Red Leaves

The redbud tree in the front yard is dropping leaves.  The heart-shaped leaves crinkle and fold and fall to the ground and when the wind blows they scatter across the yard.  The oak tree across the street shares its harvest with every neighbor in the court.  When we walk Midas through the neighborhood, we’ve noticed a few trees that have bright and deep red leaves, but the ones that fall to the ground don’t have the same luster.

It’s a calm before the storm.  Even as the wind blowing through the bay area lowers the temperature to ‘jackets required’ kind of weather, and even as the days shorten so that I’m leaving in darkness and soon-to-be coming home in darkness, I feel calm (I don’t want to jinx anything with the “p” word here).  By the time I’ve driven home each day my mind has already put work inside a box with a lid and put it out of my mind for the night.  I keep in touch via telephone, and I am comforted and glad that my family and friends are healthy and well, that there are celebrations and triumphs (marriages, divorces, house buying, moving, reconnections, custody attainment) despite extreme hardships (suicide, health issues, marriages, divorces, moving, custody conflicts).  Lastly, I am more at peace with my own body since giving up soda, paying attention to what and when I eat, and by working out consistently.  My endurance is back up and I’m doing double sets again.  I’ve dropped 6 pounds, which is halfway to my goal.

I look at the world through the cycles of nature and Fall has usually been the most difficult season for me.  Part of me feels that I should be stressed out or manic because I’m about to start graduate classes again.  Part of me struggles with sitting down to write and share while other parts nod and smile and say, “Keep it up.”  Part of me expects a certain amount of sadness with the changing season, but I just don’t have it in me.  I’m enjoying the falling leaves that are instant reminders of life’s harvest before the bleak winter that doesn’t look so stark white.  Life is good and sweet, which make for rather mundane posts.  I think calm is good now and then.

Balls Deep

(edit:   yeah – I changed my title of the post but did NOT change the start of the post, so if you’re scratchin’ your head, that’s my fault.  Bad Don.  Bad, bad.  Bad.  This was originally titled “Ping.”)

Not quite the sound of a pin drop, sorry, nor the sound of what happens before ‘pong’ (which always makes me think of “ding dong” and then I hear middle-school voices and the sing-song rhyme of:  “…plays ping pong with his ding dong”).  Yes, that’s how my mind works some days.  Random fragments.  I’m pinging myself in a post, a reminder that hey, you do have a blog, ya know.  Yes, I know.

I’m getting a little more organized.  Thoughts of birth and death, living and dying… always good motivators to take inventory and some self-stock.  Two weeks ago I stopped all caffeine, chocolate, carbonation, alcohol, and spicy foods.  I increased my work outs, which wasn’t too difficult since I went from nothing to everything-I-do-makes-me-breath-hard-and-sweat.  Discovery of muscles that I’d forgotten I had.  I don’t celebrate myself too much, but I’m gonna admit here that I like my biceps.  I’m stretching again and slowly relearning some yoga poses.  I come back to breathing, time and again.  Deep breathing.

I cleared off clutter on my desks – at home and at work.  I pulled out old magazines that I’d been meaning to read – I finished them and I threw them away.  The stack of filing I’d kept piling up I organized and filed away.  Stacks at work got put into folders, labeled and filed.  Those little pieces of paper with “important” phone numbers got put into contact information in Outlook.  I deleted over a thousand emails.

At night before bed I’ve been doing crossword puzzles or logic problems, the attempts of which usually frustrate the hell out of me.  Word games I’m fine with, but the order and structures of logic are challenging to me.  The “get it right” perfectionist part of me will take those logic problems and erase and start over until I figure it out.  In the last two weeks I’ve solved a few that had stumped me years before.

Lastly, or maybe firstly, I carved out time for me to write.  Dreams, plans, and outlines… fine – any day, any week.  But since the writing workshop in Monterey this spring, I consciously put writing away and didn’t allow myself the time for pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.  I’m not the swiftest with figuring myself out, but it was another one of those slamming my head against the wall revelations to acknowledge that distractions are the same as saying conscious priorities.  Maybe in my older age I’m learning to embrace that which, historically, I’ve enjoyed running from.  Could be too that I’m over being coy with myself – I do like to write.  Skip the extended forplay that is an existential exercise in mental blue balls – it’s balls-deep fucking time to write.

In Search of Sanctuary

This blogger has not been very attentive.  I’m very sorry.  I have attempted this post a dozen times, editing, deleting, then re-writing – three hours and counting.  I turned off I-Tunes and Pandora, but left Rhapsody streaming an assortment of favorites.  Fair warning – this ride has no seat belts and random WILL happen… you have been warned.  Anything at this point, including the kitchen sink, to keep me writing.

“It’s not over tonight
Just give me one more chance to make it right” – Maroon 5

I might feign a coy post about writing and not writing.  Maybe I could appeal to the animal lovers and recount Midas’ first foray to the ocean – he ran parallel to the beach but looked mighty suspicious of the incoming waves.  When we arrived it was windy and foggy and I felt seriously underdressed with a long sleeve shirt.  After an hour of playing along the beach and hiking the local bluffs, the sun burned off the fog and I enjoyed the sunlight.  I drank then gave the remainder of my bottled water to Midas, pouring small amounts and letting him lap it from my hand.  He curled up on the beach towel with me and kept an eye out for the seagulls that I encouraged him to think were ducks.  I wiped the drying sand from my feet and remembered stories of dreams and endless deserts and worlds innumerable and I felt tired.

“If all were there when we first took the pill,
Then maybe, then maybe, then maybe, then maybe…
Miracles will happen as we speak.” – Seal

I thought a lot about the space I nourish or neglect in myself for writing.  I thought about this blog-space which is/was my writing sanctuary, but I’ve let myself be distracted:  work, family, relationships, health, home.  When I lay on the beach, sand and salt on my skin, memories of other times and places that shared healing overlay the sun and blue sky.  For all my love of fiction and writing, the focus here at Sanctuary has been deeply, intensely personal, but I worry that I’ve plumbed the depths enough that I’m empty.  What if I had bleached out my sense of self, bone-white, like the shells that washed up near us?  What if I have shared too much or arrived at a point where I don’t feel like sharing further?  What if I need more structure and self-moderated doses before I dip my toes again?  Could I be a bigger whiny bastard?  (Please note that sand and sandals are NOT a good idea.)  Would that self-doubt could be silenced with a seashell up to the ear – comfort in the subtle roar of illusory oceans.

“As street lamps pour orange coloured shapes through your window,
a broken soul stares from a pair of watering eyes,
uncertain emotions force an uncertain smile…
I’ve got you under my skin where the rain can’t get in,
but if the sweat pours out, just shout I’ll try to swim and pull you out.” – The The

Postscript:  I’ve had epiphanies at the ocean’s edge before – some life changing, some affirming.  My intention that day with Midas was to hike and play ball along the beach, not to sit in the sun in a self-induced cloud of sunscreen wearing one of TLC’s Pussy Caps and a half-smile.  In the end, that’s what reeled me back in and brought me the most comfort – “I will not die with the words still inside me.”  (Thank you, thank you, thank you, Tom.)  If I have a religion, those words are the closest to what I’d practice, and I’m not dead yet.

“In the distance on the shifting sea, a thousand coloured sails
Is this the moment you made? Is this the way that you planned?” – Icehouse

Talk Thursday: Found

Funny how a grown man can become adrift in himself.  Lost.  Floating.  Feeling like I lost myself.  I wouldn’t say it was self-absorption, nor selfishness, nor even apathy to everything outside of myself.  It was more a creeping fog of perspective where I could hold on to certain things in the middle of a mental white-out.  Compound the impaired perspective with a passive “let’s ride this out” and there’s a double-dose of Donavan the silent spectator to his own life. Look, he’s going in circles!  How nice for him.  If only the circles meant something.  If only movement meant direction and intention.  If only oracles answered in statements, not more questions.  If only souls had better maps of our emotional landscapes.  If only the miserable bastard wrote it out instead of talking in his own head.  If only he didn’t run with scissors.  If only he shared his sandbox.  If only he weren’t so stubborn.  If only.

Maybe, despite the illusion of being wayward and absent, I found my voice again.  Maybe I found my voice to spite the illusion.  I can be petty that way.  Maybe I chose to be silent to see how long I could stand it.  Maybe I decided to change when my comfortable discomfort became painful.  Heaven knows we as humans don’t change without a motivation, and pain is one of life’s greatest teachers.  There’s a little S&M in all of nature.  God is a dominatrix and we don’t have to like it, but we do have to listen.  I must have liked the spankings because it takes me a while to figure out the bigger message to pay attention.  Maybe a rosy-pink ass isn’t a bad thing once in a while.

What made it through the haze?  Marriages.  Divorces.  Re-locations.  Conferences.  Aging.  A death.  Re-connections.  Introductions.  These are some of the things that kept me stubbornly tethered, though not necessarily grounded.  I don’t feel like I’ve been not-living, but I felt more alive last night, like the haze was fading.  Understand, I’d had vast amounts of painkillers and Valium, one massage, and lots of sleep since Saturday when a migraine started.  But last night at dinner with friends and having two cocktails on an empty stomach was sublime.  My buzz spanned the Bay area, and for much of the evening I could hear myself and certain characters in certain stories that are unwritten.  My mind was not on the play we saw after dinner.  My mind was everywhere and it was on fire.  I could hear myself again, and I wasn’t being a self-critical little bastard.  Bastard yes, but the inner critic was shutting the fuck up.

In San Francisco is the Grace Cathedral.  Outside is a stone and concrete labyrinth set in an open space near the courtyard.  Walking the labyrinth is living a metaphor.  The way we walk describes the way we live our life.  The way we are in the center is the way we examine what we have and what we know.  The way we leave the center and return is our intention or affirmation.  I remember and forget, cyclically, this memorable and powerful place.  How is it that I found what I never lost?  How is it that I keep losing the perspective in the first place?  How is it that the act of repetition (walk, drink, eat, sleep, etc) or doing something familiar can bring us back to ourselves?  One step forward.  Turn left or right.  Keep walking.  More turns.  Go to the center.  Return.  There I was the whole time.  And you were with me.

Let’s swap my exhibitionism for my voyeurism and up the ante a little:  where do YOU go when you lose yourself?

Be Amazed

Susan Boyle from Britain’s Got Talent

Thank you, Douglas, for the link.  I watched it three times and I still have a lump in my throat and thoughts of hope for humanity.

Would that the world could see inside and not focus on the surface, on the easy, on the convenient.  Here’s yet another moment where I reconsider my opinion of Simon Cowell – and further cement my contempt for American Paper-or-Plastic Fucking Idol.

On a side note – 41 sorta rocks0.  A great day of well-wishes and love.

Your Partner

The best kinds of mornings happen when your partner makes breakfast while you’re reading work email.  It gets better when you shower and start getting dressed but can’t iron because the power cord is cut and your partner helps you solder it back together so you can look spiffy in pressed shirt, tie, and slacks.  This, when your partner isn’t feeling too hot and doesn’t complain or bitch and moan like you yourself are prone to do.  You feel like a million bucks when he tells you how nice you look.

When he checks in on you during the day which is filled with meetings, trainings, and more meetings, you smile when you hear the sound of his voice.  You melt when you hear the excitement and encouragement in his voice because your manuscript was accepted at a writing conference. You’re going, and you know that he’ll be with you every step of the way.

Oracles of early 2009

In what seemed like other lifetimes, but were as recent as a few years ago, my practice on January 1st, or as near as possible to the “day” passing into New Year’s Day, was to get out the tarot cards and/or runestones and do reading.  Some years may have involved greater quantities of alcohol than others, such as the years of my young adulthood with a group of close friends at a cabin in southern Utah.  Some years I’d use a regular deck of cards and read, gypsy-style.  Other years I waited for quiet time when I could be alone and I could wrap the present around me like a comfortable afghan and be at peace with the past behind me and the unknown ahead.  This year I drew cards on the 17th and have let the messages settle, because I didn’t “get it” until today, talking on the phone with dear friends.  More on meaning of meaning later…

From three similarly styled decks of the Thoth heritage (as opposed to the Rider-Wait heritage), I drew:

(challenge) 10 of Fire/Wands/Clubs
(strength) 10 of Earth/Pentacles/Disks
(conscious perception) Aeon

My query to the universe was to look beyond last year’s angst of career and work issues and get to what matters to the true and pure parts of me:  writing and connecting.  Ten of Fire is about self-oppression – holding back my own power.  Ten of Earth is about manifesting abundance through communication (I haz writing skillz?) and organizational (I haz a desk here somewherez) skills.  Aeon/Judgement (SELF judgement) is the archeytpe for broad perspectives, historical cycles, and being able to forgive ourselves for what we are doing or NOT doing in our lives.

“It is only when we actually try to see beyond ourselves that we begin to use the oracles as a mirror of the cosmos and all of its wisdom.” – Brian Froud and Jessica Macbeth, from “The Faerie’s Oracle.”

Meaning of meanings?  I made a deal today and I have until Sunday to follow through with my word.  Stay tuned to me stepping up, or being in the same holding pattern for decades now.

Aeon, or something like it

Best of 2008

Why is it so difficult for me to reflect on the best, versus the worst?  Human nature, or is it my specific nature?  You’d think growing up Mormon I’d have a permanent Osmond-caliber bullshit smile, 24/7, but alas, I got to be the occasional ray of fucking sunshine.  Hey – if it takes 100% snark to get me blogging again, so be it.  Let me channel my inner light a moment and reflect on the. best. of. 2008.

- Scott.  Sunshine or rain, richer or poorer, through sickness or health.  His smile makes my day brighter, and his love is sublime.

- New job.  Why I didn’t make the jump years earlier, I have no idea.  For anyone out there that is in a job that is sucking out their soul – change jobs.  Don’t wait, don’t walk – run to the nearest exit.  Be prepared for a total change of social circles, but the gain is getting your soul back.  Cut your losses and run.  Run!   You too could be enjoying a year-end bonus.  ((Insert picture of a very happy man, here – I’m having an economic wet spot.))

- Birthday party.  To have a gathering of friends and family from far and wide to celebrate one day with me is one of the best things I could wish for anyone on their own birthday.  Scott’s present was a complete surprise – ask him exactly how one hides a full-size Addam’s* Family Pinball machine?  ( * = thanks to Eddie for pointing out my spelling error – he made me get up and go check the damn machine, hmph)

- Friends.  I’m not going to single anyone out, nor spend time typing names and trying to link.  You beautiful men and women bring out the best in me and make the world a more loving place.

- Weddings.  I was not able to attend Kent and JulieAnn’s wedding because of my change of jobs.  I’m sad I missed their ceremony, but I’m happy I was able to see them while in Utah and share a wonderful evening of sushi.  And another evening at a party in Pleasant Grove (but I’ll leave out the amount of alcohol that might have been consumed.  The wedding I was able to attend was Julz’ and Bill’s where I had the privilege of being her gentleman of honor.  Such a great weekend, being able to be a part of their lives and growing family.  Two extra bonus points:  the number of pet-friendly hotels in Utah, and something about a Bloody Mary the morning after their wedding.

- Peace.  Not having daily conflicts and enjoying a sense of, dare I say… peace… is something I haven’t felt in years.  The combination of all the above blessings and happenings of 2008 have made for a fulfilling year.  One side effect has been a complete disregard for blogging.  Overall, I’m okay with the blog neglect, because I’m going to ride this wave of peace and satisfaction for as long as I can.  It’s like a long-term orgasm – I’m sorry if I’m so self-aborbed that I’m not considering your pleasure – but baby this feels so good that I’m not going to spend too much time feeling guilty about it.

I Can Relate

Now and Zen

Except for being fuzzy and not nearly as handsome nor graceful.

**technical note: the damn caption option is now built into the posting process – I can name it, but don’t have a clue how to change the setting or alignment (yet).

White Light

Up and down hills.  Go down one hill and up another.  Reach the crest and experience white light before descending (tripping, falling, sliding) and going up (trudging, dragging, pushing, pulling) the next hill.  I’m right there at the crest and basking in the full glow of life’s light.  Part of me wants to doubt, but at three days now, I’m done pinching myself (notice, I said “pinching).  It’s been a long time since I felt so alive.

The pictures below are obliquely related to this post since they are wearing white.  I’ll fire the first preemptive snarky comment:  if one can’t have eye candy, then what the hell can one have?  And the rhetorical answer is… everything.

In the name of cheese and rice:  Ramen.

(this post partially inspired by a thoughtful discussion of physics and relationships and energy, found at Seizui’s digs)