October 2008 - Flibbertigibbet Handmaiden

10/01

I am happy to finally be in class with you given that your reputation far preceeds you. -- amused that the one concrete thing I knew of your teaching ("Donald says, 'up is toward the sky, down is toward the center of the earth'") didn't turn out to hold true (at least last night). If I hadn't been holding on to that idea, I might have had an easier time understanding instructions (sometimes 'down' = toward the feet)

I wanted to let you know (when you have the paperwork in front of you & the potential to use tools to remember it)

10/02

I am facing a mountain of resistance to the many props that seem to be necessary for 'restorative' poses & pranayama. Grumpy, agitated etc. come up just in thinking about the many props, let-alone starting the practice. I am attempting to get to the heart of what is behind this to allow more openness to the practice, and at the same time holding myself gently in my irritation and gloaming.

Little underrepresented hairless cautionary tales have heard you many times before. Dumbing it down for you or the guy down the street what does it seem? Four more, here too.

10/03

I've been furiously writing a response to what remains of your message -- I step back, having written all I wanted, I am not happy with it. I saw the exercise as in inquiry into YOUR views, & then spent my time writing a (well-reasoned and insightful) rebuttal. I imagine I'm trying to convince you of something, when all I really wanted to do was to understand. While I no longer want to SEND what I wrote, I am grateful for the exercise, happy to have gotten greater clarity on my thoughts, as well as the insight on WHY I communicate.

10/04

I knew this was a 'hot' one... part of why I threw it in, I suppose -- knew I'd get something back to ruminate on . There is much that is wrong with our educational system-- it consistantly fails many of our youth who aren't able to be heard for their needs. And yet, I've seen how children denied the ability to go to school, unable to afford the books or materials, are hungry for learning (how to read & write, how to count, do arithmetic), but have noone to teach them because the nation cannot provide schools in these rural areas.

10/05

absolutely -- one of the things our current education system doesn't always actively cultivate (though there are individual teachers who do) -- is creative thinking, independent learning etc.Some of the most valuable classes I had in jr. & high school were the "independent study" courses where I had some guidance, but was basically driven by my own curiosity. Lots of people got nothing out of the class (it was "goof-off time")... but for me it was a great opportunity.

The old phrase "reduce, re-use, re-cycle" comes to mind. I wanna see this done far more *radically*, in a thorough, complete do-it-yourself way.

10/06

I /really/ don't romanticize 'do it yourself' trash-removal. The river beds were FULL of little bags of trash, empty fields, the beach... Some people burnt their trash (not great for the environment or for health). There were major public health issues (cholera etc.) b/c city dwellers had no access to land. All vegetable scraps/ bread were fed to passing goat herders & STILL a society touched by Western influence had TONS of irreducible CRAP & no way to be rid of it.

I do not romanticize education, trash removal, sewage treatment, environmental protection, health concerns, hygene, medical care, transportation infrastructure...

10/07

I have lived w/o sewage, w/o electricty. Where food is scarece & of poor quality, where the black smoke from the cooking fires cause lung disease, child mortality from preventable disease, parasites in the water etc. I have lived where the nearest hospital is at least 2 days away & cooking fuel is a 2-day hike in the opposite direction, & there just are no medicines. I am hesitant to overromanticize living without these things. I wonder at a "destruction of civilization"... will you have enforced A? And what if people spontaneously create laws and nuture government, will you stop them?

10/08

"Burn it for me. People need to make those decisions for themselves."

Running late because I had chosen to stay with him this morning, walking to work, listening to my headphones, absorbed in my novel, waiting for the light to change. I saw another woman (Heather?) who is stumbling & having trouble breathing, & feeling dizzy, desperate to cross the street & get somewhere.

I walked with her to her doctor's office, holding her arm, carrying her bag, & just being there. There is something about being able to be there right when someone needs you that is really fulfilling.

10/09

We got to the office, she gave told them who she had an appointment with, they asked her for her Kaiser card, she told me it was in her bag, I asked if she wanted me to get it for her, she did. I suggested she sit down, helped her sit down, then went through her wallet to get her Kaiser card, took $5 from her wallet to pay her co-pay, the woman at the desk asked if I was coming in with her, I said 'no' -- I just met her on the street, & was worried about her. Be there

10/10

I handed Heather L... her forms, told her to fill them out or not, the doctor could handle it if she didn't feel like it, put her wallet back in her backpack, got her a glass of water, & said goodbye. A short interaction, really, but this is one of those 'holy' times. No description can really explain how blessed I feel to have been there then, to be able to serve a total stranger. Yum.

The end of the world as electricity came through. Rehearsal continues after we know that it has happened! Six more have find that box.

10/11

Follow-up to my story about my Larouche-friend (little did I know that he was going to be such a great teacher). Disappointed with one spiritual leader, (who I hadn't really thought of as a leader as much as many of the folks around me seemed to) I believe have find more truth about myself, and the world around me, through my Larouchian buddy than through the hierarchy of my Buddhist sit. One thing I like about the Buddhists is the silence, & the sitting on the floor. The Quakers actually talk, don't sit on the floor, but they sit. See.

10/12

The Quakers actually talk, don't sit on the floor, but they sit in a circle. I miss the circle in the Buddhist community b/c somehow it holds fast to the notion of you, oh, guru, & me, poor slob... Yes, what new insight have I gotten from my Larouchian teacher? "They" aren't "my people" – or, everyone is "my people". How many times am I going to have to learn that there's no 'us' & 'them', there really is no 'other' – we are all one. – not in some new agey way, but in some other truly visceral way.

10/13

Just a little more then

Must it always flow from in to out? Why not let the dancing review hold its head high. Why must the spiders always be preserved, unfailingly & medicinally tacked to a board, & then hidden behind plexiglass. Where are the angles that left her lost & angry?

What portion of this is true? What is truth? Can we know & understand the endless procession of statements & catheterizations & cancel our breath & just imagine ourselves as doers who mechanically move from point A to point C under undescribed stress and unexamined un reviewed hopes.

10/14

Who is my breathmaker? Why eats the bread & knows why the answers are to blame? Have you seen temporary dreamings? How long can we be here without noticing the donkey dancing in our cup & the bat held onto by another whisper. Canvassing for truth, longing for understanding & longing for connection. It's not me, it's not you, it's just the fancydancers from feather land. It's a bit of you & me & yaaawwwn. Hold the truth til we can get there. Has it been reviewed at all? Has it been seen to know how long it will take?

10/15

Six more minutes & the tick & the tock - the tooth glows red as the heat melts our unending unerring minds. Can we ? Could it be here? Could it be beyond reproach? Henry hasn't met the master of the playschool yet. We know the breath is essential, so why let it linger, lilting short of what we know? Can you know or understand? Is there more I could say to you? Questions always leading, never answered, never held sacred, never known. Lift cracked and broken pencil to your lips & whisper to the potted plant, secrets that you've known. Fish

10/16

This is just to highlight the wanderings & the naiscent whispers. You cur, you creature from whence we're not quite sure. THe apple-laden back-board, the hyphenated-pencil-tips, the horse & hoarse-throated hummingbird, the paper-clip creation, the rubber-band-twisted rock-band. The mold stained vent, the ocean-vast horizon, the chair-lilting belief systems & how many more ways can be found to see into this or that or the past or the truth

A simple scene. Off to work, off to play, the lemon tree needed trimming. I am here with a vast and mighty wind ot carry me forward, who is the cyclops? Wait!

10/17

How does /that/ play out? I want to know, I want to be part of the future and to christen you, "Lovelace" and to wear your fancy clothes & dash to high-priced parties and dream in technicolor.

one mroe moment in time where I am here & you are there, & the pen & the paper are combining to become something even more wonderful. Do we know what your Spider Box meant? Do we know anything more vindictive & careless than that? Hope springs eternal. Spirit moves in crazy & inconvenient ways.

No shadow, technique palms together. If already full?

10/18

Dishes still to be done, Alicia moves slowly to the open window, flips on the radio. She is searching for something somewhere, and doesn't know where to look. She must silence the voices that call her name long enough to really be present in this moment. The constant chatter in her brain cannot really be squelched. It can only be quieted, and surpressed, a pillow over their mouths, a gag. She will always know the multiplicity of voices, and speak of them to others as separate beings. It has always seemed to Alicia the world she inhabits is somehow unfinished.

10/19

It has always seemed to Alicia that the world she inhabits is somehow unfinished, like someone forgot to add the wall paper or to cover the floor. She copes by crossing to the window, looking out at the unending lives that criss cross her street, alive in their own little internal dialogues, their own passions, power-plays and deceptions. They don't know what it is like to wake up & see the world still unfinished and rough at the edges, they think it's already here, already complete, waiting for them to simply step on stage and revel in its creative musings.

10/20

There's music in the distance, one of the neighbors has started taking violin lessons, and the screechy missed almost notes fill the air, giving Alicia something to focus on. How many times can an individual be thrust into dream-lined waitings? Where will we find the end, really?

She is lost in an unfinished paintings where the edges are not yet spackled into place. We are here today because somehow the world has been created in an alternate reality or no. She looks to her cup of tea, & finds a spider has accidentally chosen JUST this space into which descend.

10/21

What if we have already chosen JUST this space into which to decend from the ceiling. He has been scorched by the steam, & now hangs, a black speck from his strong and invisible thread.

She feels fragile navigating the world, not sure which piece will drop into place, when. She longs for companionship, desperately seeking out the company of others who are always too busy to share her space. This is the fishing story of a thousand years. Alicia's whole being is here, ready to be seen, ready to be picked up by the creative geniuses of our times.

10/22

But who else is here? Where are we? A picture of diversity in a world untouched by the rainbow of colors here in front of us. What is the piece of where we are. Abuse? Revelation? Reveal, unpeal the wonders of it all.

Susana, strong, proud, Latina, knows who she is, and where she comes from. She is sure that white people can't really give her what she's after, and that the presence of people of color is imperative to her well-being. She feels stifled and alone in her work and her community as more than one well-meaning white person.

10/23

She feels stifled and alone in her work and her community as more than one well-meaning white person in the room looks at her uncomprehending why color has to be such an issue. Why can't we just see eachother as people rather than having to put all our energy on feeling sad about not having something we don't have? Damn bastards don't understand, can't understand, YOU, WHITE PEOPLE HAVE to reach out to US, we're sick & tired of reaching out to you, struggling to make YOU feel comfortable after all that's been done to perpetuate the differences. As if.

10/24

You aren't even concious of the differneces that separate me from you, that grant you great privelege based purely on the color of your skin. You're right, Susana, I don't. I've seen over and over again that my efforts are perceived as somehow 'less than' because I don't have dark skin. I am not welcome in groups of color, not welcome as an ally, how can I be an 'ally' when you want to do everything for yourselves? When do the color lines fall away? When can we mourn collectively the differences between me & you and when can we.

10/25

We face the issues as a people united to face them? When can you value my work as a human being, uncolored by my pale skin? Why do I find myself over & over in communities of whites and asians?

Why are my hobbies (singing, writing, running, meditating, studying, personal growth...) why are they so 'white bred'? Why can I, a foreigner in a strange land get people arrested with the flick of a wrist, with the twist of a braid, on a whim? Why is it that MY word should be valued anymore than the word of someone else?

10/26

If I'm really understanding, then what? What am I not getting?

Where are we? The Wise area, people spread throughout,

Kristin is a Republican, lives in the suburbs with her two young sons and a husband who's been called off to fight in the war. She passionately believes that we must give up our liberties to feel safer. There is nothing more urgent than making the nation secure from the immigrant scourge that

A butcher who cuts meat with such skill that his knife never touches bone. Find your own. It's unnameable and flows like water without name or form.

10/27

I don’t remember where I left my keys, or the bus driver’s name. I don’t remember any of the faces I saw this morning on the train. I don’t remember how I grew from infancy to the woman I am today. I don’t remember happened for me to loose a childhood friend, or how much it hurt to find out he’d cheated, or how painful it was to live in friendless isolation. I remember that there was pain, remember seeming insurmountable, but cannot recall the pain. Where did I hold it in my body? Where does that sinking hopelessness live?

10/28

doing absolutely nothing in the presence of a good friend

hugs

focusing on what ‘works’ when I'm in a pissed off mood healthy body

taking a colleague to the airport (service to others)

offering a much needed refuge for a friend

appreciating the creativity of others

being reminded of my dreams

seeing evidence that I’m not the person I was last year

having more food in my garden than I can consume!

expressing gratitude

stopping what I’m doing to take care of …

seeing that ‘post vacation glow’ on all my colleagues faces

expressing my gratitude

making my own bread

10/29

getting rid of stuff I don’t need

clean laundry

kitchen floor so clean I think I could really eat off of

finding out my class DIDN’T start last night

knowing that in all likelihood, the cut on my thumb will heal

opportunities to ‘get real’ w/ friends and family

getting to sit with companions

finding a local source for pasture fed animals – no more CAFOs for me! ( CDC article )

grinning at my local egg farmer at the farmer’s market

‘away time’ with my partner

my little space heater

planning for & making my own food

growing my own food

10/30

planning for & making my own food

growing my own food

fresh-cut (local) flowers in JANUARY

when the camelias drop their blossoms on the ground, creating a pink snowy landscape

a brand-new notebook

a blank calendar full of possibilities for the new year

jasmine green tea!!

knowing that I’m growing

deep-down cleaning & getting rid of junk that no longer serves

whoever came up with the idea of donating to organizations for gifts instead of giving more ‘stuff’

being read to

a prayer for the earth’s well-being

a set of prayer beads made by someone dear to me…

furthur drawn

10/31

just sitting

sitting in community

eating the hottest soup you will ever eat

the stories we make up when we don’t know

what we do when we do know

friend who can make me cry at 6:30 in the morning with just a few lines…

deep sense of belonging

that bird…

gentleness mixed w/ harsh veneer

wearing a hat under my bike helmet

recycling a whole box of magazines

letting go of STUFF sending it away with the recycling

empty space!

getting over myself

being inspired (again)

falling asleep in class -- reclining pigeon pose…