From Rodger Kamenetz’s Stalking Elijah:
“People think of violent crime as physical violence,” he said. “But I perpetrated emotional violence because as a con man I got people’s trust and abused it. In some cases that prevented people from trusting others again.”
#thereitis
The New York Times published an article about the best way to get over a breakup saying that writing and journaling is a healthy, productive tool.
Obviously, writing has been my tool, but in the public sphere of writing it is hard to really call out the one you are breaking up with on their behavior. You have to be sensitive to a public viewing. On the other hand, you also have your own portrayal of who you are in the whole unwinding.
I’ve been honest to a fault at times and yet surprisingly tight-lipped in other areas. I think the thing about break-ups, any type, are that they are painful and yet provide endless self-revelation.
In my relationship with Sty, I didn’t realize how we went from a chance meeting to speaking several times a day, to planning future events, to engaging life philosophies into a single thought process. While it may have only been months of this, and while there had been flags I heeded, the unwinding or abrupt departure from this is just plain sad.
Maybe not sad in the way the ending of a 16-year relationship is, but sad in the hopes and dreams that are dashed when the promise of what’s to come suddenly dissipates.
The best way to get over a breakup is to suddenly be aware at how much this person’s presence had infiltrated your life and to now suddenly have that time made available to you again to do with what you choose. In one particularly painful break up, my therapist had asked me what I missed the most and I told her the witty and sexy text messages. She said find a friend who sends you witty text messages and engage them in repartee. It’s not the same, I said, because it does not hold the promise.
In Alain de Botton’s Essays in Love, he writes:
A long, gloomy tradition in Western thought argues that love is in its essence an unreciprocated, Marxist emotion and that desire can only thrive on the impossibility of mutuality. According to this view, love is simply a direction, not a place, and burns itself out with the attainment of its goal, the possession (in bed or otherwise) of the loved one. The whole of troubadour poetry of twelfth-century Provence was based on coital delay, the poet repeating his plaints to a woman who repeatedly declined a desperate gentleman’s offers. Centuries later, Montaigne declared that, ‘In love, there is nothing but a frantic desire for what flees from us’ – an idea echoed by Anatole France’s maxim that, ‘It is not customary to love what one has.’ Stendhal believed that love could be brought about only on the basis of a fear of losing the loved one and Denis de Rougemont confirmed, ‘The most serious obstruction is the one preferred above all. It is the one most suited to intensifying passion.’ To listen to this view, lovers cannot do anything save oscillate between the twin poles of yearning for someone and longing to be rid of them.
I don’t think it is unrequited love that turns us on, but instead the promise of tomorrow. Tomorrow is what makes today so exciting, without it, you return to living in the present, which we have all learned is where we need to be, but is often times, somewhat dull and routine for anyone with a romantic yearning. Oh yay, more work, oh yay, parenting, oh yay, the toilets need to be cleaned. Yes, you should turn to the bluebird whistling outside your window, but you are in the midst of a breakup and so I think a little wallowing is in order.
My brother has admonished me for being a romantic one too many times in my life. I guess, at this point, I will die a romantic. It is what it is.
While Tin was at Sunday school yesterday, I attended a pop-up university lecture at the synagogue on superstition and the Torah. Gathered with mostly elderly Jewish couples, I listened to the academic yoking together of superstition, religiosity, and Judaism and had to chuckle as most in the audience talked about how Judaism, religion, worshipping, and putting on teffilin are all strangely superstitious and irrational, so what’s the point?
The warning signs were everywhere and yet, and yet …
He played nick nack on my brain with a nick nack paddy whack give the dog a bone, this boy keeps calling home.
And what? Do you feel me … is my message getting through???
How about the truth, sugah, that’s all mama wants.
Dang. I’m gonna take a nice hot bath and dream of Cuba.
FACTS: birdbrain. #IDFWU.
Darrin came over Friday night and turned the house once again into a home made barbershop. He took Tin’s hole in his afro and styled it into a beautiful fade.
Now he’s so darn cute I have to stop looking at him all the time.
I went to sleep last night having pulled this card from my devotionals:
I read signs, tarot, and meaning into all forces around me and I convert these messages into suggestions and then I spin them into tales. My friend’s teenage daughter is grappling with the complexities of who she is and where she fits in – the answer, she doesn’t, won’t, can’t – because she needs to create her own world as all of us creatives have had to do.
I have made my world and it is a much better world than I ever saw outside.
Louise Nevelson
US (Russian-born) sculptor (1900 – 1988)
One day I will write about how writing has saved my life. It has guided me through the passages of love and loss, joy and sorrow, and most of all my own self-actualization.
This morning, I woke and the first thing I saw was the kimono on the wall that Sty gave me when we first started seeing each other. The beauty he delivered always had a caution light blinking in the background of my mind, the light got clearer and clearer and though the beauty of him remains, the reality of him is glaring. We create our world and we allow others to merge their world with ours, we become very choosy about who we let in and who we show the way out. Remember we are walking a path and going around our own spiral, there are those we leave behind as we move up to a higher consciousness – it’s sad and disconcerting but it should not impede our progress.
Go you must, forging your own way in the world.
And leave behind those who choose not to budge.
The saying April showers brings May flowers must have an equivalent in December excess brings January depress. I’m not trying to bring you down, but okay if you go there with me. We three women sat around the table wanting more that what we have – more money, more passion, more fun – and yet, what? As broke as we all were, we forged a beautiful meal and ate it together and still felt a lack.
As I threw a piece of challah, some salad, and other tidbits away from our meal, I thought about how there are people in the world who literally could have made a satisfying meal off of what was going into my garbage.
And yet, nothing seems more remote to me than the notion that somewhere someone is starving.
Speaking of lack, let’s talk about love. One wants a boyfriend, one wants her boyfriend to call more often, one wants to know why her boyfriend didn’t just stay a booty call instead of pushing into something more. Through the course of days, I’ve heard one wants her husband to give her more sex, one wants her husband to stay out of town so she can get more sex, one wants her husband to talk to her, one wants her husband to quit being jealous.
Want seems to be a universal affliction, but particularly so in January when it is overcast and cold.
It was like this, I met you in a lighting store, you with the golden eyes. I was not looking for no love affair, but then you took time to seduce me, certainly I was not looking for a man to get under my skin and then turn around and play me, like that.
#IDFWU – FACTS: YOU’RE A BIRDBRAIN.
“Certainly (Flipped It)” Erykah Badu
Uh, Flip with me,
Might be cool.
Who gave u permission to rearrange me
certainly not me
who told you that it was alright to love me
Certainly, certainly not me.
I was not looking for no love affair, baby
and now you wanna fix me
I was not looking for no love affair
and now you want to mold me
Was not looking for no love affair, baby
now you wanna kiss me
Was not looking for no love affair
and now you wanna control me
hold me
I know you’re trying to get creative with my love
and that’s alright, but
you tried to get a little tricky
turned my back
and then you slipped me a mickey.
Certainly, certainly, certainly not me (I wasn’t ready)
Certainly, certainly, certainly not me
Certainly, certainly, certainly not me
Certainly, certainly, certainly not me
Goodbye, but now it goes, (when I wake up)
I don’t need nobody tellin’ me the time, oooh uh uh oh
Who gave u permission to rearrange me
certainly not me
No way, no
Who told you that it was alright to love me
certainly, certainly not me
I was not looking for no love affair
and now you wanna fix me
I was not looking for no love affair
and now you want to mold me
Was not looking for no love affair
now you wanna kiss me
Was not looking for no love affair
and now you wanna control me
hold me
I know you’re trying to get creative with my love
and that’s real cute, boy,
you tried to get a little tricky
turned my back
and then you slipped me a mickey.
Certainly, certainly, certainly not me (ooh)
Certainly, certainly, certainly not me (ooh)
Certainly, certainly, certainly not me (ooh)
Certainly, certainly, certainly not me (ooh)
You know that that was mine,
When I wake up (when I wake up)
I don’t need nobody tellin’ me the time, no
The world is mine, mine, mine, mine, mine, uh, (when I wake up)
I don’t need no middle,
Rollin’ over,
Lookin’ after me.
No no,
No no,
No no,
No no,
No no,
No no,
No no no no no no no no no,
Oh no, oh no, oouuuhh,
I don’t need, I don’t need, no,
No no no no
No no no no no no no no no,oh
(And he slipped me a mickey) ooouuh
(And he slipped me a mickey) (You know I wasn’t ready)
(And he slipped me a mickey) (‘cause I admit baby)
(And he slipped me a mickey) (baby)
(And he slipped me a mickey) (oooh)
(And he slipped me a mickey) (oh no nono)
(And he slipped me a mickey) (yeah, and he slipped)
(And he slipped me a mickey) (and he slipped he slipped)
ooouuh, oh no, no no no no no no no no oh,
oouh oh no oh, heyiiih,
love affair, love affair, love love, it ain’t no love affair, ooh,
oohh ohh, ouuh oh,
aaauuh.
Living my truth, believing that patience, gut logic, and more will be revealed in its own time, I woke this morning awash with clarity. #ivegotthepower
Sunday, 2:45AM
S: I need you to trust me, baby.
Thursday, 10:30PM
REVELATION
Friday, 12:30AM
R: You missed your blessing. Too bad.
Here’s a song for you, music man:
And here’s a song for me:
You know that book BLINK that told us to trust the first reaction we have to events, people and places? Well, I try to use that practice in most everything I do these days, but I still find myself sometimes on the slow uptake. I try to overcome this bovine mentality by remembering that not everyone is bright, sharp, self-aware or enlightened all of the time, so don’t be so hard on yourself.
Tin is about to turn 6, he is entering the transition cycle, so he took his perfect afro:
And cut a hole in it in kindergarten:
He is going through that cycle again of disobedience and rebellion – everything is contested – every response is refusal. If I had hair, I’d pull it out. But alas, I don’t have hair.
Sty is about to turn 59:
He is cycling through the peaks and valleys of transition with his move to Florida. The transition could and should have been smooth but it created a low frequency of dissonance from the get go with us – all the adages we know, absence makes the heart grow fonder, out of sight is out of mind, love the one you’re with, what will be will be – which of these should we pluck out of the hat and pin to the wall?
Meanwhile, I have cut a steady path the last three years towards stability that I find myself digging deeper and deeper into the rut that I have dug, the rut that resembles sometimes a grave, sometimes a crevice to hold all my dreams, and sometimes a snug place to hide from all those things I cannot control.
In my thoughts, there are dark places where I start to believe that there are only a few things in our life that we ever have any control over and the first is our thoughts. The second is our center – a constantly shifting and accommodating compass within us. The third is our intuition, which is the wellspring of all desire and knowledge. And the fourth, because four is my lucky number, part of ourselves that we can control is our spirit.
We do not control our hearts, we do not have any control over our plans, we do not even control when we enter a cycle or when we exit one, we only know how to hold our center in it, how to use our intuition to navigate, how to stop our thoughts from going too far in any direction, and we know we must, to be happy, follow our spirit instead of our plans.
If we succeed in this, it is because we have let those things we cannot control free in the universe to dissipate or strengthen. It is only in that place that we can truly be free ourselves. Freedom from attachment. Enlightenment. What’s the sound of one foot tapping?
