Dangermond.org

Everyone kept asking me for the plan, or wanted to make a plan, for my birthday, but I wanted to keep it loose. I plan enough of my life and birthdays should involve some spontaneity. So when a friend said she was going to UAL, I said, count me in, that’s where I’d like to start my day. So three of us caught the streetcar and headed to the Quarter.

We met another friend who works nearby and everyone tried on over a million different pieces of clothing and some of us bought some. Not me, it was one of those UAL days where I couldn’t find what I was looking for and that was just fine. So the girls bought me something – a pack of chewing gum:

And then one friend went back to work and the rest of us headed for a late lunch to Peche in the Warehouse District. At first I felt giddy to be having lunch in a new spot, but after a bit of this and that, I was less than impressed. I’m not a big fan of upscale doing downscale, like those places that are haut cuisine doing a hamburger (leave that to the dives) and so the poboy (a mix of shrimp, oysters) just didn’t resonate with me the way a nice catfish poboy at Parkway would have. Live and learn.

Then we all headed to Canal Place for some more shopping and to avoid the miserable rain that kept coming down in torrents. And we ended up all buying the same dress. Now this is a practice I started with Flower years ago where we’d travel together and dress alike because we are high class dorks. But now there were three of us being dorks and this photo just makes me smile:

I then went over and spent the rest of the afternoon into the evening with Tin. Tatjana had gotten me a pineapple upside down cake from Cake Bakery that I must admit was so moist and delicious – it might have been the best thing I had all day. And Tin was entertaining as always.

Then I walked home, tired and exhausted yet when a friend beckoned me out again, I wound up going to meet friends in the Warehouse District and heading over to see the Honeypots at Cafe Istanbul – only we were very late, and so we just wound up hanging around the bar with Lynn Drury, Margie Perez and Monica McIntyre – hell if you can’t see them play, you can at least play with them.

I hauled in $27 in birthday booty – our custom in New Orleans of pinning a dollar to your shirt on your birthday and everyone wishes you a happy day by adding to the stash. And so at the end of the no plan day, my plan to be happy and free came together in bountiful way.

I woke this morning and was 54 years old – fifty four revolutions around the great big sun – and I woke with a smile on my face.

Thanks to Facebook about a million people remembered my birthday – a far cry from when I was 24 years old or 34 years old or 44 years old and I would wait for my mom’s call, my grandmother’s birthday card with $5 to arrive, and my lover to sing me birthday greetings. I waited till the last minute to make a plan for today because I wanted to keep it loosey goosey and so a little shopping with girls, a little lunch with a cocktail, and the whole day to spend with my loved ones:

What will you do with your one precious life?

How about keep hoping for a child till you receive the perfect one?

How about keep searching for meaning and your purpose in life only to find it?

How about opening your heart and loving profoundly?

How about celebrating your 54th birthday knowing you are loved?

My mother told me when I turned fifty, I would become a woman and to enjoy it. How about enjoying being an over fifty year old woman?

I’ve been around and around this great big sun and I learned to have an attitude of gratitude.

I’ve no idea what is next. Maybe I’ll get a tattoo?

I read this passage from The Power of Now this morning, and have to say this Tolle guy is onto something:

Wherever You Are, Be There Totally

See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.

Ordinary unconsciousness is always linked in some way with denial of the Now. The Now, of course, also implies the here. Are you resisting your here and now? Some people would always rather be somewhere else. Their “here” is never good enough. Through self-observation, find out if that is the case in your life. Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences. No excuses. No negativity. No psychic pollution. Keep your inner space clear.

If you take any action—leaving or changing your situation—drop the negativity first, if at all possible. Action arising out of insight into what is required is more effective than action arising out of negativity. Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing. Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.

If there is truly nothing that you can do to change you’re here and now, and you can’t remove yourself from the situation, then accept your here and now totally by dropping all inner resistance. The false, unhappy self that loves feeling miserable, resentful, or sorry for itself can then no longer survive. This is called surrender. Surrender is not weakness. There is great strength in it. Only a surrendered person has spiritual power. Through surrender, you will be free internally of the situation. You may then find that the situation changes without any effort on your part. In any case, you are free. Or is there something that you “should” be doing but are not doing it? Get up and do it now. Alternatively, completely accept your inactivity, laziness, or passivity at this moment, if that is your choice. Go into it fully. Enjoy it. Be as lazy or inactive as you can. If you go into it fully and consciously, you will soon come out of it. Or maybe you won’t. Either way, there is no inner conflict, no resistance, no negativity.

Are you stressed? Are you so busy getting to the future that the present is reduced to a means of getting there? Stress is caused by being “here” but wanting to be “there,” or being in the present but wanting to be in the future. It’s a split that tears you apart inside. To create and live with such an inner split is insane. The fact that everyone else is doing it doesn’t make it any less insane. If you have to, you can move fast, work fast, or even run, without projecting yourself into the future and without resisting the present. As you move, work, run—do it totally. Enjoy the flow of energy, the high energy of that moment. Now you are no longer stressed, no longer splitting yourself in two. Just moving, running, working—and enjoying it. Or you can drop the whole thing and sit on a park bench. But when you do, watch your mind. It may say: “You should be working. You are wasting time.” Observe the mind. Smile at it. Does the past take up a great deal of your attention? Do you frequently talk and think about it, either positively or negatively? The great things that you have achieved, your adventures or experiences, or your victim story and the dreadful things that were done to you, or maybe what you did to someone else? Are your thought processes creating guilt, pride, resentment, anger, regret, or self-pity? Then you are not only reinforcing a false sense of self but also helping to accelerate your body’s aging process by creating an accumulation of past in your psyche. Verify this for yourself by observing those around you who have a strong tendency to hold on to the past.

Die to the past every moment. You don’t need it. Only refer to it when it is absolutely relevant to the present. Feel the power of this moment and the fullness of Being. Feel your presence.

I neglected to mention that the first guy who hugged me last night was Washboard Chaz’s son. This happened right as my friend was enumerating all the things he loves about New Orleans, the first being that someone neither of us knew had just walked up to us and within two minutes said he was going home to smoke some weed. Gotta love New Orleans – even though we are deeply flawed, or possibly because we are deeply flawed.