The Hallelujah that counts

I had the genius idea of coming to Bella Terra to write. I could see myself after a preliminary dose of poetry sidled down in the corner of the Starbucks in Barnes and Noble--remember when I used to hate Starbucks I think to myself , not unkindly--apologetic in my own judgment of humanity, how to be human?  Relinquish unto the aspects deigned most unacceptable. I think how liberals or new agers are some of the most judging righteous people I know and I check myself.  My own isolated sanctity's.  An amen that I at least recognize some of my own small vengeance's.  That I am not active in at least some of my worst prejudices any more.

The morning I spent in the coffee shop near my house.  Writing poems til it moved in me that it was time to leave, that my novel was ready to speak and in that...precisely why I had to come here.  On the way I followed the singing to a used book store.  Do you have Emerson's Self-Reliance I asked cheery and foolish for all he knew.  No he shook his head slowly but I didn't even listen and asked instead where the poetry was.  Beside the poetry was "Literature", it is a British voice that pronounces that in my head, silly as I am on a sunny Sunday...I scoured the Li-trit-chore section one by one as if with metal tonged comb.  Nothing.  He was right.  I surrendered and let my bag fall to the floor and cozied in to study the poetry books when the first one jumped off, surrounded by the hallelujah light, Emerson's Collected Poems and Works.  What a find.  I handed over my ten dollars.

Here at the Starbucks at Bella Terra the line was so long and people so many you couldn't even see the front door. Mos Def on the stereo maybe, hard to say.  I spotted a dirty crammed table with straw wrappers and some kind of sticky mess visible from as far as I was away.  I headed towards it, a little man with a beak-nose and a beard of Jewish grey slid in and pretended to ignore me.  I hated him so much in that moment before I remembered to laugh and loosen up.   Just wait and be I reminded myself and within the ten minutes it took for my drink a table in the middle of the room opened up.  I promised myself that if someone hopeless and wandering passes by I'll share my unused part of the table top and push a chair their way.

Why is it I can flow so easily in so many sections of my life?  Why why why can I so easily open in to and happily contribute to the ongoing daily dialogue of the larger day?  And yet still want to force the littlest details, til I feel absolutely nuts?

Ask why, cuz you're gonna I told Erin on the phone this week.  But only ask that of yourself for one sec, don't waste too much of your time.  Don't focus on the why when it's the Hallelujah that counts.

Hallelujah, hallelujah.  Halllle freakin lujah, I say.

The Return of Sweetie Cream Cheese?

Marla's a friend of mine who works in radio.

I write that and as I do streaming through on my I-tunes live feed is WTMD outta Baldamore and they are talking about this event at the Rutger tomorrow night featuring Charm City Rollergirls and Gilded Lilly Burlesque performances and all I can ironically think about the music here at the beach is not exactly my kind of radio...but whatever works...

Guess who's back I tease her yesterday morning at work.  It is 6 am or so, maybe 6:15.  The orange light in the coffee shop glowing warm.  Peaceful.  I may hate, hate getting up that early because of the thin metal tiredness accompanying me at all times, but it is quiet in the morning there, waiting for the sun.  It is still.

WHO?  she scampers around in a whirlwind til she's turned sharp and petite in my direction and three espressos in, looks at me all Marla-wild.  I laugh I can't help myself, I love her so much and did immediately, she is one of those rare people who simply and unapologeticly is who she is.  She thinks I am referring to someone from work, one of our bosses or board members or some thing I can tell by the frozen way she stops.  Noooo no, no.  That's not what I meant!  I am smiling and full of ease. 

She calls me Feeney, as in Shirley Feeney.  Like from Laverne and Shirley because she is so brass and I am so often aiming for some unaimable tempering and calm.  Without realizing how, I've learned working with her that this is nothing to strive for:  it simply is who I am.  My nature to be loving and accepting, overexuberant and full of praise for all living or loving things.  It comes out so bubbly and innocent most of the time because I'm just being who I am.

I meditate, and have for years.  I practice several different techniques, from occultist trance to prayerful christian exaltion to tantric-mantra chanting to simple pranayama or minimalist buddhist watching.  The point is to go within, to be unfearful in confronting me.   The wisdom of Anicha, which is a sanskrit word I learned at a 10-day silent meditation retreat using the technique of Vipassana, means changing.  Change is the ego's, or self-talk always on rev and going going up there, way.  When our minds are full only of ego than the state of our consciousness is pliable, easy to be swayed.  AND, Anicha teaches that the state of our emotions and reactions are always in a state of flux.  So meditation helps us watch them but not BE them.  Hence, this too shall change, or pass...and therein: peace. 

Sweetie Cream Cheese I tell her.  Sweetie Cream Cheese is back!  Sweetie is the name I gave myself when she explained why I was Shirley to her Laverne, and the only reason I was even aware of Sweetie when Marla pulled out youtube clips and laughingly started calling me Feeney is because that particular day, after many that felt just like it, I was full of the dry, tired irreverence that is the underside of having Feeney-nature.  So I could see the fluffy cream cheese Shirley Sunshine part that day really, really well.

And that's the thing.  Changing.  I was driving along yesterday listening to Marla's radio station.  A hair-rock, one-hit wonder band was on it reminded me of Skid Row and Sebastian Bach (my first long-haired 1980's crush, followed by Slash of GnR ha!)  My ipod's battery was dead, my hair smelled that fabulous ripe smell of hormony sunshine because I was laying on the beach in 60 degree weather for an hour, I was on my way to cook dinner for Valentine's dinner with a girlfriend.  The sun was low in the sky and yellow in that burnt way that makes the clouds edges look bluer than they really are.  I had one of those moments--I've been exhausted lately, run down with the wintertime, and waiting for this phase of my life to pass.  But after several experiences that I had to make happen of quiet, of meditation and devotion to my own sacred-ordinary life, my perspective is centered again...until changing changing it isn't once more...!  Today I have the peace that is under it all, though.  The watcher's peace, the quiet ok.  It's all always changing, passing on by. 

Sweetie Cream Cheese, while maybe not so enthusiastic as she naturally is, always helps remind me that none of this, not one part of my funny random life do I ever want to miss.  It's precisely this cold, tired shit, these miserable 80's bands and me and Marla rolling our eyes at the watching eyes of bosses and board members and us sharing too much sugar and coffee amplifying our natures in the mornings that make me laugh.  And makes me get quiet, appreciative of it all.  Appreciating the burnt sun blue edges of all of it.  Sweetie Cream Cheese!? Marla screams in that loud funny way.  She slams her low-carb sugar-free but with one Splenda double shot 20oz drink she is not paying attention to me it is coffee and not smoking cigarettes on her mind.   Then she says I missed you Shirley Feeney and I am laughing again, life's not passing me by I am with it, with her and all the people I love and we are changing and trying to keep up or be still or work on moving on.

 

Be Kind, Plato said

I was so dark and gnarly yesterday.

It was hella hot out, and I only got maybe an hour of complete sleep Thursday night. I had errands to run and other little life things I told a friend I'd help with yesterday morning, then lunch with mom and there's nothing that disappoints me more than paid-for bad food. Next was work at 3 and by the time I got in there I thought I'd fall over I was so miserable. Of course I got my period. Sometimes even the thought of PMA (choosing the positive mental) just pisses me the fuck off.

I have learned, however, to take myself--especially at my most foul--lightly. Be kind, Plato said, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. To practice this most effectively I have begun at home: compassion for my self.

There is a Sanskrit word for the Western understanding of Changing. It is Anicha. Anicha is the Buddhist quality of human nature: the flowing whimsy of the unswept mind.

Liken Anicha as a concept to a stream. You're chilling waterside, in the woods, watching the water go by. Ah it's so mellow, the air feels like dancing, the trees are sighing you can hear them. The stream sounds like a hushhh. The water is one body, but keep your eyes on one singular spot. Watch there goes a leaf floating on top. There goes a funny rivulet of bubbles....Now nothing but water but even it fuses and blends and seems to change forms, now a water bug floats along followed by a thin brown branch. Changing, changing. Anicha. The water surface changes and yet. It's always the same. This is the mind, the ego self. There too is the watcher by the stream. Quiet witnesser, where breathing lives.

And so this is the alchemy of magical thinking, Anicha. What 12-step rooms teach as This Too Shall Pass. (And come again, too) There was a time, a long time for me, that hopelessness of thought or emotion or physical slug trapped me, like Chinese handcuffs the harder I'd yank to get away the worse it'd take hold. Samsara is Sanskrit, too, and basically means those little mental loops we get stuck in, the ego with its roughian bloody jawgrip it takes hold, clamps down and causes the resistancy to growwww. Maybe your little loop of samsara is about paying a bill. Ah there it floats on by oh crap it's due next week... but that's when I was going to get my oil change too...Here's where you loosen up, you watch the thought without chomping down, ahhh there it goes. Or where the deathgrip grabs it, ego ego human control, takes hold. The looping intensifies. The loop track gets bigger. More and more fear and loathsomeness...What the fuck's the point? My always final absolute last bad thought in that miserable loop.

Somewhere in the center is compassion. For ourselves, our sick twisted imperfectly perfect little human minds. And oh the great joy of laughing at it, not taking any of it too seriously because why? If heaviness is just going to increase the misery flow? This is first axiom of those Eastern Wisdom Teachings: Life is suffering, because of addiction to the ego's flow. Detachment just means the wisdom of Anicha. And compassion is an action word, love and gentleness with ourselves....

What if all life was just about enjoying the flow, being open as possible to the nutty updown of the ever present moment?

What if Anicha gave you the power to choose for it to be so?

What if?

Or better~why not?

Mercury went Retrograde yesterday, nows a great time to practice lightening up on your self. Read all about here.

My Little Family

Dad is in the back, in his room, there are piles everywhere and no furniture here other than the kitchen table, which wont stay, and the LazyBoy Sean and mom and I pitched in and bought him the winter Richard died and Chuck was so sick and about to die, too. Other than the table, and LazyBoy, it is just piles everywhere. Mostly paper piles, but a corner of the floor is all liquor, and another soda, and if bottles could be piled all that glass and plastic would be stacked on top the other, too. That is something I've learned about us, my little family. We make piles, and live on cheese and crackers and microwaved tea.

I am eager to see what will become of this place. I helped dad take down the tree today, the artificial plastic dark green bows with the white twinkle lights built in. The steel frame. We ducked taped the box all together to fit it up the attic stairs. The attic is crammed tight with boxes, also I am imagining of papers. And cots disassembled, which were Pop's, my dad's dad which I am guessing were saved because they are a visceral reminder of Pop's legacy: the Army. Also up there is a chest with all the McMullen heirlooms our family has claim to. What was left of Church Street, Grammy and Pop's place in Brooklyn, South Baltimore, after we sold it in 1997 in the fall the summer after Gram died. There are about three boxes up there that belong to me: one for the kitchen, two randoms but not full of papers. Just my bauble trinkety magyc stuff I couldn't bare to part with after I left the farm. I also have my first computer up there, and a chest I filled with 32 years of momentos, the stuff important enough to save. Dad bought me the chest from the Five and Dime on the corner of Broadway in Fells the spring I turned 18, when mom demanded he move home from California to make peace with me. She's always had that power over him.

Last night I took him out to dinner, my dad. It is MLK weekend which is always the weekend I come down here to work for my mom at this scrapbooking convention in OC. Mom goes away most of the month of January she saves all year for it it is what she does. And I come down and do foot therapy on these women and spend the weekend with my dad, under the guise that it is his birthday on the 22cnd. The first year, 07, I came down here with all these expectations, thinking we would spend time together and make up for so many lost years. He went golfing the whole weekend instead, and it took me a little bit to understand: it is not personal, it is just what he does. We did go out to eat that night tho, which is what we have in common dad and I, with his mom: our great, great love of food. And over dinner that night I told him: I dont know if my relationship with Brandon is going to work. I am having my doubts, I am so numb and unhappy, and I dont know what to do. It was January, 2007. He, my dad, away all those years to make money which he lost to credit debt and depression that broke him when his two best friends died at mid-life, was the first person I ever told. Today we undecorated the house, the piles on the floor all around. Last night I took him out for birthday dinner with the money I made working for mom. Then we went out and watched the miserable miserable home-team game. It is mellow, and happy, this time together, this place and time we now have to just call ours.

Beds, two chairs, and lots of piles. A TV. Papers, some momentos. Gram and Pop's memories of home. Plants, lots of plants. Out here in the living room Bagger Vance is on TV. Dad's fave. He is in his room, watching the same thing on his TV, sorting through piles and folding clothes, periodically calling out about the movie. My parents, married but only contractually. The modern day partnership: minus the romance but learning to be friends. The kitchen table is full of papers of my own. I had plans to get so much done today but instead I am so content to, on the LazyBoy we years ago bought for my hardassworking dad, just lay around.

Cycles & Wisdom & Sometimes Getting to Know

In my wyld and at times crazed round about head there is lately an almost daily flash of new thought or insight that I am noticing floating on by.

It's always a wonder to me the way that my thought process, thus my growth goes: how I'll spiral along with these little randoms of new passing thoughts, fresh and clean as a classroom at the start of September. How they delight by my mind's eye dancing from all different slanted and quik-passing directions, til BAM, along comes one of those days when the fluid is so flow, when everything is so right that it all falls together in a tapestry of perception and oneness-of-living that it so brand new and fresh that it is clear that my soul, big and bright, and my subconscious have been busy at it making sense of things for me all the while. How on those BAM days I can be moved to tears in joy over the simple serendipity and obvious blessed harmony of things.

How I want that, all the time. What a sucker I am, you know, for feeling good...

And so what's on my mind today: how I am aware of being in one of those upturns of my own cycle right now. New growth and taking things in. And since I can see it, little flashes of original thought here and there, and have seen this before--I know that it will eventually culminate in a whole new understanding of things. Which increases my amped-ness to know what is on the way....

But then at once such anticipation also births the awareness in me of what it is to be dull: in the lax period, the time of quiet or void that feels like to me nothing but mud, to be with confusion and no dreams...and how this always pre-empts a period of great wonder and new lease, and also always follows a new level of heightened perception and increase.

This sounds manic-depressive, yes? I know I know. But the truth is I believe this to be quite naturally the cycle of the Creative. And I am heartened at how this triumph, this great seizure and breath of life itself, then the inevitable exhale and release so naturally and rythmically follows the world. The earth itself, the flux and flow of the seasons, the living and dying of every breathing detail, of even the moon. My god even the economy, the stock market, it all goes up, and, what the market-eyes will tell you: so too will what goes up come down.

It is Anicha time right now. Time of Great Changing. The time the earth dreams long of what she soon will grow. In this dreamtime is the unmanifest energy of all that you shall be in the year to come. Feel it, magic and subtle as breath passing by your hair. All artists can feel it right now. Unless they're drugged or drunk-numb...(it's hard at times to trust all that sizzle of magic! hell this I know for sure)...You're sure you feel just behind the air--it's almost like a tingle on your skin. The Dreamtime in your subconscious...the slight rush deep within.

Mercury retro will pass at the end of the month and then Imbolc will come. And then, all us earthly people so consumed with our daily lives will, if we are in a place with Winter, forget that Spring shall come. February will hit us hard with the hurt and we will forget: that our daily acts of living indeed are our only form of prayer. Trust this friends and trust yourselves, trust the natural ebb of quiet and rest for what it is--the downtime before the great release. And it follows naturally this spellbound rush then gone, rush then gone, sometimes electric sometimes Still, time of January when your soul-stuff is letting off little glimmers of all that it deeply dares you to Dream.

Three is One: Lessons from Mercury Retro

Wow I had such a long day today I feel like I lived a million different lives. At an open house at the college's Continuing Ed department where I work, some of the various aspects of me literally collided this afternoon. I was barely manning the Adult Ed station when I noticed the women next to me had a booth set-up about a Reiki One class she was offering. I introduced myself and we got immediately in to one of those peacefull, clear and heightened-conversations. Next thing you know, out of the blue appears Tai-Chi Wayne from Chestertown, and now the three of us are jamming and in our own little harmonic convergence. Big talks, lots of light. In the middle of all it I notice that the bigboss from the Maryland State Dept of Ed just got there--I knew I needed to get my head over to the crowd around her. Wayne, upon my excusing myself, pulled me in for a quik reiki-share as means of departing, at which moment I was caught red-handed as the freeflowymoonymama I am: there in my Calvin Klein bizness trousers and sharp black fitted-sweater with my college nametag on, the whole Adult Ed staff witnessed my huruguru wyld woman as they sought me out for the bigboss. I took it in stride.

It gets better.

As I'm greeting the MSDE bigboss, here comes my bigboss, the head of the college's Cont Ed Dept. She wants me to meet her daughter, whom she has always claimed is just like me from looks on in. So off we go across the building to the conference room where her daughter is teaching a class. I meet her daughter hello hi hi hello. And then who should appear behind the daughter but Brandon's mom, who is taking the class because it is a farm management class for women. I've not seen his mom but once since I moved off Anngar farm.

Talk about convergence people.

I literally felt like, in those ten minutes time, I was in a revolving door and each time an opening passed it was a window in on my life. And more, for the first time in ever, I understood, like in me!! In my heart not my head!! that life, plainly put, IS NOT segmented. Which was exactly what me and Dena the Reiki Lady and Tai Chi Wayne were talking about: the web of life, the ecological truth of the wholeness, or interconnection, of all earthly things. That there isnoseperating any of it out, how same as run-off effects the river effects the ocean effects the fish effects the humans effects the air effects the stream...So too am I that same example of autonomy, at once functioning within the larger flow of all that effects me and that I effect. As the me who shows up for "real life" and my job is the same me that creates, is the me with the writing as a hobby that keeps me sane. Is the me in love, the me in need of me and Independence, the me who has a community, the me that is alone. And maybe it's true that all of those parts speak in somewhat different forms, but it's still the same voice I use, all as one.

The funny thing is I felt like I should have felt overwhelmed to swallow all of that all at once. And I did, in all honesty, cut out of there hella quik and get on the phone to my friend in Oregon...but I had to be somewhere else anyway. And what counts is I saw it all.

Which brings me to mercury, in retrograde right now. Reviewing reviewing reviewing. An excellent time to let life run its course and sort of just sit back and watch the stream float past, like little picture windows open but with nice screens and open breeze. To try not to get too connected to any of it, any thoughts or ideas or experiences or circumstances, as right now we are literally in soul review prior to first seed of spring. Think of it as a seasonal inventory. Time to take stock, once again, of within.

Anicha. This too shall pass. Anicha. The nature of all things is changing. Anicha. Changing. Anicha. Changing. All things rise. Anicha. All things fall. Anicha. All things pass.

Anicha. All things circle back, and by and by, again. Anicha. So it goes. Anicha. So it goes. Anicha. So may it be.