slings and arrows

I've been hurting over the willingness of people I thought I was once close with to villainize me. It's really a strange thing being elevated in status from a person basically struggling, confused, and heartbroken, to an entity of mythological proportion. But, I suppose a threat doesn't have feelings, it's just a threat - an object of scorn and fear. While it is a distinct and undeniable downgrade from being human, it's not a position without power.

This is the dual life of the scapegoat. You are the honorary symbol of dysfunction, yet the only one who gets credit for having any agency. Someone points a finger and says she made me do it, or better yet, I would never do that. While I get to remain responsible for my own choices, everyone else involved is just a puppet.

In this black and white world, I am the black, the wrong, the bad. And as the bad one, I lost the right to feel hurt. I became invisible behind a screen on which others projected their fears (and formed alliances behind). People secretly love a villain. It validates what they always suspected to be true, that they are better than others. Disregard a person's total hypocrisy in numerous other ways - their transgressions big and small - on this count, they are fucking pious and will scream it from the rooftops.

Forgiveness is a slow process. Being human isn't enough, you have to deserve what you get. Well, I've decided I get to hurt. My gift to myself. I won't pretend the slings and arrows don't still land because they do. But I would rather sit with my grief rather than run to new dependencies. I will sit with my imperfections because I am ashamed. Not for all the debts I'm accused of owing, the pound of flesh, but for trading my love, my sense of self-worth for a lie.

"When we allow ourselves to be irritated out of our wits by something, let us not suppose that the cause of our irritation lies simply and solely outside us, in the irritating thing or person. In that way, we simply endow them with the power to put us into the state of irritation, and possibly into one of insomnia or indigestion. We then turn around and unhesitatingly condemn the object of our offense, while all the time we are raging against an unconscious aspect of ourselves which is projected into the exasperating object." ~ Carl Jung

Baba Yaga

You can hide behind another, like a bairn behind its mother's
skirts, but you're still scared of me. And you should be
for I've shed my earthly status for the realm of fantasy.

In the funhouse mirror of your eyes, I'm difficult to read,
as deformed as Baba Yaga sharpening her teeth.
But the bony one is hard to kill, I won't die easily.

Not because I'm supernatural or impervious to your swing.
It's simply hard to win a fight against your own psychology
(and it began long, long before I was ever on the scene).

In a few days, my understanding no more enriched than now, I place myself in the center of a green crater off the coast of Maui.

one, two

it's ok, really

no judgment

just numbers

like 4 follows 3

you're simply not 

strong enough yet

in yourself,

not for me.

don't stop the music

Walking to my car last night I ran into a neighbor and his friend. Sometimes it's ok to be vulnerable. You choose your moments or perhaps they are chosen for you. My building has covered parking in the rear of the building that opens to the street behind. There's an indenture in the wall behind the cars - a concrete stoop mostly hidden from view. Dominic and his friend meet here at what seems to be odd intervals to talk and (from the smell I would assume) smoke pot.

I take a seat between them without asking and am thankful when they don't object. An 80's mix of R&B plays on Dominic's phone. They are guys and I'm a girl, but there's no flirtation. People are people and right now I need it to be as simple as that. We commiserate over our crappy parking spots and swap stories of scratched car panels. We talk about Los Angeles. How it has changed and how it has stayed the same. Dominic's friend leaves.

Yarbrough and Peoples' Don't Stop the Music begins to play. I know this song from a disco tape my sister and I used to dance to as children. I don't have to think about it too much. The space hangs there between us, suspended by a few bars of music. I sing. And I let my voice carry. There have been so few moments lately, so little room for the heart. It doesn't lessen or even dislodge my hurt (which hangs somewhere between my ribs, sticky and unforgiving as tar). But I know I've been witnessed in some small way. And my idiot self is made easier to live with by it. 

Saturday, June 13

6:30 – Woke

7:15 – Morning sitting in the Ballroom

8:00 – Breakfast

Comments were made of the completion variety, several relating to the performance and the audience's reaction. My observation was that the right impulses seemed to arise out of being present, sometimes bringing about surprising or unexpected turns of events, obstacles, and fears, which were overcome by, again, becoming present. Afterward, I realized my comment was poorly timed, but was able to laugh at the irony. 

10:30 (?) - Intro team with Curt, Tony and I for guitar mechanics.

Some insecurity about whether commentary from me would be supportive or disruptive to the group. I felt I couldn’t quite hold the space. A wish to see what is needed for the Intros post-performance. 

Private lessons:

Friday, June 12

6:45 - Woke, showered. Two separate health issues which have been bothering me all week have come to a point.
7:20 - Sitting in cabin
8:00 - Breakfast
9:30 - Staff Meeting

Gave short, private AT lessons to Julian, John, William, and Igor

12:30 - Personal Meeting

I frequently lack an emotionally clear response to being thanked. Where the polite thing to do would be to acknowledge it, thus acknowledging the person giving it, I am sometimes uncomfortably-speechless instead.

A flight back up to the cabin. On our way to the dining room MB and I spy Michael Hendrix, shoeless, hot-stepping it through the grass back to the ballroom. He looks like a wood nymph. I find out later he runs without shoes. This is a thing.

1:00 - Lunch

I'm asked to join a ladies circle outside where a song is being presented. It is a spiritual. The idea is to sing together at dinner. An intention for the performance is suggested.

Gave Frank a table turn. Despite the wide gap in our experience, that he puts me at ease.

Ran into Glenn and begged a little 3rd Relation help. We worked on it briefly in the Ballroom, both of us dripping with sweat.