wtf???

i am back to the lack. the lack that isn't really there. when the absence is felt of what the brain contracted around and the heart leaped towards without knowing anything about the future except that everything changes all the time. the longing the confusion the disappointment the hurt the frustration the annoyance the sadness and in it and through it--the beauty of the the diamond in the center, the brilliance of the love and courage of the cracked openness. even in the silly fantasies of a young girl going on 33, there is the purest intention to see and embody spaciousness and to soar with someone's spirit. that's beautiful and mind doesn't always know best when it grasps towards that when it wants when it tries to figure out and hold on. the end is a new beginning!


 it's oh so subtle and seductive the mind's little sneaky tentacles hooking into a fantasy into expectations into a little movie and i bother myself when i believe and things do not go as planned for how could they??? confusing the temporary high for freedom...


my friend Julia posted these relevant words


Quit trying to make things work... say goodbye... move on... let go! Fly Blackbird it is time!

heart hurting

really...how can a year that seemed so challenging while deep in the thick of it now be remembered with such love and fondness...resistance to actually leaving this home. feeling the air the magic of the land around this amazing house, the quietness, the sweet spot i found here despite it not living up to my fantasies, the reality was more difficult, more trying, and much more rewarding, and revealing. will miss this house and housemate.

ya know...

i am suspecting telogen effluvium rather than alopecia. hair started falling from emotional stress of visit with family. it was that day i got to my mom's after the 3 days in car with my dad, i broke down crying, exhausted, defeated, then went numb after i poured out my heart and mom wanted to use my heartbreak to gossip about family. took a shower and pulled out so much hair, so much hair!


Telogen effluvium. In this condition, emotional or physical stress pushes large numbers of growing hairs into a resting phase. Within a few months, the affected hairs may fall out suddenly when simply combing or washing your hair.


actually...who knows...cause this says it takes a few months. maybe it was just the stress of winter which was intense not as acutely traumatic but more of a steady burn of discomfort. hoping the love and nurturing that i am receiving lately from myself and my friends is healing this. 

p.s. hurricane

thought it would bring more rain. praying for everyone's safety as it moves north.

ahhh! i am really missing my beautiful long locks of healthy flowing hair...body, what's happening??? why you not happy? why my hair keep falling out??? sigh. having some sadness seeing old photos & how much hair i had. feeling the thinness and lightness of my mane. remembering how free i once felt wearing my hair down. loving myself unconditionally, letting go of ego attachment to my thick feminine hair, getting used to and sick of scarves and pinned up tresses. how I long to have that hair grow and flow again! my most prized possession...it was the center of my sense of feeling pretty, beautiful-- my hair...now it feels like sad straw and more and more coming out...cry cry cry. 


need to load more stuff in the van i'm using to move to Hillsborough...tomorrow....still in denial. i mean, i am going to love it. the house is amazing...the yard...the quietness...the peace...the walkability...my landlady now friend. friends to help me today and tomorrow morning, thankful for them. i am feeling laze lax in sort of a state of denial. i really will miss my wonderful housemate friend companion brother so much even though i think it will be healthier for me to have my own space...and certainly an insulated one. but this land and this house is truly magical and gorgeous and this was a fertile & intense year...lots of gloom in my bedroom and also lots of transformation and stripping down to the raw real me. this space held me in a weird way even the cold shivery days and nights held, even midwifed, encouraged, my deep pain and confusion, which were needed, necessary, had to come out finally, had to be Seen and loved and embraced like the girl i was rejected and throwing tantrums with my stuffed animals thrown in the shower with all my clothes punished spanked with towels for crying and it's okay to break down and cry and to Need and to ask for help and to feel sad and lonely and hurt and angry. and the resolution...still resolving. a big moment was when my therapist started yelling on my behalf, inviting me to join her in the rage, helping me to generate that and release it myself, all that had been built up, held in, not expressed, really seeing the insanity of the family, really seeing it and know it's not my fault and i don't have to carry shame for being rejected by the logic of this family, for being not good enough. to see how perfect and good i really am as i am.


so in love with the Austra album. there's a sonic warmth and emotional intensity of the voice and piano juxtaposed with haunting sinister beats. the music moves me!

postscript

i love my fabulous friends! how moved i feel to have them share their inner worlds with me and how kind and sweet they are to play with me.

planet earth

it sounded like david attenbrough's narration, the documentary was already underway when i arrived at B's house.  


planet earth documentary and WHOA--stunning what is happening in this wild world!


an elephant babe lost, far from mother, separated from pack, in sandswept kalahari desert 


searching for water, exhausted & moving in the wrong direction. great white shark 


launching enormous body up, propelling into a magnificent spin, seal in hungry jaws, 


masked zorro alien castanet tap dance bird of paradise showing off for the female and all 


of this is happening on 


the same planet on which i live?! and so much more?! amazing.


work week finished...phew. let the packing frenzy loading unloading arranging begin. tomorrow the plan is pack kitchen and bedroom in morning, go get a pap smear (!) (been way too long) then *finally* send my mom her birthday gift/card...oh, only 1 month late! pick up van for moving from b. check out TROSA for furniture. then, then, then,...steady centered grounded calm relaxed secure and elated excited romantic turned on spacious curious all at once! bed time!

yesterday evening's sky--aglow with sherbet pinks, purples, oranges, golds, outlining the clouds and rays of sun magically beaming low along late summer green landscape--had me feeling i was in the middle of a Maxfield Parrish painting.

Daybreak

The Garden of Allah

life is being so sweet and gentle to me lately...even with the alopecia, i have been able to find ways to feel presentable, feminine still, feeling good, even with these peachy patches of fuz


feeling nervous about my move...news of a hurricane rolling in this weekend could complicate matters and it's going to be strange not living in carrboro after 6 years aqui...only 20 minutes away yet...i will really miss this house, this land, my housemate, the wild here. embracing change, though, and will love the space and peacefulness there. since my hours changed and i committed to this house i've had job interview offers come up in Sacramento, Contra Costa County, and San Francisco. i couldn't be happier than i am here, though. this is feeling like home. i have the most amazing kind generous friends i feel so spoiled! and north carolina is gorgeous....mountains beach woodlands farms. okay....coming down from my day...feeling the tired in my body. relaxation station.

vanessa needs to pack

boxes of books and books and books pots pans plates mugs CLOTHING, drowning in CLOTHING cds and miscellaneous sundry items...i move Saturday, eek!

the perfect opportunity

posted by Zensing Coaching this a.m.:

There is no other version of your life where things SHOULD have been different. There is no; IF ONLY..... THIS is your life! It is complete. There is NOTHING missing here. Not even a grain of sand.

or a strand of hair!

life is giving me the amazing chance to love myself without conditions, to love life, yes, to meet the fragility and tenuousness of image, identity, vanity, the who i think i am when i have looked in the mirror and seen long flowing voluminous hair. beauty beyond all that. it's hard and i feel sad sometimes and yet grateful, too.

and now finding sweetness

and LOVE in the pain. tender broken heart, falling, melting, dissolving into surrender and softness, gentle tender sweet sweet kind love to myself my father metta.

ambivalence of childhood dreams and nightmares

going to see my home-to-be this evening apres trabajo...so excited to see it and visualize the space to create my home. i can't believe moving happens so soon! i am imagining a nest-cocoon of quiet solitude for reading books and a room dedicated to dance with my booming speakers and barefeet on hardwoods a cozy cute kitchen and my sanctuary bedroom. i may need to get a kitchen table and couch...also i am overflowing with books, piles spilling over and out of my shelves means another bookcase. things i have at my dad's house i would like to bring down, inherited from his mother...the favorite lamp in the room i slept in so often as a little girl. that lamp lit up little girl dreams, an illuminated globe dancing petals with one click, the next click lights the top bulb, one more and both top and bottom glow. it is a romantic lamp...from another time, and it stirred my childhood imagination in that room of antique furniture, black and white photographs of my grandmother as a young woman. also, one more standing lamp, a scene of a ship battling the stormy sea. and a huge old fashioned turntable/radio.

something like what is pictured...

the question is how to transport what is there, in Rome, New York to North Carolina. not sure my system can handle another encounter with that edge between wanting to love the father wanting love from the father and fearing the father and the very childish way i cope with the emotional squelching repression you've got to hide your love away, hide yourself away suffocating choking choking i can't even breathe and of course my hair fell out and my heart closed and i went numb. i just can't handle being pushed out, being pushed down, sinking into so much heavy silence, being ignored and at once talked at incessantly. it was fucking horrible and i adapted to it so well because i wanted reconciliation and forgiveness and the power is so invisible...it is not a smack it is not hand slapping my face it is not unkind words it is fucking invisible and oppressive constricting confining shallow loud breathing being told what i feel what i should what i should what would be good for me without anything that i ever say being heard or acknowledged much less understood. usually talked over, always ignored. crazy making. then telling me something about me and what i need that contradicts what i have expressed and then i stay silent, shut up be good.

it sent me into a state of shock. and into regression...reduced to wanting to please wanting to be liked drained from the effort expression affection of trying so hard to connect forgetting what it had been like to be alive and fully loved i treated the most pathetic dull showings of connection as if they were my biggest dream and warped my reality and so lowered my expectations. meeting my high school english teacher on the final day of my trip was a fucking miracle that started to pierce the numbness since she is such an alive firework of passionate energy dedication and commitment to another she could listen and reflect and mirror and empathize...

i soon be going to breakfast with mi amiga esta manana. little rattled with the memory of this May trip. such a crazy and heartbreaking week...jolted out of deep peace and self-love in my week of silent meditation by the sight of a father who doesn't see love when it slaps him on the face. i was so open and ready and my heart broke in that moment and then was put in prison for 3 days, confined to heavy breathing anger pain fear seething under silence trapped with him and his smelly sweet dog in a car driving driving driving add misogynistc uncle and what a trip. throwing up.

it's okay...was just holding my breath. safe again. safe. with less and less hair...can't wear it down in public anymore...so sad. i love the way my hair feels down, free feminine and may use scarves to cover soon. grow hair grow!

i have awesome friends. thank god. and life. so grateful to be here.

my new obsession!

writing

i haven't been here in awhile. 


here i am. 


not sure why?


really. 


i wrote a letter today. to a dear friend. in it i said i want to be more authentic, more transparent, more honest, more vulnerable. i love to meet another soul from this space...of heart, with a willingness to be unprotected, unguarded, and to express feelings of insecurity, of fear, of being human. i've heard that voice come out of me, the defended one, the authoritative one, the mind made up one, the critical one. i was reading the book for our book group yesterday and noticed how often my sense of self, that false identity i say i've seen through yet still drives my opinions and preferences has me making my mind about something, dismissing or disregarding an idea or a story before i've ever considered it, because i already "know" which is ridiculous. how could i possibly until i am that person having that experience? i really could use more humility, curiosity, and beginner's mind. because really, i don't know. i have no idea. nothing repeats itself, each moment is different. each experience and perspective. so how much more enjoyment in life i gain by letting go of control and remaining open to the unknown instead of feigning a false and arrogant closed off answer. really, what could be more stimulating than engaging in the ambiguity and mystery of life and amazing variety of experiences? what could be more free than hearing everything for what it is, really being able to listen without taking it personally or needing it fit into my perspective. what could be more empathetic than understanding a view vastly different than my own? this train of thought came from my near dismissal of the content of the book we were reading...deciding too easily and lazily that i didn't like the book not really grappling with any of its themes or tensions but having a facile response that sounds smart. i am good at coming up with that and killing my own joy of learning and connecting. i got through college that way...sounding smart. writing smart and what i learned was how to write to impress but did not learn what i really thought or felt and how to express myself truly. that was too risky... humbled softened by life is good. excited to read/listen/sense with a new-found openness.


i think it is bed time...i have been low energy zombie like this weekend but always get more energetic when it's late. really need to take care of myself. i feel happy. goodnight.


song...i go away

marimba medicine meat mares

Guatemala's national instrument is piping out from the woods. a house tucked behind out of sight sends the marimba out to accompany wren, titmice and cardinal. then a peacock trumpets from further in the forest. walking in the mid-day, the temperature feels perfect.  it took this long for me to remember how good BAREFOOT feels and ditch the shoes and feel the massage of dirt, grass, uneven terrain on my happy soles. i can feel yesterday's cathartic dance in my calf muscles. my body feels nourished, made it my practice, going inside starting from inside and allowing all movement outward to come from center, and the energy came easily and kept feeding, feeding itself. big selfish generous greedy movements, rhythmic agile feet, rocking body, twisting spiraling, and the subtlest smallest moves offering some of the richest and most delightful of sensations.


very helpful meeting with my naturopath today. endocrine fatigue + iron deficiency. she gave me an herbal tincture--Chinese Medicine and had me pick up a bottle of Floradix + iron...she did a bio-resonance stress test to assess levels of inflammation in my body and pick up food intolerance. as i already knew, i am sensitive to milk and wheat--the unexpected was cayenne pepper (wonder if that contributed to my pain when istarted the so-called master cleanse, which i aborted on day 2 because my lower back froze and i realized i was starving myself and ingesting sugar and how would that help me break the sugar habit??? sugar craving is a symptom of adrenal fatigue). her test found inflammation/ stress in my endocrine system--specifically hypothalmus, parathyroid, and pineal glands, all having to do with hormones, regulating body temperature, reproduction and menstrual cycles, hair growth, circadian rhythms, sensing tiredness, sensing hunger or fullness...and the body's ability to handle and recover from stress. all issues. she also gave me a brochure by the Weston A. Price Foundation, that promotes an omnivore diet for humans, including meat and saturated fat. it makes sense to me that our unhealth and disease is related to corn syrups and sugars. this article online "Twenty-Two Reasons Not to Go Vegetarian"  expresses some interesting points, in particular #8 on some of the issues i raised in my discussion of ahimsa. 


"Not a single bite of food reaches our mouths that has not involved the killing of animals. By some estimates, at least 300 animals per acre—including mice, rats, moles, groundhogs and birds—are killed for the production of vegetable and grain foods, often in gruesome ways. Only one animal per acre is killed for the production of grass-fed beef and no animal is killed for the production of grass-fed milk until the end of the life of the dairy cow.

And what about the human beings, especially growing human beings, who are suffering from nutrient deficiencies and their concomitant health problems as a consequence of a vegetarian diet? Or does only animal suffering count?

Of course, we should all work for the elimination of confinement animal facilities, which do cause a great deal of suffering in our animals, not to mention desecration of the environment. This will be more readily accomplished by the millions of meat eaters opting for grass-fed animal foods than by the smaller numbers of vegetarians boycotting meat.

Vegetarians wishing to make a political statement should strive for consistency. Cows are slaughtered not only to put steak on the table, but to obtain components used in soaps, shampoos, cosmetics, plastics, pharmaceuticals, waxes (as in candles and crayons), modern building materials and hydraulic brake fluid for airplanes. The membrane that vibrates in your telephone contains beef gelatin. So to avoid hypocrisy, vegetarians need to also refrain from using anything made of plastic, talking on the telephone, flying in airplanes, letting their kids use crayons, and living or working in modern buildings.

The ancestors of modern vegetarians would not have survived without using animal products like fur to keep warm, leather to make footwear, belts, straps and shelter, and bones for tools. In fact, the entire interactive network of life on earth, from the jellyfish to the judge, is based on the sacrifice of animals and the use of animal foods. There’s no escape from dependence on slaughtered animals, not even for really good vegan folks who feel wonderful about themselves as they finish their vegan meal."

i am not sure what to believe of all the contradictory studies cited and i am not going to say anyone is wrong for choosing vegetarianism. trust how the body feels, listen to its signal, and honor your own values. i was never vegetarian for moral reasons...as in "animal rights" but because i believed the vegetarian take on the link between meat and cancer and toxicity...and i'm sure this is true of factory-farmed flesh, but these are modern diseases that did not arise in the traditional diets that included meat. and my body has been feeling the consequences. i must say i have been feeling much more energetic, more balanced, more emotionally stable in the past week or so when i started changing my diet. too soon to tell, though. i do have more energy. i haven't actually added much meat--compared to the standard american diet, just more iron from diverse sources. more protein and vitamin bs. i  know it is a sensitive spot for many and really respect that people will make the choice that is best for them.


*                       *                            *                         *
how little i know of Horses. really. i've gone horseback riding a few times...the first with my dad in Rome, or just outside, and loved it. i felt safe, secure, and excited. the horse was gentle with me and we did not go very fast. i was a young girl--maybe 11 or 12? then Leon, a spirited horse who wanted to trot ahead of the line...on a narrow cliffside trail that dropped off steeply and sharply into abyss at glacier national park. i felt terrified the entire ride and my dad got very angry with me for it...the fear, the bad attitude, i guess. this was when i was 15, maybe. i just wanted to feel safe and comfortable, and i felt rushed being assigned to Leon without getting to know his temperament and not used to not having any control of his speed. so it took some courage for me to hop on a horse again in guatemala a couple years ago...i felt much more secure on flat open land. and with a patient couple of friends and our cowboy tour guide, who took my nervousness in comedic stride. it was mostly uncomfortably bouncy and was tiring for my body, numb rump. even with these few equine encounters i had never taken much time to observe and be present with and try to understand the experience of a horse. i just went to visit the 2 horses here and just quietly stood and watched curiously. i am in awe of their strange bodies...really unusual when i look at them innocently, as if i'd never seen a horse and was gazing at one for the first time. incredible creature. i notice a calmness and peace when i am near them. they both came close to me, the pony massaging herself on a tree next to me as I use my hand to pet her long body. the older, m, she comes right up to me, and i don't know what she wants or needs. i talk to her and pet her and try to listen and see...i'm no horse whisperer and her strange yawn-like dentile displays confuse me, her eye seems to be leaking water, crying--is she sad? too hot? do they need water? turns out a horse (from my research) yawning can indicate stress and releases endorphins for a calming effect. maybe the visit from a stranger causes tension even though they also approached me and came close to my body, their sides breathing into mine. glad to see their caretaker is here to replenish water and see to their needs. 

sad to be saying goodbye to this sweet family of animals tomorrow morning. what an awesome little vacation. goodnight, spoon.