ten dollars and the gift

Instead of beginning this post in critical apology for not having been around for  awhile, I am choosing to focus on something way more important to me.

Perception.

Story

The last few months have been pervaded by an undercurrent of financial woe.  It’s the old cut-and-paste scenario.  Living cheque to cheque, counting change, planning groceries right down to the nickel.  That sort of thing.  But something else has happened during this time.

I started writing, and getting paid for it.

Opportunity has come around and poked its head inside my virtual doorway.

Point

It is Friday, and  I have ten dollars.  Normally, I would be feeling somewhat depressed that I am facing a weekend with only ten dollars in my pocket – with payday still a week away.  No credit card.  No overdraft. No savings to dip into (save the advice, that’s another post entirely).  Just two five-dollar bills.

But, here’s the thing.

I am grateful.

I have food in the fridge.  I have a bus pass (yes, I am a frequent rider of the proletariat chariot).  My rent and bills are paid, and I am writing a series of articles that I will soon be paid for.  I have a day job. I have a home.  I know where my next meal is coming from.   I have love in my heart, and in my life.  And I have the courage to write about something a lot of people would be embarassed about.  Money issues.

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A few months ago, I started this blog as a gift to myself.  The gift was motivated by this intention and purpose:

I have so much to give and share.  I love to write and express myself.  I want to be who I am.  This is permission – an active choice, given by me to myself, to be and do as I am, without the prerequisites I often impose on myself…I must lose X pounds, I must not age, I must be kind always, I must browbeat myself into a lunatic frenzy etcetera.  This is the beginning.

This blog was the best gift I could have given myself and, since its inception, I have met some incredibly good human beings and rediscovered my passion and enthusiasm for writing.  In the process, I was fortunate enough to have been introduced to someone who really liked my stuff, and now they are a mentor and employer.

I said Yes to me and a deep inner yearning (I hate that word, but it’s the right word) to set myself free.

And I said No to a lot of other stuff.

Shortlist:

1) No! to the inner critic/fishwife

2) No ! to the infinite amounts of blogger info telling me what to do, and how to do it

3) No ! to the frequent temptation to just delete this blog when I thought it wasn’t meeting certain expectations

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I am not even remotely famous.

I haven’t been discovered.

I’m not launching a product, or scrambling to lunch with the cool cats on the Internets.

I’m a woman that looked inside, saw something I needed to pay attention to, and did so.  And that feels gigantic.

If there isn’t something you’re paying attention to, or if you’ve been neglecting your  inner loveliness…Say yes to something your soul has been craving.

Doors will fly open, and having two five-dollar bills will, somehow, feel just fine.

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Nota Bene: I recently subscribed to a wonderful blog – Confident Writing – which posed this question as a topic of reflection for a group writing project:

What has blogging given you the confidence to write or create and then *share*… that you wouldn’t otherwise have done?

This post is my response.  I encourage you to check out Confident Writing, and take part in the group writing project.  it’s a wonderful place for anyone who uses the written word as a vehicle of expression.

Thanks Joanna.

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Fade to black

I invite you  to consider this space as you would a cherished friend’s sprawling deck overlooking the garden on a sunny weekend afternoon. Enjoy a cocktail, but please know this: kind words enhance while negatives detract.  Keep it nice. Keep it clean.

Or just keep it.

Nietzsche, not niche

The train this morning.

I did not look up,  as I usually do, to survey the field of eyes around me.

I did not want to inhabit anyone else’s moment.  Or <thinks> I just did not want to be seen.

I simply stood lankily, a drape of muscle and flesh, the screaming yellow metal my anchor.

I thought:

I want to go home

Where your poetry cannot shoot spitballs at the face of my heartfelt prose, and the cachet of confidence clutched in hand unfastens – spills everywhere! – to reveal itself as it really is: The arrogance of achievement.

Home.

Where I edit nothing.  And I alter my walk for no one.

Home inside me.

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The web of life inside and outside of each of ourselves dipping, twisting, dancing, buckling us down to our knees ?

You

Draw the map and paint yourself the ” You are here “.

Make it beautiful with colour and feeling.

Do not hide.

Cry out !

Be still.

Love circles around people.

If accused of thinking too much

p   a   u   s   e

then, go back to thinking

LAUGH   so hard

Gaze warmly

Nourish your heart

You don’t have to accept someone else’s truth as your own

ever

Even if you agree with it in some way.

Silence works a lot of the time.

And make some art.  Your way.

Sing and make mistakes, at the same time if you like.

Be fruity if it suits you and say ‘so what?’ once in awhile.

This was fun.

 

 

 

 

 

An unexpected lunch date with Death

This morning I woke up with that not so welcome awareness you have when you know you are about to be plunged back into the world Tony Soprano style <hands pushing your face and head into the cold water>

Last night was spent talking to my son about the virtues of telling the truth ie  not taking Josh’s Starbursts when he isn’t looking just because you want more, and choosing to be good because it feels good not simply because you want TV privileges reinstated.

Last night was spent in a concentrated effort not to take every dish I own and throw it in the garbage.  No dishes, no standing at the sink doing them. No dishes, no bowling ball of obligation in stomach.  No dishes, no clutter, no cyclical mounting of mundane tasks to rob me of precious time and energy that could be better used toward figuring out how the hell I’m going to survive the next year of my life without having a nervous breakdown.

Dishes.

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Bedtime.

This is where the window of opportunity opens.  This particular window was going to open into my own bed, where I planned to collapse in exhaustion once reading time – a time I love – ended.

But no, the gods conspired and I spent some time trying to convince my 6 year old son to sleep in his own bed after he awoke to go pee and couldn’t go back to his own bed.

Unsuccessful.

The evening then turned into a why-the-fuck-cannot-I-not-have-my-own-bed-to-myself-for-the-love-of-all-things-good-and-holy for a very brief moment, until I realized this was not helpful.  I lie.  This was not a realization. I knew all along it was pointless to put myself through the asking of Why?.  I just happened to catch myself in it, right before it got rolling, and I cut it short.  Dagger to throat.

And I slept.

How’m'Igunnas

The last 15 years of my life have been lousy with these.

How’m'Igunna figure out how to make a good living without whoring myself out to the man for the rest of my life?

How’m'Igunna teach my son to be a good person without projecting all of my neurotic anxiety and residual childhood trauma onto him?

How’m'Igunna be a better writer/musician/creator/producer when I am barely managing to be a better mother/person/daughter/sister/employee/runner?

How’m'Igunna start living the life I want to live, stop eating sweets and drinking too much coffee and worrying about what other people think huh?

The good news

I have a better idea how I’m gonna now.  It’s not The Idea.  It’s not a one idea fixes all because the very idea that there is an idea that fixes all is a dumb as a bowl of hair idea. My idea, it’s just a better idea.    And I’m on my way.

My way.

And today, after I called my mom and dad to apologize for being grumpy on the phone last night, when my mom told me that my cousin had been killed crossing the street last Friday and that his mother was going through the worst kind of grief a mother could ever go through – I cried.

And when my mom told me that she didn’t want to tell me about it when it happened because she didn’t want me to be sad, to worry, to be further burdened – I cried.

I pictured my cousin crossing the street on his way to a family barbeque with friends.  I pictured his mother clutching his photograph and wishing every single moment of him – his smell, his laugh, his gestures and even his meanness – back into her life.  I pictured his wife and three children relearning how to live without their husband and father.

Dishes and bedtime and all the how’m'Igunnas shrunk into tiny dancing creatures.  Harmless. Manageable. Even appreciated.

Death reminds me

Everything big is small.

Everything small is big.

Death, be kind to my cousin’s family.

And thank you for lunch.

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this post is dedicated to the memory of my cousin Adrian ~ en paz eterna

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Fade to black

I invite you  to consider this space as you would a cherished friend’s sprawling deck overlooking the garden on a sunny weekend afternoon. Enjoy a cocktail, but please know this: kind words enhance while negatives detract.  Keep it nice. Keep it clean.

Or just keep it.

I walked

muse

ally

lover

curandera

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Music

On any given day my internal soundtrack loops anywhere from Ennio Morricone and  Berlioz, to Jimi Hendrix  and Narciso Yepes,  sidestepping all the way over to Freddy Fender and SNFU.

And that’s just on lunch.

The greatest gifts are the ones we share.

Whether it’s practicing a simple song for my son - wherein I switch the lyric fucked up to messed up relish every moment I  sing weiner dog - or crafting a CD for someone.

To me, a CD is not just a CD.  It is a digital custom-designed rosary.

Bead for bead

Song for song

~A prayer ~

A piece of music can cause a seismic shift in perspective.  It has the power to lift a frown and sweep the ashes of our burned out bodies and world-weary souls right up off the cracked tear-stained sidewalks of melancholy straight into a hot and dirty tango with ecstasy.  It can also transform a benign moment into agony, the imprint of a once dormant memory gasping with renewed breath.

A pause.

A whisper.

An unforgettable chorus.

Music is e n e r g y.

You know this immediately as the first dustings of Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir wend their way past the malleus, incus and stapes into your awareness.

You know this as your body tenses in anticipation as the bass swells and the violins hasten and the cellos mourn.

You feel it.

And I feel it as I somehow find it deep within me – drenched in sweat and lungs squalling – to run an extra kilometre to this.

Music is a story…

In the town where I was born

of unbearable pain spoken in electronic dialects and choir

Lover, will you look at me now ?

I’m already dead to you

but I’ve come to explain why I left such a mess on the floor

For when you went away I went crazy,

I was wild with the breast of a dog

Music is a journey. Replete with redemption, triumph, euphoria and failures amok.

Each lick, note, hook and jingle marks an X in the earth of  our being.

This is where I ache

X

Arpeggio

This is where I crumble

X

Crescendo

This is where I rest

X

Resolve

Surprising and complex

Sexy

Powerful

Cathartic

Down

the

stairs

and

back

up

Music cradles me

note by note

forever comprehending.

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This post was inspired by my undying love for music…and the song I Walked by Sufjan Stevens

What does music mean to you? Do you have specific songs or lyrics that align with you/make you feel a certain way?

Would love to hear about it!

Tell me more in comments !

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Fade to black

I invite you  to consider this space as you would a cherished friend’s sprawling deck overlooking the garden on a sunny weekend afternoon. Enjoy a cocktail, but please know this: kind words enhance while negatives detract.  Keep it nice. Keep it clean.

Or just keep it.

Ribbons

Imagine…

It is sunset.

We are on a terrazza overlooking a vineyard.  The smell of grapes mingles with fresh garden tomatoes, golden and gleaming;  hanging seductively like the bare breasts of Maria Grazia Cucinotta.  You sip satisfyingly from a stem of Barolo while I contemplate the foam on my latte.  Garlic lingers on our lips. The warmth of the fading sun a parting lover’s kiss…

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Think about your bedroom growing up.  What was in it?

Mine was filled with records, CDs, art supplies, instruments and scribbled poetry.  Journals. Candles. Incense.  Books and books and books.

My bedroom never once had a single plaque, trophy or ribbon.

In Grade 6 I was awarded an honours plaque which still remains  in the office at my parent’s house.  It is dusty.

I played on baseball and soccer teams throughout elementary school.  I faintly recall a consolation acknowledgement for ‘Most Consistent Batter’.  I hit it every time but never got a home run.  They only yelled and jumped for home runs.

Fuckers.

In junior high I played team basketball until I injured my knee.  I tried out for volleyball in high school and lasted 10 minutes.  All that running around behind those pretty leggy girls just depressed me.

Bitches.

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Today I received an email from a beautiful, successful, wise and exceptionally talented woman named Katie Tallo.  She has included me among 3 recipients for a Beautiful Blogger Award.

The terms of the award are such that I am to thank the blogger who awarded it to me, tell readers 7 things they don’t know about me, and give the award to a blogger and/or bloggers of my choosing.

Let’s do it.

Katie.  Thank you. There is so much power in these gestures of support, community and appreciation.  Your encouragement and enthusiasm is further-reaching than I can ever articulate.

7 things you don’t know about me but now you do

~ I am an Aries, as if you couldn’t guess

~ When I lived in Sahuayo, Mexico I spent most mornings here in reflection and prayer. The priest was a student of mine. The ceiling.

~ When I visited Angahuan - a town of natives who live with no electricity, speak only the Purepecha dialect and walk or ride horseback –  I rode a chestnut mare all the way to and up this volcano with a Purepecha guide for 8 hours, eating sugar cane soaked in lime.  I cry to have seen and felt such beauty.

~ I am fluent in Spanish and English and I am proud of my Mexican and Irish heritage

~ Apparently, in my last two past lives I was male.  This does NOT surprise me.

~ I cannot stand it when people lie to themselves in front of me and expect me to believe them

~ I loathe petty.  Especially scorekeepers. I don’t jive with emotional tallying and its attendant manipulations.

And the award for Beautiful Blogger goes to…

Bridget Pilloud

Fabeku Fatunmise

Kelly Diels

Massive love for these blogs and so many others.  Seriously, if you’re reading this and you blog, consider yourself a recipient too.

Write on.

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Fade to black

I invite you  to consider this space as you would a cherished friend’s sprawling deck overlooking the garden on a sunny weekend afternoon. Enjoy a cocktail, but please know this: kind words enhance while negatives detract.  Keep it nice. Keep it clean.

Or just keep it.

Announcement! You choose.

Friends, swordsman and people of the forest!

Talented, properly published, internet-revered wordsmiths and book authors of the world!

Much-admired, well-meaning, savvy, hip pro-Do-It-Skippy blog builders with consistent thrice or more weekly posts, peppy newsletters and a paycheque over $2000 a month!

ellipsis

If this post were a song it would begin nicely.  Innocuous and pleasant.  Much like the muted tones of Smooth Operator by Sade,  scarcely noticeable but for the chorus as barista # 4 hands you a steaming cup of espresso-based consciousness.

But nay, this post is not a song.

And we all know there can only ever be one Sade.

What we have here is a whirling blitzstastic goulash all dressed up and going everywhere at once.  That’s what life can be like.  And that’s what my writing is often like.

A seasoned writer might call it messy, over indulgent, poorly punctuated, rambling and hopeless. That would not be completely untrue.

Which brings me around to my point.

Yup, got one.

I can’t do what I’m supposed to do according to smart and knowledgeable bloggers and business people making money on the internet.    SEO, marketing, spending more than 10 minutes a couple times a week commenting on others blogs, networking etc, learning how to suck the fat out of a sentence until it is anorexic and bled of soul, brazilian waxing the vagina of a paragraph’s hirsute mound of adjectives, curls and lilts ( this is where I imagine a commenter coming back with ‘your paragraphs need a good douche’).

It’s too hard right now.

After all, I just started giving myself a chance in this joint and as much as I would actually sincerely truly madly like to spend more time doing all of those things that I know work…

I must choose.

To sleep. To be more present with my son.  To allow myself the freedom to dilate and expand.  Break and rebuild. Let go of low food chain priorities.  Make mistakes. Explore art. Be in my body without losing my mind. Be in my mind without losing my body.  And not allow anything or anyone to push me around.

This often means that, though during the day I think staying up late to do more research, learn more about blogging techniques and write more is a great idea; half the time it is not.

Often it’s out of exhaustion.

My capacity, finite.

I believe in abundance and the busty fireworks of possibility!

But I must choose.  And after many years of stockpiling burdens on my shoulders unnecessarily,  I simply choose to be here.

Just like this.

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How and what do you choose?

I really want to know!

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Fade to black

I invite you  to consider this space as you would a cherished friend’s sprawling deck overlooking the garden on a sunny weekend afternoon. Enjoy a cocktail, but please know this: kind words enhance while negatives detract.  Keep it nice. Keep it clean.

Or just keep it.

Where’s my thing? And, why can’t I whip it out?

Warning: the usage of the word Thing in this post may cause dizziness, dementia and/or extreme nausea. Proceed with caution.

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By Thing I am referring to a business/service (online or otherwise), an Inc. or Corp. or Comp, a cause,  a niche (which I pronounce ‘neesh’)

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I have been reading hundreds of blogs over the last few months since I started Fly in the face.  I confess, I had a music blog with a lilliputian cult following prior to this blog and when I found I couldn’t sustain sticking to the straight path of MUSIC MUSIC MUSIC I took a breaky-poo and chose to be here instead.

So, in fact, I actually have read thousands of blogs.

What I’ve found is that there are so many incredible and inspiring people out there doing amazing things.  Like Bridget and Fabeku. Havi. Claire. Emma. Katie. Jean. Charlie. Catherine. K e l l y.

I read their blogs and see what they’re doing and feel like I should whip out my thing and just do it – yeah! What they do is magical and creative and super hardcore fantastic!  After a post or two I wanna shake my thing, slap it and make it dance like a ticklish sumo wrestler covered in honeybees.

And the e-books.

MY GOD!  THE SHEER ENORMITY IN VOLUME OF E-BOOKS!

Eeeeeeeeeeek!

Read them too.

Some of them are really good.

But alas, I don’t have a Thing yet.

I really really want one so I can look upon it with great affection and say,

” Thing of mine, how I have longed to gaze upon your beauty”

and then I would share it with anyone and everyone.

Right now my thing is that I don’t have a Thing.

And part of not having a Thing is accepting it and recognizing that I have so many things, and maybe my thing tree has not completely taken root yet.  Or maybe I am merely beginning to branch out.

That.  Is.  Okay.

And, necessary.

I want you to know that if you don’t have a thing and if you’re feeling thingless and frustrated or sad-faced about it and you still work a day job and aren’t totally busting up your cubicle with a sexy hammer dressed in a superhero costume…

It. Is. Okay.

I’m saying this because I need to know it’s okay that I’m where I am.

And that means that other people need to hear it too.

It’s okay to be where you are.

Clarification: I am not saying it is supposed to feel okay to be somewhere you may not want to be.  It feels uncomfortable and scary to be somewhere you don’t want to be. I only mean to point out that you are not alone and to suggest that having a Thing takes time. And that maybe a good place to start would be to let yourself be in that thingless place without added pressure from yourself.  It starts with love.

I believe that.

And I believe that everyone has a thing or two or three to offer the world.

You and me and everyone we know.

Even if it isn’t out there yet, it’s definitely in You.

With love and a big thank you to you readers.

Gawsh, you are awesome!

This post is dedicated to all of you sweet things with no Things out there…There is a Tom Jones song in the jukebox ready to drop in your honour right now.

Ah, there it is.

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Fade to black

I invite you  to consider this space as you would a cherished friend’s sprawling deck overlooking the garden on a sunny weekend afternoon. Enjoy a cocktail, but please know this: kind words enhance while negatives detract.  Keep it nice. Keep it clean.

Or just keep it.