cheese/sentimentality/thinkin' about stuff

we carry so much baggage with us, the weight of our parents' stories and their parents' stories...traumas and past lives and expectations and pressures.  we change and shift and shrug.  we become stronger and we break open.

yes. ten years ago i was--not a different person--a different version of myself: the ghost of a stone sculpture not yet articulated in sensuous curves and sharp-edged hollows.  i was a dream and a spark of what i am now...and right now, i am a spark of what i will become.

do we ever really get to reach our highest form?  yes.  maybe not while we are alive, but we are born with this perfection, this blazing joyful soul that becomes veiled as we age and learn and become burdened with knowledge and avoidance--and we return to that state in death.  i suppose select few make that transition while in human form: these are the Buddhas and Jesus Christs and Mohammeds and Mother Theresas, the anonymous ones who drag dying brothers to safety and who spend their days feeding and bathing the sick.  But most of us are trying to flip the Rubix cube while we are half-blind and roaring for affection and recognition.

i am no expert in love, though i know that i crave it and need it as much as i need water to keep my body running smoothly, as i crave pieces of dark chocolate on a select few days out of every month.  i know that love has many masks...and that love unmasked is more powerful than the weapons our government spends billions on every week.  i know that i can convince myself that i have it, that i am in it--or that i don't have it and won't ever know it, not truly.

the truth is that i am looking for the freedom that comes from pairing with a person who can look me in the eye as i lay down my burden of stories.  i need a best friend who will cherish me and call me out on my shit.  someone who is imperfect and adept like a chameleon, shifting to fit a mood, a mode of communication, a moment when i am glorious and frightening.  i need a lover who can undress me, and a confidante who can hold me when my mother dies--a partner who will have my back when i'm faced with a gang of demons ready to bludgeon me to death with their stinking fear, and a companion who will play Twister with me while Tom Waits, followed by Radiohead, followed by BB King, followed by Mozart plays on and on and on...

in return, i will offer every bit of who i am.  i will be lovely and sexy and honest and jealous.  i will cry and kiss and soothe with my fingertips.  i will complain and apologize and praise and bless.  i will be there, even when i am not.  i, too will be imperfect, and i will try so hard.  and i will back off and run away, but i will always come back.  and when our paths part, i will still love you.  and when we meet up again, i will not love you less. 

don't let the days go by...sertraline

She Keeps Bees is my new favorite band.

what's happening with the bee populations these days?  i hate how our media builds up excitement around one issue for a week or two...and then nothing is heard of it again.  i suppose it's up to the individual to follow whatever cause speaks to her.

i am feeling restless lately, like i have a beehive in my belly.  no, it's not the Level 4-spicy Tom Yum Goong i ate.  the turmoil is in my emotional body...maybe in my intellectual body.  it makes sense: i have not purged since before Christmas.  all the stuff that normally beats its wings against my brain until i rush to numb it out is spinning around, unfettered.  a year ago, i couldn't bear to be in the house alone.  i would almost inevitably binge and purge.  recently i've found caught myself browsing online stores for hours...i think i've always had a mild shopping addiction, and now that my food addiction is lessening, something has to fill the void.

what is so treacherous about the void?  it's big and empty, and my Shadow self resides there.  the Wild One, the one who wants to to leave everything and everyone behind and fly to Tasmania.  the one who wants to swim naked in cold water.  the one who is rude and vulgar and impatient.  the one who is not her culture's idea of a socially functional woman.

my Shadow Yoga teacher says that we must follow the shadow to the source of light to become balanced.  in the dark i am obsessed, but in the light i am passionate.  in the dark i am a dilettante; in the light, a renaissance woman.  we either flee our Shadow or become consumed by it.  but the day and night each have their time, and so things grow and bloom and die.

i am afraid to bloom.  afraid to step into the flow of creativity that will sweep me up and toss me around so that i have sand in my ears when i surface.  creativity is the realm of gods--of spirit.  it has nothing to do with me and everything.  if i close off, i get sick and die.  why can't i remember dying?

maybe it was intentionally uneventful so that it would pale in comparison to the life i'm now living.

once i become more adept at unblocking my creativity (Roto-Rooter for the chakras?), maybe i won't have such high highs and low lows.  maybe i can quit depending on sertraline HCl.  wouldn't THAT be nice.

this one was heavy.