checking out...

i have been having a serious case of the "i sucks"s this week. from standing at the front of a room, leading strangers thru downward-facing dog, instructing them to breathe & release what no longer serves them, wondering "What the hell am i doing up here?!?" to holding my squealing, squalling infant in my arms - unable to comfort her - with either my words, sounds or body.... helpless. inert. grossly incompetent and unable to meet the demands of life - as they present themselves in this moment... well... or at least.. that's how ya' feel. ... from staring covetously at a friend's smooth skin, firm belly or tidily-coiffed hair, while my own body is still in the process of recovering from & meeting the new demands of motherhood... it seems we're primed to engage in an endless game of covetousness... always someone else's life, or the accessories thereof... barbie's perfect dreamhouse is always perched just one spot over the hill.. and never residing where you are NOW. we are clothed in lack.. drenched in longing... and it is Encouraged. No! It's True! the ads & accompanying voices seem to say... "You are NOT enough! Buy this! Use this cream! This shellack! Try this ab routine! This insider tip. This secret-handshake-twenty-dollar-club-badge-membership trick. One more thing, more tidbit, last tweaking, last temporary stamp of approval.. before you are enough.. good enough. presentable. lovable. acceptable. GOOD. and i'm tired.. i'm tired of a game that pits me against a would-be friend, a mirror, an ally.. and turns them into someone i must either idolize or demonize... someone i must weigh my own value against.... well, she's thinner than me but at least i'm smarter... they make more money, but i have a cooler, more bohemian life... they're more talented than i, but i know the "right" people... bull. shit. i am tired of a game that turns friends into frenemies... assesses my life's value & worth based on how effing well i look & measure up to, EVERYBODY ELSE. it's as if high school never ended!!! hey, look, folks! no need to cultivate any strain of authenticity, any depth or grit.. any nuanced flavor or soul.... all you've gotta do is cultivate the right ratio of fat to muscle, floss, wax & scrub the right things, read fucking cosmo, fill your brain, that delicate and valuable gray real estate with nothing more than sex & diet tips.. and newer ways to whiten your teeth & eradicate wrinkles. cuz, you know.. it MATTERS. and i'm tired. screw this. of a game that views the soul as an afterthought, the spirit as an accessory akin to earrings or lipstick. in the words of the wise & erudite Homer Simpson.. "This Game SUCKS. Let's play Chinese Checkers." .... so I'm giving up. I'm calling it quits.. handing in my playing cards, admitting DeFault.. No way... So when the conversation inevitably shifts towards bodies & what we all virtuously hate about our own - our thighs, our butts, our "less-than-perfect" triceps & glutes... I will cradle my soft & stretch-marked belly, declare myself to be Perfect & Beautiful. AND MEAN IT, DAMNIT

. .... when longing words of what so&so does or drives or earns or how successful & accomplished they may be and So Young too.... I will write songs. I will play my ukulele, slowly & maybe out of tune... do cartwheels on the lawn & make gurgling noises at my beautiful kid.. and have so much fucking fun , that I will not CARE ....... I will love deeply & play with abandon... I will create, Create!! without thoughts of paychecks or outside recognition... On the days when I suck - at every task at hand - i will give myself permission to do just that - SUCK! - fully, completely, with glee & joyous aplomb!! - I will dance & sing & seek inspiration in all the gorgeous forms in which it chooses to find me.. and I will give thanks. .... I will stand on my own two feet & declare "Here I am!" and know..now free of the bound & cumbersome rules of the never-ending game of Human Monopoly I've just exited... that finally.. & beautifully - I am EnOuGh . ......... and to those still playing on the other side of the fence... over on Barbie's dream hill, living Barbie's dream life, driving Barbie's dream car.. striving Barbie's dream Striving... I will issue a friendly wave.. from my new patch of wild grasses & rambling clover... the air perfumed with the intoxicating scent of pOsSibILiTy... and bid them Welcome. Should they ever choose to vacate the stifling patch of Astroturf... and join me together inhabiting... a brand new SpHeRe ......

disclosure: I am a reader of horoscopes. not in the drink-the-koolaid, buy in hook,line & sinker sort of way... not in the superstitous, "lemme check in with the demi-gods of free internet astrology to determine how to chart the course of my life & day" sort of way. more, uh, i dunno. like you pick out what clothes to wear in the morning. how am i feeling today? a blue scarf? maybe a cap? is it a jeans or skirt sort of a morning? and how do we feel about socks? ??? ... some brief little pithy check-in, to help lend my morning a spot of color, a flavor... lime or orange, tobacco or peppermint, please... what shall it be? * and discount shopper that i am, if one does not give me quite the Thang I was looking for.. I'm off in search of another (well, Yes, Mom said no to Tv & ice cream before bed but let's try Dad - he's a sucker- he'll say yes.) from the generic & overly-perfumy words I glean from the peddler of Vagueries app on my phone to the so eerily specific references I get delivered to my daily inbox they make me wonder if Google & the CIA have perhaps joined forces to monitor the daily workings of my life.. to my favorite.. but the one I least turn to because he does not merely dish out empty platitudes and lofty, feel-good pop-psychology wrapped in the satiny tissue of the stars, but rather... this guy... who takes it several steps further and issues warnings, nudgings, commands & directives that are often times hard to swallow in one fell gulp. "Now is not the time to be complacent, dear Pisces.. step up and steer your ship! Be willing to serve as the captain & commander of your own life!" or somesuch thing.... Activist Astrology - commanding you to stop being lazy, get out of your rut, stop clinging to the things that no longer work for you - take charge and step into the protagonist role of your own damn storybook.... or atleast that's what I get from him anyway.. and, so, entreatingly, intrepidly.. after both my aforementioned Sources had failed to supply... "what's on the menu for today? stripes & chenille? polka dots? feathers? a toupee?" No thank you. And off to my last resort - my own personal, psychic manufacturer or these, "the pills that are large & difficult to swallow"... and what should I alight on but this.. these words.. glimmering... poignant.. a song...a lark. "Rob Brezsny says the apocalypse is now, so let's dance." *and a small lightbulb is lit in my head. of course! because it feels like so many things are falling apart... personally, politically, structurally, incredibly... i feel like *( and correct me if i'm wrong)... we are being collectively led to a place whwere the old ways simply will not serve.. beat-up, sullied, stagnant & gentrified ways of conducting business, relating to one another, constructing our worlds.. the car we've been driving thru life all these years - that once was so shiny, new, humming & perfect -now runninglike the beat-up old jalopy that it is.. making strange new sounds, grumbling & sparks... one more trip to the mechanic.. try & sew up the seams of this outworn mode of existence... and it's broken.. and yet we're clinging.. and so says my dime-store prophet, my world-wide-web-soap-box-savior... "Yee-haw!" Let's party. put on your favorite records & boogie. Cuz this is just Life's way of cracking you open.. stripping you down to your essence so you can Breathe.. helping you, oftentimes painfully, repeatedly.. release what is futile, heavy, & leaden & dead in your world... helping you shed all your scales & hook-lined gils & fins .. so that you can swim again - Unbounded - in the deep blue sea of your own Life.. and the last shall be first and the first shall be last... the meek becoming the inheritorsof this - this brand new earth... emerged from the fissures of the past.. cracked wide open by well.. Love - that great leveler of playingfields.. the stuff that melts molecules & shifts substance... so in the maelstrom of your brokenness give Thanks! Take a page from Leonard Cohen or a Sufi poet and breathe a quiet prayer of Yes. ... all right.. I give up.. cuz its only just the Light... bravely, boldly. & sometimes quite painfully!!.. finding its way In.....

cognition...ignite ...

the last few weeks in review... 3 weeks ago, my partner, the love of my life, the father of my infant child, and the man who nearly one-fell-swoopedly scooped up the contents of my heart almost 12 years ago... he went on a bender. ..... 3 weeks ago, i very dramatically scooped up my child, as much cash as i could find inside my house, filled a banged up toyota corolla to the brim with children's toys & clothes, shoes, books - Whatever I imagined we might need... 3 weeks ago I slept in my childhood bed, with my daughter by my side, and listened to her breathe. 3 weeks ago, i sat in my sister's tiny little living room watching trashy reality television, sipping coffee, changing diapers & playing with our kids, reading magazines & taking turns dissecting the vicissitudes of one another's worlds... 3 weeks ago, when pressed, i pointedly told my own mother - the one who saw fit to drop everything in her world at that moment and run to my aid, cradle my daughter and i in the confines of her house-beautiful home & soothe us with 400-thread count sheets & impossibly fluffy scrambled eggs - i told her - that I thought she was frivolous & silly. that she ought not to spend so much time just buying shit & why couldn't she contribute something useful in some way? I made my mother cry. and in the end, all i could think was - careful to hang yourself up on the splinter of another - when there's a massive log in your own damn eye... 3 weeks ago, i sat on the big, mortgaged deck with my father - that overlooks mountains & trees & a beautiful sunset - discussing farming & subsidies, consumerism, cancer & the My-oh-Mys of what a pickle we all are in. And I felt lost. So lost. & small ..... 2 weeks... i camped in the woods with mosquitoes & firewood and improvised woolen mittens for my 3-month old daughter from socks - who likes to sleep with her hands held aloft - as if she were absorbing Grace from the Ether into some infinite power strips traversing the width of her palms... i had bad, horrible dreams where i would wake up, wanting to spit and pummel at the man sleeping beside me - friend, lover, husband - betrayer - .... i stood at the edge of a stone-lined, grass-laden labyrinth by a river - closed my eyes - and whispered - avowing to live at the Center of my life - with heart & courage & verve & wisdom. then quietly walked to the center of the stones...eyes closed. i sat in warm pools and took deep breaths. i napped. i cried. 3 days ago, i went on my own bender - of listening to the news for 3 hours straight - deluged by the endless rain of Civil Rights not gradually, but so rapidly eroding, our food supply ever-more tainted, the corporate stranglehold on our nation growing ever greater - the Endless litany of "The BAD GUYS are winning"... playing its insouciant dirge another round in my head... and i could barely put one foot in front of the other - for fear of everything I buy, every morsel I eat, every trip downtown I take in my little petroleum peddler - somehow only adds to the Demise... this week i sat and listened to my breath, watching the endless rocking train, engine seemlessly linked up to the caboose -of my thoughts- for FIVE WHOLE MINUTES. this week i sat in the company of warm, imperfect women - & we dug together - pliantly nudging at the contents of our hearts & guts - as one. i walked, i wrote, i rode my bike & ate bananas. and i thought... how in the end, the political is, in fact, deeply personal. what a radical thing to move on into the center of your own life - inhabit all of it - the fear, the anger,, your doubts & your own great smallness- the myriad uncomfortable places - and to sit. Breathe. Listen. then to quietly ask, open-palmed, for Grace to come aloft - and be your Guide.