Time-lapse in mind thinking

Everyone I have chatted to about this completely agrees, time is speeding up!  Either it's because of technology or it's because time has literally sped up and we are so blind to it that we assume 60 seconds is still the same 60 seconds it's always been.  But it isn't.  There is sorcery involved I'm sure.  Even those long last hours of a tedious work day don't exist anymore.  Extra snooze minutes don't feel the same. And what was a lifetime has become a blip on the radar.  A hurdle takes milliseconds to jump, a hearty laugh is short lived and "just now" or "later" is utter illusion.  Either productive or wasted, time doesn't care.  It'll move you from now and today to next year and then, with or without your awareness.  Time scares the shit out of me.  I used to say that my biggest fear is not death itself but rather not being able to see and know the future.  The inventions, the advances and the world as we don't know it.  However now I can say that my biggest fear is not being able to see and know the world as we are living on it.  And time is relevant to it all.  Being the basis to my prior fear and the cause to my current. Instead of the future, I want those 60 seconds.  I want more seconds now, currently and for everyone.  I want real time.  I want real love.  And I want real life.  Not so much that I want to slow time down but instead give myself more credit and acknowledgement in it.  To understand its power and its catalytic nature for everything. EVERYTHING.  Spend your time wisely, an overheard and in my opinion a really crap way of looking at time.  First of all, only time makes you wise.  Secondly, spend?  And lastly, "your time" is not a finite thing.  There is no sell by date known, there is no currency worth trading time for and what's wise today could be foolish tomorrow.  "Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed." - Peter Drucker.  I call mostly bullshit on this.  I'm not a massive fan of the word "manage" and all it entails.  By definition it has two meanings and neither sit well with me.  Manage - be in charge.  In control.  Manage - to cope, survive or succeed despite difficult circumstances.  Alright, I'm a little too eager for the succeeding part.  But that's not how "manage" really makes me feel.  How can one control time?  Surely pretending to would be a delusional mistake?  Coping isn't really appealing either.  So how am I supposed to comprehend Mr Peter Decker's statement?  Perhaps the very reason I can't is why I fear time.  I know I'm definitely not in control and I know that I'm barely coping.  Alternatively, "Commit yourself to a deeper awareness. Be generous of spirit. Embrace every day as a new world. Let the timeless be in charge of time." - Deepak Chopra.  Now this seems doable. This is without fear and with more ease.  And a new world every day? I can forget clinging onto the fear of not knowing the future world, as well as the current because it's new every day. Current is always changing regardless.  To further elaborate: "In order to be not bound by the tether of time, we must have a relationship with the timeless." - Deepak Chopra, once again.  So I fear time due to my lack of relationship with everything that is not relevant to time.  If you take time out of the equation, hurdles are deeper lessons learnt, laughs are limitless and "just now" and "later" either become now and done with heart or never and not important enough to you.  I guess it all comes down to feeling that the 60 seconds you are living are exactly as they should be. For reasons that over-thinking time will never tell you.  Time shouldn't tell you how to live them, only your heart can and if you focus not on the noisy seconds passing you will feel the beating of your heart and live to those moments rather.

Traffic happens, it's how you live with it.

Forty minutes of stopping and starting, re-routing, frustration and attempting to just breathe.  With a dull internal pain I'm almost certain is due to self-inflicted abuse and skin that shivers then sweats.  Definitely in my top ten of worst traffic experiences.  A thrown in the towel brain and arms that can barely hold the steering wheel, exhausted muscles all around. Including the muscle that is my heart.  I was in a dire state, the scraps of mantras I could remember trying to save me internally and externally. To no avail.  I had just about given up.  Convinced it was now in my top five of worst traffic experiences.  I just needed to survive; it would all be okay when I got home.  And once I was home I would just go to sleep.  Cancelling yoga.  Cancelling any effort.  Cancelling life.  Just for a while.  Just as I got home. 
This was all happening subconsciously.
The pain in my side was real but the rest was covered with denial.  To fully admit the source of the pain would be to acknowledge just how fucked up I am. 
And then it happened.
Closer to the almost home stretch - the breaking point of wanting something so bad but it being just out of reach.
I was going home, downhill. Easy enough.
He was going somewhere far, with only uphill ahead. Hard as fuck.
At first I saw the rickety skinny wheels of his bicycle and thought about how old they must be.  If they had ever broken, been fixed and if so, how?
Then I thought of what lay ahead for those rickety skinny wheels.  Arm-fucking-strong Avenue. Did the bicycle know that it was surely doomed? Too steep a hill, too long a climb and too hard a journey.  But then the bicycle became more than faulty looking equipment. It become more than a second hand piece of shit. It became more than something for me to scrutinze over so. 
There are no words to describe the human being that rode that bicycle. So I just wept. 
As my gaze lifted higher to his face the tears automatically welled and released down my ungrateful face.  My face being the complete opposite to this man's face.  His face was that of life, of gratitude and determination that beamed through every pore and circled his head like a helmet.  
He knew what was ahead.  He knows what he has to do. What made me cry is that he still does it. 
There's a pureness that radiates around someone like him... spectacularly emanating strongly enough from him to be able to touch me so deeply.  
I'm usually impermeable.  
But this man was life and I let him be who he is, do what he was doing and my God was he great at it. He will never know that a white girl in her car was so incredibly moved in stand still traffic.
My thoughts were yelling of his impending doom.  My ego was screaming at its shittyness. My self was too blind to ever consider what he would have seen had he looked at me. 
No doubt it would've been in my top three of worst faces that he'd have seen.

Why am I unconsciously tormenting myself? So much more than any occasional hour long traffic nightmare, I've turned my life into traffic.  I'll get where I'm going but I'm sure as fuck not enjoying it. 
The stopping and starting, re-routing, frustration and attempting to just breathe. The mornings, the evenings, the days.  The weeks, the months and the years. 
Perhaps if I get a bicycle I can be like the man and avoid traffic and just be happy.
But that is not truth.  That is thought and expectation and grappling for something else that is me. 
No matter what the form of transport is, there is unavoidable effort required.  There is unavoidable determination needed.  There is unavoidable life that is meant to be accepted. But the most important thing in all of it is that you talk yourself out of your lies. Out of the norms, out of these preconceived notions that you won't make another minute.  Because you will.  The question is how, why and who. 
How - you walk, you cycle, you swim, you drive.  You move.  Internally as well.  Shift yourself.  Shift your thoughts.
Why - you have a purpose, you have a home, a place to be.  You are also already here. Exactly where you are. 
Who -  you have a self to be. The choice is natural but can be done wisely, within a second. A sixty minute test of traffic. A week, a month and a year.  You have a lifetime to be who you are, keep yourself emanating spectacularly enough to touch someone.  To touch the world positively. The who is the hardest - the Arm-fucking-strong of hills. If you persist with the how and the why, eventually the who will be stronger and no traffic will change that. 

what subconsciously follows

It was soft and slow.  Intense feeling with open but full palms, contact of skin to caress.  Moving all the cells of our bodies.  And everything else did not steal our minds.  Just your souls' cells and my souls' cells the point of contact and understanding and accepting.  With every movement, mapped our connection closer, calmer and continuous.
Almost indescribable, the senses that are touched.  A perfect mixture of safe, love, forgive, respect, surrender, accept.  An energy unlike any other.  Myself was not me and yourself not you but rather an unaccredited us.
That was my dream last night.  I was a mess.  I was kicked out of class (life class) for being the third of a trio of naughty students throwing ghost pops around.  It was then raining and muddy and cold, and I found myself outside on the grass.  And then there you were.  And there I was.  Mapping our hands and holding.   No skin or space left uncharted.  But glimpses felt like I was being saved.  And I guess I still hold onto this possible savior notion very tightly because I am just becoming aware of its destroying aspect.  Nothing appears to be perfect but everything can be peaceful.

____________________________


The art of letting go.
It's an art because it's perception
Felt, feelings, evoked, believing
Your eyes
Your ears
Your tongue
Your skin
Your heart
Your feet
They all need to let go
The heavy stone
The golden throne
The train of thought
and the web caught.
They all need to let go
Every inch of your body
Your mind
Your idea of what was
Of what appears to be
Of how to portray
On display
Is not what is
Only the artist knows the truth to his work
the reflected else is just perception.
Be
Art.
Not just perceiving.
(BE letting go)

_________________________


You can care and not share it.
You can love and not shove it.
You can know and not show it.
You can heal and not feel it.

___________________________


I feel like a dog walking myself.  Collar on, lead in mouth with teeth trying to smile but more clenched than anything.  Which way?  Am I in the countryside, on the beach, the city, a busy road or not even out the gate yet?  Or am I just lost whatever the surroundings?  Independence I don't know how to handle even though I want so badly.  A memory of familiarity.  A heart of only forgiveness.  And no one to walk with.  Curiosity blind.  Short spurts of energy until a halted stop, nose shove and a faster disinterest.  Much like a dog, I'll piss on what interests me.  Mark my territory, try it, get nothing back and then swiftly move on.  If that mark I made fades and I come across it again, by will or by chance, I'll piss on it again.  If that mark fades and I never come across it again, I won't give it a second thought or leg lift.  Who put this collar on me if I have no one to walk with?  Who owns or possibly opened the gate to let me out?  Who is beyond and above my crotch-view and outside of my hairy skin?  When will I stop?  If I do, I'm faced with options I don't know the consequences to.  The option to trace my steps back with familiarity.  The option to sit and wait for someone wiser, bigger and more human to find me.  The option to keep searching for what I don't know.  I could chase my tail for a while.  Feels like I'm moving and being productive but in actuality these stationary circles of self-attainment are dizzying and exhausting.  And then, after not quite realising my demon, my tail, is attached to me, is me.  Interest is lost.  Ignored.  Which way now?  Or nowhere at all because what is a dog without someone to show unconditional love to?  Wild.  Savage.  Stray.  Infected.  Independent sure, resourceful if it wants to survive yet completely threatened if not cautious.   With a calling of a howl rooted to the makeup of my being, there is instinct.  Albeit faded by conditioning, wolfed down and out by civilisations silencing and suffocating all that is natural.  Whether instinct gets me in trouble or propels me to safety, either way it's learned and trusted within.  Trouble leads to fight or flight.  Safety leads to tolerance and tranquility.  I'm a dog that could bark, bite or bolt.  I'm a dog that could be poked by a toddler and be okay with it.  No matter of what a toddler means or is to me.  Temperament evolves.  My walk evolves.  While I search I forget the lead is in my mouth.  There is no other being pulling me nor being pulled by me.  I can even let the lead drag if I want to.  Possibility of tripping increases of course.  Along with getting snagged, hooked and causing destruction behind me.  However with this risk comes unclenched teeth, an unsuppressed open mouthed inhalation of everything in all directions.  Independence with purposeless.  Tripping happens when I backtrack, ignorance happens forward and onward.  I choose to ignore what is attached to me.  I just let it subconsciously follow me.  Every walked dog has done this at some point.  It feels at first like reckless freedom and advances to erratic confusion.  It is not sustainable.  The lead must detach or it must be in my mouth or it must be held.  I'd rather it be in my mouth in the greater scheme of things.  If it's held, it would be to follow or lead with a heavy pull.  It would be an attachment and co-dependency to what is holding you.  Holding you together.  Giving you direction.  Most dogs less frequently walked will try lead and will need that leash for control.  It is rare that you see a dog on a lead tranquil enough (trained enough) to walk parallel to its owner. A sign of obedient submission.  I suppose the ultimate would be to walk parallel to your unconditional love without the lead.  The rarest.  But I am a dog walking myself.  I don't want to drag my lead so I put it in my mouth.  I clench my mouth and I modify my tail from in between my legs to wagging.  Albeit still lost.  Biting more than I can chew in an attempt to avoid the fear, loss of control and tripping while walking forward.  Most if not all of the lead disciplined and tightly compressed.  Restricted in seeing more than I'll allow.  The bind.  A collar with a name tag, an attachment I try to control and the sad sight of no one walking with me.  However the fact that I am outside and walking regardless of where and with whom is in itself remarkable.  Never taken for granted.  I may be lost and feel lonely at times but this is impermanent and more like a dog I should be elated in not over thinking the moment, joyful in the unpredicted.  The collar, the leash and the despair of both are not me and they are ultimately detachable.

Coining life

It has been a while since I sat down to type my incoherent thoughts out. To get them out, out of my mind, out of my being and out in the open where they can lift and leave. These thoughts can become lumpish and immobilizing if not freed. So I've been mantra-ing to myself: let that shit go.
Now my thoughts aren't all bad. They're just thoughts progressive to healing.  In fact, I've given too much credit to them, they are not they's - instead what whispers of pondering thoughts I have are simply that, whispers. Loud enough to just hear but faint enough to ignore. Dense and deep enough to have meaning but swift and shifting like breathing. With every inhalation they come and leave on the exhalation, much like pen to paper and fingers to keyboard, I sometimes sit with thoughts but they are not me.

Life is like a coin with two sides.  Every morning we flip that coin up in the air and depend our lives on which side it lands. Not even realising we do it, routine enough task like brushing your teeth.  Every morning, every day. We place our fate in this coin that we hastily throw up in the air in total disregard and with clumsy focus it may fall and scatter.  We then search, scrounge and get on our hands and knees in hope to see where and which way it landed.  With blind hope and anticipation, this coin is all we are looking for and at. The coin isn't the problem. Everyday is the catalyst and what you do with that coin is the solution.  But the problem is that we don't know what to do with that coin from the point of throwing it up to higher ground, watching it fall, land and settle - and then what to do with the side it lands on, and every moment after that. Why am I even mentioning this coin if we clearly have no idea how to handle it?  Well, that's life.  Life is waking up, relinquishing your fate to something out of your control but so much greater than yourself, life is both flying and falling, life is gravity, life is worthy, life's a gamble and life is hitting or skimming ground, settling or cherishing. It's ying and yang, it's good and bad, it's hard and easy, and it's never one sided.

What to do with the coin then?
Wake up. Be still. Hold that coin, your life. Connect with it.
Send it up. Watch it.
Don't let your intention be one-sided. Don't let your hopes be dependent. Don't anticipate disappointment.
Watch the coin but be still.
You won't have to search, scrounge or get on your hands and knees.
With little effort you will see where it lands, the whole picture of it.
Now set your intention, that no matter which side that coin landed - you saw it leave your hands, touch the height above you and fall to maybe bounce a few times but eventually it lay still on its side.
The side.
One of two options.
Sit still like that coin.
Set your intention for that day on the same side as that coin.
The side that's meant to be.
Without dependency, without anticipation and without haste - if you connected without these.
Let that coin be.  Let your life be.
Breathe, pick up the coin and go brush your teeth
Your day is now and you are worthy and entirely impelled in and by the same hands that guided the coin down to the ground after it left yours.



The Other Side Of The Coin:

I know I am not whole, enlightened, free - I am broken in places I can't yet see and possibly never will.  The broken places I can see aren't easy to fix with glue and gold. It's not easy being broken or repaired in some way or another, it creates points of weakness that if under pressure will buckle and break. Break once again. And again. There are days, more frequent than days that there are not, that I gasp for breath and my pupils constrict and I see no light. When I heavily drown in the stormy ocean of my thoughts alone. So alone that not even the salty water stings, I am just numb to it all.  If I breathe I take in more salty fluid to fill my lungs that overflow into my heart that drinks it in like it's never drunk before. But it has.  My heart has done this before, many times, it almost likes the familiar taste and the routine choking, purging, choking. Forcing itself to beat this way to know I am alive. Barely. Brokenly. With an elastic lyric, an audible car, an orange sunrise, an apparent ocean and an evening of just stars - my heart pretends to beat like it doesn't.
I know I am not whole, with or without you. But you're haunting my mind, my ego, my heart, my body. You're the ghost that I can hear but can't talk to.  I hear your words, they sting more than salt and they heal only you.  I feel you are healing while you haunt. And I am hurting while I harden. I have sold my soul and I can't get it heard again.  My soul is in the dungeons of complacency and tied to a binding unspoken contract. You heal, I harden. You from me, and I from you. Selling my soul along with every fiber in my body. Selling my soul along with every connection within and outside of my body.  To you. From you, away and disconnected.  It's a hell to me. "If anyone asked me "What is hell?" I would answer "distance between people who love each other"  But only I feel the distance like a burning inferno that starves me of oxygen and burns my face red hot.  Not all the time but rather a creeping torture with every remembering or longing. And I can distract this devil, I can distract him well. I have been playing this game with the devil for quite some time.  Although he grips me I am able to hide the hurt from him enough to pretend I'm okay with it. The devil is my thoughts and my sinking ship.  The devil is my heart and the blinking hope. A real trickster, but my counter tricks get me by. They turn my sinking ship into a submarine, impenetrable from the outside.  They turn my heart into beating, habitually. And so the devil and I live, but we do not love. You cannot love what is wrong, what is hell, what is not your soul. What is disconnected. Love is truth and the devil is not that nor is this godforsaken binding contract of unspoken words and unheld hearts.  This is hell to me.
Do I need to be saved? From the devil which is my thoughts and disconnected heart? Which is me. Yes. But the truth, the love and the savior is the hardest fucking thing to find in yourself. That's the disconnection that needs repairing. That's the scariest side of the coin.
Looking at this side myself, would you be okay with what was there? Could we flip our coins together and then you go brush your teeth and go about your day as I do mine and we continue to flip our coins together so we are not in silence and solitude? And free from hell.

Letters to myself

When the sun starts and

I sit in my skin

With the dark land

In all that is deep within

Do I know my skin?

Do I know my within?

Without the spun light

Without the sun bright

Do I know my control?

Do I know my whole?

Self shields and pity fields

Mind wars and body chores

Soul chases and love phases

Do I know my being?

Do I know my meaning?

All that I've thought

Through conditions taught

To learn how to unguard 

All that seems scarred 

Do I know my worth?

Do I know my earth?

That which surrounds

From my perceptions

Is not free 

That which compounds 

Formed by expectations

It is me

Do I know my freedom?

Do I know my wisdom?

Beauty in the breakdown

Faith in the unknown

Is as the land flow

Forever fluid I grow

My skin

My within.

love learning letters

After A While

 After a while you learn
 the subtle difference between
 holding a hand and chaining a soul
 and you learn
 that love doesn’t mean leaning
 and company doesn’t always mean security.
 And you begin to learn
 that kisses aren’t contracts
 and presents aren’t promises
 and you begin to accept your defeats
 with your head up and your eyes ahead
 with the grace of woman,
 not the grief of a child
 and you learn
 to build all your roads on today
 because tomorrow’s ground is
 too uncertain for plans
 and futures have a way of falling down
 in mid-flight.
 After a while you learn
 that even sunshine burns
 if you get too much
 so you plant your own garden
 and decorate your own soul
 instead of waiting for someone
 to bring you flowers.
 And you learn that you really can endure
 you really are strong
 you really do have worth
 and you learn
 and you learn
 with every goodbye, you learn…

  ~ 1971, Veronica A. Shoffstall.

I’m not sharing; I’m just overthinking.

I've been unpacking the reasons as to why I appear, believe or simply am, shy. Not being able to speak in certain situations, muted to my thoughts and being so conscious of the effects of this behavior around and on others. Reserved, perhaps. Scared, likely. Perceptive, most definitely. 

__________

Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people. (Quote by - Andre Dubus)

The bashful are always aggressive at heart. (Quote by - Charles Horton Cooley)

Everyone is shy -- it is the inborn modesty that makes us able to live in harmony with other creatures and our fellows. Achievement comes not by denying shyness but, occasionally, by setting it aside and letting pride and perspiration come first. (Quote by - Kirkpatrick Sale)

“Deep rivers run quiet.”  ― Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time.”

― Criss Jami, Killosophy

__________

Sheena Sharma on Just The Way You Are Aug 12, 2015

I’ve always loved to sing. In high school, I enrolled myself in the Masquers Guild, my high school’s drama club. But even though I was a bonafide drama nerd, high school was rough for me.

The drama club was filled with singing, dancing divas whose outspokenness echoed through the auditorium.

They cracked jokes, laughed, practiced their lines in silly voices — even when they knew people were watching them — and didn’t have a care in the world.

But the quiet kids were there, too. They were the shy members — the wallflowers who would curl up in the corner, turn their iPods on full blast and recite their lines under their breath while they made shifty eyes to check that no one was watching.

I was one of these people.

We weren’t any less committed or excited. We just didn’t make a show (hehe) about it, and so people considered us outsiders.

The divas and wallflowers had an ongoing battle. I’d lock myself in the locker room’s bathroom stall and overhear the divas’ late-afternoon gossip:

“She thinks she’s better than us.”

“If she can sing, why the hell can’t she talk?”

The divas made a good case. I had the plight of the performer: I knew I could sing, and I knew I did a decent job doing it. But talking was hard for me.

I just couldn’t bring myself to keep up with off-stage conversation. When the curtain closed and all was said and done, I’d take off my figurative mask, breathe a little, turn myself “off” and crawl back into my shell.

I envied the drama divas; I wished I could be more like them. They were expressive, fearless and unstoppable.

They had the uncanny ability to externalize their happiness and their pain at the exact moment it hit them — instead of holding it in and remaining impassive.

Life forces us to open up. It breaks down our walls. But shyness doesn’t disappear with a snap of the fingers. Socializing helps — momentarily.

No matter what I do, I can’t deny the facts: The “shy drama girl” will always be at my core. She doesn’t define me, but she still influences my identity. I suppose that’s why I hide behind words now.

People often say, “Watch out for the quiet ones.” We have to watch out for the quiet ones: They twiddle their thumbs, sit and ruminate. Lord knows what they may be plotting.

But maybe they aren’t plotting. Maybe they’re just… being. It’s human nature to jump to conclusions, and we do exactly that, deeming the quiet ones “dumb” or “bitchy” because they keep everything inside. We have to stop assuming the worst in people based on motivations we can’t guess.

If something bad happens, I don’t yell and scream about it and let other people know. I stay quiet. I internalize the incident and process it in my own head.

I’m not a big talker; I’m just an avid listener.

We underestimate the value of a good listener. Listening, unlike hearing, is an acquired skill; the more we practice it, the better we get.

I’m not just hearing what you have to say; I’m listening intently and making informed conclusions.

Just because I’m not mouthy doesn’t mean I’m not contributing.

I’m not fearful; I’m just careful.

I don’t second-guess my thoughts because I don’t believe in them; I second-guess them to decide which ones I want to contribute to the conversation. If my thoughts are going to serve as mere placeholders, I’ll keep them in my head — which is where they should stay.

If you really want, I’ll lend you my stream of consciousness. But I’m telling you now that it won’t get us anywhere.

I’m not being mean; I’m just staying mum.

I’m not silently judging you; I’m just taking in everything around me. Many environments can overwhelm shy people. Keeping ourselves “on mute” is the only way we know how to settle in comfortably and adapt.

I’d rather nod and smile than throw in a meaningless “mhm.”

I’m not sharing; I’m just overthinking.

Despite what you may think, I do have thoughts; I’m just not vocalizing them. I’m like a sponge, and I’m not soaking in only sounds.

I ride on the rainbows of tangential thoughts, too. I could be thinking about the president, My Little Pony, Nicki Minaj and what I’m going to wear tomorrow — all in 30 seconds’ time.

I’m not delirious; I’m just curious.

I’m not high. I repeat: I absolutely did not smoke a bowl before attending our meeting. I may look “out of it,” but the opposite is true: I’m really into it.

Some people are more computer than human: They’ll process information and spit out feedback only when absolutely necessary.

I’m no longer ashamed of my shyness. I’ve accepted that it will always be part of what makes me me. The thing about shy girls is that once you really — and I mean really — get to know them, they aren’t so shy anymore.

Elite Daily/Sheena Sharma. 2015. I’m Not Dumb, I’m Not A B*tch, And I Don’t Hate You: I’m Just Shy. [ONLINE] Available at: http://elitedaily.com/life/dont-hate-just-shy/1174775/. [Accessed 13 August 15].

Connected

The Hand of Fatimah
- The one that is kept away from evil and bad character (Fatimah/Hazrat Fatima)
- The daughter of a Prophet and most like him
- Loved and venerated by all Muslims
- Truthful
- Humble
- Blessed
- Healing
- Lady of the Light
- The leader of the woman of the World's
- Saw the people attack her father and would be the first to defend, tend and together they believed in Allah
- The mother of her father at a young age
- Married Ali, poor, gave his little food to the poor before him and her, but their house was full of laughter and love.

Hamsa Hand  
- Protects from destructive energies that arise from negative emotions (like jealousy, hatred, envy)
- Judaism = the hand of Prophet Moses' sister Miriam
- Brings goodness, abundance, fertility, luck and good health
- To feel the existence of God in everything and in every new formation.
- Symbol of holiness, healing and miracles.
- Neutralizes the negative energies of envy and the forces of evil
- Bracelets = worn by people who have faith in a "Supreme Power" and find themselves at a crossroad in life. Regardless of religious beliefs, they would find themselves in a common ground as far as having faith in a Higher Power.  They would want to depend on this energy source to keep themselves protected from negative influences that are otherwise outside their control. 
- Gods Hand
- Cybele, Artemis, Virgin Mary, Hazrat Fatima

Letters to myself

It's a Friday night, seven minutes away from the next day.  3 months away from the feelings, but tonight, tomorrow, I'm feeling them, the same, yet again.  Again.  Will they ever cease?  No matter the time or distance.  We are endlessly distant.  If, if I was your girlfriend, your love, would you not have called me tonight, tomorrow?  Pursued me.  Hugged me.  Told me to tell you how I feel.  What it is I am feeling?  What is it I'm feeling?  Instead, it's seven minutes away from tomorrow and time and time again it feels like inconsequential eternity with you.  Would you not have wanted to know?  To listen openly without judging, without fear.  Of rejection, of confusion.  From the blood I'm bleeding in my veins I want you to.  Because that, and so much more, would mean I am loved.  Wholly. Holy are those that listen.  But how can you listen when your heart doesn't want to hear?  I am here, breaking my walls but you're not there, here, standing to push the debris away to get to the truth.  If you haven't yet or ever will walk to be here, I beg you tell me.  I'll listen, with heart, to every meaning to your words and every distance that won't be covered.  When we are together it doesn't show how much, I don't show how much, I have grown, I retreat within the last of my shielded walls in your presence.  Because you are firing at me with judgement and condescension that I take guard with all I have left known from past.  How can I not?  If you are not willing to freely let me stand in front of my wall, naked, vulnerable, new... Here.  Asking.  hugging me.  Loved.  Again, more intentionally, I ask you to let me know.  If you foreseeing, can or ever will.  Or ever have.  Loved me.  Hope is not what I want to live by.  Faith rather.  But you have to crash your wall too.  Stand naked, vulnerable and new in front of me too.  To get past the ruins of us both.  Feeling safe in the ruins would be to know them.  Their forms, their figures, their colours, their depths and their ability to be historically appreciated.  There are two sites here that are excavated and how can we
see each others'
when, there, seven minutes from tomorrow,
we're cowering behind our own?

__________

When I tell you I'm chaotic in my mind tank.  I was desperately trying to get you to ask.  And not by a simple whatsapp msg hours later, you knew (or you don't know me) that its meaning was deeper than a "mind tank chaos?" response.  We both cowered.

When I said "people drink to mask, people don't smoke [ciggies] to mask." - I was hiding.  It wasn't my truth.  People DO smoke to mask.  Anxiety, stress, socially or alone.  But I was taking guard in your presence.

When Karin said that Michelle cried that night.  I cried many times that night too. But you know (or you don't know me) that I don't shed tears.  I bottle them.  I cried when you took 15minutes too long to leave so I missed yoga.  I cried when you put my hand on you, inappropriately, randomly, in the witching hours of the night.  I cried when we spoke about Michelle's mother.  I cried when you lay on the couch both cold and yet more comfortable than I.  I cried when you called the TV stupid.  I cried when your face questioned/doubted/ridiculed things I said.  I cried every time you did not embrace/hug/affectionately touch me.  I cried when I got another glass of wine.  I cried when Karin said, and believed, she was your mother.  I cried when my hands were shaking making coffee.  I cried when I wasn't able to get flowers.  I cried when I wanted to leave on Tuesday when I also wanted to stay and talk to you all night.  I cried when I arrived and didn't run and jump into your arms.  I cry when I realize you went away from me for 3months not to fix us but only you.

__________

Meet me there.  With the dust and the debris and the continuous rebuilding.  My darkness, my treasure is there for you to know.  There's a field beyond our ruins.  If it takes me longer, Sweet Soldier, I'm on my way.  Whether to you or not this is me standing in front of my wall, walking, running.  But cowering I cannot continue.  As silence is loud too and often misheard.  Falling on deaf hearts.  So tell me, I'll listen.  Standing.  Whether it's in the asking
or the telling,
                                                                  I ask,
                       meet me there
Here, seven minutes from tomorrow.

__________

Oh the moon is full.  My mug is full.  Makeup and coffee. My tummy is too full for my liking.  My skin is cold.  The air around it cold.  The blood below it cold.  The hour is cold.  Coffee and energy fill me further.  Makeup and skin hide me farther.

Moon, you illuminate the sun hidden, leaving shadows.  Ships are far on the edge of the long day.  But also the new.  Still and not at bay.  Keeping themselves in the shadows even more contrasted to the dark depths they wait upon.  Surfacing swells sway, lights laboriously lament.  There are people aboard there are things aboard, offshore furthermore contained.  

The moon pulls the ocean past them, like it does me darken the stars in my eyes.  The night is where it gets cold.  A few flickers failing to show the extent of what is actually so much larger in size and structure.  To eyes dilated searching for light.  They say your eyes do this when looking at love, however they don't say that it's only the sensitive eyes that have this ability. To see the extent of what is actually so much larger in life. 

Without the moon we blue eyed ships in this ocean would not adjust.  To cold to skin to darkness and to subsequent light.

It is the moon and the night that makes offshore oceans seem small but oh the ships are on the edge of tomorrow and that much closer to the warmth of time, and there is little distance from me to them now in the night.  

In the day it won't matter.  My eyes will be constricted, with warm skin, the ocean not dark and the moon unseen.  Shadows only man made and the edge of tomorrow will ebb and flow in the current. 

Rest well contained people and things, as I bid the moon away and close my eyelids for tomorrow. 

Josh goes to Heaven

Mom, I don't want to be strong for my older sister.  Not anymore than I want to be strong for myself, I want to feel it all.  I want to be let to feel it all with her, with me, with everything.  I don't really know why you told me to be strong for her today.  Perhaps you know it's my coping mechanism.  Perhaps you also told her to be strong for me today.  I know we need each other.  Perhaps you think she needs me more than I need her.  But we are both more sensitive than we allow.  I think that is due to the way and the circumstances that we were raised.  I miss her as much as I miss crying.  I miss her as much as I miss breaking down, tears. 

I sit writing this, gasping for breath, wiping the watery blur from my eyes.  I'm feeling.  And I'm feeling everything.  Just how cruel is this world and unjust.  A young but remarkable life lost.  A family, a son, a brother.  So young so innocent.  The tears sting and burn, they hurt.  But they also, with every stream, heal.  You can't take them back, just like time, you can't unredden your eyes, just like a memory.  But you can blink, squeeze tighter, lips quiver, breath deeper.

I'm going to hug you tighter.  In about two and a half hours.  I'm going to hug you so tight I mend the broken bits a little.  I'm going to hug you little sister.  Thought and understanding takes me back sixteen years or so... how I would love to have known then what I know now.  You became my sister by birth, but I didn't allow you to become my sister by bond.  Just how cruel is this world and unjust. Two young lives lost, by my own hand, to a distanced and disconnected resistance.  I simply cannot lose you any further.  You are still here and so am I.  I fear that should one of us go to heaven, we would not welcome the other without slight contempt.  Not because we want the other to live but rather because we would prefer to stay distanced and disconnected.  As it is all we've known, or shown, for the most part.  And for that, I am so deeply sorry.  I could enlighten you to my realisation that I had to grow up quick, with a sister already.  And when you came along I was already too far gone.  I was gone.  I was there but I didn't open up.  I was so consumed by being strong for my sister, my mom, my new dad, myself, I had no heart left for you to penetrate.  That heart only got harder.  Our relationship has only got harder.  With so much toughness there are no tears that sting and burn. With so much roughness there are no years young that bind. It was my wound I put outward and onto you, it has been my doing.  Or better, my not doing.  My not loving.  And for that, I am so deeply sorry.  I'm going to hug you harder,  it may hurt.  It may sting, but it's a wound that needs to burn so deep that it heals with new.  With future.  We have that, and the present.  So I'm going to hug you.  I hug you.  I love you.  You are my little sister. 

hands to hold

People help the people.

Muted we stay separate in a world of continual dissolution.

I forget sometimes that we're not meant to be alone.

Hands are cold by themselves if left untouched.

Warmth comes from holding on.

People help the people.


I urge myself to take my gloves off, to peel the bandaged dressing of shelter revealing the bare skin. The blue veins and my fingerprints. The unjewelled fingers, the nails that scratch and the empty cold palms of sweat.  Held together at the wrist, strong but small and dainty, easily broken. My hands have seen most and done many but they are wiped, slapped and withheld before they could really touch. If I undress them, if I expose them to the rain and the cold, they will shake then tighten and they will seek to hide in themselves or another thing. But eventually they will need to be used steadily apart, they will appear again, still bare. If it is still cold and raining, they will weather.  If it is warm and shining, they will appear unforced.  Open and eager. But not the weather, only my hands I can control. But not the wrinkles and the fleeing, only the action and feeling awaits me.  Unclenched, wet, slippery or unveiled warm, certain - either which way they are unsheathed and continuing. To be burnt or to be soothed, the skin on my hands heals.  Fresh layered or calloused, humbled by movement and time, not crippled but with purpose. My hands will need to appear again and again, this is life, ungloved. 

Letters to myself

I am so very tired of not expressing my feelings in a raw-like, current time, unguarded manner. With you. I am so very tired of believing not to. I am so very tired but I am able to. I am so very tired so I have to. With you. 

Feelings:

Know that it will be subtle and slight, firstly.  As I learn and try.  Know that I will be fighting and flailing, seconds.  As I stubborn and shy.  Know that you will be confessed and confused, threefold.  As I frown or cry.  Know that there will be boundaries and breakthroughs, forth.  As I stand or fly.  Know that we will be lighter and loved, lastingly.  As I you and my.  Feelings.

Love, as I undestand it.

I always thought that love was about desire -- being with someone, holding someone, feeling someone. But it isn't necessarily. Love can come in lots of different ways and lots of different guises. —Tracey Emin

No one but me can know how I love, truly. No one but me can tell me how to. But everyone can feel in some way the love I give and receive in turn.  How conditioned and warped is love in this perceived world, that it has become so unseen and characterized, to be deemed as heartless expectations and needs being met. Love is not desire. Love is not for hire. You don't rent it to acquire a need to be met. Later to return it, either debted, used, or to get your worth back. Love is complimentary in life, it is freeing,  but it is not freely given or received in light. 

_____

I did not expect to be shown love by my nephew, I did not have to force myself, my mind, worthy of loving him.  It just was, is and will always be.  It was not conditioned. It is unconditional. This love should be the love we should feel, show and know.  It goes back to your basic being, your core, your presence in the very now.  We are love. We were made of love, by a higher power and thus we only feel truly ourselves when we are in that moment of love, peace and the now. Not expecting, not masking, not distracted.  Rather channeling your internal outward than harbouring the external inward.  I believe that love is a trait we all have but it it loses its quality and quantity as we greedily consume assumptions and apprehensions for sustainability. Babies and dogs embody unconditional love to me.  Not my mother, not my boyfriend.  I expect too much out of "love" from them.  Whereas babies and dogs, there is nothing to expect, there is nothing to pick apart and there is nothing I can't show, feel or know but love as the basis of all interactions. Perhaps it's simply because the babies and dogs cannot talk, and there is no fear of rejection, there is no doubt and there is no clouded misconceptions and judgements.  It makes it a lot easier.  Regardless, this is how I feel it should be for all humans.  The fact that they can talk back, they can reject based on judgements and you will consequently doubt, makes it imperative that we should all channel our internal outward instead of harbour the external inward. 

To do that, as neither a baby or dog ourselves, is a daily effort. It's a huge action, habit breaking and reforming, mantra repeating, responding rather than reacting, it seems impossible to rewire.  Our brains are intrinsically connected to our hearts and they need to work together on this, work being the operative word.  In doing so, daily effort, new pathways will be created and opened.  With every new undaunted mental thought, positive reactions occur. Strengthening these new synapses to receive neurotransmitters to the receptor, weakening the old synapses, the old thoughts, doubts and reactions. The brain is a powerful tool of change if you train it.  The heart, to me, is there to reinforce the training.  When the brain seems too stubborn and somewhat cold and detached, the heart steps in. Love is initially actioned through the brain but it is ensuingly felt in the heart. These new mental pathways created will open the heart, breaking the impenetrable walls around it.  Almost as if the neurotransmitters pass an electric current through the heart so to shock it into working again.  Once working, even if only momentarily, the heart will beat that new thought into habit by facilitating the enrichment that you feel. Humans need reinforcement, affirmation and both ratification and gratification.  However they don't know that it comes from their own life source, their core, their hearts ability to love, oneself and others. If you can't sustain or give reason to the new mental thought, let it rather reside in your heart.  If your brain seems to be blocking any chance to the new pathway and it seems like the only conclusive direction is the old, it isn't. That thought may react through the old but with new intention, with awareness, it will have split and the other part will be automatically sent and respond to your heart.  There it will instill, build and flow with amplification upon every defibulated occurrence.  

_____

TO FEEL COMPLETELY AT EASE IN YOUR OWN SKIN, at ease with your own personality, at ease with your presence. Love will find you that way and never leave you.  Love will latch on and attract more of itself by you being yourself, at ease.  If you are, it will reverberate through and down to your inner being.  You will feel, you will create and you will store it there. Through feeling, creating and storing you will realise who you are and how, when you have surplus, to give love to others. 

_____

you're not going but you may be there

For weeks it played on my mind.  The idea toyed with my avid expectations.  I'd set them in place in my dreams and closed eyelids.  It took my mother's wise words verbalised and pushed onto me that would unsettle it all.  Deep down the reluctance that was keeping my eyelids shut did not want to make the call.  I did not want any outcome other than the one I had set myself up to expect and deep down I knew making that call would unsettle it all out of my hands and my will.  My mentality has always been to never openly ask for permission, I was leaping off from what I'd always done.  My damnable instincts were screaming at me, hesitant in the moment and all the moments before then.  I lept. I called.  I took the power of outcome out from under me and gave it to the other person on the line.  My expectations were hanging on every word that he said and they were infernally battling to escape his calm collectiveness and remain in my dreams and closed eyelids.  The fury, the southernmost pit of forsakenness, had me and my wants desperate.  I matched his cool calmness externally but on the inside I was screaming like a small child on fire.  Internally begging to be given the power back.  To restore my expectations to a reality I like.  With a slight chance, a numbing hope, I reluctantly agreed for his decision to be thought about and call back later.  Immediate regret.  Immediate realisation that I was not going to get what I wanted, not this time.   The mix of panic and hope is quite a strange emotion.  It's frantic and it's needy as all hell.  I needed to be comforted.  I needed to know I hadn't just screwed it all up. 
At this stage my stomach was spewing it's conditioned self-doubt and namely self-hate.  Oh what would the other think of me now?!  I had just messed up our plans for a weekend away to the Drakensberg.  Building these plans up and now single handedly I had taken them away from both of us.  It and I felt like a failure.  Frantic and waiting I followed further in my implosion of inefficiency.  My thoughts and heart raced to the one question that plagues me most, what would he think of and feel for me now?  I attached to the answer being that he'd probably be thinking Shit Rox, you're stupid. 
The phone rang again and if there was a glimmer of hope it was fleeting and blurred.  Not only was the outcome thrown between counsellors but it was given as a cornered option to the other.  At this point all I heard in my head, in his voice, was Shit Rox you're stupid.  My defence mechanisms were up and although the person on the other line was impressed by the others answer, there I was hanging.  Hanging onto the feeling that they cornered and shaped his answer with skill, the same skill that they disregarded my feelings with.  I was frantic and needy as all hell.  But my want for sympathy did not come out of that phone.  He dashed my expectations without a care of me.  The decision was made. WE were not going away to the berg.  Devastated, contempt and regretful.  I was polite enough but it was obscured.  His comfort did not come as I wanted, instead it was talk about how impressed he was with the other and the outcome.  The other has always been more logical than I and it seemed like logic was the driving force behind his decision but I hung up the phone listening on repeat to my mind, Shit Rox you're so stupid. 
Needless to say, I harboured this feeling of failure and pushed it into every cell in my body as that is what I do.  When you're broken and you fail, you don't take it as "I just failed" you take it as "I am a failure".  Fishing gone, horse riding gone, fireplace gone, replaced with a paradoxical reaction of non fulfillment, rejection and confusion.  I went to every self loathing conclusion I could get to.  Begrudging my mother for making me call, furious with myself for calling and re-thinking that maybe I should have worded my question differently.  Acidity towards the person on the other side of the phone, and then resentment towards all the people on the other side of that phone and around me.  Seriously?  Could no one care how much I wanted to go away to the berg?  It seemed like they didn't and ultimately only thought about the other.  But that wasn't my main concern... it always goes back to the question that plagues me most. What would he think of and feel for me now?
I went back to work, wounded and worried.  Roxy a month ago would have stayed in that mindset for as long as she could in order to fuel her wounds.  Surprisingly, my rational brain soon came back to the surface and I realised that my initial thoughts and reactions were not absolute and hardly fair.  On myself and to everyone else. 
I balled my eyes out on my drive home that day, crying is not something I do regularly.  I cried partly because I was a small child dealing with being told no.  But mostly and more importantly because I had a revelation.  My very own moral inventory had been put on display that day and it had shaken me to my core. 
I had put off calling, knowing that it was the right thing to do, as I wanted the power to control.  I had put in the effort of making the booking and I didn't want anyone to take that away from me.  To take away the vain effort of proving myself worthy and to be needed. 
Heaven forbid it was my mother who would be the one I initially blamed - it was her pushing that made me call.  The mother who in all aspects gives me everything I so selfishly want all the time. How shamefully convenient it is to blame the one person who you know loves you most.
The counsellor's job is not to sympathise, offer me comfort or give me what I want, and it's not because he couldn't care less, it's because he has the others best interests at heart.  Why should I resent him if he ultimately knows what is best.  I was projecting my disappointment onto him, hearing and interpreting only what would make me feel better about myself at the time.  Responding in a way that would project the misconception that I was okay.  But I wasn't okay, not necessarily with the situation, but with myself. 
There is a raw reality to this all.  Recovery is a lifetime not a weekend holiday.  This is bigger than fishing and fireplaces.  Whether it be a family Disney World trip with future children in the very far and presumptuous future or a simple weekend in the mountains, recovery will and always come first.  No matter how I felt and what my initial retaliations were - there was so much more that I took from this. 
For all I know, the other could feel so far from Shit Rox, you're stupid and he too could feel regretfully sorry.  Sorry that he put on me the responsibility and on us both the expectation of a berg trip.  I very much doubt he would want us both to be dishonest, as the growth in him is worlds away from running from the truth. 
Shit Rox, have more self respect and respect for others.  Knowing that I only did what had to be done, and letting it go.  Accepting myself with or without the others' thoughts and feelings is like breaking a bad habit.  Challenging an insecurity that benefits nothing and no one.  Restoring self love, a synopsis pathway that will only get stronger the more I use it.  As I cried my tears cleansed themselves into pure love.  The unconditional love that is now, for both myself and for the other.  No matter where we are, go or stay.  
I am no longer a small child getting whatever she wants and knowing how to manipulate people's thoughts and feelings of me.  It was easy as a child, so simple to say the darndest thing in the cutest way to get away with murder.  The berg trip would be the crime scene.  The victim being recovery.  The culprits being selfishness, stick-it-to-the-man mentality and my insatiable desperate need to be needed.  
From this I may not be going but I sure am growing. 

no fate awaits, powerless

The sun slips like honey off a table

Melting into tarnished and wasted sweetness

Stooped down, hand out, the other stabilizing the unbalance of night. 

Too much too soon and I can feel the stickiness and buzzing of my head fighting the dark.

Too little too late, and I stoop lower into the catacomb of the hive that is my life

Swarmed and stung

Pollinated and pollution-ED

I slip with the sun.

__________

So, throughout my blog I've discussed the frontal lobe fuse - when you actually become aware of consequences and ultimately become an adult.  Supposedly this happens at the tender age of twenty-five.  Today I am closer to twenty-eight.  I don't think it's a switch that flips, scientifically or timely.  I now believe it may start to slowly turn opposed to just flip and while doing so it consequentially takes your whole life flipside, inside out.  It feels scientific at times, uncontrollable and inevitable but at the end of the day - it becomes based on choice.  The adult chooses.  Timshel - thou mayest.  That gives a choice.  And not necessarily always the best choice but rather the harder choice, which is synonymous with right at that time only to be learnt for what it really meant later on.  When you fall but get up better for it.  Or one learns this immediately compared to ignoring it as the child would have.  It's called a number of things; regret, doubt, self-reflection, honesty, truth.  Namely consciousness.

_____________

I'm beyond the precipice.  I'm free falling into it all.  I've become powerless in the fall, but the safety is in the grace.  Of which I allow myself to give and to receive both significantly outward and securely inward.  I'm not getting any younger nor is anyone around me, and this propels me closer to the ground, the reality.  That we're all falling but not farther, instead nearer to who we are.  However we never really hit the ground.  It doesn't smack us in the face.  It's not that obvious.  We hover, we touch, we skim, and we grace the surface ever so slightly - which awakens our sense of selves momentarily.  As much as we hate near misses and love them at the same time, they're both exhausting and adrenaline fused, our whole body braces and our eyes focus on that ground.  Always.  Continuously.  Repeatedly.  The other surroundings get blurred as we fall, they're inconsequential - instead we keep our heads down and plan, overthink of escapes or contrarily we don't think at all (we actually never leaped in the first place) or, we can relinquish all control to something else.  To the actual fall and what happens at the bottom, the very pit as well as the last moment of control, when you give it away.  You give it to something greater than you.  And only then do you realise you weren't falling all this time.  Alternately you were being pulled closer to that something else.  You were being guided; you were being swooped up to and by the creator not the creation.  To be more spiritually grounded.  To be more whole.  To be more you.