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.
There are common concerns I've heard, and usually shared, about moving up the time change and thereby forcing the start of spring. Screwing up our 
Last year at the timechange I remember feeling like Milly the Mole: someone turned the lights on too quick!! I was surrendered to my burrow, in deep hibernation doing an awful lot of resting. I wasn't ready to come out yet from my hole. But this year. Woah. I. Am. So. Ready.
I moved on to Anngar Farm with Brandon over a year and half ago, in fact in June it will be two years. And strangely, the moment we got all our stuff in to that castillo--or castle--which is what my Mexican friend Santiago called the six-bedroom farmhouse that Brandon and I were literally given in exchange for caretaking the several acres of landscaped lawn that came along with it, I began to experience a deep and nagging discontent. I had no words for it, but it kept me up late, woke me up in the dark with blank stares, and caused me endless bouts of un-named melancholy worsened by my own refusal to just listen to what was Within. I kept telling my self just to shut-it, and be grateful for all the gifts you have why don't you?! By October of that year, some four or so months after we'd finally settled in, I had at least allowed myself to hear my inner message: I just want some time to be alone.
It made no sense to me. But intensified monthly. Now, here's the thing you need to know about me. I believe in our own deep Authenticity. That we each are alit with gifts specific to our own souls, unique to our own form of song. And it is our duties to listen and align with them and draw them out, and indeed this is how to evolve in to our best selves and serve this world. I believe in constant change, the power of intention, positive thinking and the law of attraction. And most of all I believe that we all are engaged by the same unifying energy, and that that energy exists in vibrations, and that everything, from a thought or intention to the rising-tide, the full moon the equinox a winter's snow or bad news from your best friend, vibrates at a certain level. And at any given moment my being, my holistic whole-bodied being vibrates according to all these many factors of Oneness. And my job is to stay the Conscious Witness so I can align and offer up those vibrations that are unique to me...I believe that in this way Harmony is possible...if even at times it looks like and feels like Divine Chaos. 
So in this Oneness of things, all movement has it seasons. And finally it came time for me to surrender to that deep yearning: it was all I could do to not scream it at the top of my lungs I just need to be Alone! It logically made no sense but I couldn't fight it anymore, and in fact, I often wonder if fighting that instinct for as long as I did instead of exploring the message of it contributed to the pain that it has greatly caused between me and Brandon. I literally was beginning to fracture inside, to feel depressed and more. And by the time I could take it no more what was left was letting down the person I loved most in the world. And frankly, I had no real reason to give to him.... 
But there is absolutely no denying that when I surrendered to the deep inner calling and said Yes to it--doors opened immediately. First a new job that afforded me enough money to live on my own, then a home in the vicinity of the new job. The first night I was here at Chop I was busybusy moving all my packed bags off my bed when something suddenly shook me and I stilled inside, and in the utter quiet of those surroundings the inner voice said: Do you hear it? This, this deep silence is what you wanted. And my friends, it is so, so quiet here. 
So, I'd love to tell you that I've just honored that quiet since then. And certainly in my own little regular ways I have. But I've also quietly been trying to plot and plan my next move, and then getting frustrated when I can't seem to force those changes. Ping-pong, ping-pong. The more time passes, the more frustrated and full of plans I get. Only to feel exhausted and more confused that ever. I like Louise Hay's term for this--Divine Discontent--and here-in lay the message of my illness: to slow down and just do what I came here, what I quite literally was led here, to do. Be Quiet. Take time to be quiet, in silence, and alone. And trust what will come from within will come in its right time. As all things come as and when they should... Like a foot of snow after you've been home sick for four days. Or the vibrant buds of purple crocus' who so needed some snow melt to grow grow grow... Ahhh, what balance to continually learn and relearn how to strike: balance of the light of knowledge versus faith that in what you can't always see ahead of you in the dark...So it goes so it goes and so it goes..So might it be....
