Angry With Myself

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

If somebody were to cut me into a thousand
pieces, every piece of me would say
that it loves...
-Chris Lubbe

Ultimately, no matter the burden we are given-apartheid, cancer, abuse, depression, addiction-once whittled to the bone, we are faced with a never-ending choice: to become the wound or to heal.

On the whole I am, or like to think I am a particularly patient and loving person. Yell at me, hurl abuse at me… treat me badly, and I will still treat you kindly. I don't hold grudges – what's the point?

That's not to say that it doesn't hurt me when someone speaks to me badly, or treats me badly, or gods forbid abuses me – I'm human after all and it does hurt, of course it does. But I try to let go of the pain and heal, I try not to carry bitterness or anger. I don't always succeed.

When I get angry though, the anger is pointed at myself and not at anyone else. It's my fault that I got sick, so I had to keep on going, pushing myself instead of giving in and resting, because damn it there were things to do, and I was the one wanted to be doing them. Yes, I always get sick right after I come, there it is in plain English. What else did I expect?

I know self directed anger is self destructive, but I can't help it, it's a learned response, and a defensive one. You try growing up in a household with two people of alike temperament where each one is always right, and see if you survive. It was a case of I had to change, or my father and I were going to come to blows, so I changed, because he wasn't going to. I very clearly remember a yelling match we got into one time, where I yelled at him, 'you've always got to be better than me!' and him getting very offended. By apparently being better than me it was an encouragement for me to do better and try harder. Hmmm. From that point on I let my own anger drive me to do better, because I hated those yelling matches… and we got into them often. We are just too alike.

Now though, whenever I don't get something right, I get angry with myself, in a very self destructive way. Oh I don't mean self harm or anything like that, except perhaps of a psychological nature. Just that really, I harm my sense of self worth, my emotional and mental well being. And now I worry that it is too late to do anything about it.

All Of These Gifts...

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Who knows
that in the depth of the ravine
of the mountain of my hidden heart
a firefly of my love is aflame.
-Abutsu-Ni

So what are we to do with our tiny little firefly?

It's rather fitting irony, I think, that the first time I saw a firefly was when I first came to North Carolina, because it was here that I also first found the kind of love that I am blessed with now. In fact there is so much beauty in the nature I have discovered as part of my loving and being in love with Mir that it's sometimes overwhelming.

Here we are in this little trailer/house in among the trees, and in the day is birdsong all around, and in the night time… the wood takes on a song of its own. The 'cheepy-tree-bugs' as I call them, as well as the crickets and the toads – and the occasional hoot of an owl – all make the dark as sonorous and beautiful as carefully crafted music. Last night we were able to sleep with the windows open. I feel very rested today.

I have walked on beaches on New Years Day, raced to the top of huge dunes of sand that seem as though they should be in the Sahara desert; I have climbed mountains and was married and shared the reception with world wide friends in two of the most beautiful locations I have ever seen. I have woken to deer in the front yard, the back yard, and rabbits and squirrels, and even some of the other, not so beautiful, but equally as miraculous creatures surround me. I even let a lizard out of the house yesterday, while I was cleaning up… he was a tiny, but beautiful iridescent green and blue and grey… None of this I would have experienced and shared – none of this I would have even dreamed if it were not for opening my heart to love; to Mir. So my heart sings…

Just The Way You Are...

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

Asleep too long, we need to wake.
Awake too long, we need to sleep.

Perhaps the wisdom in blinking is that it keeps us in the middle, keeps us from drowning in the dark and from burning up in the light. Perhaps this is the reflex that lets us make sense of being human.

Isn't this the shape question of the day?

It's right up there with question and observations such as: Glass half empty/half full; the act of lighting a candle casts a shadow; is a shark evil because it bites a little girl that was swimming; are the Wraith in SGA evil for feeding on humans (you can substitute vampires if you don't know SGA), or are they just doing what they must do to survive… Does our perception of light and dark change with how we see ourselves and the position from which we're coming, originating, or are these qualities absolute?

There's a series of ads that I see every time I walk along the jetway of international flights. I think they're for HSBC bank or something… It's a series of two or three identical pictures, only the captions change. ( here's the kind of thing I mean) There are a lot of them, and they really bring the matter of 'perspective' into sharp focus.

Another thing that struck me today as being about a matter of prespective – there's a big hullabulloo going on right now, because there's this 'explicit gay sex scene' in Torchwood that the BBC are cutting, but Starz are not (forget that Starz already nixed a scene where someone was speaking with a welsh accent because they didn't think the Americans would be able to understand it), now… doesn't bother me one way or another to be honest, far as I'm concerned Captain Jack is as gay as Christmas and always has been, so… *shrug* but there were these whole bunch of comments on the website where I saw the news where some people were complaining about having the gay sex 'shoved down their throats' (which in itself is a funny comment… if you have a warped sense of humour like mine). Don't like it, don't watch that scene – end of subject. Personally I don't see why we shouldn't see it – we see enough 'straight' sex push at us in just about every other show… why not just… complain about the sex, period. Gay, straight, transpecies or otherwise!

Perspectives… which is light, which is dark?

Floating Isn't An Issue

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

When we stop struggling,
we float.

I strained and flapped to keep my chin above the surface

This is me. This is what I am like when I'm swimming but not because I don't trust the water to hold me up – I have these huge floatation devices fixed to the front of my body – but because I don't like to get my face in the water. I never have, and I don't think I ever will.

I've tried 'swimming with proper technique' and I just can't do it, in fact, I'm more likely to start drowning when I try to swim properly because of the panic of getting water in my face. So I surrendered long ago to having to do things my way. That said, I love swimming, especially when it's hot or when I need to exercise, because these self same 'floatation devices' that help keep me up in the water, weigh me down when exercising, and make even low impact exercises very uncomfortable… at least without industrial strength support, and that then hurts my shoulders, so I can't win. Swimming is, therefore, good for me, and I don't do nearly enough of it.

Just A Moment

From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.

No bird can fly
without opening its wings,
and no one can love
without exposing their heart.

It is perhaps the oldest of the inner laws, as inescapable as gravity. There is no chance of lifting into any space larger than yourself without revealing the parts you hold closest to your chest.

I spent a good part of the day yesterday clearing up… tidying and straightening up in the bedroom. Oh, I'm sure it wouldn't have taken that long at all except that I'm a fussy bugger that has to have everything just so… so I took down everything from the shelves, unfolded, shook, refolded and restacked them… even made space to put the spare pillows away, and now we have nothing standing on top of the laundry basket.

There was a lot of mutual teasing went on when Mir got home. Not the least of which because I found Mir's passport, right where she said it would be – in other words, she said I had had it, and though I swore up and down I hadn't, she was right. It was in my purple bag, along with other items of clothing that hadn't ever been unpacked and that she was missing too.

My response, apart from being embarrassed, was to make demands about the dirty laundry going into the basket, not onto it or beside it. Mir looked at me with the sweetest grin on her face, and said, "yes ma'am."

It's days like this, moments like this when I feel my heart is at its most open.