Â§hria's Spot

Weird day, indeed!

After hunting for gas and paying $1.14 a litre for it at a place that was nearly sold out I headed for home.

Along the way I passed two guys pushing a loveseat down the street on a shopping cart.

"Gee, that's weird," I thought. "That loveseat has no cushions."

No, I didn't think is odd that two guys were pushing it down the street on a shopping cart, the first thing I thought was odd was that it had no cushions.

Does that say something about the way my mind works? If so, what?

The other weird thing that happened was me losing my nerve to do something.
I've been sort of toying with Reiki for a few years. Yes, I know that all you practitioners out there are saying something like, 'you don't toy with Reiki. It is liable to toy with you if you are inconsistent, non-committal and unwilling to invest your time and energy in it.'

But, here I am doing an occasional cleansing exercise, blessing my food when I remember and sort of trying to meditate once in a while. Toying.

About a week ago I bumped into an old friend who just happens to be a third level master, training to be a trainer.

I fully intended to go back to the group I worked with once before and tonight would have been a good time, especially since my friend is affiliated with them, too. I even drove by the house -- ON TIME. But when I saw all the cars outside, I just chickened out.

Me, I chickened out. That's bad. Not my style at all. Time to take this trepidation by the throat, slam it up against a locker and kick the shit out of it!

I think I'll find my Reiki manual and read it by Monday. Then I'll call the leader of that group I just ran away from to ask if I can come back.

And I don't just do news differently, I do Reiki differently, too! LOL

Hah! No quarter given to fear!

Finally, a picture of me I actually like... every day!

Careening through the blackness of a cloudy night so dark I could hardly even see the white line on Second Line East hill I learned to fly.

Truly, you are never so alive as when you are that close to death.

I swear that transport was mere inches from my shoulder as it passed me on the hill -- I was soaring at about 50 kmph and laughing like the fool I am.

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Today I sharpened my own knives.

Then took a nice bike ride for almost an hour. A good ride – nine or 10 km. Okay, not that good, but my bike sucks and in mid-March I had a couple ligaments re-attached in my ankle, so good enough.

My kids and they’re really cool and I couldn’t love them more. My parents and my dog are great, too. My job is pretty good and keeps me busy enough most of the time.

There isn’t really time for friends, so I hardly ever miss having close ones. Besides, my blog never talks back, interrupts me or tells me what to do. It won’t even try to date any of my ex’s or mess around on its wife with me.

So what if I’m single? I’m still part of a family.

But that isn’t good enough for some people. I’m tired of couplecentricity. You know, that thing where all your friends who are in or get into relationships ditch you because you are single.

“I’d love to invite her but you know its going to be all couples,” they say. “What will she do? She’ll feel all left out.”

Left out! More like lucky to have escaped. Besides, who made it a rule that a single woman at a social event can’t talk to men who are ‘involved’. Couple people talk to each other, why can’t they talk to single people.

Oh yeah, I forgot the whole desperately divorced thing. Apparently I’m supposed to be a constantly prowling cougar, ready to pounce on any vulnerable man at the first opportunity. I am supposed to be so desperate to find a man that loyalty to friends and respect for peoples’ values are tossed aside in the heat of the hunt.

And I need a man for what!?

Okay, I know what I’d like a man for, and know it isn’t really about sex. It would be nice to be admired, to be caressed, to have someone to rely on. Mostly nice I suppose, but something I can live without. Live well without – well enough most of the time.

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Back on track

Whew, I'm back on track. Just a little misstep off the platform fuelled by a bit too much desire for him and a bit too much vodka.

But I'm back on track. Too bad the train is on fire.

I wonder how much longer I can careen through life before I am finally, blissfully consumed to oblivion.

No, I'm not going to tell him how I feel. Even though there really is nothing left to lose, I just can't find the words.

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True intimacy can only be realized with mechanical or electronic devices -- §hria

I respect faith, but doubts are what get you educated -- Wilson Mizner

Doubts
1. I doubt that my friends were ever really friends, especially one of them
2. I doubt that my ex was ever a friend, or a loyal lover

Education
1. I learned that it is dangerous to trust anyone with your weaknesses. I should never have revealed to my friend of 15 years how devastated and weak I was left by the failure of my marriage of 13 years. No matter how matter how many ways she posed as a person who cared I should never have revealed to her how much I disliked my ex's tendency to try to rule my world.

2. I learned people often have more than one ulterior motive for asking questions. I should never have told my ex why I didn't want to be her friend any more. No matter how many times or how many ways he asked I should never have revealed to him how much I disliked my friend of 15 years' tendency to try to rule my world.

Realizations
1. They are together now so there is no doubt I am betrayed on many levels. But then, I doubt them telling each other what they know of my feelings would have any real impact on my happiness so let them eat cake and live to rule each other's world. Maybe that way they will stop trying to rule mine.

2. Someone else I mistook as a friend is a better friend than I knew by the way he hurt me. The example he provided by keeping me at arm’s length, which speaks louder than his advice to find another friend, teaches me to keep the world at arm’s length rather than let myself get close to anyone.

More doubts
1. I doubt anyone can be trusted.
2. I doubt intimate interactions of any sort are really needed.

I can hardly wait to see what there is to be learned next. Bring it on.

Nova, me and Dana

Everyday Bizarre

So I'm sitting here doing background research on a story I'm working on. My in-depth analysis of wind power is interrupted by a loud, fish-bowl rattling crash.

"Uh, Nova, what was that noise... do you need medical attention?"

"S'okay, mummy," answers my five-year-old. "Boys drool and girls rule," she adds with enthusiasm.
*CRASH*

"No, it isn't actually okay. What is that noise? And I concur. Boys drool. Most of them lie through their teeth too and they do it as easily and often as breathing."

*CRASH*

"NOVA"

"It's just me, mummy. I'm learning to fly. Maffew doesn't lie."

"You're right, Matthew doesn't lie. He is brutally honest, which is definitely preferable to the usual masculine drivel. By the way, you have no wings."

"WHAT!?"

"You have no wings."

"Oh."

*CRASH*

"Nova, if you must learn to fly, could you learn to land more softly, please? Especially beside the table with the fish bowl on it. Great Nugia and Purple Surple are scared."

"They're boys you know."

So, I know what I'm going to do with my time later in life. When I am really old and still single and bitter I'll be spending time with my daughters who will probably have as much success with relationships as I am - for some indefinable reason.

Girls, marry your careers and have kittens. Careers will always be there when you need them, even when you don't, and kittens don't speak any language you understand so they can't lie to you.

There is only one Matthew in the world and, unfortunately for you, he's your cousin.

All the other boys drool.

OH YEAH BABY!!!!

I did it. Way cool!

Yes, I am excited. Today, with little in the way of instruction (five minute tutorial) I figured out how to film, edit, add credits and titles to, encode, upload and embed a link to VIDEO!

While this first 90 second clip of Dan the One Man Band performing at Buskerfest took me 8 hours to produce, the next ones will take significantly less time.

YEAH! I feel good.

Now lets see how I feel when folks rip it apart for various reasons while I am trying to function on four hours sleep tomorrow. S'okay, though. Its so totally all okay with me.

Especially since I also figured out how to put it in my blog (sort of). HA

Yum, I love the taste of canary in the dark of night! MEEEE-OW

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“… sad about being alone.” Bla-bla-bla. Yeah right, what an embarrassing post. As a matter of fact I may not leave it up there much longer so get it while its hot. Ha ha.

The last thing I need is a man. Anything he could do for me could be done with a tool. (I meant open a jar, duh!)

What I need is to get on with my life and quit feeling sorry for myself. I need to look after my kids, write some stories, edit and post some videos, organize some photos, wash some clothes and a few floors.

I do NOT need to be hugged or have someone to talk to. That’s just stupid. Could someone please kill me if I ever say I’m lonely again? Please?

Maybe there’s a pill I could take for it, or I could keep a bar of dark chocolate in a glass case with a little sign under it, ‘In case of getting stupid and feeling sorry for yourself, break glass.’

Really, this is about the whole self-worth thing. So what if I’m not very attractive and only mildly amusing? What I think of myself is much more important than what some man thinks of me anyway (or doesn’t, most times).

Its about burning up the time until this life is done. Its about filling every moment so full there is no time to feel or think.

Time to get busy and get on with forgetting about it.

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I wrote the poem below the last time I felt sad about being alone.

Yes, alone doesn't have to be lonely and others may envy my solitude but, especially when my kids are gone, there are times I would give almost anything to hear a voice shatter the stillness. Especially if that were a loving man's voice, speaking my name.

Chant the mantra: I will always be alone. I need no one else to make my house a home. Alone is better. Solitude strengthens and confirms my commitment to remain alone... not that anyone wants me to change my mind anyway.

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Coming home

Swimming through the darkness of the lake
Struck suddenly with a need to be somewhere else
Circling slowly up the murky beds
Searching for the place to be

Dimly and from far away comes the sound
A familiar song pregnant with the promise of home
Circling slowly up the murky beds
Searching for the place to be

The sent of destiny awaiting takes hold of her
Fired by the knowledge of the place she needs to be
Swimming swiftly through the dappled beds
Aiming for the place to be

Dreaming of rocky beds and clear, nourishing currents
Vibrantly alive with the process of doing what she needs to do
Stopped in her quest by a dam
Wondering if this is the place to be

The salmon leaps high and strong to fall upon the dam
Bruised and battered by twigs and mud she rolls back to the lake
Poisoned by the promise of song
Knowing the place to be is gone

The song heard was just water slipping through a dam
The sent she smelled was remnants of her home and bed long buried
By a generation of fertile, life-giving silt
The stream has turned inward

The laughing brook is now a deep, still pond and home to others
Something silky, lithe and beautiful swims in water warmed by stillness
The salmon hangs motionless outside
Dying gravid with destiny unfulfilled

She's telling me to get some sleep!

The un-woman

What is my worth? I mean, financially, I've sent my whole life working and have nothing to show for it. I actually had to get my parents to co-sign for me for a loan to fix my car. How humiliating is that? A woman my age having to ask her parents to co-sign on a loan!

Yes, I know I should appreciate that I have parents who will and can do that, and I do, but I should be able to do it for myself by now. I can’t though, because I failed at relationships, too.

I spent 13 and 3/4 years in a relationship before I finally admitted that I failed and walked away only to realize that now I'm alone, old and undesirable. Un-sexy and un-fulfilled.

According to Sex and the City, pregnant women should be married because then someone is obligated to have sex with them even though they are un-sexy. I'd have to say the same for old women. We should be married so someone would be obligated to have sex with us.

Then again, maybe we should just get older faster so we want it less. Is that what happens? I really hope so and I wonder how much more of this I have to get through before I can forget about it?

And full circle back to the question - what is my worth? How do I measure it - now and in the future? Where are the reliable benchmarks?

I am worth a lot to my children, to my parents and that's about it. I have no friends who find me worthwhile to listen to, hence the blog! LOL

As a writer I suppose I have some worth to my employers but not really that much.

A friend of mine once said that a person leaving a job or a community makes about as much impact on the people or job left behind as a fist in a bucket of water. So, I guess that while I'm in here I'm making a bit of an impact but when I pull away it will be like I was never here.

Another friend once said that I should put myself at the centre of the circles that I place the most value on, or something like that.

Maybe there is a clue in that. If I value something maybe I can find a measure of my own worth in that.

Oh my, maybe I don't even want to go there.

The ostrich is my totem animal and one of these nights I will go to sleep at a decent hour!

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Small Wasp Waist Gray Edition by Vonnegut

Equal but different is good

Last night I watched a very Canadian movie based on one of my favourite short stories, Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Equal is not the same, for many good reasons, was sort of the basic message.

You can read the story for yourself here, if you like.

"He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren't really very good – no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in." -- Vonnegut, 1961

So, when I see a beautiful woman, instead of thinking about how like something the cat drug in, I am free to choose to appreciate, enjoy and even celebrate her beauty.

Its about choices.

Its about choosing to react to envy with honest appreciation instead of willful destruction (of the self or of the person being envied). Its about choosing to take the envy to another level of awareness.

Why bother? Well, because envy to the next level means an awareness of the qualities one wants to possess. It means we can set goals to improve ourselves. It means we can choose to strive to create the very qualities in ourselves that we envy in others.

In Harrison Bergeron, the society's leaders sought to make everyone equal to (or rather the same as) the lowest common denominator in the social group.

A simple mathematical equation can demonstrate the flaw in that argument.

62+69-13=62x2.25-21.5

Obviously the two sides of this equation are different but they are equal.

So, step three in this flow of logic would be that we need not strive to be other than we are for we are equal to but different from our fellow woman (or man).

If I see and envy a woman with long waves of beautiful blonde hair cascading over slender shoulders, I need not run out to Wal-Mart for a bottle of hair bleach. Instead, I should look at my own hair and appreciate its qualities.

Now, if I could only figure out what qualities I have that make me equal to but different from those beautiful women.

I'm still feeling like something the cat drug in. My logic is cold and empty. A little help here, please? What am I missing?

Anyway, call me Hazel and kiss me with a 12-guage. Its the ending of the story I like the best, or the climax... but you will have to read it for yourself if you want to know just how twisted I am.

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