Loves Me Lightly

I’ve been very new age-y today. Last night I found a meditation site on the web with real audio. A ten minute guided meditation at your fingertips, replete with music and a visit to my authentic self. Very cool.

When I arrived home, Ed made an early dinner and I called to arrange for a massage. A woman named Tina, with rough hands, kneaded lavender scented oils into arms, fingers, stomach, thighs. She played Japanese music and kept telling me to breathe. My feet are tight, she wonders why the muscles in my feet are tight.

I took a shower and did a full body exfoliate with jasmine and rose oils. The lavender oils loosened everything and the shower smelled like a flower store. It was heavenly. It still is, really. The smell of everything lightly rising from my skin.

And exiting the shower Ed makes me hot tea with honey and sets it by my computer. He loves me lightly, offers up these little gifts and then disappears into the other room. Just when I need space he offers it up and asks for nothing in return. Here’s the tea, now you just do whatever you want, whatever you need. I’ll be in the other room.

Today was just a perfect day. Today this is just a perfect life.

I Need A New Joystick

I have opinions about everything – fairly strong ones. In my internal life the universe is dichotomous – there is right and wrong, good and evil, black and white. I’m the right, but interestingly not the good. There is an intense discordance in my inner life. I’m learning to be okay with it. Ed is learning to be okay with it as well – all at once being my beacon of strength and support and an emblem of all that is evil in the world. He wears these clothes well.

I had the most productive day yet. But I don’t want to measure the value of my life in yardsticks of productivity. So it was productive but not as joyful as it could or should have been. I do want to measure the value of my life in yardsticks of joy.

So what is joy? What is joy? How do I find this thing that eludes my disposition so these days? Of course I could go off in another direction in a spiraling tome, but does it get me any closer. I’m not sure of this.

I think some people on this planet are zealots for their way of being, doing and undoing. Like Nietzsche wrote, “Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.” I’m not so different. My path is my path. I’m not so different from anyone else in this regard. You know, this is my path so fuck off. But I’m also pretty keen on the goal and maybe to some degree that sets me apart – apart with a subset of humanity who are fairly married to both to process and the product.

So even I’m wondering where this is going - how this has to do with my joy. I might be wondering this for awhile. I need to be okay with this. Today is all that matters. I really, really need to see and feel my today with more clarity, love and integrity. It’s time to get a new battery for the meditation helmet and see if I can open my third eye a little wider.

Turning Corners

The mountain was beautiful today. Forget-Me-Nots and white wildflowers (I don’t know what they’re called) are popping out early. I see them and smile, like I’m opening a present that’s been waiting in a box since last spring. I took the short loop today, hoping that maybe I’d spy the first wild iris of the season. I didn’t. But I did see the purple ones. I don’t know what they’re called either. I’d seen a few fairly heavy with buds and thought that perhaps in a few days.. then I rounded the corner and there they were. Ms. Secret and I did a little spring dance right there on the hill. We climbed up off the trail. I spun in circles while she watched me then she started spinning about too – tucking her back end in and running about in that excited playful way dogs do.

These antics of mine used to frighten her. She’d look at me in a suspicious way and cow. Now as soon as I set foot off trail she seems to know that there’s something to celebrate. It truly is a wonderful life!

I still feel pretty toxic on the inside but at the same time I feel like I’m slowly turning a corner. Haroomf. Don’t we spend out entire God Damned lives turning corners? Just walk around it for crying out loud. Can we just get on with it already?

I was thinking, I was wondering… was I more intelligent when I smoked? Did I think more quickly, were the synapses firing just a bit more rat-a-tat-tat? Or was I more dull and did somehow the addiction and the drug lead me to believe I was more clever? Right now I find myself rather dull. With most other drugs, people just think that they’re more interesting but they’re not. So on some level I hope I just thought I was more interesting - and now if and when I have a thought that I find remotely compelling – well, maybe it will really be brilliant. Or something. I’m not sure.

You know.. one to lie and one to listen….

You Can Call Me Baby

About six weeks ago I stopped smoking. Life has revolved around this point – waking, dreaming, laughing, screaming. And suddenly I’m not the person I thought I was. Wait, I simply don’t know who I am. Oh, it’s not so bad. When you don’t know who you are you don’t’ bicker with yourself so much, there’s not all this old baggage to address. I’m all newborn, covered with blood. Ten fingers, ten toes and a big mess you can call baby.

I’m in a rather menacing way. It’s fascinating. Dark thoughts at every turn. I don’t like it. However much I’d ceased liking who I was in that relationship with the addiction – well, I don’t care much for this girl either. On the ferry en route to San Francisco the other day, I thought about some essay I’d read here or there on mediation and prayer. The author contends that whether or not we consider ourselves religious folk and whether or not we think we pray – that we do – we pray and meditate all the time. The author urged us to be mindful of what our prayer rests on. Some people spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about money, material things, what others think of them (or what other’s aren’t thinking of them), etc. etc. So these are the kinds of things that might occupy our thoughts – which are our meditations and prayers.

Considering this unremembered author’s contentions I tried to be mindful. The bay, how beautiful the water, the sun glinting on patterns of waves in such and such a way to look like diamonds sparkling on something dark and mysterious and deep. The color of the hills surrounding San Quentin prison – electric green from the winter rains. The smell of salt and sea. The woman who asks for change on the Embarcadero – she has a lovely smile. I give her ten dollars. It’s what I would have spent on cigarettes that day – do I think for a second she is less worthy than that?

It’s all a fancy way of saying, go to a happy place. So I went to my happy place. I don’t mind saying that I have a bit of disdain that it’s a contrived place – not a natural place my thoughts and heart lands – not like it used to be. Or did it?

I keep trying to remember the wisdom in that thing that Homer Simpson said… Marge, it takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen. It only goes to follow that it also takes two to speak the truth. Some days I feel like I’d have a real edge up on things if I were schizophrenic.