Ultra Violet Light

Brief thoughts before I tumble into bed at two-thirty:

I will always be disappointed if I seek in someone else, that which I think I do not possess.

When I emerge from disappointment I realize I have what I wanted all along, and they have nothing that I need.

I lack nothing.

I am whole.

There is no missing puzzle piece.

There is no alchemical Other.

I'm it Bebe.

The whole enchilada.

What I seek after fruitlessly, I already contain in abundance.

I can befriend myself. I am stronger than anyone realizes (anyone includes me, when I slip into unconsciousness).

Last thoughts before sleeping are always true. I'm telling The Truth now; to myself, and to you -- whoever You are.

Why can't I live in this place all the time? This clarity and completion. Perhaps I'm moving in. Settling in. Learning how to live here. In a place beyond illusion.
In a place where Truth bathes the walls in full spectrum color. And the lights are always on when I come home.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

El Genius

Well, brain trust here wanted to play with some of the other templates, and I accidentally erased all my customizations, so I lost all the comments from haloscan. :-( So, we will start over mon amies. However, it's kinda sad. I liked having your comments saved.

Update:
As you can see, my comments have been resurrected -- all right!

Inside me

Breathing in within silence, recognizing that there is a still strong core beneath all fear, all doubt, all wavering, that exists in quiet dignity.

*OW*!!!

So it looks like this bad ass wannabe is a wimp. I did indeed go to the "Bloody Valentine" bout last night. Well, I didn't just watch roller derby, I experienced it. I have the swollen ankle and messed up right leg to show for it. I was sitting cross-legged right on the edge of the rink, pretty close I guess, too close obviously. I was accidentally body slammed by a roller girl. They were racing 'round the track fast, and someone pushed her, or tripped her, it happened so fast it was hard to say. All I know is suddenly someone was hurtling through the air toward me, and then before I even had a chance to move I had wheels slam down on my ankle and shin, and an excruciating pain shot through my body. Cartoon tweety birds were circling my shocked noggin I'm sure. I was stunned by the enormity of the pain for a few minutes, then I asked my friends to help me up. I went to go try to walk off the pain. I went to the women's room, and put the lid down and sat down to catch my breath. I put on some make-up, looking better always helps everything ;-> I hobbled around, the night wound down, and then my friends and I went to a diner. It was 15 degrees out, and the wind was whipping frigid.

I went home, and took it easy. It's a bit worse today. Tomorrow I may need X-Rays. Well, I guess that means I'm not trying out anytime soon. I'll go back, but with a spectator chair, and sit a safe distance away. Glad she didn't land on both my legs, or I wouldn't have even been able to walk around today, and I had a lot to do. In fact, I won't cover my day today, because it was just too busy, and I'm too tired for the recounting.

So, here I'll be, vegging out, putting up my achy swollen ankle, and my poor leg. Heh. Yea, I'm such a tough bitch. I should stick to contact sports involving nerf toys. :-)

no clever heading

This is not going to be a momentous post. I can feel that already. Why am I even bothering? Well, perhaps just to say that I'm still here. This was a busy week. A week of some deep change on the inside. A week of pursuing concrete change on the outside.

& after all of that seriousness, I have the perfect antidote: I'm going to All-girl Roller Derby tomorrow night. I'm psyched.

This is the first ever real bout on Long Island since 1973 when the men's leagues had their last bouts. This nation-wide and local roller derby renaissance is all female, and infused by the punk and riot grrl attitude and aesthetics so it's a different world even than the 70's rollergirls who were more often than not sexy disco dollies in satin hot pants. These girls are punk bruisers. They are bad ass and take no prisoners.

I have recently begun daydreaming about becoming a rollergirl. I used to roller skate at least once a week (usually more) when I was growing up. I started in elementary school, and continued into junior high and part of high school. I can't even say why I ever stopped, just one of those things that faded away as I got older. When I was actively skating though, I was so into it that after a time I no longer rented skates at the rink. I bought my own pair, they were white (I was pissed that the girls skates didn't come in black) then, as was the fashion, I added these pink and white snoball looking fuzzy pom poms that had a bell in the center to the laces. I even knew how to skate backward. Those were the days. The DJ would play, and I'd skate round and round the track, and then after a while, go to the snackbar for a break. The hardest part was using the girls room while on my skates. Then I'd skate some more, till the session was over. Taking off the skates was always kinda sad. I'd step down on the ground for the first time wearing shoes and feel like I'd just touched down from orbit.

I think at some point, I just have to get back on skates and try it. It's gonna happen after I start losing weight though. One encouraging factor, there are some big girls who do it, and they are actually prized as blockers. So, I wouldn't have to be thin, I'd just have to be fit enough and skate well. Right now it's just a dream, but hey, I can dream. Of course, basic health and fitness will come before that, but it's fun to think about. For now I can be a fan and get inspired. I saw these girls on the Rollergirl TV show on Bravo who stand on the sidelines and shake black pom-poms, Rollergirl Cheerleaders -- I could do that! :-D

In the non-dreamworld AKA reality, the only thing that would be a drawback is that I'm already concerned that spending time on art, knitting and crafts will cause my writing to suffer. I have to be be really careful with the "Jill of all trades, Mistress of none" syndrome that I am all too prone to. I am interested in so many things that I can spread myself too thin, and never excel at any of my dabblings. For example, mixed media has a strong draw for me, but my writing is my vocation. I have to see writing as my destiny, and art as a hobby if I'm gonna make it. I have to strike the crucial balance. Hard to know where to draw the lines, and how to reign myself in and be creatively disciplined. I'll figure it out though, because I have to. Sometimes I wish I had one life for each thing I'd love to be. I suppose I'll just have to do the best I can with the one I've got.

Fall Out

Sometimes I just really don't want to post because I don't want to share what I'm thinking and feeling. It's not all good. It's often confused and jumbled. I'm working through some things that are central in my life. They just don't seem like blog fodder. I've lost trust in my two pastors for one thing. It's complicated, because it's not like they are evil, or bad people, and it's not like they have done something "wrong" per se, there just are deep difference in personal philosophy and opinions between us right now. I had a private meeting with the senior pastor at her office on Tuesday, and it left me with a really bad aftertaste. I don't know that this can be resolved. It seems like the choices before me are to suck up a bunch of bullshit and play along, or just split.

So, I may be leaving the church I have been a part of for almost four years. The problem with leaving is that there are things I will miss, there will be losses. I will also be leaving behind many of my friends, who are family to me. It's not that I won't be able to keep in touch with them, but it will be different. I don't have much in common with most of them outside of church, and I know we'll drift apart. The person I have the most in common with lives far away. The other person I'm friendly with, I may be able to hang out with sometimes, but it's still unlikely to be often. I just know there are a lot of people who will fade out of my life completely if I leave.

More importantly, the style of worship and ministry time/prayer we do is not found elsewhere easily. So, I will be missing out on spiritual things, which is more significant than anything else. I'm wondering how to live my life as a person of faith. I am wondering how to live my life period. I'm mostly internal right now; slightly sad, but mostly just serious.

I guess I'm changing. I'm just hoping it's not for the worse. I'm hoping that I'm right. If I'm wrong, and my pastor is right, then I'm gonna end up in a worse place if I leave. It's tough to know because a lot of this is based on personal hurts and ways I feel they've really let me down, so I don't know if I'm seeing it all clearly. I know I have to forgive, but I don't know if that means I'll ever be able to agree with what they believe and how they have handled things.

There is a bottom line however, I feel like there are distinct things they have both done and said that have been shaming, and I know it's not healthy for me to be close to people who are treating me in ways that shame me. In that respect, my mind may already be made up to withdraw from this environment and these people. I am tired of feeling like the Black Sheep, as I've already been playing that role all my life, in my family and in many other areas in my life. I know I don't always "fit in," which is perfectly okay as I don't have to be the same as other people, as long as I don't occupy a leper status for my difference.

My pastor suggested if I made services every Sunday without fail, and mid-week Kinships every week (despite the fact that I no longer like going to kinship) and if I take on some church jobs, that people will begin to regard me differently, and I'll lose my leper status. As if I didn't do that for at least two years before there were reasons I pulled away, and stopped being around all the time. I've done my time, and I have shown people who I am, I am not going to start being there on some kind of trial status. I'm tired of being made to feel I have something to prove. I'm not going to work my way into their acceptance, not after four bloody years. Especially not when the Grace of God has already proclaimed me redeemed. If I am worthy in His eyes, I certainly don't need to earn acceptance in their eyes. In fact, that's not only offensive, but it's Un-Biblical and Non-Christian. Sadly ironic coming from my pastors. When I think of it, I just feel disgusted, and angry. Maybe the best thing I can do is just cut my ties and hit the road. Maybe I will actually start to feel better about who I am without the input of these people.

If there was nothing nourishing about my congregation it would be so easy to say syonara. This is a baby & bathwater situation; in order to divest myself of the disagreement with my pastor(s), I have to leave my entire church behind. I feel like in order to protect myself, I have to lose people and spiritual experiences that I want to keep. Like a lot of things in this life, that just doesn't seem fair...because it's not. That's why this sucks so much.

Age & Other Beasts

So much in my head and on my mind. It gets so impossible to contain or describe it all because there is so much and it moves fast, flits and disappears; my mind is the ultimate in ephemeral. I’ve been thinking about age. About "coolness" and relevancy. About how to change what needs changing in me and how to retain what works. How to hold onto what is me, at my core, the things that aren’t temporal, but how to let other parts of me evolve into what is "age appropriate," to use that painfully dry term. I’m at mid-life (OK, if I don’t live past 76 that is) and wondering about a lot of these things.

I am on myspace, which makes age a very strange slippery slope. I look very young for my age and although I feel like my body is a train wreck (though I’m well-aware that many men and women who like my type would disagree) I still attract attention. I have a face and a presence that intrigues and clearly attracts men and women, but of course I only get that sort of mail from men, you know the kind of mail I mean. The messages range from polite to lewd. I get quite a few from young guys who are between 18-25 and who are well aware of my age. I mean, hey I’m flattered, but it’s just strange for me. Especially when they relate to me as a "older woman," and they plaintively inquire if I like younger men, and if so would I please consider...etc. followed by their contact info. I never write back.

Stranger still is seeing boys and girls of those ages re-interpreting the new wave styles I grew up wearing. The fact is, they make me wistful. They seem so free. They have so many peers who understand where they are coming from. I didn’t. I mean, I did have friends in those years, but until I hit the clubs and then college, it wasn’t like I was surrounded with people who understood my taste in music, or my wardrobe. I was one of my high school’s few freaks.

On myspace, besides all the nouveau new wave indie kids, there are so many cute girls who look like boys, some who identify as bois, and few cute bio-boys who look like dykes. Scrolling through friends of friends, doing the myspace hop, I found myself smitten with a 19 year old myspacer who I thought was a really cute andro boi or a FTM tranny, but it turned out he was really a cute andro boy. He had a link to his facebook. It was filled with his delicious narcissistic self-portraits. There were also many pictures of his new college friends. They were all young, cool, and fluid. Pictures of parties with girls making out with girls, and then with boys, and then two boys making out with a girl and each other in three way kisses. No set couples, just a lot of friends having a drunken make out party. I couldn’t figure out if it was pathetic or hot. Maybe both. I also couldn’t figure out if they were freer than I used to be at that age, or if they were lost in a sea of free-floating ambiguous desire that left them confused and spun the next day.

I was consciously bisexual by the time I was 17, but no one else around me was. Well, at least not girls. I was the primary fag hag to a the only out gay boy in my high school, before I even knew what a hag was. However, the only girl I knew who was even close to queer was post-bisexual. She was Italian, from Milan, and bucking all my current tastes, she was a blonde, and I was still drawn to her. Draped with European sophistication which showed up as a worldly knowing boredom, she explained to me that she had been with girls already, and was over it. It was a phase for her. She actually had a crush on my boy nemesis, this bully who used to antagonize me. She, however, was still very content to toy with me for her own amusement (and well, she wasn't totally heartless, she did tell me she loved me). She used to pick me up from my French class and kiss me in the hallway, right on the mouth. I never stopped her. We didn’t make out, but they were real kisses not pecks. The first time she did it, I thought, everyone who sees us is going to think I am lesbian, that thought was quickly followed by, who the hell cares, she’s kissing me! She would take my hand after that, and would walk me to lunch. After eating, we’d go outside to the courtyard, and she’d play her acoustic guitar, and sing. She liked folk music. Joan Biaz. Yea, and she claimed not to be a dyke, that takes cajones, er, not an apt descriptive there, but anyway, I’ll let it be. I liked Joni Mitchell, but I’m not sure I admitted it to her. I wasn’t about to lose my punk rock cred. She hated my music. It didn’t matter much. I just liked to sit there and look at her. At the moment I have no idea what it was about her that captivated me, as she really wasn’t my type in any way. It was just one of those inexplicable things. My last memory of her was the day she left. I was at her host family’s house, I stood in the street waving goodbye, and she waved back and looked at me through the back windshield as they drove away. That was the last time I ever saw her, and unlike me and my Japanese exchange student star-crossed lovebird slip of a girl (that’s a whole ‘nother story) Sabrina and I never kept in touch via airmail. She did tell me to read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, which I did that summer on the beach in Saint Martin listening to The Smiths and Japan on my walkman (remember walkmans? remember cassette tapes? yea, I am old). There’s much more to the story, but later. I am trying to think of what my point is. Oh yea, age. Being young, then and now, and the differences (and perhaps similarities which I’ve not yet discovered).

Perhaps most of my epiphanies are so indescribable that I can only feel them in completeness within myself. I feel their shapes and they are whole. I can hold them for moments alone. Their forms are not attached to words, or if there are any words they slip away before they can be captured. I feel so frustrated with my mind sometimes. This is one of those times. Sometimes it seems I’m so close to the meaning I can fairly brush it with my fingertips, and then the set dresser of my play moves the tree away, by increments so small, so slowly, so I keep coming at it, keep thinking I stand a chance at capturing it. I plead and make balesome entreaties. I promise I won’t put it in a cage. I just want to hold onto it for a moment before it flies away. I long and hunger and ache. It keeps me awake at night. The wanting to understand. The desire to make sense of the mess of my past. I don’t know how I am supposed to contain all this and go forward. I hear all the pep talks, all the positive pieces of advice that make perfect sense, but still, I can’t quite follow where they lead. I'm still damaged. I’m still bewildered and broken. I want to move on, but perhaps I’m afraid of leaving myself behind. Or maybe I’m afraid I won’t be honoring her, to stop being a monument to her pain. If I walk on, will I be leaving her behind in her closet? My closet. The place I went, not to feel safe, but to try to find the child’s version of invisible. There was nowhere else to go. Let me blend into the walls, and disappear. You don’t see me. You forgot I was there. Your screaming penetrated my closet, but your eyes were amnesiac. The walls in the kitchen dripping blood, the world caving in. Nothing making sense. And forever. Moments stretching into eternity, wondering when it will end. Hugging my pillow, my stuffed animals, my knees. My blanket stretched underneath me. Dark, cool and hidden, how I still like to be. My world is a long sleepless night, a big closet I live inside. Do you see me now Mama, from your home in the skies? Do you forgive me for existing yet?