I spent all of my twenties and well into my thirties looking for a Recipe for Life. I read books, attended classes and workshops, studied and mentored with various people, tried on several dozen different lifestyles and ways of being in the world. There was nary a holistic stone that I hadn't lifted and looked under to some degree by the time my third decade rolled around. And by my early-thirties, from all of the information I'd amassed, people began paying me to pass on the things I'd learned along the way. I tried to stay as humble as possible about the whole process, knowing that I knew some, but not all, that I had figured out some zones but not the whole map. People seemed to get a kick out it, though, how I'd give a talk on feng shui and relationships and spice it with crazy tales of my singlehood, say: hey, don't take my word for it, go out and try this stuff for yourself as everything I'm saying might be utter horsecrud. I did have a lot of knowledge - about herbs and diet, meditation and chi gong, toning and ley lines, yoga and aromatherapy, energy bodies and emotional entities and a hundred thousand other little tidbits of Stuff. And then there was the psychic ability where I was able to see inside of a person's life, their body, mind, heart. These two things together, the knowledge and the intuition, were a pretty solid match to assist people, and I felt glad to do my best, to stay away from alcohol, to get plenty of sleep, to be on time, to stay late, to do things for free when need be, to be compassionate and kind and forgiving and strong, to give people the very best I had to offer in the best way I could. There was frustration, too, with this mode of advising, as I steered clear of telling people what to do, always attempting to turn them back to the space where they saw that it was Their choice, Their perception, what They felt to do for themselves. "Well, then what the h*ll am I paying you for?" one woman yelled at me when I refused to tell her whether to leave her husband or not. "Options," I told her. "You pay me to help you see the hidden options you didn't know you had or didn't trust were yours." If I remember correctly, she snorted and stormed out of the session rolling her eyes, off to see a Real Psychic. I considered myself pretty good at what I did: assessing people's problems then helping them devise a solution. The thorn was that this 'helping' spread over all facets of my life, friendships, boyfriends, even my own leisure time, which meant that I never took time off from all of the analyzing, the solving, the neverending fixing of all the Broken Things. It created a lot of discomfort. A boyfriend and I once had a fight where he hollered in exasperation: I don't recall giving you permission to feng shui my head! It stopped me dead in my tracks and set a whole thought process into motion. What is self-improvement? What is spiritual growth? If we see someone floundering, should we dive right in and rescue them or should we hang out and see if they figure out how to swim or get themselves out of the deep end? If we find out all sorts of cool short cuts and tips and hookups, are we duty-bound to share them? If we see others suffering, should we make haste to relieve their suffering? Up until that point I assumed that Everyone wanted to feel better, to do better, to Be Better. What I hadn't taken into consideration was that we all wake up to this concept of Better in our own time, and shaking someone awake before they are ready makes for a very cranky bedfellow. In terms of the psychic stuff, it used to drive me nuts. I'd had no training yet on how to control any of the psychic energy, the images and thoughts that popped up throughout my day. It was all so FreakinAmazing that I thought that everyone would want to know, as in who wouldn't want to know The Real Deal about themselves? And so I told them. And pretty much across the board, they hated me for it. Who was I, some stranger, some casual friend, some person they'd met not too long ago, some nutjob family member telling them something deeply personal and private, usually mortifyingly embarrassing, and who the heck knew if it were true or just abject cack spewing out of my ever-smiling maw? And even more enlightening was the fact that most people seemed to have very little genuine desire to know what was Really Going On. They had come to a definition about themselves and they had organized their perceptions of the rest of the world around it. Anyone who went fishing in those waters was gonna get sharkbit. The angry, rude person that people avoided was firmly convinced that he was a long-suffering victim of a world filled with incompetent, mean dickweeds. The diehard gossip and general all-purpose motormouth saw people as shallow and insensitive. And on and on as far as the cliché can see . . . The tricky part of this was that there was always enough of a grain of truth for this to actually make sense for the person. People can be superficial or mean, especially in today's world of sugar and road rage, celebrity rags and deep rivers of feelings of entitlement when it comes to good customer service. So how could I get through to these people who didn't even know that they needed to get gotten through to? I finally faced it: I couldn't. And then I faced the next part: it didn't matter. Then the final part: because everyone and everything is just fine the way they are. (Well, that's not really the final piece, but for the purposes of this post it is, and that's fine, too.) And then came the next part: what about the people who came to me asking for advice? And what about my own desire for advice? The answer to the latter came first, but it certainly took its sweet time. I've been lucky in my life to get advice from some dang fine people, I've certainly read a lot of top-notch books, and I have catharted full-tilt workshop-style with the best of them. And as I've spent a great deal of my living perceiving my own self-captaining abilities as pretty mediocre and oftimes downright worthy of mutiny, I spent a lotta, lotta years asking people in one way or another to solve my life for me. I took on their ways of thinking, of speaking, of feeling or not feeling. I let them choose my menfolk, let them tell me who and when to send them away. I adopted ways to eat, move, breathe. There is truth in the fact that we humans are almost totally comprised Zelig-style of the mirrored bits and pieces of others we've met along the way. But the deeper truth is that there is something underneath the collection of emotional and mental flotsam and jetsam we call a personality and parade about inside down the course of our lives. But before I figured that last part out, I kept noticing how truly clueless I was, and kept trying to figure out how to instead Get It Right, and so I asked a lot of advice, from a lot of people. And I got some great advice, advice that turned situations around, advice that mended relationships with lovers and friends, family and workmates. But eventually, at some point, I'd be left to my own devices, and without someone immediate and on call to ask for advice, I'd just blow things apart much like I always had. I sort of felt like Courtney Love during the period right after Kurt died when people felt so badly for her, and she got roles in films and Ed Norton dated her, tried to help her out, and designers gave her fabulous clothes and people introduced her to their trainers and coaches and rabbis and she lost that puffy, surly look. But eventually the thing cracked and she just went out and got drunk and flung herself at Russell Crowe and punched a girl in a club and got arrested and well, no one was really surprised were they? I was talking to my sister on the phone the other day. She was agonizing over whether to break up with her boyfriend or not and wanted my advice. I tried like heck not to give it. And at one point she said: you never call and ask any of us for advice - you are so strong. And I said: honey, I don't ask Anyone for advice anymore, and I sure as crud don't enjoy it when it's doled out uninvited, but it doesn't mean that I'm particularly strong, it just means that no matter how good that advice is, it still didn't come out of my heart, and so eventually I'll just f*ck it up anyway, so why not just f*ck it up from the start under my own steam, because at least maybe someday, when I finally find my groove again, it'll be because I finally get it, *I* finally get it, and that will be a very good day. And so that is why I hate advice so much, why I hate to hear it, why I don't ask for it, and why if people insist on pushing, I tend to bark and growl and occasionally take a nip out of the offender's hide. I'm a bad doggy these days. I don't know why. I used to be such a sweet kitty. I'm disciplined and work hard with jobs and school. I'm sad a lot. I'm angry with a lot of people who, fortunately, aren't around for me to express this to. I dream about my ex-boyfriends constantly. I fill the god hole with alternating salty and sweet snacks. But I'm okay. I sometimes think that coming back to school was the worst mistake I've made yet. It took all of my hard-won sweetness and softness and beat the crap out of them with its rigid thinky mental aggression. But when I look back, I so strongly felt to do this, and I made the decision all on my own, with no advice from anyone. That's what the past three years have been: f*cking up over and over in new and ever inventive ways. But sometimes I succeed, and a thousand tiny angels sing Barry Manilow songs, and it's like an inner sun has risen. As for giving advice out, if someone isn't paying me for it, I do my darndest to always ask first if the other would like my take on the situation. Most of the time, people say No Thanks, and I save myself a tremendous amount of hot air, which is nice for both of us. But mostly what I've discovered is that I really am clueless, and that this is as close to Getting It Right as I have ever been. You're clueless, too, you know. But, of course, this could all just be bs. Guess you'll have to work it out for yourself . . . This entry is dual posted at DatingGod

This entry was dual posted at DatingGod This is a post I've been meaning to write for about a year now. And since it also has to do with the last two posts, and with some of the emails and comments that I've received, I know that if I don't write this now, it's only gonna get a whole lot worse. . . First, I want to explain why I write this blog. I get that I don't have to, but I really want to be clear, so that maybe a few misunderstandings can get cleared up, and less will be created in the future. I've said some stuff here and there, but I figure if I put it all together in one place it'll make more sense, and a little emotional house cleaning can get done. Here's the deal: I need to do art. If I don't, I have no clue what is going on. I barely keep a handle on things when I've got the art thing going, but without the art thing, I'm seriously lost. This is what I mean by art: I take things that I feel and see and put them together in a way that is resonant to me. Using sweaty mermaid dancing, I connect with all sorts of feelings and thoughts and images that are lodged inside of my body and I dance them, or rather get myself into a place where they can dance me. And it feels really good. When I write, it can be because I'm experiencing something intensely stressful and to craft words in a certain way, to shape the story into something funny and intense or goofy and mythic, helps me to rearrange my mental furniture, allows me to break through some of the crunchy funk and get to the softness and sweetness underneath. Feng Shui: it saves my ass on a daily basis. It helps me create art that I can live in, and that helps when the outside world feels way too freakin shardful and pointy. These are my main ones now, but in the past there has been acting and painting and drawing and crocheting and mild carpentry and singing and tantric freakin s*x. Which brings me to this blog. This is where I come to Let Go, where I can take the puzzle pieces of my living and place them in a way that feels and looks like Yes to me. I spend a lot of my time judging the crud out of myself, really beating mercilessly about my head and heart. But when I come to this blog, that funky part of me is forced to release its grip, even if only for a while, and often, by the time I press Publish, it's vamoosed. It's also a crafting. Because I know that people are reading, I weave things together into ways that I hope will be entertaining or provacative or informative. Sometimes I'm just flinging stuff around, I'm pushing boundaries inside of myself, or maybe just had a day where my own boundaries are gone, gone, like a turkey in the corn. But there is always consciousness around what I'm creating, and the fact that I am creating something for others to be a part of if they feel to, whether it be reading or emailing or whatever rings true for them. Which brings me to You. You, that wears oh so many faces. You, that leaves sweet comments and sends me such heartfelt emails about the challenges you're facing in your life. You, whose own fractured, murmuring heart I can so very often feel as if I were next to you with my hand placed upon your chest. You, that sends me an enraged email detailing how my use of the words 'coming out' in reference to revealing my psychic abilities, demeaned every gay man and woman who had ever struggled for equality. You, who has paypal-ed me money and sent cd mixes and books and fridge magnets and pictures. You, who had me come and spend Thanksgiving with your family, so that I wouldn't feel so lonesome without my own. You, who encourages me to lighten up, to let go, to keep writing, to not lose hope, to give up all claims to hope, to keep on trucking, to not drop out. You, who tells me stories of how somehow, in the midst of all my meshuga schputz, you managed to find a nugget of Yes for yourself, something that helped you go back to school or Just Say No To A Buttheaded Man or take a risk or feel a little lighter. You, who felt the need to send me a detailed description of the ways in which I only wished I were dating god, but how in actuality am dating satan and will burn in a fiery pit where teeth are gnashing and all sorts of sulfery whatnot. You, who I've never met but exchanged a hundred little emails with. You, you lurker, you, that I can nonetheless feel, oh yeah. You who I know from my past, and we used to be friends or lovers or client/teacher or classmates. You, who are a part of my present, who I barely know, or seriously holy sh*t know all sorts of luscious little secrets, heh. You, who are the kindest, gentlest human I've ever encountered and who is so humble they'd never even believe that this is about them and who I feel dang blessed that you grace me with your attention. You, who likes to cruise by ever so often and ladle out some big ole nasty judgments on me so that you can stop laying your big ole judgments on yourself for a moment and feel good that you've found someone even more f*cked up than yourself. You, who feels like my sister, my brother in dating, or in art, or in kitty-worship, or mac-geekery, or insanity. You. I also hope that even as you take so much of my heartfelt postings to heart, that you don't take too much personally, even as this blog is so very often muthafreakin personal. Sometimes I get a little drunk and drunkpost. Sometimes I'm crabby and press Publish. Sometimes I'm depressed and just come here to Hoot Into The Wilderness so that I can hear an echo or two of Fellow Beings Who Hoot Into The Void. Sometimes I don't know what the freak is going on and feel the need to write about it. Sometimes my heart is breaking. Sometimes it is so full that I don't know what else to do but come here and let it leak all over the keyboard. Sometimes it all just feels so good and I feel so dang grateful that I come here and attempt to push a little of it out via the internet cable modem. Sometimes i just need to know that there is a place for me where I feel heard, where I feel held, where I can feel my heart beating so that I can be reminded that I am still here, on this planet, in this life, and that it's all okay. I don't want anyone to try and fix me. I don't need to adopt a new worldview or assimilate a new technique or have my cognitive behavior therapized. I'm not looking for anyone to attempt to put my Humpty back with my Dumpty. I may look all broken and f*cked up and flayed and splayed. It may appear that I have misplaced my heart, my values, or my mind. It may seem like I am screaming for someone to tell me what the freak to do. But I'm doing okay over here in my little piece of the universe. All is well. Everything is just as should be, exactly as it needs to be. No need to be alarmed. Just a regular old human patchwork quilt, taking a stance and trading in The Hiding for the Laying It All Out There. Life is good. Even when it's messy . . . And I know that you know what I mean . . .

About a week ago I was in the local laundromat using the Gigantor machine to wash my blankets and rugs and stuff when my cell phone rang. It was a woman from A Very Big Cancer Project who'd apparently been given my name by my boss' boss as a possible candidate for an amazing nine-month PT job. I'd already agreed to return as an intern with the program I worked at this summer, but this sort of job and these sort of people you just don't say No Thanks to. And so I set up an interview, if for nothing else but for the experience of it all, because what were the chances I'd get the job? I got the job. I suppose I thought, hey, I might get the job, but it was still farfetched enough for me to not sit down and think things through. After I got off the phone with the woman after saying Yes (because how do you say No to a job like that with people like that?) I had a weird feeling. I called the folks that I worked with this summer and asked if they'd release me from the internship, and after expressing disappointment and asking me all sorts of practical questions I hadn't thought to ask while I was in the interview for the new job, they agreed. I hung up with them, and felt really, really weird. And when I woke up the next morning it was with the realization: I just seriously f*cked up. On an excitement level, the new job was like several rounds on Kingda Ka. I'd get to meet the coolest, smartest cancer people in the state, study their programs and services and protocols, and I'd have serious contacts for when I finally get out of school and start job hunting. And that's what I'd said Yes to, to the fabulousness of it all. But when the excitement subsided a little what I get was that it wasn't an internship, but a graduate assistantship which meant no credits toward the 12 I still had to fulfill to graduate, and as the job continues into next June, I'd be hard pressed to get everything done so that I could graduate without pulling my hair out trying to make everything fit. It was also 50 cents less an hour, was a flat 20 hours a week, was much more travel time, and didn't start for another two or three weeks which meant an oncoming money crunch was headed my way. And when I thought about the folks that I worked for this summer I thought about how I knew and liked them, they knew and liked me, how they are utterly accomodating to however I want to schedule my time, however many hours I want to work, and the last thing said to me after I'd told them about the other job was: if you change your mind, give us a call, we'd love to have you back. And so I did. I called them back and said: grovel, grovel, I screwed up, big time. And they laughed and said: really? that's great, because we found several other cool projects for you to work on, and we'll keep you amused. Because here's the deal: I will not go through what I went through last semester, so stressed out that anxiety rode me like the Pony Express For The Over-Caffeinated. I purposely only signed on for three classes this semester so that I could slow down and enjoy this grad school ride I'm on, because seriously, how many people get the opportunity to go to grad school fulltime when they are forty? And why the heck should I race through it, cheeks flapping at Mach 10, when I could be having a dang fine time, and a life as well? And so I called back and said No to the glamour job, and hope that they don't think me too much of a flake, but if they do, oh well, Life it does boogie on . . .

(Double-posted over at the other datinggod blog home) Oh, let's just continue on with my favorite dreaded subject of the past few months, okay the past few years, okay fine the past few decades: my ex-boyfriends. Each time I get involved with a new guy, it feels so luscious that it seems as if This is The Big One, this is It, and through the outpouring and inrushing of love my living is transformed into something where all of the pieces fit together in a way that only heavy doses of endorphins coupled with massive infusions of oxytocin can provide. But eventually I see that it is less about having a hormonaly stimulating break from my regularly scheduled programming and more about yet another foray, Osiris-style, into the bowels of my stored patterning, like a mystical-emotional scavenger hunt where what I am looking for is Who I Am Not so as make Who I Am show up more brightly. But screw The Spiritual Stuff, what about the ex-boyfriends: what about Them? Who were They really? If I were to line them all up so that you all could get a good look at them and ask them probing questions of motive and intent, you would see some dang beautiful men. They were the men left of center, who because of uniqueness, oddness, Otherness flew under most people's radar in one way or another. But when asked the right questions, when patience was applied to help them release that outer layer they hid behind, they revealed that they were amazingly, achingly, heart-breakingly beautiful. One was tall and lean, dark haired, light-eyed, a motorcycle man, a bowhunter, a literal rocket scientist, and a goofball. He showed me that I take in the world through the food that I eat, and that living things die so that I might live. He fed me bear and deer, and wrapped us in their pelts and snuggled me like I've never been snuggled before. And then he disappeared, but he returns every half decade or so like a human cicada. One was a computer geek yogi, a daily meditator, a tantric, a gourmet vegetarian chef, funny, sweet, ridiculously smart and insightful and able to talk for hours at a depth that boggled mind and heart. He lavished me with attention and the Healing Vibes of Tantric Love, but then Real Life began to intrude and he took off for the land of leprechauns. He was really only in it for the Spiritual S*x. One was a lethal combination of goth-creative and purist-health zealot, his face generally wearing more makeup than mine, his perfect body honed from many years of daily weightlifting and perhaps one bite of sugar every six months or so, having never so much as taken a single toke of chronic or sip of alcohol in the entirety of his life. It took three separate rounds for me to finally get that he wanted the Concept of love more than Love itself. He was hot, though. Seriously hot. And he gave great pedicures. One was a sculptor who had never held a 'real job' for so much as a day, who dressed in a mixture of men's and women's clothes, who rarely bathed or brushed his hair but perpetually smelled lusciously of fresh sculpting clay and clean testosterone, who drug his mattress out into the living room so that we could sleep and dream and love by the fireplace, who when out in public would cause conversation to stop as people watched his wild appearance and energy walk by. He was simply just too freaking much for me to handle. I was just not the kind of woman who could handle a Picasso kind of guy. But being a muse was the sh*t. I hung around for a good extra month just for that. C'mon, can you blame me? One was a dreamer, charting them, watching them, sharing them, teaching them to others, a man with long black hair, daring eyes, huge gentle hands, brilliant with words, a closet shaman. He showed me how to Dream Big. He was just lost in the mists of his mind. He broke up with me by bringing me my things in a box. On my birthday. By saying he 'needed some space'. Last I heard he was dating himself. And giving himself some space. One was sweet and gentle and soft and surrendered, a boy in man's clothes, a man with a boy's soul, a vegetarian chef as celebration of food and life, a musician in celebration of Why Not? He showed me how gentle it could be between man and woman, how we could be quiet with one another and let go of the endless and endless talking and talking. It was genuinely lovely. Now, he occassionaly pops up to tell me of his many female conquests and to extend his judgments on my life, my beliefs, my interests, and my choice of menfolk. I tell him where he can relocate his judgement. He says that I use this blog as a way to mythologize my living. I tell him to shove it up his godhole. Our friendship soldiers on. One was an artist who threw himself at living, at the world, at nature with passion and openess and fearlessness, who sought out snowstorms and rain and mountains with the same intensity as he threw himself into ballroom dancing and art and making love and arguing, who saw life and people in vibrant swaths of color and energy and shape and texture. He showed me that I was absolutely, unequivocally beautiful and luscious at any weight and showed me through his art that the glow that lives in the center of me was alive and well. I still think about him way too often but when the urge to call him becomes overpowering I just remember the moment when he said to me: this is *your* chosen hemorrhoid and I may do a little something to help but your problems aren't my responsibility and don't you think at some point you have to grow up and be a big girl? And I put down the phone and whip out the wand instead and Gloria Gaynor gets another rotation in the soundtrack of my life and life boogies on. One was a hero cop, an urban commando, built like Batman made manifest but with no need for the padded suit, brilliant and crazy and strong and possessed of an insight so keen that he could see straight through a mind and into a heart, to the the bedrock of loving and the screaming efforts of all of us to be fully alive. He woke me up. He caught me as I raced by him in the free fall that was my life. He showed me the landmines that lived inside of me. He deactivated the worst of them. And then the Batlight went off and he soared away to save other lives. Yep. That's them. Well, some of them anyway. I'm lucky. Grateful to have been so loved, to have had so many interesting guys play Isis to my Osiris, glad that it has been such eye-opening and hilarious and awe-inspiring and wahooing Wow. But my heart is much much much heavier than a feather and I wonder where I can buy helium for the heart, or where I can get liposuction for the heart, or where I can go to have the love I still feel for them surgically removed. Because I do still love them. Every single one. And even though the soul retrieval I did a few weeks ago helped tremendously, I still have a lot of letting go to do before my heart can open again and have enough room in there for another dance with Man. But really, this may be all I Get in this life, and if I face it all honestly, if that were the case, I wouldn't be disappointed. I have had such a good time, even when it was bad. I have been lucky. I have known love. And I still love them all, every single, beautiful, luscious, weaselly, butt-headed one of them. And here, Right Now, in this moment, I see what a truly beautiful gift that is . . . (but really? i think i may have another turn or two on the dancefloor waiting for me in the not too distant future. to be continued . . . yeah . . . :)