It goes on without me

My husband (MH) is in Montana, his first solo journey for our business. He is finally, finally finding his grounding and his voice. His harem of adoring therapists has got him well-encircled and I'm sure will attempt to lead him far astray from the scripted path. But, it's a big first step for him, and a good warm-up for his story-telling neurons. This should make things much smoother when we have to teach together in December.

Now, if he could only fix that nagging conference-space problem for the class I'm bringing out there in two weeks.

White knight to the rescue on his charging horse - it's his favorite thing to do.

No Psychics on the Jury

....or, how to raise your hand right out the door. Nothing sets blood pressure off the dial like the jury summons. Kept it in check better this time, figuring I got excused for financial hardship ("self-employed") last time and so I would just ride that same rhythm again this time. Only problem - system is changed. Asked about it and the kid checking me in says, oh that was illegal. You can only be excused by the judge.

Next thing you know I'm in Courtroom 10F, listening to this very entertaining and reassuring judge weave the space for us, and watching the two attorneys. This one was too easy, even the newbies in Psychic 101 could ace it. Attorney for the state: grounded, steady, midline, here to do his job, uh huh. Attorney for the accused: slimy, fidgety, snarky - looking all the world guilty FOR his client (who of course had entered the plea of not guilty to both murder charges (!)). Oh, and a very BAD hair plug job. The accused himself: cranking on headphones as his translator murmured in creole, but nasty, nasty, big red arrow pointing to the reptilian segment of brainstem that pulled the trigger.

The judge actual used the term "cold neutral" as in, would any of you have a problem staying in a cold neutral place to consider the accused innocent unless proven guilty?

Me!!! It's too obvious!!!

Case closed. Out the door us dissenters go.

grist in the mill

This week I've been trapped in the millstone, huge grinding wheels of big-business and big-family energies turning and just pulverizing me. Technical failures, broken computers, "Credit Card Compliance Certifications" - let's just say it's a sad day when you know your webhosting phone number AND account number by heart. And the techs remark "wow, your file is thick." At least they're here in America, speaking English, and they don't tend to hang up on you. Unlike my other forays into Dell-world, where not only will the techs hang up on you mid-process if they know they're going to lose points by not fixing your problem, but sometimes they hang up before they even say hello! Bet they don't endorse that problem-solving technique in the YPO rulebook, huh, Michael?

And I'm trying to get ready for class in Cincinnati (with my broken computer), where I will connect with my split-egg other half, who has been writhing in the agony of her personal hell for the past month. Now, if we're two halves of one organism and she's twisted over there trying to make her own noose and jump off the edge at the same time, that is surely dragging me over the edge with her. Never mind this grindstone trying to keep me focused on my own decomposition.

Oh yeah, that would be, transformation. The grindstone thing, is that how we transcend the dis-integration of pain chewing us apart and now resonate to the world in a different way? One bleeding cell at a time?

Tension of the opposites. Some days you can balance it. Some days you're just smeared from edge to edge.

Open moment

If we can stay open to the evolving moment, it brings unpredicatble surprises with it. I am home in Florida while my husband is visiting his daughters in upper Michigan. His oldest daughter, my best friend, my split egg, is also visiting. For the first time, it feels like I should be there. Time has passed and we have a step-rhythm now, I am part of the mix. Feeling that so strongly leads to the very painful moment of feeling how it has been up til now. How, when he would travel north, I would cease to exist. I became the pink elephant in the middle of the room, the great verboten, the presumed consort of Satan who had upended their idyllic lives..Worse than being Satan is being marginalized. Maybe we are moving past that phase now.
Still, the pain rises within, bringing its truths with it. This is what happens when you find a place of deep truth and strength within you - you become the bulls-eye - and those most frightened by their own truths (or failure to live by them) hurl the worst they've got right at you. In nature, there is an eternal rhythm that rises in the dance between disparate energies, and that rhythm works with the edges of the energies colliding to create something new. At those "boundary surfaces" are new creations, new possibilities, new energies. As I write this, I think, can someone who utterly lacks boundaries, and is tidal-waving you with judgement, feel any new creation? Feel the edges of meeting my boundaries? Feel the bounce-back? Or just feel the terror of not being mirrored to their own familiar pathology?
What else can I do but hold my space? And heed the call of compassion - for myself deep within, for those attacking. And work through the grief of having been portrayed so evilly when really, what I was doing was holding a space for another to choose to reclaim their authentic life.
Next time, maybe, it will be time to go north and claim my rightful place - dancing in this flow of family creation.

Nesting

A day between lives.... an afternoon to myself, repotting and nesting new plants, both in the front and for the living room and new kitchen... a brief hour with my daughter, watching "In the Womb" and reliving our time together. And then she's gone! and without my husband here, I feel the house changing shape to hold just the two of us. And it makes me wonder about all these renovations, they're for the two of us, really, it's not the house I raised my daughter in anymore.

And then my brainstem seized up and died.

Yesterday I woke up dizzy. Without the benefits of a wild night beforehand. Dizzy supine, sidelying, sitting and standing. Dizzy from my brainstem being sucked up my crown, twisting all my membranes with it. Dizzy from two months of construction, 5 trips out in 6 weeks, overwhelming personal tragedy deep in my heart, a teenager whose boyfriend just moved 1200 miles away to college, and my husband who flew away for a week. For starters.

Not much of a celebration of reclaiming my space in my house. First we start with my space in my own head. What?

Dizzy and abandoned and projected wildly into unknown space..... like that guy in the boat who landed in the casino parking lot. There we were.

And then I dreamed of my dad, and half woke exclaiming "Dad was in my dream!! Remember this!!!" And now that's somewhere far away, just his two hands holding the book of clues and me wondering, shouldn't that be my husband deciphering the book of clues?

Obviously we're not quite untangled yet.