Connected and Committed

photowalk at the Henry Ford Museum

Photowalk is a great concept. Get a bunch of cool people together who love photography regardless of ability or experience, choose an area where they can fan out and capture whatever suits their fancy, and then share what they found. Highly recommended. Start one if there isn't a Meetup or Twitter or whatever social media platform sponsored group where you are.

miss blissmonger

all feedback, all the time

The universe is constantly serving up situations and the particular people in them as compelling opportunities for you to witness and prove to yourself just what is possible with all this intention and law of attraction and blissmongering stuff.

You do remember the game is played 24/7, right? There is no law of attraction switch that gets turned on and off, willy-nilly. Round-the-clock coverage, all feedback, all the time.

Sometimes those situations and people that show up reflect back to you that you've been hanging out in the less comfortable swim lanes of the emotional scale swimming pool more often than not.

Unheated, stark, and what is that funky smell?

Sometimes those situations and people reflect that you have indeed been diligent and focused in your intention to allow yourself to move on over to more hospitable waters.

By then you've graduated to the beach, the ocean. There's cool sunglasses and yummy chaise lounges and palm trees and 82 degrees in the air and tiki boys and girls and lovely refreshments and wonderful, soft, thirsty Egyptian cotton towels over there.

And while basking in those healing, balmy breezes you realize that you are feeling everything in your body and getting to employ the grand guidance filter that it is. You are applying what you know to be true about expectation and what's real and what resonates and what doesn't. As opposed to all the other times when you didn't know to, might have and didn't, did and hit the wall anyway, did and bounced off the wall, did and finally walked through the doorway to another room.

Now it feels like you're inhabiting a completely different structure entirely.

We need reminders that this "work" pays off exponentially, and I'm taking a moment to peer over my sunglasses and report that it does.

Now you'll have to excuse me. I'm off for a long, leisurely stroll on the sand and in the waves.

demolition man

Facebook provided yet another interesting encounter. Last night I bumped into an all-school reunion page for where I graduated from, and I started clicking on the photo albums that have been collected of the place over the years. There on the screen was the demolition evidence of the entire complex being leveled to the ground:

and replaced with a grassy field.

Whoosh. Gone.

I felt sick to my stomach.

Later I learned from a former classmate that the city went through an emotional churning, trying to find a way to save/utilize the buildings in the face of numbers that proved that it just wasn't worth it. Neglect after closing them when a new high school had been built on the other side of town, and unknowing use of hazardous material by the original builders in the 20s had rendered the structures unsound, unsafe and unhealthy.

So down they came.

I'm fairly certain that I was tapping into the upheaval the town went through during this whole process, as well as my own angst over my own set of memories about the auditorium, every turn and corner of hallway, tunnel, cafeteria, classroom, spans of lockers, display case, gymnasium, parking lot, swimming pool, stairway and entrance.

And I want to try to wrap my head around what this complex looks like now. I tried to get a view on Google Earth of the intersection in front of it, but apparently this event wasn't important enough to Google to update their satellite photos of the area--the buildings are still there. Very weird, like seeing the Twin Towers in movies and such, pre-2001.

The loss of a physical marker of a huge portion of my life feels very strange, but the memories are still with me. They can't be taken away, and they really were all I had even when the buildings were still intact. Same with relationships that have come and gone. The memories remain and are what those times were for: capturing in the moment the possibilities and the joy and the pain, even, celebrating being alive.

Another friend suggested arting-up something to commemorate this event. Not sure yet what exactly, but I'll be doing something with the energetic stuff goin' on here.

Not the least of which would be to sit in that empty field for a good long while and soak in those memories.

shake your body down to the ground

artist

Haven't read Seth Godin's latest book Linchpin yet.

But I'm enjoying the buzz and his observing his masterful choreography and engagement of the internet and all its powers.

And since I tend to craft the English language to suit my purposes, I'm enjoying his commandeering the word "artist" as well.

Hmmmm...the art of allowing, the Abraham view of life, yet another definition of "art".

I think there is room for artists of all types of lives and services, and I think everyone understands the difference between the kinds of artists who produce works of art and the kinds of artists who provide artful services, and I think everyone ought to live from one of those places if they want to be happy.

Otherwise this is all a matter of semantics. Seth is writing about soulful stuff, and it's striking a chord with the citizens of the planet, and that is what matters in my book.

more sanity on the planet

My beliefs I test on my body, on my intuitional consciousness, and when I get a response there, then I accept.  --  D.H. Lawrence

~*~*~

And that response is going to either be a resounding "Yes!", a marginal "Maybe," a marginal "No," or a gentle but firm "No." Take your pick--guess which one promotes more sanity on the planet? 

no thank you

This is where I spend my time on the J.O.B. I took these shots last week during break. Imagine 35 people filling all of those chairs, all around the outside of the room and at every spot at the table.

That's what it was like yesterday and last night.

Now I'm thinkin' that the weird vibe I was feeling was all about anticipating that craziness. How this rickety organized schooling contraption manages to move along the highway and endure in spite of itself. I could go on, but I'll refrain :-)

Instead I will indulge in a little comparisoning of that weird vibe. In the past it would have been a full out anxiety episode with cortisol streaming through my blood and my mind ricocheting all over itself like the Road Runner on crack, grasping at straw solutions and not breathing and basically getting really fucked up.

Yesterday it was more of a ride in a submarine. Quieter, smoother, with awareness of the craziness that might lie on the other side of those layers of steel. A tension nonetheless. But different. I will attribute it to this new place I've come to and already assimilated/taken for granted/forgotten because we humans tend to do that.

Onward. The alarm goes off at 5:00, and I am still in the are-you-crazy? frame of mind about it. I manage 5:45, and think that perhaps modifying the plan to 5:30 would make sense. I already do feel a bit more organized and ready for the day even with the extra half hour I gifted myself with, so there's movement in the general direction. And that is enough.

I'm grateful to a friend posting info from Mark Silver about a manageable 20-25 hour billable hours week. It's so obvious and makes so much sense, but since we are so brainwashed into believing that 40 hours is what our bodies were built to do, it's difficult at times to put that belief aside and live in reality, eh? :-) I look at my days now, with 21 J.O.B. hours plus what I do for my own endeavor, and I can't see anymore where 40 hours would be healthy or fit or be possible. That really translates into 80 hours, with the sleep deprivation and fatigue and inevitable dis-ease to back it up.

No thank you.

shun faux reassurance

No, everything is not going to be okay. It never is. It isn't okay now. Change, by definition, changes things. It makes some things better and some things worse. But everything is never okay. Finding the bravery to shun faux reassurance is a critical step in producing important change. Once you free yourself from the need for perfect acceptance, it's a lot easier to launch work that matters. ~Seth Godin

~*~*~

God, I love how this man thinks.

Everything is not going to be OK.

Have you noticed?

Since the beginning of human existence as we know it--and there is much more that we don't know, but that's another discussion--nothing has been OK.

Ever.

But it's been an amazing ride, hasn't it?

Large predators. The elements. The invention of, and subsequent slavery to, the clock. Inhuman treatment of endless varieties, towards others and towards ourselves. The notion that knowledge can be partitioned and gated by third party hoops of many varieties--spiritual, academic, medicinal, etc.

And that's just counting up to the Middle Ages.

Somehow at critical junctures, the human being has found a way to conceive, produce and integrate change into the environment in spite of the profound forces constantly dogging our very survival.

These days, the only thing in the way of our survival is changing our minds.

The technology and the vision to make life on this planet the heaven on earth of lore is available in our collective citizenry and consciousness. And yet, we often don't choose to go there.

Which is insane on so many levels.

Some of us continue looking for the faux assurances that we've been bred to believe exist that will make change palatable.

Ain't gonna happen.

Some of us dissect the false logic of those faux assurances. Some of us detect the presence of the man behind the curtain, get over being pissed off about it, and go ahead and be the change anyway.

Nothing is ever okay.

But there's a hell of a lot that's fucking awesome.

Launch your work that matters.   

Yeah, yeah, the inauguration--a year ago today I got laid off

And it's among the best things that have ever happened to me.

Right up there with getting a dream job teaching overseas right out of college. Experiencing life through the eyes of my son, who happens to be an Aspie. Reclaiming my health through changing my diet. Spending time with distant relatives on their native soil, learning about where my ancestors came from and who I am. Breaking 101 the first summer I learned how to golf.

Having reality as one perceives it yanked out from under them is as cool as those things?!

Yes.

A good friend mentioned the film Lemonade today, and I watched it just now. Ironic, serendipitous, validating, fabulous. If you're not familiar with it, everyone in the film was laid off from a job in advertising in the last few years, and every one of them saw their way to making lemonade out of their particular batch of lemons. One of them captured best the mechanics of how her life was transformed, and how it's been for me: if you spend your time doing the things that bring you joy, your life changes in simply profound and profoundly simple ways.

During the previous 365 days, my status has allowed me the time and the energy to write a book. Attend meetings of groups with a variety of purposes. Which in turn provided the opportunity to meet some truly authentic and awesome people, too numerous to mention or link to. I so appreciate having you in my life, and I can't wait to see what happens next.

And that's how I start my days now.

I can't wait to see what happens next.

I highly recommend it.

Tobacco and dreams

Anything newly created and as powerful as a prayer grown from a dream can leave a vacancy in the ribs of tradition. Death and tradition are very close relatives, and neither of these likes change. A shaman must fill that vacancy with gifts equivalent to the loss they felt by your creativity. Tradition wants to contain your creativity, and Death wants to eat it. The graveness of what was bestowed upon you was paid for heavily in sacrificial gifts guarded diligently thereafter. This keeps a prayer from losing its integrity and spiritual worth, and most of all maintains its friendliness to you.

Martin Prechtel, Secrets of the Talking Jaguar

~*~*~

The meaning of this paragraph is delightfully just out of my grasp but also just within my line of sight. Each sentence is its own paragraph, and then another, and then another, until it seems like an entire chapter in these few words. I've not resonated with indigenous wisdom before reading this book, and this world of magic and nature has me quite captivated. Enough to begin offerings as I see them, to the gods as I see them, because of Martin's seeing them as he learned to see them. 

Tobacco and dreams.

It is that Sunday evening hour

The one where the coming week's responsibilities can howl in the distance, vague and foreboding.

I look around me at my books, my art work, my photography, my designs, my writing, my son's creations scattered over the space and time with me this weekend. I think about my friends and how life has been such an amazing adventure.

In this mood and in this surroundings, the howling has no traction for it to take hold these days.

Matter of fact, the wolf is curled up at my feet, ready for a long evening nap by the fire.

I am exactly where I should be, being exactly who I am, doing what is only mine to do.

Howl.

Knowing is funny like that

I had been afraid to look at the truth, because there was so much at stake. I had been afraid of being alone. Now I was alone. I had accepted intolerable behavior because of the fear that I couldn't live without him. But here I was, living without him.

Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal by Julie Metz

~*~*~

Such a great example of why we do the things that we do: our beliefs lead us down paths that are circuitous and dark at best, damaging and untrue at worst.

But we can always wake up and change our minds.

Sometimes a wake-up call comes from our better-knowing side, delivered to us because we aren't heeding the sirens, served up in ways that are more jarring, more severe than they might have been had we not accepted putting others' requirements and preferences above our own.

Knowing is funny like that.

out of the fog

The brain fog has lifted, and yesterday I was feeling some incredible shifts that appeared out of nowhere, or so it seemed from my vantage point. I’m feeling the support of the universe that Ive invested so much intent in, and it’s blowing me away, pretty much. Actually being able to feel abundance and support and unconditional love in any tangible, or even intangible, way has been a dream, and apparently it’s been dreamed into wakingness.

I’ve finished Secrets of the Talking Jaguar. It’s resonating very powerfully with me, and I’m sad that the end came so quickly. The descriptions of communal secular life and the way the Maya live(d) their spirituality on a daily basis is a soothing balm to my civilization-barraged soul. And the descriptions of shamanism in that culture from Martin’s experience really strike a chord within me. They tell me something about myself that I didn’t expect to hear.

to keep the heart alive

Neither wing--dreams or waking-- contains all of life. Real life occurs as a result of the interaction of the two. The life is the butterfly's heart, and both dreaming and awake working life are necessary to keep the heart alive. Our lives, like the butterfly's heart, are kept aloft by two opposing, mirroring, twinlike wings. This heart is the third thing, the Rukux heart that all ritual seeks to feed and keep alive. --Martin Prechtel

~*~*~

I've been healing a sinus thing the past week and am just now coming out of my cocoon.

And it feels GREAT.

that eighth happiness

Over the last few days I've watched Inn of the Sixth Happiness for the first time and revisited Good Will Hunting. Forty years of stylized Hollywood film-making separate the former from the latter, and I was thinking of how the older one might be filmed today, with an actor like Sandra Bullock playing the lead, and perhaps more politics involved in the plot than the exaggerated love story. But hey, it's just a story.

What is fabulous is the knowing of who she was that Gladys allowed herself to tap into and never. let. it. go. She knew on a cellular level that her soul was connected to China, and she listened to it rather than to all the nay-sayers who wanted to drag her down into the lobster pot with them. I can't imagine riding the Trans-Siberian Railway these days as an unaccompanied woman, much less back in the 50s, but she did it. As for shepherding a group of 100 orphans for weeks over mountains and under enemy fire, well, she's a far finer woman than I.

Contrast that with Will, who had the crap beat out of him as a boy and learned to fear intimacy and push people away. In the end he pushes through all that conditioning and starts to take the kind of risks that aren't really risks at all. The risk is in remaining in the boxes we construct for ourselves, and thank the universe for our compatriots who remind us of other ways of perceiving.

Gladys and Will are a great team of inspiration as I transition back into a reality that is much more easily managed than war-torn poverty or astounding physical abuse, but soul-diminishing none-the-less. In Busting Loose lingo, I make up the story, I make up the characters, I make up the plot, and I appreciate that I do such a good job of making it so convincingly real. Because I get that that's what I'm doing, I can also choose to enlist those energies into more constructive story-making, drop some albatross beliefs and step into the heaven on earth that was there all the time.

That eighth happiness.

Just sayin'--Seth Godin gets the whole mongering thing

Just sayin'--Seth Godin gets the whole mongering thing:

"Not just fear of terror (which is another word for fear). Fear of failure. Reminding people that an idea will never work, that the market is in failure, that all hope is lost--does that work very often? [emphasis mine]

"Fear mongering is a lousy profession, one that ought to be regulated, if not banned. I'm more in favor of hope mongering."

~*~*~

Just sayin'.

And the fact that I get it makes me feel good, about me

"I might be the only person on the face of the earth that knows you're the greatest woman on earth. I might be the only one who appreciates how amazing you are in every single thing that you do, and how you are with Spencer, "Spence," and in every single thought that you have, and how you say what you mean, and how you almost always mean something that's all about being straight and good. I think most people miss that about you, and I watch them, wondering how they can watch you bring their food, and clear their tables and never get that they just met the greatest woman alive. And the fact that I get it makes me feel good, about me."

Melvin Udall in As Good As It Gets

~*~*~

There is hope for the world when a Melvin Udall can feel, and then articulate this to another human being.

And there is hope for a world that has a Jack Nicholson in it who can play a curmudgeon of such preposterous proportions and who can deliver those lines in such a fabulous way.

the dome