Pre-recorded Programming...

* My apologies for submitting other people's thoughts here...I am sure I will get back to my own, soon. In the meantime, the contents of the following email I received meant a lot to me:

Don't avoid the void
"When we feel stuck, going nowhere -- even starting to slip backward -- we may actually be backing up to get a running start."
-- Dan Millman

To change, we must go through a transition zone. It's not easy being in transition. Thoughts, beliefs and habits are all in flux. It can create a sense of groundlessness, of being in a void that can be quite uncomfortable.

When we’re in the void, our first impulse will be to revert to old habits because they feel comfortable. Our goal is to hang in there until the change is complete. Knowing that TRANSITIONS ARE PART OF THE CHANGE PROCESS helps us muster the courage to put up with the discomfort, the uneasiness, the void.

Change requires a letting go of what we’ve always known and done to allow in something new. We need to trust ourselves and higher forces to unfold a new reality for us.

"Every positive change - every jump to a higher level of energy and awareness - involves a rite of passage. Each time to ascend to a higher rung on the ladder of personal evolution, we must go through a period of discomfort, of initiation. I have never found an exception."
-- Dan Millman

In my inbox today...

Live your own life

"We don't always know what makes us happy. We know, instead, what we think SHOULD. We are baffled and confused when our attempts at happiness fail...We are mute when it comes to naming accurately our own preferences, delights, gifts, talents. The voice of our original self is often muffled, overwhelmed, even strangled, by the voices of other people's expectations. The tongue of the original self is the language of the heart."
-- Julie Cameron

We are each unique beings with a unique path in life. If we wish to be fulfilled, we need to go to our own hearts for direction. We might regularly ask ourselves:

- "What do I really want to do?"

- "What brings me greatest happiness?"

- "How can I bring more of these into my life?"

Life wants us to go for what brings us most joy and meaning.

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. ...I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing."
-- Oriah Mountain Dreamer

"Let me listen to me and not to them."
-- Gertrude Stein

"What you must dare is to be yourself."
-- Dag Hammarskjold

Time travel...

I was telling somebody I love that sometimes when I travel it is not the country of today I want to see. I realized I really just want to time travel.

I would really like to take one of those trips today. I want to check my Baggage at the door, get into the time machine and get out at my parent's house in the 1960's, go get my allowance of 50 cents and walk over to the Corner Store. I want to blow it all on a brown paper bag filled with sweet delights that will make me sick to my stomach.

I then want to time travel to my family's cabin at the lake, where the water was but a hop, skip and a jump from the door. I want to go out on the dock, untie the boat, jump into it, head it out into deep waters and hit the accelerator. I want to feel the wind in my hair and the sun on my face and I want to go exploring with the unchallenged joy of the child I was then.

I want to watch the seagulls drop from 25 feet in the air, free-falling into the lake with an eye to dinner.

I want to wade through the water looking for beautiful stones for my rock collection. I want to watch schools of minnows swim inches from my feet.

I want to sit on the beach in the evening, pushing my bare feet into the sand and try to keep the fire going while the wind crashes waves into the shore.

I want to go there now...to a place where life still held so much promise, still made sense and didn't hurt so damn much.

On Perimenopause...

I have decided the Christian God is responsible for perimenopause. No Goddess centred culture would EVER foist such a curse on a woman. Now people have been accusing me of being bitter around the issue of Christianity so I PROMISE I will not mention anything else about it until my next blog.Well...except for this...if Christianity is INDEED responsible for perimenopause then it is also responsible for my perimenopause induced bitterness. Are you following me? No, I mean really are you actually FOLLOWING me...'cause paranoia is an issue here too!

Anyway...so two months ago I was standing at a TTC stop waiting for a bus and I saw this cloud come over me and slowly and musically ( I think it was an oboe) it descended upon me. Like a wet sweater. Like a wet sweater that smells like mildew and mothballs, 'cause you just know someone has been saving it for you for 45 years, waiting for this precise moment. There is no brass band...('cause I am sure it would drown out the oboe)...no warning announcement...well except for that increasingly painful occasion called The Birthday...it just unceremoniously slides right on over you. Oh, you may have been keeping an eye out for it, looking behind bathroom stall doors, root cellars or the underwear aisle at Wallmart, but you will never see it coming until it arrives.

So, it descends upon me and I think that if I eat I am sure I will feel much better. Okay, so it wasn't a food issue after all...is it PMS? Nope...can't be that. Did I have a bad day and just wasn't aware of it? Nope. I am just in a bad mood for no apparent reason. AND IT HASN'T LEFT FOR TWO MONTHS!!! Occurring concurrently with this moodiness is the sensation that someone is chewing on my nipples. Chewing. And not in a fun way. And the rest of them hurt...all the time...to varying degrees and not in a way I have ever experienced before.

I have decided that all women upon turning 45...or a reasonable facsimile thereof...should be allowed certain freedoms important to retaining even some small bit of sanity to carry them into their 50's. They should be able to scream, at will, at anyone they want...only for the following serious crimes:

1. Rattling candy wrappers on transit
2. Making that noise by sliding spit back and forth through your teeth on transit
3. Coughing...for any reason
4. Nose sniffling...same as above
5. Talking on your cell phone like we are all interested in your break-up
   
6. Being mentally ill...I am sorry...I support you....just not on transit during perimenopause. Especially if you are that autistic guy who sat beside me and rocked back and forth slamming yourself into me, over and over and over again.
7. Eating potato chips...come on...think about it
8. Being that big burly guy and sitting in a seat when I am not in a particularly feministy mood and I want you to offer me your seat. Hey Big Burly Guy! I am from the prairies where they still do that...at least where they actually have transit! I am not a feminist when I am tired, OK???!!!
   
9. Ipods cranked so I can sing along with you, which I would if I could actually STAND THE MUSIC!!! On transit!
10. People talking
11. People breathing
12. The last two items are by far too much to ask!

Also, please be aware and pretend to find it completely and totally acceptable if a perimenopausal woman bursts into tears. It will always be for reasons of the utmost importance like the following:

1. Someone remembering to bring you a granola bar for a snack at a work seminar. Granola is a very important reason to cry.


2. Remembering that Little Johnnie called you a dyke when you were 12. Don't argue with this one. In fact just don't argue, it makes us cry.


3. Cute dogs. Come on, cute dogs make you cry too, it's not just us.


4. "Were you teasing me or did you mean that???" Either way, we will cry, so please wait until we are 55 to resume either.


5. "You looked at me with judgment! I know you did! Just stop looking!"


6. "You never look at me anymore, how rude! What is with that?!"


7. Your girlfriend buying you an "I Love You Sweater" even if she will just do her best to convince you of the practicality of it. You know better. Black turtlenecks are very important reasons to cry. Really! Are you questioning me? I'll cry!

I am sure life will be much easier for everyone once these rules are put in place. Did you look at me funny? Is that a candy wrapper in your hand???!!!

Get your freak on...

I can walk down a wide hall and still manage to crash into a wide doorway. I can't eat a meal without wearing it. I am the person the toilet-paper-stuck-to-the-shoe joke was fashioned for. I excel at tripping while running upstairs--anywhere--but only in front of a large crowd. I am the person drifting off while others are conversing around me, only to clue back in by saying something that has nothing remotely to do with the subject-at-hand. I am the one who came out to my parents and really religious family members by accidently sending them a risque note meant for my girlfriend. Yes...I am a spaz.

I am a spaz who rarely feels at home anywhere...not in my shoes, not in my home, not in this part of the world, not in my skin.

But because the Universe has some semblance of compassion, there are two places I do. The Gay Village and Theatre. In either place I am suddenly in the now and alive to every sense. If you put me in the Gay Village in a theatre, I am someone else. Someone I can no longer ignore. I am no longer a freak. I morph into some kind of fearless, graceful air spirit. The mundane stresses of the world no longer bully my spirit to the back of the line. I am free.

You'd think that would inspire me, wouldn't you? I'm ramping up for it. Honest. It's a big ramp and I have to pause every 10 feet to catch my breath. But look...I am dancing up the ramp...see? Look Ma...no hands!

When will you be ready?

"2 AM and I'm still awake, writing a song
If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me
Threatening the life it belongs to
And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd
'Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud
And I know that you'll use them, however you want to"
~Anna Nalick

There is something of a terrified exhibitionist in every writer. There is some twisted, fucked-up desire to purge the deepest, darkest places in ourselves and in all of us. Artists are canaries in coal mines...the most sensitive, frightened and fragile among us. What is it that causes people to want to strip themselves naked in front of people...people who can use the page or the screen as a way of emotionally distancing themselves from the artist long enough to have no conscience in tearing them to shreds? What the fuck kind of tormented life have we chosen? Or what the fuck kind of tormented life has chosen us?

If you have ever woken up in the middle of the night with the need, as close as breathing, to write something down or you'll explode, you will understand. The need to paint with words. The need to get it out or you will die, at the very least, a metaphorical death.

Somewhere, a while back, I decided to run from this part of myself. Because it always loomed large...this huge elephant in the room, staring at me with its eyes penetrating me and causing me to sweat in the heat of its truth. I ran until I could run no more and the elephant sits beside me now, staring into my soul and reminding me of the choices I made a very long time ago.

It hasn't mattered the number of disguises I have chosen to divert this elephant...it always knows me. It doesn't care that I am afraid. It doesn't care that I could fail. It doesn't care that the critics that hunt me could find me. It just stares at me. Unrelenting. I squirm under its gaze.

This beautiful woman I work with saw the elephant in the room...not everybody does. She prayed for someone to come and write her screenplay, because her voice, although eloquent, doesn't match the need in her piece. Mine does. And I know it does. She knows it does. And like in so many dreams I am frozen to the spot and I can't run.

I am big into messages from the Universe in ordinary places like transit systems. Of late, I step on a streetcar or a subway and I am assailed with one message. On a really annoying ad. It says, "When will you be ready?" Everywhere I turn, it screams at me, "WHEN WILL YOU BE READY?"

One of my clients, rather infamous for his thoughts on creativity, was going on at me the other day, once again, to pick up my bloody pen. His gaze pierced my armour and he said, "When will you be ready?"

Fuck you, you bastard elephant! Now. Ok? Now! Now, please stop shitting in my room!