Ah, impermanence.

Pre-Revolution pool in Havana, Cuba.  Iphone pic: I'm actually the dummie who left her camera at home while in Cuba.

Things get broken
at home
like they were pushed
by an invisible, deliberate smasher.
It’s not my hands
or yours
It wasn’t the girls
with their hard fingernails
or the motion of the planet.
It wasn’t anything or anybody
It wasn’t the wind
It wasn’t the orange-colored noontime
Or night over the earth
It wasn’t even the nose or the elbow
Or the hips getting bigger
or the ankle
or the air.
The plate broke, the lamp fell
All the flower pots tumbled over
one by one. That pot
which overflowed with scarlet
in the middle of October,
it got tired from all the violets
and another empty one
rolled round and round and round
all through winter
until it was only the powder
of a flowerpot,
a broken memory, shining dust.

And that clock
whose sound
was
the voice of our lives,
the secret
thread of our weeks,
which released
one by one, so many hours
for honey and silence
for so many births and jobs,
that clock also
fell
and its delicate blue guts
vibrated
among the broken glass
its wide heart
unsprung.

Life goes on grinding up
glass, wearing out clothes
making fragments
breaking down
forms
and what lasts through time
is like an island on a ship in the sea,
perishable
surrounded by dangerous fragility
by merciless waters and threats.

Let’s put all our treasures together
– the clocks, plates, cups cracked by the cold –
into a sack and carry them
to the sea
and let our possessions sink
into one alarming breaker
that sounds like a river.
May whatever breaks
be reconstructed by the sea
with the long labor of its tides.
So many useless things
which nobody broke
but which got broken anyway.

-Pablo Neruda

meh.

I've been better.  

Or have I?  I don't know that I've been realer.  And realer, for me, is definitely much feelier.  Sometimes feelier is more blissful than ever; sometimes, it's a new kind of pain.

I've been taking in some time on my own.  Lots of time.  Lots of feelings.

According to my little Twelve steppy buddies, it's a time that my hp will fill the sense of emptiness that's taken up residence the past few months- and maybe I had only had a bandage on it all these years anyways?

No matter how long (18 months?) it had been since divorce decisions were made, going through the actual process brought it all back.  It started around Januaryish, and then really REALLY started in February.  It's not about him; it's about the me who I thought I was.  In a way, it's my own coming of age to the fact that our most carefully laid plans are fragile and maybe even not what we really want anyways.  Deep down, I know that realization is a great liberation; my human ego often forgets.   I've been at least 10 percent less sane most days since then.  My faith has wavered up to 50 percent.  Not to mention that it was inconvenient timing in every way- for my ego, that is.  Smartypants Ram Dass might call it fierce grace:

"I used to be afraid of things like strokes, but I've discovered that the fear of the stroke was worse than the stroke itself...  What has changed through the stroke was my attachment to the ego.  The stroke was unbearable to the Ego, and so it pushed me into the Soul level, because when you "bear the unbearable," something within you dies.  My identity flipped over, and I said, "So that's who I am- I'm a soul!"  I ended up where looking at the world from the Soul level is my ordinary, everyday state.  And that's grace.  That's almost the definition of grace.  And so that's why, although  from the Ego's perspective the stroke is not much fun, from the Soul's perspective it's been a great learning opportunity.  When you're secure in the soul, what's to fear?"  

I'd like to think that what feels scary is the fierce grace of my hp choosing growth for me that my ego would never touch. 

I'd like to remember that on meh days.  Like today.  Meh.

lucidity

I ran across the following in a journal from this summer.   I hope I can channel that version of myself when things don't feel so clear- that chick's a smartypants.

things change

"Hands stretched wide-open, I go to the place where my power lies. That place is infinite, I find, and it's nature is the inverse of what I once believed. I am living in my powerlessness; it is a door to also living in the knowledge that all we love is infinite, and so loss of love in the universe is mythical.


Maybe it is even true that the connections we experience so deeply are an expression of what we all share. Maybe the intensity is felt, as a magnet to our path, to the lessons intended for us."


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Blogging sure is different these days

I just wanna see if/how blogging from my iPhone works.

Happy Sunday morning.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Train Day

Last month, my fourteen year old sister and I had Train Day.  I cannot imagine a much better plan than our non-plan plan: 1.) Get on train 2.) Get off when we feel like it 3.) Take pictures 4.) Get surprised.

deep ellum + guerilla commerce relics

We found ourselves in Deep Ellum where we got lots of fun urban decay-type photos.   We got surprised by the monthly outdoor market, about which of us didn't know.  Loved it there. I love that both of my young siblings are arts minded, each in their own ways.

stairs

crooked lines

 "Every object, every being,

is a jar full of delight."

Rumi

eclipse.

Tomorrow, we are headed there again; that is, if her room gets clean. :) 

One of my favorite things about divorce is how much closer I am with my family.  I have found myself needing them, when my history was to need nobody, ever.  Self-sufficiency was surprisingly lonely and surprising un-sufficient.

Namaste,
Faye

metamorphosis, schmetamorphosis

building stairs @ deep ellum

Well, I guess this is goodbye.  And hello.

I began this blog in 2004 as a way to track my fitness.  You guys surprised the shit out of me by becoming, instead, one of the most important tools in my spiritual development.  We became for reals friends.  We rode out illnesses, marriages, divorces, babies, deaths and spiritual awakenings.  We became friends outside of the blogging world.  We sent each other real live mail.  Texts.  Calls.  Facebook messages.  I wrote for you sometimes.  And I know that sometimes, you wrote for me.

I was like a hungry caterpillar who didn't know she was hungry, and you spiritually fed me.  I ate.  I grew.  You fed me.  I grew.  I fully believed I was on my way to become the best caterpillar I could be.

In something like 2008, though if I really consider it, probably years earlier, a cocoon began to form around me.  Instead of comforting and safe, it felt terrifying and bleak.

I became very ill for about two years.  From lab work and MRI's, dr's could see some stuff was really wrong, but no one seemed to know why or how to make it better.  Most of the details so took over my existence that I never want to discuss them again; the worst of it was that for awhile, I I couldn't even take my students on field trips, drive or stay alone.   B was my rock.  He took care of me when I could not take care of myself, which was most of the time.  I was so dependent on him that I would have nightmares of something happening to him.

When I happened to be at my worst physically, his sweet mom called us to say she had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.  And it was Stage 4.  It was time for B to take care of someone else.

When he went to KC to care for his mom during her first treatment, we flew my own mom in to help take care of me.  She complained of abdominal pains.

About six weeks later, she has the appearance of being 7 months pregnant.  A cancerous tumor has rapidly grown on her ovary, they tell us.  Turns out, it is also non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.  Two moms in two months. They feel it is inoperable.

I email my truly amazing therapist of seven years to draw support.  So much of my life had been changed because of her, but like my relationship to B, I suspected I was probably overly dependent.  In fact, when I moved to Dallas, I panicked about my inability to leave her.  I begged her to continue our sessions via Skype, which we did. This time,  return correspondence includes that she has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and will no longer be seeing patients.  "I'm sorry that you are being hit with three cancers," she said.  "I want you to know that you're very special to me."  

I always thought there was something secretly spiritual lingering beneath the professional relationship between a therapist and client.  

Later, she died.

My caterpillar body, life as I knew it, seemed to be dissolving.

broken open @ deep ellum

Desperate, I bought an 800 dollar juicer and began pretty religiously following Gerson Therapy.  I began to finally gain strength physically as I watched other parts of my life slip away.

Reaching for any access to inner strength, I paid what felt like a gazillion dollars to learn Transcendental Meditation.  B went as well.  

Many amazing things happened after this.  Both of our moms went into remission.  I got better, physically, little by little.  I even lost about sixty pounds.  I seemed to find my body's recipe for happiness; most importantly, I learned that what she says goes, no questions.  Oddly, for B and I, meditating was the beginning of the end.  Maybe the old us didn't have the sense of infinity to let go of what needed to be released?

The relationship was easy to release at first, maybe even the whole first year; the unbearable parts came later, when I realized how long he had been miserable, waiting for me to push the Eject button.  That's when the insecurities came.  Am I unloveable when once you get to really know me, I wondered?  Is anyone else special to me secretly miserable?  Will I ever know if they are?  Is it even worth it?  The truth is, B and I had been like two friends who picked one another from the Catalog Of Intellectually Defendable Life Partner Decisions.  We realized that as far as love goes, that catalog sucks.

Another version of me, shed.  Am I the same person, I wondered?  Am I who I planned to be at all?  Am I the same chick who had a soon-to-be doctor husband and a detailed baby plan? 

I have no plan.

I'm a chick who busted out of a cocoon she never saw coming in the first place.  I have learned enough to know that I don't know what's next, but I know it will be perfect for whatever it is.  I'll be here: 

Namaste,
Faye