Something inside me is unravelling. The desert is doing its thing - evaporating all the tightness and crap and stress from the past months/year. My last three sleeps (here at the dome) have been deep and full of bliss. I wake up more refreshed and calm than I have in I can't remember. I've spent my days moving boxes, unpacking, sifting, sorting, identifying all the little fixes the dome needs. I play music loud. I keep things silent.
I throw out things that are no longer needed. You never know how wound up you are, until you start unwinding... and the desert (for me) is the best for this. The land, the nature, the sky, the wind, the air, the crunchy rock/sand ground, the spiky cacti, the clouds, OMG the clouds are amazing and food for my soul.
But there is something else here I will have to face, and that is the people that live here, and that I am an outsider from another culture. I can fake the redneck desert rat persona, but I can not fake the local. I did not grow up here.
I ran away from a similar small town to the big city, and here I am back, faced with all the same things, 20+ years later. I wonder what I will learn and how I will change, and how I will inevitably leave my mark on this place that called me here, from the whisper on the wind as I drove my motorcycle down the mountain into the glistening town on the edge of another planet - 29 Palms.
In 2006 I was at a gig-decompression party in/near the Brewery. I was among friends. There was a face painter going around giving all the women beautiful sparkly face accents. I wanted to be pretty like that and I finally tracked down the make-up artist when he was available.
He asked what I wanted, and I told him that I really liked what he had already painted and to be inspired. He stopped for a moment, paused, looked at my face and my outfit (I was wearing black pirate pants and a men's ruffly tux shirt and boots) then whipped out his brushes. I was excited to see the colors and sparkle and glitter he was creating.
When I looked in the mirror, I saw that half my face was a painted as a skull. Internally, I was like WTF. I was really disappointed. I wanted to be pretty, sparkly, colorful. But all I got was this half face skull. But I said nothing. Other than thanks and went back to the party to make the best of my new face. In typical heathervescent fashion, I choose to own it.
If the make-up artist gives you the only half a skull face at the party, live the undead lifestyle, even if it's the opposite of what you wanted. This was way back before zombies became popular. It was also the same year I started my Zombie Cabaret.
I'd be lying if I said that makeup artist didn't inspire me to do the Zombie Cabaret. So while he failed at making me "pretty" and "ladylike" I got something much more... something I made my own. How many people can say they had a Zombie Cabaret in Los Angeles for 10 years? I know 2 of us.
Back in 2008, I bought this haunted shack deep in the Mojave desert. It's like 30 minutes from civilization, unless you count the one bar between 29 and Amboy, where the PRB drafts are like $1.50. If you follow the sandy road all the way out to the pole line, and snake around following the roads with women's names, you'll come upon Lori Lisa.
The original idea was to convert it into a place of respite, or a school for wayward girls. But the truth of the matter, it's too damn hot out there in the summers to do much but lay around in the shade. It's 120 degrees, no joke. The Marines train out here before they go to the middle east. The Mars Rover trained out here before going to Mars. To be honest, the climate kicked my ass.
Now, I rent out my haunted shack for film shoots, or give my friends a Breaking Bad adventure where we have mini-photo shoots. It's my dream that a film company will pay me to blow it up. Or maybe SRL will come down and do a show and blast it on fire. Or maybe someday I will blow it up myself. Anyway, here's a photo from my latest antics out there. Come visit me, bring some cameras, costumes and maybe I'll take you out there to experience it for yourself! xxx
I am not infallible. I only pretend. I have created this shell around me to protect my (fecund loamy black) heart. The shell is cracking. The flaws in my persona are showing. Wings protrude. I only pretend to be strong. To be a bad ass. To take care of myself. I had no choice in the matter. I had to become strong. It was become a bad ass or ??? be overpowered? give up the possibility of being who I wanted to be? a possibility I never for one considered. I never had a choice to be soft. To not take (my own) power. But being who I (thought I) wanted to be and who you are, are not the same. I only wanted others to feel free in their expression. I only wanted to be free in my expression. (Free, not push the expression to the extreme.)
O Queen of Angels, I now understand. Here in the magical arms of your asphalt streets, it doesn't matter. You have wiped our slates clean, like after a Catholic confession. We come to you with our dream, our ambitions. We leave the who we were behind, in the street of San Francisco or midwest fields of grain. Here we create who we want to be. Even if that is not who we are. An illusion based in our own reality. Empowered by you. Our hearts are broken. Our hearts are lifted. Our lives changed. We change ourselves through you. We become the self we always dreamed. Our dreams come true.
And now I am done. I have breathed your air deep into my lungs. Every cell in my body has LAified. And I am ready to change again. I have become who I wanted to be. And it is very satisfying. An achievement in itself. But perhaps that is not who I actually am. A shocking idea. Of all people, have I betrayed myself by being so true to my ideal of myself that I have missed some aspect of my authenticity? We shall see.
I never thought this day would come. Although here it is. So unknown and so clear. These years of understanding, devotion. I have loved no other, as I have loved you. Here I am, heathervescent, one of 4 million, wrapped in your asphalt paved arms, under your vanilla sky.
I have wondered, at times, where I might go, should I leave you. No city in the United States can match your tough elegance, your grit and glamour. Where in the world could I go? West Texas? Rio de Janeiro? The answer: unknown.
I shouldn't be surprised. I've been bored with my life for a bit. I've been asking for, desiring an adventure. Be careful what you wish for right? I'm never careful for what I wish for. It's what my heart desires. An adventure pulls up, a door opens, and I get in. Life is short and we all die. And life is long and has many twists and turns.
This time, you're the Queen of Spain sending me off to the new world. Except you're my Queen, La Dona, and we're already on the edge of the world. Where can I go from here? I have no idea. But I know with the same certainty that lead me into your arms, that I'm going.
A list of emotions I had last night. I'm all about understanding complex emotions, so when I had a super juicy reaction last night, I sat down in the eye of the storm of my emotions and identified them. Why not post them on my blog for future reference? Because this set of emotions triggered a string of similar ones (and a bunch more) from a few months ago. And I'm actively working on de-threading all this stuff.
This is totally legit. I want to be accommodating. "NO WORRIES" BUT I AM FUCKING PISSED.
No, I'm not really. I'm just sad. "Here we go again, just like with the ---- thing."
I don't want to make an effort.
Trying not to identify with things that are triggering me. Like I'm not worth it .... this whole thread of self-pity, but also laced with the fuck it double-down I have nothing to lose to try again.
But then there was that sparkly feeling in R's office and I told her to BRING IT! So I ALSO TRUST IN THE ME OF NOW.
Good luck, bad luck, who the fuck knows.
All this while I am on the dog walk, cheerfully chatting with my neighbors, looking at the moon, breathing in the cool air.
So there. These are all the top level emotions I had roiling. You wanna know where that effervescence comes from? There.
It's pretty amazing to feel this cocktail of emotions at the same time, and yet, with my meditation practice, to both identify and fully taste the emotion and be able to detach from it, give a name, and be non-judgmental about all these feelings I am both feeling and not feeling.
And in the end, to be kind to myself. Because I trust myself. I trust what I am doing, and good luck, bad luck, who the fuck knows. I'm not in control and I don't want to be, so I'm just gonna have these emotional experiences and watch them, feel them and learn about myself.
I spent a lot of Sunday morning looking through my feed and equally getting updates on Houston flooding, the protests in SF and Berkeley. But here in LA, the weather is great, I've walked Mr D, talked to my neighbors, gave my landlord (who lives next door to me) a loaf of bread I made for him yesterday, and I'm gearing up for some writing. As I was taking all this in, I was thinking about that Chinese proverb, goes something like, good luck bad luck, who knows - basically saying you never know whether something that seems "good" is going to end up "good" or "bad."
I've been corresponding with a new friend about our shared meandering paths around the warrior ethos - we both studied Aikido, have been exposed to US Military culture, and ended up with a Zen perspective. He wrote:
"We are drawn to Zen to help accept what we cannot change, but also to focus our power on what we can."
Which caused me to revisit a thought I've had in recent months - as I grapple with my inner conflict for protesting and confrontation (two things I am not normally meek about). I have this feeling like there is maybe something more I should do... that I should want to fight the fight with fighting. But I don't want to fight. The whole aikido attitude is about taking the energy and redirecting it back to a place where the attacker is not able to harm anyone, even himself. But I wonder, how am I able to do that?
You see this in trolling online. If one is not careful, the emotion can infect and take you over. And maybe this is where the aikido comes in, but not through physical interaction, but the emotional interactions.
My mantra for the past year or so has been "Calm and Drama free." At first I was focused on reducing the things in my life that caused drama - the things I had control over. That was relatively easy. Then it became clear that no matter how calm and drama free I made *my* life, others would bring drama into it: my upstairs neighbors, clients, normal dramas dealing with people, hey, even I create drama at times. So I worked on techniques to minimize the drama that was created. A big part of that was in not getting hooked by the emotion and create a kind of vaccine against these negative emotions.
Meditation helps a lot with this detachment. You go ahead and feel the emotion, identify it as such, but make no judgment about it. You let it go and flow. Non-identification.
Sometimes I feel like I'm metaphorically smacking a negative emotion down - someone brings some drama into my circle, I then attempt to "catch" the emotion and pin it to the ground - ikkyu works great. Now that I'm writing this on the ole blog, I think the concepts of tenkan and irimi work with the concept of emotional aikido. You can enter into the emotion, and you can turn away from the emotion so you and your opponent are both facing the direction. In both cases, you want to disarm the emotion so it doesn't hurt you or the attacker.
Irimi takes heart, vulnerability, and courage. I would say this is the emotional technique I am working with most right now. Taking my vulnerable, courageous, electrified, chain-mailed heart to battle for humanity. Entering into their fear with a calmness of my own.
I remember some times practicing on the mat, back in the Berkeley gym. The level of intimacy of practice at times remains terrifying even in my memory. I wanted to be a warrior of force, but I find my strength these days is that of using my heart. To enter into places no sword can go. I have practiced aikido more years off the mat by now, than I did on.
So maybe in writing this, I've answered my own worry about wanting to do more about the whole "protesting stuff." For me it's more about the emotional warfare. Instead of the protesting in your face stuff, I'm fighting for the freedom of your heart.
Thanks to my awesome new friend for provoking these introspections. I look forward to our continued conversations. <3.
La Dona, I feel our time together is running short. This is a strange feeling. The love I've had for you these 13 years, the grounding, the support, the magic, the literal ground beneath my feet. How can I think to leave you? I have drawn so deeply from the well of this basin. I have co-evolved as you have.
I don't know my destination. Or even when my ship sails, but I feel the need to prepare. I suppose it was inevitable, what with my desire for a new adventure. Will you be like that Queen of Spain and bestow a blessing on your loyal servant before my journey? So I may journey into the unknown and bring back to you a bounty?
I'm bored with my life. I'm bored with being myself. I'm bored with overcoming the same set of problems I've overcome before. Proving what a bad ass I am over and over and over.
I want new adventures. I want new bigger projects. I want new problems to solve. I want someone worthy to follow.
Last summer my Dad and conversed about Nihilism. I was looking for a connection between anarchism and socialism. (I think anarchism and socialism have a lot more in common than you might think. I'm an anarchist/mutualist: mutual non-hierarchal cooperation is my definition of the anarchism I believe in.) In my search, I came across this paper about Anarchism and Nihilism (and later Anarchism vs Socialism) in the context of Russian Bolsheviks. It was a fascinating read, and I sent it onto my dad to get his perspective on nihilism. (A topic we had never explicitly discussed, we stick to stoics, zen and existentialism.) His reply is more relevant than ever (8/8/2016)
I think Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche describe passive nihilism well. I have always thought of nihilism as too cynical; open to corruption, almost welcoming it. I may be antiquated, but I believe in the rule of law, but that is not the belief today when we see the rule of law shunned. Examples everyday of rationalizing why a law doesn't apply, when it does. Nihilism exists and will finally convert to radical nihilism. We live in an age when the oligarchs divert the citizens attention from inner conflict by distracting us with unrighteous wars, calling them, cynically, "good war". Existentialism is replaced with deconstruction. We fight to permit multiple moralities while at the same time discriminating those who don't follow the main. The system will finally crash and revert to despotism when the economy fails, soon. Even science will not be able to save us. A new religion will rise as the critic, a d the process will begin again with new oligarchs, the strong. For a while the oligarchs will hold off the fall with the millions of new police, but eventually and quickly, militias will form that will take them out and a new medieval era could emerge.
Wow, Dad was sure ahead of his time last summer. I know what we're going to talk about on Friday.