While nothing really fits in neat little categories and this will all meld together, I thought I’d give it a little try.
Spiritual
Last night I cast a sleeping circle because I was so dizzy that I felt like something was being yanked loose. I called upon the protection of Eros as I sleep, as I heal and he appeared to me as the Youth. I was uncomfortable with it. I am used to father Eros, progenitor of the universe. It is because you are uncomfortable that I appear so to you, he told me. Seeing God in young men is hard for me.
Chapter Work
Chapter 2
I went ahead and read Chapter 2 this morning. It’s an idyllic day in Minneapolis, and I found a park bench on Milwaukee Ave and read. interrupted only once by two panhandling Indians. One offered me a flower, which I refused. Allergies, I lied. Yeah, I’m allergic too, the kid lied back.
I took out my breakfast sandwich and began to eat. The paused at the garbage can. It was 10 am, and the father rested a can of Pabst on the garbage can by the bench while he and his son flashed and counted their cash. His father gestured to the kid. We’ll let you eat, he told me. Got to respect that. Bye miss! He was very insistent on proper greeting – Hello miss! Goodbye miss!
As I sat and read, flicking little green bugs and one baby fly off myself and my book, Eros made himself heard again. You are protected, he told me. As long as you do this, I will protect you. So I don’t need to work so hard protecting myself – and I usually do walk around, the magical equivalent of armed to the teeth. I will tell you when to resume your own protections again. I’m glad Eros is assuming a parental role with me. Constantly protecting myself gets exhausting.
Chapter 1
I meant to do the exercise of “taking my artist for a walk” and I wanted to take pictures – my neighborhood is drenched in public art. I think that Eros or spirit guides had other ideas, however, since as I took out my camera to snap a shot, I discovered that the battery I’d reinserted last night (I’m pretty sure I reinserted it last night) was not in the camera, nor had it somehow slipped from the camera casing into my bag. When I returned home after reading my chapter of the The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity [10th Anniversary Edition]
Having at last abandoned the idea of taking an Artist’s Walk – and through no coincidence, remembering that my favorite art fair is this weekend – the battery has reappeared in the plastic file drawer where I keep the battery charger.
5 Alternate Lives
I’m actually pretty happy I am who I am, I’m just frustrated at my own untapped potential, especially now I’m in my 30s. That said, there are other things I’d enjoy being. So, instead of an artist’s walk, I’m doing the “five other lives” exercise.
If I could choose from five things other than what I do now, I would be
1. A news reporter. The old-fashioned kind, who hid in air vents to get the story.
2. A boxer. I love the idea of being all muscley and violent.
3. An academic. I don’t care what kind of academic, something PhD-clad and obsessive on a subject matter.
4. A call girl. One of those that use prostitution as therapy; a sort of hands-on sex therapist.
5. An actress, especially a comic actress. This actually isn’t too far from the realm of possibilities given that everyone else in my family acts. But it’s so hard not to tag on “if I were prettier/thinner/more charming/more social.” There’s nothing stopping me from being a comic actress now – I have the innate sense of timing, the ability to create original material, I can act, and funny girls don’t have to be skinny.
- Given how often the alarm in this complex goes off, I wondered if indeed a building could qualify as a crazymaker. There have been so many problems here, and they’ve increased as I’ve tried to increase the work and creation I do at home. The more I’m here, the more trouble I see. I’m a bit of an animist. Could an entire building envy my creative process? Wow, that would suck. [↩]
Some random thought-lets:
1. My undergraduate major was in journalism. 50% a desire to be the fast-talking girl reporter, 50% because poetry just didn’t seem like a reasonable career.
2. The call girl life made me think of Phillip Toledano’s photos of phone sex workers, which I recently discovered. Read the description that goes along with the very last photo.
3. I turned 30 this year and also have a hard time reconciling where I am vs. what I might have imagined my life being at this time. One of my affirmations from last week was directly tied to this: “I accept my life’s path–it led me to this moment–and I refuse to martyr or beat myself up over whatever I didn’t achieve before turning 30.”
I actually got my degree in mass communications with the intention of being a journalist, but it just never happened. I got married straight out of college, my ex was not done with school, and I basically had to shoot my own potential career and kill it. It was unfortunate.
I checked out the phone sex photos…WOW. I have a good friend who earned a living doing phone sex for a few years. I’m not sure I could actually ever do it.
And I like the affirmation. 30s is always the mini-crisis, 40s is the midlife one. We need to get over being so surprised that a)we’re still alive and b)we’re not rich and famous and nobody’s sorry. OK, maybe that’s just me.