endings and beginnings

"That juicer is your enemy. It has been working against you for years. Throw it out."

I imagine a grapefruit, run through, its tart sweetness stinging the back of my throat and then like warmth, it spreads through me. I see my children pushing kale and lemons and apples through and giggling and licking their fingers. Frozen berries run through to make non-sugared sorbet and nut butters and she interrupts me to tell me that there is no fiber there. Nothing but a sugar high, then the eventual crash.

I want to explain that I do not simply love juicing, rather I am in love with my Omega juicer, the sleek chrome body, the sexy low hum of its motor, the fresh smooth energy oozing out of the mouth, like sex and health. I drink her down, and feel sexy and strong and able. I let go of my idea of what is healthy and let her show me packages of almond cheese and what sodium looks like in salt form. She tells me to buy egg whites and eat lean meat and turkey burgers. My grandmother ate turkey burgers with a big slice of vidalia onion for lunch, and weighed everything on a little white plastic scale. The dietitian tells me not write down calories, but I cannot help myself. I need to know.  If I write all the rest of it down, I want to know if I am taking out more than I am putting in. I'm ready to shed this belly, the love handles, the pouch of flesh that protects my solar plexus and sacral chakras. Sometimes that pouch feels more metaphysical than physical, so I keep trying to release whatever it is that is blocking my old flat belly from emerging from this fat cocoon, and then watch what I'm eating.

I've become one of those high maintenance eaters whom I once mocked in my years at natural food stores. No wheat, no soy, no dairy, no sugar. No. No. No. I just want to slink away when people ask me what to bring to my house, or what I can eat. I really want no attention. This high maintenance shit doesn't endear one to people. It's sounds impossibly fussy. I hate that I have become a person with such limiting dietary restrictions, not because I particularly mind eating no wheat, soy, dairy or sugar, but because it is contrary to who I thought I was--laid back and easy going. I roll with the gluten-rich foods, and eat with bravado and lust and the beautiful gratitude that comes with moaning and talking through bites about deliciousness and richness and I shouldn't, but okay one more.

I turned thirty-nine on Friday. Like I said, this year and this age feels meaty. Steak-like with a big t-bone that I can suck the marrow out of, even though I cannot eat marrow anymore. I remember my mother being thirty-nine. From fifteen and defiant, thirty-nine looked liberating. My mother said to me when she was thirty-nine, "I just don't feel like being the mother anymore." And I whispered, "I don't feel like being the kid."

Her thirty-nineth year involved the second year of separation from my father, her career working in AIDS social work filling her life up, going out to gay clubs and learning to play chess. She put a basket of condoms in the middle of our coffee table so that we were always protected, even though we weren't having sex. But our friends came and took them, and that was some kind of comfort for her. And when the shit was getting hard for us, she sent us to a woman who channeled Edgar Cayce. The channels voice grew deep and gnarled, and she told our little group of hippie teenagers that the Pacific Ocean would swallow California, taking her into her mother sea belly, the crystals casting strange ripples on her surface and the Atlantic Ocean would devour Florida, belching disco balls and thong bikinis. Back then, I wondered about these hungry seas swallowing states and how this was helping me with my "parent" problem.

I unintentionally keep doing these intention setting rituals. Well, the first was intentional. I bought a workbook, and filled it out. The release ceremony on Lucia's birthday began this search for the energy I'm bringing it, and I visioned and journeying and wrote down ideas. Then I went to a lady party a few weekends ago. She asked us about our intentions, and burned our releases. I solidified more of what I was releasing, and more of what I wanted to bring in. Then yesterday, I did a Sankalpa Retreat. It was my birthday present to myself, and yet, I had no real idea why I signed up.

Yesterday morning, I sat in meditation, and choose some oracle cards, and Kali came to me. "Endings and Beginnings." It read. "The old must be released, so the new can come in." The entire day was yoga and movement and visioning and meditation. In fact, the whole day, we were supposed to remain in a mindful, almost half meditative state, never quite coming out of meditation. I had already visioned, already released. But in a real live circle of women, we yogaed and danced in the infinity symbol. We drew our intentions with crayons on a pearly piece of paper. I kept seeing angels, a sacred heart and Mother Teresa, and prayer. Deep, profound prayer, a turning over of will. I saw healing work being done through me,and healing myself. I heard, "Love yourself as you love your children. Unconditionally without expectation, without need. Just mother you." Something shifted in me. I wrote what I wanted to release on a piece of paper:

Any resentments holding me back from doing the highest good.

And I let that be there alone on the sheet for a few moments. I watched it. I released specific resentments on the 22nd of December. I released things that now feel gone. It was a powerful ceremony. I didn't release enough, so I went on, and every nook and cranny of that small slip of paper was filled with stuff to release:

FATNESS!
SICKNESS!
ANGER!

ATTACHMENT TO FATNESS, SICKNESS, ANGER!

I knelt before the fire, and asked to have these things gone from me. I watched it burn, and I felt a lightness of being. Then we danced, just danced. And I am so self-conscious about my body, but I bounced and brought my hands over my head, and wiped away the tears of joy before anyone could see. It felt so good to just be strange and unself-conscious in a room full of people. I kept swatting that ridiculous voice down that said, "Your belly is too fat for you to have this much fun."

And in the end, there were three rituals in all, like the three knots in a witch's spell, even though I'm not a witch and this is not a spell. I thought about tying those knots in the universe, setting my intentions for thirty-nine, letting go of my attachment to juicing and my ideas of what health is, and my attachment to what thirty-nine is, and my attachment to attachments.

By the knot of one, the spells begun!
By the knot of two, it cometh true!
By the knot of three, so mote it be!

ouroboros

I used to think of myself as a series of uncategorized items. Undefined, out of color and alphabetical order. Bourbon and cigarettes, and unwashed lucky socks. Second hand combat coots, and mixed tapes with  names like Heartbreak. I suppose I used to think of myself as a junk drawer. I am none of those things anymore. I have none of those things anymore.

I have this shell that feels nothing like me. It hasn't in four years. It is like I walk through the earth in a machine, bumbling and inoperable, left moving me right. My body turns against itself, and the pain that plagues me feels finally like the manifestation of years of anguish. And that is what my body did to me, or rather I did to my body.

In the past few months, I have felt sick. Arthritis, depression, weight gain, exhaustion, lethargy. I can't remember to return calls or emails or thank you letters. Perhaps, after Lucia's death, I just couldn't muster too much sympathy for me. I grieved and felt sorry for myself, yes, but I also acted out, and retreated and pushed. Those two Angies, the one of good and the other of evil, I hadn't reconciled. It makes me sick. One swallows the other, like the Ouroboros devouring its tail. I am one, not two. I draw it, like an enso, in a few strokes a circle, and a snake eating itself. Then I sage it, say a prayer, meditate on the image. It is not an image of destruction and self-sabotage. It is about rebirth and recreation and primordial unity--that which was, is, and will be. 

I no longer want to feed myself the storyline of her death and of my responsibility. I don't want to feed it to my ailments and my dis-ease. I don't want to give it strength anymore. I wonder if I caused my sickness to find a cause of her death, then I shoo it away as overthinking. I don't want to speak its name anymore. Even when I think grief is over, it comes back, like a mobius strip, the beginning is the end, and the two are a moot point anyway. But the grief and the action of blame are too different things. I release the blame, release the hatred, release the guilt that I didn't even know was there anymore.

I open, open, unfold the turns and twists of me. I, maybe folded into a swan, am still just a piece of paper. The words, melodramatic and wordy, run around me like the rings of a tree. Each description a year, telling the story of me. The song I call out into the night, my song, as I journey into a world where time lays easily on top of itself, and the dead live again. I pocket the paper away, fold it into an elaborate fortune teller game.

Eenie, Meenie. Miney. Moe. Catch a Tiger by the toe...And then it reminds me:

"2008, you were the happiest you ever felt, most contented. Your daughter died."

"2009, You wept for a year. You walked through the underworld. You mourned. You alienated. You survived."

This upcoming year, the one ahead, I envision something magical, important. The path before me has changed in 2012, a hair pin turn back to a spiritual center I had before the marriage and babies and jobby jobs. It was covered over the decaying leaves of grief and alcohol and self-loathing. I sweep them away as I find my footing again.

Remembering.

Remembering.

Remembering this way of beauty and strength and surrender and unconditional love of everything including myself. There is moss on the northern facing parts of me, the shadow parts. I must turn toward the sun now, open to the air, water, fire, and earth. I emerge from the machine that has trapped the storyline of Lucia's death. I emerge from the sickness that I imagined killed Lucia and Michael into the strong body that brought me to this place right here. I emerge from self-loathing into a place of unconditional love and acceptance.

I have been meditating on a word to encapsulate my year. 2009, Grieve. 2010, Create. 2011, Recover. 2012, Open. 2013...what word can you be? I create another fortune teller. This one with words that encapsulate what I hope for--love, blessings, miracle, opening and counting until we reach the fortune for next year. I write on the inside all the words that I hope the next year will be: Balance. Self-acceptance. Open. Clarity. Growth. Trust. Heal. Spirit. But I know the word as I write it.

Emerge.

What is your word for 2013? What does it mean for you?

blue moon

Wind takes pity on my battered soul and torn up legs, moves through the backyard, first caressing the chimes, then moving the mosquitos to the neighbor's backyard.  It is night. The dog is patrolling the yard, scaring squirrels, chasing phantom cats to prolong outside. I don't mind. I look both ways, then I open my arms and close my eyes and see the moon as a photo negative behind my eyelids. It is so bright already. Strange in this place that steals organic light, sucking it into some suburban ambient dull orange aura that surrounds our town. A second full moon this month is the moon of intention. Deliberate abundance. It is the one of synchronicity. "Ask your spirit guides," I read on a blog. "Watch for signs. Open yourself to them. Make connections. Then act on them."

I feel the magic run through my body as I soak in the moon. I am not eaten alive by bugs. That should be enough magic for this long summer. I ask for nothing, rather I tell the universe what I have in my mind's eye. It is what the blog shaman says to do. Use affirmations.

I inspire my children. 
I bring joy. 
I am driven. 
I know. 
I awaken. 
I am confident. 
I am clear-headed. 
I forgive. 
I am healthy.
I am a source of light and love. 
I am my higher self. 

Then, I whisper the vain requests, I am thin. I am strong. I am beautiful.

I am run by the moon. I howl to energize and turn inward, my cycles match up to the moon, perhaps like all women. But I don't know what to do with the power I harness from the night sky. I squander it on resentments and dream work that I am too lazy to write down and deconstruct.

I like the Native American names for the moon. August is the Sturgeon Moon which makes me happy for the fish (don't forget the fish.), and yet the blue moon, the second one this month, takes the name of the first, like a shadow self. Amore radiant, special, important shadow self.  Last full moon, I was packing for our trip, and praying and I forgot about the moon all together. I felt disconnected from the space outside my house. Heat and mosquitos kept us inside in July, bouncing on furniture, wrestling until someone cries. I am trying to let go of my shadow self, or rather maybe I am trying to make her more radiant, special, and important, like some kind of blue moon goddess. Can that be the shadow self I don't discuss in proper company? The one that is luminous, forgiving, pious, full of God and light, as opposed to the angry, resentful Angie? I realized a few weeks ago, that I hadn't thought about my righteous indignation in a week or more. I scratched my head and thought, Yeah, but I can fire that up if I want. Maybe that means I am still damaged. 

But I don't want. It is exhausting to let it go string by string of the cord that binds me to curses, abuse, and neglectful spirits. After more than a year, finally, I feel almost free of the cord that bound my heart and prevented me from letting women get close and know me. It occurs to me that I have already set my intention this year. I want to allow another woman into my life as a close friend, someone to confide, share, open up to and who I can do the same. I miss that in real life. Perhaps it is a friend of my daughter, or the pagan yoga instructor, or the psychics who ask me to join their group. I am asking the universe for a friend in my town, someone who makes me laugh and brings out that part of me, someone who likes far-out gypsy topics and oracle cards, art and crafts, and remembers that women need each other. Someone I can listen to for hours, someone who I trust.

I signed up for this two-month project called the Magical Sabbatical. It was everything I wanted to accomplish, and it felt divinely given that I even found it. It follows the full moon cycles, starting this blue moon, and ending on the full moon of October. It contains lectures and affirmations, rituals and intentions. The website says it is "an intentional disruption in your status quo." I am open to opening. I am open to the shadow self, the luminous goddess that she can be, if I only let her.

What are your intentions this blue moon? What are you accomplishing spiritually, emotionally? Share with me.