and as for you

Right.  My face.  It just got so bad.  I took pictures, but they're too horrible, and I decided I can't post them, so you'll have to believe me.  With my face all blown up like a baked potato, and stinging so bad there was no relief from the burn, I decided to head to the ER and just see what a professional person of the medical arts might say.  They said a bunch of stuff, shot me up with an IV of lord-knows-what and saline, and sent me on my way with a couple of prescriptions.  Boy am I glad I embarked upon this quest for health and wellness!

Thankfully, the prednisone took the swelling down pretty well, but my skin still appeared red and hella-chapped.  Yes - so bad I said hella.  I decided to head to VT on a whim last Saturday
night, too, and thinking it would be an in & out job, brought naught more than the clothes on my back...but I got stuck.  The blanket I slept under irritated my skin badly, and I woke up with fresh bruises from scratching.  Then I got a flat tire, and in my attempt to change it, I dropped the car off the jack.  When I finally managed to get it back up off the pavement and put the donut on, I spent the rest of the morning driving around looking for an open tire place to no avail, so I took the boy to P-Pie and resolved to stay an extra day.  Alas.  It would have been perfectly alright to spend another day visiting in VT, eat another Coffee Corner breakfast, say hey to folks we met along the way, but I didn't bring the little blue bills that apparantly kept my 'sunburn' in check (our waitress did in fact ask if I had a sunburn), and the burning Itch was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.  After another mostly sleepless night, we struck out first thing Monday morning, got a new tire, and headed South - into the flurries, which were just flurries as we headed out of Montpelier.  By the time we were done winding our way along 107 towards Killington, the pavement was white, and I was crawling along at a white-knuckle 20 mph, praying the semi that was stopped at the crest of the hill would move before I had to hit my brakes and lose any momentum I could have counted on to get myself over that hump - with another semi coming in fast in my rear view.  I didn't make it.  The semi behind me kissed my back bumper and came to a stop, while I fishtailed my way up the last few hundred yards of snowy slalom to pull in at the gas station and break down in tears, while gulping in huge breaths of air, my first since the long moments when I saw that truck coming up behind me.

We got some snacks, took a potty break, and sat in the car until the snow appeared to taper off a bit, and I'd seen a few plow trucks go by before I attempted to slide down the other side of the mountain to our certain doom.  I started off slow, mindful of my traction and the cars I passed on the shoulder with their hazards on.  I managed not to have a heart attack or hurtle us into oblivion over the edge of a cliff, and I found that as I pulled into Rutland and turned onto 7, that we were going to live, and even get back to Woodstock this very afternoon, that I could count on a shower in T minus 2 1/2 hours.  Once we hit the Thruway, it was smooth sailing, and I was under the boiling hot water by 5pm, dosed on a blue pill, and breathing my relief into the steam.  Now, 4 days of liberal slathering of moisterizer later, I feel that I've really had just about enough of this facial catastrophy I've been dealing with, fully acknowledging that I did it to myself, but who knew and all that, and it's moot at this point.  It's looking much improved right now, even though it was threatening to come back in force, which makes me think I'm on the 'better' side of the whole experience, yay team (blue pills and moisterizer).

holy cow...

Wow, I had a whole post typed in recapping the last few things I've been meaning to recap, when I stepped away from the computer to live my life for a minute, and the power went out...you would have thought it would still be here, as it was saved and all.  Guess not.

So.  Dreams.  And dream interpretation.  For the dream I called 'the first one' in this post:  in a space where I feel comfortably trapped, I have the freedom to explore the symbolic boundary between personal self and public self while merging various aspects of my personality, and letting things happen at their own pace - anticipatory, perhaps uneasy.  I'm looking to recapture the excitement, freedom and vitality of youth in my current need for intimacy and affection, but I'm keeping a secret, not dealing with an issue, getting ready to finally acknowledge qualities within myself.  I feel emotionally cold and frigid, excluded, left out, scarred by the lack of love and absence of warmth in my own family circle, so I need to work on mindfully exploring aspects of my self that have yet to be acknowledged or utilized.

The second one, from the same post:  an aspect of my personality that I have rejected, but am ready to incorporate and acknowledge, and the relationships I have with those around me are important in learning about myself.  a positive regression into a past where I had no responsibilities, things were simpler, carefree. escaping the pressures and stresses of adulthood, acting in a childish manner - because 'acting like an adult' is a part of myself that is repressed and hidden. so the archetypal dream helper offers me insight and advice in searching for some direction in my life which is lacking motivation.  a transformative self exploration is the beginning of the path that I am taking, going through a transitional phase and journeying into the unknown to experience spiritual enlightenment, emotional growth, physical prowess, new opportunities and mental passages.  social and cultural changes, expanding knowledge and awareness - now is a good time to experiment and try new things. In considering personal experiences and memories, they may be a reflection of my current surroundings. achieving my goals through perseverance and hard work.  a period of stress struggle determination ambition.  instability  - lost my grip on a situation, a relationship.  lost control of perception, vitality, my outlook on life, my consciousness and point of view. intuition and awareness in reflecting on a decision.  going back out into the larger world and experiencing life again. a new surge of energy, growth, ambition and renewed confidence.  rebuilding by working on bettering my mind and body.  approaching my goals with careful forethought and preparation, yet lowering my standards, doing less than my best.  willpower, hidden aspects of my activities, feeling hollow and empty. an awakening to get out and expose myself to new interests and activities.  feeling stuck - dug into a hole and can't get out to enjoy something familiar.  spending more time cultivating and developing some emerging ability I thought was left in the past that is coming back to me, bringing me back to a particular time period, as a situation in my waking life may be parallel to a situation from my past and my dream is providing a means of resolving how I've lost my direction and lost sight of my goals. I feel worried and insecure about the path I am taking and I am trying to reach out for support - looking for someone to lean on while still adjusting to a new situation in which the rules and conditions are ever changing. coming into contact with some aspect of my psyche or unconscious and recognizing a part of myself that was previously repressed or undeveloped.  change - identifying new facets of a relationship, taking it to a new level / in a new direction.  feeling helpless, dependant on others.  take charge of the situation.

Well, there's just about nothing there that doesn't  pertain to the situations going on in and around my life these days, so I actually found that exercise to be very centering, and even in a way reassuring.  It actually took some research and a bit of thought, which is why it took so much time to get to, but I'm glad I did.

♥

dramatic and sensational title indicating mind-blowing content

my FACE...it BURNS!!!  GAaahhh....WHY must I DO these things to myself?  Whatever.  I will survive this trauma, too.  Here's the scoop:

I went to the local apothecary to find some lovely salve for my patch of hideous and painful psoriasis that has lived on my ankle for untold centuries.  They said, "Why slather something ON it, when you can correct what's causing it?"  I said, "OKAY!"  So my new friend Josh, let's call him Josh to protect his innocence, immediately put me on boatloads of vitamin D, fish oil and probiotics.  Yaay.  I felt like I had been proactive about my health, yet realized later in the evening (probably about 20 minutes after I took the first D, when the Itch began, 7 days ago) that I was still out of salve.  Damn.  A day or so later, I headed to the Co-op where my friend who gave me the salve told me she bought it.  While finding the salve, a lovely Co-op staff member talked to me about doing a mercury cleanse, and I jumped right on board (she also sold me some stinging nettle, for the Itch).  The Itch started on my left wrist, has done a tour of my entire body, and seems to have come to rest in a burning patch of red welts on my face and neck.  My eyelids and ears are swollen.  I have been treating it with boiling hot showers, and periodic cold washes throughout the days.  It continues to burn.  Fucking Ow.  I haven't tried the stinging nettles (for the itch) yet, because the nice lady said it tastes bad, and I should mix it with juice.  I happen to be out of juice at the moment.  Lame, I know.  I shall endure the burning swell - and/or get some juice tomorrow...

On a lighter note, the scary patch of oozing red psoriasis on my ankle looks better than it has in awhile, or at least it does today.  I'm hoping the vitamins are working their way into my system as the heavy metals are working their way out, and that my face will clear up like my ankle in a day or two (hopefully not seven).  Fingers crossed.  In the meantime, it's time to go steam myself again, try for some relief by sweating the toxins out by force.  I've been pounding gallons of water, throwing down fiber and roughage, meditating on meanings.  Wondering at the totality of my need to release - to flush myself so completely that I can feel remade, 42 years new.  Wondering at how I could have gotten so far knowing so little, and how much I need to learn to be able to continue on.

My foot is too swollen to fit comfortably in a shoe, my face is on fire, and new eruptions are breaking the surface of my skin as I begin to scratch, but somehow, it's all part of what's supposed to be happening right when it's supposed to happen.  So, I'll be backing up to the nice dreams I was having a few weeks ago (a few weeks already?) and talking about the interesting things I thought about while searching for meanings in my subconscious.  Stay tuned for updates on the condition of my sandpaper face/skin ~ ♥

a few days ago

it's about how I itch how badly i itch how I take boiling hot showers to soothe the skin that erupts and slather it with salve and cut my nails all the way down so I don't tear my flesh off  how there are red streaks covering me from head to toe, starting to creep up my chin now, like it did that other time, and I had it on my feet then, too, so painful.  and on my face, and I was writing down what I was eating, and then it all just equalized and things had started to get better, were moving forward, but then I moved here, and fell flat again.  not completely flat, I was at Soons for 2 years, that was a good stint, and here, I'll be successful, I feel it in my bones, though it's gonna be like giving birth again, but it's a different kind of pain.  all that digging into the Old Words the ones from long ago, it fucked me all up, made me go back to places and process things and to see that every now and again I was really out of my head, and live it again, and get all twisted sideways with the things it brought out of my past, and the things I had to live with and get past.  and there was so much pain.  so much actual physical pain that it crippled me, and I felt it bind me up, wrap itself around and through the very fibers of muscle into the tissue, and poison me from the inside.  and my issues tend to erupt on my skin my lovely skin smooth and clear, though I haven't taken proper care, and I should love my skin for the ways it loves me - my thick skin.  like elephant hide and quick to heal soft and smooth firm longs for the sting of a slap or some candle wax- the boiling showers - don't even get me started on my hair and eyes...and I scratch and i scratch and i feel sometimes like a cutter because i'm damaging myself but it goes right along with the screaming in my ears, and the stress levels I didn't get really sick this winter (acknowledging the fact that I'm superstitious) which feels really good, and taking a more active stance towards my health, by getting on D, fish oil and probiotics.  then i went with the herbal cleanse, and by god if I'm not crawling with toxins my body is mass-flushing through my pores and it itches like mother fuck but I know it's going to suck for a limited period of time and my ear is swollen where my cell phone lives, which is interesting, and as i type this the hives are working up my right cheek and onto my eye...so rather than scratch and further tear away at it i'll go take a boiling hot shower and abuse myself that way, and probably itch in the shower for good measure and i wish i had  a bruise to be proud of from a good spanking rather than bruises from scratching  I just need to sweat this shit out with lots of water -boiling shower - half my body weight in ounces each day, and sweat, and all will be well.  raise that D and get my poor sore ankle off the critical list right now I'm so strung out i can't even wear shoes it's hurts so bad and I don't want to put on clothes because my skin is crawling  i got stinging nettles because it's a histamine or some such, I'm no herbalist, a not-itch-thing but I haven't taken it yet because i need to go slowly with all of this, like all that shit i dredged up out of the past was to find out how deep i was hurt so i knew how far i had to go and it turned out to be all the way.  its a dangerous road but i think im making it and I need to keep in mind that it may get even still worse a bit before it gets better because the cleanse is 30 days, & the D gets looked at again in 12 weeks.  bad D.  way down D,  like 9, on a scale of what , I think in the hundreds?  skin eruptions stress lifestyle change dumping all the shit that's been dumped on me, and not taking on any more  end of story  time to run screaming for the hills but i should be good after that on my way a one month mark and a three month mark tsa random street sweep searches gas prices middle east blowing up we sit on our asses and are intimidated out of traveling of leaving our homes ready for the jack boot regime inviting them in to crush our children's spines ohm madness sitting on a lotus feeling groovy being at peace with the all one growing organic veggies saved from heirloom varieties clean food and water and air and earth clean living clean soul clear mind clear heart invite it in sweat it out drink water boiling shower ohm to the temple respect i apologize, you deserve better I deserve better the Ariadne and Dionysus write that story the porn get up get on up like a sex machine don't even get me started on sex i'm so desperate, drink water boiling shower...

Warning: Adult Content

So, I was visiting with the neighbors the other day, and the male of the pair decided to play his new favorite song for me to introduce me to the kind of music he listens to - yeah, it's rap.  Now, I have nothing against any form of music, even if I don't like it, but I've heard some really good, inspirational, deep and moving social commentary in the form of rap, and by comparison, what the neighbor played was nothing of the sort.  HowEVER - having said that, I must admit that the VIDEO that went with the song was very...arousing, and I haven't been able to concentrate on anything for days.  So much so, that I had to write down the fantasy my mind constructed around it just to get it out of my head!  It sort of worked...I've been able to think and do things that don't involve sex for a few minutes, now, but it's also that time of year that my sex drive tends to rev itself right up, and send me spiraling into juicy daydreams of free love and frequent couplings.  I'm not talking about love, here, kids, I'm talking about sex.  If you're easily offended, or a prude, stop reading now - I don't know how messy this is going to get, and you may even need to get yourself a shwag towel if you choose to continue, but I'm not making any promises.

Sex is sex.  Sex is not love.  I am in no way confusing one for the other, and neither should you.  I have love in my life - my child, my friends, they love me.  Sometimes I even think my family loves me, but there's no confirming that, so I leave it out.  Right now, I'm not having any sex.  In fact, I haven't had sex since New Year's Eve 2010.  That's a year and two months, which is a long stretch for an old hellcat like myself.  The last time I went this long without sex, I had just had a baby, and was too busy to think about anything besides diapers, breastfeeding, laundry and sleep.  I had sex a few times during my pregnancy, and by the time my boy was a year old, I had found myself a single dad to play with - score!  Unfortunately, the guy decided he would rather be an asshole than in a relationship - but he was a fantastic lover (for me) and I still think fondly of the time we spent together in the sheets.  My physical attraction to him was/is so powerful, that I often use his likeness as the subject of my fantasies, even though there's no way in holy hell I'd ever be with a guy like him again - this attraction, as I said and at this point, is purely physical.  He wasn't relationship material, and I not only slammed that door, I bolted and chained it as well.  So what set me off on a jean-creaming porn frenzy?  The hot dude in the bad rap video closely resembles my erstwhile lover, and depicts the sort of 'fuck me 'til it hurts' approach we unmade our beds with after our respective little angels had played, eaten, bathed, and gone to sleep.  Ooh, those nights...

...anyway, in the interest of doing something with my days other than watching crappy rap videos and movies featuring skinheads having sex, I wrote down and added this new fantasy to the list of short stories I keep in the folder marked 'Porn', and attempted to get on with my life.  Here I am attempting - how am I doing?  Yeah, not so well.  I'm still visualizing the guy in the video, my old lover, another well known actor, and a lesser known porn-star too many times per day, making me all too aware of the impending rutting season.  Mama needs some blue eyes and a buzz-cut, STAT!!!  Give him a few tattoos and put him in some leather, while we're at it!  Oh, I need to calm down again, I almost typed the word 'Harley'...oops.  Needless to say, I looked up my horoscope to keep myself off kink.com (sorry, not gonna put in a hyperlink, copy and paste if you can't bring yourself to type it) - what?  What do you do?  Think about baseball?  How very 1950 of you...  Here's what it said:


{When some Westerners hear the term "tantra," they think it's a New Age codeword for lavish sex. But in its original form, tantra is a philosophy that advocates spiritual union with all of creation, not just erotic union with an attractive partner. Tantric practitioners might engage in metaphorical "love-making" with lizards, birch trees, clouds, toasters, rivers, and quirky friends, among other wonders. I recommend that you experiment with this perspective, Aquarius. I bet you'll find that cultivating lusty compassion for the entire world will enhance your personal intimacy with the people you care about. Happy Valentine Daze!


SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
What advice would be useful for your love life? Not this observation by The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening: "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come." Do not, under any circumstances, make those your words to live by. Instead, consider the following counsel from Norman Mailer: "Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to."}


...umm...Come On, Lusty Compassion!  Better than cultivating ice weasels.

Oh, and I highly recommend Rob Brezsny's amazing horoscopes, they're the only ones I read!

Dreams

Recently, I've been having these strange dreams involving my ex, a high school friend, and labyrinthine wanderings...

The first one seemed to be at my friend's house, where I've never been, so it must have been a construct of what I thought a Home should be - which seemed a warm and happy space with friends gathered and enjoying each other's company.  A group of people were hanging out waiting to go somewhere or do something (it's been more than a week since this one, and I didn't write it down).  The ex and I were flirting, and I felt that flippy butterfly feeling in my stomach as we found corners to hide behind and kiss where the rest of the folks couldn't see us.  It was nice to see him smiling, and making eyes at me (even if it was a dream).  It must have been a snowstorm, and he and his crew were all geared up and about to go out and do what they do, and maybe we were all hunkering down to wait the storm out, and were feeding them and wishing them well, as we wouldn't be seeing them for a few days.  I'm not sure why this particular girlfriend was the one who's house we were at...she and ex have never inhabited the same physical space, and have no connection to each other.

Last night, I dreamt that the same girlfriend and I (and some other chick I didn't know) were wandering through the mostly abandoned hallways of some old university, climbing out windows and sliding down construction tarps to crawl through holes between walls to get to a space where there was a party going on.  I think my ex had been hanging out with us, but went on to the party while we met up with my cousin who showed up with the dog she had when I was I kid, and I couldn't believe she was still alive (she would have been almost 40!), but I hugged and loved her nonetheless (the dog, not the cousin).  We didn't quite know where the party was, so this other chick showed us how to get there - along this bizarrely circuitous route.  She was running ahead, and we were trying to keep up, but we lost her, at which point it turned out my friend knew the way and we got there regardless, just along what we thought was a unnecessarily long detour.  When we found the party, ex was there, hanging out by himself looking surly, and I went to him and reminded him of how he was like this character in a movie he turned me on to, except for the part where the dude in the movie got shot.  He seemd edgy or uneasy, but I reminded him of how much he had taught me, and how much there still was to learn.  He seemed doubtful, but I adored him all the more as he threw an arm over my shoulder in that way that guys have to show they've 'claimed' you, and held me like something he had a responsibility to protect, and was concerned about his ability to do so.  Or rather, his ability to continue to want to. 

Wonder what's up with this?  Why that high school girlfriend?  What does she represent to me?  She's adorable, perky, was a good student involved in activities, had an active social life, and a good group of tight friends.  There was some stuff going on at home with her parents, but nothing out of the ordinary, and while we lost touch for many years, she seems to have a good life going for her now, with a career, a good husband, wonderful kids, and a heart that just seems to get bigger and fills me with respect for her values.  Obviously, I don't know what goes on with her behind closed doors (we're not that close), but she's got to be representative (in my dream) of some sort of ideal, right?  A motherly influence, maybe?  An example to live by? 

And what about ex?  I adore him - always have - but why am I dreaming of him in a romantic way?  Is it him I really want, or just the idea of who I want him to be?  And what does that mean, anyway?  He can only be who he is, and he's never pretended to be anything but that, so am I romanticising him?  Because I'm so lonely?  Sex-starved?  This kid I knew once said that I 'couldn't keep a man', and while I was highly insulted by his statement, I thought to myself, "is it that I can't, or that I've never really had one worth keeping?"  If I wanted to keep one, I would have, right?  Maybe it's just that the men I've been with have no intentions of keeping me, either.  At this point in my life, I'm not sure it's even possible anymore - I'm so used to being alone, and being in charge of my own things, I'm not rightly sure I could even share.  Especially when it comes to my kid...

These dreams have got me thinking, though I'm not sure about what.  What I'm missing?  What I lack?  What I want?  Who I want it with?  Either way, it's got the ex on my mind, and how good things were when they were good.  I miss being in love with someone worth my affection, though I don't miss being hurt by someone I chose to trust.  Maybe I'm just thinking about how much better things could have been if we'd been able to work through the bullshit, but were too naive to know how, or that it was even worth the effort.  Again, that's on me - I have no idea how he feels, and it's not a subject we discuss.  Besides, I believe in there being more than what we had - a true partnership on a multitude of levels, and that's what I seem to be holding out for.  A synergetic partnership that would heighten the levels of both our awareness.  And my need to be non-monogamous - my dream of having two husbands and a wife - how does that come to be?

Saadi of Shiraz, a Sufi author from the 13th century once wrote:  When a man's sleep is better than his waking - It is better that he should die.  Why these dreams remind me of this saying, I could guess - but dying now, while my son is just a wee lad would suck beyond all reason.  Perhaps, as is the point of mysticism, if looked at figuratively, what I can surmise from this connection in my head is that I should be taking steps to create the waking life that I want for myself rather than living in these nebulous dreams. 

Thoughts?

42



     Great day in the morning...there is a blue, star-shaped blob hovering it's reflection just at the top right corner in the field of my vision.  There are several blue twirly-things hanging from the ceiling, and the apartment is so clean!  It feels 120% better in here.  The Sun has settled into my constellation and is blasting brightly through my freshly washed windows, bouncing off a hillside of snow and back up to the clouds in the ice blue sky... I'm tripping out on the sunshine.  Saving up for a rainy day, when I get so low, and I just want to dance in the sun.  All in all, it's been a great birthday weekend, and I did what I wanted to do, which was clean my house, have good conversation, some laughs, and lots of yummy food with good friends.  It was delightful, and a wonderful way to start out my new year.
     I unpacked the last of the moving boxes, and while I didn't quite finish putting everything away, or scrubbing the bathtub, I would say I'm done with the majority of what I felt I needed to do in order to invite folks over to say, "I'm officially moved in, let's celebrate."  There's still the art to hang on the walls, and the aforementioned scrubbing of the bathtub to be done, but just to have rid myself of the countless years worth of grime from my environment - to have vacuumed the accumulation of decades of shoes from the cracks in the floorboards - has lifted a pallor from the space itself, opening the energy and allowing it flow through unhindered, amplifying the effects of the sunshine...  I feel much more at home now, like I can go back to dealing with the orders of the day, get to work on upcoming science fair projects (I'm so excited - our first science fair!), and plan our next birthday party (the boy's).
     I still need to finish up my schoolwork from last semester - I managed to finagle an extension, which I seriously needed given the challenges I chose to face - but this is the service station beyond the end of the line for me with this, so while there's not much left to pull together, the pressure is still measurable.  I need a job.  That point is the thorn in my side these past few months, and the most significant of my worries at present.  A regular paycheck would do wonders for my psychic state, which is begging to be allowed to perform a striptease from the woolen clown suit in which it's been swimming (with a nod to Rob Breszny).  Nevertheless - the lightening of my environment by its subsequent cleanliness, paired with the positive vibes from a visit with harmonious spirits engaged in loving acts, lends itself to an end-of-weekend morning, lazing in the rays of the Great Solar Charger, eating leftover party goodness in the Zen-ish calm.

     My ears continue to ring, the skin infection on my ankle remains troublesome, and my love-life exists only in my fantasies, but my boy is a blessing, we are both in good health, 42 is a sacred number, and I'm willing to see what there is to learn...