71

I think that the word narcissist is greatly overused. I know that there are true narcissists out there but most of us are called that word or use that word as a replacement for being selfish. For Selfishness. And being selfish, what is that? Who gets to draw that line? Because we're here to grow and evolve and to stay in communion and communication with Spirit. We are partnered with Spirit to fulfill our life path. There are human partnerships too, of course, but those are in constant renegotiation. And I understand how that adherence to Spirit versus societal expectation leaves open room to be labeled selfish — as I understand that this is why my children's father and I are soulmates, dancing this o n g o i n g Tango. Because their father values societal expectations. He values himself a very successful person who excels at doing everything that he should do. I don't know what is society versus what is his father's opinion on the should dos, and I certainly didn't understand any of that in my mid-twenties when I made major commitments to him and thus to his family that I couldn't uphold. I don't agree. I don't agree with living my life by their rules. But I don't... Well, I would say that I don't judge his life, but I must and I did and do even though I don't want to. I have respect for his style of living and also for him as a man and his soul. It's just hard for me when he as a man over and over and over again tries to force my hand meaning my existence to comply with his worldview. Then I go into judgment because his truth, as he sees and feels it, is not my truth. He does not respect my truth. He tells me this. He tells me You are a a fraud. That is why we are not married, and likely why I cried all day on our wedding day. I knew, but I didn't yet know I could go and that it would be okay. Our worldviews are not in alignment. I've never thought that the fact that we have two sons means I have to be like him. It means I have to be the most me I can be, even when that's selfish or narcissistic according to him. And I get upset with myself when I lose my calm in my knowing.

🧗

🍄

When I tripped, he was very much in the apocalyptic scene, right beside my narrow worldviewed mother and they really needed me to know what a bad person I am. Bad: That's the word they kept using. They gave me all the reasons that I'm bad and those are the reasons their human selves use to stay good people — to stay in the acceptance. The fervor with which they need to be liked... I've always wished for the two of them to slow down and feel and allow the anxiety to be examined. I've examined a lot of my anxiety this year and I'm super grateful I took the time to do that before my sons and I get much older. It felt like high time to understand as much as I was able to understand over the last November, December, January, February, March, April, May, June — that's eight months.  We're in July now and at the end of June, when I was in a cardio dance class at the YMCA, Spirit said Stop now. Not the cardio dancing, the deep examination. There's climbing and there's calibrating and calibrating is a time of healing and acceptance. It's now time to climb again. All we can do is keep our side of the street clean; garners energy for climbing. Our sides get dirty. It's messy and insular when we calibrate.

When I know where I'm sending my energy and why I'm sending my energy there, it's a lot easier for me to relax into the reveal. It's a lot easier for me to not to take the cheap bait. I don't ask anybody to do it my way. But I've learned this year that I don't need to have anybody's acceptance of my way either. Or their permission. I accept and permit. I understand the way I work and I don't wish to shame It any longer. Shaming our nature is a waste of energy.

I do know that my sons need me to Come back to Los Angeles for this upcoming school year. They told me. The boundaries around that, around my life in Los Angeles and their father's life in Los Angeles, will have to be a lot stronger and I'm the one who will be able to keep those boundaries cleaner. Will require a lot of graceful fortitude, which means that I'm taking care of myself.

Good care of myself.

HQ wipe ⏷

🌬You can hear the dryer in the background and a small desk fan I have positioned in the middle of the house, circulating air.

I'm such a believer in having a home that fuels you and a home that is so systematized that you can come and go with relative ease —     to the point where you're bringing in the mail, sorting the mail, opening the windows, circulating the air, and unpacking. And I unpack right in my laundry / mud room. And what I'm doing right now is I took everything that was in my Dopp kits, I had a couple — toiletries, cosmetics — and I laid out a towel, dumped everything out, took a kitchen towel out of the washing machine, and instead of putting it in the dryer, I used that damp towel to wipe everything down.

I have a tray that I'm putting things on. Then I'll take that tray and I'll either put things in the medicine cabinet or back into a travel bag or in the first aid kit in the guest bathroom, just wherever stuff needs to go. And then there's a handful of things I'm going to wash, like my tongue scraper and my tweezers and my toothbrush and some of my guasha tools.

And, I feel so grimy after this LA trip. And so up in the face of my trauma rooted in that geophysical place that I'm even cold water washing the kits themselves, and my scrunchie.

I feel like out of body tired even though I got in after my red eye (where I didn't sleep and where I had the craziest guy sitting next to me). I feel like I transferred some of my crazy to him with permission through a foot rub. I mean just it's such a weird story. But I didn't sleep on the plane. I barely slept in LA. Lots of panic. Lots of things coming up. I don't think any of this is cool, by the way, like, I don't think it's cool to go somewhere and panic. Especially when that's where your children will be growing up because one man says it's so and he makes a lot more money than you.

Um,     but anyways, I got home.

I used a sulfur soap. Sulfur soap is very good for dandruff and acne. And I scoured my body, particularly my feet, and I fell into bed and I slept from like 8:30 to almost 4:00 pm. Then I was back in bed, I think, by 9:00 or 10:00 pm and I woke up at 11:00 [the next morning].

I still feel a little bit floaty, but I just wanted to share that we're allowed to do what we want to do to feel grounded. Even out of body, it feels really good to just address these things, and clear the energy off. I don't know how into household chores I want to get. The garden really needs some love and attention. I don't know if I have it in me today. But it feels good to do something and not just have a full suitcase sitting there. And I do love travel and I am actively calling in much more. I'd say not to a Best Western across the street from the kids' baseball practice field,     but it's nice to feel like ready to go.

I do like to smudge the suitcase every so often. I do like to store it out in the garage, on the second floor of the garage, and then have the Dopp kits ready to go restocked. I have really sensitive skin so I need to have certain things with me. And that kit lives in a cute duffel in one of my closets and I just feel like, if a sexy little opportunity came up, I'm ready 2 go.

So blah blah blah Dopp Dopp

Oh,

    and I don't often carry a handbag, but being in mom mode, I wanted to have a little kit of supplies for the boys. So I'm also emptying out the whole handbag, wiping it down, wiping everything else down and I want to smudge that and my wallet too. LA certainly imparts damage on my wallet.

Reloading the little travel Advil.

Yes, the worry dolls, and I think know they need to charge a little bit lot.

    ~all that kind of stuff~

Reconciliation & Ready To Go-Ness


Implied Metaphors
from the Micro to the Macro of it all

^

This was recorded on Sunday

now it's Wednesday

The tray is still sitting on the floor of the living room

and that's okay

☁

53

🗣Girl Mess is waking up to super erotic dreams and deciding to reset your bedroom.

I've done a lot of bedroom resets for myself and for others to call in new l*vers. And there's no right or wrong. It's just about freshening up the room. My bedroom is not very big and my bed is very big and it's kind of in a corner. So I moved it out of the corner and really dusted underneath. Dusted the baseboards. Stripped off the sheets. Did a hot water wash. Thought about flipping the mattress, but didn't. Opened the window. Did a little bit of smoke medicine. Went for a power walk, listening to oldies. I used to fall asleep to oldies as a little girl and I would cry because maybe they wouldn't be around when I was an adult and this boy who had a crush on me would call in songs to the cool radio station and I would lie and say that I liked Green Day. But I really liked oldies. I wish I could have just had him call the oldies station. 

base of driveway post power 👟👟

That's really all I've done for the bedroom today [🪜 plucked that paintbrush strand (2)]. It feels like enough. Put the sheets back on, fresh and clean. I was gifted some new cosmetics, so I unpacked those. I'm going to put them in this little wooden box that my grandfather painted forever ago. It's outside taking air. Smelt a bit musty, so I sprayed it down and am letting it get some sun. Oh, and I also took a shoe rack and spray painted it metallic silver, so that'll be really funky. That'll live in one of the bedroom closets after full moon light.

I'll give the bathroom some love. i.e. I'll clean the bathroom. And then when I shower, after cleaning the bathroom, I'm going to wash my hairbrushes with my shampoo. I'm thinking about switching to shampoo and conditioner bars. No plastic. And work on washing my hair less. Thinking a lot about hair as an extension of the skin, skin as an extension of the nervous system, of the sensory system, of sensing things. Intuition. I was strongly guided a couple of years ago to chop off my hair and let only my natural hair grow back. And now of course I want it down to my ass ← I always say this → growth takes time.

Working my way through the rest of the house, on📱off with clients, so keeping all the balls rolling, playing a lot of oldies. Inside🪴Outside, there's this planter box that the dryer vent empties into, so nothing's planted in it right now. It was overgrown with weeds when I moved in. Pulled out all the weeds (then) and so now I just turn the soil there to get out the lint, tend and flip. Feels very kinky. It really seems like very happy soil.

Went grocery shopping for some of my favorites, for that always feels like big love shit. And I've ordered the vacuum !!!!! I've been lusting over. I kid you not. I've been wanting this gold Dyson stick vacuum since before I moved. Only in Los Angeles, there's a vacuum showroom at the mall, and I just fell for it. I had given my old Dyson sticks to my cleaning woman. They both required repairs, so if you want to repair them, you can have them! Make life a lot easier. I wanted to buy this vacuum then, but it felt a bit opulent. But honestly, my only complaint about this home is that I'm still finding the previous tenant's dog hair in places, which is just, like, really gross to me. So the vacuum is supposed to arrive on Wednesday, and in preparation, I've been sweeping in all the rooms.

Soooo tired in a way I'm not typically tired. I know my nervous system is resetting, letting everything be okay, making good food, sleeping on clean sheets, shampooing hairbrushes, stacking boots on a silvered shoe rack, and starting to book out clients for my visit back to Los Angeles. It'll be a nice time. It'll be nice to leave the house feeling really proud of itself.

*Lovers is a mood, a polarity fusion acceleration, as much as it can be flesh & bonexxx

P.S. family fall-out [table-out (2)]

15

SALT B🔥RN

blog post #15: 1 + 5 = 6 -> family harmony 

🏓

six

The great It encouraged chaos magic as I prepped one side for the other. It wasn't logic or some sort of plan. Just an early to-bedder awaiting a red-eye and not in the mood to do what I would have called my way of leaving the house until I gave her back her coping mechanisms. No fanfare there either. Just released with a decision not to keep moving around what doesn't belong to me. My girlfriend took back her furniture (thank you for your generosity and thank you for your timely retrieval) and the metaphor carried to habits assumed in adolescence. Gifted addictions returned to the source. Remember in puberty when your hips hit things? Bruised hips have space to spread further as the stance sturdies.

Still, somatic apathy has me feeling faint. So funny to be binge watching survivalists without the energy to clean the bathrooms before locking the door. Bored with maintaining what's been stacked against me and others in this position.

My lover coaxing ease, so I guess he's worried, or softening into our impermanence, feeling ültra romantic, round four. I don't care about that either. The feminine knows you make a mess to clean up a mess. Can the masculine know this, or think this way? My sons will. Lover brushes my hair and I scratch his spine. My lust only grows here as a sign of the chaos magic efficacy.

Eat or be Eaten runs through my mind as I bring myself to wash the dishes in compromise between now and then. I also rinse the recycling, pouring out the bit of oat milk and discarding the blob of burrata not caprese-d in time, then that amniotic water it lived in.

When the sink was cleared but itself not yet scrubbed, I became aware of my nails poking through my hot pink dishwashing gloves. The grooving began sometime and was eventually grooved into giving way — prodded into accidental fetish. The texture on my fingertips is scale-like. My clawed sea creature is throwing down. Anything is possible.

★

It did predominate

It did make the rest fade out (feel quiet)

It is an apt metaphor

★

Eat or be Easton

>4:44>

>>

4WORD  MOM*NTUM

My Mind
Races
╍
Greener Pastures
Call Me Maybe
but...
... Let Us
Move On
⬤
Let's Ride
Sunny
Wild Horses

To Freedom
,
Then
Drive
"The"
Fast Car
On & On
Down The Road
,
Into the Sun
&
Trailblaze ☆
Giant
New Beginning
Memory Gongs
➸

Ω

four (2+2)

⚬ 

I came home with only one hoop earring

I checked my handbag, this quilted Hawaiian shoulder bag I've been using

Emptied it completely and no second hoop

And not in the car

It was on when I left this morning

I considered that other hoop lost

My mind was then changed

I knew I would find it

Surprise me, I communicated through thought

Back to work

Popped the bag and coin purse into the machine

Delicate cycle with some lingerie (wash)

Smells so nice

Edited the contents and left the organized pile sitting on the blue chair in the dining room

An air dry overnight and ready again in the morning

Going>>going

I forget

Four days later my lover and I leave his Echo Park Airbnb

The morning is already hot

A glint catches my eye

There in the middle of a sidewalk square is my gold hoop

Two inches in diameter

I bend to pick it up

Not bent, no damage

That’s not yours babe — it's been there for days now

I tell him I knew I would find it, just didn’t know when and where

He presses a bit but it’s an inside deal

We get coffees and split an egg sandwich

Stroll back because it's time for mom mode again

Funneled onto the freeway behind the license plate 2ONEONE

I'd like to take a picture though it's really not safe

Later I remember this happened with my AirPods not long ago

Boarding a plane and then on the plane in a fold of fabric

Where does expectation factor into experience?

Ears and listening

Sensing and looking around

I believe I know the what of what needs to happen

The how has eluded me

Will reveal itself in time

Committed to not effort against

(Cannot be about a clean garage at this stage in the game)

I wipe down the second hoop with rubbing alcohol before I put it away

⚬⚬

★★ four readings of hoopla ★★

Real one

Picking up my friend's teenage daughter at six as scheduled, we take Pico to Echo Park to check on the place that I have been housesitting for five, six weeks or so. We note murals that we like on the way, especially the sunsetting palm trees and this one with two yellow tigers painted onto corrugated steel. The tigers have turquoise detailing, which is a color that feels modern again.

In Echo Park, it's my client's apartment that I'm happy to watch and water. Her plants are mostly doing well, like the pothos pair in the kitchen sprouting fresh offshoots of baby heart-shaped leaves, though I can tell the largest rubber fig really misses her. She mentions this guy drooped for awhile after her dog died. It can be freeing to wear your feelings out loud or it can become a burden. Repetitive behaviors morph into patterns and certain patterns turn against us. Before leaving, she put the big plants on cool platforms with metal wheels, making it easy to move them in and out of direct sunlight. I bet she'll get home and roll him in for a steamy shower in reconnection.

Hers is one of those classic Los Angeles apartments, often appreciated more from some distance. She asked me over as she was anticipating a teaching sabbatical in Paris. Should she keep this place? Or let it go, store her stuff and make a jump? Maybe stay abroad?

It's her third home in this building. Obviously she kept it, doing about a month of top to bottom work in there in preparation for her trip, creating both a sendoff and a place to come home to. With past questions answered, this is a home she yearns to live within, ripe for discovering edges, but that's for when and where. Now is for loving knowing it lies in wait. I tend to it. The ripped screens are off the arched French windows. There are stacks of books and a ceiling fan to move the warm air. My children read on floor cushions and the neighborhood church bells sound each hour of our rest.

She has self-generated a lust for what is. I call this loving on the present moment. Loving on and living in the present moment is such a harmonic way to move through the world.

I believe you can harness momentum by doing what you know you need to do. You free up your spaces for the desired new when weights are lifted. Heavy lifting seems to keep you open to a bigger big picture, for you can only ask for what you know exists. Integral to the continual opening is feeling into your next two steps, somehow provided for with the mental to do list checked off. Next steps one and two are there if you trust yourself. You will know, feel, see, or hear: Do this and then do that. Acknowledge ideas you have received with aligned action. Gratitude only stacks the deck.

Consider this and that sweet tastes of direction in surrendered recognition of the vast universal forces at play. What I'm saying is:
enjoy controlling what you can control,
and what I mean by control is:
traversing your unique path with curiosity.

    Push it.

Lately I amp up doing what I know I need to do with a push outside the scope of the project at hand. Yes to conscious language and thus yes to the word choice push. We could use a good push. Do what needs/wants/cares to be done, both in terms of common sense as well as those intuitive nudges, starting as whispers before becoming shouts. From there, you play. Playfully pushing it is an active experimentation versus passive witnessing. Pushing it invites in a multitude of perspectives — ancillary opportunities to work across dimensions of time and space.

        Push it real good.

When we clean the bathroom, for example, we clean when we know it's time to clean, which is often when it's starting to gross us out. We get down with the grossness, allowing ourselves to see it and be in it and do something about it. Then perhaps we rinse before running a hot salt soak. Probably a rad thought pops in. That's where this work has been — courting the muse of clarity through the catharsis of elbow grease. And now it grows in ways that I am growing. Somatic metamorphosis maybe.

Let us go inside of what we've been witnessing in our cleaner and more clear homes and heads. What confuses you? What concerns you?  There's your target. Now what will serve as your sandbox? The kitchen cabinets you unpacked upon move in years ago? Because really, they've never been quite right. Are the cups near the kettle near the tea? How in reorganization are you simultaneously moving backwards and forwards? How are you peeling back a layer of stagnation while making an energetic investment in your imagined lived experience? We imagine so we may experience, bringing the dream from the fourth into the third. We're on quite a dense plane of existence here.

My friend's daughter is sixteen years old and I take a generational pulse on the drive over. How many different ways do you communicate with your friends? A: Lots, through apps. How about with crushes? A: Fewer, through apps. She loses hours trying to interpret boy messages, and overanalyzing those she sends. I tell her it was the same way with landline calls... your dad announcing who's on the phone or hang ups on the answering machine and a friend coming over to support in the call back. You only learn later that of course they meant to call.

I keep talking. Is "popular" even an art school thing, or anything anymore, and isn't it cliché for the rich kid to get a new car for their birthday? It's not and still is, but who even cares, she laughs.

photos by Aria Dries

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