nothing to say

cat face meows in my human face this morning 7 am i let ruby outside and look up breathtaking blue streaks across the sky as the dark breaks open into soft yellows and wisps of blue and the pony trots closer to us, curious as i cross the land with camera in hand.

a new friend shared with me what Winnie the Pooh characters correlate with the enneagram. she, a delightful curious energetic adventuring 7 is Tigger. me, a 4? Eeyore. i have so been Eeyore. it is here now. that mournful of the past and not just so...also replaying things said, what i could have said, what i can say now even though it's over. this has been the brain loop playing since my conversation with my dad. a miraculous interaction in that he didn't hang up on me. he stayed on the phone and we spoke for the first time ever about our relationship. and then there's this: the same words from him, from ex R and ex A: "you require too much" and that is, indeed, a characteristic of the Love Addict, to have unrealistic expectations triggered by a fear of abandonment and needing constant reassurance, more acutely felt by those avoidant addicts who tend to feel uncomfortable expressing emotions or aren't even in touch with them and for some--it just doesn't matter. my dad kept saying "most people do not talk about their feelings." or "most people do not engage with each other" this view of the world was his reason to make something wrong with me for having feelings and wanting those feelings seen heard acknowledged. as a kid it is painful to have feelings and needs and to be told you are wrong not only for the content of the feeling and need but that you have them at all. it was confusing because he said his love was not conditional but then told me these things that were wrong with me that justified him not speaking to me...so aren't those conditions? me being too "needy" i guess is one. the other was in college, something like "you had come to the conclusion that you were the most enlightened person on earth." well, i was expressing views different from his and was passionate about it. of course, i was young arrogant and naive, too but i am HUMAN. i bet if i had expressed with as much vehemence ideas that conformed to his world view he would not have had a problem. it was that i was sticking up for gay people and saying my hair was my own to decide what length it would be. and if not being able to tolerate hearing a view different from your own justifies not speaking to your own daughter, who is the one who is self-righteous? i don't know...

what can i do? here's what benjamin smythe says this a.m.

Anything you think someone else is thinking about you is testable. Ask them. If they are, welcome to a free world. If you have a problem with it, stop believing it. If you can’t stop believing it, welcome to your problem.


this is true. and there is also a need for some tenderness, gentleness. because it's my fucking father, ya know, and there IS, understandably, a lot of hurt there. and yes, i am learning, as my friend Shawn Luby beautifully sang last night in a song about his inspiring grandmother, that "she always warned me that her love couldn't hold me...i'd need to find strength on my own."

would have been nice to have gotten that Love from my parents, but this reminds me even if i'd had the deepest Love comes from within...of course would have been more easy to touch and tap into if i had gotten that as a kid. and what can i do about the past...nada. it's my responsibility now.

actually...my responsibility but not mine. i can stop trying so hard and let it flow through me. God. Mother. Love. a power greater than me.

three haiku

midnight starless sky
swallows up trees houses me
out of nothing, Whoooooo?


quiet oak table 
window view giant oak tree 
wren swoops in "HELLO!"


moss caressing wood 
leaf twirling to wet earth--
we land in silent green

wow, what INFORMATION

i am getting from this experience. really grateful. to be able to see my CRAZY. and it has given me so much insight...and empathy. wow.


heard pileated call this morning...so close yet so hidden. it has been 5 years since i have seen one!!!!! please? 

loving the green wet quiet. 


so, yes. LOVE ADDICTION. should be called romantic fantasy/rescuer addiction. addicted to avoidant addicts. perfect match for CRAZY. haha. i can see how i move between the two--love addiction and avoidant addiction. i was the avoider with M and can have such understanding of A's sudden retreat when i recall my own response to the intensity and overwhelm and pressure of someone rushing into relationship with constant enthusiasm and constant need for validation and for intensity. it's exhausting...and not based in who the person really is, not seeing and getting to know but in love with a dream, an image, and then upset when person doesn't match this. and this is what I DO! ahhhhh! stop the cycle!


it has been so clarifying eye-opening relieving these past few days. to see it and know I CAN MAKE CHOICES for myself. nurturing what makes me feel GOOD. also, my friends are INSPIRING and LOVING.

seeing me

• i call my mom when i am experiencing uncomfortable emotions and want her to fix it
• i eat food when i am in emotional or psychic pain to avoid the feelings
• i judge in others what is always an attribute of my own of which i am most in denial
• i compare myself to others better or less than
• i seek outside of myself for approval validation love and pleasure...relief from suffering...i make it someone else's responsibility!!!! isn't that INSANE?!
• i sometimes fall for the false belief that i know better, am more "evolved" than other people?!?!
• even though my concerns are so SHALLOW! ego surface how sad to see myself how much energy i've wasted in presentation 
• seeing lots of arrogance and stupidity on my part here!
• and spiritual LAZINESS
• i know the right things to say
• i read the books
• another thing to decorate me
• even another way to avoid the pain...mastering the concepts!
• hahaha

vanessa is having the totally new and unpredictable experience of....Life, well yes, but this specific manifestation? my hair falling out and not growing back, not knowing if it will grow back, when, how much if ever, if all will fall out and how do i look in this hat this scarf this headband and how do i feel when i look in the mirror? what a unique and precious experience. i am actually moving to the edge of interest, curiosity, and almost some play and lightness...even considering shaving the head...maybe that would feel really free and totally give me a new experience of SEEING myself. i have these potions and concoctions and herbs and newly adopted dietary rules but i am kind of at the point of...let's let life do what it's doing. let it be, let it be.

blocked heart

James Blake - I Never Learnt To Share from Michal Zielinski on Vimeo.

this knowledge, this mind, this smartness, this intellect...it protects me from breaking down, from feeling, it jumps up and says "i know this...i know all about this" so it stays in the head and doesn't move into the gut and heart. i've felt it in the gut and the heart, been there, visceral reactions (reading Langston Hughes Alice Walker and books like Invisible Man, Savage Inequalities in high school then college bell hooks and Urban Studies-chicago 1999 and community organizing uptown Chicago with kids of color criminalized and harassed by cops and Aaron Patterson and all the black men tortured into confession released by Gov. Ryan, Bomb the Suburbs and ethnic studies courses and KRS-One and Black Star the Marcus Garvey line, the shock of my own ignorance and the overwhelm of all that is wrong that i benefit from) and there was an openness and softness that seems to have closed and hardened as i've felt less and less hopeful and more and more helpless at making change. this inner conflict of despair at not knowing what to do to transform these huge systemic problems and not wanting to experience the constant pain and havoc oppression wreaks in every instant. i mean i have the choice to escape, avoid, close my eyes. sometimes i look. i have looked closely fiercely and gotten outraged and self-righteous and was just as ineffectual. so what is to be done? to feel it, feel it fully the pain and empathy and to do what i can. power is local. yes those large scale systems of power over exist. and yet there are cracks, there is leeway, rules broken and dominant structure defied in our personal interactions. it's why i work at the cybrary. it's so not enough, so minimal but i do have an intention of loving and attending to each person, serving from the heart. patience for my path to unfold in the best path of service to others, self-denial is certainly not the way. living out my best, in integrity and awareness and compassion. allowing my heart to break at all the devastating reality. not pity. no victims. to have dignity. respect for those living out their freedom within constraints...it's always been this way. inspired by remembrance, all the history i've studied shows how people have exercised their will, their SPIRIT, their independence in the most impossible conditions. our own denial of reality, this maintenance of a fiction has caused material corporeal injustice for oppressed and cause such lack of self-awareness and lifelessness and disconnect from reality among oppresses. to the winners the SPOILS go. so we are all suffering. of course, there are material inequities, unequal choice, opportunity, and access and these do matter. i have used political ideology and spiritual ideology to find a way to be RIGHT about it rather than break down and truly feel the horror of it. something that transmits that, gets me in the gut is James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time. i have read it four, five times...perhaps time for a re-reading.


i want to feel my failure from the vulnerable heart, not from the mind, the intellect that went through anti-racism trainings, studied the history of racism, and "knows" the white supremacy of our culture, of my own conditioned mind, very well. i want to feel the grief of being part of this legacy and the joy, as well, at the paradoxical inextricable links and interdependence we share with everyone that makes this nation. i also feel glad when i see how faces have changed...that there are, in fact, more multicultural-anti-oppression driven organizations out there and beautiful people (many college friends) do amazing, powerful work from a place of Love and Justice. i want to melt my mind from the block of "already know" into the despair that lives there, in the heart and gut.


i also want to acknowledge and say thank you to my friend who is in the RAWNESS right now, in it, feeling it with courage and facing all the scary confusion with honest openness that i really admire and reminds me of just how blocked my heart is with THOUGHT and IDEA and SOCIAL CRITIQUE and POSTSTRUCTURALIST THEORY i can foucault all fear away. 


p.s. timely news. 


Troy Davis

the melon collie

vanessa looks cute with a hat
nevermind that missing hair
it isn't missing it's just not there
who says it's supposed to be?

i am in a cafe listening to what's this track??? "a dedication" by washed out
it's fitting my melancholy, something i've PERFECTED: melancholy melon collie
i feel sleepy relaxed i slept on the sand this afternoon after reading a bit of my book,
Black Swan Green, a beautifully written book, touching, aching in its awkward portrayal of teenage boyhood
i have been lucky with books, lately, yes. splashed in the choppy waters swallowed more salt, loved those pelicans madly! no dolphin sightings today. the idea is ITP: the institute of transpersonal psychology. maybe it will help me stay in remembrance and i won't fall out of myself into a dream, into romance. there's something...below the throat above the heart...it feels like loneliness and has a little story that says "i am alone. i will always be alone." there's a sadness and a almost out of breath feeling there. on the verge of crying too tired to cry giving up. my hand is there now. diving in it moves deeper into the gut and feels 6 years old sad where are my stuffed animals? where's my little soft blanket with pastel bears dancing? where's my bedroom, door closed alone the only safety. tearing tearing tugging tugging.

here's an Osho nugget posted on fb today.




"Falling in love you remain a child; rising in love you mature. And by and by love becomes 


not a relationship, it becomes a state of your being... Whatsoever is happening, you give 


your love to it. You touch a rock and you touch as if you are touching your beloved’s body. 


You look at the tree and you look as if you are looking at your beloved’s face. It becomes a 


state of being. Not that you are in love — now you ARE love. This is rising, this is not 


falling." -Osho


songs of the sea...oceania, sea talk, ritual union...a new playlist in the works? 

reflections

it's cold and i am at the beach and that's totally okay cuz it gives me a veg out do nothing day in a different way then the do nothing days on the sand with book in hand (read The Invisible Wall = amazing! and Life on Land = inspiring and started Black Swan Green = beautiful) so i am contemplating my paths...seeing this library gig is totally doable financially secure and stable and supportive emotionally of my need to contribute and connect in the world and also giving me the foundation i need to go out and explore a bit i know i know i have 2 masters degrees but these were then, previous life from which i still carry financial debt but if i were to go to school for the first time based on my own actual genuine passions and interests it would be Transpersonal Psychology. but is it viable? reasonable? practical? hmmm....interesting queries...i don't know! i am exploring options and staying open. it is clear librarian is not life path. do i need a degree yet again? not sure. maybe, maybe not. self-awareness is what i know. self-knowledge, that's a passion. relationships, that's what i care about. how to turn this into a career? i don't know! i care about people but i don't really care so much about library. i am in my element the most these days when i am teaching Nia and when i am holding space for someone in pain or feeling whatever they are feeling. my strengths are unconditional acceptance and listening. not organization of information and management systems snore. yet here i am...and i tried the Story Time thing...i need lessons in how to ham it up. i was feeling distraught because i of my PERSONAL PROBLEMS as i let drama (Enneagram #4...remember???) take over. 


1. romantic fairytale
2. looking for rescuer
3. addicted to pain of wanting someone who doesn't want me
4. how satisfying the false hope of getting a withholder to release and love...staying in the longing
5. forgetting who i am and giving away my power
6. needing something from someone else they aren't giving me
7. idealizing the "prince" and setting myself up for disappointment
8. losing my way 
9. prioritizing getting the "love" from the unprincely withholding prince over taking care of needs (food, sleep) and my responsibilities (focus at work)
10. making someone feel like they are wrong 
11. placing demands for a particular kind of way of being loved, cared for which makes me oh so alluring!!!


this is a list of? my habits and patterns and sillies
love me anyway! scheduled therapy and made some sounds Es and Os based on Emilie Conrad's book that did shift me, made a collage that loved me, made a mix called Story of a Summer Romance that captures my penchant for the dramatic and my ridiculousness of falling for the first heel that expresses interest without discernment just because i so desperately NEED that validation when that old wound comes alive and then there are those times when i feel total whole happy GRATEFUL for AMAZING friends, my INCREDIBLE home, the BEAUTY of life around me...and for NOTHING at all

and then...

i lost touch with REALITY and went into deep self-created suffering. again. lost center. fear mode. lots of OLD wound, pain-body issues hijacked my emotional responses and undermined my ability to see clearly. coming back, though...sadness at the disconnections and demands i put out on the world. the more i groped and grasped outside the more gaping the the wound seemed though it's only made real by that looking elsewhere and then when i come home to it, in it, the hole is whole, it leads me back to me. i have much to be grateful for but it seems lately my default state has been worry and disappointment...the hair loss, the self-conscious struggle with my new presentation, the comparing my life as it is to what i once thought it might be. there's a good poem about that, robert bly.


The Resemblance Between Your Life and a Dog

I never intended to have this life, believe me -
It just happened. You know how dogs turn up
At a farm, and they wag but can't explain.

It's good if you can accept your life - you'll notice
Your face has become deranged trying to adjust
To it. Your face thought your life would look

Like your bedroom mirror when you were ten.
That was a clear river touched by mountain wind.
Even your parents can't believe how much you've changed.

Sparrows in winter, if you've ever held one, all feathers,
Burst out of your hand with a fiery glee.
You see them later in hedges. Teachers praise you,

But you can't quite get back to the winter sparrow.
Your life is a dog. He's been hungry for miles.
Doesn't particularly like you, but gives up, and comes in.

  

caffeinaccident

when the wrong drink came up from K's order i offered to switch, forgetting that caffeine makes me ill...in the body and mental...praying for gentleness here. amazing release dancing this morning. my playlist available for download here. 


the last of the chaos in the mix was so amped up, emotionally, i was so absorbed in my dance and the emotion of it i shrieked it just arose spontaneously startling myself and others. it felt so opening and healing. i am going to get off the computer and move, clean, craft, read...i had a great day at quarry, making dinner, connecting yesterday. and sweet to have K out here today to hang with her. i have amazingly awesome caring friends! 






here!

my collar has huge room for two hands

start at the chest and move slowly down....ooooh. (the sugarcubes)

desire pulsing through the body...recently, it's a longing a very pleasant pleasurable longing.... 

here i am...having a really good time at work because i have things to do! feeling productive, purposeful, so much more rewarding. i wrote courtney a letter...reflecting on how resistant i was for so long to working more than 20 hours for fear it would take away my free time but i was not free in my time away from work, i was consumed with worry and stress over money, job-searching, reluctant to do anything that cost money. now with my 30 hour work week i feel free at work...free to express and create from my strengths in the contribution of our community, the library's resources, and i feel free away from work...the foundation of financial stability and basic happiness to play and enjoy life. and i am also so grateful i didn't get any 40 hour work week jobs that would have taken me away from this area. it is truly HOME here, and yesterday i so felt it, in my body, that i could not leave. i could not uproot myself from my nourishing community and land here. 1000% improvement here...in my life situation. there are zen adages about if you want something getting it won't make you happy...yes i heard this from spiritual folk and teachings while i was struggling last year, but really, making enough money to live does matter and having work that is meaningful makes a difference! and i have been so much happier for it...meeting the basic needs has allowed me the freedom to be happy.

i would like to visit NandJ in Seattle
and chicago...people and architecture
first beach...then? we'll see. have to save the money.
very content to be here right now...settling in to my new home.

found 2 opera chairs at surplus sids + a lamp
found a nightstand at Oddities and Such
cool