My Brain On Crack
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Missing
I am a ghost. I am formless, void, hollow. I breathe and the breath wafts through me. I sing and hear only the wheezing of a empty dry bellows. I trace footsteps out of my bedroom, following the shapes on the golden brown wood that lead through the hall, past the tiny-white-tiled bathroom, down the steps and out the door into constant motion, cars going by at all hours, energy moving, people living and dreaming within a hair’s-breadth of me, and all I feel is slow, dull, invisible. I move, think, work, and speak in slow motion, half-time, endless loops circling around and around, tightening around me, constricting. I do…
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Polynomial
You remember those, right? Am I giving any of my geekiness away when I say that solving quadratic equations was sort of a highlight for me, mathwise? I found a certain exquisite perfection in creating balance. Each side of the equation balances the other. Yummy. To refresh, in case Algebra II was (cough) a few years ago for you: a polynomial is an expression of finite length constructed of variables and constants. [What, you don’t trust my truthiness in math? Go on, Google it.] It has not escaped me that I am involved in the creation of a polynomial. I already told you that 1 + 1 = 3, remember?…
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Spring
Everywhere I look I see new growth. Buds ripening. Cherry blossoms bursting into soft pinkness. Vivid colors superimposed over the blue-grays of sky and water. New green shoots pushing up from seemingly lifeless brown twigs. Surely there is a metaphor here. I am cold. I miss the warmth. I long to feel it permeate my limbs, my skin, my heart. I’ve used a cliff metaphor perhaps too frequently in the past for it to fully fit now, but I do feel that I have at least dipped a toe into the waters of change. Change happens slowly sometimes, stealthily, without us noticing, like a cat climbing into your lap: one…
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Connecting
The last several days have been sort of epic. Not necessarily good-epic. More like intense-epic. The root of change epic. Changing direction, switching lanes epic. Only … it’s not yet clear where things might go. I am drawn to nestling myself in a tree-lined hilly neighborhood of four million overlooking blue-gray waters (and on magical days, the snow-tipped Cascade range beyond), where I can push my heart outward in concentric rings to connect with other hearts and draw inward again. I am drawn to sparking my cells with the essence of carrots, celery, and apple, connecting with the Earth by drinking her lifeblood. I am drawn to jumping feet first…
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Suck
I’ve been struggling with this concept for days now. Years, actually, but I truly thought I had been-there-done-that enough already to move through/past/beyond it, but no. I suck. And yet I cannot yet embrace it. Embrace the suckage. I smile slightly, inwardly, as I write that. A wry smile. Rueful. It’s irony, after all, and I dig the ironic bizarreness that life is. Except when it’s about me, of course. Me? I have to be Perfect. No suckage for me. I could say “Thanks, Dad” for that one. A big part of my imprinting is in this concept. Let me see if I can explain it to you; it’s a…
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Closure
I came to Tucson, the dry desertland, just over a week ago not really knowing why I was here save for the fact that I had bought an airline ticket and there were people expecting me. Gem and Mineral Show? Well, yes, and I walked endless rows of jewelry, beads, gemstones, minerals, fossils, and tchotchke, none of which I needed, though I do now have 20 extra pounds of stone people to bring home and share. But other than that? No idea why I was here. And I resisted being here. Cactus. Bah. Mostly I felt lack. My heart has been elsewhere. My thoughts have not been on the face…
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Raw
There are times when, despite sometimes thinking I know everything, I find myself floating in formless space, knowing nothing, not even the breath that fills the in-between spaces inside the yawning cavernous deep of my soul. Today — yesterday for the purists — was one of those days. Balancing normalcy with utter terror. Feeling — no, KNOWING — that despite anything to the contrary in the moment, everything would again change in a heartbeat, a breath, a day, a fluid flow into the yet-unknown we collectively label “the future.” And doing nothing more than the next thing. Is that all there is? In times past, when feeling this way, I’ve…
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Naked Tarot
I frequently work with a portion of the Tarot deck to seek clarity or perspective on situations. For years I rather pointedly ignored Tarot, thinking that using it was 1) weird and woo woo (yes I see the irony in that, thanks), and 2) too complicated for my wee brain to comprehend, because after all it would require Memorization and Effort, and maybe I was feeling a wee bit sorry for myself and also lazy. But whatever. A friend turned me onto the lazy-ass method of Tarot, which involves the Major Arcana, 22 cards instead of an entire deck. Oh, and also intuition. Which I can totally get behind. So.…
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Wild Abandon
It’s no secret that I admire passion. I have lived many years between the swings of the pendulum, hurtling myself over cliffs and out of airplanes because that’s just the way things are done. In my world, anyway. Living with wild abandon hasn’t always had good results. Oh, it’s ripe with possibility for learning and growth, there’s no doubt of that. And I am all about growth. But other people don’t always understand my no-holds-barred approach. I have been hurt in the past upon discovering that what I thought was a melding of the minds (and hearts) was in reality rather disconnected. In retrospect, I could have asked questions and…
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Compassion
I have been telling stories lately, the stories that add, thread by thread, to the complex weaving that comprises the fabric of my thus-far life experiences and that shape who I am. Layer by layer these stories build upon each other, some painful, some humorous, some poignant. If I could find one concise word that sums up the me-ness of who I am I would use that to say, “This is me. Here I am. Love me,” but we humans communicate in stories. We all carry stories. While telling mine, I often become lost in the emotions contained within them. I fall down deep dark holes leading far underneath the…