That's Classified

Photo Credit: eMMe

                                            

Fall and winter ferociously suck the moisture out of blooms. Similarly, a child may be stripped of an ability to access their essence, brutal and uncaring societal and parental winds peeling away the intrinsic vitality of an individual life, leaving a crusted shell of indoctrination behind.

A child learning from their environment how they must adapt to that environment for acceptance and the ability to survive, doesn’t have the mental capacity to wonder “is this good for me?” This kind of perspective doesn’t come without an awareness of a particular behavior or thinking pattern fucking something up. It is a perspective which can only arrive when an adult at least partially understands themselves as responsible for their own living experience. This last aspect is a necessary condition. Knowing one’s life is one’s own has a particular exquisite awareness that doesn’t always arise inside toxic living environments.

Human babies and children cannot care for themselves, no matter how low the limbo-age-pole goes that is held by an increasingly obtuse society. A prevailing tendency toward authoritarianism, along with generational acceptance of abusive practices, has brought a continuing thread of misperception about what is and what is not considered “mine” and “my responsibility.” Along with parental misnomers that “children are extensions of the parents” and “children should never experience adversity,” abusive practices suck most of the float out of an awareness balloon. Additionally overwhelmed by the increasing influx of cultural “too-too much," frankly, I don’t know how anyone figures their shit out. With childhood-into-adulthood states of fight, flight, or freeze, there aren’t enough collectible minutes for star gazing, let alone existential self-reflection.

Though wildly difficult, knowing the value of one's intrinsic self is an important perception to work achieve. Learning to understand oneself as part of the species called humans, as well as, if one landed in a considered and kind nest, a member of a family, and separately, identifying as an individual. The “I am” concept. I am someone who___________ instead of “I do what I am told because it is the right thing to do.” Unable to quantify without declaring a world-wide prevalence for indoctrination, I will merely suggest that many of our human ills could be reasonably linked to a lack of ability to separate an individual from the collective, while vigilently maintaining care and consideration for everyone.

I’ve outlined this human-grade issue for the following reason: I am struggling to have an ability to define my value to myself. This is likely due to the difficulty of defining value within the complexity of my version of "mind-ing." I am burdened with a collection of diverse and divisive methods for determining worth. There is the engraved and conflicting messaging of “how good I am and how bad I am” playing on repeat through the halls of my mind, and boulders strapped on my back labeled “Hard Worker,” “Don’t Be Ugly,” and “Take Responsibility.” These are a few of the reflexive approaches I learned subliminally as well as violently through childhood until well into my fifth decade. Merely thinking about my value presses the on button to those well-conditioned approaches. I’m rarely aware they’ve engaged, words tumbling out of my mouth or marching through my synapses like Pavlovic soldiers forced into formation by long-dead commanders.

If I attempt to define my worth outside of check marks on a lifetime “to do” list, I come up with and lose everything I may have dragged from the circuitous shafts twisting behind my eyeballs. This isn’t surprising. Value based on the premise that survival is and will be the only important factor, means that additional objectives threaten survival. It’s a tiger chomped on its own tail until it successfully gobbles itself whole. Survive to survive...until death do we part.

When I began writing today, I planned on answering the question “I am good at________” over and over until I had gathered the circumference of my many-minded value. Instead, I’ve written several paragraphs on why that’s impossible. If I were to ask the CIA what they’re good at, they would likely say “that’s classified” or “I’d have to kill you if I told you.” It comes to me the question “I am good at______” carries the pulse of a similar threat. Encased behind layers of unkindness, decades of indoctrination and complicit support, the snowflake of my value is not accessable. Soldiers are crusted up and stand at attention in front of a construct built through years of living-to-survive and surviving-to-live and they haven’t been granted a release from their vigilance. The husk of what came to be has hardened into place, making it difficult to find the way to an essential self. I suppose, I know am good at one thing... I am good at learning how to survive.

The Zombie Apocalypse is Here.

 

Photo Credit: eMMe

Zombie Apocalypse movies are prophecies and people behave like scavengers during a global pandemic. 

Yeah, I know, not all people...though on days like today, there's a great deal of evidence that implies otherwise.

Most readers don't know me. It's one of the reasons I write on this blog and Twitter....snark-filled anonymity. But right now, I'm almost longing for Facebook. Not enough to go back, it's just with this story I wish Bloggerville knew me well enough to know I am not a bull-shitter.

This happened.

And unfortunately, it's not accompanied with a video.

Backstory: I'm a mask-wearer. I closed a manual therapy practice in March 2020 so as not to harm clients. I reopened for a few sessions that summer and closed again as soon as fall hit. I believe in science...and facts. I spend most of my emptied calendar wishing for daylight and the better times I believe most of us wish for. I want all people to live in good health—mentally, situationally, and physically. This morning, I faced a whole lot of people who don't have the same want, they actually have the opposite want for others and for themselves. The experience was what it might've been like to be a rescuer arriving in Jonestown and unable to stop those cultists from drinking the poisoned Kool-Aide. A witness to a level of insanity that generally, pre-Covid-19, seemed to be a rare collective-occurrence.

This morning, I need to collect a wine order....you know....lockdown survival necessaries. This store usually has curbside pick-up available, but not today. It is early, the order is pre-paid and waiting for me right inside the entry, so I figure, why not? 

When I enter through the automated door, I lose time or it stops all-together. Or perhaps it is a black hole—the kind in movies used as a plot twist but in this case an alien isn't popping out of a bottle of rotgut tequila. Other than my heartbeat, which fills my ears along with an inside-the-head-silent-screaming omgomgomgomgomg litany, all sound fades as I unintentionally become performance art.

Of the lengthy line at the store register and the dozens in the connected restaurant sitting at tables, playing slot machines, and wandering to pay, leave, or go to the bathroom, I spot one lone wide-eyed stranger staring at me, mirroring my shock and horror. Masked, the person looks as though they have belatedly realized where they are and are trapped, surrounded by the walking dead. 

In the freeze state between fight and flight, my side-vision detects the door I entered has in the short interim nearly finished closing. At that moment, one of the unmasked mutants completes his purchase and moves in my direction. I snap out of my shocked stupor. My mouth, hanging open under my mask begins to form words as I shove my foot in the narrow gap left by the door, blocking it from closing entirely.

    "Are you kidding me....only one mask in this place?!...."

My knee wedges in to force the door open wider as horrified-me stares back over my shoulder at the other mutants.

    "....You're all crazy as shit!...."

In uber-slow-motion, me-eyeballs the silent mutant as he continues on past through the true-exit door while my wide hip presses the entry-opening further. Full-blown horror activates the rest of my words as I gazelle-leap through the doorway and in three gigantic leaps reach my car.

    "....Fuck!....Fuck!....Fuck!"

A postscript answer to an assumed reader-question:

    "What did the unmasked mutants do in response to me calling them crazy?"

The answer is more shocking than the event itself—the walking dead confirmed their status. They resumed conversation, continued standing in line, eating, drinking, and playing slots as though nothing had happened.

I don't know if there is an antidote to this level of dysfunctional un-living. It may be that humanity has reached a devastating point. One in which a large swath of us will continue to be a suicidal threat to others as the rest attempts to build a better country. Either way 2021 is likely to go very much as 2020 is right now....

Days of shocking enlightenment, horror, and gazelle-leaps to safety and nights sipping wine while chanting "There but for the grace of my resilient mind and belief in science, go I."

The Opossum Solstice.

 

Opossum is an intriguing word. For those thinking it should be spelled “possum”— that's only in Australia where that species of animal lives. Here in America, it is the opossum.

An opossum wandered by on my walk yesterday as if it had decided it was time to toss a rope into my swamp-wallowing. Could be it was a sage-offering, the opossum a new recruit to my tribe of spirit animals. It has all the markings of eMMe-truth, especially when entwined with this particular solstice.

 

A well-known fact of the opossum is that when it perceives danger, it often topples over in a grand death moment, the breath of the animal even perfumed with the stench of a corpse. What is lesser-known, is that occasionally an opossum forgets it is still alive, the slowing of its breath and heartbeat stealthily removing the idea it is play-acting. Apparently, the stellar performance fools even the actor and the animal never moves again.

 

In terms of the 2020 solstice and my swamp-wallowing, I wonder if I and many in our nation, have lost the knowing that we are not yet dead. Our breath though barely perceptible is still there, bodies waiting for minds to catch up to what is true. 2020 has felt excruciating. Loss of health and or loved ones to Covid-19, loss of income, loss of routine, loss of normalcy. While 2020 has been horrific, so were the three years previous as one-by-one, opossums toppled over after encountering predators unleashed to annihilate good governance and a semi-functioning society.

 

My story is complicated by a history of predatory encounters, each toppling me into corpse pose. Over time, corpse pose became normalized, not fully-living or fully-dying, walking as though I lived while living as though I had died.

 

The Opossum Solstice is a reminder that we do indeed still breathe. Though predators exist, they are not close enough to smell our breath. It is time to move.

 
Tonight, I will set a bonfire with the intention that my opossum awakens so she and I may live as though we are indeed, still breathing.

This Indifferent Country: The Devastating Price of Ignorance

Between Here & There By eMMe Lecos 

Ignorance is the lack of access to, an unwillingness to accept, and the willful denial of wisdom that is entrenched in submissive indifference.

It is also the definition for this self-provoked hellscape of 2020. I liken it to a cultural micro—an abusive family refusing to acknowledge, address, or heal a collective trauma experience.

Journalists decreeing empathy for a president who has refused science and endangered himself and others is a product of our enablement of ignorance. We cannot structurally resist an authoritarian who has left our country open to a deadly virus, unless we deal with and end our submissive coddling of bullies.

We cannot move forward until we walk backward with an awareness of what has been done.

Our country holds belligerent fools in higher esteem than science and facts. The loud and flamboyant are considered titillating and entertaining. We’ve reached an apocalyptic level of uncritical thinking largely due to a severe indifference to the importance of intelligent, social responsibility. The Senate, religious institutions, and the excitement-malleable press have given credence to a governing-platform built upon lies, propaganda, and bullying tactics that shove resistors and truth out of the mainstream. This has led to a recent “good people should” instruction: mass atrocities must be overlooked for a president who has been felled by a virus…even if due to his own inaction and venal disregard.

First walk backward, collect an awareness of what has been done, and then firmly hold onto that knowledge as enablers and propagandists relentlessly attempt to shut down critical thinking.

We are in the middle of a cold civil war—a war between wisdom and intentional stupidity. A war pitting reason; boring, logical reason against an addictive, suicidal level of ignorance. Wisdom stands between our humane selves and the entrance to our unevolved, pre-frontal lobe selves abusing each other for scraps discarded by tyrants. To protect that dividing line between thoughtfulness and unrelenting crudeness, there is only one option. Fight back. Turning the other cheek and maintaining superficial politeness enables bullies. We have no cheeks left to turn. Our battered cheeks carry collective trauma that’s actively eviscerating our future.

I have been bullied by several different individuals. Family members, kids at school, teachers, co-workers, bosses, and even friends. Many times, I fought back and many times I didn’t. Even when I resisted, my body trembled, my voice cracked, and tears threatened to lay me bare. Fighting back is the antithesis of how I was modeled, the clay of me tucked and nipped until I succumbed more often than I want to remember.

2016, pre-election, I shouted warnings on every medium available to me, my historical wounds deep, wisdom streaming like blood sent to warn of impending doom. I often relish being right, coveting the tragic lessons tattooed into heart and brain as a warrior displaying battle scars announcing my survival. I have no enjoyment of this ugly mess my wisdom foretold; a wisdom garnered from living with a poor man’s Donald Trump.

A seer is someone who foretells the future, extrapolating from available information what is the most-likely outcome of a situation. Wall Street is littered with self-proclaimed versions relying on win-loss ratios as banners for successfully guessing market trends. A seer does not self-proclaim, they instead advise while understanding that the end result, regardless of their accuracy, is out of their hands.

Bullies are prolific in this societal landscape, our soil lacking sustained pushback and consequences severe enough to matter. Bullies and tyrants sown in families, businesses, and government, kudzu swallowing thoughtfulness whole. I wrote about this in August 2016 in an article on the Huffington Post platform: The Real Authoritarian Deal—America Under Donald Trump’s Boot.

I am not a prophet. I’m a see-r. I see how the past impacts the present and how it inspires or diminishes our future.

This is a vital, pivotal time in our collective lives. Either we careen off a cliff, carried along with disturbed lemmings blindly following their leader or we put a stop to this suicidal stupidity and fight back.

Do not doubt your own earned-wisdom. Trust it. Inform others. Gather. We are between here and there. The future will be written with what we do next.

Vote early in-person or deliver mail-in ballots to the office of the county clerk. Go with friends or family. If lemmings attempt to bully you at the polls, call the county clerk’s office with the number programmed into your phone. Video their behavior and post it online. Write about your experience with bullies to remind others we don’t have to live this way. Bullies are not the majority, humanity is.

Fight back.

Birdseed

Photo by eMMe

As a kid I knew no one would rescue me. I didn’t know it in a complex “someone might help and they haven’t or won't.” I understood I was on my own since that’s simply how it had most-always been.

One time, someone stepped in and stopped my brain from extreme damage. Even then it wasn’t to offer comfort or provide support, it was to stop the person who was shaking me, snapping my head back and forth, the sound of a whooshing train filling my ears until it went silent.

Other than that single instance, my childhood was left alone to create a brokenness resistant to healing. A pane of glass shattered in big and tiny taps until the pieces are so small they aren’t a jigsaw puzzle requiring a long weekend, rather a bag of birdseed scattered and eaten by a flock of swallows on a layover before heading to San Juan Capistrano.

I offer this analogy after seeing photos of people in Huntington Beach protesting against being protected, protesting over someone caring enough about their health and the health of others to stand up for them. Those photos have risen my despair so that it swamps my broken parts...the elements of me that needed that kind of selfless concern. Those folks protesting in Huntington Beach and across the country are throwing away care as though care comes to everyone. To them, care is so prevalent or unimportant, its value is worthless and the opportunity for it ought to be destroyed.

I don’t know if I believe in God the way others do. Perhaps that’s a product of what happened to me.

What I believe in is a collective be-ing from within all life that is either cultivated into care and concern, thoughtfulness and awareness, beneficence and value or it is turned over to dread and harm, hate and putridness, and a rigid meanness and uncaring that breaks things and people, scattering them to hungry birds on a layover.

It is no longer whether or not there are “someones” who will rescue us from harm—that has been answered. We must save ourselves.

Rainbows & Lightning Bolts A Story Series Part 2

Photo by eMMe

I probably could’ve dog paddled above my Great Sea of Nothing for the rest of my life and not ever fully-realized how hard my body was working to hide what I didn’t want to remember. That might’ve been a minuscule amount of time given that a couple of organs had already skedaddled and a lightning bolt had stripped my brain of memories, however briefly, at that party five years ago…

If you missed the last newsletter describing this event, you may read the beginning of the story HERE.

…It’s true that all the blood can drain out of people’s faces when they are shocked. My partner’s hair literally stands on end and his voice squeaks as he gathers our coats from the pile on the couch at the mummering party. He asks if we should call a taxi (Uber wouldn’t establish in our area for a couple more years) since I am the designated driver and he and the other guests have imbibed enough to be the fool to perform for their supper on this frigid and typically boring February night.

Again, I trot myself through the stroke course, tongue to left and right, ABCs now said out loud, mapping the turns that will lead us home—though I do not mention I have no idea what our address is even if I know how to get us there. I watch him anxiously root through the pile of coats for a missing glove, now fully comprehending that my brain is malfunctioning. From the mysterious stroke filing cabinet, data continues to spew forth…Can I recall the names of my kids? Do I have kids? Oh yeah, I think I do. I easily count toward a hundred as my partner alerts the couple we’d driven with that we need to head home.

The car fob seems oddly familiar, the interior of the dash apparatus a bit strange, the parking brake is in the wrong place, and the knowledge for if it is engaged doesn’t arrive. My partner watches me intently when after a few stumbles, I start the car. As we begin moving, the rest returns as rote, a repetitive action like blinking or breathing and as long as I don’t try to think it through my body does what is necessary to get us all safely home.

Inside a house we have lived in for twenty-plus years, I am mildly surprised we have dogs, though the surroundings are strangely not strange. By the time pajamas are on and my partner has asked and been answered “no” several times to a question about an emergency room visit, I know there are two children, what their names are, and that the man I refer to as “my partner” is my husband. I work as a manual therapist, regularly see a mental health professional, and clearly, this is not a stroke.

When morning arrives, I wake knowing what and where Great America is and something had happened beyond anything I’d ever experienced before and that it would likely upend whatever I thought normal was. Even without a diagnosis, pragmatism and decades of dealing with trauma and mayhem have educated my spidey senses to understand when lightning bolts strike, plan on being electrocuted.

Visiting my regular doctor a few days later, she and I discuss my physical status.

     “Your blood pressure is a little high.”
     I laugh.
     “Wouldn’t yours be if you’d forgotten what and where Great America is?”
     She grins.
     “I’d like to forget…but stop trying to make me laugh. This is serious.”
     Her face strips itself of mirth, mine remains empty of participating in this drama.
     “I don’t think it’s a stroke.”
     The doctor softens her tone.
     “I don’t either, but I recommend doing all the tests anyway so we have them as a baseline.”
     “And what would those tests be?”
     “An MRI and bloodwork.”

I agree to go through the motions while also decreasing hormone replacement therapy I've been dabbling in, in case it is causing weird side-effects. The MRI is scheduled for the next morning.

At a 6 AM appointment, I close my eyes sleepily as a young female technician slides me into the machine. Her last words before leaving the room are that she’ll be able to hear me from an overhead microphone once she reaches the command booth. In my hand rests a squeeze-for-help mechanism if I need to contact her. I’m not overly concerned about the twenty-minute test, figuring with my eyes closed I’d pretend I’m meditating, bashing the illusion when my snores are picked up on the sound feed.

Imagining myself seated on an empty beach, I take a long relaxed breath and release it, the expelled air bouncing off the nearby tube wall back into my face. Panic prods a burr in my psyche into alertness. Ancient shrieks of terror vibrate through my eardrums, faces bob behind my eyelids, and suddenly I cannot breathe.

Repeatedly pressing S.O.S brings no response from the technician. I chant a stream of words to calm my surprising hysteria.

Oh no. It’s okay. Just think of the beach. Breathe. I can do this. Where is that tech? Oh God, I’m gonna die.

My body pulsates as I resist the urge to open my eyes.

Don’t open them. Don’t scream. Don’t move. Don’t, don’t, don’t!

My brain is exploding, stroke concerns now seemingly true. Straps encasing my skull make it impossible to shimmy out. Warm, moist, cloying breath surrounds me, and suddenly, terrifyingly, I’m completely encased in a wool blanket, with the fibers scratching relentlessly.

Smoke Man has returned and won’t let me go.

The MRI tube tosses me into the Great Sea of Nothing to retrieve what I have forgotten, it sends me straight back to that house. It is the 1960s on a charming cul-de-sac in a sunny beach community, the Gidget horror story that was my childhood.

But at least my heart is breathing again, right?

Rainbows & Lightning Bolts—A Story Series

Photo by eMMe

Lightning bolts change things. They are an electric current. And when an electric current enters a human body it can kill or restart the heart if it has stopped. And if the person is A Me walking around with a heart that hasn’t emotionally breathed in decades, a lightning bolt will toss the life into the sky and no one knows if it’ll ever land to live semi-normally again.
          But at least the heart is breathing again, right? At least the heart is breathing again **[INSERT EYEROLL]**

It all started on a cold winter’s eve five years ago, in a room full of strangers with a few friends telling stories for their supper. This event had been modeled after a Newfoundland tradition called "mummering." Townspeople in Newfoundland communities dress in costume, perform the fool door-to-door and are served food and drinks for the effort.

In the frigid, boring extremes of the Midwest, we work to come up with things to do that don't involve expanding our bums or re-binging Longmeyer on Netflix for the fourth time. On these many, many cold nights, we could stay home having glorious sex, the kind we tend not to remember from our youth, but instead cabin fever sets in and we either stumble out of our comfy zones or take long winter's naps aided by vats of chamomile tea.
          At this February juncture, I’m in full-throttle zombie-mode, most days lost in very efficient to-do lists filled with tasks designed to make me appear as though all is very well in my neighborhood, conveying I’m one of the “good ones” and not a “bad one.” Taxes are paid on time, the leaves are meticulously collected from the lawn each fall, and when there’s laundry I wash it in private, drowning my dirty linens in memory bleach so as to never show my ass in public.

I am unintentionally-non-aware this zombie-state is killing me one organ at a time, my heart the choir director instructing each not-vital-to-existence member to suffocate right along with her. I misplace my uterus and gallbladder during this process, both holding hands until the end as the Great Sea of Nothing absorbs them along with their importance. The Great Sea of Nothing is what I call the place that takes what was once oh-so-very-important—hopes, dreams, fluid limbs, glorious sex, dancing for no reason at all—and hides them so they don't occupy thoughts that need to be engaged in perfecting a "To Do List Life."

Glug-glug.

My hair thins, I am perpetually tired, my skin dry, and a mysterious shudder can be felt deep in my core when I lie in bed at night. I tear the house apart searching for what is creating this vibration. It has to be the furnace, the washing machine, the refrigerator, the well pump, a dehumidifier…When these are found not to be the cause, I decide someone is illegally fracking in the area and my house will one day join my gallbladder and uterus in that Great Sea of Nothing via aquifer rapids eroding glacier deposits beneath my feet.

Swooooooshhhhh...

I am terrified nearly every moment of every day, the persistent vibration following me out of the house and into my car, to work, and showing up as I check items off my to-do list and good-person smile through my every day.

And so there I am, lounging on a pile of coats during another dreary February night, listening to life stories, poems, music, and comedy, performed by friends and mostly strangers when a lightning bolt soundlessly strikes—a vibrant rainbow jagger-splitting the woman speaking at an angle left-to-right.

I watch this curious event unfold as it slow-motion changes my life instantly. It is gorgeous and terrifying. My tongue reflexively moves back and forth in my mouth, I whisper the ABCs under my breath, my name...what is my name??? Some part of my brain has managed to remember the signs for stroke, though my name wanders in the Great Sea with my uterus. I stand up as inconspicuously as possible to move my arms and legs. Nothing aside from my old lady tits droops and everything works with regular-ancient creakiness. I sit back down as inconspicuously as before and resume watching the odd rainbow-hued lightning bolt.

The woman telling her story I have known since my twentieth year, back when my heart was still emotionally breathing and I believed there were eons of life road that would carry me off to many splendid things, most of them on sunny beaches and nowhere near a plain or prairie. The story she has been sharing is one I had known about, it having occurred around the time we met.

The lightning bolt sashays to a finish, all at once clearing me of the rest of what I know, the volt of electricity zapping what was before as though it a leaf on my meticulous lawn incinerated to ash.

The room full of guests applauds while I query my partner of nearly-thirty years about the friend (now stranger's) story.

“What’s Great America?”
He laughs.
“I have no idea…was America ever great?”
“No. I’m asking about the story…What’s Great America?”
The laughter ebbs as he realizes I'm not joking.
“You know, up in Gurnee, just north of here. Didn’t you take the kids there at some point? That amusement park.”
“What’s an amusement park?”

Those questions erupting from that one random lightning bolt moment on a pile of coats five years ago evaporated my To Do List Life. The old life didn't fall into that Great Sea of Nothing, that old life no longer exists. And at the same time, that rainbow-hued lightning bolt split open and illuminated my Great Sea of Nothing and I've been seeking and sorting through what's been quivering on the bottom ever since.

But at least my heart is breathing again, right?

A Naked Heart

Filters have controlled people's behavior for so long and thoroughly, I have sensed a deep longing for people to be seen and heard wafting from the collective bones of us—our spirit—when we encounter an opportunity to bloom.

“If we walk far enough,” says Dorothy, “we will sometime come to someplace.”

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

What I noticed about the Introduction to Storytelling and Solo Performance class I recently co-produced with Jack Schultz of Green Shirt Studios, is that it mimicked the audience's reaction to Jack Schultz's solo performance I’m Falling in Love All the Time that same evening—a hunger to witness and speak from the heart.

As terrified as many of the students were in the solo class, they found ways to courageously share by assisting each other and letting themselves freely speak. When the solo performance ended and loved ones told of their experiences with those who had suffered from addiction, the thread weaving through Jack’s deeply personal story, the communal connection in the room was palpable. Compared to the communal disconnection often felt either in person or on social media, the transformative power of the type of engagement that occurred in both the storytelling class and the after-solo discussion could not be missed.

“He is my dog, Toto,” answered Dorothy. “Is he made of tin or stuffed?” asked the Lion. “Neither. He’s a…a…a…meat dog,” said the girl.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

I witnessed those who thought they'd never be able to tell a story in the class and people in the audience overcome entrenched public speaking shyness/anxiety to find their voices. And after doing what had been personally considered out of an individual's scope of practice, there came a collective, joyous spike in awakeness, awareness, alertness, and humanness that I'll never forget.

At the end of the evening, I checked in with Jack, as a primary component of his solo expression is revealing the grief he carries after losing his brother to a heroin overdose. In his performance, he shares this question “What do we do with the love for the people we’ve lost?” Walking up to Jack, he grinned without speaking. I was struck by how joyous he appeared after opening his heart to a room full of strangers.

“How do you feel?” I asked, though it seemed a redundant question.

“You have plenty of courage, I am sure,” answered Oz. “All you need is confidence in yourself. There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid, and that kind of courage you have in plenty.”

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Jack’s joy enveloped his entire body, I could feel him nearly clap with glee. “Great! It went well, it felt good out there, and I was able to stay present!”

“I was able to stay present.”

When Jack continued, he discussed what that meant—staying present while trotting a naked heart out into the jungle that is humanity.

“Lions, and tigers, and bears, ohmy.”

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Jack spoke of how he managed to be present, in his body while emotionally connecting with other people, not only during the performance, but also afterward during the open discussion and then with me when I asked how he felt. He offered compelling testimony of what it might be like to be real.

“When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

The Velveteen Rabbit

“Yeah, it’s hard having those feelings for my brother in front of people, but when I sense they get it and are following along with me…its freeing and a connection all at once. I feel more alive.”

My face must have looked dubious.

“I won’t say it’s easy. There have been times when I’ve performed this and dialed it in, the audience got the story and not the emotion. I couldn’t do it. And that’s okay. It’s part of me learning how to be present.”

Later by email, our conversation moved onto how Jack’s theatrical background and study of the Meisner Approach may be the grounding wire that’s helping him do this kind of performance work and stay present in front of an audience. I’m considering signing up for a Meisner Intensive Class that begins next weekend (12/7/19). The shrieking sound of my inner-freak-out is likely echoing through this typeface.

Since the class and performance, Jack’s vibrant, joyous face after spilling his guts in public has stirred my cup of tea.

“He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these.”

The Velveteen Rabbit

Scary. Unsettling. Stripping the heart down to a naked spirit and exposing it to the jungle.

That’ll likely hurt.

My cup of tea is clearly in motion. I’ll try not to splash the audience—overmuch.

My Name Is Taboo.

The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it. 
George Orwell

A couple of years ago I got a tattoo. Not one of those tiny hummingbirds on my upper thigh and only seen by my husband and dermatologist. I'm painted with a big splash of feathers across my upper chest that is impossible to ignore—though some do try.

I see those folks, their eyes scuttling from my tattoo back up to my eyes in an up-down motion, furtive and at times ashamed, as though they are looking deep in my undie drawer and have found a red lacy pair inscribed with "spicy". I find these people incredibly interesting. All that horrified-at-themselves and inability-not-to-look agony. It comes to me as self-shaming within a crowd of one.

OMG is that a tattoo?

Who would get such a big tattoo?

Does she think that looks good?

Uh-oh, does she know I'm silently judging her?

Shit. That makes me bad or something, right?

STOP looking at the tattoo.

Can't.

Shit. I am that bad person.

There are others who can't keep from judging out loud, their in-side voices escaping the lips to run amok in the vegetable aisle.

"That's a big tattoo you've got there."

At my "oh-here-we-go" nod, they continue.

"Why'd you get it?"

The face of the person typically scrunches up as though an overripe melon has gone bad and the stink has invaded their airspace. I occasionally feel compelled to toy with this appalled-state they've landed in with one of several snarky replies.

"Why'd I get what?" while dead-stare-daring them in the eyeballs to gesture at my flock of feathers or in a super-mean mood I state with purposeful offhandedness "Was drunk on tequila and held down by witches." or meaner still and naked-to-the-bone "It was something I promised myself to do if I survived my childhood."

The latter, closer to the truth than I want to fully explain in the grocery store, is designed to get the person to skedaddle to the frozen section with freshly "oh-god-why-did-I-ask" slapped cheeks.

Telling the truth is a beautiful act, even if the truth itself is ugly.
Glen Duncan

I've had a few people manage to throttle on past my snark, their in-side voices so disconnected from what is being said that they obtusely toss additional layers of tar, feathers, and tomatoes.

"In my family, we don't believe in tattoos." or "Aren't you afraid of what it will look like when you're old-ER?" or my personal fave "Ever wish you could go back in time and change your mind?"

My name is Taboo.

I have a long list of things people judge me on, my tattoos only one of them.

The way I parent and my beliefs, how deep the leaves get in my yard before I do something about them, the Buddhas without corresponding Jesuses in my office, the color(s) of my hair, size of my ass, and even the curious cluster of bumps on my forehead (Can't you have them removed? No, I can't). There's the incorrigible behavior of my dogs, vibrant hues of my kitchen, "how dare I gleefully wear yoga pants outside of yoga class," and horror-upon-horrors, that I publically admit to seeing a therapist for more than a simple brush-out.

But the most contentious and likely items to elicit discomfited rage that may eventually lead to ostracization are my resistance to forgive abusers without receiving an "I'm sorry," not forcing myself to remain in contact with intolerant family members, and choosing not to shut up about or nice up the realities of living in a world that traumatizes instead of heals.

This lengthy list of why-would-you-do-it-that-ways and taboos doesn't contain the events I haven't yet found the words to speak about. These are the terribly-terribles most people don't want to witness—the kind of damage done in secret by abusers who use silence to get away with it.

Among other, more salacious definers, I've been labeled blabber-mouth, snitch, tattle-tale, liar, bitch, "it," and drama queen. Family members, and in other subversive ways, society, have cordoned me off for choosing not to hide what harm was done to me and sharing the odious, not-pretty, and disturbing lengths it is taking me to recover—if recovery is even possible.

We are living in a time of tipping points.

Our planet is tipping us off it, using ever more violent and uncontrollable means to get us to coexist in a healthy manner. Governments have been tipping into authoritarianism to contain people thinking outside the lines that were drawn in ever-evolving sand. Hatred has tipped the scales of justice and humanity, bringing civil societies to the brink of chaos.

No legacy is so rich as honesty.
William Shakespeare

Every tipping point has a counter-measure, something that could pull humanity back from free-fall, a life-line that might ground us for a sustainable future. The truth is, humans are not only the good parts. We each have very bad parts; traits and experiences that are terribly-terrible. I'm of the opinion our free-fall counter-measure is to learn how to face who we are by no longer dictating what is talked about, to wholly witness our taboos—the bad and the ugly, the scary and the horrendous, along with the hidden and the dangerous aspects of this life for the purpose of our healing.

When symptoms of pain and illness in a body are ignored or covered over, it often ends tragically. Our global tattoos are no longer going to sit quietly beneath clothing and leave us to nice-up the out-side while the in-side shushes and rots.

Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light.
George Washington

It is time to open-up, listen-up, and heal-up.

Vichyssoise Lightning Bugs

Photo by Em'me

What I don’t know is vast, the information an endless breath rolling over the frontal cortex of my brain, allowing me to assume nothing—I am not what I appear and also without fact. This condition makes who I am anomalous. Giving me a name counterintuitive and pixie-like, as it continually changes, the reflection making me impossible to define.

In some cases, this condition could make the carrier frenetic, unhinged, despondent, and so mercurial as to make them unmanageable. I am occasionally of that condition, my woe of it almost a death wish, asking but not imbibing in the pleasure of an ending. It would indeed be a pleasure, in so far as it would lay bare the unbearable state of my un-being. Isn’t that what it is? This non-definition of self? The continual unveiling of another aspect left in the sink as a shred that's come undone from the main course. 

It is me, the many-minded, who carries essences of whatever was never. It is me that walks with ghosts of those who could not be. It is me. It is me. It is me. We are not allowed the vichyssoise of self—pureed into sublime perfection, instead separate essences—not a whole potato or leeks, only the perfume left behind after they have been chopped to bits.

This mercurial state is of importance and also not. Interchangeable lightness with a state of darkness, as each of me is both. Wisps of delectable golden flecks—a lightning bug as it glimmers in a wood too-too far from touch that is transfixed with a blackness so inky no octopus would own the trail. As such, the length of my appendages, each coiled or flying too far, reach toward and against a life that is less than it could ever have been. The whole of us, unmanaged and left behind is soggy, limp, and without focus, even as a few tendrils strive for the sky.

Here we are. Here we rest. Here we wait. Wondering. Wondering if there is a way back to me and if the trail will be as vast as we are, glitter-filled lightening bugs, their own vichyssoise perfume waving them yonder, with an end that is impossible to see.

Ode To Keanu Reeves

photo by me

Ode To Keanu Reeves→

“I know that the ones who love us will miss us.” Keanu Reeves

          Writing is a display of vulnerability and vulnerability is an act of insanely, courageous stupidity. Lining up words intentionally connected to emotions takes this experience into something akin to lighting oneself on fire.

The brain astride the horse of my creativity is a marvel of compartmentalization. There are tiny houses lined up on a cul-de-sac that may be visualized when I turn away from the world to face inward, losing the noise of friends, family, and others to “listen” to the voices of my many-me’s. These individuals carry the suitcases I refuse to handle—each labeled with ages from the past and filled with feelings and snapshots of memories. For this current and particular twist in our life-healing journey, it is those separate clusters of thoughts that I am humbly requesting assistance in a process of dropping a segment of our protective wall to its knees.

          May we survive the experience to finish this tale.

         

          Not everyone adores Keanu Reeves. Many forget their loathe or love affliction until he says something that sears through obnoxious memes, kittens in knit caps, and toddlers speaking gibberish, to briefly fly to the peak of social media frenzy. It’s Keanu’s superpower.

Keanu and me, we go way back. I’ve never met him and have missed many of the movies he headlines, but there’s something about the guy’s “knowing” way of spilling words that could be interpreted as spontaneous “ah-ha” wisdom or purposely odd, idiotic drivel. It gets me every time. For days I wonder what his creative horse wrangler is thinking. This process I label as “affinity seeking’— desire for the awareness of like-meets-like.

          With this brain of many-me’s, there are containers without a connection to emotions. I, the one writing, am a member of that analytical and dissociated team, and we’re quite content with this state of our affairs. Feelings are messy. Unpredictable. They create ripples, waves, and tsunamis. Once set in “e-motion,” these living essences do not have a singular method for achieving doneness. The energy of them will only dissipate through the passage of time. I’ve been told conversation may help in this process, but from my point of view, that is highly illogical. Talking about gut-wrenching agony provides me a distant assessment of a Rorschach blot of undefined chaos. The jumble of it seems to agitate easily. No good can come from poking a school of jellyfish.

          Which is why it will likely come as a surprise I have allowed the all of us to investigate emotions-in-motion with a therapist.

          Keanu Reeves and I ride a similar timing plane within this existence. He mysteriously evaporates from public view, living his private life off the grid for large chunks of life until springing from oblivion—the reverse of Finding Waldo.

In typically Keanu-related fashion, he pops into thought-place, hanging for a bit in my mind, to then disappear into the ethers of his life.

          When a therapist, after several months of intensive Post-Traumatic-Stress-related therapy, mentions how emotionally dry my responses have been to highly provocative memories, I laugh.

          “My mad life skill.”

          His face and words disagree.

          “Is it?”

          Already tired of the conversation, I sigh.

          “You tell me.”

          “I would like you to tell me.”

          With magnificent restraint, I do not slap him silly with an enormous eye roll. Instead, I throw down one of the therapist’s favorite phrases to launch my reply.

          “What I hear you saying is, you want me to notice that my life might be less fulfilling without emotions. It isn’t. It is in fact, quite manageable this way.”

          In response, I receive the silent treatment. The kind designed to get the other person to continue talking. I don’t. We wait until someone becomes uncomfortable. It isn’t me.

          “The way I see it, life has the ability to be more wholly vibrant with emotions.”

          “You’re a therapist. That’s what you’re supposed to say.”

          Dr. Ben laughs.

          “I actually believe what I’m saying.”
          “I bet you do.”

          “Are you being sarcastic or do you accept what I said?”

          “I accept you imagine that having emotion is a good thing.”

          “I detect an ‘and’.”

          “And there are times when you do not like having emotions.”

          “That’s true.”

          Having passed “Go” and received two-hundred dollars, my voice is gleeful.

          “Ergo my point. This is a mad life skill…my not having emotions. There are plenty of normal-ish people who would agree with me.”

          The therapist whips out his therapy 101 guide book language.

          “However…”

          “Oh, here we go…the sell job.”

          “I’m not trying to make you agree with me.”

          “Yeah, right.”

          “I’m actually not. What I would like to help you understand is that in the main respect, you’re right, emotions are not easy. But they are important. Take one of them for example…Love.”

          Without passing Go, we skip a turn in the silence jail as Dr. Ben waits for me to grow weepy or something. I don’t.

          “Do you have any thoughts on love?”

          “What do you mean?”

          “Situations you’d like to discuss relating to love?”

          “No. I can’t think of anything.”

          “Is there a time you were in love?”

          “Sure.”

          “Isn’t that relevant to this discussion?”

          “Not unless we’re talking about why emotions are a pain in the ass.”

          One of the things I like most about Keanu Reeves is that he appears to be as befuddled and enamored as I with the mysteries of this life. When I imagine him wandering through a day, his brain spits out wonderings about how this place is sense-less, infuriating, wondrous, and without care for how we feel. When it comes to emotions, I don’t think life gives a hoot if we’re having a good time, or whether or not the last kick in the teeth hurt.  Keanu seems to have this part of the equation down—while life doesn’t have an emotional playing piece, it’s firmly in charge of the rules and the kitty.

          It’s been a couple of years since the feeling gauntlet was catapulted onto my field during therapy and I haven’t changed my thinking on the topic. Having an emotion in front of another person isn’t something I want to do. In recent months, I’ve exercised “no” more often than would be considered polite or economical, considering every dime for my sessions comes out of a finite amount in the bank account. It’s easily understood that honesty is a primary and necessary dictum in sessions with a therapist. Up until now, I’ve leaned heavily in that direction, while also holding a few odds ‘n ends deeply in the crevices. These items are mine and not mine, things the me’s individually consider private and sacrosanct.

          “May we talk about why you have difficulty sharing an emotion while we’re working?”

          The habitual answer “no” bubbles up to my lips, but I swallow it, burping slightly with the effort. Dr. Ben is given a polite alternative.

          “I don’t know.”

          “Is there a part of you that has an answer?”

          I nearly laugh, a smirk wandering outside before her mother shoves the girl back in the corner. Once the urge has gone away, I answer.

          “Of course there is. I’m just not going to say.”

          “Why do you suppose this is how it is in here?”

          “…Safety?”

          “Does it feel unsafe in therapy?”

          “It feels unsafe to have emotions.”

          “Why is that?”

          The laugh bolts out of the corner, no longer taking no for an answer.

          “Come on, Dr. Ben. Emotions aren’t exactly safety-inspiring.”

          “No they aren’t, but in here it’s meant to be a safe place where they have an opportunity to be experienced…Can we try EMDR to see if a reason for not feeling safe will present itself?”

          EMDR is the acronym for Eye-Motioning, Desensitization, and Reprocessing. It’s a technique that can help the brain find resolution for PTSD, traumas, and in this instance, canoodle with a resistance to emotions.

Dr. Ben passes his hand back and forth in front of my eyes while I consider the question “Why don’t I want to have emotions in this overly-familiar, blue-walled office with a therapist I’ve known for so many years?”

          An image of Dr. Ben bent over laughing appears on my mind screen.

          That’s ridiculous…The guy probably doesn’t even laugh like that over a perfectly-delivered, hilarious joke.

          When I share what was viewed, the therapist appears disturbed.

          “I would never laugh at something you shared with me.”

          “I realize that. Your therapeutic training wouldn’t allow it. And I have my doubts whether you are someone who laughs in that way about anything.”

          “That’s also true. What’s more important is that I certainly wouldn’t laugh if you shared an emotion in therapy.”

          “I’m clear on that.”

          “Then why do you suppose the image came up?”

          The cul-de-sac of tiny houses in my brain is lined up left-to-right, with the opening at where I sit when I’m talking or thinking. Inside these mini-cubicles are at last count, eighteen different personalities. Each has activities that pertain to what they individually do best or worst depending upon the life happenings that are engaged. Currently, the image of Dr. Ben faces “Look,” a twenty-something female with a plethora of issues, most notably a belief she has lost every-thing. I share the information with the therapist.

          “The “you” that is laughing is sideways, toward Look.”

          Again, a shocked questioning “what” sweeps across the young-old man’s face. I scurry to remind him it is understood he would never behave in this manner.

          “Seriously. I have no idea why this is coming up. You wouldn’t act that way.”

          “And yet, that’s how she’s feeling.”

          “Feeling?”

          “Yes, feeling. Can you describe the feeling for me?”

          “…Worry?”

          “Anything else?”

          “I don’t know.”

          “Why would my potentially laughing worry her?”

          “She doesn’t like being laughed at.”

          “No one does. Why would it matter if I laughed?”

          “I have no idea.”

          When Keanu spontaneously pontificates and I happen to catch the event, an unexpected, unnamed, unconscious sigh slides from my lungs—warm, gooey-goodness coating the mouth for a millisecond-eon. These events are little houses rolling slowly toward a barely discernible dip until they have gathered in silence.

          Dr. Ben continues gently prodding the-one-who-will-not speak by talking to me.

          “Is there another memory that comes up with this?”

          “I sense old relationships nearby.”

          “With who?”

          “Evan, the high school boyfriend and the guy who was ten years older named Kent.”

          “Is there anything that resonates between these two people?”

          “They broke things off…well…not the Kent guy. The last time with him was embarrassing though. Actually, embarrassing covers both situations.”

          “How so?”

          “Neediness. Needing them.”

          “How did you need them?”

          “Look needed them, not me.”

          “Yes, I understand we’re not talking about you. We’re talking about Look. How did Look need these men?”

          “The Evan guy dumped her for someone else and the end of it was brutal. That’s the time she almost ran the car into a brick wall.”

          “I remember that memory. What about Kent?”

          “When things were really bad with the guy I’m married to and it seemed like it was going to end, Look called Kent and asked if he could help her remember who she is.”

          “What did Kent say?”

          The gruff voice of Kent from twenty years ago fills the ears as though a recording has been waiting to be asked. The sensation as the sentence whisper-parrots out of the mouth is plummeting.

          “I can’t help you with that.”

          “Why do you think Kent responded in that manner?”

          “He…was married then…His wife called right after the phone was hung up…started screaming at Look.”

          “A case of bad timing.”

          “That’s one way to describe it.”

          The mouth goes rigid so no more words escape.

          Where do these Keanu moments come from? Are they a product of a multi-minded brain or are they something singular brains do? Having not researched the phenomena I can only guess all people have access, though I’m probably more hyper-aware of it happening. This could be due to the vast number of different activations with eighteen separate players, the occurrence becoming a pattern that is more easily detected. It might also be true that inside a life with frequent painful trenches, the sublime is a delectable retreat one wants to tarry in, and after leaving strives desperately to rediscover.

          Stuck on this idea of emotions, with session time still available to him, the therapist is relentless.

          “Why are these relationship situations important for Look in terms of having emotions in therapy?”

          Instead of answering, I turn inward, as the personality mentioned is shouting without speaking.

          Leave them alone. These feelings are mine. No one gets to touch them or analyze them or make me share them…I’ve lost every-thing. You don’t get to fix or take, or peruse. Leave them alone.

          Dr. Ben notices I’m not in the discussion with him.

          “Are you noticing something?”

          “Not anything I can or will say.”

          As we sit in silence jail staring at one another, I am certain he is wondering why I didn’t cancel this session and play a game of Monopoly with a stranger.

          There are periodic, mild social media wars over whether or not Keanu Reeves is icon-worthy. I doubt he notices or cares. There are strong opinions on both sides and a large swath who respond the same as Keanu by blinking past the occurrences. Personally, I don’t pine for icons, the golden calf story simmering in my rules-to-live-by tome that’s utilized to keep me from experiencing more trauma. Keanu isn’t an icon to me, he’s a person with an energetic essence that somehow dances to a similar rhythm as mine does. There is no understanding for the mechanics of the process, only that it exists and I have no control over who the tango erupts with. In this most recent dip with Keanu, he had been answering the question “What do you think happens when we die?”

          There was a long pause as the raggedly-bewhiskered man stared off in the distance before speaking.

“I know that the ones who love us will miss us.”

          Therapy is a pair of dice tossed across a wide river to bang against someone else’s rocks. There is no guarantee the dice will be seen or more awfully, intentionally avoided, and even if they happen to be collected, the winnings can be opaque. It is pulling a card from the deck of Chance—finding a therapist who takes insurance, an ability to afford the cost, personality and scheduling conflicts, beliefs that refuse to coexist with other beliefs, and always-always, the effed-up shock factor.

          Trauma is shocking whether it is within the experience, shared, or heard. That’s why it’s called “trauma.” Fully witness-listening when people relate their experiences means going on a journey and allowing stories to happen as though they are unfolding all over again.

In my brain when I read or hear someone sharing events, a video ensues, and because I can be without emotion, I view the occurrences without another person’s trauma coming home to breathe. Most people are not able to separate themselves from what they are learning, wandering off in their minds instead of being present in the moment of telling. It is a sad thing to me, we as a people not having the life abs to support each other as we individually attempt to heal. Perhaps this is why many-me’s dance in silence with Keanu, our respective songs mingling across the chasm that is him and me.