A trip to the desert

I have just come back from an extraordinary trip out west to Santa Fe, NM. I participated in a week long writer's conference studying under Natalie Goldberg. The focus of this conference was Creative Non-fiction. Through my work with Natalie in her workshops, and her methods of writing practice I am developing m,y own strong writer's inner voice. It was an amazing journey. I had to reach deep down and pull out the essence of me. It was emotionally charged at times but it has left a lasting impression on me.

I should reveal a truth here. One that I came to on Wednesday, June 15, while sitting in the garden of St. Francis Cathedral. I came to this writing conference hoping to meet a man. I knew that I would benefit greatly from all the workshops, but secretly I was hoping to meet a man at the conference that would be revealed as my soulmate. That struggling, tragic, writer/poet, that would share all my grief and sorrow. I was hoping to meet someone of like mind and same depth. Imagine my surprise and disappointment during the first night when I saw that the conference was composed of mostly middle-aged to older women and two men who were also older than I expected. I thought great there go my chances at romance. Sitting at St. Francis I had my epiphany. I wanted to meet someone because I have been so lonely lately and I feel that time is slipping away from me. And that if I don't meet and marry someone soon then I never will. I cried on the bench facing St. Francis statue and prayed for some peace. It dawned on me that something extraordinary was happening to me. As the rest of the week wore on I realized what it was.

I am alone becasue I don't let anybody into my heart. I reveal nothing about myself yet people openly reveal themselves to me. I met the most courageous and extraordinary women at this conference. Each one of them in my workshop has been hurt, has suffered, has overcome great obstacles, and have continued to forge ahead. The revelations in their writing was honest, real, and raw. I came face to face with my own fear of being revealed. Why? Nothing can be as bad as all that. I came to admire and love these women for all that they were able to do. I left that conference feeling that I made some real connections and life-long friends. Now I must continue to work at getting over these fears and self-doubt. The Monkey Mind that is never quiet must be taught to stay focused and positive.

I will continue to write more of my adventures in the desert.

The Power of Love (Pt. 2)

Last night I felt it. That spark, that kindling flame, that love indeed will come back to me. That I am very capable of feeling it. I just have not found the right person yet to give my love to. But he is out there. Waiting for me. Probably asking himself when his love will be returned. My hope was reborn through the friendship I have developed with another man who has become very dear to me. I have imagined a life with him but I recognize that he is not free to love me. Yesterday afternoon when we spent considrable time talking of his troubled marriage that tiny hope was lit like a flame. But the flame that burns twice as bright dies twice as quickly. Then this morning that flame was put out. And yet I feel very relaxed. Very confident. I may not be the one for him. I may only be here to offer him the moral support he needs. I can love him for a tiny bit. It's something. Not all that I want, but in the grander scheme of things, this tiny bit will open the door to more.

And who's to say that this love won't blossom into something greater on down the line? I honestly don't think I can wait for him to decide to leave his wife, start his life over, and hook up with me. That is such a long process but life takes many turns. All I do know for sure is that I don't want to see him die. I would rather see him shackled to that horrid marriage than see him dead.

What I am trying to say is that my faith in love is slowly returning. I never expected it to be in this form but it is returning. And perhaps that is why God put him in my path. To help me see that all is not hopeless. That faith and love will win out. I love you M.W. Just a tiny bit. That's all I can manage. I will not come between you and your wife. I will not wrench you away from your family. I will not give you any more of me other than my friendship. And this little tiny bit of love that you have sparked. And for that I thank you. I don't want you to know about it however. So hopefully you won't read this. But if I didn't write it down I would forget.

Tired of my own skin

Ever have those days when you walk around and it feels like you're tramping in the same muck? You move in circles and see that the bottom of your shoes are filthy from the same treads you've made a thousand times. Oh to lay down fresh tracks! I so desire to get out of my own safe circle of being and explore a new place. A few days after school let out I found myself at home. I slept late, I moved about my little house, content but so very angry and uncontent. I wanted to go somehwere but I couldn't think of a single place in this huge city that I live in that I haven't seen hundreds of times before. This city, my city, it is my second skin. I live it and breathe it every day. I walk among its streets and trees moving within the elastic of my body. I stop to admire the views but it is still the same view that I've seen.

I want to experince something new. Each and every day I want to feel a different sensation upon my flesh. I want to breathe smells coming up from ground I haven't trudged upon. I want to see visions that come from a place I discover within the confines of this sprawling city with its limbs spread wide but still by its sides.

I want to live a different life from my own just for a short while. I know I would miss my own life and I would want to return to it but I really want to try out another life. Like a new dress. I want to wear a different name for a day. I want to be Rebecca. My clothes would have to change too. Rebecca wears designer clothes only. Coco Channel. And she wears high heels, red lipstick, and gets her nails done once a week. She is utterly insupportable. She barks at every one around her, she orders people around like they are her own personal slaves, and she expects the world to grovel at her feet. She came home one day and found the maids trying to fix a huge mess they'd made in the kitchens. Rebecca screamed at them for 20 minutes, reducing them to tears, and ordered them out of the house and never to return. She didn't pay them their last wages, she didn't even let them get their belongings. She is a horrible person indeed. But the worst thing she ever did was to whip her pool man with a leather strap. The man actually left one leaf in the pool and when he tried to reach for it she caught him across the right cheek with her strap. He fell into the pool and when he came up he was bleeding and crying. Wrethced woman he yelled. He pulled himself up from the pool and staggered away still cursing her name.

Rebecca woke up with a frightened gasp. She'd been ahving such terrible nightmares that she was this awful, rich, despotic, bitch that everyone despised. She reached over to pull on her terrycloth robe, a bit frayed and worn, but still her favorite, and walked downstairs to the kitchen. She started a pot of coffee going while she went to the front door to get the newspaper. She brought it back in, poured herself a cup of coffee, sat down at the table, and opened the paper. The coffee cup fell out of her hand when she looked at her own face blaring up at her from the newsprint with the headline "Heiress arrested for murder of magnate husband."

The power of love (Pt. 1)

I have been thinking lately about the nature of love. PArt of the title of this blog is love and yet I have skirted around the issue for fear of saying out loud what is truly in my heart and on my mind. I have been questioning myself for the past two years on whether or not I can truly love someone else. Love is such a multi-dimensional and complex emotion that I can not simplify it into a black and white issue although my tough outer shell says "I either love you or I don't".

I have been in love exactly three times. The first time was to man I thought for sure was my soulmate. I will call him M.R. I loved him dearly and blindly. I almost married him. We were together for two years. I did everything for him. And when he left me I wanted to die. Never had I felt rejection so keenly. It was a knife to my heart. I begged and pleaded with all the gods in heaven to return him to me. And he did come back. And swore he wanted a life with me. After a while it was me who wanted a life without him. I don't know why. I don't know what happened. All I knew and felt was that all this immense love I felt for him dissapated into the ether, carried away on a hot wind one summer afternoon when I told him it was time to say good-bye. He calmly accepted it and the last memory I have of him is him sitting on the dusty driveway of his home watching me drive away. I have never seen him since. It's been 16 years since that day and I have not regretted the decision I made. That love died.

It was reborn in my husband. Again, that intense, passionate, all-consuming love that I was capable of came bubbling to the surface. A hot, tumultous, whirlwind of love that swept me up in its throes and raced me to marry him. I loved S.B. like no person has ever loved another. That is what all the romance novels state. And it is true. Each and every person feels that his or her love is exactly unique. It is and it isn't. It is the ultimate paradox. Every person feels love differently yet I believe that at the very core love is the same. It is our mortal flesh which twists it into those intense feelings I have experienced. I loved my ex-husband to the point of insanity. To the realm of obssession. And he loved me the same way. We each gave it 100%. And I ask myself "Why then, with so much love to give and to have been given, why then did love die?" It was love but it was a conditional love that knew only limits, restrictions, terms, and sorrow. It was doomed to fail. I believed with all my heart that it was forever. I told myself that no matter what happened this was FOREVER. And I tried with all my might, with all my body and soul and heart to make it forever. And one day I woke up and realized that forever meant death. It was the most horrific experience I have ever gone through, but I realized that in the midst of giving away all my love I had stopped loving myself. Even though my heart was shattered into a thousand shards that pricked and slowly bled me I had to walk away from my marriage and from that love. Now I look at my ex-husband and feel absolutely nothing for him. Open me up and you will not find a shred of that immense love that was once there.

The third person I loved was M.F. But right from the start I knew it was doomed to failure because that was a toxic, poisonous love that came from a very dark place inside of me. A place that wanted revenge for all the hurt, pain, and sorrow I suffered. A black love that was returned by M.F. in a tie that bound us, for three years, into an affair that brought us together, flesh melding with flesh for the sake of satisfying our bodies and lust only and in the knowledge that all we had to do was call the other and we would come running no matter who else was in our lives at the moment. It was such a dark love that it drove me and him to subject another person to our will. After that our lives began to change and I realized that this love would only bring me ruin. And I made the painful decision to leave him behind. He knew it too and he stopped seeking me out for a while until he appeared in my life again a few weeks ago. We may have been together for a few hours but I felt nothing for him. That love now too is dead.

I am afraid to love again. I don't want to love this way anymore. I want to be able to love completely and freely and unconditionally but I don't know how. What does it mean to love unconditionally? I did that with my first two loves. I gave them everything. All they did was take and take. I was left with nothing. Now I don't want to love because it will mean I will give my power away again. I have hardened my heart and I have not allowed anyone access to it although I have had many chances in these last four years to open it up. But I haven't. I have locked it tight. I have deliberately sought out casual relationships based on sex only so that I don't have to love anyone. But I am losing myself again. In trying to keep my love all to myself I am once again dying inside. And each and every day of this past year has been a stab to my heart. I want to be in love. And I want someone to be in love with me. I want to feel that immense power again but I don't know how. I no longer want casual relationships. I no longer want to give my body away. It precious as is all of me and I am learning my true value and worth. Now I need to find someone who sees that value and will give me what I deserve.

Dreams of blood and sugar

I have been experiencing the most vivid and disturbing dreams lately. I feel sucked into a strange world each night where all the darkest things within me reside. I have always enjoyed dreaming and I record my dreams when I can in my dream journal. But the last couple of nights I have been dreaming of blood. At first the dream seems so innocuous. I am trying to find games to play with children that I am looking after and then the dream turns into a search for items to be used in a ritual. I see a man with a long beard pour blood into bowls of sugar and then he begins to eat it. I am disgusted, repulsed, but fascinated as well and I can't look away. And everywhere in the dream, on the walls, and on the floors, I see strange markings. The man calmly looks at me and continues to eat.

Then last night I am dreaming that I am in a sterile white office, a doctor's office, there are so many people in there, too many for one single visit. I am watching as this woman is being told she has to have a blood test because she is diseased. I stare, again fascinated and unable to look away, as she tries to understand what the nurse is telling her, that she could have HIV and they need to draw blood to run a test. I watch as the blood is taken out of her and put into a glass bottle, not a tube, but a large bottle. The blood is red, it's roiling with clots, moving in the bottle as if it were alive, and the woman is asking how soon will she know the results. I turn away from her and there seated at another end of this white office is a man I know. He's from school. He's smiling at me and I at him. He just appeared there and just as quickly disappeared. He had no part to play in the dream, he had no reason to be there. He simply was there. As if my mind pulled him out of his sleep and deposited him in my dream for the briefest of seconds and then he was gone.

I can always tell when my dream is not a dream such as in that instance with that person. I can usually tell when my dream is just a dream and when I become aware of it then all bets are off. I can do whatever I want, fly if I wish, have sex with whoever I wish, stretch out my hand and change all the world around me. If I dreamed I was holding a rose in my hand and if when I woke up I actually had a rose in my hand would I then think that the dream was still happening or would that be the proof that my dream world and my waking world are in fact one and the same and I can do whatever I wish? When the dreams become nightmares I am powerless to stop them. All I can do is wipe them from my mind. I want to uncover what my mind keeps hidden from me.

Sometimes it is safer to live in the dream than it is out here. As long as you know it is just a dream and you can always change it when it doesn't go your way. But then again you can do that out here too. Hmmmm..........strange worlds we live in.