pay attention...

loving adjusting my love

expAND the efficiency of your words

fair warning: i shot today's "tip o' the day" yesterday, before receiving my friend trevor's advice to "get outta the camera's face."

duly noted and much appreciated. thanks, trevor.

in the meantime, please ignore my tendency towards exaggerated expression, and hone in on the message AND let me know how it all sits with you.

yes, yay, yes...d

careful what you wish for...

this is my lifestyle visioning board:

it hangs in my bathroom.

i love it.

this is my love visioning board:

it's rolled up in a basket on a shelf in a closet.

i'm not into it.

i put it together quickly, half-heartedly (ironically, enough), after an obsessive four-day, five-visioning board hole up. i'd barely scratched the surface of my love visions when it was time to re-engage the world, so i nabbed a chunk of the intentions off of a mind movie that had been making the internet rounds, many of which didn't quite sit right with me:

i am in love with my soul mate.

kinda makes it sound like we're relegated to one soul mate, which i don't believe we are. it feels weird - stuck, corny, old.

he brings out the best in me.

i bring out the best in me. sure, our dynamic amplifies it, and still, to say he does it feels disempowering.

my heart is wide open.

so much space between me and that wide open heart. in saying "my heart," i'm suddenly separate from this heart to which i refer; and then this other that is my heart is itself wide open. it seems like such a long way to travel when, the truth is, i am my every intention now.

i am heart wide open now.

i dig the images, and still, truth be told, the whole thing felt very old paradigm. it hung on the backside of my bathroom door and i was semi-embarrassed whenever i looked at it.

within days of posting my visioning boards, the manifestations started rolling in - a large cocktail ring from a friend, a weekend retreat poolside in the hills, lavish meals, creative opportunities, superfoods, and men - a bunch of 'em.

within a week or so of seeing one, in particular, i was floored by the intensity of what came up for me. issues around commitment and expectation and social conventions. while i was calling in a real-deal, true-blue love thing, my actions belied an attachment to my freedom and a deep fear of being vulnerable and of getting hurt.

i took the vision board down. it never felt authentic, rather filtered through the dogma-encrusted lens of social convention. and having been confronted with the ferocity of my own stickiness around intimacy, i'm choosing to examine the murky places where i'm full of shit before calling in the real-deal, whatever that means. when i do, i'll choose my words much more carefully.

...........................

on a related note, i had lunch with my mother yesterday, who was telling me about a wedding shower she'd attended. i launched into an inspired diatribe on the ass-backwardness of these unchallenged social conventions that require us to shell out for presents because joe and sue are erecting a fence around their love. happily-ever-after is not a paradigm i play in, nor a paradigm i acknowledge or wish to feed.

that's selfish, my mom said. you're selfish.

i think it's selfish to expect me to fly to mexico to watch you sign your freedom away, and then to attend not one, but two pre-nupital showers, which i'm expected to attend bearing gifts. and, not the sort of gifts that are a heartfelt expressions of what i'd like to share, but crass and calculated pre-chosen registry items that i'm required to purchase at a corporate chain. it's disturbing on far too many levels to elucidate here over steamed vegetables in hen cum (we'd compromised on chinese).

what about celebrating your friends?, she challenged.

what about it? celebrating is one thing. expectation is another, and it's a relationship killer - romantic, platonic or otherwise.

fill your own cup and buy your own kitchen accessories, i say.

why words (r) matter part 2

why words (r) matter

while words (r) matter goes audio-visual, there is still the matter of licensing rights.

please don't tell the rock stars.

smooth feet, reckless words and rippin' bass lines

My favorite mystic came bearing gifts of quinoa and cacao. He channeled cosmic wisdom from the council of sacred alchemists by way of my big toe, told me my callouses were holding denial, and instructed me to get a pedicure. Immediately.

With my feet lookin' so fly, a night out and about with a handsome gentleman seemed about right.

His jacket was Watanabe, his bottom lip swollen from a morning collision with a bee's butt, and his languaging harsh and jagged. He called celibacy lame and spiritual men pussies. And while his words were reckless, I'm not clear that they were an accurate reflection of the energy infusing them; and I wondered how many people I brush off, discount or cast aside because of the words they use, words they semi-consciously choose, words they likely don't pay enough attention to.

We listened to a jumpin' jazz trio, dropped in on an Echo Park dinner party riddled with gluten and art-talk, and ended up at Pho, squinting beneath the glare of halogen horror over steaming bowls of rice noodles.

What is your biggest perceived obstacle?

He didn't ask much, but he asked...hmmm...interesting? hard? deep?

(yes, kind of, no)

I appreciated "perceived," and still...

I don't perceive obstacles, I said; and named a few things I'm currently shifting into: ease and grace, and a softer, more feminine me.

The words were plenty and half-hearted and circuitous; and the vibrations out of sync. I returned home, unclear as to the lessons embedded in the evening, utterly thrilled to cozy back up to my bass guitar.

as quickly as it began...

i met k briefly at a gallery opening before talking with him at the boogie down dancing queen's "leos, leos, everywhere leos" birthday party friday night. we spoke about the rift between men and women here in los angeles, and our friend's sometimes tendency to speak so softly that it's difficult to hear her. i told him i'd read a book about energy bodies that explains low-talking as a specific personality type.

i received a message from him immediately upon accepting his facebook friend request saturday afternoon. the following exchange took place in about five minutes:

"voice"

k: So...what did Healing Hands say about low talkers?

d: it's an unconscious (subconscious?) manipulation to pull the other closer (energetically/physically) so that they can cord in to your third chakra.

make sense?

k: I don't know what the 3rd chakra is, but I have a friend who has espoused a similar theory and I always resisted it. Maybe it feels too devious to me.

d: it's unconscious.

devious is a judgment. it's manipulative. we all have similar issues on various levels.

it merely is.

k: i hate you.

on forgetting...

when i forget to remember to pretend that i'm small and limited and that i don't know, my world explodes open in great, big bursts of electric, ecstatic, synchronistic yes, and suddenly i'm moving mountains and manifesting magic, and i'm smack dab in the middle of my biggest, brightest dreams come true.

as this eclipsing moon ripens...

words, words, everywhere words.

i'm trying to let go.

i want to be more courageous.

we tack on extraneous words that push our intentions farther and farther away.

let's close the gap.

literally.

let go.

be courageous.

let's shorten the distance. let's annihilate the space between our dreams and our reality, our potential and our actualization.

time is a lie. nothing is going to happen in the future that isn't already happening now.

let our words reflect the magic of this moment, and all that we want it to be, which it already is.