Feeling Lost

I don't like spending time with the dark parts of myself. I am a being who is usually very much drawn to the light. I'm not talking about day and night here, but inner realms and experience. I am not drawn to negativity, pessimism, depression, or hopelessness. Not that I don't experience them in my life, because surely I do. But I am naturally drawn to joy, optimism, love, and effervescence. Angela "Blueskies" is hugely fitting to the state of being that is most natural to me. But it's been quite a while since I inhabited those states of being on a regular basis. My name right now may as well be Angela "Thundercloud."

Anger has been barging its way into the hopelessness and sadness these last few days. At first, I thought it was coming along with my cycle, the usual anger and aggression that often accompany it. But this has lingered and intensified. There is a track in my mind that feels like a tiger, waiting silently, patiently to strike to kill anyone who crosses me in the slightest way. This part imagines confrontations, and imagines scenarios and outcomes that involve tremendous violence in words and actions. Now, I haven't been acting upon any of these scenarios, but I have been watching them, especially these last couple days. I haven't even seen any point in leaving the house. It seems that when I do, unbelievably frustrating things happen.

The question that has been a recurrent mantra in my mind has been "what is the fucking point of any of this?!" I feel like a hamster stuck on a wheel, or at least in a little shitty cage. But I KNOw that I'm that hamster, stuck on a pointless fucking wheel, inside a prison of a shitty cage, and I KNOW that there's more outside of it, and yet I can't seem to find the way.

I have experienced firsthand - in ceremony and in meditation and in community - the most incredible beauty in this world, in this life. I have felt the sublime power of love. I have felt held in the womb of Mother Earth. I have seen things I couldn't have ever believed, and felt things that called into question everything that I have ever known. And in spite of all of that, the death of Familiar kitty has marked life with a heavy darkness. And part of that darkness has disconnected me from those truths that come from living in the Light. I remember them as a novel right now...characters and scenes from a life that are bound to the page, yet not my own.

I posted a question on Facebook the other day: "What gets you out of bed in the morning?" The answers that I received were depressing beyond my imaginings. I also had included an aside to that question, "besides the alarm clock or coffee," hoping to suggest I was looking for the *meaning* of getting out of bed in the morning. Not once person who answered went there. The answers? The dog, the cat, the kid, hunger, needing to pee. And honestly, these are the things that I have been feeling in my life, lately, too. Never before have I felt like I got out of bed for food or a piss. I got out of bed because the light of day pulled my spirit into the world to LIVE. But right now, I am feeling that I, too, get up to eat, poop, and sleep again. And after living my life from a place of intense meaning and connection, living with these things as my drives is the most devastating thing I have ever known.

I cannot wake up in the morning and get out of bed if all there is to my life is eating, pooping, making money, and sleeping again. If that's all there is, then let me die right fucking now.

I already know, somewhere deep inside of me, that there is way, way more to life. But when I try to go there, it's as if I'm dumb or something. Like the part of me that knows that has been blocked off somehow. And yet the question, the longing remains. I know that a new pair of fuzzy boots is a great thing, but it doesn't give meaning to my day. Stuff doesn't give meaning to my day. Material things don't give meaning to my day. Their absence can be a pain in the ass, for sure - as it was tonight, when I discovered that the tape deck in my car no longer works, and that is what I use to play my Ipod - but that's not living and dying. It's a fucking tape deck. And the boots are fucking boots. I also know that getting rich and buying a fancy car and house won't give meaning to my life. It's just more stuff that might make me "comfortable" and make me feel "abundant" but it's essentially just more garbage.

What about finding a partner and having a family? While these things certainly do add some sense of meaning to life, undoubtedly, and provide some sense of structure to daily living that is rooted in living communally, when it comes down to it, unless the deeper meaning of life is clear first, these things just become another path toward material living. Getting the right stuff for the couple, getting the right stuff for the kid. And good god, raising a kid in a material paradigm? That makes me want to die, too...

Anything external, really, is guaranteed NOT to add meaning to life. Those things are just distractions. It's the inner stuff that really gives meaning to my day. And it's relationships, too, the ways that these inner worlds of people (and animals) come together and create the world together. And right now, I am feeling betrayed by that. All those years of loving, and one day it's all gone. It's as if it never happened - except in my heart, that is. How is that fair??? When I go down this track of thinking, then I feel like there's no point to life at all, we're just waiting around to die. And it's no fucking wonder that all the religions have made up things like "heaven." That's the greatest comfort ever, believing that at the end of the line, we'll be reunited all together in one big angelic party, with harps and clouds and that crap. I don't buy it for a minute.

The Buddhists really do lay it all out with no bullshit. Change happens constantly, and there is no external God to believe in. All we can do is accept that everything is going to fall apart, and love in spite of that, with as much compassion as possible. Life is going to pull the rug out from under us again and again. And eventually, it will be our very own body that has the rug pulled out from under it. As much as I try, I can't find anything in that that encourages me to embrace a spiritual path even more fully than before. If anything, I feel inclined to come back to my original question: "what's the point anyway?" I don't buy into any of that heaven and angels crap, and haven't since I was a child. The coddling of religion offers me no solace at all. But I have been spiritually motivated for years - right now, I can't even feel connected to that.

Well, at least I am walking in circles with the question...

Partnership

It's been plenty of days since I last sat on the porch to do my blogging. And today is stunningly beautiful! It's probably almost 70 degrees, and not a cloud in the sky. I love it! I am feeling a walk in my future, maybe in the woods, maybe to Main Street along the trolley trail. Feet and breathing and a beautiful fall day with almost all the leaves off of the trees...mmm...

I'm also noticing this remarkable transformation of the Magnolia. Last Sunday I went to offer Familiar kitty some blessings underneath her beautiful boughs. The cones were still fuzzy and pink, but the red seeds were beginning to emerge, little jewels in the velvet. Today, the cones are looking brown and studded with these bright red dots! I wish I had been able to watch it emerge day by day. But I am grateful to have even been able to watch her transformation this much! Never before did I know the cycles of Magnolia.

In spite of the fact that my house is a mess and I have lots to do, and in spite of the fact that I had a fun night in Baltimore last night with Michael, I have been finding myself feeling a bit lonely this morning. Especially after last Sunday's brunch! It's so nice to have a gathering in my house, to bring people together in an informal, chill gathering and just see what emerges. I am forever more in awe of the changes that I am observing within myself. I am finding that I really am no longer a loner. I'm also finding that in spite of the fact that I am feeling ready to be in a love relationship with someone who's really on the same page, I am not at all wanting to be absorbed into that whole dynamic of "cult of pairs" as Michael calls it. Sure, that kind of intimacy is necessary for any relationship to thrive, but I am longing for the kind of connection that is bigger, too. Community. And anyone who comes into my life, romantically, needs to be interested in the same thing. Coming together to come together in a bigger way. Partnership is what I crave. Not just a lover. Not just someone to be entertained by or with. Someone who can stand strong beside me, and who is ready to see how the power of two can create even bigger togetherness and power and love in this world.

Is that really too much to ask?

I was talking with Michael last night, and one of the funny things that crossed my mind is that it would be an awesome experiment to somehow go on 100 dates with different men. Keeping myself open for real possibilities, and keeping the idea of a fling totally out of the picture. It was inspired by Dancing Lodge a few weeks back, when we were dancing in pairs, and kept changing partners every couple of minutes. It was amazing to feel how the energy and dynamic between each pair was so different! The ways we came together, sometimes playful, sometimes mirroring each other, sometimes completely out of sync - these were incredible ways of relating that were utterly nonverbal. And *this* is the heart of what would make going on 100 dates so interesting. To "practice" showing up authentically with new people, to experience the difference in dynamic between myself and so many others, and to seriously stir the pot.

This stunning day beckons, and I must answer that call.