Manifest

I woke up this morning feeling like I am already in that space. I kept my eyes closed and imagined that I was in that little vintage bedroom with its minty sage walls and fuzzy rugs and hardwood floors and that I would step into my little slippers and make fresh coffee with my coffee press and watch the sun come up through the east facing kitchen window with its deep window sill where I have placed a few ripening tomatoes that just came off the plants the day before, straight from my garden.  I imagined that those tomatoes were picked just a wee bit too soon by my over eager son, who just couldn’t wait any longer after watching them grow from little white flowers to the green, then orangey red bursts.  Fragrant earthy coffee filed my senses, warm sunlight, orange, green, yellow, blue. Musical birds. This is going to happen.  AND I WILL TELL YOU WHY.

I FOUND IT. The house. The little old lady house, built in the 50’s, original vintage kitchen with teal metal counter tops and deep cast iron sink with built in washboard, and the hardwood floors and established herb garden and private back patio canopied with grapevines (four different varietals!!) and twinkle lights strung across and right next to the farmers market and summer concerts in the park and zoned commercial (owner: “so you can run a little business out of your home if you like!”) and the cellar originally used for canning and the big old fireplace and radiator and OH MY EFFING GOODNESS the rent is a couple hundred LESS than what I am paying now!!!! I found it yesterday just driving around, sniffing around, flying around with my eagle eyes. The woman who owns it just happens to be a massage therapist as well and disclosed to me that she too divorced when her child was seven and with the bit of settlement money she got, she put money down on that house and signed up for massage school. Both massage and that house have served her ever since, and now she is engaged and in the most loving relationship and they are renovating a little old place together and she couldn’t be more happy. WHAT A COINCIDENCE.

I freaking applied. We will see what happens!! The closets are VERY tiny so I will have to get very ingenious about storage, but I am up for that challenge.

Before I get to move and store a bunch of stuff though, I am going to try to sell it all! I started listing right after I turned in my application yesterday! Making that space. Manifestation and shit like that.

So we will see!! Life is freaking miraculous and amazing. That is all I have to say.

AIRAVATA

So, although I don’t have a retail shop set up in my house selling oddities and witchy knick-knacks yet, I am getting close. Currently my house is overloaded with some of the most interesting, random, and amazing objects. My friend Kai has a pretty keen eye for unique home goods and has been collecting things for a while.  When I told him he would be a natural “Etsy Seller” he agreed to let me show him the ropes, and brought over a few boxes containing his favorites. This guy has got my number. Carved wood altar pieces, animal skulls, mid century wooden trays, unique ceramic jars and pots, AND BOOTS, like woven kilim boots, that made my mouth salivate and my palms sweat and if they had been just a tad bigger would have been his payment to me for helping him set up a pretty kick ass online home goods shop (if I do say so myself).  AIRIVATAhome is the name of his shop.

I have been away from etsy and vintage and all of that selling business for a while, so it was kind of fun to see how the apps and programs have changed in the past couple of years. I even got pretty excited and have decided to start selling vintage again. It’s so funny though, I am so excited about the stuff Kai keeps bringing over for his shop that I just want to focus on home stuff. I have so much vintage still, dresses and blouses and coats and shoes and boots and belts and accessories that I held on to when I liquidated “just in case” I decided to come back. I have not listed any of my things yet, but I probably will now that Kai is all up and running. 

You can see his shop at AIRAVATAhome.

Also, I promised my grandma that I would begin blogging regularly again.  We have had a few scary weeks regarding my grandpa and his health. Reconnecting with them and many of my root people, have shifted my priorities tremendously. All of this is actually really exciting for me. I am really looking forward to getting back in touch with people. Picking up the dropped threads.

Experience

I wrote the following fantasy on January 17^th of last year. A little over a year ago. I had no idea at the time that fantasy was a strong form of manifestation. 

I have been fantasizing about opening an oddities shop where I sell crystals and candles and bells and bones and other witchy knick-knacks. In the back room, through the wood beaded veil, I’ll have a table draped with printed silk and I will read palms and do tarot readings. I will ask for your birthday, time and location and tell you your moon and sun signs, rising sign, and where the planets appear in your houses.  Then I will tell you what that all means. The information will hit home with you and you will leave with a greater sense of purpose, an understanding of your place in the universe, and the grace and ease that comes with the confidence that everything is exactly as it should be.  Ideally, my shop will be in the floor level of an old house that my family lives in. As customers come in a bell will ring, but when no one comes in, I will just be at home with my family. The shop will be open most times, unless I am not home (and after 7 pm). I will drink tea and invite groups of friends and philosophers to come over to tea. Perhaps it will be a central meeting place for a book club or a drum circle.  There will be an area for meditation and yoga. I will also have lots of plants growing in a beautiful window wall.  Kilim rugs and other woven textiles will line the floors and walls. My personal collection of oddities, carved book holders, brass crabs, bundles of dried sage, will fill shelves and deep windowsills. Vintage chairs and tables will be situated randomly. A basket overflowing with brightly woven Mexico blankets will casually ask all who enter to bundle up and stay a while.  I will play music. Whatever is tickling my feet to bump around at the moment.  And there will be books everywhere. For sale, rent or trade. I will try to read all of them and organize them in a way that makes sense to me so that when someone comes in looking for something they might be turned on to something in a different subject, but maybe leaning in their direction of interest. And of course I will be able to find exactly what they are looking for when they come in asking, “I just want to know what types of things I can eat and do to balance my internal organ function with the changing seasons.”  I will direct them to a practical guide on Eastern Medicine, or some such, and send them home with a little bag of herb tea to sip while they read in a sunny window, my acupuncturist’s phone number, and a big warm smile.   This shop will be profitable, but really just enough to pay the bills and fund more finding and collecting to keep it freshly stocked.  People will come, more and more, all by word of mouth.  It will be aesthetically pleasing and interesting. Visitors will see something new each time they come in.   I may even sell vintage clothing. Leather boots and purses will line the wall in one room and above it will be a line of easily wearable day dresses and sweaters.  Wallpaper. Beautiful wallpaper.  A beautiful little space that I can live a simple life in.

The writing went on to expose an internal paradox I was experiencing at the time. On one side of the paradox: Attachment- the fear of this fantasy and all that its fruition entailed, including losing my current house, the restructuring of the foundation the last 13 years of my life was built on, and the consequences of such restructuring. The other side of the paradox: Freedom- letting go of my foundation and all that tied me to it, allowing for creation and reinvention.  My heart's unquenchable longing for this fantasy to become my authentic reality was pounding on me and forcing me to come to terms with the fact shit was about to change. "Get yourself ready," it beat into me. 

And man, did shit ever change. Starting massage school began a cascading, cataclysmic, and completely healing and transformative process that I am still engaged in nearly a year later. So much has happened I don’t even know where to start. How about this, another excerpt from my “prophesy” statement from last January:

I feel like I have been living in a dream state. Or waking from one. Every time I clean a toilet I am aware that I may not be cleaning this toilet by the end of this year. I may be cleaning a different one. One that someone else I don’t know has been shitting in for years. There might even be some of their piss under the tile that can never be reached.

Life is not without irony. I have moved. I moved out of my house. Into a little rental. And yes, its filled with all the things I mentioned in the fantasy above, the good: kilim pillows and rugs and mexico blankets and sage and meditation and yoga spaces and books and tea and drumming and all of that stuff, and it had the sort-of gross: the remnants of the prior occupants pee at the crease between the foot of the toilet and the linoleum floor (but seriously, it wasn't that bad. A little windex cleans everything.)  And the reason I moved is that I divorced my husband. And the reason I divorced my husband is complicated, as you would expect. Pages can be written about this, but the simple reason was that it was time for us to part ways. The rest of my fantasy is still coming to fruition. The tarot/palm reading part isn’t quite happening yet, but massage and energy healing is on the horizon. People do come to my house for healing. And we have tea and I send books home with them. 

I had been doing so much internal changing and shifting, as recorded in the later entries of this blog, but over the last year I finally started changing the exterior environment of my life. It has been my experience that internal change is not enough. Once authentic internal changes take place, the outside material world must shift to reflect it. It’s the law of correspondence (as discussed in an earlier post). I think more than anything the past year has taught me that its not enough to just read and understand concepts. Experiential knowing and doing creates a physical understanding and helps to form authentic truths.

There has been a whole lot of experiencing over the past year. 

Alchemy

I am starting massage therapy school tomorrow. THIS IS HUGE FOR ME. So you might recall that about this time last year I had a mini meltdown and sold all of my vintage stuff off in huge collections and virtually gave the rest away and quit the blog and went into a total hermetic state for a few months then came back in October and was talking all this sort of abstract, kind of ungrounded crazy talk, then retreated again until, like, a few weeks ago? Well, that's sort of what it might have looked like from here. And that is sort of what happened actually, but from where I am standing now, peering back over the year, A FEW HUNDRED SHIT TONS OF STUFF WAS ACTUALLY HAPPENING. I think I actually get the concept of alchemy now.

alchemy |ˈalkəmē|nounthe medieval forerunner of chemistry, based on the supposed transformation of matter. It was concerned particularly with attempts to convert base metals into gold or to find a universal elixir.• figurative a process by which paradoxical results are achieved or incompatible elements combined with no obvious rational explanation : his conducting managed by some alchemy to give a sense of fire and ice.

Ya. I went medieval on my own ass.  Not claiming that I am now made of solid gold or anything, but shit is purified and transformed. I know, I am sounding like a total bad ass right now (please read my humble sarcasm) but last night I finished a fitness challenge that I started 3 months ago at my local Mixed Martial Arts studio and I am totally and completely blown away by my stats. (I am a fitness machine.) Then finally FINALLY, I am heading toward a license that will actually allow me to touch and heal people through massage. These two things are seemingly unrelated, I realize, but to me they are actions of alchemy that are transforming my base metals into freaking sunshine.

Its obvious and concrete how the fitness challenge, intense and global, including weights and cardio and kicking and punching hard, and balance and diet, transformed my body from soft to hard (though flexible and agile), but the way I arrived at my decision to go to massage school (really just the next leg of my journey) takes a much more winding route, that totally started back when I was all, "I discovered my Dharma!" and shit, like a year and a half ago. Maybe I'll pull that post up for those that care to check it out. . .  naw, I'll just summarize since it was a long ass time ago: "Holy shit guys! I think the universe just opened up and gave me the gift of knowing EXACTLY why I have been put on this earth and all of the good things I am capable of and it was beautiful and incredible! But they only showed me in pictures, not words, and really, only the outcome, so I have to sort of figure out how in the hell I am supposed to do all this great shit now. . . "

Oh, by the way, the "great shit" was that I am to awaken people to see their own light. Plant seeds in their hearts so that they can grow spiritually and accomplish their own dharmas. I was excited about all of this, but feeling a little daunted by the task. Various reasons: I had seriously about ZERO friends in real life (though lots of friends on the internet living miles and miles away) and felt insecure about my ability to meet people and make new friends. Or NOT EVEN FRIENDS, just like people that want seeds planted in their hearts and shit by a total stranger. Ya. So there was that. Next, I got physically exhausted very easily and couldn't even muster the mental willingness or physical knowhow to plant any ACTUAL PLANT SEEDS, let alone spiritual seeds. So, there was that. On top of all of that stuff, I just BAAAAARLEY got my little dharma heart seedling planted when the herbicides of self doubt and insecurity almost shriveled them to dust. Obviously I had to take some time to nurture and grow my own seeds before I even dared give gardening advice.

So. Quit the blog. Tried to make real friends. Felt like I lost a few (due to my own reclusive nature and not keeping in contact via email and shit) Read a million books and tested out lots of crazy shit (some not so crazy, almost all super fun or incredibly interesting) Nearly blew up my brain and went to see a therapist (who helped me see why I had so much difficulty cultivating and keeping female relationships. HUGE huge work. Now I have a couple really real authentic friends and it feels really nice.) Thought maybe I would go back to college and get my masters degree in philosophy and signed up for some classes (Those just ended. The classes were not what I had hoped they would be BUT my professor was SO Great, this 70ish year old guy who had lived in New Orleans for about 40 years and was all into hypnotism and tarot cards and astrology and shit! We are friends now and meet up to discuss metaphysical matters and behavioral psychology. All I really wanted when I signed up for classes was to be able to shoot the shit with someone who had read and experienced WAY more than me so that worked out perfect.), then finally focused on strengthening my physical body and willpower through the fitness challenge, and now here I am. Beginning massage school.

Do I wish I would have known that massage school was the next length of the journey back a year ago? NO WAY. I had to do all that crazy stuff. Do I know EXACTLY what type of massage I will do or what I will do after?  Nope and it doesn't matter. I feel SO on my right path, so I am just going to stay present and keep on heading that direction. I was the whole time, even when I was lost and mixed up and sad and insecure.

I failed to journal about Universal Laws 3 and 4, the laws of vibration and duality, but its ok. They were huge ones for me though. Is anyone else doing it?

Over my head

I have 30 minutes. Boy has it been a long weeek. Lets just get started shall we.

The second Universal Law that I will be paying attention for the remainder of this week is The Law of Correspondence. Since I am trying to really get a good grasp of these things, I have included the definition of correspondence.

1 a close similarity, connection, or equivalence : there is a simple correspondence between the distance of a focused object from the eye and the size of its image on the retina.2 communication by exchanging letters with someone : the organizationengaged in detailed correspondence with local congressmen.• letters sent or received : his wife dealt with his private correspondence.


The internet explained this rule to me this way (These were copied from my notes in my journal and I failed to write down the link, but I think these definitions are universally recognized):

"As above, so below; As below, so above."
"Know thyself and thou salt know all the mysteries of the gods and universe." 

On a very simple level, I get this rule as our thoughts (as above) effect how we feel (so below) and how we feel effects our thoughts. Easy peasy.  My kid is crying on the way to school today, positive that he will have an awful day and that he will miss me. He cries harder. Harder crying makes him think that that bully at school will hurt him today. He bawls. I stop the car and reveal to him that he is just going around in a circle creating a cycle of sad. "STOP. Take a deep breath and think of how you felt when I surprised you at lunch time last week. Exhale and push all of your breath out and take another deep breath in and think about how happy you will be to see all of your friends at martial arts after school." this continued till the tears stopped.

We all do this, just on a different scale. My little breathing exercise worked well enough for him to get a grip and head off to the playground by his own will, but sometimes we have no idea we are trapped in little feedback loops. What kind of loops do I have going on?  I feel pretty good right now, so my loops are pretty positive. I remember sad and scared loops from not too long ago though. How did I break them?

On a much wider and cosmic scale, I think this second law is also stating something about the planets, sun, moon and constellations. As WAY above, so below.  But below and above are such relative terms on this scale. Relative in that how I am oriented on the earth with my feet pointed toward center, which would I guess be below me, and all that expands out from the level of my head into the freaking infinite cosmos, is above.  ( I have no idea if that last sentence is grammatically correct but lets just go with it for the sake of time.) But really I guess that is putting a whole shit ton of stock in the importance of human life since we are infinitely small compared to how large these "above" bodies are. I am going to think about this aspect of the rule a little more. I think it has to do with archetypal energy and universal consciousness. Personification for the sake of clarity. I need to think about this.

To be Continued. at some point. this week. ish.

Oh Dang.

Hey! Hi! You know, its crazy, but I was journaling Monday and Tuesday about some new things and I though for a second, while I was writing, that maybe I should be writing this stuff on my blog. I quickly dismissed the idea and covered it with, "you have been journaling just fine on your own on paper, so why would you suddenly want to blog again?" Good question, so I continued in my paper journal. BUT then, I got a little kick in the teeth, a good jab that comes when the nudge of an idea is not quite enough to spring me into action.  You guys know. Well, I wouldn't say the kick came right away, there was more a gentle tug on my heart strings from a few long distant friends. The tugging lead to the realization and the realization was like a full on kick. My teeth are fine though. In case you were wondering.

Sooooo, What? What's up? I am totally out of the loop.

The first Universal Law governing everything in the entire universe (duh) and our entire perceived reality is The Law of Mentalism. The Law of Mentalism essentially states that all human reality is mental, and that our entire universe is one big, huge, infinite intelligence and that all of our brains, rather than creating unique thought, are simply channeling signals like the little am/fm radios sitting on the shelves of your garages. We can tune in to different channels and play whatever tunes suit our moods, ideals, and perceptions, but we should be mindful of what we broadcast since our minds have the power to influence and create our reality. Your environment is your thinking objectified.

For the past few months I have been turning my dial to stations I didn't even know were transmitting before. I have been letting stations play, sometimes a few simultaneously, through my receiver for extended periods of time to see what their purposes are and if there is overlap in the transmissions. Its been a little like trying on different lenses and filters and seeing how they cut through the glare and fogs of my reality.  In more concrete terms, I have been taking a shit ton of classes, reading an even broader shit ton of books and talking to a shit ton of people. I have been meditating and finding new parts of myself (and everyone technically).  I have been doing breath-work and have found a way to use my voice and breath to raise my awareness to higher vibrations and dimensions. I have kept dream journals and received messages from my higher self. I have charted the movements of the moon and kept a keen eye on the planetary shifts and aspects, recording any influences that may be accorded to them. In case you were wondering, Yes, I stepped into to the deep end, but I have never felt more at peace and grounded in my entire life. Apparently, the deep end is where its at for me.

So that explains where I have been. Here, but there too. I know that many people have mixed feelings about all of this type of thing. Its fine. I shrug my shoulders at that. Lots and lots of people are feeling the veil slip a bit though. Peering through that nagging feeling that things are not quite as they seem. My advice: READ. Read then measure. There are is so much information that can be found that will resonate for you. FIND IT. The more you find the more you begin to trust yourself. Till eventually the polarity will shift and it will be no longer a search to validate your truth, but an outpouring of it. The evidence is incontrovertible.

For the next 7 weeks I am studying the 7 universal laws, one for each week, and journaling, sometimes here and sometimes on paper, how they are active and effecting my reality. I mentioned the first above. If you wanted, you could research them for yourself and journal as well along with me. Pay attention to how you may deflect the laws, or how you unconsciously manipulate them. Pay attention to the thoughts that come and remember that you have the power to change the station if you wish. Consider that power before you follow an impulse to spread any poison in this space.

Thank you for missing me, those of you that did. I miss you too.

Still Crazy, after all these years

So a few weeks have past. I am practicing non judgment now so it's no big thing.  Moving on.

I left off in a precarious sort of humbled state in my last post about weaving. The end of that story was going to be eloquently written and convey my personal lesson and all of that, but I am pretty much out of that mode right now. Long story short, I went back and read all of the boring introduction stuff that I had skipped in the weaving book and found this great statement that pretty much changed my whole outlook. I gave the book back to my teacher so I can't quote it, but I'll paraphrase.

When a Navajo girl weaves her first piece on the loom she dedicates herself to weaving just stripes. This gives her muscles memory, teaches her about her loom and helps her to develop her personal weaving style without having to worry about the more technical aspects. The Navajo people enjoy the process of weaving and look forward to all of the pieces they will eventually weave in their life. They can take the time to weave their first piece in just stripes.

When I read this I felt very comforted. I decided to strip the old loom I had found at the thrift store and re warp it. With the help of my teacher, I was ready to begin weaving some stripes. I figured that if I was going to DO this thing, a little patience and step by step progress would serve me well. Over the next couple weeks I weaved stripes and found the peace I experienced while weaving my first piece. I am still working on it now actually. I will photograph it when I am finished. I love it though. I love the process.

Image details can be found on my Tumblr

In other news, I am still reading like a maniac. I finished a few more books on esoteric topics, spirituality, stuff like that. As Serene said in a previous comment, I am really searching right now and have actually been finding the answers I  have been looking for. Those answers have been less in the text though and more in my heart.  Everything I am reading has been leading me to a deeper awareness inside of me.  I was having a hard time trusting myself for a little while though. I admit, for a minute I thought I might be going crazy. I started a desperate attempt at seeking validation externally again in a more private way and got crickets at every request.  It made me begin to doubt the very thing I rely on to guide me through this life! My internal compass, my truth detector, my bullshit meter, all of my instruments would have had to be re-calibrated but I wouldn't have the faintest idea of what code I would recalibrate them to? My personal code has served me so well my whole life. My invisible energetic team. . .  whatever that feeling is when I know something is right and something is wrong. . .  How could that be off?  I was in a crisis for a minute or two. My doubt in myself actually made me SICK to the point that my HEAD EXPLODED. Literally. The pressure built up so much that I ruptured my ear drums. Blood and pus were dripping out, it was effing sick, let me tell you. A few doctors appointments, acupuncture and a therapy session later, it dawned on me that the reason I was getting NO external validation was because I am not supposed to get validation externally anymore. It was time to trust myself. FOR REALS. Silence from others was not proof that I was wrong about the way I see things. I am not crazy. As soon as I began to accept this I got better.

So that was my last three weeks. If you have been reading my blog for any length of time (and those of you that are actually still here obviously have or else you wouldn't waste your time on this shit. Thank you) you will realize that I have been on the verge of this for a while now. I got started blogging again because I thought I was ready, but I guess I just had this final hurdle to clear. Now that that's, I am pretty sure, over I can get back to it. I still feel like this blog is an important element in my life. Trust me, I weighed the pros and cons again during my little break and I just can't get around it. I am here. Again.

Incremental Progress

The salvaged original work left unfinished on the loom.

About a year and a half ago I found an old loom at my local thrift store with an unfinished tapestry woven onto it. The warps (the strings that run vertically on the loom that provide a matrix on which to weave through) were made of wool but were very old and weak, yellowed and broken. The unfinished tapestry had thick, hand spun lengths of different colors of wool, twine, and wood layered upon each other to create a rich and rough piece of work. The spun wool had bits of vegetation and the hair of other animals interlocked in its fibers. The whole thing slumped against the wall among the wicker baskets, mismatched coffee mugs and tupperware that had been separated from their lids. The tools that accompanied the loom, carved from matching dark cherry wood, had additional lengths of wool wrapped around them. It was apparent to me that this weaver didn't feel like they were finished. They had  more work to do here, but for a reason I will never know, they abandoned their weaving. I speculated there in the store while my heart raced as I carried my new find to the register. 'THIS IS INCREDIBLE,' my heart sang. $12. I paid $12 for this treasure that would bring about a change in my life that I could never have anticipated as I gleefully threw a hot $20 down. 

This loom with it's unfinished work stood as a found piece of art work, decorating my house for the next year. People would visit and we would speculate on when and where it was woven, what happened to the weaver and what I intended to do with it. "Are you going to weave on this loom?" The inevitable question kept coming up. My silent answer was always something like, I would love to but would that disrespect the original weaver or ruin the beauty of the found piece? What if I am not good enough and I weave a piece of shit, then not only will I have dismantled something beautiful, I will have wasted and proven a secret desire I have to be a disaster. I carried some self doubt. 

Last spring, while I was in the process of disintegrating my vintage business and the blog here and all the middle man tasks I had been busying myself with for the previous year, I had this very compelling drive to MAKE something. Stop finding things others have made and selling them for a profit, MAKE something of your own and realize that the profit you gain is the cathartic act of creation. The peace that comes from the process. In order to begin making, I had some doubts to overcome. The well of ideas was overflowing but the cap of insecurity kept me from beginning for fear that I would expose myself to myself as a failure. I felt like I needed guidance. I needed tutelage, a teacher that would walk with me in those first steps and show me the slow but sure way to proceed. By August I finally asked the universe for a teacher. While I believe that asking for help is a huge important first step I am also well aware that help comes to those that help themselves, so I grabbed a community college schedule of classes and browsed the subjects. 

Ceramics? No. Painting? Hell no. What was I looking for? Come on come on, I knew it was there somewhere. Then, there in the community education section for the satellite campus in my town was a weaving class. The energy in my body about gave me a heart attack. THAT was what I was looking for! A Passionate Response! I wanted to feel my heart beat out of my chest and lose my breath with anticipation! The month waiting for the class to start was torture. At one point it was cancelled but the woman teaching it agreed to teach me in her home since she was happy to have at least one interested person. It was the first time she had offered her lessons through the college since she just felt like she needed to broaden her search for students. I was an eager and thankful pupil. 

She started me on a simple frame loom, essentially a frame with small brass nails hammered along the top and bottom on which the warp was strung. Her lesson was basic. String the yarn onto a weaving needle and weave in and out, alternating as you add layer upon layer. Basic weaving.  She said, "Experiment! Try different patterns, change colors!" By my third row I already felt it. The rhythm. The doing. The making. One row at a time. Incremental progress. Each layer builds upon the next and eventually a fabric is created. A flimsy string locked together with more flimsy strings within the boundaries of a defined matrix, created a square of strength. The pattern though was up to my imagination. I could create almost anything I wanted within the frame of my matrix. All I had to do was envision the goal and move forward with patience, focus, forgiveness, the willingness to unweave and make right any missed steps, and the drive to complete the process and see it to the end. Consistency in tension and pressure matter. Finding my own rhythm and staying in it matters. Breaking when I become fatigued matters. All of these lessons seemed to effortlessly download into my system. I would take deep breaths and hear the word YES. This is right. This is what I have been needing and looking for. 

My first finished piece.  

When I brought my first finished piece into class the next week, my teacher could hardly contain herself. "This Is amazing! Superb! I just can't believe it!" She asked if I had any previous experience weaving. No. She explained that the feathering I had created in my angles was very desirable and difficult to do and that she wanted me to come to her Navajo weaving class to show them how I did it. This made me feel UNCOMFORTABLE. For one thing, I felt immediately my ego filling up with hot air, a feeling I am very conscious of and actually DESPISE in myself. Additionally, I don't really know HOW I did it. I just did it. When I was figuring it all out I was in the zone. It just happened. I felt awkward taking credit for that, but then my ego stepped in, "Oh sure! It was easy! I would love to come to the Navaho class and show them how I did it!" chest puffed out jaw jutted, hands in loose fists on my hips. 

At that point the pressure was on. I had to make another equally amazing piece. SCREW THAT! It had to be better than the one before it! More technical, incorporating complicated interlocking techniques and an even cooler pattern! I took a book home and skipped to the good parts because I didn't need the introduction, I was a freaking natural.  Let's effing do this thing!

This time the weaving was long and tedious. It was frustrating and ugly to me. Nothing seemed to be going right. I kept making mistakes and resented going back to fix them. I had wanted to make it as symmetrical as the last one but miscounted the warps for my brown sections and inadvertently created a mess. As I got nearer to completion I just gave up on the pattern all together and filled the center with half hearted lines. I disdained the finished product. 

 My ego driven piece. 

Before I even arrived at the Navajo class I was a humbled lump. The other attendees were all expecting this special girl to come waltzing in, their eyes filled with the promises my teacher had made about my brilliance. I muttered a weak and shy hello to each of them before pulling out my two pieces. As they looked at them I watched as they quickly grabbed the first piece and maybe without even realizing it, covered the second with it. One of them said specifically, disregarding #2 all together, "This is a beautiful sample." Ok. Thank you. My interaction was them was meek and controlled. 

This is getting long. I will resume with the second half of this story later.  Thank you for reading. 

Read, Weave, Run, Write

Aside from the day to day family household things, I spend all of my waking moments doing one of these four activities. It sounds rather boring actually if I put it that way. And if you take these things at face value it would be pretty boring. The great thing is, I believe that there is a spectrum for the way we can perceive life- at one end, you see everything for exactly what it appears to be, face value, and at the other end you understand that everything you can see with your eyes is merely a shadow of what the thing really is. A reflection. I have spent time sitting in a reality where there is nothing beyond the visible real. Its fine. There are nice things about that type of living. I am far more interested in sitting in the other end of the spectrum though. I love to imagine that what we see (and measure with all of our external sensors) is only half of our true reality. That visible reality is very well documented through science. What if every object, activity, and physical sense you have is mirrored by, in equal proportion, an unseen reality.

1) Read
It was important for me to give a summery of the seasons in my last post so that I could use them as a reference point for where I am right now. I spent the summer in the world of the physical real, but about a month ago, I full on stepped into to other side, just to see what I could see. I have been reading like crazy. Reading books that entertain alternative points of view. After I physically read the words, I read the meaning of them against my inner voice (We all have an inner voice right? Im not talking about monkey chatter in your brain but a clam, grounded, inner voice? I might have two actually, but I am pretty sure I am not schizophrenic) to see what I really think about what I just read. I talked to people about my findings and my new (new to me) ideas to read what they thought of it all (hmmm, mixed reviews). I am continuing to read more. Here are some books that have sent me reeling so far:

Indigo Adults, by Kabir Jaffe and Ritama Davidson: You know how I said I went to that Chakras class two Fridays ago? Well at the end of class I was talking to the teacher for a while and I told her some things. CRAZY things that I have not really ever talked about with any one outside of my safe circle. She did not seem surprised by my crazy shit. Instead she smiled at me and told me to look up Indigo people. She was very nonchalant about it. "Just look it up on the internet or get a book about being an indigo and see if anything makes sense to you. Call me when you are ready to know more," she said.  If anything I have ever said has resonated with you, maybe check this one out. If you feel like you are supposed to be doing something more, or if you suspect that there is a much larger plan in play, or if you just feel strange and different and maybe a little bit off from the majority of people around you, investigate this for yourself.

The Secret History of the World, by Mark Booth: I am nearing the end of this one. If you found the above book interesting, this one is like a handbook for the imaginatively aroused. Blowing my effing mind.

The Secret Life of Plants, by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird: So my husband goes into Vitamin World to get some fish oil or something and and the guy behind the counter acts stunned and says "Whoa! I was just thinking about you! That was so random!" Then he launches into this whole conversation about how our energies move at a much higher and faster frequency than our bodies and that if we are sensitive enough we can have experiences where we can sense things blablablabla . . .  and on and on and then he brings up this book and says that back in the 70's, this guy hooked lie detector machines up to plants and say that they responded to very specific phenomenon that lead the guy to do all these studies and find that plants communicate with each other and this that and the next thing . . . my husband was like, "ok dude. cool. can I buy this fish oil?" But he came home and told me about it since I am in to that kind of thing, and I bought it and read part of it and freaked out. This book was maybe the catalyst for my new abstract, looking glass state of mind.

Boy, this is already getting long. How about I talk about the weaving tomorrow. or later today. I need to get some food. Oh, and I responded to your comments in the comments section that you left them in. I will continue to do so , but please know that I am not like sitting here EXPECTING you to comment. If you want to chat that's great but I will not be upset if you just want to read and be entertained or bored or whatever you are doing here. I would LOVE to hear your thoughts but I hope you just do what feels compelling for you. And I just looked up the word compelling because I wanted to be sure my heart chose that word correctly and it did, but I want you to comment only if your heart feels compelled to do so, not out of some other perceived obligation. ok.

cross the bridge

Yesterday when I was checking my blog settings and clearing my dash and other internet spaces I was reminded of a blog I started a couple of years ago called 5ifty2. I didn't include a link but the premise of it was that there are 52 weeks in a year and 52 playing cards in a deck, coincidentally, and that I had at least 52 people in my life that I needed to communicate with so by writing their names on the face of each card and drawing a card a week, I could eventually reconnect and or finalize or provide closure to a number of loose end relationships that were weighing on my conscience. The plan failed after about 3 weeks. Some chapters are best left closed. This whole concept and memory flashed through my head quicker than it took you to read the word "Yesterday" in this blog post but it seems that it was not an accident that I was reminded of this concept of 52.

Each morning that I run I always break to do walking lunges across a bridge on our property. I have only just begun to be able to complete the entire length without stopping. I have never counted my steps before but for some reason today I did. As my steps grew harder my counting grew louder and more pronounced to help remind me that I could do it one step at a time, until I reached the end at 52. 52!  I smiled to myself. How coincidental! But my mind couldn't let it go. I went along running and thinking about this coincidence.

"52 lunges across the bridge, 52 weeks in the year, 52 playing cards, 4 suits in a deck, 4 seasons in a year, 4 symbols.  If I was to lay a card on each week I would give each suit a season, laying the aces on each equinox and solstice. What suit would I give each season? Well, obviously spring would be hearts, summer clubs, fall spades, and winter diamonds. Whoa. Why do I say obviously?"  . . .  and the conversation continued in my head as ran:

Well lets start with winter and diamonds. What does winter represent to me? A time of the mind, introversion, a drawing in, snow flakes, crystals, a mind like a diamond, the third eye, the star on my christmas tree, cold, purity, first day of the year, one, singularity, thinking. . .

Winter leads to spring and hearts. Hearts in spring= New buds on trees, rejoicing, new life, cell division at conception, love birds, joining, waking up, transition, change, preparation . . .

Clubs in the summer = clubs are like feet or paws, hiking, activity, physical activity and matters of the body, behaving like animals, being outside, swimming, camping, laughing, fruits and veggies, more raw foods, gardening, resting of the mind, a more physical existence . . .

And finally spades in the fall = leaves fall like spades, harvest, call a spade a spade, reaping what was sown, grieving the end of summer's bounty and the death and drawing in of nature, spades are upside down hearts, swords, the opposite of spring, a time to take inventory, move inward, digging in, collect your bounty. . .

This free association thinking lead me to myself. My body. . .  My body is like the earth. I have seas of water, soil growing new tissue, an atmosphere that renews and cleanses itself, my cells perform a form of photosynthesis, and I have seasons. Last spring, the time of the heart, I was sad. Lonely. I longed for more human connections. I felt the need and urges to ground myself after a long, intense winter of the mind. As I moved into summer I essentially shut my mind off and lived fully in my body. I ran and played and drank lots of beer and sang and laughed, behaved like an animal doing just whatever I felt like, grazing as I wished, storing up vitamin D in my skin, muscles on my bones, joy in my heart, and fat in my brain (as I didn't call on it to work much). As the fall approached I felt the shift. The dog days of summer were over. The time of the club and foot had ended. The leaves are now falling in spades and I am feeling a wealth of abundance from my harvest. I feel sharp. and ready to dig deeper.


I began replying to comments in the comment stream of my last post and will continue to communicate in the comments with you on an individual basis, though I have given myself very strict parameters related to my computer time in order to maintain a nice balance and to avoid burnout. Please know that I see you. Interaction and conversation are a huge part of what I am doing here so I absolutely welcome your insights.

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