The Vintage Series.

You guys, I'm back.  YES, the Impulse Itself is vibing high and vital!  Screaming surging pulsing pressing to get out and witnessed, or at least not to just stay bubbling under the surface any longer.
Can a blog that started only six years ago be called vintage?  No haha and I am alright by that bc I dowhatiwant and also,  yes of course it can--bc in this high-wire frame of techno overdrive time blogging is as yesterday as MySpace so holllaaaa and whatev.  Who's gonna stick with what feels good anyway?

Ya.  Def this girl.

So for two years I worked out my esoteric witchy wisdom stuff over on Wild Women Wisdom.  I'm really hella proud of that project and how it informed me as a tool through which I could be self-taught.  That whole time, (and still) I was getting fed from the bottom on up by my education in depth-influenced counseling psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute.  For the past several months I have been behind the scenes, relying on the old persona of KadadaB to work it out for me as I begin to coalese the old with the new in order to focus actively on what will yet be!  So STOKED!

Wild Women Wisdom is slowly changing into the hub of my women's coaching practice.  I am focusing on self-empowerment, whole-bodied practical day to day meeting of yourself where you're at and learning to love and live your self, through whatever responsibilities and roles are alive and real in your life as a woman.  I am happy to work with men too!  I will also specialize in The Women's Work, or the Menstrual Mysteries, which is helping women to embody their personal tides until they are no longer mysteries!  A life's work, for sure…I offer Skype sessions right now, can see clients in an office space in San Juan Capistrano, and (especially for more ritual or sacred-based work) in my home.

Ultimately--and here's the exciting stuff to me!  The seeds of what yet will be!  Woot woot--I will be incorporating--ever so slowly, my goal of doing the Social aspect of Permaculture work.  SoCIal Perm. I'll be using Wild Women Wisdom to mostly work that out but you know there's no separating soul--so stay tuned on here to learn--WITH ME!!--more about what I mean by that.  We'll learn together, since that's always how I do this jam.

The Impulse Vintage Series will be alive-- again!  Horay.  Bc sure as I am living I need a place to express all the minute expressions of the holy mundane coming through me and that I'm out there relating to each day.  In this way, I re-Christen this blog, at the season of Samhain, holy celebratory tide of reverence for the dead.  From which comes all new life.

To Poetry, as a way of being, living, seeing.  Getting it all down~  holy act of self-creation.  Amen Amen Amen.

I love you guys!  Play on~

Wild Card Inside. (You Really Should Read This.)

There's this Feist song going through my head as I sit down to entertain the thoughts behind what will become this blogpost.

I feel it all, I feel it all is how it starts and what I want to write about is the potential recklessness of being as god-damned emotional as I am.  I''ve begun journaling again and am trying to take much time as I can to resettle and recharge, too, an intuitive move that I've been drawn towards since November and which, I understand now that I've finally begun, is motivated by my deeper wisdom.  What I call God (proof of either my pure faith or my true atheism: my GOD is the Vegetable Body, the other 92% or so of my body/mind/consciousness that keeps me going while I twiddle along and shit all over my mind with the piddly 8 or so percent of brain power I actually have or think I have competency over...)  Anyhow.  My deeper wisdom, ol VB settled in harmony around me in the kitchen this morning.  I need to journal right now in order to temper and reign in my emotional life.  I've tons of experience in the handiness of this.

It's how I've come to learn HOW to make good decisions.

Look, this is the Old World Western-Wound.  I dont care who you are or where you live, if you've got six kids a monster SUV and a hub who wears a tie to work, a hippy bliss-head wearing few clothes with most your possesions in your backpack and a happy home built by hand in the woods or a high-powered heel-wearing bus-jumping city glam girl with two dates one at happy hour and one at eleven tonight when drinks are half-priced, the point is we all come from the same tribal thing and that is the unconscious presumption that our emotions are somehow BAD or at best SILLY THINGS.

I was in my mid-twenties when I learned the importance of how to name what I was feeling, when I actually was taught by someone that there was a range of inner-life deliveries other than good/bad or even happy/sad.  And I'm coming on the end of my 34th year now, having just put behind me what I would say was my very first year of successfully living according to my own integrated rhythms.  To illustrate:

New Years Day Katie and I were sitting slap-happy as hell and laaaaid-out in a nest on my folks couch watching movies.  Classic sweatpants on Sunday style day.  My boss called to talk over some issues at work.  When I hung up I bitched for a few secs about one certain issue, in order to blow off steam and then resume movie-watching chill-mindedly.  It happened that at that exact moment my dad walked  in and proceeds to bark (my nice way of saying yell, as I've come to accept this is how he communicates: All reaction) Kel!  What have I taugyht you!  It's not personal!  It's work!  It's not personal or emotional it's just work!

Katie and I, as my brother and I so naturally do still, just looked at each other and than busted out laughing so hard and grimy that all we could do was immediately start making fun of dad and each other.  Do you get it?  Here's my father, emotionally screaming about me needing to learn to not be emotional when it comes to work.

And here is the tribal wound:  THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS NOT BEING EMOTIONAL

Emotional lives are real as the chemical epicenters that trigger them.  Indeed, when it comes down to it chemical response is really all they are.  Doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman you've got chemical response centers.  But not having emotional lives, and men in particularly and the devaluing of them and their emotional lives, and the resultant suppressing of women and ours because of that, is the lie that Western Society has so suppressingly cultivated over the years.  It is responsible for all matters of power struggles.  I have zero, that is ZERO friends with whom I've not commiserated over our mom's subtle victim/martyring ways and the demasculation of men at home that ultimately rotates out of all of that.  And it is what it is, built on years of conditioned self-sacrifice.

And behavior is modeled when it comes to how we influence one another.

So therein, the deceptive nature of being true to ourselves.  Emotions suppressed, much like in Feist's video when she tries to bang out the fire sparks, will jackknife out in the most caddy-wampus directions.  The truth is lies in this case, as it is when we react or make decisions based on a charged feeling in the moment.  So learning to not react to them willynilly but also to honor them, feel and integrate them and the messages they inherently deliver MEN and WOMEN, proves to be our generation's most endeavoring order.  I read Committed by Liz Gilbert in the fall, and weeks later a blog post by an old friend in which both mentioned the pure luck of birth that so many of us landed in middle-class lifestyles in the West.  Meaning our problems, no matter what, are motherfuckin high-bottom.  And I will be the first to say that is true, that my people are no longer dominated by establishing compulsion: struggling to put food on the table or keep a roof over head.  My ancestors by and large progressed that for us/me--and with wisdom and more resources comes responsibility.  Period.  Poetry is political, you're life is how you be. And we're all in this together, afterall.

Suppression is suppression and personal power, and oppressing it through de-, and/or over-valuing our emotions by only ever reacting to them, is a behavior that we can either model, or undo.  The results are never-ending.

Word.


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On Craft: Ferlinghetti & The Real Work.

Glad for the discourse, the go between that happens in the mythic when I engage myself creatively. The serendipitous alignment that entrances Brooks and I...couldn't get five pages of my novel done the other night so I blog rolled for inspiration and discovered Mike's post about Icarus. Dead-on time for me, because so recently I was feeling so good about having the vision for my book locked-in, but not being able to write had me fighting myself in such a gnarly way my wings definitely felt burnt. I write a response back, and link to a post I wrote last year about the Duende, and that post eyeballs me with Liz Gilbert's whole piece about creativity being a dance.

My job, do the work. Write the words, period.

Not my job: to figure out why or why not, how or when the Presence, the great Muse or Duende or Genie or Impulse or whatever else I call it, will show up and visit and it will all feel right and with the flowwww...

My job, do the work. Continue to educate, to read. To read to read to read, and to cultivate fresh, open mind. This is The Real Work--remember that? Literally, show up. & too, the intriguing relationship between showing up and taking in new knowledge and doing so in a non- prejudiced way. Let's take apart that word: non-pre-judged...My application of Real Work, to show up to your own life in a active way, courageously taking yourself on. Finding where you are programmed to beliefs, ideas or behaviors that are not authentically your own. Unselecting them.

Cultivate dissidence and critical thinking. First thought may be worst thought. This is Lawrence Ferlinghetti in Poetry as Insurgent Art. I love this. It is saying just that to me: question everything, including the what-I-consider-sacred. First thought=Best thought? Well, this is extraordinary, yes. Spondown works for me because I believe in honesty, writing the truest sentence I know. Which means I just sit down and Gooooooo with the words to get it all out, come what may. BUT--what if the first ten thoughts are fear-riddled, are examples of me lying to myself because it happens that the subject matter arises insecurities, and insecurities for me taunt out old defenses I picked up as a kid or something. First thought=truth in that scenario, but only in so much as Herman Hesse would teach. Everything is true, including the opposite of the truth...

So for today's lesson, kiddies? I'll leave us with us this, also from Ferlinghetti:

Dont be so openminded that your brains fall out.

& yet (fine, subtle nuance, funny little dissident line where ever-present newness of this eternal creative moment lives....)

Become a new mind and make it newer.

Of Note: Self-Portrait In Ink

by Bruce Beasley

As the gone-
translucent

octopus
jet-blasts into evasion, vanishing

while its ink-sac spurts
a cloud of defensive

mucus & coagulant
azure-black pigment,

self-shaped
octopus imago in ink, so the shark

gnashes at that blobbed
sepia phantom,

pseudomorph
that disperses into black

nebulae & shreds
with each shark-strike

& the escaped
octopus throbs

beyond, see-through
in the see-through water, untouched--:

so, go
little poem, little

ink-smudge-on-fingertip
&-print, mimicker


& camouflage,
self-getaway, cloud-

scribble, write
out my dissipating

name on the water,
emptied sac of self-illusive ink...

____

This is a love story; and
bitter prayer, in disappointment to
be more than
I have been.

Taking a stand.

You've heard this axiom before, right? Stand for something or fall for everything?

I agree, but still am particularly cautious about what I stand behind. Because with wisdom comes responsibility. So to take a stand for something, in my opinion, implies responsibility to whatever you are claiming.

And responsibility is inherent of our behaviour--not who but how we be. Thus, being responsible becomes a character thing, quite legitimately being the change.

It's the end of mercury retrograde. That means that most of this week I've spent in review, not writing much because of all the watching. Lots of troubled stuff and lots of mundane, the samskaras surfacing. This is happening for us all right now, this is one of the inner mysteries it just is. Much as possible I've tried to merely witness what my spirit is showing. Allowing the automatic surfacing to guide me deeper into my experiences in life as a conscious, open person.

The review is almost over now though, it is Sunday, I have one week left of work then five days before I start my move! I am excited, terrified, and eager for it all. I am trying to stay perched on the edge of my life, of my daily experiences as a newcomer to the world: open, engaged, in awe.

Which brings me to the beach yesterday, Ocean City, a storm coming up. The way it moved caught me in that place of wild women, of wild sacred spirit: The sacred inner S/HE/IT. That tension of compulsion how sumptious it is. The authentic struggle, listing between the tides of self and inner speak and passion and the real day-to-day walking in the world of job and friends, places to be and stuff to do. In that center place, in the Great Still where the wild yowl of potential and passion surrender to the practical every day--in there the ocean air engorged with the thunder air coming from the north and I literally felt my rebel yell echo against a curve in the Atlantic sky.

That echo. A reminder of the power of the unseen magic of the world.

It was Mandy, Shannon, me. Two, then three, then four of Shannon's other friends with us. Not a lot of talking, just sitting, and some laughing in the sand and let me tell you nothing in life feels like a thunder storm moving in over the ocean and when it came the ocean turned the weirdest, most melancholy green. Then it was black all over the sky, and then the first flash and we got up to go. It'd been hot up til then but the night before outside the club the air was coming off the sea. And then yesterday the storm came and was followed by perfect blue sky, but by last night the wind was blowing like mad, the weather'd shifted, the humidity that brought the lightening and thunder is gone and in Easton today I have to have a sweatshirt on over my tee. And most of all, that place in me, the center place is awakened and charged~engaged by the magic that the natural world rooted in me.

I am taking a stand. It came around this morning after a spontaneous talk with Rudy-Satva, after remembering the impression of Shaman Bob last night in the middle of my deep, deep and otherwise dreamless sleep, after remembering that alluring reminder of magic behind the thunderocean wind. The veil over this world, the power of the unseen. It is real it is real it is real but it is up to us to walk that reality in to being. And so there is the one thing to which I am taking a stand, putting my responsibility behind. All else, the book, the boarding house, OC, Pac NW, Baltimore or Mexico, Hawaii or Crownsville, travelling or staying still~is secondary to this one thing.

Opening up to the Power inside. The deep, unyeilding power within. Being responsible to it, being responsive to it. Recognizing as within, so without. And from within, from that inner spot where I own myself and open up to the world of who I am, so too do I converge with the outter world and the day to day. It is this power that connects me to you, and to her, and to him, and to the earth and to the thunder and to the sky and to the sea. Elemental, because atomically none of us are any different and atoms react to the energy of other atoms. Get it? Within is my duty, yes, but the the living of it day to day is what matters most to me. Being struck and awed by the outter expression of thunder and electric which too is inside of me. Being struck and present in the exchange with a stranger on the street, or with mom on the phone. Being aware of my reactions, responsible to them. It is what I believe we each are charged with doing. Illuminating ourselves, and living this light, one person to one person to whole groups at a time.

Are you paying attention? Am I paying attention? To the faintest inner stirring, to the thunder rebel yell, to the conversation, to the image in the dream? Am I telling myself it doesn't matter, or am I opening up unto the mystery, and encouraging the open moment with what could be.

Consciousness, for lack of a better term and in order to make no religious association. What I am standing for, being alive, being awake, being conscious to me. What if none of it matters.

Sure that's probably true. But what if I decide it does? What if by virtue of that decision, of that one thing to stand for~it does?

Then what?

Then I take my stand.

Poetics and the political, Charlie Mars & learning as I go

We sit on different sides of the same table him and me and I forget it's because he writes fiction and I'm a poet but no that's not true, either--it's not that I forgot it's more that I never thought about it in those terms.

It is snowing, hard, when we walk down Goldsborough on our way to see Charlie Mars. He points this out, that he is not a poet and has never written poetry. There are still a few cars on the road downtown but for the most part the air is filled with wet white specs and everything is grey. The Coffee Cat, when we enter, is warm and my glasses mist over immediately with steam. They already had snow drops all over them.

Earlier, when he first got to my place, I was still in my frump clothes and only had time to brush baby powder through my hair and put on some musky oil. While he waited I showed him Carrot's Zine and so of course we immediately started talking Craft.

It's funny how he pisses me off--I defend stream of consciousness and first thought even as I'm thinking about me editing editing editing. Prose and poetry. The intersection between first thought, the consciousness it draws forth from there, and the sensibility to edit but still keep the Beautiful Vision in tact. I think about being pissed and realize there must be something new in this conversation for me to gain.

I think about other men who've pissed me off.

Charlie Mars is good. Really good. I fall in love a little. With him, his movement, his stories, his clear, kaleidoscope voice. I am glad he's not with his band. The poetry moves in me after a while, I want to call out and make him stop and make the snow outside stop coming down and make my skin stop tingling the way it does when the acid first kicks in. Remember that? A body trip we used to call it...but no, this is not acid it is the Duende, the Descention. When the song first hits and starts to ring through me. It makes me, sitting there, feel crazy a little like how it used to when I didn't know what it was.

It would be fun to hang out with Charlie Mars. I think he would be good at making out. Which is or isn't the same as hanging out. Depends on who you're with...Also, his songs are full with stories, like my Memoir, so by the time it is over all I want to do is write. Write until the snow goes away, write until it is night, and then the night is day.

Later, after Charlie Mars and after walking to the grocery store in the snow and no cars on the streets at all, he is sweet and makes a list of things he does when editing. An actual list. I smile a little and there's that inner eye-roll. Teacher Tom. I keep reminding myself to be open, to learn. To be teachable. We are both Aries only three days apart so that's a lot of fire.

Then today we are back at it again, He is very plan plan plan work work work and now I am decisive in putting my finger on his position and refuting it. I've got diPrima out, we've been reading poems to each other. Dinners and Nightmares. I point out who she was, who she is, I identify her myth. Nightmares: Her regular run-ins with violence in the name of authority and institution. I am redblooded and hot faced in defense of her alchemical free verse, impassioned, breathless about women in the fifties being locked in sanitariums and asylums if, for example, they didn't want to marry. Of course it's important to know the Cannon I am saying, I'm not refuting that at all, you need to know the rules in order so that your voice might break them as dictated and become strong and true on your own....

I open Pieces of a Song and run my finger over the bent pages. My eye stops on Poetics which I dont ever remember reading but I know this will be the one. I go there: If the New York School and the establishment were symbolic of the Patriarch then her voice, her Voice, was anti this. She was a scholar. She channeled Blake and Keats. She knew what she was doing. O'Hara and Ginsberg claimed the same things. But can you find a book of hers at Borders? Not often, most times no, no you can not.

I am defending my self. I know this. The white sun is reflecting the snow and my little living room is full of light. I plant my eyes on his, gain silence, and smile. Then read

Poetics (Diane diPrima)
I have deserted my post, I cldnt hold it
rearguard/to preserve the language/lucidity:
let the language fend for itself.
it turned over god knows enough carts in the city streets
its barricades are my nightmares

preserve the language!--there are
enough fascists &
enough socialists
on both sides
so that no one will lose this war

the language shall be my element, I plunge in
I suspect that I cannot drown
like a fat brat catfish, smug
a hoodlum fish
I move more & more gracefully
breathe it in,
success written on my mug till the fishpolice
corner me in the coral & I die

He leaves soon after, I walk him out and breathe deep the fresh air so sparkly it makes me feel like I have lung fulls of clean sharp sun. I go back inside and use all his suggestions, index cards, color-coding, all of it. All afternoon I work and come away with an organization plan for my memoir broken down by year: 1994 all the way through til now.

I am happy, satiated. I am passionate, yes. And learning to be wrong.

Or at least, still learning to learn.