I did my full voice workout today, after a couple of days missing it. It felt good. I’m getting better at relaxing the muscles in my neck and remembering to keep my knees unlocked. I’m able to focus more. I changed the room I’m practicing in too, which seems to help.
I’m writing a novel for National Novel Writing Month. I’ve decided to do it here, and will be adding to this post throughout the month. The task is to write 50,000 words between November 1-30th. We’re not supposed to edit or review so this is the first draft, but I thought it might be interesting to follow the process. Here’s more info on www.NaNoWriMo.org
It was a dark and stormy month. November in Vancouver is always a bit cold. People who can, stay inside, except for the soccer players, who are crazy and run around in the mud and cold like it was any other day. Lucy found all her great tentatively anchored new good habits, to go for long walks daily, to garden and get outside to see the sky, washed out like a chalk drawing on the wet sidewalk.
Lucy’s friend Michael, had other ideas. A confirmed gym bunny, or whatever guys with tight butts who go to the gym all the time are called, he liked the different quality of gym time in the winter. The condensation on the windows of the second floor the Tim Ralley’s gym he went to prevented people from looking out and so people talked to one another more. You had to. The place was so crowded these days by people antsy to move but unwilling to get cold and clammy, that there was always someone asking to work in on your set, and conversations just happened.
“You should come to the gym with me sometime” he told Lucy. You’d get to like it.”
“Which part of it would I like more, the sore muscles or the slipped vertebra when I put something out of joint trying to lift the damn weights? Or maybe listening to my attractive puffing and panting in a nice public place where people can hear?” Lucy liked exercise that was dignified, or, failing that, done to loud music so no-one could hear her asthmatic bellows cope with the unaccustomed strain. Men with cute butts were in no position to know what would make a perimenopausal amazon like herself happy.
Walking slowly to the escalator, they left the food court and wandered upstairs. Lucy liked shopping with Michael. He shared her taste for rapid browsing, non-engagement with salespeople and Purdy’s ice-cream bars with fresh melted chocolate and toasted nuts that were so fresh and crunchy they squeaked on your teeth. After losing Brenda, he helped keep her moving, even if it was only on the mall level.
Hugging Michael goodbye, Lucy buttoned her coat and headed out the side doors of the mall and onto a courtyard that if not exactly rain-proof, was at least sheltered from the wind. The old stones were time-roughened, or perhaps time-smoothed from a rougher state centuries ago. Looking up in the too-early to be dark wintering sky, she noticed that the moon was a wee sliver of platinum coloured light, pale like baby hair against the black. Just past new moon, waxing crescent. Brenda would have said that it was a time for good new beginnings. But not to Lucy.
I wanted my life to be a science fiction novel, thought Lucy. Where anything could happen, and the truths that seem to hold me from stretching out into life were only one version of reality, and a highly unlikely one at that. I wanted to live in a world where Brenda and I could just be who we were.
___
Brenda had disappeared. On purpose, probably.
“I don’t know why you need to tell everyone. It’s not something I need.” she’d said during their last, dismal failure of a fight. Brenda’s need to pretend to herself that she wasn’t gay was understandable at first, but had begun grating on Lucy , who wanted to go out with other couples and stop pretending they were just roommates. Brenda’s religious guilt and, to Lucy’s mind, intrusive family were big blocks around her neck pulling her into the closet and anchoring her there.
The sex had dried up. They were barely talking, and had become room-mates in truth again.
Then one day Brenda was gone. Had Brenda told her family and they’d come to pick her and her things up while Lucy was at work, hauled her off to some bible camp to be brainwashed and married off to some church scion? Lucy had even called Brenda’s mother in Seattle, who said she hadn’t heard from Lucy and didn’t know where she was. Somehow Brenda doubted that.
This courtyard was where they’d met. Not in the rain, obviously, because they’d never had sat out here, finishing the last of their lunches while watching the birds finish the last of someone else’s and then fly off. The seagulls had been brazen, and had sneaked up beside Lucy and nearly stolen half of a good roast beef sandwich. Brenda had leapt to her defence and waved her umbrella like Xena the warrior. For someone who was such a strong presence in the rest of her life, so articulate and decisive, Lucy couldn’t understand why Brenda had quailed at this last, seemingly straightforward challenge, to be honest about her life.
Lucy had told her mother when she was 19. They’d been walking on the beach on one of her mom’s visits to town, and her mom had asked about her friends. “Do you hang out with any guys?” She asked. Lucy drew a deep breath. “Not really, I have a couple of guy friends, but most of them are gay.” Long silence. “I thought that might be the case.” said her mom, and changed the subject. But her mom had liked Brenda, and had treated them just the same as she treated her brother and his girlfriends, so Lucy figured her mom was fine about it.
Lucy passed the bench where a lone seagull squatted. No squabbling for leftovers today, he’d have to go back to eating fish. “Better for you anyhow” Lucy admonished him. “Omega 3 fatty acids are good for you too, I’m sure.” She reached the end of the courtyard and went down to the water, walking along the large rocks that line the shore, slowly to avoid slipping on the wet underfoot. It was barely raining now, only misting and by Vancouver standards, that really didn’t count as rain. But it was enough to keep the beach relatively clear, and she could pretend she had it all to herself. She might even be able to cry, here, surrounded by the comforting sound of the waves slipping back and forth, and the big grey belly of the Mother behind them.
Lucy could feel the mist swirling around her as she walked, getting to almost pea-soup thickness. It reminded her of Samhain, when they’d visualize visiting the island of apples, Avalon. Stories of getting lost in the mists and having adventures were a folkloric staple, as were tales of coming back after only a few days to discover years had passed.
Her shoes weren’t the best for this kind of thing. Brenda was always on her about wearing her nice clothes and shoes when she indulged a sudden desire for gardening, or fixing something in the yard, or walking a muddy beach. Well Brenda wasn’t here to judge. She could walk just fine in a leather sole on a slippery rock. It was just like walking on ice, and she’d done that often enough growing up. She’d be….
Lucy’s ankle wrenched as she went down on the rock, hitting her butt and back of head. A person standing on the courtyard above, if someone had been there, would have seen the mists wash over her, hiding her from view.
___
The sunlight was frighteningly bright. Looking out over green hills and birch trees with light green leaves. “I’m looking out over green hills and birch trees – what the hell?” thought Lucy. Looking down, she noticed her clothes and shoes were gone. Nearby, neatly folded on a rock was a cream-coloured soft fabric tunic, with soft leatherlike boots. She pulled them on. The rock she was sitting on looked familiar, somehow.
Just out of sight around one of the trees, she saw movement, and a woman emerged from the forest and started coming toward her. “Good, you’re here. Come this way.” she said. “Do you need medical attention?”
The woman was beautiful in a solid no-nonsense way that Lucy liked a lot. Slightly taller than Lucy’s average height of 5′6″, she was fairly broad-shouldered and carried herself with posture that Lucy’s chiropractor would have approved of. She was always giving Lucy exercises to do to strengthen the muscles in her upper back to balance her largish bust. Lucy shook her head.
The woman’s hair was pulled back in a low ponytail. She wore no makeup, and a tunic similar to Lucy’s.
“Sorry about your clothes” she said. “It doesn’t bring those. Maybe it thinks materializing you with our clothes on would be better than bringing you through naked, given your cultural norms.”
“What are you talking about?” Lucy said. “Who are you?”
“Oh, sorry” said the woman, pushing back a wisp of blonde hair from her forehead in a way Lucy suddenly found facinating, “I’m Mariha, Mariha Birch. This is going to be confusing for awhile, I’m afraid, and I’m not sure what I can explain to you yet. But we mean you no harm.”
With that, the woman turned and began walking back toward the forest. Lucy didn’t see any reason not to follow.
The path narrowed a bit and the ground underfoot got a bit boggy after a few minutes of fairly brisk walking. Lucy found herself panting and wheezing, as usual, from her asthma. Marja didn’t seem to notice, but slowed her pace slightly, which Lucy appreciated. She also appreciated the boots – her ‘girl shoes’ would have been more hopeless here than they had been on the wet seaside boulders she’d been walking on earlier.
Their trudging fell into a steady rhythm and Lucy found herself listening to the leaves rustle. Looking up she could see blue sky in places through layers of soft green leaves, lit up in the sunshine. As she let the peace of the place fill her, she found her breathing eased a little.
Mariha stopped for a moment and drank a little from a canteen looking thing she wore on a strap over her shoulder. She offered some to Lucy. “Water?” Lucy drank a little and caught her breath. She’d been studying the woman’s back for some miles now, but hadn’t hadn’t exchanged much in the way of words. Getting pulled along in Marija’s wake, a bit like she did with Brenda, now that she thought of it. Brenda had a way of sweeping you into things, that at first Lucy found endearing. Swept her into her bed, and then into the closet pretty quickly, once it became clear that was the only way Brenda would have a relationship. At first Lucy hadn’t noticed, since she pretty much didn’t want to get out of bed when they were together, but after awhile she picked up that Brenda would show her no affection at all if anyone else was around.
What am I doing? Where the hell am I? thought Lucy bracingly to herself. This is a crazy situation, and I’ve just been going along like a good girl. Just like with Brenda, Lucy found that with an attractive woman leading the way, she didn’t much care. “How sick is that?” She thought. However, what else was there to do, really?
Finally, the forest opened out to a sloped clearing containing a large adobe-coloured circular building. It appeared to be made of some kind of concrete, or maybe actual adobe. The walls had a comforting curved warm look to them, and several of the windows were round as well. A relief showing trees and what looked like agriculture scenes flowed along the walls, inlaid with what looked like bits of glass and stones.
Mariha stopped at a small fountain near the entrance and splashed water on her face, drinking some and sprinkling water lightly down the front of her tunic and over her hair. It was an automatic gesture that looked like she’d done many times. Lucy awkwardly drank a little water, finding that it tasted slightly of iron. Now that she was right at the fountain, she saw that the water seemed to flow from a stream nearby and then empty back into it once it had made it’s tour of the pool. The edges of the fountain were surrounded with shells, lozenge shapes, and sensual looking pale rose flowers.
Past the pond was a curving half wall that bordered the walk that led to the front entrance. Lucy scrambled to catch up to Mariha. The door looked to be carved of a single piece of wood, fir if she remembered her woodworking classes, with a curved top and a latchlike handle. Mariha opened the latch and held the door for Lucy. Then followed her in to the slightly cool interior.
Inside a lot of the light came from skylights curving around the ceiling, in which Lucy could see what looked like strandboard beams supporting the roof.
____________
Lucy looked around, registering a kind of vestibule with a series of small doorways and one large one, like a church. “Is this a church?” she asked.
“Not exactly, I mean, all of our forest gathering places are sacred, of course, but not in the way I think you mean.” said Mariha.
“Well, where are we, then? What happened to me? What’s going on?” Lucy was beginning to feel like it was time for Some Answers. “It’s not that I’m not happy to be out of the rain but you have to tell me what is going on.”
“I’ll tell you what I can. A few years ago, we discovered that the rocks in the place where you emerged from would from time to time deliver us a person from some period in the past or future. It’s like we’re a way-station of some kind. The person stays for awhile and then, without us really knowing why, dissappears again. We’ve worked out a schedule in relation to the sun and moon, and are getting better at predicting when women arrive, but not exactly when they leave.”
“Women? only women?”
“So far. You’re the sixth woman to arrive so far.”
“Can I meet the others?”
“Eventually, although, only four are left. Two disappeared again about a month ago. First I’d like you to meet our Elder. She’s waiting for you in the central hall.”
Mariha led Lucy to the main doors, and into the central hall. The hall was a large circular room with a high ceiling. Benches in a circular pattern lined the circle two deep. In the centre was a beautiful mosaic floor pattern depicting the four seasons in colours of red, green, blue and yellow, that looked like it was made of glass tiles. A woman about Lucy’s age sat on a bench in the inner circle, to one side. ‘Elder?’ thought Lucy ‘this woman is about my age’.
The woman rose to greet them. “Thank you Mariha, for bringing our guest in. It looks like the schedule is as accurate as we thought.” she said. “At first the newcomers would wander through the forest and became quite tired and hungry before we located one another. This is a lot more civilized.”
Civilized was right. looking around the room, Lucy saw that over to the side was fresh fruit and vegetables, a pitcher of what looked like the spring water from outside and some delicious looking bread. Lining the walls were beautiful tapestries meant to mirror the trees outside. The skylights in the ceiling were made of glass of uneven thickness, which provided a mottled light, primarily in the centre of the space. It gave the place the feel of being in a clearing in the woods, except with far more comfort. A fountain at one end provided a low burble that gave a restful undertune.
Seeing Lucy’s gaze, the woman moved over to the food table and took a seat on the outer ring of seats, motioning Lucy to sit opposite her on the other ring. “Can I offer you something to eat?”
“Perhaps in a moment”.
“My name is Rosemary, and I think Mariha will have probably explained that I am Elder here.”
“Yes, but I don’t exactly know what that means”
“Well, I’m the person in charge of holding this gathering space both physically and spiritually for the people who come here, which includes the nearby holy forest. Since the travelling stones have showed up near here, they have been given to my care as well. I’m called Elder in part because of my age, but also it’s just the name this role assumes.”
Lucy didn’t feel it was polite to ask how old Rosemary was, but wondered how young people died here if this woman was considered old. Rosemary’s face had a few wrinkles, like Lucy’s did, and her hair had a few grey strands, but she wouldn’t have put her at over 50, at the most.
It must have showed on her face, because Rosemary said “You’re wondering how old I am. Some of the others were confused too. It seems people in your time have environmental factors that make them age prematurely, so I’m not looking old enough to you?” She chuckled and shook her head. “I assure you I am old enough to have great, great grandchildren. Our people generally live to 150 or so, and I’m well past middle age. “
_____
The rock basked in the sunshine of this clearing. Of all the times it inhabits, this one was/is/will be its favourite, so it focused it’s attention here often, usually when it could feel the warm sun and strong pull of the full moon. A trick of the moon sometimes allowed it to bring along a traveller. This latest had seemed so wrong for her time, like that other one had. The rock is old, as rocks go, in this time especially, and it’s worn soft surfaces absorbed the radiance and pulled it deep inside.
The rock couldn’t remember when it had developed this skill. Like all rocks, it could be in multiple times at once. Most rocks learned this in the first millennium or so – it was only the fresh lava who hadn’t yet mastered it. Most of the beings seemed to be stuck in time. Some long-lived trees and fungi developed the ability of being in many times at once, but since they were easier to destroy than rocks, few made it so far. The ever-reincarnating spirits of people and animals did have a sort of permanence, but didn’t often retain enough memory while in body form to get the hang of it. But the ability to bring the soft ones along when it shifted focus from one time to another was not widely known among the rocks of this rock’s acquaintance. The Weaver, yes, that was who had helped Rock learn this skill. She had demonstrated it once, moving a doe forward in time to prevent her species extinction. She didn’t do it much, though. “Wouldn’t want people to catch on. They need to know the consequences of their actions. Just enough.”
______
Lucy is a woman on a Mission from the Gods. She just doesn’t know what it is. At least that was Rosemary Elder’s take on it. “You’re here to do something, to affect us or yourself, we don’t know. Follow your instincts. You’re here for a reason.”
“Yikes” thought Lucy. “What do I do now?” she said aloud.
“That’s not for me to say” said Rosemary. “Whoever or whatever brought you here did so for a reason.” We don’t even know what time period you’re from in relation to this one, or I guess where in the world.
“You must be in the future” said Lucy “since your setup here doesn’t seem like anything I know of from history, and besides I can understand what you’re saying. That must mean you’re not so far removed in time or geography that you speak a different language. Do you mind if I ask how old you are?”
“160″.
“Wow! – er I mean you don’t look a day over 100. holy Dinah!”
“Just because Mariha and I can speak your dialect doesn’t mean the younger folks can. I remember it when I was a little girl.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“Canada, in the west near the ocean, in a place that’s now underwater, unfortunately. Before the big quake changed the coastline a bit. But I’m not that old, some of the trees have been here longer, and the rocks. Some of them were dredged up from the sea bottom and moved here to shore up the dike, but that was awhile ago now too”.
“So you’re not going to tell me where to go or what to do?’
“No, but we’ll help you in whatever way we can. We have a pack fixed for you if you want it, with some supplies and equipment and you can take the ferry to the mainland. You won’t need money. That’s so funny to think of needing money, I haven’t thought of money in ages…”
“You don’t have money here?”
“Not as such. People just do and make and help where and how they see fit. For larger projects, like the ferries, we meet in places like this one and decide who will do what. It’s kind of like barter, but we don’t keep strict track of things, just make sure everyone gives what they can and has what they need. It only works because we organize in smaller communities. In the larger places they have a more formal system of credits, with the produce and labour each person contributes tracked by neighbourhood, and then they draw what they need. It’s all tracked by something you’d probably think of as a computer. It’s not the only way to organize, but it works for us around here.”
“So what do I contribute?”
“You’re a special case. You’re here from the Gods to do whatever you think you need to do. You don’t have any restrictions on you, within reason. When you feel you’re done, go back to the place we found you and you might be taken away again. We’re not sure where to, though, since nobody has come back.”
How wierd. No job, no family, an important mysterious mission, and no one telling her even which way to go. Lucy couldn’t let it all in. She decided to focus on the concrete. Travelling alone. She’d never travelled alone before – she was unfortunately too aware of the hazards.
“Where are all the men?” Lucy suddenly realized that she hadn’t seen any guys or even heard male voices around.
“Oh, they’re here all right, but we didn’t know what time you were from. Some of the other times seemed to have some quite barbaric practices about women and men and we thought it would be most comfortable for you to be met by a woman. In your time are men more violent than women? Some of the women seemed quite wary of men here – it seemed they’d come from times where women were enslaved and treated pretty badly.”
Lucy had to admit that in general that men murdered more women in her time than was true in reverse. “I guess, when you’re used to it, it doesn’t seem unusual. Women aren’t property in my time, but it was a relatively recent thing, so a lot of vestiges still definitely exist. Women’s labour is worth less, for example, and women aren’t safe to travel alone in many places. In some places in the world women are still property.”
How strange to talk of women’s oppression like it was ancient history. This might be a good thing after all.
After her interview with Rosemary Elder, Mariha led her to a small bedroom off the main corridor, which held a double bed and very little else. “These are our guest quarters for gatherings”, Mariha said. ‘Mostly people are so busy meeting they don’t spend a lot of time in the rooms.”
Laying back between sheets made of something that wasn’t cotton. Linen? Lucy began to cry, tension rolling from her body in large shaking sobs. First all her worry and hurt about Brenda and now she’d had such a confusing and overwhelming day. For all this space was almost unbelievably calm, ordered and tranquil, it only made her all the more aware of the rocks of tension in her shoulders, the screaming waiting at the back of her throat. Thankfully, the soft looking plastered walls looked soundproof. She certainly didn’t hear anything from outside, and hoped that went both ways.
If this was the future, then everyone she’d known, Michael, her parents, even Brenda were long dead. How wierd to think she’d outlived them in the blink of an eye. Would she ever get back to them?
Eventually, the room’s cool, solid, patient darkness won out and she fell asleep.
When she woke she didn’t remember any dreams.
______
A bird landed on rock, scrabbling a bit as it settled in with it’s prey to eat. The soft brush of it’s feathers were familiar, as was the light touch of it’s spirit, trusting, grounded by the rock’s presence.
The rock liked birds, the light touch of their mind, focused on small details that were easy to overlook otherwise in the vast stream of time. Birds paid attention to small things – seeds, wind patterns, the clouds of dust raised by a small animal digging, an unusual animal in the forest. This bird had flown from the mud building some distance from here, and had seen the soft-bodied one the rock had shifted through time enter it.
It was as the rock had expected, he’d seen it plain in the mind of the soft bodied human who’d collected his charge. The swirl of time around her made her easier to track, dust patterns were shaped by it as they blew by. The rock would watch this one.
____
The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.
~ Richard Bach
I did do my practice yesterday, and got a little farther into exercising my voice. I seem to do it best when my wife is around. She came home from an evening shift at work, and started practicing guitar, which gave me space to practice voice. I could hear her strumming in the other room and it felt safe to focus on what I was doing. Then she left to walk the dog and I noticed it was harder to concentrate. I’m learning a lot about this.
I just watched a video about overcoming bias against people with mental health problems. I started bawling when I saw a pair of people wearing shirts. One was a guy with a shirt that said “post traumatic stress disorder”. The woman next to him had a shirt that said “battle buddy” . What a great thing to do – makes me want to have some kind of walk where everyone is wearing a shirt saying “incest survivor” “childhood sexual assault survivor” “better half” “battle buddy” “support spouse” etc… Here’s the video: http://www.bringchange2mind.org/
My grade 6 teacher was at a presentation I gave last week. I recognized a woman in the audience, but didn’t know who she was till I saw the sign-in sheet. I emailed her and she emailed me back, with a lovely description of what I’d been like as a 12 year old girl. She said she was glad I’d weathered the adolescence and early adulthood well, and I replied back that I’d had more to weather than most. I said she may have heard, since a few of my teachers were interviewed by the police, that I’d been rather seriously abused by my father. I said “I’m telling you this not to make a big deal of it, but I make a point of being open, as I think it helps prevent the silence in which child predators hide, and if that helps some kids, it’s worth any awkwardness.” and then I gave a few more chatty details about my life and ended thanking her for some things she’d said.
I hope that was okay. No real impact on my life if it makes her feel awkward, she’ll just not reply. I’m seeing my younger brother for dinner tonight. He’s the one I have the least gunk with, so it should be nice.
[Trigger warning to my ritual abuse survivor allies: If mentions of mainstream, benign Pagan/Wiccan spiritual practice are triggers for you, please go read something else now. ]
I went to a public Hallows ceremony a few days ago, organized by some folks I don’t see any more, as one or two are unpleasant to say the least. An ex-roommate we had to kick out for raging at me was there, but I managed to avoid her successfully. I did see several nice people I actually missed though, and connected with some gals that might want to have a women’s circle, so that was good. It was nice to have my wife there.
Oh, the main thing about all that was, Hallows is a time when Wiccans think about our ancestors and make a ceremony of visiting them on the isle of the dead in trance to speak with them. We also remember and recognize both loved ones who have died in the previous year and bless the babies born in the past year. It’s our new year. Blessing children at hallows/Samhain is where the practice of giving candy to children came from. It’s a way of blessing the new year through blessing the young ones. There was quite a long trance my grandmother was there when I got to the island. She led me to my other grandparents. I spent some time crying, telling them off, and then made them all promise they’d keep my father completely away from me after he dies, since they owe me for that. And then I asked for their blessings, which they each gave me. They got why I was mad and didn’t take offence. Dead people are much more sensible about these things.
Skipped 2 days, did my singing practice today. Today I did it with my wife home, standing facing the door, and found it a lot easier to concentrate without getting flashbacky.
(what is this about? click here to see the rest of this story. )
I was able to practice voice for longer last time, and it felt good. It’s amazing how alive I feel when I’m singing well. I still haven’t done the full routine, but I’m getting there. I had a long day today, and feel edgy and distracted. The last thing I want to do is put focussed energy into anything, or is it to be fully present? Anyhow, I haven’t done my voice practice yet today, but I will.
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3 1/2 hours later
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I just finished doing my voice workout. I didn’t do all the warmup stretches and really felt the increased tension in my neck and shoulders impacting my voice. I was sitting with my back to the door, and the door open and felt (still feel) a creepy sense that something low and black is slinking up behind me to grab my neck. Lovely being a trauma survivor isn’t it? 35 years later, when I try to focus completely on something I love, I get distracted by phantom abusers sneaking up on me. I hope that rat bastard’s cancer is really hurting him today.
I have my period, which is always a trigger time for me, perhaps because of the blood and cramping, so that probably explains the ‘monstery’ – afraid and wary and haunted by phantoms – feeling I have. I’ve been curled up with my dog and the tv all evening, wanting some time to myself to curl up. I’m proud I did the practising despite feeling like a wounded bear, avoiding everything and everyone and eating a lot of something — fruit? I still feel monstery, which usually means I’m angry. Ya think? I’ve been working on getting my sexuality back, which seems to be working, but bleeding this month is suddenly having a whole new resonance – reminding me viscerally of how I bled when I got those scars. I think that’s where the trigger is coming from.
I will outlive him and dance on his grave.
Well, I’ve managed to practice voice for two days now. Mostly I just did the physical stretches and some warm up vocalizations, not the actual practice, but I’m figuring out when in my day to do it, and I’ve remembered fairly late at night when I was tired. However, I did it anyway, which is good.
Today I’m trying to do it before I start my workday, which might work better. It’s funny that I find it hard to do something I remember enjoying. When I talked it over with my therapist, I was saying that I’m afraid if I get unblocked, whether vocally, creatively or sexually, bad stuff like flashbacks and memories might come out.It’s like I’m trying to break some self-imposed (and partially culturally imposed, to be fair) glass ceiling.
I guess we’ll see.
Photocredit: Lawrence Op
(Trigger warning to my ritual abuse survivor allies – the following has description of positive pagan ceremony. )
Last night I got together with a friend of mine who shares my religious beliefs. We got to talking about how neither of us are completing our creative projects to our satisfaction. As we talked, we both realized that it’s at least partly about being seen in our authentic selves. Me, to be seen in my gritty survivor art that I am drawn to now, and her in her art at all. We decided to do a symbolic action in sacred space to magically invoke the ability to be seen. The Goddess we chose to bless us was Aphrodite. Aphrodite is the only Goddess I know of who has no myths about having been raped. She is often depicted naked and makes independent sexual choices about her lovers and seems to have no negative consequences for that independence. I think that a person who is able to be safely naked/vulnerable/visible without need for armour and violence is much more powerful than someone who cannot. So that was the aspect or spirit we wanted to bring in, the courage and strength to be visible in our true selves.
We decided we would cast a circle, call the sacred elements and Aphrodite to be present and then for 40 minutes my friend would write a story, and I would try and complete an arrangement of a choral piece that has been unfinished for over a year.
Something magical happened.
My music notation software malfunctioned and I couldn’t edit my work. Every time I clicked on the score to edit it, it would play my piece for me, in its full imperfection and incompletion. For 40 minutes I read the manual and struggled with it, and got absolutely nowhere. Parts of it were perfect already, playing similarly to how I hear the three part piece in my head, and parts of it were incomplete and didn’t sound right, and I could do nothing to change it. By the end I was ready to cry and wracking my brains for what it all meant.
My belief system is that anything that happens in sacred space is meaningful, and is likely a message from the Gods/Goddess. My friend didn’t seem to get it, and gave me a ‘better luck next time’ kind of encouragement, but what I really wanted to know was why this freak computer bug had emerged in sacred space when I’d invoked assistance on my creative work.
When my wife came home, she understood immediately. Bless her! (things are going a lot better with her, by the way.) In talking it over with her I figured out why the Goddess was playing to me my same old song, unchanged, over and over. It was a song I’d written almost 20 years ago, one I’ve gotten a lot of recognition over, and could easily find a choir to sing for me if I had sheet music to give them. I’ve only heard it sung properly once by three voices and it made me cry. The topic is about finding strength from a relationship with a tree and the earth, but isn’t overtly about the abuse.
It’s an old song. It’s not me as I am, naked. It’s me as I was 20 years ago. No wonder the Goddess of healthy empowered nakedness rejected my work on it as an offering in sacred space.
I have decided to make another offering.
I am promising to myself and Aphrodite that I will practice voice daily. Each day. Every day. Using a CD I have with some vocal exercises, the ones that fill me with a feeling of joy and mastery in my voice. For a year. Voice practice needs to be done frequently and for short duration, as the muscles involved are small and damage easily. By practising a tiny amount daily, I will do more good than practicing once a week for hours. By practising regularly I will build a much stronger voice, that I can depend on.
I need to prove to myself that I can persevere with something I’m passionate about. So mote it be. (That’s a think pagans say at the end of a spell or intention, which means roughly, ‘it is so/it must be so’.
I told my therapist about this today and she’s going to help me stay on track, despite my resistance. I’m also telling you, and I’m going to report in on my blog when I’ve done it each day.
I’ve lost 28 pounds since January. I’m proud of that. I’m eating more healthily, taking my vitamins and getting regular light exercise, just brisk walking but it’s good and my wife walks with me so we’re working on it together.
Photocredit: Swamibu
Why is it I can get so much done at work on a computer and the rest of my time I don’t live my life as exuberantly and richly as I want to?
It is almost a year since I found out my dad had been in the hospital with a cancer recurrence for three months. He’s still not dead.
I’m in limbo.
If there was an ethically, spiritually and legally palatable way of killing him, to get it over with, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
I’m tired of not living my life.
My friend Kate said something that struck me (I’m paraphrasing here) – that her life could not be extraordinary enough to compensate for the horror of her childhood. I feel like I’ll never catch up. I’ll never be successful enough, famous enough, creative enough, happy enough. I’ll never have a good enough marriage, and active enough social life, do as much good in the world as I want to do, as I deserve to be part of. That rings true.
I know I wasn’t ritually abused, I only have one, maybe two perpetrators, and I’ve never been raped as an adult, except in that grey way so many women experience, where I gave in to sex I didn’t want to keep the peace with a boyfriend or two. As far as I know my identity is one intact piece. Things could be a lot worse, and I don’t have the denial most people have to prevent them from knowing that. Yes, I was raped as a small child, so violently that my perineum tore and so repeatedly over a decade that I can’t separate the instances. I know others have survived worse, but that was bad enough.
If I can’t win, I give up. I’m in some kind of weird holding pattern, only half living my life.
Photocredit: Zachstern
Like surviving being torture-tickled by my dad, the only way to survive is to give up, to go limp and let him win.
I have learned to fight, but I like a sure thing. I hate suspense, I hate waiting, I am not patient. Waiting never resulted in good things in the past. I was never rescued, the abuse never didn’t happen because I waited silently or was a good girl and it won’t now. I see no value in patience.
So if I can’t have it now, I don’t want it. I don’t have the patience to persevere with anything I really want or which makes me nervous. I am enormously productive, because I want it done yesterday, but I have a hell of a time practising an instrument or a physical skill or anything where I’m not assured of success.
Photocredit: Jim Moran
What does this all mean? I’m not special. 3 out of 5 women are sexually abused in childhood. I was perhaps abused a bit more intensely than some, but I’m actually within the range of normal. Horrifying that being raped by your father is relatively typical. More horrifying that more people don’t see it and fight it. I may be smart, I may be strong, but I’m not extraordinary. I’m starting to tell myself that I don’t have to be. I can live a life where I get nothing outstanding done and no-one remembers me when I’m gone and it won’t be any more unjust than it already that I was abused. I can’t redeem what happened to me. I need to stop trying. I need to see what my life is when I live it for me, not to make meaning of horror.
It is so fucking wrong that so many men feel they can rape children and that so many of them get away with it. I want to scream and spit and rip things apart with the injustice of it. If there’s one thing being a survivor has given me is how important it is to speak truth to power and to take action to stop abusers. Failure to act destroys lives. Because they won’t stop unless we stop them.
May we outlive them all, to dance upon their graves!
I was early for my therapy appointment today, and was sitting in the waiting room browsing magazines. I opened up a Buddhist one, Shambala Sun. The first article was about Buddhist jargon stuff that I never get and frankly find annoying. I studied philosophy so I’m quite comfortable with arguments that for example try to prove that a tree doesn’t exist, but this was not making any sense to me at all. This is why I am not a Buddhist. I agree that everything is interconnected, but I have no need or desire to get off the wheel of life. I’m happy to be connected in the here and now.
End of Buddhism rant. Sorry to any Buddhists out there. I’m clearly not getting it, I know, but if I was meant to get it it would make intuitive sense to me, and it just doesn’t. I don’t get Christianity either, so it’s fine.
What I did like and what brought me to tears was a piece by Thich Nhat Hahn which was on about how being present with anything you’re doing or feeling makes it holy, or puts you in a holy space. He said something that I did agree with and made intuitive sense to me, that ritual done without the priest(ess) being fully present and mindful had no meaning. Sitting there in the office taking a moment to bring mind and body together in the present moment, so hard for us survivors, brought tears to the surface. I didn’t even know the story behind the tears, but only that they were there.
I had to put my dog down last week. My wife and I were on a trip and our dog has an existing hip injury that would have been difficult and costly to repair. He’s a nervous, active, wilful dog (or was one anyhow) and was flailing around making it worse in the car. Even if we had repaired the injury and dragged our difficult doggie through a year of rehab, his other hip would probably have gone and then he’d have died of old age. So we cut the journey a bit short for him, and us. I feel less guilty now than I did. His death was not the calm one I’d envisioned – he was never a calm or easy dog. We’d had him since he was less than a week old and had never been able to train him out of his behaviour problems, which included aggression toward other dogs and sometimes kids. He whined constantly whenever he didn’t get what he wanted, which was most of the time, and which meant constant accompaniment on car trips. If we’d been able to find dog care, we wouldn’t have brought him, but couldn’t find any. He never actually bit anyone, but we had to watch him closely. My wife and I feel guilty being relieved he’s gone. Our remaining dog is happy to have the extra attention.
I miss him most at night. In my rough neighbourhood, he’d often bark if something was going on on the street, and although he had a lot of false alarms (cat’s in the yard are not the danger to me they seem to him), I could count on him to notice if someone was lurking around the house. My wife doesn’t seem to hear these things. My other dog is pretty good as alerting me to trouble too, but I haven’t lived with her for nine years like the dog we put down. I still feel him sometimes, and can feel the hair on his chest as I reach a hand to stroke it. I think if he is confused, wherever he is after death, it is my job as his alpha to provide a safe place to go to if he needs it. He can haunt me as long as he likes. I’ve been present with my guilt, my grief and my relief, and now with just missing him. The storm is passing.
Today in therapy I talked about the possibility I might need to end my marriage. It’s a big deal. I’m the first gay person in my extended family and my wife’s to get married ever. it’s like being the first inter-racial couple in a family. It would suck on so many levels to have it end in divorce a mere three years after people stood up for us and blessed us. My wife and I are very different on so many levels, and the glue we once had that made it work anyways has worn thin. We’ve gotten into power struggles where I try and change her and she resists, and it’s not working. The only way to win a power struggle is to give up, like letting go of the rope in tug of war, and that’s what I’m trying to do. My therapist has suggested I write down a list of what needs to change so I can look back in March and see whether anything changed once I stopped nagging. I’m also to make a list of ways I can feel safe that are independent of her.
I have a book called “Too good to leave. Too bad to stay.” that I’ve been looking at. It’s not bad. The author, Mira Kirshembaum, takes the position that deciding if a relationship is worth staying in is not a weighing scale with the good balanced against the bad, it’s a diagnosis of whether the relationship has the factors that make it possible to be satisfying or not. She asks questions, starting with the obvious “has your partner hit you more than once” (no), which signal a “sure thing, do not pass go, this relationship is never going to be worth having” to more subtle things. She says things like ” most people who answer yes to this question do not regret having left the relationship”, rather than putting a value judgement on it. I read the first chapter or so and then stopped. So far we’ve of course passed the obvious tests, but in the more subtle stuff, there’s no clear indication this relationship is a keeper just yet.
I’m not going to talk about my marriage a lot, so as to respect my wife’s privacy, but it’s definitely something running through my thoughts and feelings right now. Everything we do seems bittersweet, and sometimes I slip into denial and wonder what I’m going on about, my marriage is fine. Perhaps all I need to do is be present with it through this all.
Incest survivors are strong, brave and resourceful. I am one of them. This blog talks about my my quest to find closure with my dying abuser and living family within my Earth and Goddess-centred Pagan faith.
