ghostland

5.31.08

i have really fallen in love with ghostland observatory. perhaps i am a little late in the game, but sad sad city and stranger lover off of paparazzi lightening are so unbelievably delicious i cannot help but cue them for eternal repeat - esp. when walking through the misty seattle streets at night, waiting for the bus...excellent soundtrack for the bizarro world of 3rd and pine.

my dreams as of late have been perforated by closure and renewal - makes sense, no? i keep dreaming about things dying or morphing or changing and every morning i wake feeling infinitely more renewed. it's funny how one can carry a seed of pain or worry or fear for a misc. amount of time and then one day it's just gone. circumstances have not changed but the perspective has transformed into something distinctly more peaceful and optimistic.

when i am in my studio, i am sad that i will be leaving the beautiful boundaries behind - but every other time i'm looking forward to the change. looking to close out that time/space with the surrounding individuals. the bonds were broken and there is no way to fix them, particularly because i don't really care to, and so foraging ahead on my own is exciting and freeing. still kicking around what i will do and, between you and me, i kind of like the unknown, openwide notion of it all. the fact there is no plan, commitment, responsibility in place (other than to ms. lu, claro) is so lovely i cannot express. i like that i have all options open and i can really just line things up how i want to, not concerned with what other people are doing or needing or asking.

my life has been simplified by force. it's interesting how economic variables can challenge one's adherence to bullshit - i honestly didn't realize how much i was hanging onto for no real reason. going through a financial reset has taught me that i can live on an incredibly small amount of money each month and that i sort of dig that. sometimes i look out and think well maybe i'll work for some monkey for awhile and go through all the motions, but i know that i will loathe it so i don't really put that much effort into making it so. sean and i had a great conversation a few weeks ago and he said something that really resonated with me: that he had been trying to achieve all the things other people did but doing it his own way instead of the tried and true paths...and that he realized that what they had/got/were wasn't really what he wanted and that along with going a different path comes a different result. it put syllables to a morphing realization i have come to myself: my life will always be off course of the norm for no other reason than i just can't bring myself to pretend import and value of things that i find utterly empty, hollow. certainly i could do it - i can do anything - but is that really how i want to spend my time? such a fleeting, hopscotch resource should be engorged with activities of true joy, not just dusty chalk markings.

it's funny how shit has to come full circle time and again for me to recognize the juxtaposition and melding of shapes, frames. i used to think it was hard to go your own way, but now i realize that hardship is across the board in different forms. happiness is a hard road to travel, regardless of the individual trappings. truly committing to individual authenticity is a struggle when there are so many shiny possibilities strewn about us. a prison if we let them pile into gilded columns.

limon

5.25.08

so gorgeous today - lovely humidity and sunshine that just busted through into rain. now a chill is coming on and i'm a bit tired, but i feel good.

options, darling. remaining open to what may come. extending feelers, curling subtropicals, expanding + contracting, optimistic & fresh.

a few weeks ago i purchased the first perfume i have ever bought as an adult. generally i prefer essential oils but when i smelled this - lemon, lemon verbena & geranium - it elicited a million delicious meringues, sunny sweaters, citrus sunsets; now i wear it each day and leave a waft of shine behind. i can't help but bury my nose in my wrists and inhale deeply, treasuring the juicy fruit, a bashful & lusty aroma.

i have settled on a final date for my time in phinney: 7/27/08. this is very exciting and i'm looking forward to two months filled with halcyon days - working and massaging and enjoying the summer without the loom of rent to pay. during august, i'm going to find and setup a new location, then i'm going to travel a bit, i think, i hope. not quite sure yet. it would be nice to travel somewhere new and it would also be lovely to see old friends.

tomorrow is a rolo wash! and a bbq! and some....sun?

all kat radio

5.11.08

seattle's weather has been batshit. it's basically doing a "this is what idiocracy looks like!" and jumping all over the place in order to prove that yes, virginia, there really is global warming. honestly, myself and the fellow mammalians with whom i cohabitate really have no idea what to do: are we hibernating? are we shedding? earlier this week, neither of them could be bothered to even lift their heads when i got up in the morning, two completely sacked out furballs rubbing my nose in the fact that they get to basically do what they want all day. well, except rolo wants to go on walks all day and he doesn't get to do that. oh yeah, and lu wants to lay on my chest all day and paw at my face when i'm not petting her...so i guess neither of them really gets to do what they want all day long so we're all theoretically in the same boat. yay us.

but i'm not really going to write all about the weather and interactions with pets. lord knows i could, but i will not.

this afternoon, i called my bro and we had a great couple of hour chat about nothing and the sun. we are co pep talkers, it is nice. it really is a blessing to have a sibling with whom you can ground yourself because it's a reminder that so many of the things i get wrapped up in are basically groundless. i had a wonderful epiphany, however, during our talk, which came out from us talking about how we are very critical of ourselves, etc., never feel like we're good enough and all that jazz.

i don't know where it came from but i told him how whenever you read or listen to child psychologists counseling people on how to manage disturbing change for their children, they are incredibly focused on the fact that the parents need to make sure the children are continuously reassured that the change or negativity is not something that they caused. i suppose because children are inherently self-obsessed, their ability to understand causes outside of themselves is limited and so they'll internalize the situation as being localized to them: mommy and daddy fight because i'm not good enough; mommy and daddy are breaking up because i am bad; basically fill in the blanks and any dysfunction will be explained as the direct result of the child's inability to be perfect and wonderful and good and what the parents always needed.

now it's no secret that my parents didn't have an ideal situation going on, especially to us children. today while sean and i were talking about beating ourselves up about shit and thinking we're never good enough, i realized that it's likely because we carry with us these feelings of inadequacy because each of us, in our own way, took on the responsibility of our parents' unhappiness as being the result of us not measuring up, and so we internalized that, again, each in our own ways and have carried it with us since because no one bothered to correct that misinterpretation and so it became, for us, a simple truth. it was fact. of course, you can add onto that the experience of our father actually playing into it by continuously complaining about the high financial cost of having children and you have a double whammy: it would be one thing if the resulting belief system came out of ignorance or negligence on the part of our parents...and i suppose it did. i'd like to think my father's obsession with checks and balances and keeping tabs on something as ridiculously empty as money was born of ignorance and not of malice. so i'll cut him that slack and say he probably just didn't get that his actions were actually helping to form the perspective of four individuals and that they shouldn't have been interacted with - or expected to understand/delineate/process interpersonal interactions - as adults. if i had to identify a core truth around the misrearing of his children, i will say that my father never understood that we were not his equal inasmuch as we had a lack of experience and exposure to the world and we relied on him to guide us, not to simply hang out with us and expect that we should understand the difference.

so: it is time for me to let this go. it is time for me to say hey, here is a truth i have carried for a long time that is actually a lie. i am as good as i need to be. i'm as perfect and wonderful and awesome and powerful and capable as i want to be; the limit in any of these things is not an externally driven hamper: it is only what i choose. so i'm choosing to give that up. it will take time to decode the carefully built up reality that i have around beating myself up and self-analysis, but i think it's all gi joe and knowing that these feelings of inadequacy are rooted in something very different than me actually being inadequate really is half the battle. i can do anything...so i will.

tigerlilies & mirth

5.6.08

april was an interesting month; i spent several days down in sf with my lovely man and i also had a very busy, banging biz month. it all kind of came to the fore, however, with deep realizations and decisions about my work, my life in seattle, my future.

now, i started the business two years ago because i wanted to have my own thing going on and kay and i were planning to be here in seattle for a few years after thailand. after we broke up, i had put so much time and effort into developing the space and setting everything up, it seemed kind of stupid to just walk away from it, even though it never felt right to me. instinctually, it hasn't ever resonated with me in the essential way in which i thought it would. certainly there were glamorous snapshots here and there and i really love the work itself, i just don't think that the business was the way i need to express or fulfill the drive to work with people. ultimately, it was a struggle - i have learned a ton about myself, what i want, what i'm good at, what is important to me - and now change is looming on the horizon.

succinctly, i am burnt out. working with the business and a part time job, juggling and struggling for over three years now...i'm kind of over it. i know i've talked about this for awhile, and now the studio configuration will require change, so it's the best time to assess - is this really what i want?

what i feel very keenly is that i need to remove several levels of liability that i have been managing for awhile now. i need some time to just enjoy life, to explore and read and write and grow in different ways. i have all the necessary skills to run a business, but the love, the passion, the drive and the motivation hasn't been there - basically, all the keys that people cite as the core of their success. when i'm honest with myself i have to say that i'm just not feeling it.

so, what next? first up is that the studio's lease runs through july, with last month's rent already paid. so i will continue to work and then in july work with the co-tenant to unravel all that we wound.

next step after that is to decide what my next step will be; the dg and his business partners are in the process of figuring out their own next steps and so perhaps we shall coalesce. it would be so lovely, and i like the idea of just clearing out my stuff here and moving somewhere new, starting over. exploring. i have grown immeasurably in a number of ways but now i'm looking to turn inward and understand some of my energetic imbalances. so i have this rather slack part time job that i'll continue hacking at for awhile and then see where i go from there. perhaps it will afford me the time to write - now that would be lovely.

so there you have it - change again and again and again. my instincts are telling me to step out and not let the structure of what i thought i wanted inform who i have to be. i'm drowning in that so it's time to get real and recognize that i am not someone who gives a shit about all the shit my community tries to tell me is important. ultimately, i am a vagabond, a traveler, driven by transmutation and a passion for the unknown. i don't think i can settle down and so i'm not going to.

the next few months will be closure, reset, selling a lot of things because goddamnit, owning more than i can carry on my back is an albatross.