Speak, No Feeling, No I Don't Believe You

I have been avoiding the blog pull. I think of such great things to write in my head and when I finally get to the computer, I am apathetic and tired. Above all, my head hurts all of the time. For some reason, my Lyrica has not had the same utter euphoric feeling that it did when I first started it. Upon restarting it after 2 months without it, I thought that I would be back on that same cloud, feeling thoughtful and expressive and wanting to get all of my thoughts out of my head and onto the interwebz.

I don't really know how it works, but for me, I had an epiphany one day while watching A Mighty Heart. I don't need to slide around religion the way that I have. I have never felt that I was truly a part of anything, but I took little bits and pieces from this and that and made it my own. That did not make me feel any more involved. Instead, I felt like more of an outcast than ever. So I decided that I would do my absolute best to devote myself to Buddhism, which is the philosophy of life that I most closely try to follow. I have been interested in Buddhism for many, many years, and always treat others the way that I would want to be treated. I don't try to be a bad person, and I love my enemies as if they were my friends. I do not hold grudges or bad feelings. I see the world as parts of a whole being. We are all humans and therefor should not be against each other. I was reading, and a particular part took my attention to a whole new level. His Holiness the Dalai Lama stated (and I'm paraphrasing) that we are all striving for the same goal, enlightenment, no matter what religion or ethnicity we are, we all want to reach nirvana. We are all in this together, whether you like it or not. I tend to like it. I say that I'm not altruistic because I get pleasure out of doing good things for others. I remember a great debate in one of my anthropology classes about altruism and that I agreed that it does not exist. However, it was brought to my attention in one of my books that I was actually practicing Mahayana Buddhism already. Altruism in Buddhism means that you don't just want to reach your enlightenment, you want others to reach it as well. You want everyone to see it, to show anyone, and although you may live in suffering instead of in Nirvana, you get great joy out of seeing others successfully becoming happy, and realizing that they didn't know themselves at all.

"There is a story about four enlightened ones; who are traveling a vast desert, that is existence. As the story goes, there is a wall surrounding the goal; often portrayed as a lush garden. The first of the enlightened ones climbs over the wall never to return from Nirvana. The second, climbs over and never returns. The third also climbs over never to return. The fourth up on the top of the wall, looks to Nirvana and then returns their gaze to the world of suffering. The fourth enlightened one chooses climb down back into existence in order to search the desert, ushering those who aproach to the entrance and within. The fourth promises that Nirvana is within everyones reach. The fourth enlightened one promises to wait on the edge of Nirvana until all of existence is enlightened and free from the suffering(dukkha) of life." Truth

I am that suffering pebble that is just enough to cause a landfall. Not having a purpose drove me crazy. I know that I must stop doing what I've been doing. I realize that I've been wasting time. I've been focusing on the past, and the future, and I've been missing out on the now, thriving on chaos and drama, and possessions. Strip it all away, and all I have left is me, and to be honest, picturing staring at myself, naked, vulnerable, with no possessions or others to protect me is terrifying. Why am I so scared of myself and who I am? Why do I stress over things that do not matter. Why do I lose precious time with my kids while sitting and watching tv? I want to be a better person. I've always strived to be a better person, that is all I've ever wanted. Now I have a way to. I don't know how others just up and decide that they are going to be Buddhist, but this is my story. I want to have that word wrapping around me as protection. I don't want to stutter when people ask me what faith I am. I have faith, and no longer have to be envious of those that hold their religion close to their heart. I don't say that Buddhism is a religion actually, but a way of life, a philosophy and an ultimate goal to not only help myself, but to do my best to rid my life of things that cause stress and possess those things that give me strength. I will help others if they want it. I will not be ashamed to say what I am and defend why I am. I'm on my way to enlightenment.

The Beekeeper (Start Your Own Revolution)

Words of wisdom have never made so much sense:

Roses and Thorns
"When you speak of roses and thorns, the paradox within one beautiful flower, the marriage of the male and female, the crown of thorns, with Jesus and Mary Magdalene being known as the rose, I thought that all of us at some time in our lives experience a sacred marriage of sorts and I truly wanted there to be in the garden a place for union. In all of us, there is a love. In all of us, there is another piece, a mirror piece. Yes, of course, within. You have to find your own twin flame within your being, but there is someone, and sometimes it is more than one person, that you go into sacred marriage with. And I explore it in different songs on this record, especially Marys of the Sea, which is about her journey out of Jerusalem, and fleeing and when she gets to the south of France, she takes on a ministry herself. The gospel of Mary Magdalene was something that I had heard about but hadn't read until I was much older. My mother, a minister's wife, read it for the first time very, very recently, and she looked up with tears streaming down her face, and she took my hands in hers, and her name is Mary, and she said, "Darling, why oh why has this been kept from me my whole life? I am not someone who isn't exposed to literature, particularly Christian literature," My mother was a literature major. And she said, "Yet this is something that has not been available." And I said, "Well, I think that is the key question. Why 2000 years later would the gospel of Mary Magdalene be hidden from the masses?" Now to me, that is the greatest story NEVER told. And I explore this greatest story never told in Marys of the Sea.

Herbs and Elixirs
Elixirs and herbs is a place that the passion that this woman has for her beliefs, for the man that she loves, for the direction that humanity is going, is very much where she's exploring. And allowing herself to not only heal what are wounds, but to allow her wounds to express themselves. And this doesn't always have to be a place of victimization, this sometimes is a place to be able to confront something is out of balance, and it's an ancient practice that the bee shaman have been working with for thousands of years. They work with a tradition that forces you to look at those places that may need to be stung. And there is a song on this record in the Herbs and Elixirs garden called Sweet the Sting and in order for you or I to gain the sweetness, wisdom does not come without the sting.
If we can all begin looking more at our lives like a garden, and within a garden it has different shapes, I mean, yours may not be based on a hexagram concept. The beekeeper is however, mainly because the cells of the hives itself are based on the principle of the hexagram. From my wisdom, and my sort of tree of knowledge to expand, I chose to follow my heart, so I followed my husband down to Cornwall, welly boots and all. This would not have been my first choice. I enjoyed living in cities, but now, over the last few years there's a different rhythm here, and the weather is very much a character in this theater piece of my life. It is a huge part, and the power of it, when the gails blow in off the Cornish coast. There's a song, Jamaica Inn, that I wrote as I didn't get trapped but I was just driving down on a beautiful, quote unquote beautiful, you know it was raining, it's England. And, all of a sudden, the gails started to come in and my mind started to wander and I pulled over on a cliff, and I started to think about this story I had been told by some of the locals. where the wreckers would come in when a ship would run aground and take everything. And I started to think about this story that was taking over my car. In that moment, Jamaica Inn walked in to my Saab, and she said, "You might not like my story, because I'm not going to tell you how it ends yet, and you need to travel it with me. And we're going to have to explore your deepest fears." And I think my deepest fears come down to betrayal in love, friendship. It's not death, that's not my greatest fear. Tragic, if it's untimely, but it's going to happen to all of us. What always stops me is betrayal, and if I betray someone, that scares me too.

The Desert Garden
The desert garden is very much about the crossroads. It's a place where you must make choices, grave choices. This is where our garden of Sinsuality differs from the garden of Eden because in a place where the creator is the feminine scribe telling the story, the bart, in our book of Genesis, in our beginning, we as women were encouraged to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, because that's how we could help our pride or tribe. And if we don't, then we will be subservient, and unequal to the male and therefor cannot help him, and cannot serve the pride. As a songwriter, and someone who chronicles time, I have to feel the pulse of what is current. I was able to include General Joy on the record because I wrote it in July 2004 and recorded it and it was relevant then and it's relevant again now. We are still at war as of this taping, and General Joy is very much a current figure, or not because there are not a lot of Generals that we would call General Joy and that's the point. General Joy has lost his boys and they've been left behind. He needs a soldier girl now that liberty has been gagged.

The Greenhouse
Parasol is a song about deep betrayal, and how this woman survives this experience without becoming victimized in the end by being able to transform herself. And as the song says, "If I'm a seated woman with a parasol, I'll be the only one." There will always be someone who feels trapped in a situation like the seated woman with a parasol. There is a song called The Power of Orange Knickers that really kind of explores the idea of the word "terrorist," so I put on a pair of orange knickers one morning and I decided that if I'm going to stalk the idea of a terrorist, without having a picture of what one was, then I'm going to need my orange knickers. And as I started to walk over to the piano, I started to think about words that rhymed with terrorist, and this song kept drawing me in and drawing me in, deeper and deeper and deeper, and it said, "Yes, it's easy to see the enemy if it's in another country, it's easy to see the enemy in another culture. Find the enemy in your own culture, then find the enemy in your own being." And she's there. We all have this part of ourselves that will choose to obliterate an idea instead of negotiate with it, because it takes great skill to negotiate with ideas. It doesn't take a lot of skills to obliterate, unfortunately...and I began to understand how the opposites, if they don't have an understanding and a respect for one another, and hold it into balance, then the whole thing begins to bring chaos.
My mom was very ill this year. I was having to realize that I was not willing to let her go at this time. So what do you do? Well then you go to the beekeeper, don't you? So, in the song, The Beekeeper, I travel to find the master beekeeper, who is really sort of the master shaman keeping everything together within the gardens, making sure everything is pollinated, making sure there is life, making sure that when and if there's disease, that that is extricated from the garden. It wasn't guaranteed that my mother would survive. But the master beekeeper explained that "Of course she will wake. Don't you believe in infinity? Don't you believe in the shape of infinity? That's the bee's dance. That's what the worker bees do; that is their dance. Don't you believe in the mystery of the Magdalene? Don't you believe in this lineage of Damider, the endless of cycles of mother and daughter? Because wherever she awakes, she is still your mother, even if it's not on this plane, she will always be your mother."

The Orchard
Mother Revolution is core because the album centers very much around this idea that in order for there to be a continuance of life for the next generation and the next generation, and the next generation, the songs begin to speak about if the masses didn't chose to listen to the needs to the next generation, then the mothers would need to make a choice, which was were the mothers okay sending their sons off to a war that they may not believe in. And I began to understand an internal revolution that is more powerful than thousands of soldiers, that there is an artillery of the soul, and a resolve that I have seen in a concerned mother. The masters have spoken about the complexity of the hives that love living in the orchards. I was drawn to it mainly because of the vine and the fruit and the transformation of life. Becoming a mother has brought me my greatest teacher. She is four, and we're in communication, we're in harmony, we're in a balance of mother and daughter, not me as the authority or her as the precocious child that's totally in control, which is true sometimes. But when we're in balance, we're sharing this dance, this sonic dance, that the songs have been trying to show me since I was little, but she, through her love of music is beginning to show me. And that lives in the orchard along with the Tree of Knowledge. Ribbons Undone is a song that really I guess explains a mother's love, and a father's love, for their daughter. They see their little girl running in the fields with their ribbons flying, as they're little flashes of lightening that go by, especially in the back field here, and you can run and run and run and run, and catch butterflies, thinking that you can fly like one. And I was watching Tash run and I started to remember something my mother said to me. She told me years ago, we would look in a mirror, and she said, "This woman that I see, that you see, this old, wrinkled woman, is a stranger to me." I said, "You're the most beautiful woman I know." And she said, "That's...don't get distracted by what I'm telling you." She said, "That is a stranger to me. Inside, I'm running. Inside, my legs can carry me. I don't have a heart condition. I'm not someone who is in a wheelchair. I am someone who catches the butterflies in my mind's eye." And when I watched my daughter running, I saw my mother and I began to understand that this case is a distraction sometimes, and it tricks us because it can start making us believe that we are old of spirit, not just that the violin case is beat up, but you can begin to believe that the violin has no music to play anymore. And that is where you have to go to the Tree of Knowledge and I tasted my mother's wisdom looking into that mirror. And I see her running now, and my mother will always be running, next to Tash, together, hand in hand, and Ribbons Undone is something that I hope one day to see myself running alongside them.

The Rock Garden
I don't necessarily see it as barren, the rock garden, and I think the songs take us into a place that I certainly didn't expect. There are little surprises that I find all the time. There's a song called Witness, the gospel choir is on that. We go back to the gnostic gospels and the techs talking about being a witness, and did you witness Christ's teaching. I started thinking about judge and jury and I started to think about crimes against humanity, against each other, stripping it away to a very personal place of crime. And the gospel choir becomes very much the jury. Do you ever start screaming in the car, having an argument, reliving an argument, "Why didn't I say that? Why is he so stupid? Why can't he understand?" And you go, "What is it gonna take? What language is it going to take for us to communicate on this issue?" So I decided what is the language that this guy understands? So I decided to become a car, one with a stick, that he can put his hands on, and maneuver, and he can polish my rims. And he can step inside me, and feel himself become manly, and have a conversation with his car. Then I decided that I could also become a guitar, and he could pick me up and play me, and I could listen to what he was trying to say, and if I could just change my shape, we could maybe get through this because it was never was the cars and guitars that came between us."

--Tori Amos


Start your own garden. Find joy in your life and make up your own mind. Find what makes you happy, find what makes you sad, because it is all what makes you. Realize what parts of your life occupy which garden, and watch it grow, expand, multiply, die off, and start its own revolution.

New Music and Lost Weight

This morning was my 3 month weigh in at the medical weight management place I go to. I was extremely happy (and terrifically surprised) to see that I was no longer over 200 pounds. It's been over a year since I've seen that on the scale. To date, I have lost 36 of the 100 pounds I want to lose by April 2011. As long as I continue to lose 7 pounds a month, I'll be there. It's exciting to know that it's an actual achievable goal. If you would have told me in March that I could lose almost 40 pounds and drop 3 dress sizes in 3 months and still eat well and not exercise as much as I should, I would have thought "Yeah, right. Maybe if I starve myself." But there has been no starving. I feel terrific and my clothes are fitting better. Aaron's lost 54 pounds in 3 months. I have to say that I'm jealous. I know men lose faster than women and all, but it's so crazy that he's lost so much more than me. I try to look on the bright side and think that together, we've lost 90 pounds in 3 months. That's a huge accomplishment. I can't wait for people to look at me and say "You have 2 kids under5!" I'm just waiting for it and smiling to myself.

I got in to work a couple hours late because of the weigh in and had to get started on my work pretty quickly. I'm almost caught up, so I'm not feeling that rushed, but I always like to be prepared for anything. It's a great day because the first message on my voice mail was a contact at social security letting me know that a client (and dear friend of mine) was finally approved for her disability. I cherish this woman although I've only known her for a month. She is strong, a hard worker, and a fighter for her life. Her family won't take care of her even though she's on continuous oxygen now, and the motel room she rents weekly is always getting "broken into" by a staff person. Her mail gets stolen and they have her in an upstairs apartment even though she has to carry tanks of oxygen with her and is all but 110 pounds. She's worked all of her life and now has to wait until November to receive her disability benefits. I gave her money once to pay for her weekly rent so they wouldn't kick her out. Her family wouldn't take her in and she was afraid of dying. Once, she glanced over with a faraway look in her eyes. I asked her what was wrong and she said, "I'm dying." I smiled and told her we were all dying, but she wasn't dead yet. I wrote her a letter detailing a daydream to take her across route 66 with no oxygen, and no pain until we got to the ocean. She told me later that she wanted to go to the ocean. I told her she should go. She said, "No, I want my ashes spread there." I told her that if she put it in her will, I would do that for her. I promised that I would and she said, "I know you would. You're my best friend, my only friend. You're an angel." It made me feel bittersweet because although I loved the compliment, no one should have to find someone's kindness as a rarity. We don't pay attention enough to those who need help. We walk past them, saying that it's not our problem. But I see this brave woman as a sister, an aunt, a mother and she is connected to me through the knowledge that she is a human just like me, and who's to say that when I'm older, the same thing won't happen to me. She didn't ask for end stage pulmonary disease, she just got it. And I believe that I'm here on this earth to make people understand that they are not meaningless, and they are not nothing, and they are just as important as the person next to them. I don't care if you've thought of a new invention, or if you've got a hit song, or if you wrote a life changing book. That is your purpose, and others that have not had that kind of achievement have served their purpose. They were something to someone at some time. And who are we to judge?

I'm listening to The Shins on repeat right now. Phantom Limb. It makes me happy. His voice soothes me. I'm trying to realize that I don't need to idolize musicians or actors. It's difficult, because they seem so vulnerable and powerful at the same time. They are iconic. But I have to realize that being around "everyday, normal" people is also amazing. There are a lot of people out there with the same opinions and dreams as those actors, only they have not gotten into the spotlight, and I've found that if you look hard and deep enough, you'll find yourself sharing a conversation with a person that you've dreamed about your whole life. I promise I'll listen to different music. I've already started: the sixty-one.

Until later..........

meds, white vans, and yellow highlighters

I had a dream last night that I was pregnant again. I wasn't due yet, but they told me that the baby had to come. I was a little scared and nervous, but I went to the hospital with them anyway. I woke up feeling awful and curled my arm around Aaron's waist. I snuggled in and told him about being pregnant in my dream. He mumbled something about how good that would be and returned my cuddle. My eyes closed and when I opened them again, it was after 7:30. I'm supposed to be at work at 8:00. Not good. As I was scrambling to get dressed and figure out what to do, Aaron suggested I go to work and he would take the kids to school. I offered to switch vehicles with him and he could trade them out later.

Which brings me to the van. Needless to say, it took me a little bit of time and effort to hoist myself in to begin with. Then, I drove, slowly, to work. This van is so high up that I feel like I'm the bully of the road. However, I'm also a scaredy cat because I didn't want to wreck it. When someone pulled out in front of me 2 blocks from my house, I almost had a panic attack. I kept thinking what I would tell the police officer behind me if he were to pull me over. My brain was in a million places at once, and yet still focused on driving. When I got to work, only 15 minutes late, I leaned against my coworker's door frame and nodded to the window, asking what they thought of "my sweet van," which spawned giggles, just as I suspected. It started my day pretty well, and it didn't hurt that I got to see Aaron's sexy face when he switched out the vehicles either. However, he brought with him a note from the daycare teacher stating that because some of the kids were taking off their flip flops and using them as weapons (with no real need to mention names), those types of shoes were now banned from the classroom. Fantastic.

I realized last night as I was watching Cecil B. Demille's version of Cleopatra that I can see the beauty in just about any movie. The art and imagery that he put into it was awe inspiring. I don't even want to think about how much time it took for them to get all of the different meticulous scenes perfected. I sat there, thinking of my parents' looming divorce and my sister's probable sadness from it, looping fragments of plastic bags together to form long strands, and wondered why I wasn't sleeping instead. Lately, my medicines have not been particularly working. My body still aches from my head to my toes, literally. I'm becoming progressively more exhausted. Fortunately I'm going to a pain specialist on Friday and I have another appointment at the clinic next Tuesday, right as I will be taking my last Lyrica, which may not help with the pain, but does make my mood quite better. It's scary when you realize that you're going to be medicated for the rest of your life, and that medicine that can make you feel euphoric and happy will only keep you that way for a small time before needing more and more to achieve the same high. Drugs are drugs, whether or not they are prescribed or taken properly. Your body will always get used to it and require more. I've only been taking Lyrica for 4 or 5 months and already I need a higher dose. And what happens next?

Now I am sitting at work, trying to whittle the stack of paper down, but I keep getting interrupted by trips to the bathroom, my bloody toes, and pretty much anything else that's more interesting than highlighting names on pieces of paper. I'm trying to stay organized, but my mind wanders to my urge to be more crafty, my list of things to do, and of course the new M.I.A. cd which is supposed to be coming out in July. I usually try to get my fix in the mornings on the way to work because it kick starts my day, but since I had to drive the ubervan, I had to sing along with it in my head. But dang, isn't she purdy?

Well, My Goodness

oh hai again interwebz. It has been awhile...It's raining outside, and I have to say that I've been thinking about you a lot lately, collecting thoughts and being spellbound by my inability to actually put my thoughts onto paper, or my fingers against keys with capital letters on them. But I know it is time to start again.
Many things have been going on lately. It's not unlike what you're really thinking when someone asks you "What's new?" and you say, "Same ole, same ole." You and I both know that's not true. There are usually A LOT of things that are new, but you just don't feel that it is interesting enough to tell them about. Besides, they are probably just asking out of courtesy and don't actually want much of an answer. Next time someone asks, pause for a moment and think of the most personal tidbit you can. Then start talking about it and watch the reaction. Priceless entertainment right there.
A lot of the things that are new in my life are worrisome. I've been having dreams about many things, things that I don't think bother me in the daytime, but when it's time to sleep, it haunts me. My first daughter will be 8 this September. She was adopted the day after she was born, taken home by a beautiful, picture perfect family, leaving me with a deflated balloon of a stomach and promises that I would get to see her all of the time. I don't like to think that it was a lie all along, but it seems to be that way. People get very illogical when they are protective. I rarely see my daughter, only allowed to view her life through snapshots of smiles and multicolored tutus. But see, in the sunlight, this does not bother me. I'm happy for her, happy to see her grow and change so many people's lives. But at night, I dream of meeting her now. I dreamed that I was visiting as a family friend and she came and sat on my lap, laying her back against my chest and wrapping my arms around her waist. I could actually smell the shampoo in her hair and my heart was pounding. I woke up feeling very empty, and very alone. My chest aches when I think about it. I scent of apple shampoo still lingers in the air sometimes, and I wonder if at those moments, she is wondering about her mother.