Wet and Tired in San Luis Obispo

I woke up in a hotel room in San Luis Obispo at 6 am this morning. I don’t even need an alarm anymore. I jut wake up. And when I looked outside, it was raining. I’ve got a long drive home, and a photoshop assignment to do.

I’ve been pretty sporadic with this blog. Inconsistently posting. And more than that, it feels pretty amorphic. Unformed. Shapeless. Some bloggers seem to blog happy, witty stuff. Some people spin with they say, so they look cool. Some people moan and groan. I don’t want to do any of these things. I just want to write about life, and what it’s like to live it, and post photographs.

I’m struggling with inner voices telling me I’m no good. The thing is, while I have a hard time believing them, I can’t quite get away from them, either. There are two main things I beat myself up about: I don’t get shit done and I don’t like the way I acted with someone. I want to be perfect. I want to be endlessly productive. I want to be the best friend who ever was. I want to be a master at sitting in silence. But…it turns out, I am not perfect, I am incredibly inefficient, I blurt out stupid and hurtful things before I realize what I’m saying, I am endlessly distracted and I fidget continuously.

Okay. Truth be told, it’s not that bad. Mostly, I’m doing well, I have good friends, a nice home…but the days keep turning into weeks, months and years, and very-few-to-none of my ideas get manifested. This is incredibly frustrating. I feel like I am wasting my life. And who knows how much time I’ve got left. Two times in the past three days, I came *THS* close to getting run off the road by an almost-out-of-control tractor-trailer. Every morning I wake up and think, Oh my god, I’m still alive. How much longer is this gift gonna last? I think how precious this human existence is, and how I want to make something of it and not waste it, and be fully fully alive, loving, particpatory. I realize I had checked out of life for a LONG time. Finding my way back in is proving to be a challenge.

 

 

Falling into the Mystery

If I seek the unbridled joy of being alive (and I do) then much is required. To crawl into the pain, nest there and pull it close around me. To sob until the tears turn to laughter. To sink into the silence at the core of being. To see God in everything, in every last piece of this crazy world.

I trust that process. I know that what is offered is all I could ever want. That the fullness of each moment constantly surrounds me, whispering of love.

As I come out of a period of deep depression, I find myself surrendered. Beaten to a joyous pulp, with nothing left to fight against. My heart has become the instrument of seeing. The mind divides and judges, but the heart pierces that veil. The heart can see clearly: that which animates galaxies and lovers and a child’s laughter also animates so-called evil. There is no separation. There is nothing “other.” Not really.

So I feel the embrace of the beloved, the god of my understanding, the force that manifests and sustains and destroys.

Olema Sunset I

Olema Sunset II

Olema Sunset III

Forgiveness

Today I realized that February is about forgiveness. This coming month, the theme and motivation and primary action of my life is to forgive. First of all, myself. And then anyone else I’ve ever blamed. And then the god of my understanding. And then the corporations, the republicans, the polluters, the species-extincters, my mother, my father, my siblings, my friends, that guy who cut me off the other day at the intersection of River and Water in downtown Santa Cruz. Everyone. And then, again, most of all, myself.

Rumi:
Come, Come, whoever you are!
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
Come. This is not a caravan of despair.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve broken your vow
a thousand times,
still come,
and yet again, Come!
(translated by Coleman Barks)

You Can’t Stop The Beat!

A blog I follow by a teenager in Pakistan. It’s about Glee. It’s uplifting to read. Check it out!

 

You Can’t Stop The Beat!

 

 

this precious human life

There’s a quote, attributed to the Dalai Lama:

“Every day, think as you wake up,
today I am fortunate to have woken up,
I am alive,
I have a precious human life,
I am not going to waste it.”

I know it’s been set to music, and I’ve heard it sung. It is incredibly moving. I wish I could find a recording of it to link to, but there’s not one I could find on YouTube or anywhere online.So, if you are reading this, and you know the song, please record it and upload it to YouTube. And then let me know, so I can link to it from this-here blog.

Okay, so, anyway…sometimes I get down and I forget how precious this life is. What a gift it is. In AA, people talk about your gratitude list. “Have you made your gratitude list?” is a common response when someone is complaining about how hard their life seems to be. Okay, point taken. I’m grateful. For this life, and for much more.

I am also struggling. Something I’ve been really noticing lately, despite the fact that I want to deny it, is that I still seem to have a lot of anger in me. At least, over the past few weeks. I think it may be that a whole underground lake of it got discovered during recent excavations of my heart. As my heart breaks open, stuff locked inside is released. That’s the way I look at it, anyway.

Reading about ADHD a bunch. I am not kidding—I match every single symptom. And it says on all the websites that for adults who have not been diagnosed, when they finally find out they have it, they can feel a great sense of relief. Uh, yeah. I’d say that’s true. Last night at midnight you would have found me bawling in my bed, as I realized that I’m not lazy, or stupid, or uncaring, or unloving…or any of a list of other adjectives that I and others have applied to me over the years. I have a really hard time with a lot of things. But it’s not intentional. What a freaking relief.

So, now I’m having a series of pretty hard days. But I know that it will pass, and that brighter times lie ahead. I’m tracking down people who can test for ADHD, and who specialize in helping people with it. Also, I’m not jumping into the neurofeedback quite yet after all, just because money is tight and although I can trade with my housemate to do it, first I need a “brain map” which costs just over $200. And I’m not quite ready to spend that much.

Today two people got pissed off at me in one of my classes. One was because I’m sick of people talking when the teacher is talking, and I “shushed” them. Oooh. Wow. This one young woman was pretty pissed at me. And, apparently—based on how she stomped by me and said over her shoulder, “I don’t want to be shushed again!”—she is not familiar with NVC. Well, hmmm. This is a conundrum for me. I really hope I can learn to either communicate better with people, or just learn to let go of stuff like that. I wonder if I have a touch of OCD also.

sigh

for no particular reason, here are some photos from NYC this past August:

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