"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." Anais Nin

49 Cornelia Street

Today I drove by the house I photographed a couple of weeks ago, and they had razed it. Gone. Now it is an empty lot for sale. I am so glad I did not wait to shoot it.

Posted by: brutallycurious at January 31, 2006 00:32 | link | comments (2)

I always know when I'm on the brink of something big. It's just about the time I begin to think I"m going crazy. Really. Life takes on this vividness.  Little things set me off and I spend the day swinging between serenity and despair. My emotions carry me like a river through the changes in my spirit . They intensify, and just about the time I begin to think I must be going mad, there is a huge energetic shift inside me.  Some big fear melts away. Some big part of my life makes more sense. Tonight I have felt like I'm going crazy.  I can't make it through an hour without crying and at 40, once I start crying my eyes puff up and will stay puffy most of the day tomorrow. (I hate that. I have to pull out the Preparation H like the beauty contestants.) Everything seems tinged with a heavy dose of self-doubt.....

This whole week has been amazing in the way it has turned me upside down. All my growth over the last year has been around knowing myself, honoring what is important in my heart, and living it out. I have come so far, and yet these experiences have thrown me about like a feather. I have been bandied about by fear, lonliness and helplessness.   I realized that I depend on Yogaboy more than I care to admit. He gives me that safe zone to fully accept myself just the way I am. It is more difficult to create that safe zone for myself, and that is when i get stuck emotionally, spiritually and artistically. With his support, I feel the freedom to be a messy, intense, emotional being. Otherwise I tend to hem myself in to boxes of expectations that  do not belong to me.   So I guess it is valuable to know this, and to work at feeling that support and acceptance from the Universe which is there all the time. 

The funny thing is, I have my belief system and rituals in place that put me in touch with the eternal in myself. I have worked very hard to find what works for me,  if I would just walk in it daily.  And I do truly have a support system of other women, but I am afraid to use it. How hard is it to call on someone for emotional support? Very. And yet I'd do it in a heartbeat for them.

I have read that life is not linear, but circular. (does that mean we're all  like Shrek, with layers like an onion?) The same lessons keep coming up in your life to be re-learned. Hopefully you learn a little more each time and each lesson is a little easier. If you don't learn, it comes back the same or stronger. Geez.  I am really having to work at this self-love and self-acceptance, but I will be patient with myself. The illusion is that it comes easier to others. Surely other people don't struggle like this on a daily basis. But I know the truth is they do, just not as visibly as I do.

It has taken me several years just to admit to myself that I am an intense, emotional and vivid person.  It shows in my art, my relationships and my writing. Sometimes it's the only way I can make sense of it all. Lay it all out on the table and fit it together like a puzzle.

So, I'm on the brink of something big. The possiblities are endless. I can't wait to see what it is.

Posted by: brutallycurious at January 30, 2006 23:49 | link | comments
crazy, self-image, growing up, possibilities

Found this picture of Ms. Helen as I was working this morning. She sat for me in August.

Posted by: brutallycurious at January 29, 2006 14:21 | link | comments

Yesterday was a very difficult day. Yogaboy left town for his workshop, having completed his first week of yoga teacher training.   I was blessedly alone, but my heart was breaking and I didn't want to be alone with myself.  It was the very predictable "crash" part of my process.  I always used to marvel when a writer talked about the pain of writing, thinking how beautiful that sounded and how terrifying.  Beautiful that they would endure it for the sake of their art, and terrified that I might also face that prospect.

It is true. I know no other way to spiritual maturity or artistiic expression but through inner turmoil, nor do I understand why it is so. I realized last year that it was impossible for me to understand beauty without first understanding death.  Nothing is born without a death. Yesterday was the day to face death on so many levels. Death to my mind's image of my body. Death of a friend. Death of  my ability to go to a restaurant and eat anything I want.  Mourning the loss of effortless eating. (I am allergic to wheat, soy, and now I am lactose-intolerant).  Death (temporarily) of the support of my husband's physical presence. He was as available emotionally as he was able, but that wasn't much.  He has 12 weeks ahead of all-consuming  training...think huge reading assignments concurrent with internship.  It was very clear to me how supportive he is of me and how I depend on it.  He cannot do any of  *my* work for me or take it from me, but he is a very real stabilizing force in my life. When my ego is beating me up, he remiinds me that the ego is a liar.  He reminds me of the truth within me.  I hope I can do the same for him.

This time, I fought the cycle. Like a child stomping her foot and pouting, I resisted these lessons. It lasted most of Friday and all of yesterday. Last night I sought out the company of friends to help me regain some balance. Normal life reminded me that most of my drama I have allowed to become too big. Imagine that.  Somehow I woke this morning more at peace. I woke in a creative, calm mood and could feel my own power.

I really do not understand fully what goes on in myself. The relationship of surrender to Divine guidance and standing in my own power.  The visceral effect of emotionally and mentally "letting go" of pain. How one lives in communion with a partner (or family or environment or world, for that matter), recognizing the Spirit universal in all of us,  yet retains one's own spirit and identity.

I stood for several minutes this morning looking out the kitchen window at the woodpecker who lives in the trees nearby. I love woodpeckers. They are beautiful, unique, tenacious, resourceful. Like all of nature, they are themselves and do not try to be anything other than that.

I accept my growth. I accept the Life/Death/Life cycle. I accept that things must die in order to make room for new life. I release the pain of loss. I embrace my power to shape my life right now and in the future.  I accept who I am.

Posted by: brutallycurious at January 29, 2006 11:53 | link | comments
beauty, self-image

Ms. Helen

Start from the beginning....

I didn't give up corporate life entirely. I still work 10 hours a week for  a bank. Here's why....

She came into the bank (in the retirement community) over from the assisted living wing. Seems she'd had a stroke a year earlier and had lost the ability to write. She had terrible cataracts, so she couldn't see well at all. She could still hear, and her mind was sharper than most any other elderly woman I had met there.  Her speech was a little slurred but I could understand her.  Her voice was like a drunk Bea Arthur. It was great.

What i realized in my first conversation with her was that despite her slurred speech, she was intelligent, quick-witted, well-read, and engaging. You know, I have no idea what she did during her career. I'm sure she told me. She was very happily married but had been a widow for 30 years. No kids. No one to really look out for her except her sister-in-law, and Ms. Helen didn't like her much. She was too bossy.

So she came into the bank to get money but, without the ability to sign,  she couldn't do her own business. She was relying completely on her sister-in-law. Turns out she could write, but she was embarrassed by her signature. Over the course of the next month, I convinced her to sign checks herself, even if they were ugly. She had a long last name, so I suggested she abreviate it.  When she consented, she complained about how ugly it was, but at least she could cash her own checks.

For the next 2 years she came down weekly, using her walker, to cash checks and talk. We would laugh about all the  women who lived there who were obsessed with their beauty appointments and gossip. We talked about the audiobooks she was listening to, whether she was wearing blue or green, my life, art, the city, her history....pretty much everything.  We both loved antiques and she missed all that she'd left behind when she moved.  She showed me the one thing she'd kept...her baby trunk from 1915.  It was a tiny wood and wicker trunk made for her when she was born. She bequeathed it to me. She had always wanted to drive around the city one more time on a bright sunny day so she could see a little of how it had changed.  I tried to take her several times, but she didn't always feel well and wouldn't go when the weather was bad.

I did succeed in taking her out to brunch one Friday morning. We had a good tiime. The staff took extra care of us when they saw her come in...I don't think they get a lot of elderly women in Pastries-a-Go-Go (it's real name!).

I saw her for the last time two weeks ago.  When I told her I'd gotten married, she cried because she was so happy for me. I escorted her back up to her room, gave her a hug, and left.

She had chosen back in August to discontinue her dialysis.  We had discussed how she felt it was time to stop working so hard at keeping herself alive when she was so tired. I was very proud of her for being honest with herself and making a decision regardless of what anyone else said. The doctors told her she might only have a month or so after she quit dialysis. She lasted 5.

She died Wednesday. She was 90. I'll miss her terribly.

Posted by: brutallycurious at January 27, 2006 12:33 | link | comments (1)