I thought leaving an MFA program where each day was full of scheduled obligations and moving home to focus on my career would create a welcomed vacuum of time, and my days would be full of creative writing and inspiration and blogging about said inspiration. I forgot the verity of the adage: if you want something done, ask a busy person.
For the first time in a few years, I've not been busy, and I have very successfully gotten very little done. Each week I've been home, there has been something I have wanted to do in Louisville: free concerts, book readings, food coop meetings, farmer's markets. Somehow I have sabotaged each excursion with poor planning, momentary disinterest, distraction or as is the case is most of the time, sheer forgetfulness.
I've been going to auditions, visiting with family, doin the yogas, biking round town, scouting houses going up for auction, walking the dog and doing the bread work. Literally and figuratively...I inherited a sourdough starter from my sister-in-law and that thing is like a part-time job in and of itself!
In the more figurative sense, Gandhi preached about this concept of bread work and equality. It is a concept I'd like to model in my life (while I simultaneously dream of jobs that pay me more than I need).
Need.
I don't know that I've truly ever needed.
I mean, sure...I've been shy a few hundred bucks a few hundred times. I've had to ask for things from loved ones or request help from Uncle Sam. I've had to borrow from Peter to pay Paul. But true need?
Love.
There was a time when I needed that, I suppose. Romantically, I mean.
Many years of kissing many toads.
But now that need is more than met. Each day I spend with Jake, I love him more. You get it.
There is something to be said about an embarrassment of riches. Perhaps it's embarrassing because you know inherently the inequality of wealth plagues our humanity. Blights our hope for a more just world. And yet, we accept.
We accept our privileges and whine about our struggles. We fill insatiable yearning with stuff and food and booze and smoke and live in lack in want of more. I don't mean to project. I am responsible. I am guilty. I am trying. I say we as Americans. As artists. As tribe members of the New World (Dis)Order.
Though there's nothing new about disparity.
Isn't it funny I've know the word disparity since grade school, but only just learned parity in recent years? Or perhaps I'd heard it for longer, but only just realized the root connection in recent years.
I always thought disparity and despair were more closely related. And it can still feel that way sometimes.
But opposites are often just two sides of the same coin, yeah? Now isn't that hard to swallow? Something as meaningless...no, as precarious as a coin toss decided the fate of whether you are born in light skin or dark, in a male body or female, to parents with money or not, etc, etc, etc.
What if there were a way to forgo any excess if you could be assured no other human being would experience lack? Yeah, yeah, communism in theory...but I'm not talkin politics. Morés not laws. Standards not policies. Action not direction.
What if?
I'm gonna keep imagining it.
Meanwhile, time to make the sourdough.
Sunday, August 26, 2018
Walking the moonlit walk or la poursuite de la légèreté
This full moon has me reeling. I recently got a phone upgrade and joined Instagram, and no surprise, I can't figure the shit out. I never had Snap Chat, but clearly Instagram's trying to emulate it with the temporary story stuff, and then I got the Facebook app for the first time, and it's clearly trying to be more like Instagram.
Correct me if I'm wrong here.
You know what, nevermind.
I don't really care.
It's not that I'm against being held accountable. I just signed up for a 5 week Bowspring yoga series that's gonna kick my ass in gear; hold me accountable in ways I desperately need for my body. And I'm happy to say that collaborations with a talented screenwriter are on the horizon, so perhaps I can cultivate a local community that will hold me responsible as a writer. Also, I've come across a new suggestion for writing that I believe will be good daily practice (thanks Jill Solloway...all hail!).
And it's not that I'm against social media.
Instagram actually saved the life of a loved one yesterday.
No thanks to me...but a life was saved, nonetheless.
So it's serving a purpose. Or many purposes. Some of which I can get behind.
Watery pisces has me on the hunt once again for buoyancy. For levity in what feels like a downpour. Or a breath during waterboarding.
I came across this reading which brought me some hope:
“Pisces is the ultimate healer, the ruler of our subconscious where our stored memories, habits and beliefs live. During this Full Moon we will awaken what has been laying underneath the fear, what has been keeping us stuck and allow our inner shaman to heal us. This is a time to call back our soul from places where it has been forgotten and to return back to our wholeness.” -Nicole O'Byrne
Truthfully tho, traditional astrology is less appealing to me than the social contracts and markers of the passing of time. Our relationship to the shifting seasons and our progression from moon to moon, or month to month. The waves and ebb and flow of synchronicity and direction and grace. Ya know, how we move through time relative to one another (rather than the alignment of the planets and constellations).
The August moon was called many things by different cultures. For early Americans, it was the Dog Day's Moon. My broken heart (from said near-loss-experience of a dear one and their cry for help on Instagram) was soothed last night by taking Prince to the dog park. It helped that my amazing husband finds beauty wherever he roams, and by the end of the stroll, I had a bouquet of nature's treasures: reminding me of our vows to build this life together in that very park 5 years ago this November and filling me with gratitude.
Our flaneusing thru Cherokee Park prompted me to research what the August full moon was for this native tribe who once nurtured this section of the world: The Fruit Moon. A serendipitous reminder to hunt for pawpaws soon. It's a tragedy that I only learned about this indigenous fruit in recent years, as I'm 7th generation Kentuckian. It makes ya wonder just what gets passed along and why. Every other white person in the Southeast region inappropriately claims Cherokee heritage...and yet we know so little of it. I'm guilty of it myself, and recently discovered my only verified Cherokee ancestor was actually a slave to the tribe and likely of African decent.
Another tribe, the Choctaw, called it the Women's Moon. Wouldn't hurt us all to embrace a little more feminine these days. The devastating and traumatic personal events of a life nearly lost were (in my best estimate) the result of toxic masculinity and substance abuse. Our society forces men into a corner with their choices for processing with emotion. Hence the substance abuse. Hence the repression. Hence the violent tendencies. Crying is necessary. Emoting is human. Let this watery moon break the damn and let them flow.
For the Chinese, the August moon the Harvest Moon, and for the Dakota Sioux, the Moon When All Things Ripen. You reap what you sow is inarguably true (maybe even with a capital T), but how much has been sown on a cellular, subconscious, generational level? How much of our crop was inherited? Our free will seems to come with a caveat: disparity. Perhaps that's where the ego can gain disproportionate strength? Because we're forced to live in and inequitable world, a part of our brains cannot fathom equality? The Instagram incident was like a horrific, R-rated version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Sadly, a harvest that is a wake-up call to just how destructive and harmful repeated actions and words can be for credibility.
And for the Celtic peoples this was called the Dispute Moon. Which seems most fitting for the events that played out in my circle these past 38 hours or so. Dispute, from dis-‘apart’ + putare ‘reckon.’ A reckoning of the highest order. A sharp, rocky bottom, from which we all hope to rise.
Each culture had their reasoning behind their moon nomenclature, but I find them all helpful and relevant. On the calendar I follow, we are in a time of questioning, fearlessness and intelligence. Not intellect. There's an important distinction between the two. Intelligence represents deeper understanding on a subconscious level. We are also in a year that is the conclusion of a 13 year cycle about purity, flow and Universal Water.
May we all continue to seek healthier, cleaner more buoyant bodies and minds by continuing to question our world views with fearlessness and digging deep to reveal our own intelligence.
Walk in the moonlight.
Hug your loved ones tight.
Be there for each other.
And never, ever give up.
Correct me if I'm wrong here.
You know what, nevermind.
I don't really care.
It's not that I'm against being held accountable. I just signed up for a 5 week Bowspring yoga series that's gonna kick my ass in gear; hold me accountable in ways I desperately need for my body. And I'm happy to say that collaborations with a talented screenwriter are on the horizon, so perhaps I can cultivate a local community that will hold me responsible as a writer. Also, I've come across a new suggestion for writing that I believe will be good daily practice (thanks Jill Solloway...all hail!).
And it's not that I'm against social media.
Instagram actually saved the life of a loved one yesterday.
No thanks to me...but a life was saved, nonetheless.
So it's serving a purpose. Or many purposes. Some of which I can get behind.
Watery pisces has me on the hunt once again for buoyancy. For levity in what feels like a downpour. Or a breath during waterboarding.
I came across this reading which brought me some hope:
“Pisces is the ultimate healer, the ruler of our subconscious where our stored memories, habits and beliefs live. During this Full Moon we will awaken what has been laying underneath the fear, what has been keeping us stuck and allow our inner shaman to heal us. This is a time to call back our soul from places where it has been forgotten and to return back to our wholeness.” -Nicole O'Byrne
Truthfully tho, traditional astrology is less appealing to me than the social contracts and markers of the passing of time. Our relationship to the shifting seasons and our progression from moon to moon, or month to month. The waves and ebb and flow of synchronicity and direction and grace. Ya know, how we move through time relative to one another (rather than the alignment of the planets and constellations).
The August moon was called many things by different cultures. For early Americans, it was the Dog Day's Moon. My broken heart (from said near-loss-experience of a dear one and their cry for help on Instagram) was soothed last night by taking Prince to the dog park. It helped that my amazing husband finds beauty wherever he roams, and by the end of the stroll, I had a bouquet of nature's treasures: reminding me of our vows to build this life together in that very park 5 years ago this November and filling me with gratitude.
Our flaneusing thru Cherokee Park prompted me to research what the August full moon was for this native tribe who once nurtured this section of the world: The Fruit Moon. A serendipitous reminder to hunt for pawpaws soon. It's a tragedy that I only learned about this indigenous fruit in recent years, as I'm 7th generation Kentuckian. It makes ya wonder just what gets passed along and why. Every other white person in the Southeast region inappropriately claims Cherokee heritage...and yet we know so little of it. I'm guilty of it myself, and recently discovered my only verified Cherokee ancestor was actually a slave to the tribe and likely of African decent.
Another tribe, the Choctaw, called it the Women's Moon. Wouldn't hurt us all to embrace a little more feminine these days. The devastating and traumatic personal events of a life nearly lost were (in my best estimate) the result of toxic masculinity and substance abuse. Our society forces men into a corner with their choices for processing with emotion. Hence the substance abuse. Hence the repression. Hence the violent tendencies. Crying is necessary. Emoting is human. Let this watery moon break the damn and let them flow.
For the Chinese, the August moon the Harvest Moon, and for the Dakota Sioux, the Moon When All Things Ripen. You reap what you sow is inarguably true (maybe even with a capital T), but how much has been sown on a cellular, subconscious, generational level? How much of our crop was inherited? Our free will seems to come with a caveat: disparity. Perhaps that's where the ego can gain disproportionate strength? Because we're forced to live in and inequitable world, a part of our brains cannot fathom equality? The Instagram incident was like a horrific, R-rated version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Sadly, a harvest that is a wake-up call to just how destructive and harmful repeated actions and words can be for credibility.
And for the Celtic peoples this was called the Dispute Moon. Which seems most fitting for the events that played out in my circle these past 38 hours or so. Dispute, from dis-‘apart’ + putare ‘reckon.’ A reckoning of the highest order. A sharp, rocky bottom, from which we all hope to rise.
Each culture had their reasoning behind their moon nomenclature, but I find them all helpful and relevant. On the calendar I follow, we are in a time of questioning, fearlessness and intelligence. Not intellect. There's an important distinction between the two. Intelligence represents deeper understanding on a subconscious level. We are also in a year that is the conclusion of a 13 year cycle about purity, flow and Universal Water.
May we all continue to seek healthier, cleaner more buoyant bodies and minds by continuing to question our world views with fearlessness and digging deep to reveal our own intelligence.
Walk in the moonlight.
Hug your loved ones tight.
Be there for each other.
And never, ever give up.
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