A Toothy Decision

I've been having some problems with my teeth lately.  This could have something to do with the fact that the last time a dentist saw the inside of my mouth, Bush Sr. was in the White House.  Or it could have something to do with the legal system of Santa Monica, whose insane delaying tactics (going on a three year custody battle here people, and of that, two years have been bureaucratic delays) have caused a fair amount of tooth-grinding in moi.  Or there's an eensy weensy quite negligible chance that my diet (sugary tea, homemade brownies, and hazelnut chocolates) might have something to do with it. But really it's none of these things.  It's because I'm indecisive.

No, really, it is.  Decidedly.  I read this in You Can Heal Your Life, courtesy of the amazing and multitalented Laura Alvarez.  Teeth, according to author Louise Hay, symbolize our ability to make decisions.  When we are struggling with choices in our lives, our indecisiveness can manifest as tooth trouble.  Well hmm.  I'm pretty sure that the Wikipedia article on "Indecisiveness" has my photograph as the illustration.  And if not, it's just cause you just can't trust those damn internet sites. 

As fate would have it, the visit to Laura that introduced me to this fascinating book came hot on the heels of a session with my MFT.  She, too, had given me a book to read, titled Addiction to Perfection: The Still Unravished Bride.  It's a Jungian analysis of the Medusa complex, and I have been unable to put it down.  The Medusa complex is a series of symptoms that manifest when our ego and our spirit/unconscious are out of tune with each other.  Although I've yet to finish the book, from what I understand it is easy to "freeze" (or be turned to stone, hence the name) when faced with the dark entirety of our shadow selves.  Often this complex afflicts women who try to hard to attain ideal states---spiritual or physical---and ignore or cut off their feeling body to do so, regarding it as weakness.  Eventually the feeling body revolts, and at the point when the strength of this revolt matches the will of the ego to maintain the "ideal", total paralysis ensues.  There can be no forward motion because the forces oppose each other perfectly.  

Well gosh, that sounds familiar too.  Remember that whole long marriage to the spiritual teacher and the six hours of meditation a day?  Yeah, me too.  TOTAL PARALYSIS.  Indecision.  Tooth problems.

But the universal unconscious has my back!  Flitting about the internet the evening before these momentous events, I had happened upon two articles.  One discussed oil pulling, the Ayurvedic practice of swishing pure oil about in the mouth for several minutes and then spitting it out.  Apparently the oil draws impurities and bacteria from the teeth.  The other held forth on the healing properties of amber, specifically its use as a "teething" necklace.  These ancient resins, according to the article, have both sedative and antibacterial properties as well as being mildly analgesic.  

So this morning I woke and did several minutes of oil pulling with coconut oil.  Instant pain relief.  Amazing.  I followed the oil pulling with an inspiring and revitalizing yoga class in Santa Monica with Gigi Yogini, whose facebook post, in that beautiful Jungian synchronous way, had initially led me to the oil pulling article.  During the class Gigi asked us several times to set an intention.  Again and again, I affirmed my intention to be decisive.  (Although I have to admit there were a lot of other options that would have made REALLY good intentions, so it was REALLY hard to be decisive about decisiveness.) Again and again, we joined breath to body to intention, linking body and mind as allies, pulling spirit and ego together.  And afterward, the brilliant Briana (more synchronicity) and I headed next door to the bead store, where I decisively purchased some rather expensive but undeniably beautiful amber. Two strands. (I got one for my son too. Ahem, SEDATIVE qualities)

When I decide what I want, when I state it and believe it and follow through, it is truly amazing how quickly it comes to pass.  And my teeth?  I've decided they'll make it until the universal health care kicks in.  Which I've decided will be soon.  

So...another year, give or take.  The figs are getting ripe, the grapevines are crawling toward the top of the pergola, the boys are getting bigger and the 12x12 is still 12x12.  This morning I turned the compost and shoveled forkfuls of it around the tomato and broccoli plants. I bribed my offspring with quarters to gather lemon balm and mint leaves for tea.  I plucked nettles for my morning eggs and then stood with my chin in my hand and looked, really looked, at this space that has been my home for so long.  Had I known I would be here for two years, wouldn't I have put in fruit trees?  A pond?  Built an outdoor room?  Sewn curtains? Covered the cinderblock walls with murals?

If I had known I would be here for so long, wouldn't I have made a greater effort to build community?  To volunteer, start a nonprofit, involve my children in the workings of this ecosystem?  To create a band, a babysitting co-op, a couple of beehives? To learn to sail or surf? To run for city council? What on earth have I been DOING?

I've been twiddling my metaphorical thumbs, waiting for the life I expected, somehow feeling OWED, subconsciously assuming it will find me.  HA!  Wanting so many things that I am afraid to select one, finding that I am, in effect, choosing to have nothing.

I have been feeling a ferocious need to roar into focus, gather up the beads and string them, LIVE.  If here is where it is, so be it.  Leave the wasted time where it lies and move forward.

Did you know that nettles heal their own sting?  It's true: squeeze the juice of a nettle over a nettle rash and it will disappear.  The problem is the solution.  So if my problem is a lack of focus, wanting too much, then I shall give myself EVERYTHING.  I shall strike out in every direction that gives me pleasure: painting, surfing, hiking, sewing, gardening, traveling, making love outdoors, having dinner parties, doing yoga, writing, creating necessary changes, learning.  I am going to have it all.  I am going to make a sincere effort to have it all.  Because fearing that I will somehow fail in having it all has held me captive long enough.

And I owe this world my full, glorious, LIVED life.

My last post, written nearly a year ago, featured this song.  I wrote it in a depressed daze, feeling I'd left myself behind, praying that I would stop wanting so much.  I remember thinking that if I could just forget how much I'd wanted, dull down my frantic desires, I would be at peace.

I know better now.  Our appetites are beautiful.  Our gargantuan, articulated, immense WANTING is the fuel that drives us to create, to innovate, to heal.  When we stop dulling our desires with pastimes and rubbish and self-recrimination and invented drama, maybe we will start feeding ourselves---and by extension, our world---with the deeply nourishing things we truly want.

making art of everything

recently i found myself at the end of a day with the strong feeling that not only had i not accomplished anything, but that i had actively made the world worse. i was miserable.

but i had determined to record every night. so i took all of my mawkish misery and wrote this song. over the next week, i spent some time recording the sounds of the day-to-day dreary things i find so oppressive, as well as the beautiful things i love to do, like watering the garden or snipping herbs into a salad. i looped these sounds into the recording and turned it into a celebration: both of a terrible mood, and of ways to get oneself out of it.

cupid and psyche

i'm sure you are all familiar with the story: it has different faces, beauty and the beast, east of the sun west of the moon, the polar king. it has been haunting me lately. nearly every culture has some version of it; mustn't it then hold something very important to learn?

she leaves the safety and familiarity of her home to wed a monster. he has either been threatening her family or promising them great wealth in exchange for her; either way, she does it out of duty. there is the suggestion that she never really fit in with her family anyway. she perhaps had no clear enough dreams of her own. does she accept this marriage as a sort of assumed purpose, hoping it will give some direction or definition to her life? she is young and strong and wants to test her powers. she feels she could take on a monster, perhaps even redeem him. she is eager for the chance to test herself. it is a relief, in a way, to have something to do.

her optimism and enthusiasm win him over. he treats her kindly. she begins to identify with him despite his repulsive appearance/invisibility. she feels she can be his ally, though everyone else misunderstands and fears him. it makes her feel important, special, to be the one who sees through his roughness.

but she longs to see clearly. she is confused by others' opinions and projections and needs a definitive answer about who this creature really is. has she been misled? is he truly as terrible as others seem to think? or can she trust in her own perceptions of his kindness and character? is he fooling her? is she offering her most intimate self to a monster?

so she takes her mother's advice, though he warned her not to. in the night, when he lays himself beside her in darkness, she holds a candle up to his face. she wants to see him clearly. that is not too much to ask, surely? but she is violating an unspoken agreement, the understanding that she should never look too clearly, too directly, that she should only perceive him in half-light and fumbling, that too clear an answer, too objective a look, would destroy the half-truth half-world they had established. illusions would fall in the face of what was really there.

but of course what was really there, what she sees by the forbidden light of the candle, is BEAUTIFUL. that vulnerable sleeping center of the beast, undefended and unmasked, is a god. and for the first time she knows, without illusion or pretence, that she loves him.

but a drop of wax falls and wakes him. he is furious to have been seen so clearly. it defeats him, his need to be a powerful beast, to hide behind the terror and the half-truths. he wanted to be the only one seeing. he did not want to be seen in return. so he casts her out. he takes everything with him: her possessions, her very home and the land it stands on. her daily context is gone. her illusions are gone. the monster/lover has flown and left her bereft.

she has nothing. she is cold and heartbroken and hungry. yet somehow she forgets all else, she forgives his unforgivable actions, she begins a wrenching and heroic journey in pursuit of him.

but why? why should she seek him now? why, in the face of his clear abandonment and cruelty, does she not go on and build a life for herself in other lands? isn't the onus on him now, the weight of proving himself, winning her back?

whatever her reasons--embarrassment to face her family, a lack of any other perceived purpose for her life, love--she follows him. she is told by everyone in authority that the journey is impossible. she is told that her physical body cannot go where he has gone. in some versions she learns to fly on the back of the wind. in others she is sent to the underworld, to meet the queen of the dead.

having made it to these unreachable kingdoms, she has one more battle to join in order to win him. in one version she must resist the temptation of great beauty or she will stay forever in the underworld. in another she must defeat a hideously ugly rival for her lover's affections by tempting her with beautiful dresses and golden combs. either way, vanity seems to be the final hurdle. once she has overcome it he is there, waiting to be rescued from (in one version) life with his mother or (in another) marriage to a she-troll.

her devotion has liberated him. but she has grown older and worn in her journey. she is no longer perfectly beautiful, or perfectly innocent. she has changed. she is no longer a fitting decoration for the illusory pleasure palace of their first wedded days. will he love her?

he will. they are wed. he has shed the guise of the monster forever. he brings her to the heavens to share the cup of immortality.

so who is she? (wisdom, womankind, the soul, the human spirit?)

who is he? (god, truth, man, ego, the shadow, the mind?)

why does he forsake her for looking at him clearly--although it is this action that eventually leads to his freedom?

and why is it that she is the one who must fight for his liberation, why doesn't he have to overcome any obstacles on his own? or if he does, why don't we hear about them?

preparation/transformation

so...tuesday night is the big gig at the viper room, and i alternate between bouts of bonecrunching anxiety and an almost untethered euphoria. the mantra that works is this: it is one night, one night, one night.

if i turn out to be a miserable flop, well then at least i had the bravery to try. if i find that i love it and am well-received, then perhaps it will be the beginning of something beautiful and new. whatever may happen, it will be a party, a wild ride, with friends attending from all phases of my past---multitudes of unexpected last-minute developments have this show shaping up more like a piece of performance art/drama than a musical set. there may be many many musicians backing me, some of whom i have never met. there may be an actress, and a lost native woman from the past, and a librarian, and time portals. ....no, really. you should really, really be there.

i have learned this about myself: the more that is piled on my plate, the happier i am--both literally and figuratively (laura can vouch for this one!). i LIKE organizing summer classes and pulling together a band and learning new songs and raising children and putting eggshells 'round the tomatoes and working on a book and mapping out a similarly multi-coursed future, all at once. it is the moments when i find myself at a loss for purpose that i grow tired.

woman and weakness.

i found that poem in the course of clearing out loads of old papers from their demonic nesting place beneath my sink (betcha anything that if i looked up feng shui, under-the-sink would be my area for mental clarity or something along those lines. maybe prosperity? sanity? forbearance?)

i also found a journal, started and then forgotten. i knelt in the carnage of papers, cleaning supplies, and general undersink guts, reading. it didn't sound like my voice. i didn't remember ever thinking these thoughts i'd committed to paper. there were 12 entries, distributed over the course of a long-ago month. each had something to do with being female.

i left the piles on the floor and began setting the words in the journal to music. i tried not to edit too much. it was more pleasant by far than organizing under the sink. though i suppose i'll have to return to that eventually if i ever want to regain the use of my kitchen.

http://soundcloud.com/arlie-cat/woman-and-weakness-vers-2

being born!

I just found a poem I wrote soon after Xir's birth. It is chillingly honest. I was really hurting at the time, so thrown by the direction my life had taken, so unprepared for the reality of motherhood in isolation.

When I remember that time, all I feel is an overwhelming gratitude that all of that anger somehow resolved itself without anyone getting mauled! There were years when anger was my primary motivating force. I suppose most of it arose from the tension between my very stringent expectations of myself and the reality of who I was. These days, though I am constantly at work on ways of blooming, I find strength in the truth of what I am rather than punishing myself for all I am not. It sure frees up a lot of time. And a lot of love.

Being Born!

Before we left the desert, where the hammock hung---there---strung

Between the silvered drought-dead locust and the lush singleleaf ash—

Those first warm days of spring I’d rock my worldnew baby boy there,

Watching through a sketch of leaves the nest-building begin.

A mourning dove was nesting in the ash’s head-high crook

So diligent and patient as she waited through the hours—

She could fly! Yet she refrained! How my hurt heart learned to hate her

As I struck out, angry, lost, across the hills.

She had wings! Yet she refrained! She remained there, resolutely,

untouched by the ambivalence that raged always in me.

I was beating at the cage. She was beatific, unconflicted,

motherhood her paramount and perfect-met concern.

How I envied her her patience. How I hated her for staying.

How I raged, and walked, and rocked, and surged, and paced the desert ground.

Then one of those horrid days, when if mothers could, I’d quit,

I soothed my screaming baby in the hammock’s lilting arc

And gazing dull-eyed over out of habit at her nest

Saw her hatchlings—born! bedraggled! quick with life!

She was my ally after all. I turned away. My vision blurred

to see the nest builder succeed: it was so terrible and grand.

I held my son to see the ones who—being born!—

Did what he’d done

But he slept, sweet-heavy, safe, between my arms.