Random sound bytes.

So summer is here and I am thrilled – it means sleeping in late, tons of fresh berries and omelettes with pesto sauce.  Fresh salads of tomatoes, mozzarella cheese. olive oil and yes more basil!  This morning I enjoyed some great whole wheat bread from a local bakery and it was slathered with butter and mimosa jam.  The jam was from Stonewall Kitchen – one of my favorite companies.

I. Love.  Summer.  Even 90 degrees – even 90 + degrees and high humidity…summer is just so luscious, sensuous and dramatic.  An attractive dramatic, in a way zero degrees and a blizzard is not.

Photograph by Susannah Conway

So I got into my e-course “Unraveling” as if I needed lessons in how to unravel – well apparently I do.  I received notice of the new course starting and I procrastinated (but only overnight) thinking I’d sleep on it and enroll in the morning.  Well the course sold out in seven hours – 150 students.  So with a little help from a generous universe I managed through the grace of it’s host to get into the e-course. It begins July 13 and I am looking forward to the challenge of delving into my creativity, as well as my psyche.  You can visit Susannah’s website here to learn more about it.

The June training courses have all started and it will be a busy summer there – now I need to sit down and prepare a schedule and start promoting the next sessions in August & September. I really feel a need to get a vacation in this summer if only to our families summer place.  A week or even something short of a week staring at a lake and dipping my toes in the water after dark is something I think I need.

Oh and I am reading “Art & Fear” (observations on the perils and rewards of art making) and I highly, highly recommend it.

So come share your comments – what are your favorite things about summer?

The Great Depression

The Buddhists call it “mindfulness” – those moments when you are fully alive, present and aware. It can happen during big events in your life – a marriage, a baby, a funeral or in smaller ones like walking in the woods, washing the dishes or running on a treadmill.

I’ve been exercising for a long time and lately I’ve been dragging myself to the gym but I’ve been going.  So last Friday I decided to get on the treadmill and do some running.  Generally I loathe running and will instead opt for any other form of cardio exercise.  On I climbed.  I was doing intervals five minutes of running, five minutes of walking, five minutes of running – I felt initially awful.  Everything hurt I was winded and tired and then as I grew more aware of my breathing, my form and what I was doing I actually started feeling myself opening up and feeling better.  With each step opening up and feeling better.

And I realized quite suddenly that I have been depressed – probably seriously clinically depressed.  Not for a day, or a week, or the last few months but probably for a decade or more.  You Janet have been depressed.

And I started feeling better – I could literally feel my mind and body growing stronger with each step, each step was accompanied by increased clarity.

You.  Have.  Been.  Seriously.  Depressed.  For.  A. Very.  Long.  Time.

I am not sad because my last relationship ended – you got into these relationships because you were depressed and they ended in part because you were depressed.  The house is a mess on so many levels because I am depressed, the weeds in the yard, the _________________ (fill in the proverbial blank) it all a symptom of this great depression you’ve been in.

And the treadmill slowed down and I was walking feeling blissfully aware, suddenly full of energy – clear focused.  I pulled my iPod shuffle out of the arm band and scrolled for yeah Melissa Ferrick.  (to digress I have not listened to Melissa Ferrick in months because it reminds me of someone) So I scrolled for my favorite Ferrick live album “70 People At 7,000 Feet” – I turned her up, I turned up the speed on the treadmill and I started running.  I ran, and ran and walked and ran on that fucking treadmill for over 45 minutes.  Got off and got on the new elliptical machine at the YMCA and turned it all the way up to difficult and went faster than I’ve ever gone before for another 20 minutes.  I was sweating like a piglet — I felt wonderful I could have kept going all afternoon.

You idjit you’ve been depressed – not only have you been depressed you have been depressed for YEARS, a DECADE perhaps.  I’ve functioned at such a high level for a depressed person, it was my “normal” in a sense that I didn’t even realize it.  I’m funny, sarcastic, smart and you can weave some really intricate webs of deception for yourself, as well as play a pretty good game for the world when you are clever and can be charming.  And yeah you can do it even when clinically depressed (or at least I can).

And I’ve been barely able to move since my cardio marathon but I went back to run again yesterday and I am going out for a pair of new running shoes today.  But none of this has anything to do with running.  Well the fact that every muscle from the waist down is hideously sore does.

Friday afternoon and evening I came home and felt very serene and wanted to spend the weekend doing very little just sitting with my new awareness and being.  I realize that I have really had a major, major breakthrough.

I am no longer depressed and it is like a light has been turned on in my life – like that moment in Marilyn Robinson’s book “Housekeeping” when a light is thrown onto the detritus in their lives.  I see it all so clearly all the messes literally, all the dysfunctional choices – what I want and how to move forward.  How being depressed drew so many of the wrong people into my life, estranged me from the right ones and so on.

What a fucking long, long, l o n g,   L   O   N  G!!! tunnel that was but there was a light at the end and I found it.

I found it!

You know the one – it’s the bag or box of your stuff that gets left at your doorstep, mailed to you, tossed at you in an attempt to knock you out or smash in your skull killing you.  It’s your stuff, the stuff they had.  It’s the stuff you want back & sometimes bonus gifts, once a former girlfriend included this – I still don’t understand the subliminal message but I’m dense that way I choose to ignore you forever.  Another time my things were angrily tossed into an envelope much too large for them, my books (it’s always books) rattled around and one was lost in transit.  Another favorite was nearly consumed by her dog (a hard cover, first edition) cover chewed, chewed, chewed.  It had a lovely note attached “if_________ did this I will replace it”.   How?  HOW?! I wanted to ask – I never bothered.  Maybe her partner did it – well it was all a long time ago or at least it feels that way now.  Another fucking hideous mistake learning experience.

So this time I will have to say – everything came back, arrived right on time, neatly packaged and free of all damage.  My stuff was all there, it was all fine.  The physical stuff was fine but I was a mess.

My sense of humor for one was gone.  I had been given a sense of desperate, clinging desire for an explanation at least an explanation?!

Last one left me flat on my backside – depressed, sullen, humorless.  I fell very, very hard.  I guess a person should do that at least one every 46 years or so – the first person, in all probability that I really was beginning to slowly open up to and fell (at least a little bit) in love with.  Well I do still believe giving one’s heart is the best kind of mistake to make – and I am ready to do it all over again.  I think?

Sort of.

Miss her everyday but at least I don’t text, e-mail or try to make contact everyday anymore.  it’s just every other day A week or so ago I was so disgusted by myself and my inability to move on that I was going to post her naked photos on the internet – that I just told myself to stop.  Stop putting a time limit on the process – you’ll forget when you forget, you’ll move on when you move on and that will be fine.  I took off my watch (even literally or mostly so) and I have just been moving along.

And I realized she had not read a single e-mail message I had sent her…google mail is nice that way it tells you if someone read your message.  There they were “unread, unread, unread, unread, Unread, UNREAD”.  Did you see that you stupid bitch UNREAD. And that hurt a lot and so I called but of course no one picked up and I didn’t leave a message because I knew it would go “unheard”.

Sigh.  Unread.  Unheard.  Unforgiven.  Unloved.  Undone – you have come undone?  Nah not quite undone (clearly I never lost my drama – but I’m queer, it’s in the job description).

Then a really cute woman arrived to my classes.  A.  REALLY.  CUTE.  WOMAN.  Wow  – like gorgeous, gay and absolutely my type.  Whenever I talk to her she talks about “we have….” and “we do…” and I am NOT the “we”.  She has not said “we should go out, or we should live happily ever after, or we should have children”.  But it doesn’t matter.  What matters is I realize I would hand this woman my heart on a silver platter if she wanted it or at least I’d really like to get naked with her.

What matters is how my stomach turns a little, I get a little tingling feeling and I am sure she needs me to come over and give her more advice about her dog and to make a joke just to  see that dazzling, dazzling smile again.  I just want to see that smile.

The smile that reminds me I have found my sense of humor and the smile that reminds me I am going to be just fine.  I don’t have to become a Buddhist nun in Nova Scotia just yet.  Thank dog.

…in the proverbial saddle again.

So I googled images for “back in the sadde” and on page one there was a wee little thumbnail of someone, naked?! – on a bike.  Clicked it and wowsa this is what appeared.  Not exactly what I had in mind or rather exactly what I have on my mind nearly 24 hours a day.

Well since I am a cyclist, of a very amateur sort, it’s appropriate for me to use the photo. After all I don’t ride horses.  And I look just like her, well  minus the long hair, breasts and I’m um 100 years just a little bit older then she is.

Wow.  She’s in great shape what a hot a lovely level of healthy fitness she has achieved.

So I am back in the land of writing, smiling, winking and dating – O.F.A.D has notched up.  I changed my profiles a bit to better reflect who I am and what I am looking for.  Last night half a dozen winks and a couple of e-mails arrived.

This morning I got up and wrote back to all of them — I bit the bullet and paid to be able to e-mail,  as a woman I think is very attractive and not as far away as sunny England smiled at me.  I had been looking at her photos/profile for quite a while now.  She lives an hour away – is tall, blond hair, very white teeth/great smile, nice um she has a very healthy level of fitness and (a drum roll please) she is two years older than I am.

So collective good karma vibes and wishes of the internet — start casting out your charms and wish me success.

Asking the universe for what you want works – the trick I am learning as I get my heart ripped out, spat on and salted, more mature is to be *very specific*.

On a completely unrelated topic — I got a show!  So my art is going to hang at a local theatre for a fundraiser they are having.  Good publicity and the gallery where I currently have my work is teasing me and wants me to do a solo exhibition, invitation only kind of fancy thing.

Ohhh…maybe I’ll have a date, cause sooner or later the so smart, black Ann Klien suit has to come out of the closet again. (yes Greg I’ll post photos).

O.F.A.D.

So O.F.A.D or Operation Find A Date has begun again full swing — ok not quite full swing.  More like half hearted and still texting the last fling swing.  But STILL O.F.A.D. begins again.  It should be a fun process and instead it’s not.

Online personals – they are up yet again.  The “delete key” on my computer is getting a lot of use – it’s there but it’s leaning to the right and looking very, very, tired.  STOP rubbing my button (oh sure go there, I’m not).

But seriously do you really think I’d travel to England?  And I don’t mean New England.  England as in the U.K?!  I’m flattered, really I am, but what if you don’t show up when I arrive for coffee?

I’m realizing some things in the midst of this lukewarm start — that I am attracted (most often, always, a great deal of the time) to 1. younger women 2. feminine women 3. women I am pursuing vs. being pursued.  Unless she is a really hot young woman running after me of course.

At first these realizations troubled me.  What is wrong with the 51 year old woman who is attractive, intelligent and well traveled?  She is after all the first person that has contacted you and 1. writes in complete sentences 2. can spell 3. reads  (and she still likes your big ass tattoo)

Well I have realized many things traveling through the world of where am I going next.  I realized that one reason I am having a hard time letting go of the last two relationships (and most especially the last one) is not only did I love her.  I loved all that she represented for me…all the hopes that I didn’t realize I had until they were revealed, only for a moment to me.  She was a beautiful lovely second chance and I wanted a second chance.

While I had not given up on the idea of a relationship – I had given up on marriage (in any sense) and children.  Simply thought those things will never happen for me.  And when you think something is not going to happen for you, you talk yourself out of it, kid yourself into thinking it’s not something you wanted anyway.

But I do.  But I do.  In meeting her, beginning to fall in love with her, in talking about futures and plans and children – – well I was revived, reminded, it was revealed to me that I would like all of those things.  A relationship, partnership and children.  I let myself dream.  I liked where my dreams went.

And then of course the plug was pulled – at least on that relationship.

As I look through my mailbox of messages in the land of on-line personals, I realized I still want Lindsey Lohan a future full of everything she gave me a glimpse of.

It is a dreary landscape at times, the land of O.F.A.D.  and I spend more than a few moments each day thinking that a convent in Greenland might be more fun — but I wonder will they let me look at porn?  What if they don’t have electricity or batteries?

In the meantime — the studio calls right after I give the hounds their morning run.

My life in the D.F.Z.

Like the idea – get the t-shirt.  I think I need this…

Last week I was walking around, it was a lovely spring day – I was wearing my flip flops, a t-shirt and a favorite pair of jeans.  Life stripped down to just a few basic things.  Great music in the iPod and spending the day being paid to walk around.  Eating lunch when I wanted to – no need to wear a watch as my appointments don’t care when I show up just as long as I am basically on time.  Sometime in the morning, sort of mid-day and so on.

I realized walking around — pinch me this life is perfect.  My life is perfect.  I am self employed (my boss is great), I am outside, I am listening to music – I don’t have a lot of things but I have far more things then I really need.  And have ZERO stress in my life.  Happy.  Healthy.  Perfect.

Oh I would like things – more friends, a more interesting social life, a girlfriend but really my life is perfect.  I was in a state of bliss…

Then things happen by the end of the day I had heard things about former g.f.  (people are so helpful) and then on Saturday I had a horrid e-mail from my brother.  Essentially letting me know I was 1. insensitive 2. unreliable 3. not dependable (redundant?!) 4. selfish.  And he wrote me out of his life on many levels and tried to write me out of my mother’s life on others.  An interesting phone call to my mother later in the day – well it confirmed some things – that he tends to say one thing to her and another thing entirely to me.

And basically none of that matters.  None of that matters.  None of that matters.

Of course it hurts – it hurts to have someone criticize you, not communicate in a grown up way, cut you off.  I was all wrapped up in the drama of the events on Saturday morning.  Someone else has cut me off, I am all alone – why can’t people communicate in a kind way or at least even communicate.  I sent my brother a nice, kind e-mail asking for understanding, communication and reconciliation for (and what did I do this time).  No response.  And she won’t talk to me either – as in the she of my last relationship.

Slipping, slipping, slipping into the abyss.   Saturday morning I was slipping into the abyss of tears, self pity, isolation – all of it.  Started to feel sick had a hard time concentrating on my work …spent the whole damn day in a funk.  Went to the concert but my head was not in a good place – my head was in the place of everything I don’t have instead of what I do have.

Then at some point, maybe I am still working towards that point…am writing myself into it now – I thought “fuck it”.  Not “fuck it” in the withdraw from life, grow bitter and grow old but just “fuck it”.  These are not my problems.

I am going to live my life in a D.F.Z.  – or the Drama Free Zone.

Because my life is close to perfection, it is exactly how I want it to be – I am happy, I’m essentially a very happy and centered person.  And you know I am just not going to adopt anyone else’s problems.  When people cannot communicate, be kind, be honest, be authentic – even in their struggles talk and communicate and care for other people through them.

That. is. not. my. problem.  These are not my problems anymore.

My problem – the only problem I have is to live authenticallly, with an open heart, with compassion and care.  I will start there, start with myself and I intend to live in the D.F.Z.

What about you? – what needs releasing in your life, what needs embracing?  What are you going to do about it – starting today.

Sunday Musings.

I have to say first – that if you have a chance to see Katie Herzig playing anywhere near you…well you must go and see her.  She is an amazing musician and singer/songwriter.  Smart, thoughtful lyrics – she has a really interesting voice.  Very talented.  Go give her music a listen.  Katie Herzig!

My thoughts are kind of scattered this morning – flying in from all over the place.  Mother is in the hospital, a stroke, this one is appears not severe but they are running many tests.  Headache.  Gray skies return.  Cat came in with the most beautiful black capped chickadee in his mouth — no I was not interested in seeing the cycle of life and death just moments out of bed.

I just want the encaustic stuff to arrive as I have all of these ideas, many not fully formed that I want to express.  Results are not important the expression of them is.

This morning I am wondering …

did we ever have a chance? With so many women in the room – your past and mine swirling all around us.  Gone before we even got started, who did you leave with…

Play Herzig listen to her albums …The Apple Tree & Weightless listen over and over again.  Hit repeat, again – one more time, play again, play on.

Day 6: Purging.

Purging. I thought we could all use a break from “Failed Relationships: Installment 345” – myself included. I do feel myself releasing this emotionally (and finally) – I am realized it was not that great, she did not really care for me. And I don’t frankly know anymore if I really cared for her or was just elated to be in a relationship at all. If in other words I was in love with the idea of falling in love and not the reality.

I just don’t know – but letting go. Just letting go of it all – no need to romanticize the miserable.

And yesterday I began “going raw” – I do this occasionally not as a way of eating all the time (it’s too severe) but as a kind of fast. So it’s 72 hours of raw. Fruits, veggies and yes the green goddess smoothie.

In my smoothie this morning (admit it you are *jealous*)…

Water
Several handfuls of organic baby spinach
organic banana
organic kiwi
mango

Blend together…yum! Actually it is very good and I promise if you make one you really don’t even taste the spinach. Besides spinach is delicious. I’ll let you know how I feel about it when I break my fast on Friday evening.

If you don’t know what all of the “day 1,2, 3, 4 business is about” go here. I am taking the 37 day challenge and am blogging everyday for the next 37 days. But I am not drinking spinach smoothies for 37 days.

Day 3: Change Everything …or well nearly.

Change everything. Make it roof top garden, ginger palm, and sunny daffodil. A hall needs a little Ralph Lauren regent metallic …golden candlesticks perhaps? Certainly on the ceiling for a warm glow from the hallway. Have fun. Change everything.

Change everything. That is what this relationship did for me – it changed everything. I’ve always lived in a more bohemian manner – books everywhere, projects everywhere (usually not completed) …I mean the shower fixture in the bathroom is currently held up with duct tape. Well it broke, I haven’t replaced it, it works – I usually shower at the gym anyway. I live in a frat house for dogs – it’s not pretty, there is a lot of stuff that needs doing, fixing or reviving. Somehow over the years living in my house, I have trained myself (a highly aesthetic person) to not see it.

Change everything. So you start to date, you start to get to know someone and you are surprised that this is, for the first time, someone you really like. Everything changes – because suddenly you are looking at yourself, your life, your appearance, your home. Everything about you, you are seeing through the eyes of someone else.

That is not to say that you are changing to become more acceptable, or desirable, or whatever – just that everything changes including how you see yourself. Awareness increases.

We do learn a lot about who we are through our relationships to other people…it rattles the cage, it disturbs the dust, it shakes loose the cobwebs covering our little lives. In my case literally.

And all of this is good. And sometimes regardless of how one feels – the relationship doesn’t work.

But…
you can still continue to finish your project of painting the whole house. So I have finished the living room – there is trim work and touch up to do. It feels a bit like I am living in Panera Bread…or a Starbucks. A darker palette and I have painted the walls different colors – I’ll toss up some photos later.

What are you going to do to bring some change to your life this spring?

Remembering – re-visiting.

You’ve all been so kind to send me posts that I had previously deleted. I was looking at them this morning – remembering,revisiting and I ran across this written on a Sunday morning..

Sunday Morning Musings

You lean over and inhale
and yes
the scent of her is there on your sweater,
where she rested her head
last night.

You smile broadly.

Five minutes,
or forever.

I am so glad she is in my life.

This moment
with her scent
with my memories
with someone
some
things

besides my selfish self.

I have washed the sweater.

And I wonder who wrote that – and who were you even writing about. Because it feels, already so far away. And what are you supposed to believe in anyway? D.H. Lawrence wrote “the only reality was nothingness and over it a hypocrisy of words”.

I asked “what am I supposed to believe in”?

and she replied “I don’t know what you are supposed to believe in”.

Therein the problem. Nothing to believe in.

I am headed back to work, to art, to the gym – to myself. I believe in right here, right now, myself, alone.