I’m in Las Vegas for my wedding which happens in a day or two. All but two were able to make it out despite the vicious snowstorm that blanketed the Midwest, and they’ll be here tomorrow. We are in the Stratosphere hotel, and from the observation deck you can see the city below glittering and shouting. It’s not so much a marvel as an expected stereotype, but to me it still seems like a miracle: though ancestry and inclination hundreds of thousands somehow were called to this place to settle, to live, and now it’s a city of shouting lights, studios that rent for $125/week and child-inappropriate advertising at the baggage claim in airports.

My inner child loves it.

My inner child is also very overstimulated, and I had to ignore her cries for cotton candy when she saw it. But In’n'Out Burger was kind of interesting – I only wish my fiancee had let me in on the secret menu before I ordered, so I knew mayonaisse was available for my fries.

The car we rented had a rolled up ball of gum in the door handle and reeked of synthetic cherries. Room service at the hotel is closed until December 26th, despite me being hungry and a bit cranky. The wine list is hilariously overpriced, demanding $30 for a bottle of Beringer. And no, it’s not a reserve wine. You should see what they’re asking for a Kendall-Jackson. I’m sensing the lingering sadness of a town that has built itself off of fear and bad decisions – and that is visibly NOT prospering.

Strangely, I kind of like it. I harbor a suspicion that the Strip and the neon is not the truth about Las Vegas. I think if I veer off the cliches – and veer off Las Vegas Boulevard – I’m going to find something unique and wonderful, maybe even thriving.

I came up with a challenge for Joel and I while we’re here, after we wandered the Stratosphere complex. We together are going to look for still, calm spots in Vegas. These aren’t necessarily physical locations. They can be art, even graffiti art, or people, or just some air between parking garage and building.

My first calm spot are the elevator operators in the Stratosphere tower. They are zen about their jobs (and I resisted the urge to say something clever-to-me about the ups and downs of their employment) and they are there for one reason only: to engage the elevator riders. One girl admitted she was new and had no idea what the hell she was supposed to do when she was told to educate guests. I suggested tap shoes. Another man was asking me about my fingerless gloves that I just bought off of Etsy. Another guy let us walk through the elevator to get to some stairs. Calm, direct, efficient. I liked them.

My next were these lights by the third floor elevators. They are at odds with the rest of the complex, simple, somewhat low-lit and soothing to see.

Tomorrow my day is to be filled with the fussy feminine wedding preparations I don’t really understand, but at least the massage sounds nice. And the evening promises Cirque du Soleil, something I have wanted to see since I first learned of Cirque.

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It’s my holiday, or our holiday (depending on who’s here or how you look at holidays.)

Whatever this day does or doesn’t meant to you, I wish you great cheer, much happiness, and goodness to you with the return of the sun.

From Rent, by the late Jonathan Larson

“The opposite of war isn’t peace. It’s creation.”

Here she lies
No one knew her worth
The late great daughter of Mother Earth
On these nights when we celebrate the birth
In that little town of Bethlehem
We raise our glass- You bet your ass to-
La Vie Boheme

To days of inspiration,
Playing hookey, making something
Out of nothing, the need
To express-
To communicate,
To going against the grain,
Going insane,
Going mad

To loving tension, no pension
To more than one dimension,
To starving for attention,
Hating convention, hating pretension,
Not to mention of course,
Hating dear old mom and dad

To riding your bike
Midday past the three piece suits-
To fruits- To no absolutes-
To Absolut- To choice-
To the Village Voice-
To any passing fad

To being an us- For once-
Instead of a them-

La Vie Boheme

To hand-crafted beers made in local breweries
To yoga, to yogurt, to rice and beans and cheese
To leather, to dildos, To curry Vindaloo
To Huevos Rancheros and Maya Angelou

Emotion, devotion, to causing a commotion,
Creation, Vacation

Mucho masturbation

Compassion, to fashion, to passion
When it’s new

To Sontag

To Sondheim

To anything taboo

Ginsberg, Dylan, Cunningham and Cage

Lenny Bruce

Langston Hughes

To the stage!

To Uta

To Buddha

Pablo Neruda, too

Why Dorothy and Toto went over the rainbow
To blow off Auntie Em

La Vie Boheme

Bisexuals, trisexuals, Homo Sapiens,
Carcinogens, hallucinogens, men,
Pee Wee Herman
German wine, turpentine, Gertrude Stein
Antonioni, Bertolucci, Kurosawa
Carmina Burana

To apathy, to entropy, to empathy, ecstasy
Vaclav Havel- The Sex Pistols, 8BC
To no shame- Never playing the fame game

To marijuana

To sodomy
It’s between God and me
To S & M

La Vie Boheme

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I’ve stuck with my morning pages but fallen off of my artist’s date despite being in the last gasp of the Artist’s Way work. It’s been beneficial, definitely, though I’m not sure I’m creating so much as I’m just not bearing the weight of my own psyche and my tendency to read and over-read people. I still see things coming, I still can look at a person and know his/her core motivations most of the time…it just doesn’t bother me as much. I’m back to playing my own game, and while it’s not solitaire, I’m pretty much the only player that matters.

And I still need to get on track with those artist’s dates. For me I think the issue is twofold: 1)It’s now winter in Minnesota and I share a car, thus limiting my access to going where I want to (but allowing us to be able to have me work/create from home) and 2)I’m running out of ideas. This would be easier if I enjoyed music particularly, but I don’t. It’s extremely rare that music speaks to me, and while I can appreciate the performance experience… music got ruined for me by its own enthusiasts. I don’t see recovering from that. I’ve already passed on the book but I guess I could find something for artist’s date ideas online.

So, one of the artist’s dates I did was almost two months ago – I went to the Post Secret exhibit when it visited the Minneapolis Public Library. While Post Secret is in part a visual arts project, you pretty much go to see what secrets you share. And I shared a few, and a few just scared me to death, and the ones about body-hatred, such as the one saying “I’d rather be dead than fat!” was so full of ignorant self-and-other hatred that it made me wince. I’m fat. It isn’t easy, but it still beats death.

And some were hilarious. I’m a fan of the no-property-damage practical joke, and a few of the things people do were right up my alley. I am the person who puts Necronomicon books in the crafting section of Barnes and Noble, after all.

Some of them were hysterical:

Dark:

Strangely Joyful:

Sad because they wasted joy:

Terrifying:

Painful:

Obvious:

and ZOMG, Me too!

The moral, if there was a moral to take away, was that there are happy secrets and unhappy secrets. Happy secrets sustain you, give you strength from a place where no one can touch you. But unhappy secrets just poison you.

There was a guest book on the way out of the exhibit, inviting visitors to tell their secrets.

I wrote one.

I’m not telling what it is.

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In the last two weeks, I have to confess, I’ve been getting kind of sick of doing the morning pages. And the posts. And, because I was feeling a bit defeatist about them – not every Artist’s Date works out, because there is a blind dating factor to trying anything new – kind of sick of the artist’s dates. I recognize that this is my own self-sabotage rearing its head.

Since starting this, I’ve released one pdf book that I was genuinely scared about because it was so far out of my comfort zone,  written close to 12,000 words on the Urban Wicca book and thought of a fresh approach to the book on Divorce (the one I started this whole process to get to, which seems to be backburnered for other reasons but at least seems like a fresh and interesting project to me now.) I also have starter seeds down for an essay on mirrors and why I fear them, and a possible horror-fiction novel where the protagonist is the monster. I may possibly also be writing a fair bit of porn to release over on asstr.org under a pseudonym.¹

I’m healthier, I’m eating more consciously, my energy levels are normal to high, it turned out I personally know two competent reiki practitioners, and I’m over my guilt for writing and enjoying writing fanfic.

Also since starting this process, I’ve moved, I’ve gotten back “the feeling” that made Wicca a good practice for me in the first place, Joel is now my full working partner², I have been freed from responsibilities that were onerous and unrewarding and I have become more free and less embarrassed by my bizarre art/glue/cutting schtick and willing to pursue clothing reconstruction and related interests more. I’ve always been a woman of 1000 interests, but now they feel possible.

My business has taken a small hit from my relative neglect, and I suspect that as I keep working over the next 3-6 months I will at last achieve the right balance there, as well. I love designing perfume, and like other perfumers, I have doubts about my work that you just have to choose to set aside to create something amazing, and you also have to accept that not everything will work out as you like. My inner perfume critic is a different beast from my other inner critic.

After reading the bibliography/recommended reading, I also realize that there was a definite Pagan component to the Artist’s Way – there’s a lot of Starhawk in next to the Baghvad Gita. Again, atheists are kind of hosed using this work, but I do feel like a magical companion to the artist’s way might be well within range – I’m making notes as I go, especially after that wild energy clearance last July. I know things about myself now that I didn’t before.

So with that, I do my final check-in, and I will be signing and scanning in my follow-up contract later today – or this week.

1. I did 6 out of 7 Morning pages this last week. On Saturday I skipped out because I got up late and I wanted to get Mike over to the Mill City farmer’s market so he could see what I’ve been on about for weeks.

2. I did a cemetery walk for my artist’s date, and at first, it started as one of those blind dates gone wrong. The cemetery closest to where I live is one of those all flat-in-the-ground budget cemeteries that curiously takes you down a southern route that mysteriously deposits you somewhere to the northwest. Aside from the weird directional vortex, eh. Then I drove over to Lakewood cemetery where the experience was much more satisfying although finding a place to park was odd. Cemeteries are truly peaceful places; they helped me a lot when I was a teenager mourning for a friend, and they help me now because they are the only space where I have a guarantee I won’t be haunted. ((I will write about my haunting experiences later, because for me it’s become an increasingly internal experience that resembles but doesn’t quite match that thing where your cognition leaps to unpredictable places.) I have pictures I need to upload. I got the sense I should leave for the day, but that I wasn’t finished.

3. Most of my synchronicity this week involved a streak of highly convenient parking spaces.

4. I think my resistance to continuing this is the issue significant to my recovery. Clearly, I’m not done – I just want to be. There are other places where this pattern has manifested, and it’s definitely a learned behavior starting in childhood.

I’ll stick with it. I’ve gone too far not to.

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1. I know my sister would like to read my porn, but I think she’s better off not knowing my kinks. I will let her see the vanilla stuff. [↩]
2. that partnership has  been just shy of a decade in the making because I needed to grow up [↩]

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One of the most liberating things in the world is to create something without any concern on your first, second or third try about being good at it. In fact, this is how I can smoke out my crazymakers right away: in a no-stakes creative process a person insisting I do things “right” when it’s clear I’m already having a good time is definitely trouble. I can think of plenty examples, and I don’t need to name them. It’s normal to be bad at something until you’re good at it. It’s a writer’s rule: there’s nothing wrong with writing badly; it’s when you rewrite badly that there’s an issue. On your first draft you get out your fantasies and ya-yas; it’s on the following drafts, when you’re perfecting it, that actual perfection matters – and then, you’re perfecting an already finished product, so your inner critic and well-placed outer critics actually serve a purpose rather than just stopping you from being creative.

Here is my GOD jar. It’s got “Good Orderly Direction” painted in Crayola ™ gel paint and yes, it is a hot mess. I had the best time preparing that hot mess. Much like the spellbook earlier this week, I feel an undercurrent of glee at the horror by which others might receive it – their reaction just furthers my entertainment.

The intent of the jar is to give some storage to my personal demons, who will be neatly written on a piece of that incense paper I make and then burned in a monthly or semi-monthly ritual. The G.O.D jar is a good tool for me – it gives me a physical way to rip my obsessions out of my head and put them somewhere where I can keep their energy while losing their useless aspects.

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This was probably the hardest week for me during this process – I was sick for 4 days, only completed one exercise, and while I did the morning pages while I was sick, the last two days of this weekend I skipped out on morning pages because of the illusory concept of being “behind” in my work.

1. 5 out of 7 morning pages. Do I get a demerit? Mostly, it just seemed laborious. I have that happen – one or two weeks where getting my inner dialog out is a real strain, but then all of a sudden the lid comes off on a memory or opinion I’ve been suppressing and it’s a big energy clean-out.

2. I did do my artist’s date – I went and shot pool. I’m going to make that a regular thing that I do on Friday afternoons, anyway. I was a really decent player at the end of my first year of college, and it gets me a little physical activity. I don’t think I’d ever join a pool league – being sentenced to nine ball on account of my vagina offends me.

3. If I experienced synchronicity, I didn’t notice it because I was blowing my nose too loudly.

4. My biggest issue on recovery is that my inner critic is really, really eager for me to have a big backslide and I also still fall into the trap of putting outside work before my own.

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I feel so weird titling anything “Chapter 11.” It’s one of those chapters that, as a business owner, I strive to avoid.

I had my artist’s date today – shooting pool over at Fat Boy Billiards. The rates are cheap enough on my budget; $5.50 an hour. And while the hall is ancient and musty and the woman working seemed thoroughly locked in her own personal late 70s/80s time loop, the 40-70 year old men that were there scoped me out, realized that I was in no position to play for $100 a game and, after observing my lapse in skill, one guy realized that I was also not ready to wager coffee as he proposed. There is also the possibility that the barkeep (for lack of a better word) gave him a kick and reminded him that his grandaughter would not be so approving of pursuing a girl younger than her.

Shooting stick isn’t one of those things I do to get inspired. I do it to remove obstacles, to clear the cobwebs. I do it mostly to get off my ass. It’s not viewed as a heavy exercise game, but for me, it’s activity, and any activity lately is good.

The hall is musty and it’s only a matter of time before the whole not-quite-white thing rears its head. Still, a few of the men in the hall passed by to monitor my progress, and respected my space when I explained I’m reclaiming lost skill.

One guy chuckled as I swore under my breath at missing a ball altogether. “Don’t worry m’girl. You keep working at it, and you’ll get better.” The men there are foul-mouthed and highly competitive, almost coming to blows over politics AND pool in one afternoon. But for me, they were supportive and it looks like they’ll continue to be so. It’s quite a bit different from the hyper-competitive boyfriend that taught me to play pool – in its police-officer loaded, testosterone driven way, these guys were downright nurturing towards me.

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In the next 6 months, I will do the following to nurture myself:

1. Stick with my weekly beauty regiment that includes a facial, body scrub, vegetarian meal and when possible a chick flick.

2. I will re-enroll in bellydance class wherever I can find and afford it.

3. I will spend a little time outdoors every day it is safe to do so.

4. I will keep attending library lectures and programs because I really enjoy them.

5. I will read more fiction.

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Hi, I’m Di, and I’m a workaholic. I’m even typing this while sniffling embarrassingly from a head cold. Clearly, I have some conditioning to overcome, along with a new attitude to develop that translates into English as “do it yer damn self!”

This chapter was hard for me. Harder than I expected going in.

1. I did do 7 out of 7 on my morning pages. Reading my pages hasn’t changed my writing – I just have to let my brain do its thing, and work on coordinating between mind, body and schedule.

2. I did do my artist’s date – I went to the Como Zoo and conservatory because I wanted to get to the Como Zen Garden before it’s closed for the winter. I got lots of pictures and I had a bizarre day-of-the-dead experience that I decided not to participate in fully.

3. I guess my day of the dead trippiness? It’s been a rough week and I’ve been depressed for most of it- I tend to not notice magical happenings when I’m depressed.

4. I really do need to take more breaks to just play, and I need to trust myself not to overdo it. I was surprised in the 7 deadlies exercise how often alcohol came up – I don’t drink often and hardly to excess. However, I discovered long ago that alcohol puts me in a complete state of creative and psychic shut down. There were times in college when my psychism was really reawakening where I was grateful for this, but onto my adulthood where I’ve accepted my ghosts both inner and outer, alcohol does nothing but take time and ability away from me. I won’t quit drinking altogether, and I’m always turned off by people who insist it be central to a social activity (I prefer simple companionship and maybe light physical activity be central.) However, unless I know there’s no chance of me being creative – and since I write for fun, too – I just won’t drink anymore.

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Things that give me a sense of comfort:

1. Watching Finnian’s Rainbow

I got rid of the last VHS I had of it because I got rid of my VCR. I really need to buy it on DVD.

2. A new piece of clothing

This goes back to my childhood where it was really difficult for me to find clothing that fit. Clothes that do fit to this day give me a powerful self-esteem boost; it’s why I’m so interested in fashion despite how paradoxical that may seem.

3. Rainbows

4. Sex

It helps that I’m picky about who I have sex with, so for me it’s a safe and loving expression. I don’t get off on situations where I’m not totally comfortable.

5. Silk, satin or linen between my fingers.

6. Rich, spicy smells.

The perfumes I wear myself often have coffee and frankincense in them. I went through a phase where it was clove all the time.

7. Bright, magenta leaves in fall.

It’s like they’re the punk rock Granny of the trees.

8. Daria, Buffy, Doctor Who

9. Cuddles

10. Dancing

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