Day of Venus XVI

This is the 16th Friday of my Day of Venus Posts, where I let wash up what is present in the undercurrents of my mind, heart and spirit. I am honored and deeply grateful for your readership as I cultivate my writer voice blindfolded—vertebrae by vertebrae, all chrysalis and soil.

Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg, page 131

Brendon, grade 4, Eugene, Oregon 2022, 4am. I am in my grandma’s house and everyone is asleep. I am supposed to be sleeping but I am awake in a dream where I am supposed to be sleeping. I am standing at the entrance and in-between place of where the hallway meets the living room. Her snoring is rhythmically cascading up and then down again from in her room at the end of the hall to where I stand, as sensational news blares from her television as background noise. The sliver of space outlining the bottom of her bedroom doorframe is the static-white light of the television, choppy and flickering in it’s usual off-beat kind of way.

The blanket around my shoulders is coarse and stiff–the wool one nobody uses but me–the one that lays folded long-ways over the top ridge of the sofa behind everyone’s necks and heads. Everyone has seen it so many times they think it is part of the couch at this point. When they need a blanket they’ll reach for the old soft ones she has stored in a chest next to the front door, but it’s the best one in the house to me, and also what is closest to me when I fall asleep. You always get what you want when you want things that are not coveted by everyone else, like the way I enjoy their company, but I like being alone more, and also how, to me, the couch is the coziest nest of a spot to sleep in, in the entire house–in the best room of the house too–open-spaced and circular, and just a few steps away from being outside on the porch, which is the next best place to be at grandma’s. I bury my face in the angle of the L-shaped sofa, where the cushions meet and things disappear into–sometimes I find stale popcorn or jolly ranchers or headphones a cousin has lost. Oh, this squishy man-made, yet God-channeled of a creation that is my grandmother’s couch. The amount of pleasure and satisfaction it gives makes me think I was a burrowing animal in another lifetime. Then sometimes, when I am not a burrowing raccoon (or fox? or rabbit? or mouse?) I fall asleep on my back, watching the lights and their shadows move along the walls–my eyes catching a floating beam of a headlight from the highway 3 blocks away and overhead, the drifting reds that sway and dissolve on the ceiling–and my eyelids fall without effort. But right now, in my dream, I am awake and standing.

I somehow cannot, or I refuse to, move my body, and it is difficult to pin down the reason–am I being held to the floor or am I willing myself to be a statue here? There is both an indecision and an entity made of iron standing inside of me, unwilling to step outside of me. The floors creek in protest at even the slightest shift of my weight from foot to foot. A street lamp’s gold rests itself upon the furniture, the window ridges, the coffee table and it’s cigarette butts scrunched in an ashtray, remote controls and unopened envelopes that have become a part of the table. Everyone is asleep, and everything that is usually a background static, is loud–the fan, the hum of the refrigerator, grandma’s tv, grandma. Things that have never made themselves known to me are all suddenly a blaring symphony. I wonder how I’ve never noticed them before.

“I am supposed to be sleeping, but I am awake in a dream where I am supposed to be sleeping.”

Me, in my own psyche, in my waking day dream right now, stream-of-thought & through the lens of the dream I had last night (5/27-5/28)

I catch a glimpse of my legs in the reflection of a shop beside me that has black tinted windows and have to do a double-take because they don’t look like my legs. I am wearing shorts and there is visible muscle gain where I’ve never seen muscle before. There is a shop to my right and to my left, and ahead of me is the wooden ledge that surrounds this circled group of ice-cream and souvenir-selling vortexes. I feel the sense of relief build and build into a gradual seamless and continual state of stillness the closer I get to the lookout. Voices become soft murmurs behind me and my forearms cross over one another on the ledge, for me to lean my body into and keep my eyes closed against the blue sky. I had just gotten out from the rest area in the center of the stores, where tiny and circular wooden tables are drilled onto the wooden planked floorboard. “The Treehouse” is the name of the shopping villa, and stairways made up of 3-7 steps zig-zag in no particular pattern from one patio of shops and resting areas to the next, making it a crossword puzzle of a time to find your way back to the ground floor where you started. There is a staircase to my right which leads down into a cross-section of another group of stairways to choose from.

As I am standing there are band-members walking by behind me who I had heard moments before from a nearby unloading area grabbing their equipment. Their voices become hushed as they approach the sprawl of tourists. They focus and weave seamlessly between and around the strollers, the shopping bags, the family’s posing for pictures. Eyes glossy, joyful, still and awake; shoes a little muddy, and all wearing open-buttoned silk blouses of deep indigos and forest greens, magenta’s and golds. There is sweat and patchouli and eucalyptus in the air around them. There is a woman in a collared indigo silk blouse, holding a guitar case in each hand who is trailing behind, with complete ease as if she is made to be the lazy-yet-right-on-time and curiously sensual tail of the ensemble. She turns her gaze from the sky, to look directly and intently into my eyes, as if she knew I’d be standing here, and her smile’s corners lift to touch the creases of her eyes, and I realize who she is. I blink and she is not there walking toward me anymore. I scan the crowd from left to right, then gaze down the stairwell where the band had been headed, and my eyes become dizzy with a tiredness. All of the colors of the people, the shops, the posters, the lights, become webbed and of the same thing. I feel both a coming-together and a disintegration within and around me. While I am aware of my being–that inner voice that says “I exist here and I am one conscious creation”, I also feel myself becoming stretched and scattered into pieces all around me, my body taking on a new of form. With the passing of what feels like returning to your waking day from your dream world, I am suddenly able to make out the information and messages of the voices around me. My trapezius muscles and my triceps are allowing two heavy objects to be carried through time and space, and I feel my senses returning to my hands, which are gripping handles and my elbows slightly bend as I consciously expand my chest and keep my eyes soft as they meet the eyes of those around me. I weave and bop and twirl and somehow know exactly where I’m going. I trust the knowing and exert no energy in needing to assemble the destination’s correctness. When I get there it is a dark and cave-like entryway into the softest and most spirit-sweeping hymn I have ever heard. I see colors I both remember and am being acquainted to for the first time, under the beams of light coming in from every direction. I get closer and am greeted with the familiarity of family, high cheeks and every word of praise or silly gesture.

..this is where I am leaving off, for now

“In every moment, peace is a choice.”

Lately I have been getting tastes of taking up space, and `I like the way it makes me feel. I think I’ll keep doing it. I didn’t consciously know I wasn’t doing it. Being unapologetically loose and cheerful, then unapologetically serious and concentrated. Unapologetically affectionate, then unapologetically enforcing of boundaries I feel and cannot explain. I am learning to stop feeling a need to explain myself or provide a logical reason for behavior that isn’t appeasing or understandable. I am learning to not duck my head down low with an appeasing smile to accommodate for the insecurities and fears of another. You can be fearful–that doesn’t have shit to do with me. You can be insecure–that doesn’t have shit to do with me. Just unapologetic, like I know I can do no harm. Unapologetically selective and picky about where my energy goes, like I am making room for more–more excitement, more potent sweetness, more rooms where men and women and beings are beaming at one another from the heart. I now see that being apologetic–in posture, in mannerism, in speech, in the little choices I make–would be a disservice to not only myself, but to everyone around me. We need more unapologetic women–exuberant and generous with their joy.

–On Overcoming The Cinderella Syndrome–

When your heart is made a mockery of, or despised, envied, a cause for irritation within another’s being, there are several ways it could go. You see, sometimes people who have grown fearful are suspicious of kind gestures. Sometimes people are hateful toward sweetness, because of their own sweetness being mishandled, dismissed or abused. Even to be honest and easy-going about your mistakes and shortcomings in life can cause people to harden and scorn–your willingness to be vulnerable, messy and imperfect illuminates what they think they have to hide if they want to be liked or accepted. In these first experiences of our lives where we are learning about who we are in relation to others–how they treat us, talk to us, respond to our existence–there are choices we make unconsciously. Do we accept the story they have laid out in front of us, about us? To do so would be to fall into despair, then maybe even join in on the illusive tug-of-war they live in. Or do we hang on to the lonely sweetness for a little while longer, then sometimes a little while longer after that too? You see, there is a “running away without running away” that the universe gifts the patient & knowing–without effort there is a seamless removal of what doesn’t harmonize and a magnetization of what does. Suddenly, what looks like chaos to another is actually your soul’s greatest adventure out of the mazes the world offers us entry tickets to.

Patriarchal systems pit women against one another. They like to compare, snicker, and watch women create a world for themselves where a man’s desire for her is the focal point. Too loud. Too good. Too mischievous. Too reserved. Too much. Too little. There is never any winning when our standard for ourselves is spelled out by the shallow of the world. Your heart will be valued by those who can see, and those who don’t have the eyes will self-destruct anyway. Let them.

Maybe they’ve never been in rooms of women where there is a celebration from the inside out, for themselves as individuals, toward one another’s similarities, differences, intricacies. Skin showing, skin covered. Dances from separate dimensions taught to one another and displayed with a playful confidence. A love in the air like that exists everywhere, but it isn’t air-played on anyone’s favorite shows because it isn’t entertaining or as interesting to witness peace. If more people experience this, there will be less people feeling threatened or insecure when in the company of others. I shouldn’t see a look of relief and a surprised hardness-to-softness sweep over a woman’s face when she looks at me and I beam into her eyes. It shouldn’t be so uncommon or unlikely to have these exchanges with one another.

Maybe they’ve never experienced peaceful relationships, friendships, or connections where there isn’t a tap-dance around what is wanting to be said, what is in the air everywhere being passive-aggressively expressed. Maybe they’ve grown up thinking they had to pretend to be so many things in order to feel a sense of belonging. Maybe they’ve never experienced the safety of an in-tact bond after expressing preferences, experiences, like, dislikes, shortcomings, wins.

May you burn the food and make mistakes and not give a shit. May you wear the dress because you love it and that’s more than enough reason. May you laugh so loud in the store that they hear you from the other side, then may your laugh be as soft as a whisper and loved by you just the same. May you miss the train, lose yourself in a song, and forget to get as upset with yourself as they are with you for not making yourself small, questioning yourself or asking for permission.

You are allowed to think you are the most wonderful being in the world, and anyone who tries to make you feel otherwise is living in their own battlefield.

A sweet moment to remember: Today a student had her hand raised for a long time as others shared their thoughts and when I got to her she was like “Oh, well, um, this is not related to that so I’ll ask you later?” And I said “You sure?” and she nodded yes. So then later she stands beside me and says “I remembered my question!” And I said “Ok, yes?!” giving my full attention and really expecting her to ask about a song, an instrument or tell me about something regarding a country, culture, or dance we learned about, but she goes “What is your favorite color?” and I am more instant than I’ve ever been in naming a color as my “favorite”. Never before had it been so clear in my mind. The purple-blue of veins and the deepest point of the sea–“indigo” I say, and she scrunches up her face looking leftward, so I say “c’mere I’ll show you” and we walk to the computer where I type “indigo blue bottles in sunlight” and she sees the sun’s glow against the deep blue and beams slow saying “ahhhh yes!”

This led me to think about what my first experiences of this color must have been, and my whole being instantly knew–my mother’s indigo glasses and random wall pieces that were placed intentionally to be seen in sunlight. I think about the way baby’s open their eyes to the world and see all of the colors and shapes and creatures and beings as a web of meshed-together kaleidoscope and spiderwebbed dances. I imagine gazing at and into the glass as a child lost in daydream, carried by a trance uncategorized by the world.

“..somehow off-beat but I don’t know how I know that” can be in relation to something as subtle as the way someone is talking about something, and it is worth noticing. Off-beat like it is hiding contempt. Off-beat like it wants to steal something you are made of. Off-beat like it doesn’t belong in your song.

I am getting better at differentiating between the perceptions and projections of another, and the flame that I am. I am getting better at staying with me. I am getting better at making my world, my world.

My heart works like this: I hope you make yourself the super-hero of your own story, even if that means making me the villain, or the name of the nameless fog-from-dawn-until-dusk corner you once lived on, until deciding you liked the snow of the mountain a lot better than the sinking basin of the woods. There is no reason to hide or downplay anything when love like this is what you’re dealing with. If you look for scorn in my eyes you’ll be left bewildered. My wishes for you are your wishes for you. Go on and live baby. I want you to live.

… For it to be easy, like breathing, a part of nature–a “that’s just how it is and I never thought it could be otherwise”–to cherish and respect and choose me in their words and thoughts and actions when I am not around, or when I am gone and into the beauty of song, of life’s gifts, and away. A wolf-like sanctity and sacredness like this exists for me. A reverence for someone’s independence, and for the freedom of all individuals, even when it makes no sense to you. No interest in trying to de-mystify the things that move us from the inside. An explanation that sounds like poetry for why the artwork on their wall is coveted. A softness for humanity. Empathy for situations and people that have nothing to do with you at all. The perspective that the world is filled with magic and teeming with excitement. The felt encouragement of a thousand suns. The connection to and hunger for a world outside of a screen. Morning meditations and melodies that intentionally bring in the day. The ability to frolic with the entire world and hold me as sacred. The courage to disappoint me if that means being true to oneself. Be pulled away by sound, color, offering, dance and prayer and most attentive to the world you are in than you are to me. May I be as separate from and connected to your world as the tree outside your window inspiring you to go even deeper into yourself. I welcome your voyages away from me. I’ll sing about you when you are away, or I won’t. When we are united it is felt. When we are united it is an addition to the celebration of life we have already created for ourselves.

Day of Venus (XV)

This is the 15th Friday of my Day of Venus Posts, where I let wash up what is present in the undercurrents of my mind, heart and spirit. I am honored and deeply grateful for your readership as I cultivate my writer voice blindfolded—vertebrae by vertebrae, all chrysalis and soil.

This particular entry is more self-study and diary-like compared to recent posts, but it was all that wanted to come out and as I promised to myself in doing these, I am not going to edit or alter or hide out of shame or any resistance. As a warning, there are mentions of abuse and childhood trauma, so if you think that would make you uncomfortable for any reason, please do not read ahead. It’s been an intense week of therapy and solitude, so this is what is brewing in the aftermath of an eclipse. Writing is often a participation in an alchemical process that allows for healing and restoration, and with this post that is very much the case. As I write it out, I dispose of it and am lighter because of it taking a form outside of me, and I encourage others to try the same. Write out your fears, your torments, your confusion–from a place of seeking solace, understanding, peace. Particularly if you have been silent about pain for survival or out of fear–writing is liberating and allows for courage and a boldness to replace the silence and hesitation, and this more often than not trickles into every aspect of your life.

The translucent embryo of the empty space around the wic, the indigo ring at the basin, the voltaic scarlet, steady and tall, the smoke ringlets that are pulled into the air–I am made of all of the flame. Steady and enveloping, even when I am unaware, or forgetful, I still am. Patient and whole; dancing and still. May I act, speak and maneuver myself through time like I know I am burning. May the knowing replace all eagerness, all illusion of void, all hallucination of lack.

Relationships are spiritual work. All kinds of relationships, yes, but right now I am speaking on the romantic kind–the kind where the same side of your bodies ache at the same time, and they say what you are thinking and you sing what they have going on in the undercurrents of their psyche. So much work, yes, but let us excuse ourselves from the chambers of mirrors from time to time, and why not for most of the time? Let’s take a gummy and take off our heads. Let’s take off our words and our explanations of why we are the way we are. Let’s watch the rabbits and their white tails jump ahead of us and into dark green. I’ll put my playlist on shuffle while your hand is in my hair. I’ll rest my hand on your thigh and you’ll watch the sunset out the window. Let’s remember to be with one another while we are with one another, without wanting to consume or be consumed by. Let’s remember that while there is work to do, there is also loving to be done. Let’s take off the weight of commitment and unknowns and the uncontrollables of our mind’s antics, to just be companions for awhile. Let’s remember we are also friends.

In this work if we are not careful, we paint one another as villains, as the same people who have caused us harm. Because it has been those closest to us who have caused us the most harm, our closeness brings hallucinations of times past. We are learning to untangle ourselves and come undone while being close to one another. Our very closeness triggers the fears we unknowingly let run rampant. Alchemy: Let us remember to observe the impulses to make one another the enemy–the thing-to-be-conquered and put into place, the studied opponent you need to prove yourself as more-than to, the hijacker of light who hovered around you as a child. “I am not them; you are not them”–let this be our mantra. May we wrangle the hallucinations of our mind and pull it’s eyes to our own. In the middle of the flame of my existence is this anchor, and let it be your own: I wish you peace; I wish peace for myself. You wish me peace; you wish peace for yourself. When this is at the core of our being, our intentions, our motives, we have nothing to lose, nothing to fear, nothing to hide. May we grow and grow and grow–more soft, more light-footed, more joyous, more free.

We ask of the world: Please do not take my weaknesses and use them for your momentary gain. Please do not extract the lighthouses of my soul’s sailing and scrutinize their glow. Please do not take from me more than I can afford to give without becoming lost. Please do not delight in my sorrows, my insecurities, my losses, my illusions of inferiority. Please do not hide your true desires and regard me as a play-thing, a stepping stone, a cute little afterthought of a doll. We ask so politely, then we demand, then we sit and wonder how the world could be so cruel. And so it is we learn that we have to sometimes be “bad”, be a disappointment, excuse ourselves, and learn that the world will not always know how to honor this for us, will not always comprehend the value of peace and of wanting peace for another–we have to do the honoring for ourselves; we have to create the peace by being picky, selective, territorial, wolf-like. It is by creating the peace inside of ourselves we are able to view the world from this place and not be fooled. It is by actively honoring ourselves that we are unable to interact with energies that are dishonoring of us.

When you experience peace you value it. You become picky. You become attracted to peace and attractive to peace. It becomes the most valuable thing in the world, worth cultivating, worth holding a lot of space for, and worth excusing yourself from arenas for. May I attract more people who have experienced peace, and who are experiencing peace. May my being be what guides me.

I am made of every woman I have ever admired, and they are made of me. All of the winged and rose-aura’d-the-fuck-out women; all of the this-is-my-truth-and-I’m-sticking-to-it, stubborn-ass torch-holding women; all of the singing sly-foxed & winking women I worked with who became my mothers; all of the faeries to ever join me in studying leaf and rock and birdsong by a water’s edge. Every woman I have ever hummed alongside, and every woman whose humming put me into trance. In me is my very own castle ground–garden and stream and terrace greeting the sunlight.

May all of my exchanges with everyone I ever meet be without a sense of greed, without motive, without hidden pretentiousness. There is a richness in exchanges where nothing is being sought or hoped for. When there is a lack of eagerness both people can communicate without words, and the exchange is more a walk through the woods than transactional. I remember me–light stepper. I remember me–praise freely thrown around without hesitation, and sourced from the highest octave of my heart. I remember me–headphones blaring and weaving laps around churches and park-gatherings on Sunday morning–waving and smiling and leaping over puddle and pothole. I remember me–the I’ll-see-you-when-I-see-you and still-stays-true lover. I remember me–the while-we’re-here-we-might-as-well-enjoy-ourselves lady at the bus stop, singing opera in the rain. I remember me–pareo loose around my waist and baggy t-shirt right-out-of-bed and headed to the cliffs for a few jumps, before social media was a thing, before thoughts of capturing moments existed.

I remember me before I became so fearful, so hesitant, so unsure, so critical of myself, and I invite even more of me–more than I have ever experienced before. I invite more of my loudness, my spontaneous gestures of glee, my open and affectionate smirk, my eyes closed and singing for the neighbors to hear, my dancing and my gliding and my proposals to dance. I accept invitations and actually attend. I come out to play and become a part of a grand festival for a lifetime. All alchemical processes where peace is my anchor and my home allow for this. “You have nothing to fear honey. You are so beautiful and everyone can see it, and there is no need to feel a nervousness.” I accept words like this I have recently been gifted, and I let them permeate in my being to become me. More words I hold close to my heart said to me recently: “We see you and you belong here. You are welcome here.” “You belong with those who take your gifts seriously–not with those who spend their time merely marinating. The more you trust in the steadiness of your peace and make that your home, the more you are able to differentiate.”

To know patience is to know peace; to know peace is to know patience. All eagerness and all outward seeking vanishes when there is this knowing. Less and less you feel a need to defend or prove. Watch as you become less interested in whether or not someone else sees you, favors you, values you. There are things that matter less and less, as room is made for more more soul-sparking exchanges.

How appropriate that during the start of Gemini season I hold all truths as equals regardless of the fact that many of them are in opposition to one another. The truth is that the truth is contradicting. I’ve become tired of trying to take sides or place one as “more-true” than the other. All of them are true, and when I am able to walk along the place where they meet, there is a peace on that in-between bridge that I am learning to linger on for longer durations of time. It is better to walk along the walls that separate the voices in this way, being able to peer in and admire or observe, rather than to jump in and be consumed by. Writing is easier to do when I am this watcher of a being, and not in the midst of being tossed about in a basket of clanging mirrors. And even then that is not entirely true–I am able to write from that basket place, but everything I write from inside of that basket will then be an instrument of that place–kind of a disruptive place to be in. So a lot of my writing over the last week is this way–kept in drafts to observe later when I am not filled with voices other than my own, yet here are some recorded clips from inside of the maze:

It is my responsibility to make myself safe. The cop-out is always to blame–what they lack or do or have done that makes me feel unseen, unaccepted, rejected must be the reason I am this way–why I cannot.. what I do not… where I am unable to… There is no responsibility for myself when I place my life into the hands of someone else’s doings and un-doings. There is no redemption to be had while in a seat of blame–all victim and small-voiced and withering in the hands of my own hallucinations. Waiting around to be accepted, respected, seen or acknowledged does me no good. Do I admire myself? Yes. Do I enjoy what I exude and put out into the world? Yes. Am I proud of who I am? Yes. Do I like who I am? Yes. Remembering that the void is an illusion is what allows me to move and speak and make decisions in ways I haven’t before. And…

When we are in relationships we sort of “plug in” to what they have going on inside of them, and in this we can lose pieces of ourselves that are important for our well-being if we aren’t careful. We have to learn to be territorial over what matters to our spirit bodies, while also allowing the other to have their own world and do what they want with it. There is a merging-of-worlds that naturally happens–a psychic sense of knowing when something is unsettled in their heart, even when they are miles and miles away. Suddenly the same sides of your body ache around the same time, you think a thought they speak and you sing a song they have in the undercurrents of their psyche. I find myself wanting my body back, my mind to go un-stirred, my movements to go unnoticed, unquestioned, un-critiqued–even though it is all under the surface I can still feel it being done and I feel a fight in me, a resistance to being consumed. I am learning how to remain a steady flame while being misunderstood, unfavored or disregarded, and ultimately that is a lesson worth acing.

There is a “you-stay-over-there and I-stay-over-here” which is healthy, and it is only healthy if this allowance for sovereignty is given from a place of deep and sincere respect for their personhood and soul as an individual, apart from you and sacred on it’s own. I am learning this is a love language for me–can you let me be me even when that being has nothing to do with you? Can you let me drift into myself and create a world for myself without it causing you to lose interest, seek another, or become scornful toward me?

When `I am abiding by unconscious patterns I become small and quiet and convince myself that I am smaller-than, less sacred, less important than the person I am with. What a heavy lesson to learn and what a gross learned-pattern to become aware of–to trace this pattern back to a long period of time where I sat in spaces where my abuser boasted and ranted for hours about his loftiness, his successes, his more-thans and better-thans, as well as his blood-daughter’s–my own sweet little sister–telling me that she is more-wise, more-sacred, and showing me this is so by making me a play-thing, an object, a dumping ground, while she is taught and shown sweetness. Creating envy in my heart where there was adoration. How cruel of an act–to convince a child they are not as innocent as they are, as Holy as they are, as special as they have been born. And then it is my responsibility to now see I am no longer a victim, and the things people close to me do and say are not efforts to tear me down, pin me down, show me they are better or more. I suppose even if someone is expressing something in an effort to trump, dominate or prove–if my perception is “they are in a world of their own and it has nothing to do with my world” it serves everyone involved–setting me free and letting their own intentions dance in the air around them, in a muck of a game where they are the only player. It ultimately better serves me to decipher everything around me the same way I decipher a child’s statements, and this is an inner alchemical process that is serving me well these days. When a child comes to me and exclaims “I practiced the songs for my mom all weekend”, “I went to .. before and my mom gave me..”, “Look what I did–I made a…” they are seeking acceptance, approval, validation. So in a human being’s statements of show-and-tell, including my own, there is an innocent quest for acknowledgment and praise. Remembering this sets me free. Then I trace this back to the wound–for a grown man to be parading himself and exclaiming his superiority in an unconscious attempt to gain power over, make himself above and take power from, must mean he suffers from a deep perceived sense of lack of power, a soul that had forgotten it’s wholeness, a hungry void he had been living from–never satisfied, never having an experience of peace. And in this way I rise above the hallucinations and allow peace to permeate. Everything is alchemical when it comes to healing–you cannot shove away the monsters or you become cold, mean, resentful toward God. By seizing the moment when the angry shadows come swaying in your perceptions of the world, we shed the skin of old phenomenon and enter into new experiences.

Connect to and be entranced by something other than me–something greater than human and more sky than rubble, more winged than the oil of the earth, or become a devoted follower of The Earth Herself. Show me how you pray and tell me who your teachers are–what poems? Which stories? Whose mothers? When you feel yourself slipping into shadow, tell me about your anchors–the pillars that remind you that the dark is the illusion of the absence of light. Show me how you spend your time alone–what you feed yourself and the sounds you allow inside of your mind.

May I build a world of my own and still be loved? Without my attention on you do you lose interest in loving who I am? Does knowing you are not what or whom I live for make me less appealing? When I am not privy to your every move and motion, am I boiled down to only a mirror of all of the faces who have hurt you? When I am taken by the sky do I become less attractive? Do you suddenly fill with scorn and critique and smugness when I am hypnotized by wonder? Do you scoff at my thirst for and enjoyment of something greater than you and I? May I have my world and have love too? May I go to the event, and stay out all night long? May I sing a song with all my being about a love story from another lifetime? May I be excused from the order of things for a longer period time than you think realistic? May I play? May I be happy to be alive simply because I am alive? May I be proud of who I am just because I am? May I be at peace with myself without needing an external accomplishment? Am I less wise because I don’t know the name of the theory, the doctor, the book? Do I have to wither and die and be made the loser in your story in order to come alive in mine? Are your thoughts menacing things like “Ha! We will see if you actually..” “Ha! What do you know about…” “Ha! I have.. and you just have..” “Ha! You think you’re a .. but you are..” “Ha! I am.. but you are..” “Ha! Ha! Ha!” Because sometimes mine are. Are you bold enough to bring these to the light? Because I am. I am ready and en route. Will you come? Do you want to be lifted into the sky with me? Because I want you to come. But I am going–I am going and I am going.

I allow the perceptions of others to be the world they live in, and I stay in my own. I eject myself from the need to defend, prove or steer another. I steer myself; I lay my anchor down deep. I am unmoved; I am slipping into the horizon line.

You call it pulling away; I call it saving my life. When I return I’ll be washed anew. When I slip into the sheets beside you at 3am I’ll be a petal you can rely on. Let me go be a storm sometimes. Let me save my life.

Day of Venus (XIV)

This is the 14th Friday of my Day of Venus Posts, where I let wash up what is present in the undercurrents of my mind, heart and spirit. I am honored and deeply grateful for your readership as I cultivate my writer voice blindfolded—vertebrae by vertebrae, all chrysalis and soil.

In my hips is the storage of what is to come, what has been soaking, what is. Now is the only thing that is real and I carefully select the visions I allow to repeat themselves in my mind. I know my body is also a brain. I know my body is both a highly intelligent master and an obedient servant. My voice exposes the waves that I’ve allowed to break, the prayers I’ve whispered, the justice I crave, the love that I’ve given, and all of the moments spent alone and unseen and burning.

I walk onto a stage where the lights in my face keep me from seeing anyone’s faces. I adjust the microphone and learn to be slow and steady and inside of me more than outside of me. I do it again and again and again until I die. –A decision my whole body agrees to.

This week I sang at an open mic and learned about myself. The songs of others moved me to tears. The room itself almost made me cry–disco ball in the center and sunlight after it had been gray and cold all day sitting itself on the linen covered cushions all over the ground around the stage, shiny and life-giving people placing their beautiful instruments along the pretty wood of the walls, the window beside the stage showing the tops of trees and a sky changing from yellow to purple to black as the night played on. Hearing my voice sound out through the room, singing lines I conjured in moments of being in-between worlds, put a new color into my palette of existence. I felt naked, seen, exposed, both elegant and awkward, angelic and childlike.

Things that are soul spotlights: money, power, influence, microphones, speakers. They reveal what is collecting in corners, what is underneath, what has been beneath a tarp, the photographs and letters you keep in your shoebox. And I love the exposure. I reach into my throat and all that is nested learns how to fly.

I am singing at vineyards, among dahlias and tulips. I sing on benches under the sun and on top of mountains for the greens and ambers. I sing to children and they sing with me, back to me, for me. “Ms. A, I made a song–do you want to hear it?” and I listen close and close my eyes to listen like it is the most precious thing I have ever heard and I say “Please keep singing ok? Never ever stop singing.” “Ms. Alix I sang the song to my grandma?” “Ms. Alix I brought my piano book to school–look!” And I give and I give and I give, and I receive and I receive and I receive. I am singing in rose gardens and you stop mid-sentence to allow yourself to feel. I sing for lovers, and fighters and for people searching for a resting place to retreat to. I sing with harps and violins and drums that will you to dance. I close my eyes and am just as taken aback as you are by what flows through me. I am not even it itself, but the vessel the “it” dives into and out of. I choose to be more instrument than human. I know that a prolonged state of connection and mystery, of deep peace, and a joy so giving it hurts, is not a myth or impossibility. It is something in me so real and true and inviting. I give in more and more each day. It is for me. It is for me. It is for me because it is in me and always has been. So natural and so easy to surrender to. I create a place for this by both surrendering and redirecting my body, by accepting the call and staying on the line, by showing up as `I am and speaking, singing, moving from the inside out. I allow my love to bewilder if it must. I allow my love to be felt. I allow my love. I have nothing to fear, nothing to hide, nothing to be nervous about. Nothing Is Lost. All of the time spent wondering if this could be true… “Could this really be for me?” Every time I’ve attracted and stumbled into the dwellings of musicians and poets and painters and those with affection gleaming from their eyes–not by chance or mere coincidence, but by the sound living in me leading me to harmonization, equilibrium. All stiffness in me dissolves into a pool of water. My antennas receive and I transmit what creates a stillness, a revitalization, a state of bliss.

This week I felt many times both a drowning and a winning in the fight to keep my light alive and burning. I am still unable to pin down the cause, but I do have leads. My nose and my mouth were barely above the surface, yet above the surface–my hand above the water clenching the love letters of my light for the sun to hold for me while I figured out how to float. I felt like a slimy hatched chick, all awkward and gooey eyed, slumped and heavy and knowing nothing except that the sunlight feels good. I suppose this a great starting place–from nothing, from limited senses, from only the ability to know I am a thing that exists. I kept throwing up what I once thought of as me, and every time I saw it on the floor outside of me a tantrum took place, an exasperated voice said “What then? What now? What do I have that is worth anything?” and passing winged shadows beneath the sun’s light said “this, this, this right here and just this.”

There is an oldness in me that I have felt my whole life–old enough to know the pointlessness of competition, the meaninglessness of cuffed jeans and white shoes in photographs. Bored by teams, my attention never held in conversations with invisible score-boards. A keen knowing and understanding of when something is said from a place of rivalry vs. from a place of building connection. The noise of what our man-made systems have deemed as note-worthy, popular, standard and “the best” becomes a background static hum I check out of, and I nod my head and say “mmhm” and try to find a clever escape without becoming a rival. I have often pretended to not know, or have chosen to give praise and accolades in order to dodge a part in someone’s play. Action-packed movies have always put me to sleep, and then a film about the life of a single petal has me on the edge of my seat enraptured. It is an oldness that takes refuge in what is not asking to be seen. An oldness that easily deletes all traces of who I claim to be in the world, satisfied with only being where I am at. You met the queen and made 10 grand and I got the same surge of satisfaction from the conversation I had at the busstop with a 19-year old who bought her best friend a gift at the mall. ~

I write a lot about busstops and I guess that is because of how much I learned about myself and the world, and who `I am in the world, during the formative years of my life as a writer, taking poetry classes, attending slams on Queen street and in nooks and crannies of Chinatown, and immersing myself in literature without knowing how on earth anything I was doing with my scholarship, my time and my place in college was going to make me money in the world. I just kind of always followed breadcrumbs that felt good or were interesting to me at the time. This was before social media had such a strong presence in our lives. I had a facebook account I’d get caught up in scrolling, writing, expressing myself, but also kept careful watch of my data usage, using it mainly for the bus app or for academic emails and assignments, then sometimes the games like Words-With-Friends, Tetris and then a My Cafe game where you had to bus tables and take orders as fast as you can (why I played this stressful game while also working at such places I have no idea). At busstops and on busses I befriended all walks of life–the houseless, children, elders, criminals, the lonely, the popular, the forgotten, the tourists, healers (I met my dear friend Sylvia who later became my Reiki Master at a busstop in Honolulu), mothers, and people who never learned and never cared to learn English and so spoke to me in poetry and spoke to me via humor and loving mannerisms and gestures. So naturally my subconscious pulls from and I even have dreams of various bus stations where I spent a lot of time. I especially learned that I was an elder in a young girl’s body during those years. Observant and soft-spoken and journal-scribbling and attentive. I pretended to care about things peers my age and then society in general cared about, but at heart I never invested time or was curious enough to watch the shows, pay attention to the celebrities, understand what is socially acceptable and not socially acceptable.

I also have always had great surges of flight, a rush of emotion I couldn’t make sense of or name, and this happens all the time still to today, but `I get better and better at knowing what to do in those times. I remember once when it happened I was in the parking lot of the Polynesian Culture Center, about 16, and it was after all of the tourist busses left the lot one by one, back to the hotels, to Waikiki, to the resorts on the westside. It was about 11-midnight. I will always remember this particular surge because of how overwhelming and unexplainable it was, and how the people around me looked at me like I was crazy, another person, like I had flew off the handle and was possessed. And the truth is, I felt possessed, and during these moments that come I do feel a certain beast in me. I often wonder if I could go back in time with the understandings and awareness I have now, if I could pinpoint what triggered or caused it. What had been sitting and building up? What provoked the desire to run? I was with 3-4 people, one of them being my first relationship of my life, whom I had lived with in high school and crushed on beginning in the 5th grade. We were scheming to venture somewhere, do something, hangout somewhere–probably deciding on who to call for a ride or where we would be at for the night–whose house, whose yard, whose town to roam in. All of a sudden I felt like running, and I was angry and wanted to fight. I didn’t want to fight anyone around me–I just wanted to use my body in a way that now `I would translate as needing to push and pull heavy weight, or literally go for a run, or put music on loud and shake and dance my body through the air until the beast in me is satiated. So I remember saying things that caught everyone completely off guard, and I cannot remember what I said. I remember they were not words that hurt their feelings or served as demolitions to anyone’s spirit, just words and sentences I felt gushing out of me–maybe about my surroundings, myself, my “self”, our “selves”, the sky, the waves? I wish I could replay and witness and hear. And so I darted off running across the empty parking lot, passed my house just across the McDonalds I worked at which was across the street next to PCC, through the yard with pokey sharp blades of Japanese grass that grew in round tufts and bundles, onto the sand, blue Portuguese man o’ wars under the moonlight with tails I dodged over and around. I sat in a concave part of the tree roots of a yard where an artist lived, my body breathing rapidly and heavily after the maddening sprint. I never saw the artist or met the person who lived in that house, but my mom had. In their window facing the ocean were two manikins clothed and drinking tea. Their outfits often changed. In the yard there were statues, shapes of bright colors hanging from tree branches, gnomes and trolls and figurines that were moved, replaced or gone from time to time. And I instinctually knew that this spot was my hiding place. Everywhere we lived `I had a hiding place to run to, and it was during the years of my poetry classes and English major happenings that I realized this. I can sit and recall every hiding place I ever ran to. We moved about 5-8 times between the ages of, (well, probably birth, but when it comes to Hawai’i recollections), 4-17. I have lived in Waialua, Haleiwa, Mokuleia beach in a tent, Sunset (across the street from V-land, where they eventually built a bunch of celebrity’s houses and a big gate/fence everyone has to walk around now to get to the beach), then on the “Big Island” or the island of Hawai’i where my mom was a caretaker of a property in exchange for housing, then Hau’ula, Ka’a’awa, Punalu’u, Laie. And for every single place we lived I can recall the colors of the rocks and creatures that inhabited my hiding places. I sat and pet snails, touched water with my feet, leaned my back against roots, imagined I was a menehune and used the leaves as blankets. I spoke to God and acted out scenarios in my mind. I held bugs between my fingers and looked at their faces close-up until I scared myself and threw the bugs into the air away from me.

Portuguese Man o’ War (Pic Credit: TreeHugger.com)

Anyway, nobody ever mentioned that night and nobody ever mentioned any time I ever darted off and away. It’s just always been something I’ve done. I don’t even remember walking home that night or the events that followed, but because of the intensity of the surge in me, and the look on the faces staring back at me before I took off, it has always been a particular moment I reflect on with curiosity.

I feel like for me, solitude and reclusivity breeds authenticity and helps me go back into myself when I get too caught up in another person’s, or other people’s version of the world. I take comfort in periods of no contact with the outside world because it helps me be a better listener, translator and friend to myself. It also helps me get more clear on what I am wanting, and the clearer I am about what I want, the more rapidly it can come to me.

My only real desire, my ultimate goal, is to cultivate more joy. Through joy comes creation. Joy is the highest intelligence of the universe, and it lives with or without the knowledge of or a need to understand it’s mechanisms. There is no language that could ever bottle it up enough for consumption.

Joy is not the lack of or dismissal of sadness–joy is what allows great sadness to be filtered, to be moved. Being guided by joy is not to be a stranger to the dark–but to be able to fly through it, like a bird at dusk and dawn, close enough to the dark to know better than to be consumed, and so welcoming of the light that it becomes your daughter.

I am in the middle of training myself, once again, to cultivate and allow joy to become my being. Dr. Dispenza says “your personality creates your personal reality” and it is a reminder to me. I am training myself to wake up and dwell on the beautiful visions in my heart. I am training myself to take my life into my hands be responsible for myself. I am training my “self” to participate in what brings melody to my life and allows it to come out of me.

I speak life into. I surround myself with others who speak life into. I give energy to what I want to see grow.

With every passing moment I become more loose. My hips remember an expanding, like it is in the blood I am made of and the blood that came before. It is older than grandfather time. It is a memory in my body that my mind doesn’t know as well. I interrupt and redirect the lineage into song, dance, spell, invocation. There are stories to be told now. And my grandmothers know and they cry tears of liberation. “Rest. Play. Sing. Dance.” To see that I am free now is to be free now.