Hello! What a day. Today was a day was a day. I didn't think it was going to be that sort of day. I thought it was going to be a medium sort of day. But first thing that happened is that I went to Whole Foods, and I got all caught up in reading the Origins magazine with Alanis Morissette on the cover. It was exciting. I wrote about it in my last post. It was exciting because I felt like I knew everybody in the magazine. They are people I've met. Friends of mine. People who have had a direct impact on my life. And THEY all know each other. I don't know how to explain it, but it was cool. It was life-changing. I realized- I want to be- and am already sort of making my way into becoming- that crowd. NOT the Hollywood crowd. The "conscious" culture. Which can be cheesy in its own way at times, but is still, in general, the place where one would want to be. 

And THEN I flipped a page and saw that ALANIS MORISSETTE, ANI DIFRANCO, AND EVE ENSLER are all going to be at the same workshop in Colorado in October and I got really excited and didn't know how quite to handle that information because I wish I could go. They are three of my idols. I want to be doing what they are doing and have done in the world. 

So then I was all in a tizzy about that. And thinking excited, grandiose thoughts. And then I went to what I thought was going to be Kirtan at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, only it wasn't, because it's a month from now. 

Only I didn't know it was a month from now, because I double-checked every detail except the date, and so I went stomping around in typical fashion, getting increasingly grumpy, and spiraling into despair as I circled the premises without finding any sort of life or concert-ing going on. 

I was hungry, I was cold, it was windy, and I had geared my entire day around this event, only to have it not, actually, happen. I walked, not towards where I had caught the bus, but towards the ocean, thinking that I could maybe at least find some nice ocean-side cafe with coffee and snacks to make me feel better. 

But there was no such thing to be found, just the ocean, and more wind and cold, and I walked along it, thinking disgruntled thoughts to myself. 

The Universe is inundating me with loving guidance, and I am listening. I used to be obsessed with celebrity culture. I wanted to be Katy Perry. Which is a purely ego, not heart path. I used to read celebrity magazines as a guilty pleasure, but the stories are stale and ridiculous and there's no way I would ever even be able to stand being in that world.

The past three months have been such a turning point, and I've begun to identify new role models and value. For example, Alanis Morissette. I picked up THIS magazine at Whole Foods today, about "the conscious culture," and as I read through it I realized that after all this time in San Francisco and at the Omega Institute, I know half the people who are in the magazine. I've met them, hugged them, danced to their music, been to their workshops, had conversations, developed friendships. In essence, I'm already a part of that world. Not only in knowing it but in resonating with the same values. So anyway, that seemed like the Universe giving me a loving knock on the head. Stop striving for something that's not realistic, and which would never suit you, anyway. You're already here. You're already where you're supposed to be.

:) And on that note, I'm off to a Kirtan/Seva at the Palace of Fine Arts with Jai Uttal, Snatam Kaur, and emceed by none other than Wavy Gravy! In two weeks I go to Shaktifest in the Joshua Tree Desert. To continue the path I started with the very teachers and trailblazers featured in this magazine. Transmuting the anger, healing, shaking it out, making it beautiful. Jai Bhagwan!

 

This is Lalita, a Hindu gopi. 

Lalita is known for her playfulness, charm, and pure, loving rage. : )

Special Talents:
(1) The leader of all the sakhis of Srimati Radharani
(2) Very magnanimous like her father
(3) The instigator of most pastimes
(4) Always displays contrariness to Krsna's suggestions
(5) Frequently becomes angry and speaks outrageously insolent retorts to
increase the intensity of the loving affairs between Radha & Krsna.
(6) Brilliant in composing and and understanding riddles
(7) Unparalleled in fashioning things with flowers including awnings,
dancing arenas, umbrellas, couches, bowers
(8) Expert in performing magic tricks and juggling.

Last night at Bazaar Cafe. 

I am so proud of and grateful for Julie Mayhew for doing this series of concerts on suicide awareness. It is so beautiful and brave of her, and also, I believe, what the world needs. Forums where we can go and create together and express and bare our souls and have it be a safe environment. I previously only found that at Omega, where I made so many amazing friends and healed so much of what was at the root of an eating disorder that pretty much defined my life for 10 years. 

Now, even more is coming up that makes it all even more clear. And it is all connected. Food is about nurturing our bodies, our souls. But many times when people get together to eat it is more like a show. Everyone is talking small talk and putting on appearances and trying to impress each other. Meal times were traumatizing for me at boarding school because I didn't relate to anyone, I didn't talk the right way, I wasn't cool enough, there was no table where I fit in. That's where I became bulimic. The only place where it felt safe to eat was by myself. Still is, most of the time. 

But I can eat around people, in situations, where I feel authenticity. When people have seen me break down and cry, when they have acknowledged and loved me in my messiness, and vice versa, I can eat around them. And the reason I'm sharing this right now is because with my own shows, like Julie is doing with this series, I want them to be a safe space. A space for authenticity. A place to go to dark places along with the light. There is no pretense, no way you are supposed to talk or supposed to be to be accepted or cool. It is the surprising, whacky, wild places inside people that are the most interesting. Those are what I want to see, rather than some tape of conversation or jargon that's been played a hundred times before. I don't want to talk to you about the weather. I want to talk to you about your soul, and how THAT's doing. 

And my body, perhaps, being very sensitive, has just been acting like a weathervane, tensing up when there's a lot of pretense and ego at work, and relaxing where there is authenticity. 

Last night at the show I opened up about all of this to everyone. It was probably the first time I've talked about being bulimic in front of so many people where it was not a workshop or healing center. But I noticed something else. Every time I do talk about my eating disorder and then I start to see that I am now identified with THAT, I become resistant again. Because it is deeper than the bulimia and the laxatives and the obsessive exercise and the fad diets. Those were all the behaviors that came out of it. The thing that I am really talking about is anger at the world and not being able to deal with it. Internalizing it. And that is something I'm still struggling with even if it doesn't work its way out through food. The anger is still omnipresent, but after five years of healing, it has a much looser grip around my neck. But I want to be active in changing the world. No longer internalizing my anger at what I see are injustices. I want to be a warrior. But a warrior for hope and healing. 

And those moments like last night in Bazaar Cafe, feeling the love and healing energy of the songs, just letting it course through me and reach the completely silent and receptive and appreciative audience, our energy working back and forth in a dance to create that healing moment- that. That is why the songs came through. They healed me, and they are not stopping there. They are on a mission. They are taking me on a journey. They are opening me up- my entire self, my personality, my energy field- making it safe for me to express what has been hiding all along under what were once layers of pain and anger and shame and what I perceived to be fat- and later, sparkles and wigs and fuzzy legwarmers and banter. Without the pain, and without the sparkles, it's just.... me. That wonky, empty, no-man's land that I don't identify with hardly anything because I'm so used to disassociating. 

But if I learn to see "me" as the rich, fertile soil from where all of the songs, the creativity, the expression is born, nothing more, nothing less, then I can begin to like "me." I can begin to respect "me." I can see that that soil is producing things that make people happy, that make a positive impact in this world, and therefore I should take care of it, I should nourish it, and that has nothing to do with ego and self, in fact it is in a spirit of selflessness, because I am no longer attaching my stories of how awful or how great I am to "me"- I am rather just making room, tending to the soil, so that the spirit can move through whatever needs to be moved through and grown and fed to the world. :) 

I'm enjoying the fact that my job at the hostel involves all sorts of random tasks, including decorating this birdcage. Our manager is on a decorating kick and this was his latest acquisition. We went on a trip to IKEA and I felt like a little kid again, as I trotted around gathering seashells and potpourri to bring back to the cart, pleading "Can we get these too, PJ? For the birdcage?" 

I've always wanted to own my own business, my own space, and I feel like the Universe is giving me an inside look and a bit of guidance towards that goal, hopefully. And not surprisingly, I always envisioned that space, my little House of Dreams, being in San Francisco!

But that's not for any immediate future. Right now, I am feeling happily recharged and optimistic again (although I suspect that that is a direct correlation with having started drinking coffee after a month cleanse, during which I literally wanted to die). I kept waiting to start to feel a natural enthusiasm for life without any sort of stimulant, but I didn't. I need coffee, wine, the Liz O persona, or some combination of the above. And there are worse things to be dependent on, is what I decided, so I have decided to re-introduce them with a recognition of the fact that they are crutches to help me get through this reality as is. I do want to cleanse again, and keep healing and balancing, but to go cold turkey off any of the crutches right now would mean a total change in lifestyle. And I like what I have going on. It just needs to be balanced so I don't go so high and low all the time. 

I was going to say that has nothing to do with a birdcage, but perhaps it does. I have actually always thought of my depression, my lows, my anger being the wall I hit before truly going anywhere. It really is like being stuck in a cage. And this cleansing is a purposeful exploration of why those walls are there. And how I could perhaps, perhaps- learn to finally let them fall, and break free. 

By the Grace of Kali

 It's getting to the point now where none of the things that I feel are epic and unfolding in my life feel appropriate to post on facebook. One, because they might make people uncomfortable. And two, because they are somewhat sacred to me. I say somewhat because I am posting it, still, in the blog. But that's because I want to keep track of this time as it is unfolding. And blogging challenges me to summarize it better. 

This is how my life works. Earlier today I posted that segment about dedicating myself and this new phase of my journey to finding the dark goddess. And what should I discover, oh, 5 hours later? That there is a TEMPLE IN SAN FRANCISCO DEDICATED TO KALI MA. Who is Kali Ma? Keep up! She's the Dark Mother, Hindu goddess of death and change and destruction. Destroying old patterns to give way to rising Shakti, to the new. Kali has been present in so much of my life. Burning, tearing up, throwing up, scratching myself, changing location, running away. I saw all of these as bad things. They were done, after all, out of anger. I have worked so hard on being light and good and pleasing, but those dark, angry, spirited urges are still strong, raging, under the surface, and now I see them as something beautiful, something to be honored, for they are striving for release, freshness, rejuvenation, authenticity, healthy rage that catalyzes change. Maybe terrifies others into healthy change when complacency no longer works. This is absolutely a huge part of me. The wild woman, the demon, the rage, the irreverence. And to be able to channel it in a way that is constructive, that is beautiful, that is impactful, that is inspiring- and at the same time, scary enough to shake up the stale belief systems that have done such destruction to our world and our psyches- that is undeniably my role. 

My other favorite dark female energy is Lilith, the supposed original wife of Adam, who refused to subordinate to him and flew away to gather an army of demons. She had red hair. She was VERY sassy. I love Lilith. And just at the moment I was thinking of her, as the only other energy I feel that is as important to me as Kali, there were their names, next to each other, in a sacred chant of this goddess temple. I almost burst into tears, I was so excited. 

It's true. It's not all sparkles and ponies in the Liz O Show. I love vengeful female goddesses just as much as sparkles and ponies, if not MUCH more. And if you can't understand that, you have probably not had a life that provoked an adoration of vengeful female spirit. You are probably not a curvy woman with a symmetrical face in an obnoxiously misogynistic world. Misogyny, perhaps, does not affect you or bother you all that much. Or maybe you don't even know that it bothers you. Maybe it is so engrained in everything that you find it easier just to swallow it down. 

But I don't. I am in full support of the dark goddess rising, emerging, shaking shit up. I believe I came here on earth to be part of her doing just that. On the website for the temple, they write that Kali is returning, the dark female energy is rising, she is emerging in the unconscious, in dreams, and of course I believe that since I am a fine example of one who heard the call and is heeding it. And now I am led to this temple, and I don't think I've been so excited about a place since I found out about the Adelaide Hostel, and I can't wait to call them tomorrow and go to KALI PUJA on April 28th!!

Kali Ma, Kali Ma, Kali Ma. 

xoxoxxoxo 

Embodiment

I have strained my back and can barely move and so I spent today working on my website, going back through old blog entries. I found a blog post from exactly four years before I released the album. In that blog post, I was talking obsessively about my body and exercise, because at that time I was still totally consumed and paralyzed by an eating disorder. 

It's sad and painful for me to read but at the same time, amazing, because it makes me realize that I have completely healed from something that lasted almost a decade, and something I thought I was never ever going to be able to get myself out of. At that time, I wouldn't have been able to imagine what it would be like to feel consistently at ease in my own skin. It would have seemed like a miracle. But now, four years later, I am here. In that blog entry, I declared the beginning of the very journey to get to this place. The beginning of following my heart instead of obsessive mind-chatter. 

So, I recommend blogging. Keeping a journal. Setting intentions. They are powerful. They actually will take you where you truly want to go. While the songs and music are important to me, the most important part, I realize, is the healing journey they took me on. And I hope in whatever I do, be it songs, writing, comedy, art... the result of my work will be that I am seen as a source of support and inspiration and hopefully even a catalyst for girls to take steps onto a new path, a path of reclaiming personal power. 

In the blog, I said I had an infant goddess who I realized I had been starving throughout the entire eating disorder. I said I wanted to finally start to feed and nourish her, through wandering, exploring, listening to my intuition, so she could grow strong. 

And boy, did she ever! Only, this journey is only halfway complete, as I realized after my cd release. I went up, up, up, into the persona, the potential, the light, but I still haven't gone down, down, down, into the roots, the real nature, the darkness. It's a place I've always been terrified to go! But I know a very potent goddess lies within. I am determined to reach her through cleansing, yoga, martial arts, meditation, giving up caffeine, simplifying, dreams. The Other Side. Ereshkigal. I have a song called "The Other Side." I have LONG since wanted to have an album called Ereshkigal. I have always had a Persephone complex, always known this phase of the journey was coming. 

And I am happy to be here, and I trust where the goddess leads me, and I am so touched by having come across this blog entry from my younger self. So happy and grateful I have fulfilled that intention of healing. And I know, I trust, that my true path is to be a healer, and that this is the exact journey I needed to go on to fully embody that role. 

So thank you, Universe. Thank you, Goddess. Thank you, Spirit. 

The darkness is a terrifying place for so many, but I would much rather step into the unknown, than whir again and again in circles on an elliptical, a treadmill, berated by the same hollow thoughts over and over and over. 

No- I want to climb mountains, and wander alongside the ocean, and eat nourishing food, explore, be daring, give things up easily, set out on new cycles and quests, be forever fresh and free. 

THIS post is a dedication to a new phase of the journey--- to true embodiment. To following my body. Clearing and cleansing my root chakra so that all parts of me are in alignment with my highest self and potential. Listening to the wisdom of the body intuition in every moment. Getting to know what that intuition even feels like. And once I learn, teaching others. 

Here I go, up the new mountain. Aho! No matter what, the journey is always rich.  

Into the Labyrinth...

I spent half the day crying today. Not, initially, because I was emotional. But because my back was in so much pain. Now, I am emotional AND my back is in pain. So it goes.

The root of the cause of the back pain is a series of what I feel, in retrospect, were bad decisions, concerning what computer to buy and what handbag to buy to put it in. I spent a lot of time on each decision, but now I feel I should have gone smaller, lighter, and less expensive with the computer, and larger, lighter, and more expensive with the handbag. Had I done so, the the two things would have evened each other out. But now I am stuck walking to work every day over the hills of San Francisco with a computer that is too heavy, and a bag that, apparently, sits on the wrong part of my body, because today I woke up in dire pain which only proceeded to get worse by the hour.

As for the root of the emotional pain, it is a whole lot of things. It is, primarily, anger at myself. Anger that I can never seem to make good decisions. That I am immature. That I am self-involved. That I go way, way, up into mania and way, way down into despair. I have always had a very difficult psyche to live inside of. Even when I was about 5 years old I would throw temper tantrums and scratch myself, as hard as I could. When I was older, I developed bulimia, and made myself throw up. I loved making myself throw up. It was a triumph, that I could successfully punish myself, make my throat burn, make my stomach empty and hollow again, without anyone knowing. I also loved to exercise, obsessively. And now that I have gone through the long healing process of that disorder, when anger rises I still want to take it out on myself. I've slapped myself in the face repeatedly. I've destroyed things that are important or valuable. Sometimes a switch really goes off inside of me when I tell myself how stupid I am, over, and over, and over.

It's crazy, yes. Insane. But the truth is that I just do not know how to exist in this world. I do not know what I am seeking, or, even if I found it, how to make it happen. I don't understand this world or its values. I have no desire to live in the way that everybody else seems to be living; get up, go to work, get money, put food on the table, socialize, travel sometimes, but mostly, get up, go to work, put food on the table, go to bed, and do it all again. Nothing in me seems to be conditioned for that kind of existence, and indeed, I don't believe that existence is what I was put here for. I firmly believe I'm from some sort of fiery fairy realm, and was recruited to come here to shake things up, to question belief systems, to make art, to leave something lasting behind me.

But the problem is that when you go against the structure, you have to make a structure for yourself, and it is exhausting. On days like today, with my strained back, or when I have a cavity, or when I wish I just had enough money to take a trip or rent a car or buy a nice bag to put my computer in without having to agonize about it, those are days when I wish I had a "real" job, a good job, a job with insurance and stability. I wonder, could I have a job like that and still be true to my rebelliousness, and creativity, and rabble rousing, and art? Could the job even fuel all of those things?

I am at a total crossroads. It's really hard to even express the extent of it here. I have been so burnt out by my creativity, that I've been attempting to be more normal. Walk the normal walk. Talk the normal talk. Make money enough to be comfortable. Wear jeans. I've even been taking birth control pills with the sole intention of evening out my crazy hormones. It seems like it would be so much easier to be a normal human being, because being a human being is hard enough, without all of this extra pressure of "I have to be amazing! I have to be creative! I have to be a STAR!"

But then what happens is, when I'm at the bank or coffee shop or work or wherever and trying my darndest to make normal conversation, and I mention something about music, and they go, "Oh, you play music? WOW! What do you PLAY?" Like they are so surprised, like just playing an instrument is sooooooo craaaazzzzzyyyyyy, and that's when my inner fiery pink haired rebel wants to yell "YOU DON'T KNOW ME?! I'M LIZ O!!!!!!!!"

And that's when I get sad and feel like I'm losing momentum, because there was a point where I felt like everybody in this city was getting to know me and Boppity Bear.

But at the same time, on the opposite side of the coin, there's the feeling I have when I look to see if anyone else has bought the cd, and they haven't, and I tell myself I should promote it, but I can't, because I hate it, I hate that goddamn cd, I hate every moment of it, I hate every moment of the journey of making it, I hate who I was when I was making it, I hate my illusions, I hate that I got other people involved, I hate that I ruined and botched my precious songs, I hate other people's reactions to it, and I basically wish I had never have made it, had saved the $3,000 I personally spent on it, and had spent that money on ME. On buying nice things. Getting a nice apartment. Doing yoga, drinking kombucha, going on a meditation retreat. Oh, how about that, I'm crying again as I write this, and I didn't even realize until tears started dripping on to the keyboard.

I know I'm being melodramatic. But all those feelings are true. I exposed myself to the world with this project. I exposed my naive optimism, and everyone supported it. Because of my stupid, fairy tale way of thinking, I ran off into the dumbest situation I have ever gotten myself into. It's like when I went to Europe with a gigantic suitcase, and tons of books, all because I had some romantic notions of my time there, and it ended up being way too much stuff and I looked like a complete idiot every time I went anywhere, and I spent half my time in Europe sending things home, and then bought a smaller, cheap suitcase that fell over on every block because the wheels didn't work right, and so then I got rid of THAT, and by the time I reached southern Italy I had everything stuffed into an empty guitar case, and I was down to two pairs of pants, one of which got ruined because of my period, and on that day I literally wanted to kill myself, somehow, in Rome Termini station. But I didn't, and now it all seems kind of funny in retrospect, just as, I'm sure, this stupid crazy venture of a cd will seem three years from now.

So anyway, if I hadn't have made the cd, I would still have my illusions left. But now I have no illusions. Everything that once excited me is now hollow. When I hear a new song in my head, I think of all it took just to get these 8 songs recorded, and I just groan.

"Go bother someone else," I almost want to say. "I don't know what you think I'm going to be able to do with you, song."

When I meet a new, technically intriguing guy, all I can think of is what a douchebag he will probably turn out to be, and that I shouldn't bother wasting my time. In the past, I would have thought this, but I would have had a small glimmer of hope simultaneously, like, surely there's at least one who is not a douchebag. And I'm sure THAT'S true. I'm sure there are several, at least, on this planet, who are not douchebags. I just still haven't met any, and by now I've gone through a large enough cross-section to feel that the odds are too slim to waste any more of my time.

The third thing that used to excite me is food. But now, after cleansing, and seeing how good I FEEL when I am not using food as a crutch, it just seems stupid and hollow to go back to the unhealthy food, and it makes me feel gross afterwards, and I realize that I didn't want it to begin with.

So what would I do instead? What would I do instead of binge? How could I react to a guy and be present with him in the moment, and trust my intuition, instead of spiraling off into fantasyland? How do I honor the music authentically, instead of pumping it full of bad and immature and naive, ego-filled decisions and ruining it for myself as well as others?

This is the journey I need to take now, and if the cd release prompted that realization, the cleansing solidified it, and now the bad back is making it an urgent realization. That I need to take care of mySELF. My body. And in fact, I need to be more radical than just taking care and being healthy. I need to actually become embodied. To act out of decisions that serve my body, rather than my mind and ego. Develop a body mind. Interestingly enough, it is through the body that I am most psychic. I can sense things in my aura, through feelings, through energy, rather than visualizations. I think I am in fact extremely psychic which is perhaps why I built a layer around myself of food and caffeine and fat. And even illusions. To protect me from stark reality. To give all of that up is to become, in essence, naked to the world. Just me, as I am, vulnerable, and real.

And what I realized during the cleansing is that to live a life according to what feels good to and serves my body would be ENTIRELY DIFFERENT than the life I am living now! What an overwhelming, scary thought! But I realized I rely on caffeine to get me into manic surges to send out all the emails, get all the STUFF accomplished that I think I need to. I rely on chocolate as a fix when the world has hit me too hard and I need to wallow. Because- well, I haven't developed any other structures, like a boyfriend or companion or suitably soothing replacement to turn to.

And as for music, performing is something that really shakes me up. I need alcohol, or wigs, or anything that will help me dissociate from who I am (because who I am is BORING, or too serious, or just, generally, a scary, un-fun place).

And ironically, I believe a huge bag of my props was thrown out today by a co-worker. Hats, wigs, petticoats, stuffed bunnies, the works. But doesn't that just seem appropos? Haven't I been working on shedding all of that anyway? Am I not trying to work on cultivating someone who is just as interesting and dynamic and confident without ANY of that?

Anyway. I'm glad I wrote this tonight. Because I wanted to die. I really did. Just like in Rome Termini station. Just like two months ago when I decided to go on birth control to even out my emotions because I couldn't have myself wanting to throw myself into the Pacific Ocean three weeks into every menstrual cycle. It's cyclical, the despair, but surely this wanting to die is just wanting some ASPECT of me to die, some aspect that is no longer serving me. And feeling that it is actually easier to contemplate suicide than to deal with that aspect, to fully see it as it is.

But that aspect of myself that I want to die- it must be the self who is so hopeful and naive. The self who is manic. I am so addicted to that self but in the long run it is too painful, and costly, to keep feeding that self. Instead I need to start to feed whatever part of me is balanced and logical and rational. I don't even know if I believe that I have such a self inside of me. But I think that self resides in the cleansing, in the abstinence from caffeine, abstinence from alcohol, abstinence from props, embellishments, pomp. She resides in meditation, yoga, green food, kale, kombucha. I'm trying to get to her one bout of cleansing at a time. The purchase of the very bag that threw my back out was an attempt to get to her, because I had thought, at the time, that the bag was practical. And along the path to this self a huge bag of my props has been misplaced.

It's ok. I trust her. I want to meet her. I will continue on the path through the labyrinth, father into my roots.

Next week I will, back willing, do yoga on Tuesday night on the labyrinth of Grace Cathedral. INSIDE the cathedral whose golden doors I went to every so often to pray for good, great things for my cd. The cd was called Golden Gate 8. The doors, I later learned, are replications of The Gates of Paradise. And the cd was symbolic, the completion of it, signifying to me the opening of some internal gate.

So, amidst all the cleansing, the anger, the regret, the new perspectives, the simplification, the shift from external to internal, I full believe that gate has opened and everything that was divinely meant to has happened. It just didn't look the way I planned.

And I think about suicide, I think about experience, I think about the ego, and I think back to that trip through Europe with the gigantic suitcase full of all the stuff I thought I needed, the stuff I sent home, until it was just me and the essentials, traveling easily around, I think about how I wanted to commit suicide on that trip because I felt so lost and pointless and lonely, which is such a frequent feeling for me in this existence, but really I only felt lost and lonely when I was thinking too hard about where I should be going! And since there was never a right answer, and I would spend money and take trains and never get to anywhere that felt perfect, and so I would beat myself up about it.

But then there was the day that I was sitting in a little Italian town eating a delicious sandwich in the sun, in a little empty courtyard, and I was reading a guidebook, and I chanced to see that there was a castle, up in the hills, and the path to the castle started only a few blocks away from where I was sitting.

And so I finished my sandwich and scampered through the alleyways until I found the path, and went scampering up the stairs, up the hill, past an old monastery, and out into the open fields where it was just me, and the rocks, and the breeze, and the countryside of Italy, far as the eye could see. I sat perched on a rock for the longest time just looking out over the towns, seeing a train winding around the side of the hills far away, the pastel colors of the houses, the winding rivers, and of course in that moment there was no "me," it was just all of this beauty, the beauty of nature, the wind, the mountain, the town, and "I" made no impact on it whatsoever, except that I got to experience it, and for that I felt very lucky.

This post may not make a lot of sense to anyone reading, but it certainly makes sense to me. I think the true value of anything in this world is to let go of ego, analysis, over-thinking, illusions of power, control, and instead stop resisting and sink fully into the appreciation of body, feelings, nature, spirit. I mean- so many beings know that is the answer already, but I am just now arriving at my own personal true embrace of it, particularly the body part. I have always found my ideas of what COULD be or SHOULD be much more compelling, than the reality of what IS. But were I to structure my life in a way that provided more beautiful moments regularly, such as walks in nature, delicious, gigantic salads full of kelp and avocado and seasoned kale, the ocean, surfing, dancing, meditating, reading, writing....

well, my god. That's a reality I wouldn't need to get out of. But for some reason I have put hardly any time towards constructing THAT reality for myself, and instead have been cultivating a reality of performing, props, and persona, with hardly any real relationships, or connection to nature, or structures of emotional or financial support.

No wonder when I come down from the highs, I come down hard!

Anyway, this may seem like one long ramble but it is a ramble that has made sense to me of a very dark and difficult place I was in about two hours ago. And with all the work my dear friend Julie is doing on raising awareness for suicide these weeks, it seems like an appropriate place to visit. Not that I was truly, truly suicidal, but I was certainly starting to venture into that emotional place where everything seems bleak and overwhelming, and like there is no ultimate satisfaction to be found anywhere.

But I have family, I have friends, I have this blog, I have two new journals that I bought tonight, I have Boppity Bear, I have a roof over my head, I have a job, I have art, I have goals that are shifting to perhaps become more healthy, and I have resources all around of psychologists, yoga, meditation, movement, martial arts, and places to buy kale and kelp and avocado. Those are the areas of my life I will feed, instead of the mania. Instead of the overstimulation. Instead of the props and ponies. : )

And I will keep you updated along the journey! I hope it leads to a clearer, simpler, more embodied place.

That is all. Thank you for reading.
xoxo

The Descent of Inanna

The people of the city of Uruk take Inanna, Queen of light, for their monarch, accepting her gifts of agriculture, irrigation, astronomy, and mathematics.  Inanna revels in her glory. She proclaims her power, wisdom and sexuality and establishes Dumuzi as king of Uruk by selecting him as her consort.

At the same time, her people banish Inanna’s elder sister Ereshkigal, the earth goddess responsible for fertility of the grain, into the unmentionable Underworld, the Dark City.

In time, they also capture and kill Ereshkigal’s consort, the Bull of Heaven, who was responsible for thunderstorms that bring rain and  then fertility to the grain that feeds the people of Sumeria.

Ereshkigals cries of mourning at the death of her mate reach Inanna, who resolves to travel to the underworld to attend the wake of the Bull of Heaven and to be reunited with her sister. Before her journey, however, she asks her trusted companion, Ninshubur to seek help for her if she does not return in three days.

At each of the Gate of the Underworld, Inanna must divest herself of some aspect of her glory. Finally after passing the seventh gate, she is taken into Ereshkigals inner chamber. But Ereshkigal is driven by fury, rage and grief at her abandonment and is maddened by Inanna’s glory in the Upper World. She wreaks her revenge by slaying Inanna and hanging her corpse on a peg in the underworld.

Hearing no word for three days, Ninshubur travels to the sacred temple to plead Inanna’s case. She is rebuffed twice and told that no one returns from Ereshkigals Dark City. Finally Ninshubur supplicates the God of Wisdom, Enki, who fashioned tiny spirits to slip under the doors of the Underworld. The wisdom spirits meet Ereshkigal and express their compassion for her anger, her agony, and her rage, crying with her instead of judging her.

When Ereshkigal finds she is not alone in her suffering her heart softens and she offers a boon to those who cried with her. They request the release of Inanna, the queen of heaven. She grants them this boon according to the Laws of the Underworld, which balances the living and the dead, the light and the dark, by claiming a death in return for those it releases to life. Then Inanna is reborn and the sisters of light and dark, are re-united. Inanna takes to herself the dark, powerful, and knowing eye of Ereshkigal. And the once-reviled Ereshkigal receives her rightful homage with the title: Holy Ereshkigal, great is your renown.