Little House

Siding

2009-11-13T17:51:00.000-06:00

A couple of months ago I abandoned my project to scrape paint off my circa-1870's wood-sided house when I found out it was lead based paint.

That stuff is nasty and you totally don't want to mess with it.

The project began when I received a notice from the City that I was in violation of a residential code since I had "curling paint and/or exposed wood". So, we started the scraping project.

Five weekends into the project with two people working at least nine-hour days, we had scraped approximately 1/5 of the entire house. AND had most likely exposed ourselves to lead dust and lead fumes.

Oh, hell no! This was going to be waaay too big a project. So, I mulled it awhile, also turning my predicament over to the Universe. Shortly thereafter, my wealthy ex called me and asked how long it had taken me to get as far as I had gotten in the scraping project. When I told him, he said, "what if I paid for new siding?", to which I gulped and said, "yes, thank you".

Now, my house is little, as in less than 400 square feet, so it's possible to do nice things to it and still not pay a bloody fortune. The entire siding bill comes to less than $2,000, and I'm providing labor. His gift is being well received and well cared for! I found two local sources that still produce this exact pattern, so nothing will change appearance-wise, except that bare wood with ugly moldy curling paint will go away.

AND, I get to wrap and insulate the house and put on sheathing! So, double yay all around. I've joked that when I finally get done, I may have replaced every board in the entire house.

Last year: new roof.
This year: new floor joists underneath 50% of the house + new siding, sheathing, insulation, attic gable venting, gable exhaust fans, attic insulation, house-wrap.

Next year: lowered electrical bills, peace of mind, beautiful landscaping.

Ahh. My house becomes my home and my haven.

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Psychic reading

2009-11-11T13:42:00.000-06:00

I had a psychic reading today via telephone with a wonderful psychic lady. It was a birthday gift from June from my intuitive hubby, and well-received. At the time it was hard to schedule, but as always, it has come at precisely the correct time.

Not to go into much detail, but the gist of it is this: remember who you are. Re-member yourself; put yourself together and actually see that amazing being that is you. Allow yourself to be as amazing as you actually are. Own it.

The more specific parts of the reading were directed towards relationships, and specifically with the relationships I have with my shamanic teachers who I host for workshops here. All I can say is: this lady nailed it. She couldn't have given me a more accurate description of what is going on between unless she had seen all of our communications over the past three years. And, she gave me insight into the why of it all. Others have hinted at these same reasons, but she gave me such a complete picture of it that it felt totally true to me.

Subjective, yes. Yet energetically she hit the bullseye so many times that I quit goggling at the whole process and just started asking my questions. Right now I feel energized, focused, and am armed with information that helps me make decisions about the direction that I'm taking my business, my healing practices, and my shamanic practices.

Pretty great stuff.

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Karma Bomb

2009-11-03T21:59:00.000-06:00

Oy.

One of my shamanic teachers wrote me an email karma bomb tonight. WHY did I not {take care of his personal shit for him} since we've had to change up our workshop weekends since he and his wife are coming about four weeks early?

First of all,

You're Welcome.

I WHOMPED up a workshop out of NOTHING at all in less than three days' time, making the best of a VERY bad situation which said shamanic wife created back in early August. I should have been the Hero, yet, I have become the Villain.

For The Last Time.

I will no longer allow people to treat me as I was treated in tonight's e-mail. Above-mentioned bitchy shaman seems not to understand that he is a Guest Teacher at my circle. I am his employer; I sign his checks. I am NOT his minion, I am NOT his emplyee, I am NOT in any way his underling in this. He is ultimately MINE to command.

After the detritus of a very busy and stressful day at the FullTimeJob, I wrote a neutral response to his caustic missive, and will entertain him in normal style this weekend. After which I will sever our business relationship.

I love them as people, and I respect their teachings.

And I will absolutely not be involved in any business dealings with them from this time forward nor allow them to hold ANY sway over me in any way whatsoever.

Thus do I reclaim a portion of my soul and declare myself a Man.

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Poetry Monday (for my baby)

2009-11-02T21:38:00.000-06:00

HOME

I have a need of silence and of stars ;
Too much is said too loudly ; I am dazed.
The silken sound of whirled infinity
Is lost in voices shouting to be heard.
I once knew men as earnest and less shrill.
An undermeaning that I caught I miss
Among these ears that hear all sounds save silence,
These eyes that see so much but not the sky,
These minds that gain all knowledge but no calm.
If suddenly the desperate music ceased,
Could they return to life ? or would they stand
In dancers' attitudes, puzzled, polite,
And striking vaguely hand on tired hand
For an encore, to fill the ghastly pause ?
I do not know. Some rhythm there may be
I cannot hear. But I oh, I must go
Back where the breakers of deep sunlight roll
Across flat fields that love and touch the sky ;
Back to the more of earth, the less of man,
Where there is still a plain simplicity,
And friendship, poor in everything but love,
And faith, unwise, unquestioned, but a star,
Soon now the peace of summer will be there
With cloudy fire of myrtles in full bloom ;
And, when the marvelous wide evenings come,
Across the molten river one can see
The misty willow-green of Arcady.
And then the summer stars ... I will go home.
~ William Alexander Percy

Dealing with the Karma Storm

2009-11-01T17:02:00.001-06:00

I facilitate shamanic workshops. The teachers with whom I have my business relationship are very good at the teaching part, and very, very bad at the communication and business parts.

Early this year we dared mightily and went ahead and scheduled a workshop for Thanksgiving weekend. Yikes. we all huddled and just said, yeah, let's see if it will go.

August 9th and without first consulting me, one of the teachers sent an e-mail to my entire shamanic drumming circle (we're about 600 miles away from her) to ask if we can reschedule the workshop. After I hit the roof and reasserted my authority, I began researching options, none of which (as I had clearly recalled) had much likelihood of working. BUT, I soldiered ahead. I even called a colleague who also hosts workshops with these folks and asked to swap weekends with him to accommodate this situation. His reply was that if he had to switch weekends, he'd never in a million years fill a Thanksgiving week workshop.

So, I said, let's keep it the way that it originally was, then; forget that I called you.

Wednesday night (yes, the Wednesday before Halloween!) I received an e-mail from the male teacher, female teacher's husband (they live in the same house, sleep in the same bed), to say that I needed to call said colleague in Virginia because somehow we both had workshops still scheduled for the same weekend.

Arg.

I called my Esteemed Colleague in the fifteen minutes that I had to spare between clients and discovered that he had never heard me say, "keep your date as it originally was". He had gone ahead and moved his workshop! Yikes. I quickly e-mailed all of my peeps and asked if, in an utter emergency situation, we could move OUR workshop to NEXT weekend. 8 of the 9 have said, Yes.

So despite having salvaged a situation, my teachers, as usual, are making extreme demands upon me such as - guarantee us a specific level of income, change my acupuncture appointment for me that I've made with the doc in your town, harrumph, harrumph, harrumph, etc., etc.

First, I find it incredible that in the three intervening months they never spoke of this date-switching issue either with my Esteemed Colleague OR amongst themselves. Second, I've just materialized a workshop equally as large as the original one and on one week's notice - the other one is also full, so ... what's the issue? Come here instead of there, go there instead of here. Be an adult and 1) understand that mistakes and misunderstandings happen, and 2) make your own damn acupuncture appointment change.

Dayum.

The flakiness of the alternative "healing community" sometimes makes my head spin.

For now, my dealing with the chaos merely involves letting them make their decision: the workshop can go this weekend, or ... we can cancel.

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What to do, what to do

2009-10-29T21:52:00.001-05:00

As a male massage therapist in the South, I'm often stymied as to how to successfully market my services. "Successfully" as in, not marketing myself as a gigolo. Which, honestly, would be very fun to be.

But since I'm not that, I sometimes get a little stuck. I'm in business with a classmate of mine, a wonderful woman who is very connected in the medical community, and we also have one other woman associate, a massage therapist who is not yet a partner. Additionally we are allied with three other women who do adaptive yoga, Feldenkrais, lymphedeme therapy, and a lady who does stress reduction classes. So, I'm the lone guy, albeit a gay one.

Whenever we market our services together, invariably the ladies get all the calls, or when people want to redeem their gift certificates or make an appointment, they want a gal and not me. Here's pretty much how it goes:

Last Wednesday we went to our local Senior Center to do an hour's presentation on massage therapy for the geriatric population. To work with seniors, a massage therapist has to know what not to do in order to avoid hurting the client. Too, seniors need a lot more attention and hand-holding in general; not true of everyone, certainly, but its'a trend that seems to hold true. It's a bit of a specialized population. Anyway, we gave a wonderful presentation, gave out gift certificates to everyone there for a half-price hour of massage ("first 1/2 hour free when you book an hour!" we crow), and waited for the massages to roll in.

Tuesday I took a call from a woman with whom I'd spoken to at the seminar, and she asked what we had available. I said I had blah, blah, blah open this week, and then she hesitated. She said, "do I get to pick my therapist? I really wanted a woman." to which I replied, "sure thing! No problem. I'll give you their numbers so that you can book directly with them." This seemed to rattle her a bit, and she went ahead and booked with me anyway. She came in Wednesday of this week, I spent at least 30 minutes doing an intake, and just before she was to get on the table as we were talking about all of her aches and pains she said "I'm not sure you can get to all of that in a half hour!" Arg. I explained that the appointment was for an hour with the first half hour free. She wasn't prepared to pay that day, she said, but she'd book an hour to make up for it. Ok, I said, and we proceeded with the massage. A very good massage, indeed.

Afterward she was very complimentary of my work, relaxed and happy with the massage and then she asked, "is it just Russian roulette as to which therapist I get when I call?" and I answered that no, she could request anyone she wished when she left her message requesting an appointment. To which she then replied that she'd come back in November for her hour massage "and give one of the ladies a try".

*sigh*

So. An hour's worth of marketing gone, at least an hour's worth of massage time gone with nothing at all to show for it except for bolstering my partners' businesses.

I've been looking at myself and into my beliefs, energetic setups, etc., as to why this scenario is so familiar and has happened to me so very many times in the ten years I've been a massage therapist. Being the Good Southern Boy, I do my best not to irritate a client, especially an elderly lady client, since if you irritate them, they just go away and don't come back. Then talk about you all over town behind your back.

In our business, our individual income streams are separate, so I do not get any money from massages that others do. For corporate accounts that we all do, it's a different story, however. But most of our income is individually derived. Hence my conundrum.

I feel sort of like Edison did when he said (to paraphrase), "I know 10,000 ways it doesn't work". And, like Edison, I keep casting about for ways, likely and un-, in which it might work. I wish I knew how he felt when he was searching, though. I feel almost a little desperate, especially in this economy: it's getting harder and harder to bring the ends together at the end of the month. Maybe I'll find the "magic filament" soon, though :-) It would be great if I could truly "turn my talents on" in a lasting, wonderful way. I keep searching.

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Dark Night and Golden Dawn

2009-10-28T23:11:00.009-05:00

Spo spoke of his dark night of the soul, one dreary year in medical school. Mine lasted a lot longer: pretty much from the time we moved to Florida at age ten until I graduated High School, college, came out and finally emerged from a software career to become a massage therapist and healer.

For me, the dark night (all three, almost four decades of it!) has been about not being congruent with my inner self, about not being honest, about not coming out of all of the closets that I've put myself in.

Why is it all about the fucking closets? Why do I even care what others might think of me? Jebus, but it seems like this life so far is all about "lifting the veils", about uncovering the real me and having the courage to reveal it to ... me.

At age nine I was blissfully happy, connected to the world around me and to my beloved Blue Ridge mountains of Asheville. At ten, I'd been reviled and rejected by a next door neighbor kid who, despite his morbidly obese and threatening, domineering ways, his attention I nevertheless craved. I'd candidly told him about my sex play with cousins (which was perfectly fun, pleasant, and ordinary to me), and I thought he'd have a coronary. In that moment, on that sidewalk on a sunny day in the mountains, the concept of "I am not OK as I am; therefore I need to be different somehow" entered my world. If that were true, what else about me needed to be hidden?

I took the safe route and hid everything.

We moved to Florida shortly after this, and I was plopped into an alien landscape: weird trees, strange-tasting water, sand everywhere, flat landscape, and ... Public School. It was summer of '72, Nadia Comenici was the Olympic star, and I was just absolutely miserable, completely adrift and unmoored from everything that was recognizable in my life. But not as miserable as I would soon become when school started. It was Hell, and I cried every single day before going to that awful dungeon that was Fifth Grade.

I began my campaign to Become Invisible, to Blend In and Not Be Seen, definitely never Wanting To Stick Out In A Crowd. Thus I shut my first of many closet doors. I developed this weird notion that if I was a Good Boy and Never Had Emotions, I would be OK and everything would turn out All Right. It seemed to work at least passably well for a few years, but there was always the occasional scrape, the occasional threat from a much bigger, more testosterone-laden guy, from someone seeing me "play with the girls", or ridiculing me for being in the show choir, for being in musicals, for excelling.

I SO did not want to be different, "special", or in any way noticeable. At ALL. I dressed in ways that didn't bring the light of attention. I wore boring shoes. It was sheer agony trying to figure out how to be the person "they" wanted me to be! I kept thinking I got it right only to make some big mistake and ...

But you know what? I'm quirky! I stick out! I'm built like a little gnome, a dwarf who is far stronger than his stature might suggest. I was never fast in gym, but was always very, very strong. I may not have been the smartest one in class, but I was frequently the cleverest, frequently the guy who saw through the smoke to get to the point. Even I missed the signs, myself. I stuck with an Electrical Engineering major looong after I should have given it up.

NOT listening to the still, small voice cost me much, but the lesson has eventually been driven home with much force: know thyself. You can't change the deep inner nature of "thyself", but you can own it all, love it all, cherish it all. And then start putting it to most excellent use! I was listening to Carolyn Myss' "Sacred Contracts" on CD the other day, and she said something about when we incarnate that our soul shatters into a thousand pieces, and that it's our job in this lifetime to earn our souls back by reclaiming it one piece at a time. This jarred me a little bit, because I felt that this was precisely what I've been doing in life lately: I've been on my Knight's Quest, out in the woods and completely off the beaten path searching for and finding (!) my own Holy Grail, myself.

When I finally started listening to that still, small voice inside of me again, life became Good once more. I am learning to embrace all these thousand parts of my soul, each of which gives me more and more clarity about who I am and about what my chosen mission in the world is. I think we can go ahead and rule out "ordinary citizen" ;-) since that sure as hell won't work. I've always known that I was a catalyst, an element that forever stays apart, aloof from a reaction, but that is nevertheless necessary for the reaction to take place. Inscrutable and also familiar.

I'm just me. Wildly, exotically, amazingly me. I feel like the staid
English character Sterling in the movie "Jeffrey" as he wraps
himself in a cape and looks at himself in the mirror and says "Is this
really me? Can I *do* this?"

To which I answer myself: yes :-) (You have to! You must. You know
this, deep down inside.)

I think I'm just going to be wildly, fascinatingly, amazingly, me. And to hell with all those tiny-minded people I went to school with.

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What is shamanism?

2009-10-27T21:56:00.002-05:00

Shamanism and shamanic practice is popping up more and more these days. What exactly is it? Well, "exactly" is a little difficult to quantify, but here is a road map based on where I've been on the shamanic road so far:

Simply put, the shaman is "s/he who knows" or "s/he who sees". The word "shaman" or "saman" comes from the Tungus of North Central Asia. It means, literally, "he/she who knows"; the shaman is the person who sees what others do not, who finds information from the greater world. The shaman acts as an intermediary between the ordinary world and the world of Spirit.

Entering a different state of consciousness in order to access information not ordinarily available in "ordinary" consciousness is to practice shamanism, to work with Spirit. By many accounts, it is an ancient practice practiced in some form in every culture so far studied. It isn't new, nor is it "New Age"; indeed, it is very "Old Age" with pictograms, records, and oral histories dating back tens of thousands of years. Check out religious historian Mircea Eliade's tome "Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy" for a mind-numbingly exhaustive survey of thousands upon thousands of existing sources, eyewitness accounts, interviews, etc. I had to read it as prerequisite for taking the two week shamanic healing intensive course last year; it's quite fantastic.

According to Eliade's work, entering a "shamanic state of consciousness" can be done in many, many different ways, with entheogens, hallucinogens, ecstatic trance dancing, ecstatic trance singing, sleep deprivation, or some sort of sonic driving mechanism like drumming or rattling. I use drumming and occasionally dancing, just because they're cheap and legal. And I love my drums. Once in the altered state, the shaman or shamanic practitioner interacts with big-'s' Spirit in the form of working with little-'s' spirits to ask questions, effect healings for self or others, to find out answers to questions, to help put things, people, relationships, souls back together again.

Shamans are healers.

This works because shamans believe a few basic things, most of which can be summed up by Tom Crockett's "five stones" of shamanism which I introduced a couple of posts ago:

Everything is Alive
Everything is Aware and Conscious
Everything is Dynamic and Changing
Everything is Connected
Everything Responds

If everything is alive, we can certainly have a relationship with it. If everything is aware and conscious, everything is participating in Life as we know it, and can give insight and help. If everything is dynamic and changing, new conditions are arising all the time that we might need to know about. If everything is connected, we all affect each other, the earth, the cosmos. And it affects us, too. If everything responds, we can communicate and have conversation.

In a shamanic journey, the shaman literally communicates with anything; rocks, trees, water, mythic beings, the sun, cancer, AIDS viruses. In my first journeys to contact an Irish ancestor, I initially interacted with a red-haired female water entity. She showed me in no uncertain terms that she flowed West, and that she was very female. She turned out to be the River Shannon, which does indeed flow West. Only if all things are connected and if all things are alive, aware, changing and responsive could I have known this without every consciously knowing it.

How and why is shamanism done? Although this varies in form, the shaman does his or her work in a shamanic journey, a state similar to meditation that looks much like a self-guided meditation, fueled by one of the above methods. Time after time after time in Eliade's work, he reports near identical methods of healing and journeying to speak with the spirits. From peoples in Japan, Siberia, Tibet, the Pacific Northwest, Pacific Islands, Central and South America, Greenland, Iceland, Central and Eastern Europe to Native Americans, almost all methods share commonality, sometimes very closely. Regardless of background, the shaman journeys into a cosmology that is described as extraordinarily similar by all accounts: There is a World Axis that contains Lower World(s) and Upper World(s) and (most of the time), Middle World(s). The shaman works with a familiar ally with whom s/he has established a long and trusting working relationship to seek the answer to the client's question, find the cure, the remedy, or bring back an essential part of the client to initiate or effect a healing.

The shaman is the glue that holds a group together - by being himself consciously connected and in conversation with the world in a way that others are often not. I didn't understand this when I first started out with this practice; that's why I said at length in an earlier post that shamanism is teaching me community. I can't not do this for my peeps, for anyone who asks, really. It's almost like a compulsion, definitely a motivating force.

The flavor of what shamanism is like is described in an article by Tom Cowan of Riverdrum.com in the recent issue of Journal of Shamanic Practice (yes, we have journals! Lots of them!) that talks about the language used to describe "otherworld" experiences. Drawing on the work of many others, he states that since our western vocabulary consists mostly of nouns, and since language informs thought just as thought informs language, we may not have adequate language to describe what it is that we experience there. He talks instead of the Algonquin verb-based language which might have better constructs through which to understand.

An example might be that English speakers would look at a garden and say, "Look at all the flowers." The Algonquin speaker might say, "Look at all the flowering." Another examnple: we loo up at the night sky and say, "Look at all the stars." The Algonquin speaker might say, "Look at all that shining."

Cowan, Tom. Twisted Language. The Journal of Shamanic Practice volume 2 issue 2 (Sept 2009): 11-16.

This captures the essence of it for me: when I journey, I am immersed in the being-ness, the becoming-ness, the unfolding of it all, and am able to communicate with that unfolding. Shamanism is more about what the world is doing, how it is interacting with itself, and not about what it is.
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The Song of Myself

2009-10-25T23:06:00.002-05:00

These days I'm learning to sing the Song of Myself, strongly and harmoniously. As a Southerner, I was taught early on that We Don't Do That, and that Others Come First, and that To Brag was A Bad Thing.

But ... is it bragging if it's really, deeply true? Methinks no.

Methinks also, though, that me hasn't learned the appropriate way of celebrating my own strengths, my own beauteous strengths and true joys. What a paradox that someone else can say something good about us, but if we say the same thing, it's considered immodest braggadocio.

How interesting.

And what a double standard.

Ignoring that completely, I'm taking an honest look at myself, my succulent strengths and at my peculiar and unique brand of quirky goodness, and for the first time in my life I'm saying, "wow! What a great guy I am!" and taking myself absolutely, deeply seriously as I say it.

At first this feels a bit like masturbating in public: so good, and yet soooo wrong from society's standpoint.

And yet. And yet ... it's something that feels really, really good to do; to honor one's self for what one really is.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other

people won't feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of
God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

Our Greatest Fear —Marianne Williamson

Community

2009-10-24T11:08:00.000-05:00

Though I am very much a "people person", I am also a bit of a recluse; I have definite saturation limits as to how much people-energy I can take over a given time period. Massage therapy suits me well; the one-on-one is a good thing. I don't do well with crowds of people, though, so I avoid places like malls, loud concerts, big parties (at certain times).

Until recently, the idea of "community" did not appeal to me much. The compromise and consensus processes that I've witnessed in the few commune-style communities that I've been tangentially involved with have always bored and irritated me. Which probably marks me as somewhat antisocial. Part of this has to do with growing up in a family the emotions modeled were either suppression (my dad) or explosion (my mom), and it has taken me most of half a century to figure out how to safely embody other emotions and to speak my mind truthfully without screaming and having a meltdown.

Really. I still have to watch it, especially when I'm tired.

"Community" was something I never really wanted to have at all since to my inner child it meant "discussions" which meant "scary screaming arguments" or merely "seething, un-expressed emotion". So, it's come as a bit of a shock to me that for the first time in my forty-seven year life I'm cultivating an actual desire, a need to be connected to people. And shamanism is teaching me this. Last night I surprised even my own self when I saw one of the particularly difficult people from my shamanic drumming circle as I walked into a local buy-it-all-here retail store, and my first reaction was one of delight and to immediately yell "Hey! Good to see you!" and run over to her and give her a big hug.

In mid-hug I marveled a little at myself.

A couple of years ago when I was a shiny new student of shamanism, I came across the book Stone Age Wisdom by Tom Crockett. From a powerful journey, he espouses five simple "stones" or tenets of shamanism:

Everything is Alive
Everything is Aware and Conscious
Everything is Dynamic and Changing
Everything is Connected
Everything Responds

I'm beginning to see the depth of the phrase, "everything is connected" :-) If I am a true student of shamanism (which I sincerely hope that I am), I see how I am connected to everything, everyone, "all my relations". Even connected to the particularly difficult woman from our drumming circle. For the very first time, somehow I'm finding myself deeply drawn to this crazy, quirky group of people, and finding that I care about them. A lot. They are teaching me viscerally that we all are indeed connected, that I'm connected to everything, and that it really does matter what we all think, how we all feel, and it does matter if my brothers and sisters, any one of my relations is unhappy or feels disconnected. Despite my own self, I don't want them to be disconnected or dispossessed - I want to help them become and to stay connected, too.

In that hug moment, I realized that I had somehow, over the past several months, shape-shifted into something different, into someone new.

One thing that has helped this occur is that I've consciously tried to stop seeing what I want to see in others, and instead have been keenly observing what's actually there. Who is this person, really? Have I ever seen them clearly? What I've been finding is that, no, I've never seen anyone clearly! If I have seen them at all, I've seen them dimly, through the smoke of my own expectation and projection. Giving up wanting people to be who I want them to be has been a relief, and has been fun watching these "new beings" unfold. They're so much more wonderful, complex and oddly beautiful than I could ever make up in my wildest dreams :-)

And so much more fun to have as friends and neighbors.

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Parsing

2009-10-23T22:33:00.000-05:00

Life has been in High Gear lately: within the past month I've organized and registrared a 21-student massage therapy workshop with an internationally-renowned instructor, attended a 35-hour acupressure continuing education workshop, sung a weeks-worth of gigs in a remote city, moved my business office to a regional cancer center and set up my new therapy room, moved truckloads of office furniture, participated in no less than five major marketing endeavors, made two public speaking engagements, worked on clients, and have spent a couple of weekends with my husband-elect.

Though things have gone fairly well, I've remarked to myself that a lot of this karma-storm has felt as if I didn't have clarity about my therapy business, about who exactly I want to attract to it, how I want to incorporate my shamanic skills, etc. I've been needing time to just sit down, think and examine, put things on paper.

As sometimes happens, my honey-to-be had a dream that perfectly expressed what it was that I needed (our dreams often have bearing on each others' lives, and are always vivid when we sleep together. We were 136 miles apart last night when this one came through):

... had interesting dreams last night. The main part I remember was being on a cruise ship & some tour guide forcing me & you to take an excursion trip on a small boat. We seemed to be in Alaska... someplace wild & beautiful. Made us both take off our shoes thinking this would keep us from running off. What he didn't know was that you & I are both quite comfortable going barefoot, so we were still quite free. We exchanged a laughing look that said "He may think he can control us!" (Not sure what this symbolizes, but it seems to speak of being patient about our eventual living together... that it will happen ... our "barefootedness" indicates we're free even if others may think they control us.)

Another part of the dream took place in a foyer type entrance on the ship. There was an amazing device we'd heard about - something called a "parser" - that improved whatever it was aimed at. I was a airplane pilot looking for work & had a resume book of photos, paintings & writing I wanted parsed & [you] had something too. In the foyer was a water garden in a rectangular pool with plants & lilies in it. As a man wheeled the parser in (it was a large, black, boxy contraption "steam punk" style, with blinking lights. It had a coiled hose part with a wand type instrument with a directable flashlight on its tip), a ship worker was pointing out how the water looked milky & murky, despite his best efforts to keep the pool clean. The parser man said "no problem" & stuck the lit flashlight end into the water & turned knobs on the machine. This in turn adjusted the water's clarity, much as I can adjust color balance & contrast in Photoshop & soon the water looked sparkling clear & beautiful!

"You don't have to change the water," said the man, "just the frequency of the light passing through it." (That statement felt very important & I can think of spiritual metaphors galore...) I then had him pass the light over my resume book & everything in it clarified as well; still in my handwriting, but the words were more precise & descriptive, spell corrected & neat & all the photos & paintings had better composition, vibrant colors & were perfectly exposed. Amazing!

It didn't occur to me to put *myself* into this light until after I'd woken up...

Ah! Just what I've been needing! A parser :-) The statement that you don't have to change the water, just the frequency is bullseye, spot-on. It's how I'm looking that's most important; the content is already there, just maybe not in the right form yet.

Gosh! Wish I had a parser in my office all the time!
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Chili a la Raybob dans le Crockpot

2009-10-22T23:51:00.003-05:00

It's getting cold. 'Tis the season.

Stuff to fit in a large, 5 quart slow-cooker

1/2 lb. bacon
2 lb. beef, ground (I use Chuck)
1/2 box (or more as needed) beef broth
4 16oz cans Bush's Best Chili Beans (mild spice)
1 28oz can Hunt's Crushed Tomatoes
1 fresh tomato, chopped
1 6oz can tomato paste (can use 12oz if you're brave)
1 humongo Spanish onion, chopped
1 1/2 tsp Paprika
3/4 tsp Cayenne pepper
2 tsp Oregano
3/4 tsp Chili Powder
1 Bay leaf

Instructions

Cut bacon into small pieces. I use kitchen scissors. Brown it, keeping the fat in the frying pan. Drain and put bacon into crockpot.
Brown the beef in the bacon fat about 1/2 pound at a time. I know, I know - heart attack in a bowl. But wait! read on ...
Drain beef, add to crockpot
Add all remaining stuff and mix well - a heavy hand with the spices and peppers is not a bad thing.
Cook on low 8-12 hours, stirring occasionally and adjusting moisture content with leftover beef broth ... heat and cooking time will depend on the individual slow-cooker!
IMPORTANT NOTE: IF you add salt, do it only AFTER the complete cooking time. I've never added salt to this recipe; it seems to turn out just fine as is, maybe because of the bacon.

Best if made a day ahead so that flavors merge and mingle :-) Good with cheddar cheese, sour cream, crackers, etc., or just smeared on your favorite bear and licked off him.

Serves 1. (just kidding! Your friend can have one bite)

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Little Love Notes

2009-10-21T22:33:00.001-05:00

I've been listening to Caroline Myss' "Sacred Contracts". Very interesting, and spurring. One thing she says in the midst of all of her teachings is a bit about the Lover and Virgin archetypes. She goes on to discuss Emily Dickinson, the "Lady in White", to explain that she perfectly embodies both the Lover and Virgin archetypes.

She says that Dickinson wrote "little love notes to God" on scraps of paper and tossed them out her window for the townsfolk, or sent them in letters to friends. She says that Emily Dickinson was in love with the universe, and her poems were her love notes.

When I think of this very simple thing, of writing a little love note to God, it makes life so much easier. One thing I worry about regularly is how to put all the pieces of myself together? How can I put my singing, my shamanism, my massage therapy, my craft-y self all together in one coherent piece? And furthermore, how can I do all of these things right? God forbid I should be less-than-perfect at anything!

If I merely exhale and relax and look at myself, really look honestly at myself, I see that the sum of me is much, much bigger than the box that the parts fit in. When I relax and just let all this me just sprawl around on its own, I see that it's a pretty big me, and it doesn't fit in any conventionally-shaped box. So why force it? When I further relax into allowing me, I see that the things I do don't have to be perfect and don't necessarily have to represent me: when I truly let them flow, my expressions - whatever their forms - are my very own little love notes to the universe.

Emily scribbled hers on scraps, envelopes, grocery lists. And she scribbled lovingly away.

Its our poetry, not our paper.

Stories

2009-10-08T17:39:00.000-05:00

We interact, not with the people or events in our lives, but with the stories we have written in our heads about those things.

When someone "makes me mad", it's because I believe my own story, not because they "made" me mad.

My beautiful husband-elect recently gave me the audio version of Byron Katie's "Loving What Is", a set of umpteen CDs outlining and showcasing 'The Work' as she calls is. The Work is a simple set of four questions and a general method of self-inquiry that takes a look at those stories and asks the question, "is that really true?" Simple and very powerful stuff.

The same idea crops up in Toltec wisdom teachings: 'stalking the lies' that we tell ourselves about ourselves and about the world. Don Miguel Ruiz' "The Four Agreements" and "The Mastery of Love" are excellent, simple roadmaps.

I'm only beginning to understand and uncover the stories that I tell myself about the world, about people I love, about my own self. And as the light dawns, I laugh and see that for decades I held myself hostage over mere beliefs.

A breath of life

2009-10-06T16:21:00.000-05:00

My last post was from some time ago. A lifetime ago, really.

Since then, I've been looking for the Good Stuff, and finding it by the cartload :-)

I have been given a new name by an intuitive friend: call me "Drawing Deep Waters", and my new husband-elect is "Medicine Song for the Heart", or simply "Medicine Song". The truth and depth of these names is so spot on that it's comical, almost.

Life with the new man just gets better and better! After having the experience of being in a relationship for 18 years with a man, I thought I knew how this went. How ignorant I am turning out to be :-) Life with OneTree / Medicine Song / Jeff is better each day than the last one. I get happier and happier (and I think he does as well, at least he tells me so), and more and more downstream. He's rented a small apartment here in town, a "togetherment" we call it, so that he can begin working remotely from his job two and a half hours away, and also so we have a place to go while we work on my teeny tiny house.

While recently in the Land of Cleve doing some singing, I re-acquainted with a soprano friend who has gone through a couple of years of Hell and in the process, blasted open her intuition. She's now giving intuitive readings, and the one she gave me was dyn-O-mite. It's great to see someone bloom and blossom! This is indeed a year of change.

Watching her be so in her bliss has given me the permission to begin my own blooming and blossoming. Who knows what the future shall bring?

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You always find what you're looking for ...

2009-06-01T19:54:00.002-05:00

So be sure you're only looking for the really great, juicy stuff!

Here's how:

Update:
It occurred to me as I was driving home last night that the Focus Wheel serves a similar purpose (though much, much more crude and much less involved) as the Navajo curing ceremonies do: both serve not to change the "what is", but rather to bring one's awareness and inner thought back into harmony with it.

Being in harmonious relationship is to Walk the Beauty Way.

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Gently Down the Stream

2009-05-01T11:13:00.002-05:00

I'm an unabashed follower of Abraham, purportedly a group of beings channeled by a completely unassuming woman named Esther.

The core of the message is pretty simple: at every possible opportunity, choose "downstream" thoughts, that is, thoughts that make you feel good. Abraham's teaching is that that "feeling good" state is what makes you a "vibrational match" to your desires; you can't get what it is that you're desiring until you and it are "vibrationally matched".

Whether this statement is an accurate description of the way the world works, whether she's really channeling a group of beings collectively called "Abraham" or whether she's making it all up is immaterial to me: it works.

Life is just plain easier when you choose a downstream thought. Eckhardt Tolle says about the world, "it is as it is". My thoughts don't change the external world or its conditions (maybe); my thoughts change how I feel about those conditions, re-configure my frame of reference so that I can view the exact same incidents and external conditions and not get upset by them. Being upset is a choice that I am no longer compelled to make.

Now that's valuable juju.

Choosing "downstream" is simple, too: which thought makes you feel the best?

Generally, having expectations about a desired outcome is completely "upstream", difficult, against the flow. If "expectations are premeditated disappointments", any expectation you have immediately sets up the conditions necessary for failure.

Anticipation on the other hand, that is, looking forward to being happy in the next moment regardless of what the conditions are in that moment, is a Good Thing.

Edison had the anticipation that he would find a substance that worked as a light source when current was run through it. Had he had the expectation that Iron was going to be it, or Aluminum, or Human Hair, he would have failed miserably. Instead, he merely made note of those things which did not work and kept looking, anticipating (and, I believe, deeply knowing full well) that he would find something that did. He said, "I have not failed; I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

It's all about how you think of your world, really, how you feel about it, and not the world itself.

We believe that we can't choose how we think and feel about our world, about our conditions. I'm living proof that that is simply untrue and merely habit, that over time we can change our habitual patterns of thinking so that in every single situation there's something good that we can find in it, if nothing else than we'll be able to look back on it later and see the chain of events that led to something good coming out of it.

I have lived life lately in a state of almost constant bliss, not because things have gone completely my way, but because I've just let go of allowing external circumstances to bother me: I simply choose to not be bothered by people or by events.

The world "is as it is", and it's far more wondrous, nourishing and entertaining to simply observe it as it actually is and to see what's actually there rather than trying to see what I want to be there that isn't.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.

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Side-by

2009-04-06T21:29:00.003-05:00

I'm engaged.

I asked the man I love to marry me, and he said "yes". He asked me, too :-)

Who wouldn't love a man who could paint like this? (And these are just crappy cell-phone pictures!)

He has many charms to soothe my savage breast, not the least of which is that we talk the same spiritual language. I feel as if I'm the richest man in the world. His name is Mr. Wright ;-D

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Gemini powers, Activate!

2009-02-24T20:55:00.001-06:00

7:40am - rise, shower, prepare
8:20am - business coffee with Singing Wife to discuss upcoming March 13 concert, write Public Service Announcement copy for radio spots (long and short versions) to be recorded at 10:00am
9:20am - meet priest and (finally! yes, thank-ya Jebus) secure venue
10:00am - record both long and short PSA spots for local public radio station
10:15am - go to University library, update library ID, search, locate and secure final piece for concert, the one STB trio to be found in Bach sacred cantatas. (For bonus points, anyone out there know the BWV#?)
11:30am - lunch avec Singing Wife
12:30pm - office to return umpteen e-mails, find/buy/download recording of said trio on iTunes
1:20pm - meet with architects and executive about 1,000 feet of custom build-out new space for our practice at premiere-o new cancer consortium building
3:00pm - AT&T store to buy cable, ask questions, get new (FAB-u-lous!) iPhone bill set up on auto-pay (and fervently hope and pray they don't screw it up)
4:00pm - back cross-town at office, receive call from 6'4" built, BearGod client and inform him that, yes, I do have an immediate opening (ahem) and to come on down!
4:15pm - field another call for another walk-in-wannabe
6:15pm - finish with client (no, no happy ending but don't I sometimes wish), initiate last laundry load of the day, make study copies of new Bach piece
6:45pm - write shamanic practice bio for web page
8:00pm - write to-do's for ten on-going projects
8:30pm - start writing this blog entry
8:55pm - publish, edit, shop for dinner, go home, cook, drink, read, crash.

The moon must have moved into the House of Gettin'-Shit-Done today.

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Self Care

2009-02-18T19:55:00.007-06:00

I'm taking a class at the local Religious Science church and today as an exercise the facilitator asked us each to respond to the question, "What isn't working for you?"

I thought about it and came up with a couple of things: I'm beset about with clutter in my car, my office, my house; I'm not paying enough attention to my financial planning, balancing my statements, etc.; I'm not getting enough sleep; I'm constantly running from one thing to another; I feel harried and put off joy-producing leisure activities for the things that have piled up that I absolutely must do.

And then it dawned on me. It wasn't any one thing, it was everything: my entire system of self-care isn't working for me. Not drastically enough to impair me or to hinder me in ways other than making it hard for me to find things like socks, receipts and the like. But definitely to the point where I've become a joyless, headless chicken running around from fire to fire.

Which must and will stop.

This is one of those lessons that the universe sends me from time to time to see if I've mastered it, "gotten" it yet. Today when I saw that my dysfunctions are symptoms of failure of my self-care system as a whole and point to the fact that I've never really learned to care for my self in some very basic ways at all, maybe, just maybe I can begin to tackle this at a higher level than I've ever tried before.

Until today I've never much understood the motivation for wanting to be neat and tidy to a fault - I go through periods where I live like a wild animal, and I'm in one right now. I've never seen the point of doing certain basic chores if it's "just for me".

This morning though, I saw in a flash how this hinders every single aspect of my effectiveness, how it pervades all portions of my life and contributes to feelings of lethargy and hopelessness. My Inner Daddy reared his beautiful, bearded head for a moment then and I got it. Before I'd always had the thought that I was wasting time and energy doing these things for myself if there was no one there (such as a partner) to see them and praise me for being such a good boy.

In that daddy-flash, I deeply understood for the first time that there are two of me here in this body, somehow, and that "I" can do things for my "self". I and self can start to actually have a relationship. Seeing as how we're stuck with each other for the rest of our days :-)

I saw how stingy I've been with my very own self! I've been withholding ease and comfort from my very own self and giving in to self indulgence every time, the quick feel-good fix.

OK, since we already know how that feels, what about trying something new and different and actually expending some energy on some real self care? And finally, finally admit to this self of mine that I'm worth spending that kind of energy on me, even when there's no one else around to see it.

Radical.

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Val

2009-02-14T22:58:00.003-06:00

Had a great VD, did not receive any deliveries from STD :-) Heard a phenomenal a capella concert in Atlanta. A happy day :-)

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Love on the Gerbil Wheel

2009-02-12T23:30:00.000-06:00

For close to a year and a half, I've been in contact with a man via the internet. An amazing man with whom my soul really, really resonates. We share the same name and numerous life experiences. He's one year my senior, not my usual preference of Older Man. Or is he? He and I have joked that we've now become the old men we've always lusted after being in a relationship with.

We've had exactly one date, a chaste dinner in a little town one hour from his home, two from mine.

I think I've waited all my life for this man to show up, and yet now I find that I'm growing impatient. I said I wanted a long courtship. Which is, unfortunately, exactly what I'm getting. (Be careful what you wish for ...)

Man On Horizon's partner died last September, a man with whom he shared 26 years of life. I know it's too soon. And yet I long to jump right in. Mostly, at night, I long to just have someone in my arms again. It's been too many years since that was a regular thing.

I know I have things about my character that need a little attention: I tend to go through the occasional period when I live like a wild animal, and now is one of those times. Seems to happen in the Winter a lot. If you saw my house, you'd be appalled. Only my two close friends and my ex get to see my house when it's in this state. Maybe the wait is good, um, at least until I can clean up my house :-) and cosmically, maybe that's what this is all about: in both our lives, we've both been prone to just jumping in without looking or thinking. This time we're each doing both and taking it slowly.

Agonizingly slowly. Our one date was weeks ago, and it looks like at least another week before we can get another one in.

I despair.

And then I get an amazing e-mail out of the blue from him like I just received while writing this, and it makes the waiting more bearable. But I still pull my hair out.

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I Have Touched His Noodly Appendage ...

2009-02-12T22:47:00.000-06:00

"The universe was created by an all-powerful all-knowing being who came down to us in the form of a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father who can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree."
-- every Christian in America
(courtesy of Angry Buscuit)
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The Siren Call of Ethanol

2009-02-12T22:30:00.000-06:00

A poem (nod to Ogden Nash)

The Siren Call of Ethanol

C2H5-OH,
How I love you so.
My health and happiness
do not,
though.

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Center

2009-02-12T22:00:00.002-06:00

Every now and then a client and I will chat as I'm working with them. Of late, our conversations have turned to me and my life changes, namely the transition out of software and into singer/massage therapist/shamanic practitioner. Some are baffled by this, and others understand it immediately. I simply say that I've stopped labeling myself as an X or a Y, and have simply begun making decisions and doing things which take me closer to my center, closer to what feels like the "real me".

The more I interact with others, the easier it seems to be to find my own center, my own balancing points. I can see so clearly when others don't have theirs, and am sometimes swayed by the moods of others. More recently though, I'm less and less thrown off by being in close proximity to the whimsical moods of others; I find it easier to say to myself, "I don't want to feel like that", and I stick to what is truly my own center.

I thought about this the other day when I sadly reflected that I don't really have a robust "posse" here. I have two very close friends, one gay man and one woman (married, with kids). I've got (well, I thought I had) great friends in the D.C. area who have a wonderful cadre of friends, many of whom I've met, many of whom I've kissed. I yearn for a circle of close men friends here, and have yet to be able to build that, and have frequently sort of pined for my friends in D.C.

Then the other day I realized that this thought, too, was taking me off-center: those boys never contact me. They love me fine and embrace me when I'm there, but the communication is pretty much one-way and all uphill for me. They're not, and never will be, my posse despite the fact that we love each other.

Once I sat with that for a half a day and really let it sink in, my yearning wobble stopped and I was back to spinning on my own center again, if not ecstatically happy, then at least content and utterly OK with the what is of my life and my friendships.

I've longed for a group of gay men to call my own to hang with and call "family". Haven't found 'em yet, but I do keep looking :-)

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