Let the Mad Dog Dance
Sometimes happiness is not a symptom. You curl into yourself so deeply, the contraction is so pure and profound, and surrendered, you touch the seed of yourself. It does not matter what inspires the contraction. A bad date, a looming fear, or the loss of everything. If you go far enough in you will touch something profound, crack the seed, and blossom.
After 6 months of a chaotic dance between change and terror, I touched it. And I got up in my cruddy pajamas, turned on the music, and let the mad dog out. I danced for the day where I found out my husband had commit suicide. I danced for the day I realized love wasn’t safe. I danced for my first period. For my first kiss. For the last time I had let go and laughed. And the dance became a frenzy. Breasts and belly bouncing, I let my hair out of its scattered bun and gave up everything.
I was the Tantrika dancing on the cremation ground. Osho with his turban in his Rolls Royces. Jesus complaining to God. And I remembered, hey silly… others have walked this path before you. OTHERS have walked this path before you. And then I smiled, imagining writing this, and thinking… and you, yes you reading this, are walking it now.
Last night as I was talking to guidance I heard,” It is funny that you think of yourself now as small and weak. Only those who have chosen this “knowing of life” are shown the pain you have and continue to experience. Remember the questions you have been asking your whole life. “Who am I? What is this?” Because of these questions you will never be lost.”
And I understood. I have not lost MY way, I have thrown out the map. The more I surrender to myself the greater the distance between me and the “correct path,” becomes. It doesn’t matter what the “correct path,” is supposed to be. It could be religion. It could be the steps to financial security. It could be the rules you have concocted for yourself to be lovable. Where there are rules, you are separated from yourself.
My path is one of “both and,” not a game of exclusion. I am choosing to live so fully that I drop through this fullness into the truth. This is different then trying to separate myself out from life to find the truth. Along the way I meet my masks, the ways I regulate myself and therefore can judge you for doing it differently, the ways I section out the meal of life into right and wrong. I face the way I have tried to be good for you so that you will love me. I face the feeling underneath, which is not pretty. And I am continuously reminded that, if it does not include all versions of myself, it is a rule.
We are all growing. But sometimes it is easy to miss because we judge how that growth manifests. For some of us breaking down, failing to make a payment, or disappointing our partner is actually a BREAK THROUGH. For others saying something “inappropriate,” going to the grocery store looking like shit, or failing our own expectations is a BREAK THROUGH. Break throughs are not always something we want to announce on Facebook.
One of my favorite examples of this, is something that happened with my Dad. He came home one day flustered and filled with life. “I just told a stranger at a supermarket that he was ridiculous,” he said.
Now my Dad had been battling with himself at this point, for over 60 years. Even though he was 6ft 2 and could be quite menacing when he got angry at inanimate object or authority figures, he existed mostly as a sweet little boy. And what stood between him and his adult self, was the fear that he would not be lovable if he grew up.
After battling traffic and his own head for most of the day, he wound up in line with a grumpy man at a local grocery store. My Dad was a little slow to get the stuff on the conveyer belt, and the man, getting more and more agitated behind him, (It was NJ) muttered “You are ridiculous.”
That is exactly how my Dad already felt. Ridiculous, inadequate, and unlovable. And normally he would respond by being quiet and increasing the speed of unloading his cart. But this time something in my Dad snapped. The sleeping bull dog woke up, and frothing slightly at the sides of his mouth, my Dad looked at the man and said, “No. YOU are ridiculous.”
Was this the opening that launched my Dad into adulthood? Did he do something to enrich the grumpy man’s day therefore contributing love and light into the world? No. But it was still a break through. It was a moment of freedom. A step, away from his well worn routine of cowering to anything with a pulse. And it was profound.
I am learning that the biggest gift we can give ourselves and those around us, is permission. Since Kindergarten we have been taught to color within the lines. What within us has been lost, put on hold, or stunted, while we have been trying to behave?
We love to flaunt images of the lotus. You see it often on the fronts of yoga t-shirts or as part of a logo in spiritual organizations. But we choose to forget that the lotus grows from the mud. Without the mud, the muck, the mire of ourselves… there is no flower. How can we only worship the light, when the darkness gives birth to it?
Dead things are dead
As some one who can talk to dead people, and sees reality, well… a little differently, death is not always an end point for relationships. Phil (my husband) and I talked for years after he died. In the beginning it was to ease my trauma and explain his death. Then it was just because I liked having him around. Finally one day he said to me, “I need to leave now, you have another partner coming.” “But why do you have to go?” I asked. He smiled firmly and said. “Isis. I’m dead.”
Oh. Oh yeah.
Endings in our normal everyday lives aren’t as clear cut. For example, I am still somewhat in love with two of my former partners. One of them is the man I later married for an English Visa, the other is my most recent partner, a poor Mexican man who, like Eeyore, always looks like he has a rain cloud over his head.
Why do I still slightly pine for these men when I’m single? I’m not sure. Even though they were two of my most difficult relationships, they were also the most filled with promise. And now that I find my mind available to wander, I want to poke them with a stick like a bee-hive.
Similarly, I also want to resuscitate my life of the last 7 years. I was a successful counselor with a thriving business teaching dance and body psychotherapy. I had a house, and at one time two houses, was satisfied with my career, and ate lots of croissant. I also was a one-woman show with a lot of medical debt, a huge house to carry, and was stuck where I was living because that’s where my practice was.
After a bold and brazen move to leave it all behind so I could GROW, CHANGE, and EVOLVE, I find myself in that in between space where I am not only free of everything, I am also free of all comfort, safety, and familiarity. Suddenly the old looks more appealling. It’s the new bright and shiny old. And I am slightly panicked that I killed it.
Unlike my husband who died, my past will not hang around with me until I am ready to take the training wheels off of my new life. So I am trying to pedal on a bike that is too big for me. Often driving my bike off into the bushes and getting wedgies from the seat.
Why oh why did I think it was a good idea to evolve?
Today, as I was pining for my past, I saw a cat playing with a very dead blue jay. First she grasped it in her mouth and tried to clammer over the fence. (Evidently it is difficult to hold a dead bird in your mouth while you are trying to claw your way up a wooden surface.) She tried several times, and then unwilling to leave her prize behind, decided to stay with it in my yard.
Like me, she had decided the past was better then simply jumping into the unknown. But hanging out with a dead bird is boring. When it was alive it was unpredictable. And unpredictable was interesting and worth batting at. Now the bird just lay there with its neck unhinged and its feathers in dissaray. Boring.
Finally, in a moment of frustration, she bat at the unmoving bird. Nothing. Then she tried it again. This time some of the feathers got stuck on her claw and the bird was flung into another patch of grass. Look! It moved! The cat crouched, paws poised, convinced that the bird was now alive.
How exciting! Now she could kill it all over again.
After 20 minutes of watching her excitement, frustration, and malaise, I started to laugh. The sound made her look up at me first in panic and then with big reaching eyes. “Meow” Why isn’t this as good as it used to be? I succeeded the first time! And that time was fun. How come I can’t do the same thing again?
I went over and pet her while she arched her back and looked at me and then back longingly at the bird. “Because dead things are dead,” I tried to communicate telepathically. “And we should all leave them alone before they start to smell.”
Terror of the Wilderness
Our terror of the wilderness
The challenge of living an uncharted life, is that there is no safety net. Since every life is at its essence, uncharted, nobody is safe. Nonetheless, we spend our lives trying to make it safe. We buy health insurance, car insurance, fire insurance, life insurance, stash money in the banks, and plant ourselves in jobs that we may not like, simply to have a steady income. We even pick partners that don’t excite or challenge us because they are less likely to leave us.
In this ride through the great wilderness of the unknown we wrap ourselves in the promise of controlling it. On some level we know it is inevitable we’ll die and then what? But we try and control that too by creating, sometimes outrageous stories, to make ourselves feel more secure.
At some level we understand that all our structures to create safety may fail us. Your partner still may leave you. And there are a million creative ways the universe can render you without possessions, insurance, or money. You may find yourself with a disease, a disability, or condition that brings you to your knees. You will eventually die… guaranteed. And even if you are pretty sure what will happen after that, well…
This year many of us have been learning this the hard way. And if you are like me you may have found yourself homeless, penniless, and directionless, hooked up to an IV in the hospital. Oh, and my boyfriend of the last year broke up with on me the way back from the hospital.
I currently have no “guarantees of safety” anymore. I lost my house which I poured most of my money into, I don’t know what country I want to live in (but I know it’s not here), and after a month and a half of being in and out of the hospital without medical insurance, I have a list of bills that I will never be able to pay.
My mind, frustrated by the weakness and pain in my body, has been clammering to make new plans. Create new safety. Suddenly, more then ever, I want to buy a safe house (not a money sucker), live in a country with national health care, and have a stash of mullah in the bank. I also feel myself shying away from meeting a new partner. Too scary! Too unpredictable!
But while I may have lost all of the things that keep my mind in balance, my heart is tender and wide open. Writing from the home of my Superhero-like friend who has caught me with grace, surrounded by other friends who have offered great love, and even with a new spiritual Mother, who housed me (a stranger) in her home after I showed up stumbling at her door in Mexico with an IV fresh out of my vain, I can see… I AM OK.
Not only am I ok, I have been reborn with humility, into a completely different chapter of my life. (As my dear friend Anthony said, sometimes things have to stop before they start in a different way.) I have no idea what I am going to do now. Except that I will do it with a sense of self not tied to my safety nets, and with the awareness that I can not do my life by myself. We are indeed interdependent.
I have asked myself “What do I want now?” Where is my heart’s longing NOW? If life is in it’s essence, unsafe and unpredictable, how can I live MY life fully? What is the next step on MY path? And even if I seek to again create safety, how can I make peace with the fact that it is simply an illusion? How can I wed the unknown and walk with it as a husband through the wild?
Commit an Act of Civil Disobedience: Enjoy Yourself
It’s interesting being at odds with your own culture. In Mexico all the icky things got a free pass. I didn’t have to like the leering men or bug infested fruit, because it was Mexico. The slew of diseases I got were a “rite of a passage,” and spending all day to get an orange hamburger was quaint.
With my tourist Visa, I was enough on the outside of Mexican culture to enjoy it without having to accept it as “the way life was supposed to be.” However, arriving back in the USA, I became aware of how uncomfortable I was being “home.” The vast cultural emptiness wasn’t just a fascinating learning experience. This was MY country, shouldn’t I belong here?
Before returning to Portland to teach for a few months, I took an impromptu visit to Austin, TX to see if it could be a future base for me. I had heard so many great things about it, including that it was just like Portland minus my seasonal depression. Well hell, sign me up!
Suddenly, after walking the same two cobblestone streets for months to get my coffee and groceries, I found myself being chased down Texas highways, by what appeared to be Monster trucks. Even though my hard earned Spanish words now meant nothing, I found myself exclaiming “Dios Mio!” while secretly praying I could still drive.
My first week in Austin, since every outing included getting lost for two hours, I got to see a lot of stores whiz by. There were hordes of them!( In fact, it looked like the stores had gone to war with the trees and won.) My favorite was the Napoleon of them all. It was smartly entitled BIG! LOTS! Seriously? That’s brilliant. Why not get straight to the point?
It got me wondering, “When did we start thinking Bigger and More was better?” That attitude doesn’t seem to be working with our eating. We are starving while gorging ourselves on low fat, fat free, chemical ridden diet foods. And what do starving people do? They keep eating hoping to satisfy their hunger. The same thing has happened with our sex lives. We are advertised the same empty experiences with different packaging. What if we try multiple partners? What if we try screwing upside down? What if we get lingerie and try and seduce our partner at a bar?
Disconnected emotionally ungratifying sex is still bad sex regardless of who it’s with, what you’re wearing, or how flexible you are. Low fat and No fat food still tastes like shit even if you dye it pink and pump it full of chemicals. We seem to have confused quantity and packaging, with quality.
I love Americans, but we all seem one coffee away from a peptic ulcer. We are caught in the lonely game of striving but not arriving. We are always pining after something. Flatter abs. A flatter TV. Or a flatter cell phone. This is how we keep our economy going. We have to work harder so that we can relax.
This has led me to the conclusion that the USA is a country with a whole lot of heart but not very much self esteem. Self esteem is based on the premise that you have intrinsic worth and don’t have to prove anything to anyone. You simply have to be you.
One of the many things I learned in Mexico, is that even if you are poor, aimless, and alone, your life is worth celebrating. In fact LIFE is worth celebrating. The general attitude there was something like “Ok, so you don’t have a job and you are living off of 5 pesos tacos, did you know that your ancestors fought for their freedom and won? Sit down my friend and have a beer!”
Being back in the luxury of the USA, I find myself fighting for the right to enjoy it. The most difficult aspect of returning to your roots, is that you have all the little switches in you suddenly turned back on. (I mean seriously, just think of spending the holidays with your parents!) One of mine is the drive to achieve.
In moderation this helps me build legs underneath my big and wild dreams. In excess this turns me into a monstrous head. While I have vetoed Austin as a potential home, (in the end my allergies killed the option), my little test run there was the ultimate test. It is the same one we will all face if we spend the holidays with our birth family.
Can we maintain our hard won maturity while being put back into old and familiar patterns?
In the beginning I failed miserably. I ate like an unconscious hog and sedated myself for hours at a time in front of the hotel’s shitty little TV.(Like my friend said, “Reverse culture shock is a bitch.”) But then, after my gut rebelled and clenched in protest, I remembered that I could slow down even when keeping up with the cars, cell phones and the celebrity gossip felt like a matter of survival.
So how do we maintain our delicacy w/o armoring ourselves in a world that can feel anything but delicate? Well the first thing I did, was feel how alone I felt. I cried for a little while as people sped around me at 70 mph, thinking how EASY it is to connect. And how sad it is that we don’t want to be the first one to drop our defenses because we are afraid we might get mauled.
Then I closed my eyes. Admits the chaos of a Chinese restaurant playing to different radio stations with gusto, I felt myself dropping back into the sensation of the body. I felt the hard edges of the plastic chair underneath my bottom and I expanded into my surroundings. I was the weight of the lemon in my water. The napkin whose edges were dancing in the air conditioning. The feel of my hair dripping down my shoulders and back.
Suddenly I felt happy. The color and taste of my noodles were more vivid. I looked over at the man next to me, grumpily reading his book, and smiled.
My friend reminded me recently that I had told her that “Enlightenment was feeling at home wherever your were.” I found this out when she left me a message on my Facebook wall saying, “Hey remember how you said….” because I was bitching and whining about being in the USA. I responded with more wisdom.
”Poophead.”
My Dad also used to say a similar annoying thing. “Wherever you go Isis, there you are.” Even though it was true, it was the type of thing that made me want to punch him in the face.
Why did it make me so angry? Because it’s hard. It’s hard to stay whole and connected to yourself no matter what. And it’s hard to feel all the feelings that are inspired by being different then the person you were taught to be.
But the beauty is no matter where I may be or how hard it may be, it always have the choice to be my full self. And a freaking delicious one! Changing our own rules is also how we change culture. So slowing down and feeling into your body becomes a political act.
So do something for America today, find your asshole and relax it. Masturbate tonight without fantasizing or watching something. Just feel and breathe. Smile for the hell of it, without apology. Be a rebel… Enjoy yourself.
Isis and the dancing chicken
Isis and the dancing chicken
Life is littered with opportunities to laugh. To give up. Step back. And understand that while you are totally out of control, chaos has a certain type of order.
Squished in with gawking Americans and Mexicans alike, I let go of my tiny purse for a second to get a better look at the parade. Men, women, and children with huge paper mache heads danced by hurling candy at the audience. Today was “Dia de Los Locos.” “Day of the Crazies.” And the folks of San Miguel, as with all the other town proclaimed holidays, were having a parade.
Trying not to get hit in the head, I ducked, only to be stepped on by a small child kneeling to pick up the loot. Suddenly I felt the need to look down at my purse. The thief, probably the same child, had silently unzipped it, and with the grace of a mosquito had removed my remaining 500 pesos (about $50). This now left me with a total of $50 to my name and three weeks before returning to the States to replenish my funds. I laughed to myself, admiring the skill of the robbery. Swift, seamless, elegant.
Now, I don’t fully understand peace. It is a bizarre and not entirely rational experience. Even though I was also dripping wet from having spilt hot chocolate all over myself, and then in an attempt to clean it up, another ½ gallon of water, Peace draped its big airy wings around me. I felt fine. I clutched my purse a little closer to me and pushed my way to a more empty space to finish watching the parade.
“Day of the crazies.” There were men covered head to toe in silver paint. Children dressed like zombies. Even a squishy costume that looked like a truck. Suddenly, swayed by the beating heat, it dawned on me again that I was in a foreign country, completely re-visioning my business, soaking wet, and with no money. And I felt that feeling you get when peace flies away and farts in your face. PANIC.
Oh well.
I was just about to surrender to the sudden change in my body, the tensing colon, the quickening breath, and the sudden desire to hide.. anywhere… when down the street I saw a huge yellow blob. It was dancing irreverently, like the head of the tiny dog, that exclaims “Yo quierro Taco Bell.” As it got closer, I could see that it was a huge yellow chicken. There it was, my fear incarnate: A huge yellow chicken getting down to some Spanish dance music. And as it approached, it paused a moment to show me its special moves. It stuck its butt out in the air, waved its head around, and shook its finger shaped tail before moving on. I watched speechless, as the big yellow butt got smaller, parading its way down the dusty Mexican street.
And then I started to laugh.
About ½ hour later, I showed up at my boyfriend’s chocolate shop with my red dress sporting some almost dry blotchy stains. “I just got robbed,” I laughed. He looked confused. “Then why are you laughing,” he said. “I would be pissed.” “Eh,” I replied. “You pick your battles. Besides,” I paused, “I saw this really cool dancing chicken.”
Amen and Hallelujah.
When I was fifteen a Buddhist monk told me you first had to develop your ego before it could be destroyed. “What a waste,” I thought to myself. But like my hippie friends, who did a few too many drugs in college, I have learned that ego development is what separates enlightened from crazy. Like abstract painters who study the finite and detailed skills of imitation, one needs to intimately understand what they are saying no to. As the saying goes…”Before enlightenment, chop wood carry water. After Enlightenment chop wood, carry water.” Evidently, if you don’t know how to chop wood and carry water, you are fucked.
If you are walking a “spiritual path” you know that it’s somewhere in between chopping wood and carrying water, that you will be decimated. Your sense of what gives you your worth, the contexts that provide you with safety, and your carefully crafted ability to fit in, will be destroyed. The more you hold on to your pretending, the more you will be stripped of your mask. The things you are self identified with, (your status, your possessions, or your partner) will probably be taken away from you. And you will hate yourself. You may feel like a failure. And you will probably ask, as I have on many occasion, “What the hell have I done wrong to deserve this.”
Nothing. That’s the joke that is on the precipice of being funny. Just as soon as you become a viable player, the Divine will show you what is real. And then, as you stand in the ash of what you have so carefully created, you will be shown that your worth and lovability have nothing to do with your ability to play the game.
I thought about this as I stood looking at the glass from my vandalized car window. As my friend would later tell the story, I stood there suspended, like a frozen sparrow. “Is that my window smashed in?” I said quietly, angling my sleepy pajama clad body a little further out the door. “OH MY GOD!” Kelly said moving towards the car. “Is my car radio still there?” I continued. “The one I just bought and had installed yesterday?” “No!” she exclaimed. “Shit!” “But,”… I still was not completely getting it… I’m supposed to leave for my trip tomorrow.”
In the last month I had gotten the flu, removed a cyst and had the stitches come out to reveal a gaping hole (Emergency room!), scratched my cornea, sprained my back, had two Chiropractors apologetically give up on me, and now, the day before my drive to CA and flight to Mexico, my car window had been smashed in.
I looked at Kelly with rain dripping down my face. “I need coffee.” I said.
Whoever came up with the image of love as a cherub must have been smoking opiates. Love is rarely small, cute, and equipped with a dimpled bum. Love is big, terrifying, and will rip who you thought you were apart. That’s why as humans, we make sure we only love up to the point where we believe someone could destroy us. But God/Goddess doesn’t play those games. The divine loves us until we let go and see our own beauty, the range of our humanity, and that, regardless of whether we may be experiencing heaven or hell, we are still deeply loved.
The good news is that this is a love you don’t have to pay a fat bishop to earn. The bad news is that everything you own and love in a possessive way is not yours to control. You are not safe in your life and you will never be safe. And yet, peace may be laughing at the joke. You may not be in control, but you will ALWAYS be loved and you will ALWAYS be enough.
Amen and Hallelujah.
Teddy and I in 2010
/
You know you have hit a certain landmark in your life when you find yourself walking around Walgreens with a life size teddy bear tucked under your arm. I slung my fuzzy find on the counter and the checker eyed me cautiously. “This is my new man,” I said. He paused.
“I’m sorry.”
Yes, my life may have pooped me out like bad Chinese, but Teddy has been wonderful to me. He spoons like a champ. I can rest my face on his cheek without smelling bad breath. And his legs are bizarrely flexible. (I like having one thing in my life I can bend to my will.)
He is my consolation prize for waking up in a Hollywood movie. In this movie the heroine falls in love and it ends badly. Her business tanks. Her car dies. Her computer turns itself off at random. (Yes, it’s true). And she finds herself enraged, screaming “Run fuckers Run” at unsuspecting turkeys trying to cross the road.
Of course when you are watching a movie you know that this is just the ½ hour before the protagonist wakes up to herself, finds the life of her dreams, and falls in love with the right man who is even more devilishly good looking. But if you are the protagonist, well it just looks like the shit is hitting the fan for no particular reason.
In the last month, being a woman on the run from her ex-boyfriend, I have learned about police escorts, restraining orders, and what it means to pack your world into your car when you are not 18 and excited about it. A few days ago, driving through America with my remaining possessions sliding into me with each turn, I called my sister in a panic. “I have my life in my Honda Civic.” I said. “I think I may be a bum.”
Like some of you on this spiritual path, something inside of me has hit the “reset” button without my conscious consent. I will now be getting what I really wanted, instead of the things I had gathered around me to be reasonable, safe, and sane.
What I bring into 2010 is the reminder that our minds are not the masters of our destiny. Our deepest heart is. Even though we can not always hear its melodious and seductive longing, it leads us like a Siren. Dashing us against the rocks again and again, until we submit to our real selves.
This year, my loves, may we submit. May we snort with laughter as our well developed “plans” squeal like a pig and run away. May we curse in frustration and joy, as life births us in messy grunts. And this year, may the whisper of our longing become a full fledged yell.
Hunger
I remember one night when Jesse went out, I rebelled against what I thought I “owed the relationship,” and I turned out the lights. I grabbed my Stripper pole, the last obvious remnant of my former self and started to dance like a woman who had been slipped a ruffie. My dance became more and more wild. Like an animal waking up and suddenly finding themselves in the zoo. I growled. I flapped my wings. I beat my chest. And my shirt flew off. And my bra flew off. My socks. My pants. And my tangled hair clung in valleys of sweat.
One last dance and then I gave up. One last dance and then I walked the walk most women walk. I hung my head and became Persephone, drawn down into the underworld. As if that was what I owed. As if that was what romantic love demanded. The fierce, yielding, innocence of my sex.
But like in the story of Persephone, Spring comes again. And leaned up against the door of his truck, I thought “This is it. Take me. Let me feel your sex, your sense of yourself as a man. Contain me. Let me drip over your container. OPEN!”
But all he said was, “I love you.” His eyes shiny as reflected water and his pelvis dull. And I felt the rage come again.
A long time ago I watched a scene in a movie where a young woman overcome with desire, fell on the pavement and started to thrash. It was a foreign film… of course. This woman convulsed on the pavement with her fists balled up, and all the townsfolk parted in reverence. As if they understood the depth of her yearning. Her longing for God through the wetness of her sex. In their eyes they said, “This is simply part of being a woman.”
But in our culture sex is trade for something else. We display it like it is a “for sale” sign until someone buys us. We use it as power. Manipulation. A way to feel loved. A way to feel attractive. But it is always trade.
The sex I am talking about is different. It springs from a well deep within your marrow. It reaches out through your spine and down through your vulva. It burns in your eyes. It is a path to the Divine through your body. And it will eat you alive until you meet yourself fully.
For the last 7 years my capacity to know God through my body has been novel, torturous, blissful, and educational to others. But here’s the thing. Once you wake up to yourself you can not successfully go back to sleep again. You are like an alcoholic that goes to AA and then starts drinking again. The illusion is ruined. You know what you are doing now.
How many times have we chosen the dream of being adored over ourselves? We put duck tape over the screaming parts of ourselves and drink ourselves into oblivion. And then when the buzz wears off, when the bottle runs out, we pretend to be shocked and dismayed. We take the other person’s character and limitations personally. We blame them for our choice.
Last night I dreamed a beautiful man came to me with a message. He looked me in the eyes and said firmly yet lovingly. “Your sex is not just your sex. Your sexuality is a path to God. That is why you are angry. You are denying God.”
My dear women, we have been lying to each other and ourselves. We are not really afraid that we are asexual, we are afraid of opening and not being met. So we convince ourselves to collapse. And then we blame our sex instead of what is real. This is not enough. Your shallow need driven self is not enough. I shut down because if I don’t I might kill you.
Persephone does not live in the dark. She travels there to see what must die. She removes her self deceptions and she prepares for the re-birth. In the dark of the earth she meets herself. She feels her rage. She cries. And when she emerges, when she is ready for the world to change around her this time, she shows the world who she truly is.
Throwing away the cape
Superman was a coward. I mean sure, he gets points for enacting Gay fantasies by wearing a leotard and tights, but what example was he setting? I can see him now, sitting sheepishly in the office of Nelson Mandela “Life Coach,” trying to explain why he wanted to fit in. He would be complaining, like any admirable martyr, how he felt the need to protect the woman he loved from himself. Why he sabotaged his dreams to hide in the shadows of mediocrity. And why it was imperative for the stability of humanity, to condense his true self, into a character that wore a cape. Mandela would stare at him with a sort of irritated compassion and say, “I’ve heard it before. Didn’t you hear my famous speech? Who we are scares the shit out of us.”
I remember very well, the day I was introduced to myself. I was having a phone session with a psychic to get tips on how to manage my own clairvoyance. Part of me thought the whole things was hokey as hell, and even though I had been confronted in a full frontal display of my own abilities, wanted to chalk the whole thing up to a load of high woo-woo rubbish. Then I heard her say in that thin new agey voice, “You think you are so demure. You imagine you are gentle and delicate like a butterfly wing. No. You are like a volcano. You are intensely fiery and you go as deep as the core of the earth.”
What? That bitch! I had spent my whole life trying to tone it down. “But I scare people,” I said protesting sincerely. And she replied with those annoying words… “Have you ever scared anyone committed to the truth?” Knowing she was right did not stop me from hating her. I hated her for days. I enjoyed hating her. Who did she think she was? See I knew that this psychic thing was all crap. Maybe now I wouldn’t have to proceed in being myself. Thank god! But after a few days of that indulgence, my B.S. whistle blew. And my real fear appeared. What did I do now? What would happen if I stopped trying to be acceptable?
This funny little phase, where you are wondering if you want to be your true self, creates a kind of fun-house mirror effect. I found myself involved with a man who was terrified of me. He was sure that my uncanny intuition would make me go crazy and told me that if my abilities ever made me sick he would leave me. One day, fed up with this level of drama, I sat in the empty tub to think. I enjoy wedging myself into like nooks and you will often find me in unpredictable spots. Of course, waking up from his nap, Todd stumbled into the bathroom only to find his insane little psychic curled up in the empty tub. You can imagine his face!
After a while, you choose the fight or you choose yourself. And 6 months into the relationship I no longer tried to defend myself from accusations of being as intense as Kali or as batty as Mrs. Cleo. I started giving readings and stopped apologizing for them. I expected people to cry when I talked. And I knew that my forever partner would have to be someone comfortable with themselves. Superman, a cultural icon, ceased to be a hero to me. The costumes I had worn to make myself acceptable became a symbol of cowardice as opposed to strength. And my true heroes became the men and women who chose to be themselves…. no matter what.
The Death of an Icon
The day I saw my Father naked he was running from his bedroom to the bathroom like a gazelle. His body was bent forward with his head arched to run more quickly. He looked over at me and uttered a loud EEEEEEEK!
I stood in the doorway, keys swinging in the door lock, horrified. Not because I had seen my Father naked. But because in that moment I could no longer see him as an enemy. He was now simply a gaunt 65 year old man as naked as his Momma made him, with his penis flapping against his legs.
As he completed his run and I heard the bathroom door close, I continued to stand there aghast. “Who will be the tyrant now?” I asked myself. Who can I battle now that the man behind the curtain is revealed? My failed hero had been reduced to bones, saggy skin, and a big “EEEEEK.” I was verklempt.
Now almost 80 my Dad is lying in a hospital bed in Ridgewood NJ. The man, Stuart Shaw, is lying in a hospital bed in Ridgewood NJ. The school teacher, the business planner, the ballerina dating father of 5 children, the 12 step group attending, bubble blower on the lawn who wears short shorts, is lying in a hospital bed in Ridgewood NJ. And he may be dying.
This is not the first time I have waited for his death. In reality I have been aware of his death since I first moved in with him at 13. He was the oldest parent around so I made a quiet promise to myself that I would always say everything I needed to say to him. This meant telling him how much I loved him. It also meant screaming in his face, telling him how much he disappointed me, and holding him while he sobbed in my arms.
However, telling someone everything and being emotionally transparent, is not the same thing as forgiving them. I have seen over and over again that behind our colorful veils, our love is not pristine. We each harbor secret fantasies of revenge. We may justify them. We may glorify them. But it is still revenge. We all want to hurt the people that we love so that their suffering might vanquish our own.
With my Father I have been no different. The image of the naked fleeting Gazelle so conflicted with my fantasy Father, I had been punishing both of us with the depths of my disappointment. In fact I had so celebrated that disappointment; I played it out unfailingly with most of my subsequent relationships. Over and over again I assumed my romantic partners would fulfill their “full potential.” And over and over again they would reach some emotional chasm too vast to leap over, and give up.
Indeed all the men were the failures my Father was. And inside I tortured myself that this might be all I was worthy of. Perhaps this was the only thing that existed. Now I understand this was all because I was unwilling to look at the gaunt running Gazelle man and laugh.
Today I laughed. Because this was the end. There was no one to hold the other side of the rubber band taught. My fantasy Dad had let go of the other end. All of my stories had shot off into the dark. I was alone. And I was free.
“I forgive you,” I whispered.