My writings, unlike my poetry, tend to be longer narratives. They can be about a variety of subjects or issues that I feel a need to speak about. Perhaps they're rambling with a core statement that runs throughout that you "get" by the time you're done reading it. Maybe its just a nonsensical and whimsical diatribe that means nothing at all, but it did me at the time I wrote it! Enjoy... and opinions expressed here (this is my disclaimer now!) are solely mine.
I’m sitting here realizing two things tonight. I was sitting at the dinner table with Jenna and we’re chatting as we are eating. She was telling me about these two guys at the BMSE this afternoon who asked her if she had been at the Earth Spirits lecture the previous evening. At the lecture, she’d said she was able to see gnomes, fairies, elves and even the unicorn horns on my and the presenters heads! She’s thrilled with the fact that she could see them and I didn’t. (So what if seeing auras/energy fields didn’t count!) But, the important thing was that these two young gentlemen were praising her for being so far ahead of so many others, that it was a fantastic thing, she had a gift to share with the world. Ok, so I had to reassure her that didn’t mean that she HAD to do it and RIGHT N OW. When the time is right, she’ll know what she wants to do. We were talking about psychic abilities and people being jaded. Well… that led to a discussion of what “jaded” meant since she didn’t know what I was talking about!
What I found interesting as I was trying to explain “jaded” in terms that she could understand keeping in mind that she, as a 10 yr old, really doesn’t have enough experiences to relate to that. I hit on my job hunting experiences as a way of helping her relate, and sort of realized as I’m explaining “jaded” to her, that I have become pretty jaded myself when it comes to the realm of job hunting and interviews.
Hmm… after more interviews and rejections than I can even count anymore, it sort of went off like a light bulb in my mind that feeling jaded does and has probably affected me during all those interviews.
I suppose part of it wouldn’t necessarily be due to the fact that I really don’t WANT to be doing what I’m doing anymore. It’s a tossup between the “it’s just a check” and the need to support myself and Jenna.
And therein is the next step. What is my core belief when it comes to money? I was at the mall today with Jenna, we’re shopping and she talked (conned?) me into getting her another bear from Build-A-Bear. Granted it was a shamrock – i.e. Irish St. Paddy Day – bear, and she IS ¼ Irish, so it was cute. She was being Jenna and seeing all these different things that were pretty cool that she wanted (and well, I admit that massage chair at the one store WAS really neat, felt awesome – like getting a massage, even if it didn’t hit all the points that really works for me.)
I think I found myself saying more no’s than anything else, the “I’m not a bank syndrome”… and thinking about that while reading Skye Thomas’s newsletter which arrived in my email today. It talked a bout those core beliefs about money (synchronicity again!) that we often have. How were they instilled into us as children? I think about that, how it was sort of impressed on me that the ‘money isn’t always there unless you save it, plan for it, the lack of “having a pot to piss in”, the depression, being in control of where every penny goes, etc. I could go on like that, and I realize as being a single parent with more support going out than is coming in and well.. I have sort of adopted that attitude that the money isn’t there. What’s more I’m realizing that I really don’t want to pass it onto Jenna, and she’s got two parents who ARE preaching that. What I want to do is to think about that and see how I can change this regarding Jenna. I want her to think there is abundance everywhere. Talking ‘poverty consciousness’ doesn’t spread that now, does it? It’s a balance between being conscious of the checkbook and the attitude that there IS enough.
How does one balance that? It certainly bears pondering…
I pick up my variegated orange shaded candle in my hand and lift it to my nose. I slowly breathe in its sweet scent and turn it over to examine the base since I’d forgotten what creative name its maker had bestowed upon it. “Wild Magnolia” it says simply, and I think to myself that yes it’s a suitable name for an unusual scent, even if I privately don’t think it smells like magnolias in the least! Actually, I lied. It really says Wild Mandarin, which is a tangy citrusy scent reminding me of summers and warm sunshine and lazy beach days where I can lounge around with absolutely no cares in my world.
“OK” I think, I’m picking up my red and silver lighter to click and click and OK so this thing is almost empty of lighter fluid and CLICK and there is the flame now. I hold it over the blackened and bent over candle wick which has obviously been burnt before and smile in satisfaction as the flame flickers then catches a hold of the wick tentatively at first then with strength to burn at a slow and steady pace. Watching the flame is mesmerizing and I watch it glowing orange and yellow which is orangey through its briefly flickering then steady flame. It reaches long and high above the wick, which is signaling to me silently that NO I failed in my duty to keep that simple wick trimmed to a ‘regulation’ ¼ “ that would eliminate brown and sooty smoke stains through my quiet house.
Ask me if I have any fleeting worries about it’s quiet and simple and hidden dark desires within the flame. It sits regally on top of my very over piled desk which is still crowded with papers and I do quietly remember again why I religiously purchase candle holders to catch any of those wayward drippings, though this candle is polite and refuses to misbehave in that manner.
The warm and simple flame brings back to me memories that have been triggered of campfires of my long ago physical youth even though I am eternally young. I remember tall bonfires in various night time campgrounds surrounded by friends and smelly clothes complete with swollen and crispy brown and warm sweet marshmallows on long brittle sticks.
It remember those fondly, and I remember another blazingly hot bonfire a little more than what seems like a lifetime ago but yet a year ago in someone’s backyard where I literally walked through the bonfire of my soul. It was symbolic of a simple but profound lesson that I would learn that dark night, even as I was surrounded by a ring of people, I gazed deeply alone into that mesmerizing burning pile of newspaper and logs. The words that rang through my head, which I truly understood later were simple, short and to the point. “Because I Can” another woman had said to me when I questioned her for what seemed to me at the time an incomprehensible reason for walking on fire.
Why was I choosing to limit myself? Telling myself in a certain way that I could not, impossible, never ever do such a brash and stupid thing – ME? Walk on FIRE? But don’t you underSTAND? My legs don’t always do their simple bidding, but argue with me when I say MOVE and they would respond in their usual stubbornly sluggish way. How dare I consider such an impossible task? Walking on a hot bed of coals called fire?
I remember with a smile the lessons I learned deep within myself that night, and remember the exhilaration of overcoming my own unbiased fears and remembering that it truly IS all about what one’s mind considers the cold hard facts which can really represent themselves as fancy illusions. I choose to not argue for my limitations, for I would rather put them down, and reach out with brave and sometimes scared hands to reach for the golden ring in the sky.
And it’s a simple flame that stares back at me this dark and calm quiet night.
