You are grounded.

Do you hear me?

All of you.

All of the books that are whispering to me that they have the answer to all of my problems, but make me feel like a failure for not reading/ finishing/ doing them: you are grounded.

All of the clothes in my drawers that are sighing about the day that I will fit into them again, making me feel like a failure for not being thin: you are grounded.

All of the food that I am ’supposed’ to eat because it’ll make me healthy and all of the eating plans I have made and failed at following, all of the diets I have tried and also failed at that made me feel like a pathetic fatty: you are grounded.

All of the emails I have not written back to, all of the phone calls I have forgotten to make/ not felt up to making that have made me feel like a bad friend: you are grounded.

All of the projects I have thought about starting that I haven’t grabbed with both hands, all of the guilt I have from when I have watched Lost instead of grabbing my creative dreams, and all of the feelings of inadequacy I carry from comparing myself to other people/ bloggers/ writers: you are grounded.

All of the crap in my head about not being a good enough wife because I am not currently a sex/ domestic/ intellectual goddess: you are grounded.

We’re done.  Do you hear me? I refuse to play with you anymore.  You are too heavy to carry and frankly, I am bored of you.  In fact, I think that the weight I try so hard to shed might be made up of you.  So you are grounded for the forseeable future.  You are not welcome anymore. I am locking you in the spare room and leaving you there until I decide what to do with you.

I am not sorry.

megg

THE JOURNEY

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again

painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
enscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

first, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes
of your life.

You are not leaving
you are arriving.

- David Whyte

Not Good Enough

Not good Enough

Not good enough

not good enough

not enough

not enough

not enough

ENOUGH.

Thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers and emails!

Dad is doing better. He is still in the ICU, but they have used the phrase, “Out of the woods,” so that is a very good thing. In fact, they brought him a television into the ICU so he could watch the hockey game tonight. I don’t remember my Dad watching hockey ever in his life before, so that is an interesting turn of events – lol. I spoke to him briefly this afternoon and he seemed in good spirits. My Mom sounds so much better now too. I wish I could squeeze them both with all of my heart, but sending them love is all I can do right now. It’s such a cliche, but love is really all that matters.

Hold your loved ones tight tonight for me.

xo

Most of the time I can cope with living an ex-pat life. Now is not one of those times.

Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” – Lewis Carroll

My robe smells of jasmine this morning, but I have no idea why.

I am drinking Tazo Green Ginger tea out of my favorite puffin mug.

I am homesick for myself, but I think I am slowly returning to normal.

It’s quiet here. I can hear two different clocks ticking.  It’s funny how they are ticking all of the time, but I don’t usually hear them.

I sometimes don’t post because I haven’t got a picture to go with it.  I think I will take some pictures today.

There are purple crocuses blooming in a fairy ring around the magnolia in our garden.   They make me think of magic and how fast time is flying.  It’s nearly spring again.

Time for more tea.  How are you?

In my mind, those of you who are scared of changing the food on your plate are not sacred of changing the food on your plate. The real issue is changing your focus. Letting the light in. Half empty is comforting. It ensures that since you won’t be reaching you won’t be falling. There will be no scrapes that need tending and stingy alcohol. They call it “cruise control” for a reason. But I ask you this, is it breezy and warm inside your own personal city limits or deep down does it feel like prison?” Kris Carr

I’m scared of the dark.  I’m scared of the dark, mushrooms, violent images, cooking, failing, putting pictures of myself on my blog, and so much more.  But another thing I have been scared of is quotes like the one at the top of this post: quotes that make you think that in order to live a “wild and precious life” (Mary Oliver) you have to throw caution to the wind, bite the bullet, and streak naked through your life.  Talk about scary!

But this morning a light went on.  In the spirit of my red year, I have picked up Sera Beak’s The Red Book again. Nervously reading it (it feels like a streaking naked book!) this morning, I suddenly got it. At the end of the introduction Sera writes: “Ask yourself: How intensely do I want to exist?” Click.

Yes.

Crap.

It’s not about causing trouble or being naughty or being dangerous.  It’s not about shaking other people up, or pushing societies’ rules, or reciting poetry in your pajamas standing on your head on a busy street corner while blowing bubbles out of your ass.  It’s about how intensely you are willing to experience your life.  It is about the choices you make in every moment of every day of your very own life.  It’s about being conscious.

I am ashamed to say that I have been consistently choosing the least conscious, and therefore easier option lately.  But is it easier?  In the long run is it easier to choose easy and then live with regret and self condemnation or would it actually be easier to make the more difficult choice and live with self esteem and pride?

How intensely do I want to exist?  How can I live dangerously on my own terms?  What am I going to do with my own wild and precious life?   I’m not sure.  I am going to sit with those questions for awhile and see where they take me now that I am not afraid of them anymore.  At this point even baby steps feel gloriously dangerous.

“Ask yourself: How intensely do I want to exist?”

Yesterday was the first day of the Year of the Tiger in the Chinese calendar.  As I am a tiger, a friend told me that this year is going to have a lot of influences on me.  She also said I need to make sure I wear something red every day to ward off the negative ones. (Pardon me if I have butchered that explanation!)

But it seems to slot very nicely into where I am right now.  Fire is red.  Passion is red. Love is red. Red is energy and emotion.  Red is awake and full of feeling.  Red is very very very far away from beige.  Red is awareness that I should choose more bravely, pay more attention, and take bigger bites.  Red is joy and abandon.  Red is bursting into flame.

So for the next year I will attempt to wear a little (or a lot of) red every day.  And while I hope that it will ward off all negative influences, my intention is that it also reminds me to stay awake and to keep stirring the pot.   It scares me.  It feels like a combination of liberation and heavy pressure.  Catching fire isn’t easy.  It requires fuel, air and a spark.  But somehow I know that it is what I need to do.

Red?  Yes.

xo

(photo from iberianature.com)

Questions. That is all I seem to have had for the past few months: questions.  Mostly the question has included ‘why’ and it has been directed somewhere around me.  But I have become bored of that, and myself.  In the movie The Man with Two Brains, Steve Martin asks for a sign telling him whether or not he should do something and everything around him shakes and rattles and his dead wife’s portrait screams ‘No!’ at him, but he keeps asking for the sign.  I have felt like that.  I’ve kept asking why, but this morning I realized that I need to start asking ‘what?’

The Universe has been sending me fire.  The examples of the signs are many, so I won’t list them, but from my house catching fire to huge bonfires set in front of my house (the biggest examples) fire has been a distinct theme.  Two nights ago I asked the Universe what I was meant to do next, ‘give me a sign,’ I said.  That same night a ladybug landed on my chest as I lay in bed. (Odd as it is February and far too cold for ladybugs.)  I looked up the symbolism and it said, “Ladybug, ladybug fly away home.  Your house is on fire and your children are alone…” Fire.  This morning I was getting dressed in the dark and the static charge on me set off several sparks as I got dressed.

So sitting at my computer in the very early morning I wondered where to go from here.  Not ‘why’ but ‘what.’  It’s all very well getting signs, but I have been feeling so beige lately I haven’t had the courage or the energy to do anything about it.  I moved my computer a few inches to make writing easier and there in front of me on a green Post-it in my very own handwriting was a quote: “Remember, you are not here to play it safe. You are here to start fires.” – Sera Beak

Fire.  I’ve had none on the inside.  It has all been external.  Inside I have felt empty and a little lost.  But Deb Talan’s lyrics have been haunting me for a few days: “You are a phoenix with your feathers still a little wet.”  I’ve been poo-pooing it because I have never felt less phoenix-like in my life, but perhaps that is what the external fire has been about.  A phoenix rises from the ashes and flies.  The space around them doesn’t continue to burn when they have taken flight again.  I am in that place where the fire has surrounded me and I have been left feeling quite wobbly and unsure.  But I guess it’s my turn now.  It’s time to get those wings flapping again.  It’s time to get my own fire burning.

“Remember, you are not here to play it safe. You are here to start fires.” – Sera Beak