Archive for October, 2012

Slay the demon

Thursday, October 25th, 2012

So in order to fix a problem, you first have to name it, correct? Well, yeah, but for some gals you have to repeat it ad infinitum until you are just poisoning yourself. I’m like a soy candle, I burn so slow and so low and it takes a really long time for me to feel the burn – so it was that in discovering a saboteur on Tuesday with the life coach, today another one popped up so clear as day.

The LaLa saboteur – this is the one that says, Rachel, you don’t deserve the LaLa.

Now, mind you, when I first brought this up during the renovation to E, E said, “Your house isn’t all that, Rachel.” Which made me belly laugh.

And I do wonder about myself – why it is when I am living in the back, about how I feel so comfortable in my cocoon, because it goes hand in hand with this LaLa saboteur’s notion that I don’t deserve my own house.

Interestingly enough, walking by the house the other day for the Breast Cancer walk with my Zumba pals, I felt a little twinge of that guilt – like when I pointed out my house, I wanted to feel proud but instead a little gremlin was sitting on my shoulder saying who do you think you are owning a house on Moss Street, huh?

Yes, I have it – guilt. I feel it, I claim it, I own it.

But the reality is I don’t want it.

Guilt (emotion) is an emotion that occurs when a person believes that they have violated a moral standard. ~ Wikipedia.

So what moral standard have I violated, I asked myself as I walked the dogs in the dark this morning having risen at 4 am. And for the life of me, I thought, I worked hard and I was able to afford to buy this house. I was married to a talented architect who designed it. I have some talents myself – inherent and acquired – and so my modest size house situated on a fabulous site on Bayou St. John is something I deserve. Right?

In order to assuage my guilt I generally focus on how much it costs to maintain the house because that way when someone compliments the house I can throw up all the bad on them so that they don’t walk away from me thinking that I’m all that with my fancy pants house. But E’s right – what’s so fancy pants about my house? I mean it’s not that big for godsakes, and it does have some nice touches but the dang thing is 100 years old and acts like it a lot of times.

LaLa guilt sucks – it really does – and my goal is to slay this saboteur once and for all, or at least make it a blind deaf mute, so that I can waltz through my house, appropriately proud of my domain.

Booty Shawts

Thursday, October 25th, 2012

We developed an addiction Issa Rae – whatever she does, we watch and love. So in Cadiz, while Tin was asleep as it was midnight, we were holed up in the dark living room watching on my computer one of her episodes and the theme song was the Doublemint Twins singing Booty Shawts. Rae’s stuff is so compelling, she’s like a one woman enterprise ranging from her Ratchetpiece Theater to Confessions of an Awkward Black Girl.

The problem is that Tin woke the next morning and over breakfast was singing booty shawts, my booty shawts – rot ro.

Soy Vey!

Thursday, October 25th, 2012

Hashimoto’s and Alopecia got you down? Take control of your life, change your diet. And I did, took out dairy, cut back meat – inflammation be gone. Only I replaced dairy with soy – what! are you nuts! – soy mimics estrogen and therefore suppresses the thyroid causing weight gain, depression and fatigue in Hashimoto patients. What?

The list that I can eat shrinks, but I don’t mind, as long as the rest of me does too.

I’m gonna crack this nut … watch me now.

Ok Go!

Wednesday, October 24th, 2012

“Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.”
— Henry David Thoreau

I spoke to my life coach yesterday and it was a positive turn for the better. I told her I felt as if the last two sessions had helped move the turnstile – picture me in the center of a turnstile – the image of a hurricane and either right in the grind or whipped out into squalls in the periphery. But I felt flow, something I haven’t felt so strongly in a while. And most of that has to do with admitting some things to myself – such as 1) fear has trapped me in a trick bag and I’ve been afraid to rise above what I see and imagine what I cannot, 2) saboteurs have been awakened within (they always sense vulnerability) and they are loud and distracting (but if you can name ’em, you can lick ’em).

So we rallied around a victory lap for having come this far.

Then I had another meeting today with Epaul Julien with whom I’m going to be starting a blog – look for it – it’s called TransracialParenting.com – the site is in development. I’m very excited to be getting this project off the ground – it’s near and dear to my heart.

> I ran this morning with the dogs.
> I swam this morning cause I can.
> Good research calls for Blueshift.
> A gal’s trip is coming up to look forward to (read: Madonna figures prominently)

Life don’t frighten me at all. Not at all. Not at all.

art crisis

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012

I’m having an art crisis right now – I need to see new art, hear new music, read new words. Anyone who has something they think I should know – tell me. [A friend recently recommended WILD by Cheryl Strayed] – I came across these artists after reading about Nick Cave’s collection:

Kehinde Wiley

Barkley Hendricks

Zwelethu Mthethwa

Hank Willis Thomas

Sabotaging your life

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012

A long time ago, I was part of a group who took jobs to live so they could pursue their art – I had dreams of being a writer. California tried to destroy my dreams by making work and the great material machine godlike. Luckily, I escaped back to my homeland, New Orleans, but as luck would have it in reaching for the brass ring, the terra firma sank underwater – which became a big cosmic joke and created a domino effect that derailed my five-year plan.

Here we are seven years later, and I can’t even recall my five-year plan, much less my one-year plan or my twenty-year plan. Let’s just say there are no plans now, except to get myself on track. But I find now that I am finding myself again, some familiar traits are coming to the fore, only now they seem amped as if they had been doping a lá Lance Armstrong – I mean my intolerance is heightened, my desire for freedom is unquenched – so how to move forward and not “sabotage your life” as a friend of mine recently wrote.

If you are a girl on fire, and that flame has been dimmed, how do you nurture the fire without burning up?

When Bukowski was 49 years old a publisher told him he would pay him $100 a month for the rest of his life if he would quit his job at the post office and write. He did that and 15 years later he wrote a thank you note to John Martin – here is an excerpt:

So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I’m gone) how I’ve come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die.

To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.

Reading this letter gives me great hope.

Fun every day

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

I cut out a quip by Chuck Close and put it in this journal that I’m keeping about what inspires me. He says that he was in the hospital – eight weeks in rehab – and almost died – he decided that when he was out he would make sure that every day he would do something fun. Maybe see a play, a movie, or go to a gallery and see a show. Often it’s eating.

I used to work with a friend, she lived a mile down the street from me and we decided that the best way to spend any day was with a belly laugh. So today, I just had mine – drum roll:

Blink – look again

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Let’s get back to that Girl on Fire post just the other day. I started running again in earnest, which required a new playlist – Girl on Fire – top of the list. Today as I was making it around the bayou, I felt those old familiar endorphins.

I later saw a post by my yoga guru and she was writing about Kali about how 2012 has been the apex within the Kali Yuga – a Hindu cycle that supposedly last 432,000 years – try to put that into your iCalendar. There are some who believe we are in the Kali Yuga now, which is supposed to be a time when we are far away as possible from enlightenment.

My yoga guru’s post jumped into alignment with my own state of being – she writes, “everything [is] meeting either deeper RESOLVE or DISSOLVE. Seems there is not such thing as in-between. Jai Kali Ma and Happy Navaratri. “I want to know if you can sit in pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day, and if you can source your life from the Spirit’s presence.”

Primitive lamps

Sunday, October 21st, 2012

I’ve been scouring modern design websites trying to find a decent lamp for Tin’s bedroom and today on a whim, I stopped by a second hand store and there they were – not modern, but primitive wood carved African girl-heads with braids – 50% off – that had Tin written all over them.

And so that was really the only thing I accomplished today other than staying awake to this point after rising at 3:30 am.

Tonight – may the sleep gods carry me away.

Flame on

Sunday, October 21st, 2012