorated and full of life.
Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!
This week’s band is from my brother, it’s called You Have Gentleman Caller, their latest album is Slow At Birthdays, they are based in Indonesia and it’s just one guy.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
There is still time to join the Secret Sword Society, embarking at the end of February! It’s the only thing I’m doing this year, and it’s also temporarily half-off for current members of the Floop…
And I am still recommending the Emergency Get Calm, Quiet And Steady techniques, since they are keeping things good around here for me.
So I want to seed a reminder that this is a thing, and it helps, a lot. Not just with calming down in the moment but with building the kind of habits that allow you to change your relationship with whatever is scary or uncomfortable.
I hardly ever recommend these because the page is already many years old and needs rewriting. However, copywriting aside, this is still one of the best things I have ever made, by a lot. I have two boxes in my office full of the sweetest thank you notes from people, and so many of them are for this.
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!