Missing in InAction
Mood:  sad
Monday 24Sept07 5:42pm

Just a quick note to say that I've been in pain for close to two months now! I've got carpal tunnel (shouldn't be typing); tennis elbow (never played tennis a day in my life); arthritis in my shoulder; and degenerative disc disease in my neck.
I'm in excruciating pain most of the time, wearing a wrist brace, icing myself like nobody's business and can't do too much for too long especially since I've been going to work every single day.

When something happens I'll be back.
In the meantime, I'm not responding to many emails, can barely write and am not blogging until further notice...

Shelley

Breathing Fire
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Tuesday 6:27am 21Aug07

Well, I've hit week two of pain in my left side of my body. It started as a kink in my neck and has turned into some kind of crazy pain that had me crying on Saturday like a little girl. Like a little girl!

I went to my doctor on Friday and he suggested that I take my arthritis meds that I never take. They are doing sweet fuck all, except my feet don't hurt. Small mercies.

I nearly snapped off three people's heads with my teeth yesterday, I was so cranky. The boys knew to stay away from my office. I have no patience when I'm focusing all my energy on pain relief.

The worst thing about living alone is that you still have to do shit when you feel like shit. Going out to get cold meds when you have a cold and picking up groceries when the whole left side of your body radiating the kind of pain that I'd liken to war time torture.

Of course I forgot that the elevator in my building was under maintenance and had to walk up the 4 flights of stairs with my knapsack and the groceries I so smartly purchased on my way home. I'm walking down the hall of apartment building and hadn't noticed that my neighbour was walking behind because I'm actually pep talking myself through each step. She says to me in a snarky voice, "You can't wait for me?"

My back would be up if I wasn't in so much fucking pain. I stopped and turned slowly with the fire coming out of my eyes, nose and mouth and in my harshest, meanest voice I said, "I didn't see you. I'm in physical pain, I've had a hard fucking day at work and now I have to walk up 4 fucking flights of stairs. You can't just fucking say hi?"

Her eyes got really large as she literally shrunk back against the wall. Ducking from the fire breathing pisces dragon, no doubt.
I turned around and started my walk up the 4 flights of stairs.

Seriously, what is with people and their sarcasm? If someone doesn't notice you, can't you just say hi? Is everything really about you all the fucking time?

I realize I'm like an injured animal that attacks for it's own safety. You want to see mean? Piss me off when I'm in pain.

Needless to say, I've been a no show for blogging and my writing. I've had so many hot baths that my skin might slide off my body. I've been applying ice packs and heating pads and have yet to find a position for my left arm that doesn't have me screaming out in pain. Yeah, it's been a delight. When your bra strap hurts...

The cats have been warm electric blankets coming to keep me company in shifts. Even Zelda, who hasn't come to sleep in the bed for months, has been spending copious amount of hours in the bed beside me, staring up into my face and blinking her eyes.

Oh well, one more ice pack before I get dressed and leave for work.

EY

New Moon Promises
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
8:19pm Monday 13Aug07

I got myself home and plunked everything down and sat at my desk and wrote without stopping. Haven't touched the television, haven't checked my email, haven't gone on facebook. I'm believing those voices that I blogged about the other day. I'm believing them when they tell me that it's all going to come out on the page if I take care of the distractions. And boy did I fill some pages!

I've got my piles of books all ready for what I used to do, back in the day when I was learning how to write. Back in the day I didn't know what it was that I had to write about so I'd use the exercises in the books, as if I were in class, and I'd do them. I'd always be so excited to get home from work to see what the next exercise would be and what I'd write because of it. And in very little time, ideas would start popping in my head, and lines of poems, and story characters and the like.

I've been thinking that there was something to that person who didn't fill herself with all sorts of writing pressures and just went with the flow of what came out. And of course the moment that I decided to just do that again I could barely keep up with the words that were coming out for my novel White Wishes.

So day two of the new moon is talking to me. Yesterday, I wrote up my new moon goals and wrote of the distractions that I've got to kick out and the kind of focus that I want to have.

And something has been playing on my mind, goading me. In one of my early morning turn on the television sessions recently, I flipped the channels and stopped momentarily on mtv canada. Jess was talking about how she went to high school with Seth Rogan and his writing partner (I forget his name). She said something along the lines of, "When we were all outside laughing and joking around Seth and his partner were sitting inside writing their movie scripts."

It turns out that they are the guys that did the movie Knocked up and their latest movie that's out is called Superbad. It looks like it will be funny in a Napoleon Dynamite kind of way.

That keeps running through my head because I am that person who does stay back and works on her stuff while everyone else is out laughing and joking and my silence and the voices and my need to hibernate in August as opposed to November is pushing me to embrace it.

Nelly Furtado also said something very similar when she said, "When all my friends were out on weekends going to parties, I was home working on my music."

That's the kind of advice that excites me and keeps me going.
And the jazz musicians that would play one gig and then meet up at an after hours spot and jam together til the wee hours of the morning, pushing each other, competing with each other, playing the mind blowing shit that I can only imagine because it was never recorded, at least most of it wasn't. Fusion. Experimenting (and drugs of course, ha ha).

Some of my favorite songs are the product of those type of sessions. Groups and musicians that get their influences from everywhere. Listen to Spinning Wheel from Blood, Sweat and Tears with that heavy jazz influence and David Clayton Thomas' rock voice. It kills me everytime I listen to it and all I want to do is find a way to write.

Queen's, Somebody to Love, a rock song that is totally a gospel song to my ears with the imitation of the choir and the call and response. Please! Can I get an Amen? ha ha!

Anyway some where in my silence and sweeping away the distractions and just plain old listening, It's all coming back to me.
The passions, the stuff that blows the top off my head and makes me grin and makes me play a song over and over and impacts me and makes me get my butt in chair and write like a fiend.

It's really been hard digging through the muck trying to get myself back to this place. I was really questioning whether it was time to give this racket up and concede that maybe writing isn't supposed to be my thing. Maybe I should just try to be like normal people and work the 9 to 5 job and forget about believing...

I just couldn't remember what gives me that injection not paying attention that I was still collecting (buying more music, buying more books, finding more articles). And a couple of angels have walked beside me telling me in dream like ways to stop focusing on what is wrong and start focusing on what is right, what has always been right. Giving myself permission keeps coming up.

One Angel is golfer dude who is in the exact same (I know that's redundant) position as me. Financially, job wise, dream wise, romance wise and power struggle wise (that's why he paid for my beer and kept me at the bar a couple weeks ago). And we talk it to death, we do, and it's seeping in, and so I'm setting the goal to have White Wishes Book I , the full draft of chapters complete by Dec 31st, 2007.

I'm working on Kali's chapters backwards from Chapter 15 to Chapter 1 and Rachel's chapters in order. Wish me luck!

EY

A New Tarot Deck
Topic: Tarot Card of the Day
I went to the WB bookstore yesterday, on my way to see my herb guy, and I bought myself a new tarot deck, The Enochian Tarot. It's not a traditional deck but I loved the images when I looked through the sample book at the store. I've looked at the case of tarot cards, every single time I've gone in that bookstore and no one has ever come to me to ask if I wanted the case open so I could see a deck. Except for yesterday. ha ha!

"One deck Shelley, you can only buy one deck!" I had to remind myself.

Buddy was quite knowledgeable about the decks he offered and we discussed the decks I currently own. The ones I use the most Robin Wood Tarot for writing; Universal Waite or Thoth for personal readings. From the samples, I was down to deciding between The Witches Tarot by Cannon Reed or The Enochian Tarot. Buddy told me that he had a few customers complain about the Enochian deck being too dark for them but somehow when I held it, I felt energy stream from the deck through my arms. It was the same way that I chose my rose quartz crystal.

I surfed the net to see what sites covered the deck and the reviews I've read have been about how hard the cards are to read. I found that interesting because I'm so used to connecting with the cards intuitively. I like to check other peoples interpretations of cards to see what they are saying, but these cards aren't traditional anyway.

Anyhow I pulled three cards last night, deciding that this deck would be solely for intuitive interpretation and got this out of them...

52. Aila - I saw as the circle of life. My connection to others and how I share myself with others.

43. AOGD - My subconscious thoughts coming to the forefront. Creating something out of nothing, creativity.

61. Saiinov - In the center of my own power. Full use of my mental resources. Expressing my unique creativity and talent.

As a whole, looking at the cards together, they look at what's outside of me and what's inside me and mixing it up (like in chemistry class - mixing everything in a beeker - I failed chemistry ha!) to create something unique.

Anyway, I was kind of chatty this morning! Now I'm hungry. ha ha!

EY

What's in my heart?
Topic: Another Entry
Saturday 11:32am

Upon thinking about my previous entry my thoughts bounced around:
What's in my heart? Leo is about heart. August has been a far calmer Leo time for me compared to July Leo. Hm! I should look at the New Millenium Being newsletter again for Leo to see what I get out of it.

I immediately opened it to the pages I've highlighted and read this:
- complete or clarify relationships
- a new perspective and commitment
- sustain only that which is in alignment with your path
- concentrate on your next step
- stay focused and eliminate all distractions
- examine your motivations and align your goals to match your heart's desires
- devote your available time and resources to working toward what you really want

And for the Leo New Moon tomorrow:
Follow our hearts at this new moon. Set aside time to be with yourself and examine
1 - What you are currently creating and what you wish to create?
2 - What kind of light are you shining? How can you shine your soul light a little brighter?
3 - What is the nature of your soul blueprint? How is it guiding you toward your spiritual destination?

Somehow this brings my thoughts to our paths, whether we consider it spiritual or otherwise. It's so funny how some people will insist that when our paths veer in different directions that they are on a path but we're no longer on a path. If I can say that I believe in anything at all, I can say that I believe that we are all on our own path period. Whatever we choose to call it. Mine is a spiritual path.
As I truly embrace this belief more and more, I also find that I am placing less and less demands on others. If we are all on our own paths, right now, who am I to say that someone should be obligated to me? I don't have the right to ask that of anyone. Nor does anyone have the right to ask it of me. Which is my permission to myself to hibernate or take a break from all the social interaction or participate in the social interactions.

EY