One un-deep thought by Sam Craft: “I had such a good hair day yesterday, I just don’t know how I can live up to that today.”
And now the deep:
My fixations consume me. They bring me to a place that no one else can reach or touch. A place I feel safe and not vulnerable: a place of discovery, of grand interest, of dreams, of dynamite thoughts and imaginings, of newness and possibilities. My fixation is like a light switch to me. With my intense focus, I am able to turn off the rest of the world—particularly the problems and woes. I can at last breathe in and stop fretting.
For the most part, when I have an intense focus I feel alive and with purpose. There seems to be a reason for living. When I do not have a fixation, I feel lost and unprepared for the day. My special interest is like a backpack filled with vital life supplies for me.
Trouble is, eventually, about every three to five months, my fixation/special interest switches. Just out of the blue. Bam! I wake up, and the fixation is entirely gone. Wiped clean. Think window cleaner to bathroom mirror. One swipe and the toothpaste splatters that you’ve been staring at for ages are gone. And you wonder why you stared at those splatters for so long! Unless you are anal and wipe your mirror everyday…which is so not me.
With the clean wipe, every bit of desire and hunger to learn or study or explore the topic is gone. It’s like a thief in the night came and stole my impulse.
I’ve gotten to the point now that when a fixation starts, I can step back, outside myself, look at the calendar, and track pretty much exactly when the fixation will leave.
This tendency to fixate made relationships with men when I was younger rather difficult. I’d have a giant crush on someone. Hugely so. Bleed out poetry and breathe lust filled thoughts, and then wake up to discover (usually after winning a guy over) that I truly didn’t even like the person. Then the challenge began, as I was so desperate to not be alone, that I’d stay with the guy even though they now gave me the creeps. Nothing like kissing a guy who makes you cringe.
Since being married my fixations are typically not other men, which I’m sure my spouse is relieved to know. However the fixations are still there, and strong as ever. I move through interests like one might move through fad diets. One month this, three months later that. The funny thing is, that each time a new fixation comes, I think: This is the one! This is what I’ve been waiting for. Kind of like I did with men.
Truth be told, my latest fixation was blogging. And wouldn’t you know it, about five months have passed, and I woke up yesterday with this void and lack of desire to post. A new fixation has taken over. That of walking and photography. And the old fixation, that of blogging, has ended up in a pile with some of my other past interests: Farmville, slickdeals.net. I’d like to add cleaning to the list…to put it in a pile, too. But cleaning has rarely been a fixation for more than a day, and that’s typically when the house is so dang messy, I have to clean to breathe.
Last year my fixations included reading over a hundred spiritual books, Buddhist studies and retreats, turning a room in our house into an office for my spiritual coaching business, planning retreats, and studying techniques for spiritual readings. I lived and breathed spirituality. Until I woke up in late May of last year and the fixation was entirely gone. Presto…Emptied of all desire. Then I switched to getting a degree in counseling. And that became my fixation. In my first college course, I read twice the required readings, and delved into every project, spending ten hours on an assignment, when clearly one hour would have been adequate. The counseling fixation ended in February. And then the door opened to blogging. Blogging was like a whirlpool that I gladly leaped into. And now I find myself, just coming up for air, and standing on the shoreline all sopping wet and confused.
I don’t want to blog anymore. The desire is gone. The fixation vanished. And I think my swimsuit is still in the whirlpool. So I stand naked, confused, and unaware of just where the heck I’ve been, or at least where my brain has been for the last four-plus months.
Odd sensation. I explain some of this feeling of emerging from a special interest in this well-read post
And so today, I am sharing where I stand naked—on this shore utterly perplexed and baffled, finding myself once again in awe of how I am consumed in something, and then seemingly spat out by the vortex and set back on my feet, only to wonder where the heck I’ve been.
The good news is, with my new current fixation of walking and photography, you are bound to see more photos of the great northwest than you ever signed up for. And, of course, photos of my good hair days!
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*** I am still going to blog…just not everyday.
And music isn’t a fixation; it’s a way of life. So that shall always be, as my love for you!
A song I can’t get out of my head. There’s always one that sticks around for days.
“I have a deep angst in the depths of me that I have been carrying in my soul since May of this year. I do not have the words to describe this experience, except to say I feel a vast depth in my inner being that is filled with a mixture of love, passion, and longing. I have carried this from when I awake, until I sleep.
Dreams bring escape.
I have tried to figure out what to do with this feeling that feels akin to unconditional expansive love—a bottomless pit I want to fill with all the beauty about me.
I have had no choice but to pour the angst out of my soul day after day into prose and poetry. Each day I think I am emptied, only to find, time and time again, that I am not relieved for even a moment.
I have tried to pour this love into one person, and find that this love is not made for one.
I have tried to cry it out, walk it out, starve it out, laugh it out, talk it out….but alas it stays, lingering in the forefront of my every waking thought.
This love will not depart, and instead seems to grow with each coming day.
I know not what to do. The feeling is akin to the huge cavernous hole I would experience with the thought of expectation, a joyful event about to take place, a reunion of lovers, an anticipation of marvelous ecstasy.
The butterflies are a million. The energy persuasive and all-encompassing, as if heaven’s angels are all at once swirling within me, their wings stirring a golden dust of light.
I cannot move at times.
I cannot catch my breath at times.
And there seems to be no antidote.
I am slowly realizing that I am not meant to solve this riddle of love.
I am not meant to dislodge the love or give this love to one.
I am meant to embrace this love and welcome it. To say each morning: Welcome my angst. Welcome my calling. Welcome heaven’s voice. Thank you for letting me know I am alive. Thank you for letting me be your instrument. I welcome you with open arms. I embrace you. I walk with you for as long as you wish to be here. And I carry you for the world. This light seed. This watering can for the masses.” ~ Sam Craft, July 2012
We went to Mt. Rainier National Forest in the state of Washington, USA, yesterday.
I felt this unbearable love the entire drive there. I listened to music through my headphones and daydreamed of a forest glen, me as an elven princess, and of a charming knight. When we arrived at the basin of National Park I asked the heavens for a sign, for validation of this vast love I am carrying. Within minutes all the dark clouds began to disperse. Not long after, when I stepped out of the van, I turned, and this is what I saw.
This heart cloud was only there for a matter of seconds.
Later I asked for more signs. Greedy little girl I am…..because one heart in a beautiful clear blue sky was not enough!
I’ve always said that the angels have a sense of humor…. These are the signs I was given.
Signs on the path my family made for me and my youngest, so we could find our way to the end of the trail.
I am still learning to SPECIFY when I make requests for signs!
Hours later, as we finished our 5.5 mile hike, I looked up to the sky, and specifically asked for a sign to validate the overflowing love I have inside and to confirm one of my deepest desires (a desire which I shall not mention because I don’t have to–giggles and blushing)
And in an almost cloudless sky, another heart cloud formed right then and there above me.
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“Your truth speaks for those still listening for their voices, between the frayed and hanging stitches of their seams.” ~ My Aunt’s words to me
Oh, and here are my toes.
Tomorrow I shall post some lovely photos of the National Forest. Almost as lovely as my big toe. Or I shall share a silly slumber party poem that mentions the word shagging! Or both. Or something else. Isn’t life wonderful? All these choices. And toes…..glorious purple toes.
For those of you that are not into rambling, here is a pretty photo I took today. You can look and stare, and come back tomorrow.
Oh, and this one too.
And one more, since I like the number three, and because this is my all time favorite.
Now for the rest of you…here you go:
People often say I look familiar to them, or they know someone who looks like me, or that they have met me before. Years ago someone thought I was that teacher that got caught shagging her student. Don’t remember her name, but it didn’t help when the suspecting stranger asked if I was a teacher, and I said, “Yes.” I’ve been told I look like certain celebrities—usually bad politicians or people who play dope dealers on television. Thusly, the still very small ego. That strikes me as odd, that people recognize me or relate me to others, as I haven’t a fricken clue regarding what I look like.
I do not recognize myself in any photo. My dear friend who is a photographer says my bone structure affects my photos. She reassured me I don’t need plastic surgery. I actually texted her from some hotel in northern California in tears after a recent photograph, convinced I needed a nose job that very day.
This week, my dear masseuse reassured me that in person I do indeed look like my photos on my blog. Yes, I have the most awesome masseuse; she actually gives the best massages while discussing me and my blog. I call her my number one fan! That and sue-happy! She said I don’t look like me when I give that look though…with some questioning, sweet Sue agreed that look meant a blank stare. That blank stare look is my typical smile, or what feels like a smile.
Everyday my husband patiently answers questions for me about my looks. During a movie I might ask (during a crucial moment of the film): Do those look like my wrinkles? Am I that old looking? Do I look like her when I smile? Is that my nose? Oh, is her hair like my hair?
That same photographer friend I texted, she has always said I am blessed with a gypsy-skin complexion and doe eyes. I like her. To make me feel better, she also has told me, more than once, that “pretty” people never like photos of themselves because they appear different depending on lighting. I really like her a lot. She also says I am a good catch. I love her.
To me, my appearance changes from moment to moment. Forget about the photos. Each time I look in the mirror I do not recognize myself. I particularly do not like my reflection in the car’s rearview mirror or in the glass screen of my laptop computer. Some reflections accentuate all my lines, and I appear to be a prune. I cry at prune faces.
I do not recognize my eyes as the lids droop. And as I age, I wonder where the me before went. Not that I ever saw myself fully to begin with. But now it seems the person I never figured out is vanishing all together into the folds and creases of flesh.
Not being able to judge how I look affects me in many ways. I can’t apply makeup well. I don’t know how. Lessons won’t help. I can’t tell if the shade is right or if I have put on too much or too little. Usually I hardly wear any makeup. I do like watching my eyes change once I put mascara on my lashes, though. I’m like a little girl. I apply and then stare in amazement. It’s like someone enlarged my eyes. When it comes to eyeliner, I can’t tell if it makes me look older, wiser, sexier, or slutty. I do however notice that lately I have developed these distinct come-hither bedroom eyes. Don’t know what’s that about, but have some theories.
Fixing my hair is hard. I can’t tell what it looks like. Hair pins at different angles, hair back, hair forward, hair wet, hair straight, hair curly. My looks alter depending. I don’t know who the heck I am. I guess if I was bald that would be one less constantly changing thing. But then I’d probably have that whole light-reflection-changing-the-angle-of-my-scalp thing going on.
I cannot grasp facial features in general, of anyone. For instance, if I was asked to describe a person’s face for a police sketch artist, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even describe my sons’ faces. I was always fascinated in movies when the witness would tell the sketch artist about the nose shape, the eyes’ distance, the lips, the hairline. It feels like they have super powers to me. I’ve been staring at my fourteen year old’s face for fourteen years, and I still couldn’t tell you what he looked like beyond the fact that he has big eyes like me, long lashes, thin dark hair, and a chin like his dad. The rest, all the inside parts, inside the hairline, the face shape, the nose, the lips, the brows, they all go blurry when I try to visualize my son.
I see things in pictures. I see things as a large whole or a specific. For example I see the wrinkles between the eyes, the bump on a nose, the ear that sticks out, the red dot on a check. I am naturally drawn to the details, and distracted by the details, as if I am a camera focusing in. Then, after a little bit of time, I focus out and see the overall face. It is as if I do not have a middle focus, only very narrow or very vast.
I am amazed at how I can look so very different from what I imagine myself to look like. Inside my head I do not look like any representation outside of me.
I’ve always studied faces, since I can remember. Last year my fixation was ears, particularly ear lobes. I was trying to figure out what my ears looked like in comparison to others’. I know my ears are unique…elf-like…they stick out a bit, and larger on the top part, and generally fleshy. Makes for good nibbling, I suppose. It’s been a whole year of ear studying, and I still am clueless. I couldn’t draw you a picture of my ear unless I was staring at a photo, and likely tracing.
I just started on my nose in May. I’ve been comparing my nose to other noses, and trying to find a companion nose, so I know what the heck my nose looks like. My nose is a funny creature, constantly changing shapes based on the camera angle or how I look at myself in the mirror. When I take a photo of myself, like above, when I extended my arm out, my nose is very European. Sometimes it’s rather cute and pudgy. Other times I know for a fact someone has put their nose on my face, and it’s just not mine! I’ve been studying movies lately, pausing a film and looking at the actresses’ faces, and noticing that their noses change too. It’s not just mine. I’ve noticed how still frames of a movie star’s face are so different from when an actress is in motion. I like to go to the dentist and eye doctor, because I spend time studying faces in magazines.
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I’m still trying to get used to seeing me. Sometimes I think I look like me one day, but then the next day I look back at a photo and think that is not me.
I honestly don’t think I am supposed to be in a human body. I frequently feel as if I have put on the wrong body suit.
I have been insecure my whole life about my looks; mainly because I am a walking shift-shaper and have no looks. From one mirror to the next, I am not me. I capture glimpses of me, but then I fade. Sometimes I think I look very Maltese/Sicilian and other times I see my Irish side. Sometimes I look like I’m from another planet. Other times I am certain I am a little elf: a princess elf with handsome male knights that adore me. And one in particular I want to marry in the forest glen…I digress.
Sometimes I think I look very angular and other times very round. Sometimes I go through thirty moods about my looks in one single day. One mirror in the morning might reveal a tolerable image; I might even like my appearance; but another mirror in the afternoon makes me afraid to leave the house because I’m so frightful to behold. I’ve felt this way my whole life.
Recently, beyond the ears and nose, I’m starting to study eyelids and how they droop. If I am staring at you, I am likely studying your lids. Take no notice; the phase will pass. Just keep your fingers crossed that I don’t leave the face area!
I may sound vain, but I don’t think I am. I think this face obsession has something to do with how my brain views the world in pictures, even words and numbers in pictures, and how my brain is trying to piece together the whole of a very complex shifting face.
I don’t know if I’ll ever truly see me. I recognize me, of course. But I don’t know if I’ll ever understand what I consistently look like.
I AM trying to change something. I’m superb at picking out all my flaws and thinking I am a walking big-nosed, wrinkly-faced bozo. So I am practicing looking at myself without cringing. That’s a big deal for me. Since I recently lost a lot of weight, and have grown more confident inside, men are noticing me more. This is very weird for me. I keep thinking, what the heck do they see in me. Are they blind?
I’ve been posting a lot of photos of me on this blog because I am trying to come to terms with what I look like and to accept myself. I actually am very confident on the inside. Interior-wise, I love me, probably a little too much a times. I’ve falling in love with my person and spirit entirely, and at the same time fallen in love with other people, too. Thing is I don’t care what they look like. Heck, their faces shift and change more than mine. So I focus on their energy, their beauty, their eyes. So that’s what I am trying to do with me: focus on the inner beauty and my eyes.
Please don’t tell me I’m pretty or lovely; that’s not going to help. If you want to comment, comment about the subject matter. I’m not fishing for compliments. Even when I called my husband in to look at the photos tonight, I just needed reassurance that the photos looked like me. And I needed him to say he didn’t notice the huge, gigantic mountain-eating wrinkles. I needed him to explain to me why I look so different in every photo. I must have asked him fifty times, “Is that really me? Do I really look like that?” This isn’t about beauty to me or self-acceptance; it’s about figuring out a puzzle. It’s about figuring out who that woman is staring back at me in the mirror.
Monster of the dark, why do you come to me at night and steal my joy so readily; and leave me shaking, a small child, lost alone and terrified?
Monster: I steal nothing, young heart of mine, that you do not wish already stolen, that you have not already offered on table for me. Nothing you have not called me forward to retrieve and swallow whole. Nothing you do not already miss because you never allowed yourself to seize it. This fickle mind of yours, so solid in one truth, and then the next. How bitter the taste to savor something that is already abandoned.
Monster, I do not understand. How do I wish anything to be stolen?
Monster: You speak of love. Love, love, love. You cherish love. You want love; but when this love is given to you, you know not what to do with it. Instead it as if you spit on love. Spit and spit, unwilling to even grasp the idea of someone loving you. And yet you say you love? Ha! I laugh in your face. I spit in your face. If you loved than you would gladly take this love they give.
Monster, this is not true. You live in a false illusion. What you see is the fantasy world. You cannot see my world. Only muted shades of black and white. You see no colors. You do not know what I feel and what I hold to me.
Monster: Then why don’t you take in what these people tell you?
Monster, I do not know. I want to. I open my arm and hands and heart and mind, and I want to. But I cannot feel it, any of it. Everything of this world feels numb to me. This world of love. Everything seems a ribbon or prize…nothing that I am worthy of. I cannot take these prizes when I do not feel I have been a participant in the race or contest. Yet, life feels so very much like a contest, where in everyone is struggling for prize. And I don’t want to be like this, yearning for one prize after the next. Constantly striving. I just want to be.
Monster: But you don’t take at all. You don’t accept at all. You are this constant giver who will not receive. And that makes you a monster, too. Do you not see? The greatest gift is to accept what others give, to with open hand reach out and accept their truth as your truth. This is not absolute. This does not make them right or you wrong. This does not make you prideful. This makes you real. And yet you play this dance where you cannot accept, cannot stand to feel. What is it you fear from these feelings? What do you fear?
Dear Monster I fear loss. I fear if I collect anything—friendship, objects, compliments, words, or thoughts—that they will eventually be lost. People leave. People perish. Objects come and go. Opinions change, and words they are shape-shifters based on the speaker and witness.
Monster: Yes. Yes. But you miss the greatest point, the finite reason that your theory, your way, is flawed. For if you spend your whole life not accepting for fear of loss, then you spend your whole life losing for fear of accepting. You set yourself up from the start to suffer loss over loss, without remission. Where if you were to open your hands and let some slip into your possession, then chances are you will hold onto some and lose some. But then again, even the lost was once had. With your way nothing is ever had. Why are you so afraid to feel?
Dear Monster: If I let myself feel, I risk everything. If I let myself love, I risk everything. If I let myself think for a fraction of a second that I am special, I risk self. I do not know the fine line. I do not know how to remain humble and how to accept love at the same time. I know how to give love. I know that well.
Monster: No, you do not! You do not know how to give love. You think you do. You think love is sacrifice. Love is not sacrifice. Love has no feelings, other than love. Nothing that pulls and tugs, digs or plunges, nothing that burns or confuses, nothing that makes someone hurt, is of love. You are not giving love, you are giving fear. You are giving what you think love is. You are giving a safety net, a security blanket, a voice to calm the potential storm. Do not look at people as if they are about to explode or cry or reject. Look at people how you want to be seen. How do you want to be seen?
Dear Monster: I want to be seen as a loving worthwhile being of light. I want to be seen as important and special. I want to be held over and over again in kindness and affection. I want people to come to me for shelter and I want to receive shelter. I want to be weak and strong. I want to be happy and sad. I want to be me in totality and to be loved unconditionally.
Monster: Then you have your answers. Let people see your light. Let people see you are important and special. Let people hold you in kindness and affection. Let people be your shelter. Let people love you unconditionally, in all your states. They are trying, but you are not letting them, dear child. That is why I steal from you at night. For you leave everything out on the table like scraps for the dog. And I smell this waste. I smell this discarded love. And of course I come after you. I am hungry. I am starved. I am the monster that is you, who refuses to eat, and instead cried that there is no food. How many times must a man say he cares until you listen? You feed off of ghosts and cry of starvation when there are plates full all around you. How can you point fingers at me, this monster, who only comes out crawling when he is called by the bitter woes of you? You ring anger’s bell. You ring sadness’s bell. You summon me again and again with this feast of forgotten love. And I take. Of course I take, because you will not.
Dear Monster: Friend indeed, a part of me. Here to show me what I cannot see. How I trick myself time and time again thinking there is something in the shadows stealing and haunting my dreams; when in truth I am my own shadow, my own monster, my own robber of hope. How I do remember now, my familiar face—the hideous claws—the fang-like teeth—how I remember hiding them onto myself so I could face the world. So long ago, I hid you monster, my fierce protector and guide. So long ago when you were once beautiful, a lovely song, a summer’s sweetheart. How I hid you and disfigured you, and made you this hideous teacher to blame. And now you come out, to me, in truth, and I take your hand. I see your beauty. Your eyes. Your hair. Your breath. The very essence of you. You are beauty from the dark. I am beauty from the light. And together we make days upon days, birthed out of wholeness and completion. Nothing is as it seems. Nothing at all. When even the darkness is me.
I spoke: “I will scribe a million pages, every word a testimony to your beauty: an endless story. Beguiled and enchanted, my fingers will embrace the keys, and paint the all-encompassing passion that stirs my soul. Recklessly, I will hold your hands strong, hear your voice deep, and in pages’ dreams you shall live.”
He spoke: “I am not this flesh, nor these eyes. My beauty cannot be quantified or qualified or held in possession or estimation. Do not weigh, judge or evaluate. I have already been made prisoner of selfish eyes. Do not watch me as the others. Know beauty is immeasurable and does not rot with this flesh and break with this bone. Appearance will fade. Let loose this withering illusion you grasp. See where beauty truly rests. Behind the gaze. Come hither, come follow the depths of me. I shall take you through the corridors of my secrets, my dreams, my fantasy. Here I stand naked, exposed, and vulnerable. Here is risk. Here is truth. And fear unveiled. Here is beauty.”
I spoke: “To the depth of me your eyes speak. You are beauty from my dreams, every facet, every groove a memory, a recollection that inspires and pulls me through. You brighten me. You lighten me. You fill me with a glow I’ve never known. Every part, every line I have traced before. And yet, I am made not to touch, not to reach, not to know. How my heart aches. How my every day is filled with misery and dismay. Though I walk enlightened and free, with new hope and dreams, I am ever brought back to the pool of cool springs, the freezing knowing that you are not mine to have.”
He spoke: “Choose what bathes you. What bathes your spirit, a gentle charm, almost silent, almost invisible. You are inherently lovely. You calm me. You complete me with your kindness. A mirror to me, your logic is sliced through with innocence and curiosity. Justice is carried where you step. Secrets upheld. Your sweetness equal to your sincerity; both leave me thirsting for more brightness. You are my humble adobe, and my spirit rests in you. Your abiding grace coupled with loyalty, I cherish, moment by moment. I await you, as one awaits the sunrise. Can you not see that you are the sun to me, the one that feeds my very vine. How wonderful that I hold your inherent goodness, and not a shadow existence, a hope, a distraction. I hold on to truth, while you hold on to fantasy. Can you not see my love is pure, while you are still child sitting under tall tree, waiting for the shade to part, and love to find you, when you are already found? You stand filled, but yet you weep for this illusion of emptiness.”
I spoke: “But what of my story, my every wish around you, my waiting, my yearning, my constant wanting. Are you not what I need? Desire? Crave? My thankfulness inside your silhouette. I stand here, at center purged of games, intention, and manipulation. I stand naked, as you proposed. I am vulnerable to the core. I am all I can be. And yet you reject.”
He spoke (with laughter): “Precious one. I don’t know who taught you of love. Who taught you of heart. But what you wait for, what you crave, what you long for intensely with every bit of you, I cannot provide. That is your journey to walk. Your journey to lead. Remember I am this flesh still. Always this blood that runs out in time. The heart that tires. The brain that dissipates. Hold onto what is me alone, and you will wither. See that beyond the dream is the reality of spirit, this wanting man, who longs to be seen from the inside, where the light abides. Embrace the inner me, and in turn you embrace yourself. I am but a mirror, and shall always be my friend, a mirror of where you stand. What you make of me, you make into yourself. What you think you lack, you make me lack. What you think I am, you become. Build me up from the foundation, from the soul-level; so that when all about I fall apart, what remains is strength in character and spirit. Love me there. Love me at the center. Please. Please love me there.”
I spoke: “I love you there. I do. I love you there, and will love you there entirely, if that is what you wish. But how does one un-paint the pages I already scribed…how do I bleed this pain out of me. How does the yearning cease, the thoughts stop?”
He spoke: “You just decide. That is all. You just decide. Decide that you are in completion, that I am in completion, and any thought of a human fixing or repairing you is false. I can be with you, but cannot be you. I can be with you, but cannot be your all. I am not your answer, nor your question. I am a man. I am all that man is. And you are all that woman is. And together we are no more complete than apart. This is a game you play in your mind. A mystery that has no solution. So release. Decide and release. And turn your focus and energy to the core of you. Here is where the love is. Not outside.”
I spoke: “Then I decide. I decide. I am enough. You are enough. We are already complete. And I release you, lovely bird from your cage. I release you without expectation, dream, or intention. I release what I have made you into. I release the power I have granted you. I release everything, and in doing so, without this attachment, I will love you fully, for no other purpose but for your essence.”
Everyday Asperger's 