Small Circles

Stuff, shit, and more stuff and shit...

Goodness.  I didn't even have to pack up furniture, plates, glasses, linens or any of those sort of household goods.  But I did have to pack up a year's worth of living in order to move into our new apartment on the day we get back from Cordoba.  A year's worth of living:  there seems to be much more stuff than we came with, as evidenced by the fact that our suitcases are overflowing.  Ugh.  We accumulated so much this past year.  Lots and lots of it will be given away when we leave, like toys, household goods.  But still, ugh.  Que manera de consumir. Lots of garbage too.  5 bags or something...  Lots and lots of garbage is Albie debris:  remnants of crafts, broken toys, shitty toys, lots and lots of drawings.  Who knew that kids come along with so much garbage?  And what does it say about the values I am passing on to him?  So often I find myself saying, "don't let the water run, turn off the lights, etc., it's nice to respect mother earth..."  But, here kid, no worries about leaving all this waste in your wake...  Finding balance -- I threw away about a dozen origami frogs that I made Albie.  They were really lovely, all sizes, made from different artisan papers.  We had fun making them, fun hopping them -- and then they sat on the shelf.  And then they were thrown out.  Should I have kept them?  Given them away?  Never made them at all?  Or me -- I've acquired lots of cloths and fabrics and ritual accoutrements for the women's circles here.  I love setting up altars, different colors, different candles -- setting the stage for the evening, like a living tarot card that speaks right from and to the unconscious.  Shall I give that up?  Just make altars from the earth, from what's on hand?  Finding balance.

Times like these I remember Dan, the man who lives in a hole.  And how he lives on $5000 a year.  And well, he just doesn't seem bogged down by stuff, you know?  I mean, the hole is only 9 feet around.  How much stuff can he have?

"I used to work as a photojournalist with regular crazy hours. The problem is, people have their lives organized so they are the slaves. Basically, the average person spends a ton of their time working for very little money, just to survive. I spend a very little of my time working for enough money to not just survive, but do what I love - draw and travel."
 
Read more about Dan and his hobbit hole.

Anyhow, every time I move, I am confronted with my stuff.  I tell myself I live rather simply, and perhaps compared to much of the cheap-made in china-let's go to target world I do, but still.  Lots of stuff.  Simple as a hobbit hole?  Not even close.  Not sure what I believe about stuff.  What's too little, what's too much, how much does it control me?  But each move I make, I get a little clarity, and a bit more muddled too.

Doing the dance of life

Does your body ever tell you what it wants, what it needs, but your response is "yeah, right, whatever?" Not like when your body says, "I want dulce de leche ice cream," and you walk, no run, to the nearest Freddo to satisfy your needs.  Not like that.  More like, you've been thinking for years, 5 years maybe, that what you really need to do is dance, but for one reason or another you don't dance.  Has that happened? 

My intention this lunation was to sharpen my perception, listening for messages from the depths, from wherever...  And two messages came in loud and clear, the first being, "Move your body.  Now.  Fool."  I know I have been saying this for years, the need to dance -- and maybe I'd go to a concert or a wedding and dance a bit and temporarily fill that space.  I think that dancing really connects me to my body, (duh) and that body connection is essential for me, otherwise it is too darn easy to get lost in the clouds, in my head.  For years I didn't have to manage dancing, I just went to dead show after dead show after phish show etc., and in those spaces, was able to ecstatically dance my ass off.  But then there were not so many shows any more...  and I stopped dancing as much.  Perhaps Nia helped fill the space for a time while I was in Boulder.  But yeah, since Albie came along, there have not been that many opportunities for that ecstatic release that is dancing. 

I have also been feeling that I have been ignoring my body while here in Argentina.  I have taken for granted that I live in a city, and that I am walking everywhere, and that that is enough.  But it is not enough -- my back aches, I feel stiff.  I dance in my house and feel like an hardened fossil.  Mindful movement then, seems to be an important piece of my pie...

So, I saw this 5 rhythms dance class offered locally, and I only blew it off twice before finally going there yesterday.  Allow me to state the obvious:  it was fabulous.  It was more authentic movement than structured dance...  basically, we moved for 2 hours.  A tremendous release.  For the first half hour, the instructor does not say a thing, you just move, dance if you want, waking your body up...  Slowly, slowly, the class explodes into a joyous throbbing luminous body...  Dancing.  There is something about dancing in a group -- while I have had many mind altering moments dancing by myself in my kitchen, the group brings the experience of ecstasy...  That's what I got out of dead shows too -- ritual experiences of ecstasy (as Joseph Campbell said). 

And all that brings me to the other message that keeps ringing my bell -- that of love, big love, universal love.  I won't flesh out the whole thing, but I had been thinking about the sacred marriage, hieros gamos, the yin yang, the jewish star...  Wondering about getting beyond seeing the duality, and really seeing the totality.  Getting that it is our language that creates black/white, that this is a bit yin and this is a bit yang.  But really the yin yang is so much more than the yin side and the yang side -- it's yinyang, the whole thing....  Ok, yeah, words aren't working so well.  Skip ahead.  I started feeling, hearing, sensing that the glue is love.  Universal love.  Running through it all, making the all one...  I share this not like truth, or some brand new revelation tha no one has thought of before -- more like a 'believe-ish' that's been following me around.

But wondering, how to sink that love deep in, deep in, to be present daily, in my most mundane moments...  In the dance class, one of the last songs was Queen's epic anthem.  And we were all so high, so ecstatic as we were moving, singing, "We are the champions..."  And I felt so much love, unity...  That sense of universal love -- albeit perhaps watered down, so my little human heart can hold it...  But after class, as I floated down the streets of Buenos Aires just like post election day, I was thinking, "why am I not present to this love all the time?   Why am I so human?"  Wondering if perhaps that is why these ritual experiences of ecstasy are so essential, in whatever form you choose to partake.  They bring us to those moments of One, of Love, of Moment and Light, and Goddess, and God, and Mystery.  These experiences remind us perhaps, remind us of the bigness...  which then maybe trickles down into our little lives.  When we lived a bit more tribally, a bit more connected, we probably managed incorporating these moments of ecstatic ritual quite well.  Now, these days, I think we really have to seek out these experiences.  I know, for me, I must seek out.

So, that's what tomorrow's full moon is bringing me...  Dance.  Love.  Dance.  Love.  Dance.

And I'm really sore.

No wonder we're all ADD

Last night, at about 9:30 EDT, I placed an order with Zappos.  This morning, at 10:30 EDT, the familiar UPS dude delivered my shoes.  It's kind of eerie don't you think?  I'm still in shock.  I mean, really -- 13 hours later I had my order.  Not even 14 hours later I'm writing about said shoes.  15 hours later, I will have returned the shoes that didn't work.  Fast fast fast.  What am I going to do in Argentina where they take 13 hours just to check you out of the grocery store?

Yesterday, I stopped at a lemonade stand run by some enterprising children.  I asked, whaddya got?  They said, lemonade and crystals.  $1 for a cup of lemonade, $.50 for a crystal.  Brilliant.  It occurred to me that perhaps I am ambitious because at that moment, I wanted nothing more than to have my very own stand, selling lemonade and crystals.

It's so very humid right now.  My hair and skin love the moisture, but my feet are sticking to the linoleum.

I love my birth week scope quotes.  Very appropriate to the wishes and intentions I made for this next cycle of seven.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): To celebrate your ramble through the most wildly independent phase of your astrological cycle, I'm offering you three inspirational quotes. The first is from poet e.e. cummings: "To be nobody but yourself in a world that is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle that any human being can fight." Your second shot of motivation is from Clarissa Pinkola Estes: "If you have ever been called defiant, incorrigible, forward, cunning, insurgent, unruly, or rebellious, you're on the right track. If you have never been called these things, there is yet time." Lastly, here's a Hindu proverb: "There is nothing noble in being superior to some other person. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self."

Something to believe in...

I think I'm in the midst of a crisis of faith.  Or perhaps a dark night of the soul.  Although, it's not so much a crisis, and it's not so much a dark night -- maybe more like an overcast afternoon of the soul.  I find myself enjoying my current state of being -- I don't feel heavy or blue, just clueless, and it's is always in the back of my head:  what do I believe?  And really, that's what it's about.  I am feeling like I just don't know anything at all, questioning assumptions I have made, questioning spirit, questioning answers I have given myself in the past, wondering "what's it all for?"  Clueless.  And humble too, because of being honest about all that clueslessness.  Funny, life is, as I swear this is no different from my earliest existential crises -- crying inconsolably at age seven because nothing made any sense.  Sure, this current crisis of faith is spiced with super interesting adult issues like where to live and what to cook for dinner -- but it feels the same, just like when I was seven.

Albie and I say prayers every night -- really just a way to give thanks for the day -- and I start by saying, "Thank you mother father god for..."  But I find myself thinking, "Mother father god?  What the fuck is that?"  So I switch to Great Spirit and then I think, "You can blow your great spirit right out of my ass."  So  right now I'm just  saying thank you because I think it would be a bit overkill to say, "I don't know who or what the fuck to send this prayer out to or if it really matters to pray or say thank you but uh, you know...  thanks anyway."  Plus, I don't like to say "fuck" around Albie.

I feel like I'm an atheist, an agnostic and a believer all at the same time.  I'm not sure any of it matters.  Praise Jesus.

I don't know what I believe in.  Really -- is it better to be kind?  Is peace valuable?  Does eating locally make a difference?  Does TV really suck ass?  Do I need the Goddess?  Do I need the God?  Divine feminine?  Divine masculine?  Evolution?  Collective Unconscious?  Prayer?  Love?  Caring?  Selfishness?  Hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hypocrisy.  Do I care really about anything?

Chris thinks I should find myself a nice dogmatic religion with a rigid set of rules, guidelines and answers.

I wonder, why now?  I think much of it has to do with being a mother, wanting to have a message to share with Albert...  But at the same time, knowing I don't have a TRUTH to share with him.  Perhaps the greatest thing I can share with him is, "I don't know."  Perhaps it's the meditation -- emptying, emptying.  Perhaps it's because I feel that there is very little agreement for my way of thinking here in NY.  I am being challenged a bit more and I just find it hard to cling to being right.  And them being wrong.  It was a bit easier with my community in Boulder because I could say, "TV is bad."  And people would say, "Amen!"  And I could say, "Eating locally is good."  And people would say, "Yes Sister!"  And I could say, "Spiritual voodoo hoodoo doodoo."  And they would say, "Voodoo doodoo to you too!"

Perhaps it is that I am completing another seven year cycle, turning 35 in a month, and things are shuffling around again.  Like throwing a ton of confetti in the air and watching it float back down -- not sure how or when or where all the little pieces will land.   Not sure which of those pieces I'll pick back up.

It feels all right though, this stripping away.  Summertime light filling up my shadows.  It is good for me to come back to nothing, to learn once again that I don't know much -- I'm no better than.  Time to recreate.  To fill in.  While I think Chris had some fabulous advice, rigidity doesn't seem to work too well for me...

So I am at the end.  And the beginning.  I have come up with some things that I believe-ish:
-The earth is extremely beautiful. I enjoy enjoying her beauty.
-I love my son with a mysterious and wondrous passion, and I think it would be possible to have that love be my only teacher/guide/answer/question for the rest of my life.
-Farts make me laugh.  Thinking about the great spirit blowing out my ass makes me laugh.
-Crying makes me feel connected.  Even if I'm crying because I saw a sad Six Feet Under episode.