Christmas Ghosts

At this time of year I experience hauntings. I liken it to seeing something out of the corner of my eye, a flitting heel of an entity memory that I can bring into clear focus with some effort.

I have to stop and grab at it and pull it into my field of mental vision.

On a T.V. show, I see a flower dress and the memory of my mother sewing a similar dress for me and for my doll returns for the first time since my childhood.

While washing my hands I think of a friend with Rapunzel hair who makes Christmas tree ornaments and remember her saying she did not want to date. But she did have sex occasionally with a man who liked her.

As I clean out the sink, I think of the day she said he was helping her put up the tree and she was suddenly hit by the realization that she loved him.

I wipe down the counters and wonder how that relationship feels from the inside now after so many years together.

Lately, the whispering memories around me have enclosed me in a dark place. I am flat. I go through motions like a quickly sketched animation figure not fully detailed out as yet. I haven’t know what day it is, nor did I care.

My numbing out to Netflix ends most of my days until I slap the computer shut and fall asleep curled around it, my nightly companion.

Last night, I watched you tube videos from spiritual teachers emphasizing that we each create our singular reality. Next we find a consortium of individuals we draw to us who like witches in the same coven chant around the kettle illusion. We throw in our own sentences, our facts, our memories, what we believe are proofs and we circle together imbuing the cosmology contained in the iron pot with its power over our minds, our bodies, our certainties. The spell we cast is on ourselves.

Last night, I fell asleep within the speakers’ words that we manifest exactly what and who we are.

The concept that I am the cause of my depression does nothing to lift my head. Anyone who has the condition knows that the words provide yet another cudgel to beat oneself about the head. Not only are we walking in the valley of despair but it is entirely our own fault.


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A person with depression is thus like Scrooge. The curse comes from the past and also is happening in the present. In addition, there seems to be no future other than the one that individual is projection outward.

With depression there is a wrestling with guilt and a crying out that if I could do something, I would. So the blame becomes burdensome. There comes to be shame for not being strong enough to like some beefy super hero just burst out of the encapsuling cage.

I listened to the teachers and I snapped shut the computer and fell asleep next to my distraction, entertainment, life partner.

And like the Christmas Carol Dickensian tale, I was visited. I felt something, someone, some thoughts lingering around me. I slept for nine hours straight and woke up with an abiding sense that I had been infused with new stories.

I knew that I would write ten blogs in ten days. I knew that I would do my fifth edit on my book, Walking the Streets of Blood, about my experience of the Paris Attacks.

Anyone who is familiar with the cycles of depression knows that the victories are subtle. The amount of time, the severity of the dark thoughts, the ability to take action despite a bitter taste in the mouth can be assessed to understand that it is getting better.

 

freedom

My meditation practice, I liken to self surgery. As I sit, I can gently remove the narrative habit and bring myself home to breath. I can check myself for electrical, neurological storm sites. I can touch the inside of the shape of my body and find areas where anger or grief is hiding.

And last night, as I slept, the words of great teachers were working in my subconscious reminding me that my energy is strong, my heart is compassionate, I am here on purpose to teach. I am here to lift others up because I have had the experiences of the winding road of fear, abuse, victim hood, and repetition of error. The wounding and the failures are the journey. When I opened my eyes, I was wrapped in calm.

I went to the window and saw the sun climbing the hills to shine light everywhere. And I begin again.

A Full Moon and Mortality

It is a time of sadness. I am sleeping deeply with the comfort of my habitual sadness blanket wrapping me alone. I am a mummy in my bed, the cold air cracking in my window strokes my face.

meditation on Christmas
The Ice full moon burns cold in the empty sky and next door my neighbours have colored lights strung on every branch in their yard. They are unafraid of child wonder excess in their unfenced territory.
I have a single ornament swinging from the hook meant to cradle newspapers. The gold star is all that I have left from what I threw out when I changed my life.
Under the fat moon the snow was blue, last night, and sequined. But I could not capture my reality with my camera as I stood there. It would not read whether I stood or crouched.
Reaching out. Not reaching out. All the same, my ego tells me. I am a vessel sink and the memories pass through me like water carried away somewhere I cannot know. The seven families that I have passed through are present at Christmas.

Just now, I lack the fire to excite myself. Teaching myself patience day by day, I sit meditation and feel into my thoughts like breath, like water passing in and through me.
I watch the desire for the perfect self appear and pass away.
And I listen to my ego chastising me for the errors that I insist upon repeating.
I wrestle with the desire not to wrestle with my thoughts and simply drop my eyes to feel so much grief for being human. The grief of yearning for more than I could possibly hold in my own two fists is singing to me.
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I watch and endure the waiting for the end of waiting. I think of the magnificent sparkler moments when I just burst into the light an ecstasy moment of love.
I am sitting waiting for passion to carry me out of this frozen time, to carry me above the rigidness of anger. I endure the invasions of barbarian thoughts destroying everything in their path.

We create the self. We go beyond the self
I work on myself learning how to accommodate the chaos of being alive in a body in this time, at this time, marked by the franking of my sex, my family, my culture, my identification.

The only untainted goal is to be between restless desires for a split moment and let the tears like water flow from me, flow through me to clarify my vision so that I maybe present when I am called upon to love.
I sit and watch the invasions of my barbarian thoughts and forgive myself for being merely and so magnificently human.

Gathering thoughts like socks

It has been neither nor, not either or lately. The weather has caused the persistence of my flowers setting hopeful buds and the continued infill of grass in the bald spot in my lawn.

 

Trees heavy with no snow

Trees heavy with no snow

I have also been floating in some kind of bubble since I returned from Los Angeles for the Airbnb conference. There I was surrounded by 15000 other hosts and constant stimulation.

I followed my “open door” policy that I adhere to when I am travelling. If a door is open, I go in. I found an architecture school retrospective and a feminist film festival. The experience was delightful and I felt happy, excited and at home.

l-a-castle

Los Angels looks like a Castle in the distance

Getting back to Kelowna was less stimulating. I fell into distraction mode by watching netflix every evening.

So I am neither totally at home as I stretch out my desire fingers for more stimulus, nor ready to travel. It is an in-between state.

I find myself thinking a great deal about Christmas.

Christmas is, basically, about time. It is when we slide from past images of ourselves surrounded or trapped; supported or sabotaged by our immediate family.

Rituals are powerfully present. The old ornaments are dug out of boxes. The archived rituals like museum displays of half remembered or reconstructed narratives surround us.

Some try to recreate what went before and others like survivors of an undisclosed war suffer flash back intensity moments.

 

out my winter window

out my winter window

Another group tries to sand away the family chisled pictograph stories and start again.

The pressure from the societal mindset to experience the “most wonderful time of the year” leads to scarcity mind. Comparisons lurk everywhere. It is a time of the highest suicide rate in Western culture.

The chasm lies like an earthquake severed landscape between what we are told we “should” be experiencing and what we have actually experienced in our lives.

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We are desperate to cover up the crevassed split between that which we see in our own lives and the mythical saccharine made for TV movies.

But we do have the ability to walk about this shifting landscape and between the seasons with grace and skill.

We each find our own way forward to the place where our own version of the everyday super hero lives.

We can move away from the seasonal quaff from the cup of bitterness or booze. We can clear see the mindless expectation that are trying to script our decisions.

Getting to the next thing… the next season… the next stage of who we are becoming is an immense relief.

The question is: “Who am I now?”

“Who am I now?”

“Who am I now?”

We step as children into our own past and re-author all of it with every new thought.

Freedom to love comes from freedom from the old stories.

What is this time that now holds me?

The season moves to a wall of cold and winter shows up. Christmas shows up with so much possibility.

 

my livingroom sanctuary

my livingroom sanctuary

We are free to run towards others with a child like innocence and love. I am here. I showed up.

It is all new. It is all now. What fun.