heathervescent

egg tooth

I'm not shamed or embarrassed to cry in public. I've cried at the dinner table in restaurants more than once. You don't see much drama in real life these days. Recently I've been found crying at the Enterprise rent a car counter, on the phone to my insurance company, on the phone to my home warranty company, driving my car, in front of various work colleagues, in front of my friends, in front of my roommate, on the phone with my business partner, and on the phone with my soon to be x-boyfriend if he doesn't get his shit together. My liquid eyeliner runs and I wipe it off - so long to my Fellini look.

The past two weeks have been the most stressful, trying times in my recent future (last 10 years). Every single stable item in my life has one by one been cracked. Stability = gone. In the meantime the pressure has been mounting in all my activities. I kept asking myself what is the universe trying to teach me. What am I to learn? It climaxed yesterday with a complete and total breakdown. That was when the universe put the final squeeze on my life and I broke - completely and utterly break though.

You see, we all live in this egg of energy. It's what holds our worldview and keeps our personality in check with humanity. It's this worldview that allows us to interact - we've all agreed that that color is green or verde. We've agreed on a mutual worldview.

I've always pushed this button, both in myself and in others. I've found various paths that explain this and exploit it. There are various twists on what to do with this knowledge. I understand the words of many masters or gurus and teachers - billboards and fortune cookies. It's not synchronicity, it's the universe talking to you.

So what the hell am I supposed to learn from this build-up of pressure and final culmination yesterday? Ah, there was nothing to learn - it was a maneuver to cause me to crack - and crack I did, and start using my metaphorical egg tooth. My old world is gone, my old world view is gone with it. I live in the future - literally and metaphorically. And only now with my slow chipping away of the shell will I hatch and rise into something never before. I wonder what that will be? Butterfly, chick, snakeling, it's sure to be interesting. And you'll see it all here on heathervescent.

stuck

It was dark. And the fluorescent lights on the ceiling were not on. Instead the lights that found its way into her eyes came from children dancing in hologram shadows to musical dance beats.  As she moved to the computer generated rhythms, her dress, the one with the lace ribbons on it, flirted out among the crowd. It was made of spandex, velvet and lace and hung limply from the tips of her breasts, creating generous folds around her thighs that caressed them in ways only cloth knows.

The spotlight, however, was not on this girl in the purple velvet dress. It was on the drag queen in suspenders with the tallest cat-in-the-hat hat that all eyes were drawn to. His swinging arms and legs reminded her of dancing trees from Alice in Wonderland. The thought made her think that she could be a lost girl in a musical enchantment. The wonderland of musical ecstasy and flinging the body's muscles to the point of exhaustion and then beyond. The colors of the lights flashing and swinging in palpitating rhythm with the must. They were globules lollipops of color and sound.

Suspenders, wide swinging dresses, not those that Scarlet O'Hara wore, but ripped torn shredded remnants of Victoria hospitality throbbed with dangling braids and spiked hair, some of which was blue, orange and burgundy. White t-shirts hung limply on young boys' chests as they swayed to the music coiling and winding around itself like a wounded snake.

Some delighted in ingesting drugs of choice to get a full effect of the driving force of the music. Drugs that open the mind for some and close it for others. But she needed no outside influence to see the musical colors and hear their meanings. It was the total freedom, an abandonment of everything she was, everything she could be and living as an organism, not as an intellect or tool of society or religion. Her hips swinging, flinging her elbows into the unknown. Feeling the ache in her gut, screaming to stop the mad gyration, but the continuous frisk of her life force mingling into one with the beat of the music and blazing lights.

Face burning she ran outside into the snow and felt the cold in a new way, not with her standard predisposed dislike, but the cooling effect. Feeling the cold and yet, not feeling the cold. Outside the warehouse the air was so cold, so still. The sky was bare and offered no comfort, unlike the summer sky with its moist breath. She felt her skin tingle, the cells in her body reacting to the outside air, yet she felt no bitterness. It was refreshing and the silent night was contrasted with the savage activities in the building. It was the hot steamy voice of summer, reds, yellows and oranges of summer sun and the glimmering unknown of the ocean full of brightly colored fish.

Back inside the spinning rhythms of the music she felt unsatisfied. She felt the cold, or lack of coldness and the lights felt strange to her. She no longer felt the blood life of the beating music in her heart. The cold had penetrated her and she could not escape it.

The dark corners of the room provided no retreat from the hot sultry rhythms and her hair sent slow beads of sweat trickling down her neck, sending shivers up her back. She felt alone, alien and hostile. How could the short time outside change her entire being? She did not long to go back outside, she easily felt the cold on her skin and wet snow in her zippered combat boots. Even the place at the door, standing on the thin line separating the cold outside from the hot inside did not appeal to her. She wanted to leave, but the comfort of her car or the drive home gave no consolation. So she stayed where she was, malcontent, but without motivation to move, watching the shadows the tall cat-in-the-hat hat made in the moving lights and circling rhythms.
- myself circa 1996

Geek love

I am the wandering variable and he is the limiting parameter in our relationship.

Hunter

"Yeah, there was a moment of epiphany, but I can’t remember what it was."
-HST.

Sorry to hear him go. It's a great way to remember him.

and it continues to rain

There's been lots of rain down here in LA. This morning I watched the water crest over the curb, only to subside a few hours later when the sun finally came out. It's a good metaphor.

It's been damage control the past couple weeks. I've been in this massive fight or flight reactivity and only now realized it as I'm coming down. The stress of moving to another temporary location, my car getting hit and the flux at work was too much to bear. As well as a couple other big things I don't write about on the blog. (Yes, I do keep secrets.)

All these things will get resolved with time, which will continue to pass regardless of anything I do.

Rock it Internet Radio

Theory Labs - RIGHT NOW.

good bye santa monica, hello venice

In a strange twist of events, I'm back in the first house I landed in when I moved to southern California. It's a short stop on the way to the future. Being back in this house reminds me of how good I felt when I first arrived. How different it was for me to live alone, without a man, without a boyfriend, alone. Long long time. Months have passed. It's a writers house and I love it so much.

Oh how far I've come. And to only imagine how far I will go. To places I could never dream of, because their characteristics don't exist yet.

zen cookie

We were diving in bumper to bumper traffic on the 10. A black Mercedes on the flat bed, my Saab pulled behind. The windows were open. The radio was on and playing the Red Hot Chili Peppers - one of their ballads, but not THE BALLAD. There were seagulls flying in the sky. I pulled the bag of molasses cookies out of my bag. They've been my recent panacea. I offered a cookie to Jose, he took one and I took one as well. We ate them slowly with the wind and radio as companions. It was the best cookie I have ever eaten. It was a moment of full aware pleasure and calmness in the midst of the storm that is my life.

heathizzile

You mizzight thiznink I'm very egotizzle n it's true I have a dizzy big ego straight from long beach nigga. (Are you egotizzles if you is aware of it n kizzy it?) I attempt ta be aware of me as mizzle as possible fo yo bitch ass. I'm constantly view'n me n mah actions n saggin' tha scientific model . Listen to how a motherfucker flow shit. I'm attached n detached from myself. I think I am one of tha mizzle pimpin' thugz I K-N-to-tha-izzow. I've worked hard ta be who I am. I like ta hang out wit brotha interest'n amaz'n thugz in they own ways . Im crazy, you can't phase me.

You gotta check dis shit out yo.

hit and bladerun

Here's what I saw when I walked out of my apartment this morning.

Whee-haw - yet another big thing to add to my current collection. At this rate, my big things no longer seem big to me. It's kind of like, don't sweat the small stuff, and it's all small stuff.

Last night, prior to this damage I felt like I was in BladeRunner's Los Angeles. Designing product UI while driving on 101,  twisting through the canyons where an RV almost careened into me.  Back cracking, finger popping, Chinese herbs and needles. Heat. I stopped for noodles and ate at the counter. As the mist turned to rain, I slurped the soup and chomped the noodles and left as quickly as I came. The darkness swallowed up me and my advice.

life as a spider

earlier this year I posted my goals for 2005. I entitled the post "out with the tiger, in with the spider". I don't know if my dear readers understood what I meant. It is a remark that reminds me of a scene in my life. Simply, a spider letting itself down from my chandelier on it's one thread. Stopping on the mint green tablecloth and walking to the edge only to let itself down onto the floor and walk across the floor in the same direction.

Another time I was participating in a ritual theatre group run by Antero Alli, called Paratheatrical Ritual Work. It was interesting. We went through this series of warm-up to turn on the body. Then we did various authentic improv interactions within an esoteric setting. Interacting with ourselves, our preconceptions of themes, emotions, feelings, and sometimes with others or objects. One such ritual I will not forget. The room had been taped off into a sunburst with four sections with a 5th place that two of the sections opened on. This was what you could call the Void. From the void was section 1, then section 2, then section 3 and finally 4 which then lead back into the void as well as section 1. When you crossed that line from void into section 1, that was birth: into this world with any and all conceptions. You passed through section 1 and as you went into section 2, puberty strikes, Section 2 to 3 transition was into ripe middle age, section 3 into 4: into later years and advanced age, and as you returned to the void, you experienced your death. Each person in the group entered and we started to progress through the sections. I felt very light, I could not get identified with each of the sections fully. I felt them and experienced them as authentically as I could, but I still felt I was missing. And as I went from each section to the other, it was the transition that most interested me. It was the line I crossed (an actual line was taped on the floor). I was interested in the role of the line and once you went across, could you go back. I became obsessed with the transitions and lines on the floor. I had to really slow myself down and authentically feel what each of the sections were because I could not wait to be finished with them. As I finished the cycle... and was about to step back into the void, my foot was instead drawn to be placed on the line separating section 4 from section 1. And I made my next pass around the sections walking on the lines. Watching my colleagues authentically act their experiences in the full blown section. I saw a relationship bloom and saw the pain when one was ready to move on and had to tear away from the other. I saw mothering. I saw lovers. I saw families. I saw friends that went together their entire life. I saw people trying to cheat the cycle and attempt to return. My participation changed - I was no longer an active participant in the sections. I was the spider on the webs. I was the watcher. I was the keeper of the sections. There were laws that I upheld. I refused to let someone return to a previous section. I made someone break their promise of return with the placement of my palm on his forehead. I did not feel power in this. I knew of his promise. I had made no decision to let pass or refrain. But at the moment he attempted to cross, I was there, and my hand also. I watched while all participants completed the sections and then I danced. I danced on the webs. It was so beautiful. I cleaned the threads. I prepared them for their next dance.

A quick search via google bring me:

It's the Trickster who points out the flaws in our carefully managed societies. He rebels against authority, pokes fun at the overly serious, creates complex schemes and generally plays with the Laws of the Universe. He constantly questions the rules, and causes us to question these same rules. The Trickster appears when a way of thinking becomes outmoded, when old ways need to be changed.
 
The Trickster is a creator, a joker, a truth teller, a story teller, a transformer. We are most accessible to the gifts of the Trickster when we ourselves are at, or near, boundaries - when we are experiencing transition states. As an archetype, the Trickster, the boundary dweller, finds expression through human imagination and experience.

Quite interesting, hmmm?

In my business life I define my role as the glue that dries clear. This is perhaps another way of saying, I'm the one that builds the web that catches the pieces. As the pieces come together the hold by way of their own gravity and the web falls away. And thus my role as gentle rebel falls away and like Cain, I walk the earth in search of the next boundary to blow. (In the meantime my own worldview is re-molded and shaped and shattered and changed).

So 2005 - the year of being authentic to myself. Myself as the trickster rebel fool. Dancing with the laws of the Universe, bending them, twisting them into a new revelations for the Universe. Universal wild card.

booty call

Suz and I are out in Hollywood checking out the clubs and watching the scene. It's a bunch of 20 somethings, platforms, skimpy shirts, fake tits, drunken breath. We sat outside Beauty Bar and watched the crowds. 2am darkstreetlightness, slick streets, the smell of frying hot dogs and bacon and cigarette smoke. It reminds me of something, a life I used to lead in another country. The hike from one club to another, looking for friends, maybe the one I haven't found yet. I'm not on the hunt. I find the scene amusing and I do enjoy being out in it. Finding grandmaster flash and prince playing in the sushi joint. A little old skool to shake the booty at. I like seeing the young girls, all dressed up, with their black eyeliner and blonde highlighted hair, low-rise jeans and little bit of the flab poking out between the funky belt and their flouncy chemise top. I like seeing them enjoy themselves and be a little unsure at the same time. Dancing for their man. I like listening to the ebb and flow of the DJ, listening to the small glinter of sound that I recognize and categorize as delight to my ears. Dancing as the music moves me.

<LA interlude>
My first funky dance experience in LA was years ago. A youngin I was, and in LA for a very swanky slick tech graphic conference at the LA Convention Center. I was the youngest on the team and I had coordinated our participation in the event. Later we found ourselves at a party at a nearby hotel. Some colleagues and I got the frat crowd all amped up with our funky SF moves. The party was held around the pool and a climax ensued to be broken only by yours truly jumping into the pool completely clothed in my business casual. Several of my colleagues joined me. We got a standing ovation - I'm not sure if they closed any business deals the next day, but I doubt those frat boy observers forgot us.

Ahh, the good old days of the Internet - when we thought anything was possible regardless of the bad management, lack of direction but plenty of money.
</LA interlude>

So we're out in the streets, watching the girls and boys. And we start talking of booty call. The concept of booty call is a new one to me. Being married through the majority of my 20's I never experienced this.

Eventually we find ourselves at the magazine stand where I'm much more excited at a late-night call with a purring machine. It's the Honda CB4 I'm drooling over at full spread - centerfold. A nice picture. It's nothing special - no twisty road, no city scape, no knee dragging on the track - just her, side profile. I'm not a fan of farings - I like the bikes naked. That's why I like the 919. But the CB4 looks beautiful and I start considering her for my next purchase.

A bike goes by on the street and our heads turn - it's like the sound of a baby crying to a momma. For Suz and I, it's the sound of two wheels of exhaust. And I think to myself, if I'm going to get any kind of booty call it better be the sound of exhaust, a slightly purring engine, the pat of my booty settling down onto the seat, my leather gloves gripping the clutch and twisting open the throttle.

worth the wait?

on being a heretic

"Some scientists tell us that in our own galaxy alone there are probably hundreds of thousands of planets with living beings on them, more or less like those On the earth, and that there are about 100 million galaxies within the range of our telescopes. Man seems to play a very insignificant part in the universe, and my part is surely negligible. The question confronting me is not, except perhaps in idle moments, what part might be more amusing, but what I wish to make of my part. And what I want to do and would advise others to do is to make the most of it: put into it all you have got, and live and, if possible, die with some measure of nobility."
- Walter Kaufman, 1959, The Faith of a Heretic

black stars

It was a clear dark night under the stars. Wind blew through Jasmine scented garden. I strayed from the crowd up to the balcony. Looked below at the suits talking, conversing, wine flowing. Why am I not there? Why do I reject the group? Is my rejection so they don't reject me? These are human beings. They are alive. They are surprising. They are unknown. Maybe I am fearful of what I will find, what I will expose. I get tired of who I am. I watch the wind in the palms. I look up to see many many stars. Orion's Belt, clusters, the blackness of the ocean. It's a breath of air. I wonder where this wind will take me.

--

""I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of being around people who are merely my peers. I want to be around people who challenge and push me and shatter and expand and fuck my worldview up. Because there is nothing too precious to lose, except the time to begin it." (Heather writes)

Heather: Be careful of what you wish for. You will surely get it.

The only person who is around to shatter, push and expand you is yourself. That's number one. And if you are in a hurry, you will surely find out quickly enough that this path takes a lifetime and there are no short cuts."

Shelly is right. However there are indeed shortcuts. Shortcuts to long routes along the way. Troutdale is one such shortcut. If you know the shortcuts are there, they will be available when you need them. Do not use them often, for they may change and no longer serve you.

I suppose a shortcut could be akin to my third staircase. And I often carry it around in my third pocket.

fabulous days

Even though every single rollercoaster I'm riding is doing various double loops, I've got my hands in the air enjoying every minute. It doesn't matter if I am in control. In fact, I'm not. It's experiencing the ride, and it's more fun when you don't know what will happen next.

"We don't just say no
we're too busy sayin Yeaah"

Stagnation broken.

I've got the snob back. I feel like I'm on vacation when I have my hand on her stick and my foot on the pedal. The sky was perfect blue. Surfers were black spots at Topanga. The road is still closed for through traffic. There have been various minor mudslides the past week, so PCH has had a lane closed here and there. Malibu canyon was gorgeous and I laughed all the way. Carson gave me a mix CD for my birthday that has the best rap song ever on it. Ice Cube's Gansta Gansta from Straight Outta Compton.

"I'm drinking straight out the 8 bottle   [Olde English 800 40 ouncer]
Do I look like  a motherfuckin role model?
To little kids lookin up to me
Life aint nothing but bitches and money"

Really, I can't think of anything that could get me down. What a feeling, excited, unsettled by what the future brings. And it's not in terms of good or bad... it's in terms of experience. Good and bad ceases to have meaning. When you are living in the present there are experiences and adventures.