October is the fallen leaf, but it is also a wider horizon more clearly seen. It is the distant hills once more in sight, and the enduring constellations above them once again.
~Hal Borland

The Santa Ana winds haven't come. They usually do in October, but not this year. It's a pity, because I've come to see them as an annual visit from my beloved desert, a reminder that things are not what they seem, even when they appear dried out and lifeless.

What October did bring this year was the Very Scary Work Thing, the collapse of what seemed at first to be a promising romantic relationship, the death of a long-ago friend, the evaporation of some hopeful plans I'd made, and finally, the Thud! of a last-minute Halloween cancellation that seemed the cherry on a ghoulish sundae.

Imagine my delight at waking, rested and energetic this morning at 6:15. In November.

I got right to work with my Morning Routine, clearing the detritus of a sad, sad month... later, bed made, bathroom sparkling, with the laundry in the washing machine and breakfast in my belly, I went out into the world to wash and gas up the Mobile Empire, and seek provisions for the coming week.

I cleared out the dead roses that have graced my dresser for too long, and replaced them with sunny yellow ones.

I paid the rent, made a menu plan for the week, and chose the clothes I'd like to wear to work tomorrow.

I invited three friends over for dinner and board games Thursday night, and made plans to go for burgers with another friend on Friday.

I penciled in a 12-step meeting for Monday, and a hooping (as in Hula-) class for Thursday afternoon.

And I got a call from Paul, letting me know that his Spidey Senses are telling him that tonight's ceremony is shaping up to be more of a party than a "ritual," after all... so, even if the Empress never made it to the ball last night, she still gets a fiesta today.

What's up for me, more and more lately, is that it's time to wipe the slate clean of everything I've been thinking I want, and frolic in the empty space that creates. I've gotten a little attached to my intentions of late, and I think it's made me somewhat intense. Hard to believe, but true ;)

Let the wild rumpus begin...

Car crashing into garage door = new and improved garage door.
~Anonymous

I've been on some sort of autopilot since returning from Esalen in August... it hasn't been unpleasant, but this morning, I took alook around my bedroom and thought, Who lives here? It doesn't feel like me anymore. Which I think is fantastic, because the "me" of the past few years was some version of Breakup Girl, and now I'm... well, not.

Lately, my life involves a lot of Road Tripping up & down California, living with the OBF (so much better than living alone!), and dating like a "normal" person. Meaning that I'm no longer worried that every man I connect with is the Last Chance Ever.

Somehow, I went from wearing business suits every day to being this dreadlocked, tattooed Earth mama, who occasionally trips up the coast to dance, or lie around naked. It's all pretty good, and I'd like to make some more changes, so that my outsides better reflect my insides, which are all pretty and shiny these days.

I'll keep you posted.

You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip.
~Jonathan Carroll

I did trip, literally, a week and a half ago! It did not escape my attention that the person who helped me up and asked if I was all right was not my lover. In fact, he never asked.

Still, there was enough good stuff there that I chose to hang around a while longer and see what unfolded, but not much more did. I was shown the door last Friday. Ouch!

Thank goodness the OBF & I had tickets to see Cirque du Soleil that afternoon. It's nearly impossible to wallow in self-pity when you're at the circus with your best friend. Afterward, we sealed the deal with BBQ from Outdoor Grill. The Empress is a free agent, once again.

It's actually been sort of a magical few days...

Saturday night, I went to a gallery opening at Art & Mayhem with a friend of mine... we went down the street to Viet Noodle for a bite to eat and some good conversation afterward. On Sunday, I led a breathing circle (that went really well), and afterward I ended up at the same cafe with a different friend, and more good conversation.

Yesterday was a day off, so I went down to the Korean spa for a milk & honey body scrub... I used to love going for the scrubs, where I always say they scrub you like you did something bad, but Miss Perchina turned me onto the milk & honey thing... after the scrub, they rub you like you did something good... and they do it with honey!

All sorts of scintillating happenings this week, alone: Hair Day is Wednesday ("Change your hair, change your life!"), I've got drinks on Thursday with a new friend, and Friday, I'm teaching meditation at a new-to-me location. The OBF & I have a good costume planned for the Haunted Circus themed bash we're attending Saturday night, and on Sunday night, I'll be breathing with the inimitable Paul du Gre. If anybody can hold space for clearing out the cobwebs after my recent adventures, it's him. But the milk & honey thing really helped...

There are all kinds of opportunities and invitations flooding in, and I'm in a space to embrace the abundance.

Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.
~Bob Dylan

Every so often, a white-out happens. A month ago, I felt grounded and happy, and for the past few days, I've been feeling surrounded by landmines. Like if I make a move in any direction, everything will be blown to bits.

It started with the Very Scary Work Thing... which is exacerbated by its inherent limitation to not discuss it publicly. The people who could offer me the most comfort are my colleagues, and I can't talk to them about it. It also laid claim to every weekend in November and December, making it impossible for me to leave town, which is my favorite hard reset.

This all happened in the middle of a growing romantic connection that hit its own speed bump without any help from me. So here we were, trying to stabilize from that, and the Empress gets hit with some shaky First Chakra stuff. Sexy.

Okay, so now we've had a couple of big hits to my Root and Creativity/Sexuality centers. Working our way up, we get to Chakra 3, the-- whatdoyoucallit? where Captain Kirk and Mr Spock sit?-- "control center?" It's how I navigate, how I know who I am, and right now, the information that's jamming my wires tells me that who I am is someone who is at risk for not being able to support herself the way she knows how, and who may have opened her heart way too wide for someone who, however attracted he is to her bright-and-shininess, appears unprepared to receive and ground out her squidginess. For what it's worth, he has a life of his own, and though he's been stoic, it's entirely possible that his lower Chakras are getting a little shake-up of their own. Just a thought...

Terrible timing, though, this one-two punch.

My acupuncturist told me once that when my-- BRIDGE! They control the ship from the bridge!-- isn't fully engaged, that my Heart Chakra takes over, and emanates a force field to keep me safe. And while I appreciate the help, "protection" just really isn't my heart's area of expertise, and so it usually does a sloppy job.

In the face of a perceived threat (say, for example, when my livelihood feels threatened, or when Love appears to be retreating from my open, happy space), my autonomic nervous system has a default setting of "Freeze." I didn't choose it consciously, of course, it's a factory setting, but I highly prefer it to "Fight" which can render things irreparable, or "Flight," which carries the inherent risk of returning to empty, ransacked spaces. I've done it, but the re-building takes a lot out of me.

Built on a foundation of Survival Issues, with a ground floor of "LOVE ME!", moving up through a self-image that's currently wandering in a House of Mirrors, and passing through a panicky, paralyzed heart, we find ourselves arriving at the Throat Chakra. Poor little Throat, what can she say? "None of this is really me, but it's kind of running my life right now, and I need YOU to see through the illusion so that you can reach past it and infuse me with enough of YOUR groundedness such that it will wash all the way back down through this convoluted sticky stuff that has me bound like Gulliver with a million tiny threads, any one of which would be insignificant, but they have ganged up on me, and now I'm motionless and embarrassed?"

That's pretty good, actually...

Having uttered my run-on sentence plea for help, we need to follow it and see whose listening.

The next Chakra up is my Third Eye, my center of intuition. Still me, but me... higher. Down on Level 3, housewares, linens, sense-of-self, there's a nice view into the treetops which is pretty peaceful, but when the storms hit, you want to be up here on Six where you can see above the clouds...

I guess the person that gets to help untie the threads is Sixth Chakra Juju. The one who gets what's going on, here, who knows the back story and understands what buttons are being pushed.

Listen, my brain already knows that I am a perfect child of God, and that everything is happening for a good and Divine reason. But there's this little ball of whatever inside of me that screams bloody murder the moment my footing gets shaky. So we have to do this methodically.

Ultimately, we end up at the Empress' favorite Chakra of all: The Crown. The place that connects our humanity to the Divine. That's where the good stuff happens. That's where we get to drink a cold beer and pay attention to what's in front of us, instead of the creeping fears that we'll never earn another dollar or wake up next to someone who loves us. That's where we know that, even if those realities do come to pass, we are perfect, whole and complete, so we might as well just relax into the day.

I knew I'd get there (here?) the whole time, but life is about the journey, right? It's the process that matters, really.

Right?

Walk. Don't walk.
~Traffic Light

I'm not sure whether I just started walking, or whether I just stopped walking, but either way, the change of state feels good.

I started seeing the Shaman just as the Very Scary Work Thing started... like someone put healthy doses of eustress and distress in the Supercollider and hit "Frappe." That button probably doesn't actually exist, but a frappe does sound good right now... like the ones they make in Greece, with the Nescafe... whose products I have mostly boycotted since the Baby Formula Incident in the early eighties, but that coffee sure is tasty, especially on a hot day... but I digress...

We like each other a lot, the Shaman and I, and in our excitement about that, we dug a little too deeply a little too fast, and dinged one of those water mains that hasn't been replaced since 1912. Oh, sure, it's been patched, and it's held up fine till now, but even pure, clean water puts pressure on pipes when you send too much of it through too quickly. It doesn't have to be toxic to be too much.

So, we're returning to the sexy little trickle we started with, and some peace has returned to the Empire...

The Very Scary Work Thing remains, and all I can really do is show up to the best of my ability, tell the truth, and hope it goes fairly quietly into that good night. I'm afraid I haven't much faith that it will, though, and anxiety courses through my being like the hum of the electrical wires... you don't really notice it during the hustle and bustle of the day, but at night, when things are quiet, it's all I can hear. It's been a long time since things have felt this much potential for bleakness, and once it passes, I hope it's a long time before I feel it again.

Next time you're mad, try dancing out your anger.
~Sweetpea Tyler

I'm so grateful to my sleeping bag quarters roommate for his anger, because it's teaching me a lot about my own.

In his waking hours, this guy is fairly sweet and generous, but in the evening he has a glass of wine or two, and his tongue begins to loosen just a bit. Something about his tone becomes vaguely ominous. After he falls asleep, the rage leaks out his mouth. He talks in his sleep and he. is. pissed. He wakes up angry, while it's still dark out, and storms out.

I keep my distance, even in the daytime, even when he's saying sweet and generous things. Because I know what's under the surface, and I want to keep myself safe even more than I want to comfort him. He's clearly been hurt, maybe rejected, and he's doing his best to keep his anger to himself. This isn't the sort of thing we can control. Ask me how I know...

When I was feeling the most hurt, the most angry, the most likely to bite the hands that were trying to feed me, all but the most oblivious or damaged people stayed away (and, it must be said, a very small handful of conscious, courageous souls who deserve my eternal gratitude). Because loving someone doesn't obligate you to put your heart into their meat-grinder.

When the dust finally settled, I looked around to see that the people who loved me had been there all the time, holding space, waiting for my heart to stop Tasmanian Deviling everything that came near it. Eventually, as all things do, it passed.

You were there the whole time.

Thank you.

When Bad Christians Happen to Good People
~Sign at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Burbank

Yesterday I had an IM conversation with someone at work that went like this:

Her: The problem with the new software is that we're going to have to re-enter this data every time we log in.
Me: No we don't. The program saves the data.
Her: John told me it doesn't.
Me: Mine did.
Her: Oh. Mine did, too. I wonder why John had problems.
Me: Mercury is still in retrograde.
Her: What? I don't understand!
Me: It's still Mercury Retrograde. That's probably why John's settings didn't save.
Her: What is Mercury Retrograde?
Me: It's a planetary alignment thing. Mercury governs communication, and during the periods it appears to be going backward, technology in particular tends to go haywire. Kind of like how things get all screwy when the Santa Ana winds blow.

(looooooong pause)

Her: I believe in something even better: God, who created the planets and the wind, and governs everything.

Me: (X-ing out the conversation window)