How that's supposed to make me feel.

I am writing this week with loud music for part of it which I'm not used to being able to do.  So far, so good.  My Wednesday morning regular cancelled this morning and I had slept on the sofa because it would be easier to get up early.  I like mornings that start like this, right off the couch like it's still yesterday and all I have to do is go change and fold blankets.  Coffee will be ready by the time the screen is already open and gaping and that is a huge, weird turn-on.  And then I am sitting and then I am finger tapping and time is disappearing behind me like road under tires.  I don't get any of this.  And writing feels like I am almost to my shoulders in the hot spring muscle soft waters.  Every word I write I also see a dream splice, and it has been like this the last several days where I am walking in the middle of last night's dreamscape.  It is funky to weave my thesis in with all this.  My therapist's direction:  follow the soul of the work.

What in the good love of fuck?  I don't even know what that means either.  I have never been so frustrated and so at peace in my life.  I think of October 2011 living up north at the top of the state dirt redwood backroads and doing yoga under the green canopies.  And in a forward bend and stopping on a choke feeling of glee because, ohhh my god, this space here on my back deck I could see this.  Deep inside in places that always just felt like discontent, because that's yearning, I saw this land and this yoga here, that fog and that sun, the pine needle earth, these trees!  Holy god.  And that's what this is, yes.  This little hobbit house window looking out the canyon, the heater on the floor the music and the sun deck for reading in the late sun hours.  My god those moments in my past I remember now, misery so stuck inside cuz that I could see all this, too.

There's nothing worse, more whiney--than that.  When?

I was writing a long spondown of poetic compulsion bc damn it there is a man on the east coast who still has me a little stunned.  And what I was writing was sounding exactly like the song singing.  Which I'd never heard, it was Po'girl.  Mercy.  I saw them in Easton at the Night Cat two different times back when there was still a scene there.  I lived in the best ever apartment in Easton, with a wall length eight foot high book shelf and a bedroom I'd made my study for writing and meditation.  My bed was in the living room which made it fun when guests stayed on the couch.  I could sit on the roof at night there and look out over Goldsborough.  And smoke cigarettes bc that's what I do.

There is the deepest hollowed out space beneath me that says only one thing, oh my god how am I 37 already?  How?

It is the first time in a long time that I don't know how that's supposed to make me feel.

Cut the hippydippy horse**** . Tell the truth.

I want to write a little more about just what this means--authenticity.

I mean let's go ahead and immediately address all notions of Pollyanna perfection and sappy feel good emanations  here shall we?  Bc believe it or not Spiritual Kel cant stand being associated with any of that NewAge hippydippy horseshit.  And as that is the case, it's a fine line I dare to walk on this here blog. Because I will gladly use touchyfeely words like "authentic-self" and "inner-life" and "emotional work". I will readily speak about sitting down and "finding stillness" and "taking quiet-time."  However, it is precisely because I live daily with my own crazy fucked-up head piece that I value and emphasize these things.

What's that word mean when I use it anyway?  I'm not even gonna lie, I'm not sure.  I dont know the answer.   Does it conjure someone who stretches long on the floor each morning doing her daily yoga moves or who allows 20 minutes of calming reflective time with her steaming cup of chamomile tea at night?  Cuz it shouldn't, or at least not without the other side of the picture to make it entirely whole.  That same tea-drinker deep-breather also leaves work gets in her car and starts screaming at the very top of her lungs (with the music turned up so in case passing cars or dog-walkers see her they think she is just trying to sing.) She sends text messages to her best friends that say I am sad and fucking lonely right now: WHY DONT I HAVE A MAN!? or Could you help remind me right now to treat this evil part of my head like the terrible crazy sock puppet that it is...

Authenticity is about being honest.  And honesty takes courage and that's all I know about that.  I mean, once I avail myself to being true as I can to me, well.  Then the Real Work truly does start.  I already posted last week about the immediate complications that lay directly on the other side of such a decision.  Ernest Hemingway sort of said it when he said the writer's job is to tell the truth.  "I would write one true sentence," he said,  "and then go on from there."  Pretty immediately it gets tough because so often what's true means what we're feeling about something, and as I tangent-ed last week  most all of us are walking around with the superwall inside built on the society lie that feelings aren't real or valid.  Soooooo.  How the hell are we supposed to keep it real if that's the confusing message we're still trying to decode.

This all comes down to a sneaking suspicion I have, and I am going to go ahead and put it out there right quick.  And let me say here that credit for these ideas, or anyhow what prompted them are a buddy I'll call T3 who recently started his own blog.  T3's first post got me really thinking and in response to what he's writing about allow me this--I think that the reason most people are scared of allowing themselves to sit with how they are feeling is because they are scared to feel fear.  EVEN THOUGH FEAR IS THE MOST PRIMAL CHEMICAL RESPONSE THAT OUR BODIES KNOW HOW TO ILLICIT.  And further, most people are terrified to feel fear because it almost immediately makes us question one inherently archaic premise:  Life, plain and simple. Or anyhow our existence, and if there's any point. And this friends brings us face to face with the playing with our own bellybuttons issue of issues... (du du duuuu)...God.

And my oh my does he really exist.

Ahhhh head for the fucking hills!  And while you're there, sit a while would ya?  And ask yourself the questions that count.  Dont bother with the freaking answers you know?  Let them arise as they will when you stop fighting and trying to figure it all the fuck out.  Just be brave enough to sit inside those questions even as they haunt you.

I got news friends.  We're all spinning and sizzling and rocking and rolling across this crazyrad galaxy alone and therefor completely together--it's what we all got in common, answerless questions, afterall.  What I know from my own keepin it real diligent adherence to living a life that is authenticaly fulfilling to Kell is just this:  I am who I came here with, I am the only one going through this thing every step of the way with me, and I am leaving out of this place one day with me, alone, too.  So I might as well do all that I can to be intimate as possible with me, this person with whom I am in charge of steering along in order to enjoy the hell out of my ride.  And that means getting to know--consciously with my cup of chamomile tea, or batshitcrazy screaming my mentalmess at poor Beth or Katie over the phone--who I am in this moment by being honest and trying not to hide from myself.  And the very next step I can take on this path--hey blogoworld--is then being honest with you.

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.

This one thing... Telling the truth.

This is Erika, quoting Hemingway in my head and it's what happens to me any time I sit down and start to write and cant get started. Tell the truth tell the truth tell the truth. Usually it's followed by me asking myself Kelly what are you trying to say?

There is a song it just came on as I finished that last paragraph and it made me smile and pull the comfort sheets of my self up tight around my heart because of the tweak it put in my chest the second I heard it start and the immediate smile and hush of breath it drew. It is one of those serendipity songs and one that always no matter what makes my spirit emerge from whatever tight little haunt of me in which it's hiding. It's one of my fighting songs, and it is the song of songs that would of course in this instance speak to me.

I thought that pain and truth were all that really mattered but you cant stay here with every single hope that shattered. Big Country. Oh this song. The one that Kelly J put on the CD when I sold my shit and went travelling in 2004--it played as I pulled out of Chestertown and left my disillusioned past behind. The past. The past? Let me say this to the past. It becomes you, shapes the you you become. For many months I have worked to heal my associations of me, and my patterns of my past that became patterns long before I had the mind awareness to know any better. I have begun to live motivated by one idea: we regret not what we've done, but what we have not. I have had to ask myself again and again, and sit quiet surrendering to me, to the long inner road towards peace and silence within to hear the answer: years from now what will I look back on and say because I did not do this one or two or three things, I regret? It is in this way I've submitted to me, to following my truth and being brave and strong enough to stand in and go towards who I really am.

There is one area--love, men--where I have a backlog of mess. I am in the context, here, now, ongoing, of forgiveness and peace in that area, it's a constant motion thing for me. And as to this, as to regret, and to telling the truth. There was one, a single real regret that clung to me and went something like this:

I should've been true to myself. The moment, the second I knew I was in love with him--and no longer in love with the one I was with--I should've been honest with myself and with everyone involved. I was so in love with him. I should've gone forward and to him, and not looked back.

I should've. But that's not what happened. And so how does life unfold--how does it mark you, and push you along when there is indeed this one thing that you look back on and did not do?
What happens is you quantitate, you consider. You loop over and over again in yourself and become lost in your self and hate and even further have more and awful disbelief in yourself. You become deeply deflated, hopeless even and don't know why, because often times regret hides itself if you are lacking in a certain capacity for self-honesty in some areas in your life, so that's what happens: if you are like me and you have hurt in a certain area of your life, old hurt, old covered-over pain from long long ago before you even really were you yet, than being true to yourself in that area comes out all slanted and sideways because to really be true means first to have to re-live through the old pain that's still there. And that's fucking hard. Especially when that part of you's always been broke.

Then, one day you wake up. It's a half-waking, but I'm a fighter, so you grab for it. And you realize god damn it, this is my life. This is my life. And perhaps this regret was the one, the one key to the door that is finally, for real and completely, going to make me own me in my entirety. That is going to make me stand up, and be true as I can to myself.

You start to get honest then, about your wants, your needs, about your past. About who you are.

I've identified the things, the couple of them. And I'm going whole-hearted after them. BUT MORE IMPORTANT. I get it, I get me now. I know me, and love me, all of me. I know how to be true to my self. Get it? I know now how to be honest to me. And to tell the truth, and not miss opportunity. I have healed from the early fucked up shit and abuse, or at least have self-awareness that is full and complete, and real. Not sideways and slanted and blind or numb in some parts. I have broke parts you know, who doesn't? But those are now the places I learned to nurture and be gentle with myself instead of denying and hating and refusing, because of denial and numbness and self-hate. Those are the places I have medicine, real virtue now. Where I can be even more gentle and loving towards me, and others, as result.

I am real now. I am whole.

This is my life. And I guess that one regret is no longer on my list because the gift that came from it is absolutely nonexchangeable. I hope that he--the lighthouse guy, the one who led me here to this deep and dark well of my self, the one who suffered at my hands and who I ultimately pushed away and forced to walk away without his own looking back--I hope he is well. I hope he is well: is full, is whole.

I am being true to my self, to my heart. It's all I ever really wanted to learn how to do. That part I don't regret, not at all.