Empty Stage: Prayer part 2

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Grace, please quiet my pacing mind and help me stay in one place.
Please bring me back every time I drift.
Help me remember that what I seek is found only on the other side of honest work.

Grace please help me remember to go slow
for it is only when life slows down that I see the details 
It is the details which tell the story

Grace please help me remember - I am not inventing anything.
I am merely a witness who records what she sees.
Help me honor what I see by writing it down.

Thank you for love and fear.
They keep my senses sharp and my soul singing.
Help me honor the mountain of journals which have brought me to this morning.
Grace, please sit with me while I tell my story today.

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Ok...so...now I've written this inspiring prayer...so what do I say?
My mind keeps drifting away to yard sales I might go to this morning.
I've already been on the classified ads and written down two possible addresses.
I've been awake for an hour, drank 2 cups of coffee and it is 6 a.m.
I watched the cats wrestle and relished the tiny galloping sound their paws make on the carpet.
My kids slept over at Grandma's, so I have no excuse not to sit at the computer for hours.
But I have nothing to say to myself.
In my prayer, I mention love and fear, how they wake me up.

I am experiencing the eerie numbness of an Absence of Fear.
I pray all the time for Grace to remove my fear and show me what is next.
So, now the fear is gone, and I don't know what to write about.
Even when I fight with my husband, which I did yesterday, I don't get really afraid.
I do not experience that terror of:
"What if I chose this person and it's not gonna work?  What if he sucks out my freedom, my identity and my soul?  What if it's only a matter of time before we hate each other?"
When I am this afraid, a song can make me cry, and the temporary nature of everything is almost more than I can accept.  Apparently I need more than to simply "go slow."  
I need the salt of fear.  
I no longer get the impulse to jump into my mini-van, ditch the car-seats in the driveway and peel out onto the open road.
I haven't wanted to do that in years.
And this is why I create drama...because this eerie Absence of Fear is ... scary.
I don't know how to orient myself.  
It's as if I am standing on an empty stage waiting for someone to direct me.

It is lurking there somewhere.  I just don't see it right now.  I would never assume that, at the age of 35, I have outwitted fear completely.  I suppose it is time to go hunting...

my prayer part 1

This may be the first morning I have sat down without going first to Facebook, the News, E-mail, and back to Facebook.
I read my post from yesterday.  I was reminded of prayer, of muses and intent.
Now here I am watching the movie of yesterday played back to me.
I see Sophie at sunset.
We are sitting on the sidewalk side by side with legs stretched straight out in front.
My feet are crossed at the ankles.  I see the bulge of my left ankle.  The one I keep rolling when I go running. The damn thing just won't heal, but I run anyway.  My toenails are painted coral pink.
She is wearing blue jeans and boots.  Her leotard shows through her shirt at the neck.
As usual, her ponytail will not behave. It looks like a kitten went rooting through it in search of a mouse.  She has the eyes of her father, rich lashes and a brown so deep it could lead straight to her heart.  She is copper and amber and chocolate.

She wanders away to snap photos of sunflowers with orange light behind them.
My head lops to the side and I smile at her.
We have so little time left, she and I.  Soon there will be hardly any little kid left in her at all.
I already see it being replaced with adult mind.  The type of consciousness concerned with responsibility.
I see it when she packs her lunch for school without my help.  With assertive swipes, she chops vegetables using the biggest knife.  I see it when she rolls her eyes at her younger siblings.  I see it when she walks briskly from the shower, one towel around her body, one tightly wound in her hair.  

Grace please help me remember to go slow
for it is only when life slows down that I see the details 
It is the details which tell the story

Grace please help me remember - I am not inventing anything.
I am merely a witness who records what she sees.
Help me honor what I see by writing it down.

This is the prayer so far...

Prayer to the Muse

I don't need to try to identify as a writer.
I've been writing for 23 years.  I've been writing longer than I have been menstruating.
I do however, need to mount my defense.  I need to take this aspiration seriously.  Not because someone else told me it is serious, but because it has been in my soul since I was 12 years old.
My husband watches soccer.  He always says,
"The best defense is a good offense."  I roll my eyes at his propensity to make the same obvious statements repeatedly.  However, I think he is right.
The War of Art is a call to arms against the tyrant Resistance who seeks to plug the flow of creation.  
I know this tyrant.  With me, he got really clever and morphed into bulimia and alcoholism.  But I called him out.  I named him a Lie, and I am still acting in opposition to his stories.  This was not a gentle move. 
I did not accept excuses.  My mantras were absolutes.

 Artist Mark Demsteader
Muse Emma Watson

  

"Alcohol is no small thing.  I cannot take one drink."
"Got to a meeting every day no matter what."
"In recovery, I take action.  Regardless of how I feel or what I think."
"This is life or death.  Either I get sober, or my life will end."
"Accept the food I eat, however imperfect and do not purge."
"There is absolutely no reason I need to starve my body.  It will not serve me.  It does not equal freedom."
"I cannot have the life I desire, and indulge in this eating disorder.  I do not get to have both."

Just as it scared me to get sober and to release the ED, I am afraid to own my decision to write with intent.  I am afraid to declare war on Resistance and to claim my shield.  The shield says, "My voice matters.  This art I have crafted is important.  I call it complete.  I will stand behind what it says about myself and the world."

I was reminded this morning, there is a softness about this whole endeavor.  Yes, my decision must be solid if I am to create change.  However all the power does not come from me.  In fact most of it is Grace.  It is a light which seeps through the cracks my hammer makes.   My job is simply to take the tool in my hand and pound on the nearest surface:

Sit down to write everyday.
 Accept no excuses for why you cannot.
Don't worry about whether or not it is "good"
Tell the truth.  Use concrete details.  Say what IS right in front of you.  

When I do this, I am the  clean  lake of my most sacred meditation.
In order for a lake to be clear it must have inflow and outflow.

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These elements are timeless.  Artists have always known, by these truths beautiful things are made.   So, this morning I read about inviting the muses, the juice, the flow, the Gods or angels or the madness...with a prayer.
In The War of Art, he uses a prayer to the muses.  He begins his writing with an invitation and a request to this Grace I have mentioned.  He uses Homer's Odyssey.  It's a little too thick for me.  
Tomorrow I will write my own prayer.  Until then, I offer up this from a blog I read this morning:
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May your days upon this earth be blessed
May the poetry of your being be freely expressed
May the light of compassion always shine in your eyes
And may your heart flow with a tenderness that never dies

May you hear the universal melody
May your song sing on endlessly
May the kindness of your spirit never be broken
And may your heart always be open

May you wake each day as if you were born anew
May you realize the beauty that’s in you and all around you
May you always see a rainbow in the sky above
And may your heart always burn with the living flame of love

"The odd thing is that once I say the prayer, I feel like the matters I’m about to craft are more serious, and so I am far less tempted to check my e-mail or FB or Tweet or what have you. I’m all about the work."
http://www.howardandrewjones.com/writing/invocation-to-the-muses

Water bucket

Yesterday I ate leftover birthday cake for breakfast.
This seems significant because Chrysalisbreak started out as an eating disorder blog.
I began writing it nearly 2 years ago.
I paced like a caged tiger in front of the computer the first time I posted a link to Facebook.
I was trapped between the lies an eating disorder demands, and the vulnerable truth of freedom.
Any freed prisoner will tell you, it is scary to suddenly hold the reigns of your own life.

"Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison."

Mary Wollstonecraft

Ironically, now I will refer it to anyone.  Just last week I scrawled "chrysalisbreak.blogspot.com"
onto a slip of paper and gave it to a fellow writer whom I had just met.
This is how little shame I carry now, as a bulimic woman.
I have been a woman afraid to eat and afraid not to eat.
My entire identity has revolved around how my clothes fit and whether or not I can resist birthday cake.

I started telling the whole truth because I was inspired by one woman.
This woman, as an ammends to herself, wrote her life story.
She wrote about 40 pages.
Mine is certainly going to be longer.  I suppose because I am still alive, and still learning.
But the important part has been to share it.  I share each post on Facebook.
I know Facebook has the potential to suck the life out of my muse as if she were a juiced orange.
However, it can also be a tool to connect.  Were it not for Facebook, my blog would not be read.
Now I usually get about 50 readers within 4 hours of posting a new entry.

At the root of this tree, is simply myself.  I must write.  Since the age of 12 I have been filling journals. Whether you read it or not, I will continue.
However to have you, as a witness, makes it more vulnerable.
It is the difference between singing in the shower and singing on a stage.
There is a heightened awareness and a standard for clarity brought by an audience.

Now I am aspiring to have a bigger audience.  I am compiling a book.
I have no idea how to do this.
All I have are pearls of my soul accumulated into a bucket.
I'm afraid if I go peddling them around, they will be spilled or wasted.
The trick about being an artist is realizing:  my droplets may be only a few, and may never matter to anyone else.  This has to be enough.

All the rest is bonus.  It is a gift to be allowed an audience.  It would be a privilege to publish a book.
The story is out there.  The story of a woman in her mid-30's who just can't quite shake the remnants of shame tethered by an eating disorder.  The story of how she made peace with her humanity and ate cake for breakfast without punishment.  If I get to be the one to tell this story, I would be honored.
What I have learned is that I am not separate, or worse.
My fear manifests in a compulsion to control food and shrink my body.
It is an attempt to shrink my needs.
We all try to hide.

The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion's roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.

Nhat Hanh

The Great Wave - Hokusai - 1830

One Day

Most of my friends are alcoholics and drug addicts.

We either shine or we die.

K and I climbing in Big C

I just finished running in the rain and thinking of my friend.
It will suffice to call him K.
Those who know him will know.
During the summer of 2013 we rock climbed like kids trying to beat a Nintendo game.
He had been sober for 1 year.  He was getting strong.  He is an athlete to the core.
He is 6'2" of muscle and resolve.

There were three of us.
I'll call her Tiny.  Those who know her will also know.
She was just coming back to life after an overdose.

He called me one day and said,
"Tiny needs a friend.  She loves you.  You should call her.  We should go climbing."
I had a list of justifiable hesitations, but the simple fact is:  I love her too.  So I called,
"K says we need to go climbing together."
"Yes, I think we do," she said.
Thus began our adventure.
It was the kind of summer they make movies about, that I've read in books.
It was the Sandlot.  It was My Side of the Mountain.  It was Goonies and Karate Kid.  We were the Outsiders, and I have never been more gold.
We stayed dirty.  We were perked up, ready to throw our gear in the car and drive to the mountains.

In my most peaceful spot

He pushed us, he yelled at us, he filled us to the brim with compliments.  He saw the nuances of movement which only a coach can perceive.
We climbed until our hands gave out under the granite and our forearms were coke bottles full of blood.
I always left blood on the rock, and the distinct smell of adrenaline-laced sweat.
Sometimes he yelled at us.  Sometimes he made Tiny climb when she really wanted to cry.
We would do the same sequence 15 times until it was fluid.
He sent us up routes we knew we couldn't ascend, and we made it.
We went to the desert in Southern Utah and climbed on Potash road at sunrise.

Me doing the same sequence for the 10th time
This was a good day

While K racked up his gear, Tiny and I exchanged timid smiles which said,
"Well, here we go...I guess."


In return, we mothered him.  We listened to his monologues of self-doubt.
We accepted him in every form, and he had many.
Grouchy.  Up-beat.  Hesitant. Introspective. Scared.
To us it was all good, because it was all honest.
When he struggled, we reminded him, at least you are here.  You are sober.  You are climbing strong.  You are making progress.
Above all, we trusted him.
We rappelled off 300 foot sandstone in Lake Powell.
We went up every route he set for us, and we gave him every ounce of our strength.
He was our coach, and our friend.

I have hardly climbed at all, since he started using drugs again.
I don't really want to.

K and Tiny

Tiny and I went a few times, determined to continue what we started.
The energy just wasn't there.
We drove down the canyon trying to feel triumphant, but I know we felt the same thing:  Lost.

Now I am getting strong again.
I've been going to Boot-camp workouts with a group called Fit to Recover.
We push each other past what we could do alone.
Every Saturday morning at 10 a.m. I go to the park and sweat into the grass.
I sweat for K.  I sweat for Tiny.
It's not the same, but I don't expect anything ever will take the place of that summer in the mountains.
It is helping though.
I feel the same momentum in my body, and it propels me to reach further.

I am nagging Tiny to come, but her heart has yet to find it's way back to her muscles.  I'm not worried about her though.  She is hearty like me.  She will fight the apathy because she knows the truth.
The truth is:  Any alcoholic.  Any drug addict.  Is blessed to have one day.  One day to be strong.  One day to love their family.  One day to be well, and not sick.  One day to progress.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fit-to-recover-salt-lake-city-s-only-sober-gym

birthday gift

Today I turn 35 years old.
I've already received the best gift and it's only 8 a.m.
It came from my daughter Sophie who is 12 years old.
She attends a charter school in downtown SLC.  It is about 20 miles from our house.
This year she will be riding TRAX into the city for school.

Sophie boarding the train.

My gift was watching her walk tall onto the platform to board the train.
Like a tiny dancer who knows her routine, she didn't miss a step.
"You can just drop me off here, Mom."
I don't question her.
"Ok, here ya go honey," I park my mini-van at the gate.
"Thanks Mom. I'll just go stand over by those ladies, they look nice."
She pops her headphones in and sails away on long strides and brown leather boots.
I know I'm supposed to drive away, but I can't.
Not because I'm worried, but because I just love seeing her standing there.
It's as if I'm watching my heart outside my body in a bright pink tank top.
I try to hide my van behind the other parked cars.

She sends me a text,
"Go away.  Love you."

So I obey, and I pull away with a smile that tingles the top of my head.
I smile because she is experiencing the freedom of being in the world on her own.
I relish this as I do my favorite song on the radio.
I feel it every time I walk through an airport with my suitcase rolling behind me.
My senses are activated because I am just a little bit scared.
I am away from home, and I am aware of my insignificance.
I see mothers kissing their babies in delicate blankets.
I see long faces of men in unfriendly bars sipping drinks and wishing they had someone to talk to.
I see our human tapestry sewn together in every color.  I read each face I pass,and each one adds to the richness. I know I am only one small square.  One small square is enough.

"My Square"
birthday gift from my husband

The Twilight Blue Coffee Mug

The blue mug

I bought the book.  The War of Art. by Stephen Pressfield
I wrote yesterday,
"Today I am going to buy this book...5 years after my professor told me to read it."
Now I am reading about writing rituals.
I hear they are important.  I feel guilty that I do not have them.
Maybe I should get some.
Then it occurs to me, they already exist.

I wake up early.  Before the world begins.
I do this not because my alarms tells me to, but because my mind is zinging with unfinished sentences.
I have been this way since the age of 12 when I wrote my first poem in 4 stanzas on lavender-colored lined paper.  I read the poem in church.  It was a long poem so I had to tape two pieces of the lavender paper together.  I felt my voice melt over the heads of the faithful as I read it aloud.
I don't know if they heard it, but I did.

I wear my pajamas.  This is another way of staying out of responsibility mode.  Once I get dressed the flow of Things-to-Do has begun.  In the summer I wear belly shirts so I can feel the air on my skin.  In the winter I like slippers and zipper hoodies.

I drink coffee from one of my 3 favorite mugs.
There are lots of mugs in the cupboard.  But I only like the round ones that taper at the top and the bottom. They are a little bit bigger so I don't have to get up for more coffee as often.  They cradle my palm in a way the straight ones don't.  There is a shiny black one, a creamy white one, and a mug the color of the sky at twilight given to me by my Dad.  It's my favorite.  Right now I have the black one. Hold on, I have to go refill it...

I cannot listen to music.  I need silence.  Music...and my children...interrupt the words I hear.  I hear the sentence before I write it.  There is a rhythm I listen for, like the footsteps of a familiar person.  I know it is my husband walking down the hall because I can picture his stride.  I know my writing voice.  There are fifty ways to express the same thought, but only one that is mine.

I have to sit up straight.  If I start to sag in my posture, my brain gets soggy.  When my body is alert my mind reflects this attention.  I never knew I did this until a boyfriend pointed it out to me about 15 years ago.
(God how long have I been writing?  22 years...)
He said,
"I love how you always sit up straight at the computer.  It's beautiful."
I turned around 12 seconds later, after I finished listening to the stream in my head.
"Oh really?  I never knew I did that."

So this is what I am discovering today, my rituals need to be honored.
Why change something that has been working for 22 years?
I may become lax at times, but I always come back to my coffee mug before sunrise.

Resistance vs Existance

Robin Williams hung himself.

Robin Williams stand up Home Box Office 1977

And like the rest of America, I am searching his stand-up routines on YouTube.
The old ones from the '70's when he wore tight t-shirts and suspenders.
It is 6 am and I'm laughing out-loud in my pj's.

I can see how his mind worked in a radial pattern out in 13 directions all simultaneous and connected. This is the mind of an artist. It can be torturous, ridiculous, inspiring and exhausting. Through such eyes the world is either bright with meaning or void of it. When the fireworks go out and too much time passes between explosions, I get scared. I am afraid the light was never real in the first place.

That's the trick about light and water and love, the elements we need to survive.
They are transient...always in flux...and we are left to chase them...or give up.
If I am lucky, I can find them in the same place for a long time.
However some days I look in the "Light spot" or the "Love spot" or the "Art spot" only to find it empty.
Then I am forced to adapt, to learn something new, or let my soul turn to a wad of cold oatmeal.

As I watch Robin Williams sweat against his tight t-shirt and howl into the audience I think,
"He did it for a long time."

I also understand, it is a privilege to make stuff.  
I don't know how long I will be aloud to do it. 
There is a great tide pulling me away from making art, and from writing.
My professor in college called it Resistance.
This reference is from a book called:  The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield.

http://www.stevenpressfield.com/the-war-of-art/#book-top

plein-air painting in France 2007

Today I am going to buy this book...5 years after my professor told me to read it.
I suffered from Resistance in college.
I thought it was college's fault, this paralyzing of creativity...this pressure.
However it has followed me.  It is a part of the world, and it hides in my laundry basket.
I am learning how to act in opposition to it.
I am getting stronger.  
I never would have resolved to buy this book, had I not sat down at my computer to write this morning.
The creative process only yields when I engage and when I act.
I will learn this 1,000 times until I die.

Andrew's snooze button

My husband's alarms blares into my dreams at 5:30 a.m.
He doesn't hear it.  I do.
He spends 1.5 hours hitting snooze.
"Waking up is a process, not an event," he tells me.  It is one of his favorite tag lines.

The kids are at a sleepover with Grandma.  This is a rare morning to myself.
So I pull myself out of bed and flip on the coffee pot.
I brush my hair, check for zits that have grown over night, find one, squeeze it.
I check Facebook to see if there are any new pics from the wedding we attended last night.
Nope.

I let the cat in...let the cat out.
I decide to go for a run, then to a meeting, then to Bootcamp in the park.
I also want to write.
I want to tell the truth.  But I'm not supposed to tell you about the falling out with my friend.
I'm not supposed to publish other people's lives in this blog.
I am supposed to wear my pretty dress to the party and smile and say, "It's great to see you."
I'm supposed to flit from friend to friend like a butterfly.
But I'd much rather just sit, and speak with one person, for about an hour.
Just as I'd rather wake up and skip all the nonsense I do, and just be honest.
This friend, whom I am not supposed to write about, has lived life with me, the big and the small.  Our hours together are close to 1,000.  She has straightened my hair before parties, then we'd switch and I'd straighten hers. Last night I had to straighten my own hair.  I stood in front of the mirror by myself, looking into my own eyes.  I saw the sadness of love and of knowing.

I was with her for the birth of her baby.  I was there from the moment her test said positive.  I made her sandwiches.  I went to her doctor appointments.  I threw her baby shower.  We made onesies with delicate fingers.  We pressed our foreheads together when she got her epidural, when it was too much and she was crying for help.  We breathed and clenched our hands in a promise.  I sat with her baby in the nursery when she couldn't.  I wore the bracelet.  I wore the Dad bracelet.

After I finished straightening my own hair, I went looking for my husband's bare chest.  I found him in the other bathroom combing his hair.  I buried my nose between his shoulder blades.  My red eyes peered up over the edge of his body into the mirror.
"Are you sad?"  he asked.
To which I nodded.  He didn't try to tell me anything.  He didn't try to explain the facts.
"I feel like my heart is in my stomach and it's being digested," I said.
This made him smile, and I got another hug.

She, my friend, does not have this person.  She must eat her sadness alone.
So today I am trying to remember, before I get too busy, and my brain starts explaining the facts.