Share #15: Bread, butter, tea, salad, sliced pink grapefruit & a periscope

At last I shared a meal with Love. She offered weeks ago, but I was too sick to accept. She even offered to drop something off, something healing like soup, but I felt that wouldn't be a true share. I'd miss out on her company and all she has to offer. I begged her off when she wanted my community, but maybe I saved her from getting sick?

Love was on her way into Seattle and said she could meet me on Sunset Hill. What did I need? Nothing. I needed her. The meal was already laid out. It was after noon. I'd missed breakfast again and was hungry. We shared a green salad and warm bread and butter and fruit. I think I talked more than I ate. Since my accident, when I am eating with others I notice how my mouth is no good at the movements necessary to chew big bites of food. I feel a little self-conscious and spend energy focusing on the mechanics of chewing. I don't remember experiencing this alone.

Somewhere during the meal, we got to talking about our feelings about our lives. How are we feeling about where we are, not where are we, but how are we feeling about it,  where we perceive ourselves to be. Are our feelings a true indication of where we are? I think our feelings have less to do with our whereabouts than they do with our perception of our whereabouts.

Love began with the idea that we have eyes because we see and that we have bodies because we need to move in and sense the world. She'd just been with poet Wendy Mulhern and had been investigating this. I agreed, we manifest our world, and maybe even ourselves, in being called to this life, but when did this happen--at birth, at conception, or is it ongoing, with each passing moment?

What do we need to understand ourselves right now, to be whole? Healthy? As we move through life, as we wake up to certain truths, what do we need then to understand? When I say, "I am lost," I am saying I cannot match up my understanding with my experience. How do I know I am lost? Can I not trust myself to know? What am I loving? What am I avoiding? Are these good indicators?

Love offered a series of questions she'd learned from a teacher. I'll substitute my own current crisis for the situation at hand. "Am I in limbo?" "Am I sure I am in limbo?" "How do I feel when I believe I am in limbo?" "Who would I be, how would I feel or react to the same circumstances, without this belief?" Love answered about her own situation with a definitive yes. I answered with an "I don't know." I am not ruling out the idea that I might be misperceiving everything and that a little shift in thought might bring all the clarity I need to dissolve what I see as my problem into my path. It's happened before. The only clear answer I had was to the third question. "I feel powerless."

I believe what is shifting is my understanding, my perspective, not my circumstance, not my world. But then my perspective is my universe, so far as I know. All those same gifts, those same hindrances, are out there, in here. I'm sensing them differently, reacting to them differently now.

It's a good thing about me, for my own sake, that I can always rely on myself to react in body--move away from what is harmful, move towards what is good--even when I cannot understand or react in mind. I have good a flagging system. My body leads, and wisely. And so, I must investigate when my body talks, like now when it is saying, "You've been on the path. There is a whole you on the path. You must find it again. You cannot go on as before. But first, you need a  frame." This feels like a trap. I need the frame to find the path, but cannot find the frame because the frame is the path.

We talked about the use of love in realizing our truths. How we love ourselves, how we let go of our expectations. It is so easy, from my vantage, to see the lovable Love, to see how her on her path, but to see the lovable me, on my path, that is harder.

Share #14: Potluck turned potpie

Shanghai Stock Exchange revises trading suspension rules.

It is Sunday. It is the last day of Vanessa DeWolf's beloved Studio-Current on Capitol Hill. There is a potluck to mark this ending, this beginning, to discuss the future of these people and this space. I missed it! I'd been looking forward to it all week. But I'm still coughing and struggling to breathe. It would have been irresponsible of me to attend and compromise those who were there.

Alas, but I was relying on this community. And now I have none. So many of my plans--to commune, to share, to eat--fell through this week because of my cough. It's left me with holes in my schedule and holes in my stomach, but it's highlighted my shares, made me see how much I need the people in my life, made me hungrier, helped me understand, or is it remember, my own suffering and the suffering of my community.

I was glad when Kathleen called to ask if she could do laundry. Yes please. Perhaps she'll share a meal with me? I haven't forced a meal on anyone or made them take a bite of something so I could eat. I could have done that. Or cheated. But I didn't.

There have been several occasions when I was hungry and the person I was with wasn't hungry and so I went without. But tonight it was getting on to dinner time and I'd bought a potpie at the market and here was someone coming to my house who might get hungry just like me? Was she, getting hungry? She said she'd probably be hungry in about an hour or so. O good!!! There was that Snoqualmie Creamery coconut ice-cream pulsing in the freezer too.

Kathleen had agreed to dine with me and called Lee and he was coming too. He brought red wine and  offered two bars of chocolate and a bottle of Source Naturals Wellness Formula, an herbal defense complex for my cold. I made a green salad with goat cheese and heated up Deborah's Homemade Pies chicken pot pie. What a smell to fill the house! And everything was tasty and afterwards--ice-cream! And chocolate! And a movie!

Share #13: Ballard Farmer's Market

My Share is throwing me off and I'm not sure why. I'm not restricting my diet in any way, but my diet is certainly restricted. I can eat whatever I want, but only under certain circumstances. I can only eat with another human being, in relation, in community. Why would this cause confusion?

I've already sorted out what in relation means. I cannot eat with a dog or a cat. I cannot eat over the phone with someone or online or on Skype. I cannot eat something alone that someone gave me as a gift yesterday. I cannot eat in a public place where other are eating simply because there are others there. I must be in community. I must be sharing something with someone, least of all food.

Last week, I was sharing dinner with a friends. After dinner I ate my cream puff and suddenly felt guilty. What had I done?! I'd cheated. Wait wait, no, that wasn't cheating. That is allowed. My friend eaten a cream puff. We'd shared an experience. So why did I have this little panicky feeling? I used to get this feeling every so often when I was younger and worked three jobs and had, against all odds, a rare day off. In the middle of that carefree day I would suddenly panic. I'm supposed to be somewhere! Where? At one of my jobs? Which one? I would need to fish for things I knew every other day. Sort out what day it was. It was like I was suddenly unfamiliar with myself and my life. Then I would swim through it or in it and locate myself and the day too and my environs and reintegrate. No. I'm not supposed to be anywhere. Everything is ok. I am right here, where I am meant to be. Then a melting relief.

I wonder why, after eating a cream puff, I felt that way. Perhaps it's a conditioned sweet connection? I know from Hunger, the fasting/receiving work I did for NEPO 5k Walk Don't Run, in 2013, sugar grabs at a part of me, a part that will not be satisfied, that wants to cheat and steal away. Perhaps the sugar recalled that part of me? Whatever it was, I took some time to  review how I eat sugar, under what circumstances. I eat sugar at breakfast on hot cereal, in the form of biscotti. On rare occasions, I purchase package of cookies--my favorite are those dark chocolate topped digestives, McVittie's, from Great Britain. I like to eat them alone and to ration my intake. I pull out two cookies to have with my hot black milk tea. Then I pull out one more. Then one more, really, just one. Then I put them away a third time.

I have plenty of food where I am staying, but I cannot go into the kitchen and eat it, which is a different way of being. When I was fasting (Hunger, 2013), I did not have food around. I had a bolder line between me from food. Now I am carrying food around in a bag looking for circumstances to eat it.

What is this project about? What am I doing or supposed to be doing? I find myself wondering. Was I supposed to keep silent? Was I supposed to eat that? It's a lot looser that you'd think, but then there's a big obstacle, the inability to eat without a companion, which means I do not snack. I do not answer my hunger. Typically, I snack all day on nuts and yogurt and chocolate and bread.

I met Mylinda at 1pm at the Ballard Farmer's Market. I hadn't eaten since 2pm the day before. I was hungry. We shared a fresh quesadilla and a tamale. We sat in a doorway eating from our laps. People were streaming by. The rain let up. Later, I bought some things to take home, wild flower honey, 2 bunches of beets, 6 plums, a delicata squash and a chicken pot pie. Everything made fresh and organic, from products in season, grown locally. Splurge!!

When I lived in a studio on Old Ballard Avenue, last November, December and January, I'd walk out my door and right into the farmer's market on Sundays. I could hear them conversing in the early morning light as they set up their stands. The wood-fired oven pizza cart was the closet to me. Smoke from their fire wafted in through my window.

Some day, I will eat food purchased at the market, and only at the market, for one month, one season, one year. See what evolves. See how I change. See if I can connect my body with my landscape through my diet, live on food that lived in my region, on fish and meat raised on my land, on fruits and vegetables that are falling in season. Supermarkets make it hard to know. Where did this come from? How long ago was it picked? Was it ripe then or green? And isn't it strange I live in a culture where I must construct this reality?

I've lived on supermarket food most of my life, except for twice. Once, when I was in Poland and once when I was in the South Pacific. In Poland, I knew when strawberries were in season. For two weeks, you saw them and everyone ate them. Then they were gone. Same with sunflowers. And gooseberries. And plums. Unless you pickled it, that was the last you saw of it until the next year. Eating pickled pumpkin was a different story. Your labor was deep in that. In the South Pacific, I ate food plucked from the tree everyday, pulled out of the sea, hot from the oven. Coconuts, tuna, parrotfish, urchins.

There are several fresh, year-round, farmer's markets in Seattle. In the University District on Saturdays and in Ballard, Fremont, Capitol Hill and West Seattle on Sundays. In the summer, there are even more.

Share #12: Fruit juice in hand blown glasses and a goat cheese and salami sandwich

It was 2pm. I hadn't eaten. I made a salami, butter and goat cheese sandwich, cut it into three pieces and put each in a bag. I bagged some chips. I was putting together a lunch so I could find someone to share it with. So far as I knew, there was no hope of eating otherwise. I was headed for Ballard. I figured I'd find somebody in front of the Post Office or outside Ballard Market or Trader Joe's or under the bridge. We know where they are.

My morning plans feel through. I woke up late, missed my meditation. I felt worse than yesterday. Sore throat, sore head. I was late for my afternoon meeting. That friend was called away then and so it fell through too. I took a bath then realized how hungry I was.

On my way out the door, Marcia texted me. She was in her studio with friends. I was welcome to stop by. Ah to be taken in!!!! Marcia lives five blocks from where I am staying. I drove to the Green Market to supplement the supplies. I bought fruit juice, an avocado, a grapefruit and a brownie.

I arrived in the rain and walked down the magnolia leaf strewn drive to her garage studio. Siam Thai Restaurant, that's what the neon sign on her studio says. It's a real restaurant sign she bought at an auction.

Marcia was inside with Laura, a friend and neighbor. Laura found Marcia the same way I did. She saw a sign for a Glass Art Sale and followed it in. Rhonda, another friend, joined us. It was gray day with rain, but in here we were surrounded by brilliant purple and blue and orange glass. Marcia's studio draws in a lot of very strong, healthy, supportive, creative and globally active women.

I pulled out my goodies and opened the juice. Marcia offered four of her artisan glasses to drink from. She makes gorgeous drinking glasses called Wileyware. I've bought and given many glasses to family and to friends as wedding gifts. She sells her glasses at the Ballard Market and at craft fairs across the country. She also offers kids glass classes and makes glass jewelry and that's just the start. Her creativity stretches into the world in many ways. She's got an alter ego names Miss Direction who locates lone women at bus stops and offers them rides across town in exchange for their story. "Hello, my name is Miss Direction. I'm a public servant in the city of Seattle. My goal is to transform the mundane."

Our little group spent the next few hours encouraging one another, listening and talking about life and transitions, while Marcia reorganized her sewing supplies. I was so thankful for the brightness in there.
It often seems that bodies that need each other, are brought together. It especially seemed that way with Laura and Rhonda. Rhonda had so many insights to offer and who wouldn't take them from such a glowing, expanded being? Rhonda, Marcia explained to us, is the woman responsible for the stencils we see around town on street drains, "Drains to Sound / Dump no Trash (with a fish stencil)." I've often seen the brilliance in those signs, showing us, with one image, the connection between our actions and our living world.

As I was leaving, Marcia offered me some of her mushroom tonic. She filled a little glass bottle with some homemade shiitake mushroom tonic. I should take two droppers full twice a day, in water, until I am well. It is strong immune tonic. Talk about healing!

Share #11: Vegetable soup, garlic tea, an aura reading

Not only did Sarah offer homemade vegetable soup, she offered to read my aura and to give me a healing! An aura reading involves looking at a person's current growth period and giving insights. Sounds about right and yes, please.

I think she's worried about me, not because I'm sick, but because I'm lost. I think she's been where I am, and recognizes it as a place of suffering, which it is. She said she'd found some relief through Vipassana meditation, long retreats, travels, pilgrimages to places of wonder. Perhaps it's time for Mongolia. How long can I wait for the right frame to present itself. Whenever I try to explain my problem, my situation, my trouble in life, the inability to see things right, it seems like nothing, inconsequence, but it cannot be, it's too persistent.

Where did I meet Sarah? At Green Lake and later through Fremont Arts Council. She was looking for a boat for Luminata, to turn into a sculpture. I offered mine. I had a fiberglass over ply rowboat at the time. For two years, she turned my little pram into a lighted, floating swan and let it glide across Green Lake to mark the autumnal equinox. This year, Luminata happened on 19 September. I missed it. I missed everything this year.

Sarah is house-sitting right now, in a house I know, for a person I know. In fact, she's staying in the very house I brought my mother to when we first arrived from Pennsylvania in April. It was our first house-sitting job, the beginning of what became a very challenging and overly-eventful non-transition. I was both surprised and delighted to learn about this new connection and to be offered a healing session right here, in this house, this very same house, seems a cosmic righting of an overturned vessel. May be the first skin on this summer's trauma.

We started with the meal and ate a simple chicken stock and kale and vegetable soup with homemade oat scones and goat cheese. I offered Sarah a set of my 108 beads from February. After dinner, we washed the dishes and went into the living room. It was time for my reading. I knew Sarah did dream work from our discussions online, but I didn't know about her psychic abilities. She's been taking classes and is learning how to use and channel what she perhaps cannot filter out. Thankfully, I was able to control my coughing. I only had two cough drops left.

I sat on the couch. Sarah sat opposite in a chair. She asked me to ground myself. She said to keep my eyes open, she'd have hers closed. She would go into a trance, which really means entering into her own self. There, she would be be able to see me and my energy.

She looked at me, layer by layer. She began with my 1st layer or base or root chakra. She saw this as light pink, faded. Its paleness was concerning. She said it was shaped like a pole, a pink pole. After a while, she saw a dark spot there, just a little one, like a bat, or a half a bat, flitting about, spinning around the pole. She said it involved the fear of someone bipolar, but that it wasn't harmful. It was holding on though and attracted to me. I was providing it something to catch on and could release it or send it away when I wanted to, into the earth, give it some space, some place else to go. Like aversion, dismissing this would only make it stronger. I would do better to see it, address it, tell it I have some fears. Then I could fill that space out with a deep red ball. With work, she dissolved the bat into little flecks, but still those flecks encircled the pole. She brushed them away gently with her hands and moved on.

My 2nd layer and sacral chakra were shaped like an upward flute. My 3rd chakra was also pink. She saw a girl in a pink dress, on a tricycle, or was it a motorcycle, or a farmer's tractor? It was a changing image. It's as if I were looking for the right vehicle for my work. All through her reading, I recognized myself. There wasn't anything off base. I recognized the symbols and colors and dynamics in me. Sarah offered a beautiful and sweet view of my condition and situation. It gave me compassion for myself, made me want to care about my heart. This summer, I'd found a pink baby dress at a garage sale. I used it in my Yellowfish performance, "Tract," with my mother, at the Hedreen. Last January, I was invited to join a motorcycle rally across Mongolia, then was disinvited to go. I was heartbroken, but took a motorcycle class anyway, then found a cheap motorcycle so I could start learning to ride. Lately, I've been thinking about a work I once proposed for Vashon Island but was rejected for. It's called Haystack and would involve moving a haystack across the city by hand. These could be my vehicles. My goal, to realize my way back onto the path.

My 4th layer or heart chakra was a bluegreen orb with rings, like the planet Saturn. It was emitting positive energy in waves, but the orb itself was a hard, blueish shell with a little bird inside, struggling to get up over the lip, slipping and sliding down its sides. This layer is love for self and love for others. The hardness of the shape was concerning, but it was strong with rings like radar waves pulsing out.

My 5th layer or throat chakra, the center of communication, was shaped like a satellite dish. It was very strong, a deep golden yellow, an oval. She kept seeing images of vinyl records with various tracks and suggested maybe I needed to make some recordings.

My 6th layer, the third eye, the one that sees, the analytic center, the center of psychic abilities, was a golden bowl, but there was a dark spot there too. Pernicious. She asked me to fill the bowl with the sun or with a candle that grows into a sun. She said she'd bring some gold in there to heal it. She waved her hand inward towards her body.

My 7th layer or crown chakra was also shaped like a satellite. It was completely open, totally receptive, perhaps too receptive. There's too much information coming in. It's confusing. This shape maybe needs to be drawn in, into an antenna that will pick up only what is useful. This center also came with an image of a black bird diving down, like the holy spirit, a dove, but dark. The nativity image also came up, but with a vulture where Mary should be, looking at the baby. It was dark and scary. She suggested I might be holding onto some confusing, negative images surrounding Christianity from when I was young. A spirit guide appeared, was invited in, a native in buffalo robe, someone like Chief Joseph. Asiatic. This is a spirit guide. It's time to let go of the confusing, fearful images that don't work and allow the peaceful guides, the healthy images in. This layer was the color of wealth. I have the ability to attain it, but struggle with certain aspects of wealth. I associate negatively with it, or with certain kinds. I have something here to offer here, with this view. I have work to do.

There was so much detailed description. I cannot remember everything. Somewhere in there was fear. And ability. And a great deal of energy emanating from the throat, being drawn up from below and down from above. It made sense my heart needed protecting. All that openness was leaving it vulnerable.

This share was indeed a great gift of presence and of healing and I am so very, very grateful. Thank you.

Share #10: Meditation, jasmine tea, yogurt, toast

I haven't seen Lyn Coffin and her sweet dog Charlie in a long time. It was nice to touch base. We used to sit meditation together. Lyn is an extraordinary poet, translator and playwright. She had new work to share, two translations, including "The Knight in the Panther Skin" by Shota Rustaveli, an epic, Georgian, medieval poem. What a beautiful book, three years in the making!

Lyn told me about her world tour to London, Georgia, Iceland, Mexico and New York and about her upcoming reading at the Seattle Public Library later this month. She'll be reading from her new poems, stories and a play called "Lutefisk." It took a while to catch up, which we did over breakfast. Then we sat for 30 minutes, which felt good and grounding, and planned to sit again tomorrow.

Namo Buddhaya Namo Dharmaya Namo Sanghaya.

My Share is calling me to do the things I have been avoiding, things I want to do. It's calling me into relationship with, what Thaddeus Golas calls, the universe. "We are equal beings and the universe is our relations with each other."

Share #9: Pho

Funny how you see a friend and you want to see her again. A door hardly opened is hard door to open, but a door on a swing, swung frequently, gives effortless!

But Mylinda's bus was late and my tiresome cough was still hanging around, so we decided against First Thursday Art Walk and went for pho instead. We met at Than Brothers on Aurora, where the pho flies out of the kitchen. When ours arrived, we threw in the condiments--basil, sprouts, jalapeño, brown sauce, hot sauce--and got to work. I made it through the meal, despite numerous coughing attacks.

I met Mylinda in 2006 at Green Lake, at my poetry desk. I later worked with her at The Phinney Center. At her urging, I founded a reading series there. She was the Phinney Center Gallery Curator. Now she's at Sound Transit and sits on numerous art panels. She's currently working with Oddfellows in Ballard to bring new artists into their gallery.

We talked about the F.O.E. and Oddfellows and other art spaces in Ballard and about art walks here and there. She told me about her recent classes and about a psychic fair, then she showed me her dollar store finds. Four bags of googly eyes, a pack of glue gun glitter sticks and a strand of battery operated lights. I suggested adding eyes to our cream puffs. Before parting, we read a paragraph from the book Jean loaned me, "Basic Self-Knowledge" by Harry Benjamin. I argued with every few sentences. We'd have a little discussion then Mylinda would hold the book up again and continue reading. This is how it went.