Countdown to Pikes Peak Writers Conference

How many days do I have left?  The deadline I’ve given myself to finish my latest novel is April 22nd.  So I have 19 days. 

The four-day conference starts on April 23rd and I need to have my manuscript completed by then.  It’s currently 500 pages and I’ve gone through and polished up the first 140 pages, so still have 360 to go, though I prefer to think of it in single-spaced typed pages, then it’s only 180.  That doesn’t sound so bad. 

So my goal is 10 single-spaced pages per day.  That means polishing up chapters 15 and 16 today.  That’s why I’m writing on my blog.  I’m avoiding the hard work.

Our First Practice Trip

Sarina and I are having a mini-adventure this weekend.  Strangely the first snow storm of the year decided to come today after an entirely mild winter and almost no snow.  When we woke up, there was only a bit of moisture on the ground. Then the snow started to fall heavily and we packed up and headed over to Elaine’s house.  She’s out of town, so we’re house-sitting for her.  It took an hour to drive only a few miles in the storm.

Now we’re sitting cozily in her house watching The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.  I’ve been told it’s really good, though I don’t yet know why.

The idea of a practice trip is to make sure that we have properly packed. After all, once we get on that plane to Dublin, we have to make due with what we have or buy things, so I wanted to make sure we’ve packed what we need. I realized on the drive over that I need some gaba and valerian (natural tranquilizers). I felt some anxiety (hate driving in snow storms) and will probably have to deal with more on the trip so will need something to take the edge off.

Though it also occurred to me that rather than having this little adventure, I could be sitting in that office with my brain rotting. Better to feel some anxiety and know that I’m alive, than sit in a chair my whole life and rot.

One of our duties as house-sitters is to go to the neighbor’s house and feed his dog while the owner is traveling.  I was saying to Sarina, “I sure hope everything goes smoothly.  One thing I really hate is having to clean up dog poop, so he better not poop in the house or anything.  Next thing I know, I heard this loud, “baaarrrffff!”  There on the floor was a huge pile of slimy dog barf. 

Sarina laughed and said, “Don’t worry.  I’ll clean it up.” 

I handed her paper towels and she did the dirty work.  Fortunately, it was on the tile floor and not the carpet.  Just watching her, I felt like I was going fucking vomit.

Dealing With Fear & Loneliness

Sometimes the best way to deal with fear and loneliness is just to go through the familiar motions of the day, staying present and grounded.  I promised someone that I would do my best to be strong and stand on my own two feet, so that’s what I have to do.

Even when you’re all grown up and have been living on your own for a long time, life can still feel scary and lonely sometimes.  So I’m going through the familiar motions today… brushing my teeth… unclogging the bathtub drain (seems to be a never-ending process)… doing the laundry… reading… balancing my checkbook… checking the mail… washing the dishes… taking out the trash… putting on makeup… going to the library… driving to Staples to trade in a keyboard I bought yesterday (bought the wrong kind for my new laptop)… inviting a friend over for dinner… cleaning my apartment, vacuuming, drinking tea, blogging, having sexual fantasies about someone… I can’t help myself!!!!

Invoking My Animus: Pan, Dionysus, Robin Hood

Now I’m starting to like this idea.  You know, Pan could be a lot of fun.  Some other associations with Pan are the Green Man and Dionysus, the god of lust, intoxication, ecstasy, passion, and the world of the senses.

Pan and Dionysus are both unruly, vibrant spirits of the natural world.  Pan gave Artemis her 13 hunting dogs.  There is some symbolic meaning in that, though I haven’t yet figured it out.  And Dionysus was her best friend and hunting companion.

I need to do more research on Pan and Dionysus for the novel I’m now writing on Artemis.

Now the relationship to Tom seems rather obvious to me, but I’ll explain it further.  Pan is actually a very tolerant fellow.  He also shows up in the form of Robin Hood.  You know, the guy in the green tunic who lives in the forest?  But what’s interesting about Robin Hood is that he’s obviously a social anarchist!  He steals from the rich and gives to the poor.

An anarchist has to be tolerant of human failings and imperfections and a bit of chaos.  That sounds like something one would expect of Pan, Dionysus, and Robin Hood.

Tom is a mixture of tolerance and intolerance.  He’s a trickster and likes to create a bit of chaos, but I’m not sure how comfortable he is when other people create chaos.  Of course it’s perfectly human to be a mix of contradictions and it can remind me to forgive myself when sometimes I’m not tolerant. 

I have created my share of chaos in the world and I need to be patient when I’m in the midst of chaos created by someone else.  The key words for Pan are “Tolerance” and “Vibrancy.”  The symbolic meaning of the card says, “Connect to the life force, but also accept that life can be messy and chaotic.  They go hand-in-hand.  And it’s how we learn.”

Solve et Coagula

I just made a symbolic connection that is very helpful for me.  Now I’ll see if I can bring it over to the left side of my brain and put it into words.  First of all, it’s related to the Tarot.  The Tarot is a book of artwork.  Each piece of artwork is a card that has symbolic meaning that communicates with the subconscious mind. 

The two cards I’ve been struggling with lately are The Lovers and The Devil, mostly the Devil.  I think the Devil is the most misunderstood and misinterpreted card in the Tarot. 

Basically what I’ve been learning is to reintegrate the disowned parts of myself.  That’s how we empower ourselves. 

For many years I suffered from depression.  I didn’t know until 2006 that depression is most often caused by repressed anger, which turned out to be true.  I had been taught that I didn’t have a right to express my anger, so I repressed it, and it turned into depression.  My anger was a disowned part of myself and because I repressed it, I was also disempowered. 

So over the past few years, I’ve been working to reintegrate my shadowy, disowned parts like my anger, my animus, my masculine energy, and thereby empower myself.  I call that part of myself Artemis.  She is a warrior-goddess, virgin huntress and protector of the forest. 

But the fact is that every human being has both an anima and an animus — a male and female personality.  Artemis is my female personality.  I thought she was also my animus because, as an independent warrior-goddess, she has a masculine quality about her. 

But today I finally made the symbolic connection in the 2 cards mentioned above.  What the Lovers card was communicating to my subconscious is that I need to get in touch with my masculine personality.  It turns out the Pan (the Devil) is my animus.  The reason it took me so long to figure that out was because of all the negative Christian symbolism that surrounds the archetype. 

I have finally dispensed with all that nonsense.  I prefer to use the name Pan, rather than the Devil.  Pan is a more accurate name anyway.  Pan is the Earth God.  It is an archetype that represents everything about the earth and our life on the physical/material plane. 

See, the Christians decided that the earthly plane of existence was evil.  So they renamed Pan — D’evil – which in French means “from evil.”

But Pan represents everything in our earthly, material lives.  He represents the good and pleasurable, along with all the stuff we call negative, all the dark, shadowy, underground, subconscious stuff that we repress and disown.  But repressing and disowning it is exactly what disempower us. 

The religious powers were brilliant, weren’t they?  Even today they are still disempowering us. 

Suddenly it was as clear as day — my anima is Artemis and my animus is Pan. 

What’s even more interesting is that because Pan is everything on the earthly, material plane, he is a shape-shifter.  He can be the goat-god, the satyr, the capricorn, the devil, the shadow, the rebel, the madman.  And here’s the part I really love… he also takes the shape of Tom!

Wow, I’m gonna have so much fun dissolving and re-coagulating that one.

What Am I Supposed to Do With My Life?

This is one of the most profound existential questions a human being can ask.  It’s probably too big for most people so they accept a canned answer I call the Master Plan.  The Plan goes like this:  you’re born; you go to school; graduate; start a career; get married; buy a house; have 2.5 children; retire and die.  If you simply follow this Plan, you’ll have no problems… right?

Well, at least you don’t have to think about what to do with your life.  Plus you can add a little spice by thinking of the Master Plan as a game — whoever dies with the most toys wins.  So you’ve got a nice pat answer and you never have to devote any brain cells to answering that question yourself.

Unfortunately, some of us don’t find that answer satisfying.  So we have to figure it out for ourselves. 

It becomes slightly (or massivley) complicated by the fact that we live in a socio-economic structure called “capitalism,” which turns us into commodities.  We sell our labor in the marketplace for goods and services to maintain physical survival.  So instead of being truly free to answer that existential question about the purpose on one’s life, we’re practically forced to accept the Master Plan in order to survive in this economic structure.

It takes tremendous strength and courage to swim against the current.  But some people have to find their own way.  Occasionally they can dress like sheep (or in a gray suit) and move along with the flock, but they never feel truly comfortable there.  Eventually it becomes so uncomfortable that they have to shed their sheepskin and pursue their true identity.

That’s what I’m trying to do now.  I’ve shed the sheepskin.  I’ve stepped out of the flock.  What now?

It’s difficult to have no structure at all for answering the question.  I’ve been listening to “The Ultimate Anti-Career Guide” by Rick Jarow and find it extremely helpful in terms of providing structure for answering the question.

First of all, our purpose is not about making money.  I’m not the Federal Reserve or an ATM machine.  Because it’s drilled into our brains from birth to make earning and spending money the purpose of our lives in the Master Plan, it takes tremendous effort to put that aside in order to find the true purpose of a human life.

Once you do that, which may require having savings or an independant source of support, the next step is to go deep into your feelings and passions.  It’s our passions that drive our true purpose in life.  You can ask yourself questions like, “If I were free to do anything I wanted to do, what would I do?”

What would you do?

The Fool’s Journey

This is an experiment.

I made a decision that the choices I make this year will come from love, not fear. I’ve tried it the so-called “rational, practical” way and I don’t think it got me what I really wanted. In fact, it was not rational at all. My decisions have often been based on fear rather than love, but we call that “being practical” and therefore “rational.”

Give me a break. Basing your decisions on fear is just as irrational as basing your decisions on love. In fact, when you look at it that way, it’s even more irrational.

I made a decision this year to try something different. And because I can’t sort it out rationally, I thought, “Well then, just try it out as an experiment and see what happens.” I already tried it the way society says it’s supposed to be done and I wasn’t deeply happy. Not that I think a person should be happy all the time, but one ought to at least feel a general satisfaction with one’s life.

So I’m going to go further out on the razor’s edge and see what happens. The razor’s edge is the line between what you know and what you don’t know. That’s why most people won’t go there. They’d rather stay imprisoned by the devil they know than risk moving toward the unknown.

This sums up the story in Revolutionary Road, a film that had a powerful effect on me when I saw it in a local indie theater. Both the characters, Frank and April, knew they were unhappy. On some level they knew they were imprisoned in the “hopeless emptiness.” But when the devil offers Frank a slightly better lifestyle in the hopeless emptiness (a promotion and a raise), he decides he’ll take a more comfortable prison rather than risk the unknown. But April doesn’t want a more comfortable prison. She wants freedom and she’s willing to pay any price to get it.

The ultimate price is death. Though that certainly wasn’t her goal, it shows her commitment to escaping the hopeless emptiness.

As Patrick Henry said when he made the idea famous, “Give me liberty or give me death.” In order to truly be free, you have to give up the fear of death. I’m not afraid to die. I don’t want to die, but I’m not afraid of it. In fact, I’m not afraid of much of anything anymore. Fear has little hold on me.

My desire for love in every area of my life is too strong for fear to get its vice-like grip on me. The anger I feel at not seeing my desires fulfilled is also stronger than the fear. Together these two energies — the energy of love that pulls me toward my future — and the powerful energy of anger that burns through the bindings of fear — has lead me inexorably toward the unknown.

The reason I have to write about it is because the path is as unknown as the destination. So it’s almost as if I create the path as I write.

For example, when I ask myself “What should I do with my life?” I’m not even thinking in terms of career or money. Instead, I ask myself, “What is it that I truly want to do? What is it that my heart is calling me to do?”

In order to do this, it is absolutely necessary that I trust in abundance. I have to trust that I can meet whatever comes my way. I have to trust in my own innate resourcefulness. I have to trust in my ability to draw the resources to me when I need them. That’s why so many people make their life choices based on fear because they don’t trust their own resourcefulness.

I’m going to do an experiment this year. I’m going to trust myself. I’m going to trust my resourcefulness. I’m going to trust my inner guide, my daemon, whom I call Artemis. I do trust myself and I trust my daemon.

This is not about, “How can I make money?” It’s about, “How can I express my True Self? How can I fully express the person I am meant to be? If I do that, will the rest take care of itself?”

That is the basis of the experiment.

It’s about following my heart, trusting that if I do so, things will work out okay, maybe even better than okay. It’s about love, letting love guide me. I want to bring love into every area of my life.

This is what people think of as a “spiritual journey.” You start from your core, your deepest inner being, rather than what’s on the outside. As I said, I’m not looking for a job or a paycheck. My desire is for true self-expression. This is not a fashion statement. It’s a statement about who I am at the core of my being. It’s about the meaning of my life.

When you weigh a pile of money against the meaning of your life, there’s no contest. How can a person ever sell out the meaning of their life for a pile of money? That’s not to say you can’t have meaning and money, but I’m talking about trading the meaning of your life for money, so there’s no more meaning, just the money. Even if it were a billion dollars, without meaning in your life… it’s… well… meaningless. It’s empty. It’s pointless. It’s the “hopeless emptiness.”

Yet people make that trade-off all the time. They don’t want to face their fears of the unknown. They don’t want to face failure. They don’t want to face the death of their ego, but a part of you dies anyway.

The image and symbolic meaning of the Wheel of Fortune is helping me a lot this month to keep things in perspective. The key word to remember is “Surrender.” There are some things that aren’t worth fighting. You have to find another way to deal with them.

But it’s also about feeling fragmented and whipped around by the circumstances of one’s life when you’re out on the edge of the wheel. When that’s happening, the solution is to surrender, let go, stop fighting it, get centered, get grounded. The hub of the wheel is the place where one gets centered, aligned, and grounded. There are different ways to do that. One of the best ways is through meditation.

I often use writing. Some other ways are walking, hiking, or biking. Like today… When my mother’s suffocating presence got to be too much, I went to the mountains.  That’s where Artemis lives, so I always feel stronger when I go hiking in the mountains.

A Revolution in My Life

I’ve now seen Revolutionary Road three times and I was just as blown away the third time as I was the first two times. I’m reading the book too.  I can identify so intensely with the character of April Wheeler.  I understand the fear and frustraton that Frank Wheeler felt too.  But Frank gave into his fear.  He didn’t make it past Pollock, his threshold guardian. 

April did her best to make it past the threshold guardian, which turned out to be Frank.  She showed incredible courage, but not quite enough courage and strength to reach her dream.  She got out, but only at the highest cost.

As I watched April’s story unfold, I felt her pain and her desperation.  She knows she’s in a prison but she doesn’t know how to get out.  I’ve felt what she feels.  It takes remarkable courage to step out of the flock of sheep in their gray suits and walk a different path.  Everyone will tell you that you are a fool.  (“It’s childish.  It’s unrealistic.”)  As I watched the film for the third time, I also realized that my mother is playing the role of the threshold guardian for me. 

There is clearly something changing in me.  I guess a person reaches a point where the status quo is no longer acceptable and that’s the way I feel about my own life.  Rick Jarow says, “You’ll make the change when you get angry enough” and I am a nuclear bomb ready to explode. 

There are some things that I want.  I’m no longer willing to sacrifice my desires, and that means no matter what it takes.  I recognize myself in the character of April Wheeler when she screams at Frank, “I can’t think!  I can’t breathe!”  That’s the way I feel with my mother living in my apartment.  I just want to scream, “I can’t think!  I can’t breathe!  Your presence here makes me feel like I’m suffocating!”

It’s difficult for me to even think about anything else right now.  I mean if an elephant was sitting on your head, smashing it into the gravely earth, you’d have a difficult time thinking about anything else like, “In what direction should I take my career?” or  “Where would I like to live?” or “How can I bring a lover into my life?”

No.  You’d just be thinking, “How can I get this fucking elephant off my head and out of my life?”

We’ve been avoiding each other as much as possible.  I leave the apartment as early as I can manage.  Then I return after she’s gone to sleep.  But there are times when we can’t avoid being awake in the apartment at the same time.

I suppose I have managed to sort out a few things I want, but haven’t been able to focus more than a small percentage of my attention on how to create what I want.  Thank god, today is the last day.  Then I’ll have my sanctuary to myself again.

Deep Alchemy & the Wheel of Fortune

In February, I did a 12-month tarot spread, choosing randomly one major arcana card for each month.  For the month of March, I got the Wheel of Fortune and so I had no idea what to expect.  That’s the Wheel of Fortune.  It’s blind chance, like spinning a roulette wheel.  You could get something really good or bad — generally some of both.  The key word to remember when you see the Wheel of Fortune is “Surrender.”

Now that we’re mid-way into the month of March, I’m beginning to see it all more clearly.  It’s been a mixture of fortune.  First I got laid off from CBS, which I considered good fortune.  Less than a week later, my mother shows up and moves into my studio apartment.  That has turned out to be a nightmare.  Thankfully she’ll be out by Wednesday, March 18th.  I feel like I’ve been suffocating.  I can’t wait to have my own space back.

Other than that, I’ve just been feeling a lot of confusion and discomfort.  David, my alchemist friend, says this is all part of the alchemical molting process.  I have these “karmic” relationships with my mother and Tom that bind me (until I learn the lessons I need to learn) and I’m in the process of untying the knots, which will eventually free me.

With my mother, it means strenthening the masculine warrior energy within me so that she can no longer control and manipulate me.  With Tom, I’m not sure.  I only know that the discord in our friendship causes me tremendous pain and could no more severe my connection to him than I could cut off one of my own body parts.  Yet, I think he could easily never speak to me again and not feel any regret or loss. 

Is it normal to be deeply attached to another human being or is it neurotic?  I have no understanding of what role Tom is supposed to play in my life, but I can’t imagine never speaking to him again.

I see my mother as a gatekeeper.  The gatekeper always feels like the worst enemy you encounter on your journey to Shangrila, but in fact, the gatekeeper has a gift to offer.  You aren’t strong enough to begin your journey until you can get past the gatekeeper so this is a test.  It’s like some divine force places the gatekeeper in your way to ask you, “Do you really want it?”

You have to prove that you really want it. 

The problem for me is that I don’t even know what it is I’m supposed to do.  Hopefully in time I will know… but I must stay open.

Living as an alchemist, a sourceress, or a warrior is a completely different way of life than that which most people live.  Many people read about it, like reading the works of Carlos Castaneda, but very few people actually live that way.  I’m trying to live that way.

Why?

Because to me it is a much deeper, richer, more profound, more adventurous way to live.  It means choosing to live on the razor’s edge.

I Love Being an Entrepreneur

It’s taken a while to get lift-off, but I think I’m finally getting into a rhythm.  My friend Jeff (who is also an entrepreneur) and I are getting together during the day to work.  He has a nice big office in his house with two computers, so we each get one computer.  Yesterday I arrived at 9:30 am (a reasonable and respectable time to begin the workday); we chatted for a half-hour, then started working.  I left for lunch and to run some errands, was back by 2:00 for a walk.  Then we went to the health club to work out and afterward I took a shower.  By then it was time for dinner so we picked up his mother and the three of us went out to dinner at Applebee’s.  Afterward, we did some writing, then I was home by 10:00 pm.

Today I had to run errands in the morning, so got to his place by 10:00 am.  We went for a walk.  Just got back.  It’s now after noon.  I’m thinking about lunch, but honestly, I haven’t done any work yet today so think I ought to do some work before I have lunch.  This kind of schedule works well for me.