Eloquent as Fuck - Eloquent as Fuck

Teaching Under the Radar

6/21/2018

Inevitably, my pain hits me in the face and I am left with the bloody memories of my childhood. Normally. It used to be that every time I taught a class of preteens, I would feel my pain in every step I took across the classroom, in every question asked, in every piece created.

But with the shift, this is no longer my experience. This is the first time in twenty years of teaching I have not felt the pain of a child as my own.

They take a class called "Drawing," and we go through exercises which provide the practice, but also, the opportunity to use their voices, their eyes, and their hearts. I give them an opening to express what is important to them.

Courage is not often taught in schools. Normally, conformity, homogeny, and regurgitation are the models to follow. Kids are taught to blend in on a daily basis through humiliation, manipulation and other scare tactics that work just below the surface, so that they are angry at the end of each day, but they don't know why.

I try to provide opportunities within the exercise of drawing to open wide and sing, to stand tall, to laugh loud and walk strong. I don't miss a chance to let them know that they are more than they have been led to believe. I take every interaction and turn it into a giving. I turn engagement into a magic trick. I turn pencil, paper and eraser into a vehicle for justice. It is a subversion I am happy to create with them. After all, some of them still believe in Santa.

I only have one half of five days with each kid, but when they leave that class on Friday with a paper bag full of art, they also leave with a belly of hope, feet of courage, and the eyes of an optimist. It is my dream that some day, they will get the opportunity to change the world with a single act. That act might be art, but it might not.

That is why drawing is the vehicle for courageous education. It takes a special kind of courage to draw, and within that, another kind of courage to draw what matters, to draw what you truly care about, to draw something that might someday show a bit of the world that has never before been seen.

I ask each one of them to risk. I ask them to work through the fear of failure and ugliness. I ask them to trust that even if they make something bad, there will still be love on the other side.

I do this because when I look into the eyes of one of these kids, I can't help but see myself at that age, too scared to try, too paralyzed with emotional turnoil to even smile, and looking outward for the confirmation that I would be okay. I am trying to give them what I never got, but desperately needed. I am trying to teach them to pass this on, cheer it on, and keep it on.

I am teaching under the radar because I know that this behavior, what I am hoping to engender, is dangerous. I know that speaking out is becoming more of a risk. But I also know that the pain that results from denying yourself and blending in is too great, and what the world loses every time an individual gives up the fight cannot possibly be measured.

Now, we need kids with courage. We need kids who will go where we didn't. We need kids who will risk, even in the face of great failure. We need kids who will have the courage to be themselves.

When I am free of the pain of my childhood, I am free to risk with them. I am free to take a chance on each child, if that child can meet me half way. What a gift I have earned for myself, this freedom. I can only hope that my example will be enough to encourage risk. I can only hope that they will surpass me in everything I do.

Isn't that what we all hope for as teachers?

Is your kid in camp? They didn't have these when I was a kid but I wish they did. One week of nothing but art would have been wonderful. ANYWAY. I am building a tiny house and I am looking for funding. If you can and want to help me out, just follow the link in the upper right hand area of this blog. Even $5 will help! I am trying to move out of my crawl space and build a 10 x 10 tiny house to call my very own. Thanks for anything you can give!

Today

6/13/2018

Today I woke up free. The smile on my face rippled and spread into the corners of the room as the ceiling smiled back.

The day before I had let go. Released my desire to be loved by people who couldn't. I finally saw my part in trying to get people who are incapable of caring for themselves, to care for me. In that, all of the pain I felt around my childhood evaporated.

An inadvertant realization at the hands of another deeply damaged person. At the turning point, a flash of pain, then the vision. Eons of waiting to be loved, to be cared for, to be nurtured were a thing of the past, forgiven and forgotten.

I saw all the people in my life who I wait on to care for me, and all the people who wouldn't dream of making me wait. All the people who I would never expect to get what they could not give, and all the people I had done that to.

I am not free of these people, but of my need to get them to love me. I am free of the work I would do to get them to care. I am free of settling for less. I am free of making do with the small amount I am allowed. I am free of the lump in my throat that forms every time I am taken for granted, rambled over, or otherwise minimized.

And now I have more. More more more more more. I don't have to set people up to not love me. I don't have to walk into the habituated pattern I see forming before I enter the room. I don't have to engage in conversations created to belittle me. I don't have to sit and wait to be noticed.

The old ways of being are gone.

The culture of lack is dead.

Today I woke up free.

I am building a house!!! Wanna donate to the cause? I will be using almost ALL salvaged building supplies and building as green as possible. It is happening. I am building myself a home. Wanna help fund it? Go to the picture of the house and heart in the upper right. Click on the pic and donate. It's just that easy. AND you will get to watch my progress. Today my progress was finding out that I can go to the dump and fill my truck up with as much building material as I need for five dollars a load. FIVE DOLLARS A LOAD. See how much difference a mere five dollars can make?

The Veins in My Arms

6/10/2018

Was it in high school? Was it the girl in my ceramics class? The one dating the miscreant? The gymnast? She had muscular hands and strong arms and she was lovely in every way I wanted to be; clear skin, small nose, and a strong upper body. Her posture communicated strength, and I wanted that.

The girls with broad shoulders and narrow hips, the ones who walked with confidence, bubbling laughter, and grace, those were the ones I noticed.

I walked ugly. Acne, too skinny some times, too big others, oily hair, in pain, too timid to look at my own body and excruciatingly shy about everything. I never felt strong. Always trying to shrink away from my skin. Running away from everything the world was telling me I was supposed to be. I was At The Mercy Of.

After high school, I forgot for a while, unconscious until I found rock climbing. Climbing woke me up. I did it all the time, until my forearms burned, and I ran, biked and swam. My body changed. I started to look strong. I started to feel strong, physically. I noticed that the better my posture was, the more confident I felt, so I worked. I wanted to feel like that girl in high school looked. Powerful.

But how can you feel like someone else looks?

My forearms. They became larger, vein-y and a bit more hairy. I loved them. I loved my biceps. I am so proud of how my body developed because it is the body I wanted. The best thing about my arms, my strong shoulders, my muscular legs, is that I know these are not where I find strength. After attaining the body I wanted, I found myself because it was then I had to defend myself from people who would tell me I looked like a man, or that in actuality, I was a lesbian, I just didn't know it yet.

I had made a choice about my body based on my values and I had the confidence to defend it because I loved that. My conscious would not allow me to let other people tell me how to look or behave. It wasn't that my strong body made me strong, it was that I became a target, and I was put in a position where I would have to stand up for myself. And I stood.

My spine is alert, awake with the consciousness of choice. This is a happiness I hope to have the good fortune to reside in until I take my last breath.

When people comment on my vein-streaked arms now, I say thank you, even when they act disgusted, because I know it is not me they are reacting to, it is them. It is their weakness that cannot allow me to be different.

That's the problem with girls in high school. The pain you feel about yourself often leads you to believe they are better off than, happier than, more comfortable than. But that is never the case.

My pain has always been my pain, and it has never had anything to do with how strong anyone else has looked, or how graceful or beautiful they seemed to be.

That is the other thing about the veins in my arms. They transport the pain from my gut to my fingertips. It is a specific kind of injury that my body deals with by trying to send it out of my body through my fingers. The veins in my arms are fat with these memories. They remind me that everything about my body can be used to grow, just like every part of a chicken can be used to make soup.

My pain is the source of my strength, my beauty, my grace. I would never have come to this place of confidence if I had not resided in my pain.

My veins will some day wither to weakness, my arms will eventually return to dust. I will be nothing as I once was. This is the truth of life, that while I am living I am also dying, but in life, or in death, I will be as much of me as I can be.

Even if that is within my pain. Even if it is not.

I will never again fool myself into believing that I can feel like someone else looks.

The Skin and the Journey.

5/29/2018

I have felt too much of my skin for too long. It began with my raging acne as a teen; all the things I would not say came out in angry cysts all over my face, chest and back. The pain made me aware of it all day every day and forced me to look down at my shoes in public and avoid mirrors at all costs.

At some point in my life I learned that the surface of my body included my digestive track. All the half chewed items forcing their way down my throat and into my gut, along with the emotions I swallowed on a daily basis set my skin up for absorbing trauma of every sort.

Is this why I have skin? Because it is the most effective barrier against trauma? Or is it there to soak up the trauma? Because as easily as things go in, they also go out, and the more I consider my body and the surface of my skin, I begin to see the whole apparatus as a bellows, breathing in and out whatever happens to be in the immediate environment. Is there a way to choose what I take in? Or is my skin a mindlessly automated filter, just doing what it does with whatever comes its way, garbage in, garbage out?

My skin was never perfect. Too fair, too scarred, too hairy to be useful. But to be touched made none of these things important. My skin was too traumatized to be responsive to touch early in my life. It wanted mostly to be left alone as any touch would send sparks through my veins. But into my thirties and forties, my skin developed a deep desire for it. It was baffling at first, the longing. I didn't understand it until I allowed it. Not the touching so much as the feelings the touch evoked.

My skin quickly became a beloved friend and not a thing to be hidden or managed. My skin became a tool I could use to feel good. Touch was a delight; warming, comforting, loving. I see now that my trauma had kept me from this. Had my skin also let this go? Did my skin, maligned and scorned, figure out a way to release enough trauma so that I could enjoy loving touch?

I entered an era where all I wanted was touch and I would do anything to get it. Touch became a compulsion, an obsession, and at times drove me into the arms of the wrong kind of people, just so I could feel that warmth, that comfort, if only for a short time. My poor skin, to be used as such. It was years that I put my skin through this, wanting desperately to feel more deeply the touch of others, I would alter my senses and experiment with my skin. I could go in to a trance and know only skin. There were times I felt it would have sprouted flowers if I had allowed it.

Now it is starting to lose its form. The weight of the world and the trauma and the stress is wearing it down to the thickness of parchment, and as it starts to hang off of my chin and elbows, I am more than grateful for every part of this journey. I love the surface of my skin, for everything it has done for me, everything it has allowed, and everything it has cast off. I love to run my hands over it, grip my shoulders, touch my face. We have all been through so much together, me and this collection of malcontents.

I would not know myself in the same way if I had not gone on this adventure in awareness, and while there is adventure still ahead, I can't help but pause here in mid life, and wonder at how close my skin has allowed me to be to opportunity, possibility, and mystery. I can't belive that this surprising mechanism is such a small part of what makes up my body, for all it has done for me.

I'm excited for what it will allow in next.

Writing helps me understand myself better. I hope it does that a little bit for you too. Let me know what you think in the comments. I would love to hear from you. Still got stuff going on over a A Love Rebellion, so check that out if you're interested. Mostly videos over there. None of this silly writing stuff. I also have an artist website, Spike of All Trades, with artwork dating back a ways. Kinda cool, really. Check it out if you have the time. It's pretty neat.

What I Learn About Myself From Bugs

5/26/2018

Different bugs react differently to my efforts. Some curl up in a ball, some scurry as fast as their hundreds of legs will carry them, some put their unborn baby sack on their back and move away as quickly and carefully as possible.

Ants are different. These creatures move strategically to a new shared space in a coordinated set of moves that is completely mesmerizing, until the ones that have been sent to bite you do so. Ant trances are broken by their surprisingly painful bites.

I don't mean to break up homes, or kill things, but that is what I end up doing, and as there is nothing else going on in my mind while I am gardening, this leaves me to wondering.

I don't believe in much, except for that which I feel and know to be true. Not scientifically, of course. I don't trust a process where the scientist must leave the laboratory in order to not alter the outcome, or where a placebo is just as effective as the substance being tested. No, I trust my gut. I trust my feelings. They are linked so it is easy to read them simultaneously.

LIke the bugs I accidentally dig up every day, I have left so many homes. Places I loved at one point became unlivable by the time I was finished. I left all five quadrants of Portland, Oregon at least once, and each time, it was with haste. I have left many places in Bellingham as well, and my home in River Forest? A sling shot would have been a slower form of movement compared to how quickly I got out of there.

No one was digging me out though.

Well, maybe that isn't true, and as I write this, I wonder, was I not digging myself out? Was I not growing past what seemed a perfectly agreeable situation initially, to find myself in a position where I required a new living situation immediately?

Now that I am not actually gardening, I have time to wonder. How do I define home as I slough off the layers of skin that have grown itchy and tight? Why does it seem that I have the need to break free, almost violently, of any living situation that seemed so much better than the last one, whatever that might have been?

Ants coordinate their efforts amongst themselves and move as a single organism toward whatever goal on which they are focused. I had never really taken the time to watch ants before I had accidentally broken up a home the other day in front of a Doctor's office, but I am now in the beginning stages of moving out of a storage space and into a trailer, and I have to wonder if I am not just accumulating situation through which to grow so that I can eventually leave them.

I have to wonder if I, a single creature, will ever be as well coordinated as a swarm of ants?

It is fascinating the things I set my mind to, and how they always lead back to trying to figure out my own behavior. But, if that is not what life is for, that is, making a metaphor for my life out of every tiny detail of the world I encounter, then I don't know what is.
#abugslife
#metaphor
#ants
#leavinghome

The Long Road to Awareness

5/18/2018

The narrative in my head plays with a circular rhythm that is at turns a comfort and a torture. Full of worry and concern over things not happening, my creative energy slips out of my ears with each passing thought, and I wonder at my fixation on the horror fantasies I create for myself.

In the next moment, I struggle to choose a flower, which rots away into blackness. Then a cottage, which incinerates inside a flame that seems to emanate from within, then an oceanside that suddenly turns to lava at my feet.

My anxiety is a habit, and though I try, it is almost impossible to release my need to dream into the worst possible scenario.

This is what happens when I am not watching my thoughts, so I have trained myself to watch them. Just to notice, so that if they start to go down this circular and slippery chute, I can come back, latch on to something that will pull me back up, and use this creative energy in a more productive way.

But the rhythm of the horror is seductive, and the masochist in me needs this pain to feel the passion that comes with being a victim. There is no greater sadness than the sorrow of the afflicted, and if there is no one around to be the sadist, I step right in. I loathe myself for this, and this stokes the fire of the torture burning down my spine and straight into my boots.

My feet walk this line of victim straight into the arms of pity. Pity feels enough like love as it soothes the spurs and aches with cool steel. I can be self-righteous in my pain, carry it around on my vest like a badge that lets people know I'm the sheriff in this town of torture, that my pain is the only pain that matters and nothing they have experienced will ever come close. I have felt my pain more deeply because though the original transgression happened decades ago, I have carried it forward in order to justify my bad behavior, my insecurity, my lack of faith, and my insensitivity.

Everything offends me, and nothing is about me. I am alone in my pain and the victim of everything. I cuddle with my torment, make love to my loathing, and bathe in my estrangement. This is the architecture I have created to keep the world that made me, away. This is the armor I wear to fool you into seeing strength, though all that fills this hollow suit is fear.

This is the life I choose when I don't watch my thoughts. And it is a choice, Because I know better.

Better is the awareness of the hell I create. Better is the joy that comes from putting down my need to be justified through pain. Better is knowing that while I might be hurt, I do not have to be hurtful.

Better is understanding that in my case, being a victim is a choice.

So many times I learn this...I wonder if anyone else has this? This need to be the biggest victim? Or the Queen of the Wronged? Anyone?
A Love Rebellion is still kickin', and there is good stuff coming up. If you aren't signed up for my newsletter, you can do so at the top of this page. I write a newsletter every week, and talk about stuff like this and about A Love Rebellion which I wage on a daily basis. Check it out if you're interested.

The Changing of the Light

5/13/2018

I am sitting on my little bed in my slanted room, shaking, because as before, the darkness has closed in on me and I don't know where hope will come from, if at all.

I have been scraping by on the kindness of friends, the income from art sales and the occasional odd job, but the money is running out and I am trying to find the thread of hope in this misery sweater. I wear it on days hot and cold. It reminds with a bristle and scratch that hustle is paramount.

I have tried to conceal my freak from my partner, who has been patient with my poverty and supportive as he can be, but I am on the edge of collapse due to nerves and the belief that I need to appear to be just fine, thank you very much. This false wall of strength bears down and my knees ache beneath it.

I am a mess once again, because I have forgotten about the light that will be blowing through my tiny room at any moment, casting out the dark and radiating buoyant goodness. I have been through a million darknesses. I have felt this claustrophobic night before the burst. But it is so hard to grasp that memory when the walls of your room scream in desperation and the soles of your feet cannot stand the floor.

When the light comes in, I remember in the warmth that it was waiting for me to believe it. It was waiting for my resilient expectation, for me to let go of that old desperation and have faith. But faith was never learned in this body, and it is a hard lesson in the ink.

I hope in the glow and calm that I will remember next time. I will remember that life is in the cracks and the corners waiting for me to notice. That the memory of me will bring the light back. The me that is good and light and true and even if she is poor and desperate, there is a light in her that shines brightly. There is a light in her that connects her to everyone and everything, and if she remembers that connection, the dark has no power, except to maybe remind her of that light.

All I need to do is exhale, and notice that in order to receive, I must first let go.

I have shifted into this other mode of writing for good, I think...so if you are hoping for the other, I might not do that again for a while. This form is feeling more helpful to me in terms of expression and clarity. Let me know what you think if you have the time and the inclination. I would truly appreciate it.

Ecstatic Longing

5/6/2018

I tumble toward summer and feel sadness roll under my body and stretch out before me. From May to October, I get two days every two weeks. Two days to breathe him in, two days to listen, to watch, to feel him around me. Two days to appreciate him before he goes again.

It is the fourth summer we have lived this. I have come to resonate with the rapture of longing. I adore this sadness that fills me when he goes into an unknown world. He goes to wait for, watch, and manage fire, and comes back smokey serious, exhausted, and ready to release. We live these weekends spring-loaded, filling up, soaking in, and cherishing everything that we can while we can.

These summers have informed my life, and provided me the room to cherish and protect the details of my days. I saturate and bleed over into moments of sparkling possibility. I have incited a still receptivity that keeps me appreciating, appreciating, appreciating. Even the events that jar me, that shut me down and keep me quiet reverberate within my small frame and send me eventually, inevitably, into spasms of creative production that bring me to the edge of exhaustion.

I vascilate between a soaking in of possibility and an outpour of wonder. At day's end, exhausted and reveling in what I have taken in and what I have spewed, my life is the art I have longed to live.

I have come to this by opening up to the ecstacy of longing. So much of this I had pushed away, hating what I could not have the moment I wanted it, despising the drips of anguish that tugged at my digits, dragging my knuckles to the ground until all I could emit was a grunt of recongnition and a sideways glance of rage. Infuriated to not have what I thought I wanted, I never took a moment to consider the space in between longing and satiation. My anger blinded me to the beauty in the bliss.

It is May. I have just said good-bye for the first time, slipped a love note into his shoe which I hope he finds before his sweat bleaches out my words. The summer stretches out before me and I count down what I can do in between, and ruminate on what I will do in the during.

I have never felt more human about another human, that is to say weak, hopeful, inspired, hobbled, and loved. I have never allowed this particular type of humanity, so it is foreign to me, strange, like a coat that fits tight in the shoulders and loose around the waist.

I wait in this longing and love everything about not having.

I might be out on a bit of an emotional limb here, but I get a little bit anxious at the beginning of the summer, so much unknown and whatnot. Anyway, let me know what you think, if you have the time and the inclination. I am still off FB, so head over to aloverebellion.com and check out the action over there. It's pretty cool.

Conspicuous Cake Consumption

4/26/2018

The problem with cake is that it makes me think about my ass. Even when the cake is lovely, inventive, beautiful, I look at it and immediately, my thoughts go to my ass. Or my thighs. They take turns when it comes to all matters cake.

The last thing I want to think about when I look at cake is my ass, or my thighs, because they are so negative when it comes to cake. Cake deserves its own headspace, and for some reason, my body can't or won't supply that.

It doesn't help that I am very particular about cake. It should be made by a person who loves making it. I don't love cake that has been made by machines because, well, they are just like all the others; cold, joyless, indifferent. The proof is the boxes of them, stacked in rows in supermarkets, all to be put in squeeky-wheeled carts and fed to unsuspecting children over the course of a week or two. Good cake waits for no one. Good cake is its own occasion.

Home-made cake stirs the soul. A good cake, made with care, says love. That is why it is so frustrating that when I look at such a thing, all I can think about is my ass. Or my thighs. They take turns.

This travesty. This torture. I burden myself with "who is watching me eat?" I should be able to eat whatever the fuck I want. No matter what my ass or my thighs say about it, intermittently. I should be able to walk down the street, screaming, at the top of my lungs, over my love for cake, because, by god, it is inspiring. But, no. My shame will not allow it, though my love burns brightly.

Also, unfortunately, I am white, and educated, and now, it is insensitive for me to eat cake as well. One person-who I THOUGHT was my friend- even called me Marie Antoinette when I recently referred to my love for cake. So now, it is not only my ass and thighs talking to me, but all the marginalized people in the world who do not have access to good cake.

I blame society, as any good cake eater would. This damn society that demands that I look a certain way, eat a certain way, and deprive myself so as not to arouse jealousy or hatred.

Isolated, me and my love for cake, which fills me with joy and shame simultaneoulsy, I wait and hope for others to come along and join me. I hope for my own small band of cake enthusiasts with whom I can party. I long for the freedom to enjoy my cake in public and in peace without worry of ass or thigh, without concern that someone without might suffer.

I long for the day when eating cake might not be so conspicuous.

If you know me, you know I love cake, but I also hope that you might know that this is not just about cake, but having the ability to enjoy your life. I am not sure if the metaphor works, but I sure enjoyed writing it.

Feeling Alive

4/23/2018

Expression comes easy when feelings are sharp, shaped like icicles and just as cold. The prickling sensation around my heart, the wrenching in my gut, the ache in my lungs, all signs of life throughout my first 30 years.

Joy makes me uncomfortable. The bubbling excitement in my chest replaced the ache but has nowhere to go as I have no way to express it with any comfort. My attempts are awkward, corny, boring.

But now I am greedy for it.

I don't want anything less than the joy I sometimes feel for no reason because it makes me nervous. Who am I to deserve this? When will it be snatched from me by the inevitable?

Joy still does not sit well in my body, perched, anxiously waiting. I focus, I meditate on enjoyment. I try and wake myself up out of the sleep of passive distraction, and do everything I can to not engage. I must work for everything, and fly in the face of nothing.

People more often than not prefer to sleep and connection is hard even without the distraction of distraction. There is so much right in front of me, smells, tastes, sounds, full of color and chorus and purple-y gold citrus. I can see why this is frightening, this heaven. I am startled by how much I love it, how much I want it.

I do not contort myself in order to enjoy anything, it all comes easy. The less I think, the more I love, the less I maneuver, the better I float in the tide of sensation.

Can I enjoy this human experience without other humans? Can I be only me, floating in the detritis of my activity without arousing suspicion?

But who would suspect?

Soon my joy will be more of a comfort and I will turn over all the pages of my life to this happy monotony which no one will wish to read.

But its enough to have lived it.

Isn't it?

Sometimes I just need to write stuff. This came out of me today like a volcano. I don't even think a lot of it makes any sense. I will read it again later and try and figure it out. If you have any idea, let me know. I would be happy to hear...

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