Mirrors In a Weird Ass Nutshell

"And the wind blows up his coat and this he scribbles on a perfumed note
if I'm not here, then you're not here."
Sheryl Crow

Interesting.  I can't get the text to align left.  No matter how many times I click on align left, I am stuck in the middle.  I wouldn't call it "non-duality," but Kimmy Sue and Ruby Lou may be forced to join hands for this one.  How annoying. 

Seriously.  This is fucking annoying.

There is no beginning or end to this, only what is.  What it is is uncomfortable.  And being in the middle is probably the most comfortable place to be, but it could also be said that truth resides there...which isn't necessarily comfortable.

Am I cocky?  To a degree, yes.  Am I cryptic?  Sure, but it comes naturally.  I love a good blues song for these very reasons.  To be honest, I have always preferred naughty innuendo to the vulgarity that you hear in some forms of music today.  I'll take Bessie Smith over Missy Elliot any day.

Not dissin' Missy.  She has a few choice words that put a grin on my face! 

I'm also as scared, insecure and confused as any other soul forced to land on this crazy, forsaken planet.  Some of us are just better at hiding from this.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  We are all on a path unique to who we are and where we're at in terms of what we're ready to evolve.
 

No one escapes this life unharmed, but everyone has the potential to break through the walls that harm builds.  It's a process.  Choose your method.  And, most importantly, don't back down.  Grab the biggest sledge hammer you can find and knock the holy fucking hell out of that wall. 

(On the off chance that saying holy and fucking in the same sentence is a mortal sin, I am forgiven.  I was baptized in South Carolina, which means I can do whatever I want and Jesus will still open the door and let me in.  I'm so glad I'm not Catholic...purgatory does not appeal to me.)

In the manner of "controlled chaos," I'm going to jump to the subject of meditation. Loosely. Years ago, I had the unusual experience of meditating with a very tall, very androgynous Irish woman named Johanne. I have an annoying habit of seeing faces when meditating with another, and this was no exception. At the end of our session, she asked me what I saw. Well, I saw a series of faces "in the mirror."  The only face I was compelled to mention was that of a very evil looking man.  I told her I thought it was something I saw in her. 

And then she asked me a very poignant question:  "How do you know it wasn't you?"

In a nutshell, we have all been victims and we have all been perpetrators.  From that perspective,
how can you judge anyone or anything? 

You can't. You shouldn't. It's wrong.

Judgment may very well be the only wrong there is.

The only thing that is right is forgiveness. 

And without forgiveness...the wall remains.

So, I'm cocky enough to put myself out there in crazy and embarrassing ways...but that's okay.  We all have a purpose. And if my cockiness and craziness resonates with you, amen.  Believe me when I say that the only pain more unbearable than my own...is yours. 

Source

Pillow Talk Around the World

From a distance, you look like my friend

even though we are at war...Bette Midler (Julie Gold)

Long before I moved to Atlanta and wandered into my first blues joint, I was a Carolina girl.  I had big hair, big cars and a big tendency to find myself in funny situations. Or maybe I convinced myself they were funny.  Those were some tough years, but a sense of humor did get me through.

At age 20,  I had one of those "love at first sight" experiences - an 18-year old Palestinian who had just arrived and was getting his first taste of America.  Seriously, it was like one of those scenes in a movie when boy meets girl, eyes lock and you just know that nothing will ever be the same.  And it wasn't.

I don't know who was more naive.  He taught me how to say I love you and hairbrush (hair has always been important to me) in Arabic, and I taught him how to kiss.  Not that I was all that experienced. I was a late bloomer when it came to intimacy. But I do remember that we were young and pillow talk consisted of his stories of growing up in Beirut, Lebanon...bombings, studying by candlelight and poor vision at a very young age as a result, Yasser Arafat making his rounds to check on everyone, his mother struggling to raise three sons alone because his father died in his 40's, his mother worrying every time her sons left the house.  Forget the history books or the news, he took me there.  I could only share a life in rural South Carolina and my earliest memories of desegragation...riding my bike through corn fields, marching bands, my mother's health food store on Main Street, climbing trees and then crying for my mother to get me down (coming down is always the scary part).  And somehow it all made perfect sense that we were together at that time.  People are just people right? 

We were both so caught up in our own little world that the consequences caught us both off guard.  Did I mention that he was a virgin and we made a baby the very first time?  I said we were both naive didn't I?

The next two years were interesting.  The oldest brother was flown to America to oversee this situation since he was the man of the house.  I will never forget oldest brother.  He was very stern as he lectured me about his people.  Needless to say, I got my first real taste of culture clash...something I had never considered.  He told me they didn't do these things (really?) and that there were required classes in abstinence.  I wasn't much of a smartass then, but I remember telling him that little brother obviously skipped his. It was the weirdest experience of my life.  I can still see him standing in front of me, all serious and pointing fingers.  I was too curious and incredulous to say much. I was taking it all in.  There was an Arabic man outside my classroom door in Greenville, South Carolina...lecturing me.  I half wondered if Arafat was on his way to save my little Palestinian from the wicked Western whore!  I didn't argue with him, I intuitively knew better. 

I knew that his family was going to make him come home and that was that. 

My parents kept our precious little girl so that we could spend one last night together, and the next morning he took a taxi to the airport and I got up and got ready for work.  The sudden separation was worse than the flu and all the sickness was in a race to come out, as quickly as possible.  But I got over it and focused on raising a daughter.

Something was awakened in me by that connection and my spiritual journey began, for that experience was on a level of existence that knew nothing of segregation, religious wars and walls. These things seemed irrelevant.

Actually, it has always seemed irrelevant to me.  I can't stomach the media with its graphic and glorified production of what's going on in this world.  We watch in horror and disgust, then change the channel.  And if we talk about it at all, we take sides.  If you ask me, money isn't the root of all evil...it's taking sides.

Duality exists because of these sides and walls are a manmade construct.  Bridges are far more useful.

KS:  How do I get past this wall?
RL:  Silly girl, stop climbing...walk!