heathervescent

Roses for Gloria

Spring has sprung at the Future. Moki and I walk through the tall grass in the canyon. I watch the hawks in the sky. I see buds break into bloom on the trees. And I remember a year ago. The walks in the canyon with Gloria, our conversations, planning of projects both for the house, for our writing and livelihood. Most walks these days are alone - just the Moki dog and myself. Sam comes along sometimes if he has time before heading to work. I walk the same streets, climb the big stairs and remember how winded I used to get. I drag the Moki dog on long walks in the canyon. It's a give and take between exercise and sniff time.

Gloria and I used to often talk about the ways we'd improve the Future. Mosaic, murals, painting, planting, fountains, the tree house. Some of the projects we've completed (some mosaicing and painting) others are still to be done, like the mural on our wall. And then there are the ongoing projects, like the garden. A few weeks before she left for Italy, we spend a day or so cleaning the yard and doing some small planting. I have big plans for the gardens this year. (Shady terrace garden, front garden, side down garden.) And I've been trying to wait for Gloria to return before I start. But she is needed for more and more time, even though, I know that she would return in a heartbeat if she could.

Yesterday I could wait no longer. I've been mapping out the garden with ferns, Calla lillies, roses, purple daisies. I stopped by Home Depot yesterday and picked out a conservative (by my standards) number of plants. Three rose bushes, some Calla lillies, my absolute favorite tree ferns that I have fantasied about for years, sage and some other flowers.

They sky looked ominous, so Moki and I got right down to work. Plants were unloaded, gloves donned and garden tools plucked. We dug, plowed, furrowed and planted, pressed and gave the new plants a quick drink, before the sky opened up started to rain.

This morning, the roses had moist droplets on barely opened petals. I can't wait for the sun to come out, dry off the rain and warm them. And I hope they are in full bloom to greet Gloria when she finally walks through the gate.

GTD makes you sane, gives you control

I've been a big fan of GTD since I got on it last year. I've always been an extremely organized person in work and life, but implementing GTD has allowed me to take my life to a different level. I keep track of the infrastructure of my life in my book, which allows my brain to think about exciting projects and possibilities and then my body executes on those ideas, which are later tracked in the book. It's a cycle of success that allows me to focus my laser beam attention on many diverse projects - and easily add new projects to the workload with minimal impact. (Um, like my ceiling falling in.)

Sunday morning, The Boyfriend (TB) is feeling stressed because he has so many projects in his head and feels like he doesn't have time to do any of them. Let alone pick which one he wants to work on. So I suggested that maybe it was the day to get him on GTD. (He's been interested about it since I went on it.) So Sunday afternoon we went through my bookcase of blank books and found one that was perfect for him. (It was a mini-moleskine.) I pulled out my stick-on tabs and we found a pen that he liked. In GTD, it's really important to have materials you like. Because if you like them, you'll use them. I took him on a tour of my book and we picked out categories for his book (Project list, @Computer, @Home, @Errands, Business, @Agenda and added a calendar that I printed off of Outlook). Then we started the brain dump.

I've never GTDed someone before, so this was really interesting to me. It was part conversation, part coach, part task-master, part psychologist. Personalizing GTD is important to its success. Part of that is figuring out HOW you think about projects. TB is very organized and has very specific ways of thinking about projects. Some of these ways worked very well with GTD - and other ways of thinking needed to be tweaked. The whole action list (@Computer, @Home, @Phone, etc) is a novel concept. Tasks and actions are not prioritized. They go on a single list.

We spent about an hour brain dumping his projects into the book and then picking a few to figure out the next actions for. Once we were finished he looked over the project list and said, "That's a manageable list." And I could see his relief in knowing what all his projects were and what he needed to do next to "get things done."

And that's a great feeling - knowing that all your ideas are in a safe place and available at any moment. Knowing that you don't have to actively think about each and every project, and more importantly, having the power to decide what you do and when - and not be motivated by fear and anxiety.

Save that, for when the ceiling falls in.

Photo is a picture of my GTD notebook. Complete with Heart's Challenger sticker.

And it all comes down

The Boyfriend and I were watching _The Island_ Tuesday night. The final climax of the movie was on the screen, where they're busting down the central command. Wheels are spinning, bridges are breaking and swinging. I've got the sound hooked up to my stereo system and my new speakers, so it's very clear. Then all of a sudden, we hear this crash and shock. Did it come from the movie? Or from the house? It sounded like something fell over. We jumped up and started to look around, but it wasn't until I went down into the lower level (my lair) that I found the source of the noise.

I found a mess of wet plaster, paint chips and sheet rock spewed all over my precious Persian rug and couch. When I looked up, wet insulation dripped and ragged edges of sheet rock were holding onto what was left of the ceiling by a bare piece of mesh tape. I'm thinking - oh great. Just what I need on top of continued dog duty, multi-house duty, various job duty, not to mention barely recovered from food poisoning, dealing with car hit and run drama. Let's add ceiling crashed down. At 11pm at night.

My only guess is that there was some leak in the roof that caused the whole area to get soaked and hold water until it collapsed. Now I get to deal with my insurance company some more. And I really love them these days.

If I look at this symbolically, it's an interesting sign. The ceiling's been blown out. There's nowhere to go but up. The sky is the limit. And I can deal with this all. And probably more. But universe, please, send some love my way. Cause I'm starting to feel like the left-out child. And I'm over here doing some serious heavy lifting and my arms are shaking and are you even noticing?

Announcing The Daily Mantra

I've been working on a new blog for a couple weeks and I'm finally ready to unveil it to you. Let me introduce you to .... drum roll .... Daily Mantra. Daily Mantra is a metaphysical blog. I'm still trying to get the voice and to do that, I need YOUR INTERACTION. So please, go on over and check it out. Post a comment. Tell me if you like something, or you think something is crap.

I'm covering interesting metaphysical news and topics, while keeping my feet on the ground. Let me know what you think!

Now the Sky IS the Limit

Universal challenges on both sides of the spring equinox prove that the sky is the limit and there is nothing holding me back. Silver linings to all clouds of rain. You thought you would throw me a distraction, well, you don't realize you're dealing with a purple tornado, do you?

On Health

I've got a strong immune system and I'm not one to cash in the sick days. My illnesses are few and far between, but when I'm hit, I can't but help to thank the world, or god or whomever, that I am not debilitated for more than a few days.

I got my second bit of food poisoning last night. Just in time to ring in spring, I was vomiting all the last bits in my stomach into the wee hours of the night. I suppose it's a fitting ritual in a way. Physically ridding myself of poison, just like I've been ridding my life of poisoning people and heavy stones in the last week.

It's not a easy experience, and my bowels and psyche writhe as the poison is processed most unpleasantly. I'd rather die than be sick. But I have to remember, when the poison is gone and my health and effervescent returns, I've got the best projects and activities to do. So, it's just riding out the bumpy part of the ride.

Update

Another 5 days have gone by on the blog without a peep. It's been a busy weekend. I've been in West Hollywood for most of the time, unexpectedly. From day to night, I don't know where I'll stay. I take the necessities with me: eyeliner, dog, laptop and a mish-mash of business and club clothes. Meeting plans change on the fly and my schedule and attire shift instantly. I've got a wardrobe costume change in my trunk. And I'm fine with that. Instead of irritation at the flux of everything around me, I blend and change. Endless changing. Endless blending and separating, like different temperature in a river stream.

My life used to be a series of habits, rituals, routes. It would have been easy to stalk me. But now, from day to day, I don't know where I'll be or what I'll be doing. It's like a line from a Bjork song: "I don't know my future, after this weekend, and I don't want to."

There's a big opening. And I've recently cut away the last chain. So there's this void. A gap. A space. A vacuum where anything can happen.

Goodbye letters

I've sent my share of goodbye letters. Generally I end them with "have a nice life" and I truly mean it. It's the cutting free of a friendship or relationship gone down the wrong path. When you get a goodbye letter from me, I mean it. I'll give you a certain number of chances. But when I've reached then end, out comes the sword.

I used to try to always leave the door open. If the other person wanted to come around again at some future time, maybe I would be interested, but no longer. I've learned I'm a person who does not turn back. A fallacy I used to believe about myself (to make me feel better about sling-shotting myself into new and further locations) was that I can always take a step back. Yeah, I spent a lot of time keeping that one last step available to me, and never once, did I take that step back. Once I made a leap, I never looked back. So I'm removing that piece of code from my programming.

It's hard to realize that some people in your life are not going to be in it for the entire time. Or often even for a moment, but as I get older and wiser I realize that is the case. And that's fine. The right people come into your life exactly when you need them. And until you make room for new fabulous people and projects, those things won't be able to come into your life.

So here's to flushing out the soul-sucking drama. Here's to flushing out people who suck suck suck only on your blood, giving nothing in return, but recurring drama. Here's to flushing out clueless business partners who will take absolutely everything they can from everyone.

Here's the space for new collaborators. To create amazing projects. To execute on dreams and desires that will change the lives of billions of people. What that is, I'm not specifically sure. But I'm aiming for it. And when I fly solo, I always hit my mark.

morning thoughts

Up early again. The San Gabriel's are shrouded in ground fog, the white caps poking into the clear blue sky. I am reminded of cold desert mornings: smoke in my eyes, cold wind in my face. Effortless coffee from the kitchen this morning. View over the desk. Yellow flowers, bright sun over the hills and I'm faced with a decision. What is important to me? What do I focus my energy on accomplishing? Plans made at night often feel different in the morning, even when it is a perfect plan.

And I'm trying to keep a low profile after the whirlwind that was yesterday. The big news of yesterday, is that I figured out who hit my car in that hit and run accident two weeks from yesterday. But for now, I keep silent. And psych myself up for executing a strategy in a different war.

On Antagonism

"We live in a predatory universe. In order to evolve we need antagonism. Evolution without antagonism, meaning without something always trying to eliminate us, or fight us, or stop us; forcing us to get stronger, better and smarter and evolve, there is no evolution.

And evolution is the very movement of life. Evolution is life. So without antagonism, there is no life."
- Felix Wolf via Ryan S

On Doppelgangers

My first doppelganger was in high school. I found out about her from my high school sweetheart and now x-husband (I think he tried to date her). I never met her. She apparently hated me. I don't even remember her name.

It's true, she looked a lot like me. Same shoulder length blonde hair. Quirky hippish dark haired best friend. (My best friend also had dark longer hair.) I saw her picture once and I was taken aback because I didn't remember the picture being taken. Well, of course I wouldn't - it wasn't me - but it looked very much like me.

I've got two current doppelgangers of a sort. I'll start with the easier one, because she's pretty much out of the picture, although I'm absolutely certain of the life she is living. I lived it. I met her about a year ago, sharing the same birthday month. She was solidly in her LA scene. I was new to LA fresh from subversive SF offerings. We slowly started to spin closer and bump into each other a bit. The small bits of information we exchanged excited us. Wow - what another cool person to meet and know and hang out with. It wasn't that surprising for me to find someone like me - what was surprising was to find _how much_ like me she was. Or how much like her I was. I was excited to plan and do all these cool projects with her. She had the same crazy ideas and executed on them. I dreamt of the crazy shit we'd come up with and create.

But then something happened. Burning Man did its magic. She made a suggestion. I recoiled. But the groundwork had already been laid. She left LA and moved north, into my previous life. We basically switched places. (I’m sure she would fight tooth and nail that sentence, and I would too, if I were her.) She's got her gig up north in Oakland. I know the streets she walks her dog on. I could set her up with my x too. And apparently she hates me too. And life could be stranger.

Oh and it is.

Doppelganger #2 is somewhat well known and in the same industry. At a recent party we both attended, I was much amused when someone I had just met pointed to her and said, "You should dye your hair that color." I could only smirk and laugh uproariously. The subversive circles we spin in are similar if not the same. And like my first doppelganger I've never met her, although we have practically brushed shoulder more than once.

At first I thought D#2 sounded like she had similar interests of mine. Perusing her site reminded me of my conversations with Steven Diet Goeddes in 1998 when I had my first Aeon Flux costume made. I was going to fly down to LA to have him photograph me. That never happened as I was deeply entrenched in my San Francisco world, but it was a nice walk down memory lane. Steve’s gone on to get extremely popular in the more mainstream market, I doubt he remembers my excitement in the plans that fell through. I wouldn't have remembered them. In the past year I have learned about more similarities between our interests, and with each unfolding of the lotus leaf, well, another rosebud of the same color.

At first I was irritated. “How dare she be like me?! I’m unique!” The similarities kept pouring in and my thoughts turned to, “this is too weird, she can’t possibly be copying me. And I’m certainly not copying her.” But that’s all high school society and I’m way beyond that. So what is it then? Well, I’ve evolved to who I am because this is who I want to be. I pick and choose the stuff that appeals to me. Cutting edge, subversive, unique, different and pushing the limit in some way. Maybe she's into that stuff too.

Don’t make the mistake. I don’t hate my doppelgangers. How could I? They are merely reflections of myself in this world. And I’m a reflection of them too. I wonder if she has a copy of aUI: the language of space in her bookshelf? And for the same reasons?

The world is full of so many people, how dare I think I be different – even though I have dared to be different my entire life. But I’m a fragile soul and that’s why I carry this sledgehammer.

And that’s where my favorite doppelganger comes in. We’ve known each other for years, back in our previous San Francisco tech start-up lives, but we never really started spinning close until sometime last year. Unlike the previous three doppelgangers described above we are great friends. We’re spinning in a close orbit around and through each other. Feeding off our joint momentum and adding to it. She’s not a best friend, she’s a reflection of myself, and I am of her.

And those other doppelgangers are also reflections, but I’m not looking into those mirrors.

Getting connected

I've lived in LA for almost two years and today I took my first yoga class here.

It's not because I've never taken yoga before. In my SF days, I could almost be considered a yoga nazi. I've done so many styles of yoga, I can't even remember them all. I've taught yoga. I tried Bikram, when there was only one studio in San Francisco and co-practitioners would disappear to LA for months at a time only to reappear as certified Bikram instructors. And I've got my opinions on all styles.

It's not that I've been practicing yoga on my own either. Sure I know most of the basic postures and how to correct and stand and be in those positions. And I have my favorite flow postures. But don't make the assumption that since I know them and have taught them, that I practice them at home. Oh no.

I don't know what it's been that held me back from getting back into yoga. I know the benefits to my body and mind and caffeine induced brain. I feel calmer, more connected and flexible. I've just been putting it off. Until today.

Carmen and I are like two race cars on the track - pacing each other egging the other to take a turn a bit more or open up in the straight-aways - all while keeping pace. We're not racing - we're pacing - at extremely fast speeds. Perhaps we're more like molecules or atoms spinning, gathering momentum and giving more to the momentum which builds the momentum more as we do so.

So she finally spun me up into a yoga class. It was great. It's been so long since I've done the postures and I felt completely inflexible, but that didn't seem to matter. Something in my body remembered the postures. I breathed, kept my judgment aside and relaxed, eventually my muscles did too, and the postures I ended up doing in the next hour amazed me. It was like I never missed a beat in my practice and in fact I was stronger and more powerful than before.

I don't know what to chalk that up to. Power you gain in any discipline can be transfer to any current activity. I wonder what would happen to my sword practice if I took it up again. And I wonder how sore I'll be tomorrow.

Wash that bad mood out of my hair!

This bad mood because of my car has just permeated so much of my life. I hate it. I hate hating life, hating people and thinking everyone (or at least some people) are my enemies. I know it's a bad mood, and it will pass. I try to be detached from the negativity, because I know that it doesn't do anything to revel in it, it's just sometimes hard.

I try the twist method. The murphy's law method. The hex method. The turn the other cheek method. Nothing has worked. The Bad Mood still permeates.

I should have remembered that anytime I'm in a bad mood, I should just pop on some Brazilian music. I finally caught up reading my mailing list email this morning and grabbed this stream by Optimo from earplug. It's a mix of classic Brazilian music mixed together, some classics I've never heard before - or rather earlier versions of songs I know. It's great to get my brain out of English and listening to the Portugues and Brasil. It reminds me of my time there, reminds me of so many things I loved about braselieros, seu jeito.

It's just what I needed to kick the negativity out.

funky nerdophile?

So this post on craigslist missed connections (I don't read it, but my friends do) could sound like me, but I don't give my phone number out at bars (or really ever). Cause a funky nerdophile would only give out an email address (and I'd have to choose from one of about 20 to give you.)

Rage Reminder

"let your rage exhaust itself to your balance point, then focus on the best possible outcome"

Everytime I think about how I have to pay to get my car fixed after someone backed into it and drove away without leaving a note, I can't speak to anyone. So forget about even trying to have a conversation with me on the phone.

Then there's the other completely irresponsible person I started a company with.

At Barcamp

Hey, I'm at LA BarCamp this weekend. Go check out the live blogging over here, thanks to Mack Reed. I'll fill you in on what I'm doing later, but I'm hosting the e-iron chef meets junkyard wars electronics swap and helping with Mistress Chi Chi on the GTD session. It will be lots of fun.

Morning View

It's just a quick post before I get caught up on my writing for my new blog that launched earlier this week. I woke up to rainy morning, but the sky is clearing. Outside my window is a baby hawk. She is sitting in a bare branch watching the sky change from ominous grey clouds to The Orb's little fluffy clouds on a backdrop of blue.

I like watching her watch the sky.

Update: The skies opened up again and started raining. But the hawk sits on the branch. looking around. Nothing in the sky but rain. I like the feeling I have this morning - cozy in my house, looking out at the world, a cup of coffee with cream and lots of ideas to write. Today will be productive.

A Beginning

I was just searching for an old email from Gloria and came across our very first correspondence on May 16th in 2004. I think that with that one message so many things have happened. It was the beginning of an entirely new chapter in my life. It started so quietly that I didn't realize it at the time. And now, I am in the thick of amazing adventures surrounded by amazing people. It's nice to identify and acknowledge where it all began from.

I hate my neighbors

So my car got hit on the street again by one of my inconsiderate neighbors. I know what color truck it was and that the bitch driving had black hair. I hate these people. This is the second hit and run I've had on my car. I love the damn thing, it's so fun to drive, but I have to park it on the street and there are so many inconsiderate people who don't give a shit about destroying someone else's property and not taking responsible.

So what is my response. To be angry. To hex my neighbor. (Note: Don't piss me off. I'll send bad ju-ju your way.) And then to call up the Lotus dealership and schedule a test drive. I don't want to drop $40K on a new car. I don't even want a new car. I want my kick ass saab stick, but maybe the universe is telling me something. So I'll go take a test drive. See if I like it, and then make the money appear.

I'm always up for a challenge.