I Have To Mention

There is a pink elephant in the room.  Not a pale, washed out pastel pink.  But a deeply blooming rosy pink, hovering somewhere between mauve and mulberry and magenta.  This elephant, wonderful creature that she is, simply walked into my bedroom the other day.  She walked in, pulled herself up a chair, set up her easel and her inks and started to paint these incredible black on white landscapes.  I am left wondering if she will go back later to add color to them.  Will she be around that long?

            I know why she is here.  I know what she represents.  I have already broached the subject with the other person involved in this situation.  It is quite difficult to ignore something so large in the room.  Even if I cannot come right out and say, hey, this is why she is sitting there, all patient and calm, waiting for me to be able to say this one thing to you.  At least I made certain to mention her presence, so when the time comes to say, hey, doesn’t that elephant paint the prettiest of pictures, I will have already laid the groundwork.

            Not that that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  It is hard to want something so very badly, knowing the other person doesn’t.  But then again, that is me. 

            Pray for us, and our lovely pink elephant…

            She really does have an exceptional talent with these landscapes she paints.  It’s amazing…

My Athanor

When I close my eyes, I can feel that same sense of helplessness, knowing I had pulled out of the rest area parking lot on that all too snowy day. I knew I had made a mistake. But, I also knew I had no recourse. I had to go forward. There was no pulling off to the side of the road. I had a small child asleep in the seat next to me, depending upon me. I had to get to the next exit so we could pull out and pull aside. We never made it. Doing twenty-five miles per hour on an interstate, we hit an icy patch. The rented moving truck I was driving skidded into the middle median. I thought we’d be all right. That thought didn’t make it through my mind before we were upside down in the middle of the median and my daughter’s life was flashing through my eyes. It was so cold. The snow was coming down so thick. I climbed out of the truck, dragging my now awake and groggy child with me to check her over, nearly mad with fear and agony that she should be lost to me. I saw emergency lights a few hundred feet up the road from us. I figured they’d seen us and would be right over. I didn’t realize since we had no flashing lights they had no idea we were there. I got my daughter wrapped in her coat. I checked the bird that was traveling in the front of the truck with us. I went to check on the car we had been towing, with our dog in it. The car too was upside down. It had been thrown quite far by the accident. The dog survived. The bird survived. My daughter and I were unhurt physically. We were fine. We spent the entire day in the fire station. We were one of nearly twenty accidents that day on that one mile stretch of road.

That is not the official beginning of this story. But there is no real hard spot that I can pinpoint and say this, right here, this is where everything shifted and changed and now we started going on ahead from this point. The best I have right now is this motor vehicle accident, that day at the fire station, hundreds of miles from home, when we nearly lost everything. Without this accident, our lives may have gone down a familiar path. Maybe all those fortune tellers would have been right. Maybe some other guy would have come along to fill my days until he died in a car accident far too similar to the one we still fight to put behind us. Maybe everything would have fallen into a better place along the line financially. Maybe a lot of things would have happened. But they didn’t. This does not upset me nor does it sadden me.

Because of the accident, my best friend of eight years and I began dating. We came to find out we really were meant to be together, just like everyone had been telling us for the past eight years. Things began to come together with my writing, my art work, drawing, sculpting, doll-making. As I struggled to regain the person I was, I was also fighting to be the person I have yet to become.

The accident happened seven months ago, almost to the day today. My entire world has shifted in that time.

I feel as if I am the phoenix trapped in the flames, still buried underneath the ashes, waiting for my time to burst out and be free. This is my incubation time. This is my anthanor. I am baking and sweltering and firming up the person that I shall be when I come birthing out of my little sphere.

I am not all that special. I want to do so many things. Just cannot find the time to do it all. I want to write, to draw, to paint. I have dolls to make, bowls to throw, bread to bake, children to mold. I have gardens to grow, lawns to mow, people to love.

Far too long I have been too unsettled, to afraid, too diverse. In my little melting pot here, the womb I created and concocted for myself, I am burning away these things that hold me back. I am growing the parts I need, the ones I have been missing for so very long. I am growing a mechanism that will enable me to trust myself, one to allow me to have faith in myself, another to grant me access to my self-respect and self-esteem. I am opening my heart, widening it and allowing true love in. I am growing new flight feathers that I might soar so high before swooping down and becoming one with the Great Deep, giving up my wings for tentacles that allow me to probe unfettered and unhindered.

This is my dearest dream. I am giving birth to myself. I am creating myself in my own image. Only this time, I am free.

The Dawn Of Comprehension

My Spirit Guides have set me up.

Where to begin? Let’s start with my writing. This year is my year to really reach out and take back my writing in a way I haven’t done since I was a teen-ager. Since I depended upon my writing to get me away from all the boredom and tedium that was public school. And even then, it wasn’t like this. This is a planned action. A sincere and fervent effort.

It started with what I thought was a Muse story, as I have been having dreams about Muses and different things coming in to help me with my writing. But, does it really start there? When was it exactly I decided that this is the year I am going to enter and win the NaNoWriMo challenge? When I was going to take all my notes and various bits of outlines and short pieces and finally combine them into that novel that has been flowing through my brain, I swear to you, since I was roughly twelve, thirteen years old? When I decided to enter the Poetic Asides poem a day challenge for the month of April—which I did complete, so I am very proud of myself? When I decided that yes, I will sit and write no less than 1000 words of something every single day, even if it means I get up earlier to do so—even though there has been no getting up early for anything this past week-but for good reason-and it has not affected the writing at all? Other things have affected my writing-but never how late I sleep in.

I am sitting here now, looking at all the things I have done in the past few months, and I wonder. How long ago did all of this really start? It was 2007 when I signed up along with SoulFoodCafe to take a journey I did not complete. I didn’t have the stamina. My brain was in a thousand other places. However, I never let go of that group, regardless, biding my time until the Muse struck me again. And with my Muses, strike is a very apt term. Walloped up side the head with a mackerel is a fitting description too. Now, I am in a better space, and although I fear I never really ‘get it’ or participate to the level I want to participate or think I should be participating—I am participating, in my own little way. I find a great deal of peace in doing that too.

I am finding myself involved with several other writing groups, but none to the level of SFC. Most of the other groups are used mainly for prompts and for information about the ‘now my book is done what do I do with it’ angle. I am also finding myself in a position to interact with people I went to high school with, people I have missed and wished to find and to hear from and all sorts of things. There are two questions everyone invariably asks of me: am I still giving readings (yes) and did I get that book published/what have I had published (working on it). Here I am—back in the writer mode after twenty plus years.

My Guides are sitting around me, laughing at how slow I am to catch on to some things, to catch up to some things. That’s me: always the last to know, everything.

I have been writing for weeks now, many beginnings to stories I have had no intention of ever finishing beyond what I have already done. Most of them are the start of a woman standing up to face some trauma, even if facing it means running away. It never dawned on me there was a pattern here. Although I guess I must have known on some level. I am surely seeing the pattern and the pathways now.

Just as when I sat down and began writing the introductory piece to the Muse Journey, I had no clue there would be more than one piece, til I was finishing the first one with bits of the second part already flashing through my head. By the middle of the second, I knew there was a third. But then again, I had assumed there would only be five parts. I have notes scrawled on my little yellow tablet sitting right here beside me that include story ideas for at least four more, and I know that there should be a tenth and final culmination to the whole thing, based merely on the whole numerological idea that ten is the number of completion. Which will be done when I get there. And I know I will, at some point, get there and finish the whole thing. There is no rush though. That is the one thing I am finely, finally, getting to see.

But then again, I drew the picture of the donkey. Mister Uncetrys Tratec Outshi the Third. According to my Guides, I am supposed to be working on my drawing and my sketching, which will probably lead me into painting, and hopefully into encaustics and other things, which will then make me comfortable enough to grab that blow torch and melt things into other things the way I have dreamed about for years….but then here I digress, don’t I? The donkey. A nice sweet picture. I think I did a decent job on it.

Even as I drew it, I knew it would need a little story of its own, something to identify it. Then Heather asked that I post it on the Inner Donkey blog, which is one reason I had pulled the original donkey picture out of that magazine and held on to it for so long anyway. Then, of course, posting only a picture of the donkey I drew is not good enough-I, of course, have to write something. And I did, this morning. When I was half-way through it, I realized. The dawn of comprehension struck me full in the brain and in the solar plexus. My freaking Guides had set me up. I knew it. I saw it. I saw the way things were backlit. I saw where things were heading. I was already wandering, in my mind’s eye, through Lemuria, gazing with wide-eyed wonder at the prompts about to smack me full on in the face. And I knew. I knew! This is not the story about the donkey. Darn these Guides. This is the story I am about to write. This is a voyage I am about to undertake. This is me, seeking and finding and releasing and embracing. They never even told me. They let me trip and fall into it blindly. A pie in the face would be easier-but not funny enough for them, apparently. No, I have to stumble and fall into things all by myself, all on my own, like a baby learning how to walk, in the dark, wearing a blindfold.

Plus, they are forcing me to learn wordpress, which is by all accounts a much more professional and apt system than blogger. I prefer wordpress for a great many things, but blogger is just so much easier to use. I don’t have to think about it. Which translates into the whole I am too lazy at this point to make myself sit down and play and learn. Which is exactly what my Guides are going to be making me do.

I love them. I am grateful. They know this. I know they have my best interests at heart. But, still, the question niggles….

How far back does the conspiracy go?

It’s not all about my writing. It is, however, all about Me. Me, finding out who I am and who I was and who I am willing to be and who I want to be.

I never knew who I was. I was too busy running. Until the ex husband caught me. And even then I had to run, because he had ‘issues’ he had to deal with—as in he had to get divorced in order for us to proceed. At least, that was the first ‘issue’ that crept up. He never took me at face value. I knew he’d cheat. Let’s see. Married in August to one woman and sleeping with me come September, even though I didn’t know that til much later. Yeah, I didn’t need to have a lot of faith there, no matter what he told me about this or that. All I asked for was honesty. Period. In his words, he lied so he wouldn’t hurt me. And because he’s afraid of confrontation. So, I died. For a number of reason I won’t go into here. On top of this about him.

I did. I died. I wasn’t me. I wasn’t anybody. I was a husk of a shell and nothing real for ten years. I was running, but in a whole new way, because I wasn’t going anywhere. I was the treadmill of my mind. Nothing else really went on.

Then, in what he told me was the last-ditch effort attempt to save our marriage-while he was telling everyone else I wasn’t even coming along with him-we moved, to a whole new state. There he introduced me to a lot of people. One in particular. One guy who would save my life over and over. Someone I had to put into a place where I could deal with him. Since I do not trust anyone at all, and I needed to trust this guy. I made him family. We definitely have the Past Life Ties to carry that. It made everything acceptable in my mind.

I had to go through the messes with the ex-husband. It brought me through the valley of Death and into the Land of the Living. Nevertheless, I was still a little broken thing. It also ensured I cut all the cords, broke all the treaties done in my name without my consent, destroyed all the seeds, ended any form of any further contact in this lifetime and every other, no matter what world or form, period. That had to be done.

I had to go through all the almost training with the ‘Batwing Special’. If I hadn’t gone through that, I would never have realized my own innate power. Not to mention, I wouldn’t have my daughter. My children I may regret how I came to have them, but I never ever regret them at all.

Of course, I had to go through the other ex too, or I wouldn’t have been so verbal as I am now. I wouldn’t have been so determined. He and I were so very much alike when we got together. And then, it dawned on me, the difference. I am what I am and I am changing things to be the person I think I am and the person I say I am. He is what he is—and he is not changing that for anyone, even though he thinks he is the person he says he is. If he were the person he thinks he is, then in the past what, ten years now, none of those women would have walked away from him, if he was half the man he thought he was, if he would be half the man he says he is. But he isn’t. Yet, he sure did teach me a great deal about the way I did not want to be. I learn best through visual means. The example of his words and his actions being so very far apart was exactly what I needed to change me. Doesn’t mean the lesson was easy. But I did get it.

Now, we come to that one guy. The one guy I have known in the back of my head is my ideal of the perfect guy. Fine. He has two, no, three flaws. And, yes, I am being so persnickety with this. I don’t mean a word of it. Won’t stop me from playing it to the hilt though. My ‘perfect guy’ would be at least 6 feet tall, although my cut-off is actually 5’10”. He is 5’10”. Plus, he doesn’t mind that I have a thing for high heels. Think more 6 inch spikes rather than 2 inch pumps. He’s younger than me-and I’ve never had luck there. But this is different-and he is older than his years let on. Then there’s the blue eyes. I don’t trust anyone with blue eyes. Ever. Not since I was seven, eight years old. The so-called step-father issue there that I won’t go into. But, again, here this too is different. His eyes are like storms and I love watching the way the colours shift. Plus, there’s the gold rings that really make things interesting when I watch his eyes. I love him. And he truly is perfect just the way he is.

He’s my best friend. He has always been there for me. Bailed my backside out more times than I can count. I gave birth to my son in his house. He saved me when we flipped the moving truck. He saves me every week since I have no real desire to get a car of my own, except that now I want to find something for him and I can’t have him with me when I do it and there’s no way to get around that fact.

But, if I hadn’t been with the ex-husband I would have never met him. If I hadn’t gone through everything I’d gone through with the batty people and with the other ex, I wouldn’t be able to do anything but break this man. I have acknowledged this man as pack leader (yes, think like a wolf) for years. I have forcibly some days kept those walls of brother and sister up just because that was the safe thing to do. Then my glamours dropped and he dropped whatever it was that he held up too. It is a match made in heaven, if you believe in such things. Because of him, now I do.

I may have spouted words about “soul mates” before, but I have actually lost at least two clients because I said that I don’t believe in soul mates. Then again, it was a good thing to say in their cases, because everyone they meet is their ‘soul mate’, so I wasn’t really hurting anything. Now I believe. I truly honestly completely believe. He actually is my other half. And the same is true of me for him. We really are perfect for one another. But I had a long hard row to hoe before I could be anything like what we need to make this relationship work.

Let us step back, for just one second, one more time.

So. I move away what three years ago now almost. Where talking to him becomes one of the real high points of my day. I depend on him to keep me sane while I live so far away. It was his encouragement that gave me the confidence to come back here, even though my main impetus was to be closer to my son. I had to wreck a moving truck, total my car, and drag the man back and forth across the country twice before I stopped long enough to say, yeah, this is the guy. Before I stopped fighting and started listening.

The Universe keeps giving me what I keep asking for. I just don’t know what to do when that happens. I am not used to getting the things I want and being able to keep them. I am not used to things coming easily to me. I am not used to being happy or satisfied or content. It takes times to adjust to things like that, apparently. I’ve never really had them before. Now I have them in abundance. I am so glad for the opportunity though.

I kept asking for a guy like this in my life, of course, only a little taller. Smirk. What I got was the real thing. And it may not be ‘perfect’, but it is perfect for me. Although I do hate to hear how it should have happened long ago and yada yada yada. It happened at the right time for both of us. Timing is irrelevant. We both had to be in a certain space. We were. We clicked. End of that statement.

I keep wanting to have clients come to my home. Boom. I had my first in-house client last week.

I keep wanting to write more, to receive more acknowledgement for and encouragement of my writing. Boom. I have it. Not just my writing, but also all of my art work and the insane things I do to keep myself busy and occupied.

I have actually been afraid, since I have never really done more than short stories, maybe even a short novella or two, that I do not have what it takes to write a complete and cohesive novel. Now I know that simply is not true. I know I can do it. I know in dribs and drabs I have been doing it all along. I have just never taken the time to sit down and to connect things.

Today seems to be my day to do that. To sit down, curse my Guides, who continue to dress me funny, and to make the connections and to see the patterns. And to express my utter most sincere gratitude, even if I do it in a derisive manner, because, darn it, I was set up and I don’t like being the last one to know everything, even though invariably I am.

I am grateful. I keep wearing orange and green together, when my Guides so request it. Although today, it is orange and brown. I have to love them. Orange is one of my least favorite colours. And yet, I own a great deal of it because it makes them happy.

I am truly grateful. I am so glad they find me worthy enough to bother with me so much.

My Red Folder

I have this red folder. It is full of knitting patterns that I had designed and created all by myself. It has essays that I have written to go along with the designs. It is full of scribbles and doodles and things I crossed out. It is drawn out with graph paper and written out on notebook paper. It is my first full-length feature book that I completed. It is all about knitting. I designed all these patterns, all by myself. Well, ok, I did have a little help. Barbara Walker and her amazing stitch pattern books did come into play somewhat, especially when I started to work up the shawls. I wrote things out in pen. I wrote things out in pencil. I counted and I calculated and I thought about things. I worked and re-worked ideas, trying to get things to come together the way I want them to come together. I worked hard to get things to turn out beautifully.

So, now, what is holding me back? Why are the pages in this folder not all typed up and printed out and illustrated with wonderful full-color photographs? Why have I not begun to submit this book to publishers? Or even turned to publishing online?

Some of the projects have photos that were taken as I worked them up, writing down the pattern as I knitted and created. The rest of the projects have rough hand-drawn scrawls attached to them, or at least close to them, scattered over three little pocket notebooks that I carried with me everywhere during the creation of these patterns. Some days I look at this folder and I want to cry.

No one else knows what this folder contains. It is one of the few folders in my house, in my grasp, that I am using, that I did not jot some working title or some vapid detail upon the cover so that I and usually I alone may then identify it. The dog has stomped on it with muddy feet. My son has knocked it across the floor in one of his whirlwind adventures. My daughter has nearly spilled who knows what on it who knows how many times. No matter where I put this folder, it always comes out again, as if by magic, to sit within my sight.

The book itself wants me to write. It wants me to finish things out. It wants me, longs for me, to reach for yarn and needles, even hooks this time around, to create something profound, that I created all by myself. Such a coup for my ego, to know this I could do. This I did do. And all by myself. I just need that little push to force myself on, to move forward, and not to dwell within my fears.

Nineteen

So, I got another tattoo. It is not an unimaginable stretch for me. I have all these other tattoos. It is not a new thing. It is not a new thing for me to jump right in to getting a tattoo with what seems like very little thought, even though things always turn around to show that I indeed gave it far more thought than I realized, only after the fact. It is not a very new thing when I find that a particular tattoo means so much more to me than I could have ever realized.

I did the one thing you are just not supposed to do. Sort of like knitting your new boyfriend a sweater-the boyfriend sweater curse. Usually, according to legend and way too many stories, the sweater making process either barely outlasts the relationship or the relationship ends right after the sweater is completed. Well, you hear the same thing about getting names tattooed on your body, unless, of course, the names are of your children, or someone in your family you want to remember. Boyfriend/girlfriend names you just do not do. Even husband/wife names you are not supposed to do, what with marriages being what they are these days. I did it. I got my boyfriend’s middle name tattooed on my wrist. There is a plethora of reasons I chose his middle name. It means a lot to him. It means a lot to me because of how much it means to him.

Now, before I had it done, after a great many weird conversations with my Guides, I knew this tattoo would hurt worse than the other tattoos I had gotten. I also expected it to bleed when none of the others had. Not even the dread water rat symbol on my ankle that is just a little too long and too far back for the sake of comfort bled or hurt too badly. I have had lymph come up during the tattooing process. I have had red blood cells come up after everything was over. I have had some incredible swelling incidents, most notably the octopus. Never much red blood cell action. I have some tattoos in some very vividly painful places. My first tattoo was in the bikini region. And it was more—involved when I had it covered up.

Let me talk about that first tattoo there. I was, what, seventeen, eighteen? Enter this man I knew would change my life. Such that I was, my assumption was that he would change my life for the better. Maybe he even did, in some arenas. All I know is that, overall—it is a far far better thing he be gone-and stay that way. I got his initial as my first tattoo—but his initial was also my initial, so it was not such a difficult thing. It was a bit funny. I had this huge biker dude between my legs, tattooing me and talking, and that ex held on to my toe and watched. It was not the first time I had thought about getting a tattoo. I had in years prior to that been much closer to getting a brand than a tattoo—please do not ask me why. I had a couple friends who had gone that route. I am no longer that person-and I have no desire to return to that. I was committed enough to my destiny or whatever you wanted to call it to get his/my initial tattooed in a hidden place that no one would ever see and that no one would ever know about unless I spoke up and told them. That pretty much sums up exactly how I felt about him the whole relationship. I spent the entire time in hiding myself, much less hiding him.

Back to current day. When I got the triple swirl on my left wrist, it was a donation-it was a breast cancer charity tattoo run-the first The Ink Well in Weirton, WV, had ever done. It was a small tattoo and it was for a good cause. It did not take too long to ink. It is also the one tattoo I want to have redone because I think it could look a lot better—and one of these days I am certain I will have it redone, probably in a darker green no less. Nevertheless, I do like it, actually. It is weird and quirky and just--me. In addition, there was not much pain involved at all with getting it. It is actually higher up than number nineteen on my right wrist.

I am so dedicated and so intense and just beyond all doubts about this current relationship—I got the man’s middle man—his clan name—tattooed on my right wrist, not just where I can see it every time I do anything, but where everyone will always see it, no matter what. In this relationship, there is simply no hiding whatsoever. Period.

The tattoo artist hand-drew the name out for us. He added some terrific flourishes. I had had dreams of the tattoo before I got it, where the ink flowed like vines growing, twining around my wrist and up through my hand, curling its way up my arm and over my shoulder. And even beyond that. It was rather an involved dream. There was a lot more to it than just that. That is where the dream started. The tattoo is not centered on my little two and a half inch wide wrist, but slides off on either side. It does look cool and one day I will post pictures of it. I love it. When the needle first hit my skin, I was not really ready for it to go so deep or hurt that much. I made the mistake of watching the needle go up and down in the gun. I usually watch the tattoo artist’s hand that holds the gun, because I like to watch the energies flow. My brain flipped and I watched the top of the needle, not the end of it that was in my skin. Time slowed down and I watched the needle go up, then down, as if each movement were slow and separate, each motion deliberate. That made it hurt more, watching the needle work, in slow motion. It also forced me back into the whole concept of Celtic tattooing. I could see the ancient tools used to tattoo centuries ago. There is far too much spiritual content some days for me to really go into it. Every single tattoo I have is holds the utmost spiritual meaning to and for me. This one is something different. That seems to be the theme of our relationship currently. This is something completely different from anything else.
And it truly is.

There was some bleeding when the tattoo was being done. Especially in the beginning. Since I am a mother, my mind tends to drift down weird paths. Not to mention, the whole shaman angle these days sometimes leads me down similar paths anyway. There is always blood in the beginning. We enter the world covered in blood. Blood clears the way. Blood binds the method. Blood shared and blood given. The symbology and mythology involved there can be pretty daunting to most when you get the whole tale. I will leave it at that. Basically, we can say that this symbolizes a fresh start, shall we?

The pain angle was a little different. I have a weird pain tolerance. I used to have an extremely high pain tolerance, but that has been shifting a lot of late. Not just within the past few weeks. It has been shifting for a couple years now. Pain tolerance is not exactly what I want to say either, although that is where I most notice it. I am more aware these days. I can literally feel more--deeply. Look, I was watching the Secret of NIMH with my son yesterday and I cried, I mean, sobbed and had real tears falling down my cheeks, when the house sunk beneath the mud. I feel more these days. I was surprised by the pain of getting the tattoo, surprised I felt it as much as I did. I was surprised I felt that the ink and needle where being worked in more deeply than other tattoos I have gotten. Yet, I was also convinced that this was as it should be with this tattoo.

Not to mention, it turned out beautifully.

What I did not count on was how deeply it would affect me on a day-to-day basis. Yes, I have only had the tattoo for not even twenty-four hours yet. There is a huge difference between the thick dark lines of his name twining around my wrist and the tiny little green spiral cluster on my other wrist. I hardly notice the spirals any more. Since it needs to be re-touched, I tend not to look at it. I do not really mind, and I have not since I first got it, even before I realized how much it needed to be touched up, had any issues with covering it up, either with jewelry or long shirt sleeves or whatever.

I cannot walk past a mirror without stopping today. Even if I cannot see the letters clearly. I pace when I am on the phone for work. Back and forth, up my hallway, from my bedroom to the kitchen and back, depending on what garbage is on tv and how loud my daughter has the television jacked, and how loud the bird is screeching, since the bird likes to be very loud when the phone rings. Although we can say I am not wearing my bracelets because this is a fresh and healing tattoo, that is not the reason. I do not think I will wear bracelets on this arm again, except for the one silver one that will not interfere with reading my wrist. I have no desire to wear long sleeves that cover the tattoo, even though I am freezing at the moment and want to go find my sweater somewhere. There is only so much credence I can give to the entire healing tattoo declaration. I want to be able to see this one. I want everyone to be able to see this one.

Even with the green spiral, I had had plans to cover it. Wrist warmers. Jewelry. A watch. The only offer I made to cover this tattoo, number nineteen, was when I first meet his family, out of respect for him and them. I do not think it will be necessary by then, but the offer stands. Otherwise, I will not hide this one. Not ever.

Do you know the best thing about being a free-wheeling writer-artist-poet, the weird hippy chick, the complete unfettered wild child, that I have always striven to be? You can be pierced and tattooed and still be happy, and do whatever you want to in life. I do not have to fret and worry about my day job, cramped in a cubicle, dealing with the ignorant cube people, unhappy and unhealthy, or how they would or could react to the tattoo—or anything else. I get to be who I want to be and do what I want to do—and everyone will just shake their heads at me and expect nothing less. It is just me, after all. I am that person. I am that strong-willed and self-confident. And if I am not yet that self-confident to trust that the Universe will provide-I at least fake it till it comes. I never lose my faith or my focus. At least not for very long.

How can I not believe when all my prayers have so radically been answered of late?

Back to the tattoo. I have spoken before about how mind-blowing and incredible it is to have a partner in your life that actually gets you, that understands, that accepts you, that loves you regardless, that stands by you. I never said I was not completely insecure and free from worry—I said I was striving for such. Now I have a constant reminder of my partner—almost as if I have a piece of him sewn into my skin, sewn into me, constantly on display and always reminding me of his love. (Ok, that does sound creepy, even though it is not meant to be, really. Think more in terms of sewing a quilt together rather than, say, Strangeland.) When I walk by a mirror or I glance at my wrist while typing or writing or anything, that is what I am hit with—not how much I love this man—but how much he loves me. That is why I am not hiding this thing. That is why I cannot. There is no way I will ever deny such a thing.

I am happy. Is that not what honestly matters the most?

Do you want to know the absolute worst part about getting the tattoo? Having my arm shaved—the razor burn hurts worse than the actual tattoo healing. Although, again, it is nice to be with a person who understands and does energetic healing, because everything is a lot better today, since he worked on me a bit yesterday.

The strange little tidbit is the correlation between number eighteen and number nineteen tattoos. I can feel twitches from eighteen, like when you first get the tattoo, how it reacts as it heals. Eighteen is reacting to the integration process of nineteen. It is pretty interesting.

Funny thing here. All the spiritual tattoos. All the dream catchers in my bedroom and in my life. This is the one tattoo that can keep the scary monsters and the scary dreams at bay and far from me. It keeps me safe. Just as he does.

The frightening thing is all I ever knew or expected was that this man would be my friend for this entire lifetime. Despite everything that people and Guides and everyone else keeps telling me, even the things he keeps saying that floor me, about the possibilities of us getting together, I never dreamed that things could go this way-nor that they could be so very good. I am certainly glad they are though. We are very much blessed.

So, What If This Is About You?

Feeling A Little Vindictive Today


I know you will read this. Do you know why? Because your ego won’t let you let do otherwise. So you can laugh and snicker with all your friends while you’re crying inside. What would they think if they knew the truths that I knew about you? You can try to run and hide, you can spew forth all your old lies, the same ones you’ve told about how many other women all your life, but in the end, it’s all the same. You sit where you are, lost to everything that could have been, and miserable as sin, trying so hard to maintain those appearances that don’t mean a darn thing in the end.

I always felt so bad for you. I married you out of pity. Pity for what I had given away. Pity for what I thought you should mean to me. Pity for the poor baby who had gone through so much in his life.

Let me see. Your first wife turned into a lesbian because, well, you never really did do much for her in bed. I so get that now. Because once I got a real man into my bed and I found out the difference—I was more than a little shocked. Dude, I thought you were the best. Fine, at least a close second to one who shall not be named, but you ranked up there. Then I found out. Maybe you should sleep with fewer men. Talking to your current girlfriend really opened my eyes and clued me in to just how long you’d been playing your game and lying about how you, ahem, related to men in more intimate moments. I wasn’t just shocked there—I was revolted. Me, who can pick a bi guy out of a crowd to hit on and who has never once had an issue dating a guy that was into guys. You, you made me ill.

Then again, maybe if you slept with fewer women and just concentrated on the one at hand, you’d perform better. When you forget which one you’re with when it does tend to cause issues.

I love the mythology you’ve built about around yourself, how you are always the great guy and the rest of the world is a bunch of losers who can never compete. I look at you now and wonder-geez, what the heck does he eat. I am more than glad I got away from that. Some days I can still hear your voice as you begged me to stay, told me I was the only one, the lies you tell to everyone. The tears in your eyes and the ring on my finger…just not enough to make any of it true.

But, ya know what? I am so over you. I am just so over you. I don’t miss you anymore. I hardly even think of you at all, until someone brings you up. I have such better things to do. I have dated some real losers after being with you, but you know, they were all at least man enough to take care of their responsibilities and not torture and torment me for over nine months. Nor did they use that as a sympathy chip to get into other women’s pants. And I know you did. The women all did so love to come to me to talk. Not so many of the men, but then they never really knew about the rest of your life, did they? Or have you changed your patterns and only pursue married men now?

I married you and convinced myself I loved you over one tiny little girl. I divorced you and escaped you and hated myself for another tiny little girl. I give thanks every single day of my life I left the monster that is you. Every single day. Away from you and your evil ways and your poison mouth and despicable lies I am not depressed. I am not forlorn. I am happy. I am productive. I am enjoying my life. I am going out. I have friends. I still have friends you didn’t scare away all that time ago in Arkansas. People who still respect me and know what a liar you are.

Karma really works.

I got everything I could ever ask for in my life. I got my fairy tale happy ending—and it is only beginning. I am with a man who makes me soar. He is incredible in bed. So good I wonder why I ever bothered with you or why I thought you might be. Someone who is honest and truthful and loyal. Which is all I ever asked for. I never asked for fidelity. I knew you were incapable of it. See, turns out I was right.

I cannot believe how bad I felt for you all this time. I thought you were a good man deep down. I thought you had a heart. Now I do know. That streak of heartless bastard I always knew was there actually is the true you.

Weren’t we discussing karma? I get to work from home. Teach. Raise my children myself. Pay all my bills on my own. Have everything I want. And I have an incredible man who gets me and loves me at my side the entire time. Hmm. Based on this, whatever did you have to offer me other than the guilt of that first tiny little creature I gave birth to despite you and all your daily attempts to kill her?

I hope you are happy with the life you have created for yourself. Stop thinking about me, you jerk. I know when you do and I am not amused. Stop missing me. I was a fluke. I was a hurt little girl that you took and battered on some more. It did take me a long time, years, to recover and to get over you.

Guess what. I did it. And I find you completely unremarkable. I should have had more fun while I could, since you always made certain you did.

And one last jibe, while I am tossing them out. That naïve cowboy you yourself introduced me to? Yeah-he’s the one. And he is so much better than you. He is everything you told me you were, but could never provide or be or prove. He’s is that and so very much more.

Enjoy the life you created for yourself. I know I am going to be enjoying mine.

Wasted Space

Today I found myself face to face with a space—a space in my life and in my closet—for a man who is no longer coming. For a man who is no longer welcome.
It was a very odd feeling, hitting that space, staring at it, baffled by it. It took me a few seconds to figure out what it was and what it was asking.
The poor thing wanted to know why I was turning it away, why I was casting it out.
See, the man had been promised for years. So I had held on to this space, and some clothes that we all just knew were for him.
Well, now, I made a different choice. Rather than waiting for the next twenty years or so to pass with one man until I could finally be with another, I decided to by-pass the middle-man all together. I am taking the man that would be there throughout everything and I am starting with him.
The opportunity presented itself—and who am I to say, no, I don’t want to be blissfully happy my entire life with the one man I am destined to live with and love with regardless of any other partner between us, when it is presented to me right here and now, and on a platter?
I faced the thing and said quite plainly, “I don’t need you anymore. I don’t want you here.” I told it, “Just go away now, to wherever you feel you came from.” I nodded it towards the door, “Wherever you feel comfortable, other than here.”
It gave me the teary puppy-dog eyes routine. I wasn’t budging. I immediately hopped up, leaving a good story right at a crucial juncture, and ran to my big closet. I yanked out the shirts I had been saving for ‘him’, the thriftess in me thinking, hey I can salvage the fabric, while the woman in me thought, out out damned spot. I threw the shirts into the garbage can. I didn’t even turn around to look back. They were gone.
I walked through my house, trying to find any other pockets of space being held for a man who was no longer welcome to appear, and I cleaned them all out. I filled them up with other things, other images, other energies. No more are welcome. We have a full house. This family is complete.
That is a really good thing.

The Space Within

I don’t remember exactly what year I started to practice Yoga. I think it might have been 1997. Although my dad will happily point out I used to do Yoga with Lilias when she was on Sesame Street when I was a little kid. He will also gladly point out that I preferred to eat my ice cream to doing Yoga and was always quite willing to inform Lilias that I would do the pose after I was done with my ice cream.
I do remember after I started getting into a daily Yoga practice and I really began to work at it that I was up to three to five hours a day of power yoga. It wasn’t a hard thing to do at that time with my schedule. I won’t go into the details of the schedule or the marriage which forced my hand at having to find a way to survive. I won’t go into the story again of how Yoga saved my life. Although it did. Although it continues to do so.
I am always surprised when I return to my Yoga practice. This time it is something entirely different. I have not genuinely had a regular Yoga practice since I left Arkansas for Missouri, in 1999. I have had random spurts where I pick it up for a time, then walk away from it. I have literally been living off the reserve I built up in those three to five hour a day sessions for the past, what, nearly ten years. That foundation I have from that time period is what got me through my divorce, both pregnancies, and the break-up with my son’s dad. It is also what helped to keep me more focused during the past two years while I found my own footing and began to move ahead on my own.
Now, I am shifting my priorities. I am giving my writing a larger space in my life. I am giving Yoga a larger space in my life. I am also returning to what I know and love in other arenas. I have so many other things that I give space to during my day. The writing and the Yoga, other than my family, are the only things I schedule time for, make space for and stick to in some form or fashion, every single day. Some days I may reach my allotted word count by IMing the love of my life all day or by emailing any and everyone I know, but I always more than reach my writing goal. For Yoga, some days there is enough clarity in my mind and body to do five minutes of Yoga. Other days it’s an hour. Most days I strive for at least twenty minutes minimum.
At this point, it has only been a couple weeks since I re-commenced my daily Yoga practise. Yesterday, I noticed a very large shift during my practice. The shift remained with me even after the session. I always come out of my Yoga practice, even the five minute sessions, with a change in my mind and heart. This is something else. There are a number of changes that I have undergone in the past few days that have had some major impact on me and on my life.
First, Wishcasting Wednesdays, brought to us with love by Jamie Ridler of Starshyne Productions (http://starshyneproductions.blogspot.com) every Wednesday, this week completely kicked my butt. I swear to you, Jamie had to have been listening to my brain that morning before she posted her question, because that was exactly what I had been pondering in my brain before I went to her blog to see what she was asking that day. I am so very grateful to those women, the ones who love and support and wish with me every Wednesday. Whether you want to say it was the physical act of actually getting what I got out in a public forum, or if you want to say it was all the loving support I got from others wishing alongside me, posting what I posted caused a shift in me, a profound shift that was very visible to me very quickly. Not to mention, Wednesday was a very busy day on other fronts and many other things were in operation that day. Let me tell you, I might have had a huge shift, but the people I was discussing in my post had some pretty major things going on themselves. The wishing works. Hands down. I am not the only one that shifted. Although it did help me shift even more when the other parties shifted as well. It allowed me to hope even more, which opened my heart to more, which … well, you get the idea.
I had started something last week. I tend to catch glimpses of the future on a regular basis, and in so doing I often get twinges and content from the present. It is difficult seeing someone you will know and love in the future and then getting a burst of them in their current space where they don’t know you and have no clue what is coming. I did this with someone last week. I was overwhelmed by the sadness that follows him, but also heartened at the joy and happiness he is still able to take in, despite his sadness. In the future, that sadness will still be there. That will never leave him. In the future, he will be better able to deal with it. What I saw caused me to become aware of him at this present time—which made other entities sit up and take notice of me.
Metaphysically, I do not put myself out there as the ‘hey yes I see you come and talk to me’ type. I put myself out there as the gruff and grumpy old troll who lives under the bridge specifically so that I intimidate. It took his mother and her Guide a couple days to actually try to approach me. Approach me they did, however, and after a few minutes of making sure I really wasn’t that troll-like and that I really do have her son’s best interests at heart, my boyfriend’s mother and I had some really interesting chats. She gave her blessing. That is a major thing for me, another major shift. There are so many complications to this relationship some days and I just never feel good enough for the guy. His mother helped to take that all away. That is such a beautiful thing for me.
This is what I am taking with me into my Yoga practice. Yoga has always been good for my body, always helped to ease my mind. But Yoga has no place in my heart when my heart is torn and broken. There is only so much that can be done to heal the Spirit, no matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you pray, no matter how much time and effort you put in on the mat. I am very happy with my current boyfriend. I do mean, very. It’s that kind of happiness that makes you question the entire rest of your life, where you are sitting agape wondering if you had ever had a clue before about what real love is or was or could be, and why you had to wait so long to experience something so magical like this. Real true love is actually Free. There are none of the strings attached, none of the fears of coming loss or impending doom, none of the tawdry little games that come with the almost but just not quite there real thing. Real love is this pure blast from the Universe that draws you up and draws you in, turns you upside down and inside out, melds your soul with that of another and still has you come out feeling like a whole in and of yourself, only somehow better. I have that now. If anything in my world has ever made me question how retarded things were in my past—this relationship does that, all the time. I am amazed by the time I wasted. Yet, I keep telling myself, if I had not gone through all that I had gone through, I would not be the person that I am right now, and this relationship would be nothing more than friendship and not the true love that we have.
This is the space, the wide-open heart, which I have never had to be able to bring to my Yoga practice. When I came to my mat, I brought what I had, which was wherever I was at the time. As of yesterday, I am all here. Mind, body, heart, soul. I am here. Now. The shift has been nothing short of spectacular for me.
I do not usually do a Vinyasa practice. I have been keeping to the more slow, more restorative Asana practices of late, with a little Vinyasa thrown in now and then. Yesterday, instead of a flowing meditative gentle respite through my Yoga as I normally do, I chose to work through a Vinyasa flow, a level 2 flow, although I didn’t realize that til last night. It was an hour’s long Vinyasa flow series. It was entirely liberating on so many fronts. There was that new openness in my heart. The Vinyasa practice cracked into something, opened up what I call a Yoga Flow through my body, and made an indelible impression. The Yoga Flow of which I speak is basically the way my body moves after an extended amount of time with and on my mat. This is the normal space I was in during those three to five hour a day practice, on and off the mat. There is a lightness of foot, a flowing over the ground, swimming through the air instead of trudging through it. It’s such a tiny little shift in perception, but it is one I cherish and one until this morning I didn’t realize I was missing.
I spent the whole day floating through my daily routine. There was a different tilt to my spine, a different cadence to my walk. There was a different purity of heart with which I approached various tasks. It doesn’t hurt that I didn’t do any real writing at all yesterday. I played with magazine images and glue and worked up some basic collages. I started many more than I finished, but the artistic expression helped. It also pushed me ever closer to learning to draw. That is a tale for another time.
I am a certified Yoga Instructor. I am certified to teach Yoga to children. I am a certified Meditation Instructor. Do I do any of these things? Not for anyone but myself. I undertook these paths of study for my own edification. The children’s Yoga was for my own children and for the benefit of our family.
Do you know what I have not been taught in all these years of reading and pursuing and studying Yoga to the best of my ability? No one has ever mentioned that the physical benefits of Yoga extend so many years into the future. If I started my Yoga practice in 1997, then I had less than three years of steady Yoga practice. Plus, it was a year or so before I started the three to five hour stretches of Yoga every day, much less the power Yoga concept. That small amount of time is what I have been living on and building on top of ever since, with short bursts of re-incorporating Yoga for a month or two here and there. Sometimes longer periods of time, but it has never been so consistent as it was prior to November, 1999. That is, until recently.
Now, I have read the studies that say if you are in an accident or ill, confined to a bed, immobile for whatever reason, you can imagine yourself doing your daily Yoga practice and still reap the same benefits. I also maintain some sort of daily breath-work practice no matter what happens. I have never been to Lamaze training, with three pregnancies, and I have no reason to ever go. I trust my Yogic breathing techniques over that any day. Not to mention, it is through my breath-work I can ease my temper. I have young children-I need that ease. Some days more than others. I know there are lasting effects with Yoga practice. I know with consistent practice “you will never grow old”. No one told me that for, I will say two years of steady practice, I could live off the energetic reserves for roughly ten years, with little need of recharging on a consistent basis.
No one ever told me ever told me that the Yoga postures you do are encoded into your physical form either. I have only been steadily dedicated for a couple weeks now. My body quickly realigned itself and spread open into the poses far more than I would have claimed possible when first I re-started this time. I still have room to work and to grow, but I am still quite overwhelmed by how my body expanded into certain poses so rapidly. I expected there to be a period of building up, working into poses again, loosening the joints and the ligaments and so on. There is some resistance, but nowhere near what I had assumed I would be up against.
No one ever mentions that space between the heart and the head to me. Yoga is all about the union of body and mind, earth and heaven. I know this. I understand it. I know I come to my mat with an open heart. I didn’t realize my heart was so closed in spite of myself. Nor did I really taste the truth until I was on my mat, engaged in an active Vinyasa Flow practice, where my open heart blossomed over and flooded me from heart to soul to body and back, just how powerful an experience it could be to fully open up to Yoga and the embrace of the Divine within myself.
That is where I am, in that space, wrapped in the loving embrace of the Divine within myself. My body is aligned differently. I am moving as if gliding through the space around me, rather than pushing and shoving my way through. My heart is definitely aligned differently, but being in love does that. Finding your true partner, your other half, the soul mate for whom you have been searching whether you knew it or not, does that to a person. My mind and my spirit are one. My body is at peace. This is the bliss of which the Yogis speak. This is the space of true contentment.

My Power Animal

Ever since I was a young child, I have had two Spirit Animals: the Wolf and the Raven. These are not two separate entities; these are one working pair, inseparable. I always likened the two to the movie “LadyHawke”, where she is the falcon and he is the wolf and never shall they be parted. These are my two. My black wolf and even blacker raven. This pair is my Guide, my Totem.

Power animals for me, however, seem to have come and gone, shifting as my needs and desires and life has shifted. Never before have I been particularly attached to any one creature though. My Spirit Pair took care of everything for me. We have a family totem animal, Ursus, which is fairly self-explanatory, especially given my Ancestral Family. I have a Power Animal I use for Journeying purposes, the Grand Jaguar. The Wolf and Raven are for different Journeying purposes that I won’t go into here.

One thing that keeps coming up lately is one of my Muses. I am loathe to say Muse, as in my one and only. So I will offer the whole subjective one of my Muses instead. She comes across in Kelpie form, but not as the myths would have us believe. She is a beautiful creature, more mermaid, a definite Shifter, always shifting into that coal black horse for me, even though my own predilection where courses come are always the roan. She also comes across to me with heavy Raven energy as well. Perhaps, my Muse has many sources and gathers together what She can in order to reach me. To her credit, getting kicked in the head by a big black horse does seem to help me quite a bit every so often. Kelpies have been a favourite creature of mine since I was a teen-ager. Since I was not taught that they were inherently evil from the get go, I have always been more open to them. Since that time, I have learned that most of the creatures that are portrayed as fervently evil simply-are not. Then again, some creatures that are routinely portrayed as sweet and innocent leave devils and daemons behind in the dust when it comes to evil. I have no problem with the Kelpie as my Muse. I find it highly entertaining, especially upon seeing the reactions from others when they find out.

My Kelpie Muse is the closest thing to an oceanic Muse as I have ever courted. Yes, I have always had a thing for mermaids, but not the Disney version. Mermaids were created to be warriors; I guess that explains my constant and fervent dedication to Aquaman, even after all these years. Although Aqualad just amuses the heck out of me these days. Last year, though, the whole oceanic retinue changed. I cannot explain why or how or even exactly when. I am sure in some journal or possibly some online blog entry there is a moment I go from not speaking about this creature to speaking about it. Where the full-blown obsession began is anyone’s guess.

Now, let me first point out that I do collect things for my Totem Animals. I used to have more framed wolf pictures, but at some point, I had to let them go. I have a couple raven pictures, one of which is the conundrum of ‘why is a raven like a writing desk?’, which is my all time favourite riddle. In addition, if you know me, then you know how I feel about Alice in Wonderland. We won’t even walk through the whole tattoo issue at the moment, as I am concentrating more on the things I have done all along my life’s path. I have books on wolves and ravens. I have studied them. I have in cases and in places helped to raise them. I have owned a wolf hybrid more than once in my life. I know too much about their patterns and their communications and their lifestyles in general. I have actually followed a White Raven and not been surprised by its destination. I even own wolf’s stone, somewhere along the line. Since I no longer really work with stones or crystals, I can’t really tell you where it is, only that I am sure it’s around here somewhere.

However, in this lifetime, I have never gone as distinctly gaga over any creature as I have—the octopus. For the life of me, I cannot explain why or tell you how this came to be. I can clearly see my time before the Octopus, where an octopus sighting was a rare and tepid thing at best, to today in my life where I see octopus everywhere. In places I would never conceive possible. I see octopus on billboards, on tv, on cereal boxes, on kids clothes, in magazines, on beach towels, where before I never noticed a thing. I asked to be shown an octopus to prove that Her Power in my life was real—I haven’t stopped being shown since that time.

Do you know how hard it is to get books just on octopus? Ones that don’t cost an arm and a leg? All I wanted originally was something along the lines of a biology textbook—think high level college, not the dumbed-down garbage I have seen with other things. I searched online, with little success. I dragged people to local stores, to no avail. The poor ex even went looking locally as a gift from the kids for my birthday (because I must give the man credit when credit is due, or he’ll never even try again). I did more online research. I ended up buying several kids books about octopus, just to have a stepping off place. It’s sort of the only version of ‘octopus for dummies’ that I could find. I did buy one book that had some things about octopus in it that referenced other books—and have since ordered the other books. More adult and hopefully headier reading books. I am still waiting for them to arrive at the moment.

Books are doable for me though. Books with me are just expected things. I have books on insects just because I saw one and wanted to know more about them. I have books on the weirdest things. Books are the first things I turn to in order to learn new things. I am literally surrounded by books on all sides, in nearly every room in my house.

However, now I have octopus toys, and octopus bags, and octopus jewelry, and octopus hair sticks, and all sorts of other things I have never done for any other Animal. To touch lightly upon the whole tattoo issue, my octopus is the first real full-colour work I have had done—as well as being the largest tattoo I have to date. I keep staring at this one octopus plushie that I am dying to buy and I won’t let myself. I have bought octopus sewn and knitted and crocheted patterns. I have scanned looking for octopus fabrics, for pity-pie’s sake. Not to mention the various fabrics and yarns for making various octopus accoutrements. Yesterday, I bought videos, dvds, on the off-chance they may have some actual live footage of octopus in them. I had an urge to watch an octopus move in real life, in real time. I bought what I could and what seemed best.

Why this deep and utter fascination? Why, after all this time, has an Octopus come to me? Not just any old Octopus either: a Blue-Ringed Octopus. Does anyone else feel the irony here of the only octopus (that I am aware of as yet) that cannot hide by shooting ink has Chosen me? Of course, She came into my life before I agreed to drop all my Glamours, but I still find it funny.

What is it about an Octopus? Eight limbs. Morphic. No bones. Brain all over its body. A Traveler from one World to the Next. Much like my Spider. Grandmother Spider took the Journey from one World to Another, bringing Mankind with Her, at least once. She spins the Web of Life, the Sister Twin to the Three Fates, also a known Fount of Muse for me, a known Journey for me, such that I am. A spider goes into small places, smaller than it may seem possible for the physical body of the creature. An octopus is even more incredible, digging in and moving through tunnels and pipes and all manner of squeamishly small places, sometimes for food, sometimes for fun. We already know I am claustrophobic. But then again, we also know that I am terrified of water, especially Deep Water. Yet, we also know I am apparently fond of backing myself up into a corner, and being forced into small tight dark places, metaphorically speaking, especially when it comes to relationships, romantic or otherwise.

Octopus have unusual grasps of their senses, tasting by touch for example. I smell better by tasting things. Inhaling the aroma over my tongue gives me more information than actually sniffing it. That’s why the whole hold your nose and you won’t taste it thing has never applied to me, since I was a child. The second it is close to my mouth, my tongue knows and I smell it. The other strange thing about me is I actually have a very dull sense of touch. My fingertips have little, if any, sensation in them. I cannot always sense temperature either. Nevertheless, I am an extremely touchy-feely person. I love stroking kittens, and silks, and woolens, and leaves, and flower petals, and yarns, and everything else I can manage to get my paw near without getting into trouble. I love textures. I feel them with more than my skin. I also touch people a lot. I talk with my hands, and I touch people a lot. I dislike being touched, except by certain people, but I do a lot of touching. I tend to orient myself better with people if I can gauge their internal reactions, which I can get more clearly most times by touching them. Although I do not have to be touching them in order to read them.

According to the one book I have, octopus sometimes allow other animals to create and rehabilitate their homes, like parrot fish munching the algae that grows on the coral of the octopus’s home. The octopus itself does a lot of shifting and reshaping of the home as well. One thing they do is try to make the opening smaller and less noticeable, while making the inside more comfortable and homey. That indeed does say much about me. I’d rather people stay away from my home than bother me. Octopus are very solitary; those who know me know I am the lone wolf. Only my family means anything to me, those I deem family. Octopus are fervently dedicated mothers, slaving away over their eggs, cleaning them, caring for them. The blue-ring octopus keeps her eggs close to her, often carrying them on her body. She will fight to the death to protect them. That pretty much sums me up as well. Of course, with the octopus it is give birth, or rather lay eggs, see babies born, die happy having seen them.

Octopus is a symbol of Regeneration. Lose an arm, grow a new one, maybe even with extra fingers on it this time. An octopus can change its colour, its texture, its shape. An octopus can mimic other animals, plants, coral reefs, rocks, whatever, in an effort to hide or hunt, or both. What I find intriguing is that, supposedly, octopus are colour-blind, and yet they can blend in to the colours of their environment absolutely perfectly. In my life, I am constantly re-inventing myself, becoming someone else, growing stronger and more secure in who I am and what I want, even as those things shift and move.

Octopus has a great deal to teach me. I have learned to accept. I have learned to assert my natural talents and gifts. I am still learning. I am still learning to trust and to be open. I am ever the willing student.

I may not be able to tell you exactly when She arrived in my life; I can only assure you that She is here and She has no intentions of moving on from me in this Lifetime, if not any other. I am deeply connected to the Sea and all things that dwell within its shadowy, often impenetrable realms. That connection continues to grow within me. I am open to the possibilities. I welcome and embrace the coming changes. I am grateful for the Counsel and the Grace being offered to me. I gladly, and humbly, accept.

Hey Babe

What seems to be the problem, babe?
Didn’t you believe I would do
All the things I said I would?
Didn’t you realize that I’d move on,
That I’d find a way towards
My own happiness
Without you?
Did you really expect me to sit
Waiting at your beck and call
Not going out to live
My life?
Did you not expect me
To find a job
To support my children and myself?
Did you not hear meWhen I told you
I would buy my own home?
Just because it’s not a house
You would buy
Doesn’t make it mean any less
To me.
Did you think I would remain alone
Without friends, without love
While you treat me
Like a convenient baby-sitter
And nothing more?
Did you think I’d never find
A lover to replace you?
Can you not believe
I can be successful
And prosperous
And happy
Without you?
It’s true.
Without you, I have found my ground.
I have found my space.
I am moving on
With life and love
And everything in between.
I don’t feel bad for you
Anymore.
With your inability to let go,
Your inability to accept
Or to embrace change.
Once I felt so bad,
But no longer.
Are you so surprised.
So caught off-guard,
So horrified
By the proofs
Of my success,
Of my pleasure,
Of my happiness,
That you cannot even face me,
Can’t look me in the eye?
Yet you sit there
Wondering why
I see you the way I do
And am glad we said good-bye.

How To Destroy A Relationship

How To Destroy A Relationship In One Year Or Less


Please note: this article is not based on any one particular person. It is based upon many different people and relationships that I have observed and/or counseled over the past years. If you feel I am talking about you specifically, I am not. But if you feel that way, you need to take a deep long hard look at yourself and your relationship. If what I write here resonates that strongly with you, then something is severely wrong in your world that has absolutely nothing to do with me.

First of all, in order to destroy a relationship, when you go out in public together do not sit with, or even near, your significant other. Do not stand by them. Do not interact with them unless you absolutely have to do so. Treat your significant other as if they were just like any and every other person in the room. Always act as if you are not a couple and you are not there together. Even if you are only at a friend’s house.

Do not call your significant other. Do not email. Do not text. Do not IM. Don’t ask how their day is going. Don’t ask them about things they are interested in. Leave them hanging at least all during the work week. Let them call you. Let them chase you. Let them make all the moves to initiate conversation.

Make plans without telling your significant other. Make sure your SO tells you every detail of their life and schedule. Make sure you never tell them anything about your own schedule, even when asked point blank. Be secretive about your life, your comings and goings, and your friends, your feelings.

Keep all your feelings inside. Bottle them up. Do not share. When asked a specific question, shrug and say you don’t know or you aren’t sure. Do not give definitive answers. Remain irresolute and ambiguous. Be unable to explain your actions, your feelings, your decisions. Be unwilling to communicate at all on any level. Focus on meaningless details and explode them into huge arguments. Twist things around and throw them back on your SO to that they feel horrible and useless and lost. That way you feel as if you have the upper hand. Then when they least expect, start making demands and issuing orders and edits without explanation.

Have expectations of your SO and don’t tell them what those expectations are. Keep them guessing about your desires and intentions. Make sure you let them know you have to lower your expectations so that they even begin to measure up even though they are failing miserably. When they question what your intentions and expectations are, be unable to tell them. Resort to shrugging and saying you just cannot explain.

Do not communicate what you enjoy, or what feels good to you. Make sure you do not allow your SO to do anything that they may enjoy. Make them feel belittled and unable to please you. Force them to work harder to please you all the time and leave them unhappy and not fulfilled. Then stop having sex with them. Tell your SO that you no longer feel a connection and are no longer able to be intimate with them until that connection is reaffirmed. Be unable to explain how the connection was lost. Be unable to explain how to re-establish the connection.

Act subversive, as if you are hiding things. Walk away when you are on the telephone so your SO cannot overhear the conversation. Go into another room to IM and/or text people. Make sure your SO knows you are doing this. If your SO enters the room, pretend to be doing something else, or refuse to allow them to see the screen. Go through SO’s things, their drawers, their files, their phones. Read their mail and email behind their backs. Make sure you check credit card bills for strange charges. Treat them as if you know they are doing something wrong. Let them see that you are trying to discover what that something might be.

Do not be interested in things that your SO is interested in. Tell them their work bores you. Tell them their hobbies hold no interest for you. Be non-committal when their family and friends show up. Have other things to do so that you can leave and not be forced to endure time with them. But on the other hand, when you have family and friends over demand your SO’s complete attention and demand they be there and stay there the entire time. Demand your SO listen to details about your work and your day and your hobbies. Do not care when their eyes glaze over.

Do not allow your SO to speak their mind. Give them arcane abstract rules that hinder their expression of their opinions. Tell them they are only allowed to validate your feelings and the way they try express themselves makes you feel uncomfortable or unloved. Do not allow them to speak their minds under any circumstance.

Come over to hang out at your SO’s home and do nothing. Do not offer to help cook, or talk to them while they are doing things, or try to entertain them with stories or anything while they are busy. Sit staring at the television as if under a spell, flipping channels or really getting into one program; it doesn’t matter. Make messes. Leave your dishes on the table, or the end table.

Talk endlessly about how you plan on marrying your SO, some day. Make sure you are non-committal on dates and time-frames; make sure they understand sooner would be better than later. But when your SO does not immediately jump on that trip down the aisle, treat them like pond scum for being unable to commit to you.

Force your SO to do everything your way. Dishes must be washed this way. Your SO must be dressed this way. You So can only be friends with certain people, because you do not like all of their friends, so the ones you do not like must be removed from their life. They cannot speak to certain kinds of people. Make arbitrary rules, like don’t touch me there, and then change the rule without telling your SO and become angry and embittered when they still don’t touch you there.

Do not do anything they ask you. They ask you to show your care and concern for issues in their life by wearing a certain piece of jewelry, for example a bracelet, put the bracelet away and never speak of it again. If it comes up, make excuses and be non-committal. Shrugging and I don’t know are perfect fall-backs. If they ask you to make certain changes to accommodate situations better, say a cat door into the garage because you never clean the little box and the smell is horrendous, refuse to do it. Keep talking about it and research it to death, but never actually do it. Make sure you bring it up fairly often so they know you’re still thinking about it, but refuse to do it as a matter of course.

Force your SO to make all the significant choices, like what’s for dinner. Remain non-committal and shrug a lot. Say things like it’s really up to you. It doesn’t matter to me. Whatever you want. Then once the choice has been made, complain about it. Be disagreeable through the whole meal. Be sure to talk about somewhere else you would have rather gone that is farther out of the way, more expensive, etc. Be sure not to let your So eat anywhere you don’t like to eat, even if it is their favourite place to go.

Tell your SO there is an important to you trip you have to make and you want them to come with you. Be vague on travel times. Do not have any prepared trip details. Even if your SO has already said they have cannot get the time off work, be abrasive and ridiculing when they do not go with you. Make sure they know it’s their fault you could not go.

Do not ever tell your SO that you two are going on a trip, even a yearly scheduled event with a group of friends, as a last-ditch effort to save the relationship. Be bitter and nasty about issues that make no sense. Complain about where the group goes to eat. Complain about the conditions in the hotel. Complain about the atmosphere of the area. Complain if your SO does not drop everything and wait on you hand and foot the entire trip. Be sure to make your SO spends as much money as possible buying you things, taking you places, showing you the sights. This is especially good if you make more money than your SO.

Turns molehills into mountains. An example of this is, you two often go to the same spa in order to get massages, but you never get couples massages because your SO talks through the entire massage and you hate that. Go with your SO to that spa and say nothing about anything to your SO, get separate massages, then start a fight over the fact that they had a massage in a completely different room than you. Argue that it was very important to you that you had the massages together and that your SO must not love you at all. Brook no arguments from your SO; make them feel small and useless and unworthy.

Question your SO’s integrity. Create impossible tests and tasks for them, without telling them that is what your doing, and then degrade them and belittle them when they fail to meet your expectations.

Add people of the opposite sex to your facebook friends list, or myspace, or your blogroll, or whatever. Make a big deal out of telling your SO how great all your friends’ relationships seem to be going, while wondering aloud why you never go anywhere together or do anything. Then decide it is better for you to stay home, online, chatting with facebook friends, or whatever.

Be bossy. Let your SO make all the choices for plans, then take over and micro-manage every detail, complaining all the time that that isn’t really what you wanted to do anyway. Be sure if there are other people involved that you make them feel small and useless as well. Do not be afraid to be a tyrant with everyone.

Ignore your SO’s feelings about everything. Do not take their likes or dislikes into consideration ever. Always be thinking what can this person be doing for me right now. Never think, hey, SO may like to go to this camper show just to look around—think, god, I hate camper shows and you couldn’t drag me there if I were dead.

Forget you know what manners are. Be imperious and demanding. Holler DRINK! and expect your SO to immediately jump up and bring you a drink upon your command. Do not tell them what you want to drink, then when they get there tell them that isn’t what you wanted and to go back and do it again. Forget please and thank you and excuse me. Speak over them. Ignore them. Treat them like an annoying bug buzzing around you.

When confronted, pitch a fit and demand the relationship be saved, then refuse to do anything about it. Tell them it’s a couples thing and no one individual can do anything to fix anything in the relationship. Be sure to refuse to go to couples counseling, no matter how many times they suggest it. Pretend nothing is wrong and pretend that the past has no bearing whatsoever on the present. Have a fake relationship based on social chatting rather than intimate communication.

Based on this, never get married unless you settle for someone you can completely dominate and despise deep down, and do nothing but complain and feel the lack for the rest of your life. There is no way around it.

These are only a few suggestions. There are many more techniques that can be utilized. But for most people, these techniques work quite well.

Dream Of A Toy-Maker

I think I need to re-think how I think about dolls. I need to re-think what I think about dolls, what I think a doll “is”.
Now, I have an abundance of doll-making books, from Waldorf-style dolls to beaded art dolls. I have joined various online groups. I receive numerous newsletters and email updates. I peek at different blogs and websites at random. Plus, I do nothing but scour etsy.com for hours on end, especially when I am on calls, looking at everything and nothing in particular. Not to mention, I have run across divergent creatures called dolls in my anthropological studies as well.
When I think “doll”, I think a cuddly smaller version of a human infant. A squeezable toy to love and hug and sleep snuggled up against my chest, as I did when I was a child. But even some of my own doll creations cannot match that standard. My own unbeaded ‘Bobbsey Twin” dolls are roughly five inch tall teardrops. Black teardrops. They have no edifying marks to designate them as anything. Yet, unequivocally, to me they are dolls. Sofia, with whom I have slept, is a rectangle that has been rounded on one side and has a face first sewn and now glued on. Elannah is a knitted figure that has hair and little else. Yet, these dolls are still lovable. Elannah is my son’s special favourite when he’s here. It’s the hair and the soft squishy body. Or so he tells me.
I have been wanting a doll of my own. I have the pullip doll. I have the Frida doll the ex got me ages ago. I got the Alice doll for my birthday, even though it is smaller than I had thought it would be. I have the dolls I have made myself. None of it feels “right”. I go to etsy.com, searching for nothing in particular, and I find these art dolls that vibrate within me. I find a raven spirit doll that makes my heart soar. These are not the ten or twelve inch human-like figures. One is sticks and bits of leaf wrapped in twine with a jewel for a face. This is the doll that speaks to me. This is the doll from which I find myself unable to look away.
I have a tin full of little doll faces that I made from a mold and some clay. The same face I see on many of these dolls, blank shiny moon face, awaiting its paint and its beauty to be drawn on to its smooth surface. I often catch myself picking the tin up, flipping open the lid, and staring down at all those miniscule creations as they patiently smile in wait for their physical forms to be complete. Forms I may dream of, yet have not begun to plan to build.
It was the raven spirit doll that began to sing within me. This little five inch long bit of bracken and dust came to visit in my dreams, chanting and swaying, awakening something else within me. Before I pick up a beading needle to put to a doll again, I want to take classes, or get a dvd, or something. I need to be able to sit in front of someone and watch them do the beadwork before I will have enough confidence to try it on my own. Then maybe the Bobbsey twins on my altar will be more than dark spots of love doting mutely on me.
Any small rectangle of cloth, knotted on three ends constitutes a cunning child’s toy. Give me a little time and some decent glues and paints and watch what I can do. Any stick represents a doll. A few feathers and a stone or two and I can turn it into something even more magical.
I give myself permission to make dolls. I give myself permission to make dolls out of anything and everything my heart desires. I give myself permission to make these dolls for fun, for gifts, for friends, for loved ones. I give myself permission to sell these dolls. I give myself permission to throw them away, or to let the dog have them to chew, if I am not satisfied with them in any way.
I also give myself permission to incubate, to gather more information. I give myself permission to buy more doll-related books, whatever topic that may turn out to be (like mythology). I give myself permission to read and to study. I give myself permission to take classes, to go to seminars. I give myself permission to speak up, to speak out, and just to be.
I can be more than a toy-maker. I can be a Doll Creator. And that is what I want to be.

copyright 2009 TK Kietero
all rights reserved