7-26-10

“I used to believe… that growing and growing up are analogous, that both are inevitable and uncontrollable processes. Now it seems to me that growing up is governed by the will, that one can choose to become an adult, but only at given moments. These moments come along fairly infrequently – during crises in relationships, for example, or when one has been given the chance to start afresh somewhere – and one can ignore them or seize them.” — Nick Hornby

At the moment, I’m seizing the moment. It isn’t graceful, but I’m happy for having the choice.

What choices are you making? What moments are you seizing today? Do tell!

via Daniel Semper and Aeromental / flickr

I just saw Salt. My girl crush on Angelina Jolie continues unabated and unrequited. And I’ve just spent the last hour fantasizing about taking a kick-boxing class and jumping on top of moving vehicles… Once I can comfortably touch my nose to my knees, that is. Which will happen right after I dump George Clooney for not taking our relationship seriously.

In addition to Salt, here’s a list of movies I recommend that may be at a theatre near you:

• Inception. Not nearly as confusing as some people claim, a great conversation piece and much better than Memento.
• I Am Love. Cinema as art.
• The Kids Are All Right. Capturing all the best aspects of indie film-making – emotion, integrity, simplicity, honesty and joy. Plus, Ruffalo is hot.

Now that you know my top movie picks of the moment, my work here is done. I will now go consider what evasive moves I must master as I sleep, on the off chance a Russian spy intercepts me on my way to work in the morning.

This post may or may not self-destruct in the next five seconds…

7-19-10

Three lady bugs explore a wonderland. What are you exploring today?

Actions and I are having a little falling out at the moment – lots of miscommunication, the silent treatment, ineffective communication, etc. In fact, I’m feeling very abandoned, if you wanna know the truth. Actions seem to have deserted me entirely. So rude.

Every day, I set out with grand plans. But then I hit the snooze button. At least five times.

And that pattern is repeated throughout the day. Metaphorically speaking. I DO get out of bed, of course. The distraction and procrastination provided by the proverbial snooze button, however, is incredibly effective. It comes in numerous packages and flavors, but the result is the same. Time is “stopped.” Action is delayed.

Which means my laptop never gets turned on, I don’t write that great post that’s been peaking out from various dark passageways of my mind, I don’t visit my lovely friends at the long list of glorious blogs cluttering my RSS feed, my eyes bounce over my Twitter feed. Stories remain untold. Designs remain uncreated. Business plans remain undeveloped.

The only way to defeat the snooze button is to ignore lethargy and to relinquish comfort.

The only way to step into action is to force engagement.

So I’m forcing engagement. My brain is as foggy as it always is when the alarm goes off in the morning. Except that it’s not the morning. But I’m getting up anyway… after I hit snooze just one more time.

How are you and your snooze button doing? Have you turned it off yet today?

by aphotoshooter/flickr

I’ve been very silent for the past week or so, both online and off. I don’t know what it’s about, really. I simply get hit by a wave of exhaustion when I think about… thinking, much less talking or writing. I’d love to blame it on the June Gloom that descends upon Los Angeles at this time of year, or an incredibly busy schedule, or an epic natural disaster but, alas, none of those hold up to scrutiny, or even a side glance. And since I have no idea what’s causing this current phase of misanthropy, I’m not sure what to do to get out of it. Which is why I’m now purging on the page.

Not that I’m expecting you to sift through my bile or trudge along as I write myself out of the vagueness– or actually, that’s exactly what I’m asking of you.

If you’ve been around here a bit, you know that I spent most of 2009 in tears. The tears stopped in 2010 and I thought:

WHOOPPEE!
I’m done.
I never have to feel sad again.
Everything will now fall magically into place.
I deserve a fairytale ending, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
Oh, and look, there’s some chocolate.
Let me eat THAT for breakfast, lunch AND dinner…

And down the rabbit hole I went…

Have I ever mentioned that I use food like others use alcohol or heroine? Not in the recreational use kind of way, no. That wouldn’t be so bad. In fact, there’s a twisted sexiness to that use of addictive substances. Or at least I’d be skinnier.

But no.

Instead I (choose?) to use food because I frequently feel like my head screams a version of the following:

CHECK ME OUT OF THIS EMOTION THING NOW – I DON’T LIKE IT -  I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING – WHAT AM I DOING – MY LIFE IS UNMANAGEABLE – OH MY GOD THE DISHES ARE DIRTY AGAIN – WHERE IS THE GODDAMN KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOUR – THERE’S MOLD IN MY BATHROOM – HOW DOES EVERYONE ELSE KNOW HOW TO NAVIGATE EXISTENCE – WHY AM I NOT FAMOUS AND BEING FED SEEDLESS GREEN GRAPES – I WILL BE A SINGLE, CAT LADY FOREVER – I AM MORE PATHETIC THAN THE ROTTING TURD ON A DEAD CORPSE IN THE RAIN – THE WORLD IS FULL OF IDIOTS – EVERYTHING WOULD BE BETTER IF I CONTROLLED THE WORLD – PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME MAKE A DECISION – MY BRAIN IS A HAMSTER WHEEL SPINNING SPINNING SPINNING – PLEASE STOP AND SHUT THE FUCK UP NOW

Consistent consumption of food has worked better than any Bose silencing headphones to reduce the chatter. Of course, it also silences everything else. Not so good.

There’s a saying in 12 Step rooms that you know if someone is an addict when she calls 9-1-1 after breaking a nail. I wish I could say that was an exaggeration.

Laundry piles defeat me. Dirty tubs defeat me. Wardrobe decisions defeat me. People defeat me.

I’ve been known to binge on snap peas, for crap-sake.

About seven years ago, I got help. I was tired of avoiding birthday parties because of an overwhelming sense that I would ruin the event by showing up and being fat. I hated the shame of broken promises to myself about things I would or wouldn’t eat, activities I would or wouldn’t do. I’d started hiding food even when no one was around from whom I needed to hide anything. I was done with feeling entirely hopeless and helpless.

Then, things got better. So very, very much better.

But now, I find myself once again looking at invitations with dread, breaking promises to myself, not showing up for others in the ways I wish. I am a turtle shrinking into my shell.

by littleREDelf / flickr

This is familiar terrain on which I tread, but I have NO INTEREST in taking routes already walked.

My heart is that of an explorer.

So I’m lifting up my machete, with this purge of words, and stepping into the wilderness once again. I’m scared and uncomfortable and already doubting the sense of leaving behind the comfort of isolation and silence.

BREATHE DEEP. Off I go…

by hurleygurley/flickr

I’ve been acutely aware each day, for the past few, that I haven’t written anything in this space. Since the inception of Pleasure Notes, I’ve only succeeded in creating daily ramblings during one month, despite my continued desire to write every day. I don’t beat myself up over the gap between desire and reality in this regard, or at least not usually. But for some reason, it’s currently driving me crazy. Perhaps it’s because I’ve committed to 21 5 800 and I believe that the community created by challenges is best served when the participation is public. It could also be that I love this space so much, and the creative outlet it provides is such a highlight in my life at the moment, that I’m uber-aware of my own absence. When I do show up here, however, I like to at least strive for coherency. And there’s the rub.

by Sabrina Campagna/flickr

At the moment, my thoughts are so jumbled that I’m more likely to land on the moon by day’s end than find any degree of coherency in my mind. Poor brain.

***

As I mentioned, I now resemble Uncle Jeb’s third cousin once removed because of some dental hi-jinx. It seems that was not horror enough. Over the weekend, I momentarily forgot that bed posts are solid and decide to slam my toe into one, leaving me crippled for a day and contemplating x-rays and crutches. Yesterday, my thumb suddenly decided to lay siege to the poorly defended carpal tunnel. And in a mysterious turn of events that has nothing to do with the increased availability of mini soy ice cream sandwiches at my local Trader Joe’s, I have added a new tire to my Michelin-envying waist.

by NuageDeNuit/flickr

My body has betrayed me and now I will never be cast in the remake of Catwoman!

***

I fear that I am THIS CLOSE to becoming a shut-in, and I blame it all on my furry feline friend, Bella. I grew up with dogs. I also grew up ridiculing people who owned cats. Now, I have one. What’s worse?

Eating cat hair with every meal, and finding it woven through every piece of fabric that has ever entered my home, no longer fazes me.

by exper/flickr

Also, the torrid, entangled affair that cat hair and dust bunnies seem to be carrying on in every nook and cranny of my truly humble abode is downright unseemly, and it is for this reason alone that I’m leaving them untouched.

One benefit of maintaining this level of filth love on all surfaces is that, like fog, it reflects light in interesting and unusual ways. I can pretend I have a floor covered in disco balls.

***

I should be pregnant. I already have the silhouette. I’m hungry all the time but NOTHING IS SATISFYING, not even chocolate. My boobs have enough storage space to hold milk for quintuplets, at least, and are in dire need of something to restore them to gravity-defying plumpness.

by Pikaluk/flickr

Of course, there is the prerequisite of sex, and I’d have more luck finding a cow to tip on the streets of Los Angeles than engaging in that 3-letter word at the moment.

***

I would have made a great heiress.

***

I will never be an Olympic gymnast. Damn you, Nadia, for putting the idea in my head!

***

Why do I love office supplies and kitchen utensils so much when my fondness for offices and kitchens is so tepid?

***

Will I ever have a coherent thought again?

by vaXzine/flickr

Welcome to my world. How are things looking in yours?

But first, I have a bone to pick with the Tooth Fairy.

by AlterEgoTrip Svenska/flickr

I don’t think it’s fair that TF only works with kids. I want to put in a claim to the Council That Be; I believe I was short-shrifted. Should I really be punished, and have financial benefits withheld, simply because my baby teeth stay around longer than others’ and nothing’s moving in to kick them out?

Instead of receiving a quarter under my pillow this morning, to compensate for my pain and suffering, I received a dental bill for $368. Even with the recession and layoffs, this seems a bit wonky.

Otherwise, however, I’m not nearly as traumatized by my semi-toothless state as I thought I’d be. As a result, I’m beginning to suspect that FEAR is just fluff backed by stellar marketing.

I’ve known my tooth needed to be jettisoned for years. It had gotten infected numerous times. The roots had disintegrated. It was so much smaller than the surrounding teeth, it did little more than serve as a convenient tray upon which food remnants would sit until I noticed them. Nonetheless, I balked at saying goodbye. Vanity was shouting that I might as well move to the Ozarks. Inner Child was awash in abandonment issues.

But then, something odd happened. I stopped listening. It wasn’t that the pain this week was any worse than it’s been in the past, or that I’d suddenly won the lottery, killed my Inner Child or decided to move in with a hot mountain man. Instead, I decided to move past the fear and face whatever came after.

So simple.

***

As I was heading to my dentist yesterday, Abby Sunderland was feared lost in the middle of the ocean. Today, I’m missing a tooth and she’s missing a mast on her sailboat. And we’re both alive. I know it’s odd to compare my tooth extraction to her sailing near-catastrophe, but both circumstances involve fear. This morning, when I learned she’d been found and wasn’t injured, my first thought was: I wonder how she’ll remember the past 24 hours?

Abby must have been terrified when she lost contact with the world, in the midst of a potentially deadly storm.

***

I remember being woken up one night by a car bomb going off in front of my apartment, blowing out the windows of the building, shooting flames along my balcony. I was living in Athens, Greece, at the time and the Gulf War had just started. I remember looking at the clock. It read 4 a.m. On most nights, I would be just walking into my building at about this time, coming home from clubbing. I didn’t know if my American roommate and I were the intended target, or if perhaps a diplomat also lived in our building, or if the street in front of my home had simply provided the only parking space available. What I did know was FEAR.

At least, that’s what my diary tells me.

If I look at the pages I wrote that night, I see frantic chicken scratch and I read panic. Now, however, the sensations I feel most when thinking back on the incident are NOSTALGIA and EXHILARATION.

NOT FEAR.

***

When the dentist pulled my tooth out, I felt no pain. When I got up from the chair, however, I was shaking.

by gaab22/flickr

I wish I’d been able to save my tooth, not to keep but to dispose of it in a more ritualized manner. Everything in me is shifting at the moment, even though it looks like nothing is happening. I’m dreaming with my eyes open. I’m slowing releasing the fears I’ve tethered to me since childhood. How symbolic, then, that I am no longer anchored by that little baby tooth. Nothing has taken its place yet, but it will.

***

Of course, one trip to the dentist is not going to eradicate fear from my life. But the desire to burst through it, like a battered boat through the raging waves of a rabid storm, is increasingly greater than the fear. Seth wrote a nice bit of inspiration on this topic today, as well. As always, the need to swim through fear is applicable to all aspects of life.

It’s reassuring to think that, no matter how crippling the fear, memory blurs the edges of it. With that knowledge held firmly against my heart, it’s much easier to dive into the unknown.

What are you doing to swim through your fear?

self-evidence + authenticity

I’ve been thinking about COMPASSION a lot these last few days, since I saw it on the list of topics provided by Dian as part of her SE+A challenge, which I’m doing in tandem with Bindu’s 21.5.800 challenge and Chris’ EBK and Danielle’s FSS (I’m an affiliate) and my laundry. I know I have need of more compassion, toward others and (I begrudgingly admit) toward myself but, as with every emotion, it can be awkward and uncomfortable.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines compassion as:

“deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.”

I’ve got the first component of compassion pretty much mastered, and that’s part of the problem. I’m so aware of the suffering of others that I can become overwhelmed by it and shut down. Too many stories of rape, abuse, torture, injustice, loss – whether it originate in Rwanda or the Gulf waters or next door – make me crash like a computer with a crappy firewall. I listen to every tale, I feel every cut and I cry copious tears, even when my eyes are dry. I lack an effective filter. My only recourse is to unplug. Then, however, I’m disconnected from my humanity, which isn’t a particularly ideal situation. Or so I’m told.

The second component of compassion – the wish to relieve suffering – can be tricky too. I’m aware that abusers are frequently also victims, for example, but I become ambivalent when confronted with whether they should be alleviated of their suffering. Anger, indignation, fear, and helplessness suddenly appear in the sandbox.

So, having true compassion for others is a noble challenge.

Having compassion for myself, on the other hand, is nigh on impossible.

I know this from experience.

by MysticMoon14/flickr

In addition to all the complications already built in to feeling compassion for others, a slew of new pesky elements come into play when I attempt to direct it inward.

PERFECTIONISM

I screwed up something at work today. Actually, I didn’t screw up. Someone else wasn’t prepared. The end result, however, was that I was unable to perfectly complete my task. There were no serious, or even trivial, ramifications to the event. Yet, I was ready to burst into tears. The intensity of my reaction stunned me. I understood that there was no need to tumble headlong into fear or self-loathing. AND YET…

I was engulfed in my need for perfection. Why?

CONTROL

The need for perfection is really only a facet of this greater need: control. If I do everything perfectly, then I control the situation. This is an illusion, of course, but a VERY VIVID ONE. If I control the situation, then I DO NOT NEED YOU. If I don’t need you, then I DO NOT HAVE TO FEEL.

If I don’t feel, then I don’t fear, or fail. I also don’t learn or grow, but – PSHAW! – who needs that, right?

Also, if I don’t feel, then no more tears – not even the dry-eyed ones. (Johnson & Johnson taught me well!)

via Johnson & Johnson

STRENGTH

We’re taught at a young age that we must avoid association with certain labels at all costs; nobody wants to be a CRYBABY. Boys don’t cry. Professionals don’t cry. Strong people don’t cry.

There is a saying that gets bandied about hallowed halls and recovery rooms which professes, in far more eloquent words, that we should embrace weakness, not strength.

A strong branch breaks; a weak branch bends.

Without flexibility, adaptability, movability… there is no change, no evolution, no metamorphosis.

Which is great. For rocks, Creationists and Heidi Montag. Perhaps.

Compassion is kept at arm’s length. Connection is severed. Humanity is denied.

AW, HELL.

There’s that wee issue of HUMANITY, again.

I want that. And, much to my chagrin, it seems humanity and compassion are kinda inseparable.

So I guess it’s time to leave the over-crowded sandbox and schedule those two for a play date.

Any suggestions for what we should do?

the challenge

Today is the first day of @binduwiles‘ challenge, 21.5.800, and I am absolutely terrified. I’m feeling completely overwhelmed by life at the moment. My TO DO list is a roving monster of infinite size and, worse yet, it’s a monster with whom I very much want to be friends. The majority of items on it are things I REALLY WANT TO DO. But I’m tired and sick and emotional and unanchored, all of which has a funny effect on the monster and transforms it into a very intimidating beast. My body is betraying me. My head is freeze-dried. The white noise of the world has become a cacophony of echoes.

This challenge could not have come at a better time.

I find sanity in writing. Putting words to paper – any words, in any form, to anything resembling a blank, white page – SILENCES my brain. It is a strange alchemy that I care little to explain. I’m simply grateful for having stumbled upon the phenomenon. One of my biggest life challenges, however, is letting myself obtain that level of sanity.

I love yoga. I love how aware of my body I become when I do it. I love how strong and supple my limbs become. I love how I can feel SPACE within, and through, me. I love the rooting that happens, the invisible threads that develop between me and the ground, between my physical being and the physical earth. I love sinking into the floor and reaching for the sky. Another of my biggest life challenges, however, is letting myself be in space.

So this 21.5.800 challenge upon which I’m embarking should be interesting. I think it may be all about SILENCE and SPACE. But I wouldn’t be too surprised if it also becomes about SONIC BOOMS and KALEIDOSCOPES OF COLOR.

Only time will tell…

Will you be coming on the journey as well?

6-07-10

What dreams and goals are you reaching for today?