I recognize this as a very odd post. This second chakra awakening, passion, or transition—whatever words are chosen to attempt to decipher what is occurring for me at a soul and cellular level, is directly related to reclaiming the spirit in me that was lost in my youth. My sensitive nature, depth of soul, and ability to take in extreme amounts, coupled with the circumstances of my childhood, led me to lock a large portion of my self away.
This portion locked away, was largely the part which knew I was beautifull, knew I was worthy, and knew I was desirable. When very young, I learned how not to live, how not to show joy, how to in effect dislike myself and my body in order to survive.
In knowing this now, with a profound awakening on multiple levels, I am holding a cup in either hand. To the right of me is the hope of this now found passion. To the left, balancing my position, are the memories. I am seeing how each feeds the other. The erupting passion on one side, the imploding self on the other. The flame and the joust.
Here I place the cups before you. Experience as you’d like. For we each stand with two cups. All equally balanced in beauty.
Embracing Me
One of the reasons I am taking photos of myself lately is to embrace the beauty that is me. I never have seen me before. Seen how very lovely inside and out I am. This is part of my growth process. My hair is usually unbrushed and I wear no makeup, say lip gloss. It’s raw, it’s real, and it’s fresh. I love it.
Breaking Free Maui 2012
Flame
Naked
He beckons
The depths of me
Fingers dripped in sweet
Honey-suckle nectar
Lips moist
Dew upon the fields of sunrise
Strawberry mist
Pours through
A damp fire of longing
Reclaims pleasure
Lighting the avenue of discontent
With fierce flames of gentle dragon
Until
Devoured by desire
I taste
The phantom of celestial union
Kissing ghosts
Where we once breathed
Beauty Maui 2012
Switching the MOOD back to LOVE here. One of my FAVORITES…. This video WILL make you smile. I promise…and this is where I am today…in this state of mind. 🙂
There wasn’t any reason to hide, at least not at first. But I crawled inside my tiny closet anyhow, me and my red plastic piggybank. Inside the squared-space that was layered in frilly dresses and the smell of cedar sticks, I would hold tight to my piggy and pretend.
At first I could imagine Father was back; and not just once or twice, but all the time. In my thoughts he’d hold me tight, bounce me up and down on his knee; and then he’d stand up, grab hold of my hands, and twirl me so fast I’d fly up off my feet. And we’d laugh, giggle so hard the tears would pearl at the corner of our matching oval eyes, his with the amber light, mine with the deep ebony.
Inside the dark of the cramped space, I’d travel back to my silver-haired nana’s adobe-style house, the one with the red-clay roof tiles and the white stucco face, that sat on a steep hill on Washington Street, a one mile hike up from the barking sea lions basking on the rocks at Fisherman’s Warf in Monterey. I’d breathe in and remember a time before, a time before I understood how homes, and heads, and hearts could break.
There in my memories, my petite nana scooped me up effortlessly and dotted me in tangerine-orange kisses, while my smiling Aunt Rose Marie squished and rearranged my cheeks. And stout Nano, after leaning over and flashing his bald spot, winked and pulled on my earlobe, offering out a kindly, “We love you, Little Sam.”
Father was there, too, moving in his own cautious way, inching forward and offering everyone his one-arm embrace. I’d tried to make him different in pretending, make him hug me tight and kiss my cheeks, but the truth always had a way of winning out.
I’d see us all napkin-bibbed at our seafood feast, so that it seemed with the salty air we were all fisherman sailing the ocean waves. As we cracked open crab legs and peeled tiger-shrimp, Nano stitched together grand fisherman tales in an Italian accent as thick and refreshing as homespun ice-cream. Afterwards, with bellies filled, we all helped with the dishes, me with my very own floral dishtowel, and my wide smile still swathed in pizza sauce.
Nano took his leave soon, snuck out to the back porch with a big platter of scraps. Two minutes later, when Nano reentered the house with a lick-cleaned plate, looking more satisfied than he let on, he muttered, “Damn cats. I hate cats,” and then held onto his belly, gave me a wink, and chuckled.
Sometime after seven, when all the plates were stacked neatly back in cupboards, the plastic tablecloth wiped clean, and the eight-track tape of Italian music drifting through the room, we gathered round the table for a game of penny poker. Holding the cards proved somewhat cumbersome, but somehow I managed to win every single hand, and in doing so compiled a stack of pennies: ten-high and ten-long.
“One hundred pennies; look how great you did,” Aunt Rose Marie would laugh.
I smiled with eyes of pride, and then reached down and yanked at my stockings. It was possible, I found out, to stack the pennies the height of my mug of hot chocolate before they tumbled down. Nana leaned over and braced herself against the edge of the table, saying softly to my father, “You need to bring her more often. We miss her. And we miss you.” Then she looked over at me. “We have a surprise.”
My dark-haired aunt came forward carrying a plastic piggybank loaded with coins. Though it was only a smidgen bigger than the palm of my little hand, I was amazed. For the next several minutes everyone watched, as I cradled the plastic piggy.
“Now you save that. It’s not to open. Put it in a special spot.” Nana turned from me, pulled down her silver-framed glasses, and eyed her son. “You’ll bring her again soon, won’t you?”
Father nodded and stood up to retrieve my small wool coat from the back of my chair. “Yes, I’ll bring her soon,” he answered, as I slid into my coat, holding my piggy tighter.
Mother would arrive long after supper, all done up—the fair Audrey Hepburn—her curves hugged by a linen suit of strawberry-milkshake. “Hello, Beautiful,” she would say, fussing over my blue-silk hair ribbons. I would gaze up at Mother, then, with my deep brown eyes and tug on my braid. I savored the word beautiful much like I did Nana’s hard taffy candies which left my tongue all purple and sweet.
My gnome is laughing at me because I just said a bad word over and over. OH, NO! But I don’t care!!! Because gone is the prude-dude residing inside of me. {I can use “dude” for me, even though I’m a girl; I looked it up.}
What is the definition of prude? A person concerned with decorum and propriety…someone who uses those words in ordinary conversation is probably a prude. Here’s the part of prude that was me: more uncomfortable than most with sexuality; unusual modesty; goody-goody.
Before Photo: PRUDE
Miracles are erupting. I’m engorged with passion! Prude-dude is shrinking like a tornado has just smashed her into asphalt. Serpent power rise!
Proof of my serpent power rising and prude-dude vanishing: I actually like the music my grandma used to have on in her very slow moving car—because it is stirring me in an erotic way. More proof? I used the words loins and erotic, and enjoyed it!
Lately, I can connect to every single song that has a semblance of a romantic edge of hope. I’ve been delving into songs, living and breathing the lyrics, like some lovesick damsel in distress or a diving duck. Plunge, ruffle feathers, plunge, ruffle feathers. Every inch of me is longing for connection. Here is a song that suddenly I think is the bee’s knee, only because the prospect of romance dances within the words and ignites my entire being….like almost every damn song I listen to. (swear word, giggles)
Ignore the commercial…but the music really is a must for this post: Direct Link
Once a prude, NOT always a prude, I tell you! In high school, I kid you not, inside the bathroom walls, more than one girl inked, “I want to be like ‘Samantha Craft,’ the virgin.” Whether the wash-closet writing was fact or fiction remains a forever mystery. The point is, I looked like a prude, acted like a prude, and was assumed to be a prude. I couldn’t say the name of private parts aloud—hmmm, writing them still causes difficulty. Don’t worry, by next week I’ll be able to write that word used to describe hotdogs—I’m certain.
Passion was a no-no for long-long time.
But I’m done with the subdued prude-dude. I remember wearing my first jean skirt as a young adult and asking my father if the skirt was too revealing—the hem touched right above the ankle. There was a time period I wore short skirts, but this was primarily to appease some goof-head (for lack of more fitting words), I was hopelessly in lust with. For the most part, my hemline was long, my clothes loose, and my neckline high. Typical stereotypical grade school teacher…from the early 20th century!
Well, what’s happened? You might wonder. I know I was wondering. I’ve had crazy surging and purging emotional eruptions for the last few weeks. At first I thought it was the pig hormone I’m taking for my hypothyroid—Karmic payback, in a beneficial way, since I stopped eating pig when I was ten. But, no, the pig-powers-that-be might love me, but this is something that even out does the power of Wilburs and oinkers everywhere.
An extreme knowing that I have a right to feel what I want
Pleasure seeking
Pain avoidance
Extreme feelings of passion
Extremes of emotions
Sensuality
Reconnecting to and appreciating my body
Longing to walk barefoot
Feeling improved energy, vitality, and health
Youthful glow
Expanding personal relationships
Achieving excellence in creative endeavors
Indescribable enormous power
Vibrating sensations
Less sleep
Thinking and acting remarkably different
Detachment
Self-transcendence
Bliss
Ecstasy
Visions
Clairaudience
.
After Photo: Goddess of Love!
If only I could bottle this! Oh, but to take any away from me, would be sinful.
What’s happening to me, as far as I can tell, is called Kundalini Awakening (sexual energy). I’m no expert. I am a life-student still enrolled in school. But something boot-kicked the prude-dude out and let the coiled serpent expand. This energy of consciousness, I take it, has been aroused through spiritual discipline (120 days of bleeding my soul onto the screen for all to see) and spontaneously (connection with another). The energy of the second chakra, located physically in the pelvic area, has transformed. My center of creativity freed and honored. This chakra, my gateway, the center of emotions, is spiraling in divine tune because I have ALLOWED myself to experience life through my feelings and sensations. The prude-dude removed! This is my serpent power, the energy that lies like the serpent in the root chakra. Think of those trick cans opening to expose the explosive toy snake. That’s me. Snake in a can!
So this explains why I can’t get enough of music; why I can’t get enough of photography and poetry; why I can’t get enough of any source that evokes extreme emotions. And probably why guys keep opening doors for me!
“So, that music, Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin, meaning the beauty there of being the consummation of life, the end of this existence and of the passionate element in that consummation. But, it is the same language that we use for surrender to the beloved, so that the song — it’s not important that anybody knows the genesis of it, because if the language comes from that passionate resource, it will be able to embrace all passionate activity.” Leonard Cohen
(These photos were changed since the original post.)
This is the song I used to sing and imitate…when I was like ten. As I’ve said, I didn’t carry a barometer for appropriate behavior. I loved this song. I loved Natalie Wood. In my mind, this was a perfect song to sing in middle school in the cafeteria, while swaying my hips about and tossing my hair. Trouble started when I didn’t outgrow my delight in life—this innocence to dance and sing, and just be. Big trouble, as I approached high school, while still a ten year old in my mind.
I got downright cute and sexy approaching freshman year in high school, but didn’t know it. Once I turned fourteen, I always thought I was ugly. I was entirely clueless why the boys gawked and the girls jeered. Why the boys wanted my number and the girls shunned me. To me, I was still some scrawny kid inside. I didn’t see my sexy, my curves, my short shorts, my passionate eyes. I didn’t see what the others saw. As I matured into pretty, in my mind, I was still a little twiggy girl with buckteeth, a chipped front tooth, stringy hair, high-water hand-me-down jeans, and a flat chest. I had no idea I’d blossomed.
This was the other song I sang loudly in the middle school cafeteria
I used the moves and all. I was special. I was confident. I was damn awesome!
Before I turned fourteen, I was engorged with passion, full of life, energy, and the feeling I could conquer the world. At the end of eighth grade, Mother plucked me from the coast of California and moved me to Massachusetts to live with her longtime lover. All at once, I knew no one, was loved by no one, and knew not who I was.
This was a time of unmentionables. I transformed from wild stallion to fearful doe. I hid. I stayed in dark rooms. I pretended not to exist—this after being driven down a long country road by our twenty-something neighbor who was married to the flat-chested lady I babysat for the next door over. A scene, I blurred and blanched out of memory, that sucked out my passion, that transported the little girl I had been to a frightened woman, terrified of life, terrified to live.
I stopped living at the age of fourteen. I just stopped. My daily laughter turned to daily tears. I no longer danced. I no longer sang. I just existed. It was then I began to see my past, to compare what I’d been through to what my peers had been through. I recognized all at once how different I was, how damaged, how hopeless.
I stopped living because I finally saw my mother. I saw who she was and how she never was who I longed for her to be. I stopped living because I was ostracized at school, made fun of for my “California” looks, for my clothes, for my curves. I stopped living because when I looked in the mirror I was something horrible, unrecognizable. I wasn’t me anymore. The spirit of me, the joy, the lover of life, had been siphoned out of me. I was staring at a stranger in my skin. My eyes dulled. My heart numbed. And my entire view of life grey.
I no longer trusted the world or anyone in it. And I didn’t know where to go, how to be, and knew not enough to tell a soul of my agony. I angst perpetually from want, desire, and deafening loneliness. I ached for companionship, for people, for someone to shout out they loved me, for someone to see me—for someone to find me, wherever I’d gone.
I dreamt of ending my life. I dreamt of my prince, my twin flame, my soul mate, and would spend hours with him, in some enchanted place my spirit held. I imagined wherever he was, he would know the heart of me, that his heart would match mine, that he would be holding my heart, and would someday find me. I wept and wept and wept for him as much as I wept for the lost me.
I walked emptied.
It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that my spirit returned. I don’t know how, or why, it just did.
I have ever changed. This joy-filled, spirit of light has once again turned on, filling me with child-like glee. I have a plethora of things I want to do. A list that keeps growing and a spirit that keeps yearning and celebrating. I’m dancing inside. I’m walking on air. I’m not caring how silly I look. I’m loving me. I’m embracing my beauty, the beauty I lost thirty years ago.
Only in waking, some three decades later, I am finding myself in a strange land somewhat, surrounded by strange people I almost don’t recognize. Questioning my place, my role, my purpose. Wondering who I was for the last thirty years. Who I’d become. What choices I’ve made. How I’d let myself suffer. How I’d numbed my life.
I’m not recognizing photos of me from a month ago. Not understanding where I’ve been and who was inside of me for so very long. I can’t explain this transformation. I just can’t.
But looking into my eyes, I can see that the little girl who danced passionately without fear in the cafeteria, swinging her hips back and forth and tossing her hair about, is back. The lovely happy girl who played beside nature, climbed the trees, sang and dance, cuddled with puppies, held hands, and skipped and skipped long after sundown across paths of gold, rainbows, unicorns, and her forever friends, has returned to me. And I am embracing her fully, and never letting her go.
It was an ordinary night for a child who had grown accustomed to the unordinary. My dog Justice trembled under the bed, while Led Zeppelin vibrated through the wall. Inside the sheets, all wrapped up in Mother’s essence of bath oil and sandalwood, I tossed and turned. Then I laid listless and awake—a lump of boredom. I could smell the funny smoke again and hear bottles clinking.
I pleaded with God, “Please make the people go away.”
All at once, a melodic voice called out, “Hello, Little Girl.”
But I knew the voice wasn’t God.
I was certain my God didn’t have a Jamaican accent and dreadlocks. “We didn’t know you were in here, Pretty Lady. I’m sorry if we woke you,” the stranger apologized, as he approached Mother’s bed.
I leaned over casually on my arm, wanting to seem mature and interesting enough to earn his attention. “You didn’t wake me,” I responded, with a fake yawn, tapping my little chin with my tiny fingers a few times. I was accustomed to seeing strangers in the house, but not at my bedside. Still, I wasn’t nervous in the slightest degree. I’d liked meeting Mother’s friends. They were all interesting in that odd way…
The rest of this story can be found in the book Everyday Aspergers
Everyday Asperger's 