Speechless

Last night I was speechless...
I showed up at A Clean Well Lighted Place 4 Books, to see my favorite author, SARK (www.campsark.com), for a booksigning. Becky, my workshop partner, and I had left a long-winded message on her inspiration line a couple months back asking if we could talk about our Magic Money workshop at this booksigning. But we never heard back...

So last night, I'm sitting in the third row, and SARK is flying out paper airplanes with sayings on them, and a small paper fighter-jet hits the ceiling and falls right into my lap. *SHIT!* I exclaim. I open it up, and it's about Money. Then SARK laughs and asks me if I want to speak about the workshops now? No!!! I hide my face in my hands, I don't want to speak about anything! I don't have anything prepared, nothing to say, and SARK is amused. So she says a little bit about the magazine, that we do a workshop on money, and go check out the magazine. I'm smiling, Becky is smiling, and for the rest of the night my friends are so amused because they've never seen me speechless before...

People are stupid, when they are driving

And in the middle of typing this reverie about my book pile, we interrupt this bulletin for an important message, my one&only calling live from San Diego to sing a song we made up a while back (to the tune of Echo & The Bunnymen or the Doors, your preference):

people are stupid
when they are driving
people are stupid
behind the wheel
how did they ever
get their license
how did they ever
pass that test?
...
they should be really
riding a bike

Books

I'm in the middle of reading two books:
Soul Traveler by Albert Taylor
Prosperity Pie by SARK

And I have three books in my "to be read" pile:
Are You The One For Me? by Barbara de Angelis
Loving What Is by Byron Katie
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

By process of elimination, I chose which book to read. I am not in the mood to read about out of body experiences, thus, not Soul Traveler. I want more sustenance and vocabulary than SARK right now, I am not ready for Are You The One For Me, unless the title was "Are you the one for me right *now*" which it isn't, so I'm not, and although it's tempting to read Loving What Is, I don't want to do more processing of my currently over processed life, I want to feel commiserated with. I want to read writing about writing in a poignantly sarcastic amusing way...so the winner is:
Bird by Bird.

How do you choose which book to read?

Cleaning up messes

Strangest yesterday. I went to Becky's to talk about Being Real - the company - although I was resisting because I don't feel ready to bring a whole company into being, and it turned out that our conversation was 90% about cleaning up past messes, and 10% about new company. She says we are creating the company in cleaning up past messes, because it gives the new company a place to be without anything holding it back. Sorta. She said it better.

So yesterday I cleaned up a money mess from 10 years ago. Because looking bad still looms large in my thoughts, I'm not going to spill on what the mess was about, but just that I resolved it with a $200 money order. If all my guilt could be mea culpa'ed for a $200 money order....

And I am enjoying being honest and human in front of a new guy - who just did the forum last week. Sometimes I think people are put in our lives to teach us the lessons we most want/need to learn.

Saying what I mean, meaning what I say

There is something very powerful about just being straight with people. I use words in such over-complicated ways and hope that the other person can "guess" what it is I'm trying to say. I hesitate to say words that could hurt someone, and in doing so I am left feeling powerless because I'm not speaking my truth.

What does this have to do with the price of gas? Well, I stated the truth to two guys using language a kindergartener could understand - that I was not interested in them romantically. Period. Scaryscaryscary. How will they take it? But this is the distinction of being powerful, according to landmark, which is to be straight in my communication with others and take what I get.

Well, in doing so, I got my power back. Magical, truly completely magical.

Raw

I am feeling raw and emotionally naked today. Like a butterfly on day 1 out of the cocoon - looking around at the world and wondering if it will be friends with me. I have these wings, but I'm not sure how they're supposed to work, and I'm used to crawling around on the ground, but I get this feeling I'm supposed to fly. Oh, but the notions I have to let go of so that I can fly....

Aunt JuJu

A nineteen-month old angel named Karilyn entertained me on Friday and Saturday, pulling me insistently by the hand into her magic plastic playcastle. She could sit up just fine, I was grateful that my behind was small enough to fit through the door.

And I have a new name, thanks to her, because "Aunt Julie" is a bit too much for her to say, so I am "juju" to my sheer utter delight.

Went to lunch with my boyfriend from sixteen years ago. Spent the whole lunch thinking "I need to apologize for being a creep to him sixteen years ago," but said nothing, sitting high and mighty on my new age throne. After cleaning up all the messes I've created in my life, this was the only one left. I hadn't heard from him in years, and suddenly the email from him appeared out of nowhere, right when I was cleaning up the debris of emotional messes I'd left everywhere. Coincidence? I don't believe in coincidences.

So after lunch I called him and apologized for the lots of things I did wrong - which I didn't list to him, so I'm not going to list here either - and acknowledged him for being such a great person. He is. Really. I was the creep.

I felt like a reborn human after making that call. Which was funny, because my angel card du jour was "birth".