inspiration

Well, that felt good. The last post, I mean, which I spent something like four hours writing last night. Of course, this morning I woke up with some new ideas. That's what happens when I yell help, I guess--inspiration. Mostly, I can see how I'm finding tricky ways to essentially judge people, even as I see past all the meaningless ego stuff. This pattern is old and there are understandable reasons for it, but--regardless of what people around me think or do--if this all breaks down to is me feeling persecuted, then I have answered my own question, and I know how I'm colluding in the proceedings. And I know why nervousness makes it worse: To expect persecution and misunderstanding from others, no matter how many times it may have happened in the past, must be to participate in the perpetuation of that experience.

A Course In Miracles makes very clear that there are two types of forgiveness, and only one is at all helpful. If we're regarding other people or ourselves as having done something bad, which carries "real" consequences, but we sort of magnanimously decide that we will find it in our hearts and blah, blah blah--that accomplishes nothing but to underscore the unhelpful and incorrect view that we are not God's perfect children, but rather that sin is real. It's contradictory. That kind of forgiveness is more like a form of hate than Love. Real forgiveness, on the other hand, looks past all error as unreal. I believe this firmly, and I do apply it. However, if I'm allowing myself to also remain so concerned with how to function socially, i.e. on superficial/ego terms, then that must just be the ego wanting to reclaim its bogus control.

So screw it! I'll stop worrying. People will think what they think of me. If I let go of all these fears that they're going to see me wrong and I won't know what to do, I bet the odds of things going smoothly will go up sharply. Just from the absence of fear! I may be crippling myself and creating these self-fulfilling nightmares, fanning the flames rather than pouring cool water. I have wasted a lot of energy worrying about my social challenges. But it hasn't just been wasteful--it's been counterproductive. Wouldn't it make sense that if I feel chronically wounded that I might give off a defensive vibe? What effect must that have? And what's the friggin' point? I know this crap has never touched the real me or had any detrimental effects at all. And on the level of experience in the world, if anything, it has taught me more and more about Love and real forgiveness.

I may be becoming increasingly eccentric. I just don't see things like most people I meet. But do I trust that my spiritual path is right, or don't I? Do I trust God and Guidance, or not? As I have pursued this learning, I've become afraid to be too different! On the level of fear, I have fashioned my spiritual progress into yet another reason I'm likely to be "attacked"--I have feared that others will get uncomfortable and take my personal detachment, well, personally. As a judgment on them. And that has happened, perhaps proving once again that we make our own experience in this world, and that we always get whatever it is we're asking for. Well, I don't want to be a monk. Actually, part of me would love to be a monk, but I have made different choices. Anyway. I'd love to find more kindred spirits with whom to share my life's experiences, and I hope I can finally realize my goal of bringing only peace and light to everyone I touch. I hope as well that I can find more ease. But my inspiration this morning is that I need to let go, and leave it all to God to heal. Settle much more deeply into what I know to be true about me and about others. Release my fears and my projections of the past onto the future, show up for the moment, and trust. It can sound like a daunting proposition until I remember that I really don't have to do anything for this healing. It's much more about stopping doing, and staying out of Love's way. Whether or not I see it, I am always held up by much more powerful forces than my own wits.

I'm remembering something from a recent ACIM lesson, which is particularly timely considering my recent bout of laryngitis: Let me remember all I do not know, and let my voice be still, remembering. But let me not forget Your Love and care, keeping Your promise to Your Son in my awareness always.

That's not to say that letting go and trusting God more fully will immediately stop all unpleasant interactions from happening with other people. But it will certainly heal my sense of brokenness, and make it possible for me to find a new way to function. It may not remove all worldly discomfort, but--I do believe --it will bring peace. I feel better already.

Coincidentally, I finished the ACIM Workbook for the second time yesterday, having struggled and staggered my way through the last section. Actually, I skipped the final five lessons because I know I'm not up for them. I've gotten so much out of whatever effort I've been willing to make, but I have simply not been able to learn to meditate the way the Course prescribes. Though I experienced many unspeakably beautiful moments of prayer, I never accomplished prolonged mental focus, and I continued to forget all too often to pray/meditate hourly and to turn immediately to Truth in all challenging moments. So I started at the beginning again today. I want peace. I can find more willingness to open to it. To bring it.

time to unload

Whoah! Two weeks since I've posted. The funny thing is, I haven't been able to speak for almost that whole time. You'd think that might make me want to write more. Guess not. Till now, I guess.

It's been two weeks of ups and downs, and introspection. There's a peculiar social challenge sort of haunting the margins of my thought lately, a specific recurring situation which seems to contain the most implausible number of angles on several of my life themes. I can tell that larger forces are at work, because not only it is perfectly clear that I have been, and am, on both "sides" of this type of challenge, its two-sides-of-the-same-coin aspect is so prominent as to verge on the comic. I like when God makes things so obvious that the only sensible option is a big cosmic stooge slap. (God as Moe? Oh, dear.)

Still, my ironic big-picture detachment on how hilarious it is to be feeling inclined to complain about the very sort of thing that I detest most to experience complaints around when I do it, for instance, and even my lack of personal engagement on any painful or negative level at all, seem not yet enough to facilitate healing and mutual understanding. It will come eventually. It always does, in some form. But in the meantime, I wonder yet again at the gulf between my thoughts and intentions about people and (some of) their perceptions of me and corresponding reactions. I seem to have a special knack for pushing buttons. If someone within a five hundred-foot radius is nursing a painful insecurity or spoiling for a fight, there seems to be a better than decent chance that they will decide that I am provoking them and lash out accordingly.

I'm definitely no angel. I can get negative when I feel frustrated, which is more often then I'd like, and I can certainly be bitchy when I'm emotionally strung out. But even at those times, I'm usually just doing my best to deal with my own discomforts and sensitivities. I tend to take on too much rather than too little responsibility, and although, for this reason among others, I can really get riled when singled out unfairly, I'm usually painfully aware that when I feel prickly--though a hundred lifetimes ago it may have been tempting to blame someone else's annoying behavior--my prickly-ness belongs to me alone; it's my responsibility. And that's hard enough. Anyway, I don't mean to whine, God, but some people do just seem to project the most fascinatingly dark motives onto my speech and actions, even when I'm at my most happy and relaxed.

It's been a pattern all my life, of course, so I'm sure I'm inadvertently colluding in the proceedings somehow. Wish I could figure out how. One thing that I see happening is that I can tell when someone's on edge in this way about me, and I start to energetically walk on eggshells. Nervousness just never seems to help anything. Funny thing, though--when someone has decided I'm judging them, even sincere niceness and genuine, heartfelt overtures can be perceived as disingenuous, even nefarious snarkyness. When that happens, which is way too often, it's absolutely stunning. There's just nothing I can do.

Here's a garden-variety example of my experience of this type of misunderstanding: One day when I was about nineteen and had just returned home from college for the summer, I saw my sister in the kitchen and said hello. She had bleached her (dark blonde) hair since I'd seen her last. I smiled and said, "Your hair is so blonde!" Her face instantly contorted into a mask of seething rage. She called me a f@$%ing bitch, stomped away, and stayed palpably mad at me for about three weeks. I think it may have taken years, actually, to finally live that down. She had simply assumed utterly that I was critical of her appearance, and therefore expected the worst. I think she thought I was patronizing her, criticizing her with a smile. Her new hair color was noticeable, and it would have been rude not to acknowledge it, but I can assure you, I felt nothing critical at the time. I thought nothing much of it at all, really, and was just making conversation, so any attitude she perceived from me was pure projection. But project she did. Hoo-boy. I had been very, very bad.

But that's my sister, and sisters just have this sort of stuff, you say? Well, how about this one: A massage therapist once yelled at me so hard that I left sobbing, for walking into her workroom at my appointment time instead of waiting in the room outside. I didn't even know that was her waiting room. I'd seen her three times, and had always just walked through her open door. She knew that this was my first experience with massage therapy. She also knew why I was there--on the recommendation of a doctor, for stress-related neck and shoulder pain. I had even explained to her at my first appointment that I felt a little uncomfortable with the whole idea. I was concerned that my nervousness and discomfort might impede the process, and I even told her that I was stressed and might seem edgy. She assured me that she was a professional and a healer, smiling warmly.

And the first two massages seemed to go fine, even amiably. I thought it was possible that this could be helping. But on the third visit, on the third time that I went to walk through her open door at the time of our appointment, she blocked my entrance and barked some awful rhetorical question like did I have any idea how disrespectful it was of me to just march right into her space. I was beyond stunned. Tears welled up right away, and I stammered something about how I had no idea that I was meant to wait, but it only got worse from there. It seems it had never occurred to her that I might simply be ignorant. She yelled more--I can't possibly express just how out-of-left-field this all seemed to me--, telling me about other things I had done wrong, how she thought I was ripping her off because insurance companies never paid her, and how terrible my attitude was. I tried to defend myself between sobs. But on she went, not softening in the slightest. A therapist from another office came out into the hallway--we were making quite the racket, I'm sure. I wished he'd come down and administered the stooge slap. I almost called for his help. Eventually I just fled.

One of the cosmically comic things that happened over the past couple of weeks is that when I could not speak at all, when I struggled just to whisper and was trying to avoid doing even that, G kept getting angry at me during the resulting absurdist pantomime interactions for "copping a 'tude." I may have been a bit frustrated trying to express myself, plus I really didn't feel well, but I don't even remember feeling all that edgy. I was trying to be straightforward and as brief as possible. Makes sense, right? You'd think. But it turns out my "tone" is misread even when I can't make a sound! It was just too much.

Of course, I am also very free with my thoughts generally, "good" and "bad." I lavish praise and thanks. I make yummy noises when I eat. I also think nothing of outwardly acknowledging my own personal foibles and failings, but I'm correspondingly loose-lipped about others'. I just don't take my own crap very seriously, and I'm afraid I tend to expect, perhaps irrationally, similar detachment from others. If I have something to say, I'll say it, to their faces. For me that's just the Golden Rule--I feel respected and trusted when someone brings an issue to me rather than stewing about it or griping about it to others. I'm not a big fan of talking negatively about others behind their backs, actually. When I do it, it's out of frustration rather than malice, and it's generally tempered with acknowledgments of my own stuff, observations about the difficulty of growth, and lots of praise for effort made. If you look deep enough, all of us have good intentions at heart. I see people as perfect in Truth and doing their best in this world, and my heart is often broken by the sheer pointlessness of personal difficulties, even as it seems to be being stomped on.

That being said, in keeping with this pattern of judgment and ill-will being projected onto me, God help me when I actually do take issue with something someone has said or done. That's when the boom might really come down. Oh, Lawd. Like I said, I tend to take too much responsibility when things go awry, so even though I will speak up when I feel hurt, I know what it feels like to have the worst assumed, and I'm careful to keep it in terms of my own experience. Sometimes that works great. But with the Eggshell crowd, forget it. "Ow, that hurt," rather than becoming an opportunity for communication and greater understanding, is heard instead as "I think you are a bad person." Then I'm really in trouble.

Of course, I do believe there is such a thing as douche-y behavior, objectively speaking and without regard to motive or intentions. And in this world, we all seem to do stupid things and adopt attitudes which hurt each other, whether we mean to or not. It's not always about misunderstanding--sometimes it is about a kind of judgment. But it's judgment in the sense of discernment, not condemnation. Even if I were to comment on the unprofessional behavior of that massage therapist, for instance, I would merely be making a factual observation, and I don't care what might be said about negativity or judgment, facts is facts.

In any case, this tendency of mine to unwittingly act as a projection screen, as well as my general lack of restraint with regard to self-expression, have over time made me better suited than most to see and accept that some of my own behaviors and attitudes, however they are intended, may tend to be problematic under certain circumstances. I may not always see a reason to modify how I act, but I sometimes do. I'm generally willing to at least tone it down here or there as needed. And in any case, I'm truly, definitely, always eager to talk objectively about how the way I act might be affecting someone else, and to work with that person to find a solution to any resulting problems. The solution is often the talking itself, and the resulting mutual awareness and--hopefully--understanding.

When it comes to it, what is so terrible about dealing with that stuff? When you find someone who's equipped to deal, those corrective conversations can be the most fruitful and healing. With folks who can just show up, meet you halfway, take you at your word, and offer their own perspectives with an open heart and an open mind, it's just not a big deal. I have seen the promised land. We can talk to each other, sisters and brothers. Do not fear.

Of course, I have to allow that not everyone is equipped to deal. Or willing. Or... something. Sometimes emotion complicates things. And sometimes two people's stuff seems just too negatively complementary to ever get ironed out between them, even with repeated attempts at open corrective communication. At least in the short term. I really do believe that it all gets healed eventually.

But back to objective douche-y-ness. Once, a relative of mine, who is also in a mutual social subset, sent out invitations to a party at my house. The party in question, a double birthday celebration for her and G, had been hosted by her in previous years, and I had offered to throw it this time. I was waiting for a list from her of the friends she wanted me to invite (it was her birthday, after all) when I got the email invitation with the date, time, and my address, complete with a menu and food assignments. Needless to say, I was pretty upset by this. I saw no graceful way out, as I did not feel emotionally prepared to just let that party happen in that way--it would simply have been too uncomfortable for me. I had wanted to host them, to entertain--not just provide a space, for heaven's sake. What was she thinking?

This of course was one of the Eggshell folks in my life. It had always been pretty easy to spot that she was projecting critical attitudes onto me. She seemed intimidated by me--many of these folks do. She always seemed guarded, and sometimes hostile. But she was a family member--she hosts Thanksgiving!--and I did my best. Up to that point, she had been a social friend mostly of G's. They're all quite a bit younger than I am, as well as much more inclined to enjoy sitting around drinking (G only occasionally), so for the double birthday parties in previous years, along with many other such events, I often either made a short appearance or none at all. It was understood that it just wasn't my scene, and that was fine. But this was going to be my chance to offer something fun back to this group that I could enjoy, too. I'd planned to cook like mad and keep the focus on some great party games I know--on interacting rather than "partying." I figured we could all get to know each other better, and I was looking forward to it. It was not to be.

The message I sent in response to the invitation I'd shockingly received to my own party basically said, wow, I'm really upset by this and I just have no idea what to do next. I said, please call me; we need to talk. I think I asked her why she hadn't called before. I also complained that she used an email invitation format that I find tacky and would never have used--a snarky error, for sure, but it's not like I impugned her moral fabric. Anyway, the next thing that happened was that she canceled the party without talking with me. After that, she told me just how horrible I was to have attacked her like that.

It came out over the following days that she had basically pretended to assume that I didn't want to host the party, because she was afraid to talk with me about it. She never did apologize. So the question for me then became, what the hell do I do now? Did I forgive her? Sure. That's necessary for my own well-being. And I find it tends to be easier when a personality seems this messed up, anyway. But on a practical, gotta-see-her-around level, it wasn't easy to know how to actually proceed--what with not only the lack of an apology, but the ferocious insistence that we were somehow mutually culpable, since my response to her action had hurt her feelings. (By the way, she didn't like my dissing her evite, but she wasn't dwelling on it, either: She was hurt and angry because I was upset. Because I had told her that I was upset.) But besides, it was all just so awkward and embarrassing. Where do you go from there? I mean, I'm pretty clueless about social niceties. Maybe I should have consulted Emily Post. What the hell do you do in a situation like this so that everybody gets to save face? Not in a demanding, petulant way, but sheesh, just in a practical one for heaven's sake. How does one politely proceed?

I'm sure I could have made things easier if I'd thought to suck it up and say, you know, I'm sorry that you were hurt. That was the big lesson/reminder from that one for me, and a huge duh!, not that I always remember to apply it even now. At the time, I was just so flabbergasted that she had perpetrated what appeared to me a clearly, objectively massive faux pas--on the face of it!--and yet would not even begin to approach responsibility for the resulting difficulties. I did not know how to clean up the mess alone.

Things eventually just mellowed with time. I wish her well. I still see her, and I wish her well often, and sincerely. But in this situation and in others like it, even over time, the question still is: beyond forgiveness, what do I do? After something like that, my only option generally seems to be to go away and stop trying to make it work. As one friend sagely and perversely put it, you don't have to join the golf club just because you hate golf so much. I was on eggshells! Why did I try to host her damn birthday party in the first place? G and I put that situation to bed by acknowledging that while she might not be great at being a friend, she's quite cool for a relative. We backed off. I don't know if she likes it, exactly, particularly since G is no longer her pal, but the arrangement does seem to work okay. It's just sad. Lonesome.

So. Does anyone else out there have this problem? It's self-fulfilling. Someone gets over-engaged with what they think I'm thinking. They feel insecure. The projector comes out, and they decide I'm judging them. Then their guardedness makes them say or do something so clueless or hurtful that, in the name of self-respect, as well as the hope of social stasis, I feel compelled to say something about. All that does is "prove" how I'm judging them. Sometimes things improve through communication. Sometimes they don't. I get more and more nervous around people, and somehow (how, for pete's sake?) that only makes things worse.

Then there's the other side of perceived judgment, the spiritual cops. When I went to one friend to share my difficulty about the story I just told as it was happening, she shut me down before I'd even gotten started, glowering at me as though I were poisoning her lunch with my negativity, and then--patronizingly, it seemed to me--reminding me that maybe I needed to forgive. She was pregnant at the time, and therefore possibly somewhat impaired, but I had two issues with this, both of which I decided to just table permanently after this disastrous lunch date: One--as I've been saying-- is that forgiveness, for all its ultimate and immediate rightness and goodness, did not seem to provide me with a road map for how to navigate around these land mines or how to proceed in day-to-day interactions after one has gone off. I'd been hoping to compare notes on that. And two, where's my forgiveness, forgiveness lady? I've been hurt and confounded, and I'm upset. I truly do not wish to be coddled or enabled, but I need a friend, not a spanking. I mean, come one! I see her on her path. I see her struggling. And she did something clueless and fear-based that hurt and embarrassed me! How 'bout a kind word? Even if in my anger I had somehow suddenly forgotten who I am as well as all my spiritual work, even if what sat before you was a fallen shell of a person, an egomaniacal harpy bent on revenge, seriously!--even then, how could your cold sternness have helped? How could it teach forgiveness, or Love, or understanding? What are we coming to?

I understood that I had inadvertently whaled my friend with my intensity, and that she had not been prepared to field it. I apologized, forgave her and let it go. She remains largely guarded around me. Just so pointless and sad. So lonesome.

There's one more aspect of this chronic craziness that I need to unload: Sometimes people refuse to believe I'm being honest when I tell them my side of things. They simply cannot accept that I'm anything other than judgmental. It complicates things that I'm intuitive, I think. Others can tell that I see them, but they fill in their own ideas about what specifically I see. One of the sometimes problematic peripheral characters in my life play actually said to me recently, "You think you see me. You think you know me. And you think I'm mean and sinister." This interesting guy definitely does douche-y, and his behavior has made me uncomfortable and/or unhappy from time to time. He's not what I would call careful with people's vulnerabilities. But I identify with him in his freedom of self-expression and boldness around just saying things. I like that. And we've also been friends! How did he think I missed the rest of him, the 98% that's not douche-y? Or for that matter, the Truth of who he is! And how did he miss seeing me? It's all just so sad and stupid. I wish I could show him how I do see him in this world: sweet, sensitive, too smart for comfort, conflicted and frustrated and striving to be good. So much like me, and--come to think of it--, how I wish I were seen, even through the bitchy moments (which by the way are really not particularly numerous). Why not?

Well, world. Well, brothers and sisters. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I am doing my best. And I do love you all. Fellow students of A Course In Miracles or for that matter any other spiritual discipline, if you've made it this far, by all means, chime in. How do you deal with the seeming gulf between the Truth and these bumps along the road of temporal experience?

kersploding

Wow! What a weekend. Beautiful. We had nearly four hundred folks participate over the two days--our biggest singing yet. And not only did everything go smoothly, but even in those unwieldy numbers, we were able to really come together as a community for our shared purpose and enjoy a pervasive sense of unity. There are always annoying little snags in the social and structural fabric of an event like this, and some of my singing brethren seemed as satisfied as ever to occupy a large portion of their time and energy in homing in and dwelling on those, but this year I was able to witness the inevitable element of negativity without feeling overcome by it or in any way responsible for it. And anyway, that element seems, objectively speaking, to be growing smaller and less potent with every passing year. The unity, on the other hand, is increasingly unmistakable.

We are an odd group, really diverse with regard to age and religious and political orientation. We come from all over the country, but the areas of particularly concentrated activity comprise both the rural south and the bluest of blue states and metropolitan areas. It feels a bit superficial to even be focusing on this aspect of things, but--just to get it across to the uninitiated--seriously, where else will you find skate punks joyfully engaged in the same activity as both aging hippies and pious, conservative southerners? Yet our love for the music we share connects us so immediately on the level of Love and Spirit that none of the sort of social challenges you might imagine for such a scenario ever seem to materialize. We simply don't discuss religion or politics. It's enough to have this music in common.

So what is it about the music? Well, the singing is raw and intense, startlingly loud, as richly and gorgeously imperfect as we are, and--when we're really together--absolutely transcendent. There's just nothing else like it. And perhaps because there's nothing else like it, and no convenient accessibility-increasing reference point for it on the radio or anywhere else in pop culture, people tend to either love it or hate it. Imagine ecstatic punk rock with overt religious/life/death themes, where the whole audience is the band, and you might be approaching the ballpark.

You can listen here to some samples of our local singing events from a few years back.

And the weekend for me, personally? Well, I woke up Friday with some cold symptoms; by the beginning to the third session on the first day, they had manifested as laryngitis. I was able to sing a bit in a lower range for most of Saturday, but by the end of the day I had to push hard to make any sound at all, and when I did so only the most unmusical croaks escaped my lips. Crap. I spent most of the Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning helping out with the business of keeping the event ticking, and for a while I was happy to be of service, but by late Sunday morning this routine was getting old. As someone once said about S. H. singing, "I'd travel across the country to sing it, but I wouldn't cross the street to listen to it." Or something. The point is that listening is not the point: the juice is in the participation. And I was beginning to get tired and sad from the frustration of only being able to listen.

Then came the time of the weekend when we sing for singers and loved ones who have passed away in the last year, and also for those who are sick or struggling. It is frequently one of the most powerful moments of the event, as we come together in unity of purpose and gratitude for the community. The first singer to share her thoughts touched me immediately with her ideas about the depth and substance of the sharing that we do at this time, and in general as a community. She has struggled with serious illness over the past few years, and she said she understood from direct experience how much it meant to be sung for at those times. She lead one of my favorite songs, which includes the following text (which I have found especially helpful in times of struggle): When through the deep waters I call thee to go, the rivers of sorrow shall not overflow. For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless, and sanctify to thee thy deepest distress. As the names on the list were read, I resolved to make whatever sound I could in order to participate in remembering and supporting these people. And by the end of that song, I could sing again, though still just in my lower range.

Things just got more beautiful from there. The second half of that lesson, for those who had died, was even more moving than the first. The songs that were sung immediately following served as a sort of extended remembrance. I connected during this time with a woman who lost her son fourteen months ago in Iraq. It's an honor to have participated in supporting her and her family through that painful time (some of us sang at his funeral; she walked behind his casket holding her S.H. book, and she sang with us), and it's a joy to have her beautiful, joyful and resilient spirit among our local singing family. I only know her in the context of singing, but she's clearly an amazing and wonderful person. All I did yesterday was move to stand closer to her when I noticed her crying during the lesson, and offer a hug and a few awkward words of support. Yet she went out of her way to thank me after, "for being such a good friend." I can't describe the loveliness and fullness of intention that she focused on me as she took my hands and said that. These are small moments and small gestures, in a way, yet in that moment I understood that they are the biggest things in the world.

So I moved through the sea of hungry hearts, and I sang all afternoon. At one point late in the day, despite the unimaginably ample supply of reasons to be grateful, my ego managed to get me feeling sorry for myself. I hadn't been called to lead a song yet that day! I'd end up having to go as an afterthought, I bitterly mused, as mass overwhelm and exhaustion set in at the end of the long weekend, as socially not-all-there types became unmoored and started leading redonkulous tunes we were all far too satieted to dedicate ourselves to with any meaningful focus. Plus my voice was going again. (Though, hmmm... that seemed to kick in after the pity party began...) But, lo--what's this? The really, really not-all-there guy DID call the redonkulous tune, and he tried to make it even more arduous by talking about how hard it was, saying that if we got stuck, we could start over. But we came together before we even started singing the song. We effortlessly and good-naturedly guided the misguided singer along the most expedient and joyful path available. The song went fine; it was fun, even. No derailment. No deflation. It would take more than that this year. By the time I was called to lead a song, I realized I had been saved for last, just before the traditional closing song and prayer. It was an honor. My energy and my voice returned. I sang something joyful and fast, and many singers enthusiastically thanked me for closing out the session thusly as we all said our goodbyes.

I am filled with gratitude. And I'm actually not even all that wrung-out or strung-out emotionally. I think not being able to sing much this year may in a way have made it possible for me to have an easier time of things. Though I wouldn't want to lose my voice at a sing again, I have to admit--this was more manageable. Maybe I can take more breaks and do more administrative helping by choice next year.

On a somewhat related note, I noticed something interesting and slightly disappointing about myself yesterday. Last night after I'd been home for a few hours, I sent an email to many of my singing friends and the organizers of the event, with the same title as this post. I tried to express in as few words as possible how I was feeling; I went the cute route by using not-quite-English. And after I hit "send," I realized that all that love and gratitude had gone without saying, and that by saying it, even in a few virtually nonsensical phrases, all I was doing was popping a bubble for myself. I couldn't take the tension anymore--or in any case, I chose not to. I wrote to bring things back to normal. It worked, in a manner of speaking, but next time I'll see if I can just hold the tension of joy and fullness and gratitude too big for words, and let it dissipate on its own. I think this is related to my efforts toward poise... Live and learn. Live and live!

brief check-in

Just stopping by to say hello. I feel I am rocking a strange combination of better than ever and really f'd up lately. At the moment I'm fighting cold symptoms; I'm achy and tired. I've been cooking all day. This weekend is our annual large singing event, and that brings up a variety of emotions as well, from excitement to dread, and unfortunately the needle on the emotionometer is leaning, as usual, toward the 'dread' end of things--though that has much less to do with actual singing/social circumstances than the mere idea of being immersed for two days straight in a sea of hungry, huggy humans singing hymns. I can get overwhelmed pretty easily at these things, and therefore defensive and/or really teary.

And I've been feeling conflicted generally about the social choices I've made, in the last year or two especially, that have left me isolated in many ways. This was really bothering me earlier in the week, actually--enough so that I contacted my own tarot reader and teacher, and dear friend, for a good long reading. And oh my, did I feel worlds better afterward! That pretty much saved my ass this week, actually, and who knows how long the positive effects will ripple out into my life. My perspective on myself and my choices, and my attitude, has been largely purged of fear and negativity, and replaced with grounded calm and confidence. My reader reminded me that all is quite well. She reminded me who I am. I needed that.

Still, everything seems somehow on edge. And I guess this happens to me every spring, but lord-a-mighty, I feel the Life--coursing through me and through the earth, taking me out of my cumbersome body in my dreams, connecting me to everyone and everything, letting me see connections and life paths more and more clearly. And that, my friends, makes me want to eat cereal and watch TV under a blanket.

But off I go this afternoon to a pre-singing event, a little something to kick things off. I may actually return from it excited to see everybody and to sing; I always get really happy about it all at some point. So, here's to Life! Might as well dive in...