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.
Releasing.
Things I have let go of this week.
A grey t-shirt that belonged to a once-upon-a-time lover.
The shirt was old and torn. The former lover is, or was, in Santa Cruz. He found the shirt on a beach once and thought it was lucky, I can’t remember why, and I have nothing but the warmest wishes for him, wherever he is now.
And the shirt. I have the shirt.
2015.
I was texting with a friend this week, a fellow writer, and he asked what my wishes are in this new year. Here they are:
- Sustainable and sustaining.*
- Find out what it’s like to be an eccentric writer who has no other jobs than that, in this year of releasing.
- Discard possessions, people, relationships and habits that do not spark joy.**
- Take amazing care of my body.
- Sleep. Dance. Laugh.
- Wake up in beautiful places.
- Spend more time with my uncle.
- Be filled with praise: thank you thank you thank you.
- Write, and put things I write on the blog, and see what happens. I want the community that gathers around my writing to grow into something bigger and steadier again (see: sustainable and sustaining), but if that isn’t what happens then at least I was brave and shared things with the world, and that is something.
- Forgive and let go.
- Delight in what I have. And if it doesn’t delight, release it or change it.
** Speaking of magic, the revelatory concept of [choose things based on what sparks joy] is from Marie Kondo. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up was a spark-filled catalyst of a read for me.
Does it spark joy?
That question is just absolutely mind-boggling to me:
Does this spark joy?
I love (and am slightly terrified by) the idea of this being the measuring stick for everything in my life.
- Do I feel the joy spark? Yes! Great. This stays in my life.
- Do I feel the joy spark? No-but-but-but! Ah, thank you, goodbye.
I mean, take the grey shirt that was given as a gift, first to my ex-lover by the beach, and then given to me by him when we said goodbye for the last time.
Marie says you have to touch it to know. You caress it with your fingers, you smooth it lovingly and fold it with sweetness, and then you know. You either feel the spark or it isn’t there. You can’t pretend when it comes to touch.
You’ll just know.
So I know. No joy is sparked for me from holding this shirt.
The memory linked to the shirt, carried inside the cloth, that sparks joy, but of course — as I realized while I was touching it — I don’t keep it for the memory.
I already have the memory.
The memory is in me.
I remember the moment we met: what I was wearing, the band we weren’t listening to, my forgotten food getting cold. The entirety of that experience: it’s still there. I’m not actually going to forget that day, or the day he gave me the shirt, or how my life shifted in vital ways thanks to that connection.
That’s not why I keep the shirt. It’s just why I think I keep the shirt.
I keep the shirt, I now realize, because I’m afraid.
I’m afraid that if I don’t cling to the fact of its existence, that I won’t have adventure in my life. I won’t have passion and excitement and possibility.
I won’t have someone to tell me what a knockout I am, to whisper sweetness in my ear until I believe again. Which is absurd.
The truth is, even if I didn’t have access to those things right now, holding onto the shirt by keeping it rolled in a ball on the floor in the back of a closet is not so much issuing an invitation for what I want as it is committing a small part of myself to forever pacing back and forth in the dusty rooms of what was.
I kept the shirt to honor the joy sparks, but that’s not the correct way to cultivate joy sparks.
Thank you, me who wanted more joy. Thank you, me who said yes to joy when it came her way. Thank you, Marie, for pointing out that it is time to let this go.
Marie says, “The true purpose of a present is to be received.”
Yes. Of course. And I received all of it, with a full heart, and its work is done.
Goodbye.
Goodbye, shirt.
Thank you for bringing me so much pleasure and sweetness in a moment when I needed both of those more than I could have known.
Thank you for being a reminder of pleasure and sweetness when the moment had passed.
Thank you for showing me that these are qualities I treasure, qualities I want and need in my life. Your work here is done.
Thank you. You are released.
I receive and release, release and receive. This is the flow of life.
My god what a question.
It is a beautifully precise question.
Does it spark joy?!?!?!
A perfect question. A brilliant question. A dangerous question. A wildly subversive question.
It cuts through facades. You can’t pretend with this question.
I have been waking up at 5am each morning thinking about Does This Spark Joy.
Just this concept — that I’m allowed to use joy as the determining factor for what gets to stay in my life — is so completely startling to me that I find myself laughing.
It sinks in deeper, and I laugh. I release and I laugh. I choose based on joy, and I laugh. And sometimes I cry.
Good lord, the reminders I choose to keep around me, the many things in my life that so clearly do not spark any joy for me, and how I surround myself with them.
Does it spark joy? This is a question that makes things very hard and very easy.
On the one hand, I can now get rid of Most Things In My Life, because it turns out that very few of them spark joy…
But do I really want to deal with how naked and vulnerable and empty that is in order to arrive at how sweet, simple and freeing it will be?
That is the thing with asking about joy.
You learn things. Maybe things you didn’t want to know. Maybe things you knew and were hiding from yourself.
There is that beautiful moment of clarity, and then that cold-water-splash of okay I now know something I have known for years, but I think maybe now I have to do something about it.
Passports.
I have no idea why I keep expired passports. Do I think I’m going to forget that I was in Scotland?
Or that I had terrible glasses with black frames that made me look like an irritable librarian?
I also have forty eight shekels and the key to my ex’s mom’s place in Herzliya.
Mysteries of releasing and not-releasing.
My maternal grandfather died when I was three or four.
I have no memories of him, or of what that loss was like for my mother.
My remaining three grandparents all passed away within a year of each other when I was in my early twenties. Both of my parents returned pretty shaken from the uncomfortable experience of dealing with the piles of left-behind possessions, and filled with zeal to empty their own house so that my brother and I would not go through the same.
Their newly-found passion for letting go of things took them as as far as re-organizing the basement, and then fifteen years went by. When my mother died, there were three entire rooms absolutely stuffed with her belongings, with projects in progress.
I like a good project myself. Like my mother, I am a scanner. So I get it. Have you read Barbara Sher’s Refuse To Choose? Read it!
“I imagine there are orderly, well-organized Scanners in the world, but there can’t be very many of them. It’s far more common to hear a Scanner mumbling, “Now, where did I put that lizard?”
But there were other things too. Mysteries. Like, why would my mother have kept her 1984 voter registration card in her jewelry box?
I ask that in all seriousness, and yet much to my surprise I discover that I have four expired passports just sitting here with my winter socks.
More things I have let go of this week. Divesting.
Lingerie that I never wear, given to me by an ex.
A really beautiful wallet that I bought three years ago as a symbol/gift to mark the process of opening my new center, and have never used once.
An old address book from 2004. It had the numbers of two friends who have killed themselves, and the address for where I left [my entire life of the previous ten years in Tel Aviv] when I left for Berlin, thinking I’d only be gone a few months… I still haven’t been back.
A mixtape my brother made me in 1993. A postcard from New York.
Books I only keep to impress people, a category I didn’t know existed until I asked the question about joy. There is no joy in these books for me, so goodbye and thank you for trying to fulfill something I thought was needed.
Sometimes I notice that I keep things given to me (see: lingerie) because the experience of receiving them gave me joy. So really, I already had the joy. Now I’m just dragging along joy shadows because I’m afraid if I don’t hold onto the memory of receiving, I won’t have any more of that particular flavor of joy.
Dragging joy shadows. Time to divest from that pattern as well.
I love the word divesting, it actually comes from the words [removing] and [garments]. So it is a form of undressing, taking off. Removing layers and costumes and pieces of identity that I do not wish to carry anymore.
Making things lighter, and also bringing in light. Illuminating was December’s word, with the superpower of bringing light to the corners.
So of course January is about emptying those corners, saying thank you to everything I found there, and then letting it go.
This is the year of releasing.
Last year was the Year of Emerging & Receiving. The Year before was the Year of Emptying & Replenishing.
This year is the Year of Easing & Releasing. My Shmita year, my time to let things go.
And apparently part of this means learning to allow joy to be the reason to let them go.
To let go joyfully. Or to let go to allow in more joy. Or to let go of any rules I have about how much joy I’m allowed to have.
And then to invite in those things, people and experiences that do spark joy. To welcome joy and make space for it. To say, hello, come in, I am ready for this.
May it be so! And come play with me.
You are welcome to share stories or wishes of your own related to releasing. Or to let go of things that need letting go of. Or to share anything sparked for you here. Or to say hi, leave pebbles or tiny hearts.
This is the safest space I know of on the internet, and we have been able to keep it that way through a very simple practice: we don’t give anyone advice and we don’t try to take care of each other. Instead we make room for each other.
We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. It’s a process. We meet ourselves and each other with as much love as we can.
So come play. I love having company. ♡
postscript!
I am not actually teaching this year because I am on Shmita and letting my fields rest, but if you want to take part in my year of Easing & Releasing, come by the Plum Duff page. Password: enter-with-roses
Wish 287: let’s pretend this is about soup
Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.
♡
I want to say what I want.
Many things fascinate me currently. The one at the top of the list right now is how easily I will give up on my desires.
In fact, I will receive clear intel about what I want. It can be a very small thing, like whether or I want soup or salad (I want soup!). This also happens with big complicated life things, but for now let’s keep it on the level of soup.
Let’s pretend everything is about soup.
No, wait, I mean, let’s pretend everything is about soup.
Back to the soup, and to desire, and to my clear, deep, honest knowing.
I know what I want.
I know without any doubt what my desire is. I desire soup.
And yet in the split-second after the clear recognition of this desire, I will immediately throw myself into the most absurd contortions to cover up this intel.
First I will convince myself that I’m not sure whether or not I even feel like soup:
What, me? Am I even hungry? Who knows? It’s a mystery! I could want anything. Soup? For me? Ehhhhhhh I’m not sure, maaaaaaybee.
Then I will trample over all the evidence of my desire, so that I can neglect it completely in favor of choosing the thing I think someone else wants me to choose.
When, let’s be honest, they probably don’t care, and even if they did have an opinion on what I put into my body, so what? How is that possibly more important than this Clear Indicated Knowing I currently have about soup. Soup! For me!
I do so much work to cover up the intel about what I want that I don’t even get to the part where I stand up for what I want.
This is what I mean when I talk about living by the sea.
Living by the sea is something the lover and I talk about a lot.
The sea is the C.
A is getting the information about what I want. B is letting myself really hear it, admit that I know what I want.
C is acting on it.
I want to live by the C.
What do I know about this?
I am so damn good at A. I kill it at A.
I have spent years practicing self-fluency, removing all the things that get in the way of A.
Despite all my best self-sabotage efforts to try to shut things down at B, I’m still pretty good with B.
It’s C where things fall apart. Somewhere between B and C.
Back to soup.
Soup is a small thing. Why does it even matter? What’s the big deal? Get over it. There will be more soup another day.
Yes, that is true.
Except when I do this with soup, and let’s say we are talking about soup, I am essentially training myself that my desire is not important. I am training myself to ignore vital intel, to refuse the wisdom and support of internal resources.
What do I know about this, about living by the C?
I have moments of this.
When I am at the Vicarage, I live by the C.
When I am not busy with work, when there are few distractions in my life, it is easier for me to choose the sea/C.
Or at least, to notice when I am jamming up the works at B.
So this is about presence, and it is about time.
This might even be why my Shmita mission is so important right now, to use this upcoming time of Intentional Not Producing as a space to clear out, to undo the things that get in the way of seeing the sea that is the C.
I know what I want.
I know what I want. I know what I want. I know what I want.
All the time. I have so much intel about what I want. I just hide it because I’m scared.
I’m scared. And I think we all are.
Scared about the possible repercussions of saying what is true for me. Afraid of encountering the emotions that will or may arise in me and in in others in response to it. Worried about potential conflict, and potential conflict-resolution, afraid of the work of setting clear boundaries that I may need to do.
Petrified of the vulnerability of wanting. Paralyzed at the thought that people I love may feel hurt or envious or upset or [other usual things that I fear in all situations regardless of the actual reality] when they encounter my wants. And really, the only reason people have such strong reactions to wanting is because they are hiding and contorting when it comes to their own wanting.
There we all are, craving our moment with the sea, avoiding going anywhere near it.
What happens next?
I practice.
And, more specifically, I practice with soup.
With the small things.
Using soup as a way to practice being my true animal self: Following instinct. Listening. Resting. Bounding like a gazelle.
What do I really want?
To release the need to people-please. To recognize that I do this because I desire safety, and that true safety comes from advocating for what I need, not pretending that I don’t need it.
And, as always, to trust my instincts more. To trust my yes and trust my no, and act on that trust immediately.
Me: Hey, slightly-wiser me, what do you have for me?
She: What do you want to be doing right this second?
Me: RGW (Replenishing Glass of Water), then bathroom, then stretch for a couple minutes.
She: What’s stopping you?
Me: I’m finishing up this post.
She: How dumb is that.
Me: Hahahaha! Right. Living by the sea means I wouldn’t even consider putting work before body.
She: Love you, babe. Go take care of you, and then whenever you come back to this will be right.
Clues?
I was watching a cop show, and someone said, “Good, you trusted your gut!”
I could hear that a thousand times a day, and it wouldn’t be enough. Good. You trusted. Good.
Speaking of trust…
The superpower of calm steady trust is mine.
The quality for January on the 2015 Fluent Self calendar is ANCHOR.
And the superpower is Calm Steady Trust Is Mine.
An anchor is good for living by the sea. Funny how I just saw the connection. And so is trusting my desires.
Oh! OH! GOOD NEWS!
Do you want your calendar? They’re ready to order and GUESS WHAT IT IS PLUM DUFF so all the new cool stuff is half off this week — through January 12, assuming supplies last! Password: enter-with-roses
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, including the superpowers of knowing that it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks, I Am Okay With Being Seen, receiving gifts that are winging their way to me. See also: The superpower of Everything Enhances My Superpowers. And adds panache.
Things I find helpful when it comes to wishes…
More sweet pauses, yes to the red lights, remember the purple pills, say thank you to the broken pots. Permission. Bright colors. Passion. Costume changes. Stone skipping with incoming me. Dance. Intensity. Writing. Lipstick. My body gets the deciding vote. And, as always, saying thank you in advance.
Give it to the compass: Eight directions, eight qualities, eight breaths.
Trust. Release. Love. Receive. Anchor. Crown. Glow. Boldly.
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
So. Last week, aka Removing the versus…
Huge success! Not only did I resolve the immediate problem (cozy vs sexy), I removed the Ridiculous Versus from a bunch of other things too, and I got my secret wish which was to spend way less time on online spaces that do not bring me joy.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
You can get the 2015 calendar and access to all kinds of other amazing things, and — this is the critical part — get them for HALF OFF THIS WEEK during Plum Duff! Password: enter-with-roses
Good through January 12, assuming supplies last!
♡
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 336: Meet me on the star ferry?
It is Friday and we are here.
{a breath for Friday.}
What worked this week?
Invoking superpowers.
As you know, I love to name superpowers. Naming them reminds me that they’re possible, and then somehow they’re there.
This week I had a million trillion monster-number of things to finish up, and I invoked — in writing — I Am Focused, Happy, Taking Care Of Shit Like A Fairground Stripper!
Then I promptly forgot that I requested this, and when I emerged from a wild flurry of doing, I thought, Whoa look at all this focused happy taking care of shit, where did this come from?
Yes, totally forgetting that I had asked for it. More superpowers, please!
Choosing colors.
Danielle made me go for a Regrounding (secret agent code for pedicure), and this was very good, because I have been in Running Around Like A Headless Chicken mode, and not taking care of myself.
The color I picked was Meet Me On The Star Ferry, which is so beautifully mysterious, and goes so perfectly with the compass I am using for 2015:
Adventure. Rest. Horizons. Security. Passion. Sweetness. Clarity. Presence.
And then I picked An Italian Affair for my fingernails, which is kind of a private joke.
Choosing colors is a lot like naming a superpower or setting an intention. It is a good way for me to play. Each time I look at the color, I feel the resonance of the name.
Next time I might…
Remember about the dust.
Clearing things out raises dust.
Sometimes this is hard to remember, because the dust is invisible.
For example, if you are deleting files. Or throwing away a cozy full-of-holes grey t-shirt that belonged to someone you loved, because it is time to let that go, and because you will always remember how heart-breakingly beautiful your time together was, even without the shirt.
You can’t see the dust. You don’t even realize that’s why you’re coughing. But things got stirred up. And before you get to the whoosh-whoosh feeling of freedom that comes from letting go, there’s the headachey, irritable, uncomfortable part.
It’s from the dust. It’s a dust allergy. The air will clear soon. You’re in the process of clearing it.
I would like to remember this sooner next time.
Eight breaths for the hard, challenging and mysterious.
- Remember last week when I got a physical? They gave me the tetanus shot on Wednesday, on Tuesday of this week, my arm and shoulder were STILL SORE. I made faces. And went to work out anyway. And made more faces. A breath for the amount of time my body needs to move through things.
- Panicked Doing All The Work! I mean, admittedly better than Panicked Avoiding All The Work or Panicked Hiding Under The Covers, but it was also exhausting, and the panicky part was not fun. A breath for presence, and for knowing that there is a time for everything.
- I’m ready to leave Portland again. I want to be in the trees, in the desert, near the mountains, by the ocean, on the beach. Lots of places I wouldn’t mind being all of which are very much not here. A breath for this.
- Feeling anxious, and thoroughly convincing myself (monster party in my head!) that Everyone Hates Me because I haven’t delivered all the projects I was working on and how it should have been ready months ago. A breath for trust, for remembering the truth of All Timing Is Right Timing
- Stirring up dust. A breath for letting things go.
- I didn’t get to dance this week. A breath for releasing and for trusting.
- Computer got packed off to the fix-it elves, and either they will be able to fix it or they won’t. Either way, money etc. I have been using other people’s laptops, which is kind of great because it forces me to be laser focused and really use the time I have, and then I get off the computer, which is also good. In fact, my ideal situation would be only having access to a computer for a few hours a day. Maybe I can arrange for someone to just lock mine up in a safe when I get it back, hmmm. A breath for things being what they are right now.
- 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.
- Joy and Sweetness. So much of both of these. For the longest time, these weren’t really qualities that were in the mix for me, it didn’t occur to me to call on them, and now I am a little in love with both of them. They keep bubbling up, while out dancing Saturday night, my head resting on my lover’s chest late Sunday afternoon. A breath for breathing these in, and breathing them all the time, breathing more of them back into the world.
- I started writing a wish over the weekend about something I wanted, and then I didn’t publish it — I went with a different wish instead. And then it came true, out of nowhere. This has been something I’ve been struggling with for a year, and it just resolved itself. Kind of in shock. A breath for good surprises.
- It felt lovely to enter the new year having taken care of dental thing and teeth cleaning and physical and getting nails done. I think this was the first year that I can remember where I felt ready. A breath of thank-you to past me for setting this up.
- New Year’s was simple and easy. I bought roses. I wrote. I talked to Incoming Me. The boy came over around eleven, and we named some wishes and fell asleep in each other’s arms, and slept for ten sweet uninterrupted hours. And I didn’t get PTSD-triggered when the fireworks went off, and this is new. Usually it’s more like this. A breath for entering, more or less, as I wish to be in it, and for the newness of this.
- The hard work is paying off. I finished FOUR ebooks, TWO Havi-Announces-A-Thing pages, five blog posts! I cleared out half my closet and also the problem room. A breath for being in the zone.
- I was able to bring a kind of meditative slowness to thing that needed them. A breath for this.
- I feel very clear. A breath for knowing.
- Thankfulness. So much is good. Texting with Agent Annabelle. Folding clothes slowly and enjoying the touch of fingers on fabric. Stretching. Smiling. Roses. Warm socks.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 BOOM! Operations completed.
EVERYTHING got done this week, including things that have been in process for months and months, thank you fractal flowers. Goodies soon, to those waiting patiently for ebooks, and announcements very soon, for those who can’t wait to find out what’s happening for Plum Duff. Are you on the list? IT IS VERY EXCITING. And also: Wham Boom.
Revisiting some wise important words of truth from past-me.
Oh how I needed this again: You don’t need to take the leap.
Superpowers…
Powers I had this week…
I asked for the superpower of Focused And Happy And Taking Care Of Shit Like A Fairground Stripper! And I got it.
And I also had the power of Does This Bring Me Joy? No? Okay Then I’m Out Of Here! That is a terrific superpower and also a timesaver. I didn’t spend more than a few seconds at a time on Twitter or Facebook, because the joy question just made everything very clear for me.
Superpowers I want.
I want the superpower of the superpower of Things Resolve Themselves In Unexpected And Sometimes Elegant Ways.
And the superpower of Knowing Deep In My Bones Knowing That All Timing Is Right Timing.
So really both of those are about trust.
The Salve of Meeting On The Star Ferry.
This salve is about trust, and it has its own special magic.
You see, on the Star Ferry, your awareness of time changes. On the Star Ferry, all rules and assumptions dissolve, so however long something takes is the exact right amount of time.
Nothing is late because there is no such thing. You are never behind because there is no such thing. If it takes ten minutes to fold one towel because you were daydreaming, that is perfect. If it takes you forty five minutes to get off the couch, that was a great amount of time to be on a couch.
The secret of the Star Ferry is that it actually travels amazingly quickly.
And the secret to how speedy it is comes from the fact that there is no guilt.
I delight in taking ten minutes to fold a towel? Whoosh, the Star Ferry has just whisked me to a marvelous destination.
The Star Ferry has the powers of delicious kisses, of steady warmth, of turning left instead of right and making a marvelous discovery.
When the Star Ferry salve touches my skin, I am on the Star Ferry. I live my life like it’s the Star Ferry life.
This salve heals bruises, not just the ones that can be seen. It smells like naptime and the coming spring.
If salve does not appeal, you can have this in tea form, as a bath, cocktail, whatever works for you. Not only is there enough salve, there are also enough ways to receive it.
Playing live at the meme beach house — the Fake Band of the Week!
This week’s band is called Slam Art, it’s how my phone interprets “so smart”. They are loud and raucous and playing in the Loving Room, which, coincidentally is how my phone autocorrects “living room”. I like Loving Room better. They’re playing all week, and it’s actually just one guy.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
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, it’s no big deal. And I am blowing kisses to the Beloved Lurkers. I love that you are here too.
Entering with roses. Hello, 2015.
On New Year’s Eve, just as it was beginning to get dark, I had two sudden realizations.
One was that I did not in fact want to go out dancing.
I love west coast swing with an intensity I don’t even know how to describe, and I’ve missed eight weeks of dances in a row, because I was away on Operation Tranquility Recovery Magic, wandering the desert in a camper with a boy, and then because everything shut down for Christmas. So I’d really been looking forward to this dance.
Except…
Except suddenly I remembered that New Years Eve energy is loud and complicated.
People tend to go into that forced holiday thing of “I must be happy! I must have fun! It is required!”, there is an anxious hollowness to it, and it is exhausting (for me) to be around.
I haven’t been out on New Year’s Eve in years, not since I was a bartender working the closing shift, so, I don’t know, eleven years? I realized I didn’t want to be out in the world after all.
Which is funny, because if I’d thought about it AT ALL, I already would have known that.
The other realization was that I needed roses, immediately.
So the house is filled with roses now.
Sweet pale yellow ones, edged with pink.
I divided them into twelve small vases and jars, wandered my house until I found the right homes for them.
One in the bathroom, in a blue glass vase which Mary made for me. One by my bed, in an empty bourbon bottle, because I’m classy. One I placed on the landing, by the watercolor painting my mother made. It’s a painting of a rose.
A rose next to a rose. Glued to the back of the wooden frame is a piece of paper, a sketch of petals with barely legible scribbled notes, it fell out of one of her art books when I was going through her things after the funeral:
“Oh! Part of petal bent forward — notice line of direction (curved!!!)”
Another bit says, “If superimposing shadow over directional indicator, figure out how to shape shadow…” then illegible and then: “More carnation-y looking!”.
Apparently this style of note-taking is genetic, because that’s pretty much how my dance notebooks look, minus the flowers. So we have something in common after all.
I wanted to enter the year with roses.
With roses, with quiet, with releasing, with thank yous.
Each year I let go of something.
It’s not a new year’s thing, it’s more of an end of winter thing.
I have little patience with our societal compulsion for new year’s resolutions. Middle of winter (northern hemisphere) is not a time to mix things up.
It’s a time — for me, at any rate — to burrow under the covers, get cozy, hide, reflect. To melt extra cheese on everything. Not a good time to start running. Not that I’d run anywhere anyway, unless it was for a couple measures of a choreographed routine, but you know what I mean.
I have nothing but love for anyone who wants to use the collective energy and the power of the changing digit as a catalyst. For me, though, the new year is more about quiet, listening.
And then sometime around the end of February, beginning of March, as I get the first hint of a scent of newness, I drop something.
Fifteen years ago: sugar and caffeine. Ten years ago: smoking. 2014: guilt and gluten.
This year, I am entering my Shmita year of Easing & Releasing. I have no idea what I will release, though looking forward to being filled with thankfulness for whatever it is. All hail the magic of letting go of what is done.
Here are my wishes for the new year:
I trust in steadiness.
I have beautiful perspective.
I see the good. I am filled with hope-sparks.
Good surprises find me, and I find them. There is support all around, and I feel it.
It is so much easier to take exquisite care of myself, to make choices based on this.
Funds show up for what I need, and for the house renovations that are needed.
I love more, trust more, release more, receive more.
I am brave enough to say what I want.
I am treasured and appreciated all the time, I can feel this and trust it.
I am joyful in the learning process: dance, ASL, spirals, releasing. My [secret project] reveals itself to me in good timing.
So many wonderful baths.
I intentionally avoid social media and other forms of pellet-pushing, and only play there when it is my true desire.
I live by Nothing Is Wrong.
I am playful with life. I feel at home in my life. I am a bold adventurer! I delight in life and aliveness. I choose pleasure.
I am done comparing myself to others, to past me, to imaginary ideals about how I think I should be.
I release assumptions and welcome possibility. I respect my sensitivities and trust my instincts.
I work with what is, while still remaining receptive to [endless] wonderful things that could be.
Thank you is my favorite word, I breathe it a million times a day.
Yes to bringing my full Havi Bell self to all interactions, all connections. I do not hide who I am or what I need.
I find the fun in all things. I see how beautiful I am. Full-hearted yes to love.
Entering with thank yous.
Thank you in advance.
Thank you, wishes. Thank you, me who is brave enough to wish.
Thank you, warm loving community here, for the past ten years, for making this such a safe, beautiful space that I feel okay sharing the contents of my journal with you.
Thank you, roses. Thank you, mom, for sending me the rose painting even though you hated for anyone to see your art. Thank you, Richard for the wooden frame.
Thank you, red flannel sheets. Thank you, me who recognized that staying home was a good plan. Thank you, home.
Thank you for the things that have broken. Thank you for times I have been redirected. Thank you for the sweetness of anticipation. Thank you for the quiet voice that says what is needed, and for the hard-earned ability to listen.
Meet me on the Star Ferry?
I got my nails painted today, and that is the color: Meet Me On The Star Ferry.
It sounds like magic, and possibility. The kind of rendezvous where you might intend to have a glass of champagne but then you end up moving to Puerto Rico.
I love it. And it goes well with my compass for 2015, the eight qualities I’ve chosen to guide my voyage:
Adventure. Rest. Horizons. Security. Passion. Sweetness. Clarity. Presence.
Come meet me on the Star Ferry, 2015. There will be roses and quiet and releasing and thank-you. I have a bottle of Rose Oil that Agent Elizabeth gave me as a gift, it is called Unrepentant Rose Oil, and that seems appropriate right now as we laugh our way into sweet adventures.
Play with me.
You are welcome to leave any wishes for 2015, any thank yous or anything sparked for you. Or roses. I love roses.
Thank you for being here with me.
Goodbye, and thank you, 2014.
It is hard to even get a sense what something is, or was, while it is in the process of passing.
I’ve never really understood the end-of-year lists, summaries, the summing up. How can we say what was? We don’t know yet. That will require time.
So this is just a quiet exiting, a way of clearing out the conduit, because passage into the new is happening whether we think we are ready for it or not.
I want to say goodbye this year with thank-yous in my thank-you heart.
Goodbyes with thank you.
Not that this was a fantastic year or anything. God knows it was full of hard, challenging things. For me. And probably also for you.
These thank-yous are not a negation of the hard. The hard is legitimately hard, and all the emotions that get stirred up when it comes to the hard stuff, these are legitimate too.
These thank-yous are here because this is how I want to exit right now: acknowledging what was sweet, adjusting my eyes so that I can get better at being someone who finds the treasure.
One year ago today.
A year ago, on New Year’s Eve, I was on a plane to Detroit.
My mother had just gotten the first piece of a chain of terrible diagnoses. Incurable, etc etc.
I hadn’t been there in several years.
I remember the plane ride, and also I don’t. I remember writing.
What else?
A year ago today I was in a love story with The Spy, except even then I knew he didn’t trust me, and because of this, he’d sometimes wind up in the crazy. We fought, a lot. We loved, a lot. We wanted completely different things.
It was big and tumultuous and exhausting.
A year ago I was still completely heartbroken about the loss of [business dream] and being stuck with the chocolate shop that I never wanted.
A year ago I was feeling wildly passionate about dance in general and with west coast swing in particular, and feeling the intense frustration of wanting to figure it out.
A year ago I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but I knew a lot about what I didn’t want. I was waiting for clarity, and listening.
Goodbye and thank you, 2014.
What did this year have for me?
I know that much of the treasure from this year won’t be visible for some time, it will reveal itself slowly. I will look back and laugh. I will whisper retroactive thank-yous, just as I say thank you in advance.
So this is just an initial foray into treasure-finding, treasure-seeing.
Starting with thank you, ending with thank you, because that’s how I’d like to start doing things. I’d like to know what this is like.
I’d like to start a year without grimacing, without shooing the year out, without a muttered “don’t let the door hit you on the ass, buddy” as it exits.
Instead I am ready to look for some thank you moments here…
Some thank-yous from the experience of losing my mother.
Thank you: for two sweet visits.
Thank you: for getting to see this (albeit medicated) side of my mother who was just all sweetness.
Thank you: for the support of my brother and my friends and everyone who supported me in a variety of ways while I was going through this.
Thank you: that this is done and not dragging out any longer.
Thank you for peacefulness. Thank you for goodbyes. Thank you for all the ways my mother kept me company (yes, in spirit, what a phrase) while I was away on my forty three days of wandering in the desert after the funeral.
Some thank-yous from the experience of a painful breakup.
Thank you: for everything that was revealed, even if I didn’t want to see those aspects of him, or of myself.
Thank you: for the knowing that there cannot be someone in my life who doesn’t treasure me, not if I treasure myself, and that is my plan. There is no room in my life for people who don’t trust me, no room for people who say hurtful things.
Thank you: for this clearing out.
Thank you, new beginnings. Thank you, love-more trust-more. Thank you, reminder that I am always okay, that I can’t lose anything that is truly mine.
Thank you, for making it so beautifully obvious what I need and what I don’t.
Thank-you for so many marvelous things…
- A thank you for my beautiful two weeks of quiet contemplation at the Vicarage.
- A thank you for dancing my way through San Jose and Palm Springs on a wild, wonderful secret op.
- A thank you for all the Alphabet Rallies.
- A thank you for waltz brunch.
- A thank you for all the things I no longer feel sad about. Now I feel clear about what I want. Not sad. Just determined. That’s big.
- A thank you for time spent with my wonderful uncle Svevo, both here and in Eugene.
- A thank you for Operation White Out with my friend Luke (the noir gunslinger), and how we escaped the evil clutches of Blakely’s henchmen and had a Grand Adventure when that was exactly what I needed.
- A thank you for meeting the beautiful boy, and for the magical thing that realizing you like someone and then realizing they like you back.
- A thank you for a heart full of joy and sweetness.
- A thank you for new windows in my bedroom, now winter is much more bearable.
- A thank you — endless thank-yous — for the six weeks of Operation Tranquility Recovery Magic on the road.
- A thank you for all the people who read what I write here, who are reading right now, who hang out on the Friday Chicken, who glow love for what is here. This is a wonderful form of companionship, and I appreciate it.
- A thank you for the dance community.
- A thank you for friends who are understanding about how ridiculously busy I have been.
- A thank you for the people who lovingly remind me to stop doing.
- A thank you for the realization about Shmita.
- A thank you for all the things I let go of to get here.
Thank you.
Thank you, everything that brought me to this moment.
Some of those things were not very fun. The sprained ankle that took forever to heal. The deep sadness and regret about the chocolate shop. Neglecting to take care of myself in very basic ways.
I am going to trust in the superpowers of Nothing Is Wrong and This Moment Is Treasure.
I am going to invoke the quality of ILLUMINATION from December of the 2014 Fluent Self calendar, with its superpower of bringing light to the corners. And I am going to add to it the word ANCHOR. That’s the January 2015 word from the new calendar (you’ll be able to get yours soon!).
ANCHOR. With the superpower of Calm Steady Trust is mine when I need it.
Let’s illuminate things and be beautifully anchored. Let’s light things up and see how we already are beautifully anchored.
Let’s bring light to the thank-you and anchor the thank-you and live the thank-you. I’m ready for that.
When I look back in a year, if that is something I get to do, I want to remember what it was like to be someone practicing living through thank-you. I want to laugh delightedly and say, “Oh right, I forgot that this was something I had to learn!”
Thank you for last-year me and next-year me, and for the sweet simplicity of knowing that I can talk to either of them whenever I want, that we can glow love forward and back whenever we want to, all the time, we’re doing it right now.
Come play with me.
If you are in the mood for a thank-you moment, you can leave a thank-you here.
If you are not in the mood for a thank-you moment, that’s fine too. No forced thank-yous here. Everything in its right time.
If you would like to leave hearts or pebbles or flowers, I like all of those things.
If you would like to whisper goodbye to 2014, that works too.
Goodbye and thank you, goodbye and thank you.
I will see you on the other side, and it will be different because of how we entered it.