Dear sweet readers, I have just lived the week from hell. I know, I say that rather often lately, but this time even the Tarot agreed, tagging me with The Tower card. The Tower is one of the highest cards for healing and transformation. Awesome, right? Well maybe, sorta. As anyone who has been broken will tell you, the road to healing is one that leads straight through the landscape of nowhere. Luckily I find dust, scrub brush, and power lines oddly soothing, at least to look at anyhow. Good thing, because my journey though the energetic version of this landscape is akin to wandering in circles without food or water under the tutelage of the desert sun, buzzards optional. To everyone in the real world, of course, it just looks like I’m malingering. Some lessons come hard. But I am possessed of an iron will (thank you, Mother) and I cut my eye teeth on Marines, so it takes a hell of a lot to make me quit. Mostly what that means is that I learn things the hard way. Also, it means that the Universe is very happy to grind my nose into the dust until I cry uncle. But I digress.
Eight days ago, which is the last time I was here, I knew that everything I had to say was rooted in an old life, a life that had fallen away somewhere between an energetic shift at the hands of my shaman and the final posting of Chapter 5, Longtime Survivor. Well... I foolishly thought that a day or two of contemplation would be all I needed before continuing along my merry way.
The Universe said, Hah! It is to laugh!
This state of affairs, my pathetic state, has made my shaman very happy. He says I’m making good progress. He says don’t push, in fact, don’t do anything, which is funny because I couldn’t if I wanted to. It’s not that I couldn’t write this past week, not that I couldn’t edit, and not that I couldn’t talk, though I neither answered my phone nor posted much on social media; no, this past week I’ve been unable to do anything. Anything at all. Each morning I woke up in more pain than the day before. And before y’all begin wondering, let me tell you, physical pain, emotional pain, psychic pain, spiritual pain, at a certain level, they’re all the same damn pain. No matter, I tried to push my way through it, which only made the pain worse but I am nothing if not persistent. So four days ago the shaman grounded me. I am now playing a game of Shaman Says. If it’s not shaman sanctioned, I don’t get to do it. Think boot camp, only for the woo-woo set. And before y’all start assuming this is for pussies, let me say this. I will marry and financially support the first Marine to undertake and survive this kind of spiritual odyssey. I was married to a Marine, people, a three-tour Marine, and he made it his personal mission to toughen me up; that Marine has nothing on this shaman.
So, to the point of this post. As I said a week ago, I had planned to review and input the edits I’d previously made to Chapter 6, just as soon as I found them.... Well, I found them alright. This morning. Here’s the best part. I looked everywhere. I mean I looked everywhere and then some. I turned the place inside out. I could have printed the chapter again and started from scratch, but what I wanted was what I’d already done, dammit. Chapter 6 is a tome. Last I looked, it was in need of some serious from-the-ground-up editing, and I had done that....!
The irony is not lost me that this chapter, Chapter 6, is entitled One Easy Thing. ~sigh~ For my part, I am working diligently to remember that going through old shit, which is what the shaman says is happening right now, that going through old shit is just that and not some divine comeuppance. I am not convinced. Again the irony: One Easy Thing is about a time in my life when not a single damn thing was easy. Not one.
Cut back to the week from hell. For the first four days, I was a dog with my tail between my legs. Then Friday night I partied on BLIP.fm with a couple of friends. I partied till nearly 5 Saturday morning and it was Hey-la-my-mojo’s-back! kind of night. Along with my lost mojo came a lot of penis jokes, penises being one of the things I am currently forbidden, and I don’t remember what brought it up but I wasn’t kidding about having a penis pen, and YES, it did just appear by my car. Three times. So I finally gave it a home. But I digress. It’s what I do best these days. Before I move on, however, I have to say that there are actually bands named Butch Penis and Crazy Penis. Hand to God. It was too much to resist. But that was Friday night.
Saturday I slept till three in the afternoon, ten hours, and I awoke in such a state of pain and exhaustion that my body could not roll over in bed and my mind could not turn away from a depression the likes of which I have not experienced since I was a very sick puppy on a dozen medications and suicide watch. I could do nothing. I called the shaman and did as he said. I sat in the sun. I breathed. I worked at remembering that going through old shit is just that and not some divine comeuppance, which is how it’s felt, no matter what my happy shaman says.
I keep falling off the planet and Saturday was by far the worst, but I had a pile of laundry that’s been building up. Doing laundry is not hard. I did laundry. It took three months. Or maybe it was three months of piled up laundry I was doing, honestly, I couldn’t tell the difference. It’s still not done, but I no longer feel as though I am living in quicksand, and this morning I got out of bed and to the computer without pain. I sat at my computer where I sit every day, looked to the left, for what reason I have no idea, and there on the floor covered by a single sheet of paper was One Easy Thing. Edits and all. I went right to it, picking it up as if I knew what was there all along. And who knows, maybe I did.
Tomorrow I go back to plan A: edit Chapter 6 - maybe with my penis pen, who knows - and keep moving forward. The chapter looks in pretty rough shape, so it may not make its appearance tomorrow, but I will: me and my old luggage, trudging past the flea bag motels and the power lines.
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