A few weeks ago I was sitting in my car, about to get out and grab some of my favorite Thai Green Curry with Tofu, when the cell phone rang. It was a blocked call. A man asked me if I was selling a Hyundai. I told him, "No, you must have the wrong number." Then he repeated my cell number and asked me if that was the number. Told him it was but I wasn't selling a Hyundai. Then he said, "but this is (and repeated my number again)?. For some reason I felt there was something more going on than someone looking for a Hyundai. I then told him he had reached the Fort Lewis Security Office and it was a secure line.Said that my line must have been compromised and would need to check it out. He sounded upset it was not me, as if he had my phone number and wanted it to be me. At some point we said good by.
The clarity of his microphone is what impressed me. Crystal clear sound as if it was from a sound booth in a recording studio. He had a wonderful voice and my mind raced trying to figure out why I had this very strong sense that he knew me, or had met me briefly, and was trying to find something out about me before getting up the nerve to tell me who he was, that day.
Yes, he could have been looking for a Hyundai, however my Agatha Christie-murder mystery -mind clicked in and I wondered why would he call to buy a car and block his phone number? Don't you want people to call you back, if the car is still available? No, I do not own a Hyundai.
I should have asked him where he saw the ad. Darn.
The call came in at 12:30pm and I was hungry. When I see a blocked number the first thing I wonder is if the caller's first, second and third chakras are blocked.
If you're afraid of me finding out who you are, then you are afraid of me, right?
Why? Are you someone I met? I'd just returned from a few days in So. Cal and tried to think of anyone I gave my number to down there. No one, except the car rental company and Paris Hilton's daddy's company.
I wanted to ask him if I sounded like a woman who would drive a Hyundai. I am just not that type of woman. No offense to you Hyund-aid Humans, however I need my all-wheel drive with 5 star safety rating. I had a head-on car accident a while back, and I like to have some steel around me and some power at the pedal.
Dear Mr.Blocked if you need to protect your privacy and do not want to be open with me, please do not expect me to respond openly, while you keep your 5th grade game going on.
Delving into all the possibilities of who that man is and the purpose of the call has intrigued me since March 4. Wish I knew what it was all about since it all seemed a bit furtive, based on his surprised reaction that my number was a secure line at a military base.
Hmm, maybe he is AWOL from the armed forces. WOW ;) Shall I continue making scenarios and put together a 30 minute, TV Mystery script? I could at this point. I love mysteries especially with my imagination. It has been fun the past few weeks trying to piece it all together. I know for a fact Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes could definitely figure it out. Miss Marple would have it down in a few hours, too. Maybe I will write a murder mystery this weekend about it. Isn't life fun when a stranger calls and the imagination goes wild? Thank you for calling, Mr. Blocked. I wish you would call back and tell me what it was all about. You have my number ;)
He did create some negative karma for himself, by making me worry because the fuel for my curiosity, inane as you may think, stems from the Monday I returned from California, 3 days before he called. My bank let me know that one of their merchant's computers and POS equipment (Point-Of-Sale) had been stolen in a burglary, and my credit card was one of the numbers compromised. I canceled the card and waited 14 days, until the new one was issued. The FBI and state police were involved so it was a big deal.
So, if you are reading this, Mr. Blocked, I thought you could have been the burglar.
You did have an incredible voice. The clarity of your cell microphone, led me to believe it was professional voice software that is how crystal clear the transmission was on the phone.
So, because you are living in such fear of either people finding out you have a secret desire to own a Hyundai, and are turning in your manly, double-cab pick up truck, with flaps with those shiny naked girls on them, or, you wanted to talk to me and I threw you for a loop, I am attaching a couple pictures of Kauai, which is where you need to go and get a lomi-lomi massage, drive up to Hanapepe to Lappert's ice cream factory and eat some,
then head down to the beach, stretch out on a lounge chair, pull your hat over eyes, and get some rest, dude.
As Deepak says, "Black holes are healed by filling them with spirit.
Despite their terror, black holes are just lack of love."
Here's a hug, Blocked Man. Run into the ocean and release.
There is something about art that has always intrigued me. I wonder what it could be? The answer is it is art and art winds it way through my soul like a bird's song on a lazy morning, right before I move from the pillow and begin the day. It is sometimes a soft chirp and, at other times, sounds like a Canadian goose honk, aimed at my 3rd chakra, jolting me out of lackadaisical meanderings, into incisive, abrupt awareness of the infinity of all life.
Santa Fe, NM always seems to satisfy the art reconnoitre, in me, where my ego-self gets upbraided meeting the sacrosanct art of those who are inspired by the hallowed grounds of ancient, Southwest indigenous power.
I love it there. My body feels good, the air is clean and the majestic mountains and secret kivas fulfill the need to escape my 21st century daily life. There are many places like that for me, around the world, however this sculpture of bronze, holds a precendence as a work of art for me, inspired me today, as I was thinking about a completely different topic for the blog.
Instead, I decided to write about an old boyfriend and something I learned about our old relationship, 2 weeks ago. It was one of those opportunities, you get once in a while, when the past assails your presumed conjecture, of what a dinner party will be like in the evening hours. I had not expected to see him, and as we have spoken over the years, since he is one of my sister's best friends, the mild anxiety I began to feel, meant that something was up. It would be unexpected and probably another lesson from the cosmos.
However, it would be the first time he and I would be seated together, for 4 hours, in a beautiful glass, wood and stone northwest lodge, owned by friends, having a party in my sister's honor.
I just didn't know what it(the anxiety) was all about. Come on, now.The universe threw us together for some reason, and it did not give me a clue before I left for the party.
I can handle surprises, even human ones, the thing is it was also the week I had been working through some past remembrances, of old relationships, and what the real reasons were that they did not work out. So, you see, that he should arrive from California, unannounced (as a surprise for my sister) challenged the unassailable reason, which I had embedded into my memory banks, of why we had ended our relationship 15 or so years ago. Crap! Or so I thought.
We had been together for 4 years before that last 5th year spiraled into silence. We had chosen different topics of study. He, the invincible topics of Contract Law and Torts and me, the near-death experiences being researched at Berkeley, and the study of anthropomorphic sound development in Cro-Magnon anthropological studies. Interesting, for us individually, death for the relationship.
We stopped talking, as neither one of us were interested in the other's discoveries and excitement garnered from them. We stopped dancing together, going on weekend jaunts, and then we stopped loving one another. Silence came quietly into our lives. I wondered, many times, what could be done to dislodge it from our home in Berkeley. It was too late. Our minds had turned away from each other, as the cosmic wheel of our destinies spun into the ethers.
That night, sitting before the twin fireplaces, in a beautiful room, over-looking Horsehead Bay, something lovely happened for me, which made me realize he had followed his heart and was happy, and I, mine.
He was talking to another guest about music of which he has an incredible knowledge. Ask him any song title, and he could tell you the composer, musician, who they were married too, who they lived with, when they played which coliseum, and which bands they had been in before and after.
In the middle of this conversation, he turned to me and said: "Danise, do you remember the night we went to the Cellar Door ( in D.C.) and Tom Waits ended the set and pulled the can of beer out of his coat jacket pocket and drank it at the piano? It was half empty, remember." I did. We had become fans of Tom and eventually, friends -though distant, since we lived in D.C. and Alexandria, VA when Tom was doing his best to make it to the top. I liked Waits and I realized there were good memories between us, because of our love of music.
When I left that night, I had done a few shots of the Herradura Seleccion Suprema Tequila Extra Anejo, which is smooth as silk, and I highly recommend it should you run into an old lover/spouse/etc., unexpectedly. There was clarity of thought as I drove across the Narrows Bridge, home, late that night.
The best part of the drive home was realizing, we had not parted from boredom, we had parted because our lives needed to go in different directions, alone, to pursue our lives and hearts' missions.
When I walked into my house, that evening, I was happy because another false premise, about a good, ole' Southern boy, had perished when a happy memory, of times past, converged into a discussion, between a man and a woman, who had once been friends and lovers, with the knowledge we had meant something to each other, at one time, and it had been good.
So, in the early morning moonlight, I released the last male phantom, of my past.
Sitting on my back deck, under the April moon, at 3 a.m., the final relationship was sealed with jubilance and gratitude, finally.I was now unshackled from false suppositions of why those relationships had ended for me. I knew the truth and it was a simple truth.
I may be free to love again. Not so much the wild, speculative love of early years. No, to explore with the deep, abiding love born from suffering, sought in wandering and tenderly touched from a life renewed with joy and reverence. I had known men who had been my worthy adversaries and lovers. I graduated from that school of understanding past male relationships.
Now, it is me, the woman who understands it was all worth it. I am happy with my life, content with my past, and can share that joy, and only that, with a man who is somewhere, out there, under the stars, and walking the earth.
He may never show up, is what you may say.
Well, like the lovely, spiral bronze sculpture above, my wheel of destiny and wisdom turns with cosmic time, through the ethereal, sublime void of space and soul, never to be stopped by mortal fears. One day, there may be a sound I recognize which will be his breath, his heart, his atoms slowly moving across the galaxy toward me. I believe our wheels of destiny are whorling toward one another, and will one day corkscrew around one another, in a helix of consummate exaltation that we were meant to be. However, I do not seek him. He will arrive, on time, when he is ready.
I can understand the incredible joy I feel to know why those relationships ended. It was a mixture of the good, bad and ugly, as we all know they can be sometimes. I had to finally decide to look at what I did to create the end, in them all, too. Painful, sometimes holding onto my denials, however, it took me 10 years to work through it. Hopefully, it won't take you but 5 or 10 minutes.
It is worth it though. I can breath and laugh again, without fear of being afraid to talk about it.
Your life is worthy of love and joy when you know we are all headed in the same direction. Love and Joy, Art, Music and Books, they are my plane ride away from a completed past.
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With beauty before me, I walk
With beauty behind me, I walk
With beauty below me, I walk
With beauty above me, I walk
With beauty all around me, I walk.
In beauty it is finished.
In beauty it is finished. ---(portion of Navajo Blessingway ceremony)
(Here is a view from my home) Lovely, isn't it?
If you need to get out this mood I have created, go turn up,Bop 'Til You Drop by the Nylons and dance around the house. I did.
Today was one of great change and peace for me.
I awoke realizing I had nothing to do, and not only nothing to do, but would try to enjoy the "nothing to do" energy instead of feeling 21st century, humanoid guilt about it.
Why must we always be put into a position of feeling we need to have something to do, by others, by societal screwed-up robotic thinking? It may be true that having nothing to do, for 6 months or 6 years, would speak volumes about your/my psychoses, which would require one of us, or hey, both of us to head into some jelly-fish infested waters, on water skis (once painfully experienced near Yorktown, Virginia), or climb up into Nepal, during an ice-storm, in order to shake our lethargy from consciousness, and realize that our reality is incredible if we challenge our hearts or ignore the screams of those who are stuck in fear.
However, in my defense, the past 7 years my life has been spent willfully tied in to someone else's time clock. Today, I am able to smile at the bunny in my yard at 830 am, while I am still wearing my comfortable yoga pants and my UC Berkeley sweatshirt.
I am not in my work clothes, today, since I left my technical publishing job yesterday. As an artist, I have declared that yoga pants and french cotton t-shirts will be my writer's uniform, from this point forward, and no longer will I require, of myself, to be en-clothed in a politically-correct wardrobe, for the non-artistic workplace, such as a military base. So, first official management decision, for my new life is now signed into law. Only regret is that I should have grandfathered-it into use years ago.
Today is the first day of the search for the words to fill a 300 page book, which will be completed and sent to book agent by August 3, 2010.
Of course there will be interrupts, by life's surprises, while writing and researching the book, however, I am not tied to an unfamiliar and unknown work meister or military-industrial complex general's demands, as of 12:01 a.m. today.
Don't get me wrong, it was a great job since I knew what I was doing and doing it well. I explored and wrote about high-level architecture designs for software, which for some reason, I just had a knack at understanding. However, even I know when the time has come to take on new challenges, like learning new words, so that my spirit soars and the heart is fed.
As I rode around the planet, over the years, I spent lots of energy seeking mystics, healers and gurus and saints, to see if they were what people thought they were or would spend time exploring their energy, picking their brains, or sometimes delighting in the pure joy of seeing them face-to-face.
Always canoeing my energy into places, one might not normally go, helped me to learn things about myself and others, and sometimes even fall into the arms of some lovely man who I would never stay with forever, but, for a time, our relationship became a classroom in learning about caring, trust, and love.
There were other times,such as one day in Calcutta, when I walked into the middle of a Communist take-over, (Calcutta had a communist government then) and had to be escorted out to the airport by a tank, with a group of freaked out tourists, who thought they were going to be blown to bits. (After flying off a 50 foot hight, ice covered cliff in the Pennsylvania mountains, on a toboggan, and living to tell about it now, a tank with a cannon aimed at me, while sitting on a warm bus, is relatively safe place to be for me.).
The bus vs. the tank was tense, for sure, like all tense moments in life, which is why they are called tense moments. Then the stress ended after I was pushed through the airport, out onto the tarmac, at 3a.m and thrown on a plane to Bangalore, with, of course, the same group of frightened tourists.
At that point I would have loved a bowl of oatmeal or a mai-tai, since the tourists were more draining of my energy, then the Calcutta police and Indian Army, that night.
So, it appears I have some stories to tell, although telling them will involve lots of soul searching and, of course, lots of Mate and blueberry tea.
Getting unplugged from the old pattern will take about 3 days, and since the dark of the moon period, starts today and lasts for the next 3, it is a great time to meditate, cogitate, and resolve what I shall do with my time that will lend sustenance and peace to this planet, I call home.
It is a time of transition for me and I am peacefully entering into it. Breathing out stress, Breathing in Peace will be my practice for the next few days. Maybe you should to, as this incredible time of transition, for all of us, in the universe has made itself known in all our lives. When I think of where I was 10 years ago and how much more I love myself now, to be able to not rush wildly into the past, because it is familiar, makes me happy.
I am throwing some things together tomorrow, and heading out to photograph the new nature and baby animals arising via spring energy. Maybe I shall head up into the Mt. Rainier Valley or up the Nisqually River to photograph the new eddy's formed by this winter's snowfall. Wherever I land with the cameras, it will be the right place, the beautiful place, the place of transition and peace.
So, because you are living in such fear of either people finding out you have a secret desire to own a Hyundai, and are turning in your manly, double-cab pick up truck, with flaps with those shiny naked girls on them, or, you wanted to talk to me and I threw you for a loop, I am attaching a couple pictures of Kauai, which is where you need to go and get a lomi-lomi massage, drive up to Hanapepe to Lappert's ice cream factory and eat some, 
