Alive

Today has been a good day so far. The alarm went off this morning at 7 a.m., and instead of gaining consciousness with the looming burden of dread that has been sitting on my shoulder for the past few days, I tried to peel myself off the sheets looking forward to whatever good things may be coming that I have recently tried to make room in my life for. Slowly I tried again to accept this new skin, though it pricks like a thousand tiny needles when I wake up to a tender new world every morning.

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It seems that whenever I go through life comfortably, I forget how resilent I can be. I forget that I know how to forge ahead, that I have unwavering determination, and that I am, of all things, an unrelenting optimist. When I'm comfortable and settled, I am tuned into one channel, one frequency, and my body and mind hover there, half-dazed and lazy. But when big change happens, and I shatter the thin shell that has enveloped me for so long, I feel electric. It's like all my senses are amplified. I feel raw, open, exposed. The ordinary takes on new qualities that I hadn't noticed before. Serendipity becomes the norm. Strange and beautiful things happen.
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Deciding to do something life-altering is kind of like standing atop a high ocean cliff, looking down at the black, icy water, knowing that even though you have a choice not to jump, there is only one choice you are really going to give yourself. You know that the cold water is going to hurt like knives when you cut through the surface. You know you're going to be a bit disoriented when you're under. You know that you could be pulled deeper into fierce currents. You could bash your head on the rocks.

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And then you jump. During those infinitesimal seconds that follow, every emotion you've ever been capable of races through your mind in a flash before you hit the water. But once you're in, you've never felt so alive.

Magneto

I seem to have become an interesting phenomenon today. I'm not sure if it's because a friend of mine has been hammering away at me to repeat mantras such as "I will attract to myself everything I need in my life" or not. I feel blessed by all the loving people in my life who are scooping me up and dusting me off and giving me mantras to get me through the day, but maybe I need to take it down a notch for the sake of my safety.
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In the Co-op today, I was a planetary force unto myself. An unstoppable magnet for things I needed. In my wake I left dented cans of tomatoes, broken bags of flour, and tumbled asparagus. As I reached up for a can of tomatoes, one just hopped off the shelf - evidently aiming for my hand (which was not ready). Ouch. A bag of flour that I needed fell towards me and broke open at my feet. I looked around myself sheepishly. What a Monday this is turning out to be. Just when I thought it may be my clumsy motor skills - though I swear I hadn't touched anything - a bunch of asparagus leaned over from the stack in the produce isle and tumbled towards me as I was picking out peppers. Um, no, I don't need any asparagus, but thanks. I decided to hurry my foraging before I got slapped by a turkey.

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One must be very specific when asking for things. Like if we are asking for a new car, we don't really want to be run over by one, right? I guess I need to get my orders straight. Mantras should come with an instruction manual.

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This could be a very shaky beginning back into the realm of being single.

Journey

I haven't been all that inspired to Blog lately. I'll admit that it's not because I don't have the words, or the time, but because there seems to be this big filter on my impulses to write anything 'true'. A good friend of mine, who is a writer, told me during one of our many conversations about writing that every time I have the impulse to leave things out of the writing process, I should ask myself the reason why. Because writing about truths is what makes it interesting for readers. I often get caught up in trying to limit people's assumptions about my inner life, of protecting myself. Though you wouldn't know it by reading my Blog.
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By comparison, Twittering, which to me looks like blogging 'one-liners' on what you're thinking in the moment, looks so much easier. How about something like, "I can't help but wonder what soft mitts my cat would make. Especially on days when he pisses outside the litter box". Okay, I'll admit that it needs some work. It's not really what I really want to say, which is, "I feel like I've been dragged behind a truck and have lost my will to perform daily functions". Which seems more true-to-self at the moment.

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I don't know what it is about charting a new course in life that seems so scary sometimes. I've often thought of myself as an adventurer, someone who loves new experiences and gets excited about new things. But right now I am shedding my old skin and walking forward into the new, and it hurts. It's like the new light falling on my skin is burning me like fire. Maybe it's because I've been protecting myself for a really long time, sheltering myself with clothes that didn't fit. I thought that perhaps I could get the clothes taylored. I kept shifting them left and right with each step, thinking they may stretch. I outgrew my desire to keep trying to taylor, shift, or stretch.

Sigh.

Break-ups are hard.

I think that's about as real as I can get at the moment.

Nurdles

One of my first thoughts today was about nurdles. This has been my buzz word lately. Nurdle. It is simply the funniest word I have heard in ages, and by simply uttering it, I laugh. I can't believe that anyone could have a serious conversation about nurdles. But that's just it: the first time I heard of nurdles was in a very serious context.

I saw it posted on someone's Facebook wall recently - a long description about the damage that nurdles are doing to the environment. Apparently nurdles are little round pre-production plastic pellets that are used to make a variety of plastic products. The plastic of your keyboard keys. Nurdles. Plastic parts. Nurdles. Plastic containers. Nurdles. Dishwasher parts. Nurdles. But apparently these harmless looking little plastic beads, which come in a variety of colours or none at all, are a total environmental hazard. About 250 billion pounds of nurdles are shipped globally every year, with many of them escaping their containers. Little animals and marine life eat these toxic nurdles, mistaking them for food. Not good. Advocates are lobbying for tighter controls of nurdles to prevent devastating effects on the environment.

Considering how evil these little things are, why the name? Who on earth thought to call them nurdles? I mean, can you imagine an international convention on nurdles? I can see the headlines: Invasion of the Nurdles. Oh wait a minute: here is a headline that I just found on the web: Just Say NO To Nurdles. Surely there could have been a more sinister name for this environmentally devastating product.

I can't help but want to appropriate this word and make it into something else. Morph it into something still derogatory, but unmistakeably giggly. I called my cat Lumpy a nurdle after he broke my CD player yesterday. I referred to someone I don't like the other day as a nurdle. After a somewhat mentally compromising week, I am going to say that I feel really 'nurdled out' today. Someone cut me off in the parking lot today: nurdle.

Nurdles for breakfast. Nurdles in my pockets. Nurdles who I know that bother me. Nurdles in my nose. I mean, really, this is the perfect word. I dare you to use it in at least one sentence to someone today, and report back.

Ostara

In the spirit of sheer paganism, I wish you a Happy Ostara. Today is the day of the Spring Equinox, when the hours of day and night are of equal length, with the light becoming stronger as the world is renewed. In pagan tradition, this holiday is celebrated as a time of balancing and rebirth. The name for the occassion comes from the goddess, Eostre, whose symbols are the rabbit and the egg; symbols of fertility. This is traditionally the time that we should be celebrating with the painting of eggs and eating of chocolate bunnies - but the Christians, in their subordination of all things pagan, appropriated the holiday and buried it into 'Easter', which is held on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the equinox.

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I can't say that my earlier compulsion to eat 2 chocolate bars was in the spirit of renewal and balance, especially being that I never really eat chocolate bars anymore. In fact, I feel rather green at the moment for having fulfilled my dire PMS-ing need for chocolate. I intermittently ate it with a few snacks of melted cheese and triscuits. I am only barely able to hold down this whole mess right now while writing, taking big swallows as it threatens to come back up. Pardon me.
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I really feel like it's time to clear out the old and welcome the new. This winter felt dark and gnarly on several fronts. And it's still -25 degrees outside most days. Not exactly spring weather. But there is an abundance of sunshine, and this opulent light calls to me and promises that there will be green outside once more. Someday. And the green couldn't come soon enough. Every time I walk up the snow covered steps of my deck to the back door of my house, I try to imagine what that deck was like without snow, on the summer days past when I grew flowers and herbs there. And suddenly, while I'm clutching to this reminiscence as the icy breath of winter freezes my thoughts, I think I remember the sound of chatty little birds. Of life other than that of the frozen black ravens of winter.
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I am beginning to forget the green world, but something about the light today is promising. This day is like a crack in the thick dark veneer of something that formerly felt impenetrable, and this, my friends, is something to be celebrated.

Down the Rabbit Hole

I feel a bit like a Catholic in a confession box when I say to you, "It has been 3 weeks since my last Blog, forgive me for being absent". My life has been consumed with all manner of drama these days, but I'll save the excuses and descriptors for conversations with my cats.

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I can't help but want to follow up on my previous entry. As expected, "Cunt" got a lot of attention. In fact, it received the most hits over any other Blog entry I've ever written. People from all over the world wanted to see what on earth I had to say about that little four-letter word. And I am most gratified in saying that I learned a lot about other people through that entry. Some people pleased me, some made me giggle, some rubbed me the wrong way, and some gave me a delightful surprise. The analogies I'll leave to your imagination.

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It's interesting what comes out of the woodworks when a little word is flashed around. People either get curious, or kind of stupid. I had advertised the Blog entry on my Facebook status, with the word "Cunt", followed by a link to my Blog. One fellow, whose name I won't mention, replied to my status with a "??". Nothing else, just question marks. In the spirit of intolerance, I deleted him from my friend list. I mean, give me the benefit of the doubt that I'm not just posting profanities without some reason. I felt no remorse at the cull. Besides, I generally make a rule of not making friends with anyone who puts 'The' in front of their name when constantly referring to themselves in the third person. That should have been a freak flag right there. And my sentiments are that anyone who is that repelled by a four-letter word like "cunt" should be fed to the lions.

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Another fellow who saw the Facebook post apparently decided differently. He saw my post and asked himself, "....hmm....what could THAT be about?", and saw my Blog link, and, as he put it, "decided to take the red pill" and head down the rabbit hole to read my Blog. The guy has some balls, not to be turned back by a dirty little word. Now that is something I have respect for. Obviously I am partial to red-pill takers.

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And yet other people said nothing at all about "Cunt", because, well, it's just expected of me. The folks in this category know me well enough so that nothing at all shocks them anymore. I could walk down the street naked and these folks wouldn't bat an eye. All I've really learned from these people through my Blog is that I must be a real piece of work.

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Anyway, I'm going to name this Blog "Down the Rabbit Hole", and laugh to myself while I make a cup of tea.