A little jazzed

I am nervous about tonight's dinner out.  I keep imagining myself tucking into some extravagant dessert.

(Our intention was to take my mom out to celebrate her birthday.  But, an unexpected and harmonic convergence is bringing together my mom, my cousin, my second cousin and my sister!  So we will be a happy party of six.)

Maybe saying some guidelines out loud will help:

• no gluten

• unless it's truly a single size portion, halve my entrée and bring half home/share it with the table

• stick to meat/seafood/veg and choose something un-/less saucy

• savor the tableside making of the guacamole...and the guacamole itself

• skip dessert (unless they have fruit) and enjoy a good cup of coffee

• revel in the kid-less conversation and the delight we all take in the occasion

Peace.

Gluten gut

I hear my body talking...complaining...occasionally squawking.

For a week or two I've been mindfully decreasing my grain intake, particularly wheat.  I've noticed on the plus side that, I have quickly begun to experience feeling hungry in the morning again.  That just feels "normal"...and nice.

On the minus side (which I guess is a plus in terms of the whole knowledge=power thing), on the occasions that I have consumed something gluten-y, I have begun to experience and be more aware of bodily ills and symptoms that wheat is hard for my system to digest.

• itchy rashy red skin

• bad mood

• restless/unfocused mind

• gut pain

• digestive irregularity (of all types)

Yesterday's pasty...a hard lesson learned.  I felt like I had a lead ball in my stomach for hours after I ate it.  Then I was in a fiercely bad mood followed by incredible mental restlessness.  I went to bed late, but had no insomnia (interesting).  This morning, as soon as I ate (I was not hungry, but breakfast always seems the thing to do when starting my day), my stomach started to hurt.  This does not happen if I am regularly consuming wheat/gluten.  But, I think, the bit of a break was enough to resensitize me and my body.  It wasn't my stomach that was actually having trouble this morning, the issues had landed further along my digestive system.  I'll spare you the rest.

I tend to think it's never just one thing.  And I tend to think things always change. 

I am looking forward to continuing to refine my diet according to what my body tells me.  Gluten-free, less grains...more veggies.  Protein is a must for me so continue with grass-fed pastured meat and eggs.  Cheese seems, for now, okay.  Beans are beginning to become problematic.  I noticed it first with lentils, and now chickpeas.  Soy seems fine, so far.  I tend to consume fermented soy (natto) which may be why.

Next week Cap and I will begin to construct a new schedule, with an eye to building new routines for the Fall.  I am joining the Y (Gem upon hearing this: "let's see if it lasts more than a month this time"...ouch!) and am lobbying for a daily block of time for myself. 

I am someone who bounces back and forth between scheduled is good vs. unscheduled is good.  And I am wanting more of a schedule these days.  (A sign, for sure, of the chaos I am feeling inside.)

I am realizing that I have been in a near constant state of never knowing when either or both the kids are going to need me...but knowing that I need to be available for when those moments come up.  For my ADDish self, this can be a hellish purgatory.  If I delve into something on my own, I hate being interrupted.  I hate it so much that I become inhibited from starting anything and then I feel crappy because I feel unproductive.  By the end of the day I am physiologically tired and then I begin again vis-a-vis Cap.

So, yes, more structure is sounding very good about now.

I will also resume seeing Vinny and taking herbs and I think practicing Qigong will follow.  Vinny is leading a Dragon's Way class this Fall and I am hoping to join the Qigong class.

In the meantime, I'm putting one foot in front of the other, one thought in front of the other.  Thanks for moving along with me.

Peace and love.

Alas

How'd that happen?  Days passing with no blogging is a rarity (and I'll be taking a two week hiatus starting end of next week...internet connection in Barcelona is going to be much less than what I am used to).  My apologies.  This took me by surprise.

The addition of baseball into the family activity rotation has shifted my time-space continuum.

And we are working, slowly, on preparing the kids' room for the hoped for debunking of their bunk beds.  (Things need to be moved out, preferably permanently, to make more space.)

And a friend from high school invited me to join an Old School Music group on Facebook which has been totally fun...wonderful, really.  I've been listening to old tunes and adding some of my own.

In between there are the usual playdates and appointments (Vinny made a lump in my armpit disappear yesterday with some very painful massage that traveled from my pit down to my ribs...anyone here remember my Springtime woes in the rib/lung area of years past?)

An eye exam yesterday which resulted in a prescription change.  I am hoping my new glasses will be ready before my departure.

Staggering fatigue at the end of the day recently which has sent me to bed early.

Here are two oldies...one from the Old School Music group, the other a shot of me and my incredible mom who has taken such good care of me for so many years.

Earthing

Take a listen.  And tell me what you feel.  I had an immediate and visceral reaction which manifested significantly in the physical plane.  Wild.  The video description over at YouTube explains the "what" of the video.  The "how" and "why" and "wow" is up to you. Enjoy.

Groove-y

This line from Superchunk's Learned To Surf keeps catching my attention on my March Melodies playlist.

If I drift out in channels way too deep,
It's cause I can't stand the shifting sand and shells under our feet...

I like the line that comes after, too, though I don't usually 'hear' that one.

If I drift out in channels way too deep,
It's cause I can't stand the shifting sand and shells under our feet,
Put your suitcase down, and leave your shoes,
Gently by the door, in a puddle with your blues...

Ouch

Nothing says 'slow down' like slicing through a fingernail into a fingertip.  Quite.

Holy (insert expletive here)!

I'm reading Married to Distraction and it is hard to put down.  Luckily I have the day to myself so I don't have to.

It is sobering and a relief to see myself and familiar scenarios in these pages.

Hope your Saturday is full of light and air.

Solo

A song from Floodplain by Kronos Quartet. Going up and down my iTunes dial searching for October sounds.



Deluge of rain for over 24 hours now, jolted from sleep around 4am by a particularly clamorous downpour.  (The night before it was a single heart stopping explosive lightning strike around 3am.)

Woke up for good a few hours later, stressed.  Some of the factors crystal clear, some less so.  Talked to the guys and decided to send them off to Ocean City without me.  Some family vacation.

It will be a weekend of much needed solitude.  Some catching up of work, some Qigong/meditation, some release.

I ran out for some single gal provisions before they left with the car: root beer, spicy salmon and avocado sushi, Udi's GF pizza crusts and a bag of Daiya CF cheese, hummus, Udi's GF sandwich bread, coconut water and orange juice.  Someone's thirsty.

The air is chilling down nicely and the sky is lightening though still cloudy.  Looking forward to some uninterrupted sleep tonight.

Peace and love to you, hope you have a wonderful weekend.

StoryCorps

Happy about this:


http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/storycorps-radio-histories-coming-to-television/

Natural magnetism

Someone shares my love of the sea.  When he was in utero, I remember driving out to the tip of Provincetown and feeling him awaken and energize inside me.

Back from a weekend in Massachusetts.  Lovely visits with family (of origin and choice) abounded.  The drive home was arduously long and this morning came way too early with a child throwing up in bed.

It can (re)start with a word

Yesterday someone referred to me as "lazy".  This person wasn't trying to hurt my feelings or call me a "name".  They were speaking their truth based on observation and experience.

And, I am lazy.  It's hard not to feel stung by the negative connotations and associations that come with that word, but it is possible.  The word itself is neither bad or good. 

Yet, I did feel misunderstood.

I can better understand my lazy self through personality studies.  I tend towards being an introvert and a phlegmatic (both are personality types which are/appear "lazy" to others).  Being lazy is far from being my whole picture.  But, it (and my personality) is something I can focus some attention on in the next few weeks as I shift how I work on financial accounting, decluttering, and generally managing my household more effectively.

I found this piece via a quick Google search of lazy and misunderstood :-)  Finding a different place to work on these aspects of my life will be a challenge (I spend a lot of time within this apartment!), but it's also clear to me that it would help.  A creative puzzle, just the sort of thing my mind likes to occupy itself with...

I also found this piece which resonated because while I was having my time with the person who called me lazy, I felt at a loss for words.  I did not wish to "get into it"...to share what I was thinking or feeling.  It didn't feel possible to translate what was inside to outside.  This was infuriating to the person I was interacting with.  Did I look smug?  Arrogant?  Blank?  I'm not sure.

And the process continues.  I really liked the line in the first piece: "...I say combat because I'll probably never win the battle completely."  That's honest.  It's accepting the challenge while accepting (and loving) what and who it is causing the battle in the first place.

Woods walk

Seen:



















Heard:

Upshot

There doesn't always have to be a reason.

I sat in the sun with Donna on her front steps. Sipping hot jasmine green tea with honey we talked. And this was one of the things that came up. In the wake of feeling my emotions more powerfully the last few months...the last year, I am noticing my tendency to want to "explain" why I feel the way I feel.

I wonder if I've forced some connections that way, rather than come to realize authentic ones.

There doesn't have to be a reason. Or...even if there is a reason, knowing that reason, spending time trying to figure it out, isn't always important. Honoring the emotion, respecting it, and receiving love and support around it, those things matter.

Feelings come and go. Going with the flow and keeping your senses and self open to what is happening in your moment...reaching outside of yourself to connect to the moments of those around you, there is meaning and value in that.

Manatee musing

I am listening to a play list I just made for a friend. I am not a skilled song arranger so I always listen to the play list once through before committing it to a cd. I'm plugged in with my ear buds. The kids are on my periphery watching some Duck Tales (cold and dreary fare...it is really cold and dreary out). Cap is up at school.

I listen to these tunes and am pulled under an emotional sea. The songs that draw me lately are sad songs. I was beginning to read into this until Kelly mentioned that according to TCM this time of year brings on the sadness. Sadness for no reason. Sadness for sadness' sake. There's actually a beauty and poetry to that. The earth is tilting away from the sun in our part of the world. It's a time of dying...of shutting down...of slowing down.

I am feeling so done with myself. Not suicidal...just, frustrated, let down, simultaneously parched and damp, both brittle and softest-parts-exposed...

This weekend has been about slowing down. Regrouping. I've been knitting. I've watched two good movies (Head-On and District B13). I've gotten a bit more sleep. I've read. I've vacuumed.

(My problem with focusing on "home" is that I don't come by home-making naturally and therefore don't typically gain intrinsic satisfaction from it. Home-making is relentless. There is always something more that needs to be done. Or, in my case, most likely needed to be done weeks ago and is still hanging over my head.)

Enough complaining. I've got a good life...a really good life. I'm trying not to think too much (what every single TCM practitioner has ever told me). But, sometimes it's hard for me to deal with emotions and I find myself quickly constructing scaffolding with my mind... A series of planes and lines of meaning, explanation, idea, epiphany.

Something to ponder as I continue with Dragon's Way, as unique as this journey has become (not practicing daily and eating pretty much whatever I want?!) My liver has been the other aspect of my health that every TCM practitioner has agreed on. My liver the beacon. The liver the organ that processes emotion.

If I can create and collect more Qi, there will be more of an allotment that can flush out stagnation in the liver and enable easier flow. As the channel widens, I should be able to process emotion more naturally, and more easily. Then I won't have to be knocked over every time I hear a certain song...or be memerized by someone's turn of phrase... I won't have to apply some external meaning to make sense of an intense emotional reaction.

I wonder if this means I will lose some of the intensity I feel. But, I think my gradual opening has brought on an intensity in experience: sensory, emotional, physical... There appears a possibility that whatever I experience, subtle or intense, will simply feel more comfortable and normal. Nothing that has to be explained by something else. Nothing that has to mean anything other than what it is.

Consequences

I was able to talk some of this out with a friend on the phone this afternoon. She was talking about taking risks and being afraid of consequences and how it's worth it to feel like you are truer version of yourself.

And I connected that back to what I wrote about this morning. Falling equals taking risks, being a truer version of yourself equals being a truer version of yourself, so...the smooth black hole, the acute sense of potential loss...could that equal fear of consequences?

This is interesting.

• Because I have taken plenty of risks while flashing that smile at whatever consequences might follow. It makes sense now that this doesn't have to be black or white. I am looking for more detail within the grays. A process which will no doubt continue for the rest of my days. The key is to tread peacefully as I travel in between times of clarity.

• Because I can see how this type of knot could have formed and tightened over the years. I don't remember a big specific event, but I've certainly had experiences in and out of my family that made me feel less inclined to simply feel comfortable being myself. I've opted to take on actions, roles and outward identities/appearances in order to avoid potentially feeling ashamed, embarrassed or hurt.

• Because if you spend time showing a front to the world, eventually you can pull adrift from who you really are. And if you don't reflect on this kind of disconnect and it simply gets left by the wayside as you do manage to reconnect pieces here and there... Those knots don't go away on their own and, as another friend said, they can take awhile to unravel.

• Because this ties into something else that has occurred to me. I think entering middle age continues to lob new awareness my way. And I mistake that as an opportunity to learn something new each time. The error of my ways is that this process is nowhere near as linear as I make it out to be. 1+1 sometimes equals 1. (ie. There's the me that doesn't worry about consequences at all, there's the me that worries about them unconsciously, a lot. But, it's all always just me. 1+1=1.)

• Because "consequences" is still a term that I toss (or sometimes throw in utter frustration) to my kids, literally or metaphorically, and sometimes insidiously, and I can see more clearly now why I struggle with this. There is a difference between a natural consequence and an unnatural/inorganic condition coming into play when interacting with anyone, but especially with children or someone with less power than you.

• Because there is a connection I can see between "consequence" and the sense of deprivation and being externally controlled that I do remember from childhood.

• Because earlier today I requested a book and dvd about string theory from the library. String theory momentarily blew my mind when I had a conversation about it with Judy while living in Sacramento. I was stunned to hear about a scientific theory (not being much of a science person) that made so much sense to me. And then I kind of let it go and didn't learn more about it. I wonder if this theory will connect back to some of this other discovery...

Shedding the theoretical and being more in the here and now...drinking in moments like this one...smiles shining with love and nonsense.

Minding the physical mess around me, but not enough to stress about it, or to put it before whatever it is I really want to be doing in the moment.

Aware of my right hip. There's been a tightness there for months coming and going. Vinny says we're going to pay closer attention to it. Clearing that up will ease communication between the upper and lower sections of my body.

He pushed harder on my liver and stomach meridians last visit. He is excited for me, he can sense whatever it is that is happening. Those same spots that shrieked to life under his fingertips are still humming a song of recovery...

Off to practice..."you're not above it you're not below it"...

A picture speaks...

Maybe not a thousand words, but this picture says a lot about where I am these days. (Which was not intentional when I took the photo. Coincidence or the subconscious at work?)

The words "when one door closes, another door opens" have been swimming in my head for days and days. (Full quote by Alexander Graham Bell...I had no idea!) : “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”)

The four-sided shape of light on the carpet represents an open door, bursting with bright possibility and well within my reach. I can see it, but I'm not there.

My feet are planted at the end of this road. I am not opposed to jumping. I can see that spot of light and it looks inviting. And it doesn't look to far to make it safely.

But, there's something peeking out at me from under the ledge. I can see it is looking directly at me. It is meant for me. That's undeniable.

I can't see the whole of it and don't understand what it is. But, I can feel what it wants. It wants me to look. And somehow, I'm afraid that if I go for it, take a leap while turning a blind eye, that it may grab for a limb (and maybe only manage to make contact with a finger or toe or a ponytail) and I will fall.

I hate falling. I wasn't always like this. I remember a particularly spectacular fall running down the block full speed heading for the playground. I was maybe seven. I approached the corner and I skidded, braking and turning, my Pro-Keds unable to grip completely, mysterious grains of sand thinly spread out on the speckled concrete. I went down and wide swaths of scraped skin formed starting at my knee caps and ending somewhere around my ankles. The heels of my hands were mottled with bits of sand studding my skin, indentations where the sidewalk left imprints, and dots of blooming blood.

And I felt triumphant. I was full of energy, I loved going fast, and I was unstoppable. I don't remember what happened next. Maybe I cried. Very likely I had to return home to get the scrapes cleaned. But, I am sure that I ended up exactly where I had been headed for originally: time to play outside.

This memory is a gift rare and vivid. Maybe it is a part of what is peering out at me from below. A reminder of who I am underneath all the layers and static of time. Not afraid to fall, flashing a smile in the face of a tumble, in fact.

A being willing and happy to fly forward not knowing what's coming around the corner but trusting that whatever it is, she can handle it. And in the meantime, what about this ride? It's GREAT!

Doing Dragon's Way, continuing with working with Vinny and the herbs, the hallway has become a much more comfortable place. I've figured out how to replace some of the old light bulbs. But, I know I can't live in a hallway forever. And I don't want to.

I am paralyzed, at this spot. I haven't practiced in days, I have been eating to fill that unnamed hole in my soul, my curiosity about the pause in my journey is turning into sadness about the fear that is part of me.

The strains of the cello in the background slow me enough to realize that it isn't the falling that scares me. I have taken falls since that memorable childhood spill.

As a free wheeling teenager I was knocked off my ten speed when someone opened their car door moments too soon. I've passed out: once stepping out of a bath tub and once in the midst of streaming demonstrators on the Mall in D.C. I've fallen down half a flight of a steep stone stairs in Fisk Hall and been hit by a car right around the corner from the same building during college.

And none of those experiences were particularly traumatizing. Falling happens. I know I can't control it, I can try to be careful, and recovery can be anticipated (I am very much a cup half full person.)

So what is it that I am afraid of? Not knowing what it is I will lose by pushing forward (if not flying) to get to my truer self. There are things I want to do, or have wanted to do for a long time that I haven't been able to do. To live more simply, to have less stuff, to be able to do what I need to do (commitments I have chosen to take on) and what I want to do, in some balance, each day.

I don't know why I feel such an acute sense of potential loss. Maybe that ties into the unnamed hole in my soul. Maybe that is what the hole is. I don't care much how the hole got there. But, I would really like to get rid of it.

Is that what this is about? Facing the hole more squarely? Do I need to recognize it more fully, to name it, in order to let it go? If that is so, then I have my work cut out for me. Because right now, the hole is blank and smooth. I don't see any way in to gain a better understanding.

When life speaks

...I choose to listen.

I took it slow this morning, remaining open to what would unfold.

My energy has been building. I knit some rows of Brian's socks. I fed and nourished myself and my children. Sag and I talked about the possibilities of a Lego birthday party. I spoke to my sister on the phone. I ordered books for a birthday we will be celebrating this week. I bid Cap good-bye as he went off to work hard for our money (smile). I listened to some new music (video clip below). I read a blog post and cried.

The kids and I were preparing to head out to Angela's house for a play date when Gem said his stomach hurt. He doesn't feel well. And the way his body is communicating, we best stay home.

One door closes, and another opens.

Wearing another of Barbra's creations. Namaste, my friend.


John Vanderslice and Magik Magik Orchestra.


The one and only, Donna Summer!

Watch and listen

I've watched/listened to these two videos this week and both have touched me...opened my mind...made me smile. Maybe something in them will touch you, too. Enjoy.

(I am a little rattled this morning. More qi gong will help. Writing feels out of the question.)

Love

I want to rest today.

The day is full of breezes, tender with some coolness. The kids and Cap are quietly involved in their own things. For now.

Allowing myself to rest when I need to is honoring my body and mind.

I am troubled by my lack of energy. My stores are low. Sleep, qi gong, eating less, and overall, being more mindful, each moment, will help restore. So simple, yet so hard to surrender the attachments that feel so real and that I cling to...

Yes, time does a number on us all. But, we can let go, let go....and become one with the love, choose the love, that presents itself to us, each and every moment.