12.30.2010

Who Am I At My Best

A strong, clear vision of who you are at your best holds the power to transcend your current reality. ~ Debbie Ford

I read this and thought, How amazingly simple. So I started to wonder who am I at my best? Then, I made a list of people I am.

I am a woman
I am a mother
I am a friend
I am a sister
I am a daughter
I am a photographer
I am a writer
I am a college graduate
I am a songwriter
I am a dancer
I am a partner in a business
I am a "domestic goddess"*
I am a soul
I am a part of Consciousness


Eventually you will come to understand that love heals everything, and love is all there is. ~ Gary Zukav

I am also divorced. I have yet to be at my best because of it. But I have come to understand what unconditional love is even if it's not reciprocated. I have also come to understand this past year that I create the person/people in front of me. I will continue to create this person with absolute and unconditional love as I see only his success and expansion forward without me.

When the karma of a relationship is done, only love remains. It's safe. Let go. ~ Eat Pray Love

So, this is the year I begin to become who I am at my best knowing there is nothing to fear. That resolution requires aiming unconditional love towards those people I am. It requires I tell you a love story:

Once upon a time, there was a woman that woke each morning to the image of herself in the mirror. Each time, this image humbled her because it reminded her of how unique she was. Each day, she grew in love and in compassion for all the details, big and small, that she had lived through that made her who she was. That love and compassion was so abundant it flooded her children's lives and the lives of her friends and her family. They became more mirrors reminding her of her beautiful pictures, clever words, quick intelligence, gift for song, graceful movements and practical advice. In the mix of the reflection, she saw that she was indeed divine in both the "real" and the ethe-real spaces and this motivated her to take more amazing pictures, to write more clever words, to teach, to sing, to dance and grow in wealth while reaching out to the larger world...with her very best.

She Begins


You are what remains when the story is understood. ~ Byron Katie

I Am Love.



























*that covers Chef, Taxi Driver, Therapist, Maid, Fashion Consultant & Nurse

12.25.2010

Well Deer



The New Year's Almost Here!

!A Few New Resolutions To Follow!

12.22.2010

A Wall Fell On Me

Mine...one brick at a time.
Now, to pick it all up and build a door.


This is always true: What I think and
how I feel, and what manifests, is
always a vibrational match. But here's the
big kicker: What manifests isn't manifesting
instantaneously. So, you've got all this
buffer of time leeway that makes you sloppy...
If you thought a negative thought
and a brick would instantly fall on your
head every time, you'd clean up your
thinking. But you're not here to be punished
about your thinking. You're here to
use your thinking—and your focus—to
create.
--- Abraham


12.21.2010

Come Morning

In the last 26 hours, I've been on the road 17 of them. I love driving but this was business and I procrastinated getting the details organized. Stress. Things went very well but due to fatigue, Christmas and a flight on Sunday, I may not attend my friend's funeral. That's another 11 hours on the road and he would not want me to do it. He was a funeral director. He helped me bury our amazing friend 20 years ago. I drove all night with a baby-in-tow. He was glad I came but assured me if I hadn't she would have understood. So, all of that's come up for me. What is "that"? It's the deep missing of them. It's desire to just call them up and chat it out. It's the longing to share life stories...our processions in time. It's the lack, lack, lack of them. It's also the wanting to say all the words you should have said...and so I say them, anyway. Actually, my mind repeats them. These two friends certainly knew how much I loved them. I repeat those thoughts now because it's the only thing I have the power to do. Words containing unconditional love. Words weighted with thankfulness of having known them. Words describing moments shared most about being stupid kids who were having a whole hell of a lot of fun. I end up laughing. That's the space they want me to enter. That's where they are...a space of joy. There is a tiny non-exhausted part of me that says I can pull off the drive. A part that whispers I should go and comfort my other friends. I think I'll just sleep and maybe by morning I'll hear more clearly what I'm to do.

PEE *

























* It's the poet in me.

12.19.2010

My Oldest Friend 1967-2010



It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer...everything collapses. ~Colette

My tears are not for my loss.
These tears are for what was given me.

12.18.2010

Thinking Cap

You are creators, and you are vibrational beings. You are more about electronics; you are more about electricity;



you are more about vibration than you are about the physical stuff that you think you are about. This physical stuff that you think you are about is all vibrational.
--- 8-Track Player Forever with the help of... *

Sometimes you just have to cap your thinking. Particularly, when you have about eight tracks of thought going on at one time. That's where I find myself...entirely lost in the cross circuitry extending backwards and forwards through the influences and demands of others. I write to focus. And the focus is All Is Well. And my beginning list of gratitude and appreciation looks a little like this: I am grateful for...

1. ...the covenant with Source which brought me here.
2. ...the ever wonderful dance I'm engaged in with my children.
3. ...the constant unfolding of friendship.
4. ...the vast contrast of Life that aids my expansion.
5. ...the amazing evidence stating I am creating my life.
6. ...the loving moments in complete randomness.
7. ...the unseen mechanisms that runs my physical machinery.
8. ...the Divine in all of the above.


*...well, not exactly.

12.15.2010

Mastering Happiness



It was as if all of the happiness, all of the magic of this
blissful hour
had flowed together into these stirring,
bittersweet tones and
flowed away, becoming temporal
and transitory once more.
~ Herman Hesse

Aside: I wonder how many Sciuridae have songs dedicated to them...

12.13.2010

I Am For Giving

After the last post, my friend asked, How could you forgive him? I suppose from the way I wrote it, it can be assumed that I did. Not close. That would come years later. In those moments outside of the house while sitting in the car came the realization that the dance between them was so entrenched, the psychological grooves so deep, they didn't know how to climb out. Eventually, everything would collapse into those grooves.

Everything.



They are both happy today. My mother has let go of all of it which never has to be difficult if you've had the practice of losing everything and surviving.
She lives on her own and recently retired from the home-health field. She was older than most of her clients but you wouldn't know it. I doubt retirement will last long. Anyway, I had a dream of buying her a house. A few years ago, it happened. I love the Universe. We could not have gotten a better deal if I'd of found it at a thrift store. It was indeed a garage-sale! She's made it her sanctuary. Frankly, I've never seen so many ceramic animals in one front yard.

My father still struggles with regrets but, obviously, he is prone to living in a painful past. Nonetheless, he has someone that loves him and he is faithful to her. He lacks for nothing -- nothing -- except a clean conscious which he could gift himself at anytime. I wish that for him. I really do.

As for forgiving him, I did while I was pregnant with my second child. We were at
Multnomah Falls in Oregon and he was playing with my first against the backdrop of those glorious waterfalls. She knew nothing of his past. She was present with who he was in that moment. And I remembered being her and I chose to be her again. It was really that easy...but it took a long time to get there.


12.11.2010

Missing While Giving


In her haunting tune "One Blood," Virgo singer Lila Downs confesses that "the deepest fear [is] my desire." I personally know many Virgos who make a similar lament. How about you? Is there any way in which you are scared of the power of your longing? Do you ever find yourself reluctant to unleash the full force of your passion, worried that it could drive you out of control or lead you astray? If so, the coming weeks will be prime time to face down your misgivings.* It's time to liberate your desires, at least a little. ~ Rob!

I have let go of longing. Longing is a powerful and painful force riveted with lack and in it holds the essence of some other time when there is only Now. But I remember this woman very well. And I remember the choice of feeling powerless in creating those things I wished to happen in my life. I am still reluctant to unleash the full force of my passion, though. Not because of losing control or being lead astray but, because, I do question myself. And self-doubt is a habit like any other. All of which, take time to break. But I'm on a roll when it comes to 'letting go' and 'allowing in' so I'm hopeful that some unleashing is in my future. But Me is not what this blog is about.

This blog is still about desire which has been on my mind since the last post as it is the pathway that I came to Be. Granted, my parent's marriage wasn't a "match made in heaven". Dad had a great deal of desire for a great many woman. This is not an accusation merely an observation. But I know he had loved one young woman deeply. And she loved him in return. I'll never forget her name. It was Penny. They were in high school together. Penny knew she would never get the approval of her father, a well respect attorney in town, so they found ways to be together. Then my dad enlisted in the Army (Airborne) right before graduation when Penny denied his hand in marriage. Maybe her deepest fear was her desire for him. I wonder if she was a Virgo?

I came into awareness of Penny when I was 15 and not quite the season driver. There was a game my parents played that, after seeing my mother so distraught, I took on. It was him taking off and she calling all the bars to locate him. They had the dance down until hours of absences turned into days, weeks then eventually months. He was always escaping and it always revolved around three things: His paycheck, alcohol and other women. In this part of my timeline, he was only being swept away into the hours. My mother was working and I was babysitting at home. It was the middle of an afternoon during the summer. She called me telling me she couldn't find him. I rang all the typical numbers of all the local bars. Most knew my voice well and, though sympathetic, unhelpful. Sometimes I couldn't locate him. This day, I did. The barmaid said to come get him. Mom could not take off work. So, I went and picked him up at the bar. I was a nervous wreck but I did not wreck. Kudos to me. I walked into the bar and with the help of a couple of strangers, I got him in the car.

When I pulled into the drive, he became present to the situation. My under-aged daughter just drove my drunk ass home on a lovely Saturday afternoon when she should have been doing something more age appropriate. With that
acknowledgment, he told the story of Penny and him. I think he thought he owed me an explanation. He had a picture of her in his wallet. Their story was not the only story he told me that day. As I sat in the driveway and listened, I met Richard. They were buddies together in the 82 Infantry. His soul-brother on the ground in the Dominican Republic. Which would become the ground my father crossed with Richard across his back bleeding to death from a chest wound. He carried a picture of him, too. As an apology, he was sharing with me the huge loses that defined the powerful longings that he buried deep under a sea of alcohol.

Even now, it remains the sincerest, most bittersweet apology I have ever been blessed to have been offered.




























*Misgivings -- are feelings of doubt or uncertainty about a decision or an action. ~McGraw-Hill


12.10.2010

Looking Back

When I was in grade school, I lived outside of what I now consider my hometown. It was a lovely little farm house that my parents rented from Mr. H.. I don't remember meeting Mr H., or Mrs. H. for that matter, but I know my parents had said they met us. Later, I would learn this older couple was hesitant to rent to an interracial couple. My mother, Caucasian, with an eighth grade education and my father, Mexican, with some JuCo under his belt, managed to convince them that they were indeed worthy candidates. I like to think it was those four beautiful children who won them over (my youngest brother would come years later). To date, there's never been any real formal debate on the subject. I doubt there ever will be. My thoughts win by default. Anyway, it was outside this farm house, as the new school year began, that I encounter a word I had never heard.

Half-breed.

Without fail, the first two weeks of riding the school bus had the ceremonial exchanging of the guards with my parents handing me off to the driver. Somewhere in all of this my older brother, from my mom's previous marriage, immediately ditched me for his friends in the back of the bus. Which was fine, I never wanted the title of tag-along. I pretended I was on my own. The first week cruised by. It was a lengthy drive. Many times, I pretended to be in a movie where I was the lead all dreamy staring out the window, the landscape rolling by with really great music flowing over the scene. Imagine dramatic. My mother loved soap operas. It's relevant.

Anyway, a week in, a new boy moves to town. On my route. His purpose: To make my life a horror flick. My Little Universe was about to teach me an early lesson in compassion but not before walking me through fear and then hatred for that boy. It's hard to remember the details of the fear and the hatred, though. Those feelings no longer live inside of me. But I do know within his taunting this H-word appeared repeatedly. And I had no idea what it meant. The way he said it made me worry that asking my parents might get me into trouble or, worse, might hurt them. So, I asked my older brother. He said, "You're Mexican not Indian, don't worry about it."* His definition confused me further.

One night at dinner, I finally just asked. My mother was livid but my dad had lived a life of discrimination and thought this a mild offense. "Just ignore him."

But what does it mean?

It means you're of two races.

What are races?

They're ethnic groups.

Ethnic?

Yes. The same in the way they're made up.

But you said no two people are alike.

Yes. But the groups are the same in ways.

What ways?

Black, White, Chinese, Indian...they are the same.

But what if you're two?

Eat your Green Beans.** (This from my mother who was still livid.)

During vocabulary, we used our student dictionaries and I remember trying to look up the word one day. No luck. I went home and did the same thing. My mother came in and asked me what I was doing. I told her. She sat with me and asked me what else was going on with this boy on the bus. I told her about the hair pulling and name calling. I told her about my stomach aches and how I wish the bus would run over him. I told her all my evil thoughts. I think she was trying not to laugh. I asked her not to tell anyone and that I was going to practice ignoring him like dad had said.

Of course, the Universe conspired.

Our washing machine broke AND mom said I could go with her to the laundromat! Just me and her. I would have her all to myself. We got down there and we got busy. I was quarter dropping and turning dials and life was good until HE walked in. I hid. I whispered to my mother that it was HIM. He was followed by a large fellow. His father. Clearly one-breed: Mean. And I watch from a safe distance the full blown version of the boy on the bus.

We would get in trouble as kids. Fight. Forget to pick up. Sneak in some back-talking defined as mumbling but my parents weren't abusive. They didn't call us names, they didn't shove us around, they didn't buy a soda then not offer us a drink. My mother was back to being livid and intently watching as if it was one of her serials. Her face was taking on one of her looks that spoke volumes. And I could tell she was fit to be 'heard'. Carrying out the last load of laundry, she gave that man that look full-on. He felt it, too. And I looked at his son...no longer wanting the bus to run over him. He never bothered me again after that. I hoped his dad never bothered him again after that. To date, there's never been any formal calculations on how long my mom's super eyeblast last. But for the sake of a happy ending, let's believe it is still in full effect.

*He was not a "half-breed" but "big brother" dumb at the time.
**This is the gist of the exchange. It could have been mashed potatoes.

12.03.2010

A Temporary Day

























A Future Moment


Either way, focus in the Now*

Your prayer
causes you to focus,
and the Law of Attraction
causes everything
in the Universe
that's in vibrational
harmony
with your focus
to come to you.



P.S. Enjoy one of granny's favorites.

*She knew the exact thought would come to Here sooner or later