Dangermond.org

The Krewe of Endymion is going to roll spitting distance from my front door the weekend before Fat Tuesday and I couldn’t be happier – it’s one of the super parades that march right before Mardi Gras day. It’s also the Krewe my brother decided to join even though they used to not let in Blacks or Jews.

This afternoon, I ran into my neighbors as we purchased our Mardi Gras decorations. We both fondled the $65 masks and ogled the giant flags then turned down the aisle where the cheaper decorations lurked. I chose the jester with the bindi, of course. Money or no money, it is Carnival time and already I am grooving most afternoons with Warren Easton’s marching band practicing across the street.

Oh, I love a parade.

Drum roll please…

I got the Mardi Gras costume box down, one of two large ones, and dusted off my masks and my tutu and the purple, green and gold panty hose.

Laissez les bons temps rouler! And Roll And Roll And Roll. I called a friend in California and said let’s catch up now because it was the holidays but now it’s the lull before Carnival and then there’s Jazz Fest and you know how it is, time just seems to fly, when you’re …

My horoscope today:
Jan 21, 2014

Taurus 4/20-5/20 (change)
Someone is courting you — it could be romantic, professional or just someone who wants to be friends. Your amazing energy makes you even more attractive than usual, so don’t be too surprised.

A friend of mine is want to say “more will be revealed” and I’ve never felt the truth of that statement more than I have than in the last few weeks where what I perceived the first week of January has been kicked to the curb and a sudden breath of fresh air has blown in. I was at the Blush Ball – the Pussyfooters’ fundraiser – the other night and it was an event I didn’t really feel like going to but after deciding on what to wear I was out the door and there and it turned out to be an incredibly fun night.

Fortuna’s Wheel keeps spinning and what I’ve seen in the last couple of weeks is that I’m up. Here and there I’m meeting people and here and there my friends are gathering and here and there work is presenting itself and so more than anything in life I’ve come to know the weight of the words, more will be revealed.

I walked along the streetcar tracks to Canal Place yesterday and went to see August: Osage County with a friend. Powerful movie that unearthed the tenets of more will be revealed – here everyone thinks they are in control of the truth and yet, more is revealed at every turn, and there it is in all its glory: life unfolding.

My friend and I spoke about how you have to let the waters wash over you – the one where you are on the bottom of Fortuna’s Wheel, or the one where you perceive everyone but you at the top of it. And everything takes time – it takes time to mourn a relationship, to grieve for its lost potential; it takes time to change gears, and redirect yourself on a new path; it takes time to get to know yourself and then to let all you know go. These things take time.

As I walked along the streetcar tracks a man circled a few times and then pulled in front of me – “Can I give you a lift? You don’t have to walk here by yourself.” I smiled, he was the embodiment of a metaphor. “I’m good,” I told him. In a few minute exchange I heard the beginning of his story – Antoine Jerome – Creole? – AJ – single – not gay – would buy me a drink and pay for it – and he had to work tonight but couldn’t help notice me.

I’m good, I repeated, smiling.

My friend and I spoke about how this grand experiment called life is constantly changing, which requires us to constantly show up. And if I have learned anything in my years it is being present. It’s not something that comes easily to me, I have directed my entire living to a future-oriented goal, and so to be still, to be here, to be now, is not something that comes easily. I thank Alex, who first gave me The Power of Now, and I thank Susie who told me she listens to Ram Dass for inspiration, I thank Linda who has been reading an affirmation with me every day so far this year, and I thank my parents who taught me about faith – my father’s oft-repeated mantra: it’s the darkest hour just before dawn.

I’ve come to know life through these cycles where sometimes it seems the rotation of Fortuna’s Wheel is a slow and drawn out symphony and sometimes the wheel is spinning so fast it looks headed for a train wreck.

And still I rise.

Today Tin said to me, “You’re gay.” And I said, “Actually, I’m bisexual.” But I asked him where he had heard that and he wouldn’t say but I speculated school. I said we don’t say that because it isn’t nice. Later he was looking at my Facebook page and he said who is that big girl and I said, we don’t say that because it isn’t nice. And he said why not?

Because it’s not nice to call attention to someone and say, “You’re big because it implies bigger than other people which then means others are normal and the big girl is not.”

And saying you’re gay is calling someone out for their sexual preference, which has nothing to do with you, so it’s rude. How would you friend feel whose fathers are gay if you said something that hurt his dads’ feelings?

I started my 2014 Gratitude Jar and already it’s packed – what goes on? A friend who is a spiritual teacher in California and I are doing a Prosperity Affirmation every day for 30 days by phone. I also have started saying an Abundance Prayer in lieu of my other mantras. And more than anything I’ve started noticing how much rocking gratitude I have in my life.

Little things like I haven’t had a manicure/pedicure in a long, long time and someone gave me a gift certificate today – out of the blue! Or that my heater problem went from a $200 to a $400 and was climbing to a $1450 problem, but right now I’m sitting in my heated house courtesy of my agent Andrew at Tommy Crane’s office who is trying to sort it out for me.

Tonight, I went to give my first of the year workshop to foster to adoptive parents under my Transracial Parenting company. Yay! I am stepping into my new career. And yet, I’m still able to pay the bills with my old career as I transition by virtue of getting new work last October that is sustaining me.

I’m definitely grooving on some good vibes here – so let me just say this about that – I’ve noticed (it happened today) that when workmen have come through my house, a few of them have stopped and copied down the quote I have on my wall:

Hardship prepares ordinary people for extraordinary lives. C.S. Lewis

I think about these men and what makes them stop and read this quote and what makes them go so far as to copy it down – I find this unusual behavior for men – but something in this quote says something to them as it did to me.

We all go through our own hardships and we all make our lives out of chaos and clarity.

I think about how our lives are fabricated from our thoughts and how if you think you are losing, you’ve already lost, and when you think you are winning, bingo, you are a winner. The first few days of the New Year, I was hard pressed to write anything for my gratitude jar and now I’ve put a cap on three grateful notes a day.

I’m leaving notes for myself to remind me of what I know to be true:

As I build my new company:
I helped build a $40 million company.

As I see other relationships flailing and struggling:
I have been in a profoundly loving and long-term marriage.

As I’ve spent moments by myself when I would have preferred not to:
I have been a good and sometimes great friend.

As I’ve missed my parents and grandparents:
I was a loving daughter and granddaughter.

As I have regretted deferring my dreams:
I became Tin’s mother at 50.

As I have learned to accept the loss of my hair:
I have fallen utterly in love with being bald!

I’m putting a cap on these because I could continue to list the hardships that have brought me grace, joy, and grit. Yes, indeed.

This is a round up of all the #Tinism’s I have posted on Twitter – going back through some of these makes me realize how special my son has been from the get go.

@RachelDanger 6 Jan
#Tinism: “I did NOT hit my funny bone, Mom. This is a sad bone.”

@RachelDanger 21 Dec
Does not bode well – #Tinism: “Mommy, there is a huge mess in your room.”

@RachelDanger 18 Dec
#Tinism: Mom, your butt’s too big to be by my train tracks.

@RachelDanger 23 Nov
#Tinism: Why does my butt move when I hear music?

@RachelDanger 23 Oct
#Tinism: It wasn’t me! I don’t drive the car usually.

@RachelDanger 20 Oct
#Tinism: There it is, that’s all folks!

@RachelDanger 18 Sep
#Tinism “Bad guys don’t have mothers.”

@RachelDanger 17 Jul
#Tinism: I’m not going to the meeting! I’m not a grown up anymore-remember? Do they have donuts?

@RachelDanger 14 Jun
#Tinism: “Hey look at the duckies, and there’s a mama and mommy duck too!”

@RachelDanger 12 May
#Tinism: “I love you Mommy!” #bestmothersdaypresentever.

@RachelDanger 11 May
#Tinism: This mosquito really knew what he was doing. Look at this bite.

@RachelDanger 3 Apr
#Tinism: Mom: “Turn off the light, it’s bedtime!” Tin: “But I need atmosphere.”

@RachelDanger 5 Mar
#Tinism: Is that girl rapper really on fire?

@RachelDanger 4 Mar
#Tinism: Mom: “I am master of my own destiny.” Tin: “Uh oh.”

@RachelDanger 28 Feb
#Tinism: Mom: You’re getting too heavy to carry. Tin: One day I’ll be carrying you.

@RachelDanger 22 Feb
#Tinism: “Mommy, please invite @frank_ocean to our house and cook something good.”

@RachelDanger 9 Feb
#tinism: Where’s the pussyfooters?

@RachelDanger 7 Feb
#tinism: I am a Queen not a King! (How appropriate for Muses)

@RachelDanger 24 Dec 12
#Tinism: I’m going to hit you in the face. No? Then will you hold my hand? [#hormones]

@RachelDanger 17 Dec 12
#Tinism: Ms. Karla, when I grow up, I want to be a teacher like you.

@RachelDanger 15 Dec 12
#Tinism: “I’m moving to New York. You are allowed to visit.”

@RachelDanger 15 Dec 12
#Tinism: [at Rouse’s] Wow, she must have got that booty at the butt store!

@RachelDanger 2 Dec 12
#Tinism: I celebrate myself.

@RachelDanger 20 Nov 12
#Tinism Mom drop me off at the airport, I’m going to New York to do art.

@RachelDanger 15 Nov 12
#Tinism: When I was young I had a band, but Louis said, hey little man, want to join mine?

@RachelDanger 6 Nov 12
#Tinism: I am at the train station of love.

@RachelDanger 29 Sep 12
#Tinism: I need a grand piano!

@RachelDanger 19 Sep 12
#Tinism: “Mommy, I want you to always be here.”

@RachelDanger 17 Sep 12
#Tinism: “Oh Ruby, you know you’re my girl and I love you.”

@RachelDanger 19 Aug 12
#Tinism: “I live in a dark city but I call it Music Wide Open.”

@RachelDanger 30 Jul 12
#Tinism: It is not ALLOWED to rain in Spain!

@RachelDanger 24 Jul 12
#Tinism: “I’m going up in a blimp to see my other mommies – Evan and Nina.”

@RachelDanger 14 Jul 12
#Tinism: “Mom, can we ride a whale for my birthday?”

@RachelDanger 14 Jul 12
#Tinism: “Mom, do musicians nap?”

@RachelDanger 9 Jul 12
#Tinism: How much is money?

@RachelDanger 3 Jul 12
#Tinism: “Mom, my new band name is Combo-sation. You got it?”

@RachelDanger 1 Jul 12
#Tinism: Tin: “Guantanamera is a Puerto Rican song.” Mom: “No, it’s Cuban.” Tin: “You don’t know, Mommy.”

@RachelDanger 1 Jul 12
#Tinism: Spain needs air conditioning, Mommy.

@RachelDanger 16 Jun 12
#Tinism: Mom get my pocket trumpet cuz I need to blow.

@RachelDanger 22 May 12
#Tinism: Tin: “I’m having a baby, Mommy.” Mom: “Boy or girl?” Tin: “Boy, I’ll call him LoveYouSo.”

@RachelDanger 11 May 12
#Tinism: Mom: The ambulance is taking someone sick to the emergency hospital. Tin: Yeah, I had the hiccups once.

@RachelDanger 3 May 12
#Tinism: I live by the water because I’m a Pisces. It’s about fish.

@RachelDanger 24 Apr 12
#Tinism: Mom: Why aren’t you napping? Tin: I have a gig, it’s funky, did you hear it?

@RachelDanger 23 Apr 12
#Tinism – Mom, are you ready for music – are you ready for Jazz Fest?

@RachelDanger 15 Apr 12
#Tinism: Mom, I think Louis Armstrong doesn’t know me.

@RachelDanger 14 Apr 12
#Tinism: “Yay we’re going to a slip n slide!” PAUSE “Mom, what’s a slip n slide?”

@RachelDanger 10 Apr 12
#Tinism: I’m a doctor I can better him.

@RachelDanger 5 Apr 12
#Tinism: Mom: Why weren’t you good at school? Tin: Because. Mom: Why didn’t you listen to Ms. Karla? Tin: Because I didn’t.

@RachelDanger 31 Mar 12
#Tinism: I want to change my caca diaper before I go to Zumba.

@RachelDanger 24 Mar 12
#Tinism: Mommy, there are too many dead butterflies today.

@RachelDanger 22 Mar 12
#Tinism: Can little boys wear a tuba?

@RachelDanger 22 Mar 12
Tinism: A butterfly died in front of my house.

@RachelDanger 10 Mar 12
Tinism: Do you eat with gusto?

@RachelDanger 8 Mar 12
Tinism: Mom: Musicians don’t leave their trumpet on the floor – Tin: I am not a musician.

@RachelDanger 22 Feb 12
Tinism: Mardi Gras is over and now it’s Jazz Fest time. I’m super tired.

@RachelDanger 11 Feb 12
Tinism: Ben (Schenk) plays the clarinet good.

@RachelDanger 9 Feb 12
Tinism: Mom: Adults go to work and kids go to school. Tin: I’m getting a band for work.

@RachelDanger 9 Feb 12
Tinism: What happened with the cow and your hair? (in response to mom’s bedhead)

@RachelDanger 4 Feb 12
Tinism: I like cake better than caca.

@RachelDanger 20 Jan 12
Tinism: When I was a little girl my daddy took me to the French Quarter.

@RachelDanger 18 Jan 12
Tinism: I get up in the morning have my coffee do my caca and go to work.

@RachelDanger 16 Jan 12
Tinism: I was stuck naked on a bus.

@RachelDanger 11 Jan 12
#Tinism: Did Mommy make the red beans? (Yes) I’ll have to thank her when she gets home.

@RachelDanger 2 Jan 12
#Tinism Mom: Do you want to go to Children’s Museum or Zoo? Tin: French Quarter

@RachelDanger 2 Jan 12
#Tinism Mommy do you remember when I used to laugh and call you names?

@RachelDanger 2 Jan 12
Tinism: My horse will go to work and the gym for me.

@RachelDanger 15 Dec 11
#Tinism – Redlight stop, green go, yellow slow and blue light stop in the middle of the street.

@RachelDanger 10 Dec 11
#Tinism – I don’t like alligators because they eat unicorns.

@RachelDanger 3 Aug 11
The Tao of Tin: “Mommy, I want to go back to the beach.”

A friend sent me an Abundance Prayer* and she told me how when she was growing up she didn’t buy into any of the religious doctrine she was introduced to but then she came to understand her own spirituality. She searched for others who believed in the God in all of us – in the oneness that connects us to each other and to all beings everywhere. She made it her life’s practice to become a spiritual teacher and help others along their rocky journeys into the light. She lives in California after all, at the epicenter of new age and spirituality.

This morning, when I woke from having stayed out too late from a night of abundance at the Spotted Cat where I danced to the Panorama Jazz Band, I too reflected on my state and wondered if I should even get out of bed. I had come home late enough to have the Sunday New York Times waiting for me by my stoop and knew I had the luxury of greeting Sunday with a groggy ease. I had already woken too late for meditation at the Zen center and so I spent a good deal of time on just trying to still my thoughts through my own meditations. I had gone to sleep reading a book about a guy in rehab and its horror had not dissipated while I slept.

Then I got my paper and made a cup of coffee and crawled back into bed under the covers and began to dive in deliciously into all the news that’s fit to print. First article I read was about sleep and why it is important in our life. Having just gotten in more than eight hours of this wonderful drug called sleep, I could easily tell you its importance in my life.

From my bedroom window, I saw the sun shining bright so I went to sit on my back stoop to feel the warmth on my bald head. It was then I noticed the abundance of weeds that had died in the latest frost. I tip toed onto the grass in my stocking feet and my pjs and began weeding the garden, which led me to dig up all the wild onions that were populating the grass, carefully extricating the thousands of tiny bulbs that were entrenched in the roots of the Bermuda grass – after carefully disposing of my handwork, I cut down the canna that had gone from green to brown in a matter of days.

Abundance – everywhere I looked, I saw abundance.

I carried big loads of weeds and canna stalks and dried vines and wild onions to the trash.

Then I fetched some seeds I had been saving – I planted sweet peas along the west side and cosmos on the east side of the yard. I’ll go out and water them tomorrow and pray they take over the page fence that outlines my yard. My gardening had to start somewhere and so it begins with a sprinkling of seeds on a warm winter’s day.

Once again, abundance. I AM indeed grateful. And I let it be so.

*Abundance Prayer

From The Light of the Universe that I Am.

From The Love of the Universe that I Am.

From The Power of the Universe that I Am.

From The Heart of the Universe that I Am.

I Decree:

I dwell in the midst of Infinite Abundance. The Abundance of the Universe is my Infinite Source.

The River of Life never stops flowing. It flows through me into lavish expression. Good comes to me through unexpected avenues and God works in a myriad of ways to bless me.

I now open my mind to receive my good. Nothing is too good to be true. Nothing is too wonderful to have happen. With the Universe as my Source, Nothing amazes me.

I am not burdened by thoughts of past or future. One is gone. The other is yet to come.

By the power of my belief, coupled with my purposeful fearless actions and my deep rapport with God, my future is created and my abundance made manifest.

I ask and accept that I am lifted in this and every moment into Higher Truth. My mind is quiet.

From this day forward I give freely and fearlessly into life and Life gives back to me with magnificent increase. Blessings come in expected and unexpected ways. The Universe provides for me in wondrous ways.

I AM indeed grateful. And I let it be so.

Today is my father’s birthday, he would have been 88 years old today. He was a bull of a man and the first man I ever loved.

I don’t speak about my dad often and perhaps that is because he died in 1985 and has morphed into many different men since then. At the moment when he died, he was the equivalent of God to me. He was the be all of my universe. Later he grew more complex, he was this great man, but he was abusive towards my mom, dictatorial towards his children, and infantile in his real world structure.

He was also a man who was a virtuoso on the piano and could pick up any instrument and make music; often, he sang so loud in the synagogue in a deep and rich baritone voice that I grew up with people staring at us; he always danced with every woman in the room and was the life of the party.

Did he cheat on my mother with his nurses? Did he really have a medical degree from Havana’s University of Medicine?

He did tell me my mother was a witch who would hurt me and my sister after she left him when I was four years old and hiding behind the bedside table scared to see her when she returned because she didn’t want to lose her children.

He did hold a gun to my mother’s head, cut her forehead with a thrown broken glass and then stitch it up; he did break my nose when he punched me so hard I flew into the fireplace, and he did beat my oldest brother with a belt till he was black and blue – this wasn’t the only beating – but one that has stayed in my mind all these years – we were on Louisiana Avenue Parkway and I can remember the stairwell and the beating and my young eyes watching in horror.

My mother and all of us said “Yes sir” to him till his dying day.

He did speak with a thick Spanish accent and mispronounce most English words.

He had gypsy in his blood even though his lineage was Sephardim – ancestors who left Spain in 1492 and went to Constantinople, left Istanbul in the 20s and went to Havana, and then in 1959 came here to the U.S. He gave me my love of travel and instilled in me a friction with my own country – America.

He loved me fiercely and stood between me and any harm like a German Shepherd who would die defending me. He called me baby elephant for most of my young life and now the elephant is my spirit animal.

After he died, I dreamed that it had been my mother who died instead. It took years to shake that dream.

I suffered my first panic attack within the first year of my father’s death and was taken off the Causeway in an emergency vehicle. I’ll never forget because I was dazed and confused in the emergency room and when my then husband came to get me, he had one of those first mobile phones that was as big as a shoe box and the doctor took one look at him, me and the phone and said, “First, there is no reason to have a phone outside of your house.” That was 1985.

When my mother suffered her second Code Blue in intensive care in 2009, she told me she saw him. “I saw your Dad!” but it wasn’t a good thing. It wasn’t all light and heaven and God and angels, it was downright fright that shook her back into this life.

After reading The Great Santini, I was convinced Pat Conroy had stolen the character who was my father to use as his own.

Do I compare my dad to a summer’s day – hell no – do I love the man who was my father – absolutely.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

I confess to the gloomiest holiday period I’ve experienced in a long time at the end of last year. The last time I had the blues like these was back in the pivotal year-end of 2005. And both times were after a serious transition year. 2005 and 2013 – while the rest of the world moves on a seven year cycle, mine must be an eight year one.

I think I’ve spent an eternity hurrying up to get to where I want to be rather than being where I am. To live like this means to measure out transitions and life changes in minutes, days, weeks and months. How long does it take for someone to transition? How long to grieve what you have left behind?

Because I move fast once I take a step or rather a leap, a lot of times the collateral damage takes a long time to confront me and for me to process it. Most people process and then step, I dive and take stock long after I’ve leapt. There is no right or wrong way to move through life, to evolve, or to move up to a new wrung of the spiral.

However, I do want to give the blues a place in my life. I had the blues and kept spiraling downward until I realized there is no bottom to the blues. I felt lonely because I missed being a part of a family and this goes all the way back to being a kid when I was the youngest of six siblings of a large and boisterous clan and it takes me through three marriages and other partnerships into my present day.

I felt overwhelmed by the work I want to do and the work I must do to take care of myself and my son financially.

I felt sad over dreams from the past that were dashed and destroyed.

I felt fear of uncertainty that the New Year would bring perhaps the same old thing all over again and there is a weariness in my bones of having to deal and to process and to act.

And then suddenly I felt light, the burden and blues were lifting, and I started coming back to what has helped me – Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, Flower’s often shared Russian wisdom, Judi Dench’s quote from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: “Everything is going to be okay in the end, and if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” And even my father’s wisdom that the darkest hour is just before dawn.

Every time we give birth to a new idea, a new way of being, ourselves, we walk through a threshold and the resistance we meet is our own – fear – and the only way to get through is to accept what is and move along. That acceptance of what is, what is now, dissolves regret and sadness and doesn’t give light to anxiety and fear – it is only living in the now.

I have noticed you since I moved in.
I wondered who fed you.
I like to watch you tip toe across my backyard.
You always dart across the street.
I’ve thought of feeding you but you look well fed.
You come from under my neighbor’s house, or mine.
I’ve seen you on both sides of our street.
Yesterday, I saw you dead.
Blood pooled underneath you in the middle of the street.
I looked for my neighbor to get you out of the street.
When I went back inside someone took your lifeless body.
I found out who fed you.
My neighbor said the man across the street put food out for you.
Maybe he took care of the burial.
I know he will be sad that you are gone.
My neighbor was sorry to hear the news.
His son was hurt when I told him you had died.
I am sad.
You gave our little neighborhood a glimpse of joy.
Black and White cat, you will be missed.