The Phoenix is Rising

The “POD” arrives Friday. Crew help Saturday and Sunday. 12 foot Penske drives my stuff away to a 700 Square Foot Hacienda in San Carlos on Monday - to be unpacked Tuesday - before my presentation Wednesday.
The “POD”gets delivered to storage until Les can move into his Pebble Beach home on the 8th of May.

It’s been 8 years since I’ve wanted to work in the bay area - and finally - a company who has the heart and purpose that I can “get behind”. . .is dancing with expectation. A career reboot. Warmth buzzes through me.

So here I am - boxes all around - and tired from packing till 3:30 am - and rebooting myself at 8:30 am.
The jacuzzi beckons; a long stare across the Monterey horizon, filtered silver-moonlight shimmering in icicle water.
Tomorrow I’ll be visiting UPS to send precious art pieces to my sons in Oregon & Washington. Portraits of them as children - that their father (now deceased) created from pictures I took of them - over 25 years ago.

Tomorrow I’ll be pack, pack, packing. Sorting, letting go, letting go, and letting go again, even more, and finally, just letting go.
Letting go - leaves room for so much more to flow through me. Finally, the phoenix is rising, again.

September Summer in Monterey

Sweet wind, like a body-sized silk sheet rousing exposed skin. I stand still for a few more seconds - feeling the fullness of the gift. The sun speckling light falling through dancing oak leaves. Wind swirling in song and touch. A swelling sense of joy fills me. Smiling - slowly I step forward - sandals on bricks. The mailbox tucked into pine tree limbs, the siamese cat calls from the driveway across the street. She too is excited about the beautiful moment. “Come touch me too.”  A car comes up the hill. The cat looks at me - and then the car. We wait. The car passes before I walk across the street. She comes down her driveway and prances left and right. Rolling over on her back - then quickly to her feet - trust is being discerned - in the dancing. Finally - a few strokes across her back - and she steadied for just a few seconds. Gentle massage of fingers down her spine. . .a few more…and a few more. Then five feet away, she looked back and churtled a thank you. Spirited like a frolicking colt, up the driveway darting and bucking. That was mid-morning.

The sun sings and sighs and stretches dark brown shadows through the afternoon garden. Leaves and limbs of great California oaks whisper and lean to the whimsy of the wind. The sage is almost a scent. The lavender is on it’s second bloom. The night blooming jasmine is crawling over the head posts of the gate. The sea enters the Monterey Bay - with only a few white caps. Prescott Presidio Hill is home to the elements - of joy.

Journal 6.18.07

A rainbow of quick thoughts in this blog. It’s been too long since I’ve written - and I miss writing and posting.

Here’s what’s moving me this morning - in the fog and sunshine.

Poetry Illuminates, Like Paint for the Mind

This excerpt by Brandon Cesmat book: “Driven Into the Shade,” (ISBN 0-9 714003-3-4) moves me …

“If I lie down for the wheel of time

to roll over me, I am full of use;

I keep time from falling, I catch memories

and hold words as sand holds the colors of a mandala. Everyday on the beach,

blueprints to circumvent suffering are thrown

and then withdrawn to the laughter of waves.”

Today I’m practicing making conscious choices - rather than the conscious-numbing choices that tempt me into stultifying comfort zones.

Every choice affects our consciousness, like the chemistry of food affects our essence.

One more collection of moments combine into what I call the past. I wonder what today will look like in the future. Speaking of what “now” will look like in the future…

I am never in the same moment again. William James, the great psychologist-philosopher-teacher of the early 20th Century wrote that all memory is storytelling since we can never experience a moment from the same consciousness-context twice. Every moment is a chemistry of choices that shapes the next moment of chemistry - and choices. To really know the story of our lives we need to examine the storyteller.

The Math of Moments

This morning I wondered about ‘the math of our life. A day full of momentary choices occurs in the dark and light over 87,840 seconds, 1440 minutes, or 24 hours. That seems like a lot of opportunity to create. No wonder I’m tired after 16 hours. By 10 P.M. I’ve made thousands decisions! Sleep. It’s underrated.

The Impact of Child Abuse Illustrated in the play “Foreign Women“

Yesterday I saw the play, “Foreign Women” at the Carl Cherry Center in Carmel. There’s no way one can see that 90 minute play and hide from the reality of child abuse - in the faces of young adults.

Serendipity and character study guided my curiosity as the storyline unfolded.

Since it’s only a 48 seat theater in a once large home in Carmel, the audience, all 32 of us, got an up close and for some uncomfortably personal view of how people’s lives are twisted by the bully parents and relatives who commit child abuse of any sort. It’s inspiring to see (so closely) how the 20-somethings suffer the tragedy of creating functional lives while engulfed in memories of horror and shame. Seeing how some create hardened masks of anger to fend off would-be abusers, while others create lives in the shadows to avoid being found by would be abusers. Skirting the truth until the truth finds them vulnerable in relationships they can neither navigate or understand, until they’ve past. Defenseless and mute in the moments of love, they are deeply present in the tragedies and dramas of their darkened lives. Wanting to appear “normal” they pretend to be navigating the tides of intimacy they so deeply crave and fear.

The Carl Cherry Theater seats 48 so the audience is nearly on-stage but certainly intimately in the room with the emotions of 20-Somethings’ courageously persevering past the haunting memories of child abuse. It seems apparent that abuse creates a disability worse than visible or acknowledged disabilities. Cognitive, neurological, and emotional interruptions in development influence the way we perceive our choices, ourselves, our capabilities.

I wonder what percentage of the population is living with the disability created when the developmental stages of childhood were interrupted by experiences of fear, terror, violence, neglect or estrangement. Certainly adolescent drug abuse is a form of self-abuse that has developmental impact. I wonder how many people have been compromised during development - in ways they have not recognized - even now.

Only in looking back can we recognize the impact of our choices, and celebrate our courage and resilience, or face the impact of decisions that caused others or ourselves to suffer. I think we make unwise decisions when we do not acknowledged the fears, sadness, hurt, and/or rage planted in our developing soul throughout childhood.

I’ve read research about the power released when we humans can acknowledge and integrate development impacts from childhood pain. When we integrate we have more emotional and physical energy and our reasoning power and capacity expands. We make better choices when we have more reasoning resources. Our lives are comprised of the choices we make.

It may be bigger than we’ve acknowledged. I wonder how many world-shaking decisions are made by men and women who are developmentally-impacted by their childhood.

Why don’t we acknowledge and examine the impact of developmental disturbances in “functional” people too?

What if we did something BIG about the inhumanity right in our own culture? What if we were not afraid of “the bullies”? We go to war with bullies. But that’s only the displaced satisfaction.

What can we do to shake down the shambles of developmental impact of abuse, neglect, and estrangement?

What if we decided to shake-down our preconceptions about parenthood as a right? What if we decided parenthood is a privilege we all have to earn?

Dear God, wake us from the stupor of fear that causes us to stand still and silent, like Lot’s wife, frozen in salt-rock, breathless with unacknowledged desire to stay in our morbid comfort zones, burdened with unacknowledged emotional baggage.

Sometimes my courage evaporates. Sometimes I stand still in my fear. I can awaken when I remember, I will live in increasing emotional-desolation, suspended in breathless, vacant, soul-less thoughts, until I acknowledge my fear, of facing, my fear.

Writing this blog-is like hugging the part of me - that breathes, acknowledges, embraces, nurtures and restores me.

Moving Into Monterey

I’m still discovering this region, the Monterey Bay Peninsula including Carmel and the Carmel Valley. I imagine the choices I am making will become a painting, sculpture, dance or poetry reading soon.

Challenge as a Metaphor

It’s been anything but easy to assimiliate physically into this beautiful artistically inspiring, natural sanctuary, home. I still wonder what the meaning of the challenges have been. I see metaphors in the fact that essential elements of survival have needed “repair” in order to fully live in this beautiful place. For 31 days we lived with uncertainty about whether the water, gas, heat and openings to wind and weather would be secured. Some spiritual traditions talk about the “threshold guardians” as a metaphor for times when we “move up” to inhabit our deepest dreams - we are “tested” to deteremine whether we have what it takes to inhabit “more” of what we truly want - in our lives.

Results? I believe we’ve passed through the a “doorway.” And, now for the next threshold. God be with us each moment.

Adventure

Each day is an adventure of infinite moments speeding in community of artists, playfulness, and the undertow of business.