Posts (page 2)
Today, I dusted off my altar for the first time in a long time. I think I am finally no longer trying to make myself fit into an image that feels uncomfortable. I should be more learned about Buddhism, but today it was enough to come back to the comforting rhythm of practice.
I'm not sure if the perfect moment of serenity I had later on today was because of the thirty or so minutes or so I spent really meditating on my happiness, but wherever it came from, it was great. It might have lasted only seconds, but in those 10 or 15 seconds, I knew without a doubt that:
everything was gonna work out fine
this time next year, things will be very different
that your issues are not problem
i can't fix you
i understand why you act the way you do, but that doesn't make it ok
the love i have for you and the love you have for me is perfect just the way it is
the debt is paid. let me say it again. the debt is paid
the present is all i have control over
perfectionist tendencies create too much stress, i just decide to go with my A-game instead
i'm pretty fly
My perfect moment of serenity also has me thinking - and completely without malice or bitterness now - why do we still blog? Will anybody read this and give a damn? There must still be something I find interesting or useful about it, because I could have just wrote this in my paper journal. But seriously, why...what are we doing with the blogging, the social networking, etc.? There's a point to it; on some days, I just don't know what that is. I don't care the way I used to.
And blah blah blah...ad nauseum. Oh whatever. Another abbreviated post that I'll try to develop into a full-blown entry, but will probably lose interest in. Life continues.
So...it's September.
My September started off kind of interesting. I was all set to get my hurr did. We go out to the car to find our passenger-side window busted out. WTF, mate?
After talking to the insurance company and all that, and being mad at the world, and wondering why this happened, we got over it and went ahead with our Love Weekend at the Millennium Hotel. We had planned this weeks ago as a last-minute relaxation pseudo-getaway before school started again.
We went ahead because honestly, if someone wanted to come and bust out all the other windows, so be it. If they wanted to steal the ish, go right ahead. It's just a car after all. Nice to have, but life goes on without it.
The Love Weekend was great. Sounds corny, but I think you need those little getaways so you can fall in love all over again. Which is kinda what happened. It was right on time. And I'm still feeling good from it.
Anyway, does anybody know of a good detox routine? I want to go on a good cleansing routine, but I still want to eat solid food, and I don't want some lemonade with cayenne pepper or some crazy mess like that. LOL Suggestions? Please!
Tori tour tix go on sale Friday morning. Holla if you hear me.
Let's not bother with the semantics.
If you are a feminist, a [insert racial/ethnic/cultural descriptor here] feminist, a womanist, an Africana womanist, I think you get the general gist.
Maybe I'll come back and write a post about how I hear that black women can't be feminist. Or aren't. Or shouldn't be. And blah blah blah. I get the history behind this, but really people. Gender equity and social justice aren't white women's issues.
Wake up and smell the feminism.
So I've been on vacation since Thursday. I didn't go anywhere, and really I didn't do anything.
How nice and strange that was. I brought all this work home, and then once it was here, I asked my inner me why I even bothered lying to myself. It wasn't going down.
I told myself that I was gonna write a letter to my friend M (long overdue), write in my new journal, work on this story I'm entering in an erotica short story contest. I was gonna do something about my dry scalp with these new products I bought.
The only thing I did was handle the dry scalp issue. My babylove scratched my head out and if that's not the most soothing, erotic, primal thing ever, I don't know what is. I barely talked to anyone at all. This was, for the most part, on purpose. Folks don't know how to unplug. They especially (and foolishly) believe that just because I have a cell phone, that I'm tethered to it. Most of the time, I had my ringer turned off, but when Tori Amos' "Professional Widow (Remix)" sounded when someone called me, I just peeped the caller ID and didn't answer.
You must not know 'bout me.
I barely left my house. I just caught up on what I had on DVR (Burn Notice, anyone?), and tried to do things that made me feel good. I bought a great CD - Bat for Lashes, Fur and Gold, and listened to it over and over and scribbled poem fragments in my head.
Mostly, I thought. I thought about how we struggle to be beautiful and perfect and all the different things that can mean. I thought about how I get off track sometimes. How, in my need to beautiful and perfect, I forget what I'm trying to do, what I'm trying to accomplish. Sometimes I'm reminded - or I just simply remember - how beautiful and perfect I already am, and then I focus again. I'm a goddess again. I am the most powerful person I know...again. And I continue.
I thought about monique, and how we haven't talked in a few days, and that seems like a long time. This would be strange and somewhat single-black-female-ish, except I know she'll get what I mean. I thought about how I couldn't wait to have one of our rambling conversations about everything and nothing.
I thought about closure and letters and being honest with yourself first before you can be clear with anyone else.
I thought about a lot, but I ain't do shit. LOL It was great.
Tomorrow starts the grind anew and I'm ready.
Nothing and everything to report. Thoughts are swirling but not congealing into anything recognizable.
It's Friday. Today has been a great day.
I had a drink tonight called a Naughty Schoolgirl (pictured below).
How could I not get this drink? LOL The drink itself wasn't all that naughty, though. Tasty, but not naughty. Although I'm sure we're supposed to have ourselves a high-schoolish twitter from the cherry in the bottom. Those of us at the table had all sorts of "Do you want my cherry?" jokes.
Up this weekend? Casino madness and pot roast-y goodness.
I think I will go for a walk in the morning to walk off the Naughty Schoolgirl.
What are the 5 words that best describe your life right now?
Submitted by mojito.
Lush. Open. Change. Introspection. Energy.
huny reminded me of my love for shoes. I think I should have these. Those who know me know my love of Mary Janes of all kinds.
There's something about Victoria's Secret AKA Vikki Hush-Hush that's so...how do I say this? "Bring It On" meets baby prostitute-ism.
And yet...
Video: Show us a great music video from the '90s.
Don't know if it's a great music video, but it used to be my jam. LOL
I live in Minneapolis. I'm sure you've already read or heard about the 35W bridge collapse here in the Twin Cities. The wife and I were talking about this on the drive into work this morning.
Last night, we were playing Guitar Hero and had not seen the news. The calls started; we found out from E that the bridge had collapsed. For awhile, we couldn't picture it. Even looking at news footage didn't seem to help. After all, we are the Land of 10,000 Lakes - there are easily 10,000 bridges for each of those bodies of water. We live within a mile of the portion of 35W that collapsed. We don't take that highway on a daily basis, but it is what we would take to get to the airport.
So back to fielding calls and text messages last night (and this morning). We are fine, obviously, and went about the business of getting ready for work this morning. We normally catch the bus to work. All the bus stops near our house had been re-routed. I expected this; delays and re-routing and cancellations. It's what should happen.
The wife had the hardest time picturing which bridge, which portion had collapsed. We got into the car when it was clear we weren't going to be catching the bus this morning. She couldn't picture it, so she was kind of struggling with why things not in the immediate vicinity of the collapse were closed off. We had a whole conversation about inconvenience then. We were also listening to the radio; she brought up that someone said that the bridge collapse and the ensuing tragedy were "Minnesota's 9/11." We debated this.
But then we drove past the bridge, and we saw. And then a better understanding dawned.
I think sometimes, when stuff like this happens, and it doesn't immediately touch you, the whole experience can be akin to walking through cotton. When it's not you or people you know or love, you understand it, you sympathize, but you aren't embroiled. And there's a tendency to feel...insulated from it.
I think that's a very human response, when you're not at the front line of a tragedy. But when you actually see with your own eyes what has happened - a huge portion of an interstate just gone and you can see the missing chunks - it's jarring.
I am happy that me and mine are all doing OK. I am sad about the people who have died or been seriously injured because of this. I am baffled as to how this could have happened.
But I understand why it feels weird to even be at work today. Of course, you have to keep going. It's like the moment after some massive silence or a series of frozen seconds where time and life resumes. Everyone's sort of thinking, "What happened?" but they move forward, almost out of habit.
I wouldn't sign on to the theory that this is Minnesota's 9/11, but I understand the comparison. I really do feel that there's something visceral that happens in industrialized nations when major architectural (and cultural) landmarks and structures are destroyed. We are so tied up with our man-made structures, that when they go down, it triggers a fear about survival. The building went down. The bridge collapsed. Electricity is out. You can't get cell phone signals. Regardless if someone close to you has been hurt, your whole plan has shifted. You cancel meetings. You go a different way to work. You can't get to work. Will you always have to take a different route from now on? How long will they take to rebuild it? How did this happen? Is any bridge safe? What does this mean for the future?
"I am afraid."
The ripple effect continues.
Even though these are seemingly small things, this is what I think people mean when they say that tragedy effects everyone. It changes the fabric of everyone's life, in so many different ways.
Dear Universe,
...or protective forces, God, Higher Power, third eye, Holiest of Holies, karma, Mother Earth, me.
Whatever name you're going by these days.
Look, OK, you win. I get it. Nothing can change unless I change. Unless I stop moving against the the grain. I have been thinking lately, "What would happen if I just stop fighting? If instead of pulling away, I lean into the change? What would happen if, instead of just dipping my toe into the unknown, I embrace it with my entire body, gloriously, and begin by meeting it head-on, shoulders-on, breasts-on?"
I think some really powerful shit could happen.
So, yes. You win. I'm perfectly willing to give up the ghost.
And I'm thinking that's a good thing.
Thanks again,
Me
