Sirens -
I'm writing this check in as the body of an email, mostly for the sake of familiarity. It feels more intimate, cozy, snugger, more like a cradle for my words. I don't know what words those will be, and have noticed feeling a kind of distance with our new online presence. I am still open-hearted and open-minded about letting it unfold, but like Foxy, aware of a shift and needing to allow some time for myself to find my way in, us to all find our way in, to this new way of checking in. It's amazing how powerful just the visual cues are - seeing my words in a blogger box versus seeing them in an outlook window or a word document or scrawled in my notebook (not that I've done that in a while...) - each has such a different flavor, different set of associations and sensations.
Right now I am sitting in a Starbucks in a strip mall I rarely visit, having just clinched a new client. Funny to write it that way, reminds me of when hikers talk about "bagging a peak" - it always makes me bristle a little, or a guy bragging about the woman he fucked over the weekend - where do I come up with this stuff? Anyway, I don't usually refer to "clinching" clients or closing deals; this work is so much more personal than that, but it feels good actually, to have the freedom here to just say it: I will get money from this person. I will indeed be very invested in their experience while we are meeting, but outside of that, it is a living I am making. Well, it's not that crass really. And what's so wrong with money anyway, Noa? Geez Louise.
In reality, a couple of clients wrapped up our work together recently, and it was bittersweet actually. I became quite attached to them and their journeys along the way, and at the same time recognize that I am one of those guides, one of those people who serves a particular purpose, plays a certain role, shows up for a contained moment in someone's life, hopefully right on time, right when they're ready and it makes sense, and then we part.
And there is the money. The fact that Red brought home $1,500 for this whole month and I'm hoping to match that, maybe a little more, and we spent $800 on the car last month. And the crazy part, the counter-intuitive, inexplicable, irrational, pathological part of it is that the tighter things are, at least this month, the more freely I am spending money. I can't quite tell if it's willful denial or faith that things are going in the right direction, or just three sheets to the wind what's another thirty-sixty-ninety dollars on top of it all? It sounds irresponsible.
But I have to tell you: last week I got my toenails painted at a glorious nearby spa with waterfalls and salt pools and plushy robes; we spent three hours there and it felt like three weeks. And then Friday I "splurged" on new sandals - you have to understand that the old ones (same pair I've been wearing for about five years) were literally coming apart at the seams, and the new ones are so nice, so comfortable, the leather tight and taut across my foot, holding my foot, cradling it the way the box holds my words in. And then Saturday we "splurged" on a bed and breakfast the night before our big race, which just felt like the most well-deserved, awesome form of self-care to have a night with Red away from kids but not staying (as we had originally planned, up until literally the very last minute when I just couldn't do it) at a friend's house, a friend's house where we would have had to VISIT and stay up VISITING and get up in the morning and VISIT. I didn't want to VISIT with anyone. I just wanted to see Red, and eat dinner, and have sex and go to bed early in an anonymous place where we could get up, eat breakfast, not VISIT with anyone, and go run 13 miles for the very first time in our lives. Which we did, and it was, can I really be saying this, glorious.
On top of this, the haircuts I got today for myself and for Ariel & Wren, and some expensive shampoo and conditioner. I stopped short of the Aveda skincare products I really wanted to buy, told myself enough already, I have an almost full bottle of Neutrogena moisturizer and truly can't justify buying a $42 bottle of face cream. But where's the sense in any of it? Oh, and the burrito I grabbed for lunch today because I forgot to make a pb&j for myself...
Money. Yummy products. Time away together. Running far. Red loving me, wanting me. And me, trusting him in a way that I can only hope, have to believe in fact, is authentic, not just hopeful and based on fantasy, that he will succeed in this business, that the business will support us, and that what really sustains us is not the money, just as what breaks us is not the lack of money but only the lack of communication, or trust, or commitment. These are what sustain. I am living so totally in this truth these days I can hardly believe it.
Money. Yummy products. Time away together. Running far. Red loving me, wanting me. And me, trusting him in a way that I can only hope, have to believe in fact, is authentic, not just hopeful and based on fantasy, that he will succeed in this business, that the business will support us, and that what really sustains us is not the money, just as what breaks us is not the lack of money but only the lack of communication, or trust, or commitment. These are what sustain. I am living so totally in this truth these days I can hardly believe it.
I could share yet more evidence, but that's where our new arena has me a bit mum. I am still feeling out the lines here, how to blur them, whether to have to, in terms of identity and confidentiality and total freedom. Like Foxy, it's an adjustment. I keep saying this, feels like. I miss you all. I find myself peeking in at our new space here to see who has written, to eat your words like someone who hasn't had a real meal in days or weeks. To feast.
And there is my old self-consciousness again, questioning myself instead of writing with complete abandon, which of course is in and of itself a form of self-judgment or censoring. And there, dear Sirens, is what Lila would deem a mindfuck.
All mindfucks aside, I am surprised at how good, how not exhausted, how energized, how happy and pumped I feel after running my first half marathon. I loved the challenge it posed between me and myself, me and my mind, me and my body. I loved settling into such an incredibly slow pace and having to keep reminding myself that the slowness was on purpose, that is was ok, that it would save me from my biggest fear, which was/is running out of juice. I'm not sure what this fear stems from, but in this case it served me well and kept me from starting out too fast. Why I don't slow down all the time is the million dollar question. And amazingly, I'm already thinking of my next race. And yet, and yet, even after this, I still don't think of myself as a "real" runner.
I'm home now, having been kicked out of Starbucks (they were closing, though I wish I could say I did something really provocative and got booted). Red is washing his dinner dishes. The girls are asleep. We made banana muffins tonight and they surprised me by sitting right down to eat with me, no complaints, brown rice and this awesome tofu dish with onions and ginger and spinach and soy and coconut milk. Yum.
I know each of us is in our sphere, surrounded by our own wholeness, however partial it may feel sometimes. Coming here brings me home again, whole again. I find some peace, spilling my words, knowing you will read them.
I love you all.
Noa
