Eloquent as Fuck - Eloquent as Fuck

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.