Moving On – Aiming for Onward

My goodness.  Christmas has been exhausting.  Even exhilarating leads to exhausting after a while.  Emotions have been running high, as they are wont to do in the madness that is the holiday season.  Queenie has been involved in being quite responsible during “the season,” following the artist’s life, and in such my bliss I suppose, but having attained a certain age it just plain gets down to the bone.  I think I may have launched my book tour, and may I say that my precious little project has been very well received, and for that I am grateful.  It was the strangest thing, when I started this Heart Project, that I never feared of tackling too much, and I totally believed in it from the very first thought of it.  Things fell into place so easily when I finally got the right direction on it that it was downright amazing.  When it was going to be a calendar, (my first conception), it just wouldn’t come together.  Too this, too that, not happening, bad communications….. dead ends.  But from the moment I switched my concept to a book – Shazam!  The magic just tripped over itself to get to me.  Not that it didn’t involve steady work, dedication, and following up and tending to the birth, but it was just that – a pregnancy – and I birthed myself a little book.  Imagine that – a mother, at my age!  The tabloids will have a feast with this one.  Oh the pity – I’m afraid Queenie is still off their radar.

It appears that Timing, along with Location, really are part of the equation of success, but nothing happens without believing in what you are doing.  I’ve just seen it happen, been a part of it, and it was a marvelous experience.  Now, what can I do next?  What do I want to do next?  Because, evidently I’m somehow successful in pulling off the things I really want to do – the ones I believe in……..in certain circumstances.

So here comes the question that percolates to the pondering parts of my brain – why couldn’t I “make” it work when it came to the business of my heart?  I obviously know that the most pertinent part of the situation is that it involved another person – a soul with just as much individuality as mine, and as much baggage brought to the check-in desk.  Certain parts of me are powerful, but I couldn’t do diddly with the outcome on that one.  Nor would I ever want to control another person.  And with what did, or didn’t happen in considering what I desired in my heartspace, the “lesson” I’m dealing with right now is learning how to surrender to that – to accept it – that it wasn’t to be.  And feel at peace about it.  Let me tell you it’s a concept that’s easier considered than actually experienced.  I see it – I know it – I understand it – I honor even the NEED for it, (and I get really on point when it comes to the subject of Need.)  I recognize that it is what has to be, (present tense), and I am indeed walking my talk, even if it feels more so at times that I am crawling it.  No matter I guess, it’s forward motion, and for some of us, all of us, any forward motion is encouraged and gratefully accepted.  What a trip.

It’s an obvious corollary that my heart’s wish (or was it a Fantasy) was just not going to work, (or was better not to), and therefore that’s exactly why it didn’t – somewhat like that calendar.  However, not doing the calendar didn’t hurt nearly as much, or else it’s just a pale comparison to begin with, but the only one I’ve got to illustrate my current enlightenment mode.  Of course I didn’t have nearly as much invested in the calendar, and I was able to let it go rapidly, and then the right thing filled the plate.  What if I’d been as stubborn about “Doing A Calendar” as I was with keeping my heart on that same highway for so long, and not considering other destinations?  I still have lots of conflicts about so many aspects of that journey, and it’s my nature to try to dissect so much of behavior and events.  It seems to have led to head-slamming, which I suppose is why I finally considered some other path, even if I had to walk it alone.  I’m still making peace with Alone,  but getting more familiar with it, maybe even friendly.  Not that I’ve shied away from major life living while being ALONE, and doing quite fine with it, thank you very much, but what I refer to is an aloneness of the Heart, after a meaningful pairing that’s been rent, and that’s a very different critter than the Ego free, Life loving seeker of dreams and adventure that defines who we really are, (or who I am, anyway), and it is something to be dealt with – until it isn’t anymore.  It is my quest however, to deal with it in such a way as to understand why it happened like it did, in order to LEARN and NOT DO THAT AGAIN.  Ouch.

BUT – I have to add that learning from this experience is the fodder that found itself expressed in my book, and I am very proud of what I created.  It’s the journey, stupid.

So now we journey from 2009 into entirely different digits.  2010 – it just looks weird to me.  I’m getting some years on me, and they’re beginning to tell (on me), and time is passing.   Yet I read today in some uplifting words that Time is our friend, and we have all we need.  Well, I don’t know about that…..  I suppose Time will tell, right?  Time is one hell of a concept, worthy of too many pages here, and I’ve already rattled on.  I just wanted to say something else before 2010 actually arrives, and be present, and make a difference, and say…. Thank You.

I have so many wonderful things in my life.  I am grateful.  Thank YOU  who are reading these words.  I hope it makes a difference.

Happy New Year.  Happy New LIfe.

Swimming in the Deep End

When I was a child, I guess in the lower grades of elementary school and before I learned to swim, I would go to the city pools with my friends and splash around in the shallow end.  I suppose I’ve always loved water, and being in it, and not being a full fledged swimmer didn’t keep me from having my good times where I could at least touch bottom.  But one day I had occasion to be standing alongside the deep end – I don’t know what I was doing – and all I remember about “The Incident” is that I saw a flash of red – a boy in red swim trunks – and next thing I knew I was pushed into the deep water.  I don’t remember being particularly panicked, but I do still remember what happened next.  My eyes were open, I was flailing about, and I was sinking steadily.  Why I wasn’t wildly horrified and in total fear I’ll never know, but it seemed as if I were watching someone else in the process of drowning.  All this continued until at some point the lifeguard saw me, going down and further down, and then I was pulled from the water.  I suffered no ill effects, spent some time at the side of the pool while I “recovered,” and then later I was back in the shallow end with my friends, splashing around as if nothing had ever happened.  No lingering fear of water, no trauma, just life going on as I knew it before that rotten little boy in red trunks made his move.  (Wonder what he thought about the whole thing after the excitement?)  It was still one of those moments that stays with you throughout your life.  I truly was in the midst of an experience that could have cost me my life, but thanks to the fates and a capable lifeguard, I lived on.  And now I swim in the deep deep waters of the lake, becoming one with that water, with no life jacket and no fear, but still with a healthy respect for what lies beneath me.

And now I use that little snippet of my life experience as an allegory for what is happening now.  Earlier this week I was again pushed into the deep end, feeling again like I could sink like a flailing stone, but no one to save me but myself.  Particular events lined up like the planets in some cosmic dance to put me back in touch with parts of the family I lost when I distanced myself from that star to which I hitched my wagon that I talked about recently.  It was something I had to do, even having vowed that there would be no more contact with any of them, despite the fact that I know they love me, and they, too, would have wished for a different outcome if there could have been any way under the skies of the universe that there could be one.  There would be no other outcome, and there it is.  But now I had to open the wound again, to take care of some business.

It upended me.  It ripped the still tender scab from my heart.  The tears flowed, but I was still loved, and given a gift from them that was horrible and wonderful at the same time.  I felt myself to be sinking again, in the waters of sadness and brokenness and pain, and no lifeguard in sight.  And so I had to save myself, and swim, whether I thought I could, or not.  And I’m still here.  Wet and stringy haired and red-eyed, but I’m here.  And so are you.  We’re all still here, and it is a testament to our will to live and go on that we stand, still, maybe bent and maybe with scars and seaweed clinging to our feet, but we are not sunk, nor dead.

And so we learn our lessons of survival.  We learn now to swim so that when the little devils in red swim trunks push us unprepared into the deep ends of our lives, we are capable of saving ourselves.  We must be our own lifeguards.

I thought of other scenarios that might apply.  I imagined a shoreline, walking along beautiful beaches looking for sand dollars and other treasures of the deep places, washed upon a foreign place that indeed signified their own deaths and transitions.  And to be so caught up in the beauty and the mystery as to be unaware of the rogue wave that was coming up, and then to be swept away into the undertow.  I’ve never experienced such a thing, but I’ve heard of it.  And I have learned that to survive in an undertow, you must go against your survival instinct to try to swim directly to shore, but give in to the new direction, and swim parallel to the shoreline until the undertow has lost its power, and only then can you make your way to a new shoreline a ways down from where you were plucked.  A new vista, a new chance, and a reclaimed you.

Whether we manage to save ourselves from the deep end, or have to go against all that we thought we knew and find a new way to survive an undertow, we learn to take care of our own selves, be our own lifeguards and counsel.  I got myself saved once when I didn’t know better, and for that I am grateful.  And I am grateful for those who still love me, even though it hurts so much, and the blood still flows from the wound.  But I am grateful, too, that I have learned to swim, and now I am prepared to kick that bad boy in red trunks in the butt if he should decide to try such a thing again.  And I have the knowledge to outwit the undertow if I’m not wary enough to see it coming.  And I don’t fear the water, even though it almost claimed me once.

Now I have to feel the same about Love.  Even as I go to get more bandaids and dressings for the wound to my heart, which I found out wasn’t nearly healed.  If I can learn to swim and still love the water even after nearly drowning, surely I can heal this heart.  And still, I don’t want to hate that little boy in the red swim trunks – I just hope he learned better.  I hope we both did.

And Now What, You Ask

Indeed, what is next?  What comes after you decide to make those big changes in your life?   You buy the self help books, you listen to the counsel of friends and loved ones, maybe even your family if you’re lucky enough to hold your family in high regard, and you begin the process of Moving On.  But oh, which way, how, where to move exactly?  Having done so many things that led to the current situation of Less Than and not a little pain, we may not trust ourselves with the decision itself, or have the slightest idea of how to enact it.  Who is this new, emerging person, and what do we do with it?  How do we trust what we’ve never encountered or encouraged, and in whom do we place that trust if our new selves are really strangers?  Haven’t we always been encouraged to avoid strangers and give them a wide berth?  Maybe so.  And now comes the great Now What?

I want you to know, person to person and soul to soul, that it’s really true that a lot of what I spout in this venue is words to myself – what I need to hear.  There was an ancient episode of MASH, in which someone turned to Hawkeye Pierce and said something like:  You’re really good at solving everyone else’s problems.  It keeps you busy not having to deal with your own!  Ta Dah.  I have always found it extraordinarily easy to pinpoint “everyone else’s” issues – to see what they needed to do to find their way out – advise them profusely if they cared to ask, (maybe even if they didn’t) – but in true Hawkeye fashion, my own life was mired in my own flights, or crashes and burns, of fanciful pursuits of the unobtainable.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying that Nothing’s Impossible, at least when it comes to personal quests of betterment and tackling dreams and goals.  What I’m referring to is the hitching of one’s star to a lowly wagon of Less Than that comes with a broken down horse belonging to someone who fails to offer you what you WANT, and what you NEED.  You keep putting more nails in the rotten wood of the wagon held together with baling wire and maybe even duct tape, and keep footing the feed bill of a horse that long since needed to go to pasture, and you keep “believing” in a cause that defies reason.  (Ah, Heart and Mind, again….. forever at odds.)  Comes the time when you have to wake up and smell the Columbian Latte and deliver the swift kick to your own personal behind.  Stop it!

I offer up this scenario because just last night I had occasion to delve deep into my old computer to complete some job at hand, and found myself face to face with some archived emails and writings that knocked me off, or maybe really ON, my pegs.  I mean they could’ve been written weeks ago, (truthfully, even days?), and it was the same stuff I’ve been bemoaning for years.  I carried the torch of unrequited fulfillment for so long I should have a statue commemorated in my name, but it would best be a monument for what NOT to do.  How can I be of such help and solace to so many, and so dishonest to my own self?  There’s a question to ponder.  What, et tu, Hawkeye?  Damn.

It was all for Love, I said.  I can do anything with the power of my love, I said.  Anything’s possible.  It can happen,  it will happen.  Ha and double Ha.  OK Queenie, time for a reality check.  Well, some things are possible.  Some things are doable, even miracles of your own making, but they have to be for YOU.  Of and by and for You.  Be your own Declaration of Independence, and quit squandering your gifts, your talents, even your Love, on those who value it not.  What is that old saw?  Cast not your pearls before swine.  Well, I happen to like pigs, and most all animals, but I weary of muddying my turquoise nuggets in the cesspool of Love which has been blasphemed and devalued.  Enough already.  For all of us.  It’s so ridiculously true – we do have to love ourselves first and foremost before we can gift that love, and ourselves, to someone who is willing to accept it, and treasure it.  Anything less, or more, is downright sad and wrong.  And I’ve had to walk a lot of miles carrying a lot of weight to get to the point of discovery.  Maybe you will, too.  We all have to experience our own “version of the truth” – (another line from a great chick movie) – before we are ready to accept it.  And it hurts.  Oh well.  Maybe we will continue to NOT accept it, and may I tell you now that you will continue to hurt, with little or no hope for getting past that.  What a dreary prognosis, but true.

And so dear readers, (and self), do yourself a favor and heed these words.  Take care of yourself.  Love yourself.  Be who you are.  There are platitudes aplenty written by those far wiser than I, but we all “know” the eternal truths, even as we might choose to close our eyes to them.  Do so at your own peril.  Oh maybe that’s too dramatic.  It’s simply your choice, and mine.  We can live in a foggy reality of unfulfillment and pain, or we can strike out for a new shoreline.  Why not?  Why indeed not?  I’m ready to trade in the lumbering, rotten wagon for a newer model, and a horse that is a worthy steed.  And I’m looking for a new shining star, and maybe I’ll just name it and claim it for myself:  Queenie the Magnificent.

Which one is your star?