Bloodline Ceremony

I’ve been taken down to the bone. I spent the day with a Lakota Medicine woman who spent hours walking in other realms to rid me of darkness and the karma stored in my family bloodline. Hers is powerful medicine, which has left me open, raw and renewed.

I have always been the one to heal others, while longing to find someone who could do the same for me. Many people claim to have spirit medicine, but few are authentic and free of ego. This gift has been a long time coming. 

Part of me still journeys in that other realm, while the physical side sits in silence in my quiet retreat of a house. Stepping into the world again was especially hard, like having a split-screen open on the computer. Lucky for me, a friend was there to drive me home or I may have ended up in Idaho. 

Loved ones ask about the experience but there are no words. The details and mechanics defy description, because they are sacred and not of this time and place. I can only say that the work went deep and until I integrate I am left feeling like a visitor in my own life, and a little uncomfortable in my skin. 

June has been a month of pulling back. My worldly self is resting and what little writing I do comes in drips instead of the stream I am accustomed to. I welcome the day when words move through me like a river. I see them waiting and hold out my arms, knowing they will land again when the time is right.

Days at the ocean preceded my ceremony. I spent hours outside, slept in the sun, walked barefoot in the sand and was nurtured by the loving presence of a friend. I found bones, the exact size and shape I was seeking, and feathers, lots of feathers. My essence feels more bird than human, so these things comfort me. 

I am always surprised when people choose not to work on themselves, and to live in their fears and patterns of limitation. That is a choice I could never imagine making, because releasing darkness and making room for more light is such an exquisite thing. It is painful, as any birth is painful, but the other side is worth every second, because everything around you reorganizes to create a flow of ease and love that makes life so much more inviting and welcome. Today I sit with my labor pains and raw open feelings, but soon I’ll soar again with even greater freedom than before. I am humbled in gratitude.

Passion

My husband is in love with tennis. Maybe love is the wrong word. He has passion for tennis, passion for the experience, passion for the way his body moves and feels playing the game. It is his fountain of youth and his catnip.  He thinks about it, reads about it, and talks about it. He coaches tennis, goes away to tennis camps and hires teachers to show him how to become a better player.

I am not tennis. I am a woman he cares for and loves, but there is no passion. In the evenings we sit at our computers, reading or watching DVD’s to avoid what is not happening between us, the big white elephant in the room.

Yesterday we floated down the river ~ together and apart, not speaking. I was having fantasies of going up to fishermen standing on the shore and saying, would one of you make love to me please? I would like to have sex with a stranger. I want to cuddle up to the masculine and feel held, but I don’t want any part of what comes after. I don’t want to know the person, or see beneath the masculine exterior. I simply crave the beginning times when love is a warm inviting sensual bath and I’m not dealing with family, coffee spilled on the couch, or the ‘Why didn’t you call if you were going to be late,’ conversations.

I hoped our marriage would bring us closer together, not farther apart. But, instead of developing the trust that leads to more openness and touching, I have been learning to do without him, to let him go, to live my life alone, as I did before.

Last week, moments before he walked out the door on a camping trip, he came into the bathroom. I was combing my hair as he slipped his arms around me and said, You are so beautiful, I am a lucky boy, I mean man, and he was a man in that moment. In that instant, I was with the man that found me beautiful and desirable, the man I fell in love with, the man I married. I was with my husband. I felt stirrings of intimate feelings, the first I’d known in a very long time. I wanted to go to bed with him and love him and hold him. I wanted to remember us as we used to be. Then it was over, time for him to leave to go camping with his son.

This man used to grab me by the hand and say, come with me, come out into the world. We are 60. We can do whatever we want. But now his spirit has dampened and his desires have disappeared; now he is compliant, I don’t care. Whatever you want. What do you want to do?

He is willing to go where I choose, but his mind is too busy with tennis, running a pallet company and making time for his family to think of ‘us.’ The time that we need is seen as a distraction, a diversion from things that are important. ‘We’ can always wait, as in the unspoken, Are we done yet, cause I have to leave?

I’d like to go to Europe and live for awhile in Italy, France, Spain or Greece. I’d like to let my artist soar and the healer in me rest. I’d like to ride along the Italian Rivera on a motor scooter and settle into a little villa where sunlight greets me each morning and I am inspired to create. I want to escape to a better version of myself.

I fear this marriage side of me comes from a conservative out-moded value system, one I mistakenly ingested like bad pasta. I have tried over and over and over again to make it work, but in the end it becomes nothing more than a settling, while specialness and delights are found away from one another in the company of other people.

Pieces of Monday

I had a very large arrangement of edible flowers delivered to my door this afternoon from my daughter in law, Khrystyne and my son, Clayton. The card said: We Love you so much. Hugs and kisses. Clay’s name was first on the card, but he’s a guy. He loves me, I know, but his mind goes to carburetors and computers before floral arrangments, so thank you Khrystyne for making that happen. I was so touched, I had to hold back tears, so I could continue seeing clients. 

My first client settled in for her session. We did some catching up, then I wanted to focus our purpose.

So dear, what exactly do you want today, what do you need?

Oh Karen, if only you were an ice cream truck, I would know exactly how to answer that question!  

Perfectly stated.

I am allergic to chocolate but ate 6 chocolate covered strawberries anyway. They were worth all the itching that will arrive any second. 

I am in touch with my cousin, Bobby, whom I’ve not seen since childhood. He is giving me news and sending me pictures of his life in Florida. It’s vibrant and alive compared to gloomy June in Oregon. Writing to him has retrieved a sense of family I believed was extinct. 

I bought presents for Caleb, my niece Ingrid’s new baby, painted the boxes purple and put gold stickers on them. I enjoyed having purple fingers and the mess of it all.  I worked outside with the sun warming my shoulders and flamenco music shouting from the door. 

I watered this morning while the gardeners pulled up morning glory vines. I built a trellis for wax beans and pushed flimsy metal cages over cucumbers. My stunning pink rose bush is getting ready to bloom, but it’s all an exercise in non-attachment, because the deer will level my garden in their hunger and greed - and I’m going to let them. 

The bees did not sting me as I made my way through fields of wild strawberries in bare feet.

The dirt-covered cat did not jump into my clients lap when she sat outside to admire the day.

The library did not close before I could leave an old book and grab a new one. 

That’s a lot to feel good about for a Monday.

Friends – old and new

I had a long talk with my friend, Joy, today. We’ve been friends for 38 years. She is in Ohio and I am in Oregon but as soon as I hear her voice on the phone, distance dissolves and we are young again, remembering what it was like when we lived together and stayed up all night talking, laughing and trying to find direction for our lives. We were single mothers, poor, divorced and determined. I found work singing with a classical guitarist, while Joy modeled and kept us in groceries by distributing Leggs pantyhose, which were displayed in little silver egg-shaped cartons in her delivery van.

I’ve heard you can count the truly close friends you have on one hand. That has been true for me. I wondered today, after we hung up, exactly what made the quality of our friendship so rich and lasting. We have a shared history, yes, but also an openness of heart and an ease in conversation. There is a quality of feeling safe and understood, but the big one for me is having a give and take in discussions that does not involve me being the sole listener. There is a natural easy flow between us and an ability to pepper any discussion with heartfelt laughter.

Our conversation filled my thoughts as I began my walk up the driveway, which I do every evening, (well, that’s a lie! The intention is every evening, but the reality is more like two evenings a week) because my exercise ratio is off. I sit 90 percent of the time and exercise ten percent. Not good, so I walk, and to amuse myself, I sing. Tonight I sang a song one of my clients wrote:

Please carry me over to the opposite side of where I’m standing

cause I’m looking at something that’s brighter than halogen.

A small deer walked out of the forest as I sang. I was not sure what to do, because I didn’t want to scare her, so we stood frozen for a few minutes watching each other. Then I began to sing again and to my surprise she did not run away, she walked towards me. That’s what we did for awhile, I sang and she got closer. Then I continued up the drive, which is really long and steep and a pain in the butt to climb.

On my way back she came out of the woods again, I sang again and she walked toward me, stopped a short yard away and ate some grass. Her wild spirit told me that she was as close as she could risk. I acknowledged her and sat down. Deer are such an expression of gentle innocence. I will never understand how anyone can pick up a rifle and end their lives. I sat on the ground with my back to her, hoping she would come closer, but when I turned she had gone. Instead the black cat appeared rubbing her dirt-covered coat against my sleeve, encouraging me to walk home. I was grateful for the company. 

Inside I fixed tea, changed into my nightdress and finished making Joy’s birthday card. Joy works as an actress and teaches film making.  She will be 67 on Monday.

God Karen, she’d told me, I just received a new script. They want me to play a 50 year old woman!  Do you think I look that old?

 

Almost selling the truck

Saturday morning my husband Gib listed his truck on Craig’s List. He put it in for $1,300 because it needs work. The truck was full of Gib’s stuff, because he is basically a trasher, so it was a real mess. I told him last week-end that we should clean it out, but he was not up for it.  Gib gets a call as soon as the ad hits the net from a guy that lives basically as far away from us as he can live and still claim he lives in Portland. They talk and he makes him an offer of $1,000, which is fine with Gib. Gib offers to bring the truck to the guys house in two hours. “Bring the truck over and I’ll go get the cash!” This is Saturday morning and we are sitting around in our pj’s.

The truck is over by the pole barn, so we walk over and start to unload it. It is full, full, full of his crap. Gib: Gee, I guess we should have done this earlier. Me: No comment.  There are locked boxes in the back where he stores his camping equipment: sleeping bags, chairs and tents. Of course, this is mixed with tennis balls, old socks, tools, and tavern receipts. When he opens the box the worst smell comes out. A mouse or mouse family have lived in there, been pooping and dying and have eaten ALL of his camping equipment. The smell is overwhelming, an odor mixed with mold from sitting too long in the shade of an Oregon winter.

So we start pulling stuff out and tossing it to the ground. Gib is throwing wood screws out the back of the truck into the gravel where we’ll have to hunt down each one, so the gardeners don’t get flat tires.  More work.

 We drive the truck to the house and get soap and the vacuum, both of us gagging on the smell. The front cab is also covered in mold, and more of Gib’s twelve year old way of storing crap. Meanwhile, it’s nearly two, and I’m saying, “This guy is waiting, give him a call!”  Gib is SO attention deficit disorder he can only focus on what’s right in front of him, everything else gets lost. We are hours away from done, so I keep saying, “time to call him, time to call him!” He calls at two, and tells him three thirty, which I think is terribly optimistic. 

 Gib tells me he still wants to get the oil changed and go through the car wash. I tell him to let the new owner do that, but he is determined; plus the clock is ticking, we are going out that evening and need to be dressed and ready. I load the crap we took from the truck into my trunk to dump it in a dumpster, but Gib doesn’t like that idea, because he’s not ready to deal with that part yet, so I haul it out again. Finally, after mopping the ceiling, sides and floor of the truck it looks okay. I spray air fresher in there, but it has the same effect it has in the bathroom. You still smell the shit, it just has an artificial smell laid on top, even worse. We use Windex on the windows and that helps.

Time to get our evening clothes and run. No, Gib needs a shower first, and advice on what to wear to the concert, and he can’t find his belt….anywhere. Finally, we are on the road with me following him in my car, but guess what?  The truck needs gas, so we pull into a station. I’m thinking, knowing Gib, that he is probably filling it up instead of putting in ten bucks. I want to yell at him, but am all yelled out.  That’s done. We make it to the oil change place, but they have long lines and an hour wait. It’s an oil change and car wash. Gib says he will take the wash only, but they say they only wash cars that have had an oil change, but he has already pulled in and there is no road around, so they have to let him go through the wash, because the truck has no reverse, except in the morning when the weather is cold, which is why we are selling it in the first place! The guys at the car wash are not happy. They don’t know how to handle it, so they talk about it for a loooooong time.

I wait for him to go through the wash. We are on the road again. Oh, nope. We are not. Gib pulls into a Shell Station to buy oil. He parks the truck so it blocks all the gas pumps and slowly walks inside to buy six dollars worth of oil. Cars are waiting to get gas as he leisurely pulls the dip stick out, wipes it clean and makes his assessment. Okay, oil in now. Old man blocking gas pumps has been politely tolerated by everyone in the long line that reaches out to the street.

Now we are ready to make the long drive to this guys house. I honk my horn really loud because Gib is pulling the truck into the side of a bus…..~!  “Didn’t notice that Karen, wonder where it came from.”

Nerves on edge now.

We get to the guys house and he lives in scumville, because he is a scum. He hops in the truck with Gib to test drive and doesn’t come back for a really long time. He offers Gib $500 and keeps Gib in his clutches, while he does his slimy salesman routine.  They walk to my car and Gib tells me what’s up. I hit the ceiling!

 “What, we drove this truck all the way over here so he could break his word?”  The guy is still talking to Gib. “We had a deal!” I say, “The deal was for $1,000.”  The guy has Gib’s keys and doesn’t want to give them back. I said, “NO DEAL!!!” Gib smiles, and says, “We all have wives. You know how that goes.” He is leaning on me, because he doesn’t know how to get free of him. He finally gets his keys back and we pull out, both of us shaken by his Mafia manner.

Stressful… Now we have two vehicles, so we take the truck to my daughters house and park it. We’ll put a For Sale sign on next week. It’s time to meet our friends at the fancy restaurant for dinner. I don’t even bother to change, just go as I am, because I’ve had it. I order a coffee drink and good food, the day is looking better.

The show afterwards is fabulous. Flamenco dancers from Spain. Unbelievably beautiful, but I’m having trouble staying awake. We get home at midnight and suddenly I am wide awake and so is Gib, so I begin doing a sketch in my art pad, and he does some computer work. It’s two o’clock in the morning and we HAVE to go to bed, but somehow we are not tired. At four, I am still laying in bed going, I must sleep!, but can’t. Finally, we sleep.

My daughter calls at eight the next morning to see if we’ll help her paint a bedroom. Sure, why not? Half awake we drive into Portland again, stopping to dump all the crap from the truck in a big dumpster outside a manufacturing plant. Illegal dumping. Gib is fumbling around with the lid, being nervous and looking over his shoulder. He makes a horrible criminal. He has no skill at it at all.   

written 11-06-07

Memory

Kay is in her 80’s. She calls about once a month to tell me she needs a healing session, specifically to deal with the clutter in her life, but I have learned to wait to call her back and not mention her request for a session. Kay’s clutter defines her and is a needed reminder that she exists and has a history. Instead I call and suggest we meet for lunch. I could offer her a session and send her home with a CD, but she would not remember having it. 

Kay has always been eccentric, in extreme and wonderful ways. She blurts out her truth in a blunt warrior-like fashion, concealing a delicate, almost fragile spirit within. She calls late at night to tell me about a praying mantis that landed on her front door. The wonder and description of him occupies most of the phone call.

Kay was part of a woman’s training I offered that went on for six years. She was clear then and lucid. Crazy Kay, as we called her is a hot-wired red head who gets mad at her 93 year old boyfriend for sitting out more than one dance, legally changed her last name to match the neighborhood she moved to, washes her hair and her underwear in the same bathwater, and was the only person willing to march with me during the Belmont Street fair in nothing but a bathrobe and feather boa.

Her dementia is hard to be next to and often difficult to distinguish from her unique view of the world.

Last time we were together, the conversation went like this:

What would you like to do now, Kay?

Let’s have lunch!

But we just got up from lunch.

I know, but there are several nice lunch spots. Let’s just keep having lunch.

We went into a boutique.

 Kay met the owner. Your business is going to get really bad in five more years, she tells her.

The woman laughs, you mean worse than it is right now, with the recession?

Yes, I read it in a magazine. By 2014 there will only be two planets we can inhabit.

And where would those be, I ask.

Where? Well, how should I know? They didn’t tell me! 

We get back on the road, the air conditioner in her Volvo is broken and it’s really hot outside. She is convinced it should work, so she keeps blasting warm air into a car that is already sweltering. I turn it off and explain that it no longer works. A few minutes later she forgets, reaches for the AC and we do it all over again.

My car is in the garage so she is driving me around. She does some slick maneuvering to cross a jammed traffic lane so we can go in the opposite direction of our destination.

Oh, aging does not look pretty. Maybe that’s why I feel compelled to write these memories out, because one day my mental screen will go blank, there will be nothing left to retrieve, and I’ll be the one who insists on holding up traffic so I can satisfy my urgent need to go in the wrong direction.

Roots

It was not unusual for me to greet strangers at the door of our childhood home completely naked – not that we had many visitors.

The grown-ups were too busy to protest or enforce rules, east coast summers were sweltering and humid and clothes were a bother. I went without a shirt in public until I began to develop and often drove the car shirtless as an adult. Since my curves were slight, I thought I could easily be mistaken for a man. This drove my kids crazy, so I stopped.

Because I wore my hair short, I had an idea that I looked like a man and believed strangers couldn’t tell the difference.  Some days I’d test my theory by going into a shopping mall dressed in a man’s suit and hat. Of course my skin was cream colored and smooth, and my figure thin and hourglass, but that never occurred to me. Sometimes I’d even glue a mustache above my lip to gain credibility. I did well if I kept my distance, but speaking was a dead give-away, so I would never answer a question, I would grunt or make deep guttural male sounds when a clerk asked if I needed help.

Well, I probably needed a lot of help, but not in the ways they thought. If I caught a clerk looking at me and giving me a broad knowing smile, I knew the gig was up, smiled back and made my way out the door. Must not look like a man today, I thought.

We went barefoot year round as kids. We were without shoes in all kinds of weather including snow. I imagined I would live my entire life without shoes until I stepped on a lit cigarette at the county fair. That left a lasting impression that changed my mind.

My parents ran an upscale restaurant, and customers often complained about our lack of shoes. You should supervise those kids, they’d say, or they’ll all have pneumonia.  My folks dealt with this by repeating their words, but there was never any threat or action. We were just kids being kids. They would report the conversation much like they’d say, Looks like Glenn’s cow is out. Guess someone ought to give him a call.

One afternoon I was walking back from the woods carrying my dad’s double barreled shotgun. It was a 20 gauge, which I liked better than the 12 gauge because that one recoiled and hurt my shoulder. I’d been doing some target practice and feeling good about my aim. We were all taught to use guns and to use them safely, it was part of living on a farm, but when a customer complained about a kid walking on her own through the pasture with a 20 gauge, my dad caved in. I never quite forgave him. I knew what I was doing and hated to be told I had to stop because someone else got scared.

It poured rain the other day. I was feeling stagnant and disconnected so I went outside in my bare feet for the first time in decades. I walked to a tree stump in the middle of the woods and let my feet rest in tall grass. I soaked the earth up through the mud and into my core. It was the perfect medicine, simple, immediate and right. Funny how a little thing like that could take me back to my roots and a clear remembering of the land that once held and defined me.

Ram Dass

 

I first saw Ram Dass in the late 70’s, when he came to Ohio State University to speak about his trip to India and the ways it transformed his consciousness and character. He spoke about his time as a Harvard Professor, his friendship with Timothy Leary and finding his Hindu teacher.

Everyone is a manisfestation of God, he said, and every moment is of infinite significance.

I had no idea who Ram Dass was and had no expectations. He walked to the center of the stage in flowing robes, closed his eyes and sat quietly for a very long time. It amazed me. How could anyone begin a presentation by sitting down and being quiet?

I was at Ohio State studying dance, theater and women’s literature. I had just finished touring with Hello Dolly and had been well-schooled. Being on stage was about dynamic presentation, articulation, entertainment and projection. How could this guy sit center stage, take a long drink of water and willfully exclude his audience? I was baffled.

He began to talk about consciousness and the freedom in allowing yourself simply to be without doing.

We are human beings, he said, not human doings.

Wow, what would that be like? I was a single mom and the pressures of it made me feel like jumping off the nearest bridge. I got up early each morning; put my son in the child seat on my bike and my daughter on the grown-up seat, while I pedaled standing up. I stopped first at the day care center and later the university. We came home the same way. I worked as a waitress from three until nine, gave all my tips to the babysitter and stayed up past midnight finishing assignments. The next day I did it all again. Easy for him to talk about being and not doing, I thought.

But there was something wonderfully appealing about his gentle spirit, colorful robes and the tranquil glow in his eyes that made me pay attention and want to read his books. A few years later I moved from Ohio to Oregon and decided to try a ten day meditation. I had never done a formal meditation in my life - starting with ten days was not enlightenment, it was pure hell. But I was curious to know who I was beneath my story, history and ingrained beliefs, so I began searching for another way, a way that made sense to me.

What I settled on was sending my kids to their father’s house, while I closed the door to the world and imposed a kind of solitary confinement. I sat and noticed and observed.

When I wanted to bust out of the room, I noticed the feelings, thoughts and sensations around the desire but remained still.

When I wanted to eat food I was not hungry for, I stopped and noticed the desire for comfort, my need to fill my emotional emptiness and soothe the frightened child within.

I spent nearly a month peeling back the layers of my identity, sitting, laughing, crying and writing, looking for and finding the me that was capable of being and not doing. I wanted the personality to ease its fearful grip and allow a glimpse of the divine. I wanted access to the wise woman at my center and was not disappointed.

I saw Ram Dass last night in a documentary called Fierce Grace. He looked vulnerable, frail and broken. He talked about his stroke and what a worthy teacher it was. He cried openly and laughed the same way. The ability to mask his emotions had dissolved; the flow of his language was restricted and withheld. My husband wondered if it hurt his credibility to weep without restraint, but I saw it as one more protective human wall that had collapsed, to further reveal the compassionate spirit within.

Life is a strange and unyielding teacher. Willing or unwilling, we are all her pupils.

New York City

 

Every few years my parents treated us to a cultural week-end in NYC.  We drove four hours through vineyards and rolling acres of farmland to the heart of a cosmopolitan environment that was as different from our barefoot childhood as I could imagine. 

We stayed at the Hotel Astor, which in 1955 was the finest hotel in the city. The Astor embodied old world elegance, sat in the heart of the theater district and towered over Time Square. The Brooklyn Dodgers had just won their first world series and the city was alive with excitement. Cab Calloway and Fats Waller were hot stuff and the Cotton Club was birthing a new musical sound. But it was the Broadway shows that interested my folks.

Evenings found us in our finest clothes with fresh gardenias from a street vendor pinned to our coats. The smell of that delicate white flower can still bring back vivid memories of Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, sinking into red velvet theater seats, watching chandeliers dim against a ceiling of gold and holding our breath as plush curtains whooshed back to reveal a magical world of song and dance. We sat spellbound by every theatrical gesture and perfected vocal score. Those performances began my admiration and love for the theater, and also spoiled me for anything less professional. 

I was ten years old when I watched long rows of women called the Rockettes, high kick in unison at Radio City Music Hall. They were wholesome family entertainment, while a trip to the Latin Quarter opened our eyes to the exotic. Women on flower-covered trapezes, descended from the ceiling wearing high heeled shoes, seamed stockings and little else. The undeniable points of attention were their breasts, where long tassels adhered to each nipple, leaving their fullness bare and exposed. The tassels were smaller versions of the fabric ends that held back the drapes in our living room. I was stunned! I could not take my young eyes off them – grown women who amused themselves by swinging naked from the ceiling of a darkened theater. Was that really okay? Was that what women did when they got older? Apparently it was not only approved of but applause worthy.  I began to wonder about stringing ropes in the hayloft and doing some undercover surgery on my mother’s drapes.

When the performance finished, my sister Kristen and I had to use the bathroom, but the lines were too long, so mother encouraged us to wait. We’ll be home soon, she promised. We hopped in a taxi, which vigorously whisked us through busy streets and hairpin corners. When we screeched to a halt, my father’s angry face matched the burgundy coat worn by the doorman. He was complaining about the driver as my sister and I pushed through revolving glass doors, past walls of glossy walnut, expensive paintings and potted palms. We jumped up and down in the elevator in our urgent need, reaching our fourth floor room before the white gloves of the elevator man disappeared behind us. Doors were never bolted at home, so we were stunned to find we’d been locked out.

I’m peeing my pants, Kristen told me. What should we do?

I had pushed my winter coat aside and was dancing up and down in a desperate attempt to wait.

We can’t pee right here, I said, it will make wet puddles right outside our door. We’ll surely get caught and get in big trouble. I have an idea. You run that way, and pee as you go. Run all the way to the window drapes. I’ll run to the marble statue. We’ll spread it out in long lines, that way nobody will be able to figure out what we did.

And so, on that eventful Saturday night, in one of the cities grand hotels, two little girls were pushing aside their fancy lace dresses to leave a bit of themselves in the lavish carpet at the Hotel Astor.