the singlehood chronicles #11: a progressive retrospective

this summer's venus retrograde sparked a few revelations...and thanks to a rare astrological event destined to hit pisceans especially hard, my saturn return has lasted well into my 30s.

about 3 or 3.5 years ago, someone pushed the reset button on my life.  i left my spiritual family, my relationship finally, fully died...much of what i'd been working towards for the better part of a decade slipped away.

i don't regret any of it; it all had to happen. but it was still a lot to deal with.  i spent the first year sleepwalking, getting by as best i could between the pain and the anger.

in the last 18 months or so, things finally started to bear fruit.  i achieved my dream of becoming a Reiki master, and my spiritual life blossomed in wonderfully unexpected ways.  i am grateful for my new spiritual family, and honored that i'm still welcomed by the one i left.

perhaps most improbable: i can speak to my ex again. that one snuck up on me.

so i should be ecstatic, right?

well, part of me is. 

there's more, though.

i need to create space to breathe, live, love, laugh. i need to feel, deeply.  revel in corporeal joy...eating well, spending time in nature...

and, often, i need it to happen in a way that is not driven only by me.

i know i needed to learn how to do it "alone", but i never thought it would go on this long.  gradually, people i knew got busier, kids were born, marriages and relationships happened and un-happened...and i've just been plugging away at...me.

if i needed to talk something out, it was difficult to express "single people problems" in a way that didn't seem selfish, navel-gazing, or unimportant compared with the concerns of folk who are married and/or partnered, particularly with children.  

soon i realized the comparison was the problem. why give myself problems i don't have?  of course my challenges are different--i'm simply in a different situation.  

i suppose some would see a kind of paradox in declaring i desire a partnership without making the pursuit of one my alpha and omega.  frankly, i'd rather devote my energy to creating the life i long for.

you know that whole thing about shooting for the moon, so that even if you miss, you're still among the stars?  well, if i take the best care of myself now, my love will be a welcome complement and support to a content, whole, confident and blissed-out woman.

and if "the one" doesn't show, that's still a damn good space to be in.

the singlehood chronicles #10: 2 years later

i fit "the demographic": never married, over-30 Black woman.

the kicker: no kids.

trust me, i am not about to delve into the sickening, desperate/despondent, wedded-to-an-endangered-species trope which, in my opinion, is a distorted, hastily drawn conclusion about a complex issue.

still, my reality puts me in a distinct position even in my closest circles. i am slowly becoming The Only One, especially when it comes to motherhood. 

for now, i don't have the cold hard cash to ball my way through my blues.  the velvet glove on that iron fist would be much thicker if i did.  and although i'm still rather ambivalent about mothering and do not long for a child, several dynamics shift when the worlds of others revolve around babies and yours still revolves around...well, you.  

what's frightening is that love and loving has never felt as difficult or elusive as it does now.  i cannot remember a time when i've been this deeply, absolutely single.  for most of my life i've been involved in some kind of love relationship--not because someone told me i "had" to, or even because i sought them out.  they felt right for their time and were easy to find.  i took breaks at will, and it was easy to pick it back up.     

true, i've been focused on several other things over the last 3-4 years, and  i definitely consider myself blessed.  i'm enormously proud of what i've achieved, and i love my friends and the people in my life.  i'm grateful to have the support of my birth and chosen families.

but the clouds creep in more often now, and they're a little more articulate than usual.

i'm human.
i'm a woman.
a woman who has loved and been loved deeply and well.

i can't unlearn that love, or forget it.  no matter how many days i "wish" i could, i know i wouldn't trade those experiences for the world.

but for now, it makes sense to commit to living for myself, and living well.  my hope is to create a life that will allow me to care for myself and realize my dreams--whether there's someone to share it with or not.

i remain open to love, family and the rest, but i've gotten beyond mourning the lack of it.

clearly i'm meant for something outside the "usual" configuration.

time to go out and discover what that something is.
 

{for the other "singlehood" posts, click here.}

happy mardi gras, cher

i love mardi gras. for some reason, this is the only widely celebrated day that actually feels like a holiday to me.

i think it's all the ritualizing around impending spring/rebirth that i enjoy. plus i'm always in the midst of my birth-time energy. the depression and heaviness of fall and winter finally start to crack and fall away--no matter how cold it happens to be.

originally, i was born on a palm sunday. i think my actual birthdate has fallen on or near it several times since. i always liked to hear my mother talk about how it was an unseasonably warm, very beautiful afternoon.

i was raised lutheran, so mom always made pancakes for dinner on "shrove tuesday", also tons of fun. what kid doesn't appreciate breakfast for dinner? still, having successfully resisted sunday school, i did not understand the full meaning behind it until much later.

so this is, in many ways, my season.

spring seems to struggle to get here. it's not like october with a colorful equinox or that typical late may/june overnight leap into full summer.

the month of march feels almost violently transitional. anything can happen with the weather, from beautiful pre-spring days to freezing rain and snow.

it really is like a microcosm of my birth and my life.

so, enjoy the party, and don't give up too much for lent, hear?

today...

i am at home.
my home.
with my chosen scents and colors, my books and my familiar.

enjoying my kitchen.
eating my food.
savoring my appetite.

i have had the day to myself.
i have slept, awakened, bathed, and prayed in ways pleasing to myself.

i am full of myself
and life
and love.

and i am happy.

little things

getting out of bed at 11:30

pandora.com

dancing around the living room

kitchens

rose quartz salt baths

inspiration

honeyed french toast

raven's nests

hot tea

apple-cherry cider

fafinettes

river dreams

...i'm beginning to think i just needed a day all to myself. time to sleep and to dream. time to reconnect, revision, reset.

overflow...

i walked in hoping i'd be able to get down some thoughts and feelings, but i can't seem to form the words yet. everything is just too amorphous and full of pure emotion and feeling...

but i am happy
and grateful.

the universe is conspiring to revert me
to my fuller-than-full,
brazen hussy,
flirtatious,
bliss-creating,
pleasure-loving self.

...and i am ecstatic.

self love # 4

blurs & beads...

self love # 3

"Here," she said, "in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard... And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face 'cause they don't love that either. You got to love it, you!"

~Baby Suggs, from Beloved


massage training helped me gain a new appreciation for hands and touch.

according to my mother, i have my grandmother's hands...that's always fascinated me since those are the only parts of her i remember with any certainty.





these days, i feel like they spend a lot of time covered in shea butter, palm oil, or dishwater.




but they're mine, and i love them.

self love #2

the girls! (totally PG, don't get excited. lol)






one of my profile pics. i'm rather partial to my collarbones/neckline. tee hee.

singlehood chronicles #1

i noticed that i've avoided writing too much about myself lately--even slacking on my journaling. instead, i've been doing a lot of internal processing, trying to figure out the best way to articulate what i've been feeling...

things are good. i've been having fun, meeting interesting people. i'm also learning just how much the last few years have changed me.

i am much less wlling to give up space, time, and, most of all, myself.

i realize that i'm still able to share myself physically while not allowing many inroads to my mental state. i've heard that's one of the many pisces paradoxes that make us equally irresistible and infuriating.

it's also interesting how long i existed without the level of physical attention and affection i prefer. this has caused me to develop an almost ruthless analysis around kiss, touch, etc. exposure to an openly affectionate man--other than a family member or friend--has been both enlightening and an adjustment.

sometimes i find myself forgetting that, at my core, i am very physically affectionate. i've simply suppressed many of those tendencies since (a) my ex wasn't around much to benefit from them and (b) it takes time to figure out how other people will interpret it, so i remain reserved until i'm assured some measure of safety.

my boundaries are firm:

i am determined not to just give myself away because "he seems nice" or "we get along, so why not?" the "i do not have to diffuse my love..." mantra really worked on me.

exclusivity will be my choice in my own time and not determined by my empathy. thankfully it's become easier to not allow others' emotions to blend into my own.

falling in like/lust is fine, but loving has become something much deeper and wider for me than "falling" into it. i can't fully explain it, but when it comes around again, it will be a completely different ride.

so, that's where i am. i'll sit back and see where it takes me.

do over

i just realized that i need to make up for my lack of a 30th birthday celebration.

for years, i said i was going to plan this HUGE party...i barely got out at all.

this cannot stand. i'll have to think on what i wanna do...

pardon my shimmer, beautification in progress

having recently realized how deeply affected i am by beauty, i have decided to beautify my life.

i don’t mean this on a wholly superficial level, but more a project designed to entice and enhance the senses; indulge my sensual self with the goal of discovering my true loves, passions, desires, and needs. it is also a means to spiritual symmetry and loveliness.

i am making an effort to dress in ways that are comfortable, yet flattering. since i’ve (unintentionally) gone down about 1 size, i’m having to rediscover what fits, what doesn’t, how my body has reshaped itself.

i bought a lovely new journal on my birthday. i’ve been carrying one kind of notebook or another with me daily for some time, scribbling thoughts and other things as they arise. the new, beautified journal was part of a commitment to (a) buy no more anonymous, spiral notebooks and (b) no longer compartmentalize my thoughts/feelings/words (typically i’ll have the "daily" notebook, something for poetry, a diary for journaling, another for spiritual matters, etc.).

the goal: regain my flow, let things spill out wherever they please. get messy. become reacquainted with myself.

so don’t mind the extra honey and glitter sprinkled around wherever i may happen to be at any given moment. i’m just working out a few minor details.

longing, part 2

i was in a peculiar place when i spit out last night's blog, but i wanted to document it. i'm into my contradictions right now.

however, i'd like to set the record straight: despite my bitching and moaning, i know how to do all of those things, and have accomplished most of them several times over.

for instance, this morning i was reminded that i do know i'm beautiful.

not that i'll be on anyone's magazine cover any time soon--you have no idea how difficult it is for me to take a picture i like--and i'd probably fail a screen test.

but i can turn heads when i want to.
i use what i've got. well.

part of my recovery seems to involve consciously falling back in love with myself.

it's a good feeling. i turn myself on. i lovingly acknowledge my curves and delightfully imperfect perfections whenever i pass my mirror(s) naked. i dig that about myself. it's a key element in my ability to attract adoring, attentive lovers.

still, when i'm in relationship, the glow gets reserved for very specific moments and situations. otherwise, the vibes i emit from sharing my ecstasy and joy pull all kinds of extraneous folk into my orbit. it becomes too much to think about at once; i fall in love with one and want to be in love with all.

i wrap myself in insulation when i'm playing monogamist. conversely, my aura fairly hums when i'm freely sampling the dessert tray.

ultimately it will be interesting to experiment with polishing my shine while acknowledging how it's changed. i'm older, wiser, and have a harder shell to crack.

what kinds of delights will come knocking on my door?

my twenties are over...

...and it feels good.

just wanted to get something in with this date on it. *smile*.

i'll write more when i have time. it's waaay past bedtime...

#4: joy, peace and serenity despite circumstances

(see: the list)

well, i'm back from beautiful california.

i hardly know what day it is, and daylight savings isn't helping my jet lag at all, but i am full of gratitude and peace.

i was on a business trip at a retreat center just outside san francisco, so there was definitely work involved, but i also had time to be quiet and open myself to healing.

just before leaving, i was distraught. after the white water rapids ride my life's been the last couple of months, the last thing i wanted was to have to pack up and go to the west coast.

but when we landed and i stepped off the plane, it was green and warm with flowers everywhere...i was immediately enchanted.

the center's gardens were filled with all kinds of surprises:

a celtic cross with a mossy, impossibly green grass planted in front of it that i just had to stand on barefoot;

st. francis standing in the hollows of trees;

a buddha holding blessed blades of grass in his arms;

the perfume of hundreds of flowers--always different depending on where you were sitting or standing, sometimes dependent on the direction of the wind;

a beautiful labyrinth.

there were even sequoias--i real treat for a (rather literal) tree-hugger. i never thought i'd see one.

i attended a transcendent taize service and reconnected with a spirit guide i haven't seen since i was a child.

...and it would take forever to tell you about all the wonderful people i had the opportunity to meet. my last day there, i realized that i had learned quite a bit about how i want to operate as a priest and a woman on a spiritual path just by being in the presence of this group of deeply human, deeply committed individuals.

i knew i needed renewal, but i wasn't sure how i would get it without an expensive plane ticket and a whole lot of time (that i didn't have) off work.

god/dess is so good to me. this job has already repaid me several times over for the extra early mornings and commuting hassles. may it continue to do so.

my ori is securely aligned with my heart, hands and feet.

i can begin to breathe deeply and pray again, secure in the knowledge that i have the power to manifest the bliss i want.

my dreams are back.
my egbe is with me.
i am well on my way to happiness.

ase.

in search of a powerful eroticism

i reread audre lorde's (iba t'orun) "the uses of the erotic" on the train the other day, and it made my heart hurt a little.

during a conversation with c., i realized (again) how complacent and sedated i've become; how i have betrayed my wild woman, allowing parts of her to hibernate or suffer from dehydration for far too long.

first, mama audre tells us:

There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives.

We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued within western society. On the one hand, the superficially erotic has been encouraged as a sign of female inferiority; on the other hand, women have been made to suffer and to feel both contemptible and suspect by virtue of its existence.

furthermore...

As women, we have come to distrust that power which rises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge. We have been warned against it all our lives by the male world, which values this depth of feeling enough to keep women around in order to exercise it in the service of men, but which fears this same depth too much to examine the possibilities of it within themselves. So women are maintained at a distant/inferior position to be psychically milked, much the same way ants maintain colonies of aphids to provide a life-giving substance for their masters.

But the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough.

precisely. sensation is not enough. my hunger goes much deeper than that.

one of the first steps towards my satisfaction was obtaining fulfilling employment. all praise to my ori, egbe and the orisa, i have done that.

but it's only the first movement. in many ways, i'm still starving.

The erotic is a measure between our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.

indeed. it has touched me, fully and deeply--and not just in love.

It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our
society is to encourage excellence. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.

This internal requirement toward excellence which we learn from the erotic must not be misconstrued as demanding the impossible from ourselves nor from others. Such a demand incapacitates everyone in the process. For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness.

hallelujah.

The aim of each thing which we do is to make our lives and the lives of our children richer and more possible. Within the celebration of the erotic in all our endeavors, my work becomes a conscious decision - a longed-for bed which I enter gratefully and from which I rise up empowered.

Of course, women so empowered are dangerous. So we are taught to separate the erotic from most vital areas of our lives other than sex. And the lack of concern for the erotic root and satisfactions of our work is felt in our disaffection from so much of what we do. For instance, how often do we truly love our work even at its most difficult?

i feel like i would be terribly dangerous if i were so empowered. seeing women like dark daughta making the attempt is a blessing. she and others encourage me to find my own way towards freedom, past the fragmentation and the lies i tell myself to fit in and make it through the weeks.

i am learning that it isn't just my creativity that's fallen away from the nucleus of who i am--parts of my sensuality, sexuality, even parts of my spirituality feel incomplete.

i don't just have writing blocks these days, i have prayer ones as well. what can i say to my shrines when i can barely speak to my ori? what once seemed so simple has become a chore.

As women, we need to examine the ways in which our world can be truly different. I am speaking here of the necessity for reassessing the quality of all the aspects of our lives and of our work, and of how we move toward and through them.

The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all its aspects - born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.

somehow i have been cut off from the source.

i'm wondering what part the last month has played in this drama, how much i've dealt with and how much i haven't.

...but that'd be another blog altogether.

Beyond the superficial, the considered phrase, "It feels right to me," acknowledges the strength of the erotic into a true knowledge, for what that means is the first and most powerful guiding light toward any understanding. And understanding is a handmaiden which can only wait upon, or clarify, that knowledge, deeply born. The erotic is the nurturer or nursemaid of all our deepest knowledge.

this is going at the bottom of the blog as my newest quote. maybe posted above the goddesspace. a new mantra.

The erotic functions for me in several ways, and the first is in providing the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.

...and this is why i like DD, despite her insistence that many of us (whoever the "we" happen to be who stumble upon her musings) won't.

i don't need to nitpick with her about the different ways in which we see the world. i respond to her as my heart and mind dictate, and she responds to me in kind. in that, we don't bicker, but find common ground. when we disagree, we don't polarize one another--we teach each other.

that's the way it's supposed to be.

mama audre had so much to contribute in the way of the conscious acknowledgement and acceptance of difference...it breaks my heart that we didn't have her for just a few more years.

Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy, in the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, harkening to its deepest rhythms so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, or examining an idea.

That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy which I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife.

This is one reason why the erotic is so feared, and so often relegated to the bedroom alone, when it is recognized at all. For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.

this is why my relationship with him was and still is so important; we lived and breathed this essay before i even knew it existed. we still do.

now that our love is shifting and transforming into another form of being, i'm wondering how it will still be capable of feeding me, how my current situation may need to shape shift.

how fear has factored in to my desires and loves.
the walls are getting thin.

During World War II, we bought sealed plastic packets of white, uncolored margarine, with a tiny, intense pellet of yellow coloring perched like a topaz just inside the clear skin of the bag. We would leave the margarine out for a while to soften, and then we would pinch the little pellet to break it inside the bag, releasing the rich yellowness into the soft pale mass of margarine. Then taking it carefully between our fingers, we would knead it gently back and forth, over and over, until the color had spread throughout the whole pound bag of margarine, thoroughly coloring it.

I find the erotic such a kernel within myself. When released from its intense and constrained pellet, it flows through and colors my life with a kind of energy that heightens and sensitizes and strengthens all my experience.

mmm hmmmm...

We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. But, once recognized, those which do not enhance our future lose their power and can be altered. The fear of our deepest cravings keeps them suspect and indiscriminately powerful, for to suppress any truth is to give it strength beyond endurance. The fear that we cannot grow beyond whatever distortions we may find within ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, externally defined, and leads us to accept many facets of our own oppression as women.

...But when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense. For as we begin to recognize our deepest feelings, we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied with suffering, and self-negation, and with the numbness which so often seems like the only alternative in our society. Our acts against oppression become integral with self, motivated and empowered from within.

In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial.

i believe that this is the message mama gena intended when she, essentially, watered down and commercialized this lesson for her school of womanly arts.

it's definitely a wonderful beginning--if that's the level you need to be reached on--but i hope that the actual classes touch on something deeper and more critically minded than what glitters on the surface.

back to the essay:

And yes, there is a hierarchy. There is a difference between painting a black fence and writing a poem, but only one of quantity. And there is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love.

This brings me to the last consideration of the erotic. To share the power of each other's feelings is different from using another's feelings as we would use a Kleenex. When we look the other way from our experience, erotic or otherwise, we use rather than share the feelings of those others who participate in the experience with us. And use without consent of the used is abuse.

In order to be utilized, our erotic feelings must be recognized. The need for sharing deep feeling is a human need. But within the european-american tradition, this need is satisfied by certain proscribed erotic comings-together. These occasions are almost always characterized by a simultaneous looking away, a pretense of calling them something else, whether a religion, a fit, mob violence, or even playing doctor. And this misnaming of the need and the deed give rise to that distortion which results in pornography and obscenity - the abuse of feeling.

deep.

The erotic cannot be felt secondhand. As a Black lesbian feminist, I have a particular feeling, knowledge, and understanding for those sisters with whom I have danced hard, played, or even fought. This deep participation has often been the forerunner for joint concerted actions not possible before.

But this erotic charge is not easily shared by women who continue to operate under an exclusively european-american male tradition. I know it was not available to me when I was trying to adapt my consciousness to this mode of living and sensation.

...and it's still not available, mama audre, not even for a heterosexual black woman--whatever scraps of privilege that offers me.

i am built for this kind of life.
it is always on the tip of my tongue.
the rhythm of it guides my heart...
whether i'm loving someone
writing
designing sacred space...

it's there. it's waiting. it's mine.

but i still have plenty of work to do before the erotic is fully fused to my life.

maybe that should be my new prayer...

i hear, i act, and i am rewarded

i popped up this morning after a somewhat nonsensical anxiety dream. feeling too lazy to go to the farmer's market, i started fooling around online. soon, i started to feel like i was being pulled away. a familiar feeling.

time to do some spiritual work...

there is still a part of me that attempts to ignore that pull. i suppose it's ego and conditioning--the drive to be "normal", the inculcated tendency to act like communing with the intangible is silly and childish. but spirit is insistent; to act in false ignorance is to betray my name.

so i tore myself away from myspace (i'm making that sound much more difficult than it actually was...) and got cleaned up: black soap and a yemonja rinse with sea salt and molasses.

then i settled in, opened up and listened.

spent the late morning and early afternoon tied up in shrine maintenance & meditation: cleaning vessels, pouring libations, dusting fabrics, reflection with ifa. the house still smells a bit like a temple.

despite my stubbornness, i always enjoy the work and feel enriched for having done it. there is something special about coming home from a long day and inhaling traces of candle wax, incense, and gin. i might walk in ready to curse out the world, but as i kick off my shoes, i am greeted by my warriors and my little black cat. they instantly transform my mood.

i am home.
i am loved.
i am protected.
i am connected to my source.

after today, i am certain that this past week took a more out of me than i thought.

i only left the house today to get some food.
the laundry remains in a bag, in the hallway.
i really have to get on that.

i suppose i'm still birthing...

but i've learned my lesson. the fount has been shut off. i will invest no more energy in this endeavor than is necessary. gotta keep that fire from flaring up.

and next weekend i'll be celebrating my new beginning...

listen up & pay attention...

why our 'flaws' are beautiful

...the quotes around "flaws" are mine 'cause i don't really see them as flaws.

that scar is a survival story.
wrinkles are the mark of a crone.
in parts of africa, gapped teeth are considered a beauty mark.

and so on.

amen & hallelujah to these women for flaunting what they "shouldn't".

reality

i have a serious thing about fulfillment. i am not a pleasant person when i am unhappy or dissatisfied.

i don't expect to be free of desire, nor do i see the absence of desire as a natural state--unless your desire is warped into addiction.

if and when i begin to feel dissatisfied or distressed, i'm learning to shift reality, to make things look, sound and feel the way i want and expect them to.

i think people get caught up in understanding that process in a negative sense, i.e., you have to hurt or harm others to achieve that goal.

you don't.
you do not have to universally impose your will to achieve your bliss.

the universe has created a space for you--you do the work to find or open that space.

the need to bend others to your will is a sign of weakness and laziness. conquering isn't the same as mastering.

i don't need to make over anything not worth my ashe.

i voice the desire, i move towards the space.

the worlds of work and drudgery will never act as mother.

the earth and the universe will.

quick hello...

i haven't had much to say lately...probably because i'm beginning to stabilize.

feeling prayerful again.

getting back into the job search (got a call today, actually...yay!)

moon time's on its way, but i'm not too daunted by it.

believe me, guys, sometimes it's a good thing when i'm quiet. *smile*

hope you're feeling bountiful and blessed this evening...

peace