Oh hey! 128!

My last blog has been viewed by 128 folks. Or 128 times? I'm not sure. I don't bother pretending I know enough about technology. I am so ignorant. But I know a thing or two about a thing or two. I guess. And I like the number 128.
Who are you internet voyeurs? Nobody comments 'cept my baby sister because I make her. Drop me a line if you dare.
After yet another tragedy, I was temporarily stalled at the keyboard. What can I say that hasn't been bouncing around my echo chamber? What could my heart venture to express that could make one bit of difference?
8 days ago I was baptized by fire.
Not literally.
Although clearly that means nothing anymore in our post-truth world. The upside down.
Close to literally, tho. I actually suffered 1st degree burns from a cup of scalding hot tea that slipped from my fingers and spilled all over my chest. I am fine. It was painful and lonely. Jake's been in KY, and I had an early night at rehearsal. I'd just settled in with my night-time tea and a good book and was ecstatic at the prospect of getting a good 8-10 hr nap in, and it was a chilly night and was aiming to rest it on my bosom over my thick bathrobe and just hit the steam and warm my hands on the mug as I have done thousands (if not, definitely hundreds...literally hundreds) of times.
In retrospect, I was too excited.
I'm pretty excitable. I think people like that about me. I don't know. Do people really like me? I mean, 128 people like me enough to at least click on my blog link to make me believe they've read my blog. That's certainly enough for any one small human to need.
THEN WHY AM I SO NEEDY??? Why do I want more than I need? Why do any of us? Where does insecurity come from?
I was about to write "human nature?" when Freeman Lovejoy (my feline familiar) started to scratch at the door. He didn't want to go outside so I deduced he could see the bottom of his bowl. He's a fat cat, but not seriously overweight...I mean he likes to exercise the 4 hours/day he's not snoozing. But he is hopelessly insecure. He won't finish a bowl of food before he'll just drive you crazy with scratching and meowing and his weaving thru your legs threatening to trip you.
I've been his human for 7 years and he's never known true hunger. But his instincts say "Wait!!! This might be all you get!" And turn him into a total asshole. A worry-wort. A greedy fat cat. And I can't say I don't get it. We're all insecure assholes unnecessarily worried and greedy. It seems nature cannot be severed from the human, try as we might.
I mean, the knowledge Eve tricked Adam into gaining made them less ignorant, but they lost the bliss of the garden. Greed is what happens when our collective instincts are skewed by the great forgetting. Maybe this is what the early Semites were exploring with their mythology? They imply that what humans had before we became self conscious was gone after that original sin. Lost. Forgotten. Taken away. Forbidden.
I think if people don't like me it's because I can come of as judgmental. I mean, I can recognize that in my past I have spent a lot of time judging. I think I also just struggle with the difference between simply making a choice and judging. I sit down to stream some tv, and I choose the latest HBO series (which happened to have 3! actresses with whom I have directly worked...it's so close I can taste it) because I judge it to be the best thing happenin right now in that realm and my time is so limited. I read Jill Soloway's Tiny Women in Shiny Pants because I judged it to be a solid recommendation from a genius on how to start my career as an actress and writer. Sheila Callaghan graciously has many more scopes to light my path (which I plan to gorge on post thesis project).
But my baptism from the hot tea has me itchy. And that itch is manifesting itself as this blog of wise meanderings. The wisdom is not my own. I'm just open and finding it coming in waves. Perhaps it's the wave in my mind coming from Ursula K. Le Guin's collection of talks and essays?
Maybe it's Brené Brown's On Being episode this week? She brilliantly addresses the cultural amnesia that's temporarily lifted in moments of great joy or excitement with strangers (like hugging the fan next to you at a sporting event). Host with the most Krista Tippet quotes a line from Brown's latest book that advises "Hold hands. With strangers."
Did I mention I'm in a play called the strangers? I have a whole monologue about this exact topic. It's beautiful, and I'm having a swell time making Christopher Oscar Peña's character come alive. Brown eloquently noted a beautiful sentiment that is the heart of Peña's production, "He or she who chooses comfort--over courage and facilitating real conversations in towns and cities and synagogues and areas who need it; when you choose your own comfort over trying to bring people together, and you're a leader, either a civic leader or a faith leader, your days of relevance are numbered."
I pray for this post-post-truth reawakening with every fiber of my being.
Come hell or high water. Or hot water, as it were.
Before we knew there were judgements to make about one another...before we "knew" of this blaringly relative and subjective "good and evil," we recognized the truth underneath it all. That great capacity for love. It is the true North (while there is still one). It is our gift from Divinity. The apple just fooled us into thinking it was about something else because of our basic capacity for hunger. For more always. And subsequently the capacity for a lack mentality. Insatiable and constant it steers us toward greed more often than we'd like. Or like to admit.
But there. Is. Enough. If we go back to the Judeo-Christian mythology (and why not, it is Lent), Jesus completed the cycle or circle of humanity's damnedness to remind us of what we collectively forgot in the garden. That love is the only key we need to unlock redemption.
My sweet, ever-lovin décolletage may be marred for another good week or more, and I'm hoping it doesn't leave a scar. Though I'm no stranger to 'em. (I guess it could help the haggard/prisoner/trashy/victim trope a little better for my future cameos on OITNB and other hit tv shows.) As I sat down at my alter to meditate this evening, a sacred heart my husband drew at it's center reminded me of a time when I felt most insecure and incomplete.
When I first started to meditate with some regularity (desperate for a partner to love), I kept having recurring visions of this sacred heart. I had seen it depicted in many a picture of Jesus and the Mother Mary growing up Catholic, and I thought it was just a memory stamped in my brain that came up in spiritual stirring. From a teacher in the school of metaphysics, I was given a pdf of a spiritual Taraka Yoga practice entitled "The Keys to Your Heart"and I taught and performed the ritual during the return of Venus (remember when she came between us and the sun back in 2012?) on retreat in Upstate NY. Printed on the pdf was this picture of the sacred heart.
When I found this drawing of my husband's, I got goosebumps. It was his "tag" during a brief exploration with street art. These coincidences bring me joy and literally (not literally) set my heart on fire. If I do have a scar from this foible, it will remind me of the baptism or revelation I've come upon in this dark dark time. That somewhere between my heart and throat sits a fire burning in me...and I will use it to LOVE.
8 days ago I was baptized by fire.
2 days ago, a young man forgot how to love.
1 day at a time, we heal. It's itchy and it may scar forever, but we heal.